July 4, 2008 2:19 pm | Posted by Adrian
It’s long been known that you shouldn’t build sites in Flash if Search Engine Optimisation is your thing. Now though, Google and Adobe engineers seem to be getting together and developing ways for Googlebot to being able to follow links contained within Flash.
The blog post “Experimental Proof. Google Can Index Links in Flash” from Guava details a recent experiment they’ve conducted that demonstrates this is now a fact of life.
Clearly, it also raises some issues with the potential for unscrupulous webmasters to bury links within the depths of a flash movie. Presumably, those very bright people at Google will already have thought of that though and already be on the case…
Definitely one to keep an eye on!
May 29, 2008 3:22 pm | Posted by Adrian
Microsoft recently launched its Live Search Cashback service in the United States. The basic concept is that you have a free Cashback account and when you search Microsoft Live, you will earn a percentage of your online purchases. Once you’ve accrued over $5, you can get this rebate sent to you using the more common payment methods, e.g. direct deposit to bank account, Paypal or cheque.
Whilst very early days, and only available in the US, this at least offers a new twist on the business of search. Will it be enough to erode Google’s market share? Probably not. Do searchers really want to earn pennies per purchase or know that their search results provide them with the most accurate results and wide ranging choice?
Hats off to Microsoft for demonstrating that innovation within Internet search is still possible but I fear this will be no more than a minor inconvenience to Google in terms of the ’search engine wars’.
What’s really needed is a fresh, innovative, dynamic company to enter the fray, take on the ‘big boys’, not do evil, not take over the Internet and not buy up every company that’s doing something good online. Any suggestions?
April 29, 2008 5:51 pm | Posted by Adrian
No real surprise there, but do you know by just how much Google is dominating the UK Internet landscape? Well, according to those well respected Analysts at Hitwise, the search behemoth now accounts for over one third of all Internet traffic in the UK through it’s major properties, e.g. Google.co.uk, Google.com, YouTube, Blogger etc., (Google delivers over a third of all UK traffic).
The co.uk and .com versions of the search engine even account for an amazing 87.7% of all UK searches. Putting this into context, in third place you’ll find Yahoo with just 2.85%.
The Hitwise article goes on to explore the impact of Google’s dominance considering the fact that Google will allow non-trademark owners to bid on trademarked terms within the UK from the 5th May 2008. In other words, from the beginning of next month, you will not be able to stop third parties bidding on your trademarked terms. Given the dominance of Google, this will have a major effect on many UK businesses. When compared to the US market where this is already the case, Hitwise estimate a potential drop of just under 8% in terms of traffic once competitors and affiliates are able to bid on trademarked terms, such as brands.
February 1, 2008 1:52 pm | Posted by Adrian
In a world full of mega-money purchases and deals, Microsoft has set the Internet alight with an offer of $44.6bn (£22.4bn) in cash and stock to buy Yahoo.
This offer is 62% higher than Yahoo’s closing share price on Thursday 31st January 2008.
As of today, there’s been no comment from the search company so at the moment it’s just a question of ‘watch this space’.
Let’s just hope that the Internet doesn’t just end up being divided up between Google and Microsoft with any hint of individuality being snuffed out my the mere offer of a few billion dollars…
January 30, 2008 3:16 pm | Posted by Adrian
Those clever people at seomoz.org are running a survey for search marketers trying to gain as much data as they can from the SEO community.
It would be great to get some more UK involvement, so if you’re a UK SEO Company, why not take 20 minutes to contribute to this survey?
Just follow this link: The SEOmoz SEO Industry Survey
December 11, 2007 11:59 am | Posted by Ben Norman
After July’s announcement Ask.com has now gone live with AskEraser their new free privacy tool which can be enabled by its users and remain active for 24 months before it will need to be activated again.
This will mean that users can ultimately surf anonymously within the ASK.com search engine. This means that Ask will stop recording the searchers search queries and cookie information (Ip address, user Id, session Id and the complete query text).
If you do use the personalisation features on Ask using AskEraser will get rid of these along with other cookies stored on your computer.
It is unsure if this move will encourage many more users to use the Ask.com search engine over competitors such as Google, Yahoo and MSN but it is a good move and shows that they are making moves to further protect users privacy.
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