By Mark Eting

Bullseye Strategy Special Correspondent

If you remember last week, (they’re starting to run together for us too), we told you about Google’s gigantic May update and what it meant for digital marketers. It was still rolling out then, and we told you to stay tuned. You’ll be glad you did now that we have additional details to share! Oh, and Facebook is flexing its social media muscle with new features, and a likely new acquisition. Read on!

Google Rollout Keeps On Rollin’

Google’s May update is starting to show us some preliminary results. Thin content powered by external factors is losing, local SERPs in major flux, SERP features may be in flux, and aggregators and directories appear to be winning. 

Top losers include NYPost.com, Allmusic.com, Last.fm, WordPress.org, and Huffpost.com. Top winners include Topgear.com, People.com, Businesswire.com.

Fitness, health, recipe, and news sites are all showing declines. 

For the categories and websites showing declines, it may not be entirely about what’s wrong with the website; it may just be about what’s right about the competitive sites that gained.

Facebook Launches Avatars

Facebook’s avatars have begun rolling out in the U.S. and frankly, it’s about time already. What took you so long Mr. Zuckerberg? 

If you’re not familiar with Snapchat and their use of Bitmoji avatars, you’re going to likely really enjoy this personalized cartoon version of yourself that can react with sayings, emotions, even show off your sarcasm. If you are familiar, you’ll just be glad the functionality is finally available on Facebook. 

Avatars can be used within Facebook as comments, in Stories, and in Messenger. Expect to see them being used very, very frequently, and very, very soon.  

Facebook Gets Giphy With It 

Facebook knows everything, including your appetite for animated gifs. They know your affinity for those quick, repeating animations of everything. A slow-clapping Heath Ledger Joker character and a jumping, overly stimulated cartoon coffee cup with “Happy Monday” inscribed on it say so much about your current mood. The tremendous ability of these motion-graphics to quickly convey emotions makes them a favorite on Instagram Stories.

So what’s a Zuck to do? Buy Giphy, of course.  

Facebook has allegedly agreed to buy the platform for making and sharing these creations for a cool $400 million. This paves the way to make it easier to incorporate animated gifs into Instagram. It also makes it likely that Giphy, now backed by the revenue and sales teams inside Facebook, will go from super popular to super popular and super revenue-generating. 

A name change is not expected, although based on some past acquisitions, it’s possible we’ll see it renamed as Facebook’s Giphy. 

Stay safe. Stay classy. Stay indoors still.

“Mark Eting” is the pen name of the Bullseye Strategy team. Check back with us next week for more news on what’s buzzing in the digital marketing industry

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