What Advertisers Need to Know About Google’s Related Activity Card

Imagine you find some great information on a topic through Google. A few weeks pass, and you want to revisit the same sites again but you’ve forgotten the website. Worse still, you can’t remember what search terms you used to find the site in the first place!

You may be tempted to simply give up. Now, you don’t have to quit – Google has a solution for this exact problem:

Say hello to Google’s Related Activity Card.

What is Google’s Related Activity Card?

This is a new feature that you can access in your search panel whenever you are logged into your Google Ads account. Anytime you search for something, Google will generate a new card.

You can tap to expand this card, and it will display a list of all the links and related search terms that you have used in the past to search around this topic.

Some key features include:

• The ability to delete items
• Toggle on/off cards by tapping the 3-dot icon
• Mark pages for later by adding them to a collection on your activity card

The Importance of the Google Related Activity Card

Nowadays, people tend to search for information over longer sessions. The rise of cross-channel marketing means that many consumers begin their shopping experience on one device, then complete it on another.

The customer journey involves several stages, and many people need time to learn about a brand and consider various options before making a decision.

With this being the case, the related history feature makes it easy to pick up where you left off, regardless of which device you are on. You can collate your ideas and useful content together, and avail of relevant suggestions on what to explore next.

This feature helps map out the journey, facilitating a smooth transition for the user, and helping search understand interests on a deeper, more accurate level.

How Does this Impact Advertisers?

With Google search becoming more intelligent and better aligned with user intent, the search history card is another step in the right direction.

So, how will it impact online advertisements?

Here are the pros and cons of the Google Related Activity Card for advertisers.

Pros:

• You gain a better understanding of user intent – Advertisers can leverage the search history records for patterns, trends, and user behaviors to craft ads that are more likely to be of interest. By looking at the data patterns, advertisers can learn if a search term is being selected from the history card or if it is a new search term. They can calculate the likelihood of people using the history card search terms or new search terms. Based on that, advertisers can add those search terms, and long-tail exact match keywords, effectively creating a more targeted campaign that should result in more conversions.
• Faster keyword research – Much of the hard work has already been done for you, so you can use the search terms people are already using, as well as highly-relevant, similar keywords.
• Increase quality score – With more targeted, relevant ads, your quality score will benefit.
• Remarketing – The Related History Card will begin displaying your website as a related suggestion as it is relevant to the user’s current history.
• Greater brand awareness – As your quality score goes up, so does your Ad Rank. This will increase your ad’s visibility, helping you attract more visits. The circular effect of getting more impressions in the short-term will lead to more impressions in the long-term as your ad remains highly visible.
• More conversions – As your ads increase in relevance, and the quality score rises, you will see a bump in your conversion rate.

Cons:

• It may restrict keyword discovery – By placing too much emphasis on previous search history, you’re unlikely to find a lot of new search terms.
• Branded keyword use may increase – As people move through the customer journey, the search terms they use may get very specific. They may focus on long-tail keywords and brand names that you won’t be able to incorporate into your ad copy.
• Cost-per-Click (CPC) may soar – There is a chance that keyword auctions may get very competitive and you could end up paying a lot more than anticipated.
• Repetitive search results – When people return to the same sites and sources, you may struggle to get a lot of Google Ads impressions.
• Fewer clicks – The potential drop-off in impressions could have an adverse effect on your clickthrough rate (CTR), which in turn could impact brand awareness.

What is the Dynamic Organization of Search Results?

The Related Activity Card isn’t the only new feature that Google has added recently. Another addition is the dynamic organization of user search results.

This displays a range of subtopics that are highly relevant to what you are searching for. The goal is to provide easier, more accessible solutions and information with a single search.

Dynamic organization works on a machine learning-based system, so it continues to learn over time, gathering more data about how you search. Therefore, it gets smarter and continues to update automatically, providing more accurate and relevant suggestions as time goes on.

The Potential Revolution of Online Advertisement is Here

Artificial intelligence has been shaping the future of marketing for some time now. These recent changes to Google are a big step towards more automated, authoritative search results.

Now, people can harness the power of dynamically organized results and the related history card to quickly research topics, learning about something in a naturally progressive way that is aligned with their intents and position in the customer journey.

For advertisers, this presents more opportunity to personalize their content and offer targeted ads. Take care not to depend too much on this channel though. Too much reliance on the user’s existing search history is somewhat of a double-edged sword, which could, in fact, damage your CTR and incur higher costs if keywords get too specific or competitive.

It’s wise to remain open to discovering new keywords so that you still appeal to a wider audience and can attract users using new search terms. With a balanced approach, advertisers can learn from the related search history card to create more relevant ads, which will help your business and your reputation with Google.