Category: Social Media


13
Jul 11

Google +1 the Next Step?

Filed Under: E commerce, MAD News, Social Media by Admin — View Comments

Google are launching their new social sharing button with their Google +1 rating. When you are signed into your Google account you can “+1” websites that you and your friends have liked.
The plan is that other people can then see whether or not a website has received lots of +1 votes and you can choose whether or not you want to visit it based on the reviews of others. You have to have a Google account in order to +1 websites otherwise there will be no difference to your Google experience.

The +1 and SEO

Social metrics and Google are now going hand in hand and are having a greater impact upon the rankings. Google have been gradually getting in on the act and are using social media and bookmarking to determine rankings. The customer has become the total focus of the search engine and the site; sites are there to provide a service after all so they should be providing the best possible service to all its customers.

It is believed that the +1 button will affect search rankings, and therefore it will be an important tool for all website owners. It is thought that this will encourage website owners to create a site that is functioning well with all of the relevant information that the customer would need.

Lots of sites are already replacing the Google Buzz button with Google +1 button so that people can rate their sites and have this available for other people to see to both boost their rankings and encourage people to visit their sites.

The Negative Side of +1

Plenty of people are concerned that this will become abused easily. Having this rating system of course means that there is the possibility that people will create accounts to boost the amount of +1s on their sites. People are already offering these services online +1s and it remain to be seen how well Google will be able to keep an eye on these “bogus” accounts and how severe the punishment from them will be.

Like with so many new introductions by the search engines it becomes a waiting and guessing game to see how much effect the changes will have to page rankings and customer interaction.  M.A.D  will certainly be watching developments closely.?

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29
Oct 10

MAD in Step with Google

Filed Under: Google, MAD News, Online Marketing by Sarah Stirrup — View Comments

Here at MAD we are always encouraging development and progress with our websites and our staff, which is why we are so thrilled to announce that our employee James Faulkner has taken Google’s new Advanced Search Advertising exam and passed! He has attained an AdWords Individual qualification with a specialisation Search Advertising. Google are constantly evolving their business and changing their requirements from websites and their employees and we are proud to be keeping up with the latest developments and trends.

Having an expert in our midst means that we can get the best out of online advertising for all of our clients, placing adverts on the correct pages will boost traffic and ultimately sales. So congratulations to James and we look forward to using this enhanced knowledge with our clients in the future.

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09
Sep 10

Google Instant Search

Filed Under: Google, MAD News by Kevin Galway — View Comments

Search now faster than the speed of type…

At MAD we’ve been trawling the google blog to bring you new, fresh & sometimes exciting Google stories…

Google never one to stand still are at it again, innovating & taking search results on to the next level.

Google Instant is a new search enhancement that shows results as you type. Their key technical insight was that people type slowly, but read quickly, typically taking 300 milliseconds between keystrokes, but only 30 milliseconds (a tenth of the time!) to glance at another part of the page. This means that you can scan a results page while you type.

The most obvious change is that you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search.” Another shift is that seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback. You can now adapt your search on the fly until the results match exactly what you want. In time, we may wonder how search ever worked in any other way.

Benefits

Faster Searches: By predicting your search and showing results before you finish typing, Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

Smarter Predictions: Even when you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, predictions help guide your search. The top prediction is shown in grey text directly in the search box, so you can stop typing as soon as you see what you need.

Instant Results: Start typing and results appear right before your eyes. Until now, you had to type a full search term, hit return, and hope for the right results. Now results appear instantly as you type, helping you see where you’re headed, every step of the way.

For example you want to search for the country Turkey.  You start to type and by the time you have typed Turk, these are the results you get – immediately below:

All you need to do is select from the suggestions either in the suggestion drop down, or from the search results below.

??

You can also see a video of this in action here at Google: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/09/search-now-faster-than-speed-of-type.html

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05
May 10

How is Bing Different from Google?

Filed Under: Google, MAD News by Chris Tunstall — View Comments

Bing is the renamed search engine recently released by Microsoft, and, whilst it’s like its competitor Google in many ways, it has a number of its own nuances – in terms of end-user experience and search results – that make it a viable alternative to the market leader.

Search Engine Algorithm

Search engines use a number of different signals to deduce page relevance and ranking. These include titles, URL content and keyword density as well as a myriad of other contributing factors, such as page popularity, length and quality. Algorithms are created to assign value to certain pages and produce the best results. Because of the complex nature of these search engine algorithms, however, there is no set way to build them.

Site Relevance & Quality

There are many trivial differences between Google and Bing, such as layout of the homepage and search engine results page, but the main difference between the two is the way each system’s algorithm differs. Whilst it doesn’t seem to incorporate any new signals when evaluating a given site’s relevance, Bing gives noticeably more weight than Google to certain signals.

  • Bing pays more attention to keywords and keyword phrases present in URLs.
  • Bing puts a much greater emphasis on capitalised terms.
  • Bing displays pages from larger sites more often than smaller sites.

Both companies, of course, won’t release how their algorithms are made up, but their effectiveness is measured by end-user experience and satisfaction.

Bing has a very small percentage of query volume compared to Google (3.16% against 85.35%), but Google has a number of years on Bing. The fact that Bing is implementing different strategies will highlight how effective both algorithms are as time goes on.

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09
Apr 10

Using site speed in web search ranking

Filed Under: Google, Organic, PPC, Web Development by Nicole John — View Comments

It was announced today that Google are now using site speed in web search ranking.

Google we’re obsessed with speed, in our products  and on the web. As part of that effort, today we’re including a new signal in our search ranking algorithms: site speed. Site speed reflects how quickly a website responds to web requests.

Speeding up websites is important — not just to site owners, but to all Internet users. Faster sites create happy users and we’ve seen in their internal studies that when a site responds slowly, visitors spend less time there. But faster sites don’t just improve user experience; recent data shows that improving site speed also reduces operating costs. Users place a lot of value in speed — that’s why they decided to take site speed into account in our search rankings.

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