Despite this success, Google hasn’t finished yet. Google wants to own the internet, taking out a huge number of companies in their wake (by loss of rankings) by releasing a series of tools and add-ons to their service, cutting out the need to click through to a host of popular sites. Here’s a list of just some of the things they’ve done:

Calculator

It used to be that if you needed a calculator quickly, you would either use the one within your operating system, or you’d use one of the rafts of online calculators such as online-calculator.com.

Rather than acting as a vehicle to transport you to your desired tool, Google has now removed the need to click through to another website by offering a calculator within the SERP’s.

CAR INSURANCE

No doubt one of the most competitive search terms around, ‘car insurance’ has been the golden egg of the major comparison websites for years. Now, however, they have to compete with the might of Google; but in a totally unfair fight. Over the past few days it seems Google have implemented their very own ‘sponsored’ (not a PPC ad) listing in between the paid advertisements and the organic results.

Users can click through, enter their details and compare quotes from the various insurance companies; once again cutting out the need to use external websites.

Credit cards

Similarly, Google also offers a credit card comparison service. Users can select the type of card that they want, browse terms and apply directly for that credit card, cutting out any requirement of websites such as moneysupermarket.com and comparethemarket.com.

WEDDING PLANNING

Having recently got engaged myself, I have been going through the process of building a giant spread sheet of all the information I need to plan the wedding. It occurred to me half way through this process that there may be tools online to help save time; low and behold, Google have their own wedding planning tool kit.

No doubt after noticing the raft of websites offering wedding planning tools, Google have created a range of tools using Google products (Google docs for the spread sheets, Google sites for wedding sites, Picasa for galleries etc.).

QUICK INFORMATION

Gone are the days where you had to spend time trawling various websites to find out what the capital of Uruguay is or, in this case, who the manager of Manchester City is. Once again Google are cutting out the need to venture away from the search engine by offering the answer along with bio’s and supporting information within the SERP’s.

Summary

Despite the massive effect it will no doubt have on the companies that relied heavily on search rankings related to the above, I think this can only be a good thing for users. These new tools and add ons will help cut down on time and effort in finding the information being searched for, and that can’t be a bad thing, can it?

The post Google’s Add-Ons’s to Help Users Find Information Quicker appeared first on PushON Ltd.

As you may already know, we have recently lost a dear friend. Mark Cadwaladr sadly passed away in June, and to pay tribute to the great man 3 members of PushON are joining the ‘In Memory of Mark Cadwaladr‘ team in the Salford 10k this Sunday (9th September).

Mark was a true gentleman and touched many lives with his kind, friendly nature. In fact, the charity which all the donations are going to, The Wellspring, was regularly visited by Mark as he offered his time and expertise to help those in need.

Please spare anything you can to this great cause at http://www.justgiving.com/RIPMarkCadwaladr/. The PushON team members will be tweeting at the event (@psychobel, @jordandwilson, @tomfittonuk) so you can follow PushON MD Simon Wharton as he attempts to run at least 10% of the race, followed by a wheeze, a walk and possibly even a crawl.

The post 10k for Mark Cadwaladr appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Pinterest for those not ‘down with the kids’ is a social network that allows users to create boards of images based on their desired topics (a digital mood board, if you will) which others can choose to ‘re-pin’ to their board and comment on accordingly. Simple and useful, but the comparison with Facebook and Twitter is laughable and smacks of laziness on the part of the media writers who have simply run out of ways to explain the offering and impact that the medium may have.

So how is Pinterest useful? Well, if you’re getting married or buying a house, you’ll know all too well that mood boards are a great way to document all your ideas. The problem with physical mood boards is the sourcing of the various ideas from dozens of expensive magazines. Pinterest offers you the entire web; and not just images and websites you find, but you can also follow and repin the ideas of thousands of other like minded brides to be or home-owners, making the whole experience a social one – brilliant.

What about businesses? We all know that businesses like jumping on the bandwagon of all of these new found, ‘next big thing’ social mediums, but where is the real value?

Pinterest is, as you may imagine, a great network for any business that relies on great visuals. Designers of any kind (interior, clothing etc) for example, work very well as these are things people create boards for. By simply creating boards of your work (traditional bathrooms for example) offers those images out to people creating bathroom related boards. The more re-pins, the wider your message (or image) is spread and the more people that can see the great service/ product you have to offer; opening them up as potential customers.

So, it’s a great way to get people excited about the beautiful products you sell, and it’s the next big thing so how long until these 500 million+ Pinterest-ers start engaging with me? Well… That’s it. The whole digital scene has got so caught up in all the excitement, they’ve forgotten that Pinterest is very much in it’s infancy. As James Carson said in his talk at Think Visibility, “Pinterest has a smaller user base than MySpace; but MySpace is dead isn’t it?”(at the time of the talk) The point being is that, yes, Pinterest is a great idea and can provide a host of businesses real value (as part of a good marketing mix) however, it is way too small for anyone to suggest that it should be at the forefront of any digital strategy.

The post Pinterest – Is It All It’s Cracked Up To Be? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Each of the 16 participating countries were drawn alongside a company/ agency to decide who would be taking part in the prestigious tournament and who would sadly miss out. Here’s how the draw went (or see the image below):

So, with that done it’s down to the real business. Each company/ agency will receive their very own PushONEuro’s wallchart (*WOOOO*) so they can follow their team’s progress (or lack of) throughout the tournament. But who will win the illustrious PushONEuro’s trophy? Let’s take a look at the candidates.

As one of the host nations, SEO Creative will be hoping home soil will give them the edge to make it through to the latter stages of the tournament; but will their star striker Robert Lewandowski be distracted with constant rumours of a move to Manchester United?

It remains to be seen if Photolink Creative Group can step up in a major tournament and deliver a trophy or if they’ll fall at the final hurdle as they did in the World Cup.

With major players entering into a rich vein form (for once), Melbourne Hosting must be deemed as one of the favourites but they will face stiff competition in their group from Return On Digital, PR Agency One and the other hosts MediaCom Manchester.

The overall favourites however have to be the current holders, Defibshop, despite including Fernando Torres in their team.

Good luck to everyone involved and if you have any questions or refereeing complaints, feel free to drop us a tweet at @pushonltd using the hashtag, #pushoneuros. Here’s the draw in full.

The post Euro 2012 Sweepstake – The PushONEuro’s appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Wanted: High Quality Sites – Reward Given

The Story

Codenamed “Google Penguin”, the algorithm follows Google’s last large-scale change (“Panda”), this time targeting webspam in the search engine results.

What does it mean for SEO’s?

Well firstly, you are likely seeing quite a few fluctuations if you are monitoring keyword rankings for any websites. With a number of low-quality websites now identified and “devalued” by the Penguin update, some of the more genuine websites have experienced healthy jumps in visibility.

If you were previously using some “darker” SEO techniques, then you may want to start cutting back unless you want to risk being affected by this latest update (if you haven’t been already!).

What does it mean for users?

As Google is intending, I fully expect a huge amount of spam filled websites dominating the SERPs to lose rankings, providing a higher quality of search results.

For more information, check out the Official Google Webmaster Central blog.

Another Informed Round-up

If you don’t quite know what to make of Google’s version of what the ‘penguin update’ will include, why not see what the guys at Search Engine Land have to say about it.

Wrongly Bitten by the Penguin?

No doubt there’ll be plenty of websites that are wrongly accused of webspam, with owners completely helpless and without a clue of where to turn. Fear not! Head of Google’s webspam operation has informed that there’s a handy form for you to plead your innocence with.

Still annoyed about that spammy competitor that’s unfairly dominating the SERPs using underhand tactics? There’s also a form for that.

htaccess Hacks You Need to Know

htaccess files can bring about a whole world of confusion if you don’t know what you’re doing, so how about a simple guide? Well, makeitrank.com have provided a handy list of 10 useful hacks.

Puis-je avoir un lien s’il vous plaît?

Or ‘can I have a link please?’ in English (at least, that’s what Google Translate says). SEO in foreign languages is still very much an unknown to the majority. Can you not just use Google Translate to translate all of your existing target terms? NO YOU CAN’T.

Luckily, SEOmoz have recently posted some great tips to get you started with SEO in other languages. Merci.

The post Last Week in Digital – WC 23.04.12 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Facebook to Introduce the Descendants of the ‘Like’

The Story

Facebook will soon be unveiling the descendants of the much loved ‘like’ button. Used as a statement of intent, Facebook is now offering users the option of adding clarity to that intent by offering buttons for ‘Want’, ‘Own’, ‘Played and more. These buttons will be offered to both advertisers and websites that use Facebook plug-ins.

What Does it Mean for Advertisers?

Advertisers LOVE data; especially data that helps to determine buying habits of their target audience. These new options will allow advertisers to target users based on what they want or what they already own (to name a few). This could offer advertisers the chance to:

• Target users that ‘want’ a competitor’s product with a similar product
• Target users that already own a product of their brand with further products
• Target owners for reviews which would no doubt be propagated to their friends’ news feeds

What Does it Mean for Users?

Users will be even more privy to their friends’ purchasing habits which may in turn influence their own.

More information on the new Facebook action buttons.

Google Knowledge Graph

Google are changing (for a change) the way that they understand queries. They want to understand true meaning behind queries and offer related search attributes based on that meaning. Take a look at exactly how they intend to do it using the Google Knowledge Graph.

Men are Better at Remembering Stuff (well… mobile ads)

You know women are better at everything, especially multi-tasking and being organised etc? Well, at last men are better at something – remembering mobile advertisements. According to eMarketer, 69% of men aged 18-29 remember seeing an ad on their phone, compares to just 42% of women. Well done men.

Remember it.

Enhanced PPC Ads

Google have announced enhanced sitelinks for PPC ads. After testing, Google have said CTR is much improved with enhanced sitelinks, which is unsurprising given the amount of space given for them. Find out more about enhanced sitelinks for PPC.

Inbound.org Launches

Rand Fishkin and Dharmesh Shah have launched a new inbound marketing news website, HURRAH! The content will be provided by everyday marketers, SEO’s, bloggers etc. By the community, for the community. It is already proving popular with over 1500 submitted posts within it’s first few days. Head over to inbound.org to check it out yourself.

The post Last Week in Digital – WC 13.2.12 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Groupon Posts Loss in Fourth Quarter

The Story

Who would have guessed it? Just over a year ago Groupon turned down a hefty $6billion offer from Google – which they duly rejected, citing ambitions of building the company independently.Well so far it’s going swimmingly as they have just posted a loss of $43 million in the fourth quarter of the year. Whilst revenue has grown by a staggering 194% to $507 million, huge expenditure on advertising among other things have left them once again firmly within the red.

What Does it Mean for Groupon?

The announcement alone doesn’t mean too much as lots of big companies post losses. This is different though. When they turned down the extraordinary offer, Groupon were the new kids on the block offering a product unlike anyone else. The business itself had gone viral, becoming a household name based on the generous discounts they could offer. Since then, that market has been saturated with thousands of similar companies using the same business model. Now Groupon doesn’t seem so special. Yes, in terms of brand awareness, Groupon still dominates but these companies are only as good as their offers, and with similar offerings throughout the market, its hard to see how Groupon will recoup a return anywhere near the offer from Google.

What Does it Mean for Users?

Nothing. In short – if Groupon ceases to exists, there is a market full to the brim offering the same product.

More info on Groupon’s financial loss announcement

Shopping Cart Abandonment Infographic

There’s no greater pain from an e-commerce perspective than when you’ve managed to:

1. Drive a prospective customer to your website
2. They have successfully navigated your website
3. They have selected a product and made the decision to purchase it
4. They have added the product to their basket

…and then after all that they decide not to complete the purchase. To keep your e-commerce manage from ripping their hair out (and probably yours too) here’s a great infographic to help optimise the whole payment process.

Google Introduce Sitelink Arrows

As is the life of SEO’s, something minute has changed in the SERP’s and we all excited. This time they’ve implemented some tiny arrows next to sitelinks within the SERP’s.

Take a look at the arrows implemented within Google’s SERP’s

Bing Testing New Results Design

In the same vein, Bing are testing out a new design for their SERP’s. It looks much cleaner and fresher.

Take a look at Bing’s new SERP design

TIP: How to Build an Advanced Keyword Analysis Report in Excel

Dan Peskin has posted a great ‘how to’ on SEOmoz to help analyse keyword data from multiple places (Analytics, Adwords, Webmaster Tools, etc.).

Take a look at how to build and advanced keyword analysis report in excel

The post Last Week in Digital – WC 6.2.12 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

One such occasion was last night waiting for my lift home, as I was faced a huge BT billboard advertising their broadband services. As BT have consistently done within their advertising over the past few years (the most popular being ‘Adam & Jane’), the ad refers to a fictional narrative that focuses around using BT’s services.

This time it’s focussed (from what I can gather from the billboard) on 3 young people that all successfully use the same internet connection for their various needs.

My first major gripe with the billboard is the call to action (if you can see it?!). “Search ‘flat 6′ online” is the smallest item on the billboard and I’m sure that the majority of passers by don’t see it, leaving the billboard rather aimless. That, however, isn’t the biggest issue I have with it; the biggest issue is the CTA itself.

Firstly, my research took me to Google:

As I have now come to expect with this type of nonchalant CTA within traditional media, the whole billboard campaign is resting on a single PPC advertisement, with no sign of BT within the organic search results. It would take very little effort indeed for a competitor to hijack the traffic driven from the campaign by building competing paid ads or organic listings around ‘flat 6′. Hat tip to Pete Young who spotted a similar case last year.

But wait. The CTA says “Search ‘Flat 6′ Online“. Maybe BT have focussed on Bing or Yahoo for their campaign? Sadly not.

Bing and Yahoo have not even been given a second’s thought. As with Google they don’t appear anywhere within the organic listings, but with Bing and Yahoo they have even failed to set up a paid campaign. This means of those passers by that:

1. See the ad
2. See the CTA
3. Are taken in enough to follow the CTA

The post BT fails to push offline interest online appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The ICO cookie legislation will take effect in May, but we are still to see any credible solutions or strategy to combat the potential loss in tracked traffic via Google Analytics and other analytical packages. We are expecting to see a rise in cookie-free Analytics packages, along with an official annoucement from Google before too long.

It will also be interesting to see the stance that browsers such as Chrome take, with some expecting them to include an option to accept cookies at browser level.

Destination URL [tip]

You can look at specific landing pages, conversions and CPC in the dimensions tab within the Google AdWords interface.

.co.cc domians are now being indexed again

After 6 months of expulsion from Google’s search results, .co.cc domains are back. They were removed due to the majority of them being low quality or ‘spammy’ but Google now seems to have either changed it’s tune or has been hit by a bug. Either way, they’re back.

Read more

Google slaps itself on the wrist… again!

For the second time in a year Google have had punish one of their own sites after proof of sponsored listings for Google Chrome were found. This follows the furore that followed Beat That Quote’s punishment last year after being bought out by the search engine giant, which was consequently punished for a host of paid links.

Read more

SEO in other countries

Something that is sometimes overlooked by SEO’s is the value in optimising multilingual websites properly for their respective languages. This is much more than simply translating the English version of the website. Query Click have written a great post on ‘an introduction to multilingual seo’.

Read more

Google acquires more patents. This time from IBM.

Google has continued to acquire patents, this time from IBM. This is just another round in the war which is seemingly going on between Google and it’s main competitors Microsoft and Apple.

Read more

Video on rich snippets on Google Webmaster blog

Rich snippets can vastly improve CTR from Google so it’s vital that they are implemented correctly. Google have made it easier by providing an instructional video, showing you exactly how to do so.

The post SEO Weekly Round-Up #17 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

New YouTube layout

YouTube rolled out their snazzy new layout last week. It’s just another in the long line of Google owned assets that have had a makeover, but we think it looks great.

More info

Link Spike Case Study

SEOWizz have provided a great case study on the affect link spikes have on rankings. It shows the real issue that rented links can cause and that there’s no substitute for real, manually or organically built links.

More info

E-commerce Logged In Statistic

There have been plenty of statistics and rumours about the effects banded around since Google have stopped providing data for signed in users, however TechCrunch have posted some shocking statistics from some recent Sociable Labs research.

More info

YouTube Analytics Launched

YouTube has at last launched Analytics for YouTube. As well as all the stuff you’d expect to see (overview, statistics on how people are consuming your video) it also provides insight into building and retaining audiences with a view to making money from your videos.

More info

Click-Through Rate Based on Description

Richard Baxter posted some great results from some recent research into how descriptions affect CTR, along with recommendations based on his findings. It’s interesting to see descriptions affecting CTR based on the objective of the page i.e. e-commerce or information.

More info

Old Spice Christmas Comeback

He’s back. Everybody’s favourite viral campaign has made a Christmas comeback (just in time to get some Old Spice in your stockings).

Gowalla Bought By Facebook

After a very lacklustre start to Facebook Places, Facebook has bitten the bullet and bought a location-sharing service that actually works. Gowalla will cease to be as a standalone service in January. It will be very interesting to see how this one works out.

More info

#NewTwitter

Twitter had a huge update last week with a new layout consisting of Home, Connect, Discover and Me. It also includes a new sleek design, all of which seems to have been received well by the majority of Twitter users.

More info

Introducing Google Currents

Google has released their own news aggregator app for iOS and Android devices – Google Currents.

More info

Brand Journalism

E-consultancy has posted a great article on the troubles of brand journalism. Well worth a read.

More info

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