Jason Butcher

France’s “Google tax” – Sounds like protectionism

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:43 +0000

A report has been made public proposing that France begins taxing the likes of Google to subsidise its own creative industry. The authors of the report suggest that this new taxation could raise up to the equivalent of $28 million, which in the grand scheme of things isn’t much money at all. The suggestion that the tax will help France subsidise music artists and book publishers doesn’t therefore sound like the sole objective here, given that this amount of money won’t make much of a difference if it’s spread so thinly across France’s creative community. On this basis it feels like protectionism of the worst sort – instead of collaborating with successful, innovative companies, or creating an environment that promotes innovation domestically, France appears to want to give its own industries an unfair commercial advantage by taking money from non-French firms. If the proposals are made into law, this then…

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The history and evolution of SEO

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:33 +0000

Ever wondered when links became such an influential component of SEO? Or when Google released the infamous “Florida” update and what effect it had on search engine optimisation? Perhaps you’re interested in the origins of the unsolicited link exchange, or want to know when (and why) nofollow was created. All these questions and many more are answered in Greenlights SEO History of the Internet, a graphical two page “cheat sheet” plotting the evolution of SEO and key events that have happened during the fourteen year history of the industry. Here at Greenlight the history of SEO is something we find quite fascinating. But while there are many disparate sources of information on the topic, I was unable to find a single source that packaged all of the key events that have happened in our industry in a single, graphical timeline. Thus, I give you the History of SEO (click for…

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Google takes its first bite of the Apple

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:27 +0000

So, less than a month after filing the trademark application for the ‘Nexus One’, Google has launched its first hardware retail product direct to consumers and starts a direct assault on Apple’s dominance of the mobile sector. This is a great example of ‘speed to market’ from the most over-exposed brand on the planet launching a product in the most over-exposed global consumer market. In fact, the only other brand that has shown that it can operate as effectively as this is, er… Apple. Google is breaking new ground by becoming a direct retailer of this handset. It suggests that they will be braver than Microsoft in entering the PC hardware retail space. Can we therefore expect this year a Google laptop running their Chrome PC operating system to rival the much rumoured Apple tablet (due possibly in Q1 2010)? The question we should be asking ourselves as marketers is:…

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Hold the front page….Man has turkey sandwich!

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:19 +0000

Google released real-time search this week, incorporating Twitter and kin. So we at Greenlight took it for a road test. We evaluated what the pros and cons are for users and for marketers. Amidst all the hype, I can’t help feeling the usefulness of the results seems to range from the inconsequential, to the surreally disappointing. Admittedly these are early days, but in our first road tests, which happened to be on searches for ‘Turkey’ i.e. the country not the game fare, the impressive list of relevant results, which included Lonely Planet, The State Department, The CIA, The Turkish Tourism Ministry, had somehow been permeated by the resounding news, that ‘thoughtbeast’ (presumably an alias), was enjoying a sliced turkey sandwich for lunch. With milk and Doritos, no less! Ok, fair enough. Seasonally relevant perhaps, but way off the mark. Having been in search marketing for 10 years, and seen all…

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The News Industry and Search Engines – Two camps emerge

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:13 +0000

Google has unveiled ‘The Living Stories’ prototype, a project in conjunction with The New York Times and The Washington Post. It explores a new way to get news to the masses online, which Google hopes other publishers will want to exploit with them too. The central concept is that particular news topics could be centralised under a single URL, updating in real time or near real time, to reflect what’s happening out there and how the respective subject, issue or story is evolving. Whilst these pages currently live on the Google domain, they will be migrated over to The New York Times and The Washington Post early next year. Pages include one about Health Care, Global Warming and other major topics. Google has essentially found a way to try and bring publishers on-side by offering them free search engine optimisation (SEO), and what in his view, would appear to be…

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Google’s ‘Web History’ – Tailored to fit or exclude, is the question

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:17:05 +0000

Google has launched ‘Web History’, the new name for its personalised search feature, by default across its user base. Essentially, by monitoring what you click on in their results, Google can learn what sites you like and give them a ranking boost in your search results. This adds a further dimension to how Google ranks sites and pages, which had historically focussed largely on analysing on-page relevancy and third party links pointing into a site. Some of the advantages and disadvantages this will bring. For example in the case of the enterprise, new entrants online will find it more difficult to break into Google page 1 results if the sites a user has visited before have been given a preferential boost. On the other hand, for those firms that customers like, Google’s ‘Web History’ will enhance their ability to cross-sell new products far more effectively. It also calls into question…

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Google’s launch into UK online property poses a severe threat to property intermediaries

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:16:58 +0000

Google could become the biggest threat to online property intermediaries overnight Google is said to be considering a launch into the UK property market next year. This will allow both estate agents and private sellers to put their property for sale as an overlay on Google Maps. Whilst this is open to estate agents to exploit as well as private sellers, if it becomes incredibly popular, (and there’s every reason why it will), and the average private seller becomes more technologically savvy, estate agents as we know them, will cease to provide any real value to sellers and offer no value as part of the supply chain. Moreover, the role of the intermediary in online supply chain mechanics overall, is changing. In its early years the Internet was heralded as the great disintermediator – removing the need for middle-men across the entire spectrum of commercial affairs, and allowing manufacturers and…

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Spark Something – Driving Search Demand… and Ignoring SEO

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:16:52 +0000

As companies become more and more comfortable with search as a marketing medium, we’ve seen increasing numbers of ATL (above the line, or TV, radio, press, outdoor or cinema) advertising campaigns utilising a search based call to action either instead of or in addition to a web address. The attraction of this approach is obvious; telling people what to search for is a lot more memorable than having them remember a web address – even a short “vanity URL” – and makes the marketing approach more interactive (”pull” rather than “push” marketing). Obviously this only works well if you can be sure of capturing as much of the resulting search traffic as possible. That means bidding for position using PPC and ranking naturally as well – something which is very easy given the long lead times that these ATL campaigns have and the (usually) uncompetitive nature of the terms in…

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Experts Vs Crowds: The battle defining our relationship with information (Part 2)

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:16:45 +0000

Experts fighting back The current balance of power between crowds and experts hugely favours crowds, largely because the social media and networking movement of recent years has given the crowd the tools and mechanisms it needs to build efficient methods of collaboration and communication, and this has naturally been focused on the lowest common denominator. Experts absolutely have a role to play and now that the crowd has benefitted from practically all recent internet innovations, attention appears to have shifted towards providing the same for experts, essentially intentionally or unintentionally correcting the balance. This is predictably being advanced principally in the two fields of search media and social media. Within the realm of the search engines, today’s prevailing algorithms have focused on harnessing the crowd to determine where a site should rank in a search engine results page. Loosely, this works by looking at the number and quality of sites…

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Twittle & Twing – Why Google and Bing need Twitter data.

Jason Butcher — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 03:16:39 +0000

First it was Microsoft, followed a day later by Google. At the end of last week both giants have signed deals with “micro blogging” phenomenon Twitter to reuse its vast repository of data for their own purposes. The terms of the deal aren’t known, but it probably represents the first time Twitter has managed to leverage its user base – around 5.1 million strong, if you go by publicly accessible profiles – as a major source of income. This has proved a stumbling block for other Social Media favourites such as YouTube and Facebook, but by acting as a single gathering point for the type of information that search engines can’t typically get at, Twitter has made itself extremely attractive to Google and Microsoft. Time Sensitive Queries Search engines exist in part to satisfy a need for what might be termed “static” search; informational or transactional searches where the user…

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