PlayStation 4 Announced 

On Wednesday night the worst kept secret in video gaming was finally revealed with the announcement of the Sony Playstation 4. During a two hour presentation the assembled media were told and shown the capabilities of the ‘most powerful platform ever’. However we did not get to see the console and were only shown the  ”DualShock 4″ controller.

Interestingly there was an acknowledgement from Sony that the previous console was difficult to develop for. This time round they contacted games developers whilst the console was being made, hopefully this means that more games companies want to get involved on the PS4.

So what can we expect with the PS4?

• A highly powerful AMD x86-based 8-core CPU, an enhanced GPU and amazingly 8GB of DDR5 RAM. This all means this will be the most powerful games console ever made and would go toe-toe with most gaming PC’s on the market.
• Games will still be on Blu-ray discs but all games will be fully downloadable, and can be played instantly with downloading continuing as you play.
• The PS4 will have an ‘Instant On’ feature which means the console never turns off but rather hibernates. This means that the user can instantly return to whatever was being played prior to turning off the console.
• The controller features a ‘share’ button which means gameplay can be instantly uploaded to Facebook and video streaming sites.
• The “PlayStation App” will enable iPhone, iPad, and Android based smartphones and tablets to become second screens
• PlayStation 4 Eye – 1280 x 800 camera (Xbox Kinect style feature)

Overall the PlayStation 4 is a smart piece of kit, the biggest disappointment was the fact the console was absent from the press conference. However this means it will most likely get shown at E3 in June. We are looking forward to it, now its over to Microsoft.

The PlayStation 4 is scheduled to be on sale in December 2013.

Google Glass

Google have been developing their revolutionary augmented reality head-mounted display for quite a while now, with little being shown apart from the headset over the last few years.

Now they are trying to push the sales in a social campaign by asking the question, ‘What would you do if you had Glass?’. To enter the competition you have to answer in 50 words of less with #ifihadglass using Google+ or Twitter, photos can be used and a short 15 second video can also be included.

The main drawback is that this is only available to U.S residents, meaning we will just have to write our own #ifihadglass tweet:

‘#ifihadglass I would visit the Wonders of the World and compare them using Glass to show the originals compared to 2013’s Wonders of the World.’ – Pedrom Pourkashanian

‘#ifihadglass I would go to a new city where I couldn’t speak the language and try and get a date by the end of the day’ – Jonny Pennington

‘#ifihadglass I could finally be on time for stuff without getting lost for 2 hours’ – James Whitelock

So I pose this question to you… What would you do if you had Glass?

Find more details here – if you are in the US you can enter on Twitter or Google+

interflora DISAPPEARS

Last Thursday, Martin Macdonald broke the news that Interflora had effectively been ‘wiped off the face of the Internet.’ Google hit the flower delivery service with a penalty which saw it virtually disappear from the SERPs for prime keywords it was previously ranking #1 for, including its own brand name. The company was sitting at the top of the search results for search terms such as ‘flowers’, ‘flower delivery’ and ‘florist’, but now finds itself buried in the 5^th or 6^th page.

We can only speculate the full extent of Interflora’s bad behaviour, but it appears a long history of bad link building practices has caught up with them. A quick Link Detox showed over 70% toxic and suspicious links, this includes advertorials, link networks, web directories and paid blog posts on abandoned networks.

Reminder: Google’s guidelines on paid links that pass PageRank also apply to “advertorial” pages. See goo.gl/PhwsY for more info.

— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) February 22, 2013

Following this incident, last Friday Matt Cutts posted a polite reminder on Google’s Webmaster Central blog that selling links is naughty and can lead to a penalty. It will be interesting to see how, and if, Interflora recover from this nightmare, whether they move to a new domain or start a long and gruelling recovery process, it won’t be easy.

The post Digital RoundUP 25/02/2013 appeared first on PushON Ltd.

There have been a couple of Google announcements recently that have ruffled some feathers within the search marketing community.

Encryption of organic keyword search data for logged in users which Google is proclaiming as a move to protect user privacy.

The first announcement has come as quite a blow to the search engine optimisers amongst us. The net result of the announcement is that anyone logged in to a Google account when searching won’t pass any keyword information to analytics programs because the data will be encrypted. They’ll still show as a hit but the all-important info of what they searched for to arrive won’t be made known and will instead just show as “not provided”. Google suggests that it’ll account for about 9.9% of organic search data although that number is likely to increase if we see Google+ become the social network of choice over Facebook.

Apart from the obvious blow to the online marketing world from a reporting perspective, I mean it’s already difficult to justify the value of good on-going SEO work without losing a big chunk of supporting data right?, there’s a couple of other issues with Google justification of this change that has got peoples backs up.

1. Awords users will still be able to see this data. So not so much in the interest of user privacy but more like a pay-per-view model.
2. Users not logged won’t have that same encryption. So the privacy of non-Google account holders doesn’t seem to matter.

There’s all sorts of theories being thrown around about what they’re up to (perhaps there’s genuinely nothing more to it than they suggest) like this epiphany from +Jenn Mathews where she considers it might just be Google trying to track the referrals to its own Google+ asset (I’m not convinced). It also appears to have caused some unusual affects as reported by @AlexMoss from Pleer.

My own take on it is I’m predicting that reporting on encrypted keyword searches will become a feature of the Google Analytics Premium service.

The Google Analytics free version has become the analytics program of choice for many search marketers and for the majority of sites being tracked there seems to be little reason to start paying for the premium version. Perhaps this would be a reason for people to start paying? They’ve handed out their samples of meth to us in the form of a free Analytics account and now we’ve become dependent they want us to pay for our Skanté (sorry that’s the Breaking Bad thing again).

There’s a petition to show the volume of dissatisfaction over this change available to sign at http://keywordtransparency.com/ which has been put together by @searchmartin if you feel strongly about this.

Introduction of usage limits for the Google Maps API

This more recent announcement has also rubbed a few people up the wrong way. As of October 1^st Google announce that they will impose a usage limit on calls to the Google Maps API and sites exceeding those limits will need to either pay for the excess usage or purchase a Maps API Premier License.

For most users the usage limits will be more than enough I suspect with only high volume for-profit sites being affected but is it another indicator that Google is moving its previously free services to a pay to play model?

What next?

Will we see more Google free services move to a premium model now users are dependants?

Will we see Blogger offer an improved paid version? There have certainly been some interesting announcements there like Google+ integration and Dynamic Views that has encouraged a few people to switch back from WordPress.

The post Google got us hooked on Crack Codecaine and now it’s gonna make us pay appeared first on PushON Ltd.

If you are involved in any form of online marketing in the UK, you or your online team should be at SASCon if you want to  establish or maintain your competetive advantage.

The post The Best SEO, Analytics and Social Media Conference in the UK? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Although there are many factors that influence where your website will be ranked in the SERP some factors are more important than others. After taking a look at Bing for a few days now and carrying out some analysis it has become apparent that Bing uses a very different algorithm to Google. A good example that shows this clearly is searching for SEO Manchester in both Google and Bing.

The two SERPs looks very different, only one of the top ten results are the same and many big SEO agencies in Manchester are missing from the Bing SERP. You’ll also notice that the Bing Local Listings are not very competitive at all with only one agency being listed.

So which factors should you focus on to rank well in Bing?

• A mixture of inbound links including a good number with good keyword rich anchor text (see this great article on Link Building Secrets by Patrick Atloft).
• Make sure you write keyword rich, unique meta data which is also human readable.

If you have any other ideas on which factors are most important to rank in Bing please leave a comment and let us know!

The post Bing SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) – What is most important? appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Here is an example of organic local listings for a Bing search in Manchester:

As you can see there is little competition for Bing Local Listings at the moment and the results are not great, one nightclub, a cafe and a strip club…

The post How to get listed in Bing Local appeared first on PushON Ltd.

“Hi” fits well in a blog which I’ve classified as “informal informative”, but may be a turn-off for the more serious-minded client. “Greetings”, on the other hand, has limited appeal outside of science-fiction enthusiasts. Ideally, I would test several variations on a range of segments and even consider targeting each of you with a personalised message.

But we’re a small agency, and where our larger cousins might devote a team of creatives, copy-writers and analysts to such important questions, I’ll simply compromise with “Hello”.

I’m Dan. I’ve arrived in Manchester from Australia, where for the past few years I’ve been marketing in-house at a large customer insights agency with the likes of Jeff Richardson, James Duthie and Lucio Ribeiro (who will now dutifully link back to the PushON blog, thereby ensuring we are Number One on the Google within the week).

I think of my approach as customer relationship marketing with a healthy dose of analysis. The analyst in me tracks customers through acquisition, conversion and retention, hunting at each stage for opportunities to increase the flow. Meanwhile, my ‘experience architect’ side enjoys tweaking sites to improve usability and simplicity.

I’m delighted to have joined PushON in my first UK marketing role, and am particularly excited to develop my technical skills around web development and SEO. Kat, Simon and Co. have obliged by making me feel very welcome, while kindly throwing me in at the deep end.

I’ve already met some of you, and look forward to widening my small circle over coming weeks and months. If you just can’t wait, beat the rush on Twitter @danlukas.

The post PushON's Loss is Australia's Gain appeared first on PushON Ltd.

• Tweet Deck – Twitter Client. In marketing we all understand the need to follow conversations and be able to engage in them quickly and easily. The standard Twitter interface makes this extremely difficult so making use of a comprehensive Twitter client such as Tweet Deck can make this much easier. The three panel layout means you can see track your direct messages, your standard responses and also the overall Twitter conversation of the people you follow.
  http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/
• Tweet Scan – Brand Monitoring. This tool is excellent for finding out what is being said about you, a topic or a particular business. Tracking what people say about your business is extremely important. This tool is a great customer feedback tool as you can see what people are saying about your product or brand.
  http://www.tweetscan.com/
• Monitter – Real Time Keyword Monitoring. This tool allows you to type in multiple keywords and track the conversation around those in real time. This gives marketers the chance to see what people are talking about around particular topics and themes. This gives us the chance to release pages or news items around this coversation. This means that your site is keeping up to date with the latest trends and gives people a reason to come back.
  http://monitter.com/
• Twitter Tools Plugin – Keeping Your Readers Up To Date. Twitter Tools is a plugin for wordpress that allows you to post new post url’s to your Twitter feed automatically. This drives traffic to your blog or news section. If you post a lot of new blogs each day then this probably wont be the tool for you. Tweeting to much can annoy people.
  http://alexking.org/projects/wordpress
• Twitter Local – The Local Angle. This is something that i came across and have not had chance to fully research it however the concept behind it is interesting. A lot of SEO campaigns are going local these days so with this tool you can now track what people are saying in a particular geographical area.
  http://www.twitterlocal.net/

This list could essentially be endless as the number of tools being released is rapidly growing. If you think we have missed an essential tool then why not drop us a line. It is also worth checking out Julia Roy’s blog. She does an excellent weekly round up of Twitter.

The post Top 5 Twitter Marketing Tools appeared first on PushON Ltd.

Firemen on the job

The full Castlefield Fire Photoset is here.

The post Fire near Urban Splash in Castlefield!! appeared first on PushON Ltd.

(On the image you can see the logos of voila.fr, yandex.ru, and rambler.ru search engines).

The post International SEM and SEO Services @ PushON appeared first on PushON Ltd.