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

McCann Lowe, Kunstmaan, VVL BBDO, Saatchi, Punta Linea, VVL and FamousI read with interest the current agency scenario going on in Belgian at the moment. For those that have not been following the story, much of it comes down to the way organisations in Belgium have traditionally gone about their new business – and the pitch process therein involved. This historically has involved a maximum of 3 agencies plus the incumbent however recently this appears to have changed – thus the agencies in Belgium have taken action against this as follows:

Its a fantastic idea, fantastically implemented with a number of high profile agencies involved including

• McCann Lowe
• Kunstmaan
• VVL BBDO
• Saatchi
• Punta Linea
• VVL
• Famous

My thoughts looking at this immediately sprung to its impact on SEO, particularly in terms of how they were handling – or appear to have considered the impact of their actions on SEO. Perhaps they didn’t consider it – but one has to remember that SEO is not about the hear and now – and its effects often go further than just the current scenario.

To put this in context – I looked at the code for the site – and noticed the following:

<meta http-equiv=”Content-Type” content=”text/html; charset=iso-8859-1″ /> <meta name=”title” content=”Why Belgian advertising is offline this week.” />
<meta name=”description” content=”Although the websites of Belgian ad agencies are offline this week, there’s still a good reason to visit them.” />
<title>Website closed</title>

It would appear that some consideration has been considered – however consider this. What happens when the strike is over – and all returns to normal. The title and description will not necessarily automatically change back to their original defaults – and thus a lag will occur between campaign cesation and that of the SERP’s returning to normal.

Whilst they can to a certain degree guarantee a significant level of traction in terms of PR and linkage to the site, one has to suggest this is likely to be heavily biased towards the BBDO site where the campaign trail starts, rather than some of the deeper participants such as McCannLowe and Saatchi BE.

It may have therefore have been a better idea to factor in some degree of appropriate SEO remediation prior to campaign launch – particularly given the assertiveness of the title line – website closed.

I cant help thinking it had been me – the incorporation of some robots management or appropriate server response code utilisation should have been considered to manage the short to medium impact on the campaign in terms of SERPs.

Thats not taking away anything from the campaign itself – which if you haven’t seen yet – I would highly recommend you do now…..

To view the campaign in full – click here

For those of you that have met me you will know I am very involved with the Manchester SEO meetup that happens every month along with Ben McKay, David Lindop and Shane Jones.

Given the increasing popularity of the event in only seems right therefore to launch a website for the event – yes a dedicated Manchester SEO website – to keep you up to date with the latest news, events, gossip and more importantly when the next Manchester SEO event is

We have also launched a new twitter account for the Manchester SEO Group (twitter.com/mancseo), and will shortly be adding the Manchester SEO list to the group, so drop us a line if you want to be included

We are always on the lookout for sponsors for the event, so please drop us a line if you are interested in sponsoring an event, getting involved or helping in some way

Looking at spending some of your budget this year attending a conference with a particular focus on learning more about SEO, PPC, Social Media or Analytics. Well look no more. Holistic Search have compiled a list of the must go to search conferences in the UK for 2010.

1) SASCon

Date: 28th April 2010
Well I would put this first (as its one of my little babies))but in all truth its shaping up to be a fantastic conference. Speakers such as Jon Myers, Joost de Valk, Bas Van Den Beld, Fantomaster are already on board and we have a load of good sessions for both client and agency side people – all at half the price of many of the other conferences about.

2) Search Engine Strategies London

Date: 16th – 18th February 2010
Always puts on a fantastic show, and this year is looking absolutely fantastic with Richard Baxter, Mel Carson, Brett Payne, Ciaran Norris and Brian Eisenberg amongst others again showing fantastic support of the event. Always worth a go even if only on a day pass just for the quality of the speakers involved.

3) Think Visibility

Date: 13th March 2010
Dom Hodgson has been responsible for running a very enjoyable conference out of Leeds, which has attracted a range of great speakers from all parts of the country. This year is no different with Judith Lewis, Tom Critchlow, Steven Pavlovich and Sarah Goodwin all speaking at the event.

4) SMX Advanced London

Date: 17th and 18th May 2010
This year part of the Advanced SMX framework, so should be an absolutely immense event. Speakers for this years event are still being put together however don’t let this hold you back if events at previous events are anything to go by.

5) A4U Expo London

Date: 11th – 13th October 2010
One of the Events I was personally gutted to miss out on last year, makes a return to London in 2010. Worth attending if not just for the different angle the conference takes against that of more ‘mainstream’ options such as SES or SMX.

If you are thinking of attending any of the events, let us know and we will add you to the twitter lists for the events.
http://twitter.com/peteyoung/sascon2010
http://twitter.com/peteyoung/seslondon2010
http://twitter.com/peteyoung/thinkvis2010
http://twitter.com/peteyoung/smxadvanced-2010
http://twitter.com/peteyoung/a4u-expo-london-2010

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

After months of planning, we are pleased to announce the launch of SASCon (Search, Analytics and Social Conference) 2010. The event is being held at the Bridgewater Hall in Manchester – and will bring together some of the best digital marketing speakers in the UK including Jon Myers, Richard Gregory and Dixon Jones, but also bringing in some of Europes finest such as Fantomaster and Joost de Valk. More speakers are to be confirmed too.

The event is being organised by a number of industry prominent national and regional search marketeers including Ben McKay (MediaEdge), Richard Gregory (Latitude), Simon Wharton (PushOn), Nicky Wake (Dont Panic), Peter Cobley (iSpy Search) and Peter Young (MediaVest).

SAScon Event Details

Date: April 28th 2010

Venue: The Bridgewater Hall, Manchester, UK

Early Bird Tickets: £225 + VAT (Available until the 1st March 2010)
Early Bird SEMPO / Manchester Digital Member Tickets: £195 + VAT

SAScon is going to be one of the UK’s finest search and social events for those agency and client side looking to excel in their field.

For further information or to book tickets please go to the SASCon website which can be found at www.sascon.co.uk.

If you would like to sponsor the event, please go to our sponsors page or contact Nicky Wake @ Don’t Panic on 01706 828855

To follow SASCon on Twitter go to twitter.com/sasconference

I was recently looking up something to do with the Daily Express and noticed the following coming up on their search results

As you will notice, there appear to be two results being returned within these brand searches, one for the Express, and one for the Daily Express. From reading an earlier post from Malcolm Coles about The Express site redesign last year, it would appear they have migrated the site (or attempted to) from dailyexpress.co.uk to express.co.uk – however they appear to have made very hard work of this.

Take for example, the indented result for the Daily Express relating to the recent problems PM Gordon Brown had.

If you click on the result – the result takes you to the Daily Express site which appears to naturally resolve whether you try

• http://dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls/
• http://www.dailyexpress.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls/
• http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls/
• http:/express.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls

or worse still

• http://www.sundayexpress.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls/
• http://sundayexpress.co.uk/posts/view/150522/Brown-rallies-Labour-as-failed-coup-damages-polls/

This already means that there are potentially at the very least 3 domains where content is duplicated, however I would suggest the issue further manifests itself within the inbound linkage.

This can be further highlighted as follows

Whilst there is no doubting that the express.co.uk site would appear to be a priority focus – and as such is likely to be the authority from Google’s perspective – such a decision should not be left to Google particularly given the amount of options a search engine marketeer has at his/her disposal. The Express in this situation may well have considered:

• 301 redirect for www.dailyexpress.co.uk, dailyexpress.co.uk and express.co.uk to www.express.co.uk
• Given that Google have announced they support the cross domain canonical tag, perhaps they may have considered using this (sure Brent D Payne would be more than happy to help here )

However as is they havent – and as such it would appear that their search engine results are likely to suffer. Take for example some prominent UK events such as

• I’m a celebrity – The Sun and the Daily Mail both appear in the top 10
• Gordon Brown – The Telegraph, Guardian and Times are all in the top 10
• UK Recession – Times, Telegraph, Guardian and even the Mirror appear in the top 10

Whilst this isn’t the only reason why the Express is not reaching its full potential in terms of visibility online – one can’t help thinking missing something as simple as this is significantly hampering their performance – and wouldn’t require a lot of time or effort to fix properly.

Before I start with this post, I will caveat the below with the fact I used to be one of the organisations offering SEO for £200 a month, and this post represents the fact it is not possible to outsource SEO in a competitive sector without paying a reasonable amount of money. I am under no illusions, there are cowboys out there – just like there are in any other sector – even advertising and PR suffer from these idiots.

However I do get tired with stories like one I read in the Crains Manchester Business, something I until recently thought was a half-decent publication. It read as follows:

Website owners are being charged up to 30 times too much for work to improve their Google rankings, according to one Manchester-based search engine optimisation provider.

Colin Bell, operations director of Modern World Media, said he knew of one case in which an advertising agency quoted £25,000 to carry out a three-month test contract for a Manchester-based healthcare provider. The client shopped around and got the work done for £850.

Bell said such cases of “scandalous overcharging” were creating a mistrust of the industry, which he believes should have a higher degree of self-regulation.

“Many clients do not know how much they should be paying and they are being taken advantage of in some cases,” said Bell, who set up the Albion Wharf-based company with brothers Simon and Piers Vaughan in October.

Now dont get me wrong, £25000 is a lot of money. However lets evaluate the facts. THe sector happens to be healthcare, lets assume its health insurance which includes a number of high profile organisations who have been undertaking SEO for a number of years. These include health insurance specialist Bupa, finance aggregator Moneysupermarket and Insurance companies Prudential and AXA PPP, four organisations you are not going to shift for £850.

Further to that, lets do the commercials. Lets suppose you are offering your SEO for around (£25 an hour (to be honest I think thats low but lets keep it simple for illustration purposes) – lets remember this is a three month trial). That is 34 hours of allocated work without including any other commercials into the mix such as Directory submissions or third party costs for article or PR distribution or for copywriting.  Further to that – that sort of activity is not going to get to you to a competitive edge with the likes of the afore mentioned organisations.

I would also add it may also be worth considering the potential renumeration of undertaking such a project. Any project undertaken should have commercial justification and should the costings (and choice of vendor) should reflect this. Spending that volume of money, should it deliver a significant return on investment would be money well spent. Is £25000 spent on a successful test, better than £850 spent on a moderately successful trial?

If you are considering SEO however you may want to consider the following:

• Do your research. Have an idea of what you are purchasing before you purchase it. You wouldn’t go and buy a car without looking at it (well not if you had any sense) – so why do it with SEO.
• Have an idea of what needs doing. By understanding the terminology you stand less of a chance of being undone by an unscrupulous organisation
• Don’t base your decision purely on cost. I got told once that you will never lose a sale purely on price (something I argued you would), and that you didn’t sell hard enough. However if you do base a decision purely on price, you are putting yourself in line for a potential fall, as by doing so you are not looking at the bigger picture.
• Ask your potential agencies of a breakdown of their proposed strategy, project plan and costings. Any potential vendor should be able to provide a reasonably clear breakdown of this. Anyone proposing a massive budget without any such justification could be potentially ropey and in such cases having this breakdown will at least rationalise such costings.
• Spend time on the decision. Don’t just do it because you have to. A good SEO that is well nourished will flourish. At the end of the day SEO is often what you put in you get out. Put in nothing – and you will often get nothing back….

[These are the views of Peter Young and not necessarily those of his employers]

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….

Localisation, SEO and Multilingual Marketing

This is a guest post by Christian Amo,founder and Managing Director of Lingo24.

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is perhaps the most valuable and easy to implement of all modern marketing methods. In short, if a company features highly on Google’s search results for relevant key search terms, then the business is far more likely to succeed than if it ranks lowly.

One of the main benefits of SEO is the measurability – you can easily monitor the effects of your PPC and AdWord campaigns through Google Analytics; indeed, most successful websites will use analytics to drive their web design, structure and usability.

Whilst measurability is certainly a plus point from an online marketing perspective, the internet also opens up a whole new world of opportunity for businesses to tap into new or emerging markets. Globalisation was once the territory of big businesses with big budgets. Now, a bedroom business with nothing more than a networked computer and a touch of entrepreneurial savvy can grow abroad. And the process all starts with a fully optimised and localised website.

The majority of the internet is in English, yet most of the world’s internet users’ first language isn’t English, so there’s a clear gap there to exploit. Indeed, because the saturation is nowhere near what it is in the English-speaking market, it’s actually possible to rise very rapidly in foreign search engine rankings.

So how can a company expand its global internet presence into new territories? Well, the first step is to identify the most appropriate target country/countries – this will vary greatly from industry to industry.

You will have to do a little bit of research and recognise any gaps your business can exploit. However, it’s a good sign if there are other similar businesses in operation already as it reveals a demand for your service/product. Though a saturated market can be difficult to penetrate so be wary of too many companies.

The next stage is to buy a locally hosted domain name in the target country. It can just be your usual business name with a local domain extension, for example ‘.at’ in Austria or ‘.ch’ in Switzerland. You also need to ensure that your webhost uses a server located in your target country – search engines considers the IP address of the server in its ranking algorithms.

Some businesses may be tempted to use a free website translation tool, such as the one Google provide. These can be useful if you need to understand the essence of a foreign language website, but you shouldn’t use such a tool to translate your own website. From a content standpoint, you must use a translation company that uses professionally qualified ‘in-country’ translators that only translate INTO their native tongue. This will ensure your website is fully localised for your target market.

It also pays to be wary of the linguistic nuances between dialects. For example, the French spoken in France, Belgium, Switzerland and Canada is largely the same. However, fin de semaine is ‘weekend’ in Canadian French but it’s simply le weekend in France. And dejeuner is ‘lunch’ in France, but ‘breakfast’ in Belgium and Switzerland. There are many such instances from within the relatively small confines of Europe alone that help to highlight the importance of adopting a fully localised marketing strategy.

Online marketing and SEO should always go hand-in-hand with any campaign. With international markets, however, localisation is an obligatory addition, given the cacophony of cultural and linguistic complexities that come into play. To go global, you must think local.

About the author
Christian Arno is founder and Managing Director of Lingo24, a UK translation company that specializes in website localisation. With operations across four continents and clients in over sixty countries, Lingo24 are on course for a turnover of £3.7m in 2009.

Many SEO practioners will start their campaigns with a comprehensive technical framework prior to undertaking any SEO campaign. This provides the foundations for subsequent recommendations and provides a solid framework to develop a comprehensive SEO campaign that delivers results.

1) Site Targeting issues.
Good targeting starts from the very beginning of a site development. Get this wrong and many of your subsequent recommendations may fall flat on their face. In particular site localisation is often the difference between global domination and localised mediocratity. This can manifest itself in many ways

• Localised targeting but no global targeting opportunities
• Incorrect targeting due to ‘incorrect’ ccTLD and many others

I remember working with an IT company when I first started my own company. They had a great branding url – utilising the .it TLD however this had a significant effect in terms of natural search as a potential revenue source for them. The company in question were trying to target UK users, and the .it domain meant that much of their site visibility was localised round Italy, and they enjoyed very little in the way of UK based organic search visibility.

In such cases remediation is often not a quick process, and it is worth thinking through your ultimate requirements, marketing channels and target customers before commiting to any defined URL strategy.

2) Robots Management

Its amazing how many people still haven’t got to grips with this one – despite the amount of well documented coverage.

In short, merely advising the search engines via the disallow command in a robots.txt file does not mean your page will not be included – in fact completely the opposite. If this is required webmasters should consider page level robots remediation in order to ensure content they do not want included in the index – is not included in the index

3) Server Response Codes

Again this is something so many people do not get right, and again is something that is so easy to fix. There are a number of tools out there that allow you to check what server response codes are being sent by a page (these are passed in the head of an HTML document – and are not anything presented to screen) – however two which are easily accessible and useful would be

• Google Webmaster Tools
• Live HTTP Headers (Firefox Plugins)
• SEO Moz

The following codes in particular should be taken into account:

• 200 – Valid page
• 301/302 Redirects
• 404/410 Error page
• 50x – Server errors

Particular bottlenecks in such instances are normally

• Error pages resolving as 200 valid pages
• No consideration taken when databases go down. Resolve as 200 and subsequently indexed
• 302 redirect utilised when 301 should be used

4) Page Load Times

There has been a lot of noise in the industry press recently about page load times, so it was only right to throw it in here. However I have included in here, not just for SEO purposes but for the following reasons as well

• Adwords quality score takes into account page load time as well
• People don’t like sites that take a long time to load. Thats reason enough to consider page loads times alone

5) Information Architecture

I have found that this is an often under utilised facet of SEO, and one that is increasingly influental within particularly Google’s framework. Take for example the new breadcrumb trails introduced on the SERP’s, these need to use trigger signals to determine hierarchy

This should be considered early on, not just in terms of what content you are going to be on the site but also

• How will your content fit together and support it from an SEO perspective
• How is your content going to evolve. SEO should most certainly be an ongoing activity, and subsequent content should have a function. What is this function and how does it support your end goals
• What are your champion pages. Are these integral to your information architecture
• Is your internal information architecture supported by your external activity

There is a lot of other potential issues that should be looked at as part of the SEO process, however it is often the easiest facets that are not considered and often overlooked. Getting these right is often not a difficult to do but not doing it is a bit like building a house without laying your foundations

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

A date for your diary. Following on from the success of the last Manchester SEO event last month, I couldn’t help feeling that we were starting to get the foundations of a vibrant search marketing community in Manchester, engaged and talking – something I don’t feel has been in place despite the success of SEO event that took place last year.

However things are changing. Attendances to the Manchester SEO events has been continually improving and the event on the 4th looks as they we are going to build on the success on the last one.

There are certainly plans afoot to even further push Manchester (and the NW) onto the Search Marketing map – details of which will be announced once details have been confirmed – and it would be good to see the vibrant agencies of the North West such as Latitude, MediaVest, MediaEdge (MEC), Just Search and Amaze PLC be at the forefront of that push.

For those interested in attending the details are as follows
Place: House 9 Bar, Manchester (Just of Deansgate) – Within walking distance of Manchester city centre
Date: 4th November 2009
Time: 6pm onwards till late

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As a sidenote – Anyone interested in sponsoring the event, please let us know.

One of the conferences which seems to have drawn alot of attention this year has been the A4UExpo down at the Excel in London. Many of the big names in search are down at the two day conference run between the 13th and 14th of October including Dave Naylor, Search Cowboy editor Bas Van Den Beld and Head of Search at Mediavest Jon Myers.

So if your attending A4UExpo which panels should you keep an eye out for:

Day 1:
Dave Naylor – SEO Strategies to make a splash – 9:15am to 10:15am
A4UExpo snippet:

Entering a new niche or vertical? Up against established competition? – Dave will uncover some hot, new and innovative SEO strategies for both on-site and off-site SEO. You’ll be able to use these strategies to instantly give you a fighting chance against grandfathered competition within the SERPS. Like all sessions at a4uexpo, ample time will be given for questions at the end so get your thinking caps on to quiz one of Europe’s hottest SEO talents!

Meet the search engines Q & A – 10:30am to 11:30am
Its not very often in the UK that you get a chance to quiz the google reps here in the UK, however A4UExpo has provide Dean Chewella – Google (Chewie) and Dan Cohen – Microsoft for you to query. Unsuprisingly Yahoo have been slow to the table, perhaps indicative of search within their mindset at present.
A4UExpo snippet:

A technical SEO panel, giving the search engines the opportunity to present the latest updates within the algorithm and ranking models followed by the opportunity for the audience to Q&A some of the search engines own SEO engineers and Search Quality teams that work on the search engines on a day to day basis.

Beyond Link Bait: Getting Authoritative Mentions Online – Dixon Jones / Kelvin Newman / Jon Myers – 14:30 – 15:30
One Mediavest’s very own Jon Myers will be moderating, and one you be sure to get something out of – particularly with Dixon Jones and Kelvin Newman involved.
A4UExpo snippet:

Link building is crucial, but link-bait tactics that worked this year may not be as effective next year. This panel session includes 3 diverse presentations outlining the many facets of link building and analysis which focuses on the underlying quality as well as ingenuity needed to get other websites to link to you early and often. It will also explain how you should approach journalists, bloggers and other authoritative sources to enhance your company’s online reputation, whether or not you get links.

Advanced Site Architecture And Product Feed SEO – Judith Lewis – 16:00 – 17:00
Conference veteran Judith Lewis offers her insight into the challenges affiliates face in terms of complex site architectures and the unique challenges faced by larger sites. Worth attending and not just for the chocolate….
A4UExpo snippet:

This session will look beyond SEO 101 to the specific issues affiliates face with large sites, product feeds, architecture and optimization. By examining beyond the basics, this session will build on existing knowledge about SEO to help those with larger, more complex sites requiring more bespoke solutions to rank well and beat the ‘affiliate penalty’.

Make sure you follow the goings on this year, more details to follow shortly

Last night saw the second Manchester SEO event take place at the House 9 bar in Manchester. Despite the fact Manchester can boast a number of high profile SEO agencies (amongst them major players in the UK Search Marketing scene), the community in Manchester hasn’t really taken off as it the way it has in other places such as London and even Leeds.

As mentioned above this is only the second evening that has taken place, however the turnout was highly encouraging with attendees from agencies such as Latitude (including Head of SEO Andy Heaps, Lloyd, Phil etc), ISpy (Peter Cobley), MediaEdge, iCom (Adrian Berry and Mindy Gofton), Kevin Jones (TecMark) and obviously ourselves (MediaVest – David Lindop, James Hanson) and even some client side peeps (hat tip to Ryan Mckay from Cheap Tents) . Its a highly encouraging start and hopefully we can start seeing some traction from further afield, given the vibrant Leeds market at present.

Much thanks must go out to Ben McKay and David Towers (from MediaEdge) who were heavily involved in the arranging of the evening.

If you are interested in attending the next Manchester SEO group, keep tabs on this site, or join the Manchester SEO group on LinkedIn for further information

PS. Apologies to anyone I missed out….

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

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]

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….

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…

There have been a number of tweets going round Twitter over the last hour or so relating to combining a PPC and SEO strategy and figures for employing such a tactic. Google and Yahoo for obvious reasons will highlight the benefits of such a tactic, however there are a number of such studies in existance, and the evidence is quite compelling.

99% of C-level executives use the web at work.

52% of executives consider the Internet the most important source of information on business.

C-level execs are online somewhere between 115 minutes and 137 minutes per day.
Source: Harris Interactive & GartnerG2 Study, March 2005

Yahoo have one such example where the following evidence regarding holistic search marketing was producted
Source: Yahoo

Google have a similar bit of research published however whilst the original Yahoo research targeted impact on clickthrough, the Google study was more involved in terms of brand perception and brand association.

Further research by Enquiro and Google continues to reinforce the benefits of a combined PPC/SEO strategy and the effect it has in terms of consumers willingness to purchase following engagement.

The full Enquiro/Google research whitepaper can be found via the Enquiro website (Highly recommended reading).

There are obvious niches where such tactics may not work, and it is often a case of testing (refining and testing again) however I would always advise caution when deciding to blanket turn off PPC once organic traction has been obtained. As the research above suggests, it may not always result in the best ROI.

There is certainly no doubting that the UK Search Marketing sector is still fairly vibrant and certainly one of the most mature. As with many other channels, search marketing has been hit by the global recession, however there is no doubting it has faired far better than its traditional media counterparts such as Press (in particular), TV, Radio and even PR. There is also no doubt that there have been some interesting developments in terms of the traditional powerbrokers out there and more newcomers to the table.

The number of high profile agencies in the UK seems to be ever growing with traditional media agencies such as MediaVest joining existing search marketing specialist in offering enterprise level search marketing solutions. As a constant work in progress this is merely a starting point and something I will look to revisit on an ongoing basis.

As a starting point I have started pulling together a list of many of the agencies offering SEO in the UK, starting with some of the bigger agencies however we will refine as time goes on.

Whos who of SEO – Part 1

Mediavest (Manchester)
One of the largest media buying agencies in the UK, based out of Manchester and part of the vast Publicis empire. The SEO team was started in 2008 joins a well established search marketing team based in Manchester and has pulled in a number of high profile wins including new homes builder Barratt
Key Personnel: Jon Myers (Head of Search), Peter Young (Head of SEO)

BigmouthMedia
Bigmouthmedia are well respected within the European search fraternity with a range of offices in the UK, Germany, Italy and Spain (amongst others). Headquarted out of Edinburgh in Scotland they work with a number of well known brands including Hilton, Sky and British Airways to name a few
Key Personnel: Andrew Girdwood

Greenlight

Primary SEO focussed agency with offices in both London and New York, Greenlight have won a nunber of key accounts during the last couple of years including that of Vodaphone and GHD to add to existing clients Fish4 and Monarch
Key Personnel: Warren Cowan

Guava
Despite being based down in the South West, Guava command significant respect within the UK search marketing sector. Major clients include confused.com, the Post Office, Kaplan Open Learning and Nestle
Key Personnel: Teddy Cowell

iCrossing
Formally Spannersworks, the boys from Brighton are still a force to be reckoned with despite the lack of change of name. Active on the search marketing conference scene, iCrossing work with a number of respected clients including Virgin Holidays, Brussels Airlines and More Th>n
Key Personnel: Jonathan Stewart

Latitude
Despite what can only be described as an up and down year, Latitude appear to be on the way back up. Under the leadership of Alex Hoye, Latitude have started to bring in a number of key wins including Virgin Games and Land Rover
Key Personnel: Andy Heaps (Alex Hoye)

Steak
Still primarily a paid search specialist in terms of revenue share, Steak are still a big player of the UK search marketing arena. Key clients include Help the aged, Boxfresh and Visit London
Key Personnel: Oliver Bishop

Epiphany
Recent wins have already seen significant growth from Leeds based Epiphany, with a search team of 30 now meaning Epipany could be considered a player in the UK search market. Clients include CBI, Holiday Cottages Group and more recently casino operator Genting
Key Personnel: Robin Skidmore

Ones to watch

Verve Search
Newly started by Mrs Jon Myers, Lisa Myers (nee Ditlefsen) in early 2009, Verve Search are certainly one to watch. With a couple of good early wins under their belt they are certainly one to watch for the remainder of 2009 and 2010 in particular.
Key Personnel: Lisa Myers

Branded3
Probably not one of the names out there that would slip immediately off the tongue and possibly better known because of the Patrick Altoft (yes he of Blogstorm fame). Patricks profile has certainly blossomed over the course of the last couple of years and there is no doubting there is more to come from the Branded 3 boys.
Key Personnel: Patrick Altoft

SE Optimise
Kevin Gibbons, Stuart Toft and the boys have had a busy year, and have been getting more and more coverage as time goes on. Key clients include ITJobboard and Oxford University Press
Key Personnel: Kevin Gibbons

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

In the lastest of Matt Cutts’ videos on SEO he addresses the issue of the priority field in the XML sitemap, following a question from a Google user. The user asks whether having the same priority will be penalised.

For those who may be concerned you will be glad to hear that Google will not be penalising your site any time soon, instead where priority has been set at the same level (or not provided at all), Google will look to determine the priority of the pages themselves

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.