Search Engine Optimisation Blog

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!

Google are well known for their technical innovations and when it comes to pay per click (PPC), their AdWords advertising system is the clear market leader.

However, they’re not perfect and recently seemed to have dropped the ball when it comes to using Broad Match. This is the most common type of matching used when you create an AdWords campaign with the others being Phrase Match and Exact Match.

In very simple terms, Broad Match previously meant that if you entered a keyphrase, e.g. England Football Team, those three words could appear in any order and still display your advert. For example, someone entering the search term, “What is the best football team in England?” could have displayed your ad.

In short, Broad Match has always given most exposures but not always relevant. To combat this, we add a large dose of Negative Keywords.

Now though, Google are developing their algorithms to enable synonym replacement on words. Carrying this example on, it may be that the system thinks ‘English‘ is a good swap for ‘England‘ and ‘teams‘ for ‘team‘ so someone searching for “English football teams” could display your ad. Not too bad? What about “England Rugby Team“?

Although this is a very frivolous example, last week we saw in our own campaign that we had paid for the click “John Lewis Website“. This had come from the broad term Website Marketing Company. Go figure!

The point here is that we’re seeing a lot of totally unrelated searches coming through and if you’re running your own AdWords campaign and have it full of broad terms, you may want to start running regular Search Query reports and scanning a critical eye over the search queries column. Go on, run one today… you may be in for a bit of a surprise!

More AdWords Tips…

Everyone knows that Google is making money like there’s no tomorrow but could the search giant be losing $110 million a year by having the “I’m Feeling Lucky” button next to the “Google Search” button?

That’s the claim in featured in a post on the Valleywag site.

Of course, Google aren’t saying how much this feature is really costing them but what is clear is that every time a search “feels lucky” they bypass the search results page and therefore miss the company’s sponsored adverts. It is estimated that as many as 1% of searches could be made this way ‘though that number is disputed in the many comments below the post.

Whatever it’s costing Google, the company will hardly be worried as profits continue to soar, just like the company’s many privately owned airplanes!