SearchPath Blog
SearchPath Internet Marketing Blog - Thoughts, ideas, humour, information and more ...
Friday, July 31, 2009
Finally, after much time and effort, we have today launched the redesigned
SearchPath website. There are still some things that need to be completed...client work comes first as ever! - but we're happy with the new, fresh look so far! (Thanks to
David Marlow Design for the design ideas).
Thursday, July 30, 2009
A year since talks last broke down, Microsoft and Yahoo finally announced a deal in their attempts to take on Google.
In short, Yahoo is giving up on search - all search via Yahoo going forward will be powered by Microsoft's Bing search engine. Paid search will also be driven by Microsoft, while Yahoo will still 'sell' paid search in it;s delaings with the larger client end of the market.
So what does this all mean for search? Well it gives Microsoft more market share in its quest to take on Google. As for Yahoo, the deal doesn't include its email or instant messaging, but there's really little else that's now left.
Friday, July 24, 2009
I loved yesterday's story about the United Airlines passenger whose guitar was broken by United's baggage handlers. United refused to offer him compensation so he posted a video on YouTube which attracted over 3.5 million views!
Needless to say, United have now seen sense & paid $3k to a charity of the customer's choice, but at a huge cost to the airline's reputation. This
SEOptimise puts the loss at $180m! Just doing a search on Google for 'United Airlines' and this video is at no. 5 with 4 references in all on the 1st page!
A great demonstration of how the Internet can empower people! And the guy has now secured a record contract!!
Gone are the days of getting to the top of Google by filling your pages with repeated phrases or keyword stuffing text in the page footer with the font the same colour as the site background, or of submitting your site to thousands of free directories.
Search engines have involved and consequently so has the work and effort needed to achieve those top rankings that clients' require.
So what is involved in setting up a successful SEO campaign? To help people better understand what's involved we've added an
SEO - Planning for Success Guide.
Take a look and if you think your current campaign could benefit from the professional touch, give us a call!
I've just come across this post about
Delia Smith's site redesign - it's a great lesson in how not to undertake a site redesign.
For instance, they've deleted all of the old forum's posts, people have lost old saved recipes, the site is selling links in direct violation of Google's guidelines, no redirects from old pages to new, and the page titles are a mess (why is the home page title just 'delia-online? Why the hypen? Why not a little more description?).
And the result - well it looks as if site traffic has halved since the relaunch!
Even the big guys get this wrong as shown in this post from
Malcolm Coles.The www.domain.co.uk version of your domain is not the same as domain.co.uk. Depending on houw your site and server is setup, if a visitor leaves out the www part of the domain, they will eaither see an error or they will be directed to the non-www version which isn't great for search engine rankings.
If your site returns an error when omitting the www, you're not alone - the Jessops, The Body Shop and WHSmith sites all return nothing (
The operation timed out when attempting to contact thebodyshop.co.uk.), giving their customers a frustrating experience!
It really takes little effort to get this right and ensure you're not driving your customers away!
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Google last week enveiled plans to release its long expected Operating System (OS), named "Google Chrome OS". Operating Systems are the base program that enables other programs to run on a computer. Chrome OS is intended to be a lightweight, quick starting system; Google intends its key aspects to be "...speed, simplicity and security."
Chrome OS will be open source, mesaning anyone can access and potentially alter its source code. The idea behind making its OS open source is that it makes it potentially universal, and much more accessible. There is also the matter of the price - Google intends to pitch its OS at a much lower price than the current dominant OS (Windows) - free.
Google says that it initially intends to distribute its OS on netbooks (small, lightwight laptops) that are currently in vogue. The netbook manufacturer names Google has on board is impressive - Hewlett Packard, Toshiba and Acer. Google is going to need the support of major manufacturers such as these if it is going to stand a chance of eating into Microsoft's massive OS market share.
The main principle behind Chrome OS is "cloud computing", where all computing activity - word processing, spreadsheets, email, Facebook - takes place on the web, rather than on invidual PC's. The idea is that as computing moves from the PC to the web, security, speed, price and convenience will be improved, making the computing experience a better one.
Google sees Windows as slow, unwieldy and out of date. For example, it intends its OS to boot up in seconds, rather than the minutes it takes XP or Vista to load.
Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer responded to the announcement this week by saying that Windows, rather than a browser centric approach was the right one, citing the fact that half of PC use today is spent outside of the browser. "We don't need a new operating system," Ballmer said Tuesday, as part of his keynote at Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference in New Orleans. "What we do need to do is to continue to evolve Windows, Windows Applications, IE (Internet Explorer), the way IE works in totality with Windows and how we build applications like Office...and we need to make sure we can bring our customers and partners with us."
Google is obviously trying to push cloud computing to the fore, as that is where they make their money, from people browsing the web (Adsense) and searching (Adwords). Microsoft's entire business model is built on PC-based non-cloud software; for them to change tack and compete with Google would be very hard. So if Google can gain traction initially in the netbook market, and build market share from there, the software market could be their's for the taking.
I think if Google were to wrestle the OS and office application (with their Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets apps) market leader position they would definitley come under scrutinty from the US government for breaking monopoly laws, just as Microsoft did in the 90's. Google have to be careful that they don't set their ambitions too high, and become too big.
Friday, July 10, 2009
We were at the Online Marketing Show at Olympia last week, catching up on what's happening in the industry and seeing a few good presentations.
One that stood out was from
Immediate Future on Twitter. They looked at how brands are using Twetter - the good and the bad! - who you should engage with and how, and how you measure the success of your 'Twittering' (measure Awareness, Attention & Actions). Immediate Future have a full report on '
How to plan & implement your Twitter comms strategy' on their website.
The other standout presentation was by Maxymiser, hammering home the benefits of AB testing on websites with some impressive results. Changing a button from 'buy' to 'select' can have a huge impact on click throughs, but does it necessarily convert to more sales - in the case they showed, no.
The AB Testing they discussed was all focused on tweaking page elements, from the position, size and colour of buttons, to moving distractions from a page - eg removing the 'email a friend' or 'print this page' functions from just before the 'buy' button on a page could increase sales by over 60%.
And the main thought from the presentation? That as a marketeer, what you think will work best doesn't always!! You need to test, test and then test again.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Bing is MSN's latest search engine with which it hopes it will be able to take on Google for a slice of the search market. In an effort to make a more -real time- search engine, Bing is now beginning to index some Twitter posts, starting with the posts of those with the most tweets and volume of followers.
Twitter posts on Bing will be displayed separately from the main search results and only when someone includes 'Twitter' or 'Tweet' next to the name of the person they're searching on.
This is a great development and sees Bing one step ahead of Google again. We saw some results recently connected with the Iran crisis, of Bing being ahead of Google in displaying the most updated data. At least it keeps Google on its toes!
