Algorithm no stress!

The algorithms of the major platforms we use every day are designed to favor a specific ranking of alternatives among the proposed content, and even small changes can result in large variations in terms of visibility and interactions and in the scope of digital jobs around the world.

The update of Google basic algorithm, for example, which arrived in Italy in September 2022, is the beginning of some of these changes that will challenge marketeers, web developers and SEO enthusiasts to structure content in an increasingly user-centered way. 

The basic algorithm, of course, is constantly being adjusted, but changes of a certain magnitude, in addition to being appropriately announced, can result in changes in approach and strategy for those who work with the web and focus on leads and conversions it helps to generate.

For this reason, with this article we want to explain the most important changes that, once the “break-in period” and propagation of the changes has passed, could affect the search results we have always been used to seeing in Google SERP.

The new version of Google algorithm will give a kind of priority in visibility to those contents that can give users a rewarding experience. In fact, it is no coincidence that this aspect of the algorithm is named “Helpful Content Update,” precisely to put the focus on helping the user in the enjoyment of content and the gratification that comes with it.

Contents, then, are people-centered, and this change is perhaps one of Google’s biggest steps forward in recent times in terms of the “humanity” of the web. 

By this time, the new update may have already borne fruit and stabilized, but it should be kept in mind that, as with any change, there is the need to have a monitoring phase to assess the performance of contents, search rankings  and the performance of contents and ads, with frequent and increasingly flexible evolutionary adjustments between people, algorithms, and platforms.

Meta, too, is in the process of making some changes to its algorithm, and as we browse the web we can see that the proposals are among the most diverse. 

Meta algorithms, as well as others, are frequently reviewed and modified to continually improve the user experience of contents and ensure the best experience of gratification, engagement and interaction. 

After the latest updates and compared to the past, the current Facebook algorithm (and the Instagram one) aims to give more importance to those patterns that detect interactions, shares and comments and choose what to show and to whom, precisely by virtue of these interactions, in order to increase engagement within the platform, between people and pages. 

The social networking giant also opted for this choice in order to obstruct the immense success achieved by Tik Tok, with a different mechanism of contents distribution that had nevertheless managed to put Meta social applications under attack, enjoying even more success at some stages. 

If at the beginning Facebook goal was to strengthen interactions and engagement within the same social network (friends and family for example), it is now aiming at the so-called “unconnected distribution” method, such that the potential audience of the produced contents increases to reach even people who do not know the user or whom the user does not know, just as it has always been on Tik Tok.

Furthermore, a very recent news article tells how Facebook will make sure to ask for more immediate feedback from users about the content they prefer to see on their feed.

This approach was already being used by the social network, which sometimes, taking advantage of users’ scrolling, found time to ask the user whether or not the content they viewed was of interest to them.

Needless to say, here again, the human-centered approach is clearly visible with the purpose of gratifying the user more and more and abolishing the superfluous to avoid moments of boredom.
This will be accomplished mainly by the inclusion of two buttons “show more” and “show less” that are estimated to have an impact on the algorithm for about 30-60 days and will help to determine which accounts are displayed in the feed, as Tom Alison, the head of the main Facebook app, said.

Originality, creativity and adherence to guidelines will always be the cornerstones for adapting to the constant changes that the world of social media, SERP and the web in general undergoes day after day, even without us noticing.

More than ever, the digital and social media marketing strategy, therefore, must be dynamically structured, designed and implemented in order to ensure a similar experience for our users, even when everything changes.