Tag: search

The Social Media Rundown: Search Overtakes Social, Facebook Blocks Third-Party Data Ad Targeting

With a Facebook News Feed algorithm change and few other factors listed below, search is now driving more traffic than social. And in an apparent effort to make some positive changes at the company, Facebook announced it will no longer allow ad targeting based on relationship status. Plus, be sure to check out this week’s learning section for tips on beating Twitter’s algorithm and how you can better protect yourself online.

Social Media News:

  • The SEO versus Social Battle Has a New Winner (Convince & Convert). Takeaways from Jay Baer on why search is sending more traffic: Less use of social overall, social algorithms showing fewer posts from companies, fewer links in social posts, more social indexed in search engines. If you have an extra minute, definitely watch Jay’s LinkedIn video explaining this trend.
Search vs. Social: Share of Visits Chart
Shareaholic Data Report: Pinterest, Google, & Instagram big winners as Facebook share of visits falls 8% in 2017
  • Facebook Will No Longer Allow Third-Party Data for Targeting Ads (The Verge). The company is disabling a form of ad targeting called Partner Categories, which allowed prominent third-party data aggregators like Experian and Acxiom to provide clients with offline data like purchasing activity to inform ad targeting.
  • Facebook Quietly Removes Ad Filter to Target Users Based on Their Relationship Preferences (Marketing Land). The decision to remove the ‘interested in’ filter from its ad platform was based on feedback from outside experts. The decision could prevent malicious behavior targeting the LGBTQ community.

Learn:

  • Cracking The Twitter Algorithm: 11 Brilliant Ways to Outsmart the Timeline (Sprout Social). This thoughtful post from Sprout Social outlines several ways to increase your organic reach on Twitter, such as tweet consistently, run twitter ads, use twitter video, re-share your top tweets, engage when people mention you, make timely tweets, use emotional trigger words, and several more tips worth considering.
  • Facebook Isn’t the Only One Tracking You. Here Are 5 Ways to Protect Yourself (Digital Trends). With all the heat Facebook is taking for allegedly abusing data as part of the Cambridge Analytica scandal, now might be a good time to consider how you can keep your personal data private online. This article has five helpful tools.

By the way, I share most of the social media news articles and learnings that I come across throughout the week on my Twitter and LinkedIn profiles. Feel free to follow me to keep up. And of course, if you see something interesting in the news, please share.

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Who Uses Bing?

Google is clearly the winner.
Google is clearly the winner.

Consider this my first rant. I know, I know … it’s been nearly two weeks since my previous post and I should have something more interesting to discuss and, believe me, I do. However, “Who Uses Bing” is the first topic listed on my blog ideas I have saved in my iPhone notes. This topic actually came to me when I watched my professor go to Bing and type in “Google” before actually doing his search. Let me know in the comments section below if you have ever done this.

Bing is terrible. That may be a bit harsh, it’s not like I know anything about search algorithms, but seriously, Google is just a lot better. It was only a couple years ago when Microsoft formally launched its new search engine site and changed the name from the boring “MSN Search” (Live Search and Windows Live Search–also terribly boring names–were also used) to simply “Bing.” I remember watching some of the fabulous network news anchors poking fun of the name and trying to predict if people would start saying “Just Bing it!” as we all do with Google. Pretty sure I have never heard anyone use Bing as a verb and I don’t think I ever will. Well, there is the clever tagline “Bing and decide” used in it’s advertisements, but come on.

Okay, this is more of a rant than I wanted it to be, so let’s just head over to bing.com and see if the search engine can explain to me why Google is better. After reaching bing.com (which I typed in on my awesome Google Chrome Web browser), I proceeded to type in “why Google is better than Bing” and the auto-complete finished after typing in “why Goo,” nice. At least they’re playing fair and not trying to block certain search terms. Anyway, I came up with this nice article in the number two spot (the first site was an article from 2009 stating that Bing is a competitor, but it is not a “Google Killer”), which contained the 10 reasons why Google is still better than Bing.

There’s no reason to try and list my top 10 reasons; I think the above mentioned article speaks for itself. However, I say Google is king of search because of a few key reasons. First off, Google was founded as a search engine company and has always kept the focus on speed and finding the most relevant, pertinent information regarding the user’s search term. Secondly, Google really optimizes the user Web experience through additional tools such Google Docs, Google Calendar, Gmail and much, much more. Finally, Google has done an outstanding job of integrating its search function into mobile platforms. Google Goggles, voice search and the entire iPhone app is a great addition to the mobile experience.

I think I’ll finish there before I get into a rant on why I think even Yahoo! is better than Bing. Somehow Bing has managed to overtake Yahoo! as the world’s number two search engine, so I guess I’ll congratulate them on that.