Crowdsourcing: it’s a scary concept for marketers who are only just getting used to conversations with consumers as opposed to monologues. Crowdsourcing takes the idea of marketing as a two-way conversation a step further. Conversation is still two-way (how could be anything else), but consumers have much more input in the manner in which marketing [...]
Will Aaron Wall’s new definition of doorway pages stick?
Posted 14 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: definition of doorway pages, doorway pages | Categories: SEO | Leave a Comment
Aaron Wall’s blog post yesterday (13 September) was a mite bitter. It related to doorway pages and, once you got past the attention grabbing (and misleading) title, Google’s apparent tendency to play fast and loose with its definition of doorway pages and apply punitive action in a way that can best be described as erratic. [...]
SEO industry regulation: always a contentious issue
Posted 14 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: regulate SEO industry, SEO industry regulation, SEO regulation | Categories: SEO | Leave a Comment
Way back in 2007, the question of whether the SEO industry should be regulated started capturing major attention. In 2008, the question got even bigger with some serious industry heavy-weights coming out both for and against regulation. In 2007, Steven Bradley wrote a blog in response to another blog that came out in favour of [...]
Don’t forget Google’s changes to Products Feed Specifications
Posted 8 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: | Categories: SEO | Leave a Comment
Earlier this year Google announced that it would be making changes to Google Product Search, specifically, it would change the Google Product Search Feed Specifications and Policies. This, according to Google, is to improve the user experience by including availability data and provide better browsing for related product variants. It has now issued a reminder [...]
Highlights for the week in search
Posted 5 September 2011 by PhilTagged As: google plus, google spam report, web master tools | Categories: News | Leave a Comment
Google release their “report scraping” tool. The tool is a simple text input form where web publishers can identify sites that scrape their content. It is notable what Google themselves suggest as a “reportable” web site or page: A page that outranks your own page for content that you were first to publish. So does [...]
Top Searches on Google South Africa (Google.co.za) – August 2011
Posted 5 September 2011 by AntTagged As: | Categories: News, SEO | Leave a Comment
Topical searches for June included: Kim Kardashian’s wedding The Sowetan Newspaper The PSL The Iphone5 The top searched brands per category were: Gmail for internet mail Facebook for social media Gumtree for jobs Absa for banks Blackberry for phones Vodacom for cellular networks Toyota for cars News24 for news And the top 50 search phrases [...]
Digital ad spend will snatch most of advertising spend by 2016
Posted 5 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: digital advertising, digital marketing, digital marketing spend | Categories: News | Leave a Comment
So, you know that digital marketing is increasing almost exponentially year-on-year. You know that only fools don’t use at least one digital marketing channel. You know that multi-channel marketing is the ideal. But do you know just how big digital marketing is going to get? Forrester Research has released a new report with projections for [...]
Two-step review for Adsense publishers will improve ad network
Posted 1 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: Adsense, Adsense ads, Adsense publishers, Google Adsense | Categories: News | Leave a Comment
Putting Adsense ads on your site is a great way to earn a passive income. After the initial setup process you can virtually sit back and let your compound ad revenue grow. However, in the past just about anyone could create a site purely for Adsense purposes. Quality was almost irrelevant, and this had a [...]
International marketing implications of Google’s $500 million settlement
Posted 1 September 2011 by SandyTagged As: digital marketing, online ads, search marketing | Categories: SEO | 1 Comment
For a company that’s motto is Do No Evil, Google sure ends up in a lot of trouble for evil-like behaviour, at the least behaviour that many people consider evil. One of the latest scandals involves drugs. Despite several warnings and US federal laws against the practice, it seems Google continued to run ads by [...]
Google and Microsoft engage in the battle for voice search
Posted 31 August 2011 by SandyTagged As: bing voice search, google voice search, voice search | Categories: SEO | Leave a Comment
Voice search is rapidly moving out of the realm of sci-fi and into reality. Google is working furiously to improve its voice search capabilities and Microsoft is working furiously to catch up with Google. In the latest news, Google has released voice search on Google Maps. As with the other desktop and laptop voice applications, [...]
The right to know vs. the right to be forgotten
Posted 12 August 2011 by SandyTagged As: online privacy | Categories: News | Leave a Comment
Online privacy is a contentious issue. Everyone wants it – except Google and Facebook – yet no one knows how to define it. Facebook and Google have thrown anti-privacy barbs at each other, the most notorious incident being Facebook’s underhanded attempts to undermine Google via “reputable” news services. But increasingly governments are getting involved. Although, [...]