Since 2002, the Google Doodle has honoured the search engine’s anniversary of its founding by transforming the logo – and today was no exception with a retro 13th birthday message…

2011

2010 - a Wayne Thiebaud cake

2009 - 11 years old and a double L to prove it...

2008 - 10 years old and a filing cabinet present!

2007 - and a '9'-shaped pinata

2006 - Google turns 8

2005 - and 7 pieces of cake to share!

2004 - and the OO becomes a balloon & a number 6!

2003 - Google turns 5

2002 - the first Google Happy Birthday Doodle, but for the company's 4th anniversary

Google is set to make its first significant foray in to the fashion world with the launch of Boutiques.com later this week. Announced at the “High Tech Fuses With High Fashion” Google event, it would seem as though Google are taking a leaf out of Polyvore and Shopstyle’s books.

The site will allow users to “create and share their own personalized shop by selecting style preferences and the looks, brands and items they love” (Polyvore), while linking out to a pre-existing e-tailer like net-a-porter, Austique, or my-wardrobe for purchases (ShopStyle).

The site will allow users to save items, brands and looks they love in their own personalised shop.

Sarah Jessica Parker and Katie Holmes have reportedly been approached by Google to set up their own virtual shops, thereby encouraging users to do the same. The site will also feature a live data feed from its retail partners which will allow for images, making it look like a high end boutique rather than a search results page.

Designers including Oscar de la Renta, Tory Burch, Cynthia Rowley, Marchesa and Erin Fetherston have already agreed to set up their own virtual stores on the site, WWD reports.

Boutiques.com is preparing to launch tomorrow…

Reading between the lines of various search engine marketing forums and clients’ analytics data, it does seem as though something might be happening within the  largest search engine in the world. There have been fluctuations in traffic and rankings -  something which we tend to only see before large updates are rolled out.

Google had, until last year, quite consistently launched algorithm update every Christmas, the most famous update being the Florida update of November 2003 which caused widespread issues with lots of businesses online.

We have already had a large update this year when Google rolled out Caffeine which, according to experts at the time, was going to cause problems to lots of sites though nothing huge ever really materialised.

Marketing implications: As with all search engine updates there is very little you can do to prepare for what may happen. All we recommend is this:

• Make sure you are ticking all the boxes within Google’s current guidelines.
• Keep generating & sharing good quality content.
• Get regular ranking & traffic updates from your agency or internal team.
• Keep a sharp eye on Google’s blog, and visit the GA blog for up to date news.

It found that while the over-55 age group was one of the fastest growing online, marketers should note the differences in how they use the web to reach them effectively.

According to Tamar, men over 50 accounted for 38% of the 1.9m new web users last year and women over 50 accounted for 15%. Older women are now the fastest growing segment on Facebook and a third of internet users in the UK are now over 50.

The report revealed that 73% of over-55s would select organic search results over paid results.

Tanya Goodin, CEO of Tamar, said, “Silver surfers are savvy, keen to engage and value the benefits of being online. Integrated social media and search should be central to any brand strategy that seeks to maximise ROI and we think that the next 5-10 years will be an exhilarating, rewarding journey for brands that understand the new online commercial environment.”

Related articles:
The Bing Facebook partnership and its impact on SEO
Older adults and social media

Last week, Bing and Facebook announced a partnership that will allow Microsoft’s search engine to return results based on the Facebook “Likes” of a searcher’s friends. With Real Time search already well underway on Google, this is the next logical step towards showing results tailored to a searcher’s existing social footprint…

Until now, search algorithms have used machine learning and artificial intelligence to predict which of the billions of pages available on the Internet might be most relevant to your search. Now, at least on Bing, they’re going to have access to something even more precious: the knowledge of who your friends are and what they like.

So, let’s take a look at how these ‘liked’ results on Bing will work… Say you’re looking for information on the new Paranormal Activity movie. On Google, you would be served up the most relevant, popular pages to your search.  On Bing, as of now,  it will return the regular Google-style results as well as a module that shows pages your friends have liked – including, for example, movie reviews. You no longer have to trawl through search results to figure out which of the pages you trust the most to tell you whether the movie’s a hit or a flop. Instead I would look to work colleague Jade’s recommendation within the results (Jade is GA’s in-house horror and scary movie expert).  I would certainly click on the page she ‘Liked’ to read more.

Will this new search innovation affect SEO strategy? I think the answer is yes. There will be changes to the way in which SEO professionals run their clients’ campaigns and this ’social searching’ trend will certainly affect the industry as a whole. SEO professionals will have to constantly adapt and grow alongside the search engines to ensure that searchers get the results they need.

We have already seen certain Twitter feeds included in Google search results. Before long, results may integrate other social networking sites, like Foursquare, Gowalla, Brightkite and myriad other sites that haven’t even been developed yet. For SEO professionals, this change highlights the need to integrate social networking if they haven’t already.

The example below shows a search for Google TV and a friend who liked a page about Google TV:

While Google claim that this change “will make it much easier for users to find a large number of results from a single site”, it has not gone without a certain amount of criticism.

Firstly, let’s use Sky Sports again as the example. Although Sky Sports may well be a prominent brand, with a website providing useful news to those looking for it, as a product in the UK, it is not exclusively found on the Sky TV network.  Sky Sports is also sold by Virgin and BT Vision. Therefore, by allowing Sky Sports to dominate this search engine results page (SERP) it may well be very damaging to the sales of the product on those two other platforms.

The comments on the Google Webmaster page which broke the news also highlight some usability issues…

mayank said…“I dont think its very useful. it will eat up my time by having to click on subsequent pages, for if i wanted more results from a single site, i could always do “more from site” command.”

Collin Cornwell said…“This is a horrible feature.. Major retailers that sell “branded” products will be pushed off the page, giving users fewer options. Bing is going to steal a tremendous amount of market share because of this.”

30something said…“I was 2nd on the page for my search term – now I’m 9th, underneath 8 pages from my competitor. yeah, a real nice start to my weekend.”

What I find interesting is the last statement by Google:

“We expect today’s improvement will help users find deeper results from a single site, while still providing diversity on the results page.”

However, was it not Google’s Peter Norvig who said, “for the second one [search result], you don’t want something that’s almost the same as the first. You prefer some diversity.”

Brands with reputation management issues will benefit from this change. However, aside from that, I’m not sure I see how beneficial this change will be…

The best method of illustrating how it works is through using this video, presented by Matt Cutts of Google. As well as understanding how search engines work, you’ll also learn a bit about PageRank, indexing and paid for adverts. Enjoy!

The example will come first, followed by the explanation…

*red hat with green stripes* = the exact phrase

bar covent garden -leicester square = bars in covent garden not leicester square

+sock =  only the words sock, not the plural or any tenses or synonyms

define:seo = definitions of the word ’seo’ from around the Web

red * blue = the words ‘red’ and ‘blue’ separated by one or more words

(p.s. the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button takes you directly to first web page returned for your query)

Happy searching!

Google has announced that, from September 14th, it will allow resellers, sellers of component, replacement or compatible parts, and informational sites (such as review sites) to use third-party trademarks in their ad copy, regardless of whether they own them or have approval from the trademark owner.

Any advertisers that do not fall into these categories will not be included in the changes.

In line with the US, Google has opened up the market to hundreds of thousands of third-party sites that have previously been restricted in what they can say within their copy.

Some, through being affiliates, may already have agreements in place with brands to use their trademarks within paid search campaigns, but the policy change negates any necessity for others to make such agreements – if they have relevance to the keywords they’re bidding on, of course.

Likewise, department stores and review sites will have more options open to them.

Google, which first rolled out the changes to ad texts in the US last year, expects the policy change to make ads more specific and relevant for users.

Peter Fitzgerald, Google UK’s industry director, said the change in the US has helped its users and advertisers by reducing the number of “overly generic” ads.

“We believe the user experience is improved if, for example, they conduct a search for a particular brand of TV and see ads which give them more detail about where they can buy that brand, where they might be able to fix it, buy component parts or read reviews.”

Now, six months later, almost half (47%) of 18-24-year-olds use real-time search results. However, just 8% of these users find them useful (according to research by Tamar).

But what about other types of search results?

Interestingly, by looking into the search habits of 2,210 people, Tamar’s report also showed that just 4% of people would choose paid search results over natural search results, down by 1% on 2009 and down 6% on 2007.

The research found that people over 55 were the least likely to trust paid search as a trusted source with just 3% choosing it over natural search results.

Younger people are increasing their use of mobile to search as 14% of both 18-24-year olds and 25-34-year-olds use mobile search every day.

Neil Jackson, search strategy director at Tamar, said, “Consumers have decided that natural search is the route they trust more and this defines the strategic starting point for all brands, which need to focus on being highly visible ‘naturally’ through campaigns that reach effectively across a wide range of media and devices, especially mobile – a huge growth area for the search engines.”