Going Against the Grain - Search & Digital Insights - Issue #21
How the Russian invasion is being felt and what is being done to help
This is the first edition in a while and focuses on what is happening in digital globally due the Putin's invasion of Ukraine. We hope that the war can be stopped and no more lives have to be lost.
Google Trends Hot Searches in UA + RU
Thomas Steiner announced two new lenses showing you what is on peoples minds in Russia and The Ukraine. Some of the trends phrases in Ukraine are IBM, Paralympics, Liverpool West Ham, Demilitarization while in Russia it's VPN, Samsung, Coursera, Zara, Adobe, Coca-Cola most of which have suspended operations or product support in Russia.
Ukrainians looking for work
If you work in the digital space and looking to hire Ukrainians to support them for work, contracts or small gigs you can visit here
Digital vacancies for Ukrainians
If you have open roles suitable for Ukrainian digital folks you can list them here
Yandex may shutdown unable to pay debts
Yandex which previously had a market value for USD$17.4 billion and controlled around 60% of the search market in Russia has announced it might be unable to pay creditors due to financial market meltdowns. The $1.25 billion in convertible notes have a right to be paid in full + interest if Yandex shares are suspended from trading for more than 5 days. Yandex's parent company is based in The Netherlands but due to sanctions and Putin introducing capital controls the Russian subsidiaries can't help fund their parent company and won't be able to redeem the convertible notes.
Cannes Lions bans Russian entries and delegates
In a statement, the festival’s owner Ascential said: “Despite our desire to celebrate creativity from wherever it comes, we have made the decision not to accept submissions or delegations from Russian organizations into Cannes Lions or its associated awards programs.” Cannes organisers said it will welcome all Ukrainian delegates free of charge and honour full refunds on awards submissions for Ukraine agencies if requested. It will also make a “significant donation” to the charities working in the region.
JetOctopus donates 15% of subscriptions
Cloud based crawler and log analyzer for doing Technical SEO work is asking search folks using their tool to donate to an approved charity https://mkip.gov.ua/en/content/volonterski--organizacii.html and they will extend your JetOctopus subscription for double of that. Please send proof of your payment to support@jetoctopus.com. Apart from that, JetOctopus is transferring 15% from all the transactions till the moment of big victory of Ukraine! Signup here for a free trial and support Ukrainian companies.
Ahrefs extends subscriptions for donations
Tim Soulo announced last week that any Ahref customers can make a credit card payment to the National Bank of Ukraine https://bank.gov.ua/en/news/all/natsionalniy-bank-vidkriv-spetsrahunok-dlya-zboru-koshtiv-na-potrebi-armiyi and contact support@ahrefs.com with the receipt and a/c details and they will extend your subscription for double that donation.
Google stops in ads sales in Russia
Google said last Thursday that it had stopped selling online advertising in Russia. This ban that covers search, YouTube and outside publishing partners. This does not yet cover other Google services such as Google Analytics or Google Cloud but Google Keyword planner has also remove all Russian data at some point during today.
Facebook stops all ads in Russia
Facebook said it is halting all ads in the country, stopping state-controlled media from monetising their content and refusing to run any ads from Russian marketers which should reduce the amount of misinformation on the platform around the war. Russia earlier today blocked access to Facebook likely in retaliation for limiting their ability to fund misinformation.