Approximately 70,000 cumulative profiles, Pages, and groups have been removed from Facebook and Instagram as a result of Meta’s significant action against a well-known sextortion group operating out of Nigeria. Additionally, the mechanisms to prevent them from returning have been strengthened.

Meta says that these accounts were associated with a group called “Scammers,”.

These scammers originally relied upon the old “Nigerian Prince” type of scam, where they’d try to dupe unsuspecting marks with promises of riches. But more recently, they’ve switched to romance scams, where they create fake profiles, then convince their targets to share money and/or personal details to maintain the relationship.

Meta says :

”We removed around 63,000 Instagram accounts in Nigeria that attempted to directly engage in financial sextortion scams. These included a smaller coordinated network of around 2,500accounts that we were able to link to a group of around 20 individuals. They targeted primarily adult men in the US and used fake accounts to mask their identities. 63k profiles is a lot, and you can imagine how this group could look to use a coordinated effort of this size to intimidate targets.”

In addition to this, Meta also notes that it detected a coordinated network of around 2,500 accounts through a combination of new technical signals and processes. The majority of these accounts had already been detected and disabled by our enforcement systems, and this investigation allowed us to remove the remaining accounts and understand more about the techniques being used to improve our automated detection.

In other words, Meta has effectively been able to use this research to gain additional knowledge on the ways in which these ”Scammers” and other groups plan and collaborate in order to put pressure on users.

Which should put Meta in a better position to prevent such incidents in the future, but as is always the case, as detection systems advance, so do the strategies used by these groups. Although it’s still a cat and mouse game, Meta appears to have prevailed in some of the bigger, more significant (at scale) incidents overall, according to its continuous reporting.

Meta eliminated 5,700 groups and 1,300 Facebook pages that had been disseminating advice on how to pull off online frauds in addition to these profiles.

But again, the scammers will evolve, and in the age of AI, there are now all new vectors for them to tap into to initiate their schemes. Hopefully, Meta will also be able to evolve its systems in line, in order to maintain some kind of balance in enforcement.

What do you think about this initiative ?

Writing the perfect meta description

If you have already audited your website and have walked here to understand how meta-description works, I’m here to help remove that confusion. This article will cover everything you need to know about the basics of meta- descriptions and what makes a perfect one. You’ll also learn why your site’s meta descriptions are so important, as well as the best length for your meta descriptions (especially taking into account Google’s changing policies) and some great meta description examples.

What is a meta tag?

A meta tag is an HTML element that provides information about a webpage for search engines and website visitors. Two elements must be placed as tags in the <head> section of an HTML document. These elements are:

Title tag
Meta description

We’ve already discussed title tags in a separate post, and now, let’s move straight into meta descriptions.

What is a meta description?

The meta description is the short paragraph of text placed in the HTML of a webpage that describes its content. This is also known as a snippet. The meta description appears under your page’s URL in Google’s organic search results. The meta description will often appear when people share your articles across other websites and social channels.

Where is meta description added?

You can add a meta description in the <head> section of your site’s HTML. It should look something like this: <head> <meta name=”description” content=”Here is a precise description of my awesome webpage.”> </head> Here are examples:

If you use an SEO plug-in, that comes with a content management system, you can add a meta description to the ‘meta description’ section, and you can preview an example of how it will look in search engine results pages (SERPs):

Preview of meta description in WordPress

Why is the meta description important?

Since meta descriptions appear with your title and URL on the results pages, they have the power to influence the decision of the searcher as to whether they want to click through on your content from search results or not. The more descriptive, attractive, and relevant the description, the more likely someone will click through. Research has shown that having your content focus keyword in the meta is a relevant signal for search engines to discover you.

How to write a perfect meta description?

A great meta-description will compel the reader to visit your website and read more. Here’s an example of what it usually looks like.

1. Keywords

Do make sure your most important keywords for the webpage show up in the meta description. Often search engines will highlight it in bold as a clue to where it finds the searcher’s query in your snippet.

2. Write legible, readable copy

This is essential. Keyword stuffing your meta description is bad and it doesn’t help the searcher, as well as robots, discover you well. They’ll assume your result leads to a spam or phishing website, so make sure your description reads like a normal, human-written sentence.

3. Treat it as an advert for your web page

Make it as compelling and as relevant as possible. The description MUST! match the content on the page, but you should also make it as appealing as possible. That is what we call SEO copywriting.

4. Length

Google cuts off the displayed description tag at about 150 characters but may index up to 185 characters. Other engines may index up to 250 characters, but will still only display about 150. Therefore, try to say what you’ve got to say in 150 characters or less, but feel free to use up to 180, and even up to 250 if you’re not concerned with the entire thing getting indexed by all the search engines. Aim for about 1-2 sentences (140-160 characters) long

5. Keyphrase

Use your primary keyphrase at the beginning of your description tag, giving it higher “keyword prominence”. Don’t overuse your keyphrase though, or it can be considered “webspam”. Higher than zero keyword prominence is good, but higher still is not always better.

6. Use natural-sounding language

Use proper grammar, and try to peak interest in the subject. Also, consider making an actual “offer” in your description tag. Remember, you want the reader to click your ad, but not just to record impression. Now let me ask you? how many times have you skipped over a search result because the two lines of text you see (the description tag) in the SERPS looked gibberish?

7. Do not duplicate meta descriptions

As with title tags, the meta descriptions must be written differently for every page. Google may penalize websites that indulge in mass duplicating of meta descriptions.

Examples of good meta descriptions

Since you only have 160 characters to work with, writing a great meta description takes more than just throwing a few words together. To help you get your creative juices flowing, here are some examples for your inspiration.

Helpful online tool for checking your meta descriptions

Below is a helpful tool that you can use to test your meta descriptions as you write them. SEO Analyzer— This tool analyses the health of a website. It will provide you with a list of issues that makes it easy to see where exactly a website is struggling, including missing and duplicate meta descriptions:

Conclusion

Remember, the primary reason for a perfect description tag is NOT so you can rank higher, (since Google, for example, is currently not using the description tag in their algorithm). The primary reason for a good description is to compel the reader to click on you, instead of the competitor.

Tag: Understanding meta-description

Meta Description: Writing The Perfect One