Fri, 21 Nov 2008 15:53:29 by Pete Handley
Google's personalised searching changes have taken a new twist with the release of Search Wiki, as is being widely reported at the moment including on Google's own blog.
Rather than Google deciding how to personalise results for you, when signed in, you can now remove and move around the placements of the search engine results - and then next time you search for the same phrase, the order that you gave results will be remembered and served back to you.
Google are stressing that this data isn't going to be used to determine standard placements - they say "The changes you make only affect your own searches" - but it will be interesting to see if they use this data in the future to help
quality assure the results that they serve for particular keyword searches.
When you look at a SERP when signed in, there are a number of new elements that you wouldnt have seen until now:
I've marked the new button...Read More.
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Thu, 20 Nov 2008 14:47:55 by David Thomas
Recently I posted a blog on the new Google Quality Score feature in Adwords. This new system did away with the old style, where by agencies and users had to pretty much guess what state their adwords campaigns were in and what the quality was by using logic and testing within the campaigns, retrieving data and acting upon it. Google promised a new easy to use Quality Score algorithm........
As I predicted and mentioned in my last post the new system was riddled with teething problems and needed time to bed in properly. This had stirred up the PPC Companies and posts of errors and problems came flooding in.
Hooray the uneasy storm has now past and the calm of a Quality new era begins.....
The new algorithms that have been put into place mean that advertisers will now be given opportunity to move up position rankings in the sponsored links without paying above the odds for the privilege. Google will determine the relevancy and quality of a...Read More.
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Wed, 19 Nov 2008 17:05:07 by Joe Bursell
It's the first time I noticed it, although it's probably been there forever- the humble watermark that sits in the search box on the Google Analytics Support page:
It indicates the language that you are likely to be searching with, using the "custom search".
What's odd is that when I've logged out of Analytics the search box contains a Cyrillic alphabet watermark:
Before I log in it displays a UK one:
What's odder is that the URL of the Cyrillic one is:
http://www.google.com/coop/intl/uk/images/google_custom_search_watermark.gif
and the UK one's is:
http://www.google.com/coop/intl/en/images/google_custom_search_watermark.gif
...the only difference is the country identifier being replaced with a language identifier (uk or en).
I'd love to know to how or why this happens. Of more interest to me is whether it is a reflection of, or a hint at, how truly difficult it is to serve count...Read More.
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Wed, 19 Nov 2008 12:13:31 by Kerry Dye
As an SEO company, Vertical Leap spends a lot of its time explaining the processes we use and monitoring the effects that our efforts have on the traffic and rankings for our websites.
We also monitor the blogs and websites for information of interest to us. We read a lot of information on a daily basis, some of which we agree with and some of which we don’t. We filter the information in the blogosphere past our own experiences and evaluate it. With a hundred or so clients we have a lot of data to check other people’s hunches about the way that search results are changing.
So it was with great interest that yesterday, I read two items of interest. One was a summary of Bruce Clay’s PubCon presentation, and the other was Google’s Release of their SEO Starter Guide.
The focus of Bruce Clay’s presentation was the evolution of SEO in 2009 (including forecasting the death of rankings again). Predicting the future is always difficult an...Read More.
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Wed, 19 Nov 2008 09:44:47 by Emily Mace
Google have this week released a set of SEO tips for websites and I thought that part of this would make a good follow up to Matt’s blog on Title tags and Meta Descriptions
Google’s advice to webmasters is very similar to that we have covered in some of our previous blogs, such as the importance of unique content for the title tags and to ensure that this title is not forced by any CMS or the default description such as “untitled1” or “new page one”
As Matt mentioned in his blog last week it is important to ensure that this title tag includes some kind of call to action for your visitors as the title tag is the heading potential visitors will see in the Search Results.
Making sure that your title tag is descriptive, contains some of your keywords and unique to the page you are working with is an important first step to achi...Read More.
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Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:58:55 by James Daniels
eBay sellers who want to draw more attention to their listings can advertise on eBay through a new program called eBay AdCommerce. AdCommerce is a new powerful advertising option which will show sellers ads near the bottom of search results pages to targeted buyers that are interested in your product line.
Sellers decide how much they are willing to pay each time a buyer clicks their ad after running a search for certain keywords. The ad includes a title, short description, and an optional image, which appears at the bottom of search results pages.
AdCommerce will have no up-front fee and no minimum payment or deposit. Sellers pay only when a buyer clicks your ad and goes to your listing or eBay Store
James DanielsPPC Campaign Delivery Manager...Read More.
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Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:40:59 by James Daniels
Google is set to trial their own Adwords system on Youtube in an attempt to make money from their very popular video site. The new arrangement will see advertisers bid to have their videos displayed in a new “sponsored videos” section of the site when Youtube visitors search for particular keywords.
As with the current Adwords system where advertisers pay per click, advertisers on the Youtube version would have to pay per video click.
The attempt to use the AdWords approach could solve two problems that have done much to hold back advertising on YouTube. One has been a fear among advertisers that many of the site’s user-generated videos are not suitable places for them to display their advertising campaigns.
Sounds like this could be a worthwhile addition to the already successful Adwords system. Oh and not forgetting more profit for Google. Credit crunch is obviously not affecting them!!
James DanielsPPC Ca...Read More.
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Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:10:28 by Matt Hopkins
There have been many surveys on the topic, but it seems that around 87% of consumers research products online before buying them in person or in a store. This phenomenon has been named "ROBO" - research online, buy offline. People will use a search engine for product reviews, price comparisons, etc and then look for the best local source to actually make the purchase.
I would like to introduce a new variation on this concept - "ROTOBO" - or research online, TOUCH offline, buy online.
Some products can be purchased at some discount online, but many people are hesitant to purchase without first seeing and "touching" the product "in person". Products that fall into this category are flat screen televisions, white goods, etc.
For example, let's say I was looking for a new LCD television.
I would first research the authority sites and check product reviews, user comments, etc. Fro...Read More.
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Tue, 18 Nov 2008 14:04:36 by Jayne Wiltshire
So many times I hear prospective customers say they are so confused about whom to choose to provide them with SEO - I have to say I genuinely feel sorry for any company taking on board the hunt for a good and trustworthy SEO company who really does what it claims.
Its quite often I come up against competitors adding things to ‘pack out' a proposal. Things such as ‘Free Google Analytics' - which is already free to anyone who signs up for it , ‘Free monthly reports', - generally a print out from Google analytics you could have done yourself ‘, ‘performance related charges' - which just worries me as how can you be in control of your budget when traffic volumes can fluctuate so much?? All of these offerings can sound impressive when listed as part of a companies SEO proposal but what are you really getting?
Generally, in my experience, if anything sounds too good to be true - then it is - especially in ...Read More.
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Tue, 18 Nov 2008 13:46:11 by Emily Mace
The last post we did about Google Base was quite some time ago so I thought it was time we mentioned it again as using this Google Service can increase the level of visibility your site has on Google.
With all the work Google have been doing recently on the SERPs, I’ve noticed more and more of the keywords and industries I’m working in are showing Google Shopping results above the normal organic listings on the results page. This means that as well as focussing your SEO on getting into the top 10 and your PPC to the first page of adverts, there is an additional opportunity for you to get yourself on the first page of Google’s results.
One of my clients is now in a position where for one of their keywords they are 5 out of a possible 19 results on the 1st page of Google (including Google Base, PPC and Organic listings), which is great news for driving business to h...Read More.
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