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!)

My article about marketing through the bad times was published is the local paid daily paper on Tuesday July 14th:

“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.

Whilst we do (and seemingly always will) see Google as our first choice search engine, in the past couple of months we have come to enjoy Wolfram Alpha’s computational search. The two are different yet comparable – whilst Google focuses on results most relevant to your keywords, Wolfram computes an answer to your query based on its own database of knowledge.

So, sometimes you’ll find yourself wanting to use both. For example, if you wanted to know something as specific as the current population of China, Google will give you plenty of sites and pages with information pertaining to the answers, but Wolfram Alpha gives you the data straight away, and as many statistics as it deems relevant (such as population density, average age, life expectancy etc.). Of course, Wolfram is less useful if you’re after something less specific, or something that couldn’t be in its knowledge base, for example if you typed “SEO company Brighton”, Wolfram Alpha can’t help. Yet.

In a way, the difference between the two is as marked as the difference between intelligence and knowledge. Google (the intelligent search) adopts complex algorithmic searches that take myriad factors into consideration before presenting you with what it perceives to be the most relevant results. Wolfram Alpha (the knowledgeable search) parses your keywords and relates them to its own accumulation of facts and figures, and presents the relevant data in both textual and graphical formats.

Between the two, you can usually find what you’re after (and plenty of irrelevant yet interesting material besides); and happily, some clever chap has combined the two into a two-column search mashup, unimaginatively titled Goofram. One query, two pages of results. Convenient.

This September, we will be exhibiting at StudyWorld London, the language industry’s premier event for schools and agents.

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!

Alex and I are both big MJ fans, and were naturally upset by his passing last week. However, Alex and I are also both fans of Google, so it was interesting – if still slightly upsetting – to see what effect Michael’s death had online (besides the setting up of billions of decentralised “RIP Michael Jackson” Facebook groups, of course).

Taking a look at the last 30 days at Google Trends, well, some pretty clear results here:

Such was the increase in search volume (from index 0 to 10 in fewer than 48 hours!), that Google actually interpreted the influx of Jacko-related searches as a malware attack or similar. In fact, by the time I had managed to get to a computer (the news was broken to me midway through a wedding reception – poor form by the DJ, if you ask me), Googling “Michael Jackson” popped up an error message, telling me that my search looked like ‘an automated request from a computer virus or spyware application’. Well excuse me, Google, for wanting more information!

This graph from news.cnet.com shows the surge in Jackson queries in an hourly format:

Interestingly, Google received a massive increase in searches coming from mobile devices – not surprising since most Americans were at work at the time the news was announced – and they also set a record for visits in a single 24-hour period: over 16.4 million unique visitors. And with Michael’s penchant for breaking records, Google’s front page story covering his death was the most popular story to date.

Even at the time of writing – about a week after his passing – 9 of the top 10 bestselling albums in Amazon.co.uk are by Michael Jackson (10 out of 10 on Amazon.com)… his death has put his body of work out there to a new audience in ways I didn’t really expect, and I can only see this as a good thing.

Apologies to anybody reading this who is still suffering from Michael Jackson over-saturation – we just happened to think this was worth blogging. But what celebrity death won’t the media turn into a feeding frenzy these days? RIP Michael!

The Nieman Group at Harvard have done a great write up of The Guardian’s “crowdsourcing” experiment. The newspaper asked their readership to go through MP’s expenses claims and flag anything that looked suspicious, with great results. As of today, for example, we have learned that the average Lib Dem MP claim for gardening expenses is more than double the typical Conservative claim. But this figure may not include moat maintenance claims. The figures are also changing as more data is processed.

Read the article here:

http://www.niemanlab.org/2009/06/four-crowdsourcing-lessons-from-the-guardians-spectacular-expenses-scandal-experiment/

If you want to do your bit for the cause, check out the link here:

http://mps-expenses.guardian.co.uk/

Source: blog.facebook.com

Facebook have decided – some would say at long last – to offer personalised usernames on a first-come-first-served basis from 12:01am EDT (4:01am GMT), linked to the user’s profile via a vanity URL such as http://www.facebook.com/dave.upstream. The only limitations are that only one username is allowed per profile/page, it must be at least 5 characters, and it must be made up only of alphanumeric characters and, if you want, a full stop. Thank the Lord that they’re not allowing counter-productive usernames that proliferate sites when they allow ASCII usernames such as ´¯`°¤.¸.¤…Bøñd. Jåmê§ Bøñd´¯`°¤.¸.¤ , or (L)pÛÑk~PrïÑcꧧ(L) …

So what does this mean? Well, for a start it’s going to be easier to link people to your Facebook profile, so you won’t need to give out your full name in order for people you just met to add you as a friend. Most people find my surname impossible to spell (even though it’s only 6 letters), so this would be useful to me if I weren’t so picky about who I add as my friends in the first place. It also not only gives companies a great opportunity for branding on Facebook, but finally gives ‘normal’ users a chance to match their Facebook username with the handle they use on other social media and bookmarking sites. This may not seem like a big thing, but username consistency will also make it easier for people to find you (that is, if you want to be found).

In SEO terms, however – which is the interesting part for us – it may well mean that you can pick pretty specific keywords for your profile to show up in Google search, which has even further-reaching possibilities. As so eloquently put by Jeremiah from web-strategist.com: “If the Blog is the new résumé, then is “Google Me” the business card?”. Businesses may be able to make strategic use of this by registering their primary keywords as the vanity username for their page, and with the power of Facebook’s pagerank this could end up being a very useful – if a little morally grey – exploit. All of this, of course, depends on whether Google will index the new Facebook URLs; but with sites like Flickr, FriendFeed, Twitter and LinkedIn featuring prominently in search results for a while now, it’s fair to say that this has become the norm for social networking sites.

Happily, Facebook have issued the following caveat to prevent the all-too predictable abuse of the new system:

Think carefully about the username you choose. Once it’s been selected, you won’t be able to change or transfer it. If you signed up for a Facebook Page after May 31 or a user profile after today at 3 p.m. EDT, you may not be able to sign up for a username immediately because of steps we’ve taken to prevent abuse or “squatting” on names.

Still, how much are you willing to bet that Facebook will be down within a few minutes of the floodgates opening for username registration…? If I could have gotten www.facebook.com/dave, I probably would have been willing to stay up until 4am on Friday night to try to nab it, just for the bragging rights. Damn their arbitrary 5 character limit…

Longstanding Upstream client H Forman and Sons – top in Google for Smoked Salmon – has recently moved to amazing new premises in London’s East End.

The striking, salmon pink building doubles as a unique, 600 capacity venue for parties, conferences and much more. It is also the closest venue to the rapidly developing London 2012 Olympic stadium (you can check out progress with the new stadium with Forman’s Fish Eye View webcam).

Among the delights on offer are an on-site restaurant with food from former Tate Modern chef Lloyd Hardwick. As Forman’ s is the UK’s leading salmon smoker, you can expect excellent fish on the menu!

After successfully working together for a number of years on formanandfield.com, Upstream Connections was the natural choice to create a visually striking website for the new venue. The results can be found at www.formansfishisland.com.

If you are interested in the venue, call 0208 5252390. If you would like a striking, new website, ask Upstream.