Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:
Google's new GetMo scheme launched in UK Radical New Search Arriving Soon Google Removing Demographic Bidding February US Search Engine Rankings
Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics.
Google's new GetMo scheme launched in UK – 14th Mar 2012 Google wants British businesses to put more thought into their mobile web strategies, and has launched a UK scheme called GetMo to encourage them. The scheme is a UK extension of the GoMo initiative that Google launched in the US in November 2011. The GetMo website offers a tool for companies to see how their current website looks on a mobile phone, while providing tips on how to build a more effective mobile site as well as information on mobile consumer trends. "As the smartphone explosion continues, more consumers are looking to engage with brands by searching for them on their mobile phone. Yet the majority of businesses don't have mobile sites or a mobile strategy for connecting with them," says Google's director of mobile advertising for Europe Ian Carrington. "Businesses need to get mobile in order to provide a positive user experience for their customers. At the moment, businesses are not keeping up with consumers." Google cites stats from Ipsos CT showing that 93% of smartphone owners in the UK use their handsets to access the web every day, with 84% looking for local information. GetMo includes a guide to "10 Mobile Site Best Practices”, which advises businesses to ensure their mobile sites load quickly, have simplified navigation, are "thumb-friendly", offer local information, use mobile site redirects, synchronise features like shopping baskets with the parent website, are designed for visibility, and are accessible. Google is also advising businesses to "listen, learn and iterate" by using analytics to understand how people are using their sites, while collecting user feedback through other means like user testing sessions before and after launch. There’s a useful session in the GetMo Website called “GETMOMETER”. It shows you how your current site looks on a smartphone, and provides a free report
with personalised recommendations tailored to how your business can build a more mobile-friendly experience. – Blair Liu More details: www.howtogetmo.co.uk www.guardian.co.uk/technology/appsblog/2012/mar/14/google-getmo-ukbusinesses
Radical New Search Arriving Soon – 14th Mar 2012 A new type of search engine created by one of the world’s most respected search engineers Massimo Marchior, is soon to reach consumers. This project previously highlighted in Search Lately last year, is named ‘Volunia’ and claims to revolutionize the way we interact with search. While it is still only in Beta, the concept behind it will integrate Search with Social and provide interestingly detailed site maps to enhance user experience while searching. Volunia is expected to officially launch within the next couple of months and it will be interesting to see the response from user and industry experts. While it cannot be expected to make a serious dent in the armour of Google, a lot of work has been put into producing this new concept of search that may well appeal to certain niche search users. The name Volunia, is a combination of the Italian words for flying and moon, as Massimo Marchiori has stated “because I wanted to evoke the quantum leap my social search engine delivers.” Watch this space! – Kevin Ting
More Details: searchenginewatch.com/article/2159251/When-Will-Social-Search-EngineVolunia-Deliver-its-Quantum-Leap launch.volunia.com/
Google Removing Demographic Bidding – 14th Mar 2012 Google will be officially removing demographic bidding and phasing this out starting from next week. While no Google announcement has been made as to what this means for demographic bidding tools in the future, the following has been provided by a Google spokesperson: “This is a feature that we have to retire to introduce additional features down the line”. Demographic exclusions and data will still be available for access, but users will no longer be able to bid by demographic once these change takes place. This is not expected to be the end of demographic targeting, but with the simplification on Google privacy policies, it may have a silver lining. Google may be preparing to launch a more comprehensive system using the wealth of information it now has cross-platform, and with the help of Google+ and its wider network. Demographic targeting will play an even greater part in content and search advertising, as it will advertisers to deliver even more appealing and personalized ads. – Kevin Ting More details: searchengineland.com/google-demographic-bidding-being-eliminated-toclear-way-for-new-adwords-features-115132
February US Search Engine Rankings – 9th Mar 2012 Comscore monthly results are in, and show that Google continue to dominate the US search market with 66.4% share of the searches. This is a 0.2% increase in share for Google that seems to come at a cost to Yahoo, who has seen a 0.3% drop in share compared to January. While Google drove 11.7 billion searches within USA, the next closest rivals Microsoft and Yahoo, delivered just 2.7 billion and 2.4 billion respectively. This means that Bing powered searches now account for just over a quarter (26.2%) of search queries nationwide. – Kevin Ting More details: www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/3/comScore_Releas es_February_2012_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings