This week there have been some interesting news from Facebook, with announcements that they will no longer be counting accidental clicks and that load time will now be feed ranking factor.
Members also discussed the state of AI and if the current AI techniques are all that they are promoted to be. In Google news, members weigh in on recent changes to the Google Quality Rater Guidelines.
FB Says its not counting accidental ad clicks anymore
Surfaced on Threadwatch is that Facebooks’ recent action to tackle invalid clicks. Advertisers are excited to learn that Facebook will not longer count accidental clicks. In terms of impact on publishers, Brett Vogel, Product Marketing Manager, states that the ‘vast majority’ of publishes should be unaffected. Facebook also released new reporting on total, billable, and non-billable impressions.
Google Quality Rater Guidelines Updated July 27,2017
Over on Webmaster World, news is surfaced that Google has recently updated their Quality Rater Guidelines, which is a useful reference guide that webmasters have used through the years to try to get an understanding for how Google may assess content quality.
Webmasterworld Members had a number of interesting comments regarding the recent changes:
Artistotle:
Another question is whether their changes for detecting fake and false news, could have spilled onto other parts of the web and affected the rankings of sites with other kinds of information.
Member nonstop used examples to illustrate that in some cases it is difficult to distinguish between the change regarding “fact” vs. unsubstantiated conspiracy theory, mentioning the following examples:
“There was once a city that was submerged in water called Atlantis”
Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?
“There was once a boy called Harry who went to school and was able to cast spells”
Fact or unsubstantiated conspiracy theory?
Facebook Will Rank Faster Loading Pages In The Newsfeed
Facebook recently announced a change where it will reward rank faster loading pages over slower loading pages within users feeds. The change will be rolling out slowly during the coming months. Member engine noted that it is strange that they are using an estimate from time of click vs. measuring using their own systems.
From a read of the comments by members, the prevailing view is that this is just a small effort to keep pace with web standards and will likely not do much to reduce the bloat when using Facebook.
Is AI really “Stuck”? – Gary Marcus thinks so
Highlighted on Threadwatch is an opinion piece By Gary Marcus, Professor of Psychology at New York University, stating that AI is ‘stuck’, which is interesting when viewed in context of the prevailing views that AI technology including much touted techniques like deep learning are set to disrupt many industries.
Automating Me And You And What We Think
Cre8pc mentioned that despite the highly touted capabilities of AI and deep learning, there are some limitations impacting the effectiveness of AI, quoting the following from thinktank RAND Corporation
Algorithms and Artificial Intelligence Agents Influence Many Areas of Life Today
• In particular, these artificial agents influence the news articles read and associated advertising, access to credit and capital investment, risk assessments for convicts, and others.
This Reliance on Artificial Agents Carries Risks that Have Caused Concern
• The potential for bias is one concern. Algorithms give the illusion of being unbiased but are written by people and trained on socially generated data. So they can encode and amplify human biases. Use of artificial agents in sentencing and other legal contexts is one area in particular that has caused concerns about bias.
• Another concern is that increasing reliance on artificial agents is fueling the rapid automation of jobs, even jobs that would seem to rely heavily on human intelligence, such as journalism and radiology.
• Among other risks are the possibility of hacked reward functions (an issue with machine learning) and the inability to distinguish among cultural differences.
Members on the thread seemed to be in agreement with this assessment, quoting member iamlost, who summarizes the sentiments of the group well, ”Everything existing now and for the next decade will require “human-in-the-loop” decision making.”
Getting a Featured Snippet in Google
New SEOchat member charmac2nd conducted a test to try to get a featured rich snippet within their websites target location. So far, the effort has not have been a success and charmac2nd wanted to gather feedback from SEOchat.
Highlights of tips provided by members include:
- It may take 4-6 weeks or longer for snippets to appear, so be patient.
- You may want to remove meta <description> and <keywords> to be more relevant for a broader query-set for broad indepth-content.
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