Search Engine Marketing Blog

Google’s online ad revenues will continue to grow despite the US economical downturn according to data released by eMarketer.

They predict that Google’s online ad revenues in 2008 will increase by 27.4% in the US alone. Even in comparison the other leading search engines (Yahoo, MSN and AOL) which take 25.7% of all US online advertising dollars Google exceeds them with a staggering 30.7%.

It seems that even in economical downturn that the power of online marketing shows through and it’s no surprise that when other areas of marketing spend are dropping of that online advertising continues to grow.

So if you’re looking for where to get the biggest return on investment for your advertising spend then why not look into online advertising.

Yesterday Gmail saw a big email outage leaving its users unable to send or receive email. The Outage started around 10pm here in the UK (GMT) so chances are it didn’t impact on UK businesses to much.

Around 10:30pm official word from Google was they were working on it and aware of 502 errors (as reported in a Google Groups thread). This then prompted hundreds of posts from upset Gmail users keen to see the service back up and working as soon as possible.

This does raise questions about not only the Gmail service but also the other widely available free email services that people take for granted. There are many UK businesses that rely on Gmail and the other free email providers to handle their company email. Although these services are free you should carefully consider the implications of using them for business use.

Remember the free email providers have the right to remove the services from use at any time (although this is unlikely to happen).

First impressions count for allot so ensure your business is well represented online and avoid using the free email services for business email as it really doesn’t create the right impression about your business.

It seems that another development has arisen from the last Google Update seeing Google live up to its promise of not allowing the automated querying of its search engine by blocking some automated rank checkers.

It has been reported that popular software applications Web Ceo and Web Pro Gold have been blocked from querying the Google search engine leaving their owners unable to extract search engine positions.

Google have always made their standpoint clear in their Information for Webmasters that they do not allow Automated quires and it seems now is time for the crackdown.

Two recent snippets of news should bring some cheer amongst the incessant reports of recession and predictions of doom that seem to dominate the press at the moment.

Google announced yesterday that their revenue for the second quarter of 2008 topped $5.37 billion. This is an increase of 39% compared to the same period in 2007 and a small increase over quarter one of 2008.

Perhaps more importantly is the fact that within the UK, online shopping spend has increased by 38% in the first half of this year compared to the same period in 2007. The total amount spent online was £26.5 billion, according to findings recently published by IMRG and Capgemini.

UK shoppers now spend 17 pence in every pound online, almost 20% of total retail spending.

This could, of course, just be down to the fact that with many households feeling the squeeze they are turning online to ‘bag a bargain’ but hopefully the buoyant trend of Internet shopping will continue.

Hopefully we’ll be reporting more good news soon, including how rival London gangs have turned to hugging each other in a ‘love off’ and how Team GB are confident of winning at least one bronze medal in the Olympics*

*London, not Beijing

Google are currently rolling out the new AdWords Local PlusBox which will now enable the top featured sponsored result in the Google search engine to display even more information.

This information will consist of a map, contact details, address and will even allow people to get directions. The best part is there is no extra charge for this and you will only billed by Google as normal, when someone clicks on your add and arrives at your landing page.

For local businesses looking specifically to target their particular geographical location this could prove very helpful in maximising the online visibility received.

More information can be found here at the Inside AdWords Blog

At Impact Media we believe the most important search engines are the ones that deliver the most traffic and this changes from country to country but for the UK and USA the big 3 are the same.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are the big 3 in question and control one big slice of the internet traffic, approximately 91% of all UK and 93.4% of the USA search engine traffic.

UK Search Engine Share:

USA Search Engine Share:

At Impact Media we offer the real deal and optimise website’s for the main 3 search engines so that you get quality relevant traffic to your website.

Bottom line, if your not in the top 3 search engines you are missing out on nearly all natural search enquires.

(Statistics from may 2006 Source: Hitwise)

Google is now taking minutes to index web pages instead of days according to a recent article by Manoi Jasra for Search Engine Guide. This is probably Google’s response to the fast paced blogging trends that mean content on the internet is now being updated at a much faster rate.

This goes to show that your content can be indexed and appearing in Google’s search results faster than ever which is great news for web site owners with fast moving content that want to get their news to the internet as fast as possible.

Last Thursday Google rolled out their new charts API which will allow anyone and everyone to to embed stunning dynamic charts into their web pages.

These charts were originally created for Google’s use but they have now made the technology freely available to everyone. The charts will be rendered as PNG format and are available in several different formats including:

- Line Graphs
- Pie Charts
- Bar Charts
- Scatter Plots
- Venn Diagraphs

So if you are into charts and graphs then this is an API for you!

At the recent Pubcon Matt Cutts has announced that Google will begin to start treating subdomains like a normal folders.

In a few weeks Google will roll out a new filter that will look to allow a maximum of 2 results per domain to be returned in any given search. There will of course be exceptions to this rule for sites such as blogspot.com but it should look to halt the results ownership some big sites have held and open the doors to a more relevant results list.

Google have turned their considerable technological weight to helping children around the world track Santa Claus as we head towards the 25th December.

In their blog post, Tracking Santa, then and now, their Chief Santa Tracker explains the various ways that children can now monitor Santa’s movements using a combination of products, including Google Earth. There’s even a widget you can add to your Google page for up-to-the-minute monitoring of Father Christmas and his sleigh. Ho! Ho! Ho!