Greenlight's Search Blog

The UK contributes more pages to the Internet than any other European country

2010-02-01T01:53:45-08:00

A million new books are published globally each year, a fifth of them in the UK. The UK in fact publishes more tomes than any other country on earth[1]. Is this also the case online? Does the UK contribute more to the Internet’s pages than other countries? Research undertaken by Greenlight, focussing on countries in Europe, suggests that this is indeed the case. Amongst the 20 largest European countries, the UK has contributed the most pages to the Internet, around 5 times more than France and Germany, the study found. Whilst this doesn’t account for the quality of those pages and who has produced them and for what reasons, it’s a good relative indicator that the UK’s offline publishing leadership is being mirrored online through a combination of corporate and consumer publishing. Further findings: 45% of the pages on the Internet were created in Europe, 8% in the UK There’s...

4% of websites have page load speeds detrimental to their search marketing efforts

2010-01-20T01:48:35-08:00

Website page load speeds will become an increasingly important factor in 2010 for search advertisers, and demonstrates that page load speed performance cannot be assumed, even for some of the biggest sites in the UK. In a sample study of 100 of the UK’s most popular websites, Greenlight determined that 4% of them had page load speeds slower than the acceptable threshold set by Google, beyond which the advertiser may see increased click costs. In June 2008, Google revealed landing page download time has an impact on a marketer’s Quality Score in Paid Search. This meant that ‘latency’ began contributing directly to a campaign’s performance and ultimately it’s ROI. At the close of 2009 there was also much speculation over whether this would also make its way into its natural search algorithms too. Matt Cutts hinted quite heavily in that direction in a video interview for Web Pro News, where...

How search engine market shares look around the world featuring Bing, Yahoo and Baidu and others

2010-01-15T04:09:01-08:00

How search engine market shares look around the world featuring Bing, Yahoo and Baidu and others.

Google’s quitting China spells loss of advertising dollars and greater dependency on foreign operators

2010-01-13T05:12:07-08:00

Google has indicated it may cease to operate in China following a cyber attack aimed at gathering information on human rights activists. If Google quits China, then it leaves MS yahoo and Baidu as the primary sources for accessing the Chinese searching audience. Without Google, assuming Yahoo and Bing remain, that 30% share will re-distribute. Most likely to Baidu, which will further cement its leadership position, and the remainder may not split equally among Bing and Yahoo users, which would further upset the balance of power for one or the other, and means growing in the Chinese market is likely to make it very difficult for at least one of them. For advertisers looking to target the Chinese market, it means a greater dependency on foreign operators who are less familiar to them, and less integrated with their ad operations. For the US and global advertising industry it means ad...

France’s “Google tax” – Sounds like protectionism

2010-01-08T05:28:55-08:00

A report has been made public proposing that France begins taxing the likes of Google to subsidise its own creative industry. The authors of the report suggest that this new taxation could raise up to the equivalent of $28 million, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t much money at all. The suggestion that the tax will help France subsidise music artists and book publishers doesn’t therefore sound like the sole objective here, given that this amount of money won’t make much of a difference if it’s spread so thinly across France’s creative community. On this basis it feels like protectionism of the worst sort – instead of collaborating with successful, innovative companies, or creating an environment that promotes innovation domestically, France appears to want to give its own industries an unfair commercial advantage by taking money from non-French firms. If the proposals are made into law, this then...

The history and evolution of SEO

2010-01-08T05:11:26-08:00

Ever wondered when links became such an influential component of SEO? Or when Google released the infamous "Florida" update and what effect it had on search engine optimisation? Perhaps you're interested in the origins of the unsolicited link exchange, or want to know when (and why) nofollow was created. All these questions and many more are answered in Greenlights SEO History of the Internet, a graphical two page "cheat sheet" plotting the evolution of SEO and key events that have happened during the fourteen year history of the industry. Here at Greenlight the history of SEO is something we find quite fascinating. But while there are many disparate sources of information on the topic, I was unable to find a single source that packaged all of the key events that have happened in our industry in a single, graphical timeline. Thus, I give you the History of SEO (click for...

Google takes its first bite of the Apple

2010-01-06T06:54:45-08:00

So, less than a month after filing the trademark application for the ‘Nexus One’, Google has launched its first hardware retail product direct to consumers and starts a direct assault on Apple’s dominance of the mobile sector. This is a great example of ‘speed to market’ from the most over-exposed brand on the planet launching a product in the most over-exposed global consumer market. In fact, the only other brand that has shown that it can operate as effectively as this is, er... Apple. Google is breaking new ground by becoming a direct retailer of this handset. It suggests that they will be braver than Microsoft in entering the PC hardware retail space. Can we therefore expect this year a Google laptop running their Chrome PC operating system to rival the much rumoured Apple tablet (due possibly in Q1 2010)? The question we should be asking ourselves as marketers is:...

Hold the front page....Man has turkey sandwich!

2009-12-11T07:03:21-08:00

Google released real-time search this week, incorporating Twitter and kin. So we at Greenlight took it for a road test. We evaluated what the pros and cons are for users and for marketers. Amidst all the hype, I can’t help feeling the usefulness of the results seems to range from the inconsequential, to the surreally disappointing. Admittedly these are early days, but in our first road tests, which happened to be on searches for ‘Turkey’ i.e. the country not the game fare, the impressive list of relevant results, which included Lonely Planet, The State Department, The CIA, The Turkish Tourism Ministry, had somehow been permeated by the resounding news, that ‘thoughtbeast’ (presumably an alias), was enjoying a sliced turkey sandwich for lunch. With milk and Doritos, no less! Ok, fair enough. Seasonally relevant perhaps, but way off the mark. Having been in search marketing for 10 years, and seen all...

The News Industry and Search Engines – Two camps emerge

2009-12-09T10:32:46-08:00

Google has unveiled ‘The Living Stories’ prototype, a project in conjunction with The New York Times and The Washington Post. It explores a new way to get news to the masses online, which Google hopes other publishers will want to exploit with them too. The central concept is that particular news topics could be centralised under a single URL, updating in real time or near real time, to reflect what’s happening out there and how the respective subject, issue or story is evolving. Whilst these pages currently live on the Google domain, they will be migrated over to The New York Times and The Washington Post early next year. Pages include one about Health Care, Global Warming and other major topics. Google has essentially found a way to try and bring publishers on-side by offering them free search engine optimisation (SEO), and what in his view, would appear to be...

Google’s ‘Web History’ - Tailored to fit or exclude, is the question

2009-12-07T10:17:46-08:00

Google has launched ‘Web History’, the new name for its personalised search feature, by default across its user base. Essentially, by monitoring what you click on in their results, Google can learn what sites you like and give them a ranking boost in your search results. This adds a further dimension to how Google ranks sites and pages, which had historically focussed largely on analysing on-page relevancy and third party links pointing into a site. Some of the advantages and disadvantages this will bring. For example in the case of the enterprise, new entrants online will find it more difficult to break into Google page 1 results if the sites a user has visited before have been given a preferential boost. On the other hand, for those firms that customers like, Google’s ‘Web History’ will enhance their ability to cross-sell new products far more effectively. It also calls into question...