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Magento News

Magento Announces Ongoing Support for M1
There are not many details yet, but it looks like Magento 1 will still be supported after November 2018. We will bring you more info on this as it becomes available. See the original post here.

Gartner Magic Quadrant Names Magento a Leader
In an analysis of 21 digital commerce platforms and vendors, Gartner has included Magento Commerce among its grouping of Leaders. The ranking is based on a company’s completeness of vision and ability to execute. Citing Magento’s flexibility, cost-effectiveness, speed, and architecture, Gartner has recognized Magento’s position as an industry leader dedicated to serving eCommerce companies of all sizes.

Magento and Indaba Creating Industry Guidebook
Early this month, CloudCommerce announced that its subsidiary, Indaba Group, would be partnering with Magento and Retail Dive to create a guidebook for eCommerce merchants about industry best practices. Featuring the Vice President of Strategy for Magento, Peter Sheldon, the guide will be called “The Flexibility Imperative: How to Measure Your eCommerce Adaptability in Today’s Digital Age.” The guide is expected to be released in the next few weeks.

Google News

Purchases on Google
Devoid of any major announcement or fanfare, Google has released a beta version of Purchases on Google in the Merchant Center. Google mentioned Purchases on Google back in 2015, and it essentially allows you to place shopping ads that include a checkout button. Hoping to improve mobile conversions, when a customer clicks on the button it delivers them to a Google-hosted page that is branded to suit your business. In Google’s own terms, “Checkout is seamless, simple, and secure, thanks to saved payment credentials in the user’s Google Account.” If you are based in the US and want to use this new feature, you can fill out a request form in your Merchant Center or right here.

AdWords Updates
First, Google has announced the launch of similar audiences for Search and Shopping. This feature allows you to target audiences who are similar to your current audience, but are not already part of your remarketing list. They have also introduced Customer Match for Shopping, which uses your email list to identify your best customers and show them your most relevant Shopping ads.

Another addition to AdWords this month is two new kinds of extensions: message and structured snippet. The message extension allows customers to directly text your business and structured snippets give more details about your products and services. Both of these extensions are applicable at the campaign and ad group levels. Also, sitelink extensions can now be used at the Account level.

Offline conversion imports into AdWords can now be scheduled to upload automatically at your selected day/time.

Finally, as you may have already seen, Google has created a completely redesigned AdWords experience. It is currently in beta, but is expected to be available to all advertisers by the end of this year.

Mobile Updates
According to Search Engine Land, Google has introduced new filters on mobile image search, including filtering by color, GIF, and usage rights. Also, 300 x 250 ads are now allowed above the fold on mobile pages.

Google I/O Conference
Did you miss the news from I/O? Google published a list of the 101 announcements that were made at the event. Topics include Google Assistant, Cloud, AI, Photos, Play, Android, VR, and more.