For some time now the issue of net neutrality has been a thorn in Google’s side. Back in February Google was pulled up by the European Commission over allegations that Google used it’s algorithm for its own benefit to reduce the search engine result success of what it considered competitors. Now Google has problems to contend with once again as they face a new US competition enquiry.

For the first time US regulators have pulled up Google for a review of its potentially anti-competitive nature. Anti-competitive legislation is a long-standing process for governments and national/international commissions in ensuring that the most successful businesses do not use negative or immoral tactics to stifle their markets competition. This extends from chewing gum to broadcasting channels, and Google’s market leading search engine is no exception.

With a search engine market share in the region of 80%, Google certainly has the capability to stifle the success of businesses through its SERP’s and advertising streams.

This is in-part why the issue has been raised by several companies including Microsoft, but more importantly also by three companies which took exception to the results which Google turned out for their websites. Of the three firms – myTrigger, SourceTool/TradeComet and Foundem – two are US based so it is surprising that only now is the issue being brought to light.

On Friday, Google announced the proceedings via their Public Policy Blog with Google Deputy General Counsel, Don Harrison stating:

“The important thing to remember is that we built Google to provide the most useful, relevant search results and ads for users. In other words, our focus is on users, not websites. Given that not every website can be at the top of the results, or even appear on the first page of our results, it’s unsurprising that some less relevant, lower-quality websites will be unhappy with their ranking.”

Google are building quite a portfolio over issues with net neutrality, legitimate business practices with the previous European hearing and problems with the FCC over their joint vision with Verison of future net neutrality.

However, in contrast with other anti-competition cases Google’s is fairly unique. The nature and required secrecy of their algorithm makes it very difficult for them to share the details of how they rank firms without sacrificing the integrity of their results. In the short term it is unlikely that anything will be decided, but what is likely is that such legal proceedings – frivolous or justified – will continue to reoccur.

As is the way with Google, they’re certainly not likely to take on any new lackadaisical mantra. Their maxim of ‘be good’ often times would be more suited to being ‘look at the funky new features we’ve added yet again’. Not quite as catchy or utopian, but it would make the point that Google seem to spout out new features like they’re rolling off an assembly line.

AdWords is the epitome of a golden goose for Google as it practically funds their organisation, from new product developments to keeping Matt Cutts fed and watered. As a result there’s is no shortage of time at Google HQ for AdWords development. This week Google released the new ‘analyse competition’ tool which, surprise surprise, lets you analyse competitors. Like a voyeur you can peak at your competitors clicks, CTR, etc. to your hearts seedy content. ‘Just look at those impressions.’ ‘Yeah show me those average positions.’  …sorry where were we.

Gmail got a little addition itself with the new priority inbox feature. Not the same as a spam filter, it lets you put your ever expanding inbox in the order of importance so that the vital stuff gets done first.

Google also turned their attention to the Chrome browser as they highlighted future developments that’ll make browsing even faster and better by utilising your graphics processor. Faster better browsing for everyone then. Good Stuff. Of course Microsoft had also chimed in as they look towards hardware accelerated graphics for future versions of Internet Explorer.

And once again, we wouldn’t be able to round off the week without another instalment of Matt Cutts’ Webmaster videos. Google saw fit to let Matt out of their storage cupboard once again to dispense some SEO know-how and feed on the flesh of the living, before returning to his deep slumber to rise when the moon basks in the blood of a thousand lost souls. So sayeth the Book of Google. This week Matt looks at Pagerank for photography sites, domain history issues and talks future laser vision.

As a last note for the week, we’ve done some work of our own to help out all those budding bloggers and link builders out there. Find out some of the cool things you can do with your blog content from humorous ranting to good old fashioned industry know how. All it takes is a bit of ingenuity and reasonable grasp of language. Hence the lack of blogs out of Glasgow. Also check out our guide on the good and bad methods of link building. Go with the bad ones and Google will give you about as much consideration as Andy Dufresne at a parole hearing.

Cast your mind back to May 2009 (ah it was a simpler time, halcyon days, etc.) to when Google first announced its introduction of Rich Snippets to allow search listings to not just return page results but also pepper them with additional information.

Well Google has now announced some improvements to the way it handles its support for features such as Breadcrumbs and Events in SERP listings:

Rich Snippet Testing Tool Improvements

The testing tool will now provide more feedback to webmasters trying to jiggle their microdata into a working state. So Google suggests that if you had problems getting your snippets to be sufficiently rich in the past, you could try again now and hopefully receive more useful feedback on any errors.

Breadcrumbs

Google has been adding the useful Breadcrumbs links to the bottom of some sites ranking entries for a while now, but it has been all been reliant on Google actually spotting the hierarchical structure of your site. Now however Google has announced support for a Breadcrumbs markup format that will allow webmasters to unambiguously identify their sites structure.

Events

Arguably of less widespread appeal than the Breadcrumbs, but the ability to display upcoming events in the snippets is also useful (you can see an example part way down the page when searching for ‘live music london’). Google has announced that they will now show additional information for single event listing as well – details can be found in Webmaster Central help.

More information can be found on the Webmaster Central Blog and in the Rich Snippets documentation in Webmaster Central help.

It’s time once again to bathe in the warm nourishing waters of webmaster videos. So lie back, relax and let the warm informational waters wash your web worries away..

Domain History and SEO

Click here to view the embedded video.

This is often an issue that people are unaware of. Its obviously less of an issue for companies who are using a domain with their name in – it’s a lot less likely to have been used before. Spending a short amount of time determining whether your URL was previously owned may save you a lot of wasted time, effort and heartbreak in the future.

You could think of it as buying a car. If you know the car was previously used then you want to look for signs of abuse or neglect – how do the tyres look? Has it been serviced properly? Etc. A similar mindset should be applied to buying a domain.

Photography Sites and PageRank

Click here to view the embedded video.

In addition to the points mentioned in the video, its worth also mentioning that the comments that you allow to be added to your images will also provide unique content for your page. You are effectively getting your site visitors not only to tag your images with descriptive words but also help in general SEO terms by adding unique content.

Although links to your site from photo-sharing resources like flickr tend to be nofollow’d, actually getting those users to your site and leave comments mean that time spent building those links could actually help your SEO in the long term. Nofollow doesn’t have to mean ‘useless’!

The Matt Cutts / Google 5 Year Plan

Click here to view the embedded video.

So Google Goggles might be replaced with Google Eye Lasers at some point? I’m not quite sure how I feel about that!

The emphasis on security is certainly warranted, though you have to wonder about the demographics of people watching webmaster videos – it might just be preaching to the converted. We have looked at website protection issues before (recently we posted some WordPress security tips) and will continue to bring you news from the security front-lines. Stay tuned!

Anyone with even the most fleeting interest in SEO knows that link building is a big deal for building your sites strength and reputation. The thing about link building is that the sites which are more popular and higher ranking already, find it far easier to get linked to. So what does the little guy do? Luckily there are plenty of ways to get creative with link building and with the right kind of attitude and a creative mind, you can go a long way.

Of course there are some methods which are better that others and some that are practically a waste of time, so unless you have unlimited resources and time for your link-building strategy, I’d suggest that you prioritise your link-building plans.

Get Social

Not so long ago the social scene was a nothing realm for SEO. However, with the exponential growth of social networking sites on the web, there was eventually no choice but to sit up and take notice. The fact of the matter is though that specifically, social media has little direct effect on SEO. Twitter links for instance are no-followed.

However, it’s all down to how SEO’s evolve to take advantage of this new realm of online interaction. And that’s exactly what it is, interaction. Having good content is great but it only has any real value when there are eyes on it. As such, getting your content and your name out in online social circles will allow you to build a reputation for your business which will eventually filter through inspiring others to link to like or tweet your content, thus giving your online brand awareness a boost. While Twitter links give you no strength, the increased brand awareness will give you a greater chance of inheriting links elsewhere.

Try creating accounts with some quality and some niche social media/bookmarking websites. Sites such as Facebook and Twitter are the obvious choices as they have the largest numbers of subscribers and therefore the largest market for you to promote yourself. Bookmarking sites such as Digg and Reddit are another great avenue for promoting content from your blog.

One important point about social interaction is that it requires quite a bit of time and devotion. You’ll find that you inspire more views and links if you take the time to post regularly and not just link to content. Interaction will build the strength of your profiles and give your content more weight in the eye’s of other users.

Getting the Wallet Out

If you have the budget available for it, then a little monetary grease can certainly get the wheels in motion. By having a budget to put towards building links you can bypass much of the work required for other methods.

While paying for such things as links and reviews might seem a bit like cheating, you still have to ensure that you’ve put yourself in a position for these to be of value. Paying for links through some kind of link providing service is all well and good if it goes right, but a vast number of links from unrelated page rank ‘zero’ sites isn’t going to build you much strength.

Sponsored links can be very useful if you find the right site but you need to be sure of a couple of things. Firstly, make sure that the site you are attempting to get a link from has a reasonable page rank and is relevant to your industry. The more relevant the link the more strength it will provide your site. Secondly, ensure that any link you pay for is followed. ‘No follow’, means no strength, meaning your basically being ripped off.

Paid reviews are an interesting option as they provide something a little more comprehensive than a basic link. You can often barter with a site owner over the cost of a review for your site or perhaps reviewing some content or an article on your site. Just be sure that you are approaching the right person. Ensure that their site and particularly where they’re publishing the review have good strength. They might have a strong site, but publishing your review in the dark recesses of their architecture will give it less strength and make it harder to find.

Be Creative

Creativity is the holy grail of link building as it is inspired content and ideas that will get people linking to you naturally. This is known as link bait. So in a somewhat ironic effort, I’m going to tell you how to be creative.

First and foremost comes good quality content. Google and Matt Cutts are so often spouting about how crucial good content is, whether it is on an ecommerce site, an information site, a regular post on a websites blog or an article for distribution. As such, make sure that you create something which people are going to want to link to. You should ensure that you’re up to date on all facets of your industry, that way you can give some useful and up to the minute insight, as well as some informed opinions. For more info, see our post on creating great blog content.

If you run an ecommerce site, holding a contest should be easier as you will have prizes readily available to you. Remember to be creative with your competition. Don’t just ask entrants to submit a form. That’s boring. Ask them to write an article on a funny or interesting topic in your industry. If you run a t shirt or clothes site, ask them to submit a design.

Be sure to advertise the competition well by using ads on your site, writing a blog and submitting to social sites. If you have a reasonable Twitter or Facebook following you will be able to instantly engage with a large number of people.

In terms of prizes try to come up with something original. If you run a site that sells custom design clothes, get a graphic designer to come up with a uniquely designed t shirt or outfit to be offered as the prize.

If you have some coding skill, why not create a custom blog theme or wordpress plug-in that can be downloaded from your site for free? Everybody loves something for free. You can apply a required link back to your site from within the theme or a requested link or article for using the plug-in.

On the far corner of creativity is viral advertising. With YouTube such a vast platform for viral videos, there is great potential available for the unusual, the funny and the downright bizarre. If you have your own YouTube channel it’s worth coming up with a few creative ideas.

Alternatively you can create videos for use on your site such as how-to’s. Not viral but useful.

Get Around

Aside from internal work, look into other areas and other websites for potential linking. That is after all where your good links will come from.

Guest posts are a great way to create useful content that can instantly give your site strength. If you have good experience writing for your own blog, there are plenty of sites out there which regularly host guest blogs. Find a site with good page rank that hosts guest articles based on your industry and check to see the page rank of the pages where articles have been published previously. Also ensure that they provide backlinks as part of the post or in the author bio and that they are not ‘no-followed’. Then find a way to approach them about writing a guest article.

Don’t just send a quick email saying you’d like to do it. Take some time to become familiar with their site and provide some ideas of potential articles you could write while introducing yourself in an email. A little more tact and insight shown will give you a far greater chance of a response.

Link Exchanges are another alternative but there is some debate over whether reciprocal links still carry much weight. Despite this, I believe it is still an area worth pursuing as even without much strength it is still a link back to your site that can potentially be clicked. A variation of reciprocal linking is to use a third site to provide the back link in a kind of linking three-way. This way the link to your first site won’t lose value as a basic swap.

Extras

There are several other common methods of link building which have less assured value. Linking out basically means providing links to relevant sites in the hope that they’ll track your link and keep your site in mind based on the apparent respect you have for their site. Wishful thinking.

Another idea is to create mini-blogs linked to your main site. I wouldn’t necessarily say this is a good idea as it basically constitutes link farming. If you have secondary blog already then by all means link back to your first site. The fact is however, if it is based on the same domain or IP search engines will most likely devalue your link. Also, several blogs thrown together for this purpose aren’t going to have much if any strength to pass on unless you spend a substantial amount of time working on them. I suggest dedicating more time to your primary blog and forgetting about this.

Last comes directory submissions and forum posts. Posting to forums can be useful in promoting yourself or your business as long as it is an industry related forum and you post regularly. However in terms of link building you might find yourself getting kicked off for being too blasé and the vast majority of forums ‘no-follow’ anyway. The same usually applies to commenting. Submitting to directories is vastly time consuming and there is never any guarantee of acceptance with little strength gained. These directories have countless links so any page strength gained could be split between 100’s of sites. Try spending your time more usefully be locating niche directories for your target industry and posting there. These are likely to have less links per page and the relevance will certainly help.

Social Networking image by jscreationzs and Bulb, 3D Chain and Business Graph images by Renjith Krishnan all courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

If you are like me then you probably get a tonne of email, and unsurprisingly it’s not all useful. Not just spam, but also legitimate advertising from companies you actually deal with. Unfortunately, with this volume of text arriving in your inbox every day it can become a job in itself just to decide what you want to actually read. It’s possible in many mail clients to set up a filtering system to colour or divert mail to individual folders, but that can also be a laborious and fiddly task.

Well it seems that the web mail masters at Mountain View have been working on an automated service to help users deal with the daily deluge of mail. New to Gmail is the Priority Inbox, a system that will sort your emails based on their importance to you.

Priority Inbox will automatically sort your incoming emails into a number of pre-defined (but editable) categories – Important and Unread, Starred and Everything Else. Based on a number of indicators such as emails from people you send messages too often, or other mails that you normally open and read, Priority Inbox will continue to learn and improve its filtering based on your actions. You can even speed up this process by using the + and – buttons to raise a messages importance.

It’s a neat system that could do with a slightly whimsical video explanation, luckily Google thought of that as well…

Click here to view the embedded video.

Gmail Priority Inbox is currently in Beta and will be rolled out this week. More information can be found on the Google Enterprise Blog and Priority Inbox homepage.

Anyone can write content for a blog, but in order to make your blog the central hub for your industries know-how you need to come up with something a bit special. A blog has to be informative and captivating and this isn’t something which comes naturally to everyone. This article looks at the various different directions in which you can take your blog and how to make a success of it.

News Blogs

The basic blog setup for any budding would be journalist. Everyone wants to catch the latest scoop and this can be a bit difficult if you’re not a journalist for a major tabloid. What is critical here is that you know your industry. Whether it’s search engine optimisation, sport or politics, people interested in that industry will pick up pretty quickly if you don’t know what you’re talking about. As such, with news blogs it’s vital to stay up to date with any developments and post regularly. The only thing worse than being late to a story, is missing it completely. On a final note, try to remain as impartial as possible. Professional journalists don’t let personal opinion cloud the quality of a news story and neither should you.

Opinion Blogs

On the other side of the coin is the opinion blog. Here you can feel free to voice your opinion on the type of topic that your blog covers. This type of blog is most likely to spark debate so make sure that you have a comments section available. Just be sure to have a filter in place for the comments as controversy is never too far away. One common problem with opinion blogs is that they fail to keep themselves in check. You’ll find you develop your own unique style of writing, but be sure that in doing so you don’t become preachy or offensive. This is one sure-fire way to put people off.

Funny Blogs

The key to a funny blog is actually being funny. Once again the style and content will very much depend on your area of interest. You could end up with a bit of witty political satire or even a bizarre parody of recent news stories. Whichever way you take it is up to you, the important thing is to be creative and keep the content fresh and original. If you start to feel like your articles are getting tired and uncreative then perhaps it’s time for a change.

Industry Blogs

This is a very common form of blog as it is easier to be vague about the limits of your content and it allows you to keep the potential options for your posts open. This is a fairly common thing for an online business to provide as it allows them to showcase their skill and knowledge within their industry. This is all the more reason for you to be one step ahead by providing the most comprehensive and high quality content available. It is often the case that online businesses begin to neglect their blog due to a lack of time or understanding of the importance of their blog. As a result you can boost your appeal and strength by posting regularly with unique insights and developments.

Help and How-To Blogs

This is a pretty useful type blog, in that, in many cases people come across blogs because they are trying to find help with something. People commonly make searches for things like “what is SEO?” OR “how to cook beef wellington?” The unfortunate flip side of this for you is that many of these questions have already been answered countless times already. Answers that are too general are unlikely to be picked up over long running posts and as such it’s important to come up with something truly original but helpful. If you go too obscure no one will be searching for that answer. Use your industry know-how as the jumping-off point. Think of common questions asked often in your industry and expand on them.

Once you start to build a portfolio you’ll find it easier to pick out the areas of interest. Once again ensure that you provide a comments section so that people can ask for further clarification. Responding to visitor queries will provide invaluable interaction with your users and allow you to build your profile and respectability in your industry.

Cartoons and Comic Strips

One of the more unusual areas of blog content creation requires some artistic skills, whether it be in Photoshop or just hand drawn images scanned onto the computer. These can also be sent as weekly emails to subscribers, showing the lighter side of your blog while also keeping people engaged. Whether your area of expertise is political opinions or website design there will always be an abundance of news or topics available for humorous satire or parody.

Conclusion

No matter where your expertise lies, you should always be able to come up with something unique and interesting as long as you are passionate about it. The most important aspect of creating and maintaining a blog is being invested in it and once the passion is gone you may want to start considering a change so that it doesn’t become stale. Another important fact is that you don’t have to be a professional to develop a great blog. Some of the most successful blogs where created by people who just wanted to have their say online and happened to have a great understanding of their medium.

If you want to take a blog forward then there are three key areas to consider. Passion, Understanding and Relevance. If you don’t care about the subject people will notice; if you don’t understand the subject people will definitely notice and if the subject isn’t relevant, people won’t care for it. For information on the benefit of a blog to your business, see our post on how to blog your way to online business success.

Sketch Image by Arvind Balaraman courtesy of FreeDigitalPhotos.net

There can be no doubt that Google’s own web browser, Chrome, is now a major player in the browser market. Its lightning quick reactions and solid plugin-enabled designs seem to point to a strong future, not only for the browser, but also for the upcoming Chrome OS.

Future

Google, who are never one to rest on their laurels, have announced an interesting development about the way that the future of web browsing might actually utilise your computer’s hardware in a more efficient manner.

At the moment, your computers brain – the processor – carries the burden of drawing all of the page elements that you see. However there are other areas of processing power (such as the graphics processor used for games, 3D work, etc.) in the average home computer that are not currently utilised when browsing. It is this resource that Chrome will be able to tap in the future. This idea is not unique to Chrome though, Microsoft actually talked about the upcoming Internet Explorer 9 also using hardware-accelerated graphics. It seems this might become the de rigueur feature for the next generation of browsers…

More information can be found on the Chromium Blog.

Past

A walk down memory lane is all the more feature packed and impressive when experienced in Chrome with writer / director Chris Milk. He has created an audio-visual theatre-like experience using some of the rich new opportunities delivered by HTML5. The music – “We Used To Wait” by Arcade Fire – actually seems to drive the action, with a user specific experience delivered in a series of synchronised browser windows.

Want to try for yourself? Point your Chrome browser to ‘The Wilderness Downtown’ site.

More information can be found on the Google Chrome Blog and details of its construction can be found on the Chrome Experiments site.

We talked a couple months ago about the new in-the-pipeline tool from Google to help advertisers check how their campaign is performing – well I’m happy to bring you the news that it has finally arrived! (well, for all English language accounts)

The tool can be found in the Opportunities tab – ‘Analyse competition’. There, Google will show you the categories in which your adverts are being displayed and how your campaign is performing relative to others in your industry.

So, for example, if you advertised a luxury spa business then your adverts might appear in the ‘Beauty & Personal Care’ category. Google will then show you via a rough sliding scale (or via actual numbers if you roll-over the scale) how your adverts compare for Clicks, Impressions, CTR and Average Position.

Not only is this useful information to supply clients with, but it can also be a great touchstone for PPC managers operating in unfamiliar industries. Perhaps you don’t need to stress about that CTR – others in the same market might not be managing to beat it!

More information can be found on the Google Inside AdWords blog.

With another week down the search engines have dominated the news with acquisitions, mergers and good old fashioned rumour. Google set about their daily business of trying to take over absolutely everything while Bing where happy to just take Yahoo.

It wasn’t quite a funeral for Yahoo this week but the long standing search engine has finally given up the ghost as Bing starts to take over its web, image and search results. Like something out of Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Bing took control of all Yahoo results in the US and Canada with the rest to follow soon. Yahoo is still there in the visual sense, but like an old infirm man on a Bing Iron Lung.

The upside of this merger known as the (Yahoo! Microsoft Search Alliance) is that combined the two might constitute more of a threat to Google dominance. No longer will they be just a couple of coiled up piles on the sidewalk, but a full blown flaming bag on Google’s front step.

Of course, you’re never going to see Google looking too worried. Like some footballer’s WAG, whenever Google feels down in the dumps they just kick up their heels and go shopping. Most recently Google picked up a Like.com and a pair of social networking sites that really go with their YouTube. Like a fat girl in a kebab shop slurping down a doner, Google have been tucking into a fair array of social networking sites of late…but to what end?

Well, as it is whenever Google does something new, the internet goes into full blown rumour mode: “Google are creating a tablet computer”, “Google are starting phone calls through Gmail”, “Google have Elvis and Shergar locked in their shed”. The most recent rumour circulating is that the Google social networking ghost stories could be true even though Google Buzz still gives me nightmares. Whether this GoogleMe or GoogleYou or GoogleWhatever ever comes to fruition is up for debate, but Google’s head of user research for social team Paul Adam seems to think Facebook could certainly be 1-up’ed.

Away from the constant culling of other small businesses, Google actually got back to doing something with their search engine. The new feature in testing is ‘instant search’ which predicts what you are looking for even as you type it. I know what you’re thinking, ‘Google already has predictive search’. However, this feature actually predicts what you’re after and pulls out a full SERP before you even think about hitting return. Could be interesting, or just irritating. Like those people who try to finish your…