Websites that rely on copied content to boost their search engine optimisation are among those that will be targeted by updates to Google's search algorithms.
In a blog post, the company's Matt Cutts stated that the company would seek to drive down the amount of spam presented in results of user queries, with sites that have low levels of original content among those to be filtered out.
He explained that the implementation of the changes to the system had been carefully targeted and only around two per cent of results would see changes, with less than half a per cent being adjusted to the extent that people would notice.
"The net effect is that searchers are more likely to see the sites that wrote the original content rather than a site that scraped or copied the original site's content."
The move is part of a drive the company has initiated for this year in order to improve the quality of the results it delivers, due to what Mr Cutts described to CNET as "a slight uptick of spam in recent months".
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While Google may have earned billions of dollars in revenue through features such as its pay per click services, one writer has questioned whether the company will be able to expand its business into other areas in the face of a new wave of social media.
Writing for Bloomberg Businessweek, Matthew Ingram suggested that a major issue for the company when it comes to future growth may be a lack of ability to create new innovations to provide additional revenue streams.
He explained: "Google's biggest problem is that it has consistently failed to produce any new lines of business apart from keyword-related advertising, which still produces more than 90 percent of its income."
Continuing, the writer noted that the amount of money the firm makes from other sources, such as display ads and YouTube views, is "peanuts" by comparison.
Mr Ingram added that the company's failure to produce a competitor to social networks such as Facebook my harm its business in the long-term.
Google's outgoing chief executive officer Eric Schmidt recently denied rumours that a boardroom shake-up of the company was a reaction to increasing competition from such sites.
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Paid Search Manager, Adrian Epstein, reveals details of the latest crossover project from YouTube.
On July 24 2010, You Tube invited people to create a snapshot of a moment in their life and upload it to YouTube.
People responded in their thousands. Over 80,000 clips were submitted from around the world, which added up to more than 4,500 hours of footage.
This footage was then condensed down and edited, and the result is a 90 minute movie, called “Life in a Day”.
Tonight, the movie is exclusively being shown live on You Tube at 7pm, streamed from the Sundance Film Festival. After that, you won’t be able to see it again until later in the year.
The film has been put together by Oscar winners Ridley Scott and Kevin MacDonald and so it’s likely it will be an awesome movie. Why not watch along at: http://www.youtube.com/lifeinaday
It’s another fascinating glimpse into how YouTube is documenting, and in doing so changing the lives of millions of people all over the world. Enjoy!
Outgoing chief executive officer (CEO) of Google Eric Schmidt has stated that Facebook's internet marketing services are not a threat to his company's business.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Mr Schmidt denounced rumours that a shake-up of management at the company was down to competitors.
Describing such speculation as "completely false", he added that "the next ten years will be as successful as the past ten. We're going to run this way for a while", CNN Money reported.
He also dismissed the possibility of Facebook challenging Google for advertising revenue, saying that he considered Microsoft to pose more competition to the firm.
Mr Schmidt added that he is still a full-time employee of the organisation and public ideas that he is effectively stepping aside had resulted from a misinterpretation of his new role.
Larry Page will take over as CEO of the company on April 4th, while Mr Schmidt will become executive chairman.
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It has been reported that Google is testing out display ads in Gmail as part of its internet marketing services.
Writing for Search Engine Land, Greg Sterling stated that a spokesperson for the company had explained that they are "experimenting with image ads on messages with heavy image content".
Mr Sterling noted that he found an advertisement that appeared on his own account page "really jarring" and observed that it would be interesting to gauge the public's reaction to the new feature.
He noted that, as the trial had been running since last Friday and he had only witnessed one ad, it is likely to be a small-scale test in order to gain feedback on public perception of the service.
Gmail is officially part of the Google Display Network, which also includes properties such as YouTube, Google Finance, Blogger and "over one million web, video, gaming and mobile display partners".
Commenting on the new feature, Engadget's Vlad Savov described it as an "unwelcome new visitor" and added that he hoped the firm thought better of the idea.
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More consumers may be happy to engage with internet marketing services through their mobile phones while on the high street, it has been claimed.
The Interactive Media in Retailing Group (IMRG) stated that customers are using their internet connection when out and about for purposes such as giving feedback and checking they are getting the best deal.
Research by the organisation showed that a quarter of individuals have used a barcode scanner on a product in-store to see if they can find it cheaper online.
It suggested shoppers are embracing technology and now expect a "seamless" experience from brands across all channels.
Managing director of the IMRG David Smith said: "Developments in mobile-commerce have led to the phenomenon of the ever-connected consumer, who can access multiple retailer channels concurrently, while instantly comparing and contrasting with similar offerings on competitor sites."
It was recently suggested by Gartner that the use of mobile apps would continue to see large growth, with 17.7 billion downloaded by the end of 2011.
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In this post, Head of Digital Marketing, John Newton, considers emerging trends in the way that the Travel industry is using social media and offers a few predictions along the way.
ClickThrough have recently been asked to share our views on the how social media will change the Travel industry over the next few years. The short answer is that social media will have a profound effect on the online strategy of many industries, which include the Travel market.
However, here are some more specific thoughts:
1) Facebook has set itself the aim of becoming the ‘operating system’ for many consumers, and this aim looks, in some cases, to already have been achieved.
We believe that it’s vital that Travel brands build their Facebook fan pages just as they first did their email database 15 years ago, and that they recognise that the interoperability of Facebook with other platforms (either social, CRM or ecommerce) provides them with the basis of a long term consumer relationship conducted through one major platform. Almost all social media campaigns will have Facebook as a required element.
2) Although the iPhone has made the smartphone popular, Google Android has made it affordable. The adoption of Google Android by many mobile manufacturers means that Android Travel Apps will become a major part of the buzz around Travel destinations.
Location based apps such as Foursquare, Gowalla, Twitter Locations and Facebook Places (see our Location Marketing white paper) enable Travel brands to engage Travellers (either through real or virtual rewards, or other means) in evangelising about their brands and locations.
3) Although when it comes to social media users are congregating around Facebook, there are also emerging Travel-centric social media vertical platforms. Bumped.in, Exploroo, ontheroad, Tripit, ShareTrip, TravellersPoint and Driftr are all social networks dedicated to Travel and Travellers.
These platforms allow consumers to share travel plans, update others whilst in the processing of travelling and even get real-time travel tips from other users in the vicinity. Travel is a ‘big ticket’ consumer item, and like the Automotive sector, consumers are passionate about sharing when things go better (and worse) than expected.
We believe that utilisation of these Travel-specific social media platforms will play a part in the social media plans of some Travel organisations in the next few years.
4) Consumer reviews will continue to play a crucial part in Travel industry purchases. In the PowerReviews ‘Customer Reviews and Online Shopping Habits survey’ this summer, customer reviews were viewed by 70% of people as having the highest impact on buying behaviour, closely followed by community forums, Facebook wall posts and User Videos.
We believe that finding ways to leverage true grassroots consumer opinion, and leveraging this to business gain, is going to be a major ambition for many Travel companies over the next few years.
5) Some Travel companies may decide to move away from the ‘superbrand’ as a focal point, and instead move towards developing bespoke social content for individual locations and hotels including more blogs for individual properties. Travellers and long term residents may well want to become part of this movement.
6) Consumers like the way that they can access their entire social circle so easily through social media platforms, and this has an implication for Travel retailers, and other brands too. Some consumers are already rejecting email and forms as a means of contacting customer services teams, and are instead choosing to take their business elsewhere.
Tools such as getsatisfaction have helped consumers get the answers they need quickly, but some consumers will expect to be able to use the social tools that they are already using on a daily basis.
Travel companies should expect consumers to use DM (direct messages) on Twitter (e.g. @HyattConcierge on Twitter) and Private Messages on corporate Facebook accounts more frequently to handle booking related issues, and be prepared to train their staff to be able to use these tools.
7) The economy continues to bite on both sides of the Atlantic. Consumers will continue to look for travel bargains, and especially late deals.
Companies that are able to offer same-day Hotel and Travel deals (in conjunction with their revenue/yield Management teams) for unoccupied rooms, leveraging the ability that social media provides for brands to obtain high search engine rankings for short periods of time for specific phrases, will be able to capture more last minute trade.
This is a big ask for the industry, but realising the potential of this hyper-late micro market will help to squeeze every last drop of revenue out of Travel inventories.
Internet marketing services providers may be interested in a new report that has revealed individuals in the US are spending more time on Twitter than ever before.
Analysis from Experian Simmons Datastream revealed that the average user in the country spent 2 hours and 12 minutes engaging with the site in November 2010.
This was up from the figure of 1 hour and 51 minutes that was recorded during the same period in 2009, the report stated.
The average number of visits per month from users grew by 37 per cent over the last year, with people coming to the site more often, but for shorter periods of time.
However, Experian also noted that the number of adults using the service fell, from 9.54 million in November 2009 to 8.25 million in the same month last year.
Recent research from eMarketer forecast that ad revenues for the site would grow this year, reaching the $150 million (£94.86 million) mark.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, Pay Per Click Services, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Online marketing services providers are planning to invest in mobile channels to engage with consumers this year, a new report has found.
The Econsultancy Customer Engagement Report found that 73 per cent of companies that responded to its survey said they would look towards mobile in 2011, with 19 per cent describing their level of investment as "significant".
Nearly half (47 per cent) said they would aim to create an application to exploit the opportunities available, while 28 per cent have already done so.
While 15 per cent already have m-commerce capabilities, a further 46 per cent are planning to move into this area in the next 12 months.
However, many companies stated that they did not have the expertise needed to fully utilise the technology and this was holding back their expansion in the sector.
Recent research conducted by In-Stat suggested that almost a billion smartphones will have been shipped worldwide by the end of 2015.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in SEO, PPC, Multilingual Search Marketing and Website Conversion Enhancement services.
Internet marketing services providers may be interested in the news that Google has begun to remove several piracy-related terms from its instant search features.
Several terms, including 'bittorrent' and 'rapidshare' will now no longer show up on the autocomplete function, although users will still be able to view results by hitting enter.
The move has been described by several websites as a form of censorship, while some commentators have suggested that the move was performed at the behest of entertainment companies and will have no impact on piracy.
Devin Coldeway of TechCrunch stated that the new policy is "worthless" and would only serve to damage public trust in a company that is supposed to remain objective, while Search Engine Land's Matt McGee pointed out that the terms are not necessarily illegal and there are many legitimate uses for them.
Elsewhere, Mary Jackson, editor-in-chief of ISPreview.co.uk, has stated that the public perception of government anti-piracy efforts is that they are going "too far, too fast".
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