Following on from yesterdays post about Google launching new comparison ads in the UK and the US, we have finally seen the ads now out in the wild

The terms seem to trigger on quite specific terms at the moment such as
- Compare credit cards
- Compare savings accounts
- Compare Bank Accounts
- Compare current accounts
- Cash ISA

The ads themselves knock the organic search results down quite significantly, and on many screen sizes sampled now make the organic results sit below the fold, which is likely to impact significantly the likes of the GoCompare’s, Moneysupermarkets etc should the scope of these ads roll out to a wider keyword set, which lets face it is likely to happen at some point in the near future.

When one clicks on the ads, the user is sent through to the ‘product level’ page, rather than the client whose logo is displayed. This will display any partners who have signed up – and currently works on a CPA model – similar to many other existing comparison models in the market at present. At present, it would appear Google are dealing direct with clients in many instances.

One would have to conclude – that this is the cat well and truly thrown in with the pigeons – particularly if – and more likely when this expands to a greater resultset

Google may well have truly thrown the gauntlet down to the big finance aggregators with the launch of new financial comparison units on a number of finance related terms. The comparison ad concept themselves is nothing new, however rumour is rife that much of this will use the Beatthatquote technology that Google acquired back in 2011 – something that would really have significant consequences for the wider comparison market as a whole – and potentially impact on Beatthatquotes’ ex competitors such as Compare the Market, GoCompare etc.

The fact this may happen is not a surprise. Google is not the type of company that spends near £40 million on the acquisition of a comparison and then leaves it to one side. The potential rollout of this is significant for a number of reasons. Firstly and foremost it is likely to utilise the Beathatquote functionality and drive the user straight through to the users site. Secondly it is likely again to take up a sizeable chunk of real estate on the search page for hugely competitive phrases such as credit cards, savings accounts and the like.

Given again the fact that aggregators play a big part in many of these market places either via the paid listings or more often than not via the organic ones, this could really play a big part in migrating traffic away from these sources – many of which Google would probably argue do not provide real value to a consumer.

According to the money.co.uk site, Google will launch new financial comparison ad units between 5-6pm (UK-time) today. As of 17:31 today, we were still to see anything….

As part of our day to day campaign management at Mediacom, myself and my colleague Ryan McKay have recently been looking into the wider effect of the recent Venice update on the search rankings – as well as other updates such as Penguin/Panda etc. To many it would seem the effects of the recent update have been lost to many, certainly some recent on the subject suggests many seem to associate this to merely the greater integration of localised results into the Google search results – in fact a presentation from SMX suggested that it was merely Google changing ‘the rules for how places-results are displayed in websearch’. For those more familar with Venice, it is certainly more pronounced than this, and effects the resultset in a much more significant way.

Now certainly, the resultset would appear to be far more impacted by local results if some recent Sistrix data is to be believed. From the study run on German result sets, the percentage of hybrid search results (the local + traditional organic results) had increased from 1.0% to 3.5% of serps sampled. This represents quite a significant number of queries overall if one considers the volume of queries run by Google during any one day.

The announcement of Venice was announced by Google back in February 2012 (27th) amongst a raft of other changes including ‘iotfreshweb’/Freshness, Link Evaluation and new variants of the Panda update. The notification itself sat around 20 or so in the list of changes

However the impact of Venice has been quite pronounced if one starts to look at individual resultsets. If we take for example a branded term such as ‘Co-Op Travel’:

In Blackpool (which is where my address relates to (actually its around 40 miles to the East but anyhow)), we see the resultset below. In particular the following are of particular interest.
- The Cooptravel.co.uk includes a fourpack sitelink result
- The second co-operative result includes a refernece to a Blackpool airport result.
- Positions 5,6,7 are all localised
- It includes a three pack local result just after result 4.

Now we perform the same query in London. A significant change is now visible:
- The sitelinks are now 6 results deep.
- The local listings have now disappeared
- The localised resultset for the airport result on result 2 is now replaced by a generic result.
- The localised results have now been replaced with many of the results we saw down at positions 6 – 8 in the Blackpool result.

The scario was often consistent through a number of other serps we analysed namely that:
- Many non-London results saw significant breakthrough of localised results particularly at page level
- Local packs were more visible and did appear on a greater number of searches
- Positions 4-8 were impacted significantly by personalisation and localisation issues. My personal perspective is that the local results were a bigger factor here on many searches.

With many updates taking place at the moment, the first assumption to jump to can often be to blame the latest Google update. This shouldn’t however be the first port of call. I was looking at a result this morning to do with eyecare and noticed the London result had disappeared for a site which had previously dominated that SERP, however localised results remained unaffected – however did highlight a number of significant local differences many of which shared traits with those above.

What these changes do suggest is a more overarching strategy is a must if the nature of your product is in anyway localised – much as it would be if you were advertising in traditional press. The days of a one size fits all strategy are limited, and as SEO’s we will need to consider the impact of our strategies at a more granular level – one where local is an increasing part of the overall strategy.

Well obviously your not going to get the full answer here, however Matt Cutts has posted a nice little video as to how Google used to work and currently works (at a very top level) – what else what you would expect?

In it he goes through
- How Google used to work
- Google and crawling
- How Google evaluates content

Much of it isn’t necessarily brain science but its worth a watch all the same.

Have you heard of Pinterest? It is a relatively new social media network where users get to “pin” photos and videos that pique their interest. The website offers a “pinmarklet”, a bookmarking widget that allows users to pin their content without the need to copy and paste links. Pinterest, with its by invite only membership, have managed to expand its platform into over 10.4 million registered users. And as companies embark into social media marketing territories, a lot of businesses are on the run on making their own Pinterest page. But wait! Before you add another social media account to your business, it is important to make sure that joining Pinterest will be for the best interest of your business. Here are 5 reasons why Pinterest may not be a good network for your business;

1. Pinterest is not an arena for B2B organizations.

If your business requires more technical explanation than just attractive photos, then it will be hard to sell your service or product on Pinterest. Part of the site’s biggest strengths is its aesthetic value and its capability to showcase visually appealing images. Moreover, other businesses are on the website not to look for suppliers or partners but to sell their own products. If you are into B2B leads, you better spend your time on other media. Nonetheless, if you can find a use for Pinterest in your business e.g. attracting individual attention to call out to companies that cater to them, that will be a nice way to stand out.

2. You do not have the time and resources to make a Pinterest strategy.

Lindt Chocolate did not make it to the Top 20 list of socialmediadelivered.com for nothing. Lindt used the social media to make a campaign for autism. The company donates $1 for every #Pin4Autism pin on the website. Pinterest is more than just beautiful photos, companies can use it for their causes, too! However, these campaigns take time and resources and therefore there must be someone in your organization to take charge.

3. Your target market are males.

Friedmansocialmedia.com reports that 68.2% of Pinterest users are females. Because the website attracts mostly women, it will be hard to showcase your car battery products, for example.

4. Your market does not fall in the 25-44 age bracket.

Half the users of Pinterest are between the ages 25 to 44. This market is relatively young, upbeat and bursting with zest for life. The average time spent on Pinterest by users are 15 minutes, and with that amount of time, you are competing with a mix of individual and business contents. If your pin is not as interesting as a form of visual art or as heart-warming as a cause, better spend your Marketing money elsewhere.

5. You need a brand page to properly present your business.

Pinterest does offer a brand page for companies. So for those who bank on their brand for strength and share of voice, it will be hard to make noise on Pinterest. Moreover, brands who use Pinterest are willing to share content not directly related to their brand in order to engage their customers. If you do not have anything more to share other than what you do, it will be better to explore other social media networks for your business.

Experian reported that Pinterest is now the third most popular social network after Facebook and Twitter. With its growing membership and its ability to go viral easily, Pinterest is one hot media for businesses. However, the site is not made to suit all businesses. So before you jump into the pinning bandwagon, evaluate your business and resources first. And if ever you decide on getting on it, make sure to formulate a good strategy! Happy pinning!

Author bio:

Jessica Francisco is a cheerful 25-year-old with an odd sense of fun. The least of her broad range of hobbies include swimming, hiking and listening to the music of Michael Jackson. Jessica is also one of the editors of Luke Roxas a renowned Business Tycoon from the Philippines. Luke Roxas on Facebook.

To many this is just a natural evolution of what Google already did with the Nexus one , however it would appear from stories doing the rounds that Google are ready to enter the tablet market to sell c0-branded tablets directly to consumers through an online store. Googles ambition to become the modern day skynet appears to continue unabated if this is to be confirmed.

It would make sense. Through Android Google already own a significant share of the mobile market – and their operating system is already common place on many of the best selling tablets on the market today including Motorola, Sony and Samsung. Further to that, that share of Motorola they own would provide a fantastic basis for any potential venture into this space.

Google did try selling direct to consumers before, however that its online portal in 2010 but that closed down fairly quickly despite the fact Android sales have been fairly good since then. That deal with smartphone manufacturer HTC, would probably be very similar to any potential partnership with a tablet provider – so the chances of success here are perhaps 50/50 if previous history is anything to go by.

What this may do is add to the downward pressure on the price of Android tablets made by other companies and potentially be a good way of taking a significant market share of the tablet market where the Apple IPads are towards the top end of the market. Further to that they now own about 10% of the US market and have an established name in terms of mobile software.

It does however further extend Google’s reach not only into your search behaviour but perhaps into the wider hardware landscape

In a move that will surprise very few SEO’s Google today announced that it will be expanding their SSL privacy rollout to “local domains around the globe”. Ironically for an organisation which doesn’t appear to be as bothered about my privacy when it comes to lining their own pockets – this represents a significant step for Google – and one which we can expect to impact on a high % of potential searches through the Google search engine.

Many SEO’s have been very vocal about this in the US, with many prominent UK search marketeers expressing their concern at the rollout of the not provided framework then – and thus its going to be interesting seeing the reaction to this.

No confirmed dates have been set as yet (bar the next few weeks) – but one would expect to see the changes rolled out sooner rather than later.

I was interested in reading a piece of resource over the weekend which suggest that round a 5th of all internet users in the UK were 55+, thus making it the largest age segment in the UK at present.

This already suggests a 2% increase on the figure recorded just over a year ago and one which dispells the myth that the internet is the domain of the youth. The age groups of 6-14 and 15-24 only made up 29% in total (12% and 17% respectively)

That 20% figure equates to around 8.6 Million potential customers out there. If you arent using the internet to target these segments, perhaps nows the time to start thinking…..

There are a couple of ex-colleagues who are going to have a little snigger at the above headline, however the headline hides an interesting manouvre from Google in terms of shaping their PPC inventory moving forward and how these display on site.

Sitelinks through PPC have been a recent improvement from Google, and something even as a SEO I have been very keen on. They allow advertisers to target messaging much more effectively than in the early days of PPC, and furthermore allow us to create particular paths and functions for consumers which often vary from channel to channel

So lets take for example the current sitelinks incarntaion

The current framework allows for around 6 sitelinks for PPC managers to communicate with potential consumers. Whilst these ads are limited to headline snippets they are small and dont take up a lot of page real estate. As of the 14th February however this is likely to change and with it bring a new round of challenges to both SEO’s and PPCs alike.

New enhancements from Google could significantly change much of the landscape for advertisers using existing sitelink functionality but utilising creative from other parts of the Adwords campaign.

To be eligible for the extended sitelinks, advertisers must have:
- A valid Adwords campaign and an ad with sitelinks appearing within the Google search results
- Ads relating closely to the sitelinks in the campaign.

In testing for the ads, Google mentioned clickthrough rates were significantly higher than the previous 2/3 line sitelinks. One would argue that is hardly surprising givent he real estate that these new ads take up, and that in itself presents more interesting scenarios to SEO’s who are already under pressure with many of the changes Google has made to its search results set. Further more these results bear many similarities to those of the sitelinks already in place within organic search results.

More real estate to PPC which this undoubtedly will mean, should mean yet more traction for PPC results, and less visibility on organic results potentially resulting in the following scenario
- More advertisers using PPC as organic visibility is being throttled
- Competition within both PPC and SEO significantly increasing as the battle for no1 increases significantly organically and the increased competition means CPC etc are going to be significantly tested
- Differentiation between SEO and PPC diminishing further
- Advertisers utilising more personalisation factors to try and influence eyefall where possible

Its an interesting time, and again its disappointing to see yet more real estate being taken up with yet more PPC. The balance between the two channels has always been a defining factor of Google, and its interesting to see them move away from this as the chase for increased revenue continues unabated.

That in itself brings challenges, due to the way many consumers perceive organic / paid results. Its another interesting move by Google and certainly not the last. For advertisers its certainly time to get clever with managing your PPC ads, ensuring as much targeting and refinement as possible. From a SEO perspective, its time to get clever and start utilsing all the tools at your disposal whether its extending your campaigns into wider contexts such as social and local to simply ensuring your campaigns are now working in tandem. What the new changes do bring is a better way to communicate with consumers more effectively, something which if harnessed correctly could be powerful weapon in the search amoury

Some of us are old enough to remember the early days of the World Wide Web, when we had to hand-code our websites and there were no such things as ‘grid layouts’ or ‘responsive design’.

In this stone age of web development, many companies launched so-called WYSIWYG HTML editors that allowed you to build websites in a more intuitive (i.e. less code-heavy) way. One of the earliest WYSIWYG editors was Microsoft’s FrontPage.

During its 7-year lifespan as a software product FrontPage went from being a time-saving darling of budding web developers to being widely despised and ridiculed for the bloated code it churned out.

It’s been nearly 10 years since Microsoft quietly retired the FrontPage brand name, but it still sees widespread use today. In fact, some developers use it daily. Because, believe it or not, FrontPage still has many uses.

 
Build HTML Emails
First and foremost, FrontPage is hands-down, bar none, the most effective HTML editor for emails. Due to the wide variety of email clients out there, each with their own peculiar HTML rendering engines, it is notoriously difficult to code HTML emails in such a way that they display correctly in all email clients.

But a HTML email coded in FrontPage is very likely to render correctly in pretty much all email clients out there. That’s because the code generated by FrontPage is so arse-backwards – virtually no CSS, layouts based on tables, and font tags up the wazoo – that even the most pernickety rendering engine will be beaten in to submission by the tsunami of bloated and redundant HTML so that it has no choice but to display the email exactly as intended.

When it comes to building HTML emails, there really is no better editor out there than FrontPage.

 
Test Websites for IE6
Secondly, FrontPage has a built-in preview function that allows you to view the page you’re building as if it was rendered in a browser. That browser being Internet Explorer 6.

Yes, FrontPage 2003 uses the IE6 rendering engine for its preview function. (Or, if you’re lucky enough to use the older 2000 version of FrontPage, it might even be IE5!) That means it’s basically a perfect IE6 browser testing tool. Now why on earth you’d need to test webpages in IE6 is an entirely different question.

But if for some inexplicable and most likely utterly retarded reason you did need to build webpages to function correctly in IE6, FrontPage is an ideal testing tool. If it works in FrontPage’s preview, it’ll work in IE6.

 
Slow Down Your PC
It will come to no surprise to anyone that FrontPage, being the product of Microsoft’s Office division in the late nineties and early naughties, is a hopelessly inefficiently-coded monstrosity that will severely slow down even the most modern of PCs.

Now, you may not see this as a useful feature, but trust me it is! Whenever you need to convince your company’s IT department that your PC needs an upgrade, just run FrontPage on it and show your IT guys how horrendously slow your PC responds to even the most basic of interactions.

Your IT department will be unable to comprehend how a modern PC running only one piece of office software can behave as if it’s trying to calculate Pi to the 10 billionth decimal and simultaneously converting a thousand PSDs in to PDFs with Photoshop. The only logical conclusion is that your hardware is outdated and an upgrade is required. Voila, a brand new upgraded office PC will be all yours, courtesy of Microsoft FrontPage!

 
So there you have it, three highly convenient use cases for Microsoft’s ancient FrontPage product. Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it’s not handy to have! If you know of any other effective uses for FrontPage, please do share them with us in the comments.

Barry Adams is a seasoned SEO pro whose experience includes consulting for dozens of SMEs and in-house SEO work for two massive multinational corporations and a large regional newspaper. Currently he’s the Senior SEO guy at Pierce Communications in Belfast, where he deploys his skills in aid of some of the Emerald Isle’s biggest brands.

Its a strange use of the above idiom however I have to say it was one of the first things that came into my head having now had the ‘pleasure’ of Google’s new expanded social functionality within the new mainstream Google search results pages. One may suggest I am averse to change, however this couldn’t be further from the truth. For most SEO’s change has become part of the job description, as Google tweak, change, test to ‘give users the best experience’ – and for many of us it forms part of our wider night time activities (I know what your thinking) in terms of various affiliate and business ventures many SEO’s have behind the scenes.

Change is something in particular, SEO’s have had their fair share of over the last six months or so – and certainly the changes announced by Google yesterday are comparable to many of the earlier changes announced by Google during that period. The integration of features such as more personalised results, the integration of personalised images could have a profound effect on how users interact with their search engine.

Further more the people and pages functionality provides a greater level of detail and personalisation into my search results, as Google integrates the wisdom of the crowds into my personalised web experience.

There is one big problem with much of this most recent rollout and that is the with the degree to which personalisation is beginning to impact on the entire search experience. One can see what Google are trying to do here, and I can see the logic in doing so however much like many of their other recent tweaks and changes it comes with a degree of cynacism attached. Strange again that we see a product rolled out yet again which significantly favours Google real estate above and beyond that of many other real estate (not going to get into the subject of co-incidence, correlation etc here) but much of this does appear to favour their inventory in the search engines. Further to that, the fact much of this new advancements come as standard, and one actually has to turn this off to get a non personalised experience.

This has one significant drawback, it relies on on engaged Google+ audience to work – however in my eyes it shares many similarities to the days where Microsoft Windows defaulted to Internet Explorer as standard and where Windows came on the majority of PC’s out there. Microsoft pushing Microsoft and the similarities to those days appear to be there for all to see. Its going to be interesting to see as with Microsoft whether we see any impact from bodies like the FTC as to privacy or antitrust concerns – however certainly I would be surprised in the short term as to whether we will see anything of that scale of here (though be interesting to see how the Germans and US deal with this.)

The fact it needs Google+ to be effective could work too fold. This does feel more like a direct shot across the bows at Facebook. A real big shot aimed at stealing userbase away from the social monster that is Facebook. This could be an absolute masterstroke from Google, it could also be a significant flop and one which may have significant repurcutions. We can only wait and see on that one. With that in mind, we come back to the idiom above. Google appear to be throwing significant weight behind Google+ now – and more closely tying it into their primary commercial vehicle. However until Google really break that social vehicle and give me a reason to want to engage socially much as Facebook have done I still feel the real attraction to move away from Facebook isn’t there for one to change and as such may still leave this as underutilised. We will see…

Where I do feel Google could get real traction on this is if there was more impartiality. Twitter have already been vocal regarding their concerns on the rollout as is, and I would be surprised if we didn’t hear more from Facebook at some point. Integrating true wisdom of the crowds into such a personalised rollout would really throw credibility to this and create a more rounded perspective of peoples behaviours, likes and dislikes.

After all, my Google+ activity is certainly not a reflection on my personal character and thus this links me to possibly the biggest issue of all. The success of this personalisation is very much dependant on an all in approach. That is me making Google ‘the center of my universe’ and sharing with it all aspects of my likes and dislikes. To do that as I said before they need to break that social barrier – as otherwise it will be nothing more than what I suspect it is now…

2011 was certainly an interesting year for SEO. We saw a number of things impacting our SEO world, from the introduction of the Panda updates, to the removal of keyword data on SSL based searches. 2012 promises to be just as interesting a year, and we have already had SEO drama despite it being early days with Google appearing to fall foul of their own human assessment (call me a cynic but that smells of pure Google propoganda – however thats another post)

I asked a number of fellow SEOs about how they saw SEO in 2012, where they saw the growth areas for this year, and whether they thought 2012 would be the year of Google + – with some surprising responses.

1) 2011 saw a number of significant changes to the Google interface, as well as the continued expansion of Google into vertical specific search products. What do you think 2012 holds and what will we see the the search engines doing during this year.

Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
Looking into the future is difficult. I don’t think many people expected that many changes in 2011. But my gut feeling is that in 2012 that will only be even more. Google is moving swiftly towards a more social experience which will mean even further changes to the interface, though maybe not as major as in 2011. But tweaks, more verticals and maybe even more surprising products are without a doubt coming in 2012.

Nick Garner (Unibet)
I have a preamble to this answer….When I look at what Google is going to do I reference people like Arron Wall. He has always looked at where the money is and worked his way back from there. Essentially as I see it, there is a relationship between how far you go to monetize something and how much users will put up with the disruption and unpleasantness of their experience before they go elsewhere.
When Google ‘turn the screw’ they don’t need to shift the needle much to have a massive effect on their revenues. Things like increasingly integrating their own properties into search results, query deserves freshness where commercial sites are pushed out in favour of news sites, on ads; using a yellow background on the top of page and then making that yellow so transparent many monitors don’t even pick it up any longer, leading to more mistaken clicks than ever before, using search suggest to corral users around certain phrases and thus intensify the ad auctions…it goes on.
So what do i see for 2012? more of the same from Google, but probably a bigger emphasis on adding ,more +1 results into the SERPS, possibly even removing the yellow background on the top of the page ads and pushing the informational and commercial search results even further apart.
The problem for users is that there’s such a massive ‘brand halo’ around Google now, they can get away with poor search results because most Google users wont even try Bing. This point is brought home by the recent results from ‘Blind search taste test’ ( http://blindsearch.fejus.com/ where Bing is now the preferred search engine. But you don’t hear users complain of the rising commercial tide. So expect to see a worsening search engine for 2012.
PS Bing is now my default search engine! – because it’s better!

Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
Good question and I wish I knew – but reading into Google’s recent algorithm changes and social integration has to be highest on the agenda. For example, having trusted authors with linked Google+ profiles is likely to become a strong ranking factor for blogs and news sites, plus I’d expect to see more in the way of freshness/real-time updates as Google will be aware of the treat social search, Twitter in particularly, brings for breaking news queries or finding more trusted results from your social circle.

Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Aside from messing up the results and doing everyones head in with confounded and eratic personal search results the biggest looming change is still going to be the integration of g+ and the social profiling aspect, hence, more personal search results madness. Also, brand search will most likely become more refined and accurate as the year progresses.

I think Google will continue developing (and bloody changing) the various different results and interfaces that have been proven (like video and local) and terminate any of its less used or useful tools.

2) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing SEO’s during 2012 and why?

Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
The biggest challenge will continue to be: integration. Making sure as an SEO that everything integrates: social, search, paid, organic, but also offline. Integration will be very important. Many SEOs who do ‘on site’ work will also be working more on the rich snippet area.

Nick Garner (Unibet)
Google+1 results in the SERPS. Winning Plus1 votes is not an SEO thing, so our community will have some challenges because you can’t go to a vote seller and buy 10,000 real votes from real people who you actually might want to business with. 2nd is Google’s ever decreasing reliance on manipulable links. Lessening reliance these links = a tough time for SEO’ers who have relied on their link buyer friends and posting links on Directories/PR distribution sites. In other words the makeup of links is changing.

Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
In my opinion, although panda was a massive update for SEOs in 2011, the most significant changes in 2011 are yet to have a full impact. Most importantly, these are social integration and roll out of SSL Search – with the ICO cookie compliance directive potentially being far more harmful to analytics and the way we measure search than anything we have seen so far during the last 12 months.

Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Personal search is already causing headaches for me as its not a matter of looking at a universal result anymore and assuming that this is the most likely or natural results set a visitor will. My challange is bringing together all of these marketing channels and focusing them into a benefical seo result.

Actually, I’m begining to isolate these aspects and even on occasion ignore the seo impact altogether as it has become to difficult to translate the data. Its simply to fuzzy to accuratly guage and much better to allow elements to do “their thing”. It simply means I take a much broader view of SEO than before.

3) Will Google+ make the breakthrough in 2012?2) What do you think is the biggest challenge facing SEO’s during 2012 and why?

Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search):
Depends on how you look at it: as a Facebook competitor: no. As the ‘center’ of Google products and as how we can see everything connected through Google+: yes. But it is very important to look at Google+ as not just that next Social Network. It is so much more.

Nick Garner (Unibet)
Google have always asserted that the whole of the internet is a social graph. If they can socially ‘link up’ even a small amount of it whilst remaining THE place to go when doing a commercial search, then its a win for Google. Remember, Google know that bribing website owners with traffic from Plus1 sources means they will comply and thus be a lever for Google. As webmasters know, a facebook ‘like’ doesn’t really bring in commercial traffic. Users don’t go to Facebook to buy stuff, they go there as a brand touch/connection point. So with this in mind, Google will prevail in the end, only because it’s where the money and fresh traffic comes from. In short, it won’t be a breakthrough. It will be a gradual rising of the tide over the next 3 years.

Kevin Gibbons (SEOptimise)
They’ve clearly got a huge task ahead of them in terms of really making a mark in social. Despite stagerring user growth figures, Google+ is still a huge way behind Twitter and Facebook. Plus it hasn’t quite got that stickability factor yet that makes you want to log in and post every day.

That being said, social has been big on Google’s agenda for a long time now – and with Google+ they finally seem to be getting somewhere. At least in comparison to their previous attempts. Also with the roll out of social integration into search results (via +1 votes, author profiles etc) they’re tapping into an audience of billions so stand every chance of making a huge push next year.

Justin Parks (SEO Dojo)
Ha! I know google want it to and the signups and “users” figures are being bounced about if it suits google to announce them but im still dubious about the actual effect of google plus on the average user who google really want. Facebook still wins that battle and continues to win the war in that respect. I think g+ will continue to carve put its own little niche but, unless something particularly dramatic occurs (like FB gets destroyed by some privacy issue for example) then it will temain niche rather than mainstream.

So then, no, I dont think google plus will make its breakthrough this year. Maybe 13 will be its lucky number.

My thanks must go out to Nick Garner, Bas van den Beld, Kevin Gibbons and Justin Parks for helping out.

I’ll be honest, I do try and keep much of what I write on this site UK centric, however I came across this data from Comscore which I found particularly interesting and certainly worth covering in light of recent statistics concerning the continued ‘growth’ of Google+.

Of particular note were the following
-Google+ is only the seventh largest social network behind Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Myspace and Tumblr with around 15 Million Unique US visitors per month. The Facebook figure was almost 10 times that number.
- Google+ saw the least user engagement out of all of the main social networks with average minutes per visitor of only 5 minutes. In contrast Facebook visitors spent an average of 6.6 hours on that site (up 37% YOY) with Tumblr and Pinterest coming in behind.
- Tumblr has seen growth of around 131% in 2011. The majority of this growth has taken place post April 11 2011 and unlike Google+ much of this traffic appears to be highly engaged.

It should be noted the Comscore data does not include any data from the Google+ toolbar or its distributed network – however this would at least put some of the growth figures outlined in context of the wider industry. I would also add I would expect the UK figures to be reasonably different to those outlined above, given the greater cut through of Google throughout the UK and Western Europe.

We ran a poll for the last couple of months or so asking people in the industry about which Google product they thought would be pulled next. The poll itself was developed following the announcement of the demise of Sidewiki – and a number of options were provided including

- Google +

- Feedburner

- Picasa

- Google Reader

- Google sites and others

Nearly half of respondants voted for two of the products namely that off Feedburner and Picasa with Google + following behind however I should add a number of those votes came before the announcement of the new business features for Google+.

Agree with the poll or will we see bigger changes in the wider field?

Its nearing the end of another year, and its been an interesting one both personally and for the blog itself -and to be honest I am looking forward to 2012 with renewed vigour. We have a number of big plans for the site to move it forward and I really look forward to bringing these to fruition in Q1 next year.

So from me – Merry Christmas to everyone from myself and Holistic Search and see you in 2012.

Its amazing watching how Google is evolving their presence across the search engine landscape. Yesterday we saw Bas’ post on State of Search regarding the continuing takeover of the SERPs with Google+ results, and at the same time we saw the introduction of the Google Comparison ads across the pond on many hotel based search queries.

Source: Search Engine Land

Google’s usage of these comparison ads is nothing new, we have seen similar products roll out here in the UK for secured loans for example for a couple of years, and more recently Google have taken advantage of the ITA purchase through the rollout of the flight search functionality. There have also been examples of further seperate vertical specific rollouts such as boutique.com over the course of the 12 months, in what appears to be a wider plan to dominate vertical aggregated search as well as the main piece itself dealing often with end users rather than middle men as much of the recent acquisitions have suggested (I would suggest we are not far away from seeing similar forays into Insurance (Beat that Quote) and Real Estate at some point in the very near future.

The hotels extention is however a sort of natural progression of what they have been doing less obviously over recent months. Many people would have noticed the more prominent maps on hotel centric queries, and further to that the categorisation of many of these hotels underneath (see below).

The new comparison ads would appear to merely make this more prominent within relevant searches, offering Google valuable real estate on the page in which to further monetize applicable searches.

As I have said before, I doubt this is the least time we will see Google monetize vertical search. Whether or not advertisers beat a path to their door is open to debate however the continued strategy would appear to be here to stay

Experienced SEOs know that there’s a huge difference between what Google and its fans declare to be ‘SEO best practices’ and what actually works to get sites to rank.

For those who are still struggling to make sense of this, below I’ve outlined a few SEO myths propagated by the likes of Matt Cutts and his adoring fanbase, and compared that to the real truth of the matter.

Paid Links

Probably the greatest myth in SEO is that buying links – paying a website money to place a link to your website – is a horrendously bad SEO practice and will get your site banned from Google’s SERPs.

The truth is, of course, that paid links are a massive grey area to begin with. Paying for inclusion in an online business directory is, for all intents and purposes, a paid link. Yet you’ll never get penalised for that. Also, many newspapers give extra column space and links to big advertisers, as part of their ongoing patronage. These are essentially paid links, yet you’ll be very hard-pressed to see any site penalised for engaging in such activities.

In fact, Google is so bad at detecting and acting upon paid links, that in some cases it takes enormous mainstream media attention for them to do anything about it. The JC Penney affair was one such case, and while it resulted in a temporary penalty for the site, it didn’t last very long.

So buying links – if you’re being smart about it – is a perfectly valid and relatively low-risk linkbuilding tactic.

• Google Says: Don’t buy links.
• The Truth: paid links work and are very hard to detect.
• What you should do: if you’re in a competitive industry, go for it.

Great Content

Google has been brainwashing encouraging webmasters to produce what they vaguely define as ‘great content’ for years. In fact dare you to find a Google Webmaster video produced in the past year here Matt Cutts does not utter the words ‘great content’.

So what is this ‘great content’ they speak of? Nobody really knows. The good news is, you shouldn’t worry too much about it, because ‘great content’ is just a load of bollocks.

The truth is that Google’s ranking algorithm leans heavily on links. You don’t need great content, you just need a shedload of links to rank for any given term. Links rule Google’s SERPs, and while the big G has been trying to wean themselves off of the link juice for years, so far they’ve been thoroughly unsuccessful.

Sure, having solid content on your site helps – you’d be a fool to build your SEO strategy purely on links alone – but chasing after that ‘great content’ hullabaloo is a pretty pointless exercise. Always deliver what your visitors want, but don’t go chasing after Google’s windmills. Focus on what works.

• Google Says: Publish great content
• The Truth: Nobody knows what great content is, and it doesn’t matter that much anyway
• What you should do: Don’t skip over your on-site optimisation and do make an effort on generating good content, but don’t go chasing after it to the detriment of more effective activities. Like linkbuilding.

Cheating

Google has been trying to discourage SEO methods it considers ‘cheating’ for almost as long as it has existed. There are a lot of tactics that can be considered cheating, including (but not limited to) cloaking, doorway pages, scraping other people’s content, link networks, and more of such fun.

The truth is, those types of activities are still widely used today because – you guessed it – they still work. Search engines are getting much better at detecting these and penalising sites accordingly, but overall it’s a running battle of search engines versus smart coders. My money is on the coders, because every time Google finds a cure for a specific tactic and burns a couple of sites, the coders just move on and try new approaches.

If your goal is to build a sustainably profitable website, such cheating tactics are probably not the best approach. But if you’re not too worried about losing the occasional website and are fine with the burn & churn approach to making money online, cheating works.

(Note how I avoided using any parlance involving colours and hats. That’s deliberate, because that whole shtick is sooo 2005.)

• Google Says: Don’t cheat
• The Truth: Cheating works – albeit often temporarily
• What you should do: Don’t cheat if you’re building a long-term business. But if you’re OK with disposable websites, by all means go for it. Just don’t break the law, m’kay?

Barry Adams is a seasoned SEO pro whose experience includes consulting for dozens of SMEs, and in-house SEO work for two massive multinational corporations and a large regional newspaper. Currently he’s the Senior SEO guy at Pierce Communications in Belfast, where he deploys his skills in aid of some of the Emerald Isle’s biggest brands.

Advertising in mobile search (sometimes called mobile paid search) is similar to traditional paid search where you, the advertiser, pay when your ad is clicked.

This is where the similarities end, however, as the mobile search user is a different animal to the desktop one, especially when it comes to their intent, the keywords they use and how you can target them.

Let’s have a closer look.

1. Be brief
Perhaps it goes without saying that mobile users’ attention spans are less than the average desktop user. What this really means for you as the advertiser is that you need to keep your ad copy brief, to the point and focussed on shorter keyword groups.

The search ad networks generally have good guidance on their sites for best-practices, so it pays to read up on what they recommend.

While keeping it brief is a real challenge, you’ll still need to tell customers what they need to do to act on your offer.

2. Include your contact
Including a number (for click-to-call advertising) and either your web address or physical address is necessary because mobile users generally want to act as soon they find something they are looking for.

Google offers ‘click-to-call’ mobile ads via its AdWords network. This means that a restaurant using mobile search advertising can include a phone number for searchers to call to make dinner reservations or order take-away. The advertiser pays Google when their ad number is called.

3. Understand what keywords mobile users are more likely to use
It’s a good idea to set up and use a separate campaign for your mobile search advertising, so that you can better segment and adapt your messages.

Mobile users search with shorter queries than they do on the desktop, so using a keyword research tool such as Google’s AdWord keyword tool will help you select better keywords and keyword groups for your mobile audience. Use the ‘Advanced Options and Filters’ area to Show Ideas and Statistics for mobile devices. You can even choose to show only WAP devices, or only full-browser capable phones.

When using mobile, people also tend to consume their information quickly, so advertising products and services that require little consideration will do better than those that need longer consideration cycles. (Think downloading a ringtone vs buying a new dishwasher.)

Popular mobile categories tend to be things like sports, news, ringtones, wallpapers, local food and entertainment listings, and watching videos.

Build your keyword strategy around immediate actions: downloading something, getting a discount code, ordering a meal, or quickly buying tickets.

Bonus: Targeting options
Google and the other search engines allow you to customise your target audience, including by device type (iPhone, Android), mobile network, and even by WAP-enabled phones for those devices that aren’t smartphones. This allows you to target the kinds of products and offers you have to specific segments of your audience. If you’re an app developer, you can advertise Android apps only to the Android users.

Advertising in mobile search is a powerful way to reach out to your mobile audience segment and enables you to offer specific products or services to very specific people no matter where they are.

About the Author:
Pavel Webb is the affiliate manager at TextMagic, a bulk SMS gateway based in United Kingdom.

It would appear the evolution of the Google Serps into the conversion funnel continues unabated with recent posts suggesting Google are now trialling email subscription options within Adwords – as long as your logged into Gmail

Source: EuBlog

This in-ad subscription option allows organisations to capture an email address opt-in without the person subscribing on the site itself. A Privacy link is placed next to the ‘Subscribe to newsletter’ option to allow people to view what will happen with their data.

As far this has only been seen with the Honda ads, however one would suggest we will see more of this moving forward. Whats your thoughts good or bad?

Google have just released the ‘Evolution of Search’ video, a fascinating six minute overview of the history of Google. With excerts from Marissa Meyer, Ben Gomes and Amrit Singhal it features some of the big hitters from within Google. Whilst watching it you realise just how far Google has come in what in real terms is a very small period of time, and from very humble (by modern comparisons) beginnings has evolved into one of the most complex information retrieval systems in the world.

Where Google go moving forward is open to debate – social and mobile would certainly feature high on the list of potential target sectors – as does aggregation if recent flight news is anything to go by. However there is no doubt the evolution will continue, whether developed internally or via the acquisition of smaller entities. If organisations are to compete with Google – one has to suggest that they have a lot of work to do, not just to match the sheer innovation within Google but also the quest to further develop and grow themselves.

Right on the heels of Google Panda comes Google Freshness – an algorithm change in the search engine which Google says will make search results much fresher than before. Google claims that unlike Panda, which only affected about 12% of all search queries, Google Freshness will have an effect on over 30% of all searches, close to 35%.

After moving over from the caffeine infrastructure a year ago, Google prepared itself for a much quicker search engine algorithm change. The Google Freshness change is the embodiment of this year-long plan.

What Google Freshness means to do is to give searchers the absolute latest information possible about a queried subject. Because of the caffeine infrastructure which allows Google to index, crawl and return results incredibly fast, this current search engine algorithm can give you the latest news almost instantly, providing you with high quality pages that may only be a couple of minutes old.

Another aspect of Google Freshness is the ability of the search engine algorithm to follow events that take place on a recurring basis, like presidential and congressional elections. Currently, looking up in advance that is recurrent may give you results from a long time ago. However, with Google Freshness, you are more likely to receive the results of the most recent recurrence of the activity instead of one from 40 years ago.

This update will also give you the absolute latest when it comes to products or services as well as news. For instance, if you were looking up a certain car or the latest smart phone, you would be more likely to get information on the newest iteration of that product rather than older versions.

Under the new Google Freshness update, content that is updated much more frequently will be rewarded under the algorithm. However, some opponents of the system have raised some doubts about what this will actually mean for search results. For instance, the Google Panda update stopped many black hat techniques in their tracks such as keyword stuffing and directory listing with spam directories. There was also some backlash with Panda, with many users saying that this particular update unfairly punished how to and wiki sites. However, the positive effect of Panda on search results and search engine optimisation both far outweighed the negatives – this was pretty much universally agreed upon by consumers and producers of online content alike.

Opponents of Google Freshness see a much higher probability for backlash with no positive effect. For instance, opponents say, simply making a small change to a page can give it a “freshness” update that will unfairly boost it to the top of search engine rankings without taking into account its relevance or true popularity. This would actually lead to huge decreases in relevancy and the ability of spammers and content with less gravitas to have greater presence in search results.

Google counters these critiques by saying that it has already incorporated search ranking factors that are tried and true in with the Freshness algorithm to reward content that is both fresh and good. They say that simply changing a small aspect of the page does not make it automatically become “fresh,” as opponents of the update say that it will.

However, there is a large constituency of “fresh” content that Google has never really been able to rein in. This is all of the content on Twitter, which far and away has most of the fresh information on the Internet. Though Google+ is attempting to catch up with the amount of content that Twitter provides, Twitter is the un-equivocated leader in fresh content on the web right now. The fact remains that Google simply cannot index all of this Twitter content fast enough to incorporate it into a freshness algorithm.

Google does not deny this, but simply diverse the issue by saying that they are more focused on the microblogs than on Twitter. Google says that Twitter might be fresh, but it is not good, because you really cannot get in depth with an issue in 140 characters.

Opponents of the continued changes of the Google algorithm had yet another argument for both Panda and Freshness – that is the fact that Google is still the sole arbiter of what is fresh and good. Until search engine rankings give more credence to social media networks, that is. Personally I find this update to work in favor of quality content, the same as Panda, but of course we will see the end results after we have time to measure the impacts of this new change.

This is the first guest post from Alex Petrovic a SEO strategist for Dejan SEO Company in Australia.

Finally Google is doing what many of us said they should have done before, and opened Google+ up for commercial brands. Like many Google launches this is being phased out – however at the time of writing I was seeing the new feature live and kicking here in the UK.

Using the ‘Create a Page‘ tool, users can now create a page in one of five main categories namely:
- Local Business or Product
- Brands or Products
- Company or Organisation
- Arts, Entertainment or Sports
- Other

Details required in each setting varies from category to category with fields presented changing depending on what options you choose from above. In particular for commercial organisations, the Local and Product Brand options are likely to be of particular interest. However the lack of integration between the Local Google+ page and the actual Google Places entry is somewhat of an oversight in my opinion. Surely the time has come to revisit the entire Local framework – as this is something that is archaic, cumbersome and out of touch with everything else Google appears to be doing – but that is a different post.

That said, these Google+ local pages do include some of the functionality of the Places page.
“Local Google+ pages are unique from other categories of pages because they have features that allow customers to easily connect with that business’s physical location. For example, local pages include a map of the business’s location and feature its address, phone number, and hours of operation.” – Google Help pages

However according to Google the functional differences of the Google+ environment to that of Places, is one of the reasons things have been kept seperate. Why closer integration between the two should not have been included from the beginning is beyond me. Surely one looking for a local partner is more likely to buy into the whole feel of the brand and probably more so than a bigger brand.
“Currently, Place pages and Google+ Pages must be managed separately. A Place page provides information about a business and makes it easy for customers to find local businesses on Google Maps and local search; while a Google+ page provides business owners with additional ways to engage, build relationships and interact directly with customers.” – Search Engine Land

Its just one of the examples of a feeling of disjointedness that we have seen throughout the Google+ launch. That said, the functionality of the personal Google+ accounts is still there for Pages. Users can still share photos, videos links and conduct hangouts. Further to that, organisations are not restricted to one page, so for example company x could have one page for their company, one each for their brands, one each for any local entities and so on. There is still some usability issues with regards to +1/circles etc however one can’t help thinking much of this being factored into the overall algorithm in some form or another. Further to that much of the feedback I have had has mentioned the issue of duplication and even potential canabalisation of brand spaces. Again not all the questions appear to have been answered here and one would assume and hope any small issues are worked through and sorted out over the coming days and weeks.

One of the nicer touches – and the explanation for the removal of the +parameter recently on searches has been the launch of Direct Connect which effectively links search with that of the Google Pages. Whenever a user wants to find a brand on Google+, all they have to do is type “+” in Google Search, followed by the brand or business they want to follow. So if a user wants to follow DFS, they would simply type “+DFS” in the Google Search box. This brings up a direct link to the DFS Google+ Page that appears directly under the search box. Hitting enter after typing in “+DFS” will also take a user directly to DFS’s page. Its certainly a nice touch – and one of the better features of the new pages platform – however one needs to be warned it does need setting up first.

We have all seen Facebook taking a leap into the offline integration landscape by encouraging brands to use their Facebook environments for landing pages and the like (ie FMCG goods -Smirnoff etc). Google had a fantastic opportunity to develop this early doors – something given their existing corporate relationships that would have been far far easier to do than it would be for Facebook who are still finding their way. To me really going to town on this would have given them a fantastic environment to leverage greater personal usage of Google+. At the end of the day – why are businesses going to jump if the audience isn’t there. Again an opportunity missed in my opinion.

To conclude, Google+ is potentially a great little tool. Whether its got the social factor and likeability factor to take on Facebook is still open to debate. It certainly has issues – theres no doubting that – and as with any modern Google product it does have a ‘half finished’ feel to it. That said there is no doubting in my head its got the potential to integrate nicely with search and integrate the social functionality into an environment potential customers are used to – and it gets more exciting when one considers the products Google is working on and could bring to the table – ie Wallet, Local, Shopping etc. Its a step forward but its the start of a long journey if Google wants to get the product itself right. That said one can’t help feeling that Google are already getting a ton of value from + in terms of the understanding user behaviour etc. That itself is worth its weight in gold

Here are some thoughts from the industry:

Sam Crocker – OMD
It’s a really interesting opportunity and I think there will definitely be more that will come as a result of it. It’s potentially much better than Facebook pages as from first glance it looks like the analytics information available will be much better and more regularly available. In the long term I think this is going to have a massive impact/intersect with Google places and they way in which Google rolls this out and in the longer (still) term I think this will line up really nicely with Google products and even integrate with Google wallet. It’s a bit of a long shot but this is where I really see this going and this is ultimately where I see Google+ having a real impact on the space – I see it as more of a social marketplace and maps/reviews interaction data source as much as anything else. Still lots more playing to do though!

Ooooh and worth noting that I think along with integrating with Places they’re going to really find their stride with vouchers and location as well… watch this space!

Rishi Lakhani
The real reason why Google has removed the plus operator (http://searchengineland.com/google-sunsets-search-operator-98189) was in preparation for brand pages.

In your google plus settings https://plus.google.com/settings/plus) see this line:
“Automatically add a Google+ page to my circles if I search for + followed by the page’s name.”

So Google is going to potentially con hundred of eople into plussing sites that they never intended to.

Eds note (PY) – Google did forecast this back in late October – https://twitter.com/#!/rishil/status/128817367995252737

Dan Taylor from Moneysupermarket
Working for one of the largest brands in the UK the Google+ Pages are just another property we have to claim to protect our brand, but where Google+ differs from say Facebook is the ability for businesses to personally connect with individual users through features such as Hangouts. This means that potentially customers can get 1 to 1 facetime (no pun intended) with businesses they follow.

What this means from a business perpective is anybodys guess; will businesses have the resources to manage these relationships, and will Google+ provide the necessary return on engagement required to utilize the full feature set on Google+?

Tim Nash
Google+ Pages seem very clunky, not entirely sure how to add people to the pages circles, and with them defaulting to the wall and not the about page means information about the brand or company isn’t immediately seen. Indeed they look a little to much like a users page. So when do people expect to see Facebook style Apps for pages?

Mark Edmondson – Guava via Twitter
Google+ pages have a huge incentive by offering bypass of navigational search, avoiding aggressive brand bidding etc

Ammon Johns via Twitter
G+ Pages finally gives G+ something over Facebook. Far more bizlike than FB, yet more social than Linkedin.

Stacey Cavanagh via Twitter
It’s a bit disappointing. Facebook do it better…. No different to setting up a personal page really.

Liam Sheppard – Coast Digital – via Twitter
Disappointment. We’ve waited all this time for what is no different to the standard profile. No analytics or additional features!

Ian Miller – Crafted Media – via Twitter
Good for avoiding brand search leakage to 3rd party sites, & aggregated +1s crftd.md/uGs218. Poor as yet another platform

Tom Smith – Fast Web Media via Twitter
Direct Connect could make Google+ brand pages interesting: on.mash.to/tOPjoj …The pages really need analytics though.

For many of us in the SEO industry, SideWiki was one of those products that Google launched which was met with a mixture of wariness and excitement. Sidewiki was launched on 23 September 2009 as a browser plugin packaged with Google Toolbar. Sidewiki was Google’s attempt at web annotation, whereby users could leave feedback about a page/site and other people could then see those annotations when visiting the site. quoting Google – it allowed users to “contribute helpful information next to any webpage. Sidewiki appeared as a browser sidebar, where you could read and write entries along the side of the page.”. For those that remember it they launched the up and down arrows on the results round the same time whereby Google users could promote/demote results as they wanted – not too disimilar in thinking from the current +1 incarnation

The news of the demise of Sidewiki isn’t new – however users of the service were today advised that the service will be closing from the 5th of December to bring to an end another of those Google products that was launched to huge fanfare but delivered little – much like Wave, Real Estate Notebook and Buzz

This is not likely to be the last of Google’s products to be pulled however what do you think will be the next product that we see go the way of the dodo.

We have seen Google trialing Print Ads over in the states, however it would appear not that Google is trialling print ads in the UK. The ads which can direct users to a brand’s mobile site using its Google Goggles function already has a number of advertisers signed up including Buick, Diageo and Disney. The project is still in trial with one of the main objectives being to understand more effectively the relationship between on and offline advertising – something many organisations are increasingly monetising through Econometric modelling.

Source: NMA

The Google print ads will run with a Google Goggles logo, and when photographed via the image search function returns a link that directs browsers to the relevant product’s mobile site. If you are thinking that this sounds all a little QR code in format – you would be right with many people suggesting this may be a significant alternative to QR Codes moving forward. In my opinion with QR Codes struggling to get cut through in many situations the backing of a player such as Google behind a similar technology means that we may well see the ‘technology’ take off – but through a different format (think VHS/Betamax etc)

According to Amanda Rosenberg, Google’s business development manager for mobile, EMEA “We’re interested in where mobile’s at within the purchase funnel,” she said. “We’re testing it out in the UK right now and just seeing what the results are like.”. Ms Rosenberg went on to demonstrate print ads that can direct users to relevant product sites via a smartphone’s NFC capabilities, a function she termed as “tap to search”.

Its interesting now seeing Google starting to push the offline/online integration angle. There is no doubting the impact may offline formats have on online behaviour particularly if one looks at formats such as TV in particular. Increasingly we have seen Google trying to get more integrated with such technologies such as Google TV but this marks a significant step in the relationship between both press and online.

Sometimes I see Google make decisions which make absolutely no sense at all – and today is just one of those days. Increasingly I can’t help feeling we see Google make decisions purely on the basis of increased revenue and that is there perogative – as at the end of the day its a business, it needs to make money and at the end of the day they are not a charity.

For those that don’t know where I am coming from today, I will let you in. Google Analytics blog recently announced that from now on the SSL Search on Google.com would be become the default setting for users logged in to Google (although at present it important to highlight this would only affect a single digit percentage of users in the US according to Google however…). So what does that mean. Well quite a lot of this rolls out further afield and even more if you utilise SEO as a significant proportion of your marketing framework. Whilst at present this may not affect the vast majority of users, the likelihood of this having a significant impact is significantly magnified should other Google assets such as Google+ etc take off.

The main impact of the changes above to the use of the SSL search is that this is likely to impact many analytics systems that use the Google search string to determine search intent (ie what term a particular browser has used to enter the site) – take for example the snippet below from my Statscounter stats

The bottom result is that of a typical non SSL search. As you can see the result pulls through all the relative query and positional data. Compare that against the top result. The top one was made from the SSL search site and as you can see none of the data is retrieved as part of the result. Google Analytics responds in a similar fashion although information such as source is still able to be accessed. However browsers who have entered the site from the SSL search site will not return query data. This however will only affect organic search traffic and NOT PPC data which remains unaffected (surprise surprise).

What bugs me about the announcement that they are not passing search query data in SSL searches – no to a certain degree I can go with that, what does bug me is that this affects ALL users logged into accounts (well US at the moment but I am fairly confident that this will spread further afield. This isn’t something you can choose – to protect those unscrupulous advertisers who want to know your every move – no its something Google dictates you do (a so called opt out rather than opt in). For Google to hide behind this is to protect users feels a bit of a cheap shot as lets face it, this is significantly going to fly in the face of many SEO’s particularly those I would suggest who are likely to be providing a more professional SEO service by utilising data such as organic query data to determine the impact of their organic search data.

For the life of me I cannot understand why Google would do this whilst at the same time encouraging take up of its new products such as Google+. Certainly greater revenues are an obvious one as this does not affect PPC data which in itself is ironic as I have lost count of the number of agency accounts I have come across where the PPC data is not correctly tagged up and is only tagged up so they can differentiate from organic data. To be honest the fact that its perfectly acceptable for PPC data to be tracked in the same circumstance that Google says it cannot pass organic data through for ”privacy purposes” would suggest again this privacy is the least of their concerns. “You can have the data – as long as you pay us” would appear to be the rhetoric here. Further to this – If Google are so worried about privacy how come are they so keen on retargeting and social profiling? Doesnt sit right with me

So who is this likely to affect.

Well SEO’s obviously.
For the meantime, many will remain unaffected but their is a good chance we will see this rolled out further and to be honest that is when this becomes a real issue. Good SEO’s track the success of a campaign by the impact it has. Driving an SEO campaign without keyword data is a bit like sailing a ship without a map. What it is likely to do is impact on a number of levels

• Make rankings and share of voice much more important
• Bring about the opportunity for ‘smoke and mirror’ SEO’s to take advance of the ‘unknown’. Many of us have worked hard to try and clean up the industry and I can’t help thinking this is a big step back
• Some data is still available from Google Webmaster Tools however this obviously isnt in a format where advertisers/online marketing managers can get an aggregated view of all channels in a granular format.

Analytics & CRO

To me this is where we may see an even bigger impact than we see in SEO. With Google potentially looking at removing query data from referrals we are in a position where people may not be able to understand where their traffic is coming from. I can’t help thinking this is the sole reason many organisations actually use their analytics as lets face it organisations are more likely to use Adwords itself or Doubleclick/Atlas etc if they are tracking their PPC campaigns.

Whilst Google are good enough to provide the fact is organic, granular data is best and to me it just feels like Google haven’t thought through this properly unless we are to see future developments but given this is supposedly privacy based I can’t help thinking thats the case. Further to that should they choose to let Google Analytics understand the SSL strings would open them up to further antitrust action something I don’t think Google will be keen on.

PPC

Well the obvious impact is likely to be the migration of big budget SEO campaigns to PPC as advertisers look at migrating spends to channels where they can understand where each penny is being spent. This would likely have a further knock on effect as demand would likely increase CPC and further increase revenues. Not a bad idea when you look at it from this perspective – not that I am suggesting this may be in any way associated with this decision.

My conclusion

One thing is for sure. Its going to be an interesting time. It only affects a small number of users in the US and in the UK we are currently unaffected, however I for one will be watching this very closely over the coming weeks. Like I said I can understand why they are looking to move to a more secure framework – its just the fact they differentiate paid and organic data in such a way that doesn’t sit right with me.

Other reading
Google To Begin Encrypting Searches & Outbound Clicks By Default With SSL Search – (Highly recommended read) – http://searchengineland.com/google-to-begin-encrypting-searches-outbound-clicks-by-default-97435
Now We Will Need To Pay To See Keyword Referrer Data? – http://www.hobo-web.co.uk/now-we-will-need-to-pay-to-see-keyword-referrer-data/
SEO Under Attack – The Google Analytics Keyword Data Apocalypse – http://bit.ly/nx7clX

On a search round the sofa landscape (for Cousins Furniture) I noticed an interesting new layout for ‘localised’/brand results, which is quite different from many of the recent tests I have seen Google have undertake recently

The revised result has a number of interesting features
- Wider right hand column which includes a more prominent map
- Image results relating to the Local Result
- Local information such as store opening times etc for the result.
- I understand from Karate Barbie that the ability to upload up to 10 photos now via Local results

This isn’t something I have previously seen in the wild, however its one I personally actually like a hell of a lot for a couple of reasons
- Brand protection – Whilst this doesn’t stop competitors/brand detractors from potentially canabalising brand it does mean that the first result is that bit more focal. That said the overriding feature of the page is the Google Local result which again draws one into the Google inventory rather than potentially into the site.
- It does draw attention to the first result – and as a result is likely to result in a far higher CTR for that result. As a result one would think this could be a real honeytrap for click through

Firstly have their been other sightings in the wild – and what are your thoughts on the new layout????

I remember Google Analytics back in the days when it was still Urchin – which in the day was a paid analytics package. When Google purchased it back in 2005, Google released it as a free package, which it pretty much has been ever since developing into one of the worlds leading analytics packages.

Google Analytics has always been a reasonably good analytics package, and increasingly many of its newer features have brought it more into line with more Enterprise level tools such as Omniture and Webtrends. However it has struggled in certain areas and i particular in terms of reporting depth. attribution modelling and support.

Interestingly, Google have as of the 29th September launched Google Analytics Premium, which will allow more advanced tools, dedicated support and probably as importantly SLA guarantees in terms of data collection, reporting and processing.

The benefits of the Premium product are as follows

Processing Power
Guaranteed processing for up to 1 billion hits per month (vs. the 10 million a month for standard accounts). This applies to a single business or enterprise, but can include multiple web properties. In other words, if a company owns several sites, but the combined volume is under the 1 billion limit, all can be part of one premium instance, but if each site may reach the 1 billion limit separately, then the company would need to pay separately for each site.

• Faster, intra-day processing
• Service Level Agreement around data collection, reporting, and processing
• 99.9% on Collection up-time
• 99% on Reporting up-time
• 98% on on-time Data Freshness (within 4 hours)

Advanced Analysis Tools

• Up to 50 Custom Variable slots (the standard version provides 5)
• Unsampled report downloads for custom report requests
• Unaggregated report downloads for large report requests (up to 1 million rows per download)

Dedicated Support

• Dedicated Account Management
• Phone & Email support 10 hours per day, 5 days per week (relevant to the time zone in which the contract was signed)
• Implementation Consultation & Tagging Audit
• Live & Webinar Training
• 24/7 Product Emergency Escalation Support, if the product is ever outside of the SLA

Google Analytics Premium is as the name suggests not a free product any more. It is available for a fixed annual fee in the US, Canada and the UK with Conversion Works, iSpy Marketing and iVantage, as well as through Google themselves. Prices varies per region and will be as follows: $150,000 USD (US), $150,000 CAN (Canada), or GBP 90,000 (UK) per year (billed in monthly increments)., certainly taking it well beyond many of the already existing enterprise solutions

A while back I was approached by Nicky Wake from Dont Panic – who has helped us develop Sascon into one of the leading UK search conferences – about developing an awards ceremony for search celebrating all that is good about the UK search industry. The feedback for the first UK Search Awards has been unbelievable – all culminating in the awards ceremony on the 3rd November 2011 at the Emirates Stadium in London and following weeks of feedback from all the judges involved are now at the final shortlist stage

The judges include Bas Van Den Beld (State of Search), Nick Garner (Unibet), Richard Gregory (Latitude), Jon Myers (Yahoo), Judith Lewis (Beyond), Philip Miles (Google) and Dave Coplin (Microsoft) – to name a few and have been generously supported by Manual Link Building and SEMPO.

The final shortlists were as follows

Best SEO Campaign
Recognition of a campaign that has achieved outstanding results in search engines in natural, free or organic listings

Fast Web Media – Bravissimo
Guava / talkSPORT – Re-tuning online identity to deliver natural search success
Just Search / Euro Car Parts – Best SEO campaign for increasing online sale
Koozai – Payday Power Organic Search (SEO)
Met Office – Met Office Events Calendar
Tecmark – Icelolly.com Search Campaign
Upstream Connections / eHarmony UK – Finding love online
Verve Search – SEO services for Yale Door

Best PPC Campaign
Recognition of a campaign that has achieved outstanding results through PPC advertising

Adido – Overhaul of PPC campaign for Postgoldforcash.com for second quarter 2011
Fuse8 / Persimmon Homes – Intelligent Internet Landing Pages with Brains
iProspect – AA Travel Insurance Restructure Back to the basics
Just-Eat.co.uk – Supply and Coverage campaigns
Lakestar Media – A successful PPC campaign for Parcel2Go
LBi/bigmouthmedia – PPC campaign tastes good for Tastecard
Steak – Debenhams Christmas Spectacular
Tecmark – Sunsave PPC Campaign

Best Integrated Campaign
Recognition of a campaign that has achieved outstanding results through an integrated campaign using a variety of both online and offline activity

Auto Trader – Automotive Search Excellence
Fast Web Media – Coors Light – Closest To Cold
LBi/bigmouthmedia – integrated campaign is spot on for Redspottedhanky.com
Tecmark – 8Ball.co.uk Internet Marketing Campaign

Best Local Campaign
Recognition of a campaign based around a specific geographical location that has delivered outstanding results or visibility in search engines

Adido – The Colbornes Group Dominance of Google Locally
Branded3 – LA Fitness SEO, Google local and PPC
SEOtastic – Estate Agent Dominates City

Best Mobile Campaign
Recognition of a campaign that has successfully enhanced the visibility of a website or web page in mobile search engines

Found / Autoglass – Smashing the Glass Repair Market on Mobile

Best use of Search – Retail
Recognition of a campaign that has successfully enhanced the visibility of a website or web page in the retail sector

Blueclaw – A hole in One SEO Strategy for Direct Golf UK
Fast Web Media – Bravissimo
Found / Red Letter Days – Driving a Unique Experience
Interflora / Branded 3 – Interflora’s Retail Search Strategy
Mediaworks Online Marketing – Leisure Lakes Bikes
Receptional – Putting Vertbaudet First
Tecmark – Fawkes Cycles Campaign
theMediaFlow – BathEmpire Organic Search Campaign

Best use of Search – Finance
Recognition of a campaign that has successfully enhanced the visibility of a website or web page in the finance sector

Greenlight / Santander – How to launch a high street Financial Services brand
Koozai – Payday Power Organic Search (SEO)
MoneySupermarket.com / Branded3 – Financial SEO

Best use of Search – Travel
Recognition of a campaign that has successfully enhanced the visibility of a website or web page in the travel sector

Branded3 – SpaBreaks.com SEO
Further Search Marketing – Richardsons Boating Holidays; Book Direct
Real Web SEO – Experience Nottinghamshire Tourism Campaign
SEOptimise – SEOptimise for Audley Travel
Stickyeyes / SkiHorizon – Multilingual site development
Tecmark – Icelolly.com Search Campaign

Best use of Search – Leisure
Recognition of a campaign that has successfully enhanced the visibility of a website or web page in the leisure sector

Branded3 – SEO Campaign for LA Fitness
Further Search Marketing – Richardson Boating Holidays; Book Direct
Guava / talkSPORT – Re-tuning online identity to deliver natural search success
Real Web SEO – Experience Nottinghamshire Tourism Campaign

Best Blog
Recognition of an outstanding industry blog

Branded3 – Blogstorm
SEOptimise – Search Marketing & SEO Blog
Tecmark – 8ball.co.uk Blog

Innovation
Recognition of search innovation in the development or use of a campaign or platform

Branded3 – Competwition.com
Stickyeyes – Stickyeyes Search Dashboard

Best PPC Management Software
Recognition of the development of an outstanding management software package that successfully manages and enhances pay per click marketing campaigns

The shortlist for this category will be announced soon

Best SEO Software
Recognition of the development of an outstanding software tool that successfully manages and enhances an organisations search engine optimization efforts

Analytics SEO – Analytics SEO Software
Majestic SEO / Receptional – Majestic SEOs Site Explorer
Screaming Frog – SEO Spider Tool
Wordtracker – Wordtracker Strategizer

Best Agency
Recognition of an outstanding agency that demonstrates consistently great understanding and use of search and / or PPC

Branded3
Fast Web Media
LBi/bigmouthmedia
Mediaworks Online Marketing
SEOptimise
Tecmark
White Hat Media

Best Client Side Team
Recognition of an outstanding in-house team or practitioner that demonstrates consistently great understanding and use of search

Auto Trader
Just-Eat.co.uk
Met Office

Search Personality of the Year
Recognition of a talented and inspiring practitioner who has revolutionized the UK search industry
The winner of this category will be announced on the evening of 3 November at The Emirates Stadium, London

To find out more about the awards, please go to www.searchawards.co.uk

With the recent ruling from the Court of Justice of the European Union on the Inteflora/Marks & Spencers case regarding trademark usage and its direct impact on Paid Search, we are interested to know whether you think brands should be allowed to bid on competitor brand searches.

With many organisations using competitor bidding as a big part of their online acquisition strategies there is no doubting the potential impact this could have – however one may argue this could work two fold and in many cases may help larger organisations more than smaller ones.

In a landmark case for online trademarking, Interflora’s long running battle with Marks and Spencers appears to be over. The ruling – from the Court of Justice of the European Union – may enable brand holders across Europe have far greater control over where, when and how their trademark is used online.

This judgement appears to be for more encompassing than previous rulings. In particular instances where competitor using a keyword identical to the trade mark in relation to identical goods or services which has an adverse effect on the investment in the trade mark where that use substantially interferes with the brand’s reputation and its ability to attract and retain consumers will all come under the remit of the new ruling

In addition to competitors using ‘competitor bidding’ as part of their PPC strategies may also come under the new restrictions, something Interflora and other global brands have been arguing for many years. This obviously would appear to be more akin to the previous trademark regulations for Adwords prior to the changes around a year ago and could mean realistically mean a considerable dent to the Google coffers depending on how this works its way though the system.

Many potential changes will not come into force immediately – and it is still up to the UK courts to ratify –  however it is certainly a huge ruling for Inteflora and an even bigger one for Google. The net effect may also be felt in terms of the budgets many organisations use to protect their brands and sales from competitor activity again significantly impacting on the required budgets required to dominate brand searches.

Current regulation only restricts the use of a keyword within paid search copy – whereas the new ruling may affect the usage of the ads fullstop – though any knock on effects are still to be confirmed. This one feels is a massive step forward for brands, bringing the online space much more into line with that of many other channels. How Google and the other search engines will react to this will be interesting to watch – however I would stop short of saying we will see rival ads banned at this stage from Adwords – however there will certainly be more stringent regulation thereof. That said, certain commentators in the industry suggest we may see the end of brand bidding.

That said I do feel it is going to mean PPC managers will have to be very careful about what and how they develop the creative for their paid search ads with the following particular considerations in mind

1. Ads must not cause reputational damage to the owner of the trademark, nor to the trademark itself. For example denoting an issue with quality or the like would lead particularly go against the ruling

2. Ads must not make it difficult for internet users to determine who is selling the advertised goods or services. Should an organisation imply its part of an organisation for example when its not then this ruling would cover that

3. Ads must not take “unfair advantage of the distinctive character or repute of that trademark”, nor should they damage or dilute the character or repute (for example by turning the trademark into a generic term).

Update: Whose the winner in this

Well personally I think we still have to see. There is a lot of mixed thoughts on this at present. Inteflora appear to have taken this as a win, whereas there are others out there including Dan Barker and Chris Lake from Econsultancy who think otherwise. As highlighted above there are obvious areas where the ruling will impact in the short term however in my opinion this may spark the Brand Bidding debate to the fore once again.

At present lets face it, the only winner from brand bidding at present are typically Google. Competitor based bidding as a whole is typically low conversion (although there are exceptions to the rule – and this does vary from competitor to competitor) however at the end of the day Google have a vested interest in allowing people to bid on competitors even if a trademark is in place (with the obvious restrictions in terms of ad creative)

Many large organisations are against the idea of brand bidding as in a nutshell it does often benefit those lower down the food chain and affiliates rather than the larger organisations – and in my opinion goes against what Google appear to be trying to do with SEO. For example, we see a lot in SEO circles about developing your brand and brands coming more to the fore through organic results – however the net result is those smaller organisations having to utilise a higher % of PPC as part of the overall online marcoms. It is because of this I can’t help feeling the conversation will need to be had again at some point in the future – however – that time is not now. I personally believe we may see some revisions to the existing Google regulations however not to the extent of the removal of brand competitor bidding – and that timescale is still a way off.

For those interested below is the ruling from the Courts of Justice

1.      Article 5(1)(a) of First Council Directive 89/104/EEC of 21 December 1988 to approximate the laws of the Member States relating to trade marks and Article 9(1)(a) of Council Regulation (EC) No 40/94 of 20 December 1993 on the Community trade mark 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.

2.      Article 5(2) of Directive 89/104 and Article 9(1)(c) of Regulation No 40/94 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.

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.
Source: Europa.eu

Further Reading:
E-Consultancy – Brand bidding on Adwords is ok, rules EU in Interflora vs M&S case
Blogstorm – European Court rules in favour of Interflora – an end to brand bidding?