Archive for the ‘International’ Category

Yandex – Yet ANother inDEX?

September 26th, 2011

There are parts of the world where Google is not dominant. In Russia the search engine Yandex is the market leader with a market share of over 60%. Helped by rapidly growing internet usage in Russia, the search engine doubled the number of searches it handles between 2008 and 2009. For online businesses operating in Russia there is no question about the importance of Yandex (for more about search engine marketing in Russia read our Internation Search Review post) but since the launch of an English language search engine in 2010 should the rest of the world be thinking about Yandex?

There are two aspects to this question:
1. Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?

2. Are there other reasons to observe what Yandex is doing?

Will Yandex gain a large worldwide market share?
In my opinion, no. Right now people have no reason to use Yandex. It is not integrated with any of the online services commonly used in the West, nor is it the default search engine on any of the main browsers. The only ways Yandex can increase market share are either by spending a lot of money on advertising (this is working, but very slowly, for Bing) or by being better at search than Google. Unfortunately for Yandex, they can’t just be a little bit better they need to be a lot better; studies (by Microsoft) show that people say the quality of results from Bing are equal to those of Google, but only when the Bing results are wrapped in Google branding. Any new search engine that wants to dominate the market needs to be an order of magnitude better, just as Google was in 1998.

The search technology behind Yandex
Google beat the competition with their PageRank algorithm. Page and Brin realised that strong webpages were more likely to be linked to from other strong webpages. In other words, they picked a feature that they thought good webpages should have and then built their search engine to rank pages with this feature.

Yandex’s MatrixNet algorithm is very different; given a list of good pages for a queryspace, MatrixNet uses machine learning to decide which features distinguish them from the average. Then they rank pages with similar features in that queryspace. This method is a great defence against spammers because any feature that becomes common is no longer a powerful ranking signal. For example, if everyone has an optimised title tag then having an optimised title tag is not a signal of quality.

The main weakness with the MatrixNet approach is getting the list of good pages to begin with. The internet is too large for this to be manually curated so there has to be another algorithm to generate the list of quality sites. This algorithm must be very conservative in the sites it selects, otherwise results quality will suffer a lot; imagine if having a large number of AdSense ads became a positive ranking factor!

Google’s recent Panda updates use a similar approach. Matt Cutts (Head of Web Spam at Google) has said that they “came up with a classifier to say, okay, IRS or Wikipedia or New York Times is over on this side, and the low-quality sites are over on this side”. However, this algorithm update can only reduce rankings, not increase them so Google do not need to be as conservative with how it is applied (some site owners say they should have been a lot more careful).

As evidenced by their Panda update (and many other projects), Google has the technical ability to do machine learning at web scale. Should Yandex’s approach begin producing SERPs of amazing quality then Google can copy their approach before Yandex’s market share reaches critical mass. This is why Yandex need an order of magnitude improvement over Google; they need to capture a large amount of market share before Google improve their algorithm to match.

Why you should pay attention to Yandex
Like Yandex, the browser Opera also has a large market share in Russia without being a big player in the West. Opera introduced features like tabbed browsing and “speed dial” that have since been imitated by Firefox, Chrome and others. Web designers watch how Opera are innovating because some new features will cross over into the mainstream.

Similarly, you should keep an eye on what Yandex are doing because they take a different approach to search and successful features from their algorithm are likely to appear in other places.

Blog post by Richard Fergie, Consultant at Reform

From riots to dinosaurs – how digital continues to amaze me

September 22nd, 2011

I am a student from Birmingham City University, working at Reform on my placement year. A couple of months into my digital year in industry there are few things that have struck me…

When I tell people I am working in digital for my placement year, a common reaction is to imagine a fantasy world, impregnable, with very techy people playing around with code on computers.  I don’t think that could be further from the truth at this moment in time. Digital is becoming more and more crucial to daily life and I for one welcome this.

Social media was recently blamed by many for enabling the London riots. However, I think the key point to remember is that it’s not social media itself that is the problem, its how people use it. For all the Blackberry messenger organised rioting, there were also some fantastic campaigns on Twitter and Facebook which help to restore faith in humanity, focusing on communities cleaning up and coming together.

This is the kind of reassurance that digital can provide, and it even extends to nations. During the earthquakes in Japan, Twitter, Facebook and Skype all helped families to reconnect and confirm the safety of loved ones. Analogue phone lines could not cope with the extreme high levels of people trying to contact each other, but digital platforms enabled contact and granted peace of mind in times of immense trauma.

And what about the power of social media to spread fantastic stories that would not be heard otherwise? The best example in the last few days is the story about one man’s experience with Marks and Spencer’s customer service. In case you haven’t already seen it, one customer who was overcharged for a sandwich was told in response to his complaint that he would receive a gift card in compensation. When he didn’t receive his gift card he asked politely for a hand-drawn picture of a smiley dinosaur to be included with the gift card (presumably as a joke?!). Wonderfully he actually got what he asked for, including a message apologising ‘unfortunately art was never my strong point…’ Check out the picture of the dinosaur – it’s actually quite good!

Digital is connecting more and more with the real world and we get to hear about real people and their experiences so much more than we ever could previously. What I love about the digital industry is that it’s volatile, it’s unpredictable, it’s challenging and it’s here to stay. Another plus is that apparently I’m a computer genius now that I work in digital. (It is worth bearing in mind that this is coming from my mother who is amazed because I know Ctrl+C…).

By Karen Hawey at Reform

The new domain name game

September 12th, 2011

Starting in January 2012, companies will have the opportunity to register new tailored domain names. Traditional naming conventions such as .com and .net will continue to exist, but brands will be able to use other words or phrases, such as their own brand name, as their domain name. For example, Reform.com could use reform.reform and other variations thereof using the .reform structure.

What will the cost for this new domain structure be? There’s an application fee which costs around £180,000, plus an annual running cost around £25,000. So, for many businesses, this kind of investment will prove cost prohibitive.

At Reform we’ll be monitoring what effect, if any, these new naming conventions have on search optimisation best practices. Will Google and other search engines favour one domain name over the other, and if so, could it lead to an unfair advantage in preserving top rankings? This will be an interesting space that we’ll be keeping an eye on for our clients.

Additionally, the new domain naming convention .xxx has been approved by ICANN after eleven years. Although some countries, such as India, have already started banning the new naming convention, brands and individuals now have less than a fifty day window to register to ensure their assets are not used in the adult online industry.

While the benefits of the .xxx domain include heightened parental control, as well as the hope that people will be less likely to unwittingly stumble across adult content, the 15,000 domain names that have been reserved are almost certainly not enough to protect all the people that may be affected. What about everyone else’s reputations?

ICM Registry’s chief executive Stuart Lawley said, “Regardless of what your personal views are on the existence of pornography on the internet, at least .xxx will give people the information they need to make a choice.”

Reform provides a bespoke brand monitoring service that can help you to ensure your brand is not misrepresented. With these new developments, it is more important than ever to invest in the right amount of diligence to protect your brand. Get in touch if you would like to know more.

Blog post by Anthony Dobson, Business Development Executive at Reform

Search engine marketing in Malaysia – International search review issue number 7

August 1st, 2011

Reform has this week published the latest paper in its international search review series. Continuing the focus on markets in Southeast Asia, this instalment looks at the internet and search market of Malaysia.

With internet penetration increasing from 15% in 2000 to 59% in 2009, it’s clear that there has been significant change in this country’s technological outlook over the last decade.

This is another market where Google has consolidated its dominance of the search engine arena, growing its share from 51% in 2008 to 85% in 2011.

The increase in internet penetration (16,902,600 internet users as of June 2009) has occurred in spite of the fact that the quality of the broadband in Malaysia is still rated as ‘poor’. This, combined with a growing number of increasingly sophisticated mobile devices, has led analysts to believe that mobile search will become ever more important in this market.

Advances in mobile technologies can also be looked to as the facilitators for the phenomenal popularity of social media sites in Malaysia. This is a country that has Facebook penetration of 88.4%, and which accounts for .47% of Twitter’s world voice.

Since 2009 the number of Malaysian web users using social media to keep in touch with family has increased to 71%.

To find out more about the search market landscape in Malaysia, download a copy of the review – and let us know any comments or feedback that you might have. You can also download past issues of the International Search Review to see what we discovered about Chinese internet development and the Russian search behaviour evolution amongst other things.

Contact us and we’ll send you the next issue of our International Search Review before anyone else.

Blog post by Juliette van Rooyen, Consultant at Reform.

Google updates: Panda/Farmer

April 21st, 2011

Over recent weeks the internet has been alive with commentary on Google’s recent changes to its search algorithms, labelled by some as “farmer” and others as “panda”. The changes that were initiated in the USA are now permeating Google sites worldwide with changes now evident on google.co.uk. Some of these changes are perceived to be having a devastating effect on websites who are seeing traffic levels fall by up to 90%.

The SEO implications

For a bit of background, “farmer” and “panda” are the same thing, explained in detail here – http://searchengineland.com/google-forecloses-on-content-farms-with-farmer-algorithm-update-66071 and http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2011/03/the-panda-that-hates-farms/ (Summary: “content farms” were the initial target, hence the name “farmer” while “panda” was Google’s code name for the very same update).  However, in the UK, it is often referred to as the latter.

The principal impact of the changes appears to be a downgrading of many of the most used article repositories, such as Ezine articles and Suite101, which has in turn had a knock-on effect on businesses that interact with these sites as part of their SEO strategy. For years, the SEO mantra has been ‘content is king’, which lead many sites to add as much templated content as possible to their site (and towards their site), often overlooking the quality of the source. This artificial inflation of a site’s amount of content now leaves them vulnerable to plummeting rankings and the associated ramifications.

Our take on the Panda update (Reform UK)

With the advent of the Panda update, we’ve seen a considerable shift in the type of sites being affected. Even those sites with significant brand authority have seen a large drop in visibility, resulting in a drop in traffic. For information sites this is problematic, but for e-commerce sites, this can be catastrophic.

The primary targeting has been towards uniform content on sites, such as articles that have been syndicated on sites which have no other content. However, it’s not just the sites that syndicate, it’s also their primary sources of content, the articles sites which have taken significant hits. Even for those sites that do not syndicate content, sites that rely solely on strategies like this for link building and that use templates for elements like product pages seem to be suffering as well.

Well known sites like Play.com have lost around 10% of their visibility and the associated level of traffic. This is possibly a very low level indicator that the real world weight of brands could be having less of an impact on their search rankings. There have also been a large number of well-regarded tech sites seeing significantly decreased rankings, such as Techworld & Techradar.

Our take on the Farmer / Panda update (Reform USA)

Names aside, all of these updates (Farmer, Panda, Caffeine, even Google Florida) are similar in many ways but from an SEO perspective it is important to understand that the changes will impact on a number of strategies.

Many websites rely on “tried and true” strategies and continue with them because they have brought positive results in the past.  In particular site owners have a had a penchant for allowing users to add content at will, which in turn helps make the site larger / more content rich and therefore more favourable to Google.

Other sites will automate content and templates to bulk up the site and catch keywords.  Another possibility is that they will see that a certain link strategy (whether ethical or not is not the question here for once) brings them good returns and stick with it.

However the recent changes to at Google suggest that while content may still be king, they are taking a much more qualitative view on the value of content and so webmasters and their SEO advises need to wise up to the changes.

How to counter the losses – 5 key points:

  1. Think long term strategy, not short term fixes
  2. Don’t keep using out-dated strategies
  3. Do your research thoroughly
  4. Constantly innovate in your optimization
  5. Audit your content

Reform has worked with a number of clients around the world developing long term and flexible strategies that maximise the benefit of existing content and infrastructure while providing an ability to move with the times.

Reform can also help you to move forwards with a balanced and ethical SEO approach that is in tune with your strategic goals in other marketing channels including profile building and social media.

Apple or Android? Coca Cola or Fizzy Drink?

April 11th, 2011

I can’t work out if I find flexibility or certainty more comforting. With the fight for democratic freedom raging in North Africa it is easy to feel that freedom of choice aka flexibility is what we really really want. The idea of being straight jacketed in an autocratic regime where there is no choice and you consciously and sub-consciously follow a predetermined path sounds very unappealing to the typical western democrat.

Yet in the most liberal of western societies where consumerism is championed and celebrated we are often quick to disregard the flexibility that our society allows and we opt for ‘choices’ that provide the most certainty. Supermarkets stack their shelves high and wide with a multitude of different products yet when we head up the fizzy drink aisle it is all too easy to grab the slab of Coca-Cola. Do we appreciate the fact that we had the opportunity to choose from 100 alternatives or do we tend to fall back on the ‘certainty’ of the product that we will consume.

The same debate prevails on the supply side. As a manufacturer or service provider should you organise yourself in a ‘walled garden’ (where for example the apps or the plug for your phone chargers only fit your phones) or should you be ‘open source’ (where the U in USB stands for universal)? If you visit a potential supplier’s website to establish the credentials for the service they are offering are you impressed or put off by the number of additional services that they purport to deliver?

The Brand marketer will always go for the closed shop certainty claiming businesses and consumers will always revert to type and if they can make their brand the ‘type’ that people revert to then they have done their job. “Nobody got fired for buying IBM” as they used to say. Scientists and statisticians will recount theories of natural laws that suggest people are intuitively creatures of habit and generally crave some certainty.

But we don’t all drive Ford cars, surf on Dell computers and support Manchester United. Indeed if a farmer planted the same crops in the same field year in year out his yields would collapse. Fields like people can have too much of a good thing. So whether we are looking at human psychology, business models or agricultural best practice it appears that variety may just be the spice of life.

We live in an ever changing world which suggests that we need more than certainty to thrive, but where a good brand is a lazy man’s saviour. Probably no right or wrong answer but something to ponder upon in the shower in the morning.

Blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-executive director at Reform.

Search Engine Marketing in Japan – International Search Review Issue Number 5

February 17th, 2011

Reform published the fifth installment in its “International Search Review” series this week. After venturing all the way to Google friendly India in our previous review, this time we decided to mix things up a bit and check out the land of the rising sun… Japan.

It’s currently the third largest economy in the world but many western businesses find entering into the Japanese marketplace difficult (just ask Facebook). Yet the potential of the Japanese market makes it a worthwhile goal for companies focused on a global presence. With over 94 million people online, Japan also has the third largest population of internet users in the world. This translates into a high amount of paid advertising and PPC ads. In this International Search Review, we break down how the Japanese marketplace can prove difficult for foreign businesses and why it’s worth the effort.

Key stats and findings to take from our review of Japan search market include:

  • This is a market with a broadband penetration of 75%.
  • 90% of all Japanese have a cell phone and 40% of them use their mobile to surf the web.
  • Mobile usage is growing faster than regular internet use.
  • With Google’s partnership with Yahoo! Japan, they now control the organic search results for 84% of the market.
  • Differences in alphabet can create problems in keyword usage.
  • Mixi, not Facebook, dominates the social media marketplace but Twitter has shown that a western brand can be effective.

 

To find out more about the search marketing landscape in Japan, download a copy of the white paper here – and let us know any comments/feedback. Contact us, and we’ll send you the next issue of our International Search Review before anyone else.

Blog post by Matt Dorville, SEO Strategist at Reform

Update on International Search Review 4 – India

December 28th, 2010

Well, our review on the Search Market in India was the fourth in our series of International Search Reviews from Reform. It was an interesting piece, but I figured the best way to learn how the market really works and to generate insight is to actually go there (for a holiday of course). So here are some things that I inadvertently learned while in India, from a search and web perspective.

Things I learned in India:

1) The Market – As we’ve all been hearing, India is a market that’s barely tapped when it comes to internet usage, and the online population is set to explode, like it has in China.

Now that I’ve been there, I’m not sure if I agree 100%. While things like food and transportation were much cheaper in India than in the west, broadband was actually pretty much the same price as in the west, if not more expensive in some places. Many “offers” were still in the 15-45 dollar per month range, at the very least.

Considering that buying a home is significantly cheaper in India and an average salary is about $3.5k (though figures online do vary quite a bit, so to put it in perspective, some of the top jobs in India are in IT and they still make under 10k USD on average), broadband is proportionately an expensive offering and only for the well off. And from being outside the major cities part of the time, it felt even more far fetched (mainly because broadband was not available everywhere yet).

Though I did see a fair few billboards advertising “high speed internet access coming soon”. So at least it will be an option outside the major cities soon.

2) Google Billboards – Speaking of billboards. Google buys billboard advertising spaces on the highways of Delhi. However it took a few passes to realise it was a Google advertisement, and considering how manic the traffic is in India, with constant horns blaring and cars cutting in from all angles in their attempt to convert a three lane road into eight lanes – I doubt anyone even notices it.

Plus, they probably shouldn’t encourage speed on these roads anyway. By that I mean, the ad is for Google Chrome and it’s mainly a picture of a Windows-esque folder that says “Install Speed” on it – with Chrome’s logo in the bottom right corner. Google does dominate the search market here, perhaps because the search market is mainly those who are quite internationally savvy to begin with. Ask the regular people on the street and some of them will have no idea who Google is.

So putting an ad up that is mainly for people who already know who you are is a bit misleading.  The ad looked too subtle perhaps.  Where as every other ad on the road had the brand name in big letters, pushing the big brand name as much as it can.

3) Use PPC and Affiliate Networks To Make Money At Home! – I did manage to get a camera shot of this (shown below), seen all over trains and lampposts especially in Mumbai. Yes, perhaps some of the stereotypes are true unfortunately. Just click away on affiliates, fill surveys, click PPC ads, enter data, etc and make money at home! Ezeeincome.com was one of several sites advertising here, the shot above was from an “economy car” in one of Mumbai’s overland trains, which were busy as expected, but still worth using, though perhaps not during rush hour.

Beyond search, big name sites like TripAdvisor.in will “reimburse” you for reviews, with credits and vouchers one can use elsewhere.  On a computer in India, I saw a pop-up saying I could earn money with each review made on tripadvisor.in, but taking a screenshot was the last thing I was thinking of at that moment (plus it wasn’t my computer!).

4) Mobile Phones – The government is discussing a national broadband plan for the coming years. But with current offerings costing a fair portion of many people’s monthly salary – hopeful predictions like http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/infotech/internet/237-mn-internet-users-in-India-by-2015-Report/articleshow/6479094.cms are still far away. However, mobile broadband will make it much more possible.

Everyone seemed to have a mobile phone out there. Some looked like the one I had ten years ago. But I also saw many phones that were perhaps newer than my current phone. Even outside the cities, I saw kids calling and texting away – while piled on a 3 seater vehicle that had more than ten people in it, so this is definitely a market ready for mobile broadband. But 3G mobile broadband is not readily available yet, especially outside the big cities.

So why the big mobile takeup? Well, it doesn’t require a full computer, and it’s cheaper. Basic plans started from under $6 per month, with text messages costing less than two pennies. Calls were also about one cent a minute. But again, adding wireless internet access to the mobile phone was expensive. And 3G wireless access is just being launched – so even though many people had 3G compatible phones, they were using them for traditional means such as phone calls! Chances are the mobiles might have came with the plans, as the actual mobile device costs are again similar to that in the west, which means too expensive for most.

Articles like http://www.domain-b.com/industry/telecom/20101227_mobile_network.html are perhaps misleading. Yes, there are more mobile phone subscribers and their phones are connected to a wireless network, but the network is not necessarily one with any real internet access, let alone 3G. Major provider Tata only launched 3G in November 2010, while Airtel delayed their launch till 2011.

So will people be using their 3G phone for things like video chats and internet access when ready? Not if the Indian government have any say, as they look to delay plans further – http://www.slashgear.com/india-faces-3g-data-video-call-ban-over-real-time-security-fears-22120687/

On a side note, I didn’t see a single iPhone.  Everyone had Nokias!  I even looked this up when I got back and turns out that most of the top phones in India are in fact Nokias and iPhones are not nearly as popular here.  There’s an interesting report by Google/Admob at http://metrics.admob.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/AdMob-Mobile-Metrics-May-10.pdf if you’re interested in more details.

Summary – Is India a booming market with loads of potential in the internet marketplace? Yes. But it might take a little longer than expected before it fully expands across the country’s population.

How does it look today? Take a look at our India search market review (with downloadable PDF). Or view information about other countries in our series of international search market reviews. Thanks again to all those who commented and gave us feedback and help in 2010, Issue five of our series is set for release in early 2011.

Search Engine Marketing in India – International Search Review Issue Number 4

October 29th, 2010

Reform has published issue number four of the “International Search Review”. After a run of Google-unfriendly markets like China, Korea and Russia, we’ve moved to an Asian market that loves Google (and the feeling among users in India perhaps is mutual)!

It’s also one of the most untapped internet markets in the world, and one where a good portion of the population speaks English, which is good news for North American and British marketers. Indeed, India recently moved up in to the fourth place on the list of largest internet markets, with 81 million users. This figure becomes even more interesting when looking at the overall population of India:those 81 million internet users account for less than 7% of the overall population, meaning that India could one day be ahead of the US market in terms of volumes, even chasing China for the top spot. Sources such as The Boston Consulting Group estimate close to 250 million internet users in India by 2015.

Download the full “Search Marketing in India” review in PDF format here

Key stats and findings to take from our review of the India search market include:

- This is a market where only 10% of internet users have broadband at home

- If you rank top in PPC and SEO, expect a greater share from PPC when it comes to click-throughs

- India is the 2nd largest mobile internet market after the US, but 96% of mobile users are male

- Search market share cited by various sources puts Google in the 80-95% range. One source had Google 95%, Yahoo 3%, Bing 1%, Other 1%. And from our own research sample of over 10,000 visits in 2010 on various sites, we had Google at a 97% of search traffic in India (Yahoo 2% and Bing 1%)!

- PPC is cheap (even for competitive markets), and converts well, but English is the primary language of this marketing channel

- Google-owned Orkut was big in India (like it is in Brazil), but Facebook has caught up fast and taken over as the top social network in India with 20.9 million visitors in July 2010. Twitter however, has yet to take off here.

- Link building is key to the offering for a lot of SEO agencies in India, though the quality can be hit and miss.

To find out more about the search marketing landscape in India, download a copy of the white paper here – and let us know any comments/feedback. Contact us, and we’ll send you the next issue of our International Search Review before anyone else.

Digital observations from the other side of the pond

October 11th, 2010

Last week I was ‘doing digital’ business in New York. Tony Blair was in town too, advising WPP, but compared to his day rate (a reported $200k) my digital consultation comes at a bargain!

I am fascinated by digital anthropology – observing how digital infiltrates culture and society. So with every trip that I take abroad I try to come away with as many digital snapshots as I can, as these are helpful indicators of market growth and consumption trends.

Here are some of my observational snapshots from my time in the city that never sleeps last week:

  1. Boy, is digital TV big in the US! You only have to gaze up at the HD screens in Times Square to appreciate the enormity and the sophistication of the digital branded content on the big screen. While in town we attended the launch of ControlTV (http://controltv.com) which is another example of how brands are investing heavily in digital broadcast content – it begs the question, is this cannibalising non-digital TV budgets or will this be a new, additional line on the media plan?
  2. New Yorkers (and we must make the point that New York isn’t necessarily a microcosm of where the rest of the country is it with its digital adoption curve) are tablet-tastic. Whether it’s the iPad or the Kindle, you see these being consumed / read / used on the subway and in cafes much more than here in London.
  3. Spot the Starbucks customer without an iMac!
  4. As of 1st October 2010, Bing + Yahoo! = 30% of the US search market. They’re back in the game! Last week Microsoft started the migration of AdCenter campaign delivery onto Yahoo! Search results. Will Google be worried?
  5. Blackberry is much bigger than here in the UK. This market share is probably set to grow with the launch of the Blackberry Playbook (rival to the Apple iPad) in 2011.
  6. Free Wi-Fi is being curtailed. Cafes, bars and public spaces are blocking their Wi-Fi access to the general public because US digital IP legislation is much tougher than in the UK and no proprietor wants to be sued for one of their customers illegally downloading copyrighted digital content.
  7. (One for the journey home) – on Virgin Atlantic the in-flight entertainment channel cross-promoted Virgin Media to VA customers. It just occurred to me what a no-brainer that was, when both are on-demand digital TV channels owned by the same umbrella brand. Yet Virgin is unique in this cross-platform opportunity from digital ‘in the sky’ to digital ‘on land’.

I guess if I were to summarise these snapshots, or to try to find a common theme, it would be one of multi-screen, multi-dimensional digital opportunities for brands.

It is always interesting to get a feel for what the opportunities are for brands to target customers over the other side of the pond, and equally interesting to compare the US digital market with the markets here in Europe.

Blog post by Amanda Davie, Managing Director of Reform

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