Facebook Introduces Three New Ranking Factors For Videos

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Facebook is making big changes to how it ranks and shows videos in the news feed and “More Videos” section of its platform with three new ranking factors for videos. 

While the changes shouldn’t impact the number of videos Facebook is showing overall, the company says it is hoping to better prioritize original videos and content that people are actively looking for.

New Ranking Factors For Facebook Videos

To better sort and rank videos, Facebook is implementing three new ranking factors for videos on its platform:

  • Loyalty and Intent – Facebook will begin boosting the ranking signals of videos that people return to and view repeatedly.
  • Video and viewing duration – Facebook will begin to prioritize videos that keep users engaged for longer periods of times. This will look at both how long a video is (with videos over 3 minutes long receiving the biggest boost) and how long viewers have watched the video on average.
  • Originality – In an effort to cut down on the presence of repurposed or stolen content, Facebook will begin to strongly limit the reach and monetization for unoriginal videos.

In the announcement, the company stressed that while the changes may hurt those copying content or stealing videos, Pages creating original high-quality content should only see positive effects:

“While there are numerous factors that determine video distribution on Facebook, these changes will benefit video distribution for Pages that create original content people want to watch and come back to.”

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Instagram releases new ‘stickers’ to encourage engagement

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Instagram has released a set of new features aimed to encourage better engagement and participation with followers, especially when live streaming or creating Stories.

Countdowns

 

Do you have a big event, announcement, or live stream coming up? Now you can highlight it with an interactive countdown sticker in your Instagram Stories.

Once you’ve created the countdown and set the time limit, you can easily insert it in all your stories to remind your audience about important events or promotions. You can also use the stickers to raise awareness of a limited-time offer that is expiring soon.

Followers who see the countdown can also choose to follow it, which will ensure they receive a notification when the countdown is over.

Question Stickers

One of the biggest ways people like to use Instagram’s live videos is to answer viewer questions. The only problem is this can get a bit hard to follow when you have lots of viewers asking questions back to back. It can also be hard for new viewers to know what question is being answered.

Now, viewers can create and share question stickers during live streams to make it easy for everyone to stay on the same page.

The stickers are easily browsable for streamers to pick from. Once chosen, the question will be shown at the bottom of the screen so that viewers know what question you are answering. You can see an example below:

Both of these features are now available for both iOS and Android users. However, broadcasting live videos is only available currently on iOS. Android users can still view the streams and share questions.

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YouTube videos will now autoplay when shown on the home tab

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YouTube is changing how it previews videos on its home tab by making all videos silently autoplay by default.

The new “Autoplay on Home,” as it is being called, is expected to roll out to all mobile users on iOS and Android devices within the coming weeks.

If you are a subscriber to YouTube Premium, you may already be familiar with the feature. YouTube has given its premium subscribers access to the feature for the past six months.

As the company explains in the announcement, the change was made based on user feedback. Many have been clamoring for a way to better preview videos before clicking, especially as many thumbnail images may be misleading.

“Previewing videos helps you make more informed decisions about whether you want to watch a video, leading to longer engagement with videos you choose to watch!”

While the videos will have the audio turned off by default, captions will be shown when they are available. If you have created any of the more than 2 billion videos on YouTube without captions, this will add even more motivation to create transcripts for your videos.

Thumbnail images will still be shown for a short time when users are scrolling through their feed, meaning thumbnails will still be a powerful way to grab attention or entice users to watch videos. However, the autoplay feature will prevent uploaders from sharing videos with misleading or false preview thumbnails.

If you are worried about your data usage or simply don’t like autoplay videos, Google is giving you a few options. Within the settings menu, you can turn off autoplaying videos or set autoplay to only activate when you are connected to WiFi.

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Facebook Explains How Its Search Results Work In New Short Video

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While most companies won’t tell you the exact science behind their search engines, Facebook has decided to take a different route.

As part of their recent push to be more transparent about how the site uses content from users across its platform, Facebook has released a short video explaining how its search results work.

How Facebook Search Works

Posted by Facebook on Tuesday, November 20, 2018

How Facebook Search Works

According to the video, Facebook relies almost entirely on users’ activity on the platform to evaluate its search engines. Users’ activity outside of Facebook has no influence on the search results.

Specifically, Facebook ranks results based on recent activity on Facebook and the activity of the overall community related to that search.

The types of activity that can influence search results include:

  • What your friends share with you
  • Pages you follow
  • Groups you’ve joined
  • Events you’ve liked or followed
  • Things you’ve interacted with in your News Feed
  • Information you’ve listed on your profile
  • Places where you’ve been tagged
  • Previous searches you’ve done

Facebook’s search results also consider the overall activity it is seeing across Facebook, including how popular the search topic is and the medium of the content. For example, videos hosted on Facebook’s platform may be prioritized over links to blog posts that are hosted off-site.

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Google My Business officially launches videos in listings

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After a few weeks of testing, Google My Business has officially announced that all business owners can now upload videos to their Google My Business listings.

Business owners can “view videos added by customers and upload videos about their business for customers to view,” said Google’s Allyson Wright.

Videos can be up to 30 seconds in length and may take up to 24 hours to become visible on the business listing in Google Maps and local search results.

Because others like Google’s “Local Guides” can also upload videos to business listings, GMB will also soon give businesses the ability to mark offensive or inappropriate videos on their listings.

To get started adding videos to your own listings, open your Google My Business Dashboard and click “photos,” followed by the “video” tab at the top of the page. From there, select the option to “Post Videos.”

Just drag and drop your video to the box.

Let it upload.

And wait for it to appear. Within about a day, the video should become visible for you and anyone who sees your listing.

Wright also provided these notes about the new feature:

  • Videos will appear in the overview tab of the Google My Business Dashboard.
  • Customer uploaded videos can be found in the “customer” tab.
  • Merchant uploaded videos can be found in the “by owner” tab.
  • All videos can be viewed together in the “videos” tab.
  • After upload, it could take up to 24 hours for the videos to appear. Once live, they will display where local photos do.