Some of the biggest names in search are on the judging panel which makes being shortlisted even more prestigious.

• Bas van den Beld, Founder, State of Search
• Dave Coplin, Director of Search, Consumer and Online UK, Microsoft
• Nick Garner, Head of Search, Unibet
• Richard Gregory, Chief Operations Officer, Latitude & UK Chair, SEMPO
• Neil Hardy, Head of e-commerce, Midcounties Co-operative
• Peter Jordan, Strategic Search Manager, government Digital Service
• Judith Lewis, Head of Search, Beyond
• Philip Miles, UK Director for Agencies, Google UK
• James Murray, Marketing and Research Analyst, Hitwise UK
• Jon Myers, Director, Account Management UK and Ireland, Yahoo!
• Peter Young, Head of SEO, Brilliant Media

The awards will be presented at an awards dinner at the Emirate Stadium, on the evening of Thursday 3 November 2011, so fingers crossed until then!

]]> http://www.upstreamconnections.com/blog/2011/09/28/uk-search-awards-we-have-been-shortlisted/feed/ 0 http://www.upstreamconnections.com/blog/2011/09/16/google-api-launch/ http://www.upstreamconnections.com/blog/2011/09/16/google-api-launch/#comments Fri, 16 Sep 2011 08:00:22 +0000 Rhys http://www.upstreamconnections.com/blog/?p=509 So yesterday Google began to open up the real potential of Google+ with a newly released API allowing third party development. This is Google stepping it up a gear and now the real development can begin!

For those of you who don’t know what an API is, it is short for Application Programming Interface. Basically it allows third parties to develop programmes that can interact with the host, in this case Google+. Some you may be familiar with are Klout for twitter and Farmville on Facebook, these are developed by separate companies but use the information from the host.

The Google+ API opens the door for initial development for companies such as Hootsuite and Sprout Social. They rely on the API for their product and it will become a race to see who can get the best Google+ integration.

This is great for anyone who uses any kind of social media engagement tool.

However it is not as great as it sounds. Yet. Currently the API is limited to basic user information and does not include circles. The other main drawback is that it is a read only API which means that it is not possible to post from any third party app yet. It has been announced by Google on their blog that there will be further developments and I would speculate that the inclusion of circles will come alongside the ability to post as it is the next logical step.

We are all familiar with third party applications whether you know it or not. The authorisation process is the same as on every other network that is out there. See below for an example of an authorisation notification:

How does this affect you business?

Well currently it doesn’t really, but it is a great sign that after only 3 months of limited release there is an API out there. Google mean business this time and are doing everything they can to keep the buzz alive. That’s THE buzz not Buzz, because we all know how well that went. The developers are the best people to keep interested and an API is basically cat nip for them.

It will be great if there is a solid base of apps that can be used with Google+ when the business pages are finally released, it will make the platform far easier to capitalise on.

So Google are taking another punt at becoming a social media superpower, let’s hope for their sake it pays off and has more success than Buzz! Anyway, we are seeing a hybrid between Facebook and Twitter. You can follow anyone and anyone can follow you but you don’t have to be mutual friends like you would on Facebook it is more of a Twitter way of “friending”. The major selling point that Google have gone for is a simple usability and fantastic privacy settings and I have to say, they have done a fantastic job of it. But before you run off to sign up, it is currently invite only and there is a distinct lack of business pages. This is because currently its still in testing so only the likes of Ford and Mashable have pages.

It is now becoming clear though that Google+ can help your rankings, the basic concept is around social search. Google+ has a “like” feature called +1, this can be done on any page that has the button embedded in it. In this sense it is similar to Facebook, however Goolge+ is of course owned by the biggest search engine in the world and what sense would it make if the giant didn’t incorporate their +1s into the search algorithm? None. Which is exactly why they have.

From what we have seen so far is that as soon as someone you follow on Google+ +1s a page then that will show up for you on the first page for any related search. An example of this is a search for “search news” returns the top news sites on the first page but also as I follow Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Land and he has shared their page it comes up on page 1 with his endorsement shown below.

The search term was "search news"

It will be very interesting to see if +1s from non friends will affect the rankings. I think it is a given that they will affect the rankings but the interesting part will be how big the effect actually is. What do you think and are you on Google+ yet?

This is an interesting idea from Google Labs, now I know by now the question you are all asking is “yes but how does this affect me?”. This is a great point and one we are yet to know the answer to, will the faster pages be given priority for rankings? Frankly like most things Google this is an enigma to us at the moment and only time will tell.

The tool is extremely easy to use just put in the page URL and it will tell you how fast the page is and then areas to optimise in order to make it quicker, this is set out in a nice traffic light system with High priority as red, Medium priority as yellow and Low priority are green. It also gives you a nice pat on the back for any rules that you are adhering to, they come up in grey.

Page speed analysis of BBC News

Why would Google do this if it wasn’t going to affect rankings?

Well the long and the short of it is that the quicker your internet experience the more pages you can view in a specific time and the more adverts you can click. This is all money in the pocket for the guys at Google.

Is this something that you would take into consideration now or will you wait and see what happens with the rankings before you try it?

If you don’t use supermarket loyalty cards, are opposed to the idea of identity cards and balk at the size and scope of the police DNA database, think before you click that “search” button…

Google, which has an approximate 90% share of the UK search market, is working harder than ever to profile its users and their (read “your”) online behaviour in order to… err… well who really knows?

Google is a highly secretive company and is not fond of sharing the secrets which are both a source and a result of their huge competitive advantage.

All of this leads to a lot of speculation as to what is going on in the dark, secret chambers of the Googleplex. Well, technically they are more likely to be bright, glass-walled flexible feng shui approved work spaces with strewn with primary-coloured space hoppers, flowers and bowls of fresh fruit, but I digress; observers and regular internet users have noticed a clear trend towards the collection of more and more data for unqualified purposes.

Before you wrap tinfoil around your head, encode all of your emails and start leaving comments on YouTube videos, remember Google’s fabled motto: ‘Don’t Be Evil.’ A company with a motto like that couldn’t be evil, right?
Let’s consider some of the evidence.

Google Toolbar. Before the advent of personalised browsing there was the Google toolbar. If you are reading an SEO company blog, chances are you have the Google toolbar across the top of your browser. Google Toolbar gives you easy access to your gmail (more of that later), bookmarks (why use your browser’s bookmark function when Google’s is 5cm closer and you can take your bookmarks with you?), spell check, awesome translation tool, PageRank (how we’ll miss you when you go) and a wide variety of search options.

In return, Google gets your data.

What sites do you visit? How do you browse? What services do you use? How long do you spend on a site? Even if you are not logged in to any Google account, the toolbar sends this data to… well… somewhere.

Google Chrome is the next step along from the Google Toolbar. Another good tool for the user and another great source of browsing data for Google. But we still prefer Firefox in the office.

Gmail offers us loads of free storage. So we store loads of private, personal things with Gmail. You receive targeted messages from advertisers alongside your private messages.

This is from Gmail’s privacy page:

When you use Gmail, Google’s servers automatically record certain information about your use of Gmail. Similar to other web services, Google records information such as account activity (including storage usage, number of log-ins), data displayed or clicked on (including UI elements, ads, links); and other log information (including browser type, IP-address, date and time of access, cookie ID, and referrer URL).

Google Analytics. Why would Google provide a service that is really worth thousands of Pounds for free? Adding Analytics code to your pages allows Google to learn a huge amount about how people really interact with your content. It’s not hard to see the logic behind this one – all of those interactions that Google could not capture through the toolbar or its own services are trackable from the website end as opposed to the user end. Great stuff!

But how is the data being used? Google ain’t sharing.

So is Google being evil? Depending on your definition of ‘evil’, probably not; but who really knows? What we do know is that they are collecting a huge amount of information about how people use the internet and using that information to offer users better services and shareholders better value.

There is a recurring theme in the way that Google approaches these interactions. Much like supermarkets with their loyalty cards, Google offers something of value for no financial cost, asking only for your data in return. Personally,
I’m happy to make this deal most of the time, but not always.

The recent introduction of personalised results for everyone, whether signed in to a Google account or not, feels like the crossing of some sort of intangible line. Of course, all of Google’s data hoarding has been leading to this: search remains Google’s core product and personalised results are a logical next step to improve experience and create a further separation from competitors (who, it must be said, don’t have the best history of “not being evil”).

You can see Google’s announcement of that service here.

The biggest annoyance with this – and what has concerned some observers – is that the service is an opt-out service as opposed to an opt-in service. So my search results are being “personalised” according to websites that I have visited before? Great. Maybe I don’t want to revisit the sites that I have already seen. This reduces the quality of my “personalised” search results – the opposite of Google’s intention.

Google gives the impression of being a company with a well-tuned moral compass and I am not suggesting that anything else is true. Why would they use all of this harvested data for anything other than providing the best service possible and therefore making money and therefore becoming an even ‘better’ company. And the services that they offer are consistently excellent.

This said, just because a company has no malevolent intentions for all of the data that it holds, does that mean that every single individual within the company is equally as well-intentioned? Who knows.

Do most internet users know how to delete a cookie? Probably not. Would most internet users feel a little bit differently about Google if they knew just how much data the big G was storing? And, due to secure backups, that some of the data is effectively “undeletable”?

Pass the tinfoil…

Alex can’t wait to see you there!

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!)

“In these uncertain economic times…”

Are you fed up with hearing that yet? There is nothing uncertain about it; we are in a recession.

So, is it time to chop your marketing budget, or to invest more in marketing to strengthen your claim to the business that is out there to be won?

I am a marketing guy and therefore you can probably guess what my opinion will be. But I do have evidence… honest! At Upstream Connections (the SEO and Internet Marketing company where I work), we have not stopped growing in the last 12 months and let me tell you how: marketing. And, of course, being great at what we do.

The big buzzword of the moment is “engagement” (thank goodness; “synergy” was getting tired) and “engagement” is a great place to start thinking about how to market your company in a recession. On a local level, networking groups are a great way to meet real life human beings and boost your profile. We are repeatedly told that the best kind of engagement is “a conversation with your prospects”. Imagine having a real conversation; that’s what networking groups like the BHCC and CADIA offer.

Digitally, the equivalent is business networking sites like LinkedIn and Ecademy, where you can spread your net much further afield. One great benefit of finding people through these sites is that there is no travelling involved and the time commitment is smaller. The downside is that you often don’t meet your prospect face to face.

By networking, you will make yourself visible to a small batch of people at a time. At Upstream Connections, we firmly believe that you should be visible to as many people as possible, all of the time and Search Engine Optimisation is the best way to make that happen. By ranking well in Google for the searches that reflect your business you give your prospects a quick and easy way to find you 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

If you are worried that your website itself isn’t up to scratch, we provide all SEO clients with a free, review of their website in the first month of work. For most businesses, basic is best.

These are hard times for sure, but there is still plenty of new business to be had. The best way to get those enquiries is to push your marketing in the most cost-effective way possible and forge the relationships that will see your business blossom when times are better.

Come and visit us at stand 20, upstairs the the Hilton London Metropole on September 7th-9th to chat SEO, social media and online strategy. We work with a number of Europe and the world’s leading language training companies and have achieved some striking results over the past six years for brands including Linguaphone, International House, Enforex, ESL, Cactus and many more.

If you would like to book in some face to face time with one of our team, drop us a line in advance and we can schedule a meeting in either at or around the event. If you are a language school with a website that you suspect could be performing better, please send us a link to your site so we can have a look through before the event and offer some expert feedback.

For more about the event, check out the website here.

See you at the fair!