Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots: March 2020, Week 3

Hello, reader. We hope you are doing fine amidst this Coronavirus outbreak and that this edition of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots finds you well. As you probably already know, this is our weekly blog digest wherein we cover some of the most relevant industry-related pieces of news and events that took place over the last 7 days (or so). 

In our “March 2020: Week 3” installment, you can read about the following events: 

• Major Social & Tech Platforms to Together Combat Fake News and Fraud About COVID-19
• Bing Rolls Out Interactive COVID-19 Tracking Map
• Support for Google Ads & GMB to be Delayed/Unavailable
• How (and Why) to Update Your Search Results Snippets
• YouTube’s ‘Trending’ Tab Becomes the New ‘Explore’ Tab (on Mobile App)

Ok, let’s start. 

Major Social & Tech Platforms to Together Combat Fake News and Fraud About COVID-19

The biggest technology players – including Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Microsoft, Reddit, Twitter, and YouTube – have joined forces in a decision (and a commitment) to together battle spreading fraud and misinformation about the novel virus COVID-19. 

On Monday evening, they all published the following joint statement: 

“We are working closely together on COVID-19 response efforts. We’re helping millions of people stay connected while also jointly combating fraud and misinformation about the virus, elevating authoritative content on our platforms, and sharing critical updates in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world. We invite other companies to join us as we work to keep our communities healthy and safe.”

Here’s a tweet coming from Google Public Policy:

The technology industry is working closely together in coordination with government healthcare agencies around the world on COVID-19 response efforts. Read our full statement. pic.twitter.com/Xn0fhyJLXm

— Google Public Policy (@googlepubpolicy) March 17, 2020

This is clearly the period when major tech companies need to be more involved and proactive than usual when it comes to tracking and taking down frauds, hoaxes, and other similar forms of abuse. 

It is yet unclear what measures exactly this joint effort may involve. 

Bing Rolls Out Interactive Map to Track COVID-19 

Microsoft’s Bing has put out an interactive COVID-19 tracker showing the number of confirmed cases of the virus across the world map. The information is divided into 3 levels of data:

• Active cases
• Recovered cases
• Fatal cases

The map can be filtered by geographic region. 

(Source: Bing)

Users can also click on individual countries/states to access relevant and up-to-date pieces of news and videos pertaining to the info and situation in that particular country.

(Source: Bing)

The link to Bing’s COVID-tracking map available here. 

Support for Google Ads & GMB to be Delayed/Unavailable

Google has notified users that customer support for Google My Business and Google Ads may be delayed or even completely cut off for the time being. Due to the ongoing situation induced by the virus outbreak, Google is currently playing with a shortened bench. 

Here’s an official statement coming from the Google Ads help section:

“Important update: As a precautionary health measure for our phone and chat support specialists in light of COVID-19, some Google Ads support options may be unavailable or delayed. You can still reach us through the Contact Us form. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and appreciate your patience. This message will be updated as the situation changes.”

Additional measures Google is currently taking include:

• Launching a nation-wide coronavirus information platform 
• Making Google Hangout Meet premium features available to everyone for free 
• Promotion of the World Health Organization campaign on the Google homepage
• Directing YouTube users to videos from the CDC
• Suppressing false information on COVID-19 by removing thousands of content pieces related to dangerous/misleading data 

More information on the company’s efforts to assist with the novel virus can be found here.

How (and Why) to Update Your Search Results Snippets

The latest episode of Google’s ‘Search for Beginners’ video series provides a concise and comprehensive crash course on effective search results snippet creation. This can be quite useful, especially to fresh website owners who are yet to learn the tricks of the SEO trade. 

The importance of Search Snippets mirrors in the fact that it provides the primary piece of data a person uses when deciding which search result to choose and click on. It has the potential to be much more than just a plain meta description. 

More information available here. 

YouTube’s ‘Trending’ Tab Becomes the New ‘Explore’ Tab (on Mobile App)

Web’s biggest video sharing platform is updating its mobile app (on both iOS and Android) with a tweak that turns one of YouTube’s most visited sections Trending into a sort of expanded version of the same tab called “Explore”.

The updated tab is definitely a more robust version of the old Trending tab, and here’s what the team behind this platform has to say:

“… with Explore, you not only have access to Trending videos, but also to destination pages for some popular content categories like Gaming, Music, Fashion & Beauty, Learning and more – all from one place.”

The features that come with the new Explore tab include:

• Access to destination pages: Shortcuts to destination pages including Music, Gaming, News, Movies & Shows, Fashion & Beauty, and Learning.
• More prominent ‘On the Rise’ sections: “Creator on the Rise” and “Artist on the Rise” will now appear before other trending videos.
• Trending videos: The old Trending tab will now have its own section in Explore.

This concludes this installment of Digital Marketing Week in Review by Four Dots. Catch up next week as well, until then – feel free to check out our previous edition!

And remember – stay at home and stay safe. 

Radomir Basta

CEO and lead SEO strategist at Four Dots and lecturer at Digital Marketing Institute Also an angry driver and huge tattoo fan. In love with growth hacking.

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