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Thursday, December 11, 2008
The offical Google blog this week announced the release of what has become a regular event in the Google calendar - the release of Google Zeitgeist. In it Google makes known the most popular searches of the year, and informs its public what are the hottest topics Google users have been typing into its search engine in 2008.
It's only a partial picture of what's on our minds, however, because subjects pertaining to pornography and gambling have been framed out of the image.
"Zeitgeist means 'the spirit of the times,' and we strive to capture this spirit through exploring the year's new and exciting search terms," a Google spokesperson explained. "Searches for adult keywords are pretty constant, and although they may be popular, we don't think they define the Zeitgeist for any one year. We apply the same kinds of filters to the Zeitgeist that we use for SafeSearch, so no adult keywords are included. We have also removed duplicate entries, including misspellings. Additionally, we remove any spammy results."
Nonetheless, there's still something to be learned from Google searches, as the company has shown through Google Flu Trends, which correlates searches about flu symptoms to the incidence of the flu in the U.S. populace.
The fastest rising searches globally for this year were:
1. sarah palin
2. beijing 2008
3. facebook login
4. tuenti
5. heath ledger
6. obama
7. nasza klasa
8. wer kennt wen
9. euro 2008
10. jonas brothers
In the UK. the top 10 sites were:
1. facebook
2. bbc
3. youtube
4. ebay
5. games
6. news
7. hotmail
8. bebo
9. yahoo
10. jobs
No surprise to see Facebook at number one; its growth this year has been phenomenal, with the site currently having over 100m users, more than its rival, MySpace.
Also interesting to see Hotmail in there: web based email is one of the few areas where Microsoft leads Google on the web. It will be interesting to see how long this continues, what with the onward march of Gmail.
To see the full international Google Zeitgeist 2008 list go
here.
It's that time of year to see what everyone has been searching for online in 2008 and it looks as if the global financial crisis, British banks, cupcake recipes and the BBC's catch-up TV service have been has dominated searches.
Residents of Stevenage performed more google.co.uk searches for money-saving coupons than any other city in the UK, while the residents of Farnborough in Hampshire searched more frequently for information about the credit crunch than any other town. Searches for Icesave, the beleaguered Icelandic bank, were performed more often by the people of Watford than anywhere else in the country, while Google users in London were preoccupied with credit default swaps, the method used by financial organisations to transfer third-party credit risks between themselves.
Liverpudlians searched for "sub prime" more than residents in any other city in the UK, while the prudent inhabitants of Milton Keynes searched most often for "savings" and those in Gloucester for "ISAs". In Belfast, it was a different story, however, with residents more likely to search for "sales" than people in any other UK city, while the residents of Croydon searched for "shopping" more than people in any other town.
Facebook was the most popular overall search term for the second year running, followed by the BBC, YouTube and eBay. Games was the fifth most popular search, underlining the growing popularity of online gaming websites such as Friv and Jogos, which were also among the fastest rising search terms of the year.
Ten most popular search terms- Facebook
- BBC
- YouTube
- eBay
- Games
- News
- Hotmail
- Bebo
- Yahoo
- Jobs
Ten fastest-rising search terms
- iPlayer
- Facebook
- iPhone
- YouTube
- Yahoo Mail
- Large Hadron Collider
- Obama
- Friv
- Cam4
- Jogos
Ten most searched-for politicians
- Gordon Brown
- David Cameron
- Barack Obama
- Tony Blair
- Sarah Palin
- John McCain
- George Osborne
- Alistair Darling
- Boris Johnson
- Nicolas Sarkozy
Fastest-rising searches for people
- The Ting Tings
- Barack Obama
- Cheryl Cole
- Heath Ledger
- Alexander Graham Bell
- Chris Brown
- Martin Lewis
- Hannah Montana
- Perez Hilton
- Chuck Norris
Fastest-rising "how to" searches
- How to geek
- How to download
- How to spell
- How to reference
- How to defrag
- How to sew
- How to recycle
- How to flirt
- How to cook
- How to swim
Ten most searched-for tickets
- Oasis
- Leonard Cohen
- AC/DC
- The Ashes
- Steve Coogan
- SOS (ticket firm)
- Oliver!
- Gladiators
- Tina Turner
- Nickelback
Monday, December 08, 2008
Nielsen recently released some usage data that suggests that not only is mobile internet usage growing at a faster rate than the humble PC, put also that mobile internet usage makes up 20% of the overall number of internet users. This number may at first glance seem quite high, but if you consider the popularity of the iphone (which has 3G connectivity and full web browsing) as well as a multitude of other internet ready smart phones that are hitting the market either now or soon, then the number seems more believable.
The old perception of mobile internet - slow, WAP-enabled, a tiny screen, a limited number of sites - is rapidly being replaced with the fast, big screen, 3G, big number of options version that seems to be revolutionising how and where UK surfers use the internet, if this Nielsen data is to be believed. With Nielsen being the respected data provider that it is, it would seem wise to take these stats at face value.
Comments made a while back by Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google, suggest that he believes the onward march of the mobile internet will continue at the current rapid pace - he was quoted as saying that ..."most of Google's revenues will come from mobile advertising in a few years."
There are now more than 7 million mobile internet users in the UK according to Nielsen. That compares with more than 40 million in the US.
In terms of growth, mobile seems to be way ahead of PC's: From Q2 to Q3 2008, the number of Britons using mobile Internet increased by 25% (from 5.8 to 7.3 million) compared to 3% for PC-based Internet (34.3 to 35.3 million Britons).
So its clear that the mobile internet is growing at a rapid pace and firms need to have a mobile friendly site available, or they may be left behind in the race for the internet.
Friday, December 05, 2008
The reality of the global credit crunch hit home last week with much loved retailer Woolworths and also MFI calling in the administrators. Although these events are signs that consumers have less to spend on the high street and are tightening their belts, it also signals a wider trend, in my opinion, that is happening in retail - that trade is moving from the high street to online.
The statistics seems to bear this out - according to the latest Nielsen Global Online Survey on Internet shopping habits, more than half of global internet users have made at least one purchase online in the past month. In the UK alone, 97 percent of those who have Internet access have used it to shop online. The UK market for online shopping has increased by 40% in the last two years.
The high street, as we have seen, is showing signs of decline. It seems consumers are choosing to stay at home and shop from the comfort of their homes rather than brave the crowds and cold in the British high street.
What this means for your business, of course, is that you need to have a focused SEM strategy in place to take advantage of this migration to web shopping. From the very start of the process, with keyword research, through to content creation, analytics and PPC, businesses need to have a grasp of the online environment, and also an SEO firm that can carry a web strategy through and produce results. At SearchPath we do this successfully for a range of clients; give us a call and see what we can do for you.
Monday, December 01, 2008
Google has launch a SearchWiki, enabling people with a Google account to customise their search results, including moving results up & down, deleting unwanted listings, addding new ones and attaching comments to listings.
From an SEO perspective, this throws up a number of issues - for one, it extends the whole concept of personalised search which started with people being shown search results based on their click history. No users of the SearchWiki could be seeing radically different results.
Can the SearchWiki be used for SEO purposes? You can't directly influence search results, but since you need a Google account to store your modified results, Google will have access to an awful lot of modified search result data whihc it could factor into its search results. eg if lots of people are promoting a specific listing, it's likely to conclude that that listing is popular and important, and therefore improve its search ranking and vice versa. Beware though that Google will be monitoring unusual click patterns, so don't try to manupulate the results!
One point to highlight about the SearchWiki is that people can leave public comments about a site on the Wiki raising all sorts of concerns about reputation management. Google not only shows the comment, but also the keyword search that brought up that listing. These comments are not visible in the regular search yet, but they are visible from a link at the bottom of the SearchWiki. For an exmaple, log into Google and search on Walmart Canada - then click 'see all noted for this SearchWiki - this is what you'll see!
Google has been updating the Adwords Quality Score algorithm again with two major changes.
Click through rate has always played a large part in the calculation of Quality Score. Ads getting a lot of clicks appeal to users and are therefore assumed to be of high quality. However, ads at the top of the page will always be clicked more than those lower down, so how can Google account for this? Well, it has recetnly started to normalise CTR data, enabling it to calculate a Quality Score regardless of an Ad's position. Supposedly this will help higher quality ads to reach higher positions.
The second change is in how Google decides which ads are placed in the yellow area above the natural search results. Being in this position requires a very high Quality Score and can be expensive in terms of CPC. Google has now made it easier to reach this position. Previously, there was a min quality threshold - if the ad with the highest rank didn't meet the threshold, then no ads appeared in the top spot. Now however, if ads in lower positions do meet the quality threshold, they will jump over the higher positioned ads with lower quality scores, possibly giving maximum exposure at a low cost.
There's now even more incentive to work on the quality of those ads!
