Search Within Search
March 11, 2008
I spotted a strange thing on Google yesterday so hopped over to the official Google blog to research my findings and I can confirm that you can now search within a search!
Open up Google and search ‘NASA’. You will be presented with the listing and underneath nestles a brand new search box!
In reality this is only a shortcut to what you can easily achieve any way making use of the - keyword site:nasa.gov - parameter but for the millions of us who don’t know how to use advanced search correctly, this heralds a step in the right direction.
This only seems to occur for some of the really big sites at present. We serve a number of huge UK sites at the moment but alas it seems that this latest change is US only. If anyone finds a UK site with the added search box, please let me know.
Well done Google! This is (for once) a truly useful addition to the SERPS.
Website Grader Free SEO Tool
February 7, 2008
Website Grader is a rather interesting and useful (and more importantly free) online SEO tool brought to us by Hubspot. It works on a basic premise that you feed some simple information into it pertaining to your website and a clever little algorithm will generate a report for you, grading your website on a scale of 1-100. It checks such things as H tags, images with alt text, inbound links and more. Yes these are the kind of functions found on numerous SEO toolbars but for a quick overview of a sites usability, functionality and optimisation I think it’s a really handy tool to have bookmarked. Especially given that you can use the tool to generate a report comparing your site alongside that of your competitors, and if the tool finds any problems or deficiencies it will flag them and offer advice on improvements. Cool.
Check out the sample results page for a sneaky peak at the kind of stats available.
Printed Business Directories - No Thanks
January 23, 2008
Welovelocal.com, the UK business listings directory recently commissioned a YouGov poll into printed business directories in Great Britain. The results show what we in the search marketing world have known for some time.
35% of British adults polled said they would prefer not to receive such directories. That equates to some 17.5 million unwanted directories, that’s a lot of waste paper.
Other results showed that 51% used the internet to source local business services and 67% trusted word of mouth referrals the most.
Professional search engine marketing companies actively work to increase trust and authority for their clients, knowing full well that word of mouth travels fastest of all online. Review sites are as popular as they have ever been and are an important stage in most searchers buying cycle, mine included. It is important that your business or brand is well represented online and that any negative publicity is balanced.
It just goes to show how much life has changed in the UK, usually we like to try and hang on to our national identity; red phone boxes, pounds sterling etc. but when it comes to having half a tree under the telephone, we seem happy to move on. Good news I say.
UK Loses Out On New Adsense Referral Rules
January 21, 2008
This has really got my blood boiling. Google have made some modifications to the Adsense referral program that have left us Brits well and truly out in the cold.Now you can only make a commission if you refer somebody to Adsense who lives in North America, Latin America or Japan. That’s right, Google have blanked Europe completely.
All UK bloggers who refer people from their own country simply don’t get paid anymore. Is this Google saying we don’t care about Europe? Sure as hell feels like it doesn’t it?
Facebook and Nokia to Join Forces
January 21, 2008
Rumour has it that the bods at the social networking monster that is Facebook are about to complete a deal with mobile phone maker Nokia. This means we are likely to see FB links featured prominently on future Nokia handsets, maybe reminiscent of the You Tube link on the iPhone’s home screen.
The rumours, although not confirmed by either party seem to revolve around Nokia taking a stake in Facebook. I for one will be interested to see how this pans out and what Nokia’s next move will be, they certainly seem to be moving into the social space with some gusto.
What On Earth Is Crazy Egg?
January 18, 2008
That’s what you’re all wondering right? Well then, allow me to tell you all about it. Crazy Egg is a new and interesting way to track visitors to your website and discover exactly what they are clicking on when they are there. It achieves this by using a series of visual tools and overlays like the heatmap (as seen below) which graphically represents the hottest parts of your site, what people are clicking on the most, giving you instant visual feedback on wether your site design is working or not. Cool eh?
Another function is the confetti overlay which allows you to see where visitors are clicking based on such criteria as search terms, operating system and browser amongst others. Useful for discovering which kind of traffic is clicking your ads the most. Crazy Egg describes itself as for people who:
- Want more ad revenue
- Care what visitors do
- Need to make improvements
- Like things that are easy
Payment plans range from free to $99 a month.
YouTube Bubble Map
December 14, 2007
Internet DIY broadcast kings YouTube have rolled out a new feature for finding related videos in the form of a bubble style visualisation. To use it you have to be watching a video in full screen mode, to the bottom left of the screen is a new icon next to the play/pause button, on pressing this icon a bubble map appears with the current video and related videos surrounding it in a pretty circle. Hover over another video bubble and that too will sprout more video bubbles leading off into other related videos. It’s quite fun to use but the results do seem to be a bit hit and miss bizarre. When testing this I was watching a Matt Cutts video discussing snippets, after bringing up the bubble map the related videos shown were a song by pop starlet JoJo, a tutorial on how to perform a gymnastic backflip and a skateboarding video…
I was unaware that Matt possibly spends his weekends grinding some sweet rails and catching air. Seriously though, when I tested this new toy on some other Matt Cutts videos the results were more relevant with bubbles leading off to videos discussing GMail etc. While not innovative this feature is interesting and one I will certainly be playing about with from now on.
PM Queries Google On Poverty Fight
December 10, 2007
British PM Gordon Brown has issued a rallying call to a rash of multi-national corporations including Internet giant Google in a bid to tackle the massive problem of global poverty. Brown, plans to hold a series of meetings across the world with some 20 business leaders, after a UN report pointed to a “development emergency” in the Third World. The PM commented:
“We are half way to the target date of 2015, but a long way off track to our goals and face a development emergency. 2008 should be a development year and mark a call to action from everyone - not just rich and poor governments but civil society, faith groups, trade unions and even the private sector.
“There are 72 million children not going to primary school, in some countries one woman in six dies in childbirth, over a billion people do not have access to safe drinking water. The international community needs to face up to this development emergency. We know what to do - we need to keep our promises and act. I am therefore calling for an millennium development goals action meeting during the UN general assembly in September to re-examine and galvanise our efforts.”
This initiative will surely give Google a chance to repair a damaged track record on social and environmental accountability as highlighted in a recent report by One World Trust.
Facebook Saving Its Beacon?
December 6, 2007
Well they have gone and done it haven’t they? The big brass at Facebook have got around the table, drank gallons of coffee, agreed, disagreed and then agreed again and big decisions have been made. In what amounts to a huge great whopping turn around Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg yesterday announced Facebook users will be able to completely switch off the much maligned ‘Beacon’ widget. Posting on the Facebook blog Zuckerberg offered an apology and an explanation:
‘We’ve made a lot of mistakes building this feature, but we’ve made even more with how we’ve handled them. We simply did a bad job with this release, and I apologize for it.’
‘Facebook has succeeded so far in part because it gives people control over what and how they share information. This is what makes Facebook a good utility, and in order to be a good feature, Beacon also needs to do the same. People need to be able to explicitly choose what they share, and they need to be able to turn Beacon off completely if they don’t want to use it.’
This is a big leap from the ‘opt-in’ tweak to Beacon offered by Facebook last week after users voiced concern over privacy issues over the widget. A widget that would, basically put, send a user’s friends information on web purchases made by that user.
So there you have it.
Will this move be enough to help save Facebook, a shining star teetering on the brink of a supernova-esque implosion? Or has too much damage been done already in the Beacon fiasco? Only time will tell.
Google About As Transparent As A Brick Wall
December 4, 2007
One World Trust’s 2007 Global Accountability Report, an assessment of thirty different organisation’s from around the world, was made publicly available today (after registering of course *rolls eyes*) for us all to ponder over.
The various corporations, foundations and groups including Interpol, Coca-Cola and every one’s favourite search engine Google were judged on their transparency and cooperation amongst other things and then positioned on a league table of overall accountability ranging from most accountable at the top to least at the bottom. And guess which certain search engine finished dead last? Yes that’s right, Google.
Google, who refused to take part in any of the research, not only finished bottom of the pile but also scored dreadfully (as in nothing, zip, nada) on transparency and even such things as environmental impact. Google, often criticised for collecting user’s personal information, have developed a privacy policy in response to such criticism but it wasn’t enough to impress the researchers:
“While it is good practice that Google have such a policy, the policy itself meets no good practice principles and in a recent study by Privacy International it was rated last among other popular Internet based companies’ privacy policies for its quality”
Will the internet behemoth that is Google take any notice of this report’s findings? Considering they apparently showed no interest in offering information to the researchers in the first place, probably not. And even if they did it would surely be buried deep somewhere in the hive of official Google blogs.