Shamsul Chowdhury, New York office

Last week, Google announced significant changes to its criteria for Exact and Phrase match keywords. Starting in mid-May, Google will expand the relevancy factor for queries in order to capture misspellings, plurals, and stemmings.

What does this mean for you?

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I’ve written several times about “Cookie Day” on May 26th in the UK and suggested steps to take to ensure compliance in Britain.

There are still grey areas, but one thing brands do need to do is, in the ICO’s words:

“…think also about giving people more details about what you do – perhaps a list of cookies used with a description of how they work – so that users can make an informed choose about what they will allow.”

My advice was to update Privacy Policies and Site Ts and Cs with this information, and to “Remember that you should also provide links to any opt-out mechanisms that exist, too.”

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By Adrian Goodsell

I’m a big fan of Paul Adams (@padday).

He’s probably best known as the guy who laid the foundations for Google+ then upped and left before Circles launched to work on Facebook’s advertising platform. I’ve been following his blog for some time now and I’m usually given lots of food for thought by his posts. [Read more →]

By Gareth Owen

Google is going to change the way it displays search results in order to ‘answer questions’ rather than provide a list of sites that might contain the answers. That’s good, hopefully it will enhance user experience etc. – I personally use Wolfram Alpha when I want an actual answer to a question, rather than a list of sites, so I can completely see how this would be useful. HOWEVER, I had a think about what exactly Google has in its arsenal to ‘answer’ my questions and this was just the start of the interesting list of URLs they could use to answer keyword queries I might use: [Read more →]

By Duncan Parry

Last year I wrote about the UK Information Commissioner Office’s efforts to enact the EU ePrivacy Directive, and the “year’s grace” granted to brands to help them comply.

May 26^th, 2012 is Cookie Day – the day the grace period ends. Whilst the ICO isn’t going to start breaking down doors and issuing fines the day after the grace period ends, brands need to make sure they have taken steps to comply – and continue to do so.

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 By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch

One of the drivers of the growth of the digital industry has been the low barriers to entry in the industry. Anybody can start learning PPC from the Google site, or reading about SEO or other channels on sites like Search Engine Watch. That’s been a fundamental part of the industry’s rapid, vibrant growth.

But low barriers to entry have created another problem – the scammer.

Since the early days of the industry, people have fallen foul of the “too good to be true” approaches to PPC. After presenting at SES London, I was again approached by somebody who was paying a set fee to an “agency” and receiving no sales and no transparent reporting.

Here are some of the approaches you should be suspicious of when looking to outsource PPC. [Read more →]

By Shamsul Chowdhury, New York office

 We made an interesting paid search discovery whilst admiring our Managing Director’s cable knit sweater.  He disclosed that the garment was from Scotch & Soda, a store in Soho that also sells their clothing through other retailers. So, we decided to search the brand and check out what else they had. 

The result was interesting:

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By John Barham

EU bailouts. Stagnating political action. UK unemployment at a 17 year high. 2012 is not looking good for those recently out of university who want to grab themselves a rung on the job ladder. However there is a growing industry in the UK that is screaming out for educated, talented individuals who are looking to start their careers. Digital marketing is huge, yet I can’t imagine it appearing on the radar of many non-marketing graduates. There is an industry right under your nose every time you use the internet to search or visit social sites. PPC (Pay per Click) is just one of the many disciplines that sits under the umbrella of digital marketing and, like the other channels, it continues to grow in the UK and other markets.

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By Adrian Goodsell

I attended the first IAB Social Media Debate of 2012 yesterday afternoon. It was also the first since STEAK joined the IAB’s Social Media Council. The motion was as follows:

‘The online marketing industry is too easily distracted by the latest ‘shiny technical object’, reducing its effectiveness and ability to achieve results’  

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By Adrian Goodsell, The Wall, 30th January 2012

Looking for a huge numbers of fans? Can’t wait a second longer? Then read on, this blog post is for you…

1. Buy your fans
This is definitely the easiest way to guarantee a following fast; decide how many ‘fans’ you want then simply go to any dodgy-looking site (probably via a Facebook ad) take your wallet out (remember to stick your head in the sand) et voila, success! But wait a second; by definition once you directly pay for a relationship what does that relationship become? What does it really mean? There’s a very obvious analogy here, one that doesn’t involve any love at all…

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