Category Archives: Online Marketing News

Google – Verizon Deal. – Why Net Neutrality is not a Topic of the Month?

Google and Verizon will announce a deal that the New York Times describes “could allow Verizon to speed some online content to Internet users more quickly if the content’s creators are willing to pay for the privilege”.

We believe that the best and the worse in this area has already been done already and now we just carefully watch where this is going. We are web people who are aware what this type of deal may mean for us vs huge corporations. For now it looks like another Googlenet story which may or may not be a huge problem… stay tuned for more news from the Verizon-Google-Obama Administration front.

Net Neutrality The Worst up to date:
The confusion in the US after FCC vs Comcast over Net Neutrality case (2008-2010) which ended in early April 2010. Federal Communication Commission fined Comcast for blocking BitTorrent usage. Comcast won only because they proved in the U.S Court of Appeals that the FCC has no authority to give such a fine. Imagine: broadband service isn’t currently defined as Telecommunication! – Shocked? – me too!
Of course this confusion allows companies to talk about possible deals.

The best on Net Neutrality front up to date:
The Paccific Telegraph Act from 1860 says “Massages received from any individual, company, corporation… shall be impartially transmitted in order of their reception”. This says it all and if current congress will be able to pass an update to this act and extend it to broadband services we are all good. Of course before this happens we have months of lobbying and pressures on Congressman.

The biggest unknown on Net Neutrality up-to-date:
Obama’s Administration – which is trying to patch law and ensure Net Neutrality for the future. Is the president strong enough to gain support from US Congress? Is he interested enough to make an effort? We don’t know.

So we have the typical pressure, lobbying and race between Government/Regulators and Industry itself, which is going to make sure trade standards are faster than regulator’s law.

Google-Verizon Deals and Net Neutrality Guards

AdWords Ad Extensions – The Full Story

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Google are slowly rolling out a new Adwords feature called Ad Extensions, which you’ve probably already come across in your account. They can be found in the Settings tab of each Campaign and allow you to add your Business Location for example, from your Google Places account or by manual address entry. Then when someone is served your Ad they will see an expandable link below your Ad that shows them a map of your business location. This is one Ad Extension you may have already used if your business relies on walk-in customers.

Using Ad Extensions

Sometimes providing additional information in your Ads is necessary in order to get the best response, and Google Ad Extensions does exactly that. For example, when you’re trying to describe a product, including a picture could make the message more relevant and valuable. Or when trying to describe a location, an Ad that only contains text can be confusing. In this case, having a map can help someone find your location more easily.

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Available Ad Extensions

There are only a handful of Ad Extensions available to everyone at the moment, like Locations (as mentioned above), Click-to-Call (for mobile devices) & Sitelinks. But in future all of the following Ad Extensions will be available:

Currently these Ad Extensions are available in limited release & limited beta only so it’s unlikely that you’d see these in your account yet but we’ve spotted some already so they are definitely out there! Take a look at this example of Adwords Product Extensions:

If you were lucky enough to be part of the beta testing, or currently using the limited release, we would really like to hear from you!

Facebook Become a Fan changed to Like

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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…

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Google PageRank removal – is PageRank dead?

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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…

Google Maps in Adwords – Sponsored Links just keep on getting bigger

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Google have been in the headlines a lot lately due to the amount of testing that’s been going on… We’ve seen various versions of the homepage; some with buttons; some without buttons; some saying ‘Press Enter to Search’; and some saying nothing at all until the user moves their mouse over the page, triggering the fancy fade-in effect, revealing the rest of the page.

And now comes more evidence that Google are willing to test new features. This time in Adwords - Features that affect the way certain Sponsored Links are displayed to the user.

So far we’ve seen Site Links in the Sponsored Links (only for certain brand keywords – for obvious relevancy reasons).

And now, we’ve even seen Maps appearing in Sponsored Links – from what we’ve seen, we can only assume that Google grabs the location for the map from the businesses location given for that particular Adwords account (optional) when people are setting up their account for the first time.

It’ll be interesting to see if Google decide to keep these changes, or if they are merely test. One thing which might scare you if you do a lot of SEO, is the shear size of the Sponsored Links when these new elements are present, and the effect it may have on natural results by forcing users to scroll down further to see them.

Tell us what you think…

Google Algorithm and Impact on WWW size

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Since Google’s policy (and Google Algorithm) has drastically changed last year regarding paid links WWW had another great reason to grow in volume (Of course Google’s decision is just another reason for having another social media account). Everyone seems to have twitter accounts, links on blogs and works hard on all kinds of forums to get the link in either form out there.
I tried to get a sensible clue out of this and finally I thought about Google Algorithm.
Google Algorithm is not longer brilliant because of its relevancy. Google Algorithm is great because this is a very powerful business engine behind one of the biggest companies in the world. Google’s Algorithm task is to deliver results not to us but to Google’s boardroom and not in the form of horribly looking text links which they recently try to make it more attractive but in the form of
money,
more money
and more money.

My lovely cheeky Google Giant makes money out of AdWords platform which is working well only because of Google brilliant algorithm.
AdWords need more users and publishers to make money so the key success will be to adjust Algorithm always the way that it will produce more users and publishers and will help to get rid of competition buy simply telling everyone – You know AdWords is the only way to go if you want online presence (very clever).

- Among other stuff Google owns: Blogger, Orkut etc – These services are unlikely to bring money back unless they have AdSense publishers and/or traffic
- New Content = New Pages – paid linking doesn’t usually bring new www. Link publisher gets all the money with no contribution to Google he is very unlikely to introduce AdSense online.
- This is simple the more pages is out there the bigger job search engines have and the bigger money are going to their pockets (they all know that not only Google)

I like everything what makes web growing – so lets make it even bigger – I just did my bit – did you?

Wave Hello to Wave – First Impressions on New Googleworld Product

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So Wave is in trial for 5 days now and – I have no invitation. Shame, Never mind.

So 500,000 users are in the trial and majority of them in the US. Google says it’s an amazing tool, we say Google’s PR this year is better then ever.

It is so strong that it makes us believe that there are just three busy areas for journalists, columnists and bloggers this year;

1) Michael Jackson

2) Economy Downturn

3) Google

(There is also Middle East war and political affairs but this is going for sometime now).

Basically if you are “Horse and Country” journalist or correspondent for Far East or Latin America you either cover one of these subjects above or get made redundant as there was nothing to do.

So where were we? I know, another brilliant invention from Google – Wave. Is it good? We will see, it seems great but I believe there is still one important problem with Google inventions – lack of functionality on the launch day. A tool like Wave has to be business orientated. Market will test this idea but from over 1h long promo video it looks like they have still a lot of to do.

Good Luck to Google Giant!

Google 11th Birthday Marks Online Advertising in UK at its Peak

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Coincidence or very clever PR? Just 3 days after Google’s 11th birthday BBC published IAB and PWC study regarding Online Advertising. Official numbers say:

Online spending grew 4.6% to £1.752bn in the first half of 2009, while TV spending shrank 16.1% to £1.639bn.

Of Course this is not a milestone (it was expected sooner or later). The study sparkled a lot of discussion what is better TV or online. In my opinion Eggheads from both sides forgot couple of things.

Both types of advertising are fuelling each other. The truth is if not tv advertising online would be a little dwarf brother of a paper based advertising. Is enough to see how gigantic traffic is referred to your website when you have links on websites like BBC or Times online.

Of course this traffic is generated because these guys themselves in their real world publications promote online world. On the other hand we have TV people banging their heads against the wall saying that TV advertising is the best value per customer – of course they keep forgetting that you need initial £1m to start talking about putting your ad out there not even mentioning timescale for the project.

I am Glad to be in Online Marketing business. Maybe it sounds narcissistic, but online advertising is the most effective form of marketing your products if you need to be fast out there look no further. On the other hand I am a very concious how powerful Radio, TV and Paper ads can be. This is the reason we always work with PR people and our strategy contains very powerful message.

But for AdWords, Webmaster tools, GMail, AdSense, Analytics, Conversion Tracking and Google Labs inventions we should all sing:

Happy Birthday Google!

“Computational Knowledge Engine”

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Wow. Added with the name of WolframAlpha you’re sure to understand what you’ve just unveiled.

However with a brief explanation there’s no reason to be running away with your tail between your legs. Simply, the creators of this website believe that it knows everything. They reckon that it can answer any question. Any question that is given in the exact format that they need AND only requires limited knowledge of the subject you’re talking about – oh, and it generally has to be Mathematics based.

Or does it? I’m sat here playing around with this new toy and though I’m not getting any of the results I would like or expect, it is redirecting me through odd routes to find information I might like. I can’t find out how many legs an octopus has but I can find out when Henry VIII was born (even if typing Henry VIII born doesn’t return the result I can find it eventually).

It seems like a great idea but its scale hasn’t been fully explained. Do these developers believe they are looking to create a mass of knowledge – both known and computable – that will become such a powerful intellect above any other computer around? Or are they just making a scientific calculator that has bit more knowledge and social life than the one you’d carry in your pencil case?

The most dissapointing aspect of this website for myself as a Mathematician is the result it returns if you ask for the root of -1. This is known as ‘i’ (a complex number). All Wolfram has to offer is repeating the information you just entered (root[-1]).

However I am willing to give this construction the benefit of the doubt for future development as it has an answer to “What is the meaning of life?”:

Input interpreation:

answer to life, the universe, and everything

Result:

42
(according to Douglas Adams' humorous science fiction novel The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)

The developers also wish to track who is copying and finding out any information through their website. When you get your results, any text on the page that you need will be presented as an image. To be able to copy it you will have to click on it and copy from a ‘plain text’ popup box. The owners of WolframAlpha are watching what you’re searching and copying. The question that this begs: Could they be recording data to turn it into a paid for service? We’ll find out as it spreads out across the internet.

Google introduce new forecast feature – added this week to Insights for Search

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Google has developed a formula to predict hot online search topics. The formula attempts to characterize the predictability of a Trends series based on its historical performance.

Google Trends, a free online service that shows what search subjects are gaining or sinking in popularity, has been around for some time. But now engineers at Google’s lab in Israel have come up with a forecasting model while studying whether past and current search patterns hold reliable clues to what people will search for in future months.

These findings resulted in a new forecasting feature added this week to Google’s Insights for Search.

More than half of the most popular search queries at Google are predictable as far as 1 year ahead, with a margin of error of about 12%, according to the Israel lab engineers. With categories such as health, travel & food and drink being particularly predictable, this tool could prove extremely useful in these markets, and could help advertisers decide how to disperse their budgets most effectively in future online campaigns!