SEO
Facebook Report Reveals Most Popular Posts and Pages
Facebook released it’s quarterly Widely Viewed Content Report. The report shows what kinds of content users shared the most, giving an idea of the kind of content that does well in Facebook’s algorithm.
Most Facebook Content Does Not Link Out
Getting traffic from Facebook seems to not be what it used to be. Views from Facebook’s feed tended to stay in Facebook.
Facebook feed views that included a link accounted for only 14.6% of views. The vast majority of Facebook feed views (85.4%) did not include a link.
Additionally, when a post did include a link, that link tended to come from a Facebook page that a Facebook member followed.
When Facebook members viewed a post with a link, only 2.5% of those posts were from friends and followed people, what are generally considered trusted sources.
Of the rest of the posts with links that received views, 1.2% came from groups the member had joined, 7.7% were from pages that members followed and 3% came from posts that were unconnected to the members.
The majority of posts (48.6%) with no links that Facebook surfaced in member feeds were created by friends and followed people. The rest came from groups (18.5%), followed pages (8.4%), unconnected posts (7.7%) and what Facebook terms as “other” (2.3%).
Facebook Content is Long Tail with No Head
When people’s reading, listening, searching or buying habits are compared there is always a huge concentration of people who read the same books, listen to the same music, search for the same things and buy the same products.
But there are also books, music, searches and purchases that are very uncommon.
When these reading, watching, listening and buying habits are organized into a graph, the graph has a huge group on the left side and then a long declining line moving to the right that represents the millions and millions of individuals with unique and uncommon watching, buying and listening habits.
The group that tend to do the same thing is called the head. The huge group of individuals with uncommon tastes are called the long tail.
When it comes to Google, 15% of search queries are uncommon. But when it comes to links that people see in their Facebook feeds, only 0.1% of the top Feed content views came from the top 20 sites outside of Facebook.
What that means is that most people don’t see the same thing on Facebook.
When it comes to what people watch on television, huge audience percentages watch the same thing, which means that they are consuming head content.
But for the Facebook ecosystem, people see different things to the extent that no external website was able to achieve massive popularity the way movies, music and television shows do.
An interesting fact shared in the report is that all Facebook members are exposed to content that is unique to them.
There was no content that was able to reach all members and achieve a dominant level of popularity.
Facebook explains:
“…even though our most viewed content might have a very large number of content viewers, as measured as a percentage of all of Facebook content viewers, they represent only a small fraction of total views in Feed in the US that quarter. In short, it is uncommon for different people to see the same content in their Feed.”
Facebook noted:
“…even though our most viewed content might have a very large number of content viewers, as measured as a percentage of all of Facebook content viewers, they represent only a small fraction of total views in Feed in the US that quarter.
In short, it is uncommon for different people to see the same content in their Feed.”
Of the top 20 most popular links on Facebook, only three went to news sites and one link (#16) no longer existed because Facebook removed the link for violating community standards (after being viewed nearly 28 million times).
Most Widely Viewed Facebook Pages
Unlike how things work in the real world, in Facebook world, no one Facebook page managed to gain a massive following in the USA.
The top 20 Facebook pages in the fourth quarter of 2021 only represented 1.1% of all Facebook pages.
Of the top 20 most popular Facebook pages, the number one Facebook page was removed for violating community standards. That violation page received over 121.8 million views before being removed from Facebook.
The majority of the top 20 Facebook pages were about recipes, cute animals, television nostalgia, and other mostly trivial pages that seem to indicate that people on Facebook want to be entertained or amused by articles with titles like, Woman can’t stand every time boyfriend’s daughter visits because “she needs constant attention” and web pages featuring videos of pugs being bathed and images of a pair of French bulldogs mouth to mouth as if kissing.
The list of top 20 Facebook pages paints a portrait of Americans who are hooked on Facebook for a quick shot of endorphins from pages offering a “Daily Dose Of Woof Woof.”
Here is the list of the top 20 Facebook pages:
- This Page was removed by Facebook for violating Community Standards.
- Thinkarete
- WomenWorking.com
- Do You Remember When
- Newsner
- LADBible Australia
- The Dodo
- 3AM Thoughts
- 97.1 QMG
- Eric Alper
- Woof Woof
- Sarcastic Honey
- Kitchen Fun With My 3 Sons
- STUDENTbible
- UNILAD
- BithiriSathi Fans
- Tyla
- Daily Mail Video
- Lessons Learned In Life Inc.
- Selindy Bae GH
Most Widely Viewed Facebook Posts
Similar to the statistics on links and pages, there was no single Facebook post that was able to go viral and be seen by a majority of Facebook members.
The top 20 Facebook posts made up only 0.1% of all Facebook content views. Posts that people viewed on their Facebook feeds were highly different for most people.
Much of the top 20 content is trivial,like a 9 second long video of a man using a vacuum-like device to pull and yank at a mole on his neck. This video was the fourth most popular post on Facebook for the fourth quarter of 2021 and was viewed a staggering 57.4 million times.
Screenshot of Fourth Most Popular Facebook Post
The sixth most popular Facebook post for the fourth quarter of 2021 is a six second video of an angry woman splashing a drink into a man’s face.
This is eerily similar to the movie Idiocracy that depicts a population so dull they go to the movies to watch 90 minutes of a man’s rear end farting.
Widely Viewed Facebook Content
Perhaps the biggest takeaway is that posts that didn’t link out to another site vastly outnumbered posts that featured a link to another site.
The next most interesting takeaway is that there are no universally popular top pages and posts on Facebook. Most people see a unique Facebook news feed.
The last takeaway from Facebook’s report is that Americans seem to be seeking diversions.
Citation
SEO
Google Declares It The “Gemini Era” As Revenue Grows 15%
Alphabet Inc., Google’s parent company, announced its first quarter 2024 financial results today.
While Google reported double-digit growth in key revenue areas, the focus was on its AI developments, dubbed the “Gemini era” by CEO Sundar Pichai.
The Numbers: 15% Revenue Growth, Operating Margins Expand
Alphabet reported Q1 revenues of $80.5 billion, a 15% increase year-over-year, exceeding Wall Street’s projections.
Net income was $23.7 billion, with diluted earnings per share of $1.89. Operating margins expanded to 32%, up from 25% in the prior year.
Ruth Porat, Alphabet’s President and CFO, stated:
“Our strong financial results reflect revenue strength across the company and ongoing efforts to durably reengineer our cost base.”
Google’s core advertising units, such as Search and YouTube, drove growth. Google advertising revenues hit $61.7 billion for the quarter.
The Cloud division also maintained momentum, with revenues of $9.6 billion, up 28% year-over-year.
Pichai highlighted that YouTube and Cloud are expected to exit 2024 at a combined $100 billion annual revenue run rate.
Generative AI Integration in Search
Google experimented with AI-powered features in Search Labs before recently introducing AI overviews into the main search results page.
Regarding the gradual rollout, Pichai states:
“We are being measured in how we do this, focusing on areas where gen AI can improve the Search experience, while also prioritizing traffic to websites and merchants.”
Pichai reports that Google’s generative AI features have answered over a billion queries already:
“We’ve already served billions of queries with our generative AI features. It’s enabling people to access new information, to ask questions in new ways, and to ask more complex questions.”
Google reports increased Search usage and user satisfaction among those interacting with the new AI overview results.
The company also highlighted its “Circle to Search” feature on Android, which allows users to circle objects on their screen or in videos to get instant AI-powered answers via Google Lens.
Reorganizing For The “Gemini Era”
As part of the AI roadmap, Alphabet is consolidating all teams building AI models under the Google DeepMind umbrella.
Pichai revealed that, through hardware and software improvements, the company has reduced machine costs associated with its generative AI search results by 80% over the past year.
He states:
“Our data centers are some of the most high-performing, secure, reliable and efficient in the world. We’ve developed new AI models and algorithms that are more than one hundred times more efficient than they were 18 months ago.
How Will Google Make Money With AI?
Alphabet sees opportunities to monetize AI through its advertising products, Cloud offerings, and subscription services.
Google is integrating Gemini into ad products like Performance Max. The company’s Cloud division is bringing “the best of Google AI” to enterprise customers worldwide.
Google One, the company’s subscription service, surpassed 100 million paid subscribers in Q1 and introduced a new premium plan featuring advanced generative AI capabilities powered by Gemini models.
Future Outlook
Pichai outlined six key advantages positioning Alphabet to lead the “next wave of AI innovation”:
- Research leadership in AI breakthroughs like the multimodal Gemini model
- Robust AI infrastructure and custom TPU chips
- Integrating generative AI into Search to enhance the user experience
- A global product footprint reaching billions
- Streamlined teams and improved execution velocity
- Multiple revenue streams to monetize AI through advertising and cloud
With upcoming events like Google I/O and Google Marketing Live, the company is expected to share further updates on its AI initiatives and product roadmap.
Featured Image: Sergei Elagin/Shutterstock
SEO
brightonSEO Live Blog
Hello everyone. It’s April again, so I’m back in Brighton for another two days of Being the introvert I am, my idea of fun isn’t hanging around our booth all day explaining we’ve run out of t-shirts (seriously, you need to be fast if you want swag!). So I decided to do something useful and live-blog the event instead.
Follow below for talk takeaways and (very) mildly humorous commentary. sun, sea, and SEO!
SEO
Google Further Postpones Third-Party Cookie Deprecation In Chrome
Google has again delayed its plan to phase out third-party cookies in the Chrome web browser. The latest postponement comes after ongoing challenges in reconciling feedback from industry stakeholders and regulators.
The announcement was made in Google and the UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) joint quarterly report on the Privacy Sandbox initiative, scheduled for release on April 26.
Chrome’s Third-Party Cookie Phaseout Pushed To 2025
Google states it “will not complete third-party cookie deprecation during the second half of Q4” this year as planned.
Instead, the tech giant aims to begin deprecating third-party cookies in Chrome “starting early next year,” assuming an agreement can be reached with the CMA and the UK’s Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO).
The statement reads:
“We recognize that there are ongoing challenges related to reconciling divergent feedback from the industry, regulators and developers, and will continue to engage closely with the entire ecosystem. It’s also critical that the CMA has sufficient time to review all evidence, including results from industry tests, which the CMA has asked market participants to provide by the end of June.”
Continued Engagement With Regulators
Google reiterated its commitment to “engaging closely with the CMA and ICO” throughout the process and hopes to conclude discussions this year.
This marks the third delay to Google’s plan to deprecate third-party cookies, initially aiming for a Q3 2023 phaseout before pushing it back to late 2024.
The postponements reflect the challenges in transitioning away from cross-site user tracking while balancing privacy and advertiser interests.
Transition Period & Impact
In January, Chrome began restricting third-party cookie access for 1% of users globally. This percentage was expected to gradually increase until 100% of users were covered by Q3 2024.
However, the latest delay gives websites and services more time to migrate away from third-party cookie dependencies through Google’s limited “deprecation trials” program.
The trials offer temporary cookie access extensions until December 27, 2024, for non-advertising use cases that can demonstrate direct user impact and functional breakage.
While easing the transition, the trials have strict eligibility rules. Advertising-related services are ineligible, and origins matching known ad-related domains are rejected.
Google states the program aims to address functional issues rather than relieve general data collection inconveniences.
Publisher & Advertiser Implications
The repeated delays highlight the potential disruption for digital publishers and advertisers relying on third-party cookie tracking.
Industry groups have raised concerns that restricting cross-site tracking could push websites toward more opaque privacy-invasive practices.
However, privacy advocates view the phaseout as crucial in preventing covert user profiling across the web.
With the latest postponement, all parties have more time to prepare for the eventual loss of third-party cookies and adopt Google’s proposed Privacy Sandbox APIs as replacements.
Featured Image: Novikov Aleksey/Shutterstock
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