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Hello and welcome to Digital Marketing Month in Review by Four Dots. This is our monthly column where we comb through some of the most relevant news and events that took place within the digital marketing landscape over the last month or so.

Let’s see what “January 2021” edition brings us:   

  • DuckDuckGo Reaches 100 million Daily Searches 
  • Three Keyword Research Tips For YouTube Videos 
  • Facebook Falls Behind TikTok in Time Spent per User
  • Five New Features in Facebook Pages
  • Whatsapp’s New Privacy Policy Update Delayed Over User Concerns
  • Product Pages to Get Price Drop Rich Results in Google
  • Is “Land Down Under” About to Lose Google?

Alrighty then, let’s dive right in!

DuckDuckGo Reaches 100 million Daily Searches

The increasingly popular DuckDuckGo browser reaches a milestone with 100 million searches in a single day

The record was set on Monday, 11th of January, according to their public traffic data. DuckDuckGo had a steady yearly increase, reaching a record 73% in the last year. Their popularity concerning mobile searches pushed them up the ladder to second place, leaving Bing and Yahoo in the dust. 

DuckDuckGo Reaches 100 million Daily Searches | Four Dots
(Image Source: Search Engine Journal)

This huge success can be attributed to their privacy policy as users are increasingly opting for privacy-based apps and services. For example, encrypted messaging apps like Signal and Telegram are the top two apps on the US App Store. 

The predictions are that the popularity growth of DuckDuckGo will continue to rise, provided they expand their number of features to match the competition.

Three Keyword Research Tips For YouTube Videos 

In the first upload of the year on YouTube’s Creator Inside channel – where they answer questions from various users – a member of the search and discovery team, among others, answered a key question concerning keyword research: 

“When researching which keywords to use in a video, what is a good way to gauge the likelihood that it will be surfaced in users’ recommendations?”

These are three tactics recommended by YouTube:

  • Audience Insight
  • Google Trends
  • Competitive Analysis 

Audience insight

An Audience Insight card found in YouTube Analytics tells you what other videos your audience is watching. It helps you discover fresh topics your audience is interested in and which you might have overlooked. 

Google Trends

Probably the most obvious tool, Google Trends has been utilized by SEOs since its launch to keep track of the most popular topics at the moment. And if it’s good enough for SEOs, it’s good enough for YouTubers. 
You can even track two topics to find out which one is more popular in comparison. The guys from Search Engine Journal used Roblox and Minecraft, two hugely popular topics on YouTube and made the following comparison: 

Three Keyword Research Tips For YouTube Videos  | Four Dots
(Image Source: Search Engine Journal)

As you can see, even though the two topics were equally popular in September 2020, Minecraft took the lead and it’s widening the gap. 

Competitive Analysis

Yet another weapon from the SEO arsenal, Competitive Analysis is basically entering keywords in the YouTube search bar to see what you can learn from the most popular videos on said topics. Titles, thumbnails, use of video chapters, descriptions, use of video chapters, intros, and ad placement are just some of the aspects you can use to see what works for the big guys and implement your findings in your videos.

You can find more info on this here

Facebook Falls Behind TikTok in Time Spent per User

According to the newest data, TikTok users have surpassed the social media titan Facebook in time spent on the platform per user. Even though nearly every popular app on the market has noted a certain growth in the number of visits, TikTok is by far in the lead.  

Facebook Falls Behind TikTok in Time Spent per User | Four Dots
(Image Source: Search Engine Journal)

Currently it ranks in Top 5 for time spent, it has surpassed almost every other app out there and has noted a year-to-year increase of 325%, beating its main competitor – Facebook. 

Five New Features in Facebook Pages

Along with the new design, Facebook Pages got five new features:

  • A dedicated News Feed
  • Easy navigation
  • Improved Page management tools
  • Actionable insights
  • Safety and integrity features

We’ll go through them one by one:

Dedicated News Feed

As a page manager, you now have a separate news feed from your private one. As the guys from Facebook claim:

“We are bringing the power of News Feed to Pages for the first time. Now Pages can discover and join conversations, follow trends, interact with peers and engage with fans.”

Also, it will suggest groups, pages and public figures.

Easy Navigation
Now you can use Switcher to easily go from your personal profile to your page. You simply tap on a three-lined icon on your main navigation bar and you will see your personal profile as well as your pages. Now, with a simple tap you can switch between them. 

Improved Page Management Tools

Admins now have task-based controls at their disposal. In order to better differentiate tasks and improve security for their pages, as well as a personal profile, admins can now assign roles with various levels of access like Insights, Ads, Content, and Community Activity & Messages.

Five New Features in Facebook Pages | Four Dots
(Image Source: Search Engine Journal)

Actionable insights

Facebook claims they are adding more actionable insights, but they are a bit stingy on the details. All we have to work at the moment with is a bit cryptic claim from their Help Page that claims: 

“Updated insights will help you understand your audience and how your content performs.”

It is also said that the improvements made Page Insights will include more relevant notifications.

Safety and integrity features

Facebook has made some improvements to their ability to filter out forbidden activities like hate speech, spam, sexual content, violent behavior etc. more easily.

Whatsapp’s New Privacy Policy Update Delayed Over User Concerns

After a serious turmoil amongst WhatsApp users concerning the security of their data, Facebook has decided to delay planned updates to both the Privacy Policy and Terms of Use for WhatsApp.

Whatsapp’s New Privacy Policy Update Delayed Over User Concerns | Four Dots

The biggest uproar was brought down on Facebook because of the last bullet point: “’How we partner with Facebook to offer integrations across the Facebook Company products”, which got a large number of users concerned if that means WhatsApp will now be sharing all of its user data with Facebook. 

The people from Facebook tried to explain that this premise is not true as the change in policy and data-sharing only relates to messaging with businesses on WhatsApp, making your personal profiles completely secure – but to no avail, it seems, since alternative messaging apps like Signal, Viber and Telegram saw millions of downloads as the users started moving on from Whatsapp to more secure encrypted apps. 

Product Pages to Get Price Drop Rich Results in Google

Google has updated their Product Structured Data to add a new feature i.e a new form of rich results named Price Drop Appearance.

Developed by Google, Yahoo, Bing and Yandex, Schema.org structured data is basically a browser’s tool to pick specific structured data to display in Rich Results. Product Rich Results are added as a way to help e-commerce stores to get more clicks according to the data they give out. 

Product Pages to Get Price Drop Rich Results in Google | Four Dots
(Image Source: Search Engine Journal)

Price Drop Appearance will use Google’s price tracking feature to track when the product price changes and will add a “price drop appearance” rich result that shows that there’s been a price drop.

If you’re wondering how to become eligible, here’s what Google has to say:

“Price drop: Help people understand the lowest price for your product. Based on the running historical average of your product’s pricing, Google automatically calculates the price drop. The price drop appearance is available in English in the US, on both desktop and mobile.

To be eligible for the price drop appearance, add an Offer to your Product structured data. The price must be a specific price, not a range (for example, it can’t be $50.99 to $99.99).”

This new feature should definitely make sales prices pop in the search results, which could potentially result in more sales.

Is “Land Down Under” About to Lose Google?

Google warns that in case Australia’s new legislation forces them to pay for news content passes, they will make search in Australia unavailable

In a sort of “display of strength”, Google started an experiment showing only 1% of news stories from Australia. This has been interpreted as a sort of a company’s warning as to what will happen in case the country passes the News Media Bargaining Code – world’s first legislation that would force Google and Facebook to share royalties with the publishers.

As Mel Silva, Google Australia’s Managing Director stated in a Senate hearing:

“If this version of the code were to become law, it would give us no real choice but to stop making Google Search available in Australia…we do not see a way, with the financial and operational risks, that we could continue to offer a service in Australia.”

Although most of the media focused their attention to Google, they are not alone in this fight – Facebook has made similar threats, claiming that, should the bill be passed, they will ban Australia-based publishers from posting and sharing news links.

What will be the aftermath of this story? It is yet to be seen. 

Wrapping Up

That would be all for this installment of Digital Marketing Month in Review by Four Dots. See you next month! In the meantime, check out our latest (and last weekly) edition of the Digital Marketing review column

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