Social Media

Facebook Backs Off on Plan to Bring Ads to WhatsApp

According to The Wall Street Journal, Facebook is re-thinking it’s approach to WhatsApp as a revenue-generating tool: “WhatsApp in recent months disbanded a team that had been established to find the best ways to integrate ads into the service, according to people familiar with the matter. The team’s work was then deleted from WhatsApp’s code, the people said.” That would mean that while WhatsApp has more than 1.5 billion users, it won’t be contributing significantly to Facebook’s overall revenues anytime soon.

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YouTube Shows Users’ Comment History in New Profile Cards

Perhaps even more telling than a user’s comment history is what channels they subscribe to, which will be on full display in their profile card. You can learn a lot about someone from the types of YouTube creators they subscribe to. However, users can change what information is displayed in their profile card from the settings menu. So that may be worth looking into if you value your privacy on YouTube.

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Marketing

Google January 2020 Core Update Almost Done Rolling Out

Google has confirmed that its January 2020 core update, which began Monday at noon, is now mostly done rolling out as of Thursday morning. Google said on the @searchliaison account “the update is mostly done, though as with any core update, it may take to two weeks to fully complete.”  This Google search algorithm update was announced on Monday and began rolling out Monday at 12pm ET. The rollout is global and impacting all Google search regions and languages. This update is just about done rolling out but you may see fluctuations throughout the next two weeks, Google said.

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Google Expands Domain Name and Icon Listings in Search Results to Web Queries

You can find a more in-depth explanation of the process here – and given the prominence of these new icons in the search display, especially on desktop, where they’re larger and stand out even more, it’s worth looking into, either by yourself or your tech team. In itself, the update is not a major, functional change, but definitely, those icons stand out in desktop search queries. And given that around 90% of searches conducted on desktop PCs come via Google, it’s worth taking note, and optimizing your listings wherever possible.

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