Google acquires Frommer's – 13th August 2012 Google demonstrated their increasing focus on providing local and travel content this week with their purchase of travel guide publication, Frommer's. Google announced their acquisition of Frommer's on Monday to complement their ever growing local and travel search and reviews, which, in addition to the travel Frommer's website, will include over 300 published guidebooks. The purchase of Frommer's is a clear sign of Google's plans to become a full content resource for travel and local reviews, with a Google spokesperson confirming in a statement on Monday, "We can't wait to start working with them on our goal to provide a review for every relevant place in the world." A statement on the Frommer's website further stated that they were looking forward to their content reaching an even larger audience. The acquisition of Frommer's comes almost one year after Google bought Zagat in a move to boost their information on local businesses globally. Zagat, which offers ratings and reviews of millions of businesses, was integrated into Google+ Local in May this year. The Zagat integration transformed the Google Places offering, and this latest acquisition will likely mean further developments within the Google+ Local offering over the next 12 months. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL55 @SearchLately. – Heath Stook More details: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/aug/13/google-buysfrommers-travel-brand
Olympic Multi-Screen Viewership and Searches – 10th August 2012 In the 2012 Olympics, people experienced the Games not just via TV broadcast, but on desktops, mobile phones and tablets. According to research conducted by Google and NBC in the U.S., the following multi-screen viewership patterns were revealed: - Mobile makes a strong showing: many viewers turned to one or more ―second screens‖ beyond TV to keep updated on the Olympics— nearly half of these (44 percent) did so via a mobile phone or tablet.
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Power viewers: second-screen viewing didn’t seem to diminish participants’ interest in watching the games on TV...in fact, it increased it. People who followed the Games on TV plus one other screen watched 52 percent more Olympics on TV than those who didn’t; people who followed on two additional screens spent more than twice as much time (105 percent) with TV. And people who watched live streams of events online watched 66 percent more Olympics on television than people who followed exclusively on TV. Synchronized usage: Overall, nearly 56 percent of people who followed the Games on TV and at least one other screen did so simultaneously. These simultaneous viewers also watched TV for 67 percent longer than those who only watched TV.
And as users watched the Games on multi-screens, they're searching for information about athletes, sports, events and records - on multi-screens as well. The Olympic Games especially fuelled the mobile search surge. In fact, at some moments during the Games, there were more searches performed on tablets and smartphones than on computers. In its first week only, Olympics related searches on mobile devices (smartphones and tablets) grew by 10x from the previous week, According to Google, European countries showed especially high mobile search volume with most countries having one-third or more of Olympics-related searches occurring on a tablet or smartphone. According to ComScore, 46% of Olympics searches happened on mobile in the UK. Keeping up with the Games often involves seeking the latest updates from news sources, an activity that has become increasingly easy with the variety of news providers making their content easily accessible via mobile phones and tablets. ComScore looked at UK page view traffic to News/Information sites on the first full day of the Games (Saturday, July 28), and found different patterns of relative consumption appear across the three main device categories – PC, Tablets and Mobile Phones.
Computers drove less relative traffic to news destinations during the first part of the day, compared to tablets and mobile devices. Tablets saw higher relative use in the morning hours, as tablet owners were more likely to browse news leisurely through these devices on a weekend morning. Tablets saw their highest relative usage in the evening hours, as people were more likely to curl up with their device before heading to bed. Reflecting their ubiquitous nature, mobile phones – which are always within an arm’s reach – had the greatest traffic stability over the course of the day when compared to tablets and PCs. It is clear that today’s Olympic fans and consumers everywhere have a growing number of ways to access content, presenting marketers with expanding opportunities to reach today’s connected consumer, along with new challenges in understanding this increasingly complex, multi-platform landscape. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL55 @SearchLately. – Blair Liu More details: http://blog.comscore.com/2012/08/small_screens_for_big_games_how_mobi le_phones.html http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2197336/Google-Olympics-FuelMobile-Search-Surge http://googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk/2012/08/going-for-mobile-gold-10xincrease-in.html http://adage.com/article/media/nbc-universal-s-olympics-challengescreen-jumping/232676/
The Rise of Mobile Web – 6th August 2012 The unprecedented growth of the mobile web industry in recent times means businesses with an online marketing campaign should no longer ignore the potential impact of mobile. It is so big in fact that the mobile internet is currently the main growth driver in time spent online. Recent research published by Google shows a marked increase of smartphone usage throughout the USA, UK, Germany, France & Japan in 2011. They showed that for the 5 countries where the study was carried out, consumer usage of mobile phones was higher now than desktop/laptop usage in the 1st and 3rd quarter in 2011. More and more people seem to be searching for data on the move and Google showed UK smartphone usage increased from 30% to 45% for the total population in 2011.
Businesses should make every effort to understand how they can capitalise on the rise of mobile usage. It is becoming increasingly important to create websites that have been specifically designed for mobile devices as they have been proven to be more engaging to the mobile user and reduce the bounce rate, increasing conversions. The study also revealed that 59% of smartphone users in the UK only look at the first search engine results page. This means increasing mobile search visibility in Google and other search engines is essential to maximise traffic coming to the site from mobile devices. – Daniel Kelly It has been noticed recently that Google is testing Smartphone Optimized Icons in Mobile Results. The new smartphone icons labelled on some mobile search results symbolize if the website you are about to click on is smartphone-optimized or not. It could help users identify smartphoneoptimized sites more easily, so a mobile-optimised website could potentially get a higher click through rate with the smartphone icon. If Google finally decide to roll out the Smartphone Optimized Icons, building a mobileoptimised website will become even more important to businesses. Let us know you thoughts by tweeting #SL55 @SearchLately. – Blair Liu More details: http://googlemobileads.blogspot.co.uk/2012/01/new-research-globalsurge-in-smartphone.html http://searchengineland.com/google-testing-smartphone-optimized-iconsin-mobile-results-129768