How Google and Facebook’s New Algorithms Have Changed Digital Strategies
In lecture, we have talked about search engine optimization (SEO) and how companies and small businesses used popular search terms to appear highly in the search results. Large search engine and social media sites, like Google and Facebook, have developed algorithms to specifically match a person’s search word to the most popular search website or profile. Outside of advertisement auctions, this implementation of search term ranking has been the most influential cause in what webpages are promoted the most.
The addition of a search word algorithm has led many businesses to hire marketing teams to specifically optimize their websites or profile pages to match the most sought after keywords related to their range of products. This leads to a higher chance of promotion on the search page and makes particular products easier to find. However, in the past year Google and Facebook, specifically, have made changes to their algorithms that have affected the marketing strategies of many digital advertisers. In Google’s case, they have updated their search optimizer, called RankBrain, which uses artificial intelligence to look for key phrases in a search rather than keywords. The optimizer now understands how to use the synonyms of a multitude of words to increase the accuracy of potentially showing a site that matches the user’s search.
This makes it easier for the user to find connections to their wanted search result but slightly more difficult for marketing teams to optimize the engine. Currently, search engine optimization is more convenient on both sides of the table but does make the search field broader in a few different aspects that can be troubling for users and optimizers.
In the case of Facebook, their search engine has now been oriented towards showing results that are about friends, family, and connecting groups. Facebook was built on the foundation of connecting people but has seen a rise in political, economic, and marketing advertisements that seem to trouble some of the people on the site. Though there still have been and likely will continue to be an overload of advertisements on the site Facebook has shown some concern, however minimal it might be, on the content their users see on a daily basis.