Posts by Sean

Good Afternoon, and welcome to the Intelligency Digital Roundup.

This week, Twitter rolled out a new feature for advertisers, Google updated their Image SEO best practices, and the company also teased their new products for this year, including a potential ChatGPT competitor.

Let’s get straight into the news.

Twitter Rolls Out Search Keywords for Advertisers.

Twitter has begun to roll out an ad unit for the platform named Search Keywords. Search Keywords allow advertisers to pay for tweets to appear at the top of search results for keywords.

This is similar to the feature that allows a business to pay for their tweet to appear in feeds, but it appears in search results instead.

Advertisers will now be able to reach a wider audience than they originally could.

Once an advertiser logs into Twitter Ads, they’ll be able to see Search Keyword Ads as a new campaign objective. Twitter outlined the new feature below.:

The aim of the objective is to drive traffic to a business’ website.

The campaign objective is unique in that unless a user is actively searching for the keywords in the ad, it won’t appear. So the users you get seeing the ad will be a user who is more likely to convert.

Twitter plans to flesh out Search Keyword Ads to additional objectives in the future.

Like other ads and promoted tweets, Search Keyword Ads will keep the promoted label so users can identify that it’s promoted.

This new campaign objective may be a move by Twitter to generate more ad revenue; as advertisers dropped out of the platform after Elon Musk began to make controversial changes to the platform.

Ad spending on Twitter dropped by 71% as of December 2022.

Google Update Image SEO Best Practices

This week, Google made some fresh changes to two of its SEO help documents. Specific changes included outlining that title and link elements are vital for RSS Feed Follow for Google Discover. Another change to the document stated that the company parses .img elements, including in other elements.

RSS Feed Follow

RSS Guidance was written in the Get On Discover documentation, there’s a new line under the section “Feed Guidelines” which reads:

“The most important content for the Follow feature is your feed <title> element and your per item <link> elements. Make sure your feed includes these elements.”

Google is basically saying if you want to get the most out of users following your RSS feed on chrome, include the title and link elements.

Image SEO Best Practices

The Image SEO Best Practices was clarified to state that <img> elements are parsed, including when the <img> element is enclosed in another element such as <picture> elements. This applies when images are indexed by Google:

“Using semantic HTML markup helps crawlers find and process images. Google parses the HTML elements (even when they’re enclosed in other elements such as elements) in your pages to index images, but doesn’t index CSS images.”

It’s important if you’re optimising for SEO or using Follow for Google Chrome to keep up to date with these changes so that you’re not hampering your own website.

Google To Debut Chatbot In 2023

As revealed by the New York Times, Google is set to demonstrate a version of Google with Chatbot features later this year.

ChatGPT has garnered discussion over the past two months, and Microsoft may even incorporate it into Bing. As a result of this, SEO experts are wondering how it may look in the future. Businesses already believe that snippets steal traffic, imagine if Google can answer something before you even click a search result.

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai initiated “Code Red” in December following ChatGPT’s release. Pichai reportedly sees it as a threat to the business.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin, the two who founded Google, have been having several meetings about AI Product Strategy, This is the first reported involvement they’ve had with the company since they left, according to The Times.

The Times stated the below:

Google now intends to unveil more than 20 new products and demonstrate a version of its search engine with chatbot features this year, according to a slide presentation reviewed by The New York Times and two people with knowledge of the plans who were not authorized to discuss them.

Google’s three priorities for the Chatbot:

• Getting facts right
• Ensuring Safety
• Removing misinformation

Watch this space, as I suspect this will get interesting later on in the year.

Good afternoon, and welcome to the last roundup of November!

This week’s stories cover how Elon Musk recruited a long-time critic of his to fix Twitter Search, how TikTok are helping out small businesses yet again, and Google’s guide to ranking updates vs ranking systems.

Elon Musk Hires A Prolific Hacker To Fix Twitter Search

Twitter’s current CEO Elon Musk has set their eyes on enhancing Twitter’s search bar. This week, he recruited George Hotz, a long-time critic of Musk who also serves as a hacker.

During a 12-week internship, Hotz will aim to “fix” Twitter Search and include new features. One such promised feature is being able to search within liked tweets.

Hotz was the first person ever to jailbreak an iPhone, so they have the background of bringing new features to an existing product or platform.

What’s ironic is that Hotz was actually a long-time critic of Musk, proclaiming that he could develop a better system for self-driving cars than Tesla can.

Hotz reached out to Musk on Twitter and volunteered for an internship, at the expense of the company covering the costs of living in San Francisco. From the tweet chain, it seems like Musk has agreed to these terms.

As of now, Hotz is tweeting his journey of how he’s improving search and adding common features which have been requested from users for a long time.

Which new features though?

One long-requested feature is actually just the search delivering relevant results based on a broad match of words rather than exact words.

As well as this, Hotz is trying to source ideas from users for how to deliver contextual autocomplete results when a user types “from:” into Twitter search.

Another change Hotz wants to make is removing the annoying sign-up/in prompt that appears after scrolling through Twitter if you aren’t logged in.

After removing the prompt, Hotz plans to implement searching within liked tweets.

Beyond the above changes, it’s unclear how Hotz will “fix” Twitter search. However, if they’re documenting the journey through tweets, it’s likely it will become clear as time goes on.

A New Tool To Gain Audience Insight From TikTok

TikTok has rolled out a new business tool which lets a business gain insight into its audiences, with the intent of helping to plan organic and paid content.

The tool can be found in TikTok Ads Manager, however, it’s free to use and you don’t need to have paid for an ad to use it.

The insight can help to plan organic and paid content due to the data that’s available because it’s based on users from across all of TikTok. The data will let you see user behaviours, interests, and demographics.

You can also see which hashtags are popular with your audience so you can incorporate them to boost engagement.

Filters allow you to define your own audience or filter information as well.

Here’s some more info about the data from TikTok Audience Insights.

TikTok Audience Insights

Audience Insights is available to use through the TikTok Ads Manager, and delivers aggregated information from users who have been active in the last 30 days.

To access the tool:

1. Login to Ads Manager
2. Select “Reporting” from the top navigation bar.
3. Click “Audience Insights”

Defining An Audience

By using the menu on the left, you can define your audience by using custom filters or segments such as:

• Locations
• Languages
• Demographics
• Interests & Behaviors – includes the optional sub-filters:
  • Ad Interest Categories
  • Video Interactions
  • Creator Interactions:
  • Hashtag Interactions
• Devices

Audience Overview

After defining an audience, you’ll see the audience overview tab:

The Audience Overview tab shows you easily readable graphs and charts displaying the following data for your audience:

• Age
• Gender
• Country
• State
• Device OS
• Device Prices (USD): Device price is only available in USD.
• Top 10 interests
• Bottom 10 interests

Audience Interests

There’s also a tab which shows your audience’s interests to see what type of content they engage with:

You can see the top ten hashtags a user engages with, and the ad categories they engage with.

You can also export the data to an Excel spreadsheet with the “Export All” button in the top right-hand corner.

TikTok is currently releasing quite a lot of tools and resources for small businesses, which advertisers and marketers are appreciating.

Google’s Guide To Ranking Systems

Google has published a new guide to the current ranking systems the company use for websites and content, and the ranking systems they’ve sunsetted in the past.

The aim is to keep SEO’ers and marketers informed about terminology, ranking systems compared to ranking updates, and which ones are current or retired.

A ranking system constantly runs in the background, but an update is a one-time change to a system.

For instance, the product review system constantly runs in the background when Google delivers you a search result based on product reviews, but updates help to improve it.

Here’s more about the Google guide to ranking systems.

The Current Ranking Systems

Here are the current ranking systems Google use:

• BERT
• Crisis information systems
• Deduplication systems
• Exact match domain system
• Freshness systems
• Helpful content system
• Link analysis systems and PageRank
• Local news systems
• MUM
• Neural matching
• Original content systems
• Removal-based demotion systems
• Page experience system
• Passage ranking system
• Product reviews system
• RankBrain
• Reliable information systems
• Site diversity system
• Spam detection systems

Sunsetted Google Ranking Systems

The ranking systems that Google don’t use anymore are:

• Hummingbird
• Mobile-Friendly ranking system
• Page speed system
• Panda system
• Penguin system
• Secure sites system

If you want to learn more information about the above ranking systems, Google’s guide explains each one in detail.

As always, thank you for reading this week’s digital roundup!

Good Afternoon, welcome back to the Intelligency digital roundup, bringing you all the latest marketing news from across the internet.

This week, you can learn about the new Local Search features from Google, how it’s easier to get your products on Google’s shopping tab, TikTok’s further support for small businesses, and the place where you can put an ad on Instagram.

New Local Search features from Google

Google has recently begun to roll out new local search features for users that were teased earlier in the year, one big feature being the ability to search your surroundings just using the camera on your phone.

The features that are being rolled out were first teased at Google’s Search On conference in September with excitement from the speakers.

Here’s an overview of everything that’s rolling out.

Search With Live View

From next week, a user will be able to scan their surroundings through Google Maps Live View. Live View will be released in London, LA, New York, San Francisco, Paris, and Tokyo on both android and iOS.

Search With Live View utilises your phone’s camera to scan and find information about your surroundings using information that’s on Google Maps and Google My Business. You can find out if somewhere is open, the reviews of the business, or even look at a menu.

Search By Dish

Another new search feature is the addition of being able to search for a restaurant by the dishes it serves. An example that Google uses is searching “truffle mac and cheese near me”. You can also use Google Lens to scan a dish, and it will bring up a result based on what you scan. Here’s an example of how both would look:

Currently, Search By Dish is launching in the U.S for English users.

Find Fast Charging Stations For Electric Vehicles

Google is also adding a filter to Google maps to differentiate between fast-charging electric vehicle charging stations and regular charging stations. You can also filter for charging stations which accept your vehicle’s plug type if you’re in a foreign country.

As long as your country has EV charging stations, you will be able to use the filters on android and iOS.

Wheelchair Accessible Businesses

For users who are in wheelchairs or who have wheelchair users in their family or friend group, a business can select that they’re wheelchair friendly/accessible or stair-free. You can then filter on Google maps by using the filter “Accessible Places”

If it’s accessible, you’ll see a wheelchair icon on the business, if it’s not accessible, the wheelchair will be struck through.

Google’s Shopping Tab Becomes Easier To Get Your Products On

Google is making it easier for an eCommerce business to get its products onto Google’s shopping tab.

Due to an update to Google Search Console, it’s now possible to list a product in the shopping tab without having to submit a product feed or even re-verify your website.

Here’s how to list products just using Google Search Console.

How To List Products On The Shopping Tab Using Google Search Console

The new Search Console feature relates to websites utilising product structured data.

You can find Shopping tab listings listed in the nav bar on the left. By clicking it, it will take you to a screen where you can connect your Merchant Centre account.

If you don’t have a merchant centre account, you’ll be prompted to create one, which is a simple process.

Now you have an account and can skip the process of listing a product feed and verifying your website.

You just need to ensure that your structured data is kept up to date.

New Resources For Small Business From TikTok

The social media platform TikTok has recently launched new resources and initiatives to help small businesses. Some of these include tips from successful accounts and stickers.

TikTok promoted the resources in a blog post and called the new landing page “Accelerator”.

“Right now, small businesses need our support more than ever, which is why TikTok and American Express are launching a brand new program to help merchants reach new audiences and grow their business. The  # ShopSmall Accelerator, powered by TikTok and American Express features popular TikTok creators Anna Sitar, Brandon Blackwood & Sofia Bella and will be complemented by a custom Shop Small® soundtrack created especially for TikTok content. This new effort aims to help small businesses stand out in the crowded holiday shopping season and make the most out of Small Business Saturday® on November 26.”

Here’s some more information about Accelerator and TikTok #ShopSmall.

TikTok #ShopSmall

Tips From Creators

Users can watch a video where three successful creators go over topics like how to stay on top of audience interests and what should and shouldn’t be shared.

#ShopSmall Stickers

TikTok is launching a new sticker collection that creators can add to videos to raise awareness for small business support.

Any user is able to add a sticker to a video by searching “Shop small” in the sticker collection.

Meta Announces Instagram Explore Home Ads Placements

Meta has announced that marketers will be able to add explore home feed ads via the Instagram Marketing API.

This was announced on the 4th of October 2022 but has not been implemented until this week.

The announcement read:

“Businesses can now place ads in Explore home, the grid that people see when they first arrive on the Explore tab.”

Instagram also announced Explore home advertising.

“We’re introducing more places for people to discover brands and products in Explore and profile.

Explore home, the grid that people see when they first arrive on the Explore tab, will now feature ads to reach people in the earliest stages of discovering new content they care about.”

The New Instagram Marketing API Option

The company announced that marketers can place ads on the Explore home through the Instagram Marketing API last Friday.

“We now allow for ads in Instagram Explore home via the Instagram Marketing API.

This new ads placement will be available on all current Marketing API versions, and does not require an upgrade.”

The current APIs will work with the new INSTAGRAM_EXPLORE_HOME placement option. No upgrade is required.

“Using this new addition, you will be able to update your app to enable your clients to create and preview ads in Instagram Explore home via API.”

The new features include the following capabilities:

• Ads creation
• Ads insights
• Ad preview

You can use the placement option to create new ads.

Instagram further announced that developer documentation for the new capabilities and features will roll out soon.

Twitter’s Senior Execs Resign

Platformer, a Twitter-based news outlet for big tech, recently tweeted that multiple senior executives for Twitter who were in charge of security, privacy, and safety have all resigned from Twitter after the recent purchase by Elon Musk.

Questions are now being asked in terms of the company’s viability, due to how fundamental these departments and features are to how Twitter functions.

The senior resignations were:

• Marianne Fogarty- Chief Compliance Officer
• Lea Kissner- Chief Information Security Officer
• Yoel Roth- Global Head of Safety & Integrity
• Damien Kieran- Chief Privacy Officer

The news regarding the resignations was first reported by Casey Newton, a journalist for Platformer:

Here’s some more information about Roth, Fogarty, and Kissner.

Yoel Roth

Yoel Roth- former Global Head of Safety & Integrity for Twitter was a leader of data analysts, threat investigators, and policymakers. Their remit was to ensure that the platform was safe from manipulation, artificial tweet amplification, bots/fake accounts, and other threats to users as well as Twitter itself.

One example of work that Yoel Roth and his team carried out was how the company responded to the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

After just 4 days of the invasion, Twitter implemented a label which flagged tweets containing information from Russian media.

One significant contribution from Roth was how he introduced a global crisis misinformation policy:

“Today, we’re introducing our crisis misinformation policy – a global policy that will guide our efforts to elevate credible, authoritative information, and will help to ensure viral misinformation isn’t amplified or recommended by us during crises.

In times of crisis, misleading information can undermine public trust and cause further harm to already vulnerable communities.

Alongside our existing work to make reliable information more accessible during crisis events, this new approach will help to slow the spread by us of the most visible, misleading content, particularly that which could lead to severe harms.”

As of now, there’s no news about who will take over and lead the Safety & Integrity team.

Marianne Fogarty

Marianne Fogarty’s responsibility was regulatory compliance.

The FTC fined Twitter $150 million because the company were asking users for private information to “keep their accounts secure” but then using the private information to deliver targeted advertising to that user based on what they’d provided.

A spokesperson from the FTC stated:

“We are tracking recent developments at Twitter with deep concern… …companies must follow our consent decrees. Our revised consent order gives us new tools to ensure compliance, and we are prepared to use them.”

Casey Newton (who I mentioned earlier) reported that Twitter employees have been told that they’d now be responsible for self-certifying themselves, rather than having someone monitor compliance for them.

This method of compliance is certainly an unorthodox one.

Lea Kissner

Kissner was the Chief Information Security Officer (CISO), a CISO is in charge of cyber security for the company and website.

Lea Kissner actually tweeted about their resignation:

An uncertain future for Twitter

All these resignations of fundamental executives for Twitter have raised concerns amongst employees, marketers, stakeholders, and the public about how long it can continue to function as a company and platform.

Even Elon Musk himself has stated that Twitter may be on the way out:

Twitter is clearly not heading in the right direction, but only time will tell what will happen next.

Instagram Allow Creators To Schedule Posts & Reels In-App

Instagram creators with professional accounts can now schedule a post or reel 75 days in advance.

Previously, a user would need to use third-party tools such as Hootsuite or desktop solutions such as Meta Business Suite.

But now a creator can schedule posts and reels on both the android and iOS app.

Regular user accounts aren’t able to schedule posts, but if you’re a creator or a business it’s likely you have a professional account anyway.

Here’s a guide on how to schedule:

How to schedule Instagram posts and reels

You’re able to schedule either a picture, video, carousel, or reel up to 75 days in advance.

To schedule a post, you’ll need to do the following:

1. Open the post composer and compose a post as you usually would
2. Tap Advanced Settings
3. Select Schedule this post
4. Now, select the time and date you want the post to go live
5. Click Schedule

That’s it! Simple as that.

Automation can be a huge advantage to creators and marketing professionals because it allows you to manage your time efficiently as you don’t need to be physically present to post.

You could be out running errands or in a meeting but the post can still go out and keep your Instagram profile updated.

One way to take advantage of post scheduling is to schedule posts to publish at prime engagement times.

If you need any help on prime engagement times, Hootsuite has a handy best time to post guide

Google’s John Mueller on Indexing

Google’s number one search advocate John Mueller has said that “search is never guaranteed” as a response to a site owner who questioned why his website’s content hasn’t been indexed.

On Reddit, a user was dissatisfied that a website that was republishing its content was getting indexed faster, so they wanted to know if they can use an indexing API to brute force their site into Google’s index.

Mueller shot down the idea as a response, as he said that the indexing API is only for special types of content, such as job postings.

He continued to say that search isn’t guaranteed but offered some insight into what Google prioritises for indexing.

Content that’s worth indexing

Mueller has said on the record that a site needs to be worthwhile and have value in order to be indexed.

Mueller glossed over several bits of criteria that Google’s algorithm looks for when it’s considering if a piece of content is worth indexing:

“Search is never guaranteed, and there are tons of sites that are trying to push their updates into Google. I think what ultimately works best is that you prove to Google (and users) that the updates you’re providing are valuable: unique, compelling, high-quality, and not something that’s already published elsewhere.”

The website that the user was speaking about was an obituary publisher.

Mueller contained and said that it’s hard to ensure that your content that’s created or contributed to by others meets Google’s criteria.

People don’t really think about obituaries and Google Search in the same thought after all.

However, the entire site is in the end user’s control, and they don’t have to exclusively publish contributed content.

“I realize that’s hard when it comes to user-generated content (which I assume some of this will be), but ultimately your site is what you publish, regardless of where it initially comes from. So the more you can do to make sure the indexable content on your site is easily findable and significantly valuable to the web, the more likely Google will be able to pick it up quickly (and that can mean that you block content that you determine is less-valuable from being indexed, for example).”

When Google indexes re-published content, it is because Google perceives the original website and its content as less valuable.

Unfortunately, there’s no quick fix, as SEO and content take time to establish. You can’t just use Google’s API. Mueller told the user to make positive changes to the site to prove that it is worth indexing

“One of the things even smaller, newer sites can do is to mention and link to updates on their homepages. Google usually refreshes homepages more frequently, so if there’s something important & new, make sure you have it there. Many sites do this intuitively, with a sidebar or a section for updates, mentioning the new headlines & linking to the content.”

As always, thanks for reading this week’s roundup!

Welcome to this week’s digital roundup! The best place for digital marketing news to keep an eye on.

This week’s stories include backlink clarity from John Mueller, how Instagram are allowing creators to make more revenue from the platform, and how YouTube has changed this week for creators!

Google’s John Mueller States That The Strength Of Backlinks Will Drop

Whilst at a live session of Brighton SEO, Google’s number one search advocate John Mueller made a prediction regarding backlinks.

Mueller was joined by Lizzi Sassman, also from Google, and a guest called Myriam Jessler and answered several questions related to SEO whilst doing a live podcast recording.

The podcasters all answered several pre-selected questions, and one related to how Google penalises a backlink. The question specifically asked:

“As an SEO, we are interested in backlinks. However, actively working on backlinks often becomes a gray area in terms of link schemes. What are Google’s main criteria for penalizing backlinks?”

Mueller was cautious when answering this question, as Google representatives often are when one relates to ranking or penalties.

Google dislike unnatural link-building for websites and discourage it in their guidance, however, giving away too many details could lead to people walking the thin line of what’s acceptable and what’s not acceptable.

Rather than speaking about how backlinks are specifically penalised, Mueller spoke about backlinks in general and their ranking signal on Google, and also why backlinks may become less important for marketers going forward.

Backlinks and their ranking signal

Due to Google’s understanding of how content fits into the big picture for the world wide web, Mueller suggested in his answer that backlinks will start to be less of a ranking signal in the near future due to the search engine’s algorithm not needing to rely on inbound links:

“Well, it’s something where I imagine, over time, the weight on the links at some point will drop off a little bit as we can figure out a little bit better how the content fits in within the context of the whole web.”

This feels like Mueller telling marketers not to worry because backlinks won’t too valuable for a website to acquire in the future.

However, Mueller suggests that backlinks are only helpful because they help understand content which invalidates all the other useful information they communicate.

A backlink profile helps to tell the story of a website, and also how much it’s trusted by other companies, and also how much it can be trusted for its particular niche.

Mueller continued with his answer:

“And to some extent, links will always be something that we care about because we have to find pages somehow. It’s like how do you find a page on the web without some reference to it. But my guess is over time, it won’t be such a big factor as sometimes it is today. I think already, that’s something that’s been changing quite a bit.”

You can listen to the full podcast below:

Instagram Adds New Ways For Creators To Get Paid

Meta is currently rolling out new ways for a creator on Instagram to earn revenue from their audience.

The subscriptions feature that I talked about earlier in the year is expanding to US accounts that are eligible, and Instagram will also be releasing a tool to make and sell digital collectables.

Here’s a quick rundown:

Instagram Subscriptions

I’m sure a lot of you will have noticed that you’ve got a notification stating that you can subscribe to your favourite creator on Instagram which looks like this:

A subscription lets a user access content which is exclusive to a member such as a group chat or stories from the creator, with just a monthly fee.

This is arguably the best way to earn an income on Instagram.

If you’re a creator, just pop over to the professional dashboard to see if you’re eligible to offer subscriptions. If you are, you’ll see an option to set it up.

When you enable this feature, you can post or have exclusive:

• Livestreams
• Stories
• Badges
• Posts
• Reels
• Group chats
• Broadcast channels

You can also promote your subscription offering with stories by using a sticker which takes a user to the subscribe page.

Users who subscribe get an exclusive sticker which will appear next to their username in comments so that other users can tell that they’re subscribed.

Instagram gifts

Creators are also able to gain revenue through Reels with ‘gifts’, which sounds the same as the TikTok feature.

A user is able to send a gift to a creator as a show of appreciation and to show support for their favourite reel.

To give a gift, you need to purchase Stars, with real money.

Once an account receives a gift, they receive a cut from it.

This feature is currently being tested with selected accounts, so not every creator will have access to it, and Instagram didn’t post any guidance on how much a creator would receive or what the gifts look like.

Howver, we do have pictures of what the back-end of it will look like:

Instagram collectables

Instagram shared some details about collectables, and functionally, they’re just NFTs.

Creators are able to make a digital collectable using a toolkit on the platform or upload their own, and then sell them to an audience.

This feature is also being tested with a small selection of U.S based user accounts.

Instagram will allow still images and videos to be sold as NFTs, and they will be supported through Solana and Phantom digital blockchain wallets.

New YouTube Updates

Google has updated YouTube with new features such as more search insights for creators, a channel page redesign, and additional language-based search insights.

Here’s more about each feature:

Additional language search insights

First introduced in 2021, search insights allows a creator to see popular queries, to help give them ideas about trends and to help create content that people are looking for.

Search insights also help to highlight content gaps, to help a creator generate new ideas for content.

Originally, you could only access search insights in English and from user queries in the US, Canada, India, and the UK.

Now you can experiment with Korean, Hindi, and Japansese, with more languages on the way.

New channel page layout

YouTube are changing the channel page in two ways.

The first way is that the nav bar sits below the channel bio/information section, and looks like this:

Join and Store are more visible to users visiting a channel now as well, to help boost creator revenue.

The second change is that the video tab is split into long and short-form videos.

This will make Shorts that a creator has made more accessible from a viewing perspective.

Here’s a video explaining all the new changes:

As always, thanks for reading this week’s Digital Roundup.

Welcome to a finance and technologically-focused weekly digital roundup from Intelligency.

This week: learn about how Meta’s Metaverse is down $3 billion, Google’s revenue growth slowing down to a halt, and how new AI tools are allowing users to communicate with deceased loved ones.

Meta’s Metaverse Division Loses Substantial $3.7 Billion In Q3

Meta’s Reality Labs Division, which oversees the company’s virtual and augmented reality operations, has reported a loss of $3.7 billion in Q3. Stick around to get the rundown from the latest earnings report.

The staggering loss is due to expenses that Meta is incurring to bring the “metaverse”, which is Mark Zuckerberg’s dream, to life.

Currently, Meta’s expenditure is double compared to last year, and there is still Q4, this chart explains it pretty well:

Several billion dollars were put to use on spending for the Reality Labs Division, but Reality Labs only brought in a revenue of $285 million.

The company’s Q3 loss of $3.7 billion for Reality Labs is $0.9 billion greater than the Q2 loss of $2.8 billion.

Meta expects even more losses in 2023 in order to make the metaverse happen. Investors have called upon Meta to reduce the expenditure on Metaverse ideas and projects.

However, Zuckerberg has stated not continuing would be a mistake:

“A lot of people might disagree with this investment. But from what I can tell, I think that this is going to be a very important thing, and I think it would be a mistake for us to not focus on any of these areas, which I think are going to be fundamentally important to the future.”

Zuckerberg added that although the losses will grow, the investment will pay off:

“We do anticipate that Reality Labs operating losses in 2023 will grow significantly year-over-year. Beyond 2023, we expect to pace Reality Labs investments such that we can achieve our goal of growing overall company operating income in the long run.”

Meta’s shares plummeted 15% this Wednesday due to Zuckerberg’s statements, and overall MEta’s shares have gone down 60% in 2022.

Is this the start of the end of Meta? Stay tuned to my roundups to find out!

Google’s Revenue Growth The Slowest It’s Been In 10 Years

It has been revealed through the latest earnings report of Alphabet which is Google’s parent company that it’s been the slowest quarter for revenue growth in almost a decade.

Google’s YOY (year-on-year) revenue growth is only up 6%, which is the smallest increase since 2013.

On the surface, it may seem like a good thing that growth is up overall, however, when you compare it to last year’s growth of 41%.

The operating margin for Google has come down from 32% to 25%, and net income is down 36% YOY.

Google fell short of expectations from investors and financial analysts due to earnings per share and revenue not exceeding these expectations.

Here are the financial earnings compared to expectations:

• EPS: $1.06 vs. $1.25 expected (according to Refinitiv estimates).
• Revenue: $69.09 billion vs. $70.58 billion expected (according to Refinitiv estimates).
• YouTube advertising revenue: $7.07 billion vs. $7.42 billion expected (according to StreetAccount estimates).
• Google Cloud revenue: $6.9 billion vs. $6.69 billion expected (according to StreetAccount estimates).
• Traffic acquisition costs (TAC): $11.83 vs $12.38 expected (according to StreetAccount estimates).

Alphabet were only expected to report the slowest revenue growth in two years, not in almost ten years.

Here’s a PDF with all of the earnings from Q3 2022.

New AI Developments Allow You To Talk To Virtual Loved Ones, Even Those Who Are Deceased.

Don’t let the Black Mirror-Esque headline put you off, new AI advancements are allowing people to interact and even hold conversations with their loved ones who have passed away.

There are now various companies such as HereAfterAI which are using tech that’s similar to AI chatbots and voice assistants that you see on more and more modern websites.

The AI is available as an app, and uses photographs, video interviews, and videos, to create interactive representations of people that can be talked to.

There’s another tech company called You, Only Virtual which is based in LA and strives to “recreate the relationship dynamics between you and your loved one through conversation– enabling authentic communication upon one’s passing”.

Finally, Hour One allows a user to create a digital clone of themselves who can speak on camera without any user input.

AI Overcoming Ingenuity Difficulties

Since Alan Turing introduced his eponymously named test in the 1950 research paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence”, cloning human thought and putting it into a digital thought pattern of consciousness has been an El Dorado or Holy Grail for scientists and researchers.

You can learn more about Turing’s paper below:

However, one of the biggest challenges for scientists in developing AI is separating creative and imaginative thoughts into convergent thinking for an AI.

Convergent thinking is fairly straightforward to explain, it can be summarised as figuring out a problem by using memory and logic.

Back when AI was on the rise, it used to struggle with convergent thinking, but since AI has been developed so much by numerous scientists and research bodies, its creative capabilities have increased significantly.

For example, an AI from NYU (New York University) wrote a script for a fictional short film in 2016 after being given prompts about what the film would be about.

Since then though, because AI technology is becoming more widespread, the creative output from AI has increased significantly, from game development technologies such as procedural generation and AI-powered upscaling, to journalism and music creation.

In fact, I even wrote about how AI-powered deepfake technology could be used for marketing campaigns in the future.

For now, we’ll just have to see if the ethical concerns outweigh the curiosity for how far AI tech can be pushed.

Good morning and welcome to a slightly delayed version of the Intelligency Digital Roundup.

In the latest pieces of digital marketing news, Google is rolling out another spam algorithm update, Bing are using DALL-E 2 to power an image generator, LinkedIn is becoming a more accessibility-friendly platform, and Google has streamlined its webmaster guidelines.

Keep reading to find out more about these stories.

Google Begin Rolling Out October 2022 Spam Update

Google has confirmed that they have begun to roll out the October 2022 Spam Algorithm Update worldwide, and in all languages.

The company has stated that the October 2022 Spam Update should take several days to fully roll out.

Unfortunately, a common pattern with spam updates is that specific details aren’t provided by Google unless they target a specific type of spam.

However, what we do know is that spam updates are rolled out on the regular in order to help Google maintain high-quality search results. They enhance Google’s automated systems, which are constantly running in the background and detect and hide spam on SERPs (search engine results pages)

If your website is abiding by Google’s Search Essentials (formerly Google Webmaster Guidelines which I’ll speak about later in this roundup) it’s more than likely you don’t have to worry about any negative rankings as a result of the update.

What constitutes spam?

Admittedly, it’s tough to be guilty of spam without knowing about it, just because Google has a fairly strict definition of what the company considers ‘spam’ which primarily includes low-quality sites which have been created to goad users into providing personal details or install malware.

Google’s spam updates also target phishing websites or websites which try to impersonate highly relevant pages.

Although some websites may have little content and aren’t helpful to users, these are not considered spam, instead, they’d be affected by Google’s helpful content algorithm updates instead.

If your website isn’t secure, there’s a chance it could have been affected by this update, because you could be serving spam to your users without knowing.

If it has been affected, check for signs of a possible malicious attack by checking your site security and files.

If a website is affected by a spam update, the content is either removed from Google’s index or is demoted on SERPs.

Bing Test A New AI Image Creator

Microsoft Bing has announced it will be adding a new AI-powered image generator to the platform in the next few weeks. The feature will allow users to generate images through text prompts.

This new, innovative technology was announced via a Microsoft blog post

For instance, say you need an image of a dog as an astronaut because it fits the blog post you’re writing, but you can’t find one which really suits the post.

With the new image creator, Bing will be able to generate the exact type of image you need using the descriptive text that you type.

Here’s an example of what it will look like:

Bing’s image creator is powered by DALL-E 2 image generator technology, which has recently been taking the internet by storm due to the powerful technology behind it.

To use the feature when it’s been rolled out, you’ll need to navigate to bing images and click on “image creator”, once you’re there, there will be a text box where you can type in an image description.

When will it be available?

Microsoft is committing to a ‘measured’ approach when it comes to rolling out the image creator, there’s currently a preview of the tool in selected countries.

Due to the technology of DALL-E 2 being so new, Microsoft wants to be cautious when it comes to AI:

“It’s important, with early technologies like DALL∙E 2, to acknowledge that this is new and we expect it to continue to evolve and improve. We take our commitment to responsible AI seriously. To help prevent DALL∙E 2 from delivering inappropriate results across the Designer app and Image Creator, we are working together with our partner OpenAI, who developed DALL∙E 2, to take the necessary steps and will continue to evolve our approach.”

Microsoft will use techniques for the technology such as query blocking, sensitive topics, and filters, in order to prevent misuse and limit images that violate Bing’s policies.

LinkedIn Videos Now Generate Automatic Captions

The social media platform for businesses, LinkedIn, plans to upgrade the platform with several new features, the big one being numerous accessibility features with technology such as automatic caption generation.

Automatic captions are being added in order to make videos more accessible for users who are deaf, hard of hearing, or those who prefer to watch videos on mute.

The captions will automatically be added in the upload process for videos, where you can proofread the subtitles to make sure they’re accurate, or just publish the video immediately.

Another accessibility feature being added is a high-contrast mode for the visually impaired to adjust the colours on the app.

Additional features

As well as the features above, LinkedIn is also implementing multiple accessibility-focused enhancements to job postings and user profiles such as new job titles and skills.

Job Titles

The blog post has reported that there’s a substantial growth in the number of job postings in the US with the word “Accessibility” featured in the job title, so accessibility specialists are more in demand:

“… our data shows that these job postings have spiked 171% since September 2019, indicating that companies are actively not only talking about this, but taking action to hire accessibility specialists that can help them create products and services that work for everyone.”

If you work in accessibility, you can choose standardised titles such as “accessibility designer,” “chief accessibility officer,” or “accessibility engineer.”

New Skill

There’s also a new recognised skill called Dyslexic Thinking which a user can add to their profile:

“Through our research, we learned that dyslexic thinkers are often able to simplify complex products or tasks and see connections that others may miss. This example showcases that disability can also be viewed as a strength and meaningful differentiator.”

Advert Alt Text

The last accessibility feature announced was the ability to add alt text to adverts in the campaign manager. This will allow users who are blind or visually impaired to understand the creative that has been used in the ad.

Automatic captions will be rolling out in the next few weeks, with alt text for ads coming soon. Everything else is available to use now on desktop and mobile.

Google Replace Webmaster Guidelines With Search Essentials

Google has stated that the company will be replacing Google Webmaster Guidelines with a more streamlined approach to web principles, as there are only three sections.

This will be called Google Search Essentials.

The aim of search essentials is to move away from the webmaster branding and make the guidelines easier to understand.

The company has gradually been moving away from the “webmaster” branding over the last few years, even renaming Google Webmaster Central to Google Search Central.

Google has said on the record that webmaster is an outdated term, and isn’t inclusive to content creators who wish to see their content rank in search results.

The guidelines, or search essentials, now consist of the following three categories:

• Technical requirements
• Key best practices
• Spam policies

If you’re familiar with the guidelines, there’s nothing new you need to learn as nothing has fundamentally changed.

Let’s take a look at the three new categories.

Technical Requirements

There aren’t many technical requirements a web page needs to pass to get onto Google Search.

Google has stated on the search essentials that most sites pass the technical requirements without trying.

The requirements are as follows:

• Googlebot isn’t blocked
• The page works (it’s not an error page)
• The page has indexable content

To summarise, if Google can crawl the content and index it, it will appear on Google. Although, this is the bare minimum.

Key Best Practices

The key best practices category describes additional considerations for your website that Google recommends in order to get your content to rank.

These considerations include:

• Ensure your content is helpful
• Place your keywords in strategic sections such as alt text, headings, titles
• Ensure that links are crawlable by Google
• Tell family and friends about the site
• Follow best practice guides for your images, videos, structured data, and JavaScript
• Use rich snippets to make your site appear better in search
• Anything you don’t want to be found, make sure you block it from Google’s crawlers

Spam Policies

This category explains everything that Google considers spam, if your site contains spam then it can suffer from a lower rank or even become de-indexed from search.

Google has also updated its spam and abuse guide lately (read more about the spam and abuse guide update)

Google’s spam policies include:

• Cloaking
• Doorways
• Hacked content
• Hidden text
• Hidden links
• Keyword stuffing
• Malware or malicious behaviours
• Misleading functionality
• Scraped or duplicate content
• Hidden redirects
• Thin affiliate pages
• User-generated spam
• Copyright strikes
• Online harassment removals
• Fraudulent behaviour

Google believes that the changes to the guidance will “help site owners avoid creating content that Search users absolutely hate”

To learn more about Google Search Essentials, you can watch this video from Trevor Stolber as well:

Welcome to the latest Digital Roundup, keeping you informed of what’s going on across the vast space of the World Wide Web.

This week, Google has made giving image credits a lot easier, TikTok may be competing with Amazon, and a new WordPress has been discovered.

Google Release An Update For Image Structured Data

This week, Google released three new structured data properties which can be used with ‘ImageObject type’, the new properties will allow you to add image credits, copyright information, and image creator information a lot easier through structured data.

Originally you’d need to add this information through IPTC photo metadata.

IPTC stands for International Press Telecommunications Council, which serves as the standards body for news media. The IPTC metadata is a way that you can add licensing information to your images.

The changelog from Google on this update states the following:

“Added support for image credits to the Image Metadata structured data documentation.

Previously, you could only provide image credit information with IPTC photo metadata.”

The pages about image licenses have now been updated to reflect the fact that support has been updated to reflect the fact that structured data has been updated.

The page begins with the following statement:

“When you specify image metadata, Google Images can show more details about the image, such as who the creator is, how people can use an image, and credit information.”

The following new data structure properties are:

• creditText
• creator
• copyrightNotice

According to Schema, the data types can be defined as:

• “creditText
  Text that can be used to credit person(s) and/or organization(s) associated with a published Creative Work.
• creator
  The creator/author of this CreativeWork. This is the same as the Author property for CreativeWork.
• copyrightNotice
  Text of notice appropriate for describing the copyright aspects of this Creative Work, ideally indicating the owner of the copyright for the Work.”

Examples of how Structured Data Requirements will look

Google has shown an example of how structured data looked before, and how it now looks:

Before

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "ImageObject",
"contentUrl": "https://example.com/photos/1x1/black-labrador-puppy.jpg",
"license": "https://example.com/license",
"acquireLicensePage": "https://example.com/how-to-use-my-images"
}
</script>

After

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
"@context": "https://schema.org/",
"@type": "ImageObject",
"contentUrl": "https://example.com/photos/1x1/black-labrador-puppy.jpg",
"license": "https://example.com/license",
"acquireLicensePage": "https://example.com/how-to-use-my-images",
"creditText": "Labrador PhotoLab",
"creator": {
"@type": "Person",
"name": "Brixton Brownstone"
},
"copyrightNotice": "Clara Kent"
}
</script>

These changes have made it a lot easier for website publishers to add the required image licenses and credits.

TikTok Plan to Open Warehouses In The US

This week saw over a dozen LinkedIn Career postings which suggested that the social media giant TikTok would be getting into warehousing and logistics.

The listings were first notified by Axios, which is a Chinese-owned company, and the postings stated that the company is looking into constructing ‘global fulfilment centres’. Currently, Axios is looking for employees around Seattle and Los Angeles.

“The eCommerce industry has seen tremendous growth in recent years and has become a hotly contested space amongst leading Internet companies, and its future growth cannot be underestimated,” TikTok stated in the posting, “With millions of loyal users globally, we believe TikTok is an ideal platform to deliver a brand new and better e-commerce experience to our users.”

TikTok will be committing to providing warehousing, delivery, and return services for respective merchants. This will also include clearing and supply chain systems.

The above information and findings show that TikTok is committing to revenue generation through eCommerce, which when paired with the platform’s impressive ad revenue, will keep the company growing at a significant rate.

TikTok’s Pledge To ECommerce and Live Shopping

Back in August of 2021, TikTok partnered with Shopify, in order to allow vendors and merchants methods to connect their Shopify shops with TikTok. The idea behind the partnership was to help facilitate brands on the platform by allowing users to organically discover products and by introducing shopping tabs.

TikTok also experimented with live shopping, which is a cultural craze in Asia. However, it was reported that after the experiment, TikTok would be abandoning live shopping plans for the rest of the world because it struggled to become popular.

Now it’s been reported by the Financial Times that TikTok is launching the live shopping initiative again by partnering with TalkShopLive.

Whilst the deal and details haven’t been finalised, the partnership would allow TikTok to outsource live shopping operations. It’s currently unknown if this would be coming to Europe or America.

TikTok’s Warehousing Could Be A Challenge To Amazon

TikTok has established itself as a powerful online company and competitor to Meta, but by creating its own supply chain system, it could begin to challenge Amazon as well.

“By providing warehousing, delivery, and customer service returns, our mission is to help sellers improve their operational capability and efficiency, provide buyers a satisfying shopping experience and ensure fast and sustainable growth of TikTok Shop,” said TikTok.

WordPress Plugin’s Vulnerability Affects 700,000 Sites

The US Government’s NVD (National Vulnerability Database) published an advisory this week regarding a WordPress plugin called Shortcodes Ultimate after it had been discovered that the plugin contains a Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability.

Shortcodes is an extremely popular plugin and has over 700,000 installations.

If you have Shortcodes installed on your site, you need to update the version to 5.12.2 in order to plug the hole in the vulnerability ASAP.

What is a Cross-Site Request Forgery vulnerability?

CSRF, or cross-site request forgery, is a type of vulnerability which can lead to total website takeovers from malicious forces.

This sort of vulnerability is caused by whoever programmed the vulnerability to target a flaw in the plugin’s software, the flaw can trigger a change, which can lead to nasty consequences.

A successful CSRF attack depends on the user, if a user with admin access clicks on a link, they could unintentionally reveal sensitive information such as a session cookie, if this cookie is accessed by someone looking to do damage, they can impersonate the admin.

“CSRF is an attack that tricks the victim into submitting a malicious request. It inherits the identity and privileges of the victim to perform an undesired function on the victim’s behalf. For most sites, browser requests automatically include any credentials associated with the site, such as the user’s session cookie, IP address, Windows domain credentials, and so forth. Therefore, if the user is currently authenticated to the site, the site will have no way to distinguish between the forged request sent by the victim and a legitimate request sent by the victim.”

– Open Web Application Security Project

The NVD

Not to be confused with the NKVD, the NVD or the National Vulnerability Database published some details about Shortcode Ultimate’s vulnerability, whilst there’s not a complete breakdown, we do know the following.

“Cross-Site Request Forgery (CSRF) vulnerability in Shortcodes Ultimate plugin <= 5.12.0 at WordPress leading to plugin preset settings change.”

The changelog in Github states the following:

“### 5.12.1

**Security release**

This update fixes a security vulnerability in the shortcode generator. Thanks to Dave John for discovering it.”

Dave Jong is the CTO of PatchStack and the one who discovered the vulnerability, the Github patch notes misspelt his name.

Good Afternoon, and as always, welcome to this week’s Digital Roundup.

Summer is over, and as we welcome Autumn into our lives, it’s good to keep track of what’s trending! So our first story covers all the Autumn trends you need to know. We also have a story covering why advertisers are pulling out of Twitter, and how mobile search from Google is changing.

Tok 4 TikTok Trends For Autumn

As of now, there are currently 1 billion active users on TikTok, and over 8.9 million of those are in the UK, if TikTok doesn’t have a part in your social media strategy, it’s seriously worth planning to engage with these users.

However, engaging with users is easier said than done, due to the nature of trends coming as quickly as they go.

So how do you keep track of a trend on TikTok?

The platform sees thousands of users upload videos daily, so it’s hard to stand out with videos that capture and connect with your brand’s target audiences.

However, you can use TikTok’s Creative Centre for businesses, which is a tool that’s designed to give you inspiration, but it’s easy to lose a few hours in the app trying to find something which fits into your brand guidelines.

As well as this, TikTok is constantly changing how its platform works, such as removing the Discover tab and changing it to a Friends and Search tab.

If you’re stuck for time or inspiration, I’ve got you covered with the top 4 TikTok Trends For Autumn.

Trend 1: It’s Corn!

The first trend combines the “It’s Corn” comedic audio which involves an interview with a young child describing why he loves corn, with something that you love, such as a product, and listing the reasons why you love it in text.

You can use the audio to show off your brand too, by showing off things like an icon, product you sell, or activity.

Trend 2: Sped Up Cool Kids

This trend utilises a sped version of the song Cool Kids by Echosmith, where creators will show off nostalgic photos or finds, as well as DIY Hacks.

The tone of the videos is usually targeting nostalgia, or they’re a before and after photo/video set, or even tutorials or recipes. They just have to be quirky or hipster-y.

One popular way to do these videos is to show a before of someone not using beauty or cosmetic products with the text “younger me would lose their mind if they saw what I looked like today”, and then an after photo or video.

Trend 3: I Put A Spell On You

Just in time for Halloween, the sound clip “I Put A Spell On You” by Working With Lemons is being paired with Halloween DIYs or festive tricks.

This sound clip can help you spotlight your brand by showing off creative, spooky decorations in your office or costume ideas.

You can use this clip with either text-to-speech or plain text.

Trend 4: J’s Lullaby

Our 4th trend involves storytelling in the content by utilising the whispery lullaby in conjunction with a gentle acoustic guitar in order to warm your viewers’ hearts. Content typically features weddings, romantic events, or love stories, so this is a good opportunity to show your brand’s emotional side.

Arguably, the content doesn’t need to be romantic, just emotional. Anything from customer testimonials to your brand’s community work would fit the trend.

It can take a lot of trial and error to research what sorts of trends fit into your brand guidelines and image, and how you want the brand to be presented on TikTok.

So it’s always worth using TikTok’s search to see what’s trending daily which can help you grow your viewer base.

TikTok insights also help you gain insight into who’s interacting with your content so that you can plan your next video better.

By staying consistent and on top of trends, you’ll definitely grow your user base.

Child Exploitation Forces Top Brands To Drop Twitter Ads

30 major advertisers have stopped advertising on Twitter this week after it came to light that their adverts were being run concurrently with content that promoted child pornography and abuse.

One example of this includes an advert for a children’s hospital being shown alongside harmful tweets which promoted child sexual abuse.

The Revolt Against Twitter

The fact that 30 advertisers had dropped out was revealed by Reuters (a cyber security firm), which reported that promoted tweets were showing in conjunction with toxic content.

One Twitter spokesman was quoted as stating that Reuter’s research and conclusions weren’t representative of the platform’s efforts to fight illicit tweets and harmful activity.

However, Reuters’ article stated that these big brand advertisers were notified that the tweets they were promoting appeared alongside toxic ones.

One of the quotes from Cole Haan, an executive, read:

“”We’re horrified,” David Maddocks, brand president at Cole Haan, told Reuters after being notified that the company’s ads appeared alongside such tweets.

“Either Twitter is going to fix this, or we’ll fix it by any means we can, which includes not buying Twitter ads.

Twitter’s Ineptitude For Detecting Toxic Content

This all started when Twitter’s toxic content was brought to everyone’s attention with an article which was published by The Verge.

The article in question informs readers of a Twitter project to develop a platform which could compete with OnlyFans wherein users could pay a fee to share sexually explicit content.

However, before the new service launched, Twitter asked a team of employees, called the Red Team to test whether or not Twitter could successfully weed out toxic content so that the platform didn’t degenerate into the sharing of illegal content.

The service’s development ground to a halt when the Red Team concluded that the company was unable to detect abusive and toxic content.

The Verge’s article states:

“What the Red Team discovered derailed the project: Twitter could not safely allow adult creators to sell subscriptions because the company was not — and still is not — effectively policing harmful sexual content on the platform.

“Twitter cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and non-consensual nudity at scale,” the Red Team concluded in April 2022. The company also lacked tools to verify that creators and consumers of adult content were of legal age, the team found.”

This all happened in the Spring of 2022, since the team found that Twitter couldn’t detect toxic content, the project was shelved until further notice.

But the story doesn’t end here, the cyber security firm Ghost Data found that Twitter was still having trouble detecting rogue users and accounts that were sharing illicit and harmful content.

Ghost Data carried out an investigation in September this year to really see how widespread the illicit child content issue is on the platform.

Ghost Firm began with known child exploitation accounts, and mapped out toxic accounts which followed them, as well as the social connections between each account.

Ghost Firm eventually identified more than 500 accounts that were responsible for 5,000 tweets related to illicit child abuse or exploitation.

Ghost Firm noted that the accounts they investigated were only the English ones and that accounts in other languages were yet to be investigated.

The Researchers’ Conclusion

The researchers concluded that if they carried out an investigation into accounts that weren’t in English, they’d find even more sexually explicit content which involved children.

However, one of the biggest conclusions was that Twitter only took action against just over a meagre 25% of the accounts that they’d identified as toxic during the first 20 days of September 2022.

The researchers wrote:

“We noted that Twiter (sic) suspended less than 30% (27.5%) of the users that publicly shared child pornography links, material, and references in the first 20 days of September.

To date, still, more than 400 users are active after « the purge».

Many of these users have been active for months.”

The researchers also identified that Twitter could be doing a better job at cracking down on toxic accounts:

“These results validate the alarming problem already discovered by internal employees and exposed by online media: Twiter (sic) cannot accurately detect child sexual exploitation and its executives are doing almost nothing to address this disaster.

We also uncovered evidence that such permissive policies on pornographic content are also inducing users to post non-consensual and rape videos, not to mention minors trying to sell their own nudity or sexual content.

…Probably a modest investment and a dedicated team, even applying our own basic techniques, would be suficient (sic) to easily locate and drastically reduce the illicit activities…”

So the conclusion that Ghost Firm reached is different to the one that Twitter reached, as twitter state that the company has a “zero-tolerance” policy for these types of issues.

Google To Roll Out 5 New Changes To Mobile Search

Google has announced new changes that will be rolling out the mobile search in the next few months at their Search On Conference, which was hosted earlier this week.

On the Google app for iOS, you can now utilise shortcuts which will carry out various actions rather than typing in a traditional search query.

As well as this, in the upcoming months, the mobile search bar will be enhanced with new features to help users get more relevant results.

Here’s everything you need to know about the new changes which were announced for now and the near future.

Google Search Shortcuts

You don’t just have to type with a text query to find something on google anymore.

You can find products by uploading a screenshot, or translate a piece of text with Google Lens, or just hum into your phone’s microphone to find a song.

Now, on Google’s app for iOS, you can see shortcuts which will let you carry out these advanced searches without any additional effort on your part.

Here’s an example of how it will look:

Results In The Search Bar

Google is also making things even easier for mobile users to find a result by displaying links and results in the search bar itself.

Google will now start populating the results as you type in your query.

Google showed us what this would look like:

Enhanced Query Refinements

As well as results in the search bar, Google will show an assortment of query refinements when typing in a query.

As you begin typing your query, Google will offer up ideas to make your query more specific.

Again, see the example below, where it suggests options after a user has typed in “best Mexico cities”:

Google Web Stories

As well as easier and refined searches, Google are wanting to implement Google Web Stories to make searching more visual.

The idea is to show users relevant and helpful information from multiple sources, such as images, Wikipedia articles, videos, or map locations:

You can tap on each story (which happens to look like iOS widgets) to learn more.

Combining Text, Images, and Video

You will no longer have to switch between individual text, video, or image tabs as they’ll all be combined into one big content feed:

Good afternoon, and welcome to the Weekly Digital Roundup, keeping you up to date with the latest marketing news!

This week’s stories include yet another Google update, positive news for YouTube Short creators, TikTok making the move to ban political fundraising content, and how Google commemorated the Queen.

Google Begin Rolling Out September Product Review Update

Google has confirmed that they have begun to roll out a product review update, which is the fifth in a series of algorithm updates specifically targeting low-quality reviews.

The update began rolling out on the 20th and should finish rolling out by the 27th if everything goes smoothly.

Google announced the update with their Google Search Central Twitter account, which linked the official page on their website for Search Ranking updates.

Historically, product review updates have taken two weeks to roll out in the past, but Google stated that the September product review update is actually “mostly done”

“For awareness, the September 2022 core update has not fully completed but it’s mostly done. We expect it will be fully complete within a week and will share on our updates page when it is done.”

Due to the fact that the update is mostly complete, you might already be seeing the effects of the update on the product review pages from your site.

Google said this about the impact:

If you see a change and wonder if it’s related to the core update or the product reviews update :

If you produce product reviews, then it’s probably related to that.

If not, then it might be related to the core update.

This update only applies to websites where product reviews are published, if you don’t publish reviews, your site won’t be affected positively or negatively.

What Is The Product Review Update?

The Google product review updates are devised to reward high-quality product reviews which share in-depth research.

If your product review pages aren’t up to Google’s standards, however, and have thin content that summarises the information you can find on a manufacturer’s website, you’ll be punished.

Google wants to rank product reviews that have been written by reviewers who have personally used the product they’re reviewing.

This can be made clear to Google by doing the following:

• Including your own photos and videos of the product
• Writing about the benefits and drawbacks of the product
• Comparing the product with competing ones
• Noting other first-hand thoughts or observations

The product review update affects websites that publish long-form product reviews, such as those seen on websites like Wirecutter and Tom’s Guide.

It’s important to note that customer reviews are not the same thing as product reviews, if you only have customer reviews and not product reviews, you won’t be affected either.

YouTube To Monetise Shorts

YouTube has announced that it will be monetising its form of short-form video, Shorts, and that creators on the platform will be able to keep 45% of the revenue.

This is a significant and highly competitive update for content creators who earn money from YouTube.

Until this was announced, there hasn’t been a way to directly earn money from shorts, only long-form videos.

YouTube instead has a shorts “fund” that awards a creator with money for popular shorts, but this isn’t the same as what they’ve announced as it’s not a direct revenue stream.

As well as the shorts monetisation announcement, YouTube also announced that they’d be expanding and improving upon the YouTube Partner Program, which will assist creators in qualifying to earn revenue for long or short-form videos.

Here’s some more information about both announcements.

Shorts Monetisation

Beginning in early 2023 (likely Q1), content creators who are enrolled in the YouTube Partner Program will be able to monetise their short videos,

YouTube will add the revenue that’s generated from Shorts into a pot and pay creators out at the end of the month, where they will keep 45% of the revenue based on their share of total Shorts views.

This 45% tactic is a fascinating approach and should incentivise most content creators to buy into the Shorts movement due to the fact that the more ad revenue that gets generated through Shorts, the more every content creator will be paid.

YouTube stated that this model is sustainable by design, we’ll have to see how it plays out in the long run though, as they will be competing against the megalithic platform TikTok, which is showing no signs of slowing down.

YouTube Partner Program Expansion

In order for you to benefit from the above, however, you need to be accepted into the YouTube Partner Program.

In order to entice more Short-focused content creators, YouTube is introducing new eligibility criteria for the program.

Around the time that Shorts monetisation will begin, creators will be able to apply to the Partner Program if they’ve got over 1,000 subscribers and have received 10 million Shorts views over 90 days.

This significant change will allow creators to qualify for the program even if they don’t make long videos.

More details will be revealed when the updates are closer to launching.

TikTok To Ban Political Campaign Fundraising

TikTok will start requiring accounts which belong to government officials, departments, or parties to be verified with a blue tick, and any videos or content which call for fundraising will be deleted from the platform.

TikTok and its parent company, known as ByteDance, have sworn to shut down political disinformation campaigns just in time for the American midterm elections in November. They previously allowed political advertising, but after facing scrutiny from US lawmakers, they banned it.

If you have a political account, then you can request verification, you’ll then have to through a multiple-step process so that your identity can be confirmed.

TikTok is also updating its policies so that campaign fundraising content or videos will be prohibited, and verified accounts won’t be able to access any ad features. Political accounts won’t be able to access gifting or digital payments either.

Black Google Logo To Commemorate Queen Elizabeth II

This week, Google turned the logo on its UK homepage black in order to coincide with Queen Elizabeth II’s funeral.

The temporary sign of respect was implemented on the 19th of September, which was the same day as the Queen’s funeral, which was attended by dignitaries and leaders from across the world.

The logo for Google is typically blue, red, yellow, and green, but on Monday it was black and featured a black ribbon which read “Thank you, Ma’am” There was also a link which led visitors to a webpage which summarised the legacy of the Queen, who sadly passed away on the 8th September at the age of 92, she ruled the UK for more than 70 years.

Here’s a screenshot of how the change looked:

If you hovered your mouse over the black logo, you could see a text box which read “Queen Elizabeth II: 1926-2022”.

The black bow could be found in other Commonwealth nations such as Canada and Australia. Originally, the logo was grey which was implemented on the 8th September after it was announced the Queen had passed.

The Google logo has changed before, when George H.W Bush, former president of the United States, died, the logo was changed to grey. The logo also turns grey on US Memorial Day.