Archive for the ‘SEO’ Category

Analysing Google Search By Image & Google Instant Pages

June 22nd, 2011

Last week Google instituted two new additions that span across regular and image search results, first “Google Instant Pages”, geared at making experience online faster for users and an update to Google image search, known as “Google Search by Image”, which allows for the user to drag and drop an image in the Image search bar without entering text and thus search for related images. This could also be done through a right click on a Chrome or a Firefox plugin (sorry Explorer).

Previously this was available through TinEye, yet Google has pushed image search further than TinEye since Google provides both text and search results that suggest what you’re looking for while TinEye only returns images. Upon entering these hybrid results, you can continue to drag and drop images or search for text results.

However, overall, it does look like Google’s results are varied. Google relies heavily on colours and the general shape of the image presented, plus proportions of what’s shown in the image – along with traditional factors such as text around the image, image file, etc.

Say you put in a picture of one of my favorite actors, Jack Nicholson. Not only does Google Search by Image identify that the image is Jack Nicholson but it returns pictures all throughout Jack’s life to help me decide which picture I’d like. It also provides me with the imdb profile for Jack as well as his Wikipedia page, if I’d like to learn more about him. These two results are taken from the natural results for the term “Jack Nicholson” followed by various images, then single image results where the corresponding page is listed.

jack nicholson

The algorithm for the image itself, though, seems to pick up the black background and I’m wondering if this matters for pictures of people that are not celebrities. To test this theory, I dragged in a picture of me looking smug at a friend of mine’s wedding.

matt-dorville

As you can see Google has picked up the black of my coat as well as the very white light around me to believe that these photos of people with dark clothing and a white background are more pictures of me. Though there are pictures of me throughout the internet, Google couldn’t figure out it was me in the picture (strange though, since I do consistently throw a smug look). Instead it focused on color, the fact that I was standing (all the photos show the subject standing straight) and my focus is directed at the camera (which Google only picks up on somewhat). Probably the most embarrassing part of this is that a majority of the selection are, in fact, women.

Another significant change that Google instituted is “Google Instant Pages” on their main algorithm. After Google’s recent commercials with Chrome indicated, the speed of the browser to opening pages has been put to the utmost importance. They have recently found a way to eliminate load time of a page by pre-rendering the top result. Since Google has faith that you will choose their number one option the page automatically loads, taking out wait time. However, Google Instant Pages only works when it’s almost entirely certain that it knows what you’re looking for, so not to waste bandwidth. When Google is very certain it knows where you want to go (such as when you enter a big brand name), it pre-renders the pages, allowing the load time for the page to be much quicker. Time will tell how efficient this is for sites that change content frequently.

These two additions have changed search by instituting search by image and having the search engine prerender a page. It’s also probably not a coincidence that this update is close to the appearance of Chrome books, which promises a faster experience. Though this recent addition does look a lot better than Google Wave, we’ll have to wait to see how these additions are accepted by users in the future.

Search engine marketing in Indonesia – International search review issue number 6

June 10th, 2011

This week, Reform has published the sixth installment in our “International Search Review” series. After reviewing India, South Korea, Russia, Japan and China we have decided to place a focus on Southeast Asia, starting with the fourth most populated country in the world, Indonesia.

Although internet penetration in Indonesia is only at 14.2%, with 34,850,920 users overall, the rise in mobile search and social media has lead to a lot of investors looking at Indonesia in terms of growth potential. Smartphones have become increasingly popular in this country, with some analysts predicting a possible leapfrog in technology, where users would skip using a computer in favour of mobile technology. In this International Search Review, we investigate Indonesia’s market potential in search, mobile search and social networking.

Key stats and findings to take from our review of Indonesia include:

• Poor quality of broadband and a low internet penetration may contribute to a rise in smartphone sales and a subsequent increase in mobile search.
• With 95% of the search queries, Google controls the vast majority of Indonesia’s search market.
• While Google does better in Indonesia’s search market than Yahoo!, Yahoo! does better than Google in the mobile market, a figure that becomes more important as smartphone sales increase.
• Indonesia is the second largest user of Facebook in the world, clocking in with over 34 million users.

To find out more about the search market landscape in Indonesia, download a copy of the review here – and let us know any comments or feedback that you might have. And view past issues of the International Search here. 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

Benefits of on-site search

June 9th, 2011

On-site search. It’s a feature found on almost every e-commerce website, and yet for years retailers have largely completely ignored its benefits.

Traditionally returning irrelevant results, for most e-commerce departments this function has not been a priority. Instead they have focused on actions such as SEO and web page conversion optimisation. Recent data, however, suggests that this is likely to change over the coming months.

NMA recently published an article to this effect, saying that “research shows that at least 50% of visitors want to use the search function”. “Last October, FACT – Finder conducted research using eye-tracker technology to take a closer look at on-site user behaviour, and 80% of the British people surveyed went as far as saying search boxes should be more prominent on the page”. With such a large percentage of people actively seeking an on-site search box, improving this feature is bound to move up the priority list for e-commerce managers.

Getting the placement of the on-site search functionality right, and making sure that it returns relevant results, will certainty help to improve on-site conversion. However, there is another aspect of this feature that should also be looked at.

In most cases data on what is being searched for is readily available via a sites CMS. Analysing and using this data properly is another way for e-commerce teams to improve on-site conversion. Looking at what keywords are currently being searched for can not only help websites to better place their products on site, but can also help to inform what is being looked for by the consumer. If there are a high number of searches for a certain type of product but the sales are generally quite low, then there should be an immediate red flag that something is not working. Is there enough stock for this product? Is the style, colour and sizing all that it could be? Analysing this can help improve the site owner’s placement of products as well as help to inform future stock orders.

So, with demand for a quality search function growing, and with the clear benefits that can be gained from analysing the data this feature produces, surely this will become a priority for all ecommerce websites?

Blog post by Mike Jennings Director at Reform

How businesses should (or shouldn’t) react to Google’s latest update

May 20th, 2011

SEO has come a long way in the past decade, with companies focusing on search as a key component of their digital marketing strategy. And while you can probably guess I would be in the position to say such a thing, the truth is that SEO can indeed make or break a business on the web, leveling the playing field in this day and age between big names and local startups.

Companies around the world have started to use a good portion of their overall marketing resource based on how they perform in search. This is great, but it seems to me as still less of a “plan to action”, and more of a “knee jerk reaction”. The recent Google Panda / Farmer update was a major example of this – with companies “reacting” left and right wondering what they did wrong. While we love the fact that in today’s marketplace, many businesses are watching their search engine marketing performance much more closely – unfortunately, many are also believing everything they hear! So yes, SEO has indeed come a long way – and companies won’t fall for just anything, but there are certainly are still a fair bit of misconceptions going around the industry.

One recent example was the Overstock.com SEO Spam incident that you may have heard about on both the major news sites like CNN, or industry sites such as Search Engine Land where the major US retailer was penalised in the Google algorithm – supposedly (but this reason was never fully confirmed) for having a link building strategy that consisted of bulk .edu links. Weeks later, Overstock itself issued a statement saying that they had made the fixes Google required and sure enough they were back in the index – and all was well.

Some people simply assumed that Overstock had simply fixed things up, while some people complained that it was unfair that the big companies get such an advantage and got reinstated (not bothering to check why), while most companies only remembered the first part of the Overstock story, spending the time since chasing their SEO team, consultant or agency about some other new story that made the rounds in the industry or mainstream press. Perhaps direct competitors did look a bit closer at the overall situation, but we cannot confirm this, and thats not the issue here anyway.

Either way, it seemed like no one from any of the groups above double checked the story. If Google says no to bulk link acquisition and Overstock got banned from Google, does that mean Overstock’s bulk link acquisition got them in trouble? No. It was a poor misconception, an assumption that A+B=C. Clients should expect more from an agency, consultant or in house team, especially when monitoring competitor activity. We in this industry should be looking at the full answer and not taking other people’s word all the time. The EDU links by the way are still quite active in many places (example: http://www.alumni.ncsu.edu/s/1209/index.aspx?sid=1209&gid=1&pgid=632) – and so what changed then? Well, on the pages that got penalised for generic terms such as “living room furniture” – Overstock.com had pop-up/expandable text coded within the tags of their page. The pop-up text was filled with keywords and was in Google’s cache and visible to text browsers (screenshot of this example below).

The text strategy was reported by a competitor and got penalised shortly after. Yet, when Overstock was allowed back in, what changed? The links stayed, yet the hidden text is no longer there. Could this have been the “real” reason why the penalty was imposed in the first place?

No one will know for sure, but the point is that many companies will go by what they hear/read and that there are still many misconceptions about SEO as a whole. Here at Reform we make sure we try to not just throw some excuse about why sites perform the way that they do, but examine closer into it and find out what the real reason may be – instead of a “one size fits all” answer. With this extra insight and custom approach to your overall digital marketing strategy, SEO can become more of a natural approach, rather than a mystery. Not necessarily the wrong answer or right answer, but exploring multiple answers and possibilities and avoiding any potential misconceptions is key to any project we take on.

The ‘super-injunction phenomenon’ – is your digital reputation under attack?

May 11th, 2011

It can take years for a celebrity to build their reputation, but it can all be undone with one tweet.

Whether that tweet is written by the celebrity or not, the nature of the beast is that this tweet can spread so quickly that it very soon becomes common knowledge and, to all intents and purposes, fact.

So, how can celebrities manage their reputation online? Who is responsible for making sure that the image they are creating for themselves in the public eye is reflected online?

Who is responsible for reputation management?
There are two key people who need to be involved in both creating and managing a reputation – the celebrity themself and their management team. They both need to share a clear strategy on how they are going to build and maintain this reputation both on and offline.

Celebrities are brands and brands are alive 24/7. People don’t stop talking about you on Twitter or Facebook outside of office hours, which means that these kinds if channels need to be monitored 24 hours a day. Just like a celebrity can’t choose whether to be famous or not when they wake up in the morning, they also need to be in ‘celebrity mode’ online, constantly building their brand. If they don’t, they risk undoing all their hard work.

The other party who needs to be involved is the celebrity’s management team. I am constantly terrified at the lack of time and investment that agents, PRs and publicists put into their celebrities’ digital presence. I understand that this is a whole new world with different rules, but online reputation management is not a choice anymore, it is an essential part of their job.

So, to all celebrities and their management teams, my advice is this.

1. Take it seriously
If your brand comes under a cyber attack – a wave of negative publicity – it is very often too late to limit the damage. Tweets are in the public domain forever and it is impossible to ask everyone to remove their posts.

Reputations can evaporate in seconds. The speed in which this gossip spreads is astonishing. It is human nature to gossip and all Twitter does is give people an opportunity to listen and participate in it on a massive scale.

2. Have a plan – the best form of defense is continued preparation
Most of us invest in software and technology to protect the things we love the most – smoke detectors, burglar alarms and virus protection. If you have a brand or reputation that is worth saving then you need to invest in someone to develop a plan on how you might manage an attack on your reputation and to be able to respond intelligently 24/7. They need to live and breathe social media and have a true understanding of what the celebrity is trying to achieve.

3. Start NOW

Blog post by Rosie Sayers, Strategy Director at Reform

Google testing a redesigned search results page for US search users

May 7th, 2011

In the U.S. Google users are seeing a different look and feel to their search results page. This is the latest of several “tests” on Google.com – such as some users seeing “Google Voice Search” earlier this week.

New Google Search Result Test - May 2011

As seen above (click the image to see a full size version) – the search results page has more white space, a sort of muted colour tone, and PPC ads are not as obvious as before, since the colour of the PPC ads shaded much lighter.

Several users will notice the “cache” option has been removed from Google, much to the chagrin of SEO’s and users who want to check out a page before it loads in its entirety. However, they have replaced this from a visual standpoint, with “Google preview” – though this shows a page that one can hardly delve much information from.

Each result is also split by a dotted line, so that one can see where result one ends and two begins. And there is space between the result link and the snippet below. Overall, many people are guessing that this spacing below and above the title / link text may be a space for Google to later put their “+1″ button and various other social networking based aspects.

Last but not least, the results are not underlined anymore, which also has received mixed reactions. Unlike the recent layout changes on Google, this seems a bit more drastic. Several sites covered the story immediately with many users reacting to the change so shocked, that they thought it was a virus!

Let us know what you think.

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.

Google Instant Suggestions Misleading Users And Businesses Alike

March 23rd, 2011

This isn’t exactly recent news, and maybe more along the lines of criticism. But so many clients and people in the industry have referred to it that we had to take a closer look.

It has been six months since Google Instant officially became part of the default search results in the US (and since then in some other countries too), and actually there is an interesting transcript of a presentation at SMX in New York that touches base on this.

But that’s more of a side note. What I want to talk about here is that when people type in a query and see keyword or brand variations suggested, they think that these are the top terms people are querying based on the main term. For example, if you look for “Reform Digital”, Google will suggest “Reform Digital Limited” or “Reform Digital SEO” or “Reform Digital London”. Fair enough. Google Instant will often suggest up to five terms as you conduct your search, and they are often some of the top variations of the query; however that is not always the case and they don’t appear in any particular order.

A recent test, based on data from different clients and companies that we work with, as well as Google data, showed that the suggested terms were actually a selection of five key terms found in what Google considered to be the top ten queries around a term. From as long ago as 2006 you could go to a URL on which Google was testing what was then known as “Google Suggest”, where they used estimates of Google impressions (perhaps query estimates?), which differ by market. Google then took the top ten variations that it sees in terms of impressions and lists them out. Have a look at the following URL which we generated using the term “mobile phone” as an example, to see what we’re talking about http://www.google.co.uk/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=mobile%20phone (or http://www.google.com/complete/search?output=toolbar&q=mobile%20phone if you want to see the US variations). This kind of query can be done with any term to see what terms Google Suggest would return (ie first four or five listed on the page) and to see what the other contenders are (based on query totals next to most terms).

So what we saw is that Google picks the five search terms that it’s going to show via various parameters, but to have a decent chance of being listed amongst those five, you need to at least be in its list of the top ten (or know how to automate queries etc). In terms of timings, we saw that Google Instant’s suggestions don’t respond immediately to changes in impression volumes, there is some delay. When checking for AT&T following the announcement that they were buying T-Mobile at the weekend, it wasn’t until late on Monday that a T-Mobile variation appeared in the list of top ten key terms, and even then there was no “impression total” next to it (it’s the only keyword suggestion with no data on that above URL).

Or, for another example, for the term “Reform” (including the space, as if you were going to add another word), Google’s top ten list includes the term “Reform Digital”, and it actually now gets the most queries of the group. But as a newer addition to the list, it’s not one of the five being suggested when you search in Google proper.

So Google Suggest is definitely sensitive to a combination of historic data and trends, and, like everything else on Google, it’s subject to manipulation. Website owners have looked at getting users to query variations to make their business look cleaner, for example “Business Name scam” is a common suggestion. Tools such as Amazon Mechanical Turk – where users are paid very small amounts to do basic tasks such as “like” or tweet something – have also been used by sites in the past to try and manipulate the results, as have several other methods of pushing query data.

This issue comes into play when looking at brand reputation. What if one of the ten terms was some other negative comment about your company? How can we get a more positive variation up there in its place? Of course, if all five of Google’s suggestions were negative, you probably have other problems!

Blog post by Niall Madden, Search Director of Reform

Update: “Scam” variations of a keyword are now blacklisted in Google Instant – so… “Business Name scam” won’t reveal a drop down. Nor does it appear in the URL that lists the 10 keyword variations. However, some brand names still have the “scams” variation, for now.

The Oscar Prediction: Why We Were Wrong

March 9th, 2011

A couple weeks ago we did a short Oscar blog wondering if the new Oscar watch created by Google could accurately predict the Oscars. We took the data given by Google and localized it, limiting it to Los Angeles county. Our assumption was that voters who were preparing to vote during this time would go online and look at the film’s website or they would do some research on the film they were planning on voting for. We predicted, based on this data, that The Social Network would win. We were wrong.

Why were we wrong? Was it because The King’s Speech was a better movie? Is it because of Harvey Weinstein’s power and influence or is it because the Academy Awards are just political? The fault probably lied in our assumption. Most likely since Academy Awards voters get a free dvd of the films they didn’t need to search for the movie to watch them in the theatres and possibly they didn’t go to their computers at all for research.

But what does this prove? That while the data compiled for Google can show a trend in a specific area, it cannot determine a smaller base of voters on the assumption that they may go online. Was it a longshot that we could pick the winner? Yes, but it was fun and we’re sometimes geeks for data and we were intrigued. Although it didn’t go as well as our previous prediction, it was still an interesting experiment that had us on the edge of our seats for an otherwise drab awards show.

Can Social Media and Sports Play Well Together?

February 24th, 2011

The previous week the English Premier League warned footballers that tweets, blogs and entries on Facebook that are deemed improper by “bringing the game into disrepute, or are threatening, abusive, indecent or insulting may lead to disciplinary action.”

This is following a £16,000 fine by Liverpool’s Ryan Babel after he posted a photoshopped photo of Howard Webb, the referee whose calls the Liverpool striker didn’t agree with, wearing a Manchester United shirt.  Babel apologized soon after the post, stating it was “just an emotional reaction after losing an important game.”

Yet this raises the question of is social media and sports able to play nicely? An increasing amount of fines have been levied to sports superstars with many superstars citing that they use it because they don’t enjoy how media outlets portray them and, on twitter, they can show their true character.

Though, many sports organisations are concerned about this character and rules on social media have become increasingly stringent. And many would say this is a correct step since athletes around the world have shown great carelessness in their social media. Athletes have been fined for tweeting during a game, commenting about their team’s performance, even for blaming God after missing a touchdown catch. Australian Rules Football players have even used it to find women…a tactic that backfired when one woman started posting pictures of footballers naked on her site.

Yet Twitter is growing in the sports world. Last season in the NFL draft two teams posted their picks on twitter before announcing them to the commissioner. Also more sports stars, from golf to swimming to FA football, are joining twitter and gaining massive followers, undoubtedly changing relations between the sports star and the fan. But whether players will conform to the increasingly strict rules brought by sporting organisations is another matter. Ryan Babel’s twitter and Google search spiked as news of the Liverpool striker’s fine hit the web. Seems like £16,000 buys a good amount of PR for the young man.

Blog posted by Matt Dorville, SEO Strategist at Reform

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