We’ll be at StudyWorld London 2009 from the 7th to the 9th of September this year, spreading the good word of SEO to language schools across the world. You can find more information on the event here (PDF).

Alex can’t wait to see you there!

A couple of weeks back I posted about Goofram, a site which takes both Google and Wolfram Alpha search results and places them side by side. Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi came up with a somewhat similar idea, but gave it an experimental ‘blind taste test’ twist: display search results from Google, Bing and Yahoo on the same page – but don’t give the user any clues as to which one is which – and let them choose which results were the most relevant. Try it for yourself.

8 weeks later and he’s posted some results on his blog, and as somebody who works a lot with Google and thought that Bing wouldn’t stand a chance against the almighty yardstick of search, I was a little surprised by the results.

From 559,239 search queries, the experiment showed that Google was, perhaps unsurprisingly, the top choice as the engine that gave the best results, with 41% of the vote. But following closely behind were Bing at 31% and Yahoo at 28%. I was relieved to learn that I wasn’t the only one surprised that Google’s results had not wooed the lion’s share of searchers: even users who were consciously trying to pick Google from the available results were left wondering how they had ‘accidentally’ chosen Bing.

So, does this spell the end of an era as Google is slowly usurped by search competitors? Well, the answer is… no. Google is still the first choice for those out there who do know which one they’re choosing, but it just goes to show that the alternatives probably aren’t that far behind. The influential Joy Of Tech continues to poke fun at the newly-forged Bing/Yahoo partnership, but for a webcomic that is fundamentally a four-panel leadup to an anti-Microsoft gag, that’s hardly surprising.

In his conclusions so far about the experiment, Kordahi does mention the surprise aspect of the results:

Many were surprised that Google wasn’t always their choice. There were many instances of surprise that Google wasn’t as superior as they thought it was.

Still, “hang on, I’ll Bing it” just doesn’t have the same ring to it…

So Rupert Murdoch has finally confirmed the rumours that have been circulating in recent months: his newspaper websites are no longer going to be free to use. This announcement comes on the back of a bad year for News International, which has seen advertising revenues plunge and tough times online as users desert MySpace for the less spammy climes of Facebook.

Murdoch’s announcement is a significant development in the world of online news and, if the move proves successful, is likely to be copied very widely, very quickly.

The situation regarding online content provision is finely balanced and has caused huge consternation for newspaper owners in the past decade:

Quality journalism costs money; free news websites lose money. So surely users need to pay for online content?

But the reality is somewhat different. Why would users pay for content in one place, when it is free elsewhere? Buying one newspaper per day is perfectly normal, but our behaviour online is different: we can find the news (through search, blogs, news portals, aggregators, bookmarking sites) or the news can find us (RSS feeds, Google Desktop/Reader, etc). So are you loyal enough to a particular newspaper to pay for their content as opposed to getting it for free elsewhere (The Guardian, for example)?

The truth is that nobody knows. Rupert thinks people will be happy to pay for celebrity scoops at the Sun and News of the World and he could be right, especially if the other red tops follow suit and start charging. But would people really pay to read content at The Times Online when the other broadsheets (and particularly the politically-aligned Telegraph) are still free to view? And what about that perennial thorn in Murdoch’s side, the BBC?

And how long until the general public completely bypass the red tops for celebrity gossip and go direct to source at free sites like TMZ, Popbitch, Perez  Hilton etc?

So many questions!

As an aside, it is interesting to see how some newspaper websites have embraced bookmarking sites. We know of a couple that are using social bookmarking sites extensively to drive visits, a topic we have touched on before. But if there’s one thing the bookmarking sites prove, it is the huge variety of news sources out there and how little loyalty many internet users show. This bodes badly for the paid model.

The exceptions to the rule (or perceived rule) are niche publications that have truly unique content, such as industry publications and, arguably, local papers, although many of these have been slow to adapt and have their online policy dictated from on high.

We all love free stuff, but the situation is increasingly unsustainable. As Techdirt point out in this thought provoking article, old school media outlets feel like Google owes them something because they are profiting from the content providers’ hard endeavours. But the media owners are missing the point; Google makes it’s money from transactional searches, not news searches. The news services they provide are great branding, of course, and helping them to dominate the online landscape, but they are not generating significant revenues.

So, what next for online news? I would guess that eventually Google will start paying some form of subsidy to free news providers in order to avoid a war and keep the quality content coming. The search engine is a success because it provides the right information to people who want it, so logically it would be in their interest to keep the quality information coming. Maybe they will provide this subsidy through a new advertising model for news sites. Personally, I can’t see how subscription-based mainstream news websites will prosper.

Or, more accurately, is PR (as in Public Relations) the new PR (as in PageRank)?

The world of SEO has been all aflutter in the last month as Google’s “Vince” update arrived on these shores and shook up search results in many competitive industries.

The effect on search results has marked a big shift in SEO and online selling. Predictably, this has been at the expense of the little guy and in favour of the bigger fish out there. To cut a long story short, Google now gives more weighting to bigger brands for generic searches like Personal Loans, Hotels, Insurance, etc, etc.

The changes also appear to be filtering down to a wider range of industries.

This printout from Google Analytics shows the effect of the update for one of our own clients, a fashion retailer:

The graph shows volume of traffic generated by high value, generic industry keywords. Notice the expected increase as a result of our SEO work, followed by the explosive spike in early July, soon after the update.

There has been a lot of debate about how Google determines what constitutes a brand and how they calculate this algorithmically. We, as a good SEO company, are running a number of tests at the moment to help smaller brands compete in the new landscape and, of course, to help our larger clients capitalise.

Everyone knows that Google loves links, but they seem to be just one of a number of factors involved in determining what does and what doesn’t pass their brand test. Mentions on social sites are a likely factor, as is brand buzz around the web. This means that more power than ever has been passed to the PR team and means more co-operation than ever between PR and SEO people, which I, for one, welcome.

What do you reckon? Is PR the new PR?

Has the age of link building been and gone?

(If so, will someone please tell the spammers? The flood of SEO company emails in my outlook inbox is reaching epic proportions!)