Archive for July, 2009

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Yahoo! and Microsoft join forces

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 by Rachel Kneen

It has been suspected for some time that there was a proposition in the pipeline for these two search giants to join forces in a bid to be able to seriously compete with Google. This week the deal was made public and the two have thrashed out details of an agreement to suit both parties, in a move comes more than a year after Microsoft’s failed bid for it’s competitor.

The crux of the deal: Microsoft will power the search platform whilst Yahoo! will be the sales force for premium search advertisers.

By combining the services of both it is hoped that users will receive results faster whilst being more relevant. The partnership, which has been agreed for 10 years is to give Bing the ability to " more effectively compete, attracting more users and advertisers, which in turn will lead to more relevant ads and search results." according to Microsoft’s CEO Steve Ballmer.

Still with Google estimated to have over 70% of the market share the new partnership will have some serious work to do in order to recover some of this ground.

This does raise some interesting questions from a PPC agency perspective. Will they combine the backend admin? Will we be billed 1 invoice? Will we lose our Microsoft rep whilst our Yahoo! Rep is trained up on the full offering?

Watch this space…

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Senior SEO executive

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 by Matthew Phelan

Chris Hyland has just added our latest position with full details to the econsultancy website. Here is the link if you are interested in applying http://econsultancy.com/jobs/senior-seo-executive-5

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Pennyshares Company City Equities Invest in SEO

Thursday, July 30th, 2009 by Rachel Kneen

Like many different markets, stocks and shares can be a very complex subject matter. Inevitably this can cause some headaches when trying to search relevant information online.

Penny shares are classified as shares which have a low price. Typically they have a value of a few pence as opposed to shares with much higher values. They are traded in the AIM (Alternative Investment Market) which opened in 1995. Over the last few years there has been an increasing amount of information which can be found online for people who currently invest in or are looking to buy penny shares. The AIM market was opened to give the smaller and younger companies an opportunity to access the public markets. It offers an alternative to the London Stock Exchange (otherwise referred to as the main market) which has strict rules and regulation for admission.

So how does someone who is interested in penny shares go about their online research? It depends whether they are looking to research historical share prices or buy shares? As always there are a number of search terms people use, from "share prices" "penny share", "penny shares", and "pennyshares when looking for information. Those looking to invest often use search terms such as "buy stock", "penny stock" or "penny stocks".

In a similar vein, how does a company with information about pennyshares reach their audience? Using search engine optimisation is one strategy to embed in the marketing plan. This will enable people who are looking for the information to find your website quickly and easily. When looking at SEO, it is imperative to remember that although you are writing for the search engines you are ultimately writing for your target audience. Therefore it is vital that keys words are not over used throughout the content of your site.

4Ps Marketing are currently working with City Equities Ltd, endeavouring to make sure that searchers receive the information they are looking for in relation to pennyshares.

If you have a website you are not sure is reaching the correct audience please feel free to contact us.

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Discovering Twitter

Wednesday, July 29th, 2009 by Rachel Kneen

When logging onto my Twitter account this morning I was somewhat surprised by the new look homepage. Completely unexpected but, a welcome change the new clean looking homepage is designed to be user friendly to those not familiar with the site.

If you have ever tried to explain Twitter to a colleague, friend, relative you may have been greeted with an indifferent reaction. Many will often comment that to them it seems pointless why would they want to join when they already have a Facebook page? Twitter has finally taken this into account and redesigned their homepage incorporating these comments in the approach.

In repositioning themselves the new page has the tag line "Share and discover what’s happening right now, anywhere in the world" with a search bar underneath. At the bottom of the page there are a number of popular topics which are categorised into: ‘popular topics right now’, ‘popular topics today’, ‘popular topics this week’, which visitors can click on to see results. Those who do not have a Twitter account are able to click the ‘Sign up now’ button to create their own profile.

We have seen the site morph into a place in which people can share their thoughts with friends, acquaintances and strangers. With the new homepage it is hoped that new visitors will be able to see how engaging Twitter can be and want to take part. By taking this approach Twitter lends itself to the concept of being a "discovery engine" as opposed to pitching itself against the more recognisable search engines or decision engines we have come to rely on.

As Biz Stone comments on the Twitter blog there is still more work to do " The open and timely exchange of information will have a positive impact on the world and Twitter has a role to play". It is stated that they will take on board feedback about the new look and continue to make changes thus giving first time users a better experience. Whether it will help them reach the 1billion users they were striving for is questionable.

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I said be gone.. Vanish

Monday, July 27th, 2009 by Rachel Kneen

The new tool for ‘Self Destructing Digital Data’

Over the last year or so we have all heard the countless horror stories involving employees of various companies posting messages on the net they are unable to erase and sending inappropriate emails. This morning I came across an intriguing piece of information… it may soon be possible to delete your data. Yes that Facebook status which described how you felt about your colleagues which was then brought up in your appraisal could be a thing of the past!

The tool known as Vanish was developed by a group of researchers at University of Washington and has been designed to work with all types of messages including emails and networking sites.

Encrypted with a secret key the message appears as complete nonsense until the recipient highlights it and clicks on the Vanish button to make the text legible. It does this by sending splitting the key and sending it over the P2P (peer-to-peer) network, once enough of the pieces are lost, it is like a jigsaw puzzle with missing pieces, it cannot be rebuilt.

Using the Vanish plug in the developers say that you can put an expiry time on your email, social network message or blog comment and when it reaches that time the message will simply disappear without you have to do anything, it will self destruct. It is then left permanently unreadable.

This inevitably could mean more control for users over their documents and the private data which is stored long after they wanted it deleted. Although does it pose a security risk in itself. With people being able to destroy their data will it lead to an increase in online criminal activity?

Whilst we have not investigated the legitimacy of the producers’ claims to identify if they are true, the concept of the idea itself is outstanding.

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