Mackerel Media’s Search and Digital Marketing Roundup – January 2025
We hope that everyone had a good start to the year.
Even though we’re only a month in, 2025 has already brought with it some significant changes in the digital marketing and social media space, including new Google search updates, TikTok’s temporary shutdown and some controversial moderation changes over at Meta.
TikTok Takes A Power Nap
TikTok was a major topic of discussion this January. On the 18th of January TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S., only to be reactivated a couple of hours later following a 75-day extension given by President Trump. Whilst the app is still accessible, it remains unavailable in the Apple App Store and Google Play Store in the U.S. The uncertainty around the future of TikTok led to a 5,000% surge in searches looking for alternative apps and VPNs, with platforms such as Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts and apps such as RedNote and Clapper seeing an increase in users. This news highlights the importance of businesses expanding their social media presence across different platforms.
Meta’s Free Speech Shake-Up
Meta has announced plans to remove independent fact-checkers from Facebook and Instagram in the U.S. and replace them with user-moderated community notes. Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg explains that this change is due recent concerns over political bias and a return to free expression on his platform. This change has led many to believe it will cause an increase in misinformation and harmful content being shown to users. Fortunately, for now, the European fact-checking program remains unchanged.
Google Glosses Up Search Results
Google has made some recent updates to how their search results are displayed, by removing breadcrumb-style URLs and only showing the domain name on mobile search results. The aim of this change was to make search results cleaner and easier to navigate on smaller screens. Whilst this change won’t affect desktop search, many are arguing that the removal of the site navigation path makes it harder for users to understand a page’s location within a website. It is important that pages continue to offer a clear and accurate page title and meta description so that users will understand the content of the page, since these will be much more prominent on mobile search.
Google’s Search Share Dips As Rivals Rise
Google’s global search market share fell below 90% during the last three months of 2024 – the lowest it’s been since 2015. This decline in users was most significant in Asia, while there was minimal change in the UK (dropping from 94.41% in August to 93.34% in December). This decline has been due to rivals such as Bing, Yandex and Yahoo gaining more users. What’s interesting is that AI search engines such as ChatGPT and Perplexity weren’t included in the report (yet!). While Google remains the most popular search engine, this decline shows that there has been a decrease in users relying on Google search, and that businesses should ensure their website performance is monitored and optimised for all other major search platforms.
Over on the advertising front, Google has made several updates to their Demand Gen campaigns by offering expanded placement controls, AI-powdered creative tools and retail-focused enhancements. From March 2025, advertisers can now select ad placements across Youtube, Discover and Gmail and also serve vertical ads on YouTube Shorts. Google had also introduced AI-powered tools such as automated video shortening and an improved ad creation workflow. This update helps provide advertisers with more control and creative capabilities.
