It is a great survey and the most comprehensive completed in the area to date with 32 people from North America and a Dutch guy taking part.

The survey contains a lot of information that I agree with, especially the importance of the NAP (Name, Address, Phone Number). I also agree with how these citations across the web have similar importance to hyperlinks within traditional search results.

But, and there usually is one, I have an issue with one of the listed ranking factors. This post is broken down into two separate gripes that I simply don’t agree with………

First

The survey makes the distinction between owner and manually-verified pages, which in reality doesn’t exist. They aren’t separate ranking factor thus shouldn’t be viewed independently.

The distinction they may be trying to make between owner and manually-verified listings comes from the process in which users have to go through to add their listings to Google Places.

Users who manually upload and verify add their businesses go through a page that prompts them to add a lot more accurate information, such as correcting their map marker locations, payment options, opening hours and additional categories.

Where as users who upload via an Excel file and bulk verify are only prompted to add the most basic information that is provided within the template that Google supplies. You can still add more information such  as opening hours, fix your marker locations, add opening hours and additional categories, but there is no prompt to do so.

There is no inherent disadvantage that go with bulk verification other than the ones which a user creates in not taking the time to add more than the required details to their listings. Thus, distinctions shouldn’t be made between them as individual ranking factors.

Second

Bulk and manually-verified pages to me just come under ‘verified listing.’ In all honesty,  this doesn’t appear to be the limiting factor in the UK that it was 12 months ago. If you weren’t verified and you had local competitors that were verified, you’d rank below them.

The experts within the survey rank (manually) verified pages as the second most important ranking factor as a whole, but relegate it to third within ‘pure’ local search results and knock it down to fifth for ‘blended’ local search results.

It is still important to claim your listing in regards to protecting your business and stopping fraud, but not in the sense of being a ranking factor. I’ll show you why….

If I search for ‘restaurants in manchester’ in Google UK, I get the above seven pack of which the first, fourth, fifth and seventh listings are unverified.

If I search for ‘night clubs in London’ we find that the second, fourth, fifth and sixth listings are unverified.

If I do a search for ‘restaurants on cross street in Manchester’ I get a first page that pulls back seven blended local results with all but the fourth listing being unverified.

Conclusion

Out of three random searches in big British cities, we have just pulled back 21 local listings across pure and blended search results with only seven being verified.

Now we may be getting our wires crossed and the North American Places algorithm could be completely different from the UK’s with regards to verified listings. However, that doesn’t appear to be the case through the proxies I’ve been looking through today.

Which begs the question…..are (manually) verified listings really the second most important ranking factor when you consider I haven’t pulled back a single listing in the above three searches without a user review? As a ranking factor, it doesn’t appear in the overall top ten within the survey.

Please leave your comments either here or on Twitter - @GavinSmithLeeds

Well Google is now trying to make those problems a thing of the past and give users a better shopping experience, not only online but offline too.

A Big Step Forward

It was announced yesterday, on the Google Merchant blog, that Google is starting to expand upon the trial done in the US through November and December 2010. Google paired with a number of top retailers to gain access to local store inventories, to then use the data within the Google Places listings and as well as Google Product Search results.

While only on Google.com at the moment, a ‘Nearby Stores’ Google Places quick link is being added to Product Search results (as shown below) where the products is in store within a reasonable distance from the searcher.

So What Does It All Mean?

For some time now, I have been championing how Google Places and Google Merchants are Google’s way forward and how local search is going to be the future of search.

A lot has happened to Google Places in the last nine months and this could well be the most important feature.

Google has always been an online company, but this change is a direct attempt to influence peoples’ offline shopping habits.

It really is a huge step forward for Google and a move that companies such as Milo, Goodzer and Shopatron have been trying to make work over the last few years, with their main obstacle being their lack of clout with major retailers.

How Do I Add My Data?

Although quite exciting, this is a ways off from going live in Google.co.uk, as they have only recently started to engage with large UK companies to gain access to this type of data.

It’s free and the functionality is now available to all US based companies, with a help thread already available to help people with the specific of how you add your company’s data.

What Will This Mean for Offline Retailers?

Although it may be hard to believe, many major high street retailers still don’t have a full grasp of the online market and the opportunities available.

Although (sales) people are making lots of noise to alert them to the possibilities, many are still managing to drown it all out.

Should this take off, and offline shopping habits and thus sales be affected, many retailers will be in for a shock and forced online or get left even further behind than their clued in competitors.

The Future

Well it could possibly mean the end of retailers using duel pricing strategies to compete with online, whilst still charging a premium in store.

Google also recently announced that adding unique product identifiers to Google Merchant Centre feeds were going to be compulsory by the 3 May, which probably means it won’t be too far down the line until Google Product Search effectively becomes a massive product level price comparison engine for both offline and online. This would combine the world’s largest local business directory, with the world’s largest product inventory.

Forgetting the technical details, you could even envisage a future click and collect style functionality being added to Google Places and Google Product Search.

However, at a time when they are under increased scrutiny and there are a whole host of fears about Google’s market domination, it could well be that they are about to sew up an emerging market before it has properly begun.

For commerce sites in the UK, the following makes for very important reading:

Unique Product Identifiers [required for most categories]: ”With user reviews, prices, related items, and videos, ‘product pages’ (example: Canon S95) help users make decisions about what to buy. To help us match product listings to these pages, we ask merchants to provide ‘unique product identifiers.’ Starting May 3, we will require unique identifiers for all products except apparel and one-of-a-kind items.”

Shipping Information [required] ”When shoppers are trying to find the best deal, online or offline, they need to know the full cost of an item – including the cost of shipping.  To help them accurately compare prices, we will begin requiring shipping information for Google Product Search on June 6th.  After that date, we may disapprove feeds from accounts that do not include this information.  Please visit this Help Center article to learn more about how to specify shipping costs either at the account or item level.”

The new requirements are not recommendations, they are must do’s.

Make sure you keep note of the 3 May and the 6 June. Should you not make the necessary changes, the first thing that may alert you is a loss in traffic, as Google have stated your feed may not be rejected, but your products won’t be visible.

Now as expected the Adidas site ranked first for the term as you would expect, but the search snippet from the first organic listing looked quite peculiar indeed.

Search Snippet

Now for those who don’t know, the search snippet was a feature Google introduced in early 2006, in order to enhance its user experience. The snippet is the two-line summary that appears along with the link to the website.

It is more often than not taken from the pages Meta Description or an amalgamation of the content on the page, usually related to the content and the target audience.

Now the below sentence didn’t look like a snippet that would be anywhere either on the UK Adidas Originals page or associated to the page.

Откройте для себя коллекции винтажной одежды, ретрообуви и
городской одежды adidas Originals, в которых спортивный дизайн
сочетается с непреходящим стилем…

Google Translate

Now if I am to use Google Translate to see what the above Russian means I get the following back in English. I know its Russian as Google detected it was….

“Discover a collection of vintage clothes, urban clothing and retroobuvi adidas Originals, in which the sporty design coupled with timeless style”

Pages Meta Description

Now the ranking page does have a Meta Description and it is in English and it is as follows (taken from the current Google Cache):

“Discover adidas Originals collections of vintage clothing, retro shoes and urban wear that blend timeless 70s and 80s designs with sports styles.”

Conclusion

So it would appear that for the search result of ‘Adidas Originals’ in Google.co.uk, Google has decided that for the first listings search snippet it would take the sites’ actual Meta Description, and translate it into Russian before displaying it.

Well the best guess is that it is an anomaly, but how the search results managed it would be interesting to hear.

Other than that Google is either anticipating a Russian takeover of the UK or Russian Mobsters have hacked big G.

In what seems to be a very interesting way to promote themselves in the face of increasing competition from web browsers such as Google Chrome and Windows Explorer 8, Mozilla have launched Firefoxlive.org.

If you were to visit Google to do a search within the Firefox browser you will be greeted by the following page below with a clear call to action for Firefox Live.

Firefox Live is essentially driven by webcams in the enclosures of 6 Red Panda’s at the Knoxville zoo, 3 of them cubs, the Mum (Akkali), the Dad (Chewbacca) and Aunty (Kumari).

Over the last 17 days competitions have been run to name the cubs, there is lots of information on the site as to how you can support wild “FireFoxes” and the Knoxville Zoo where they will be brought up.

Although not huge yet, the CubCaretakers’ twitter account set up to accompany the experiment currently has 1,514 followers although it has only tweeted on 22 occasions.

The project is still young, but it looks like it is going to be great publicity for 2 non-profit organizations.

Once you have viewed the webcams, if you want to, you can reward the cub’s cuteness with a treat. then download Firefox 4 Beta, as the little fellas are only 13% (13,000 downloads) away from their next target/treat.

Google Merchant Centre is a tool with which you are able to upload your products to Google’s database to be used for Google Product Search, Google Product Ads, and Google Commerce Search.

Below are step by step instructions on how to create a Google Merchant Centre tab delimited text file.

Why Use Tab Delimited Text Files for Google’s Merchant Centre?

Ideally tab delimited text files should only be used by people that run stores with a small number of products that don’t change very often.

For people who run large online stores and have a fast turnover on products, I would recommend using an XML product feed such as RSS 2.0.

Step 1: Spreadsheet programs

Using a program such as Microsoft Excel or Open Office it is very simple to create a feed and then convert it to the proper format.

Step 2: Create a header row

Just like in the image below, on row 1 of the spreadsheet you will need to enter the names of the attributes that describe your items.

As a minimum you will need to include the following attributes:

• ID
• Title
• Link
• Image
• Price
• Description
• Condition

A list of the recommended fields can be found here.

Step 3: Enter your product information

In the rows below the title attributes, enter information about your items for the attributes you’ve chosen, as in the image to the right each item should be listed in a separate row with its information in the appropriate columns.

Step 4: Convert your spreadsheet

When saving your spreadsheet, in the save as type drop down make sure you save the file as “Text (Tab Delimited) (*.txt)”.

Step 5: Submit your data feed

You will first need to make sure you have a registered Google account to use Google Merchant Centre, if not you can register here.

Once you are at the Google Merchant Centre dashboard, if you select ‘Data Feeds’ from the navigation, you will have the ability to create a new data feed.

You have the option to either store it on your webserver for Google to automatically pull down at regular intervals from a URL such as http://www.example.com/product_feed.txt or you can manually upload via the main Data Feed menu once have created a feed.

If you are manually uploading the data feed make sure you pop back and re-upload the feed before it expire in a month’s time.

If your website is selling products to consumers online regardless of your industry, and you are not taking advantage of Google’s Merchant Centre, then you are missing a huge opportunity to open a new revenue stream.

Since Google Base was rebranded as Google Merchant Centre in September 2009 shopping results have become an ever more frequent site, taking up more space within organic search results.

And from the screenshot to the left showing 2 organic search results followed by 5 Google Shopping Results, who would honestly prefer a search listing in position 3 – 10 over a shopping result in position 1 – 5?

How Do I register for Google Merchant Centre?

If you want to register for Google Merchant Centre you will either need to have an existing Google Account or you will need to sign up for one here.

Once you have a Google Account you will need to go to Google’s Merchant Centre here.

How Do I Add Products to Google’s Merchant Centre?

Unlike in Google Base where you could add single products via the dashboard, Google Merchant Centre requires you to feed data to its product database via one of a number of data formats such as Tab Delimited text file, RSS 2.0, RSS 1.0, Atom and FTP.

What Do I Include in Google’s Merchant Centre Feed?

Regardless of what format you are uploading to the Merchant Centre in you will need to include a list of attributes for your feed and below is a list of the essential fields for the feed:

• ID
• Title
• Link
• Image
• Price
• Description
• Condition

For a full list of all of the attributes click here or for information on how to include the required fields in a feed click here.

It’s all about trust

With all the negativity and bad press that Google and the other major search engines receive in terms of their approach to privacy, the team at Blekko have drawn up the following 10 commandments that they will be looking to follow moving forwards:

1.  Search shall be open

2.  Search results shall involve people

3.  Ranking data shall not be kept secret

4.  Web data shall be readily available

5.  There is no one-size-fits-all for search

6.  Advanced search shall be accessible

7.  Search engine tools shall be open all

8.  Search and community go hand-in-hand

9.  Spam does not belong in search results

10. Privacy of searchers shall not be violated

These commandments/rules are in line with many open source projects around and based upon good intentions around accessibility and privacy.

If Blekko was to ever take off and go main stream, it would be interesting to see how long they stuck to these principles seen as Google’s ‘Don’t be evil’ mantra is now thrown back at them at every opportunity.

Features

The most exciting thing about Blekko is the ability for users to add slash tags to the end of their queries to vastly alter the set of search results for the same page.

A good example of the slashtag in action is searching for climate change with the slashtags /health, /science and /conservation. The 3 similar searches deliver vastly different results that deliver unique content dependant on a user’s required perspective defined by the slashtag.

A Human Touch

The elimination of spam is big on the Blekko’s radar, with the company taking open source to heart and using its passionate user base to add and edit URLs for category slashtags.

The company aims to use editors to develop prepared lists of the 50 sites that best match its 100,000 top search queries.

So what’s next?!

Well, the easy part is done in launching the search engine; the hard part now is not fading into the obscurity in such a way that Wolfgram Alpha and many others have.

Blekko needs to find a hook and I believe the slashtag has made this search engine much more serviceable for users who are looking in an educational or a research capacity.

Blekko also needs to grow with all slashtags currently falling into one of 7 categories (Health, Colleges, Cars, Personal Finance, Lyrics, Recipes and Hotels). This would obviously need to be increased moving forwards to increase the relevance of results to queries.

If it manages to do all of the above then the obvious aim would be to try and monetise the search engine. CEO Rick Skrent has stated “We’d like to be the No. 3 search engine, and believes that the site could be profitable with 1 million to 2 million (of the 1 Billion) queries a day”!

With this in mind and with the fact that I have been optimising a number of WordPress blogs recently, I thought I’d put together a list of my top 10 WordPress plugins for saving time and aiding your search rankings.

(In no particular order)

1. Socialise

Socialise is a widely used plugin that lets you very quickly and very easily add/change/manage the different social bookmark actions on your site.

2. Broken Links Checker

As the name suggests, broken links checker is a tool that will sit in the background checking all of your sites internal and external links, only appearing on the dashboard or notifying you via email when any of the blogs links no longer work.

The tool is also quite intuitive in that it lets you edit broken links from within the plugin admin panel avoiding the annoyance of trying to go back and find the post in question.

3. SEO Smart Links

SEO Smart Links is a tool designer to automatically generate links from your content using pre-defined anchor texts through to pre-defined URI’s.

This tool allows you to set up keyword priorities and restrict the number of permalinks created within every post.

4. Google XML Sitemap

Over time blogs tend to have a habit of building up large quantities of content, and the key to making this work for you within search engines is to make sure it’s as easy as possible for them to index on a frequent basis. XML site maps were created for just this reason.

Although there are many XML sitemap generators around, this generator is by far the most frequently used.

5. Askimet

Although this comes pre-installed with most versions of WordPress, it is vitally important that you finish the setup by getting an API key and activating it in the plugins admin panel.

This is the best WordPress plugin for catching spam comments and over the life span of any blog, will save admins countless/hours/days/months/years fending off spammers.

6. WP Super Cache

With Google admitting to page load times now being a positive ranking factor(although a small one), it makes sense to make sure you are not only making your pages load as fast as they can, but also benefitting yourself by cutting down on the bandwidth being used by your blog.

This plugin automatically generates static .html files from your dynamic WordPress blog. After a .html file is generated your webserver will serve that instead of processing the comparatively heavier and more expensive WordPress .PHP scripts.

7. Top Commentator Widget/Plugin

Designed to help you encourage contribution on your blog, this is a way to let you reward the top 5/10/15 (or however many/few you would like) commenters with a do-follow link in your sites sidebar.

8. WordPress Related Posts

Using wordpress tags, WordPress Related Posts will append a list of related posts to the bottom of any post page.

This is designed to keep users searching through your site for information rather than going back to search results and possibly onto a competing blog

9. WP Touch

With smart phones becoming more and more popular and the size of the mobile search market becoming larger, it makes sense to ensure that your site is generated for these devices in a way that make it easy for them to read your content.

WP Touch automatically creates a powerful and elegant mobile theme for your website and its mobile visitors should they wish to use it.

WP Touch is free but there is a WP Touch 2.0 that, for a small fee, gives you the opportunity to tailor your mobile theme in the same way that you can your usual WordPress theme.

10. All in One SEO Pack

The all in one SEO pack is one of the most popular plugins for WordPress with some great features that can autonomously help to make your site search engine friendly, especially if you have little knowledge about the subject of search. You don’t even have to configure the plugin, it works as soon as it’s unpacked and activated.

This plugin has the ability to automatically generate unique page titles and meta content whilst improving the taxonomy of your site.

It’s now been over 2 years since Google announced they use the image alt attribute contents to ascertain what an image is and related to. This, in addition to Google’s recently granted reasonable surfer patent suggesting that more power and value is passed via links that are more likely to be clicked upon i.e. banners and images, shows it is incredibly important to make sure we are correctly optimising the images we have on our own sites.

There is a distinct difference between the supposed contents of the image alt and the image title tags:

Image Alt Tags

Alt text is meant to be an “alternative information source” for those people who have chosen to disable images in their browsers and those user agents that are simply unable to “visualise” the images.

It should be used to describe what the image is about and get those visitors interested to see it.

Image Title Tags

The image title should provide additional information and follow the rules of the regular title: being relevant, short, catchy and concise (a best practice title ‘offers advisory information about the element for which it is set’).

How do we optimise our images?

Using the description of both tags means it is quite easy for us to discuss how we can optimised them correctly:

• Both tags are meant for the end user even though alt text seems more important for crawlers.
• For the ‘Alt tag’ contents we must provide explicit information on an image to encourage users to view them and to pass on as much information to search as possible.
• You should include your keywords within both tags but keep them different.
• Whilst adding your keywords to the content avoid keyword stuffing. Even though it’s Alt and Title text, it is still keyword stuffing.
• Keep both relevant.

More recently American consumer research firm Kelsey Group in association with ConStat found that up to 97% of offline consumers now use research online to source products locally.

The importance of Google local Business listings increased in 2009 when Google adapted their strategy to include where appropriate local business listings within search queries not containing a location but basing the location on a user’s IP address (as shown below).

These reasons coupled with the fact that it is currently quite simple for anybody to claim your Google Local Business listings, gaining them traffic, and sales off the back of your good name, mean that it is vitally important for you to claim your listing before somebody else does and you have to jump through hoops to get “your own” listing back.

How Do I Go About Claiming My Google Local Business Listing?

Below I have given step by step instructions on how to both claim and verify your business listing or how to create a brand new listing should it not already exist.

How do I claim an existing local business listing?

1. Firstly you will need to create a Google account if you don’t have one already – Click here to go straight to the sign up page if required
2. Navigate to Google Maps or Google Local and search for your store
3. Click on the “more info” link next to your stores listing
4. Next click on the “Business Owner?” link
5. Then select “Edit my business information” and click on “continue”
6. Fill in the page with your stores details, making sure to add the correct phone number and your websites URL (http://www.example.co.uk) if applicable
7. Make sure to fill in the category section adding as many relevant categories as possible
8. Next you will need to verify your local business listing (see below)

How to create a new listing

1. Firstly you will need to create a Google account if you don’t have one already – Click here to go straight to the sign up page if required
2. Navigate to www.google.com/local/add/ and select “add new listing” at the top of the page
3. Fill in the page with your stores details, making sure to add the correct phone number and your websites URL (http://www.example.co.uk) if applicable
4. Make sure to fill in the category section adding as many relevant categories as possible
5. Next you will need to verify your local business listing (see below)

How to verify Google Local Business listing

1. Once you have created or claimed your listing, to show up within Google Local Business listing search results you are required to verify you are the rightful owner of the listing.
2. Once you are on the verify section, you will be offered the option to verify by text message, via an automated phone call or a postcard.
3. All 3 options will supply you with a PIN number
4. When you have your PIN code navigate back to www.google.com/local/add where you will see your listing
5. Enter your PIN and select go.

For as long as I can remember, search engines have treated both these codes in the same way, with them both meaning that nothing is returned on a certain URL.

But reading a Google webmaster help thread from yesterday, Google employee John Mu stated that this is no longer the case and that Google is now treating these codes slightly differently.

The basic message appears to be that if a page has never existed on a specific URL, it uses a 404 server response code, whereas a 410 server response code should be used if the page has existed but never will again moving forward.

I don’t think this is important enough to go rewriting your websites, but it may be worth noting if you are ever in that position.

John Mu’s post in full:

“I followed up on the 404 vs 410 thing with the team here. As mentioned by some others here & elsewhere, we have generally been treating them the same in the past.

However, after looking at how webmasters use them in practice we are now treating the 410 HTTP result code as a bit “more permanent” than a 404. So if you’re absolutely sure that a page no longer exists and will never exist again, using a 410 would likely be a good thing. I don’t think it’s worth rewriting a server to change from 404 to 410, but if you’re looking at that part of your code anyway, you might as well choose the “permanent” result code if you can be absolutely sure that the URL will not be used again. If you can’t be sure of that (for whatever reason), then I would recommend sticking to the 404 HTTP result code.

In the worst case, the 410 will be treated the same as a 404; in the best case it’ll be a bit quicker & stickier .” [Source: Google webmaster central blog, 27/10/09]

Granted Windows 7 is supposed to be a modular operating system that could potentially be deployed in lightweight systems such as web books (the target for Chrome OS) but I believe windows XP will stay the preferred choice for a low cost Windows solution in a web book.

If Chrome OS is not going to be competing with Windows 7, then what will it be competing with?

Competitors

Currently, if I do a search for web books on Amazon the first 10 machines use the following operating systems:-

• 4 on Linux based systems
• 6 on Windows XP

It’s obvious which 2 platforms dominate the web book market at present but the announcements in June that Acer planned to start shipping web books with the Google Android operating system and other manufacturers are considering shipping android with budget models, imply that competition could well be between the two Google platforms for market share rather than against a Windows platform of any kind.

Google Chrome OS -vs- Google Android

Now I do appreciate the two different ideas for both operating systems; Android is being developed to be better integrated into the various social media platforms that are popping up daily, whilst Chrome OS is designed to give more efficient performance on the web and make integration with the cloud more efficient.

I guess that means that if I want to use Google docs over Word or Excel, I should buy a web book with Google Chrome OS. However if I wish to use my web book to monitor my various social media sites I should opt for Google Android. But what do I buy if I want to do a range of things on my web book?!

My Thoughts

The bottom line is that these are two Google operating systems that are most likely to be distributed within the budget web books niche and a company releasing two products with similar concepts at the same time, designed for the same market can’t be a smart move.

Personally, I believe Google’s resource used to develop these two platforms would have been better spent perfecting a platform for people who want a lightweight computer that not only performs efficiently on the web, but in other areas too.

Over the last 3 weeks I have been using the site since its re-launch, but the more I visit the more disappointed I am by how our beloved former high street brand has been launched online.

SEO

As an SEO analyst I have tried to keep my eyes closed about the complete lack of content throughout the important pages within the site, I mean the only text on the homepage that isn’t a link is the statement about who owns the website and their offline address. The URLs make my eyes bleed, I mean what is the below URL really telling users and search engines about the page it is linking to?? I don’t see it saying much, if anything, about paddling pools.

http://www.woolworths.co.uk/rf/wlo/s.do/toys-games/outdoor-toys/pools-waterplay?N=159+4294484527+85+4294483400&Np=1&Nu=this_product&seo=t&pageSize=12&Ns=prod_in_stock%7C1%7C%7Cprod_min_base_price%7C0%7C%7Cscu_id%7C1&Nao=0&cmEvent=product_order&cm_re=Homepage-_-Text+Links-_-Pools

I’ve not followed that link as I find it quite offensive.

I could go on for hours and days about the lack of input from someone with SEO knowledge into the project, mentioning the very poor page titles, the Meta descriptions, the page code and how this site doesn’t really stand a chance in Organic search. But then i remembered it was one of the most loved high street stores and, since it does manage to rank for its own brand, it is most likely going to receive a fair amount of traffic. With that in mind I am going to try and consider the site from another point of view.

Design

I must admit, the jquery added to the site is quite funky and the different carousels kept me entertained for about 5 minutes, clicking through the various products, and the pick and mix section is simply outstanding. It should be nominated for a set of web application awards – it would get my vote. Once you overcome the jquery and pick and mix section you start to reflect on the look and feel of the site and to be honest I am not a fan. It looks similar to my very first website but with a lot of rounded corners.

This image shows how the navigation on the Woolworths party site looks in Firefox, or the latest version at least, not a pretty site for up to 20% of the sites visitors. (This appears to have been fixed since I wrote this post)

Large chunks of whitespace appears down the left hand sub navigation on the entertainment site as can be seen in the image below. Nobody can tell me that this was a pre-meditated design decision, that it had some purpose or that it would affect conversion rates in any positive way.

Usability

I have always been sceptical about sites built across multiple domains, not necessarily from an SEO point of view because the benefits are obvious (especially when built by a large brand), but from a usability point of view it can become a large issue that puts users off or, at the very least, reduces the amount of sales.

Woolworths has been split over 3 websites, one being party/pick and mix, the other being entertainment items such as computer games and DVDs, the third comprising of everything else Woolworths traditionally sold.

Visitors have to individually log into each of the sites and go through a separate checkout process for each site; which could get extremely tedious should a visitor wish to purchase an item from each section.

Overall

Considering the resurrection plans were put in place early February 2009 and the site launched in June 2009, I believe the site has been both rushed and not thought through properly. Although I have seen improvements occurring across the sites over the last 3 weeks both in terms of SEO and design, I feel that Woolworths Online is nowhere near 100% polished compared to competition such as Amazon, EBay, Play, ASDA and ASOS. This could potentially lose them a lot of the visitors that would have flocked to the sites brand on launch.

After reading over the study I decided to pick out a few nuggets of information that web designers can often overlook.

1. Visitors read in the shape of an F. Visitors were found to generally scan WebPages in the shape of an F. Make sure important elements of your content are in these key areas to keep readers engaged. Place headers, sub headers, bullet points, and highlighted text along these lines so readers will be enticed to read more
2. Headings draw the eye. In the majority of cases the first things readers have been found to look at on a webpage are the headlines. Make sure your headlines are not obstructed by other items on the page and that they are engaging enough to draw the reader into looking further through your site.
3. Text before Graphic. Contrary to popular belief, the first thing visitors look at on a webpage isn’t the images. Most casual visitors will be arriving on your site looking for information, not images, so make sure your website is designed so that your text is most prominent.
4. White space isn’t a bad thing. Whilst it may be tempting to put something in every corner of your webpage, it’s often better to leave some of your site free of any text as sites with too much going on tend to overwhelm users. Try to keep things simple and allow some open space for readers to rest their eyes.
5. One-column formats perform better in eye-fixation than multi-column formats. Overwhelming visitors with too much information is easy. Simplicity is better in some cases.
6. Readers ignore banners Ads. Ads may be the bread and butter of your site, but studies have shown that readers largely ignore banner ads, often focusing for only a fraction of a second. If you’re trying to make money from ads, you need to be creative in your ad placement or in the types of ads you have on your site.
7. Visitors only look at a sub heading if it is of interests them. Don’t put in sub headings just to stick to a particular format make sure that they are relevant and interesting.
8. Visitors generally scan lower portions of a webpage. Use this to your advantage by giving readers something to latch onto when they’re scanning your page. Highlight certain sections or create bulleted lists so information is easy to find and read on your page.
9. Short paragraphs perform better than longer ones. Information on your webpage should be designed for the short attention span of most Internet users. Keep paragraphs and sentences short unless context influences otherwise, such as descriptions of products on a e-commerce sites.
10. Navigation works better when placed at the top of the webpage. You don’t want readers to look just at the initial page they arrive at on your site, you want them to stick around and explore their way around it. You can help send them in the right direction by making sure your navigation is easy to find and use by placing it at the top of the page.
11. Visitors spend a lot of time looking at menus and buttons. Because of this, you’ll want to put in some extra time making sure that yours are well-designed. After all, they not only draw a lot of eye fixation, they are one of the most important elements of your site.
12. Lists hold reader attention. One way to break up the paragraphs in your content and keep visitors looking through your site is to make frequent use of a list format in your articles. Use numbers or bullet points to highlight important information within your content.

Broadband Tax

• The government plans to bring 2Mbps broadband to all households by 2012.
• A 50p a month tax will be added to every fixed phone line connection.
• This tax should/will go towards giving high speed internet access to everybody in Britain by 2012 and then maintaining this network.

Dear Sir/Madam, Please Stop Illegally Downloading

• Disconnection is off the agenda but ISPs must reduce online piracy by at least 70% within the next year.
• ISPs have Ofcom’s blessing to use technical measures to slow down infringing users, including blocking IP addresses should a letter in writing not be enough.

Farewell FM Radio?

• The analog spectrum used by FM and AM is due to be removed by commercial radio stations by the end of 2015.
• The report wants all radio receivers to be compatible with WorldDMB profile 1, which means support for DAB and DRM (but not DVB-H).
• Lord Carter wants digital radio in every car by 2012.
• After 2015 the FM spectrum will be “temporarily” handed over to low-power local radio stations.

The BBC’s fund is safe for now

• The license fee for now, is safe.
• It is the digital propaganda fund, the £130m a year portion earmarked for adverts and information about Freeview, DAB etc – that will be redistributed.
• The digital propaganda fund will not go to Channel 4 as suspected but mainly Local TV news and children’s TV programming.

The Verdict

Getting the obvious out of the way first; expecting ISPs to act as the internet police is a bad idea, but at least the report hasn’t listened to the insane and recommended kicking file-sharers off the net altogether.

If I was to describe this report by a single word, it would be “sensible”. The report contains plenty of level headed ideas but nothing truly innovative. The main thing to remember about this report is that this is a 6-7 year plan from a government that will be gone in less than a year and a minister who’ll be in a more lucrative job in the private sector within weeks. Personally, I think it may turn into just one of those reports.

To explain why social media is so important I feel that I should explain my very mundane morning. It is currently 10.23am on Monday 1st June 2009 and already today I have:

• visited Twitter through Twitroid and Tweet Deck;
• caught up on blogs released overnight through an RSS aggregator whilst on the train, I am also kept up to date on new blog posts throughout the day via Outlook on my laptop;
• browsed forums to catch up on the latest Liverpool FC news;
• visited Youtube for coverage on Britain’s Got Talent;
• logged on to Facebook to see if any friends have any up-coming birthdays;
• monitored Yammer for internal communication;
• used MSN Messenger and Google talk to keep in touch with friends and colleagues;
• started thinking about  this blog post;
• searched Wikipedia to see what it has to say on social media.

My day is only 3 hours and 53 minutes old but the combination of sociology and modern technology that is social media has dictated the majority of my morning already.

What are Social Media Sites?
Social media sites at the core are platforms and tools that facilitate the discovery, participation and sharing of information between select groups and the masses.

They have revolutionised the way in which individuals, such as myself, can reach large groups of people and have led to the democratisation of information by allowing people to give opinions and express what they deem important.

Examples
Sites like Digg and Delicious are employed as a source of news by many, whereas networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter are more commonly used for interacting. Social gaming communities that surround Eve online are becoming increasingly popular on the web, in the same way as World of War Craft or the one that Microsoft has created with the Xbox 360.

Social media exists in many different forms such as forums, blogs, microblogs, podcasts, video logs, wikis, email, networking, instant messengers, gaming, photos and video sharing.

If social media sites continue to grow at the current rate they will become an integral part of our lives as we move further into the 21st century.

Social Media Marketing
The mass appeal of these social media sites has resulted in businesses following consumers into the Web 2.0 era. Social Media allows companies to reach more customers, meaning that businesses can answer questions and receive feedback on their products and service.

It is another channel through which businesses can communicate with the consumer, adding another dimension to the traditional marketing mix.

So how important are Social Media sites?
Sites like Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Youtube, Sphinn, Digg, Amazon and Wiki have revolutionised the way in which we build relationships, meet new people, share content and find information.

Social media sites are infinitely important to me and my work, and this is increasingly becoming the case for corporations and the individual. Watch this space.

Last year Queensland tourist board proposed an audacious publicity stunt involving one person inhabiting Hamilton Island for 6 months, implementing social media to record their experience by blogging, taking photos and producing videos of their experience, whilst being paid $150,000!

A micro site of tourism Queensland was launched in July 2008 sending the social media world into frenzy, creating such a buzz that by the 22nd of February 2009 – the application closing date – over 35,000 applications had been submitted.

Twitter went crazy with tags such as #islandreefjob and #bestjob, whilst Facebook saw people setting up groups thousands strong creating mass publicity around the campaign. Websites, blogs and social media profiles were created specifically for the competition, all providing links back to the micro site and the tourism Queensland site, which we all know is great for SEO!

Applicants had to submit a 60 second video clip, from which judges would short list 50 candidates. The final 11 were decided by public vote, and these applicants were then flown out to Queensland for the final set of interviews.

Many events raised the competition’s publicity; one that springs to mind is the application of Christopher Grima, a 25 year old student who jumped off the south causeway bridge in Florida to make his video stand out from the rest. The only thing he gained was a fine and ear ache.

The campaign received immense press coverage to the extent that the BBC has run over 40 stories covering it, as has CNN, Reuters, The Guardian, USA Today and many more global news agencies.

It is estimated to have cost Queensland tourism board no more than $1 million but, with the excellent leverage of social media, experts estimate that the board has received more than $80 million worth of publicity from the competition.

With experts predicting the amount of success that this media campaign has seen, who really is the winner?? Is it Ben Southall, the 34 year old charity fund raiser from Hampshire who won the competition; or is it Queensland tourism board – the organisation responsible for one of the most successful social media marketing campaigns ever??…….