Facebook Home hits 1 million Users 

Facebook Home has hit 1 million downloads one month after being made available for Android. Despite this number it appears that demand is on the wane, with 500,000 downloads achieved with the first 10 days of release. However it took twice as long for another 500,000 downloads.

Home has also attracted negative attention in the form of reviews on the Google Play page with over 16,000 two star reviews.

It is perhaps too early to write off Facebook home but with a user base of 1 billion and only 1 million users signed up,the signs do not look good. Have a read of our Facebook home review here.

Matt Cutts – Taking down network of links  

Matt Cutts the head of Google’s webspam team said this past week Google had taken action against several thousand link sellers that were part of a link network.

In fact, we took action on several thousand linksellers in a paid-link-that-passes-PageRank network earlier today.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) May 15, 2013

Twitter CEO resignation

Dick Costolo has resigned as Twitter director of the UK arm of Twitter. This is due to Twitter UK being struck off companies’ house after failing to return any accounting data.

Tweetdeck, a Twitter subsidiary, was also struck off on May 7^th and due to these irregularities Costolo felt it necessary to leave his post.

In reality being struck off from Companies House will not impact on Twitter’s overall business but the restructuring of the company in the UK points to a possible relisting with Companies House in the near future.

European Search Awards 2013

PushON had fantastic news last week after being shorlisted for the European Search Awards for Best Use of Search in Retail for Defib Shop – putting search at the heart of the campaign along with ChillFactore hit the slopes. Our third nomination was for Thomson Al Fresco – making holidays personal, in the Best Use of Search Travel & Leisure category.

Google I/O 2013

Google Wallet - 

On Wednesday we saw Google I/O 2013 getting underway with Google unveiling a host of updates and features to their current services. A new Gmail feature allows users to send up to $10,000 via an email message using Google Wallet.

Will this be able to compete with Paypal?

Google+ Redesign -

Google also introduced a new design layout for Google+, with a similar layout to Pinterest, having stories spread across your timeline featuring photos from that story.

At Google I/O 2013, the company announced 41 new features for Google+, the most important being related to design, messaging, and photo sharing.

Google+ has taken a step towards the focus of the photo and video content similar to Pinterest, improving visibility of stories, and creating an addition to Hang Outs by introducing the stand alone app that can be used for chat.

Automated hashtags have also been introduced, which work similar to those for Twitter, by suggesting a topic for you to include in the hashtags. Google have suggested that it will provide better chances of finding the desired content by adding trending tags.

Another feature is the addition of photo hosting and sharing. The images that are uploaded onto Google+ using the Auto Backup option, now use higher resolutions (up to 2048 pixels) and allow for editing – Autofix, Add Text and Rotate. Autofix allows users to edit with a single click the image saturation, brightness, or contrast. Auto Highlight and Auto Awesome will provide automatic options for Best Shot or creating animations form consecutive photos.

Before:

After:

Google Glass potentially illegal in UK

John Lanchester who writes for London Review of Books, suggested that the technology breaches basic data protection provisions, adding that the recording facility is a breach of ECHR privacy laws.

“In the UK anyway, many or most of the recording functions of Google Glass seem likely to be illegal,” Lanchester said.

“The 1998 Data Protection Act defines data as ‘information which is being processed by equipment operating automatically in response to instructions; or is recorded with the intention that it should be processed.’ I don’t speak fluent lawyer, but it seems clear that definition encompasses the recording function of Glass.”

Google announce Voice Search 

The way we search as we know it could be extinct in a few years if Google’s bold new idea becomes widespread. Google has announced it is bringing voice search to the desktop, via apps such as Chrome we could go about our business without having to type a key.

Although it has been announced details are sketchy about when and how it will all work, watch this space!

That is the end of the RoundUP this week, we will roundoff with a site that we have recently discovered and had alot of fun with. It is called Geoguessr and works using Google’s Streetview, check it out and let us know what you think.

Until next week, farewell

The post Digital RoundUP 20/05/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

“This one is a little more comprehensive than Penguin 1.0 and we expect it to go a little bit deeper and have a little bit more of an impact than the original version of Penguin.”

For better or worse, Penguin happened. Some link spam networks were rendered inert overnight, and Google have evidently continued to improve their link spam detection, as more and more website have found themselves caught in the crossfire.

But it is still all too common to find examples of shambolic websites that rank highly for competitive keywords based purely on a backlink profile consisting largely of optimised anchor text links from questionable sources. These nefarious practices have allowed these websites to cheat death and gorge themselves on the benefits of taking the place of websites that have lost visibility due to link building often performed years ago by people they no longer have any relationship with.

Damnit Google, you’ve made zombie websites!

SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAM…

But it’s OK! Matt Cutts and his trusty crossbow/algorithm update have been taking this sort of website down for quite a while now. And they seem to be getting better at it.

Fearsome

Cutts clearly recognises that they have to kill the head zombie to defeat the horde (or is that vampires? Vampires are a type of zombie, right? Shut up), saying “We’re also looking at some ways to go upstream to deny the value to link spammers. We’ve got some nice ideas on trying to make sure that that becomes less effective and so we expect that that will roll out over the next few months as well.”

So when he says they’re planning on clamping down on link spammers “advertorials, native advertising and those sorts of things that violate our quality guidelines”, I wonder if he finally means it? The webspam team at Google have been tackling the issue for years and it still seems that every time they deal with one source, the epidemic moves elsewhere. But there’s no denying the effect that the first Penguin updates have stemmed the tide significantly, so it’s not so hard to believe that they are getting closer and closer to their goal of eliminating webspam as a viable long term strategy, if not entirely.

Better yet, Cutts tells us that “We hope in the next few months to roll out a next generation of hacked sites detection that is even more comprehensive and also try to communicate better to webmasters”. What’s more useful in a zombie epidemic than early detection and a robust communication system? Besides a pump action shotgun, obviously.

“Try to make sure you make a great site that users love, that they’ll want to tell their friends about, bookmark, come back to, visit over and over again” says Cutts. “As long as you’re working hard to show great content to your users, we’re working hard to try to show your high quality content to users as well”.

So the message, as ever, is simple – Google want to include lively, healthy websites in their results pages, not a useless, unintelligent mess that serves only to gobble up as much traffic as it can. If you can only succeed by spamming, then Cutts warns of an “eventful Summer” ahead.

The post The Ranking Dead: Could Google Penguin 2.0 End The Zombie Website Epidemic? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

This month we’re beginning a new series of posts that we’re calling FocusON. Each month we’ll focus our posts on a different aspect of digital marketing, and we’re kicking off by talking about Pay Per Click advertising.

To celebrate the launch of FocusON, we’re giving away a Google Chromebook to one lucky reader. Simply visit the PushON Prizes app over at the PushON Facebook page and follow the three simple steps to be in with a chance of winning. HINT: You may want to read FocusON: An Introduction to PPC Marketing first!

Keep your eyes peeled on Facebook and Twitter for updates throughout the month, and don’t forget to share this great opportunity to be in with a chance of winning a Google Chromebook with your social chums!

The post Win A Google Chromebook with #PushONPrizes appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Adria richards and that ‘joke’

When is a joke between two people private? The answer it seems is never.

Last week in the United States at a PyCon programming conference a developer who worked for PlayHaven made a joke amongst other things about ‘dongles’.

Adria Richards, a developer for a company called Sendgrid, was sat in front and tweeted this;

Not cool.Jokes about forking repo’s in a sexual way and “big” dongles.Right behind me #pycon twitter.com/adriarichards/…

— Adria Richards (@adriarichards) March 17, 2013

The developer was thrown out of the conference and subsequently fired from his job.

This act led to the lynch mob on the internet attacking Richards on Twitter with a flurry of offensive comments. Pressure was put on SendGrid to fire Richards and a few days after the original incident they relented. On Facebook they wrote;

Effective immediately, SendGrid has terminated the employment of Adria Richards. While we generally are sensitive and confidential with respect to employee matters, the situation has taken on a public nature. We have taken action that we believe is in the overall best interests of SendGrid, its employees, and our customers. As we continue to process the vast amount of information, we will post something more comprehensive.

So at the end of it all two developers lost their jobs and the internet was outraged. This could have all be avoided had Richards turned round and said to them that the joke was inappropriate. The fact that she tweeted their picture and publicly shamed them was not the smartest idea and made her position untenable.

Once something hits the web there is no going back, think before you tweet.

Google Keep

In the wake of announcing the demise of its Reader service, Google last week launched a new product – Google Keep. The note-taking app was released last Wednesday for Android devices, to mixed reviews.

Keep was immediately thrown into the ring with the likes of Evernote, although I don’t necessarily think Google is going after the note-taking giant. If they were, surely they would have released it across all platforms. I agree with Danny Sullivan’s take that it’s simply a service for Android users to sync notes across different devices, like you can with the iOS Notes app. It’s something that was missing from the Android setup.

So what’s the app like? Being an Android user myself I was looking forward to testing the app as most of my life is synced to Google anyway. My initial thoughts were that it’s a typical Google product, simple, clean interface, easy to use, and did the job. There are a variety of ways to enter a note; you can add a standard note, a list, take a photo or speech input. There is also an ‘Add quick note’ textbox at the top for additional simplicity. The notes appear as tiles that can be colour customised, re-organised, and synced to Google Drive.

The app looks good, but once you start using it on a day-to-day basis you realise that there’s a few things missing. The lack of a sharing function is a bit of an oversight, if I want to send a shopping list to my girlfriend for instance, there should be an option to share it across to her Keep account. There is also no way to set a reminder for a note, which is very annoying. This is a bit of a dealbreaker because it’s such a basic feature for an app of this kind, I couldn’t replace Any.DO or Google Calendar without this functionality. It’s also hard to access your notes on the web, I was expecting a ‘Keep’ tab to have appeared on Google’s black bar but instead I have to manually type in drive.google.com/keep/. I’m sure there is an easier way, but the fact is it’s not intuitive.

In my opinion, Google have got an opportunity to make a really good app out of Keep, but it’s not there yet. I’m sure there will be numerous updates in the next couple of months that will make all of these improvements.

Have you tried Keep yet? What do you think?

Dropbox buy Mailbox for $100M as reservations reach the 1 Million Mark

Early in the week, reports were going around that Dropbox were launching a bid to buy Orchestra, the company behind Mailbox. It was reported in a blog by GigaOm, that Dropbox paid more than $50 million for Orchestra. However, this was questionable with other sources saying the fee was much closer to $100 million.

On the official Mailbox blog, they wrote about moving to the new office move after being bought by Dropbox. They also announced that they reached the 1 million reservation mark after six weeks of being available in the Apple store. After our blog on release, the demand still remains high for access to app. With this benchmark they also released version 1.1 of the app to fix a few bugs and adds “shake to undo” to its feature set.

“Today we’re releasing an update to Mailbox in the App Store. Among hundreds of fixes and improvements big and small, we’ve added shake to undo—the feature our users asked for most. You can download the version here if you haven’t already updated.”

What will Dropbox do next with Mailbox? Rumours circulating around a file attachment integration with Dropbox’s own services.

TWITTER TURNS SEVEN

Twitter reached the ripe old age of seven this past week, and it looks like its popularity is going to continue to grow.

When did you first tweet and how often do you use it?

And We’ll leave you with this Chrome Experiment called Maze to keep you busy during the week – Try it on the PushON Homepage! 

The post Digital RoundUP 25/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Google Reader

Last week via the Google Reader blog it was announced that Google Reader would be shut down as of 1^st July.

The statement said;

usage of Google Reader has declined, and as a company we’re pouring all of our energy into fewer products.If you want to retain your Reader data, including subscriptions, you can do so through Google Takeout.

This has upset and affected a lot of its current users such as myself! It’s clear that Google want us to be using Google + as a resource for any news feeds we have. However at present there is no way to export your subscription list without doing it manually into G+.

I like many users use Google Reader on a daily basis; it’s the way I get all my news first thing in the morning all in one place.  On the other hand, will we really miss it?

RSS feeds have been around for a long time and how we digest our news has changed, these days people check Twitter for the latest goings on, or follow people/ groups on social media.

But what are the alternatives when Google Reader closes?

Feedly

Since the announcement that Google Reader is going to close I tried out Feedly and have not been alone with around 500,000 new users signing up for the service in the last few days.

The best feature is the fact that by signing using your Google account all your Google Reader subscriptions transfer over, which is great if you have a large number of subscriptions. The layout is simple and easy to use and it does what Google Reader does and will satisfy most users.

Flipboard

Currently Flipboard is stricty an app for Tablets and smart phones. It uses RSS feeds much like the way Feedly does however it is presented in an aesthetically pleasing way.

The post Digital RoundUP 18/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

google+ Sign-in

Last Tuesday Google launched Google+ Sign-In for third party developers, they can now allow users to sign into applications using their Google+ account. This is Google’s latest attempt to get ‘normal’ people using the social network, it will also give the search giant plenty of user data to slobber over.

Google is claiming that its new sign-in functionality is more secure than the likes of Twitter and, in particular, Facebook. It also gives users sharing options so that their social networks aren’t spammed with app updates and activity. Google+ director Matt Waddell released an image taking an indirect (but quite obvious) shot at Facebook with the tagline ‘Try the red pill.’ Facebook have received criticism in the past for ‘social spam’, however, Danny Sullivan took a closer look at Google’s new feature and decided that it’s not too dissimilar.

Take a look at Google’s launch video:

Google: how search works

A busy week for Google, it also released a stunning interactive infographic called ‘How Search Works.’ If you haven’t seen it yet and are thinking, ‘urgh, another SEO infographic’, take a look it’s pretty cool. The infographic itself gives a pretty basic and general overview of how Google indexes and ranks websites, but it also has some useful stuff for professional SEOs.

The coolest part is probably the live spam screenshots which show examples of ‘pure spam’ that Google has penalised. This is updated in real-time and some of the examples are pretty humorous.

These pages are examples of ‘pure spam.’ They appear to use aggressive spam techniques such as automatically generated gibberish, cloaking and scraping content from other websites.

This page also goes on to list the types of spam that Google looks for and takes action on such as cloaking, keyword stuffing and unnatural links to/from a site.

Google also published data for the first time on manual actions, webmaster notifications and reconsideration requests. The data in these graphs is really interesting. The graph below shows the number of websites that have had manual action taken against them over the last 8 years and is broken down by the different spam types.

YAHOO CEO BANS WORKING FROM HOME

Marissa Mayer, the Yahoo CEO, sent an email out to thousands of her employees last week in which she announced she was banning them from working ‘remotely.’

As a result, several hundred staff must relocate to their nearest Yahoo office by June or quit. Mayer’s said ‘to become the absolute place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we all need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.’

Those who only work one or two days in the office will have to submit to the new regime. ‘Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings,’ she says, ‘speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.’

groupon send andrew mason packing

It came as little surprise last week when Andrew Mason was relieved from his post as CEO of Groupon. The company has been going through a rough patch since going public just over a year ago, and its poor 4th quarter earnings sent its stock reeling.

Rumours of Mason’s exit have been floating around for a while now, and he seemed to be expecting it as on Thursday he released this letter to his employees on Twitter.

For Groupon Employees: jottit.com/v5wux/ (Apparently, sharing oranges is necessary but insufficient #leadership)

— Andrew Mason (@andrewmason) February 28, 2013

‘After four and a half intense and wonderful years as CEO of Groupon, I’ve decided that I’d like to spend more time with my family. Just kidding – I was fired today.’

Mason took full responsibility for his role in Groupon’s recent poor performance and told his former employees; ‘You are doing amazing things at Groupon, and you deserve the outside world to give you a second chance. I’m getting in the way of that.’

Groupon, now valued at less than £2 billion, is searching for Mason’s replacement. In the meantime, Executive Chairman Eric Lefkofsky and Vice Chairman Ted Leonsis are taking the reins.

That’s our weekly RoundUP of industry news, I’ll leave you with this little treat from Qualcomm:

The post Digital RoundUP 04/03/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

As we arrived into Wales and started taking in the amazing views, we started passing through some of the more remote towns and villages. Everything seemed perfect, and I was feeling content, looking forward to arriving at our cottage. Battle was one of the last villages that we left before hitting the country roads with the sat nav guiding us. This is when I started realising that my plans might be some what tarnished by the lack of signal; my phone kept losing network and my hair started falling out. “This is not good” I thought, “maybe the cottage will have wifi, yeah, surely they will have wifi… it is the 21st century after all…”

How wrong I was.

We arrived at our cottage and setup, I checked my phone and there wasn’t even a hint of reception. It was a complete dead zone (later I was to find that this is the case for all of Wales’ Internet). I unpacked my things and started hopefully searching for a wifi connection, but nothing there either. My week had plummeted into the mid 90′s.

One view of the situation would be; I should have taken this opportunity to feel liberated from the technological burdens of modern life but, quite frankly, I love the modern world. I welcome new technology with open arms and I will be the first to admit that I am a gadget fiend. However, these gadgets fall flat on their face without an internet connection.

In this day and age I fully expect somewhere like Wales to offer decent connectivity, after all it’s driving distance from two of the biggest cities in Europe (London, and Manchester) – the business opportunities that must be missed on a daily basis must be astronomical. Wales Internet has to improve, it’s suffocating the country.

Google is trying to encourage more Welsh businesses to get online as figures show around 40% of small firms have no website.

BBC

It’s not surprising that 40% of businesses in Wales don’t have a website if the connectivity is so bad. Maybe Google should concentrate on supporting ISPs rather than having one-on-one health checks with Welsh businesses.

wales internet access to improve

Ending on a plus note, it’s good to see that the problem has been recognised (be it by a company that is on the other side of the world), and something is happening. Let’s hope connectivity improves in Wales so that the United Kingdom can continue to grow as a leader in the digital age.

The post Wales internet stumps business growth appeared first on PushON Ltd.

According to the report, UK Paid Search Agencies Buyer’s Guide, produced by independent research organisation, Econsultancy, the total value of the paid search market at the end of last year was 3.68 billion. This figure, the report predicts, is likely to rise 14% to £4.19 billion by the end of 2012.

In a press statement, Econsultancy says that the on-going commercial interest in paid search, whereby a business pays a premium to have its URL appear at the top of various search engine results pages, is the result of ‘the fact that it remains an effective and measurable channel for generating a positive return on investment.’

Econsultancy says that that paid search also has the advantage for marketers in that it is far less restrictive in terms of what can and cannot be done when compared with more conventional marketing tools:

“The flexible nature of paid search, whether in terms of spend, campaign duration and timing, or user targeting, also provides benefits which are not so direct in other forms of marketing.”

Econsultancy’s press release states.

Elsewhere, the report also chooses to demonstrate the strength of the paid search market by pointing to the success of one particular search engine company, Google.

Google, the report says, increased its revenue in the UK by 18.7% between the period covering January to March 2011 and the same three months in 2012.

The post Paid search in the UK enjoys continued success appeared first on PushON Ltd.

The listings will need updating to make the most out of the new format

Local pages will be accessible in Google Maps as before, as well as the new Local tab in Google+ and Google Search as they will be unique pages.  These pages will therefore be able to be optimised and indexed in their own right, as well as meaning that you will be able to direct people to these Local pages through PPC adverts.

The Local tab on Google+ suggests businesses in your local area to explore. This is based on what is popular and recommendations, so having reviews on your listing could prove to be more important than ever, especially if they are made by people in your circles.

The review system is also being changed from the familiar five star rating to a system developed by Zagat, which was acquired by Google in September 2011 and gives your business a score out of 30. This ranking is to take in to account different aspects of the service that your business offers. For example, it was originally designed to rate restaurants, allowing for a different score for the food, the service, the price, etc, giving a combined score out of 30. This should mean that scores are more spread out and give a better reflection of the service offered.

One impact of this change is that if you are reviewing a business, you can now do this as a business rather than an individual. It will also allow you to filter reviews by those that you have in your circles, making it easier to find reviews from people that you know.

To see how these listings are going to look, check out Pomegranate Cafe (shown below) which was part of the Google+ Local Pilot scheme.

You can’t link this page with your Google+ page just yet, but we would expect this update to be imminent.  For now, you can still edit your listing as before in Google Places For Business. However, it looks as though Google are set to add more features to the Local pages over the coming months, meaning that it will become a much more social platform where businesses will be able to interact with their customers.

In the meantime, we recommend creating your own Google+ business page so that you are ready when this update is made. As updates like this continued to be rolled out, it is looking like Google+ is going to be a very powerful tool for businesses.

The post A Massive Change For Google Local Business Listings appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Dom Hodgson – Hodgetastic

Laurence O’Toole – Owner, Analytics SEO

Teddie Cowell – SEO Director, NetBooster

Malcolm Maybury – Director, 360spin

Chris Johnson – Agency Product Specialist, Google

Mobile Use in Local Search

•  1 in 3 mobile searches are local (local modifier or maps query).

Las Vegas Hotels campaign given as an example:

• Desktop site geared towards out-of-towners/tourists – people who intend to visit Las Vegas.
• Mobile sites are often (or should be) geared towards local search.
• Importance of splitting your campaign between mobile and desktop.

 Google Wallet will become more important (a prediction…)

• With this you can give customers offers through your paid search
• Discounts from vouchers/offers will be discounted automatically upon buying.
• Local targeting will make up a big chunk of these sort of campaigns

Google sitelinks change dynamically dependent on location

The post SAScon 2012: Location – Fitting it Into the Marketing Mix appeared first on PushON Ltd.