What we Learned in April 2017: The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute | Distilled

What we Learned in April 2017: The Digital Marketing Month in a Minute
By Andrew Tweddle . Published May 05, 2017 in the Marketing category
A lot has happened in April in the digital marketing world; so much so that it’s been hard to distill everything down to one blog post. The fake news and extremist content sagas rumble on, while The Guardian shows us that AMP stands to be a major part of publishers’ traffic drivers. There’s also Twitter’s new progressive web app (PWA), which shows the level of functionality you can begin to expect from the new software methodology.
Industry News
Google cracking down on fake news:
Danny Sullivan has called fake news and misleading or abusive answers Google’s biggest ever search quality crisis . This month we saw them launch a coordinated effort to address the problem with a combination of technology, policy, and people changes. Danny has a detailed write-up of the so-called project owl - it’s worth a detailed read.
One of the angles of attack is updated guidelines for human quality raters, and in light of that, it’s interesting to read this dive into the life of these people behind the machine .
Read the full story (Google Blog)
The Guardian is getting 60 percent of its Google mobile traffic from AMP
While many publishers have, to varying degrees, scrambled to adopt Google’s Accelerated Mobile Pages project, The Guardian is an example of just how powerful it can be if employed in the right way. As of March, over 60 percent of Google mobile traffic directly from AMP, and the AMP pages in question are 2% more likely to be clicked on than regular mobile pages.
Read the full story (Digiday)
Facebook hiring 3,000 moderators to manage online content
In recent times, Facebook has come under fire for failing to remove extreme content from its site quickly enough, and conversely for removing other content unnecessarily. To help combat this, the social media giant is adding 3,000 new employees into the 4,500 strong community operations team.
Read the full story (The Guardian)
Alphabet reports $24.65 billion revenue in Q1
Google’s parent company Alphabet recently announced record revenue of $24.75 billion in the first quarter of 2017. That’s higher than many analysts predicted, representing a 22% increase year-over-year.
Read the full story (Marketing Land)
Google and Facebook bring in one-fifth of global ad revenue
Google and Facebook have strengthened their hold on the global advertising business by attracting a combined $101 billion in ad revenue, over 20% of the total amount. Google enjoys the lion’s share earning more than three times that of Facebook. Comcast is the largest traditional media owner, with revenue of almost $13 billion.
Read the full story (The Guardian)
50% of page one results on Google are HTTPS
As Google continues to make clear that they want all sites to move from HTTP to HTTPS, the commercial effect of this is starting to become evident. Only nine months ago, just 30% of page one results tested by Dr. Peter Meyers from Moz were HTTPS. That percentage has now risen to over 50%. We assume this is because of sites migrating, rather than a ranking factor change.
Read the full story (Moz)
Twitter launches progressive web app Twitter Lite
To combat the problem of poor internet connections and limited storage capacity, Twitter has launched a new Twitter Lite progressive web app (PWA). Twitter Lite gives users timelines, Tweets, direct messages, notifications and more. Additionally, a data saver mode helps reduce mobile data up to 70 percent, so that you can preview images and videos before loading them. Even on good connections, it’s interesting to see a PWA with so much functionality.
Read the full story (Marketing Land)
Google Home can now distinguish up to six different users
Google Home can now recognise the voice of up to six different users on one device, meaning the digital personal assistant can offer customised and personalised results to each different person. The feature is available from today in the US and will soon become available in the UK and rest of Europe.
Read the full story (Search Engine Land)
Google tests Google Hire, its own jobs tool
While it’s still unknown whether it will take on LinkedIn or Greenhouse (or something else entirely), Google has debuted a holding page for its new job site. For now, signing up to hear more is about all you can do, but expect more in the coming weeks and months.
Distilled news
On the Distilled blog
This month, the main focus on the Distilled blog has been the subject of brand awareness. Senior Consultant Tom Capper discussed the ways to measure the often vague idea of brand awareness , and Senior Designer Vicke Cheung looked at the topic from a content creation view, showing you how you can start creating your own content for brand awareness . Also on the blog, Consultant Ore Oduwole outlined the process for approaching the dreaded site migration .
Over at the Moz blog
Speaking of migrations, Principal Consultant Jono Alderson is calling for a better approach to migrations , including improving the very way we define them. Analyst Lydia Gilbertson provides her best tips for small publishers to grow their network with little resource, while Consultant Sergey Stefoglo lays down the basics of faceted navigation . Finally Tom Capper tackles the topic of links. Are they yesterday’s ranking factor , or do they still have a place in an SEO strategy?
Also at Distilled
We’re now just one month away from SearchLove Boston, and the full schedule is now live. You can see it in full here . If you pick up your ticket by 11th May, you’ll still save $200 in the early bird sale . Finally, Distilled CEO Will has been  speaking to Expert Market about leading a company and the challenges of thought leadership:
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