However, unlike Google and Bing, Yahoo! will not only be incorporating real-time Twitter feeds into its search engine results pages, but also allowing Twitter users to tweet from a number of its platforms, such as Yahoo! Mail, News, Finance and Sports as well as the search engine itself.

The search integration actually went live earlier this week, but it is not currently known how or when the further integration throughout the rest of Yahoo!’s collection of products is likely to occur, although it has been speculated that it won’t be until later this year.

At the end of 2009 Yahoo! also integrated its services with Facebook and has been trying to increase its profile in the social world ever since and are hoping that this latest deal with Twitter will do just that. Bryan Lamkin, senior vice president of the company’s consumer products group said: "We’re turning the key to the online social universe - you will find the most personally relevant experiences through Yahoo!". He went on to say "We’re also simplifying people’s lives by bringing their social worlds - and the world - together for easy access."

Twitter is also said to be very excited and enthusiastic about the collaboration, and rightly so, as it will be the one seeing the greatest advantages, as it will not only be increasing its audience to the millions of Yahoo! users worldwide, but Yahoo! are also paying Twitter for the privilege.

Twitter’s co-founder Biz Stone has said: "The information in one single tweet can travel light-years farther with this Yahoo! integration. Tweets in more places brings relevance where and when you need it most."

So it looks like things are looking up for Yahoo! with the announcement of this partnership and also that the its search deal with Microsoft has also been approved by regulators.

Returning to the spiritual home of St. Anton, we were once again blessed with fantastic weather and great conditions in the majestic beauty of the Austrian mountains. 

See update below for video footage, but here are some photos of the event, mainly courtesy of Julian Sambles of telegraph.co.uk who is a legend on skis but also proves to be a dab hand with the camera :

Our regular readers will have seen previous posts about these trips and trip no.4 has cemented my opinion that online marketing is a very, very good place to be.

It is a real pleasure to spend time with a group of people who are all working at the coal face of digital marketing - the enthusiasm and passion for what we do is a credit to our industry.

Perhaps most significant aspects of the trips, in my humble opinion, is the fact that ‘competitors’ are happy to talk and chat about the greater good. I had an excellent time with Search Laboratory and Epiphany and whilst they are theoretical business enemies (hence no link!), they are great people and the passion for online marketing is a strong bond. 

So, who would want to work in online marketing? Count me in. Who wants to sign up for digital ski 2011? Count me in…

***UPDATE***
It’s here - for your viewing pleasure, here is the latest instalment in our Digital Ski trip videos:

We have migrated from "We need a website" to "We need to get more people to our website" and are now firmly into "crikey - can you help me make sense of all this social media stuff and what should we be doing with twitter as everyone tells us it is important and we just don’t know where to start and how on earth can we possibly keep tabs on what people are saying about us and what should we do about it…".

You probably get the picture and the mild sense of panic may well be familiar to a lot of our readers.

The truth is that there are a number of different approaches for organisations looking at social media as a method to engage with their target audience.

There is no such thing as a ‘one size fits all’ approach to social media and the most appropriate approach will depend on a number of factors, most notably the resource that is available to dedicate to the activity.

There are, however, clear examples of how not to do it and @VodafoneUK must surely scoop the award for the most spectacular twitter howler of recent weeks / months for their infamous post to their 9,000 followers:

It is not clear exactly what happened but it demonstrates how empowering employees can backfire (it doesn’t appear to be any form of hacked account) in spectacular fashion in an alarmingly short period of time.

Credit where it is due - Vodafone responded individually to all those tweeters who reacted with a message of "We’re really sorry. A severe breach of rules by staff in our building, dealing with that internally. Please keep your faith in us."

Perhaps it actually demonstrates a human face to a big corporation, which is no bad thing although this particular incident is likely to be perceived as a bit too human.

It is interesting to watch the evolution of social media and there will undoubtedly be some more own goals in the coming months that will demonstrate that immediate / powerful reach can be very potent, but equally lethal.

This is the first in what we hope will be several market research initiatives over the coming year but we are starting with a bang as we have two champagne balloon flights from Virgin Balloons to offer as a (massive) carrot to encourage users to complete the survey. All completed surveys will be entered into a draw for the prize.

The survey is ultimately aimed at client organisations but agencies are welcome to register an interest and we will be making the findings known in a report once the survey is complete.

Thank you for your interest and please send on to anyone who you believe would be able to contribute to what we hope to be an interesting survey.

>>Search Marketing Engagement Survey

We are looking to fill a hybrid PR / SEO role - full details can be found at http://www.browsermedia.co.uk/jobs/pr-seo-executive/.

We believe that we are small but perfectly formed. If you are looking for a career in a fascinating industry and the opportunity to join a small but growing business, we would love to hear from you.

Please note that the role will be based permanently at our offices at Braxted Park.

The mechanics of issuing press releases are, in principle, fairly straightforward but there is a bewildering choice of different suppliers who claim to offer the best solution.

Comparing press release distribution companies is not an exact science as each press release is different and issued on days with varying degrees of competition from other sources. We could not find an up to date review, comparing the strengths and merits of each option, so we decided to do our own mystery shop.

The review is intended to provide an overview of the services and results offered by the following UK services:

• PR Newswire (http://prnewswire.co.uk)
• Marketwire (http://www.marketwire.com)
• PR Web (http://uk.prweb.com)
• Realwire (http://www.realwire.com)

This mini review is not intended as a thorough breakdown of all press release distribution companies and services but merely a starting point for anyone not sure about which one to choose – it is based exclusively on our own recent experiences and we do not claim to have applied an exact science to the process.

We hope that you find it helpful and please feel free to circulate it if you feel it is of interest.

If you offer press release distribution services and would like to be added to the review (which we may well update and maintain as a ‘live’ document), then please contact Browser Media.

>>Download Press Release Distribution Services Review

It was, as expected, officially launched at a press event on the 5th January and made available online from www.google.com/phone during the event.

Surprisingly, Google didn’t follow our wisdom and offer it to Google Apps users first (although there are reports that some of the larger Youtube partners have been sent free handsets) but made the phone available to anyone in the US, the UK , Hong Kong and Singapore.

We have to admit that our resolve didn’t last long and pressed the green button and are now awaiting a handset to test out (possible review to follow).

To be brutally honest, the online purchasing experience has been fairly disastrous and the general venting of steam that can be found across the web (notably at their own forum here) suggests that Google has perhaps entered a world in which they are not especially well prepared - a world in which people’s patience is very short and where users expect / demand support and communication from the merchant. 

Google offers some mind-blowingly good products but isn’t famed for its level of customer support and there have always been criticisms of the way that it treats its loyal customers (’Even Google employs idiots‘ being a fairly recent example that shows some very suspect levels of ’support’).  The real failing in this case is the lack of communication and automated  / useless responses that still take 2 to 3 days to be issued.

The actual ordering process is extremely easy if you have a Google Checkout account already set up - in fact, it would be fair to say that it is ridiculously easy. The problems surface from then on as the online tracking leaves a lot to be desired and it is taking up to 3 days for anything to really happen at Google’s end. 

There are a lot of justifiable reasons that could explain the delays and, to be honest, most people would accept the delays if they were being kept informed of progress. Google needs to recognise that they are charging real people real money for a real product and these customers expect a level of service that they have become accustomed to when buying online. It would appear that such expectations are not being met. 

We suspect that this is unlikely to have any long term effect on sales of the phone and it should be noted that support forums are typically populated by people moaning rather than the large number of people who have a very good experience, but Google should learn from the feedback and improve its communication if it is to avoid losing some fans. 

We are in no rush and are looking forward to receiving the phone - android is superb if you are using Google’s products and the Nexus One is the most potent offering to date. We just hope that the Nexus Two, Nexus Three and whatever else may come out of Google’s empire is not affected by poor logistical experiences. 

As of today, we will no longer be found at Sheraton street and are pleased to be joining the community at the excellent Lemon Studios.

Browser Media founder, Joe Friedlein comments:

"In many ways, I feel like I am going back in time as I started my digital life at 85 Clerkenwell Road (joining Pres.co, which in turn became Wheel and then LBi) many moons ago but I have always thought that Clerkenwell is a key hub in London’s digital community and it is great to be back!

We have known Lemon Studios for some time now and they offer a fantastic service and superb facilities in the heart of Clerkenwell. We look forward to working from our new London base."

Browser Media’s office at Braxted Park (see office locations) remains our principal office and all correspondence should be addressed to Browser Media Studios.

We have a growing need to produce high quality content and are therefore growing our freelance copywriter database and would love to hear from anyone who would like to be considered for future projects.

We are particularly looking for a broad range of specialist industry knowledge / experience so that we can marry specific project needs to writers who have a proven pedigree in the particular industry sector.

Online writing experience is expected but we do not specifically need to have SEO gurus, so please do get in touch as we would love to hear from you.

Please click here to send us your details.

Happy New Year to one and all!

Since the first news / photos / rumours of the actual existence of the HTC produced handset hit the blogosphere, it has been staggering to see how much dicussion and conjecture has bubbled up surrounding how Google will launch their own phone.

It should not be forgotten that there has not actually been ANY official announcement on the handset (other than the fact that a handset had been handed out to employees to test) or how it is going to be sold, so most of the commentary is nothing more than guesswork.

We are interested in the phone for a number of reasons:

• we suffer from ‘gadgetitis’
• we are big fans of HTC handsets (HTC Hero is current weapon of choice)
• we are growing fans of Google Android (have managed to remain an iPhone free zone)
• we are MASSIVE fans of Google Apps
• the rumours circulating about how Google plan to launch the phone are interesting

It is the last two points that perhaps interest us most. January 5th seems to be the date that most are pointing to regarding a release date, but there are no confirmed details regarding cost, regional availability or possible carriers.

Most do seem to agree that the phone is likely to be sold directly via Google’s website although there are suggestions that T-mobile may well be picking up the handset.

It is the ‘direct’ channel that is potentially the most interesting as it will raise the question of whether Google will choose to subsidise the handset cost.

Why would they want to do this? There are several ways in which could monetise the use of a ‘Google phone’ (e.g. through mobile advertising) but they can ultimately afford to take a bit of a hit in pure profitability to really give the Android platform a big push.

It is estimated that the actual production costs of an iPhone are sub $200, so Google could sell their phone at the $199 that has been rumoured and give users an extremely compelling reason to make the leap to Android (in the UK, an iPhone 3Gs 32GB is over £500 from O2)

Android is still the newcomer, although it is clearly making inroads in terms of market share, especially since the launch of the Motorola Droid in the US.

In our own experience, the real benefits of having an Android handset are felt when you also use other Google services, most notably their email service. As mentioned above, we are huge fans of Google Apps and our business is run using this service, which provides a comparable email service to MS Exchange at a fraction of the cost.

This is where we believe that Google can achieve quite a coup.

We do not want to see invasive advertising on our phones and believe that this would be a real turn off for potential buyers, even if the phone was discounted. Google could, in our humble opinion, push both the Android platform and the Google Apps suite by offering a discounted handset directly to Google Apps users in the initial launch period.

There is no doubt that there is huge interest in the handset and we suspect that demand will be very high irrespective of price, but selling only to Google Apps users in the short term would be a sure fire way of driving Google Apps sign ups and ultimately providing a more thoroughly enjoyable experience (which is what Google is all about) of the handset itself.

Just food for thought, but if you are reading this Google and like it, we will be more than happy to receive a handset or two in recognition of our thoughts!

***If you have stumbled across this article on a quest for more information about the Google phone, we apologise if the title caused alarm but please feel free to tweet about / link to / shout about / etc. as it will help a mini project that we are running to measure the effect of social media.***

Browser Media’s home at Braxted Park was turned into a stunning winter wonderland overnight and it was a real pleasure to see it this morning.

Too early to tell if it is going to last until Christmas but we hope you enjoy some photos below and wish all our friends, clients and potential clients (you are always welcome to come and see us!) a very happy Christmas.

The Browser Media Team.

P.S. If you like the look of this snow, be sure to have a look at http://econsultancy.com/events/digital-ski - always a good trip…

The websites are thought to have generated millions of pounds for organised criminal gangs, Scotland Yard’s Central e-crime unit said, and the victims ran the risk of identity theft for misuse elsewhere.

It is interesting to see the police working so closely with Nominet, as outlined by Lesley Cowley, chief executive of Nominet:

"We received clear instructions from the PCeU to take down the .co.uk domain names, which have been under investigation for criminal activity. We worked closely with the police and our registrars to quickly carry out the instruction to shut down access to these sites."

Perhaps more interestingly, the operation has highlighted just how well versed in black hat SEO the online criminals are and reveals some fundamental flaws in Google’s ability to spot spammy / fake sites.

A good example is the (ex) okuggboots.co.uk site, which enjoys very high rankings for the phrase ‘Ugg boots’.

A quick look at back link data from Yahoo shows that a huge share of links are from Chinese sites and they have taken comment spam to new levels.

We always advocate the use of ethical search engine marketing techniques and it is therefore frustrating to see how effective these spammy approaches can be.

Perhaps most alarmingly is the fact that 7 out of the top 10 ranked sites (at time of testing) for ‘Ugg boots’ have been taken down - not only does this reveal the extent of the problem but also raises question marks about the freshness of Google’s index.

Of course, it would be mad to blame Google for the existence of such criminal activity but it does highlight the need for the search engine to improve its spam detection and perhaps listen more attentively to spam reports, which you can submit here.

It is excellent to see that the police are policing the web as consumers need to have confidence in the Internet. There will always be those who are prepared to use any opportunity for criminal opportunities. Acting as the biggest conduit to the Internet’s vast content, Google must acknowledge a responsibility to help police illegal activity.

How exactly it does that is quite a challenge.

Ghose and Yang conducted tests using an "unique panel dataset of consumer responses" to hundreds of keyword phrases searched for on Google, collected from one of it’s major advertisers, a nationwide retailer, over a three month period.

The study is the first of it’s kind, as it is the first to test the impact of both paid and organic search engine advertising on consumers, advertisers and also search engines and has revealed some interesting results:

• Firstly the study has shown that, on average, the impact of organic results on paid advertising is 3.5 times stronger than the impact the presence of paid search advertising has on the organic results. This is most likely to be due to the fact that search engine users trust sites that rank higher in the organic results, more than the ones just using paid ads. Most users realise that if a site ranks highly for a particular phrase in the organic results then it must be a ‘good’ site and therefore the paid ad should be worth visiting.
• The study also revealed that when an advertiser’s website appeared in both the organic and paid search results, that this helped to increase the advertisers’ profits by 16.5%, when compared to when only one of the paid or organic results were present.
• The report also proves that the presence of both types of results on a search engine results page has a positive affect on, not only click-through-rates, but also conversion rates:
• Compared to just a natural result appearing, click through rates were up an average of 5.1% when both paid and organic results were present.
• Similarly conversion rates increased by 11.7%, when both were visible, compared to when only organic appeared.
• And finally, 54% of the total growth in revenue generated due to both ads being present was provided by paid search.

Professor Ghose seems to think that this report will encourage search engines to exploit these findings, as he has said, "these findings have important implications for the incentives of search engines to strategically modify the rankings of their organic search listings in order to boost their revenues from paid search advertisements."

This statement is a little far fetched, as the pay-per-click listings and cost-per-clicks are not directly affected by and do not affect the organic results.

However the report does clearly show that having both paid and organic results present on the SERP’s on searches for a sites important keyword phrases can be very beneficial to advertisers’ overall revenue.

It shows that a paid search ad is more likely to be clicked on and, more importantly, convert, if the website also appears in the organic results than if it didn’t.

This shows that advertisers should not only focus their budgets on paid search, as time and money should always be spent on SEO to achieve higher organic results, as this will not only generate free clicks and conversions but increase the performance of the paid ones.

Microsoft has been listening to its customers’ feedback and assessing user trends and has therefore implemented new features to make Bing easier to use and more convenient by adding previews of sites, putting more emphasis on its localised results and much more.

The new alterations affect the way in which Bing now uses the content from the pages found in its results and therefore means that previews of the pages can be found within the list of results. This means that when a search is performed on the search engine, Bing can now extract the relevant information from various sites and present them on the SERP’s, which means that the user can see the relevant data without having to visit the page.

Alterations have also been made to the search engine’s homepage, which is intended to be more "target-focused". The page appears almost identical to the previous version, however they have now added new search options that can be found by placing the mouse over the categories, ie. if you were to hover over the "Travel" link you could see "find flights" and "find hotels".

The "Bing Travel" link is a new feature that allows users searching for holiday destinations or cities around the world, to see results such as the local tourist attractions, accommodation, points of interest and activities. The "Bing flights" option provides a price predictor and even advises users of the cheapest time of year to travel.

Microsoft has also integrated with the answer-engine "Wolfram Alpha", which means that if a question is entered into Bing, such as a mathematical calculation for instance, then the result will be provided by Wolfram Alpha.

They have also added a new event search feature, which allows users to search and filter events happening in major cities across the world, by performance, music, food and dining, fairs and festivals, etc.

Microsoft has also improved the quality of results on searches for health related issues, such as conditions and symptoms etc, but also specific food-related phrases and the results will now include nutritional information.

These changes are currently being rolled out across the US, so it may be some time before we see the changes in the UK, and they will be announcing even more new features on the Bing Search Blog over the next few days. However it will be more interesting to see if all these alterations and additions to the platform make any difference to the search engines market share…

According to Google Insights, 2 out of the top 10 searches performed on Google’s search engine are music related, and up till now it could often take users a while to find the exact information that they were looking for.

However Google has now collaborated with both MySpace (which recently acquired iLike) and Lala, to create a new search feature that means that when a music-related search term is entered into Google’s search query box the results could now include music related information such as audio previews.

These audio previews have been provided by Google’s new partners; MySpace and Lala, and need to be clicked on by the user in order to then hear that preview. Links have also been provided by MySpace and Lala to places on the web where that particular song or album can be purchased.

Google says that many different music related search terms could eventually return these new results, whether it be an artist, song title or even by typing in part of the lyrics to a song.

This means that if you were to hear a song that you liked on the radio but didn’t catch the artist or song title, but could remember the lyrics to the chorus, then you could enter as much as you could remember into Google and hopefully find the song that you were looking for and a place to purchase it.

Google has also partnered with Pandora, ineem and Rhapsody, which means that links will also be available, on some music related searches, to other artists or songs that you might liked based on the search term entered.

Google is currently rolling this new feature out gradually across the U.S and says that it will take some time for the feature to work fully and produce these new types of results for all music-related searches.

However it hopes that by combining it’s algorithm with it’s new partners’ efforts, more and more of it’s results pages will show these new results for the majority of music related search terms and hopefully this will extend globally too.

Microsoft and Twitter reached an agreement sometime ago, so Bing is already showing Tweets as results on it’s SERP’s and now Google has also managed to come to an arrangement with Twitter, meaning that in the coming months we will begin to see Tweets appearing for relevant searches on Google too.

Due to the demand for real time results, a phenomena started by Twitter, all search engines are trying to produce the freshest and up-to-date results and they have obviously realised that the best way to do this is to integrate Twitter posts into their results.

Google’s last effort to become more real-time was the introduction of it’s time filters, which meant that it’s search results could be filtered to see pages that had been updated within the last hour.

However in relation to Twitter this simply wasn’t quick enough, so in order to provide it’s users with what they are really looking for, Google will now be producing Tweets within it’s search results.

Google hopes that this will further increase the user satisfaction of it’s search engine, by delivering up-to-the minute results on current events. Meaning that when you are looking for information on a subject and want an update of what is happening there and then, say, weather conditions at your favorite holiday destination, you can search on Google and find tweets from other users who are there and commenting about it.

Does this mean that Microsoft’s share in the market has peaked or can it continue to grow and really pose a threat to Google?

comScore’s September report shows that Google’s share in the search engine market is now rapidly approaching the 65 percent mark, which is well over triple the amount of its nearest rival - Yahoo!

This lastest report shows that Google’s share has increased from 64.6% in August to 64.9% in September, whilst Yahoo!’s has decreased by 0.5% from 19.3% to 18.8% and Microsoft’s growth has slowed to just 0.1%, from 9.3% to 9.4%.

Since the launch of Bing in June of this year, Microsoft has managed to gain over 1% in market share, but this seems to be slowly gradually, whilst Google’s share is returning to the levels it has seen previously.

ComSore’s August report showed Google’s market share decrease by 0.1% and Microsoft’s increase by 0.4%, but Google have now gained that loss back and more on top in September, whilst Microsoft is continuing to grow but the rate of which has slowed down to just 0.1% in September, which puts another twist into the ‘Can Bing catch Google?’ debate.

The Search Engine Marketing Agency buyers guide has been split into two separate guides this year to allow a specific focus on SEO and paid search and we are pleased to say that Browser Media is included in both guides this year, reflecting our holistic view to search engine marketing.

The paid search agencies buyer guide profiles 31 leading agencies whilst the SEO agencies buyer guide profiles 34 of the UK’s finest agencies.

Both guides have an interesting commentary on the search engine marketing landscape and are highly recommended reads.

We are thrilled to have been selected to feature in the guides from such a reputable publisher and believe that it cements our position as one of the UK’s most professional search engine marketing specialists.

If you need help with your search engine marketing, please contact us today as we would love to hear from you.

Back in 2008, it was predicted by the IAB that advertisers would spend more on the Internet than TV in 2009, so not only has this prediction come true but it has done six months before schedule.

During the first six months of this year, online advertising spend grew by 4.6% when compared with the same period in 2008, taking it’s total share of the advertising market to 23.5% just overtaking TV’s 21.9% share.

The report shows that this level of growth equates to £1.75 billion now spent on online advertising, predominately generated by paid search advertising, which accounts for £1.05 billion, a 6% increase on the previous year.

The second biggest contributor is classified advertising, which has evidently moved from print to web quicker than predicted, with an increase in share of 10.6%, generating £385 million of the £1.75 billion total.

The third biggest medium is display advertising, which has decreased in share by 5.2% when compared to last year, accounting to £316.5 million in spend.

Looking at the figures objectively, overall spend on all mediums of advertising has actually fallen by a quite staggering 16.6%, due to the economic climate, which is why online advertising’s share has risen above TV’s as advertisers are now being more careful with their money and are shopping around to find the best return on investment.

Online advertising’s growth has actually slowed down quite dramatically when compared to it’s growth rate from 2007 to 2008, which was a huge 21% compared to this years 4.6%, however IAB believe that online’s share could eventually reach over 30%.

We are guilty of using this phrase ourselves and find ourselves advising most clients that they need to create more content on their site.

Not only will more content increase the number of pages that you have on your site, which will immediately improve the potential for ranking well on the search engines (remember - search engines rank pages, not sites) but it can do great things for both conversion and link building.

Improvements in conversion should be fairly self explanatory - using language that your audience uses (after diligent keyword research) will help engage with your site users and there will be an inherent sense that you appreciate their needs and are more likely to be able to help them.

The benefit to link building efforts is often overlooked, and yet good content / functionality is one of the most effective long term link building strategies.

By offering stimulating content on your site, it is far easier to encourage other sites to link to yours. When analysing possible link opportunities, you should always ask yourself why that site should link to yours. If there is no compelling reason, then you should create one by generating content that their users will find interesting.

You should also ensure that your content is as accessible as possible - the simple addition of an RSS feed can make a huge difference to the effectiveness of the new content. We are often surprised at where our content ends up but, by including links to other areas of our site, we are continuing to grow the links back to our site.

There is also no doubt that Google loves new, fresh content and sites that continue to publish new content do well in the search results. Whilst these improvements are often fairly short lived, regular content additions can sustain a regular stream of traffic as a direct result of new content.

To illustrate this point, the following graph shows a snapshot of traffic to the www.browsermedia.co.uk website since June 30th:

As shown in the graph, our traffic is reasonably consistent (with a consistent drop at the weekends) but there are notable spikes.

If you compare these spikes to the publication dates of new content, there is a clear pattern - there is a boost in traffic when we publish new content on the site.

Not only are these boosts temporal in nature, we would be lying if we claimed that the boost in traffic always generated a boost in new business enquiries but we believe that it is worth the relatively small effort of publishing regular content as the longer term benefit of the links that it generates is unquestionable.

Yes, it takes effort to maintain but there is no such thing as a free lunch and you will be rewarded for your efforts, even it if takes some time to appreciate (one of the eternal frustrations of SEO). An investment in content is a good one.

Contact us today if you would like to find out more about effective content.