Digital state Consulting in Cheshire discuss the latest Facebook update.
This week, as we’re sure you’re aware, Google began rolling out their mobile-friendly update. Since Tuesday, it seems that some of us are seeing changes and some of us aren’t.
Search Engine Land ran through this earlier today, reporting that the update is completely live in some data centres and not quite in others. Here at Digital State, we are yet to see any major changes, but we will keep you updated as and when we see them.
In other news – Facebook have made some changes that prompted this Tweet from Rand Fishkin:
“I’ll bet my beard that today’s Facebook changes will have a bigger long-term impact than Google’s #Mobilegeddon”
The changes made by Facebook cover three areas. Firstly, Facebook have made changes to improve content for those without a lot of content to see, by changing the rules so you can now see multiple posts from the same source in a row.
Facebook are also increasing the amount of content viewed from friends vs pages, whilst still allowing you to see posts from pages you interact with.
Finally, Facebook are also shoving stories about friends liking or commenting on a post down your News Feed too. I don’t know about you, but I’m certainly glad to hear of that final point – I’m all too sick of seeing stories on my News Feed that I have no interest in simply because a friend does.
Finally, Google seem to be under (yet) more scrutiny this week as it came out (ft.com) that a bill is going through French legislature which aims to regulate Google search results and reveal some secrets about its search algorithm.
According to the Financial Times, Google would have to “provide links to at least three rival search engines on its homepage, and disclose to users the ‘general principles of ranking’” to make results more ‘fair’.
Whether this bill becomes law or not, the general feeling across Europe seems to be that Google should indeed be more ‘fair’. But what exactly does that mean? And what does this mean for Google? Only time will tell.
