Archive for April, 2007
Been browing round the results today, and noticed a couple of changes not noticed before.
1) It was only a matter of time before they included it, following the development of Google Checkout, however right next to the-direct-group.co.uk result was a banner for Google Checkout.
However just because they can I have to say, they shouldn’t. One of the best things about Google is the fact that it has always been impartial without lending weighting one way or another (apart from factors such as Bid Price/Quality Score etc), however this really is a break from the norm, and one that I wholeheartedly disagree with (no doubt this will lead to a rath of people redeveloping their e-commerce platforms to incorporate Google Checkout)
2) Google joins the Web2.0 Personalised Search club. Whilst doing a site:example.com on google noticed the ability to ‘note this’ on the results.
No doubt more to come from Google in the coming months
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April 24th, 2007
Google has just annoumced a raft of new services to the Google webmaster tools, particularly tackling requests for page removal, directory or subdirectory removal or indeed complete site removal. Obviously many of these improvements tackle issues which may arise after your site has been indexed, however this is still a significant improvement in terms of functionality.
For sites that you’ve verified ownership for in your webmaster tools account, you’ll now see a new option under the Diagnostic tab called URL Removals. To get started, simply click the URL Removals link, then New Removal Request. Choose the option that matches the type of removal you’d like from the following options:
- Individual URL’s, web pages or images or other files
- A directory or sub directory on your site
- Your entire site
- Cached copy of a search result
Individual URLs, web pages, images or other files
Choose this option if you’d like to remove a URL or image. In order for the URL to be eligible for removal, one of the following must be true:
Obviously if all of the above do not apply, your page will only be reindexed again… common sense really
Removing a directory
Choose this option if you’d like to remove a directory or sub directory. As with the deletion of individual files, the directories should not be indexable (ie advised by your robots.txt file that they are not to be indexed.)
To remove a folder simply provide the path to the folder/directory you wish to remove ie:
For instance, if you request removal of the following:
http://www.example.co.uk/testfolder
type testfolder after the path provided in the Webmaster Tools interface.
Removal of an entire site
Choose this option only if you want to remove an entire site from the Google index. This option will remove all subdirectories and files.
To use this option, you must block the site using a robots.txt file.
Note:
Do not use this option to remove the non-preferred version of your site’s URLs from being indexed.
If you want all of your URLs indexed using the www version, specify the version you want indexed using the Preferred domain tool in the Webmaster Tools system(and do a 301 redirect to the preferred version, if possible).
Other changes introduced to ther Webmaster interface include:
- Advise of changing of page content
- Checking status of removal requests
- Advise to reinclude content
- Requesting removal of content you do not own
All in all this provides both Search engine marketing specialists and webmasters with a very useful set of tools in order to administer the indexation of their site more effectively.
To read the full google blogpost click here
Other reading:
Search Engine Land - Google introduces improved content removal tools
Managing Google results
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April 18th, 2007
According to a recent report by E-Consultancy and search marketing firm, Neutralize (*\*), UK companies are seeing the benefits of paid search engine optimisation or SEO.
The report went on to state, that nearly two thirds of those surveyed had seen increases in excess of 300%, with fourty percent of those experiencing increases of over 500%. Unsuprisingly this has had a knock on effect in terms of increased confidence in UK SEO, and UK search engine marketing in general.
Other key findings in the report were
- 87% of search engine marketers said their organisations paid to advertise on Google, compared to 45% for Yahoo, 33% for MSN, 11% for MIVA and 6% for Ask.
- More than half of respondents (56%) said that their companies spend in excess of £10000 on paid search annually. A quarter of respondents (25%) reported spending more than £100000 annually.
- 62% plan to greatly increase investment in Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) for natural/organic listings.
- On average, respondants spent circa 32% of their marketing budget on online marketing.
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April 16th, 2007
Google has recently announced some interesting new features to sitemaps.org. As well as now being available in 18 languages, including Japanese and German, but they have also made it easier to advise search engine robots of sitemap files.
By adding a line as follows:
Sitemap: http://www.e-gain.co.uk/sitemap.xml (including full URL ie http:// etc
to your robots.txt file, any search engine supporting the sitemap protocol will be able to retrieve the sitemap and process accordingly, including Google, Yahoo, MSN and ASK.
To read further please visit
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April 12th, 2007
I recently came across a “whitepaper” from Daryl Wilcox of Daryl Wilcox Publishing (associated with Sourcewire etc), which provided a very interesting overview of the future of traditional PR, which began with an interesting conjecture in 2017
However it soon returns to normality, and highlights what many PR organisations are starting to consider, namely whether to adapt to changing trends and behaviours as to how people read and gather news. To quote the whitepaper:
“The worst case scenario for PR, and this is real world and not fantasy, is that PR loses significant ground to an apparently more dynamic and imaginative profession - search marketing. The danger is this new discipline will take a bigger slice of the marketing budget at the expense of search marketing will start to take on communications roles which were previously part of the PR function”.
As the report goes onto state, there is already significant evidence of this. Many traditional offline publishers are now pouring money into online. Just look at the BBC. The cricket world cup has coverage from every angle including the widespread use of blogging in order to provide a more personalised overview of the world cup.
Search engines are also the weapon of choice when researching products or services, once the sole domain of offline publishers. Companies are getting wise to this, and the associated spend online is reflective of this trend. Added to this, is the ability of search marketing in order to drive traffic to the site.
Search marketing budgets are often similar to PR budgets nowadays - ranging from retainers for small clients of circa £500 per month to budgets of over circa £50000+ per month. However search marketing has one significant advantage over traditional PR in as far as it can demonstrate return on investment more effectively, easily and objectively. This is particularly important in many companies where every penny is accountable. As a result many search engine marketing companies are offering a range of online PR services such as PR syndication. This impacts PR as many organisations that would never have previously considered PR are now introduced to PR by search marketing agencies.
However the PR industry have been fairly slow in response. The report highlighted the CIPR conference in November 2006, where not one of the 14 sessions had any Online PR bias. As the report puts it - “The transformation of the media by the Internet was not a revolution, it was a slow burn. Now it as a raging fire”
However I am in danger of singing the whitepapers praises too highly. Whilst I fully agree with much of the report (particularly with my SEM hat firmly on), the reference to PR professionals being potentially better at SEO than search marketeers seems slightly of the mark. SEO is not all about numbers, numbers is merely a part of the fully equation, and it is this attention to the numbers along with the terminology and phrasology, that allows us search marketeers to leverage this ROI from online.
However Daryl’s document is written with the PR sector particularly in mind, and as such does an excellent job as such in advising PR of the potential of the Internet, whether or not they choose to utilise that information is another question. To be honest, there is no reason why Search Marketing and PR cannot cohabit side by side. I am currently working with a well respected PR agency, who are wholly embracing Online PR and the opportunities it can offer, and I am sure they want be the last.
To PR agencies. If you haven’t embraced the Internet, call us for a quick chat, to find out more on 01282 411170
To download the whitepaper go to http://www.dwpub.com/whitepapers.php?int=Public_Relations_Versus_Search_Marketing
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April 11th, 2007
According to a recent report by Technorati, the increase in the popularity in blogging shows no sign of slowing down. The report stated that Technorati are now tracking over 70 million blogs worldwide, approximately 13 million more than the number detected by the last Technorati report in November 2006.
Blogging by its very nature is more informal than other forms of “content websites” and many build up a considerable fan base, which revisit the site on a frequent basis. These sites are often more respected and trusted by the general public and perceived as being a more reliable source of information than many editorial or official websites.
As blogs are become more mainstream and accepted by commerce as a way of interacting with customers, however there is a danger that this perception will change, and there have been some well documented cases as such, with the Walmart blog probably one of the more well known examples.
However, due to the growing popularity, there has also been the associated problems such as spam blogs, or “Splogs”. These are automated blogs that contain little or no unique content and instead use content lifted from an RSS feed, which is then republished with a link. These are of no real value to human readers and exist largely for black hat search engine optimisation, however these can often rank highly in SERPS or search engine results positions.
Blogs can be an effective tool to interact with potential clients, however it should always be considered
- Who is the potential audience - Ensure that a blog is suitable
- How are your potential audience likely to interact with the blog - If you have a very negative public perception, perhaps such an interactive forum may be inadvisable - however saying that it may be a master stroke if implemented strategically
- What is the tone of your blog - personal/corporate - is this right for your target audience
- How often are you likely to update your blog - the best blogs are updated very regularly and often for this reason alone perform well in the search engines, as well as build up large followings.
- Do you wish to “syndicate” your content - this is important when deciding what platform/software to use - this for example uses wordpress.
- Is search engine optimisation important - you may need some technical tweaks in order to make your blog more friendly
There are a number of blogging experts out there, who can help with a long term Online PR or blogging strategy. If you are in any doubt, contact an expert such as E-Gain to find out more.
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April 10th, 2007
Google confirmed, Wednesday 4th Apr 2007, that the machines and workers at the 520-acre Berkeley County center site, 20 miles northwest of Charleston, South Carolina will be part of $600 million investment in the company’s worldwide network to handle Internet traffic.
Google hopes to have the first servers on line by year’s end, although the initial investment includes infrastructure that would allow the company to quickly expand if needed. The entire center should be operational within 18 months, said Rhett Weiss, the company’s senior team leader for global infrastructure.
“The company chose the site because it had water to cool the banks of computers as well as fiber optic cable connections, Weiss said. “The fiber optic connection is sort of the modern version of what Charleston traditionally was as a port city, The fiber optic network is sort of the import-export aspect of the project. That’s how the information is coming in and out.”
Andrew Johnson, who handles Google’s East Coast hardware operations, said the company does not reveal the size of the buildings or number of servers for competitive reasons.
In January, Google announced a similar investment in Lenoir, North Carolina and is also is looking at investing in another server farm near Blythewood on the outskirts of Columbia.
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April 6th, 2007
I was personally going to blog about this myself this evening, having been in the process of evaluating a self catering holiday village in Blackpool, and noticed the distinct lack of meta information of the site. Whilst the effectiveness (or rather non-effectiveness) of meta tags as regards SEO is now well accepted, they are still useful (much like PPC) in enticing the user to enter your site (apart from other things) and as such should still be considered when optimising a site - particularly if like me you like to be judged by the ROI of the website rather than just the ‘number of 1st place terms’.
However Rand Fishkin or Randfish from SEOMoz has written a brilliant post regarding how meta description tags should be correctly used.
In particular he highlights their three main functions, namely
- To describe the content of the page accurately and succinctly
- To serve as a short, text “advertisement” to click on your results in the search results
- To display targeted keywords, not for ranking purposes, but to indicate the content to searcher
Rand also went on to say
“You shouldn’t always write a meta description. Although conventional logic would hold that it’s universally wiser to write a good meta description yourself, rather than let the engines scrape your page, this isn’t the case. I use the general rule that if the page is targeting 1-3 heavily-searched terms/phrases, go with a meta description that hits those users performing that search. However, if you’re targeting longer tail traffic, for example with hundreds of articles or blog entries or even a huge product catalog, it can sometimes be wiser to let the engines themselves extract the relevant text. The reason is simple - when engines pull, they always display the keywords (and surrounding phrases) that the user searched for. If you force a meta description, you can detract from the relevance the engines make naturally. In some cases, they’ll overrule your meta description anyway, but it’s not always wise to rely on that.”
To read the article in full, please click here to read Rands article on correct Meta Description usage
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April 3rd, 2007
