Pay Per Click Advertising and SEO » Google

Google announces yet another shrewd acquisition

Jenny Sanderson — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 08:50:10 +0000

As the year progresses and we get ever closer to summer it would seem that competition in the online world is really hotting up. Perennial innovators Google are leading the pack with the announcement that they are set to purchase their third company this year.

On their blog, this week, Google announced that the deal was done for them to buy online photo editing site Picnik, as per usual this was for an undisclosed sum, but it is believed to be one of their ‘cheaper’ acquisitions as Picnik is a fairly small company. Started just five years ago in Seattle (USA), Picnik has a modest staff of just 20.

It is one of the earlier incarnations of an online photo editing website. It allows its users to edit their photos online thus enabling them to post them on social networking sites like Twitter or Facebook. The basic service is free or alternatively users can pay a subscription to benefit from more advanced features.

Picnik brings Google’s total number of acquisitions this year to 3 and a staggering 60 in total. More high profile purchases include the likes of Youtube and Android. This comes hot on the heels of Google’s announcement that they have purchased search sites Aardvark and reMail.

If this trend continues it look as though it will be an interesting year as the giants of the online world jostle for dominance in an ever growing world wide web.

Google admits its SEO needs improving

James Oliver — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 08:15:19 +0000

To many this news will come as a shock, but it would seem that the Google Empire is not perfect after all. Just this week a detailed 49 page report has been published by Google that takes an in-depth look and rates its SEO on its various properties which includes the homepage.

Surprisingly Google did not pass with flying colours, in actual fact the report revealed that the company were failing in a number of categories. Google are planning to use the information garnered from the reports as a springboard to make improvements to its SEO. Also, in a stroke of generosity, Google have decided to share a selection of some of the metrics that they use.

The extensive report covers 100 of Google’s products, highlighting specific areas in need of improvement. One of the main areas in need of change is “search result presentation” which scored a mere 33/100 or lower in 3 different categories the lowest of these being “title tag format and length.”

For those not in the know when it comes to SEO this refers to how much information appears in the big, blue search result links as well as the text descriptions that appear below them. The report suggests different ways of fixing such problems.

The company also scored low on such points as the destination sites where images or logos may lead. The report found that more than half of these logos linked with somewhere they were not supposed to including the infamous and annoying 404 pages, once again the report suggested solutions this problem.

It was not all bad for Google, however, as some aspects of the reports yielded positive results. The company scored well in its offering of a clear main page result and also having proper use of internal anchor text and headline tags.

The full report can be viewed here.

Google set to launch ISP service

Jenny Sanderson — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 08:00:50 +0000

It never comes as a surprise to hear that Google are putting their fingers into yet another pie as they gather pace in their quest to take over the online world. Back in 2005 it was reported that Google had bought up a huge stock pile of fibre optics, this sparked mass rumours that they were planning to release some sort of ‘GoogleNet’ service that was sure to be better then any other Internet Service Provider, five years later and there would appear to be rumblings of this actually coming to fruition.

Google have always sort of flirted with this idea, having offered free Wi-Fi services in airports and select places around the US. This week they have announced that they are planning to launch a fiber optic based ISP service that will apparently offer speeds of 1Gbps at a “competitive price.” But before we get to excited at the prospect of an internet connection that doesn’t at times resemble a snail in treacle the service will only be rolled out to “select markets” according to Google.

They will be having a trial run of the service in an attempt to provide the next-gen service to 50,000-500,000 people to see how fast and efficient it is. Google are asking communities in America to apply for the service that will be a strong representation of the company’s pro-net neutrality efforts.

Launch markets for the service are to be announced later this year, if it is successful as most Google products are it would be welcomed with open arms on these shores and all over the world.

Twitter benefits from traffic boost thanks to Google deal

Matt Thomas — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 08:00:36 +0000

2010 seems as though it’s to be a year of collaboration and co-operation amongst the big players on the web. After seeing positive deals between Microsoft and Facebook, Yahoo and Microsoft and Yahoo and Nectar the first evidence of positive results has arisen from the Twitter/Google deal.

Social networking site Twitter has seen its web traffic increase by 9% since their agreement with Google was implemented at the end of 2009. This deal allowed Google to index tweets into their main search engine allowing separate user ‘tweets’ to come up in a regular Google search.

This increase was measured between December 2009 and January 2010 by ComScore, one of the leading players in web traffic analysis, who found that the number of unique visitors to Twitters site had seen a fairly significant increase over that short period.

Google began integrating Tweets into its main search engine results on December 7th 2009 in the view of making them more ‘real-time’. This has evidently been a fruitful endeavour for Twitter as their number of unique visitors has hit an all time high of 21.79 million in January this trumps their previous best of 21.25 million in July of 2009.

The exact terms of the deal, as per usual, were not disclosed but it is thought that Google must have had to pay a fairly substantial amount to Twitter for allowing the index of its tweets.

In keeping with the theme of collaboration Myspace and Facebook updates are set to be indexed into Google in the very near future as deals were struck by each of the respective companies in late 2009.

As each of these internet fat cats vie to be the biggest and the best these co-operations can only be positive for us as internet users as they are sure to improve our web experience, it will be interesting to see who pairs up next.

Google snap up Aardvark

James Oliver — Wed, 24 Feb 2010 08:00:20 +0000

Yes you read the headline correctly, Internet search engine giants Google have snapped up Aardvark. Not in the way that you may think though, they have not purchased a nocturnal mammal as an office pet. I’m talking of course about the social-search provider.

This comes hot on the heels of Google’s announcement of their ‘Buzz’ feature for G-mail earlier in the week. Buzz, introduced by Google to take on social networking giant Twitter, has not been received with much warmth by users as Google chose to make the default setting reveal all followers and their e-mail addresses. So it would appear that although people like to ‘follow’ the status of their friends they do not like to know that they are doing so.

The acquisition of Aardvark is set to improve the Google Buzz service, the search engine works by scanning the profiles of people that the user has already selected as friends and trying to match the knowledge or general interests of those people with a question or query.

For example, if I was to ask “Where are the best places to go out in the West End?” where my friends in Manchester may not know this my friends in London are more likely to be able to give me an answer. During the setup process Aardvark allow users to choose the exact kinds of topic that you do not mind be questioned on.

It would appear to be quite a useful tool and will add a different dimension to the Google Buzz service by connecting friends of friends in the hope of producing more useful and relevant information.

Google have declined to divulge exactly how much the deal for Aardvark set them back but it is believed to be in the region of $50 million.

The service is run by former Google employees and the deal is rumoured to be finalized in the coming days.

Google Suggest accused of favouring Islam

Matt Thomas — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:08:19 +0000

The Google Suggest function, that generates a list of search queries you might be looking for as you type in a search, has generated some controversy this week, after Google were accused of programming it to favour Islam over other religions.

Ordinarily when you type a religion, i.e., Buddhism, Christianity, into Google, the search engine treats it just like any other keyword and brings up a list of phrases it thinks you might be searching for, based on searches that other users have performed. Some of these searches will of course be negative about the religion, even borderline racist – such, sadly, is the nature of the internet, though Google would argue that, as searches with enough volume, they should show up.

No one, as far as we’re aware, really had too much of a problem with this until Google users noticed that when typing in the word ‘Islam’ into the search box, no Google Suggest results at all were generated.

Google does make concerted attempts to filter out “pornographic terms, dirty words, and hate and violence terms” from the results, though never to my knowledge have they simply stopped showing results for a major keyword like this. A Google statement has blamed the issue on a software problem, “This is a bug and we’re working to fix it as quickly as we can.”

For now it’s probably best to give them the benefit of the doubt, though if it turns out that Google have been manipulating their results based on something other than simply propriety, it could open up a real can of worms with net neutrality advocates.

Google loses Copyright Case to ‘Groovle’

Matt Thomas — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 09:00:47 +0000

Google has (for a change) lost a court case that it filed against a small Canadian search engine called Groovle.com. The search engine giant had claimed that the name resembled theirs closely enough to confuse people. Google had asked that 207 media, the company in question, hand over the domain to them, however this claim was refused by the arbitration panel appointed by the National Arbitration Forum.

The panel found that Groovle was not close enough for people to become confused between the two companies. In addition made the point that the term had more in common with words like ‘Groove’ and ‘Groovy’ which was, in their opinion, the companies true intention. The panel also refused to entertain Google’s claims that the company had registered the domain in bad faith, having no legitimate interest in the domain.

Groovle, which has been running for two and a half years without any complaint from Google, is powered by the search engine giant but is marketed as a way for people to customise their own search engine, allowing users to upload images that stay on the homepage until they change them themselves.

Chrome Beaten on Speed

Matt Thomas — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 15:41:04 +0000

The conventional logic in the browser world is that Chrome is the fastest gun in the west. Whilst it may lack the myriad add-ons that firefox offers, its signature benefit has been that it boots quicker and loads pages quicker, and that has convinced a steady stream of people to switch over, since its inception earlier in the year.

That however, may be about to change. A new version of the Opera browser, v10.5 to be precise, has been launched (if that’s the right word) in a very preliminary ‘alpha’ format, and it seems to be putting Chrome firmly in the shade in terms of speed.

It’s worth making the point that it is still very early days – this is not even a beta version and should probably be avoided by casual users. Nevertheless, it’s very intriguing that a browser which a lot of people don’t even know exists has managed to make a leap like this. A lot of people had started talking about a two horse race developing between Chrome and IE this year however, the field may now be much more open than that.

Google Pushes Chrome

Jenny Sanderson — Wed, 25 Nov 2009 09:00:04 +0000

Since the release of Chrome OS earlier this week, Google have begun heavily promoting their new product to the masses. The key, some would say only, point they’re making thus far is that Chrome OS is a ‘seven second wonder’, i.e., it boots in 7 seconds or less which, as any PC owner will tell you is one hell of a selling point. To be fair to PC operating systems like Windows, it’s not exactly a fair test, seeing as Chrome OS is really just a very fancy web browser, in that all applications etc., are web based, and therefore contained within the ‘cloud’ and not taking up space on your PC.

Microsoft has come back on the attack, using its considerable marketing clout to point out to anyone and everyone that customers are already making very appreciative noises about Windows 7, load times notwithstanding and people are unlikely to want to change something they’ve been using for years.

They may well be right… For now. Truth be told, this argument is a little bit premature, Chrome OS is not even supported on all systems yet and may not be for a while, also people probably aren’t yet ready to fully make the shift to cloud computing. But still, be warned, the times they are changing.

Google Announces SPeeDY Project

James Oliver — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 09:00:28 +0000

Google has purchased an Internet Phone company called gizmo5 with a view to integrating the service with the embryonic Google Voice. The sale took place for an undisclosed sum and was described on the Google blog thus, “Gizmo5’s engineers will be joining the Google Voice team to continue improving the Google Voice and Gizmo5 experience.”

Cynical commentators – like me – might point out that the focus might be more on the Google Voice side of things than the Gizmo5, though Google are maintaining that current Gizmo5 five users will be able to continue using the service though, tellingly, the service has been suspended for new users, with Gizmo5 unable to take on new users until further notice.

All of this reinforces the notion that the search engine leader may be attempting to design its own full internet telephony service, maybe even attempting to compete with skype, the current market leaders.

It won’t be an easy path, however. Google has already been forced to defend itself against complaints from AT&T that Google voice is selective and discriminates against users in high charge rural areas. Delegates from Google Voice are in Washington this week making their case to the FCC.

Google acquires VoIP Company

James Oliver — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 15:51:09 +0000

Murdoch threatening to remove NewsCorp Content from Google

Matt Thomas — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 08:39:50 +0000

In typical style Rupert Murdoch has poured petrol on the free vs paid news content debate – a conversation that that was already pretty fiery to be honest – by claiming that he is fully prepared to remove all NewsCorp content from Google possibly even ‘within months’. The comments were elaborated on in a statement from Jonathon Miller, NewsCorp’s Chief Digital Officer…

“There is real tension surrounding the free versus pay debate… It will play out in the next two years. We believe that the value of high quality content is not recognised online, so something needs to happen.”

Mr Miller acknowledges that the corporation will not be able to go it alone in this particular crusade, stating that NewsCorp hopes to ‘lead’ the rest of the media industry in this new direction. The company does however seem to believe that NewsCorp’s business model will not be terminally hampered by missing out on the traffic that Google provides, claiming that the traffic generated by Google tends to be low value users who read one article and then leave the site.

Whether they actually believe this or they’re just sabre rattling is unclear, though predictably Google disagrees – “Google News and web search are a tremendous source of promotion for news organisations, sending them about 100,000 clicks every minute.” – Google Spokesperson.

Chrome OS out Next Week?

Jenny Sanderson — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:35:48 +0000

Okay, so this is kind of a big one. The Washington Post has it from what they call ‘a reliable source’ that the Google Chrome OS will be ready to go live within a week. If true, it’ll be very interesting to see the uptake, particularly since Windows 7 has only just hit the shelves and many companies and individuals are still nervous about upgrading, preferring to stick with the devil they know in Windows XP or Vista. The Google OS free download may be a feasible alternative.

That said, it’s likely that the uptake will be limited to techies at first, particularly those keen to give Microsoft a bit of a bloody nose by choosing an alternative to their new system. Also, it’s quite likely that the launch will be fairly low key – as not all computers will be supported straight away. In fact, driver issues are likely to be one of the main weaknesses of the platform at least initially

I don’t have much to give you in terms of actual strengths or weaknesses at this point though rest assured, once it’s available I’ll fill you in properly… Hopefully that’ll b next week.

Practical Applications of Google Wave

James Oliver — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 17:02:48 +0000

Google Wave, the application that promises to revolutionise collaborative work and communication between friends and colleagues, has received a practical endorsement from members of the scientific community, who are already using it to work together on collaborative projects.

Highly respected scientists at MIT, Stanford, Cambridge and Harvard, among others are already using the application with their research teams and peers, which isn’t bad for a product that’s not even really in its beta stage.

Cameron Neylon, of the Science and Technology Facilities Council elaborates on the particular uses of Wave…

“Where it really wins for science is that actually these documents or ‘Waves’ can be made automated so we can connect up documents and ideas with each other… A particular chemical compound, for instance, could be labelled and linked back to a database,”

Google will no doubt be pretty pleased with this free publicity for wave. It adds to a pretty healthy buzz around the application generated by well, pretty much anyone who’s done any research into it. It’s excitement that this blogger certainly isn’t immune to, Come on Google, give me an account, please…