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Highlights brought to you by Search Lately @SMGSearchUK this week include:
Can Bing Build On US Growth in the UK? Mobile Websites vs Responsive Design Infographic Links Might Get Discounted In The Future?
Browse last week’s Search Lately for more details and initial reaction from industry experts on recent hot topics
Can Bing Build On US Growth in the UK? – 11th July 2012 Comscore have this week released June 2012 figures for search market share showing Google & Bing rising with Yahoo on the decline. While Google have risen to an all-time high of 66.8%, Bing have now had 26 straight months of growth, as they continue to steal traffic from the smaller engines. Can Bing translate cross Atlantic growth over to the UK market and shake up the search market, where Google still maintain a 90% share of the market? Will the introduction of the Facebook integrated column give Bing a foot into Google market share?
While Google have still not successfully integrated social into search since the Google-Twitter partnership collapsed, Bing have been steadily working on a social plan after joining forces with Facebook. Social provides an essential key to the future of search, and Bing have Facebook on their side as Google+ has still yet to make it into the mainstream. Do Bing have the experience and technical clout to push into Google dominance on these shores? Recently initiating the Search Alliance in UK, France & Germany, Microsoft have also announced plans to release their new innovative Surface tablets in Fall this year. Microsoft are definitely in this fight for the long haul and will be drawing on the wealth of experience and resources they have in technology and partnerships to wrestle control from Apple (Tablet Market) and Google (Search Market). Whether or not they have enough to reclaim their throne as the kings of computing is yet to be seen, but we expect the partnership with Facebook and the release of Surface tablets to be just the start of an even greater push from Microsoft.
– Kevin Ting More details: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Press_Releases/2012/6/comScore_R eleases_June_2012_U.S._Search_Engine_Rankings http://news.cnet.com/8301-10805_3-57431224-75/bing-deepens-facebookintegration-connecting-searchers-with-friends/ http://www.microsoft.com/surface/en/us/default.aspx http://www.searchalliance.com/home
Mobile Websites vs Responsive Design – 10th July 2012 With mobile search traffic increasing five-fold in the past 2 years, building a mobile-friendly site has become more of a priority for many businesses. Besides building a separate mobile-friendly site, responsive design is an alternative and emerging method to engage customers searching on mobile devices. What is responsive design? It is a website design technique that allows you to create a single website that will adapt to the device on which it is being viewed, whether it’s a laptop, smartphone or tablet. A site built with responsive design will automatically resize for different devices, but it is up to you to prioritize the content that matters most to the mobile user. For example, a site built using responsive design could prioritize click-to-call and click-to-map buttons, while the tablet site would focus on simplifying the shopping cart.
Which Solution is better for your mobile site? Separate mobile site or responsive design? Responsive design can definitely minimize long term maintenance of your site, but many businesses can effectively connect with their customers with a separate mobile-friendly site. In the diagram below, Google has provided the answer according to different business needs.
– Blair Liu More details: http://googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk/2012/07/mobile-websites-vsresponsive-design.html http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/responsive-designharnessing-power-of.html
Infographic Links Might Get Discounted In The Future? – 9th July 2012 According to Matt Cutts, Head of Google’s webspam team, links generated by infographics may be of less value in the future. First of all he said infographics are often misleading and off topic although they are neatly designed. Secondly it is hard to understand where the link is going to since it is embedded into the infographic and often pointing to an irrelevant site. The question is how will Google evaluate an infographic to be off topic in terms of facts? And also how will it consider if the link is then related to your business? Even when Google starts to discount this type of links in the future, it should not affect your rankings dramatically since your approach always will be a natural back link profile with a high diversity of different type of links. – Christina Zoellmann More details: http://searchengineland.com/cutts-infographic-links-might-get-discountedin-the-future-127192 http://www.stonetemple.com/matt-cutts-and-eric-talk-about-what-makesa-quality-site/