Category Archives: Topic of the Month

Google Instant Results Try to Read Your Mind

Day 3 in Google watch, and today they have introduced a new search feature called ‘Google Instant’. This is a search function that starts loading predictive search results to users who are logged into a Google account.

For example, if I were to simply just type the letter ‘f’ into the search field, it would have ‘facebook’ come up in light grey as you typed and the results for Facebook would start loading below my search. Google Instant results try to predict what you are searching for as you type. As what you type changes, Google changes what it serves you in real time. You don’t even have to hit ‘enter’ or click the search button to get results.

Not everyone has been encouragable about the new Instant Search feature. Many people have found the search engine trying to give you search term suggestions AND suggested search results is information overload. Google has been renowned for it’s simplicity over the years, and this change will be very hard to swallow for many people. One of the claimed benefits of predictive results are that you can save on average 2.5 seconds on each each search. Personally, I actually type by looking at my keyboard as I press each key. Unless I pause to look up the screen, the instant results will be lost on me. Many of the supplied results will also be irrelevant, which may also distract you, making you spend more time on your search.

The sheer volume of ‘anti-new Facebook’ groups joined by hundreds of thousands of people when the Facebook layout changed is evidence that people take time to adapt to change. Do you still hear people complaining? Nope. Once everyone gets used to something they usually forget why they complained about it in the first place. I don’t doubt that Google Instant results will be any different.

On another note, the Daily Mail Online reported on this same article earlier today thinking that Google Instant referred to the predicted search terms you get in the drop down menu. This has in fact been around for months and is nothing to do with today’s search engine result suggestions.

“Goggle has today announced new ‘Instant’ search results, introduced for users around the world.

Google searches will now predict what users are looking for from the very first letter they type.

Google’s homepage will then switch instantly to a drop-down menu of results that continually updates as the user adds more letters to their search term” – says Niall Firth in his poorly researched column.

This was also picked up upon by a commenter on the article:

“You have got this story completely wrong. Google instant return the search results, not the suggestions in the pull down. That has been in place for months. I wonder if Niall Firth actually uses Google” - Jaz, Chelmsford.

I believe when the dust settles people will get more than used to the new Google Instant feature. I don’t believe it will save much time in people’s searches. I also doubt people will use it very regularly, unless they are searching for a very common search term like ‘Twitter’. Its there for people to use, and can be turned of easily if you don’t like. Not the end of the world. You may use it from time to time. Up to you!

Online Marketing in Offline World – We Love IT!

Facebook ‘Liking’ is one of the ways businesses have recently started using to attract customers to their special offers and other activities. The biggest companies try the odd TV or Newspaper Ad, which is sending people to their Facebook page where in exchange for clicking the ‘Like button’ you are given the chance in a competition to win products or served with a money off voucher for your next purchase. But recently we are pleased to notice that people have inserted online marketing to their day-to-day activities. This is no longer associated with huge budgets and cutting edge online activities (such as games producers, online merchants etc). We had the pleasure to witness half a dozen coaches on ZSL Zoo parking all proudly carrying big stickers with the “Become a Fan on Facebook” invitation.

Facebook Fan Sticker on the side of the coach - well done!

Facebook Fan Sticker on the side of the coach - well done!

OK, so what if they didn’t update their stickers and they still have “Fans” instead of “Likers“? But who cares?

“The Golden MIM” Award for July goes to Olympian Coaches. Well done!

Please let us know when you find some other samples of holistic approach to marketing!

Facebook Become a Fan changed to Like

Last night on Facebook the ‘Become a Fan’ button was replaced by a ‘Like’ button, even though the old Become a Fan system worked perfectly! The lack of communication with their users regarding this change made us a little angry, and we’re not the only ones who should be.  A client of ours client’s just started a Facebook competition asking people to ‘Become a Fan’ in order to enter… NOT GOOD! The whole campaign had to be re-marketed!

At least they gave everyone a reasonable and in-depth explanation…

Why did “Become a Fan” change to “Like”?
“To improve your experience and promote consistency across the site, we’ve changed the language for Pages from “Fan” to “Like.” We believe this change offers you a more light-weight and standard way to connect with people, things and topics in which you are interested. “ - Perhaps they just got bored…

Let Facebook know how you feel about the change from Become a Fan to Like - Vote in our Become a Fan vs Like Poll

Which do you prefer?

View Results

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Cuba responds to US easing sanctions on Web services

In Havana, Cuba’s government has said that the decision by the US government to ease sanctions on Cuba and two other countries to allow exports of Internet services is intended to destabilize the communist island.

On March 8 2010 the US State Department announced that it would ease sanctions against Cuba, Iran and Sudan to increase citizens’ access to online communication tools and open people up to free speech and information to the greatest extent possible. But Cuban President Raul Castro’s government said the objective of the decision was to use these services as tools of subversion and destabilization, according to statement from the Cuban Foreign Ministry.

The statement added; “This shows once again that the US government is not interested in softening its policy nor in developing normal relations with Cuba, but only in developing a network that facilitates its subversive actions in our nation.”

The US Treasury Department modified sanctions against Iran, Cuba and Sudan to allow exports by US companies of services related to Web browsing, blogging, email, instant messaging, chat, social networking and photo/movie sharing like Flickr and YouTube.

Cuban authorities exercise strict control over the Internet, blocking communication sites like Skype and blogs that are critical of the government.

Few Cubans have access to the Internet, which cannot be installed in private residences without express permission from authorities.

Where access is available in places like hotels, the cost often eight dollars an hour in a country where a monthly salary runs around 20 dollars, is prohibitively high.

Google PageRank removal – is PageRank dead?

On October 14, 2009, Google employee Susan Moskwa confirmed that the company had removed PageRank from its Webmaster Tools section. Her post said in part, “We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true.”

You can read this post by Susan and all other comments in the discussion here

In mid 2009 we saw a lot of websites having their PageRank changed especially after May upgrade to Google Algorithm. PageRank which you see on toolbars and other online PageRank checkers have become irrelevant, giving inconsistent results ever since Google introduced updates to their algorithm. This change resulted in pages giving more power to people regarding relevancy. During the last 18 months Google have introduced the following tools/features which had a direct impact on the PageRank concept.

The new tools include:

  • Introduction of SearchWiki – a tool that makes search even more useful in users daily lives.
  • Introduction of Real-time Search – a tool that displays Twitter posts in real-time for certain Google searches.
  • Introduction of a More Show Options tab for different types of searches, included advanced Personalised Searchfor all users.

Although people believe that Google is using some sort of modified PageRank to rank websites this is not the one which you can see on the Google Toolbar and other online readers.

PageRank is a trademarked and patented technology which is now 12 years old, of course in the visible form seen in the Google Toolbar.

So, does PageRank matter anymore?

We’ like you to share your opinions on this…

Vancouver 2010 – Show Off time for Bing and Google – Yahoo! Off the Table

Tragic start to Olympic Games in the real world didn’t stop the show to go on and the first five days went on with problems which are purely down to Mother Nature (permanent lack of snow).

Regarding virtual presence Vancouver  Games proves to be even more advanced and better served by search engines than Benjing 2008 or any other Olimpics before. Apart from medal leader board we have a great design and usability features on search engines.

GOOGLE – Google’s desire to create out of SERPs (tech: search engines result pages) one stop shops is visible this winter more than ever before

  • Schedule for particular day in particular discipline – with info by time zone
  • Event Schedule Vancouver 2010 Olimpics in Search engines

    Event Schedule Vancouver 2010 Olimpics in Search engines

  • Results for latest events in particular discipline with names of the competitors and scores if apply
  • Vancuver 2010 on Google

    Vancuver 2010 on Google

Bing – They went all the way with homepage connected with Vancuver events through several links which are dragging people to Vancouver related visual search only one far right bottom link is connected to something unrelated.
Bing Winter Olympics Upgrade - It is all about Vancouver 2010 here

Bing Winter Olympics Upgrade - It is all about Vancouver 2010 here

  • Full section with Vancouver.com homepage link on the top for general keywords (olimpic games etc)
  • Design rich sections for results for winter sports keywords with links to MSN/Bing powered CTV website for olimpics
Yahoo! – declining role of Yahoo! on search engines arena can be now clearly visible in the way Yahoo! covers Vancouver Games. As a portal Yahoo! deal with Eurosport creates situation that all content is fed from this particular site. When you type in “Vancouver 2010″ you are served with Eurosport content all over the place. But this wouldn’t be a problem. The sign that they do not invest any more in Search even on basic scale is visible on other Olympic related queries try  “olimpic games” and you will find out that you are served with News Section and set of currently at least important links with Wikipedia ahead of well known Eurosport.
Summary
What couple of these “olimpic” searches shows us is significant and I believe it defines what we can expect from search engines over next couple of years. It shows search engines effort to cover such an event and deliver the best results in a short therm
- All Search engines developed special sections for Olympics
- Yahoo! stopped Search Engine Investments their section is has got very limited visibility
- Google is the only search engine to send people broadly from special section links directly to Vancouver 2010 official webiste
- Bing and Yahoo! both support themselves with partners delivering results for Olympic games queries (CTV and Eurosport
Out of this we can draw only one picture. Even with very heavy presence of AdWords section on the top of search results Google maintained the highest relevancy by sending you to the most relevant page in the world for this year olimpic event http://www.vancouver2010.com results are at least “contaminated” by marketing/advertising deals and offers great deal of information without leaving SERPs. What we wonder for the future is how many of these Google’s “Olimpic real time experiments” will find its way to Google Algorithm
by Krzysztof Kurzydlo

Facebook Facelift 2010 – potential new layout

Google might not be the only internet giant making layout changes in 2010 – Facebook seems like it might be getting yet another layout change in 2010. When they tried to change it last year, users were so against the changes that they had to fight to try and persuade people it was a change for the better.

It’s unlikely we’ll see the same kind of resistance from Facebook users this time as the changes seem only very minor, yet still annoying if you’re a firm believer of the saying, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. However, the changes we’ve seen were pretty good, from a technical point of view at least, because it’s now faster to do some things such as view your message inbox, notifications and requests (the icons of which now sit sandwiched between the Facebook logo and the now rather elongated search bar), which has also been repositioned to the centre.

The changes are in testing and only visible at this moment on certain accounts, which suggests the update may not even happen but it’s likely that we’ll at least hear more about this soon.

Share your thoughts of the first new 2010 Facebook layout – a good or bad start to the new year?

New Bigger Google, literally…

Google makes a small enhancement, with big results!

Google Supersizes it's Search box and buttons...

Google Supersizes it's Search bar and buttons...

It’s a change that some people think Google should have made a long time ago, while others won’t really care about or even notice the change. After all, it’s only a simple change. But when you consider how rarely Google tinker with their layout, any change to Google’s search bar, no matter how minor and insignificant, can be thought of as a major change.

The announcement was made by none other than Google’s Marissa Meyer. And she ended it by saying:

“Google has always been first and foremost about search, and we’re committed to building and powering the best search on the web — now available through a supersized search box.’