The Week in Search is a weekly column produced by the Studio team to keep marketing professionals and ecommerce merchants up to date on changes in the search industry, and provide valuable context on what it all means. If you have questions or think we missed something, email us directly.

Google My Business Listings Take a Hit from COVID-19 in New Study

Google My Business Impressions Down 59%
photo from SEJ

Reputation.com has published a study on how COVID-19 has impacted local business listings on Google My Business. It comes as no surprise that activity for Google My Business listings is down across the board. Not only are impressions down, clicks to GMB dropped 37%, including driving directions.

You can download the report here.

Studio Takeaway: No surprise that COVID-19 fears and local lockdown orders led to a decrease in local business activities. The good news here is that there appears to be a return to normalcy. Judging by the data, the end of April is the start of people returning to local businesses and utilizing GMB as a resource to find info they need.

Google Launches Lightning Talks Video Series to Replace Postponed Webmaster Conferences, Talk Javascript Links

This week, Google released their first installment of the Webmaster Lightning Talks video series to replace their postponed Webmaster Conferences due to COVID concerns.

In this first series, Martin Splitt, Google developer advocate, discusses the proper way to setup links with javascript. You can watch the video below:

Studio Takeaway: We are excited that this series is being launched so quickly and really love the way that this information is relayed here. Though, we would like to get more information on content quality at some point. Google seems to have a big fixation on Javascript and SEO at the moment.

Read Google’s COVID-19 Marketing Playbook

This week, Think With Google released a comprehensive playbook for businesses to chart a course forward during and after COVID-19.

“The intention of this guide is to help you prioritize what to do next and take action. That includes ways to utilize the latest consumer and industry insights, how to evaluate the situation facing your business, and next steps to shift your digital marketing strategies to meet customer needs.“

According to Google, there are three phases or paths to recovery:

  • Respond
  • Rebuild
  • Recover or Reframe

The playbook includes a lot of insight into how user behavior has changed and what businesses can do to adapt in the coming months.

Studio Takeaway: Download the guide here. After going through it, I find it’s a pretty in depth look at how business has changed in such a short time. At this moment, giving businesses guidance on the best way to pivot and ensure their longevity is really all you can do.

Other Interesting Links

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