Ongoing - Digital Marketing Journals Hong Kong - Search Engine Optimisation News

Ongoing Chinese Influence Operations Could Strengthen the Case for a TikTok Ban

25May

By Andrew HutchinsonNo Comments

Ongoing Chinese Influence Operations Could Strengthen the Case for a TikTok Ban

While TikTok has over 150 million US users, who are increasingly spending more of their time in the app, its popularity could also be clouding concerns around its potential for harm, which is the key focus of the ongoing discussions around whether or not to ban the app. And while, for the most part, I would trust the advice of cybersecurity experts on this front, with various officials, from various nations, raising significant concerns about the app, I would also look to other cases where China-based groups have been seeking to infiltrate US-based networks, in order to gather information, seed propaganda, and manipulate opinion. Which is happening all the time. Just today, Microsoft reported that Chinese state-sponsored group ‘Volt Tycoon’ has conducted various operations designed to di...

Google Outlines Ongoing Efforts to Combat China-Based Influence Operations Targeting Social Apps

27Jan

By Andrew HutchinsonNo Comments

facebook, facebook marketing, Social Marketing Strategies, social media, social media marketing, tiktok, twitter, youtube

Google Outlines Ongoing Efforts to Combat China-Based Influence Operations Targeting Social Apps

Over the past year, Google has repeatedly noted that a China-based group has been looking to use YouTube, in particular, to influence western audiences, by building various channels in the app, then seeding them with pro-China content. There’s limited info available on the full origins or intentions of the group, but today, Google has published a new overview of its ongoing efforts to combat the initiative, called DRAGONBRIDGE. As explained by Google: “In 2022, Google disrupted over 50,000 instances of DRAGONBRIDGE activity across YouTube, Blogger, and AdSense, reflecting our continued focus on this actor and success in scaling our detection efforts across Google products. We have terminated over 100,000 DRAGONBRIDGE accounts in the IO network’s lifetime.” As you can see in this chart, DR...

Meta Commits $150 Million to Support the Ongoing Operation of its Oversight Board

23Jul

By Andrew HutchinsonNo Comments

facebook, facebook marketing, Social Marketing Strategies, social media, social media marketing

Meta Commits $150 Million to Support the Ongoing Operation of its Oversight Board

While it remains an experiment, Meta’s Oversight Board provides an interesting case study in third-party regulation of social platforms, and how official rules and regulations could help to ensure more uniformity, and fairness, within platform rulings. Founded back in 2019, the Oversight Board is an independent group of experts to whom Meta and its users can refer appeals over platform and content decisions, providing another avenue for more complex concerns. The Board can then rule on each case, and make recommendations to Meta as to how it might update its policies in-step, which Meta doesn’t necessarily have to implement. But it provides at least some type of double-checking measure, even if it is essentially funded by Meta itself. Which will continue to be the case, with Meta today a...

10Dec

By Ben FisherNo Comments

googe optimize, google optimization, google seo, Local Search, search engine optimisation, search engine optimising, search engine optimization, SEO, seo services

7 New & Ongoing Google Business Profile (GMB) Issues, December 2021

This year has been a wild ride when it comes to Google My Business (GMB) – erm, I mean Google Business Profile (GBP).The most notable change in 2021 was its rebranding and the full rollout of the capability that enables marketers to manage business profiles via Search and Maps.For a time, Google Business Profile support was massively backed up with requests and the backlog took a few months to clear out.And still, there are several ongoing issues. It can be frustrating when things are not working the way they should and in some cases, it makes no sense as to why the issue exists or has not been resolved.But have faith – Google’s support and engineering teams are constantly working on many bugs, new features, and more. They do try to stay on top of issues that are brought up in the GBP comm...

Facebook Publishes New Insights into the Ongoing Impacts of the Pandemic on SMBs

12Sep

By Andrew HutchinsonNo Comments

facebook, facebook marketing, Social Marketing Strategies, social media, social media marketing

Facebook Publishes New Insights into the Ongoing Impacts of the Pandemic on SMBs

Facebook has published the latest iteration of its State of Small Business report, which measures the ongoing impacts of the pandemic on SMBs, and how the vaccine roll-out is being reflected in sales numbers, employment, and more. The report incorporates direct responses from over 35,189 small business leaders from across the globe, including 10,262 business leaders from the US, with the most recent survey period covering the 19th of July to the 7th of August. And given the impacts of SMBs on the broader economy, this is a crucial pulse of where business sentiment is placed, and what you can expect moving forward. You can download the full, 61-page report here, but in this post, we’ll look at some of the key points. First off, Facebook notes that SMB closure rates have fallen in the lat...