The Google Brand Revolution

Posted by Paul Martin on August 25th, 2010

Google, SEO

Here at Epiphany, we have been well aware of the lack of search engine optimisation being undertaken by the vast majority of SuperBrands for a long time now, and even continually monitor SuperBrand visibility in the Market Insights section of our website.

Last month, my colleague Alex blogged about how SuperBrands rely almost completely upon their brand name and associated terms within search engines, ignoring all product and service search traffic. Well, last week Google announced a radical change in its search algorithm that could possibly help SuperBrands out in this respect. Read the rest of this entry »

Top of the Tweeters

Posted by Bev Freeman on August 24th, 2010

Social Media, Twitter

Britney Spears and Lady Gaga have more followers than the entire population of Sweden, Israel, Switzerland, Ireland, Norway and Panama according to the video Social Media Revolution 2 (Refresh) by Socialnomics. Lady Gaga hit the news today as being the most popular tweeter with over 5.7 million followers – go Gaga! I checked these stats last Friday, when Gaga was still approx 100,000 followers behind Britney Spears, which shows the speed at which communities on the social web can grow. Britney has over 5.6 million followers, compared to Ashton Kutcher (third most popular Tweeter) with over 5.5 million followers, however Britney has only posted 439 tweets whereas Ashton is much more in touch with his followers having tweeted 6,111 times! Read the rest of this entry »

Annoying Adverts. Brand Builders or Destroyers?

Posted by Christian Milburn on August 23rd, 2010

Brand Monitoring, Featured

It’s a typical week night in at the Milburn household. The baby is in bed, the washing up is done and it’s time to chill. Which inevitably means my wife and I turn on the TV and have our dinner. I’m sure like us, you find it doesn’t matter what time you turn your telly on, it’s always on the advert break because that’s the way sods law works!  As an incredibly impatient person I am enraged that it’s always like that and then the adverts only tend wind me up more. Am I the only person in the UK who doesn’t understand why Halifax employees would be running a radio station – badly – and why that woman needs to nod her head to the beat in that ridiculous manner? In fact, it’s got to the point that every time I see a Halifax advert I tell my wife “I’m never ever opening a Halifax account, ‘Ice Ice Baby’ really isn’t funny, it doesn’t make sense and worse, makes my blood boil”.  Fortunately she understands my rage; she has her own contestants for the most annoying advert ever. This week it’s the new flake advert. “Why is that woman wearing a dress made of tripe whilst having purple poster paint thrown at her? That’s not arty, it’s just disgusting. I’m never eating a flake again”. Or the maddening ‘Perle-du-Lait’ advert, where they spread yoghurt on each other’s faces. I could go on…. Read the rest of this entry »

The Battle of the Search Engines

Posted by Samia Kesseiri on August 19th, 2010

Digital Marketing, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo

It is undeniable that online search has become part of our daily lives. It is also undeniable that we all rely on Search Engines (Google more precisely) to give us the right and correct answers to all of our queries. We hear of search algorithms being improved and refined on a daily basis or Search Engines releasing applications and gadgets to impress us and gain more monopoly. For the Search Engines, it is all a question of market share. Read the rest of this entry »

Brand Power Loses It’s Adwords Safety Net

Posted by James Holding on August 18th, 2010

Google Adwords, PPC

European Brand De-restriction

Google has recently changed the AdWords rules to allow advertisers to bid on various brand or trademarked terms. The rule change has come about after the European courts ruled that Google had not violated trademark laws by allowing rival companies to bid on competitor brand and trademarked terms.

Google’s new rules will come into force across Europe on the 14th of September 2010, along with a new complaint procedure. If a company feels its terms are being used to mislead a visitor or cause confusion to a user, Google may still remove the ad after conducting a limited investigation, however they will no longer prevent a company from bidding on trademarked terms. Read the rest of this entry »