Netcoms Dot Com

'Pages with first impressions' meaning in Google search performance report

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 04 Dec 2019 18:17:00 +0000

Google has relatively recently started sending a month end summary of Google search performance to Webmasters who use the Google Search Console. See the picture for an example of the headline stats.

One of the metrics it lists at the top of the summary section is 'Pages with first impressions (estimated)'. But what does this mean?

Thankfully there's an accompanying explanation from Google themselves, if you dig hard enough:

Pages with first impressions: Pages that were seen by a user in Search Results for the first time last month. (This may be omitted for very large sites.)

So, these are pages that have only started appearing in the search results this month - they may indeed be old pages that simply haven't appeared in search results as they are not sufficiently well ranked to appear to end users themselves.

And to be clear 'impressions' means that the results have been shown to a user in their Google search results, not that they necessarily have clicked on them.

The reason why could be a combination of factors: very specific searches meaning that page is a relevant search result; tweaks to the pages themselves; updates to the Google algorithm; changes to the overall site ranking that affect the likelihood of one of the site's pages appearing above a competitor.

It does lead to the question of which pages these are precisely. Unfortunately, there's no link to a corresponding page in the Google Search Console even though the rest of the report features a number of links offering more detail on the monthly email overview of performance.

In terms of the overall report, if you're puzzled as to why you are seeing this for the first time, then not only is it relatively new in 2019, but also you'll only receive it if the site has been registered with Google Search Console for three months or more.

On the above image, the other metrics are simple enough. 'Impressions' is the number of times someone 'saw' your page listed in the search results and 'web clicks' is the number of times someone clicked on that listing and visited your site.

Uber to trial recording audio of rides - what could possibly go wrong?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 21 Nov 2019 19:00:00 +0000

News in that that Uber is to trial audio recording of rides in Brazil and Mexico in a move that could see it rolled out to other territories.

The reasoning behind the move is that it might increase driver and passenger safety and help to arbitrate in disputes or criminal acts during the journey. There is logic to this, but there are also numerous concerns with the trial:

- Privacy: concerns over your personal conversations being recorded and stored on Uber's services
- Data: the audio would be recorded on the driver's device and then passed as encrypted files to Uber - what about the cost of the data on the driver's data plan?
- Encryption: this is a minimum but what if the recordings are hacked in a data breached and the voice recordings and voice print of the users are used for nefarious purposes
- Opting-in: what about your consent to have your voice recorded? Can you opt-out

On the face of it, it looks like a legal minefield and raises all kinds of privacy concerns even if the intention behind it is a positive one.

Pirating of The Mandalorian set to break all records

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 14 Nov 2019 20:59:00 +0000

The Star Wars juggernaut is coming to a small screen (possibly not) near you with the release of The Mandalorian as part of the launch of Disney+.

Disney+ is yet another streaming service set to compete with the giants of Amazon Prime, Netflix, Apple TV+, Hulu and the rest. It's only available in a few countries at launch (Canada, Netherlands, Australia, New Zealand and USA) due to pre-licensing deals and won't reach the UK until March 2020.

The Mandalorian is the latest iteration of Star Wars since Disney acquired Lucasfilm back in 2012 for just over $4 billion. Disney are hoping that it is one of the crown jewels that will drive new subscribers to its Disney+ service as loyal fans follow the content.

With the exclusivity to Disney+ and the limited geographical distribution coupled to the popularity of the Star Wars series, it is predicted to set new records in piracy as frustrated fans seek how to download The Mandalorian any way possible.

While the streaming services have gone a long way to reducing piracy and increasing the options available to fans wanting to watch their shows legally, we are entering an era of increasing fragmentation with hit shows spread across the different platforms and fans understandably reluctant to fork out for multiple streaming services.

It does beg the question of whether a new one-streaming-service-to-rule-them-all might emerge with a higher monthly fee to access all shows. At present it's unlikely as the services compete for market share and ownership of customers. However, user experience combined with content are king. Fans want easy access to their favourite shows and even if you did have multiple accounts it's a challenge keeping up with which show is appearing where.

Internet communications of the future - fake it till you make it

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Nov 2019 19:02:00 +0000

Photo by andré spilborghs on Unsplash

Fake news, fake pictures, fake video, is nothing real anymore?

As artificial intelligence improves and the human-generated content can be increasingly mimicked, will there be a time when what is real and what is fake merge into one morality-free mess?

Certainly the trend is moving in that way.

Increasingly through Natural Language Processing we have entered a time where structured data can create article content at scale and while it may still lack the nuances and ambiguity of human characteristics, it is getting close. Particularly for drier, fact-based content, like aggregated news headlines, rolling sports reports and financial data.

And in the video sphere, not only can celebrities and politicians be increasingly convincingly mimicked, but also individuals can transform themselves into someone else on video chat.

Take for example the story of the Chinese vlogger, the wonderfully named Your Highness Qiao Bilou, who used a filter to portray herself as a young, glamorous woman only to be unmasked as a middle aged, slightly less glamorous version when a glitch removed the filter mid-chat. Fair play to her you may say for exploiting the shallowness of her fee-paying audience, but it only emphasises the point of not taking things at, literally, face value.

So, are the machines taking over once and for all? No, at least not for quite a while yet.

What can be automated, will be automated, but authenticity is going to become increasingly valued over utility.

Chrome review part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 May 2009 12:11:00 +0000

Having started using Chrome again, there remain a few of irritations.

- The first and perhaps most annoying is that the mouse-pan doesn't work in Chrome.

- A more minor irritaiton for those of us that use multiple browsers is the order of the right-mouse menu bar with 'new tab' and 'new window' swapping positions. More logical in Chrome.

- Finally on an old PC where memory is a constant problem is that processes still run after the browser is closed

Chrome shows promise

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:58:00 +0000

After an initial underwhelming test of Google's Chrome browser, memory issues with other browsers have forced me back for a second look. There are now workarounds to adding the likes of Delicious buttons (simple bookmarks do fine), but the main attractions are the load speed of pages and the independent tabs which can crash in isolation.

The result - less 'not responding' errors, a quicker browser and once you get used to the UI a compelling competitor.

I'm still sticking with Firefox in the main, but will certainly be making more and more use of Chrome.

Searching in colour

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 09:14:00 +0000

Google is adding colour filters to its image search. To use it look for the 'all colors' bar underneath the search box in image search and click on your colour.

The colour palette available is pretty limited, so it's questionable just how useful this is when you could add colour into your search term in the first place. For some, however, it could be a good way to filter your results quickly when trying to find the best colour of an object.

Either way it's a small step towards visual search, such a challenge in search where the search engine will analyse an object for its meaning beyond the metadata available (e.g. photo of red car only tagged as 'car').

Speaking Google's language

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 14:30:00 +0000

There's a good chance you will now with the announcement that the Google homepage now appears in over 100 languages.

Interesting to read in the story of adding Maori to the list of languages that it takes more than 1,600 phrases to translate Google's search interface - 'search'; 'I'm feeling lucky' that's two, how many more do you need! It's been a labour of love to add Maori to the list and there is no doubt considerable pride that it is now added to the list.

Mini Adventure

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 28 May 2008 09:07:00 +0000

Google has released several updates to their enterprise search product, Google Mini. More details are available on a post on their blog, but essentially it involves the ability to search in shared drives, weight documents by date or value and comes with support for six new languages.

Shared drives support is the big one given the number of documents stored in this locations in corporate environments.

More details on the enterprise blog.

A year on

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 27 May 2008 15:00:00 +0000

Embarrassingly it's been a year since my original experiment in blogging was updated. In fairness, I now edit two other sites and this mixture of tests, comment and even analysis has fallen behind in terms of priority.

The site still gets a regular stream of traffic from some of the better pieces in terms of content and SEO practice, so rather than kill it off I'm going to remind Google and co that it still exists.

I may well continue to do the odd update from time to time on topics outside of my current web publishing interests, so keep subscribed to the RSS feed and hopefully good things will come to those that wait.

Where's Germany? Why, it's right here

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 12:27:00 +0000

According to Google, it's right here on this blog. A quick look (UK settings) shows Netcoms Dot Com as the number two result for 'Where's Germany'.

I was surprised to see the amount of traffic coming through for this term after this post started the ball rolling. No doubt a mixture of a recent post, plus the keywords in the title tag. Let's see how long it lasts.

Double Trouble

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 28 Jun 2007 15:06:00 +0000

There's an excellent history of the online advertising industry, as part of Google's explanation of why they bought DoubleClick, essentially adding their ad sales network to DoubleClick's ad serving network.

As well as giving Google a significant foothold in another key area of the online ad industry, it also gives them access to DoubleClick's agency relationships, to capture both the short and the long tail of the ad industry. Smart move.

Google warming

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 22 Jun 2007 16:57:00 +0000

Laudable initiatives from Google at ensuring that they become a carbon neutral company and beyond. Let's hope that this becomes a template for the corporate world.

Will be interesting to see how much their use their existing destinations as a way of campaigning online, as there are some topics where you shouldn't remain neutral...

Where's Germany?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 08:31:00 +0000

So, YouTube is going international with sites in nine different major markets. However, the one surprising omission is Germany.

While Germany has Sevenload.com, this is still a huge digital market and a quick search shows plenty of German content already on YouTube. What will the locals make of the apparent snub? Maybe the German reaction to alleged Flickr censorship and the legal issues at the core played a factor in the delay...

Time to update the blogger templates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:35:00 +0000

This blog has had the same template for a couple of years now, after I decided to take it out of the pre-2000 design phase and bring it up-to-date. As ever, internet design moves fast and it's already looking dated.

So, I decided to check out the available blogger templates having expectations of at least some of the open-source creativity you get with Wordpress. However, the templates were lacking in number and excitement so I'll stick with this for now.

Time to create a few more?

It's harder than you think

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 14:26:00 +0000

Google has responded in the debate about video fingerprinting as a way of controlling the use of copyrighted content on YouTube. Both Microsoft's Soapbox and MySpace video already have video fingerprinting in place, so you can understand many content owner's frustration about the delay.

However, Google does make some interesting points about the difficulties in identifying copyrighted content when sometimes copyrighted content may be legitimately posted independent of Google's content deals. As it says, porn or violence are reasonably clear to all (but still a judgement call) whereas users may not know if a piece of copyrighted content is legal or not.

Whatever the merits of the arguments, Google needs to implement their technology sooner rather than later to appease the concerns of many content owners.

Going public about privacy

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 08:49:00 +0000

As you would expect from their communications policy, Google are using their blog on a corporate level to respond to the privacy storm caused by the controversial report from Privacy International, while Googler Matt Cutts responds on a personal level in his 'official' blog.

Their response and those of many of the blogosphere have successfully generated debate about the report and have put their side of the story across. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the report, it has put privacy at the centre of debate on the internet and that can only be viewed as a positive.

Google raising the stakes

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 11 Jun 2007 16:49:00 +0000

There have been a significant number of Google offerings of late as they extend this offering into mashups, desktop and extend the functionality of the mapping tool:

- Google Gears: allowing you to read your Google Reader RSS feeds offline with the technology open to external sites and services
- Purchase of Feedburner: feed distribution and management tools
- Google Mashup Editor: rival to Yahoo Pipes
- Google Mapplets: embed mini applications within Google Maps
- Purchase of Panoramio: geo-located photo sharing

All part of the battle for acquisitions and innovation between the big three of Microsoft, Yahoo and Google.

Blogger custom domains

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 11:38:00 +0000

About time too. Blogger.com now lets you buy your own domain, point it at the Google Blogger servers and they will take care of the hosting. So, for those of us that like to have our own domain for SEO, vanity or other reasons rather than the default 'dot blogspot', we can do so for the price of a domain.

May be a little late to capture those lost to Wordpress and the like, but another important step in making Blogger.com a competitive service again for medium to advanced users.

Just one of those days commuting

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:53:00 +0000

London transport take a bow. Keen to get into work early after a week of travel disruptions, I decided to take no chances and take an earlier train. However, London transport was having none of it confounding me at every turn:

1) Train: not only was it late, but because of earlier delays my usual cherished seat was denied me forcing me to endure the sweaty armpits of fellow commuters before the usual tube watershed.

2) Victoria station: I managed to fight my way down to the Victoria line platform, only for a defective train at Warren Street to bring the whole line to a standstill. Not being able to even get near to the stationary tube train, I headed out to find a bus, as they closed the tube on my exit.

3) Bus: with the mass of commuters seeking alternative transport, the only bus I was able to squeeze myself onto was taking the long route up to the central line. After getting stuck in traffic I decided to jump off early and head off on foot from Green Park to Bond Street.

4) On foot: It started to rain. Sigh.

5) Tube: for some insane reason, escalator works meant I couldn't access Bond Street station.

6) On foot: more sightseeing as I powered my way down Oxford Street to Marble Arch.

7) Tube: fighting my way through the mass of people, I pushed my way through as the doors closed. Tucked amid the mass of commuters I failed to spot my central line train was going the wrong way. Doh. An about turn and finally I was on the right track.

9) Work: I finally made it to work 15 minutes late having set off 45 minutes early.

10) In future: Make plans to work from home. Aren't these things supposed to happen on a Monday? Oh, they did.

Rant over!

Computer says no

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 13:49:00 +0000

Maybe because I haven't updated the blog for a couple of months while working on other blogging projects, but it looks like Technorati is starting to write Netcoms dot com out of the blogosphere history.

Despite links from several different blogs, it now states that this blog has no inbound links from other blogs, nor is it recording my blogroll's links to other blogs.

No fair. So, in the interests of experimentation, I'll update the blog with this post and see if Technorati finds it in its heart to reinstate this venerable veteran of several years and over a hundred posts back into the blogosphere fold.

Update: Some of that link love has been restored it seems, thanks to an update and a ping - now it says that 5 blogs link here, but doesn't list them. Make your mind up!

Stormhoek in a teacup?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 17 Aug 2006 18:47:00 +0000

There I was wandering around Sainsbury's looking for a bottle of white to complement my cod in cabbage and beer (much nicer than it sounds, I assure you) when a blue topped bottle caught my eye.

After all the hype in the blogosphere about those winemakers from Stormhoek and their blog, there was a distinctive bottle of Sauvignon Blanc actually in the real world, complete with a cartoon from Gaping Void. What's more it was reduced to under a fiver, so it could satisfy my wallet and my curiousity.

I opened the bottle and took a sniff inside. Fruity, fresh with aromas of lemon and gooseberry.

A swirl around the mouth. Hmm. Yes, it did have an original taste, but did it pass muster? Not really. To be honest, I prefer my wines with more depth of flavour and this one, while nice enough, was just too youthful, even for Sauvignon Blanc.

So after all the hype, it was a little disappointing. Did exactly what it said on the 'tin', but just not to my taste.

Maybe I'll try some of the other varieties, next time I'm walking the aisles.

Sir Cliff Richard 1 Gordon Ramsey 1

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 24 Jul 2006 10:37:00 +0000

It was amusing to see the boost to traffic that my Sir Cliff Richard does a Ratner piece generated. Clearly the housewives favourite is a serious player on the internet, as he is in the flesh at his concerts with his frighteningly devoted fans.

As the pre-publicity intended, I did actually watch Sir Cliff's appearance on the 'F-Word' and unsurprisingly it failed to live up to the hype. While he might have been trying to make a valid point about how fake celebrity wines are, in the end I found it a rather crude attempt at humiliation as Ramsey tried to coax a swearword out of the singer-cum-viticulturist.

Sir Cliff kept his cool at least while on camera, but the sensible riposte would have been to say 'well, the wine may not be the best, but it's such a perfect match for your food'.

Sir Cliff Richard does a Ratner

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 11:08:00 +0000

Amusing story from the Daily Mail also picked up by wine bloggers Stormhoek about the famously mild-mannered British Knight Sir Cliff Richard losing his cool with foul mouthed chef Gordon Ramsey on the F-Word.

Ever one to humiliate wherever possible, Ramsey invited Sir Cliff to do a blind tasting for the show. What he didn't tell him was that he'd be tasting his own wine Vida Nova. Oh dear. It wasn't exactly a fair fight with Ramsey first giving him a £400 bottle to sample.

Then it was over to Sir Cliff to make a memorable gaffe, according to Ramsey: "That's rubbish. I wouldn't pay for that, it's tainted, it's insipid. It tastes like vinaigrette. I'd never buy that."

Ouch. On revealing his duplicity, Ramsey claims Sir Cliff told him 'Young man, go f*** yourself'. While many would concur with that view, the whole episode is highly embarrassing for Sir Cliff.

Unsurprisingly, Ramsey is now milking the publicity with one of his traditionally understated quotes, tailor-made to fill those column inches: "Sirs can't swear like that. It was extraordinary. That was his wine from Portugal. We are now using it for vinaigrette at Claridge's."

(Yes, I'm not entirely sure what it has to do with internet communications either, but just watch this story amplify over the blogosphere and turn up on YouTube.)

Rooney fit? Pigs might fly

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 03 May 2006 17:23:00 +0000

After enduring the tedious weeks of Beckham 'will he, won't he be fit' before the last World Cup, the office let out a collective groan when the Scouse Pele Rooney succumbed to that most fashionable of injuries - the broken metatarsal(s).

In this week of hysterical Rooney metatarsal coverage, kudos to today's London edition of the metro for bringing some humour to the whole unfortunate saga:

"A piglet who broke his trotter on the same day Wayne Rooney hobbled off the pitch with a broken metatarsal has been named after the England star... Farmer James Wainhouse, 47, said: 'He even looks like Rooney.'"