SEO Blog

When the founder, or co-founder of any company leaves, it usually marks a pretty significant turning point. Either they have become out of touch with the company as a whole or new bosses are seeking a completely fresh start. In the case of Jerry Yang’s departure from Yahoo, it’s difficult to see which is the most likely scenario.

Let’s not forget that it was Yang who decided, catastrophically as it turned out, not to sell to Microsoft back in 2008, when they bid $31 per share – 62% above the market price at the time. That valued Yahoo at $44.6 billion. As things stand, the share price has spluttered and fallen to half of Microsoft’s valuation, leaving a lot of investors out of pocket.
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Sitelinks have been a part of Google’s organic and PPC results for some time now. They appear just below the Meta title or initial listing on results pages and generally lead to popular pages deeper within the site. However, earlier in the week Google took them to a whole new level, unveiling mega sitelinks.

Is essence, this concept provides brands with the chance to get prime real estate for their name. Organic results are now dominated by up to 10 links listed beneath the primary home page. So if you were to search for Sony, Vodafone, Thomas Cook or any other brand (major or minor) you can expect to see SERPs much like that shown below.
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It’s been a long time in the making, but the Bing/Yahoo merger has finally landed on these shores. Whilst our American compatriots have been using a Microsoft-powered Yahoo for almost 12 months, tomorrow marks the first integration here in the UK.

This European roll-out marks the first real move towards full integration between the two search companies. Of course it has been on the cards for some time, but any kind of announcement seemed elusive – at least until now. So what does this all mean?
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For any retailer that either isn’t online or isn’t taking advantage of SEO, the latest figures from the Online Retail Monitor should encourage you to do exactly that. Whilst the outlook on the high street is looking grim, it’s online and in particular through search engines where activity is booming.

The research conducted by the Retail Monitor group is a joint venture between the British Retail Consortium (BRC) and the search giant Google. The figures have revealed that online retail search has increased by 27% in the second quarter of 2011 compared to the same time last year.
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Last year Google announced the capture of Slide, a company that made a reputation for developing social games and apps. Fast forward to the present day and it appears that the partnership is now bearing fruit, with the launch of a new social Q&A site called Prizes.org.

Perhaps not the most predictable outcome, however it could be a hugely popular and innovative one. Whilst online users have been using Yahoo Answers, the now defunct Google Answers and Quora for years to get expert opinions, the only reward for those providing advice were a few miserly points and community kudos. Now though, Prizes.org is offering a cash exchange.
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One thing that Google has always been extremely adept at is gaining column inches. It’s one of the many inevitabilities of being one of the world’s largest businesses and also impacting so many industries. Sometimes this is a good thing; however on other occasions the search titan would probably much rather prefer the spotlight was elsewhere.

This week though they will no doubt be extremely pleased with the level of coverage they are receiving. Not only are blogs, Twitter and Facebook buzzing with talk of Google+, but the slowly morphing SERPs and now the redesign of Gmail are helping to provide ample additional ammunition.
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Every once in a while Google decides that it needs a change of style. Sometimes the change is a subtle one, other times it’s a little more comprehensive. During the course of the last week or so there have been a number of tweaks, which have now come together to give the SERPs a surprising facelift.

The once bright colours have been replaced by black, grey and red. The left-hand side of the page has seen the most drastic change, with extra space being created, providing a more expansive and clearer set of search options. Within those options are a number of new additions too, including a filter that allows you to search by readability.
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When Google releases a new product, there is a somewhat inevitable public reaction. Sometimes it’s positive, other times less so, but it rarely slips under the radar – despite a lack of promotion on the search engine’s part.

Social networking though has proven to be a pretty tough nut to crack. Google Wave was released back in 2009 and then quickly dissolved in 2010 following a poor uptake. Buzz was also beset by issues, not least the infringement of various privacy policies. So already, Google + is facing an uphill struggle to convert the Facebook masses.
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If you’re glued to your analytics reports to get the latest traffic figures, you’ll be all too aware of how good it feels when you reach another new milestone. Maybe you’ve received 1,000 visits in a week or organic traffic has increased by 20% year on year.

The big Internet companies are no different. Statistical data is analysed relentlessly to find the latest trends and indicate the major growth areas. So no doubt there will be some pretty happy folks at Google after it was announced that they had received over a billion unique users in May.
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Good news, if you’ve always dreamed of dropping the rather uniform .com or restrictive .co.uk, you can now create your own domain. ICANN officially confirmed that it would now be creating unique names for those businesses with the desire and $185,000 to do so.

That’s right, if you want to have your own .domain then you better have a fair amount of money set aside to make your dream come true. The premium cost is likely to deter all but the biggest corporations; however, the impact on the Internet is huge, creating one of the biggest shakeups in well over a decade.
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