Global Marketing News – 9th June 2015
Google unveils SEO-changing algorithm based on facts, not links
Google researchers are developing a game-changing algorithm that will rank websites based on the accuracy of their content, rather than the number of links pointing to them.
The change will address the current problem where a website containing highly inaccurate content can rank higher than a much more factually accurate site, simply because it has a larger backlink profile.
The algorithm change would completely change SEO and would mean that brand new websites could quickly rank higher than well-established websites if they are more factually correct,
To allow Google to understand whether information is true or false, it is currently building up a “Knowledge Vault”.
This Knowledge Vault has the ambitious goal of collecting all the known factual information in the world, and will eventually be the standard against which websites are checked in order to assess their factual accuracy.
Google has already tested the new algorithm and has announced that it was able to accurately rate the factual accuracy of over 100 million webpages across 5.6 million websites.
Baidu apologises for cheating in AI test
The Chinese search engine Baidu has apologised after it was revealed that it had cheated in an artificial intelligence test.
Earlier this year, Baidu claimed to have developed the world’s most accurate image recognition system.
Baidu said that its image recognition system, Deep Image, completed the challenging ImageNet image classification task with an error rate of just over 4.6%, beating Google’s image recognition system which recently completed the task with a 4.8% error rate. The error rate among humans doing the task is 5%.
However, it has been revealed that Baidu cheated by taking the test more times than was allowed. Researchers are allowed to submit their results a maximum of two times a week. Baidu, however, submitted their results 200 times over 3 months, including 40 submissions within 5 days in March.
These extra attempts at taking the test allowed Baidu to attune its systems to achieve an artificially low error rate. As ImageNet explained, “If you know the test set, then you can tweak your parameters of your model however you want to optimise the test set.”
Baidu apologised for its actions but declined to give an explanation.
Smartphones to outnumber fixed landlines by 2020
Ericsson predicts that smartphones will outnumber fixed landline telephones by 2020.
There are 2.6 billion smartphones around today, and this figure is expected to climb to 6.1 billion in the next 5 years, equivalent to 70% of the global population.
When looking at where all these new smartphones are expected to be, 80% will be in Africa, the Middle East and the Asia Pacific region. 26 million new smartphones are predicted over the next 5 years in India alone.
In comparison, developed regions like Europe and North America are already nearing saturation point, and therefore will not see substantial growth in the next 5 years.
Italy’s mobile economy to grow rapidly this year
Research by Osservatorio predicts that the Italian mobile economy will grow rapidly this year.
The number of smartphones in the country is expected to grow to 40 million this year, up from 35 million last year. Similarly, the number of tablets is expected to grow from 9.5 to 10 million.
The increase in smart mobile devices is expected to directly translate into higher levels of mobile internet use. 30 million Italians are predicted to go online using a mobile device this year, up from 25 million last year.
In financial terms, the value of Italy’s mobile economy is predicted to increase by 14% over the next 2 years to almost 40 billion Euros. “Mobile economy” includes mobile handset sales, mobile internet traffic, mobile payments and mobile ecommerce.
Webcertain’s global marketing news bulletins are daily 5-minute videos, providing marketers with the latest international digital marketing news in an easy-to-digest format.
Gemma Houghton
Latest posts by Gemma Houghton (see all)
- Watch the recording: How to identify and seize growth opportunities in international markets - April 20, 2022
- International marketing recruitment: How to drive global growth amid The Great Resignation - February 23, 2022
- 5 trends to include in your 2022 international digital marketing strategy - December 21, 2021
