Search engine Bing has said that it will follow Google’s Mobilegeddon move and roll out its own mobile-friendly ranking system in the months ahead. Bing has been outlining how it is to determine whether a webpage is mobile-friendly, when it intends adding the label mobile-friendly to sites, and what sites need to be doing to ensure the content on them is mobile-friendly.

The issue of how much content relating to our private lives is online and how accessible it is in security terms has become a thorny issue, but could it be that an obscure legal concept dating from medieval times holds the solution? Microsoft researcher Kate Crawford thinks so.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) professionals – and, by extension, website copywriting providers – need to start preparing for a future where voice will have a big impact on SEO. In the future, online queries will originate with voice input features on mobile devices. In order to accommodate voice – as well as text – queries, Google will turn increasingly towards what is known as “direct answers.” Having tweaked its algorithms over the years, Google has shifted towards an approach where specific user searches generate direct answer results, otherwise known as “rich answers,” rather than returning a variety of links to other websites. Bing runs specific search returns on the same basis, though to a lesser extent.

Twitter revealed weaker-than-expected earnings results at the end of April, citing advertising as the problem; however, do not be fooled into thinking that this social network is on a permanent slide.

Facebook is telling Page owners that their potential reach is increased if they post native Facebook videos rather than videos from YouTube or similar services. Google has shown a preference for search results generated from its own services, and now Facebook appears to be taking a similar line.

Google has taken the step of removing its reading level search feature. Rolled out in 2010, reading level allowed users to find search results better suited to individual needs. Using the reading level enabled users to filter out content according to basic, intermediate or advanced reading level.

Phablet usage has begun to increase dramatically, according to research published by the Flurry Analytics unit at Yahoo. A phablet is a larger phone or smaller tablet device, with a screen size limited to under 7 inches.

With the 2015 election campaign drawing to a close and the votes counted, it is clear that social media is playing a bigger role than ever in the coverage of politics in the UK, and that it presents politicians with the opportunity to engage voters who otherwise might be turned off.

Blue Nile Research has carried out research into how online searchers formulate their queries and has come up with some interesting findings.

Google’s release of Mobilegeddon, the latest and major update to its search algorithm, has been gradual, and the message is that the transition has been successful, but challenges for some businesses may still remain.