They claim that they have secured the rights to the top 7 results in the Google location map which appears at the top of the serp in many service location searches – you know, the google map with listings on the side – he calls it “Balloon” map index

We were very surprised by this claim. We see it as part of our web services to protect our clients from rip offs and scams, so we decided to investigate some more.

Our client is very keen on the idea. They are getting their sites found well in the towns and smaller cities they are represented in, but competition is stiff for Auckland, Wellington and Christchurch – $475 + gst for a years guaranteed listing on the 1st page is a great deal.

Hang on – to our knowledge Google does not sell such a service (they sell “sponsored links” or adwords and there is no Guaranteed placement for that), so what is going on?

We made some calls and spoke to the original sales person who contacted our client – he told us, “I don’t know how it happens – it just happens – I am just selling it” and contacted me back with a phone number of the business owner

In the meantime we made a post in Google’s webmaster forum, asking about this – the result is that it has started a bit of a activity – click here to see the forum page

We think there is enough info there now for smart people to make up their own minds whether to deal with Front Page Google or not

Google has lost 1.1% share over the past year according to their figures, but there is some movement between Bing and Yahoo compared to May. Bing has picked up 4.5% (or a 50% increase for them) of the market at the expense of Yahoo and AOL search.

The top 5 search sites which include AOL and Ask.com with the top 3 accounts for nearly 96% of all search traffic

More details here

Update 14 July

Our new website is being has been launched by Friday today.

If you are in Nelson and find an obvious typo in our site at www.web1.co.nz, let us know and if you are the first to tell us, we will give you a bottle of wine.

Five (5) bottles of wine to be won !!! First in, best dressed

Updated 19 July
Sorry offer is now closed – Thank you to Vicki who found a typo on the home page, and there have been no more entries since.
We will make sure Vicki that your bottle of wine is extremely good

We would like to reinforce to our clients and potential clients that we don’t use any of the worst practices talked of by the author Stephen Spencer. Maybe that is why our clients get found so well in Google, Yahoo and Bing.Naturally there are many things that we do (39 of them on our check list) which can help with seo, most of them include best practices, but there are a few we undertaken because we believe they can help, even though some would disagree. Client sites are certainly not penalised by them – and we can find no respectable seo commentator who have said they are  “bad”

here is a quick summary – you can read the full post here

• Do your site use pull-down boxes for navigation? – not seen much these days
• Does your sites primary navigation require Flash, Java or Javascript to function? – we still see a lot of this
• Is your web site done entirely in Flash or overly graphical with very little textural content? – can look smart, but wont work for seo
• Is your home page a “splash page” or otherwise content-less? – see above
• Does your site employ frames? – surprising how many sites are out there using them – they normally look past their use by date though
• Do the URLs of your pages include “cgi-bin” or numerous ampersands? – using search friendly urls  on your site will blow any competitors site away
• Do the URLs of your pages include session IDs or user IDs? – see above
• Do you unnecessarily spread your site across multiple domains? – duplicate content issues
• Are your title tags the same on all pages? – got webmaster tools for your site? easy to identify and fix

The list goes on – check them all with their explanations at the bottom on this post

So those “search engine experts” out there – we hope you are familiar and don’t do these things – you will only hurt your or your clients findability

Microsoft are now really attempting to get businesses and the public to upgrade to IE 8.  “You wouldn’t drink 9-year-old milk,” reads a milk carton pictured on a page hosted by Microsoft’s Australian division. “So why use a 9-year-old browser?” – Good one, but I would not even drink 9 day old milk.

It has been reported that Google does not support IE6 in Gmail, and YouTube and neither do other highly visited sites such as facebook and Digg

In our opinion most users of IE6 either dont have broadband to keep their computers up to date, or they are in the corporate scene with companies who have chosen not to update for one reason or another.

From a developers point of view – IE6 can cause a lot of issues, and yeah – IE 6 – it is time to go.

A post at this site motivated us to write this

David Bell of Glendenings

and our client winner was
Alan Kirby of MS Ford

Our congratulations to both of you.

The competition, invited readers of the Nelson Mail feature Taking care of Business published last Thursday night to complete a simple question from our website. We also invited our existing clients (gotta look after them too) to participate by a personal invitation.

Both winners receive our email marketing package which has a value of over $400

Highlights were:

• The number of internet users rose form 79% in 2007 to 83% in 2009
• Broadband usage jumped to 82% compared with 67% in 2007
• The proportion of users that use their mobile phones to access the inter more than doubled from 7% in 07 to 18% in 09
• Nearly half of all users are members of social networking sites and 3/4 of these say that Facebook is the site they visit most often
• About half of users post online messages, images or videos, while one in ten earns income in this way

The bi-annual survey, conducted with more than 1200 New Zealanders, shows how ingrained the internet has become in daily life, according to the Director of AUT’s Institute of Culture, Discourse and Communication Professor Allan Bell

Most New Zealanders, regardless of age, ethnicity, gender or soci-economic status, are increasingly using the internet for a variety of activities such as social networking, buying and selling goods online, Internet banking, accessing information. learning and entertainment.

We don’t think that there any surprises there, except maybe that the 10% of social network users actually earn money from their activities.

Sort of confirms claims in the past few days that Facebook has now overtaken Google as the most visited site in the world according to Experian Hitwise

The full report, executive summary of the project  can be downloaded from the AUT web site

It appears that a record number of brands (356) were hijacked in phishing attacks during October last year – a whopping 4.4 % increase (0ver the previous highest in August) according to APWG (Anti-Phishing Working Group)

Wow – a 4.4% increase, but it was interesting to see in the APWG website that November was down to 306 and December 249 (the later being a minor -40% odd from October of the same year.

For those unfamiliar with the Phishing, in my uncomplicated definition, phishing is the sending of emails to you pretending to be your bank, or someone else you may have a relationship with in an effort to obtain account details from you.

The email tells you that your account has been compromised and encourages to click on the link and put in your login details to change your settings, or stop your account being suspended or something like that. The website you click to often looks extremely legitimate, in fact more often than note, it will look exactly like your bank account login.

To be fair, it is true that all mail servers with decent anti spam software cannot detect these types of emails. Particularly when a new phishing attempt is made, and the filters have not had time to recognise them as phishing attempts.

But really, after 4 years or so of seeing these attempts to get your private details and with the heaps of publicity over the years, who would actually click on such an email. Well, some can get caught out I suppose – like the FBI head Robert Mueller whos wife banned him from online banking after he nearly fell for a phishing scam.

Back to the Computerland story. Really – it must be a bad news day – how trivial, which I suppose makes this post trivial as well.

On one of the few days this “part time” blogger actually looks for an interesting story to tell our readers.

Anyway, enough excuses

I came across this post called “Getting Answers To All Your SEO Questions” by one David Leonhardt this morning, which is a light hearted read about SEO. And it is all true of course

Loved it. Thanks David

So in May, we set up the new on-banking account, and I have to admit that I was disappointed with their on-line resources. For example we keep a pretty tight ship on credit cards, and with the ASB I could do an immediate transfer. Unfortunately with the National Bank system you cannot do that, although in working hours I can ring a number and make it happen in an emergency. That together with the “different ways” of doing banking online, I found the change over frustrating. Now of course I am used it all, and nothing is really a problem.

Rambling aside, I was fortunate to join around 20 other local Nelson small business representatives to participate with  Stephen Caunter in one of the National Bank workshop series called “Closing the sale“. Now I have been involved in sales one way or the other since 1976, but things change as we all know, and the opportunity to brush up on these skills was a good one.

I have to admit that I did not actually learn anything new from the seminar. Interestingly though, Stephen really reinforced some stuff that I was aware of and practising for a number of years and it felt quite good when something came up and I thought to myself  “we do that”, or “we should do that more often or better”

At the end of the day, it is all about passion, knowledge and experience: helping your clients to achieve their goals in their business activities (so maybe they can have more leisure time). Help them achieve those things, making them feel you want to help them and in most cases, they are a client for life.

Thanks Steven for parting with your knowledge and experience and your passion – WOW.
I look forward to the next seminar that will be of help to @ web one.

And for those who dont know, Stephen has a passion also (apart from his family) for Farmall tractors in New Zealand.
He would love you to go and read and respond to his new blog.