Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Social Search And Personalization: A Turning Point For Brands

April 13th, 2012

With Google’s privacy changes implemented on March 1st and pending changes such as the EU cookie law, there are a lot of people trying to explain how privacy and personalization works for users, and for many, the noise only complicates things further.  To cut a long story short though, it’s a golden opportunity for your brand and you can’t afford to miss out.

Here’s the lowdown.  Even if you’re not signed in to Google Plus, or Gmail, YouTube, etc. (which are all under the same umbrella anyway), and even if you’ve turned off your “web history” settings, your Google search results are still somewhat influenced by your past activity, your tastes, and even the general public. This may sound like a stormy time for some sites, as SEO transitions into part of an overall online marketing strategy (which it should have been all along, right?) that focuses on getting an effective brand and social influence and letting users determine how well a site fares.  But for established and upcoming brand names alike, this may be the perfect storm and the perfect time to take charge.

Branding has become easier on Google, with results for brand names inclusive of search results natural and paid (which is proven to be most effective when both are active), followed by social profiles such as Google Plus, Twitter, Facebook, Linked In,  along with video profiles, your location info, reviews and news about your brand, and even sites related to your brand.  Gone are the days where businesses felt like they had no control on how their brand was represented on natural search and maybe just stuck with paid search (I can think of many big name brands that once fit this category).  But times have changed.

Not too long ago, Google worked on making results more favourable to the country/market you are in.  But this has been magnified since, looking at your locality in more detail.  Results in New York are way different from those in Los Angeles these days and completely different from those in Europe.  Many consumers now are always logged in to one of the Google-owned sites, and often never bother to log out and the results start to cater to their interests.  Now whether this is good or bad for consumers is a different debate all together, but in this current set up, each one of us is now developing Google’s algorithm!

Google itself has focused on helping brands understand search, and they should, as it helps their own brand too.  Whether beta trials on verticals (image, video, rich snippets, local, etc) or helping to develop pilot programs on Google, it was the big brands who they contacted and wanted to get involved.  And search started being more human, whether quality control teams on Google’s end, or even how Google plus totals are becoming an influence on some rankings. More and more we are all becoming a part of a global development team, whether we know it or not.

And the reality is that getting a new brand established solely using a natural search strategy is harder to do in this day and age.  There is more competition for one, fewer unknown niches left to capitalize on, algorithms that favour sites with a good presence overall (and thus more resource to keep tabs on a multi-level strategy), while consumers communicate, share and look for each other’s favourites. The last part is key, many look for each other’s favourites, not exploring new ones, and this is a big debate too.  Does the current set up of social search and personalization allow for brand favouritism and less negative sentiment to show? Unfortunately to some, yes.  You’ll need more firepower, more resource, more people on board to get a message across. But if you are a major brand name…… you have no excuses.

Need more info on how it all works?  Well, drop us a line and let our team of consultants at Reform help guide your brand into a stronger search and online strategy.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

How Tablets Are Changing Our Online Behaviour

March 22nd, 2012

With the advent of mobile phones, the search market evolved. With the subsequent advent of the iPad and the continually expanding tablet market, we’re seeing the search market evolve further in reaction. Retailers and recipients of searches by tablet users are able to identify very different trends in customer behaviour and purchases in users on traditional platforms, and those using tablets to search.

It might be tempting for businesses to try to divine some reason why consumers that are tablet users are exhibiting different behaviours, such as generating higher levels of revenue and outpacing desktops or laptops in terms of average order value. This however would be somewhat of a mistake as it’s not really something about the tablets that generating the different levels of customer interest and purchasing. Instead it’s about the customers themselves who are making use of tablets to search.

While this may seem like a self-evident statement, what businesses need to take into account is that historically the early adopters of technology, such as the iPad, tend to be a little more affluent. This naturally leads them to have greater levels of income with which to make online purchases.

To lead these customers up to the point of purchase, Google has shown that there is a very different consumer behaviour profile for tablets than for desktop or laptop users. Searching for information is the second most popular consumer activity, so tablet users are using them fair more consistently for finding information. This makes mobile search a great arena in which to appear before an interested audience.

The trick is to understand the difference between when tablets are used for search, and when a desktop or laptop will be used to search, so that campaigns can find the right time to target different consumer groups. A common problem is that performance reports often lump smartphone and tablet together and class them as mobile and while they are both mobile devices, customer behaviour while using them varies significantly.

According to research from Google, consumers primarily use smartphones when they’re on the move, during the day while at work or between home and work. Tablets however are primarily used at home, while they are relaxing and performing secondary tasks such as eating, watching TV and cooking. Therefore the way in which businesses appeal to each of these discrete customer groups would need to vary to cater to the frame of mind and situation of the differing consumers.

Some interesting customer behaviour statistics have been provided recently by Google which illustrates the core differences in when people are searching on tablets as opposed to smartphones, or desktops.

(Source: Google Internal Data 2011. % of each platform’s traffic shown hourly for one day. Does not indicate absolute or relative traffic volumes.)

While we are highlighting the differences between customers on tablets and other devices, businesses also need to be aware that this is based on our current understanding of consumer’s search behaviour on their tablets. This is likely to change as the explosion in the number of tablets being used will result in a change in the make-up of tablet users and therefore impacts the perceived consumer behaviour on the platform.

Instead of being the preserve of early adopters and the more affluent, tablets are going to start being utilised by a far wider audience. This could result in a change in the balance of revenue generated by tablet users as their purchasing behaviour starts to more closely resemble that which is seen on desktops.

Blog post by Juliette van Rooyen, Consultant at Reform

The Implications And Applications Of Contactless Payment

March 6th, 2012

Contactless payment and NFC (near field communication) technology are hot topics at the moment but the strange thing is no one is using it. The UK appears to be way behind in this trend – yes there are brands that have the technology fully functioning but consumers seem to be unaware of how it works and therefore are wary of it.

A quick introduction into the technology; It is sharing information between a NFC device and a chip which is sometimes called a ‘tag’ from a very close proximity. The chip can hold data securely, for example bank details. To make a broad comparison it does hold some similarities to Bluetooth technology. One prime example of this in technology being adopted in the UK is the Oyster card scheme. But where is it being used elsewhere?

Barcelona is one of the first cities to introduce contactless ATMs across the capital. The Spanish bank La Caixa have installed 500 of these ATM’s and given out over 1 million bank cards which have the NFC chip installed into them. Consumers wave their card over the reader, enter their pin as usual and can withdraw money. Banks will try and push users to convert to a contactless payment debit or credit card as they can collect more data about their customers if they are using their card for every payment. This behavioral information is gold dust!

In Japan, its coupons and promotions are driving customers towards contactless payments. One promotion that has been extremely popular is McDonald’s coupon scheme; customers can put their order into their phone whilst in the queue then place their order, use a coupon and pay the bill all with one or two waves over the reader at the till. This efficiency in paying is definitely one of the highlights which could attract Britain’s time wary workers to make the switch.

By 2013 in the UK, TFL hope to roll out contactless readers for debit and credit cards for the tube, trams, overground and DLR routes. A debit or credit card will be swiped over the reader instead of an Oyster card which means there will never be the problem of rooting for that lost ticket or queuing for the Oyster card machine.

Meanwhile, LG have come up with a really interesting concept – their new phone being launched in South Korea is NFC enabled and comes with ready to program NFC tags. These stickers can trigger the phone to perform a number of different things. One example is an NFC sticker put next to a car’s steering wheel. When the phone is waved over it, it can be programmed to activate GPS and navigation apps. When I read about this I could see that this kind of usage holds much more room for growth and innovation than just making a payment.

So we can see the benefits immediately – it’s quicker, easier, we get money off, less queuing (although supposedly we the British nation love a good queue!) and we can receive tailored offers and more interactive experiences. However, there is the issue of security, if everything you need is on your bank card or mobile it’s going to be pretty crucial not to lose it. Of course it’s not so much of a concern that someone can steal your money as you can set up a price cap relatively easily but more so the massive inconvenience it will cause. It’s definitely going to be extremely interesting to watch as developments in the application of this technology increase over the coming months.

By Karen Hawey at Reform

SOPA, PIPA and the end of the world as we know it?

January 26th, 2012

Last week marked an extraordinary milestone in the relationship between the internet and politics. The signs that the internet is changing the way that governments and politics work have been there for a while. Barack Obama was arguably the first US Presidential candidate to harness the power of social media to win his election campaign in 2008. More recently the internet caused governments to topple as activists took to blogs and social networks to influence events happening on the ground in the Arab Spring. Last week, for the first time, web-based activism had a direct and highly visible impact on the US congressional process.

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), and the Protect IP Act (PIPA) had until very recently had little or no coverage outside of the United States and their passage through Congress seemed all but assured. Support was strong both in the Senate and the House of Representatives judiciary committees. A powerful lobbying triumvirate of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), the US Chamber of Commerce and the Recording Industry Association of America was right behind it. Surely, the passing of these Acts were no-brainers?

Well, no, actually.

The way in which the digital world responded, rose up and rallied against these Acts was unprecedented and thus not even anticipated. It’s estimated that 13 million people were involved in last Wednesday’s online protest, with around 50,000 websites going dark during the day. Online opponents sent an estimated 3 million protest emails to Congress. High profile backers of SOPA pulled out and Congress postponed the debate until a compromise could be reached. Internet users across the world joined together and changed the course of US politics.

So what caused this overwhelmingly negative response to what seems on the face of it to be a good thing? Online piracy and intellectual property theft are both bad, right?

Freedom of information was at the heart of this protest, though I would say that misinformation and scaremongering were both large contributors to the mêlée. How many people saw Wikipedia’s black out and a headline reading ‘SOPA will kill the internet as we know it’ and jumped on the bandwagon without knowing any of the facts? Millions I suspect – this is the nature of the internet… pre-SOPA/PIPA at least!

So what were the facts? SOPA would have allowed for the U.S. Department of Justice to seek court orders requiring Internet Service Providers to cut off access to any foreign websites that were accused of copyright infringement. That would include infringing material posted on a single blog or webpage. It would also require search engines to remove all results pointing those sites, and ad platforms to halt all advertising on them.

At the risk of committing copyright infringement myself, the team over at Mashable have posted a long and detailed blog about ‘Why SOPA is dangerous’, summarising with three main points:

  • SOPA gave the US government the right to unilaterally censor foreign websites
  • SOPA gave copyright holders the right to issue economic takedowns and bring lawsuits against website owners and operators, if those websites have features that make it possible to post infringing content.
  • SOPA made it a felony offense to post a copyrighted song or video.

 

The devil was in the detail (or lack thereof) for this Act. There wasn’t any qualification that the offending site needed to be solely for the purpose of theft, only that it enabled it. Unfortunately the Act didn’t give any allowance for the fact that the internet has made copyright violation absurdly easy. Theoretically it left any site with a comment box or picture upload form at risk of infringment.  As the owner of a site, you would be liable for any copyright infringement committed by your users. So site owners would be left having to check the content of every post or comment against copyright theft – not particularly cost-effective if you are Facebook or YouTube!

SOPA and PIPA were written by politicians who clearly had very little understanding of the nature of the internet in today’s society. The driving force behind the Acts seemed sensible enough – copyright infringement and piracy are both issues that need to be tackled. However, the way they had been written could have created situation where innovation online became stifled as experimentation left pacesetters open to too great a risk.

What we have seen in the last week is the power of the internet as a lobbying tool, the signature collection of the digital age. In this instance it has created an opportunity for US politicians to re-think an Act that had potentially damaging economic and social implications.

Beyond that though, this episode offers some serious connotations for the future of politics and government as we know it. If big corporations can launch an internet campaign to raise mass-awareness of an issue they feel strongly about and change the opinions of our elected representatives – without much explanation of the reasoning behind their stance – where does that leave the mandate of an elected government?

Blog post by Penny Anderson, Consultant at Reform

Google+ – Google’s combination of search and social

January 19th, 2012

Google’s announcement of the uplifting of Google+ (or G+) pages within search results has been eliciting reactions from a number of people in the search industry. Everyone seems to have an opinion about how they feel Google’s new preferences will affect search results, but in the furore that this has raised, businesses have to ask “How will the average searcher react?”

I think there are a number of ways in which this could play out for Google and, in turn, the businesses that get traffic from their search results. First I think it’s best to examine exactly how Google came to make this change. The rise of social media has put “the big G” into competition with “the big F”, even though they are in similar, but not the same, markets. For a large part, this decision seems somewhat ego-driven, because Google has confronted Facebook with their foray into Social through G+. So far G+ just hasn’t captured audience share from Facebook that Google hoped it would. So, to keep G+ front of mind, Google wants to increase its importance to searchers, in the hope that companies will flock to G+, bringing their fans with them.

Now those motives are not necessarily pure, it leaves search engine aware businesses with the realisation that Google’s results are no longer pure and neutral. However, for the average searcher, with little to no knowledge of how search engines actually work, will this make a difference? They will see these new details (like the result below), but their reactions are hard to predict.

Searchers seeing G+ or affiliated results, which their circles share, may believe that those pages are more trustworthy because Google and their friends endorse them. They are therefore more inclined to click on them as their level of trust in Google is high, which means that businesses could start to see G+ pages visited instead of their pages when people are searching for generic terms. This could draw greater numbers of businesses to create G+ pages as they believe their competitors’ G+ pages are gaining greater prominence in key search result pages.

Another alternative is that people start to distrust the entirety of Google’s search results because they no longer see them as neutral and unbiased. This is heightened by the fact that it is only G+ elements that are being integrated, not Facebook or any of G+’s other competitors. With this lack of trust, it could mean searchers have to find another trustworthy way to find new sites. This could mean a gap for a new search platform, becoming to Google what it was to Yahoo, or it could mean that Bing has an opportunity to seize market share. However, a new search platform would mean and entirely new problem for businesses to solve, as predicting where people will go is something that no one has completely nailed down yet.

At the end of the day, word of mouth is great when people are searching for a great place to have supper, or the new cool place to buy clothes, but friends and circles don’t know everything. We know that our closest friends don’t all have the same likes and dislikes as us, and that’s not taking into account the drive to acquire as many friends as possible. It’s a phenomenon we’ve seen in Facebook, where people collect friends to try and compete for the biggest number of friends. If people start to do that on G+, then all of those people will impact what search results they see, even if it’s a second cousin twice removed that you emailed out of family duty.

As a business, you obviously won’t know who your potential visitors are connected to, and how populated their search results will be by G+ results. This can cause businesses to potentially overestimate the impact of the new integration on their potential customers and panic. However, what they needed to bear in mind is that Google has been integrating social elements into their search results for a while, but never so overtly. Therefore without downplaying the effect that the change may have, it serves little purpose for businesses to panic that they’ll lose masses of searches overnight. For the moment, businesses need to ensure that their sites are well setup, and that they have a G+ page as well as one on Facebook.

[A potential side effect could be for those businesses with extremely poor customer service or some PR disasters in their cupboard. People are more likely to share information about bad experiences with their circles. This means that even if someone didn’t see a piece that was shared in their circle, future searches for the brand concerned could highlight the negative press. An example of this would be an article about Easyjet discriminating against a disabled businessman, which is likely to be shared in a G+ circle, so that could appear prominently when someone is considering booking a flight with Easyjet. This would make online reputation management even more important, as measuring this would be very difficult]

Blog post by Juliette van Rooyen, Search Consultant at Reform

Google SSL update and its impact on SEO, SEM and more.

November 8th, 2011

At Reform lively debate and conversation is encouraged as we develop our take on the latest developments in the ever-changing world of digital. Digital marketing is far from black or white (no search-related hat pun intended!), and through these debates we believe that we can better relay our thoughts on both sides of the fence to our clients and colleagues.

This week we’ve been discussing the latest Google SSL update, how Google Analytics now reports some SEO traffic as ‘(not provided)’ and the potential user / privacy issues driving the change.

Here are different takes on this development from two members of our team – one positive, about what Google can do as the innovative leader in this field, the other perhaps more pessimistic about what Google has become.

Niall Madden, Director at Reform says…

The big story here is that when a user logged into Google (Gmail for example) does a search, they are being taken through an encrypted query on Google’s https website, stripping out all the tracking parameters in the process, resulting in that traffic showing in Google Analytics as ‘(not provided)’.

This means that Google, and ONLY Google, know not only what keyword was used, but where the listing ranked in the SERPS (the “cd=” parameter correlates with the SEO rank in all occasions).  Why I hear you ask? Apparently this is due to a concern about protecting the privacy of Google users.

Since the change, if you’re logged in and in the US, you can’t even enter a search query with JavaScript turned off any more (UPDATE – NOV 18 – This is no longer the case, as now we can search with JS off, even when logged in, though some interesting features include one where the sub-links are shrunken into the older link only versions). Combine this with the recent announcement about the algorithm tweak emphasising content freshness (affecting around 35% of results) and there’s a lot of buzz within the SEO industry.

But the big issue is Google Analytics, a free service that’s been great for SEO practitioners over the past few years. Many users started seeing a few SEO visits listed as ‘(not provided)’ in the keyword list, and even a few days ago shrugged it off as overhyped news – since they only saw it affect 1-2% of traffic, people weren’t concerned, life went on.

Then, by last Friday, that 1-2% hit as much as10% on a couple of sites, and people started getting concerned.

There is potentially another layer to this story.

Google recently launched Google Analytics Premier, which it is aggressively pushing to larger scale clients. The introductory price of $150,000 per year provides a service which, according to the brochure will enable you to ‘track more than ever’, ‘own your customer data’ and ‘analyse ALL of your data’.

To me this sounds like music to the ears of clients worried about losing keyword data for 10-20% of SEO traffic to their site, and it has caused many to think that Google might be using this data exclusively like many third party ad providers do theirs.

However, this statement has not been accepted by Google, and their reps and other parties have informed us that this is not currently the case, (so conspiracy theorists can rest, for now). Still, it seems like the logical next step if Google is going to be selling their product, and many people have said that the answers they receive from Google on this subject are vague at best.

Face it, Google has changed. The data is valuable, and they need to generate revenue beyond AdWords. Hey, call me a cynic, but it just seems like the path that Google is taking, regardless of what Google tells me. I mean, really, who’s going to pay $150k when 10-20% of the keyword data is missing!?

And as for user privacy, consumers tend to complain more about targeted advertising, like remarketing perhaps, not SEO results. Ironically for PPC – “If you choose to click on an ad appearing on our search results page, your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

So where’s that valued privacy now?

Richard Fergie, Consultant at Reform says…

Yes, you are a cynic. As far as I know, it’s all speculation and conspiracy theory at best.

Firstly, I think it is important to be clear that Google *could* do everything that Niall is talking about; there is no technical barrier to them operating an exclusive web analytics service in this way. My argument is not that Google can’t, but that Google won’t.

What will Google gain from this? If this change increases uptake of their premium analytics product so that it grows to twice the size of Omniture it will increase Google’s revenues by only 2% (based on 2010 figures).

Not the type of return shareholders are looking for.

2% at Google’s scale is still a lot of money but I think this reward is not worth the anti-trust risk for Google. Google are already walking a fine line in the anti-trust courts; I say that using their dominance in search to help them dominate the premium web analytics space will put them so far on the wrong side of the line that the US Government will have to take action.

So what is the real reason why Google have made this change? I genuinely believe that they are doing it to protect user data. Not because they care about user privacy but because user data is being used to compete with Google in the online advertising space.

Google Remarketing is an excellent retargeting solution but it is nowhere near being the best in the space. Giving these ad networks additional data in the form of the user’s search query makes their targeting even more efficient and harder to compete with. Google can reduce the effectiveness of their competition and gain brownie points with organisations who care about user privacy – win/win.

So who is right?

Only time will tell (though at this moment Google have claimed that the data will currently NOT be added to Google Analytics Premium). In the mean time, this surely provides an opportunity for innovation and development within the SEO industry.

Every business in every industry suffers setbacks at some point, and from an SEO practitioner point of view, this certainly feels like a step backwards for SEOs that analyse keyword data as a key sign of the overall project’s value.

However, workarounds will be developed, new KPIs will emerge, and the industry will continue to grow. This isn’t the first time data has been closed off, and presumably it won’t be the last.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

To App Or Not To App? The rise and rise of mobile

October 31st, 2011

Where is your mobile right now? Are you using it to read this blog? Are you looking at an app? Are you browsing a web page? Are you on a call? Are you texting? Is it on the table next to you?  Has your five year old got their hands on it? When did you last let your mobile out of your site for more than two minutes? How many of us take our mobiles to the bathroom with us? How many of us will actually happily let another person use our mobile and not check it upon its return? Wherever your mobile is right now it can’t be denied that we have become entirely dependent upon the device. And yet brand and businesses have yet to capitalise on this.

Is it safe to say mobile apps are currently the way to go or should businesses and brands spend extra building an efficient optimized mobile site? Are we going to see mobile web take over apps down the line? Probably, yes, however apps seem to be where the hearts of the purse holders are right now.

So what do the numbers look like? Nielsen published data showing that 36% of US mobile consumers have smartphones, and ComScore research shows that the average mobile in the US has 34 apps with an average of only four used daily. App downloaders with Apple iOS and Android OS smartphones have more applications on their mobile phones than those with other kinds of smartphones, with an average of 48 apps on iPhones and 35 apps on Android phones.

There are positives for both apps and mobile websites. The latter offer a wider customer reach as they aren’t as phone model specific, and the barriers to use are lower as customers aren’t required to download anything. A mobile-optimised site also often allows more search functionality and more scope for being unrestrained in terms of design. It is also arguably easier to make relevant changes and updates whenever you like on a mobile website.

The advantages of having an app are bedded in the fact that the iPhone and smartphones are dominating the mobile internet space currently. An app is more appealing to iPhone and smartphone owners, and with the location based services available these apps provide fantastic visibility for the brand. Apps can redefine usability and interaction on mobile phones; act as a container for traditional content such as videos or games; provide an economical avenue for additional marketing exposure; and be a direct connection to festival goers (for example), keeping them informed and up-to-date with schedules, announcements, and alerts.

With the mobile industry heading towards mobile web and with generic top level domains (GTLDs) fast approaching surely it is going to change the way we discover and experience brands via our mobile.  The app v mobile website argument will continue to rumble on. What’s important is to look closely at your customers before making any decisions. Which is more appealing to them? At Reform we can advise your business on which option is the best for you. We don’t just tell you to build one but prove to you with research which is best for your business or brand.

Blog post by Anthony Dobson, Business Development Executive at Reform

Gamification strategies are now a key part of UX and customer engagement – ignore this and your brand will suffer

September 30th, 2011

Social media is a game. Some people (like me) don’t get that at first. Or maybe in the early days social platforms relied very much on early adopters who were happy just making friends (and maybe making out with them) via social. In the last twelve months however, engagement, challenges, rewards badges you can virtually gift etc, have tuned me into the fun. I find myself immersed in a world of fans, followers, circles, news feeds and apps, and all that alongside my Klout perks, beta test invitations and the micro affiliate cash I can get for simply recommending a product or service to my followers. The power that rewards can leverage to an online brand strategy is awesome. See the overnight success of Badgeville, and the adoption of behaviour analytics as a basket of key metrics in the measurement of a brand’s power to engage customer loyalty meaningfully.

Simply organising your social media life, identifying and connecting with the people that matter to you emotionally brings immeasurable pleasure. As does listening and advocating those that you find thought-provoking and that you can learn stuff from, dipping into the musings of others you know it’s good to keep tabs on, and finding those people you perhaps knew long time ago when you had a different set of priorities that now keep you connected to a shared past. This emotional payback through connectivity is an intrinsic motivational driver to the key engagement piece, and is why I argue that, although I can see a world when Facebook is the suburbs with new and innovative social urban conurbations emerging, social experience utilising technologies is here to stay.

Games for Brands, a conference on gamification, is being held in London on the 27th of October and will be the first mover in what is set to become the new social media. A quick skim read of the list of keynote speakers sees representatives of the UK’s major broadcasters, agencies, and games developer communities, as well as the academics and social entrepreneurs. Harnessing the power of gamification and utilising it is going to be exciting and will be another step-changing crossroads in the incredible journey that digital is affording the marcomms sector. Bring it on!

If you would like to discuss your social strategy and the implications and opportunities that gamification represents, please contact Reform.

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-executive director at Reform.

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

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

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