You may have read over the weekend that Microsoft have launched a new multi-million pound advertising campaign to hit UK screens this week aiming to increase its market share within the UK search market.

The three-month campaign, which includes three new TV ads created by the design ad powerhouse JWT, starts on Wednesday and uses the strapline “Bing and decide” – and will be aimed at highlighting Bing’s evolution as a decision engine. The TV campaign will feature ordinary people asking for information and getting their answers from Bing and will run for a month and then on a two-week bursts until Mid-June. This will be supported by an equally massive digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and other media including social networking sites such as Facebook.

“This is a big moment – we are taking out our slingshots and taking on Goliath,” said Microsoft’s UK managing director, Ashley Highfield, adding that he believed Bing met a real desire from both consumers and advertisers. He went on to suggest that people worldwide may have forgotten that there is an alternative search engine to Google.

Whilst its good to see Microsoft putting their money where their mouth is however how much of an impact this will have will be difficult to gauge. Following some significant traction following its launch, Bing market share has stagnated recently. This increase in exposure is likely to cement its position as the second largest player in the UK search engine landscape – however just how much of a bite out of Google’s apple it will take is still to be seen – particularly given around $100 million was spent on the initial launch of Bing.

Given their current position in the UK market therefore it is no real suprise to see some above the line activity come into play during at this stage – and one would suggest that this will result in some pickup of market share – and that market share is likely to come from Google – however the potential return is still open to debate. Given Ask.com undertook similar activity in order to increase their UK market share with limited success , one has to query whether this is likely to result in any significant market gains from Google.

Their best point of attack still stands with their product – however this is something Google have always been very good at competing against. Google have a hell of a head start in terms of their product – however this hasn’t stopped them consistently integrating new products and technologies – and whilst I am not a fan of many of the recent incarnations – it does highlight their consistent drive for better performance.

If Bing are to compete – this is where they will have to do it. There is no point throwing money at something if their is little substinance to back it up – or as one of my colleauges would say – ‘Just because you put on an engine on a set of draws – does not make it a sports car’. Bing need their product to evolve – to provide similar primary features as Google and then some.

They have certainly taken a different tact with one of the primary aims of the campaign to contrast the “visually rich” Bing with the relatively austere-looking Google. “It is a battle not just of mind but of heart as well,” he said. “We are wanting to make an emotional connection – we are ploughing a different furrow here.”

Ploughing a different furrow they might be however I can’t help thinking gains from this activity will be small in the medium to long term if this activity is not backed up with further developments on the platform itself. However if as Highfield suggests that Bing can make that emotional connection – then we may at last have a fight on our hands. I however won’t hold my breath…..

The speed of innovation at Google is immense at the moment, not a day seems to go by where we don’t see a new tool (no matter how badly thought out they are), tweak to the algorithm or change to their search page. Google is a company in transit at the moment, from pure search engine to multi-platform player – but it would seem that is not to the detriment (in terms of refining) their core products.

The announcement on the Webmaster blog today of the ability to further localise search results is interesting in the context of what they are currently doing – and a further refinement on the burgeoning ’search options’ facility they have now incorporated into the search results.

From now on there is not the need to refine your search via the traditional search box, Google now provide you with the facility to search local results via the ’search options facility’

You can choose to see results nearby either your default location or a custom location, and you can narrow down to results at the city, region or state level

From initial tests its certainly a work in progress as my search for nightclubs didn’t many of the results I expected with a number of entries for Toronto, Las Vegas etc – but to be honest we’ve come to expect a bit of cross country canabalisation in our search results recently

Don’t ask the reasons why I performed the following search – however I was surprised to see Google playing round with yet more layout tweaks during a recent search for fellow UK Search Marketeer, Andrew Girdwood from Bigmouthmedia.

My first thought was that this may be down to some configurations on my browser – however this does appear to be quite a distinctive tweak to the search page particularly if you compare this with my Mediavest colleague Jon Myers

You will notice the following characteristics

• Integration of side navigation
• Results font smaller and bolder
• Show more results not underlined
• Blue bar removed between search box and results

Anyone else seen this in the wild  or is this yet more fun and games from the mighty Google

There are a number of topics being mentioned in the industry, however one of the topics recently which has gained a lot of traction relates to RDF (Resource Description Framework) and Rich Snippets.

What markup such as this allows for search marketeers is the ability to provide further information to the search engines. In particular Google have been particular active in better ‘understanding the web’ during their announcements of Google Squared and Rich Snippets during their Searchology event back in 2009.

During the official post they stated the following:

We can’t provide these snippets on our own, so we hope that web publishers will help us by adopting microformats or RDFa standards to mark up their HTML and bring this structured data to the surface. This will help people better understand the information you have on your page so they can spend more time there and less on Google. We will be rolling this feature out gradually to ensure that the quality of Google’s search results stays high. If you are a webmaster and are interested in participating, visit the rich snippets help page to learn more

The announcement therefore of the further expansion of that earlier announcement, would suggest Google are serious in their adoption of RDF and Microformats – and that search engine marketeers would be stupid to simply ignore these within their SEO strategies.

The announcement of ‘Answer Highlighting’ by Google – which builds on the ‘Google Squared’ framework mentioned above – means that Google will now attempt to return more relevant snippets as part of their organic results. Take for example ‘empire state height’, prior to the announcements announced on the 22nd January would have been returned as follows

These will now display far more descriptive information as part of the snippet

Further to that, Googles adoption of extended rich snippets within the SERPs continues with events added to recent rollouts affecting reviews and people. These improvements could be of particularly interest to organisations such as event management companies given the example provided by Google:

Given the lack of understanding as a whole within much of the SEO community, I would suggest take up of microformats as a whole is likely to take some time to get traction, however there is no doubting the potential value not only to the search engine but to the advertiser as well – and its good to see Google adopting frameworks which further encourage on-page refinement over off-page engagement.

Whilst Google is only using this in limited sectors at present, there is nothing to stop this from being rolled out across further sectors as and where applicable. If you haven’t got rich snippets, microformats or RDF on your radar, I would suggest its about time you did….

To find out more about:
RDF – http://www.w3.org/RDF/
Google Squared and Rich Snippets – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/05/more-search-options-and-other-updates.html
Answer Highlighting and further Rich Snippets – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/understanding-web-to-make-search-more.html

Not seen this before – thats not saying much as the last couple of weeks have been manic – however saw something interesting appearing within the local search blended result this morning on Google on a search for new home specialist Barratt.

If you look at the snapshot to the left, you will see the option to click on an option which appears to be for bus directions to the afore mentioned local result.

First things first, its not something I have seen a lot of in the wild, however its not something I expect to see a lot of in its current incarnation. Clicking on the link merely takes you through to the Google Maps results for the local result – not something that seemed particularly relevant given the context of the link.

Google is able to offer directions, so it is a shame that they didnt perhaps use this as the landing page rather than that of the destination.

Wow. Given all the recent talk of Caffeine et al, it will probably come as little of a suprise to many however yesterday has to have been a fairly momentus day as regards Google SERP’s following hot on the trail of many other momentus days over the last couple of weeks. In that time we have seen a plethora of changes in landscape, from the first click free annoucements, to the introduction of “permanent” personalised search and now the launch of real time search within the Google landscape.

One of the key aspects behind personalised search , a point made clear by Amit Singhal is that relevancy is fundamental its implementation. Reducing the potential for spam within the real time search results is a fundamental consideration for Google, and it will be interesting to see how and whether this actually does come true.

According to various sources, information for the real time searches will be pulled from a number of sources including but not necessarily limited to:

• Twitter Updates
• FriendFeed updates
• Content from Google News
• Content from Google Blog Search
• Newly created web pages
• Freshly updated web pages
• Jaiku updates
• Identi.ca updates
• Other real time solutions such as Sprouter

THis in all likelihood is only the start of it. One would think that other platforms such as LinkedIn, MySpace and Facebook would be ‘plugged’ in, as and when the opportunity arrives, and from what Danny Sullivan was saying on his Search Engine land column deals are already in place with both usurping those deals in place with Bing already – however the Myspace one could be one to watch particularly given its affiliation with News Corp.

It would appear there are some reasonable levels of filtration in place already, certainly some of my simple tests suggested that

• Tweets with links are not directly published to the SERPS. There are tweets in particular going through with links, however one would suggest this would need to have reached a certain level of traction prior to publication
• Not all results receive the real time results – even with the filter turned on

There is plenty out there in the webspace regarding the launch of Real Time search however I would highly suggest the following reads

1. Relevance meets the real time web – Official Google Blog
2. Google launches real time search – Search Engine Land

THere is a point of differentiation as to the effect this will have. Neil Jackson on the Tamar blog suggested that personalised search would in the long term have a greater effect than that of real time search, however one has to consider the fact this is the first significant incarnation of a real time search experience for Google, and one would suggest this should evolve over time.

Wow, when this dropped on Friday it was a bit of a bombshell.

From the (SEO) industry, the response has been lukewarm, and mixed in nature. Some people love it, others hate it (a good overview of this has been done by Barry Schwartz over at Search Engine Roundtable – a couple read as follows:

Google is using a “secret cookie” not attached to the Google.com domain to handle the Web History/Personalized Search for users who are not logged in.The gradual impact over time will be that unaware users who click on Google search listings will reshape their search results. Unless Google develops some sort of injection to show people new (fresh) content, discovery will become more difficult for less sophisticated users. – HighRankings Forum

Google are there to find ways to best meet the needs of the searcher. As much as we want them to be, they are not there to meet our SEO needs. – Digital Point

The average Google user are just looking for what they want, and it’s them that the personalisation is aimed at. The people who do random searching will know how to “defeat” the filters. – Chris Hurst – Searchbliss

This just feels so very wrong-headed that the mind boggles! As I often explain to IT staff, NOT EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE PROGRAMMED SHOULD BE PROGRAMMED. – WebmasterWorld

@peteyoung other then tinfoil brigade and a few seos who remember I can’t imagine the take up will be high at all. – Tim Nash (in response to my initial RT (from GuavaMarkD) regarding personalised search being turned on

I think Richard Shove’s response to Tim above was pretty spot on (whether or not I agree with Googles decision or not) and highlights one of the reasons as to why this probably will mean that continued traction for Google continues unabated.

It’s on by default (I think) so I imagine it will only be SEOs that have it switched off. Joe Bloggs won’t know it’s now personalised

From a pure results stand point, I have to say there are certain bits that I will wait to see further details on, for example

1. I for one use a search engine to find potential sites I haven’t used before, not ones I have.  I would be reluctant to lose this level of functionality at the expense of sites will naturally drive traffic to their sites through other means such as TV, press etc
2. The level of personalisation. Further to my point above, I would reluctant to have my whole search query page taken up by results I have previously visited. Surely thats why bookmarks were invented?
3. Do I necessarily want someone knowing that much of my search behaviour?

Its going to be interesting to see the uptake of this. As Richard says, I doubt the majority of people will know that this is happening, however whether or not they tire of seeing the similar sites coming back is a different story

I will finish with one of the quotes from Barry’s article at the Search Engine Roundtable and in turn taken from WebmasterWorld forums which I think finishes this off perfectly:

Sounds like an attempt at a product improvement. SEOs may or may not like it, but the real question is whether Joe Searcher likes it. If Joe does, Google will remain one big step ahead of its competitors. If Personalized Search turns out to be Google’s answer to Windows Vista, Google will need to bring back Google XP or leapfrog to Google 7.

Other articles on this subject
Google Personalised Search – Neil Jackson – Tamar
Google now personalises everbodies results – Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land
Google Search gets personalised with everyone – Frank Read – Marketing Pilgrim
The SEO guide to personalised search – David Harry – SEODojo
12 Likely effects of Google Personalised Search - OnReact.com
Google’s Personalized Results: The “New Normal” That Deserves Extraordinary Attention – Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Land

I have lost count of the amount of posts I have done recently on Google related changes, and many of these have meant the greater promotion of their paid inventory over that of the organic equivalents. This has included:

• Adwords Sitelinks
• Adwords products
• Merchant Centre

The net effect of this has been the continued migration of Google’s paid inventory into previously organic search real estate, often resulting in organic results now appearing close to or under the fold. If considered against traditional Google search results, one can now see paid results influencing a high proportion of the visible page and as a subsequent result users favouring these paid results over traditional organic results. Further to this I personally would be expecting the traditional 30/70 split to come down significantly when we visit this over the next couple of months – particularly if you consider the findings of previous studies from Enquiro and Google themselves which suggest

• Higher results on the page receive more traction in terms of eyefall and clickthrough
• Whilst interactive elements such as maps/products impact eyefall and behaviour, this still is heavily focussed towards the primary results and around the blended result itself -> chunking/fencing (from Gord Hotchkiss Enquiro report – http://www.enquiro.com/whitepapers/pdf/barriers-on-a-search-results-page.pdf
• Left sided results receiving higher traction than right

However this does now reflect much more of a push rather than pull mentality, more symbolic of traditional advertising channels such as TV, Radio which whilst it does increase the visibility of Googles paid inventory – and thus make Google more money – does at the same time reduce the level of ‘choice’ and at the same time.

We have already seen a number of factors such as CTR reduce and CPC increase – however increasing the volume of paid inventory is going to mean in all likelihood

• Further increases in CPC
• Increases in budget as more clicks go via paid routes than organic
• Greater competition, thus greater obstacles to entry. Small companies finding it harder to compete
• A small number of organisations dominating the paid search results – a look at competitive sector such as insurance is symbolic of this in action

I can’t help feeling this constant drive for commercial renumeration is sooner or later going to start impacting in usage, particularly given the drive from Bing in terms of their search product and the potential for a viable competitor in the coming months/years. Consumers often don’t like being ’sold to’ without permission, with examples such as Second Life and MySpace etc highlighting how greater commercialisation can potentially lead to reductions in popularity.

Only time will tell whether this actually occurs, however it will be interesting to watch just what happens to Google market share over the coming months, particularly with the unparralled drive towards world domination. I can’t help feeling however we are getting to the point where Google are fixing things that are not broken, and that isn’t without risks.

Its been coming for a while, however Google have finally open the product ads product to US advertisers. Barry Schartz (Rustybrick) over at Search Engine Roundtable, suggests there are two types of product ads in operation namely a commission based product AdWords ads and the other is normal PPC based product ads.

Further to this Barry outlined some recent tests Google had been undertaking – dating back to January 2008:

Back in January 2008, Google began testing product (base) results in ads. They continued the test in October 2008 with expandable links to these ads. Then in February 2009, the ads became very well seen by many searchers. In May they tested one line product links and in August they tested open product ads. In April, I wrote how to get product images in AdWords ads. Keep in mind, some of these campaigns were not CPA driven, like the one I mention above.

So what does this potentially mean, well increased revenue for Google – pure and simple. Google are monetizing (or attempting to monetize) a number of channels at the moment including more obvious such as Youtube, however by placing these in prominent places such as those in the image above they take up valuable real estate, thereby in all likelihood having one of two effects

1. Increasing CPC on the top positions. Being 4 all of the sudden means just above the fold, 5 is below. This means PPC advertisers are playing a brand new ball game
2. Greater focus on the PPC results given the significant eyefall that will be drawn towards what are very prominent assets within the search page.
3. Greater utilisation of the Google Products facility. Looking at some of the improvements rolled out there, that will be the next to be fully ‘exploited’

This isn’t available in the UK yet, however given the fact many of the other recent test such as the Adwords Sitelinks (see above) have now become mainstream in terms of their deployment within the UK SERP’s, I would be expecting this to come here at some point in the not too distant future. Exciting times await, no doubting it….

I read with interest the launch of the Chrome Operating System (OS) this morning on TechCrunch. The launch of an operating system from Google is hardly a surprise particularly if you consider their biggest competitor – Microsoft – started off as a software company and now has expanded into online advertising, and as such this would appear to be natural evolution.

So what are the key features of Chrome OS:

• Boot time of around 7 seconds for cold boots – Very quick if any of you have been through a full Linux or Windows boot
• Panel based navigation system – meaning you don’t have to leave the page you are currently working on
• Integration with current Chrome OS look and feel.

An Introduction to Chrome OS

The Chrome OS GUI Interface

So what are my first impressions, well
1) Appears to be very geared towards the netbook market.
2) Look and feel is very similar to that of a Linux KDE environment.
3) Some very nice additions – really do liked the panel application tabs – and the popup layers

However a couple of questions still remain
1) Can this scale to enterprise level rollouts
2) Are there any other suppliers rolling out apps for Chrome – or is this only going to run Google proprietary software to start with
3) What is the minimum system spec for such a machine.

Its nowhere near ready for full rollout – however it is looking promising. However I certainly hope there is more thought in terms of integration than the was with the Chrome Rollout, as without this it may end up as just another Knol.

You either love it or you hate (i personally hate it) but the breadcrumb on the Google results are here

However in order to gauge the feedback on this we have decided to help our friends @ Google out by conducting a small study to see what people really think of the new breadcrumb trail. If you have five minutes just take some time to let us know what you think of it, and we will publish the results shortly

Which UK Search Marketing Conference will you be attending

• Sascon
• SES London
• Think Visibility
• SMX Advanced London
• A4U Expo
• International Search Summit
• TFM&A
• Ad-Tech
• Internet World

View Results

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A lot of column inches have been written about Caffeine and Vince. In particular the Vince update has accumulated a lot of interest particularly from people attempting to explain a number of phenomena which have happened since Vince occured.

I won’t go through the history of the Vince update, as Jonathan Stewart has written a fantastic overview of Vince, which includes a very good breakdown of the history and many of the posts attributed to Vince

I for one have to completely agree with many of Jonathans conclusions at the end of the post particularly when many of Google’s recent tools should only serve to highlight the fact that Google has, and more importantly is using the vast amount of data it has at its disposal already to power tools such as Wonder Wheel and Google AdPlanner, so why not use that data for the search engine results as well.

However it was a recent seminar down at Google (the branding summit of all places) that got me really thinking about this. It wasn’t actually something Google highlighted in their presentation, it was a question from the audience about the source of data for the Google Ad Planner tool that did it. The response from Google was fairly clear in terms of where they obtained the data for Ad Planner namely:

• ComScore
• Alexa
• Google Analytics
• Google Toolbar

Further to this, Google were continuing to present the benefits of Wonder Wheel which allows users profile what people have done after they have searched for a particular term.

This got me thinking. If Google has got all this data, and is able to draw on all the behavioural activity that it can collate via logged in accounts – why would they not be using this as part of their algorithm. For example, if I type holidays into Google, chances are (before Vince) my next port of call would probably have been Thomas Cook or Thomson as one of the biggest tour operators in the UK.

If one takes a further look at car insurance, one can see this further evidence taking place. Direct Line heavily sell themselves on the fact they are not on the aggregators, something many of their competitors do and you see will see them very prominently positioned.

This is not new – this is something very well covered by the lads over at iCrossing when they hit the nail on the head here. However where it gets interesting is what happens when we combine the improvement made during Vince with those of Caffeine.

I personally don’t think the two should be looked at seperately, and when one considers the increase in popularity of real time search rivals such as Twitter and Facebook you can see where Google are gearing much of their thinking around. Caffeine is not an algorithmic update, its an infrastructural update. It is not therefore so much about improving the manner in which data is crunched, it is more concerned with having enough power and grunt to be able to crunch that data – and thus the feasibility of real time search is now put into context – particularly if you see the following video of Eric Schmidt (from Revolution Magazine via ReadWriteWeb):

In the Video Eric particularly makes reference to the following key points:

• “Real time information is just as valuable as all the other information, we want it included in our search results.”
• “We can index real-time info now – but how do we rank it?”
• It’s because of this fundamental shift towards user-generated information that people will listen more to other people than to traditional sources. Learning how to rank that “is the great challenge of the age.” Schmidt believes Google can solve that problem

Take that scenario and combine it with the recent algorithmic updates on Vince and you have a very powerful behavioural real time search engine, something which in my opinion offers something different to the offerings available from the current ’simplistic’ Twitter and Facebook models. Whether or not my thoughts above are on the ball or whether they are rants brought on by a severe lack of sleep are still to be seen, however the latest changes are likely to keep Google very much on the forefront of search for the short to medium term still.

Other posts on Vince and Twitter
Google Vince
Jonathan Stewart’s comprehensive guide to Vince
Richard Baxter – Google Vince – Brand or No Brand
SharkSEO – Is this Googles UK glitch
iCrossing – Unlocking Googles Vince update
Aaron Wall – Brand vs Query Refinements – Google using second search

Google Caffeine
Dave Freeman – The Google Caffeine update – Whats it all about
Matt Cutts – Expect Caffeine after the holidays

Today the news broke that Google had acquired Admob, a company specialising in serving display ads on mobile devices including the iPhone. In return Admob will receive a cool $750 million in stock. Whilst Google do have some mobile traction, the deal with Admob provides them with significant muscle in an increasingly booming mobile market.

According to the BBC, Google said mobile advertising had “enormous potential” and praised AdMob’s “exceptional progress”.

“AdMob is the quintessential Silicon Valley start-up, generating impressive year-on-year revenue growth, and we’re excited to welcome this talented team to Google,” said Susan Wojcicki, Google’s vice-president of product management.

It would also seem that Google have purchased VOIP startup Gizmo5 (according to reports from TechCrunch) further expanding Googles telecoms credentials and could further aid their Google Voice product and in the long term could provide Google with a serious rival to Skype.

However it is the Admob acquisition which is getting the majority of column inches. It is no secret that Google have been trying to develop the display credentials, particularly looking at their behavioural display platform and with the acquisition of Admob they should be able to expand their available inventory within this sector quite significantly.

What it also means is that the mobile market really does have a significant player backing the mobile market (excluding search) outside of the traditional hardware and operator players such as Apple, Orange and Blackberry – and the first to make a real statement of intent of mobile within their future plans.

Its certainly an interesting purchase, and one Google will have to be careful to nuture. There is no doubt though, it shows Googles’ serious interest in the mobile market, and provides a clear warning to rivals that they are not just happy at dominating the online market. TIme will tell whether this goes a similar way to previous attempts from Yahoo and Microsoft or whether this is the start of a ‘golden age of mobile’ as the mobile market sees hastened development and innovation.

There are a number of potentially sensitive products that Google are currently working on or are close to release phase at present including Google Real Estate currently being trialled in both the US and Australia and the secured loans merchant search options that were beta’d a while back.

That early testing now seems to have paved the way for Adwords Comparison ads, which lets users compare multiple, relevant offers more easily. From their launch post on the Official Adwords blog, they describe the new feature as follows:

AdWords uses a host of targeting and relevancy signals to determine the best ads for each query. However, sometimes a user’s query doesn’t provide enough information for us to confidently predict what they want. Take, for example, users who search for “mortgage.” Do they want a new home loan or a refinance? Do they want a fixed rate or an adjustable rate loan? Comparison Ads improves the ad experience on Google.com by letting users specify exactly what they are looking for and helping them quickly compare relevant offers side by side.

For example for searchers typing in the term mortgage into Google could be presented with a result as follows:

These ads offer more than traditional Adwords ads do, and include a couple of example data plus the option to further refine the loan criteria. Once users have refined their search, they are presented with the results page much like the previous merchant search rollout, which allows them to further refine their search (within the advertisers who are utilising these services)

Once users find an offer that matches their specific needs, they can either call directly or request a quote. If a user requests a quote, Google automatically anonymizes the user’s phone number and sends you a unique code that the advertiser can use to contact the user. Advertisers only pay if a user calls the phone number on theoffer or fills out a form to request a quote.

So what does this mean for users, Google and advertisers.

Well for users this can only be a good thing. More choice easily accessible from the Google search page can only mean users are presented with a greater choice from the SERP’s pages however if it was anything like the previous merchant search testing, the number of advertisers who utilised this was fairly small. This would obviously need to scale up if this was to be of use, however one can imagine some advertisers being very cautious and very wary of the Google behemoth.

That leads us nicely on to advertisers. This is where I can’t help feeling there is likely to be some discontent. The Adwords Comparison ads take up the first position on the sponsored ads options on the Google search page, and as such take up a piece of core real estate, which for terms like mortgages does trigger a high volume (albeit impulse clickers included) of clicks. Align this with the ’standoutness’ of the ad block itself and you have an onpage feature that carry a significant amount of traction. The net result being

• Advertisers don’t occupy position one
• Advertisers have to work harder to make their ads stand out
• Positioning within secondary results becomes more important

My colleague at Mediavest Jon Myers talks about the search engines as the new landing pages, and this is such a perfect example of that, something designed to create a sticky landing page. The net result, three fold in my opinion

• Mining the long tail becomes every more important
• Creative optimisation and landing page optimisation becomes more important to paid search advertisers
• Natural (and blended) search (SEO) become even more crucial, particularly those core results above the fold on the page

It will be interesting to see whether this test ever makes full rollout, however given its refinements from earlier testing it would appear it is only a matter of time before this sees the full light of day

Following on from @davenaylor’s earlier tweet on yet another Google geo-targeting fail, I decided to go on a quick snoop around the Google search results.

One of the stranger results I came across was this one – when typing the query in ‘Google Pluto’

The result itself is one for the Google 3D warehouse project, however you will notice the second ‘phrase’ in appears to be blanked out, something which personally I haven’t previously come across within day to day SERP’s

Any other strange results within the Googlesphere noticed recently?

Youtube can now boast over a billion hits to its website on a daily basis according to a video blog post by one of its founders. According to YouTube statistics the site now provides 42 million video streams every hour or 700,000 every minute. Chad Hurley’s blog marks the third anniversary of YouTube’s £1.65 acquisition by Google.

Mr Hurley co-founded the website in 2004 with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim who all met while employees at online pay service PayPal.

“We wanted to create a place where anyone with a video camera, a computer, and an internet connection can share their life, art, and voice with the world, and in many cases they can make a living from doing so,” Mr Hurley said, reflecting on YouTube’s original aims.

Read Chads thoughts on the Youtube blog

I am fascinated by the amount of tweaks that Google in particular has made to its search engine pages. Given the relative staticness of the Google experience since it started, the frequency at which the Google experience changes at present is quite staggering.

Whilst much of the recent improvements have been to do with the actual display of the search engine pages, there have been some which have had to do with the actual search results, either via additional search functionality or via personalisation additions.

Yesterdays announcement I thought was very interesting. For those that missed it, Google have further expanded the functionality of the ’show options’ section of the site, allowing searchers to personalise results even further, with nine (yes 9) new features added. These include:

• Last Hour – In my opinion indicative of a Google drive towards real time search. More and more of Googles recent experience appears to be with delivery of time-sensitive data within the SERP’s
• Specific date range searching – Search between dates you want to search for rather than pre-defined dates
• More and fewer shopping sites – In my opinion a massive addition to the functionality and potentially the biggest impact in terms of personalisation from a search marketeers perspective
  
  Source: Google Official Blog
• Visited pages and not yet visited -
• Books, blogs and news

Some of the above functionality are merely additions to the site, but others such as shopping and time specific searching has the ability to really change a users search behaviour, something which could have significant impacts on advertisers and drive such revenues more towards the paid search ads – which appear not to be influenced by such changes.

Perhaps thats just it, however this goes beyond just dollars, it is a significant improvement to the search experience in my opinion, its just a pity its hidden away at the bottom of the show options tab, something which will probably significantly affect take up of users making this part of the search experience.

It seems many of the posts I do these days (which have been intermittent recently due to heavy work commitments), are often about changes to the SERP pages, and in order not to change the habit of a lifetime it seems only right to start a potentially fruitful post with another such post.

Whilst some people have been seeiing similar results over the last couple of weeks, Google official launched a new search feature yesterday which makes it easier to find forum posts or discussions relating to what you are searching on. The above example uses the term ‘getting from Rome to Florence’ and highlights a number of expanded forum results relevant to the search performed. Previously Google highlighted the forum relevance via a snippet underneath the title (as below)

This doesn’t seem to have received any mainstream traction within the SERP’s at present, as a number of terms performed returned no results other than those provided above, however I would suggest there should be more integration of the above snippets as time goes on

What is interesting on the above is that it goes on to reinforce the notion of Google being the new landing page, something I saw Jon Myers talk about quite extensively around two years back at SES London. Letting people make the decisions at a search engine level rather than enter the site, can’t help but reinforce such a notion particularly when considered alongside other such recent improvements to SERPs such as the Plusbox results and even the greater rollout of snippets within the SERPS, but thats another post…..

One of the little tools I have installed on the Holistic Search blog is Statscounter, something I find hugely useful in terms of tracking visitors to the site. One of the more interesting visits came today with a visit from a Microsoft IP address (strangely enough from Google rather than Bing)

The query itself comes from the following
http://www.google.com/search?q=user%20response%20to%20″show%20more%20results%20from”%20feature%20in%20google&hl=en&sa=2

I will be interested to see whether this sees any changes to Bing searches over the next couple of days

Not sure whether I missed this (as it has been an extremely busy time of late), however Google again seem to be consistently at this point playing around with their search results pages. In particular the settings options appear to have moved to a more prominent home at the top right of the screen.

However the most noticeable change occurs once a user signs in.

When clicking on the settings option, you are now presented with two options
1) Search settings
2) Google Account Settings

It is therefore interesting to note possibly the biggest change of all. Most of us have grown up with the two options next to the Google search box, for advanced search and for preferences, however note below what happens to the search box in the new interface

Not a massive change however it does present probably one of the biggest changes to the primary search interface for a while.

* Hat tip to David Tutin (the Technical SEO executive here at Mediavest) for noticing this one

I was disappointed to read Lisa Myers earlier post regarding the Reed Learning SEO course which due to a ‘misunderstanding’ appears to have not got the Google accreditation they were expecting as Lisa explained below

Google don’t want to be associated with any SEO courses and didn’t agree to endorse this course as part of the Google Marketing Academy. Silly us, we must have imagined it all. Sarcasmn aside, Google says no and we all have to abide, whether they previously agreed or not.

It seems a bit of a shame, and to a certain degree a missed opportunity on Googles part, particularly when one considers the level of support and engagement provided to our paid search counterparts. Yes, organic search doesn’t make Google money – however there are commercial reasons in my opinion as to why ignoring SEO practitioners possibly isnt the best recourse.

The Google productset

Google are bringing more and more products to the table, from the integration of plus box results into the mainstream paid search listings, to the potential launch of the Google Real Estate channel currently being trialled in the US and the Australia (something for those who haven’t seen I would highly suggest looking at.

With the best will in the world, many of these technologies are based around feeds, something that always sits more comfortably with more technology savvy SEO’s who often utilise and produce feeds as part of their day to day roles. Thats not to say their arent very technologically savvy paid search proffesionals, however many PPC specialists are more familiar with creative and bid strategies than RSS and XML.

I would thus suggest many of these types of roles fall under the remit of the SEO, working alongside their PPC counterparts to produce a cohesive holistic search strategy, one which encapsulates best practise PPC and SEO at its heart but also integrates news, products, video and feed based technologies.

There is no getting away from it. An SEO’s role is hugely diverse. We don’t just operate on optimising on-page changes,  we don’t just acquire links, SEO has multiple touch points which can cross lines with paid search, PR and even advertising.

Sorting the wheat from the chaff

One critisism of the SEO industry has often been its level of professionalism, something which I should add has changed significantly over time, however I can’t personally help thinking here was a significant opportunity missed from that perspective. Whilst I understand Google is not going to give away the secrets to its algorithm, one could suggest that there is enough content out there already produced by Google to support the development of such a course without being seen to condone or support any particular factor of its organic search framework.

This is also unlikely to produce a framework of ‘Google clones’ however what it would at least do is provide a framework for entry level professionals of best practise SEO according to Google guidelines with particular reference to specific examples, some of which could be highlighted below

How do you use Webmaster Tools?

Are links in footers treated differently than paragraph links?

By no means, advanced SEO but to someone entering the trade its a step in the right direction and one that Google use to good effect through the GAP and GAAC frameworks (ie we are not telling you how to do it – but this is best practise)

Accreditation or no accreditation

This isn’t just an issue Google has (as to whether accreditation/association with an SEO course is good), but also one the industry itself has debated many a time (and something my fellow Manchester SEO colleague Ben McKay debated recently on Dave Naylors blog. One of the responses to that post raised an interesting point

To do a professional certification right – even just certifying knowledge – requires a lot of resources. There’s just no significant demand from SEO practitioners for that.

This has also been coupled with the argument thats what is best practise for one, is not best practise for another, however the integration of Google in such a process would at least provide a basic framework for such a scheme.

To conclude

I would suggest that pure Google accreditation from Google without significant thought is ripe for abuse (lets face it us SEO’s are not known for doing things in moderation – one only has to look at the subdomain, twitter api frameworks to see that) however I personally can’t help thinking that simply stepping away from SEO’s is not the best route to sail down.

[The views expressed in this post are those of Peter Young and not those of his employers]

A while back we talked about the inclusion of plus boxes in the Google search results pages, however it was only today I noticed a subtle change to the show options parameter found in the top blue bar on Google UK searches

Take a look at this image from my earlier ‘Google Killing Localised Search‘ post from June 30th

Compare this with my post from last week on ‘Google add ’show more results from’ to natural results‘ and you will notice the plus box next to the ‘Show options’ link at the top blue bar.

Be interesting to see whether this one sticks…

It only seems fair following yesterdays post regarding the IP query facility available via Bing that I do a post on another improvement to Googles management intelligence tools, this time in the shape of Google Insights.

Amongst a number of changes introduced to the tool are the following:

• New forecasting facility via the Google Insights interface. This is currently not available on all searches however this will provide a greater level of potential forecasting information to marketing professionalsIt should be noted that Google have caveated the launch with the following
  

  “This prediction model doesn’t take into account the context of the search term or its category, nor does it account for any business cycles that may be driving a specific market,” says Google in the Insights for Search Help Center. “Please treat these forecasts as estimates only, and not as exact predictions of future values.”

• Geographically based trend tool which allows users to monitor changes in trends over time.  Users can query the tool to identify how potential search behaviour has changed based on changing parameters within the Insight interface

These are nice little additions to the Insights tool, however further expansion of particularly the forecasting tool would be good.

From a search perspective, one can only say, perhaps a little competition only fuels innovation….

It appears that there is a never ending cycle of new developments constantly taking place at Google these days. If it is not tweaks to SERPs, it is the launch of a new product or developments within the Google infrastructure. This is something that has always served Google well, and something which will continue to help keep them at the forefront of the search industry for a good time yet (but thats another post )

It is therefore no major surprise to see Google on the lookout for testers to help refine their next generation search infrastructure. According to the post on Google Webmaster Central

For the last several months, a large team of Googlers has been working on a secret project: a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search. It’s the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions. The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results. But web developers and power searchers might notice a few differences, so we’re opening up a web developer preview to collect feedback.

Those wishing to help test the new system should go to:

http://www2.sandbox.google.com/

At present Google are only looking for differences in the results between those on the above URL and those on the traditional search results. At present and through limited testing I have only spotted nominal differences, so it will would be good to further test the refinements.

To read the full post from Google go to http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2009/08/help-test-some-next-generation.html

To read Matt Cutts post on the Caffeine Update – http://www.mattcutts.com/blog/caffeine-update/

Googles ever changing SERP’s page appears to have seen another change over the weekend in the UK with the addition of the ’show more results from site’ appearing below specific results. This would appear to be limited primarily to certain brand terms from the limited testing thus far – and we have seen little or no coverage on more generic terms at present.

The revised results include an option to expand results from a specific site, which appears to display a further four results from that site (as below)

I can’t help but think this could have significant impact if further rolled out across more generic phrases and away from merely brand searches, as it has yet more potential to impact on what Gord Hotchkiss refers to as fencing in terms of search engine behaviour, something which has previously been associated more to blended search behaviour.

Its definitely an interesting development in the search pages, and as previously mentioned seems to be fairly limited in terms of rollout. One to watch…

The title will make sense soon, I promise.
What happens when the government makes a massive drugs haul, and busts the major suppliers?

- The good guys celebrate
- Supply dries up
- Users become prepared to pay more
- The price of the drug rockets
- There isn’t enough supply to satisfy demand
- To make their stock go further, the remaining suppliers cut the drug with a less expensive substance
- Price continues to rise
- Stocks are diluted and contaminated even further to dangerous levels
- Users get sick, some die
- The strain increases on the healthcare and support systems
- Supplier gangs fight to retain enough market share, increasing violent crime
- The strain increases on the police system
- Society breaks down, aliens invade the world, Matt Cutts answers a video question with a definitive answer, and the world as we know it explodes in an awesome ball of white light.

If any government still existed after this, they’d wonder what the frak just happened. Their idea was so good on paper and in their controlled test models. How could such a well intended initiative end cause such chaos?

To brush over the fact I’ve stolen an episode of Numb3rs as very tenuous analogy for this post, I’ll tie it into search engine marketing…

What started out as a great idea by Google, establishing website authority and relevance with inbound links, has produced results far down the line they just couldn’t predict or control. Effects that no normal person could predict.

Buyers, sellers, services and companies have all been born from this, where otherwise they simply wouldn’t exist. By indirectly placing commercial value on the link, Google have indirectly forced the world to define a scale of acceptable ethics that threatens to affect perceptions of morals and even law.

Yes, there are people out there who think that buying links is unethical, immoral, and even illegal, and it might not be so far fetched that the law could change in the future to agree with the society on this point.

The truth is, I don’t want to chase links as part of my job.

Linkbuilding has to be the most soul-sucking part of SEO. I love writing content and putting together the most kick ass resource available for searching customers, so full of value and reassurance that they don’t need to go anywhere else.

But this simply isn’t enough in a competitive market where the majority of search engine success comes from off-page optimisation.

As much as I deplore the the link culture, it’s here to stay until another underpinning factor replaces it.

Google must know they created this sucky link-chasing culture. They must be aware that they are cleaning up their own mess. But they must also be aware that most business is built on the back of opportunity, and they basically created a huge opportunity by placing commercial value on the hyperlink.

Agree? Disagree? Just wanna say hello? Let me know at http://twitter.com/lindop

Many column inches have been devoted to the impact Vince has had on the search results both here in the UK and over the US. The effect of Vince has seen many ‘brand’ sites occupying prominent positions in the SERP’s despite many traditional metrics suggesting they should performance on many keyphrases should be negligable.

There are obviously only a limited number of people who can definitively say what factors influence visibility in the latest Google algorithm update however a recent post by Patrick Altoft over at Blogstorm provided a list of potential triggers. These included:

• Mentions in the mainstream media – how much does Google look at mentions rather than links in the authority algorithm?
• Links from mainstream media sites to your homepage – the best indication of trust Google has
• Buzz & mentions of your brand – again, how many people are talking about you?
• Search volume for your brand – how many people search for your brand directly?
• Traffic data – how many visitors do you get outside search?
• Related search volume – how many people search for “confused.com” and “car insurance” in the same session?

Testiment to the impact this had on brand was seen on a number of key verticals including:

• Travel – Thomas Cook went from out of the top 10 to 1st for the term ‘cheap holidays’ with similar traction seen on the term ‘holidays’
• Education seemed to have minimal effect – possibly indicative of the lack of ‘big brands’ in the marketplace
• Aggregators particularly within Travel seeing loss of traction
• Many ‘loosely’ related terms previously seeing organic traction seeing loss of rankings across multiple verticals
• Continued volatility in many finance and insurance ‘battlegrounds’

However there is a certain irony in the landscape left behind in the recent update. Much of Google’s attraction is that to a certain degree everyone is equal, which to a certain extent applies to both paid and organic search. Within paid search it is not necesarily he who pays more wins – although this is certainly a part of it – but he who markets his site best wins. This has always been the case with the organic results, with Google actively seen to promote good quality content, whether you be big or small.

THat would seem until now. Certainly be seemingly looking at a picture not necessarily restricted to content and links you potentially create a field which favours the bigger boys, and potentially those with larger budgets who can influence a wider range of channels. This would certainly appear to be a very different picture to previously and symbolic of Google’s continuing migration to the ‘Microsoft Moment‘ .

There is no doubting the current state of flux within the organic rankings, and it is unlikely we have seen the last of any significant Google updates in the short to medium term, however I for one feel it is a strange way for the algorithm to go particularly given the significant traction organic search was already getting in terms of SEO from big brands – or maybe that was just it….

It appears Google is yet again playing around with the results pages, particularly in local markets such as the UK and the Netherlands. In posts by both SEOHome and SearchCowboys, the option to browse results from a particular country appears to have been removed as the following snapshots

Source: SEOHome (via SearchCowboys) – UK Results

Source: SearchCowboys – NL Results

The option by Google to change both of these certainly could significantly change results particularly where users rely on localising results. Whilst the UK market would probably only account for about 20% of searches (not official stats), what about mainstream Europe, places such as Belgium or Switzerland where countries may often have more than one language. Removing the obvious filter could have a significant impact on ease of use – one of the main things that I personally believe Google do better than any other mainstream search engine.

I haven’t yet been able to verify such behaviour (despite trying to utilise a number of contacts around Europe – thanks in particular here to Fellow SearchCowboy @basvandenbeld), however I will be watching this test closely over the next couple of days. Whether or not this will kill local search is open to debate – certainly localised results have been more and more integrated into regional (ie .co.uk) searches for a while – even without the impact of the ’search pages from the uk only’ option. In addition to this, Google have recently release the ability to show options which allow users to filter yet further within the search results, and I would suggest this would be an obvious choice to integrate any further localised filtering.

The incorporation of 'show options into mainstream results

As many advertisers are probably now aware Google have been testing a new set of functionality within the paid search ads whereby products associated with an advertiser can be retrieved via clicking on a plus icon next to the paid search ads – refered to (you will be amazed to know) as the Google Plus Box. Currently this is in beta in the UK, and was in the US until recently however I understand this has now been pulled.

Google plus box on entry

On entry, paid search ads which incorporate Google plus box results, show as normal bar a + icon and link to click for the enhanced results. Users clicking on this link will then be presenting with around three results taken from the advertiser, which have a significant impact on browser experience and obviously the impact of any organic results which may be appearing on the page as a result.

Google plus box result activated. Note the impact of the result

So how do you optimise for these results. As you may know Google Product results are often ‘populated’ by XML feeds from Google Base.

1) Have a high quality Google Base Feed (and obviously remember to submit it). Make sure this is accurate, comprehensive thus ensuring you have current prices, no out of stock items, real images etc)

2) Within your paid search campaign, ensure you have a range of product related terms, not just brand, core generic and long tail terms. Google Plus box results often appear on these types and terms, and above all are likely to be far more successful in terms of conversion.

3) Use analytics such as GA to measure your conversions on product pages. By doing so you can focus your attention on those keywords that really drive you the conversion/visibility.

4) Make sure your campaign receives a lot of search impressions. IF your campaign is not receiving a high volume of impressions, it is unlikely you will get much traction from this.

I would add to conclude, this has already been stopped in the US, and one would suggest that it is only a matter of time before this is stopped in the UK (although knowing Google it is likely this will be back at some point in the future. Thus I would suggest any work on this should be considered, however with Google Product results already incorporated into main blended (product-related) searches and thus this is really an extention of any Base related optimisation.

Whether Bing is a suitable name for a search engine aside, there is no getting away from the fact that there has been a significant build up to the launch of Microsoft’s Bing search engine for a while, since early Kumo rumours leaked out – and in particular in the build up to SMX Advanced. However there is no doubting that Google did a fantastic job of ruining Microsoft’s big day.

Source: Searchengineland.com

Whether Google Wave changes digital communications in the same way Google changed search engines is a different matter, Googles timing of the launch of Wave was clearly designed to reduce coverage of the launch of Bing, something they have achieved in droves, and at the same time made those looking to cover the initial Bing launch choose between the two – ie the Next Google Yahoo killer (and then maybe Google in the future) or the next big communication tool (and perhaps a Microsoft IM killer in the process) – one has to say its an interesting scenario.

Source: Searchengineland.com

That is something that certainly wasn’t lost on press coverage. Rather than devote entire coverage to the launch of the Bing search engine, they now had to choose between the two. This is something we have come to expect from Google, having seen similar ‘Guerilla’ announcements previously in particular prior to the launch of Cuil where Google announced a significant increase in the amount of content indexed, something which was the cornerstone of the Cuil product. 1-0 to Google before a ball has even been kicked.

There is no doubting that the level of coverage regarding Bing will significantly increase again over the coming weeks as more people get access to the new search engine (in particular us UK search marketing types), however Google certainly has – as the title suggested – rained on Googles parade.