Our Digital World series – formerly “The Global Digital Marketing Weekly” – recently rolled past its first birthday. Through the series, we aim to offer a regular snapshot of digital marketing news from key markets (as well as those that are underreported but no less important), but we appreciate that our clients and loyal readers don’t always have time to catch-up with every update.
So what better way to continue to keep you up to date, and to celebrate one year of the series, than to roundup our roundups? In this post, we’ve brought together the biggest trends from the last quarter, packaging up our recurring news items to bring you fully up to date.
Right to be forgotten goes global
One news story we regularly return to is the progress of “right to be forgotten” (RTBF) laws, ensuring the right for individuals to request the deletion of outdated but potentially damaging information.
Because of the laws implemented in the EU just last year, Google and its competitors have been obliged to set up processes to deal with RTBF requests – in the last quarter they’ve described these methods, and the EU is apparently satisfied with the results. Right to be forgotten laws may go global – Russia is close to implementing its own version of the law.
- How Google deals with Right to Be Forgotten requests (21 May)
- Right to be Forgotten comes to Russia, EU happy with current process (25 June)
China courts international small businesses to meet middle class demands
Alibaba’s Jack Ma has no plans to take on Amazon and Ebay in America – in fact, Alibaba has just got rid of American marketplace 11Main. Instead, Ma stresses that the ecommerce giant’s main focus in the international market is to engage foreign small businesses and bring them to the Chinese market – as evidence in mid-year sales on Tmall and JD, and boosted by the Chinese government’s reductions for key import tariffs.
- China set to reduce tariffs on imported consumer goods (1 May)
- Globalisation key theme for Chinese mid-year sales on Tmall and JD (4 June)
- Alibaba promises not to invade America (12 June)
- Alibaba sheds only US-focused marketplace (25 June)
Yandex combats market share decline with increased update activity
The beginning of the year saw Yandex’s share of the Russian search market fall below 60% for the first time since 2010 – since then, we’ve seen the engine bring back links as a ranking factor while rolling out a new algorithm – Minusinsk – to combat the market’s rampant link quality issues. Meanwhile, Yandex has sought greater market share in Turkey.
- Yandex reveals results from latest Minusinsk algorithm penalties (28 May)
- Interview with the head of search at Yandex (12 June)
- Yandex to be promoted via Firefox in Turkey (16 April)
Mobile continues its rise
Smartphone and tablet usage remains a hot trend around the world – purchases in China, mobile banking globally, and search traffic in 10 key nations became mobile dominated for the first time. Meanwhile, users is nations like Brazil are underserved by well-optimised mobile experiences, with 42% preferring to use the full version of a site.
- Mobile now 51% of Alibaba’s Quarter 1 2015 Gross Merchandise Volume (14 May)
- Mobile search overtakes desktop in 10 countries (7 May)
- Mobile banking apps overtake debit and credit card payments globally (16 April)
- Data on Brazil’s tablet and smartphone use (2 April)
Censorship and search-engine control remain a global game
Think of state censorship of search engine results, and you’ll probably jump straight to China and its infamous Great Firewall. However, legislators and judges in less stereotypical nations have been hard at work seeking to control what users are able to see. Both Canada and France are putting pressure on search engines to extend result removals beyond their own borders – with both complaining that results censored in local results are freely available in other regions. France even went as far as seeking disclosure of Google’s algorithm.
Japan is at it too, with a judge ordering the removal of two anonymous, negative reviews from its Maps service. And while China and Russia passed laws reportedly banning puns and memes respectively, the laws turned out to be slightly more lenient in practice.
- Google receives global censorship demands from Canada and France (18 June)
- Google Japan ordered to remove negative reviews (16 April)
- France seeks Google algorithm disclosure and EU antitrust latest (23 April)
- China publishes censorship rules for online news portal (7 May)
- Puns and wordplay survive China’s November purge (9 April)
- English speaking internet convinced that Russia has banned memes (it hasn’t) (23 April)
Digital World is published weekly: keep an eye on our Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts to keep up with the latest digital marketing news, or subscribe to our newsletter with the form in the footer. This week’s edition will follow shortly.
Image credits
Outside the European Court of Justice photo by Flickr user katarina_dzurekova
Leshan sights photo by Flickr user Chi King
Night City, Ekaterinburg, RU photo by Alex Alishevskikh
Classic Venice photo by Flickr user Roberto Trm
Life passes by photo by Flickr user Tinou Bao