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 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.

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.

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

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

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?

Its taken longer than we expected but as expected Google have leveraged its $700 million purchase of ITA last year to launch Flight Search, in the process potentially throwing out the gauntlet to the likes of Kayak etc. What it certainly does is signal Google’s intent to move out of its core search areas into more specialist verticals with flight being one of the earliest to see a formal product launch however we have obviously seen finance and retail tested before.

The ITA deal obviously is the big framework behind this. If you remember ITA were a Boston (US) based software company specialising in organising airline data such as flight times, flight availability and pricing, similar to Amadeus (one of its biggest competitors). Folowing nine months of wrangling the Department of Justice in the US recently gave the go ahead to the deal and we now have a potentially formidable competitor to the some of the big aggregators and flight vertical search specialists. A crumb of comfort for UK operators at present is that this is solely confined to the US at present, with international destinations not available through the system however if we look at recent history, one would suggest technology and data allowing, we should see mature markets such as the UK seeing a rollout of this certainly in the near to mid future.

It is important to note – and Google are keen to emphasise this – flight results is not influenced by any paid relationships (at present). Airlines control how their flights are marketed, so as with other flight search providers, the links to book point to airline websites only. From my understanding Google are also working to create additional opportunities for partners in the travel industry to participate as well.

Source: Search Engine Watch

Source: Search Engine Watch

We have already seen flight data pulled through into the SERPS however one would suggest that Google will be quick to integrate more advanced functionality into these blended search results based on the existing functionality of the new flight search product. It makes commercial sense to do this if nothing else.

There are some nice touches to the interface. The ‘price Vs duration filter’ appears below the price comparison map and looks very much like a scatter graph with price appears along the X-axis and flight time/duration along the Y-axis. Further to that you can select an airline in the sidebar and those specific flights on the scatter graph get highlighted in blue making data search very much easier to deal with.

It should be noted. At present all the data comes from feeds at present something which whilst great from Google’s perspective is not necessarily great for optimisation purposes. What it will in all likelihood mean is structured data being provided to Google so the requirements for SEO’s to get involved may be significantly diminished. I would also add, this is one product I would expect to see some major changes to over the coming months, and particularly where mobile is concerned as the current system from my testing is still a little slow and cumbersome. What I would also add is that this is another signal of intent, Google is no longer a generic search operator – we are going to see more and more vertical offshoots over the coming months and years – and there is likely to be one big winner in all of this – Google.

I was amazed like many to read today that Google had purchased Motorola for $12.5 Billion. Its a massive acquisition for Google, and its one that may have caught many by surprise. Its no secret that Google sees mobile as a big part of its future however the acquisition of a mobile hardware player puts Google in direct competition to many of its partners such as HTC and Samsung. In particular I would suggest HTC in particular could feel a bit akward at this latest development.

Lets face it, one of the reason that Google Android has such a big market share is that established phone partners such as HTC and Samsung were early adopters of the platform – as well as Motorola. However with their supplier of platform now a major competitor this may make for a couple of uncomfortable moments in the Google camp. Further to that, should Motorola continue to take market share from the other two, one can only assume this may make a potentially fraught situation even more so. When you look at it like that its a strange situation.

On the flip side of that, one may argue this may provide Google/Motorola with a more than capable alternative to the iPhone phenomenon. Google’s initial foray into the mobile marketplace has led to a slightly fragmented platform. A single provider could provide a viable alternative to the Apple platform and when coupled with the integrated communications platform that is Google + there is a really nice mobile offering starting to take shape.

I would also add that Microsoft have already started developing their Windows phones using HTC hardware which may be one of the reasons why the HTC giant wasn’t considered. With Samsung a well established multi-hardware developer this may suggest this may be another reason why Motorola was a fairly obvious choice.

However, the purchase of Motorola presents its own issues. At last count Google had around 29000 employees. Motorola has around 16000. Google has just significantly increased its size and with that brings its own problems. The marketplace is also one that Google has not actively played in, and is a huge difference to the three horse race we see in search. That itself creates a cutthrough environment in which the new enterprise will either sink or swim.

Much of whether this proves to be a successful acquisition may ultimately come down to Motorola themselves. Lets be honest they have hardly set the hardware sector alight, however with a strong relationship with Google and their increasingly impressive communications platform in place, this may actually give them a reason to develop a handset that is ultimately a viable competitor to the iPhone.

I personally have to say, I can’t see this being the amazing success. However if one blogger is right, this may not be about Google getting a foothold in the hardware sector at all – and more about just securing the Android platform moving forward. If its left to the hardware I would suggest we aren’t likely to see much of a bigger dent in the market….

Hat tip to Thomas Fjordside and Nuttakorn for this one, however I was very interested to see one of Google’s experiments in experimental phase.

Whilst we have seen many features relating to availability through the Google Places functionality such as those I covered in my recent post on the recent changes to the new Google reviews functionality on local results. If you look at the image below from that post you will see the functionality to book now just below the reviews

Taking that a step further, Google look set to take a size 12 step into the hotel booking market with Google Hotel Finder. Currently only rolled in the US, Hotel Finder could further spell danger on the horizon for the likes of Kayak etc in the US, and sites like Late Rooms, Superbreak and Trivago here in the UK should they roll out this internationally.

According to Googles official post on Hotel Finder effectively it will allow you to:

• Find a place to stay - To help you figure out where popular areas are, Hotel Finder shines a “tourist spotlight” on the most visited areas. They then select an initial shape for you based on what’s most popular or you can draw a shape around the area where you want to stay, e.g. on the ocean or along Sunset Boulevard.#
• Find the cheapest deals: In the “Compared to typical” section, you can see how each hotel’s price compares to its historical average, so you can tell if it’s good value for your stay.
• Compare and see reviews: When you select a hotel in Hotel Finder, Google will show you a collage of images, Google Places reviews, and key information right within the list.
• Add a shortlist – As you go through the option to save these to a shortlist are allowed.

Once ready to book, it then provides you with options from where you can book your hotel, which includes the likes of Hotels.com etc so one would suggest this potentially could be a double edged sword – as whilst there is certainly going to be some cannabilisation of potential traffic to this tool – there is still the opportunity for said providers to get their deals in front of potential customers.

Whether or not this is a major threat to the likes of Kayak etc is still open to debate however its certainly going to impact on them. To what extent is still open to debate.

I recently did a great event in Leeds as part of the Leeds Digital Festival organised by Simon Wilson from Twentysix, with some of the best search minds from the region including Lee Allen from Stickyeyes, Andy Heaps from Epiphany Solutions and Ben Bisco from Home James to name a few (as well as others from BlueClaw, Bloom Media and Fusion Unlimited.

One of the questions posed to the panel was regarding Panda, something which it is quite obvious there is still a lot of under awareness of what it is and where it impacts. I was interested to see this morning that Google have pushed Panda 2.3 live. Changes to the algorithm are fairly common place – however what was interesting from some of the coverage of the latest update was Google defining actually how Panda works.

Going back to my earlier references to the Leeds Digital Festival, during the line of questioning one of the panelists mentioned that Panda wasn’t a one off and this was a regular ongoing ( rolling) update. From the latest update, Google have now confirmed that the Panda updates are in fact not rollng updates, but rather require a manual push from Google themselves to go live.

When one looks at the frequency of Panda updates this can possibly be put into better context

Panda Update 1.0: Feb. 24, 2011 – Primary hits US only sites
Panda Update 2.0: April 11, 2011 (about 7 weeks later) – Rolled out internationally
Panda Update 2.1: May 10, 2011 (about 4 weeks later) – Smaller Panda refinement rolled out
Panda Update 2.2: June 16, 2011 (about 5 weeks later) – Improved scraper detection
Panda Update 2.3: July 23, 2011 (about 5 weeks later)

The latest update (Panda 2.3) “incorporates some new signals that help differentiate between higher- and lower-quality sites.” “As a result, some sites are ranking higher after this most recent update,” according to a Google spokesman.

Whilst these are a manual update a rough pattern post Panda 2.0 is starting to develop. Between Panda 2.1 – 2.3 a gap of between 4 and 5 weeks is clearly evident between updates. The frequency of such updates whilst manual would suggest Google potentially do not see this as a long term requirement (ie regularly update algorithm updates) however whilst they are refining the algorithm they will push updates up on a regular basis. Further to that, Google have already said they push live around 500 updates during the course of an average year, so such updates one may suggest may just become part and parcel of general algorithmic updates.

What is increasingly evident is that those affected by Panda are still struggling to make back much of the loss of keyword coverage they had previously

Source: SearchMetrics

Source: SearchMetrics

Source: SearchMetricsti

This is certainly not the last of the updates, there is still a lot of low quality sites out there in the search engine rankings still utilising low quality search engine optimisation techniques to rank well. I would suggest this is something we are likely to see as part and parcel of the Google landscape for the foreseeable future – and I would suggest if they can get it right its something I wholeheartedly back. What the fallout of this update is still to be seen however as organisations become more aware of the new boundaries we may see a new SEO landscape to work within.

There was an interesting infographic that came out last week relating to the growth rate of Google+. Despite the fact it hasn’t even been live for a month yet, user figures put uptake of Google+ at around 18 Million users and rising. Startling figures particularly when one

Whilst overall these user figures pail into insignificance in comparison to Facebook who have upwards of 750 million users, it is still a hugely interesting fact. Google has achieved what Facebook and Twitter managed in around 1/50th of the time. Further to that we have to bring into the equation some major caveats

• This is just the first phase of the Google+ Project. We know there is more to come
• Social is at the heart of many of Google’s new products. If we take a look at the new changes to the Google Places pages, and the prominence of both UGC and in particular the fact they have stated there will be greater integration of social
• The wider Google Product set. I would suggest once people have a reason to use Google there is a plethora of tools out there for them to use and make Google a more significant part of their communications toolkit
• Closer integration with Google Docs. To me this is another of those tolls that with greater collaboration with + could be a real big usage piece for business users.

Hypergrowth often comes with disadvantages, however lets face it – Google have been here before – and two failed social attempts to boot. Google+ in many ways is not a new product but the result of a number of trials and testing. When one looks at the wider picture as well – its obvious Google have a very clear strategy as to where they are going and how they are getting there. I would have to suggest here that neither Twitter nor Facebook would appear to have that same luxury.

As from July 21st, Google have completely revised their Places pages, with potentially huge implications for people like Trip Advisor and the like many of whom have seen their citations included within Local search results for a number of years now. The new layout of Place Pages are putting a heavy emphasis on reviews, more so it emphasizes reviews from Google users rather than aggregated third party content.

Reviews for the sites which previously were included within citations can still be found however these are linked to below the Google reviews.

With the additional review functionality, interactivity with Places pages have been significantly increased. The ability to upload pictures is now a prominent option next to the ability to add reviews to the Places page. Much of this additional functionality would appear to be down to feedback received as a result of Hotpot released earlier in the year.

The changes and tweaks to the Google Places results are unlikely to end there. Over the coming months, Google have already said we can expect the following:

1. More personalized results when you search for local places
2. Integrating some of the great information that’s been buried on Place pages into the web search experience across all Google platforms;
3. More ways to rate, discover and share places you love faster and easier than ever, wherever you are, and on whichever device you choose.

Its interesting to see Google move in this direction. Issues with citation providers such as Tripadvisor and Yell are well documented. It is however within the Hotel sector in particular where I can’t help feeling this pinch might be the heaviest felt. As an early adopter of technologies we have seen sites such as Tripadvisor and the like gain significant traction via their inclusion in Places. With much of the development of Places now very much appearing to be setting up as a provider of aggregated results, one can’t help feeling that much of Google’s current activity is gearing up for a more concerted delve into the marketplace similar to what they have been doing in other markets such as Finance.

By making Google the source for not just review based information, but also the starting point for a potential booking one can’t help feeling its only time before we see Google make a real attempt at monetising Places and really throwing the cat in amongst the pigeons – particularly when once considers how it may combine with other parts of Google’s toolkit.

It was during a quick beer this afternoon, that my good friend Ryan Mckay told me about James Breckenridges post regarding the Google Webmaster Tools bug. For those that don’t know, there appears to have been a bug that allowed any verified Google Webmaster Tools user to remove pages, even if the site in question wasn’t under their direct juristiction. By simply typing in the following URL you could wield power many negative SEO’s only dream of:

https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/removals-request?hl=en&siteUrl=http://{YOUR_URL}/&urlt={URL_TO_BLOCK}

By doing so you could block a whole site, section or single page, based on how you entered the URL. To block a site, use the top level domain (E.g. http://www.someurl.com/), to block a section (subfolder) use a subfolder URL (E.g. http://www.someurl.com/somefolder/) and to block a page use the specific page URL (E.g. http://www.someurl.com/somefolder/somepage.html). As the Compare the Market meerkat would say – Simples.

BingoplayUK before

BingoplayUK removal request

BingoplayUK now – 19/07/2011 23:02

Now the fact an unscrupulous user could do this is worrying enough – and whilst permanent deletion is unlikely due to the way these removal requests work this could still have had catastrophic events for any organisations which relied heavily on organic search for traffic. Just imagine if this has hit a site such as Moneysupermarket for example who dominate the UK marketplace for many high volume, high cost, terms such as mortgages, credit cards and car insurance. The exploitation of such a loophole could have been catastrophic.

Now imagine that self same organisation held all your personal data. Oh – wait with recent developments that is a real life scenario. What is really worrying to me is the simplicity of the loophole, a simple change to the query string and one could make merry hay. No checking or validation against user data. As long as they were a Webmaster Tools user that was good enough. That to me is a very worrying scenario, and to be honest one that makes me very conscious of the amount of data I am happy to give Google.

This may well just be a reality check. We have seen a lot of development from Google over the last year or so, to the point that it seems that not a day goes by without another tweak, change or test. With that has to come a degree of danger in terms of ensuring that all the i’s are dotted and t’s crossed.

I have to commend Google on the time it has taken for them to react to the loophole, certainly by the time I was doing the State of Search Webmaster Radio show with Bas Van Den Beld and Roy Huiskes the patch had been fixed. However if this was a simple oversight, I seriously hope its a one off and perhaps a wake up call that it only takes one mistake to see it all come crashing down.

Google+ has now been around for a little while now having arrived to what can only be described as a mixed reception. It appears to be a bit like Marmite – some love it, some hate it – so we decided to speak to some of the leading minds in the search engine marketing sector, to see what their thoughts were and whether they thought Google+ would be a success or whether it would go the same way as other Google products such as Buzz and Wave.

Bas Van Den Beld – State of search
For more of Bas’ thoughts on Google+, please visit the State of Search blog
Google Plus might very well be the game changer for the web. Google has been unfolding this for a while and is far from done.

There is, I feel, however a lot of misunderstanding about Google+. Many compare this to Facebook or feel this is a Facebook killer and I’ve also heard a lot of people who feel that Google should have launched a more finished product. There are many who think this is it. It is not, Google has only just begun.

If you listen carefully to what Googlers are saying you will get some nice insights into what the intentions from Google are. They are going to change the online world with Google Plus and the crux is personalization and integration.

My hunch is that Google is integrating all their products and is making all of them ‘social’ in a way. They say Google should have roled out Business Profiles for + with the launch. They already did: Google Places. They “just” have to integrate it into Google+.

Terry Van Horne – SEO Pros
When Pete asked me for a few words on Google + first thing I said is “I hate G+ just cuz everyone else loves it!”. Just saying the relative hype on the Google + learning channel (formerly known as Twitter) has been off the meter! When this many SEO’s like something… I know that ain’t good…public will summarily ignore it. For me I just see it as another Facebook Time Suck looking to happen.

It will flop because just like the +1 button will because the Public aren’t up Google’s bum lookin’ for morsels and tidbits. Circles will be nothing more than just another thing to manage to anyone who doesn’t have a need to segregate their sharing as Danny outlined in his best piece on Google + yet . Well you could use a list of some sort…oh yeah that’s on Twitter ya’ twat.

Hangouts looked cool at first but IMO, that has more commercial value than with John q Public who would rather just go to someone’s house and really visit then to have a virtual visit on Google +! At the time of my one visit to Google + Time Suck Heaven it didn’t come to me what the potential was for a M$/FB/Skype combination not to mention the huge online presence of Xbox. Basically hangouts ain’t a Facebook killer, nor, is Circles so why would someone want two time sucks in their life? Drop one and they might actually have a real life… #JustSayin’!

Richard Gregory – Latitude Group
IMO Google+ is here to stay, although it’s too early to tell whether it can topple facebook as the leading social media platform.

Can Google+ survive if it doesn’t surpass facebook? Absolutely.

I’ve already found myself tweeting less since the launch of G+ , mainly due to the kind of people already on the network, and that’s where I think the first fatality might actually be.

Branko Rihtman (Neyne) – SEO Scientist
I think Google+ is here to stay. Firstly, judging by the response of the tech scene, it ain’t no Buzz. The privacy was done right, the sharing was done right, it works. The big question is whether it will catch up in the non-tech circles. This depends on how well Google integrates G+ with Google products that are already in massive use. I think there is a potential there – non-tech people that research stuff on Google will definitely be interested (IMHO) to click on G+ Onebox results that are relevant to their search. The way from there to using the service is not so long.

It will definitely take some time and more cool features and integrations. Will it be a Facebook/Twitter killer? No. I don’t think there is such thing as “companycide”, only suicide. Just like Twitter did, I think G+ will create a user behavior pattern that will not completely clash with user behavior patterns on FB and Twitter and people will use all 3 for different things. Right now I have completely different usage pattern on FB, Twitter and Linkedin and there is no reason why the same will not happen with G+. They may bite here and there from each others user base, but that pendulum will swing and change from time to time.

Justin Parks – SEO Dojo
A big question and an important one. Had Google launched Google plus in a similar fashion to Wave I would say it would crash and burn again but something about how they have rolled this out just screams of longevity.

Maybe its the commitment (over commitment?) they have put behind it, maybe there’s a small tingle of desperation lingering in the air, or excitement, or even nervousness from the search behemoth, a feeling of “Have we finally got this bloody social media thing right?” screaming silently in the background and echoing around the halls of the Googleplex.

I cant quite put my finger on it, but it exists.

Personally, I didn’t get over excited about the announcement and launch of Google plus. I didn’t go mad for an invite. I wasn’t desperately checking my emails every two minutes waiting for that invite to land. I didn’t mind not being “first” in there among my friends and colleagues. Basically I had more important things to do at the time…like work.

But its here now, and I’m in and I have played with it and I like it. I think its been well thought out and implemented. Its simple enough to be intuitive to users with some nice features and ideas to keep us using it though I have to remember that I am looking at it through rose tinted glasses. I know what these things mean. I know how to figure them out. I can go to the help section or forums and read what’s going on if something isn’t obvious to me (some things are not to be honest, though it will come with time and a bit more messing about). The thing is, will Google plus appeal to the new user, the “normal user”, or even the social media addict enough to make it stick around and become a real force in the virtual playground that is social media.

Like I mentioned, due to the way it has been rolled out and with some many other factors influencing its establishment (think Gmail accounts and
android) I think it will succeed and it will be here tomorrow, and the next day and the days to come. Too much importance rests on its success for Google for it to fail, so over time, I think it will make headway in attracting a large section of the internet “social media” community.

If previous examples of Google successes are anything to go by it will boil down to how we, the geeks, the techies, the developers and the internet addicts react and respond to it. We have a history of promoting Google products, the ones that work well, to the masses (for free I might add), and I see that happening already.

Only time will tell. Hell, there’s always tomorrow to play with it anyway

Chris Lake – Econsultancy
Firstly, I think Google has rushed this product to market. The launch didn’t support Google Apps users, which is a massive oversight, given that there are 3m companies using it. As such millions of professionals have not been able to access Google+. These are precisely the kind of people who would have made the most out of Circles.

That aside, the big issue with Google+ or any other new social platform is really about the time it takes to set things up, and thereafter to tune in and manage it. On the first point, Google hasn’t made it at all easy for users to import their friends and followers from other networks. Populating Google+ with connections is a manual, time-consuming process. Compare that to Quora, which allows people to sign in and immediately hook into their existing Twitter network. Perhaps there are some data ownership restrictions when working with third party APIs? We also know that Facebook swiftly changed its API to prevent users from transferring their friends into Google+ (a grave sin, in my view; Facebook is a dominant tyrant as far as ‘user’ data is concerned). Perhaps Google is playing it safe to dodge any possible anti-trust issues?

I suspect that many people exist on multiple networks but predominantly favour one platform. In my case, it’s Twitter, which seems to be standing still, as far as innovation is concerned. I hope it hasn’t missed its moment. But is Google+ going to replace Twitter for me? Not just yet, that’s for sure.

Don’t get me wrong, Google+ looks like a good beta product, I just think it was launched three months too early. It blends a lot of the best functionality found on other platforms, and with Circles there is an inbuilt filter that many power users have been crying out for. But unless Google makes it easy for people to seed their networks, and to join up their work and leisure social activity, it is going to be up against it. It will be interesting to see what it looks like in one year, and to find out how many people make the transition, and which of the existing networks suffer as a result of that migration.

A final point would be that it very much looks like a new cold war has started, and that the social web is fragmenting into a bunch of distinct, isolated experienced. The overall user experience will suffer unless these networks can learn to live with one another. I hope we’re not reverting back to the age of the walled garden.

Richard Baxter – SEO Gadget
Here’s where I’m at – I’m going to talk about this as a user, not a digital marketer. Right now, I feel overwhelmed by Google+ emails and a lot of unwanted noise. Did Google set expectations of what circles mean with their promo videos? I’m not sure.

I’d love to be in a circle, with a group of friends and, we can share with each other anything we like – privately, away from the noise. Maybe I don’t understand something here but right now that’s not what circles is doing. Ok, so I can organise people into categories and watch those categories – that’s handy, but it’s hardly a killer feature.

I’m just working through my endless Google+ emails. Have you noticed that if you click the email link to manage your email subscriptions from an Android mobile device, you’re redirected to mobile sign in – after which you’re taken to the wrong place? There’s nothing sadder than a badly redirected mobile user.

Google+ is potentially a great idea but for me it’s not creating a compelling hook. I can only hope that over time, basic user issues are solved, circles become circles and the noise dies down. That’s the thing – it could be awesome, and I think huddles are a better concept overall for that. Why aren’t circles, actual circles?

David Harry – Search News Central
For starters I think we need to think of this as an evolution. It’s not really, “will this do better than Buzz”. Google Plus is merely part of an ongoing evolution. We can see bits of Wave, Buzz and other social attempts here. Google has deep pockets (and bonuses tied to social success) and will continue to keep going at the problem until they get it right. That being said, I really do believe that they’re onto something this time.

I have played with most of the social channels over the years including dead-pool ones such as Plurk. Obviously, at the end of the day, we’re left with what I’d call the Big 3 ( Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn). Google plus has elements much like them, including a few unique elements of their own. In many ways, I have come to actually prefer G+.

From a business perspective the jury is still out, we’ll have to wait and see what the business pages/profiles are going to look like. Much like personalization and social graph changes, people tend to say, “…but not everyone has a Google account”. To which we only need to look at the 500k Andriods being sold everyday to realize that is on the rise fast. One way or another, Google social will be around for a long time to come. Will this be the one? I believe so in some sense or another.

Rishi Lakhani – Explicitly.me
First, let’s take a look at the basics: Google+ is being heavily pushed. That is a surefire sign that its not a half hearted project like buzz and wave were. The WHOLE company is behind it. 10 Million sign ups in the first month? That’s unheard off, for any new social network. It has to be some sort of record. Even Twitter took 2 years to hit that kind of popularity. So was it doomed to failure? Not if Google wants to lose a large art of their staff, I can guarantee some massive bonuses are tied into this project.

They are coming hard into the game, and integrating it into EVERYTHING that they do – see the latest new about tying it into their shopping offering. It will survive, only because google will make sure it does. It has had too many Social failures in the past.

Where it will fit in? It will or can become the centre point of a Real recommendations engine. Google isn’t daft – they follow the trends, they have the data. The know how many people visit review sites. They know what the real figures behind that volume is. Why send them to the middle men for reviews? “Your friend liked this – check it out!”. You know why they brought this out? My opinion is that they needed a new mechanic for controlling webspam. Their algo is buggered by heavyweight spam and is being gamed. In order to tell who is real and who isn’t, they need to know those people, monitor their activity, relay that data, overlay it with “normal” user behavior, and then plug all that into the algo to clean up the SERPs. Facebook denied them that data – and so google has decided to take all their products, with millions of users and start slowly tying them all into one “real” social profile.

Facebook is cluttered, facebook is a closed network in many respects, and facebook sucks at controlling Human Spam. Google onthe other hand has millions of users with history be it their Gmail logins, adwords, adsense, analytics, aps, Mobile, android, voice, etc etc. Imagine all those tied up over time into one big network? You never need to log in, nor do you need to log out.

Andrew Girdwood – Bigmouthmedia / LBI
Is Google+ here to stay? I was asked, in a summit we were holding on data driven content, in a room full of clients, on the very morning that Google announced Google+ whether it would be a success. I stuck my neck out and said “Yes, it’ll be a success.” There was a bold and ballsy call there; but it was not mine. It had been Google’s. I had seen the YouTube clips Google had produced to explain the concept and those made it crystal clear to me that Google had thrown the incredible weight of the search experience at Google+. Google+ is has been blended into the core search interface. Google had updated their own DNA.

We’re now a few weeks into the launch and by all accounts it has been an incredible success. Remember; Google’s already had to apologise when some users got repeated email activity notifications and that was an error created when a storage system filled up far more quickly than calculated. Google+ is a success. Google+ is a blended part of the Google experience. Google+ is very certainly here to stay.

Malcolm Coles – malcolmcoles.co.uk
For the average web user, there’s an annoying disconnect between their favourite social media site – Facebook – and their usual search engine – Google (which still has 92% UK market share according to figures out this week). Clicking the “like” button shares stuff with your friends but doesn’t send out any powerful signals about what sites you want to see when you search for something.

If Google can integrate the social and search experience – so that clicking one button both shares content with your friends and influences your own and your friends’ search results – then it ought to clean up.

I’ve only been on Google+ for a week. But for 99% of that week I haven’t used it. I’ve been too busy to work out how it works. And it’s biggest problem is there seems little incentive to set up yet another network on top of Twitter or Facebook. It’s also not clear how I would get more value from doing so than I currently get from other social media sites.

I’m sure Google will solve this – if clicking +1 on sites improves rankings, there’s an incentive for webmasters to have the button. If clicking it explicitly shares it with a network and signals what I like and don’t like in search results, then I’ve got a reason to use it.

I reckon it will be a success. But because Facebook makes it difficult to import your contacts (shame on Facebook), I suspect it will be a slow burner.

So what do I think?
Well I’ve previously documented my thoughts on Google+ here and to be honest my perceptions of it still haven’t changed, although I actually think it is getting better the more people that join it.

Sure there are problems, the countless email notifications are an obvious hinderance, comment threading really needs to be considered and there are some issues relating to the circles that I would change. That said, having a centralised communication tool is very convenient, and there are obvious communication benefits to using it commercially, something that many people already appear to have done.

In particular, Huddle could be the key. One only has to look at the effect Blackberry Messenger has had on Blackberry sales amongst teens to see how much of a powerful tool this could be and ultimately the key to longevity and cut through in an ever increasingly competitive marketplace

Google+ has been with us for just over a week – with a mixed reception. However no sooner has it landed than we are seeing innovative use of the tool via an innovative campaign from Ford Europe which allows participants to win a copy of the racing game Dirt.

The premise of the competition is fairly simple. Ford have published a picture, and the comment with regards to the picture with the most +1′s is the winner.

Its not a disimilar concept to many that we have seen on Twitter where we have seen many campaigns allowing users to win anything from holidays to Ipads – however its interesting to see brands starting to test this space this early on in a new tools lifecycle – and particularly given the infancy of Plus itself.

Ford Europe – Yesterday 1:54 PM
Caption this!
Add your caption as a comment. The caption with the most +1′s after set time period wins a copy of the new DiRT3 game on the platform of their choice (PS3, XBox360, PC).
Note: Just one caption per person please!
Sharing has been disabled on this post because only captions here will be counted, but you can share a link to this post to your network, to ask your network to join in “liking” your caption or add their own caption by sharing this URL: http://bit.ly/Caption-This
If you have questions relating to this “caption competition” don’t ask them here (comments which are not captions will be removed), ask them here: http://bit.ly/mPGyWM
Tip: If you’re worried about the notification “noise” captions will generate just mute this post. The winner will be notified and your address details asked for when the time is up

That said, the campaign appears to be doing surprisingly well and one can’t help feeling this may be the first of many

Today we have seen the initial rollouts of Google, an interestin evolution of the Google product set and a significant step change from pure search player into full communications player – and perhaps now highlights just why Microsoft brought Skype a couple of months ago. The rollout is interesting – whilst there are obvious similarities with Facebook they have stopped short of producing a direct like for like competitor for the Facebook platform.

Initial impressions have been very favourable and the following video would suggest some promise:

So what does Google+ entail?
Circles: This may be where the initial circles concept came from and in some ways very similar to the way Twitter Lists work – and then some. Think XFN on steroids . Friends with Friends, colleagues with colleagues etcetera. Further to this these can overlap and be targeted either in isolation or as a group.

Sparks: Sparks helps you find content which interests you – and allows you to share this with your Circles. As you would expect from someone like Google this is something that looks as though it works very very well – and the ability to share it within context to groups of interest is something I haveto say looks very very well thought out.

Hangouts: When Google brought out Wave and Buzz – well lets just say the less said the better. However this actually looks a very sweet bit of kit – and in my opinion probably one of the reasons we have seen Microsoft take that massive investment in Skype. If this works as well as it looks well I am going to have a lot of fun. Whether one on one chats or group chats, Hangouts allows you to do just that….

Mobile: As with other products we have seen recently from Google, mobile is an increasingly major part of the Google psyche. Google+ is no different with two key products incorporated into this – along with the above funtionality. The Instant Upload facility is very very similar to that of Twitpic – however there is the obvious factor that all of this is incorporated into the Google framework.

In my opinion however Huddle could be an interesting player – particularly if you look at the success of similar framework such as Blackberry messaging. Not only can I see this being a trigger for people actually utilising much of the Google+ community but ultimately I actually think it may help other parts of the Google Armoury such as Android take up as this would be the natural extention of this within the mobile environment. If one looks at the takeup of Google+ within the younger demographics this could certainly be one to watch.

So is it a viable competitor to Facebook. Well my initial thought was no way, but actually this does look a very well thought out platform. Further to that it actually gives people a reason to join and give Google personal information, something I would argue has been one of the significant short comings of previous Google incarnations.

It also gives people outside of us SEO geeks a reason to join. I would suggest this isn’t going to be a quick thing however once there is a groundswell of people within the Google+ community I personally can see a significant growth spike of Google+.

Google+ is still in very limited rollout. If previous incarnations are anything to go by I would suggest we are likely to see a very quick migration of this into the open so I would be expecting invites to be received imminently. Whether its a success – well thats open to debate – however I would argue its certainly worth the hype

I watched in the Google Inside Search presentation yesterday in a state of awe, amazement and in certain instances bewilderment. In one amazing hour, Google outlined a clear strategy for the future where mobile and voice are thrust into the spotlight with the launch of a range of new tools aimed at really consolidating Google as the leader in search whether that be mobile or desktop, typed or voice driven, text or even image.

During the hour or so long presentation, Google unveilved at least four new products for the market including Google Voice for Desktop, Google Goggles with Translate, Search by Image and Instant Pages, with a new features and functionality added to the mobile homepage. Much of the new range of tools are centric around mobile devices, and when one looks at some of the data that came out of the presentation this isn’t suprising. This included:

• Search on desktop during the week is fairly constant however a noticeable dip is evident over the weekend periods (down Saturday,slightly up Sunday)
• Counter to this, mobile actually peaks on Saturday and Sunday with week periods actually seeing considerably less usage
• A similar trend can be seen one they analysed time usage. Desktop searches were particularly high during ‘work hours’ and fell away from around 9pm onwards. This trend on mobile went far further and extended to around 1am.

Revised Google Image layout
This pattern of mobile/desktop interplay is almost consistent all the way through the data they provide, and the focus on mobile is hugely evident in terms of future strategy for Google moving forward. Thus it is not surprising to see Google revising the layout of their mobile homepage. The new homepage features links to three main options namely restaurants, coffee and pubs & bars, with further options for fast food, whats nearby, shops, cashpoints, petrol and attractions all accessible via the more option. Google have also further enhanced the search functionality by incorporating a query builder to allow searchers to build up the query using a number of ‘+’ based keyword prompts. With tablets offering slightly different functionality to that of a mobile phone, Google has also tweaked the layout and usability for tablet based devices to be more in line with the enhanced functionality and experience that tablets provide. This was particularly noticeable in the image based search that Google displayed in the presentation, and certainly should improve the tablet experience should they continue to develop this. The one caveat is that obviously all of the result set relies on Google Local information and as such I would suggest there is still work to be done here, but I personally love the revised functionality that the new mobile search functionality provides.

Google Voice
Voice based search would appear to be another of Google’s focal points for the foreseeable future. Coupled with the increased usage of mobile over the last couple of years, voice search has grown 6x during the course of the last 12 months, quite an astounding figure in my opinion. With Google obviously seeing this as a growth area, the potential for this to be troublesome to Google is obvious. Voice recognition systems rely on accuracy to work, and thus the ability to understand what is being said is vital. Further to that mass takeup of voice based search is not going to happen until there is consistency in terms of all platforms being able to utilise it. Google used the example of 230 Billion words worth of data required to be handled in order to make voice search work correctly – something they have been able to do using the vast array of hardware they have at their disposal.

With this mass uptake in voice, not to mention the vast resource Google would appear to have put into the backend of the voice recognition framework it perhaps isn’t surprising to see Google launched Google Voice for desktop – not something I personally thought I needed but I guess some people may have a requirement for it. It should be noted that Google did highlight further functionality within Goggles to handles Translate functionality something that along with the voice functionality is quite a sweet addition to the toolkit – although perhaps not something that hasn’t been seen before.

Google search by image.
First impressions – wow. Very very impressive technology at first glance however I would suggest from some initial tests, perhaps needs a little refining as the image below would suggest.

That said from today onwards, you will be able to search Google using an image rather than traditional text – or even the revised voice based – functionality and I would suggest is likely to work far better on examples such as that provided in the example at Inside Search. Further enhancements will need to be made to handle the nuances of facial recognition but to be honest thats possibly a different post. However one has to look at the way Google has started labelling image search recently to see how the progression of image recognition within Google – and one has to suggest that this would seem are more than natural extention of this functionality. Further to that the obvious usage of this for link acquisition or blogger outreach in particular is fairly obvious – particularly in terms of identifying potential brand ambassadors.

Instant Pages
Its been just under a year since we saw the introduction of Google Instant, a marmite type product that some hate and some love – you make your decision on that one – however I personally think we are likely to have a similar reaction to this. First of all however it worth noting that the rollout of Google Instant has been considerably expanded to include 32 languages on multiple devices globally. Whilst Google Instant has had a significant impact on search time (2-5 seconds according to Google) the incorporation of Instant Pages should reduce this time even further.

To put this in context Google provided some figures….
It currently takes about 9 seconds for someone to enter a query; milliseconds for Google to do its business, then 15 seconds for users to pick a result. As we mentioned before the introduction of Google Instant saved between 2-5 seconds on this process. What effectively Google Instant Pages sounds like is that results which Google perceives will be highly clicked on (Google can work this out), they will prerender the page saving around another 2-5 seconds on the user query time.

Personally I have to say, I had no problem with the time taken to return results within the current result set – however there are obvious people that must be creaming themselves at the thought of another 2-5 seconds saved in terms of their page loading. One can’t help feeling the only people that would worry about that much time saving is likely to be the vast array of automated serp scrapers but that may be my misguided judgement….

Google Instant Pages available this week in the Chrome beta or developer version offers it today.

What does this mean for us
Well theres no doubting that Local search is big for Google very big – and mobile is a fundamental device to facilitate. It is a major surprise therefore to see Google create entry points therefore to allow searchers to quickly and easily access information in whatever format they find comfortable and it would be interesting if they didn’t continue this innovation moving forward. In particular, I would suggest the following points are particularly key

• Slow sites are a factor. Whilst we are not going back to old school 100k files any more, I would suggest an eye is kept on how long your pages take to load and optimised where possible.
• Think about hosting – not just for geo-targeting purposes.
• If you aren’t using Google Places – and can – do so. If you are using Google Places make sure your results are as optimised as possible.
• Optimise your images and make sure they are of good quality. Google looks at more than just image names and context.
• From a PPC perspective, think about device usage. Day parting in particular could be see some benefits from tailored device specific day parting in line with mobile usage….
• Make sure your site is mobile friendly. Users can and will potentially be looking at it.
• SEO isn’t a desktop text vehicle any more. Its so much more and as marketeers you need to be thinking across, text, imagery, local, products and mobile. If your not your missing a considerable proportion of the pie…..

Further reading:
Google Announces a Number of New Search Features
Google Voice Search & Search By Image Comes To Desktops
 

Since sitelinks have been launched in early 2009, they have revolutionalised the way many PPC campaigns are run. The sitelinks allowed campaigns to more specifically target or push certain messages in term providing marketeers with even more touchpoints with potential customers. Since then sitelinks have been expanded and pushed out to multiple devices and have to be considered one of the success stories of recent times in terms of Google product enhancements.

Its intereresting therefore that Google have announced embedded sitelinks which have been rolled out globally bar China, Japan and Korea. With Embedded Sitelinks, there are no additional lines appended to your text ad. Instead, text in your ad that exactly matches one or more of the sitelinks in your campaign will automatically be linked to that sitelink’s destination URL. This means that potential customers should be able to pick the part of your ad that applies directly to their current interests and visit the most specific page for that topic.

To use embedded sitelinks, the campaign must be enabled for Ad Sitelinks. Further to this the ad must appear in the paid search ads which appear above the organic search results, and part of your ad text must exactly match one or more of your Ad Sitelinks. Additionally, embedded sitelinks will only show for ads that don’t meet one or more of the requirements for one- or two-line Ad Sitelinks.

One of the unwritten rules often concerns the transfer of paid search campaigns once the management of campaigns has moved from one agency (or company) to another. This can be further complicated if one ads in internal resource, api developers all of which may require access for one reason or another.

With some new functionality within Google Adwords called Multiple Links, this is now a lot easier and will allows up to 5 different MCC’s to be linked to a single account. The net aim of this functionality is to make it easier for organisations to work together however it doesn’t necessarily fix the issue outlined in point 1 above and still requires considerable co-ordination between agencies as there’s still only one active budget at a time. Further to this each budget can only be associated with one Manager Defined Budget which is, in turn, only associated with one MCC.

There is also significant potential for further issues as any one of the MCC’s with access can make changes to the account thus what one agency may change may be reversed by another – which does beg the question as to the real-life usage of this as a product particularly with regards to actually changing details on the account.

A webinar is being held on June the 8th to answer further questions regarding multiple links and optional-login accounts. To register click here using password googleMCC

After all the build up, its finally arrived – and to be honest I personally have felt a huge deal of deflation. As with many of the products Google release it just has many of the common traits – loads of build up with just an average product – something you get the feeling you have seen and used before.

Whilst there is only so creative one can get on such a social trigger, I can’t help thinking this could have a point of difference. Whilst there is no doubting +1 is only part of the social puzzle that Google is trying to build, one can’t help feeling that there could be more to this or perhaps this is the right product released a little early (in my opinion possibly this is the more obvious scenario as I actually think this could be a great product with a more established community).

As with nearly all Google products, the system itself needs a user to be logged in and thus will not be displayed to users who are not logged into the Google accounts. I understand from a bit of research that this is temporary and the +1 button will be on full release shortly whether or not the user is logged in or not.

It is also worth noting that Google utilise a core URL and this is likely to bring the facet of canonicalisation into greater vogue. The URL which is +1′d is determined by the following:

• The href attribute.
• The link rel=”canonical” tag
• The URL of the page as denoted in the document.location.href

The +1 system is supported in 44 languages however it should be noted that +1 activity continues to show only on English language results on Google.com. One would certainly suggest its only a matter of time before this rolls out to the wider resultset – and I would be hugely surprised if we didnt see greater visibility of the +1 results in the SERPs through non .com results over the coming days.

All of this is customisable via a self service code generator to customise both size and language options

As search marketeers, many of us are driven by data. Whether it be campaign configuration or ongoing optimisation of our campaigns, data plays a fundamental part in ensuring campaign success and profitibility. I personally have often been critical of Google and the validity of some of the data they put out particularly to SEO’s (that doesn’t apply so much to our paid search brothers) – however there is no doubting Google have at their disposal a raft of really powerful data.

Its therefore great to see Google start to consolidate much of that data, with the launch of Think Insights. Whilst this is still heavily US centric one has to assume that we will see this extend to markets beyond the US (at least one would hope Google embrace the fact they are a global organisation).

The site covers a range of sectors including but not limited to:

• Travel
• Retail
• Automotive

and covering a range of other subjects including

• Offline impact of online advertising
• Understanding consumer behaviour
• Optimal media mixes

As I have said in recent posts, I can’t help feeling the more relevant data Google continue to provide to marketeers the better I can’t help feeling it is for them. Data is power, data allows us to make educated decisions and at the end of the day, the more confident we are in a decision the more likely you can’t help feeling we will be to spend…..

One of my biggest bugbears with some of the data that comes out of Google is often the accuracy of the public facing data it provides, whether this be Adwords traffic estimates or percentage clickthroughs from Webmaster Tools. In particular it is the search based data in particular that really grates me, as this is data that Google should easily have at its disposal – and whether you be a SEO or a Paid Search Manager should be the focal point for quality planning on any campaign.

Instead in the past we have had rough figures provided by Google – which in the absence of any other qualified data (such as 100% exposure PPC data) suffices. Suffices in business though is often not good enough and if Google want to increase their revenues may I suggest a simple look at the management data they provide may be a better start than opportunist changes to the search engine pages obviously designed to inflate click through on paid search results.

On that note – however Google do appear to have made some tentative steps in the right direction. As of May the 10th, Google have announced a number of changes within the estimate tool on its Adwords interface to provide marketeers with better data as regards clicks, cost and ad position. Unlike many other recent Google updates this has been rolled out globally rather than in select countries. Along with the reintroduction of local search volumes (on a keyword level), I can’t help thinking this is at least a start in the right direction – however looking at potential search volumes one still has to question the validity of the data coming back.

Over the weekend I noticed quite a significant change in my Google results pages. Whilst there have been a number of changes to the SERP pages before the most recent ones are significant for a number reasons, namely:

1. The ‘title’ previously underlined is now not underlined. The title itself also appears to be slightly softer in tone than previous
2. The gaps between results is much larger than previous.
3. The gap between the title and the description is now more pronounced.
4. In certain instances dotted lines have also been reported.
5. I have also noticed product results appear to be sitting lower, many of the SERPs we have been monitoring are now displaying product results around position 6 rather than between positions 1 and 3
6. Google Suggest/Instant appears to knock down the paid and organic search results quite considerably
7. Sitelinks in paid search results have a bigger distance between results.

The biggest impact from a personal perspective is the significant impact this may have on organic search results. Taking for example how the results would show on a 1366×768 resolution monitor (so slightly wider than a typical resolution, and the same height). You will notice that the PPC ads now dominate a significant percentage of the visible real estate, offering potential browsers around 8 paid search opportunities, with just one organic result. Where the paid search results dont occur, two results are then displayed at that resolution. Further to that if you consider that many results display secondary results or even greater brand stacked results this may still mean those first couple of results are dominated by one advertiser.

One can only assume that this is likely to significantly benefit paid advertisers rather than organic advertisers, and again increase competition for the first position organic terms. Further I would not be surprised to see competition for PPC results as a way of guaranteeing first page coverage increase, something which could again see paid search costs increase.

Reading between the lines, this certainly doesn’t appear to be a full rollout. Bas Van Den Beld has done some great coverage on Stage of Search about the new pages, however him and some of the Search Engine Land guys do not appear to have seen the results yet for themselves.  I would imagine given the scale of the changes this may stick, however certainly initial feedback has been very mixed.

@peteyoung I got it a few days ago and REALLY don't like it

May 8, 2011 7:02 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Thehodge

Dom Hodgson

@peteyoung Been loads of variations reported. I hate this 1 the most: without dotted-line + snippet & URL in same format http://t.co/n2q69Ng

May 8, 2011 7:49 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@PG_Martin

Paul Martin

What are your thoughts on the new pages??

Google is now testing a new feature which integrates the Instant Previews found on the organic search results with the paid listings on Google as well. As with the organic search results, this will allow potential browsers to view the landing page before actually clicking on the site, thus bringing the requirement for well thought out landing pages more into vogue.

This brings the paid search results more in line with Google’s other inventory, such as the organic listings as well as the mobile devices which was launched recently. As before this is certainly going to bring the issue of the landing page much more into play as regards optimising a paid search campaign. Unlike organic search, paid search advertisers are paying on a per click basis and conversion is often key to making this work as a channel. Thus the potential for browsers to evaluate a potential website before they click into it, brings the issue of the landing page much more into vogue much quicker than before.