Think Auto with Google Wrap-up
Filed under: Google, Think Events, Updates — Tags: branding, Google, local search, mobile search, social media, think auto — Ian Lavelle @ Tuesday, October 18th, 2011
A few of the team here at Outrider had the opportunity to attend Think Auto with Google Australia last week. The purpose of this blog post is to highlight some of the key points of interest from the session.
‘Go Measure with Google Analytics’ Sydney Wrap-up
Filed under: Analytics, Google, Updates — Tags: Attribution Modelling, conversion funnel, Go Measure, google adwords, Google Analytics, Landing Page Optimisation, LPO, Multi Channel Attribution, Page Speed, SEO, Social Plugin Tracking — Ian Lavelle @ Friday, September 2nd, 2011Earlier this week, a few of my colleagues and I attended the ‘Go Measure with Google Analytics’ event in Sydney. In this post I will summarise some of the key learnings and take-aways that we got from what was a very interesting day indeed (forgive the lengthy post, I have a lot to cover… 
).
The agenda gave insight into some of the speakers we would witness over the course of the day, including several of Google’s own, namely John Jersin (Google Analytics Product Manager from the US), Alex Speziali, Peter Evans and Dave Smith (Analytics Specialists for Google AU/NZ), and Timo Josten (Google Analytics Certified Partner Manager, APAC & EMEA). Also on the panel were several Google partners – Christian Bartens, Director of Datalicious; Daniel Rowan, GM of Internetrix, and Benjamin Mangold, Director of Loves Data (formerly Mangold Sengers), to offer their insight into some of the vast Google Analytics complexities.
Google Shopping Adds a New Dimension to Search
Filed under: Adwords, Google, SEO, Search Engines, Shopping, Updates — Tags: Adwords, e-commerce, Google, google merchant center, Google Product Search, google shopping, online shopping, product search — Ian Lavelle @ Thursday, May 5th, 2011Yesterday, after a long wait for many retailers (see my Product Search for Mobile post from ‘09 ), Google Shopping was officially launched in Australia. Interchangeably known as Google Product Search, it allows searchers to easily discover product information online, compare prices across retailers, read reviews and ultimately find the best place to make a purchase. In essence, it helps inform the research phase of the buying cycle. (more…)
Google ‘Clears up the Muck’ Spread by Content Farms
Filed under: News, SEO, Search Engines, Updates — Tags: algorithm, content farm, Google, rankings, scraping, serp, spam, update — Ian Lavelle @ Tuesday, March 1st, 2011Word emanating from the US over the past few days is that Google have made a change to their organic ranking algorithm, which they claim will positively affect 12% of all searches (don’t they always?!). The official Google blog announcement states the change is designed to improve relevancy in their results and “reduce rankings for low-quality sites”. While the general online population should (and do) welcome this change, as always when Google makes major algorithmic tweaks, several sites/webmasters are claiming unjust punishments.
(more…)
Forget keyword density, the real world is far more complicated…
Filed under: Updates — Ian Lavelle @ Friday, May 14th, 2010As my esteemed colleague Amye Saunders covers in her blog post Mayday, Mayday!, the search engines have been rolling out some changes that look to have affected webmasters across verticals. I had an idea for a blog post on the topic of “keyword density”, and thought this an opportune time to tie it back to some real-world events… (Disclaimer: this is just my theory, and thus by no means gospel!)
Oftentimes clients will ask us about how many times they should use their keywords in their page copy, or “what is the optimal keyword density?” The answer is that there is no magic number, and the optimal keyword density changes for every search term, and I’ll explain why.
(more…)
IDNs and the Potential Impact on Search
Filed under: Updates — Tags: IDN, international domain name, Paid Search, search, SEO — Ian Lavelle @ Tuesday, November 10th, 2009It was announced by ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) this week that International Domain Names (IDNs) are to be made available by early to mid 2010. IDNs will allow for registration of domain names that do not use the latin alphabet, instead using local language characters, for example Chinese or Arabic. ICANN chairman Peter Dengate Thrush described the new system as “the biggest technical change to the Internet since it was created four decades ago”.
Tracking Activity On Your Outbound Links using Google Analytics
Filed under: Analytics, Google — Tags: Analytics, Google, outbound links, tracking — Ian Lavelle @ Friday, September 4th, 2009A topic that comes up quite often in SEO discussions is the merits of outbound linking, whether you should link to your competitors and if outbound links encourage visitors to leave your site. You should consider the user experience first and foremost when thinking about outbound links. If the link directs the user to relevant content that they would be interested in, then the link is worthwhile. If you’re worried about excessive loss of traffic through external links, then it makes sense to keep a close eye on the click activity around these links.
Microsoft, Yahoo merge – a “game changer”
Filed under: News, Search Engines, Updates — Tags: microsoft, News, Search Engines, yahoo — Ian Lavelle @ Thursday, July 30th, 2009For those of you too busy to read the news in the past 24 hours, there’s been a pretty major development in the land of the search engines. Microsoft and Yahoo! have announced a deal whereby they will be combining their search offerings with the aim of invigorating the challenge to Google.
(more…)
Wolfram Alpha Set For Launch
Filed under: News, Search Engines — Tags: News, search engine, wolfram alpha — Ian Lavelle @ Thursday, May 14th, 2009With Wolfram Alpha set to launch in the next week, there’s been a lot of hype around the potential impact it may have on the web. Wolfram Alpha is the latest in an array of new search engines, which has been developed by the mathematician Stephen Wolfram. It differs from other search engines in that it’s being billed as a “computational knowledge engine” which presents information it has collected from various sources to the browser, rather than just returning a list of potentially relevant sites.
Google Product Search for Mobile
Filed under: Search Engines, Updates — Tags: Google Base, Google Product Search, Mobile — Ian Lavelle @ Friday, April 24th, 2009Google officially announced on their blog on Thursday that they’ve released Google Product Search for mobile. I know personally I would find this very useful, as there have been many times I’ve been in a store pondering a purchase yet hold back until I can get online and read a couple of reviews. (more…)
