Bing/Yahoo! may take up minimal market share in the UK compared with Google, however these results are not going to help improve the current percentage stake. If we look at (what is quite a popular search term due to the longest grand slam final ever contested) ‘Australian Open 2012′ – you can see completely irrelevant results for the tournament itself, focusing more so on the location ‘Australia’:

So we have an Australian Rugby website, the National Library of Australia website and Google Australia – hardly relevant useful results to find out information on the final between Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal. But if we take a look at the results on Yahoo! (which uses Bing’s search technology) you’ll see a very different set of results:

If we take a closer look at the fluctuation in results for say ‘Tennis News’, it is apparent there is something major going on behind the scenes:

Authoritative websites like ESPN.go.com and sports.yahoo.com are dropping from the top ten for no apparent reason (along with a whole host of other websites). So, to conclude, why is Bing now returning irrelevant results to the search query and why is there so much emphasis on the location (if present) in the query?

As more shoppers do their Christmas shopping paradoxically after Christmas, a 19.5% increase from last year’s figures saw Boxing Day 2011 break online retail records; As UK shoppers spent over 13 million hours shopping on Boxing Day in the UK.

Online Retail Sales Record Highs

Online retail sales as a whole increased by 14% last year to more than £50bn, with predictions that the growth will continue to hit high streets, according to a new report. James Murray, Marketing Research Analyst commented: “Boxing Day is traditionally the biggest retail day of the year, but this year it was massive with over 15 million more visits going to retail website than last year. A lot of this is down to smart multi-channel marketing by the big retailers using TV, radio and the web to drive transaction volumes. The convenience of the web combined with massive discounts, free postage and packing and next day delivery is incredibly tempting for people that want to avoid the hurly burly of high street sales.”

What were people searching for most on Boxing Day?

According to Experian Hitwise, the 10 most searched products on the day were comprised mainly of Gadgets and remarkably walking boots.

The Amazon Kindle won the race to become number one by beating arch rival The iPad and other Apple products. Surprise entries into the Top Ten came from Hunters Wellies and Ugg Boots, presumably with thoughts of a cold wet winter on the way. Lego also made a pleasing entry as perhaps Dads and Mums realised they hadn’t bought enough for Christmas.

Kindle the Most Searched for Item Boxing Day 2011

In the run up to Christmas Google was definitely the search engine of choice in the UK. The December 2011 rankings from Experian Hitwise’s Search Engine and Social Analysis saw Google triumph once again, by vastly increasing its market share of online searches. Google accounted for 91.75% of all searches made in the UK in December 2011, an increase of 0.67% in a month.

Socially speaking, YouTube also had a cracker of a month, being responsible for over a quarter of visits to social networks.

Online Retail sales up 14% Dec 2011

Online retail sales were also buoyed by visitor figures with an increase by 14% last year to more than £50bn, with predictions that the growth will continue to hit high streets, according to a new report.

Yahoo Market share down

A heavy contrast has also seen the decline in market share for all other search sites, including Yahoo and Microsoft. Over the past year, Google, Microsoft and Ask have managed to maintain a positive yearly change in market share, with competitors Yahoo dropping by (in comparison) a whopping 0.88%.

search engine traffic stats dec 2011

James Murray, Market Research Analyst at Experian Hitwise commented: “Retailers were relying more on search traffic in 2011, with 43 per cent of all visits coming from a search engine, and for every ten visits to retailers from search, nine were from Google during this critical period. Getting the right blend of traffic from search, social, affiliates and other traffic sources is essential, but with search being so dominant at these key times, it is more important than ever for marketers to optimise paid and organic search campaigns.”

There are currently 22 generic top level domains (including .com, .co.uk and .gov) as well as 250 country-specific ones. The new regulations, however, will allow companies to use branded suffixes, for example Pepsi are rumoured to be applying for the rights to .pepsi, with the prospect of new sites called drink.pepsi, taste.pepsi, football.pepsi, beckham.pepsi etc. 

Although this new TLD sale does allow companies that have previously been unable to purchase the web address of their choice, a second chance to reclaim their brand, the proposal is likely to benefit larger companies, those that can afford to pay large sums of money to increase their SEO.

Is the new TLD sale just going to create one big mess?

One of the main issues is how complex searching for specific websites will become. For example, we currently have the following websites:

• bigbrandname.com
• bigbrandname.co.uk
• bigbrandnameuk.com
• big-brandname.com
• bigbrandname.fr

The introduction of new suffixes could lead to:

• uk.bigbrandname
• name.bigbrand
• home.bigbrandname
• try.bigbrandname etc.

This is surely making the issue far more complex than it needs to be.

New TLD sale too expensive, little benefit

The move follows last year’s change concerning adult websites which were given a .xxx suffix. This controversial decision took six years to take action and there are many concerns for the new proposals. Many businesses see the new TLD sale as highly expensive with very little benefit. After the change, businesses will almost certainly experience a decrease in the number of online visitors as consumers get used to the new web address. Many companies may feel the need to purchase a specific suffix in order to ensure nobody else can purchase it. A high price for something they don’t really want or need.

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), the body appointed by the US government to oversee internet addresses, claim that the application process will include a fifty question form designed to deter potential fraudsters and ensure companies with copyright win the right to branded domains. The US Federal Trade Commission, however, argue that there are many opportunities for consumer harm including taking advantage of misspellings (Amazon.comm).

After the deadline for applications in April, the process will be closed for three years, meaning companies have a limited time to make a very big decision about the future of their website.

Less than a week has passed since Aaron Wall highlighted the fact that Google was buying links to pass PageRank to their Google.com Chrome landing page (directly or indirectly). I saw a tweet from Rishi Lakhani that Google.co.uk was now ranking for the search term ‘Google Chrome’, when it hadn’t been last week (Google.com was).

So what has changed? Should this page be ranking for ‘Google Chrome’ following the controversial purchasing of links? Worse still – it returns a 404 error page…well it did….

Last Update: 09/01/2012 at 17:15
As I’ve been writing this post, the page has been updated to actually include content rather than return a 404 error page. Here is a picture of the cache I’ve just taken (didn’t grab the actual 404 live version):

As google.com/chrome was penalised for buying links, could it be that the Google team thought it would be useful to populate the previously redundant Google.co.uk page with some useful content for UK visitors, something Google hasn’t really done in the past?

Looking at the following chart in isolation shows that since the Google penalty (on Google.com) www.google.co.uk has risen over eight pages to feature as the number one entry for ‘Google Chrome’:

But when we look back over the past few months, it is clear that this was always the case, until the week before Christmas:

The drop occurred on the 19th of December as highlighted in the table and chart below:

If we take an even closer look on the 19th, it is clear that other Google pages are being promoted ahead of the .co.uk version (possibly because the content had been taken down? – I’m unsure of that):

Its unclear as to why the content on Google.co.uk/Chrome was removed and also the exact date of when it was removed, however our data clearly shows that the domain had no problem ranking pre-Christmas for the keyword term. I’ve been critical in the past of Google towards the way it handled the June 2009 algorithm change where Matt Cutts said that we were more likely to see “.coms in the UK” – regardless of relevance, which many webmasters and SEOs pointed out, but it fell on deaf ears.

Ironic that given the embarrassing state the Google webspam (and Chrome) team find themselves in, a .co.uk website remerges from the ashes to help all of those UK visitors looking for their browser. Still, shame about all those UK visitors looking for a nice meal along the Southbank (in London!) hey?

Edit: Since publishing this blog, Google have been playing around with a 302 redirect on .co.uk to a .com page:

As of 17:13 UK time – the URL is now returning a 200 again.

Ironic isn’t it? A company that preaches the purchasing of paid links is forbidden only gets caught doing it itself! Yes, the utterly embarrassing and humiliating hypocrisy of Google was on full show two days ago, when Aaron Wall’s blog post gave evidence of a paid link campaign – setup by the big G itself. What could Google and the web spam team do in response? There was nothing much more they could do really…

Matt Cutts spoke on his Google+ account of the action Google had taken against itself (also, excuse the cringe-worthy comments from some SEOs to Mr Cutts). A minimum of a 60 day penalty, drop in PageRank and ultimately a drop in rankings has been enforced:

The chart above shows the position of the Google Chrome (www.google.com/chrome) landing page in Google UK (the web) for three search terms a) Internet Browser b) Web Browser and c) Google Chrome. Google.com has maintained a top ranking position for “Google Chrome”, however the support subdomain (support.google.com) now occupies top spot, ahead of the main landing page – as highlighted in the screenshot below:

We will of course be monitoring the ‘recovery’ of the page/subfolder, which I presume will be around 60 days – no more – and create a new blog highlighting the recovery of the page/subfolder. In the aftermath of the JC Penny fiasco (which I’m sure will have a few directors sniggering) it is humiliating for Google to be caught purchasing links, despite Mr Cutts appearing to try and play down the offense.

Buying links can get you in trouble, however, if Aaron Wall hadn’t released his blog when he did – how much longer would the ‘offense’ gone on for? Likewise with JC Penny and the NY Times – would Google’s algorithm, sophisticated as it is, been able to detect these paid for links? It seems to me that 2012 could be the year that paid for links are targeted (in 2011 it was content farms) without the over reliance on manual intervention. We will have to wait and see.

Hitwise has reported in a Tweet that Google+ gained 49m US users in traffic last month (December 2011) which equates to a 55% increase from traffic to the social network site in November where it achieved 30m which was up 20% on the previous month of October 2011.

Hitwise also linked to this pretty grainy chart in their Twitter post, showing the rise in Google+ traffic since its launch.

Should Google be Happy with these traffic figures?

We’d imagine Google will be pretty pleased with these figures. 49 million US visitors would, since the naysayers (such as us) turned their noses up at the site on launch. Yes Facebook gets this traffic before breakfast on any given morning, but Google+ is a spring chicken compared to Facebook. Plus if you regard Google+ as a bookmarking site of sorts, then 50million is more than Digg was getting in its prime.

However, this isn’t just some start-up launching a new site. This is Google. There is Google+ icon on every Chrome browser and search result in their search engines. The site was launched with massive fanfare with great expense. Webmasters everywhere have been led to believe that their sites need to have a Google+ icon if it is to succeed in SEO. 50million visitors by month 6, may in fact therefore be far less than Google had hoped.

But we will wait and see if there is a decline in how much traffic Google+ gets in the coming months when the honeymoon period wears off.

The Power of Google and Panda

For the UK as well as many countries outside the US, SEO may as well mean Google Optimisation rather than Search Engine Optimisation. There are very few markets where there is such a monopoly.

This was emphasised last month when the latest UK search engine stats were released. The report showed Google has grown its year-on-year market share to 91.07% of all UK searches in November, up from 90.39% last year.

Google is the behemoth, whether we like it or not. And so everything they do, change or introduce, the search market must stop and take note.

Andy Francos IP’s lead Search Engineer took us through the impact in April of the Google Panda Update in the US. Everyone got ready for a seismic shift of their website’s performance and the real possibility of losing a reported 90% of traffic.

Panda was an algorithmic update by Google, which brought in new parameters in judging websites and reducing organic visibility for what it deemed was “low quality content”. The effect of this saw websites that were sitting pretty on pages one, two and three then being dispatched to outside page 10.

Flaws in Google’s algorithm

Despite Google’s obvious power, and its ability to change algorithms and thus change the offerings of business websites, there are still flaws. The search engine still allows sites with hefty links and poor content to continue to thrive. This can be most noticeable in Google giving over-weighted precedence to websites with keyword rich domains, meaning sites with the actual keyword in their URL – such as www.download-free-movies.fr or whatever.

In May we looked into how rife this is in the Google Serps. The problem is that those businesses who bought a keyword rich domain seem to have some advantage over other sites, despite the amount of content. This was something that was prevalent in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Also this was something that was key for good positioning in MSN back in the day, part of the reason why Google took the march on the search market. Unfortunately, for some searches, this whole issue doesn’t look like it’s about to shift anytime soon, despite Panda and other changes.

What is positive is how referral traffic can benefit your site and thus your positions. Here Andy looks into a study he did on the subject highlighting the benefits of obtaining links that provide a high volume of referrals and that click through data influences rankings within Google.

The Changing Face of Search

So what’s next for SEO and Google in 2012? Hopefully issues with keyword rich domains will fall away, plus the mounting visibility of US sites appearing for UK local searches needs to be dealt with by Google.

However, as Jon Earnshaw our Head of Search outlines, two major changes will be evident in search over the coming year. The first is the well established activity of paid linking. This has risen its head again and Jon outlines how Google is trying to deter sites from pushing paid links to their pages.

The second and perhaps biggest change to how we all interact with search engines and thus company websites is that search results are going to be so much more personalised in the future. The changing face of search and personalisation is already with us.

This means that if you search for the same keyword as me, then we could get totally different results. How will companies and SEO agencies deal with that? Don’t worry we’ve got it all in hand.

Have a very Happy Christmas and a prosperous New Year.

When we are all old and grey and watching BBC17′s “The Best Things of the 21st Century” the year 2011 will probably be highlighted as the year Social Media really hit the mainstream.

Everywhere we look there are representations of social media (and told about how big it is). And it’s no real wonder, half the population is on Facebook and it is due to be floated for an eye-watering $100billion in 2012 (already giving Bono $800m profit). Social Media really isn’t new any more, it’s here and it’s absolutely massive.

Social Media and Politics

2011 saw social media have a real impact on global news as well as on the worldwide lexicon. At about the same time that The Social Network was winning Oscars and Golden Globes the countries of North Africa and the Middle East were starting to call for regime change in what has become known as the Arab Spring. Social Media outlets such as You Tube, Facebook and Twitter were utilised to make these calls, highlight the plight of the people and gain media momentum from Tunisia, Egypt and Libya through to Yemen and Syria.

Because of this, Libya became the fastest growing country on Facebook for the second half of 2011.

2011 also saw the release of Wiki-Leaks which spread rapidly through social media, this placed as one of our favourite campaigns of the year.

London Riots and Social Media

Here in the UK we had our own mini-uprising. Violence, looting and riots took place on the streets of London, Manchester, Bristol and beyond. The blame by some was put conveniently at the door-step of social media, many of those same observers felt that social media outlets such as Twitter and Facebook should even be switched off in times of emergency. Yes social media is an extremely useful way to get information to a large source quickly, but you can’t blame a communications device for social ills. These extraordinary knee-jerk arguments were quickly put into perspective when social media was used help with the clear up of the riots as well as belittling some of those that were involved.

Social Media for Sky1 Got To Dance

For IP we had an amazing start to the year offering 24-7 live social media interaction for Sky One’s flagship show Got To Dance. People would tweet or make comments on Facebook and seconds later the IP team were feeding the information through to the show’s presenter Davina McCall. It was an extremely rewarding and innovative experience.

That experience in part got me, Sam Silverwood-Cope, invited onto the BAFTA jury for Digital Interactivity award, which Davina won with Million Pound Drop.

Since working on that show and others for ITV, we have kept a close eye on TV and its presence in social media. It seems to be everywhere. Every primetime show has a “Follow Us” on Twitter or use “The Hashtag”. If you saw Kirsty’s Allsop’s Homemade Home show, a social media call to action came up every 5 minutes. Our hints and tips were also used in Broadcasting magazine on this very subject in response to the Twitter COO.

Social Media in 2012

Hopefully in 2012 Social Media will mature a bit, get over the amazement of how big it really is, and get on with making quality dialogue. High level campaigns will excite us all and really aid business growth at the same time. This year has been a bit of a land grab amongst agencies, with little understanding or real explanation.

We predict that Facebook will continue to thrive but businesses may move on to something new. Plus watch out for the ever-powerful blogosphere, they are the new media giants – Facebook may be the blue whale but the blogosphere is the great barrier reef.

Forrester US Interactive Marketing Spend

Forrester research carried out in the field in August 2011 opens by estimating that advertisers will spend US$ 77 billion on interactive marketing by 2016. That is as much as they spend on Television advertising today. They estimate that search, display, mobile, email, and social media will grow to 26% of all advertising spend as they become embedded in the marketing mix.

Forrester make the interesting prediction that this growth in digital marketing will help companies become adaptive, killing off daily discount deals, re-emphasizing the four marketing P’s of Product, Price, Place and Promotion and in doing so turn consumer electronics into audience-targeting tools.

Forrester believe that the key drivers of growth over the next five years will be:

• Bigger interactive teams. Marketers have more interactive staff now than they did in 2009. This doesn’t automatically mean more mature interactive programs or increased budgets. But it usually allows for program expansion. One financial services firm we talked with grew its interactive team from 18 to 70 people in three years. Now it is a top advertiser on many display networks, has tripled its email marketing volume, and has a social PR effort under way.
• Excitement about emerging media. Marketers buy into mobile, social, or online video more now than when the recession forced them to stick with standby interactive tools like email or search. Revenues from PR Newswire’s multimedia products are up 22% this year, compared to 2009 when they were down 3%. And Intuit has a group dedicated to transforming cutting-edge technologies like Kinect into mainstream marketing options. 
• Interactive marketing effectiveness. Marketers will invest more in interactive channels because they believe they will generate better results over time (see Figure 2). David Schwartz, marketing manager for power tool manufacturer STIHL Limited, explains, “People will spend on programs that show measureable returns. And you can measure anything through digital.”