The policy continues down the road of Google’s long term goal where they see internet users never having to leave Google when using the internet.

This focus has been seen by many as Google operating a monopoly on the internet after Larry Page launched “Google Plus Your World” earlier in the month.

The new privacy policy incorporates all of Google’s services, including YouTube and Gmail, enabling Google to share data about a user’s behaviour across these different platforms.

This means for example, that if you’re emailing your car insurance provider about renewing your policy from your Gmail account, when you pop over to watch that clip of the funny cat on YouTube, you would be shown adverts for car insurance before the video played.

Or it may be that you are searching for things to do in New York when you visit next month and are presented with hints, tips and photos from recent trips your friends have made that have been posted by them on Google+.

Alternatively you may be navigating through rush hour traffic using Google Maps when Google Calendar suddenly informs you that unless you catch the 8:27am train, you’ll be late for that important board meeting.

According to Google, this collation of data across all of Google’s properties will create a much more relevant internet experience for the user by only showing them adverts and information that is related to their own personal needs, interests and preferences.

In terms of SEO, it is yet to be fully seen how this will impact. However in theory it could force new avenues to be explored.

Search Engine Optimisation could require a far more socially aware aspect to campaigns that interacts with specific user groups across all of Google’s products. Rather than concentrating almost solely on rankings within Google’s search engine, more focus may need to be put on Google+ and YouTube.

A far greater synergy between organic and paid activity may also need to be developed. Aside from just working together to establish maximum visibility within search, SEO and PPC could be required to combine in other ways to ensure that a user’s activity with one of Google’s products is effectively targeted over on another.

What are your thoughts? - @PG_Martin

What is SOPA?

SOPA is the Stop Online Piracy Act – a proposed anti-piracy bill that is being debates in the US Congress . SOPA is separate to the existing Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

SOPA has a lot of supporters because it’s trying to tackle copyright in general, which would not only cover the well-discussed film/music piracy issues, but also areas such as fake brands, fake medication, etc.

Some of its supporters include NBC Universal, Comcast, Ford, Pfizer, Xerox, Walmart, News Corp, Estee Lauder, Disney, Visa, Tiffany, Pearson Education and even 3M.

Why Stop SOPA?

There’s also a lot of big names who are against SOPA: Microsoft, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Bloomberg, Yahoo, AOL, Mozilla, Tumblr, Stack Overflow, OpenDNS, Internews, Reddit. There are also plenty of big-name founders: LinkedIn, YouTube, Flickr, Netscape, Alexa, Craigslist, PayPal, Wikipedia and Blogger.

But why try and stop a bill that’s has a ‘good’ purpose – to stop piracy?

Many of the Stop SOPA supporters want to stop piracy, but feel that the bill it not well-defined enough. It’s too generalist and broad, and this means that it could have serious implications on not only the ‘freedom’ of the internet and creativity, but also increase the overheads of their services.

So it’s not that they’re against SOPA’s intent, but many feel that it’s too ill-defined for the bill to be passed in its current state.

Many of the supporters of ‘Stop SOPA’ are participating in today’s SOPA Blackout Day by either revoking access to their services, home pages, or simply creating a ‘black out’ effect on their sites to show their support.

How Can SOPA Affect SEO?

One of the primary objects of SOPA is to have copyright infringing sites ‘processed’ within five days of a request being made by the copyright holder. This means potentially removing the site form SERPs, access via ISPs, freezing any related payment accounts (e.g. PayPal) and generally removing them from the internet.

In a perfect world, right and wrong are black and white and people never make mistakes. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world.

Anyone who’s ever been removed from SERPs by accident knows that it’s not a quick process being ‘put back in’, and getting your SEO status back to where it was pre-ban can be extremely hard work.

What if your site (or a client’s site) is hacked and used to promote copyright infringing material? It can take a while to get Google’s malicious site flag removed sometimes. How long would it take to recover from the effects of a SOPA takedown in this instance?

Additionally, how long will a ban last? How will you appeal against a ban several years later if you need to use a banned (but now free to buy) domain?

What if in five year’s time we find that a huge proportion of URLs are banned under SOPA, reducing the available domain pool even further than it already is?

Additionally, the extra time and money spent on search engines such as Google on applying SOPA will potentially divert funds (and creativity) from improving existing products and developing new ones.

Can SOPA Help SEO?

On the other hand, SOPA could have the potential to directly help SEO by allowing the faster removing of competing (and illegal) sites.

For example, if your main client is a large brand such as Estee Lauder, or works in a small niche with a completely unique (copyrighted) product, SOPA would make it easier for you to ‘takedown’ sites competing in the same space that breach your clients copyright like a site selling illegal Estee Lauder fake products.

This could therefore lead to better visibility in SERPs for long-tail traffic, more visits and potentially more conversions (assuming that they would make the same purchase from the official copyright holder in lieu).

However, I’m not sure that the side effects of SOPA would create an overall benefit for SEO.

Whack-A-Mole

The article on SOPA by Search Engine Land makes an excellent comparison between trying to shut down copyright infringing domains with SOPA to a game of ‘whack-a-mole’ – simply because anyone who gets shut-down can quite easily set up under a new domain name.

Just like spammers can start spamming from other email accounts or freshly compromised SMTP servers, it’s very hard to stop.

Alternatives For SOPA

The ‘whack-a-mole’ comparison makes it obvious that trying to ‘shut down’ the sites by removing them from SERPs and ISP access probably isn’t the right way.

DMCA

DMCA already covers copyright breach, although it’s probably not as ‘fast’ as some people would like, but that’s more of a process/implementation issue. I’m sure DMCA could be amended to make it more effective.

Education

More needs to be done to educate internet users on the topic of copyright infringement. Not only in terms of “it’s bad to download music illegally” but also in the sense that many physical products that breach copyright may not even be close to the real thing. This is one of the main concerns with buying medication online – there’s an awful lot of fake medication on the market at the moment.

So there needs to be a stronger message that copyright infringement can have serious implications for consumers too, especially in relation to pharmaceutical products.

Banks – Payment Processing

More needs to be done to fight infringement from the root of the cause.  Various studies have been carried out to track down the specific banks and financial institutions that are favoured by scammers. In one study, the University of California spent several months infiltrating the three most popular fake Anti-Virus scams to try and determine which financial institutions are used to accept/process card payments – its’ quite a short list.

There’s a reason these banks are favoured. Maybe they’re not as stringent as others or easier to access?

Banks – Payment Charges

On the other side of the coin, Brian Krebs highlights that one of the world’s largest rogue pharmacies had a large proportion of its customers using specific banks. Specifically, 15% of payments were made by customers using a Bank of America card.

Could banks do more to educate their users and put more safeguards in place to check where payments are going?

Domain Authority & Banks

Could more be done to make the domain-purchasing process more secure? At the moment anyone can buy a domain, which is great, but should sites who accept payments (via PayPal or a bank) be put through more stringent security checks before they’re allowed to accept payments?

What are your thoughts? – @MeniroDev

It’s all happened so fast. I’ve drafted this blog five times now and I’m sure it’ll probably be out of date by the time it goes up on the day itself. Damn you, newsworthiness. So, if you’ve missed the coverage in any way, here’s a bit of a recap for you.

SOPA happens to be, in the eyes of the more liberal and/or creative online networks, the worst thing to potentially affect internet freedom in the history of the technological frontier. While I could try and simplify it, the basic gist of it is as follows:

“The bill would make unauthorised streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten pieces of music or movies within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.”

The somewhat floral writers of SOPA – mostly backed by the American conservative right – have claimed that the bill is “[t]o promote prosperity, creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation by combating the theft of US property, and for other purposes”. It carries over to international sites, too – advertisers, payment sites and ISPs would all be forbidden from interacting or working with infringers based overseas, such as those in the UK. SOPA even requires search engines to remove infringing websites from their search results (unlike PIPA, its not-so-offensive-yet-still-annoying cousin), which is a fantastically invasive law considering the money these online companies will make on behalf of the US government.

Ever since Reddit posted a blog to explain its stance, plenty of sites have jumped on board with it to join the crusade. It’s nicely fitting for a user-moderated community to lead the initial charge, though that’s the wonderful thing about the ultimate democracy that Reddit provides – it reflects a fantastic spread of personalities, even if it’s largely dominated by what Fox News calls “liberals” and “socialists” (British equivalent: relatively balanced people).

As a result of this announcement, organisations decided to demonstrate their anger – such as Cheezburger, TwitPic and even WordPress – in hope that Wikipedia would follow suit in a similar way to how it responded to the Italian government’s wiretapping bill, therefore delivering immediate success.

Still, while Reddit’s actions resulted in plenty of headlines, it’s safe to say that it relied on Wikipedia to turn the tables in the favour of internet users, as opposed to the companies and individuals represented by SOPA. Even the Cheezburger Network’s Ben Huh, who operates Fail Blog, Failbook, Graph Jam and Memebase, said that fans of his actions should “go ask Wikipedia to do it” too.

After weeks of arguments, the oft-discredited Obama administration finally weighed in with its thoughts. “While we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” it said, without mentioning the possible trial of Richard O’Dwyer, “we will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.” A smart move from the forward-thinking and liberal governance associated with Obama (at least overseas).

Then Wikipedia announced its intentions to blackout on January 18th. The anti-SOPA response was heightened to an almost critical mass, even though supporters of SOPA basically admitted that they would shelve it. Shelving is not good enough for online organisations that actively campaign for eradication, though, so the tribute to the ill-conceived copyright-destructive SOPA bill continued.

Rupert Murdoch, continuing his campaign to be The Most Loved Man in the Universe, decided he would speak in favour of SOPA and claim that Obama was “pandering to Silicon Valley paymasters”. Only then did the fight become one of good versus evil. Well, maybe. Many thought that it simply funnelled down into a matter of inevitable capitalism and consumer culture versus the rights of the individual.

In regards to this battle, wise words came from Zack Whittaker of ZDNet’s Between the Lines column, who rightly explained that the demonstration against the weakening SOPA bill could only be truly successful if Facebook and Google had a similar strike and cancel services in the US, or even worldwide – at least they would then be reflecting their own anger at proposals. “Both Facebook and Google have everything to lose should these bills pass through Congress,” he explained, after giving links to both companies that would send emails of anti-SOPA sentiments. “But users of the free and open web, as we live and breathe it, have the most to lose. Not only are services crucial to our everyday lives under threat, our freedom quite literally hangs in the balance.”

Maybe Zack is right. Perhaps people are sick of seeing the puppy dog eyes of Jimmy Wales with yet another demand for cash. Our cash! For a free service! The scoundrel. Maybe these individuals would only get on board to destroy SOPA if their only free search engine and social network of choice is taken down for a day. Woe betide those faced with such hardships from these much-used no-cost sites.

As these huge companies battle it out on our behalf – including myself, even though I’m British – it’s easy to let them do their thing. Does this symbolic blackout gesture really mean that much, or will policymakers simply find a way around it with a future bill?

As a person immersed in all things online, would you only get on board if the likes of Google and Facebook did, too?

-@matthewgardner

Search plus Your World involves three new features introduced by Google:

• Personal Results – this finds information specifically for you ex.) Google+ photos and posts. This includes not just your own but also those shared with you that only you will be able to see on your results page.
• Profiles in Search – both in autocomplete and results; this would enable you to quickly find people you are friends with or people you may be interested in following.
• People and Pages – this would help you to find profiles and Google+ pages  related to a specific topic or interest, and enable you to follow them in just a few clicks.

By default, you will be shown the Personal Results view i.e. search results based on your behaviour and social connections. However you will also be able to see what your search results look like without personal content via a toggle, as shown below:

This new addition will largely benefit those involved in search engine optimization as it allows you to switch between personalised and unpersonalised results. Unpersonalised will not provide results from your friends, private information or any personalization based on your Web History.

Obviously there are a number of security concerns but Google has informed us that any information provided by signed in users is secured by SSL encryption. Therefore protecting your search results which includes private content by the same high standards of encryption as your messages in Gmail.

Currently, Search Plus Your World does not cover any other social network where content is shared such as Facebook, Twitter or Flickr. In other words, Search Plus Your World is currently only displaying content from Google+. It will be interesting to see whether or not Facebook allows Google to start using their content despite already partnering with Bing. This would allow them to personalise its search results based on a searcher’s Facebook friends’ likes.

Will this enhance your experience whilst searching on Google? Let me know your thoughts.

The social data hub aims to enable social network partners to submit their activity streams, making the data available to Google Analytics users within a set of social reports currently in development.

This means that GA customers will be able to determine down to the activity level – e.g. +1 button, comment, vote – what activities are taking place relevant to their content, when, by whom, and how they help achieve goals.

This comes as an extension to Google’s recent development of default integration of +1’s into Google Analytics.

The social web offers a great opportunity for brands to engage with customers in relevant and genuine ways, but social measurement hasn’t kept up. The goal of the new social data hub is to provide marketers and publishers with a comprehensive view of how social helps customers discover their brand and drive sales.

Google has partnered with several social platforms allowing Google Analytics users to integrate their activity streams straight into GA.

The launch partners are:

• Digg
• Reddit
• StackOverflow
• TypePad
• Delicious
• Gigya
• LiveFyre

and of course

• Google+
• Google Blogger
• Google Groups

Google will be following the Activity Streams specification, an industry format for describing socially interesting events, or “Activities,” about the people and things an individual may care about. In its simplest form, an activity consists of an actor, a verb, and an object. It tells the story of a person performing an action on or with an object. For example, “Geraldine posted a photo” or “John shared a video.” Any of the data submitted may potentially be used but it must adhere to the specification. Detailed requirements are available on the GA Developer Documentation site.

This is another fantastic step by Google. There are already paid services that exist in this field but this now makes Google Analytics an even more valuable tool to SMEs as they can really begin to get a handle on the social web without it costing the earth.

What are your thoughts on this announcement? -@danpeden

Similar existing P2P networks operate – each node (i.e. user) who uses the software will contribute to the overall functionality of the search engine.

The Pros

1. Free Internal Search

YaCy can easily be used to quickly set up a free, private, internal search engine by individuals or companies. This offers a substantial cost saving on existing ‘private search’ providers that are currently used by many companies and organisations.

2. Fault Tolerance & Scalability

By using a distributed P2P model, there is an extremely high level of fault tolerance. Machines can join/leave the network without killing the actual search service.

Although many large search engines such as Google have decentralised server farms and high levels of fault tolerance, the entity itself – the organisation – is still a centralised entity that can be affected by various forces (market trends, financial issues, etc).

3. Your Search Portal Is Local

To use YaCy, you install the software and run searches from your local machine. You’re not forced to go to a single web-portal, such as Bing.com or Google.com. This means that if you can’t access Google.com or Yahoo – you can still use YaCy.

4. Potential Immense Computing Power

P2P networks have access to an immense amount of computing power – many hands make light work. This is why projects such as SETI@home and Folding@home work on a distributed processing model. Leveraging this computing power could allow YaCy to go one step further than existing search engines, allowing it to process even more complex collections of search data.

Although Google has the most dedicated servers of any known company, there is a massive cost with buying and running all these servers. In effect, many search engines are in a ‘server arms race’ – which is costly. Whoever has the most computing power can offer the fastest services and process their search data faster too.

5. It’s Free. No Ads.

YaCy is free and there are (currently) no advertisements. This is because YaCy doesn’t really have any hardware or running costs to cover.

The Cons

1. Installation Required

You have to install the YaCy software to use it. This is probably the biggest downfall of YaCy.

There is a demo search portal, but it’s exactly that – only a demo. Many users will shy away from having to install more software – especially when users will say ”Google already works and I don’t need to install anything to use that”.

I’m sure many users would happily download YaCy and ‘get involved’ by joining a wider public search network but they’ll want to give it a road test first. This will require a fully functioning web portal because the existing demo doesn’t return ‘decent’ search results for most queries, which won’t endear users to YaCy as there’s “enough” search engines out there already.

2. It Runs Locally

Although the YaCy site outlines “it is not possible for anyone to censor the content of the shared index”, people will start to question whether search indexes and results can be ‘modified’ by those with ill intent.

YaCy stores index data in distributed fragments but it could still be possible to alter the index data if you have access to enough fragment instances.

One potential scenario could be the use of a large bot-net, with all members using YaCy – possibly enough to piece together complete specific sections of a search index – enough to then doctor the fragments to favour specific sites or search terms.

Although it’s a highly unlikely scenario, if data is being stored on local machines, there are plenty of enterprising individuals who will most likely give it a try. Even if it’s simply because some people may see YaCy statement that it is “not possible” for anyone to censor the shared index as a challenge.

3. Paranoia

People will start worrying about their search queries being sent to ‘other peoples machines’. Even though the YaCy site clearly explains that queries are never stored – some people will always question this statement – just as they do with major search engines.

4. ISPs

Although YaCy appears to use relatively little bandwidth when compared to users accessing services such as YouTube, I can’t think of many issues that YaCy would cause for ISPs. However, many ISPs have a clause in their contract for home users stating that you cannot run a ‘server’ that uses their services if you’re a home user.

This could potentially include YaCy – as a P2P network is exactly that – a collection of interlinked ‘servers’ that process requests.

Summary

YaCy really is a piece of amazing software, which is well engineered and overall is a fantastic solution that is working in the real world.

I think that the future of YaCy lies in use by private companies, governments, etc – rather than the general public. This is simply because the vast majority of users ‘already use Google/Bing/Yahoo’ and they need to actively install YaCy before they can use it – which will put most users off.

Would your company benefit from YaCy or how would you use YaCy at your company? Please leave our comments below!

Out-of-date content is a major issue for both search engines and users. If the creator of the content chooses not to explicitly state when the content was created, how can a search engine or user ensure that the content is still valid?

Query Deserves Freshness was a major leap forward in ensuring that for trending topics (topics that have a burst of activity), a mixture of fresh and authority content was shown. Here Google takes a risk in saying that we are willing to make X% of the top ten results available for the latest content rather than relying on the algorithm to order results.

Google Caffeine was a major infrastructure update aimed at allowing Google to improve all areas of their search functionality including breadth and speed of indexation. Suddenly it became common place for new content (especially on blogs etc.) to be indexed within seconds.

The new freshness update, announced officially by Google on 3 November, takes QDF to a whole new level, in effect switching QDF on permanently for a range of queries.

This makes a whole lot of sense in that a vast amount of search queries are directly targeted towards the most up-to-date results. “Jamie Oliver Book”, “Leeds United Result”, “Olympics” etc. all have an unstated intent to find the latest information, and these are the queries that Google is targeting with the freshness update.

Although Google originally stated that the update will affect 35% of searches, they later clarified this to be in-line with how it expressed the impact of past updates. So six to ten per cent of searches will be noticeably affected by the update. When you consider the kind of searches this is meant to target, it makes more sense.

How will this affect sites?

The vast majority of commercial sites will be unaffected as their primary goal is not to provide time critical information. A search for “beds” or “accident claims” will remain static as there is no noticeable benefit from having fresher results over authoritative.

Information providers such as the press, blogs and niche / fan sites will be affected as they sit firmly within the domain of this update.

How can sites benefit from this update?

For sites affected, this update is a double-edged sword. Long term rankings will be easier to achieve through good content without the need for a massively trusted parent domain. That being said, fresh content will rank and provide traffic but this will diminish over time as fresher content appears.

To gain any kind of benefit you have to timestamp your content. In an ideal world every piece of content should have a date on it but this is never going to be the case. Google understands this so will be likely looking at three key areas:

1. Date Created – a web server passes details of the document you have requested along with the actual document. One of these details is the creation date, another is the last modified date. Ensure these are correct (you server may be set to 1990 without you knowing it) via checking your header information.

2. XML Sitemap – keep your XML sitemap up-to-date but not only by including new pages. Also ensure that the last-modified field is used whenever a page is updated.

3. RSS – Google own Feedburner. This means they have had access to a massive quantity of RSS data for a long long time. It therefore goes without saying that at some level this update was born out of the analysis of RSS data. Ensure that any form of time critical content is presented via RSS, be it blog content or news.

This leads back to a particular gripe of mine when sites have “blogs” that are not actually blogs as they don’t use any standard blogging software and therefore can’t be recognised easily as a blog. Solutions such as WordPress automatically handle pinging and RSS which all assists with the Freshness update.

So in a nutshell, ensure you produce an RSS feed, an updated XML sitemap and your server is time-stamping correctly. Then keep on producing great content that positions you as a thought leader and authority in your particular niche.

Good luck! - @SEOMalc

The blog claims that, on average, ads at the bottom of the page performed better than when the adverts were shown on the right hand side of the page. This was based on click-through from tests they previously ran. I wrote a blog post on this, which you can read here. Please see screen shot below of how it looks.

This means Google is also changing the Top vs. Side split in your Adwords account. This will now be Top vs. Other, and the other will include ads shown on the right hand side and the bottom of the page.

I am curious why Google has started doing this. It seems to me they are clearing space on the right hand side for other adverts. I have noticed the Product Listing Ads appearing more and more recently. These ads don’t include a message but just show a product image with the product name and price. These ads come from an advertiser’s Google Merchant Account. A screen shot below shows how these adverts look on the results page. This could mean that Google feels these product ads are more relevant to users than the paid search ads not in position one to three.

I am dubious of whether this will increase click-through rate or not but I will be monitoring the effect, if any, very closely.

If you have any of your own insights from this, please do share! - @aimee_roberts

Jerry Dischler, director of search ads product management at Google has stated “ads that have previously shown to the side of the results may in some cases appear below them. We dynamically optimize each search page, including its ads, to provide the best experience for our users.”

There is a lot of concern around how this change will affect click through rates and definitely an element that we will monitor very carefully.  Google has provided a segment, ‘top versus side’, to go alongside this update. It will allow you to monitor where your advert has appeared on search results pages allowing you to analyse how the advert placement is affecting your campaign.  You can then optimise your bids according to this.

Google has been tested this update before rolling it out and has said that on average the adverts placed at the bottom of the page performed better than the adverts at the side of the page – in terms of click through rates. There is no visible data to back this up at present but it’s definitely something that we are going to be analysing over the coming months.

What are your thoughts on the new advert placement? Please leave your comments below.

Google+ Business Pages – What Is It?

With a similar feel to Facebook Pages, Google+ Business gives companies and brands a platform to share and connect with their customer base through content such as photos, videos, blog posts and status updates.

Like with the Google+ profiles for individuals, Google+ Business Pages also provides users with ‘Circles’ to help group together people to share content and converse with them based on their interests.

Want to take your customer engagement further? Host a ‘Hangout’ session where you can connect with a group via a webcam for feedback sessions or planned conversations with your most passionate customers.

As Google states:

“The goal is to help you communicate in more intimate ways with different groups of people.”

How to Setup a ‘Google+ Business’ Page

1. If you haven’t already, set up a Google+ account.
2. Once on your Google+ profile page, click on ‘Create a Google+ Page’
3. You’ll then be taken through a simple setup up process including the type of business you are, your company tagline and a few photos that show what your business is all about before viewing your Business profile.
4. Hit ‘Finish’ and you’ll be shown your business page.

At this point it will look pretty empty. Focus on the basic set up which will include the following:

• Add a company logo
• Prepare up to 20 posts so you have content on your page straight away
• Upload any videos and photos and share those on your main page.
• Setup your tag line if you haven’t already
• Link to any sites that are related/relevant to your business including your own company website. You have space for up to 20.

That is your Google+ Business Page set up.

Be sure to plan what you will be posting and how frequently to give your viewers a reason to come back. This could be status updates, videos, photos, latest blog posts or special discounts to name a few.

Google +1 Count Versus Followers

Google+ Pages have both a +1 count and a follower count (see to the left of the above image). What’s the difference? The followers are those who have added the company to one of their circles; these followers will see that company’s updates within their own content stream.

The +1 count is a sum of all those users that have shared the company Google+ page with their own network. Whether the +1 number will contribute to rankings within Google is yet to be known.

How to Add the Google+ Badge to Your Website

Along with the release of Google+ Business Pages, Google have also launched the Google+ badge that can be added to your website to inform visitors that your company is active on Google+. To add the G+ badge:

1. Copy your profile ID (this will be the number in the URL when on your profile page).
2. Head over to the Google+ badge configuration tool and add your profile ID where prompted
3. Choose one of the badges underneath and a code snippet will show.
4. Copy and paste the code to a suitable position within your website’s source code.

Google+ Direct Connect allows your audience to find your Google+ page easily. By adding a ‘+’ in front of a company name, you will be shown a preview of that company’s Google+ page.

Remember – your website must be verified. To do this:

1. Link to your website from your Google+ Business Page
2. Add a Google+ badge to your website
3. Add the following code to your website (changing ‘[yourpageID]’ to your profile’s ID number):<link rel=”publisher” href=”https://plus.google.com/[yourpageID]” />

Want to Know More?

Google has a couple of videos to show off the new Google+ Page features:

Google+ Pages Video

Google+ Direct Connect Video

You can also view a number of Google+ pages that have already been created including:

Pepsi

Barcelona Football Club

Burberry – (Definitely check out their profile photo set!)

H&M

Toyota

WWE

The full list can be found on Google’s own blog post.

Ask Away!

If you have any questions about the new Google+ Business pages, certainly leave us a comment below. And if you’ve set up and are managing a page, we’d love to hear what your thoughts are so far.

At present, a lot of articles are a little more than speculation, so I have chosen to put together a quick post to highlight the facts within the bloat to ensure the subject lives on and everyone knows the cold facts. The more we talk about Google Plus for Business, the more Google knows we want them.

First things first

Google Plus Business Pages doesn’t exist yet! You cannot and should not try and create a business presence at the moment. In fact, Google is actively removing business style accounts.

Some sites such as Mashable and SEOmoz have already created presences by customising a personal account to look like a business. This goes against the current Google usage restrictions which are tailored towards real people. So Google contacted these people and removed their business style presences.

There may be evidence to show that Google is using key companies and educational institutions as a testing ground. When you set up your education and work statuses, you are presented with some initial options to choose from. This could however just as easily be a database of institutions, their details and logos.

Along with Google actively removing non-personal accounts, they have said that they will not be making an effort to migrate any business style accounts to real business accounts when they launch.

When will Google allow business to use Google Plus?

The only date that has been alluded to at the moment is Q3 2011 so on that note, Google Plus Business Pages should be imminent. Google has already acknowledged the general desire for business presences but remind us that Google Plus is still in very early development in the grand scale of things.

Conclusion

Google Plus profiles will be usable by businesses at some point sooner rather than later. Although you can’t actually set them up at the minute, their impending existence should lead to discussions regarding who will set them up. Who will maintain the presence? How will we interact?

Many companies have already asked similar questions regarding Twitter and Facebook, even employing staff specifically to handle these channels. If you haven’t already then maybe now would be a good time to get the ball rolling. Google Plus is the most likely social data source to be implemented as a ranking factor in the future. Data capture is the fundamental reason for its very existence.

With social becoming more and more popular as a simple means of communication and users demand more interaction from brands, a defined social communication strategy is a must.

You can also read more about this in my other post here.

-@SEOMalc

With these two announcements, as a Paid Search advertiser who creates and manages a number of existing Facebook Ad campaigns, instantly, my thoughts turned to potential opportunities these changes could offer.

Timeline

In a nutshell, Timeline will revolutionise your Facebook profile by taking all the information you’ve ever shared on Facebook and basically put it in chronological order, or as a ‘timeline’. You’ll quickly be able to click on 2007 for example, and see posts you or others made on your wall that year. If you really want to, you can even go back to the years before you joined Facebook such as when you were born and add baby photos of yourself! Furthermore, the whole look and feel is so much nicer – you can now add a giant photo at the top in addition to your profile photo, and posts in your timeline just look so much cleaner and more modern.

This update should roll out any week now to all users, but I couldn’t wait that long. Using a shortcut available to Facebook developers, I managed to upgrade my profile early, and the result was this (with the help of a nice photo from my recent holiday to Thailand!):

What’s clear to me straight away is the limited space for ads compared to the old design which allowed up to four ads at a time. In the time that I’ve had Timeline so far, at most, I’ve seen two ads at any one time. To me, this is a little surprising – you would assume that Facebook would look to maximise advert exposure as much as possible, particularly on a profile. There may be plans to expand this once the full roll-out is complete, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

That said, Facebook may not be too concerned with limiting Facebook profile ads to just two on a page – for starters, this could see advertisers having to bid more in an auction-based system to gain visibility if more people are competing for limited real estate.

My other theory is that Facebook now sees the Timeline as just one of many areas of the site that are likely to attract a user’s interest, and as a result, advert impressions could actually increase overall.

Which brings me along nicely to the opportunities Open Graph may offer advertisers…

Open Graph

As mentioned earlier, Facebook’s announced a number of partnerships with world-renowned brands and companies which will allow users to access a whole host of content via apps without ever leaving the site. One such example of this is Spotify. A Facebook user can link their Spotify and Facebook accounts seamlessly using the Spotify Facebook app. The result? Whenever you play a song on Spotify, this can be instantly posted to your Facebook Timeline and will be grouped in section called ‘Music’, as shown below:

The more music you play, the more data Facebook will be able collect about your listening habits. This may be useful for your personal interest, but undoubtedly for Facebook stands to gain so much more. Imagine the Spotify data Facebook will be able to collectively acquire across all Facebook users. Suddenly, Facebook can analyse listening trends and start to tell you the most listened to artists that day, week, month or year. Which age groups listen to what types of music, gender splits, and so on.

This is just one app for Spotify dealing in the music industry. There are plans for more apps to specialise with the films or TV you watch, the types of foods you are cooking, the media sites you visit to read your news – even the exercise you’re doing when you go on a run, which will all integrate into Facebook in a very similar way. The data collecting potential for Facebook is HUGE.

Very exciting from an advertiser’s perspective I’m sure you’ll agree (but perhaps a little scary from a user’s perspective!). Suddenly, all this extra data will tell us so much about types of users – the music they listen to, the films and TV they watch, the foods they eat, the sites you’re visiting. It’s not been confirmed yet, but I have no doubt that this will lead to a whole host of new highly-detailed targeting options, allowing an advertiser to refine their campaigns to niche audiences.

Watch this space…….

-@PeterGould83

An apparent electrical failure in Slough meant that millions of BlackBerry owners in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, India and parts of South America were left without access to internet services from their phone. This meant services such as emails, browsing and instant message applications such as BlackBerry Messenger were unavailable.

While users rapidly began to express their outrage across social networking sites, RIM stayed silent. At the time of writing, there is still no clear explanation of what exactly went wrong. BlackBerry has been quoted as reporting a “core switch failure” on Tuesday evening; however, it seems as of Wednesday morning that this is no longer the case. A recent statement from BlackBerry’s Stephen Bates reported that staff, ”thought we had found the problem [BB outage] but had not. We are working around the clock to get to the bottom of the problem.”

I am among the many frustrated BlackBerry owners, and have suffered almost non-existent or sporadic email service, and no access to instant messaging services for the last few days. I have also suffered constant uninformative texts from my network provider, Orange, to say that they are aware of the problem and it should be fixed soon. That’s all well and good Orange, but I still don’t have access to my emails, and it’s Wednesday afternoon.

Frustrations aside, this incident has highlighted how important mobile internet has become. I watched an interesting slideshow earlier this week by Brad Frost dictating on how we need to future proof the web, and that mobile internet is a large part of this. It really is, and it shouldn’t be underestimated. Frost points out that the web is no longer confined to a computer or to a laptop, it is all around us. It is in the devices we carry in our pockets, in our music players and in our TVs. And for those who are away from home machines during the day and are not computer or desk-based at their work, these smaller devices are paramount.

RIM will probably never let us know the exact scale of the disruption their service failure has caused, but the reaction amongst users is enough to hazard a guess. BlackBerry users are outraged, confused and frustrated. Mobile internet is a no longer the luxury of the few, it is now a necessity. This event, though aggravating, should be a massive wake up call to companies that mobile internet is a growing platform that should not be overlooked.

What do you think? Were you affected by the BlackBerry failures this week? Tweet me @lucy_callag

Zagat, founded in 1979 by Tim and Nina Zagat, is similar to other review services. Restaurant goers are asked to review their experience on a range of factors, these results are then collected by Zagat and are available in hard copy, and more recently digital form. According to Zagat their guides include ratings and reviews submitted by more than 350,000 people.

Zagat also reviews a wide range of other places including theatres, hotels and music venues. They operate in 70 cities in the US as well as London.

This isn’t the first time that Zagat have tried selling up. Back in 2008 they were on sale for $200 million. However, after they couldn’t sell for that amount, they decided to move forward with an organic growth strategy.

So why has Google bought them?

Google haven’t been as successful with their location offerings compared to their regular search. Back in 2005, Google purchased location-based social network Dodgeball only to shut it down (the founder Dennis Crowley went on and started Foursquare). The more recent attempt ‘Latitude’ never caused much of a stir either. Google then tried buying Yelp in 2009, offering $500 million. This reached the final stages of negotiation but Yelp pulled out for reasons unknown.

Then in late 2010, Google decided to go it alone with location-based recommendation engine Hotpot. However, this has never really taken off or been able to generate the reviews it has wanted since its launch.

Google had also been borrowing from Yelp’s database of reviews but this started causing problems. Google Places was then created and Yelp saw it as a direct competitor. In an interview with the Telegraph, Yelp CEO Jeremy Stoppelman stated that:

“We are unhappy with the way Google uses our users’ reviews on its Places page. However, there is no solution to the problem… Google’s position is that we can take ourselves out of its search index if we don’t want them to use our reviews on Places…. But that is not an option for us, and other sites like us – such as TripAdvisor – as we get a large volume of our traffic via Google search…We just don’t get any value out of our reviews appearing on Google Places and haven’t been given an option other than to remove ourselves from search.” Searchenginland

Around a month later Yelp removed its reviews from Google Places but not the main Google index.

Conclusion

In 2009 Google attempted to buy Yelp. This failed so they then tried to create a similar service themselves with Hotpot (borrowing liberally from Yelp). Neither of these ventures have been successful for Google. So they then realised that they needed a solid base of reviews and reviewers to form a working community of users. Enter the opportunity with Zagat.

The attraction to Zagat wasn’t just the database of reviews but also the brand. What Zagat has, and Google needs, is a loyal base of reviewers to carry on writing the reviews. Google has lacked a catalogue of reviews to fill out its own location-based services since their inception, and with Zagat they have bought themselves a good starting position, at least within the US.

But what about the UK and the rest of the world?

From what we’ve looked at here, there’s a high possibility that Google will spend the foreseeable future acquiring as many useful user review-based websites/companies as possible. This would enable them to take a stronger foot hold in the market and bring Google Places growth back up to scratch with its main search offering.

What are your thoughts? Please leave them below or on Twitter - @stevowalker

I think what Google has done is pretty remarkable. Google Analytics is on more than 50% of the busiest websites in the world. To be able to take, crunch and display all that data within one to two seconds is seriously impressive.

What does this tool mean to me? This is one of the questions I always get asked when I demo a new feature or tell clients about it. The answer in this case is unfortunately very very little as I can currently only see a couple of use cases of this new Google Analytics feature:

1. Monitoring the live performance of a TV campaign
2. Spotting errors and correcting them

I’m still not 100% about the first one.

Monitoring the performance of a campaign as it happens is nice, but what can you actually do there and then if the performance is not what you expected. The answer: nothing.

The error spotting is certainly useful. If your site sees an influx of traffic or errors, you can jump on it quickly and hopefully correct the problem. This is provided you have a developer on call and can make rapid changes. This tool could also provide a free version of some error reporting tools you may currently have installed. However, these typically work best on the server itself.

I think this is one of the first times I’ve actually been disappointed by a new Google feature. Considering the amount of development time, money, and resources it took to create it, I just feel like they could have spent that time elsewhere. Perhaps fixing the bugs of version five or adding more resources to some of the more interesting new features yet to be announced?

I can see why Google has created this but it certainly sits in the ‘selling of the tool’ category rather than the ‘using of the tool’ category.

I’d love to hear some real world use cases for this if anyone out there has one….

-@danpeden

As commiserations swept the world, many tributes defined the influence and creative sole that Steve jobs embodied:

Bill Gates:

”Steve and I first met nearly 30 years ago, and have been colleagues, competitors and friends over the course of more than half our lives. The world rarely sees someone who has had the profound impact Steve has had, the effects of which will be felt for many generations to come. For those of us lucky enough to get to work with him, it’s been an insanely great honour.”

Barack Obama:

”Steve was among the greatest of American innovators – brave enough to think differently, bold enough to believe he could change the world, and talented enough to do it.”. . .”The world has lost a visionary. And there may be no greater tribute to Steve’s success than the fact that much of the world learned of his passing on a device he invented.”

The Apple website showed their respect today by changing their homepage to commiserate Steve Jobs death:

”Apple has lost a visionary and creative genius and the world has lost an amazing human being. Steve’s brilliance, passion and energy were the source of countless innovations that enrich and improve all of our lives.”

Jobs fought his battle with cancer relentlessly after receiving a liver transplant in 2009. He stepped down as Apple’s chief executive two months ago but was still involved in the creative process. Born in California, Jobs strived to transform Apple into a company recognised for its design and technical innovations. The great brand that is Apple was originally founded in his parents’ garage in 1976, with his partner in innovation Steve Wozniak.

Through the last 30 years of tribulation, innovation, design and triumph, Steve Jobs helped bring Apple to the height of its success. Jobs has revolutionised our everyday life, whether it be the way we listen to music, use our phones, watch films or use personal computers. In my opinion, Jobs’ greatest achievement was changing the attitude of the people toward technology. Whether you are a strict Android user or think Apple is overpriced, no one can deny that their design, iconic style, brand, and the element of fun and excitement the products generate is something to be recognised.

Although Jobs never actually designed a computer, he was a figure head for the company. His involvement at the beginning to promote the Apple brand as unique, revolutionary, creative, and insurgent agenised its main rival Microsoft. It also allowed Apple to become a leading world company.

Apple are the makers of the Macintosh computer, the iMac, the iPod, iPad, and iPhone, and although Steve Jobs was around to see the latest release of the iPhone 4s, the great awaited launch of the iPhone 5 will never be seen by its sorcerer.

Many people have been saying on Twitter this morning that ”…he will never die. He has just been uploaded to the clouds”

May his inspiration and creative soul live on with Apple and all they create.

How do you think the loss of Steve Jobs will affect the Apple name and brand?

Please leave your comments below or on Twitter - @JodieMcDonne11.

The 27-year-old announced that his company would make some radical changes to the site over the next few weeks. The first and most ground-breaking would be the complete overhaul of the profile system, to now be known as a “timeline”.

Zuckerberg told the audience that the new timeline is designed to tell the “story of your life”. Timeline is a new way of looking at information about a person, rather than having the clear cut sections of photos, wall and info. We now have a complete amalgamation of “all your stories, apps, and a new way to express who you are.”

The new timeline lets the user control what appears on their profile completely. From users being able to set a new cover photograph at the top of their page to being able to individually select stories to give greater prominence to, the new timeline appears completely customisable.

Zuckerberg’s aim is to give users the ability to learn about people’s lives and to learn their story by seeing what is important to them on their page, rather than just looking at a static profile. He demonstrated using some pictures of himself with his girlfriend that were important to him. The ability to make stories more dominant I think will really appeal, especially for users in relationships.

This dynamic approach is a step away from the more rigid attitude Facebook has had towards profiles in the past, shunning requests to make them different colours, or to display different fonts. Now Facebook is allowing the user more control and interaction with their profile. And isn’t that right? Shouldn’t we be more in control of how our information is displayed on the web?

Of course there are the initial concerns. What if there are parts of our stories that are not necessarily good, that we wouldn’t want to remember, or display outwardly to people? However Zuckerberg reassured that users would be able to completely hide stories from people, just like on the old profile model. I am still slightly sceptical about how this will work in practice. For some users, hiding whole years’ worth of updates might be difficult.

This leads me to my second concern of how far back users will have to edit. How far will the profile allow us to scroll? This was suggested by the short film demonstration Zuckerberg showed, starting with the text “Andy Sparks was born. Aug 14, 1974”, and shows his life from a baby to grown man, all on his timeline.

Putting aside initial uneasiness at a baby or toddler using Facebook, this film made me wonder if someone could take my profile and scroll all the way back to when I created my account in 2007. What information would be displayed there? Now not many people would sit and do this, and I certainly wouldn’t be willing to sit down and “edit” my storyline for the last four years to make sure Facebook was only displaying the information that I wanted it to. So the new timeline would require a level of trust in Facebook to not display anything I found horribly embarrassing from my past. I don’t think I’ll be the only user with concerns about that.

Overall I think the new timeline will be a good thing for Facebook. On first glance, it appears more dynamic, interactive and more fun. And isn’t that what social networking is about?

You can play with the new timeline here http://www.facebook.com/about/timeline

Do you like the new timeline feature? -@lucy_callag

Interflora is delighted by the judgment of the Court of Justice of the European Union which today ruled in their favour. This ruling will enable brand holders across Europe to deliver quality service and ensure that trade marks guarantee the origin of the goods bought by consumers online.

I’ve always been of the opinion that as long as you are making it clear in your advert who you are, and aren’t trying to pass yourself off as the brand being searched for, advertising on a competitor’s brand name could only improve the experience for the searcher.

There was a time when Interflora was the only company that most people could name if they wanted to send flowers through the post. As such, when they search for Interflora in order to send flowers, being presented with a number of other companies offering the same service only improves the choice of services available to them.

I was a little surprised that the court hadn’t seen it that way, so I wandered over to their website to find out what their arguments were. I was far more surprised with what I read. The final paragraph of the ruling is perhaps the most interesting:

Article 5(1)(a) … to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks and … must be interpreted as meaning that the proprietor of a trade mark is entitled to prevent a competitor from advertising – on the basis of a keyword which is identical with the trade mark and which has been selected in an internet referencing service by the competitor without the proprietor’s consent – goods or services identical with those for which that mark is registered, where that use is liable to have an adverse effect on one of the functions of the trade mark. Such use:

–      adversely affects the trade mark’s function of indicating origin where the advertising displayed on the basis of that keyword does not enable reasonably well-informed and reasonably observant internet users, or enables them only with difficulty, to ascertain whether the goods or services concerned by the advertisement originate from the proprietor of the trade mark or an undertaking economically linked to that proprietor or, on the contrary, originate from a third party;

–      does not adversely affect, in the context of an internet referencing service having the characteristics of the service at issue in the main proceedings, the trade mark’s advertising function; and

–      adversely affects the trade mark’s investment function if it substantially interferes with the proprietor’s use of its trade mark to acquire or preserve a reputation capable of attracting consumers and retaining their loyalty.

There’s clearly a bit of wriggle room here. What they appear to be saying is that you can’t bid on somebody else’s brand name, if doing so makes it unclear which is their website, or reduces the value of their trademark.

The second part reads:

Article 5(2)… must be interpreted as meaning that the proprietor of a trade mark with a reputation is entitled to prevent a competitor from advertising on the basis of a keyword corresponding to that trade mark, which the competitor has, without the proprietor’s consent, selected in an internet referencing service, where the competitor thereby takes unfair advantage of the distinctive character or repute of the trade mark (free-riding) or where the advertising is detrimental to that distinctive character (dilution) or to that repute (tarnishment).

Advertising on the basis of such a keyword is detrimental to the distinctive character of a trade mark with a reputation (dilution) if, for example, it contributes to turning that trade mark into a generic term.

This is reasonable. You can’t bid on their name in order to pass yourself off as them or do anything to tarnish their name. The third and final paragraph is the really interesting one…

By contrast, the proprietor of a trade mark with a reputation is not entitled to prevent, inter alia, advertisements displayed by competitors on the basis of keywords corresponding to that trade mark, which put forward – without offering a mere imitation of the goods or services of the proprietor of that trade mark, without causing dilution or tarnishment and without, moreover, adversely affecting the functions of the trade mark with a reputation – an alternative to the goods or services of the proprietor of that mark.

If I understand this correctly, if you are not imitating them, diluting or tarnishing their brand name, or affect the trademark’s effectiveness, then you can bid on their brand name.

Clearly, you could argue that as long as you clearly present yourself as an alternative purveyor of that product or service, you can still bid on their trademark. From reading this, I would suggest that Marks and Spencer are in the clear – they never claimed to be Interflora, and they didn’t insult them in any way – they simply put forward “an alternative to the goods or services of the proprietor of that mark”.

Ironically, I would argue that Interflora are currently the ones more likely to fall foul of this ruling. Here’s what their advert says when you search for “Marks and Spencer Flowers”:

Unlike John Lewis, Asda and Teleflorist, they have decided not to include their brand name in the title, instead advertising that they sell flowers in Spencer. If you search for “John Lewis Flowers”, you also discover that they sell flowers in Lewis:

Maybe they are just bidding on every town and city in the country, but I know that when I search for “Castleford Flowers”, they are nowhere in sight. I leave it up to you to decide whether the pot’s calling the kettle black, or it’s just a big coincidence.

But if I were Interflora, I wouldn’t be shouting my victory from the rooftops, I’d be keeping very, very quiet…

What are your thoughts? - @CustardMite

The main and most important changes are those to the Interest’s demographic targeting options when creating a new Facebook ad campaign.

Broad Category Targeting

The first of these changes has been the introduction of what Facebook call, ‘Broad Category Targeting’, which, when selected, opens up a whole host of new targeting options.

As you can see from the screenshot above, there are now a number of broad categories to choose from. Within these, as shown with the Activities example, you then have a number of subcategories within that group, such as cooking, dancing, DIY and so on.

When you select one of these, Facebook will select people who’ve included information in their profiles relevant to that category. This opens it up to a far higher user base than the previous system which only allowed you to specify specific interests.

There are some great additions within these categories. For example, you used to only be able to target people on their actual birthdays, which was never really that helpful. Now you can target them if they have a birthday in a week’s time or less, which opens up numerous new targeting opportunities.

Targeting by family status is a brand new area:

Think of all the brands or products that could now benefit from being able to target users by their family status (particularly those with children between certain ages which is a huge market!).

Another area of huge potential is the ability to target a user by their mobile type.

You see users all the time on Facebook post updates via their iPhone, Blackberry or Android phones, and it would seem that Facebook has been gathering that data in order to allow you to then serve ads to users based on their device. This is perfect for advertisers that are looking to promote a new mobile website or app.

Precise Interest Targeting

Broad category targeting isn’t the only change that has been made to the interests targeting on Facebook. The original interests targeting capabilities, which have now been renamed ‘Precise Interest Targeting’, have seen a bit of a revamp too for the better.

Anybody that has used this tool as a means for targeting Facebook users will know that it can be very glitch at the best of times. Even more annoyingly, in the past, there were numerous Facebook pages with tens of thousands of users you would look to target which wouldn’t even show in the tool when searched for specifically. This seems to have changed – the tool appears to have added a number of new pages into its database to target which is fantastic.

The best new feature of Precise Interest targeting tool however is the introduction of what Facebook call ‘Topic Targeting’. The best way of describing topic targeting is to say that it’s very similar to Adword’s phrase match compared to Exact Match. Whilst exact match will only show your adverts for the precise term you enter, phrase match will look for any other terms that also contain that term and show you for that as well.

Topic targeting appears to be very similar:

As you can see in the example above for Lady Gaga, a number of suggestions are given for topics on the subject (as indicated with a #), with the same precise interests as with the old tool shown at the bottom. By opting for #Lady Gaga, you are saying that you want you ads to show not only to users connected to the official Lady Gaga Facebook page, but also any other pages that main contain Lady Gaga setup by fans. Although a lot of these pages may only have 50 to 100 fans, collectively, they will make up a huge audience that you weren’t easily able to target previously. In addition, you can see from the screenshot above that Facebook also recommends other relevant topics that you may not have considered, which again is extremely helpful.

So in summary, as you can see, Facebook’s demographic targeting options have undergone quite a few changes. In the past, you may have written off Facebook as you felt you couldn’t target a relevant audience for your product, company or brand. With all these new capabilities, it may be worth returning and trying again.

Has anyone been successful with these new options? Please share your experience here or on Twitter – @PeterGould83

URL Under Title

In the grand scheme of things, this change was relatively small; however, it took a lot of people a long time to adjust to.

Ever since Google launched their current well-known results page design back in the late 90s, the URL of a listing has always appeared underneath both the title and the description.

However, the latest aesthetic update has seen Google sandwich the URL of a listing between the title and the description.

My thoughts:

After an initial transition period of getting used to the subtle yet significant change, I have personally come to accept it. I don’t think it has had, or will have, any drastic effects on click through rates. However, it fits in with Google’s ongoing push on brand. Promoting the URL higher up the listing effectively forces the user to scan read the URL and therefore, take in the name of the website.
With the URL located below the description, I’d hazard a guess that far fewer users would have actually paid any attention to what the site address was before clicking through.

Extended Site Links

The most obvious change of late has been the much talked-about extended site links. The history of these lies in the authority and trust that Google has been pushing into the associated brand of a website for some time now.

This was particularly unfair for brands such as Nike for example. This is a brand that thousands of retailers stock, and therefore showing eight listings from Nike.com might not be the most relevant to what the user was really seeking.

This was an even bigger minefield with a search term that was a brand as well as a product. Here in the UK, the term Boots resulted in eight listings dedicated to Boots.co.uk (a large pharmacy chain). However, the user may have been looking for footwear.

To combat this, Google has recently updated the way they handle this with the new extended site links:

These extended site links, while still delivering up to nine different page listings and a high level of SERP real estate for the site, deemed to be the owner of the brand term. This format still allows nine other sites to compete for ranking positions.

My thoughts:

Compared to Google’s previous methodology of monopolising the first page with just the one website, this format is fairer and cleaner. The idea Google has behind treating brands in this manner is almost spot on; however, there are far too many anomalies where brand and keyword meet in a very grey area. These extended site links bridge this grey area very nicely, for the time being.

Extra Rich Snippets

Days after Google launched the extended site links, they appended extra rich snippets to the bottom of some of these listings.

These extra rich snippets pull out info from the listing’s Google Places page including the address, telephone number, opening times, local transport links and associated images.

My thoughts:

These extra rich snippets only seem to appear on a select number of brand queries. I am not totally sure what is triggering them; however, where they do appear, they are on listings for sites with clear brand names. Therefore while this takes up even more SERP real estate for a brand, there is a very high chance that the given site is the destination the user is looking for. Google just need to be careful that they don’t roll these out across all apparent brand queries and continue to stick to the clear cut brand names only.

YouTube Video Enriched Listings

Google has recently started enriching certain listings with YouTube videos. These videos are displayed as a still thumbnail to the left of the URL and description of the snippet. Once clicked, the user is sent to the YouTube channel where the video is located.

My thoughts:

These types of YouTube enriched listings appear to be very rare. To date, I have only encountered five or six of them and so this may still be a rolling test. If rolled out fully by Google, it would be interesting to see what criteria Google decides to use in order to judge on what listings associated YouTube videos are to be displayed on.

Bullet Pointed List Descriptions

The latest change announced by Google two weeks ago alters a listing’s description, of a page that contains lists, to a series of bullet points. According to Google, if a page in the search engine results contains data in lists or tables, the snippets are altered to reflect this formatting and “are designed to give you a sense for what’s on the page and why it’s relevant to your query”.

My thoughts:

I don’t like them. Of the few examples that I have come across so far, they do not aid in giving the user any greater level of information over a traditional description. In fact, I would say that this bullet pointed formatting actually gives the user less information about the page.

As I understand it, these new descriptions are generated by Google from the on-page semantics and HTML markup. As a result of this, they can’t be influenced by the site owner or an SEO which, I would speculate, will lower click through rates.

Which changes do you prefer and why? Please leave your comments below or on Twitter - @PG_Martin

It appears to be another step that Google has taken to help brands have a stronger presence on the search engine results because that is what the search engine believes people want; it has been like this for SEO for a while now and many of the changes made to the search results are suggesting this is the case.

For example, the domain in the headline, moving the Display URL above the description text and now adding more Sitelinks to those adverts with higher click-through rates, most of which will be brand, all suggest Google is making well established brands more prominent in the search results.

In terms of the effect, because it is pushing down other listings, most advertisers could potentially see a drop in CTR% (if looking for a review site, news articles, Wikipedia etc.). However, I’d expect the deep links to increase user experience but could ultimately reduce time spent on site as people won’t be “browsing” as much. For Direct Response, this should improve conversion rates if done well.

The screen shot below shows an example of this for JD Sports who have already capitalised on this change. Given 6 Sitelinks in an advert enables an advertiser to use extra messages in their adverts and give a larger idea of their range of products or services, as in the advert below. It also takes up more space in the results and pushed other results further down the page, below the fold.

I think these added links in brand adverts will certainly take focus away from the organic brand listing and any competitors bidding on that term. However, it appears Google has found an answer for this by adding in Sitelinks for the organic listings; this new look for the top organic listing is very eye catching and will most likely have a detrimental effect on the PPC brand advert click-through rate. This is beneficial for the advertiser as they won’t pay for that traffic anymore.

The screen shot below shows the added Sitelinks working for the PPC advert and the organic listing. The brand dominates the page and it would be very difficult for a competitor to steal traffic away from this. Of course, this is good for the user, as they are looking for Selfridges so that is where they want to be taken to.

Any thoughts? Please leave them below or on Twitter - @aimee_roberts

It is thought the move is a result of the 56 year old’s health problems following his battle with pancreatic cancer and undergoing a liver transplant.

Current Apple COO Tim Cook will succeed him as CEO while Mr Jobs will take on the role of the company’s chairman.

In an announcement yesterday, Mr Jobs said: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”

He added: “I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role. I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.”

Apple’s share price fell five per cent as a result of his resignation.

The legacy that he has created has earned him the admiration of his peers in the tech industry, including Google’s Eric Schmidt, who praised Mr Jobs as the most successful American chief executive in the last 25 years.

Mr Schmidt said: “He uniquely combined an artist’s touch and an engineer’s vision to build an extraordinary company… One of the greatest American leaders in history.”

Mr Jobs has been the creative force behind some of Apple’s most innovative products, like the iPod, iPhone and iPad, renowned for their technical superiority and minimalist design.

Analysts say customers will see no real difference in their products and Mr Jobs will likely still provide the same input he had when he was CEO.

-@scottmalt

I was once in a meeting a couple of years ago where a client told me that mobile wouldn’t take off due to the fact that people on pay as you go deals couldn’t afford to browse the web! Well some research recently carried out by mobile marketing and advertising solutions company Velti has pointed out the following:

• 47% believe that high street retailers are not doing a good enough job where mobile is concerned
• Pay as you go customers were spending a third longer than their contract/iPhone counterparts on mobile websites, at 13 days a year compared to eight
• 82% of consumers, who used their mobile while watching TV, researched further details around a product or service on their mobile devices after having seen an advertisement on TV.

So quite quickly we are seeing a picture here that mobile is massive, and that retailers are failing to capitalise on the demands of a captive market.

Picture this. You are on the sofa on an evening, and the Mrs says to you, “I’d really like that book” or you see a TV ad for a sale at a retailer you have always wanted to buy something from, but never have. With mobile in hand, you set about making that purchase and … what… AAARRGGHHH – you can’t get on the site / it doesn’t render properly on your mobile / selecting drop downs becomes impossible / selecting links doesn’t work …. and the list goes on. All things that a company should have sorted out on their main website but forgot to remedy on mobile. Shoddy.

Retailers and banks should be embracing mobile; it’s such a massive growth market and there is so much potential for these big businesses. This survey paints a pretty grim picture for the UK high street and it’s important that this is addressed ASAP. Apparently 90% of mobile subscribers have the ability to access the web on their phone so this isn’t exactly a small market we are talking about.

As for the pay as you go argument, well this doesn’t wash. PAYG users are spending nearly two weeks a year browsing on the web, which is an astonishing amount of time considering that PAYG phones tend to be less sophisticated in terms of technology than contract phones. These stats are probably slightly skewed as smartphone users can call on apps for banking and shopping from retailers, but nevertheless, a little bit more work from a retailer’s point of view would really help to convert PAYG users from browsers into customers.

There is no excuse for poor usability – it’s my number one bug bear with websites when they don’t do what they should do. I class myself as a pretty savvy web user, so I do wonder what users who are not well versed in the ways of the internet feel when they hit these usability snags.

Before I sign off, I must give a quick appreciation of Amazon’s mobile efforts. The process was seamless and simple and felt as slick as the web operation. Well done!

Thanks to Velti and Internet Retailing for their stats and studies used in this post!

Please leave your comments below or on Twitter – @sbaker81

(Photo: Bitter Wallet)

The organisers of the event shared their excitement and appreciation with the audience, which was estimated at more than 100 attendees, for their participation and support of the festival. Volunteers have been working hard to ensure that the 2011 Leeds Digital Festival exemplifies the skills and talent of the digital community. After yesterday’s event and AweSEOme, a similar event that featured experts in SEO such as ourselves, it is clear that those involved are well on their way to making Leeds the digital city of the north.

Most of the questions for the expert panel at Sociality were submitted in advance but that did not stop the audience from participating. From a small business that sells mobile phone chargers for festivals to the marketing director of the Northern Ballet, the need for free advice on how to best promote a product or business with social media did not go unanswered. While the panel members debated on the pros and cons of different social platforms like Twitter and Facebook, one message was universal: social media is here to stay.

”Social media is built into the fabric of our lives,” said Greg Felgate from Finn PR. Chris Norton from Dinosaur PR added, ”While certain platforms may not be beneficial for every business, building a social media strategy is.”

But does traditional marketing still have a place in a social media world? This was a question from one audience member and according to Jen Holmes from The Friendly Copywriting Company, not only does it have a place, but it definitely needs to come in the mix.

”Social media is not that different from traditional marketing,” said Jen Holmes, an online writer and social media manager for The Friendly Copywriting Company. ”The base skills are the same and the core of both is communication.”

Overall, I felt the event was a great success and I enjoyed that it was both professional and laid back. The panel was helpful and honest when giving advice and demonstrated a thorough knowledge of social media. Working at one of the leading agencies has allowed me the opportunity to become involved in the best industry events Leeds has to offer. Social media is indeed an integral part of SEO and the digital industry as a whole, and after listening to the panel yesterday, it is evident that while society has come far, there is still much to learn.

Of course, this study does not account for every circumstance, and openly points out those situations where paid and organic ads sit in close proximity; the uplift to clicks is minimal.

For those people interested in the details of the study, it can be found here.

Alternatively check out the following short video that will likely remind you of being in school (just me?):

It would be interesting if the study expanded to include a brand/non-brand split, as I wonder if they provide different levels of uplift (and even how they interact with each other).

Previously I have seen results for newly created brands (and accounts) with no offline marketing (or even organic presence), which show an increase/decrease in brand activity that matches the paid search spend increase/decrease (although with a slight delay due to the buying cycle).

Similarly, consider a brand who dominates the organic listings and also run a PPC Brand campaign. I have seen this scenario combined with unusual competitor activity, causing the brand campaign to run out of budget early for several days. Over this period, sales saw a notable drop in the evening (the same time the brand campaign ran out of budget). If the PPC campaign was only cannibalising organic clicks, surely no drop in sales should have occurred. Admittedly, this scenario is a one off with unique circumstances and I am not suggesting this will always be the case, but it is nice to read more reliable studies on similar situations.

Now it would be nice to have a study by someone who does not make billions of dollars from PPC advertising, would it not?

Any thoughts? - @JamesMHolding

The search engine giant will pay a 63 per cent premium to Motorola’s closing share price on Friday, amounting to $40 per share.

Motorola Mobility, already a partner of Google, will remain a separate business and Android will continue being open platform.

Google Chief Executive, Larry Page, said: “”Motorola Mobility’s total commitment to Android has created a natural fit for our two companies.

“Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers.”

The move will bring Google into direct competition with Apple and HTC, who currently own a large share of the mobile market.

However, Google will be inheriting around 17,000 patents, which commentators say could give Android a significant boost.

The transaction is expected to close at the end of this year or early 2012.

“When you submit a URL in this way Googlebot will crawl the URL, usually within a day.”

Of course, there’s always been the general Submit Your Site To Google feature – but this only works at a TLD level and there’s no suggestion of how long it will take them to crawl a site – or if they will.

This is great news for the web in general as we can now help Google along with finding new, updated or relocated content. In general, this means less time sitting around waiting for Google to ‘pick up’ new content of its own accord and therefore, hopefully faster updating of SERPs and quicker results from your SEO efforts!

There are two ways to submit a specific URL for Google to crawl:

Webmaster Tools

If you’re using Google Webmaster Tools, you can log in to your account, select a website and go to Diagnostics > Fetch as Googlebot – which you’ll already be familiar with.

Enter a specific URL and click Fetch.

Google will then go off and crawl the page, if the page request is successful you’ll then see a new option for “Submit to Index”.

For pages that fail or 404, you won’t see the submit option.

There are two options for submitting a page – you can either choose between asking Google to spider just that URL, or that URL and any pages that it links to.

You’ll notice that Google also limits the number of fetches that you can request on a weekly basis.

You get 50 ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ requests per week and ten ‘Submit to Index’ requests per month.

Importantly: the total number of fetches is spread over all websites linked to your account.

So if you manage several sites, you can only make up to 50 requests and ten index submissions between all sites in total; the limit is not on a per site basis however.

Although the request limit is a good move to stop abuse by Google – it could be problematic for large sites or changes across multiple sites that you’d like to notify Google about.

I’m hopeful that Google will review this limit in the future, possibly on a ‘by user’ basis where ‘responsible’ users get a higher allowance of requests.

Crawl URL Form

There is also a public page where seemingly anyone logged into a Google account can submit any URL as long as they fill in the captcha.

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/submit-url

Interestingly, there isn’t an obvious limit mentioned for this ”method,” but I’m sure that Google will monitor usage by account/ip to keep track of potential automated submissions.

Furthermore you can request any URL to be indexed providing you can read the CAPTCHA.

Also there’s no guarantee or suggestion of the time they’ll take to spider the page and look at putting it in their index, which is fair enough, as there’s no real traceability for the requests as the requester isn’t necessarily the site owner.

Here’s an example of requesting a check for an invalid page on Microsoft.com:

Successful request:

Of course, Google will have internal mechanisms for filtering out invalid requests and similar.

I don’t approve of black hat SEO techniques or anything underhand at all, but by allowing almost anyone to request a check on any URL, Google could be opening the doors for some abuse of the system.

Here’s some possible scenarios – you should NOT try them and I do NOT recommend or advise such actions:

1)    You notice that a competitors site has gone down or some important pages are now 404’ing or missing (maybe while they do some maintenance).
- You submit their URL(s) to Google in the hope that they’ll lose SERP positions or have pages removed from the index. Not very nice.

2)    You find that a competitors site returns a 200 status for pages that don’t exist and should be really 404’s. Such as www.competitorsite.com/blahtestfakepagehere
- So you start to feed invalid URL’s for that site to Google, which may then be indexed. This could then affect their search results. Again, a nasty move.

So overall, a great move by Google which should really help improve the quality of search results and gives us all a little bit more interactivity with the Google index!

@MeniroDev

It is important to note that it is just the organic results at this stage – Yahoo’s paid results are still powered by their own Yahoo Search Marketing platform. That will most likely be updated too at some point, but neither party has given a solid indication as to when, so it’s probably a while off yet.

For websites that ranked well organically in Bing and not so well in Yahoo, this is obviously a good thing, as those good results will be apparent in Yahoo now too. Conversely, sites that performed well in Yahoo but not Bing will probably see a dip in traffic.

Having said that, at least in the UK, Yahoo and Bing combined only accounted for around 6% of all searches (according to Hitwise), so any impact good or bad is likely to be a relative drop in the ocean.

@andyheaps

The internet titan had many of us in the digital industry fairly perplexed when it failed to deliver the PR storm we were waiting for. However, Larry Page and Co knew exactly what they were doing, beginning with a fizzle and ending with a deafening bang.

Their first and most brilliant move was to trickle invites into the hands of industry bods and those deemed worthy to have a first glimpse at Google’s creation. Predictably, the intertubes ignited with skepticism, what with Buzz and Wave being social flops. People asked whether Google could enter for another round in Facebook’s arena, but then the beta testers began to talk. Word was spreading and the wheels had begun to turn.

Google saw it. They knew that people would want what they couldn’t have and soon the populus craved their new social baby. Why spend millions on PR when you can use your customers to drum up interest for you? Eager early adopters waited anxiously for an invitation to drop into their inbox, like a horde of sales shoppers waiting for the shutters to ascend. Then when they finally managed to snag one, they talked about it, driving anticipation in others.

After a few weeks the site quickly topped 20 million users and people are now sharing one billion items every day, while the iPhone app shot to number one in the most downloaded chart. Granted, new statistics show a three per cent drop in traffic, which could be attributed to the fact that it is still in limited beta and the floodgates are yet to open. However, for the most part, Google Plus has been successful.

So what can we take from this looking through the glimmering prism of digital marketing?

1) People listen to other people, not big companies.

Word of mouth can be a great way to get noticed, as long as it’s engineered correctly. It does help that Google is a globally renowned superpower, but the same principal could get your campaign off the ground through a grassroots social medium.

2) People want the unobtainable.

Limited releases could be the way forward when it comes to things such as new networks and tools.

3) Listen to your audience.

Google Plus was rife with bugs, loopholes and generally frustrating anomalies, but by allowing users to submit the aspects of the network that they liked and disliked, they were able to make some headway in addressing concerns. This is massively important if you want to maintain your customers, as it builds trust and trust is what wins the day.

Whether Google Plus will soar to the frosty heights of Facebook and Twitter remains to be seen, but it’s clear that the company is more focused than it’s ever been in grabbing a slice of that delicious social networking pie.

@scottmalt