Page Rank Update – October 30th 2009
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Another PageRank toolbar update is in progress at the moment. I think it would take a few more days to fully update across the web. Although web page / website PageRank updates are not as important as actually ranking for your key phrases of choice, it is still a well accepted parameter of a good website in the webmaster community.
Some site’s of mine & my clients have had their PR increased, some other websites’ PR have remained static and others have actually dropped. I have however doublechecked their organic search referral traffic and their Google rankings; they all appear to be normal. It’s yet more proof that PR does not have a huge impact on traffic and rankings.
Lets just sit tight and wait for the update to propagate.
Photo credits: DannySullivan via Flickr
New Music Search Features on Google
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Google have just released their Google Music Search service. Its all part of their Universal search efforts in a bid to make search more relevant. The idea behind Google Music Search is brilliant – according to Google when you search for a song, artist, album or even lyrics you should expect to find more relevant results like audio previews provided by Lala or MySpace (who have acquired iLike).
I unfortunately could not personally test it as it is gradually being rolled across the U.S. first before it hits this side of the pond. But here is a video that shows what it can do.
I am keen to know if Google would be selling or collaborating with music stores like iTunes to actually sell music.
So UK Internet Advertising Finally Overtakes TV Advertising Spend – Paid Search is the Real Winner
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I started today with my usual tech news digs on Twitter and RSS feeds BUT this release from the IAB (Internet Advertising Bureau) and article from the Guardian stood out from my endless stream of tech new articles and blog updates. They are both about Online advertising expenditure finally surpassing TV advertising spend. It was inevitable but I really didn’t expect it to happen so quickly!
The summary of the two articles was that:
- Online advertising expenditure in the first half of 2009 was £1.75 billion
- TV advertising over the same period (H1 2009) was £1.6 billion
It’s not a huge margin but considering that the entire advertising industry contracted by 16.6% in H1 2009 and TV advertising declined by 17% in H1 2009 (year on year); online advertising proved to be a recession buster with 4.6% year-on-year growth in the first half of 2009. Freaking amazing…I’ll say!
Lets dig a little deeper to find out the sectors in online advertising that actually tick:
7 Facts All SEOs Should Know About Google Caffeine
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As you probably already know, Google announced not just an algorithmic update but an entire architecture re-write of its web search called “Google Caffeine” a few day’s back. The head of Google’s Webspam team, Matt Cutts actually made a comparison of the Caffeine update to the infamous “Big Daddy Update” back in 2005.
The big question at the moment is what does the Google Caffeine update mean to SEOs? Here are seven things every SEO expert should know about Caffeine:
Matt Cutts Sheds More Light on the Google Caffeine Update
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This is a WebProNews interview with Matt Cutts about Google Caffeine, an über major Google update that has meant a complete re-write of Google’s web search architecture. The Caffeine update means improved crawling, faster indexing and more relevant search results. I would be writing about its impact on SEO in a subsequent post. In the meantime, enjoy the video!
Check out Caffeine on: http://www2.sandbox.google.com.
Dos & Don’ts of Landing Page Design – 7 Deadly Sins of Landing Page Design
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I came across this Webinar video presentation this morning when doing some research on the landing design best practises and have to say it is the best I have come across as yet. It was presented by Tim Ash, author of the book, Landing Page Optimization and the CEO of sitetuners.com for the official Google AdWords blog, Inside AdWords.
I have to say, it is a really long video, with a duration of about 1hr 15mins. For that reason, I have summarised the key salient points from his presentation. Hope you enjoy it!
A Short Story About the Romance between Public Relations and the Internet…so far
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The Public Relations industry has not been the same since the advent of the internet. The first wave of change in the PR industry was the advent of corporate websites and the ability of the information on corporate websites to represent organisational opinion, a brand and make PR announcements. PR professionals had to adapt by adding and controlling content on the PR sections of corporate websites.
Online News
Managing PR content on corporate websites as a tactic was short-lived and not sufficient enough in the ever changing internet. With the sheer speed of information on the web through news sites, PR professionals had to figure out how to also grab attention from ‘authoritative’ old and new media news websites.
A Quick Local Search Tip
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I just wanted to share a quick but useful tip with you regarding local listings. Listing your business on Local search engines is not good enough – an added level of exposure is getting your listings reviewed.
Please encourage your customers to add reviews to your local listings (Google Local especially). This would improve your click through rate as not many businesses actually pull in efforts to get reviews on their listings. It would also add value to the overall search experience.
Have a great weekend guys 
Blogging Explained in Simple English
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I thought this video might be helpful to some readers that do not see the essence of blogs or blogging. It’s less than 3 minutes and pretty much covers all that you should know about the phenomenon known as blogging.
A Presentation on the Tricky Bits of Local Search by ‘Godfather of Search’ Danny Sullivan
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I’ve said it a million times, I love local search engine optimisation – here is a presentation on tricky and inaccurate aspects of Local search by Danny Sullivan “Godfather of Search”. I cannot but emphasis the fact that business owners need to claim their local listing to ensure that correct information about their businesses are displayed on all local search engines. It’s a funny and informative video – I’d love to know what you think. Read More
