SearchPath Blog

Yahoo to use High Street data to target online shoppers

2010-03-05T09:30:00.002Z

Yahoo has recently announced an agreement with Nectar, the loyalty card scheme, that will enable advertisers using Yahoo, to target online shoppers based on what they buy on the High Street.

Under the agreement Nectar will supply data on a shopper's historical purchases to Yahoo. This data will then be matched to their Yahoo login, enabling advertisers to taregt their ads appropriately.

Around 2,000 people have signed up already and Cadbury is among the brands to have signed up to use the service.

5 Top Tips for Writing PPC Ads

2010-02-24T14:30:00.003Z

Writing PPC ads is one of the key processes in the setting up of an PPC account. After all, your customers don't see your keywords, your ad groups or any of your campaign information except your ads; that's all they have to make a clicking decision. Here are five tips for writing succesful, high converting PPC ads:

1. Use the keyword in the title of the ad. This is key to getting a good click through rate (CTR), and thus good quality scores. When keywords that a searcher has typed in are matched in the ads down the side and at the top of the screen, they are bolded. This makes them stand out from the rest of the page, and draws the eye to your ad.

Having a keyword in the title of the ad also ticks the quality score box - one of the criteria for achieving a good quality score is a congruence between landing page content, keyword and ad title.

If you are doing your PPC correctly, you should have small, tightly focused ad groups that focus on one theme. This will make it easy to put the keyword in the title of your ad, and have it match the keywords you have specified in your ad groups.

2. Use Camel Casing in your ad text. Camel Casing is where the first letter of each word in the ad is capitalised. This has the effect of making the ad stand out and look more professional. Be sure to Camel Case your destination URL as well: www.MyTopSite.com looks much better than www.mytopsite.com.

3. Use call to action phrases in your ads. Phrases such as "Buy Now!" or "Order Easily Online" encourage searchers to take the action you want once they reach your landing page.

4. Include unique selling points to make your ad stand out from your competitiors. Do a search for your keyword and see what words your competitors have in their ads. Try words and phrases that differentiate you from your competition. Try using power words like expert, guaranteed or discount.

5. Experiment with Dynamic Keyword Insertion. This is an advanced Adwords function whereby users specify that for a certain ad the title is to be defined by the keyword used by the searcher when they typed in their query into Google. Initially this tool would seem like the golden ticket; your ad titles would always be matched to the searcher query making ads more relevant. Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) is typically used where there are large numbers of potential keywords that could be used; DKI is used to save time and hassle of entering hundreds, if not thousands of potential keywords into chosen ad groups.

Ebay has been one high profile exponent of DKI - hence the near ubiquity of its adwords ads on every topic from Aerosols to Zips.

However, caution must exercised with using DKI, especially when using broad match keywords. When broad match is used in conjunction with DKI, you may find your ad titles being matched with random or bizarre broad match queries, reducing the relevance of your ad and product.

One thing to say with DKI is that if you are constructing your Adwords ad groups properly you should have your keyword as your ad title anyway! So tread with care, and consider using DKI when you have overly long keyword lists.

Google Considers Pulling Out Of China

2010-01-14T16:09:00.003Z

In what must be one of the biggest global internet industry stories for some time, Google announced on its blog that it was considering pulling its google.cn domain, due to privacy and human right concerns.

What triggered this off was a security compromise at google.cn HQ recently, where hackers attempted to gain entry into the Gmail servers that house the accounts of human right activists. Despite the fact that the hacks were unsuccessful, Google concluded that they were coming from the Chinese government, and were greatly displeased.

Google's response to this has been to suspend its censorship on its google.cn domain, something that Google has wanted to do since day one, but have always felt the need to placate the Chinese authorities, and go for the cash. Now, with the security breach attempted, Google are bowing down to China no longer and are saying, "Ban us if you like."

It’s a clever move by Google. They are asserting themselves against a regime that is known for human rights abuses, but by doing this they are offering the Chinese government a choice they probably don't want to make - to ban Google.

China most likely likes to keep Google live in its country, but under their terms; it makes them look like they are a free country, accepting of western influences. Without Google, they could damage their reputation amongst the international community, and be seen as a fascist and illiberal regime.

It remains to see whether Beijing calls Google's bluff and deprives the world's leading search engine operations in the world's largest country.

Google Rolls Out Cookie Based Personalised Search

2009-12-16T11:34:00.002Z

At the start of December Google introduced mass market personalised search. Previously, Google had enabled personalised search only for those that had a Google account, and had enabled Google to access their search history.

Now, personalised search is opt-out for everyone that uses Google, meaning that you have to actively sign out from the system to not let Google access your search history. The process is also cookie based, which means that every time you use Google, the search engine plants a small piece of code on your PC; when you revisit the site, Google reads the cookie and has access to your previous search history. The cookie lasts 180 days, so it’s not permanent.

This move toward cookie based opt out personalised search has raised privacy issues with some; they feel that Google is giving itself automatic access to your data, and is making yet another move towards world domination. However, Google has defended itself against these arguments, saying that users are free to opt out at any time.

Perhaps the biggest implications of mass personalisation is in SEO. Whereas peronsalisation was previously limited to users with a Google account, now it’s on a mass scale. This makes the problems of most users having a different set of search results all the more real; the fact of mass personalisation makes SEO less important. How can you justify spending money on SEO when each person's rankings are different?

The answer here could be that there will always be a need for some SEO, it just may be reduced in effect slightly. After all, users are always going to need recommendations for things they have never searched for before.

My guess is that SEO is going to have to change and adapt quite cleverly if it is going to survive as an industry.

Google Releases Site Performance Data on Webmaster Tools

2009-12-15T16:35:00.003Z

Google recently announced an addition to their Webmaster Tools tools set - Site Performance. In keeping with the much touted addition of load time to Google's algorithm next year, Google has added this Labs (beta) feature to its Webmaster Tools interface.

Google sees the speed of navigating the internet to be a key feature in its usability; the Google Webmaster blog describes how "...Studies have repeatedly shown that speeding up your site leads to increased retention and activity, higher revenue and costs...", so there's benefits for the webmaster too!

To encourage these positive effects of a faster web, the Site Performance tool offers webmasters an insight into how quickly their site is being accessed. On Site Performance, you'll find how fast your pages load, how they've fared over time, how your site's load time compares to that of other sites, examples of specific pages and their actual page load times, and page speed suggestions that can help with page load time issues.

The load time data is derived from aggregated information sent by users of your site who have installed the Google Toolbar and opted-in to it’s enhanced features.

Site Performance is an interesting piece of data, and with speed becoming more and more important (in Google's eyes), it is likely to be an often referenced data source in the future.

Top Sites On The Web

2009-11-30T13:47:00.002Z

URLFAN is a unique site that rates sites on the web for popularity by parsing millions of blogs and finding the number of mentions of every site that it finds.

URLFAN's data is inevitably biased toward bloggers and social media, so any conclusions they come to must be taken with a modicum of reservation. Having said that, the social media/blogging community is very influential, so the data they produce is bound to be of some use.

With that in mind, let’s look at what, according to URLFAN, are the most talked about sites on the web:

(URLFAN is, as we write this, "currently ranking the popularity of 3,783,534 websites by parsing 302,023,552 blog posts from 5,948,937 blog feeds.")

#1. en.wikipedia.org (1)
#2. youtube.com (3)
#3. flickr.com (2)
#4. twitter.com (9)
#5. google.com (4)
#6. myspace.com (6)
#7. facebook.com (-)
#8. imdb.com (5)
#9. nytimes.com (7)
#10. apple.com (8)

The numbers in brackets are last year's ranking (Nov '08).

As you can see, Wikipedia is the most referenced site in the blogging community. Facebook is a new entry at number 7. As you'd expect there are no UK sites in the top; today, as from the start of the web, the US rules the roost. (Though the BBC might have made it on there).

URLFAN gives the opportunity to enter your website to find out how popular it is, according to its ratings system. Why not give it a go? Visit URLFAN here.

Google Getting Close To Adding Page Load Time To Its Ranking Factors

2009-11-30T11:38:00.003Z

In a recent interview Matt Cutts said that page load times may soon be a factor that Google take into account when calculating rankings.

"Historically, we haven't had to use it in our search rankings, but a lot of people within Google think that the web should be fast," says Cutts. "It should be a good experience, and so it's sort of fair to say that if you're a fast site, maybe you should get a little bit of a bonus. If you really have an awfully slow site, then maybe users don't want that as much."

Although Cutts has not come out and explicitly said that load times will be part of the algorithm, the comments made above, coupled with a strong emphasis in 2009 in other interviews on page load times by Googlers, means that an incorporation of load speed into the algorithm does seem likely. Page load times are already a factor in the Google Adwords Quality Score calculation.

Having said that, optimising page load times should be part of every webmaster's to-do list, since it benefits users anyway. Then if Google really does start using this as a ranking factor, you will have a head start on boosting your rankings.

Google provides a number of tools to webmaster's to help with improving speed on the web here. Google here provides resources to Google resources, as well as resources from other developers elsewhere that improve speed on the web.

Our advice is to optimise your page load times now, to be in good time for Google's predicted algorithm roll out in 2010.

Google Chrome OS Released To The Open Source Community

2009-11-23T13:53:00.002Z

Google last week announced that its Chrome Operating System (OS) has been released to the open source community. This means that the code is capable of being changed by anybody, and in any way that benefits the OS. This open source access has been announced a year in advance of the proper release of Chrome OS; this is to make sure that Google gain maximum benefit in terms of functionality from the open source community.

The upside of using the open source community in this way is that you get the "wisdom of crowds" operating, for free. The downside is that you do not have the control that you would normally have over your project. Google have obviously decided that the benefits outweigh the risks in this case.

Google says in the recent Google blog entry:

"We want to take this opportunity to explain why we're excited about the project and how it is a fundamentally different model of computing."

They go on to explain the main advantages of Chrome OS over a standard OS:

1. "First, it's all about the web. All apps are web apps. The entire experience takes place within the browser and there are no conventional desktop applications. This means users do not have to deal with installing, managing and updating programs."

2. "Second, because all apps live within the browser, there are significant benefits to security. While no computer can be made completely secure, we're going to make life much harder (and less profitable) for the bad guys."

3. "Most of all, we are obsessed with speed. We are taking out every unnecessary process, optimizing many operations and running everything possible in parallel. This means you can go from turning on the computer to surfing the web in a few seconds."

These three benefits, Google is hoping, will allow Chrome OS to achieve the monumental task of overtaking Windows in the operating system wars. If that will happen, only time will tell.

"Link:" Operator Effectiveness Examined

2009-11-23T13:11:00.003Z

The "Link:" command in Google is one of the advanced operators available when using the search engine, and is used to find out the list of inbound links (IBL's) to a given site.

This is what Google says about the operator in Google Webmaster Help:

"You can perform a Google search using the link: operator to find a sampling of links to any site. For instance, [link:www.google.com] will list web pages that have links pointing to the Google home page. Note there can be no space between the "link:" and the web page URL.

To see a much larger sampling of links to any verified site in Webmaster Tools:

1. On the Webmaster Tools Home page, click the site you want.
2. Under Your site on the web, click Links to your site. "

There had recently been some discussion around the internet about how accurate or extensive the list of links that the link: operator provides. The Webmaster Help entry on the subject puts to rest the first point made by some webmasters: that the list of links provided by "link:" is comprehensive.

Any webmaster with access to Webmaster Tools will be able to confirm that the list of links provided there is far more complete and comprehensive that that provided by the "link:" operator.

The downside of using Webmaster Tools to find links, as an SEO, is that you can only view the links for your sites. The fact that the "link:" operator gives a very small selection of links make it pretty much redundant for SEO purposes; if you need to find the links for a competitor, then Yahoo Site Explorer or SEOMoz Linkscape would be used.

New Website Launch for Steppes Travel Group

2009-11-10T13:16:00.002Z

We've been busy for the past few months working on 2 new websites for the Steppes Travel Group, which were launched yesterday, on time and on budget. The new sites are for Steppes Travel and for the newly rebranded Steppes Discovery.

Both sites make a great use of automation and dynamic content. We've also included lots of interaction for visitors to the site, with a flash map to navigate to their destination, digitised brochures and a breakdown of the types of holidays available.

Both sites are controlled within the same CMS that controls all site content and makes it simple to update. The CMS also contains a moderation system so that only changes that have been approved are published live to the site.

Further developments are in the pipeline, so keep an eye on these sites!

Google Releases Social Search

2009-11-03T15:37:00.002Z

Last week Google announced the release of "Google Social Search", a new search add on that incorporates users' social network data into their personalised search results.

For example, if you search for "New York", normal Google results would not normally display a friend's blog that is themed on New York. However, with Social Search, the user's friend's blog would be shown in a search for "New York", under the heading "Results from people in your social circle for New York."

Social Search works like this: a Google user logs into his Google account, and signs up for Social Search. They then give permission to Google to use elements of their social media including Twitter, Friendfeed, Google Reader and Gmail contacts. When the Social Search user then conducts a search on Google, the results show blogs, photos, reviews and other content from their social media contacts.

Social Search, which is still in beta (or "labs" as Google calls it), has produced concerns from some quarters over privacy. On the official Google blog there were attempts to allay these fears: "All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web — you can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we've done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant."

Marissa Meyer, Vice-President of Google's Search Products, also added recently: "You opt into using Social Search, and then we look at who your friends are and what content they might be publishing...We tell you which data source we used in order to find that friend. We're doing our best to be transparent about how we found the relationships. And people have the choice of whether they want the feature or not."

Google Social Search could be potentially be seen as another nail in the coffin of traditional, main index SEO. With the onset of localisation and personalisation over the past few years, the notion that internet marketers had to optimize their sites to display in one index of rankings that everyone saw has become less potent. Instead, the old model is being replaced by search engine changes that make the idea of having a "one results page fits all" more and more redundant.

Social search is a type of personalisation that takes moves this process on to the next step. SEO's will have to be smart and innovative if they are to keep up with these changes to how search engines operate.

Google's New Parameter Tool

2009-10-05T13:28:00.002Z

Googl ehas luanched a new tool to enable owners of sites which have multiple URLs pointing to the same content, to avoid duplicate content issues. This will be particularly useful for sites with multiple product pages, for instance, where a product can be accessed by session ids or with product options (eg /toys/plane?colour=blue&size=large and /toys/plane/affid=346 etc).

You can now tell Google to ignore specific parameters such as session ids, which will then help Google to find just one version of the page in its search results.

The new Parameter Tool is accessible in Webmaster Tools>Dashboard>Site Config>Settings>Parameter Handling.

Internet Advertising Overtakes TV To Become Biggest Advertising Sector In The UK

2009-09-30T15:33:00.003Z

The UK has become the first major economy where the amount spent on online adverts is greater than than the traditionally dominant TV sector. A record £1.75 billion was spent online in the first six months of the year, compared to £1.6 billion for TV.

UK advertisers spent £1.75bn on internet advertising in the six months to the end of June, a 4.6% year-on-year increase, according to a report by the Internet Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. The internet now accounts for 23.5% of all advertising money spent in the UK, while TV ad spend accounts for 21.9% of marketing budgets.

This milestone represents a landmark in the meteoric growth of internet advertising. To put its explosive growth in perspective, in 1998, when the IAB first measured internet advertising, just £19.4m was spent online. MDs and marketers are realising in greater and greater numbers that online offers a better deal than TV; where TV is a very much "scattergun" approach, which is hard to quantify, search engine advertising allows you to monitor exactly where your advertising spend is going, and what you are getting for it. The capacity for accountability and measurement has made internet, and in particular search engine advertising, into the most attractive option for marketing departments, especially those where budgets are being squeezed by the recession.

We at SearchPath have years of experience in search engine advertising, and have a track record in delivering excellent returns for our customers. If you are thinking of following the trend toward online, why not give us a call on 01285 643496 and see how we can grow your business.

Derren Brown Predicts The Lottery

2009-09-23T10:06:00.002Z

Derren Brown, magician, mind reader and master marketer, has captured the nation's attention with his stunt to predict the lottery. With seemingly no camera trickery, Brown managed to predict 6 numbers correctly on the midweek lottey draw. You can see the surge in popularity that this caused from looking at Google Trends (seen above).

The first spike you see is the lottery prediction, the second is the buzz surrounding Brown's next TV stunt - the attempt to stick TV viewers to their sofa's. Judging by the reaction to that show, it was pretty successful.

As is often the case with success these days, much of the buzz was generated by web activities; Brown has an active web site and blog that focuses on topics related to Brown's work. He also is on Twitter and Facebook regularly; the success of his latest stunts attest to the power of social media.

Google Tweaks Its Search Page

2009-09-23T09:49:00.002Z

You've probably already noticed that Google has increased the size of its text search box and font. On its blog Google says that they are excited by this change, due to the fact that "...it symbolizes our focus on search and because it makes our clean, minimalist homepage even easier and more fun to use. " I'd agree with that - the change makes it easier to see what you are typing into Google.

This change may be small, but it is significant; the Google home page is rarely tinkered with. I'm guessing many hours of testing went into this alteration. Lets wait and see if the public perception is positive and causes the change to stay.

Confirmation: Google Does Not Use Meta Keywords In Its Ranking Algorithm

2009-09-23T08:57:00.002Z

Matt Cutts recently posted on his blog a post about the irrelevance of the meta keywords tag with regards to the Google ranking algorithm. Due to massive spamming in the 90's, Google now disregards the keywords meta tag completely: "Google uses over two hundred signals in our web search rankings, but the keywords meta tag is not currently one of them, and I don’t believe it will be." (Matt Cutts).

This is conformation of a fact that many SEO's suspected for some time; its been pretty much common knowledge for years that the meta keywords tag is largely irrelevant. We've used it only intermittently on our sites over the past couple of years, and only for including a few misspellings. Now we know that even this limited use of the tag is now redundant.

On its Webmaster Blog Google did affirm that it still takes into account some other meta tags, such as the description tag: "...Google does support several other meta tags... For example, we do sometimes use the "description" meta tag as the text for our search results snippets...

Even though we sometimes use the description meta tag for the snippets we show, we still don't use the description meta tag in our ranking."

Other meta tags that Google reads and acts on include the "noindex", "nofollow" and "noodp" "robots" tags. These tags have the function of telling Google not to include the page in its index; telling Google to not pass PageRank through the page; and telling Google not to use the Open Directory Project description in the search results snippet.

Google's New Search Update: Project Caffeine

2009-08-12T11:03:00.002Z

Google has announced that it has been working on a new architecture for its search results. There will be no changes to the user interface, but there will be changes to crawling, indexing and ranking.

For once, Google has informed the user community of these changes and also asked for feedback.

The new system can be tested at: http://www2.sandbox.google.com/and feedback can be given via the Google Webmaster Central Blog.

More info and comment available at Search Engine Land.

ASP.NET Developer Needed

2009-08-12T10:17:00.001Z

We are currently looking for an ASP.NET Developer to join our team working on new website development.

Experience Required:

* XHTML
* CSS 2
* AP.NET 2.0 with C#
* Javascript
* Experience with SQL and LINQ

For full details, see our careers page.

Agencies - please note - this job is strictly no agencies. Please don't bother calling!

Google Pushes Its Online Apps Set

2009-08-07T12:58:00.002Z

Google recently posted a piece on its official blog singing the praises of it cloud-based computing tools:

"Every morning, millions of people wake up to a very refreshing experience at work. They don't see "mailbox is full" errors in their email. They don't worry about backing up their data. They can get to any file they need from any computer, anywhere with Internet access and a browser. They can all access and edit the same documents and spreadsheets at the same time as their colleagues. They use Gmail and Google Calendar at work as fluidly and easily as they use their personal Gmail accounts. They video, voice and text chat with their peers globally as naturally as they send email."

Google refers to the experience of immersing yourself in its online tools as "going Google", and impressively states that entire companies such as Motorola have switched their office software to Google, as well as 1.75 million other businesses, schools and organisations.

To celebrate and publicise the growing phenomenon of "going Google", the search giant have placed a series of bollboard ads in US cities such as New York. Its hopes that these ads will help to reach potential customers that were maybe not as acessible online.

With online apps such as Gmail, Google calendar and Google Docs, Google is in a great position to capitalise on the cloud computing boom that is predicted to sweep the internet and the rest of the computing world over the next few years. It remians to be seen what that other computing giant Microsoft will react with; however its safe to say this - never write off Bill Gates.

Usability Testing

2009-08-05T08:16:00.000Z

Usability of websites is of crucial importance to the effectiveness and conversion so it was interesting for us to have a session with the Web Usability Partnership yesterday looking at a client's website.

We defined our client's target market and what we'd like to test on the site. WUP then recruited a tester exactly matching our target audience and led a goal-orientated session with the user, looking at relevance of the content, navigational elements and the user's behaviour.

Observations from the session:

Placing the most important content on a page 'above the fold' - our tester didn't scroll down on any pages for the first 30 minutes so getting your key messages visible without scrolling is hugely important.
Links - our client's site has many image-based links - our tester missed them all! She even missed many text-based hyperlinks and image-based calls to action int he top left corner of the site. Make links obvious and consistent!
Home - ensure you have a Home page navigation link.
Browsers - test your site across multiple browsers - many people still use IE6
Enquiry forms - if you have an enquiry form, make sure the tone of the form doesn't make people think they're making a commitment to do something - our client's form could be putting off the more casual enquirer.

And most importantly of all, don't make assumptions...about anything...ever! Test & test again!

New SearchPath site

2009-07-31T15:58:00.002Z

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).

Microsoft & Yahoo Announce Search Deal

2009-07-30T16:07:00.003Z

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.

Using Social Media to Fight Big Brands

2009-07-24T14:28:00.005Z

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!!

SEO Campaign Setup - Planning for Success

2009-07-24T14:15:00.002Z

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!

Delia - How Not to Relaunch a Site

2009-07-24T14:06:00.004Z

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!