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Google is going into the British newspaper business

Google AdWords clients in the UK will soon have the opportunity to also place their ads in British newspapers, as – according to Times Online – search engine giant Google is currently talking with several newspaper publishers in the UK.

Although the company does not comment on if or when Print Ads will be launched in the UK, it seems to be foreseeable that they will introduce the programme in the UK as well as in Europe shortly.

Google Print Ads is a new extension of Google AdWords, the well known auction system that allows companies to bid for a slot next to the online word searches.

At the end of 2006, the new programme passed the test with 50 newspapers and a small group of advertisers in the US and, in the meantime, has grown to more than 225 newspapers (from The New York Times and The Washington Post to smaller regional newspapers, college papers or Spanish language papers).

How does it work?

On Google Print Ads the advertiser chooses a newspaper, selects the day, the desired section and the ad size and then names the price he is willing to pay for the ad insertion. Generally within 72 hours, the newspaper publisher will respond to the bid by accepting it or indicating why he rejects it (based on this discussion the advertiser then can make a new bid). Finally, the advertiser submits the ad to the publisher. However, if he cannot design the ad alone, Google even offers to do that for him (taking a slice of the revenue anyway!).

According to Google, they bring new advertisers to newspapers with this programme which will benefit readers, publishers as well as advertisers. Google Print Ads makes it easier for agencies and advertisers of all sizes to plan and buy traditional newspaper media within a single, electronic interface bringing new efficiency and flexibility.

Indeed, it remains to be seen if the larger British newspapers join in Google Print Ads…

Google's PageRank update

22. November 2007

Google has recently updated its page ranking system. If you run a website it is likely that your Google PageRank has decreased.

Page ranking was originally developed by Google and it is a system that ranks websites from 0 to 10, needless to say that the higher ranking a site has, the better it is seen by Google itself and other businesses online. Pageranks are determined by the quality of the pages on a site and the links it has.

These recent changes, rumoured to be due to link selling and buying, has decreased the PageRank of a number of websites online, the BBC website for instance has seen its score go from 8 to 7. Pageranking is something that does not affect users finding you online, but it does affect how you are seen by your competitors, advertisers and stakeholders.

Some might see this as a form of cyber bullying by Google, but if you have to resort to buying links from higher ranked sites, what does that say about the quality of your web content?

Yahoo! announces new advertising deals

19. November 2007

Yahoo! will be offering discounts to its Gambling and Finance advertisers, in order to improve "partner quality" and increase advertising revenue and investment in the company.

Any advertiser from the Gambling and Finance sector wanting to advertise on Yahoo! and other members of its vast network such as Cheapflights will be receiving a discount based on how they are ranked by Yahoo! the search engine.

If you have a website, you will most probably be familiar with the word page rank, these are scores that search engines attribute to websites, based on the traffic they receive and generate, as well as quality. These scores go from 1 to 10, and each search engine attributes its own score to sites registered with them.

What Yahoo! will be doing, is charging advertisers based on the score of the site they want to advertise in. For instance if you are looking to advertise on a website with a Yahoo! score of 6, each click that you would receive through that website will be costing you 6p, originally it would have been 10p!

"This is about rewarding the high-quality partner sites and penalising the poor quality ones (...) It provides a universal tool and pricing programme that really focuses all of our partners on delivering the highest, most valid and most interested leads to an advertiser." Richard Firminger, Yahoo!'s regional sales director for Northern Europe.

This new measure will definitely motivate lower ranked websites to improve their quality and traffic, on the other hand, it would also give advertisers the option to use websites that have the same score as their clients, and still save a few pennies! In other words, if wanting to advertise a site with a score of 5 then it would be viable to use a site with the same score and pay accordingly.

As mentioned above, these new discounts will only apply for the Gambling and Finance sectors, but should soon stretch out to other sectors. Altogether, the advertising industry will be the big winner in this situation, advertising and its revenue is running the online world and it is predicted to continue doing so.

Youngsters spend more time online than watching TV

13. November 2007

A recent survey has shown that 16-24 year olds use the internet more often than they watch TV – 82% use the internet between 5 and 7 days a week while only 77% watch TV as regularly (a decrease of 5% since last year). 48% of these youngsters have also admitted to watching less TV now because of the internet.

This study by the European Interactive Advertising Association (EIAA) has come to prove how the internet is growing and becoming so popular amongst young audiences. This study has also shown that internet users are spending on average 12 hours a week online, that is 1.7 hours each day.

Social networking websites such as Facebook and Bebo have also enjoyed an increase of 19% compared to last year, with 42% of internet users visiting such sites. This has led to a decrease on e-mail usage, however, e-mailing is still the second most popular online activity amongst Europeans.

The Top 10 most popular online activities across Europe, according with the EIAA are :

Searching	87%
Email	81%
Communicating via social networking sites	42%
Instant messaging	37%
Music downloads	31%
Listening to radio	31%
Watching TV, film or video clips	30%
Rating and reviews	27%
Sharing thoughts on forums	26%
Downloading a film, TV or video clip	20%

Source: www.eiaa.net

With Searching remaining the most popular activity more and more companies choose to optimise their websites for search engines since most people are directed to those through search engines. If you run a website this could be your golden opportunity!

The study by the EIAA has also attributed the increase of online users to broadband, which has come to increase the speed of connections, making it easy for users to watch and download online videos, hence the popularity of sites such as Youtube. Out of the 169 million people using the internet 8 out 10 are using broadband.

In all, 57% of Europeans now regularly access the internet each week, that is 169 million users across the 10 major European markets. Alison Fennah, Executive Director of The EIAA has stated: “Our Mediascope study shows that consumers are using the internet for function and fun as their media world becomes truly digital. We hope to help advertisers and agencies to understand this evolution and develop new and innovative communication strategies.”

AOL expands Truveo's availability

12. November 2007

AOL will be launching Truveo (a video search engine) in the UK, following its success in the US. This company is looking to increase its online presence by also launching the search engine in France, Spain Germany, India, Japan and Korea.

Truveo has been around since 2004 and it does have a large non-American users base, hence the opportunity to expand. Unlike Youtube, Troveo doesn't just store videos uploaded by members but also indexes them to different sources on the web such as the BBC and YouTube itself.

So, if your looking for a specific video on the web this might just be site to go to.

Google maps takes a step forward

09.November 2007

After the success of Google maps, Google has teamed up with Gilbarco Veeder-Root to bring Google maps to petrol stations across America. Internet connected touch screens will be installed on pumps and motorist will be able to get directions and print out a copy whilst filling their tanks.

Gilbarco Veeder-Root is a company providing fuel and retail management services to Petrol stations and convenience stores in the US, this new partnership and business step seems to be a good move by Google to a get a little more exposure and publicity not that it necessarily needs it. Note that Google will not be receiving any advertising revenue from this.

Insiders see this new move as good profit opportunity, petrol stations will increase their earnings from motorist that would stop to use the map and purchase fuel, the company involved could also see this as a good opportunity to increase volume sales of pumps and other services they offfer.

As per Kirsten Paust, vice president of global retail systems at Gilbarco Veeder-Root, "getting directions at the pump is safer than using Internet-enabled devices from the driver's seat and far more reliable than just asking a stranger (...) We believe consumers will prefer convenience stores that deliver useful information and ultimate convenience. Retailers who use these tools will make themselves more valuable to consumers and gain the competitive edge".

How useful would this service be for the consumers? More and More people rely on satellite navigation systems and previously printed maps from personal computers before starting their journeys. Can Google maps touch screens really compete against that?

Only time will tell. These touch-screens are meant to go 'live' next month in the United States ans there's yet no date or plan for a UK trial.

Facebook offers new platforms to Advertisers

08.November 2007

After Myspace's recent announcements regarding its new advertising offers. Facebook has announced their new strategy on Tuesday, 6. November, they aim to have businesses build their own costumized pages. This new project has been creatively named "Facebook ads".

In an era where word of mouth and personalised messages are at the core of any successful communications/ advertising campaign, Facebooks new actions will be highly welcomed by advertisers and businesses in general, with 10.000 pages having already been created and launched the same evening as these announcements.

Facebook users will be able to become fans of those pages and any action they take on such would be automatically communicated to that users friends, who would receive a company logo. In other words, if your favourite chocolate brand happens to have a page on Facebook, you would have the chance to share your passion with other users on your friend's list.

Further actions would involve businesses being able to track their social ads, as well as users shopping sites being promoted to those in their friend's list.

As per Mr Zuckerberg, ( facebook's founder ), "nothing influences people more than a recommendation from a trusted friend (..) a trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising. For the last 100 years media has been pushed out to people, but now marketers are going to be a part of the conversation.”

MySpace reveals their advertising plans

06.November 2007
By targeting adverts trough its new system, MySpace wants to show that it is offering more to advertisers than Facebook.

Indeed the first phase of its new advertising sales system called "hyper-targeting" will allow advertisers to use some personal information that users put on their profile to sell personalized advertisement.

MySpace has even assured that its click trough rate on its hyper targeting advertisements will be 300% greater than from competitors. It seems to have already convinced several well known partners: Procter & Gamble, Microsoft, Ford and more, have already signed up for MySpace's new system.

The new scheme allows advertisers to search 100 different user segments like travel, automobile or movies. This is a gold mine for advertisers as they will be able to target their campaigns at people who are more likely to be interested in seeing this advert. Furthermore as Facebook claims that it receives an average of 54 billions pages views each month, MySpace being the market leader must have much more. But these informations will have a price and the more specific information the advertisers want, the more they will have to pay. Facebook has promised to announce the details of its new platform today, which will give users the option of letting the site track their movements on the web at large.

The social networking site is so trendy that everybody wants to create their own profile and get connected. Yahoo is starting to elaborate its own by enable university students to tap into a network of professionals and get advice for internships and jobs offers. What is next?

Google boosts social networking alternatives

31.October 2007

The battle against the two giants: Google and Microsoft is still rolling! With the recent news on "Microsoft acquiering facebook shares" it is time now for Google to shoot back by launching a system that will give the opportunity to developers to create applications for a variety of social networks.

At this time developers have to give their customized design for a specific site with many are already partner with the potential competitor Facebook.

The new Google open social system is the way to compete with Microsoft which took a 1.6 %share with the popular social networking site. Google will allow a wider distribution for tools like Facebook's music recommendation service iLike and its TopFriends application.

For the instance, Google has 12 social networking partners who signed up to the system which include LinkedIn, Friendster and Google's own social network Orkut.

The difference with Facebook is that the open social network will allow developers to write in normal Javascript and Html only and you will just need to do minor adjustments for the code on the social network platform. This is an improvement because according to Michael Arrington from TechCrunch's "Developers have been complaining non stop about the costs of learning yet another markup language for every new social network platform, and taking developers time in creating and maintaining the code,". The new Google plan is clever, because it will pursue many developers to work with Google partner applications and consequently strengthen Facebook's rivals.

Google tops advertising revenue

30. October 2007

According with the Timesonline, Google has beaten ITV in advertising revenue, the search engine giant has earned £327 million last summer compared to £317 Million by ITV. At a time when the future of advertising is highly discussed and the number of people with access to broadband internet increases. These figures come to show that online advertising, and search engines will become an essential part of any successful integrated marketing communications plan.

This year Google has already earned £9.25 million in advertising revenue, £54 million more than it did for the whole of last year when it surpassed channel 4's. ITV on the other hand is expected to face a revenue's drop of 7%.

One of the reasons why online advertising has become so popular is due to the limited amounts of restrictions when compared to television and other traditional media such as press and radio, advertisers like the fact that they can be more creative online. Due to this fact ITV is looking to loosen its restrictions to increase its advertising revenue. "Google, whose advertising revenues have overtaken Channel 4’s and which has 75 per cent of the search advertising market, is wholly unregulated. Yet ITV labors under a host of anachronistic proscriptions about what it can and can’t do" - Michael Grade, the executive chairman.

Very few people however seem to be skeptical about the power and future of online advertising and search engine marketing, discarding Google as a "brand finder" as opposed to a "brand builder". However figures from the Internet Advertising Bureau show that if it was not for online advertising value growth (41%) the overall value of UK advertising would have fallen by 19%.

The internet is and will remain a viable and successful platform to communicate with your customers. As per the Internet Statistics Compendium, 91% of adults who have used the internet, use a search engine to find information. It would then make sense to optimize your website for search engines so that users would be able to find you.

Web 3.0:The next Internet revolution

29. October 2007

Engineers from the Silicon valley have created a virtual picture how Web3.0 can revolutionize the internet. According to them, in 2030 Web 3.0 will be very powerful and smart. It will be able to connect every aspect of our digital lives.

Web 3.0 will have the possibility to know when you are typing an email and what subject the email has. It will also be able to suggest websites, books, documents and photos you have saved and choose which one can be relevant to your topic.

Basically the new web is going to almost have a brain. Technologists wants to improve the basic platform Internet. The main purpose of Web 2.0 was to gather collective intelligence of internet users to give information on internet a relevant value. The goal was to improve web's usability and creating connections between internet users.

In Web 3.0, the aim is to renew the web's key index. The engineers want to implement "a natural language search": search engines will be able to answer full questions and be not focused on the original search terms. The platform will be more open which means the possibility to mix and match (Mash-up) different services on the web.

According to John Doerr, one of the founding board member at Google "Web 3.0 will be a immersive and multi-dimensional environment". Many areas will be affected by the web, he warned them that they need to be ready.

Web - Web 2.0 - So be prepared to the next internet revolution = Web 3.0!

Microsoft aquired Facebook share

25.October 2007

For the bargain prize of 117 millions pounds, Microsoft bought a 1.6% stake of Facebook. Other companies such as Yahoo or Google also wanted to invest in one of the most popular social networking websites but Facebook declined their offer.

The aim of this partnership is simply to increase profits through advertising on both sides. Microsoft will sell internet ads for Facebook outside the US. The company already had an agreement with Facebook to provide banner advertising and links to the US version of the social networking site. This was the part of the deal discussed during several weeks. With this acquisition, Microsoft will become the exclusive third party seller of overseas advertising outside the US on Facebook. Knowing that the social networking site currently has 49 millions users, this could be a huge financial opportunity for Microsoft.

The Facebook deal is Microsoft's answer in its battle with Google. Looking one year back in October 2006, Google beat Microsoft with the 1.65bn dollar acquisition of online video sharing website YouTube.

With this partnership Facebook is looking to increase its current audience of nearly 50 million active users by becoming a real magnet for advertiser and also to compete fiercely with its rival MySpace which currently has 100 million users. Facebook also wants to take advantage of existing Microsoft skills. According to Charlene Li, an analyst at Forrester Research, the software group knew better -in comparison to Google- how to work with program developers and build computing environments. She said that “Microsoft is a company that knows how to build platforms, knows how to develop relationships with developers. The social networking site is hoping with Microsoft 's collaboration to struggle less to reach leader position."

Children's Safety on Facebook

24. October 2007

Facebook has recently admitted that their response rates to complaints regarding pornography and harassment are poor. The social networking site will now be changing their conduct to ensure that children are protected from inappropriate content and Paedophiles.

Social Networking websites and the internet in general have been a playground for molesters that use these to prey on children. Last summer, Myspace in the US removed thousands of users from its network after being pressured by the US government.

Facebook will now be changing its procedures regarding complaints involving unsolicited approaches and inappropriate content, all thanks to New York attorney Andrew Cuomo who carried out his own investigation after receiving numerous complaints. As per Facebooks chief privacy officer "the attorney general pointed out some weaknesses in our complaint-handling process (...) what he has directed us to do is renew our vigilance around complaint handling.”

Facebook's new procedures will involve:

Fast-track and priority to any complaints to do with nudity, pornography and unwelcome approaches;
Quicker responses to any complaints of these nature, they will be aiming to respond within 24 hours, and demonstrate their actions within 72 Hours;
Warnings concerning the risks of social networking would be presented to perspective members before signing up;

An independent examiner should also be monitoring the effectiveness of these new procedures, nevertheless alot more could be done on Facebook, but it does seem to be a good first step.

The future of Google

22.October 2007

According to the TIMESONLINE, the search engine giant Google wants to conquer the world by holding people 's information. How is going to do that? Google has developed a three steps plan to make the impossible real.

1) Become the "universal search engine"

According to Google's head of search products and user experience, Marissa Mayer: 'the web is actually very limited and primitive". Currently it is mostly a summary of words, image and music. Google wants to innovate web's content and be the only Search Engine to provide comprehensive search facilities. They currently develop a new software that will have the capacity to scan millions of news sources of information to give richer search results.

2) Make search personal

But Google doesn't just improve the search service, they also want to make search more personalized. With iGoogle, the internet user's search is monitored and web surfing history will be recorded. Signing up to iGoogle on your PC or even using your mobile, you can search anything you want at anytime and anywhere but don't forget as good as this sounds - they can also turn this around and monitor every step you do. It become a real personal service but also a way to be traceable.

3) Developing the concept of "Cloud Computing'

Step 3 to put Google's dream into practice is implementing the concept of "cloud computing". The big G wants internet users to create all of their documents online in order to work on them by using Google's web based software. The user will then be able to store these documents online on Google's vast global network of servers instead of doing it on their computer. This will be possible via Google Apps, Google's own web based program recently launched. Internet user will be able to create a password, to protect word files and spreadsheets, in order to edit and store them online .

By pursuing this dream Google will record 'everything' we do online and store this information. So be careful, Google is watching you !

MySpace and Facebook - outsourcing application development

18. October 2007
After Facebook's annoucement to open its doors to "new and innovative" applications as previously reported (New fun features for Facebook), MySpace is set to follow its footsteps, and gets outside developers to contribute new applications to their website.

Since adding new applications to its website Facebook has enjoyed some expected success and growth. Users can now share videos, audio and photos, and it has become a window for finding such services.

With the addition of new features, MySpace is looking to offer its users a similar type of services and continues competing at a similar level. Currently Facebook is the UK's most popular social networking website - with 47 million users worldwide, but Myspace is still the worlds biggest community with 188 million users.

As per Chris Dewolfe, MySpace's chief executive, "the idea will be to allow outside developers to tightly integrate their applications into MySpace (...) I would say we're different (than Facebook) and in spite of all the hype we seem to be growing faster".

This new step will definitely give this company another competitive edge on Facebook and increase the value of social networking websites, not only in the digital world but also in general markets. These are good news for all users finding new ways to promote themselves online. In the past 2 years musicians, such as Lilly Allen and Kate Nash, have found MySpace to be a perfect launching and social networking site, and could enjoy platinum success.

MySpace and Skype: a new team

17.October 2007
MySpace users will soon be able to make phone calls to each other as the social network site made a partnership with the internet phone company Skype.

This service will be available by the end of November 2007. As the 2 companies claim to be the worlds largest online voice connected community, with 110 million MySpace users and 220 million from Skype.

The concept

Free internet calls will be possible between MySpace and Skype users. MySpace users will also have the possibility to pay for land line or mobile phones calls through this application as it will be integrated into MySpace's existing instant messaging feature. No additional download of software will be required.

The deal of this new partnership is to increase pressure on traditional telecoms companies, who are battling to save margins in the face of virtually free internet calls. But it is aimed also to improve the way people can communicate online with each other.

Guardian Unlimited sees films differently

16 October 2007
Next month Guardian Unlimited is set to launch a new interactive film database as part of their See Films Differently campaign. Its main objective is to get different users to interact with each other and embrace different film genres.

This new database would allow users to review and comment on films as well as adding links and films, depending on their registration type, which is at present defined as 'film rookie' or 'film buff'.

Film databases are not unheard of, but it seems to be a first for an online newspaper. Nevertheless the Guardian will be facing competition from other online film databases such as IMDb - Internet Movie database, which has been around for over a decade and goes beyond movies by including TV Programs and video games.

Guardian Unlimited's initiave is a positive one, especially in times where we mostly have film experts telling us what is worth watching in newspapers, is good to know the average Joe's opinion.

Google on the top of the world search

12 October 2007
Google deserve to be called "Big G" or "Search Engine Giant" or any other similar phrase out there. With 37 billion searches in August, the market leader executed half of all search request around the world .

Yahoo comes second with 8.5 billions searches followed by Baidu, the chinese language search engine (3.2 billion), then Microsoft (2.1 billion) and finally the korean NHN search engine with 2 billion. These figures collected by analysts from Comscore revealed that most search activities are based in the Asia/Pacific region. For the month of August, it represented 258 millions users carried out 20.3 billions searches. Europe is the second region with the largest total of searchers with 210 millions users followed by North America with 206 millions users.

Focusing on the Asia Pacific region and due to the fact that this market has a huge potential it also has lead to some unethical changes conducted by the search engines. Some even are in contradiction to the first goal of the Internet - access of information. In China for example, Google, Yahoo, Msn have to obey to the strict Chinese laws controlling freedom of speech. This includes employing their own “monitors” to carry out government censorship orders and committing to remove any web pages that are considered politically sensitive. That shows that even these Giants of information have their Achille's heels.

YouTube videos on Google ads

10. October 2007

Google surely knows how to succeed. For the first time shares break the $600 mark and increase by 17% in only one month.

A growing source of revenue are its various advertising channels. In a previous article "Google reveals advertising strategy for YouTube' we revealed that Google has elaborated a new online marketing strategy where small half transparent adverts are incorporated in a selection of video clips on YouTube.

Google decided to expand its lucrative Adsense platform to video content by allowing advertisers to insert clips from YouTube videos into their promotional messages.

How it works?

A banner ad will appear across the top of the video player or as a link at the bottom when internet user click on the video. A succession of text ads will be also visible when users watch the video. These text ads will change at a rate of about 1 every 10 seconds at the bottom of the page and will seize a fifth of the video player screen. Advertisers will be charged on a cost-per-click or cost-per-impression basis. The advertising revenue will be shared with the video producer and the web publisher.

This program is a win-win relationship according to Google. Currently this new program is only available to a selected group of YouTube video providers. Mondo Media or Expert village have signed consent forms to provide/generate video content. Video Adsense is only available on YouTube US.

@ Tetridia

Search engines' piracy policies

Do you love using search engines like Google, MSN or Yahoo to find information? Whenever you are using a search engine, the information about your short "stay" will be tracked: IP address, the research, profile and even your name (because so many people type their own name to know if others can find it!) This information is stored by the search engines - with no exception.

We have put together a summery about the search engines regulations:

Search engines' privacy policies

Search Engine	Anonymizes user data after:	User control over data
Google	18 months	No
Microsoft	18 months	End 2007
Yahoo!	13 months	No
Ask	18 months	AskEraser: End 2007

By the end of 2007 Microsoft and Ask want to launch a new system to give the user the choice about their personal information being stored or not.

@ Tetridia

Optimize PDFs for search engines

08. October 2007

As competitive as the online world becomes, it also is crucial that a website is noticed online.

As repetitive as this might be, Search Engine Optimization ensures that your web content appears when a user is searching for it. It is essential that search engines can read the content from a website therefore optimizing PDF files as well as normal HTML/ XHTML web content would be an excellent step to take.

Search Engines rate websites based on their relevancy to content and keywords, but also on many quality links the sites has - outgoing and incoming. The same way Search Engine Optimization specialists can optimize websites, PDF documents can be optimized too.

How to optimize a PDF file:

Make all PDF's in text format, so that the search engine can read it;
Complete the document's properties, (especially the title) - what usually happens is that people forget to set a title, that way the search engine will pick content from the PDF file and it might not be exactly what you would want.
Optimize text, by making sure that selected keywords are there and can easily be identified;
Add links to PDF files, so that readers can always be redirected to your website;
Save files at the lowest possible Acrobat version, so that readers can easily open it, and search engines can find it;
Sizes should be kept as small as possible, if files take too long to download users will abandon the site;
Place links to your files on your web page where it can easily be found, i.e. closer to the root level of the site’s file structure.
Specify reading order, in terms of text and headlines;
Publish articles in different directories that directly link to your PDF documents

In order to achieve a higher ranking, it is important to use a set of well chosen keywords and relevant content, by optimizing PDF files. They can achieve a higher number of links and the opportunity to have more content associated with your website and your business, which would ultimately affect one's ranking on the most popular search engines.

Seminar Review - Youtube, Joomla, Youhoo?! Conference in Berlin

We had the pleasure to present the Tetridia seminar “Boost Sales Using The Internet And On-line Marketing” at the Youtube, Joomla, Youhoo?! Conference in Berlin last weekend. It was a great success and judging by the number of people coming to the seminar – the interest and the expectations were very high.

While concentrating on online marketing methods and strategies – we started out with generic but very essential issues such as defining your target group or the USP of specific website. Talking about all online marketing channels would have been too time consuming – we therefore mainly focused on search engine marketing. The audience was eager to learn about Keyword research, Link building as well search engine optimisation. Some attendees had previous experiences with Google AdWords or similar schemes which we could refresh and deepen. Relatively new areas such as article marketing as well as social media, which includes social bookmarking, media sharing and social networking applications were greeted with curiosity and excitement.

It was a fantastic experiences for us to take part in this 2-day conference – worth every minute.

Is Yahoo catching up on Google?

03. October 2007
Yahoo! has improved its search engine by creating a new " Search Assist " tool. The aim is to win market share from the search giant Google, leader of the search market and also resolve a problem of consumers called "internet search fatigue".

Indeed Yahoo! will propose ways to phrase a search as a user types into the query box and will produce more links to photos, music and videos on the main results page.
This new search tool will also pull information from Yahoo's calendar service:Upcoming.org to highlight local events to a search request .

Yahoo!'s idea when deciding to create this new "search assist " tool is partly based on a research showing that online consumers were suffering from "web search fatigue".
The study by 'Harris interactive' reported that 99 % of adults online use a search engine to find information online but only 15% of them find what they looking for on their first search. They have to conduct a search three or four times to find what they are looking for.

The manager of Yahoo! Search said that they make the changes to give the best answers to their consumers. This internet search fatigue damages yahoo's earning and profit and also has a dramatic effect on their market shares too. In August 2007, Yahoo market share represented 23% of U.S Search market compared to 56.5 % for Google. Two years ago, Yahoo market share(32 %) was only 3 points away from Google (35%).

The gap between the two search engines is going to be hard to fill but it is certainly worth trying!

Wikipedia's founder explains new editing rules

26. September 2007
Wikipedia's founder Jimmy Wales, denies that the new strategies intented to improve the site's reliability, will jeopardise the users ability to edit text, and go against its original premises of having information that could be edited by people around the world.

As previously reported by Tetridia ("Wikipedia - 100% reliable source?"), Wikipedia will be launching a new strategy indented to improve its reliability. The new structure involves the online encyclopaedia’s text being edited by "accredited editors", instead of the instant editing being used at present.

In a recent interview with the Times Online, Wikipedia's founder has affirmed that the site's original premise will not be sacrificed for accuracy and reliability, users can still make the changes they feel necessary, however they would have to be registered for at least 4 days before making any changes.

Jimmy Wales believes, that these new modifications will decrease the number of wrong input information on the site; " There are no plans to restrict anybody's status (...) anyone can make an edit, but if the user hasn't been registered for at least 4 days, then it would have to be approved by someone who has been registered before going live".

As for Wikipedia's new competitor Citizendum which runs a very similar policy, the mogul denies that these new actions are a response to their competitor, which admits entries from the public but are edited by an expert panel, before being published online.

At the moment, the company is also facing a new challenge, the launch of its own search engine, which would involve users with website ranking, scheduled for December this year. Search Wikia is the name, and Mr Wales refutes that he intends to rival Google, "when we launch search Wikia, people will probably expect it to be a fully fledged Google - it won’t be!"

Altogether, search Wikia seems to be following its sister company's footsteps as a place in the online world where users have more control, if users rate the websites and the order in which they appear, that would definitely give cybernauts the power to exclude unnecessary sites from our search results. As for Wikipedia the future might look bright, it is not the most reliable source, but it will always give a good base start to any research.

Update: Microsoft Live Search

24. September 2007
Microsoft decided to take action to compete with industry giant Google. On 26th of September, a new version of Live Search will be launched.

The relaunch of MS Live Search has two main objectives: increase the numbers of users and build a stronger reputation in the search field.

What are the main changes?

Microsoft has made improvements to the search functionality of Live Search and added more personalized elements, focusing on social networks. New features have been added such as Windows Live translator. They also want to change the way results are brought to the consumers, also delivering multimedia results like its biggest competitor Google does .

Marc Bressel, regional sales director for EMEA at Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions, said "We want to bring a totally different search results experience to what we have in the market".

These innovations are following the launch of AdCenter in the UK last summer. A paid search platform to compete with Google Adwords but Microsoft didn't achieve to be a serious thread to the market leader just yet. To be successful in this market Microsoft needs to win back its slice of the search engine market share in order to make the AdCenter platform work, one step to reach this goal is to bring more users to Live Search with their new version of Live Search .

But will it work? Time will tell .... so watch out for more news.

Wikipedia - 100% reliable source?

21. September 2007

Wikipedia has been facing inaccuracy claims throughout its existence, but recently the online encyclopaedia has announced that it will be taking action towards making the information displayed on their website more reliable.

They intend to resolve their problems, by using a new package that will first be tested on the German version, where readers will no longer be able to alter information instantly, besides their own "reliable" editors. Any readers wanting to make an alteration would have to propose it to these called editors, which are picked based on how many reliable articles they have online. Certified "vandal-free" pages will also be available, as well as a new rating system that would rate editors on how many changes to their input info are requested, the fewer the changes, the higher the reliability score.

On the other hand, this could also be Wikipedia's response to Citizendium, as Tetridia has reported last month, Citizendium was created by Wikipedia's ex co-founder, as an online encyclopaedia that provides reliable and accurate information, the public can alter information but not anonymously, there are also editors and all reports are constantly monitored and checked for accuracy.

Wikipedia started in January 2001 and it was created with the objective of providing a "free content encyclopaedia", that could be edited by anyone around the world, offering one site that people could turn to for a wide array of articles and content. These new changes would obviously affect their original premises, but can we really trust Wikipedia to become a reliable base for information?

New fun features for Facebook

20. September 2007
The popular social networking website is in need of new and innovate applications (small programs which can be integrated in the users profiles like a music sharing service or Texas HoldEm Poker).

These applications need to be constantly improved and renewed as they are part of Facebook's growth and popularity.

The founder of the social networking website decided to offer a grant of £125,000 to companies or individuals to develop outstanding and engaging applications. To receive this grant, finalists will be judged by a jury including Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's CEO, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel and Accel's Jim Breyer, the primary investors of Facebookfunds grant (fbFund).

This clever move will bring many new ideas and innovation to the website. The interest in the developer community is expected to be very high as well as pretty much every programmer will be able to work with the Facebook API.

Great plans - not a very new scheme as such as the main idea is of course very simple and straight forward - bringing in new members or alternatively (and probably even more important, keep existing user on the website for longer. This will help to increase revenue made with advertising.

A previous article "Facebook opens profile to the public: How to Hide!', explains how the social networking site wants to profit from its members. Now the new weapon of choice are the software developers and even Mr. Zuckerberg said: "With just a little bit of capital, a company can grow to hundreds of thousands of users,...". Anyway - the new application will be great fun to use too!

Microsoft to pay a £345 million fine

18. September 2007

Software giant Microsoft has lost its appeal against the European Commission at the Court of first instance and due to its anti-competitive actions it has been ordered to pay a £345 million fine.

"The court of first instance essentially upholds the commission's decision finding that Microsoft abused its dominant position"- Court's statement.

Over the past 9 years the European Commission has battled against Microsoft to make the software market a more competitive one. More recently in 2004, Microsoft was ordered to share information with its software rivals, so that their products could operate with other computer systems. As well as making their Windows operation software available without Windows Media Player, which was seen as being anti-competitive since the user would not have a direct option as to what entertainment software to use.

On Monday the court has ruled that Microsoft's behaviour has been anti-competitive, and that their software should not be sold as part of a package and that they should share information with rivals. Microsoft is now unlikely to appeal again, and will comply with the demands. However they feel that handing information over to rivals would only affect theirs and competitors creativity.

Neelie Koroes, the competition commissioner has stated that "Microsoft cannot abuse its windows monopoly to exclude competitors in other markets". She has also predicted Microsoft's 95% market share to decrease.

Facebook opens profile to the public: How to Hide!

18.September 2007

In the previous article "Facebook opens profiles to the public" , we rang the alarm about the new search functionality of Facebook and the possibility for anyone to track down Facebook members via public search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN (Live) or Ask.

Here are some tips to prepare to defend the privacy attack!

Facebook's plans are clear. The social networking site wants to use the collected personal data of Facebooks members to increase its revenue. Indeed it will serve to target advertisement to individual users and you will notice this in the week to come, new advertising features are going to be added. Facebook's current priority is making advertising more personal, as because of the media's anonymity targeted online advertising is rather difficult. Search Engines don't know enough yet about their users to fullfil their commercial potential.

This is a simple reason why Facebook wants to make all this private information such as favourite music or details of personal/private events accessible to the public especially to advertisers and marketeers because they know it is a goldmine and they want to profit from it.

In the long term, Facebook's will transform from "its online talking shop to a massive distributive network for services and advertising." according to the TIMESONLINE .

So if you don't want your private life be a part in this 'amazing' transformation, learn How to hide on Facebook.

@ Tetridia

Do you have a successful website?

17. September 2007

It is important to speak to the usability and web experts, get advice on what works best for your business online. However to really KNOW the success of a website it is necessary to work with numbers, to understand what they mean and what the consequences are. Web Analytics can paint a clear picture on how successful your website is, if the right users are coming to visit and even what they are up to.

What is web analytics software?

First of all a web analytics software will trace the behaviour of the website users. The software will pick the useful data from the website to determine which aspects works towards the business' goals and objectives.

A wide choice of various software packages is out there such as Omniture, WebTrend, WebSideStory, Click Tracks, Visual Science and Google Analytics (free of charge).

What does the software tell?

Web analytics software will improve your websites efficiency and its success online, like more sales or leads, increase the ROI (Return on investment) or decrease your online marketing costs:

Website Traffic Reports: help to understand the users of a website, where they are from, how long they stay, which pages they visit ...

Key Performance Indicator or Dashboard: closely monitor the KPIs of the online activities and let them guide you to to improve the website or the marketing campaign

Possible KPIs: Number of visits, Pageviews, Pages/Visit, Bounce Rates, Average time on site, New Visits, Goals and Conversions.

Understand the KPIs of your online business

It is important to keep an eye on the KPIs you have selected as even simple changes on the website or activities can thrive your statistics crazy.

Lets assume the visits to your company's website have increased by 20% from August to September. Looked at this on its own is a pretty good performance. But think twice - should you really start celebrating? What is the consequence - your companies main aim? Can you expect more signed contracts, more newsletter subscriptions, or leads? There is more to it - if we look at the bounce rate which indicates an increase to 85% - a rather high number of users looking at only one page.

This is only one simple example of how different numbers tell different stories. Take the time to understand the results and you can achieve a highly successful website.

Google tycoons park at Nasa airbase

17. September 2007

Jet parking problems? not Google!

Did you ever find yourself stuck between two options? For instance, do I park my jet at San Francisco airport or San Jose airport? Probably not.

Sylicon Valley tycoons, however, have had to face such difficult dillema, but what they really want is to park closer to their offices. Recently, Google inc co-founder, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, have found themselves a parking space at Nasa airbase, just 1.7 miles from their offices, costing £650,000 a year.

Whilst these Google bosses get to park closer to their offices, Nasa will be installing instruments on some of these jets (Boeing 767-200) in order to obtain scientific data. Nevertheless, some locals seem to be against these arrangements.

What you need to know about Social Bookmarking

13. September 2007

The success of the "social" web applications is undeniable. Social networking sites like Facebook, Bebo or YouTube have reached success and fame in the past & present. Now followed by social bookmarking websites as they are becoming more and more praised by internet users.
Why create such a buzz around these websites? Let us give you a brief overview and the reasons why you should be in it to win it!

What is Social Bookmarking?

Social bookmarking is an online tool which allows people to organize, rate and share their favorite sites on the Internet. Categorize favorite sites using tags, which describe the content of the website. Other people who are interested in the same subject can browse through this selection, based on the recommendation and choose to bookmark the page themselves. The web application often allows users to store links (bookmarks- hence the name ), share and search a web page location (URL), web page address or a file name. All of these lists of online resources can be made accessible to the public. That is why it is called " social " bookmarking site. These bookmarks can be private or shared. To get your own social bookmarking storage - simply register to one of the website below.

List of Social Bookmarking websites

Blue Dot
del.icio.us
Digg
Diigo
Furl
GiveALink.org
Ma.gnolia
My Web
Netscape
Netvouz (Allows both tags and folders for organizing bookmarks.)
Newsvine
Reddit
Shoutwire
Simpy
SiteBar (SiteBar bookmark server is open source software)
StumbleUpon
Thoof

A bit of Social Bookmarking History

The idea of sharing internet bookmarks was born in April 1996 with the launch of the first social bookmarking website itList.com. The market flourished in three years and websites like Backflip, Blink, Clip2, hotlinks and quiver enter in the competition. But this first generation of social bookmarking software didn't have a viable money making model behind it. Many failed especially with the dotcom bubble gone burst in 2001. In 2005 and 2006, a second generation of social bookmarking site like Del.ici.ous, Simpy and furl rushed into the social software market, followed by Diigo, Ma.gnolia, Netvouz and Stumbleupon. Latest members to the family are websites like Reddit, Digg, Newsvine, the Uncut Times and Netscape. Recently IBM have revealed plans to enter this market and even the traditional BBC has added social bookmarking links for its news and sports articles.

Social Bookmarking: a small web revolution!

This a new way to discover the web. It is a big innovation in the area of searching for information online. Compared to the traditional system using a search engine, social bookmarking sites have a great advantage: The categorization of the bookmarks is made by humans who understand the content of the pages they have listed (or so we hope), unlike to the search engines which are using algorithms to rate & store the content of web sites. The result pages are ranked by the number of users or the times the keyword searched has appeared on the resource.

The importance of Social Bookmarking sites for Search Engine optimisation!

These Social Bookmarks are a nice "Add-On" for every companies Internet Marketing Strategy. It is all about traffic -and your online bookmarks again generate links which can potentially bring traffic to the website. Furthermore social bookmarking sites are highly considered by search engines because they are seen as reliable and recommended websites - human edited.

Create your account and start digging!

Firefox reached 400 Million target

12. September 2007
As a loyal reader of the Tetridia News section you know that Mozilla wanted to re-structure its Firefox brand to increase it's retention rate compared to Microsoft's Monopole with Internet Explorer. Last Friday Firefox has reached its 400 Millionth software download.

The Firefox power is growing strong since its launch date in 2004, with an increase from 100 Million to 200 Million 2 years later. It managed to doubled popularity in 2007 reaching 400 Million last week.

It's important to say that these 400 Million downloads do not represent the number of people who use the increasingly popular Internet browser. The number also includes updates or people who have re-installed Firefox. However there is no time to rest as it does not mean that every user who has downloaded the software is actively using it.

Firefox is gaining more and more market shares from Microsoft (Internet Explorer) and has reached around 18% according to W3Counter, this is a loss of about 9% for Internet Explorer.

The next Big Thing - Mobile Networking

10. September 2007

It is a fact - we travel more. Not only for holidays or weekend breaks - we have also become more accustom to travel further to work. The consequence of this is that many industries adjust to this development and research new markets. One of these markets is the mobile phone industry - new features with sheer endless possibilities - listening to music, chatting and surfing on the web = skyrocketing revenues.

The logical next step for mobile operators: After the success of user generated content online with websites like Facebook, Bebo or even YouTube, they adapt this scheme and take it mobile. With the expansion of the social networking to mobile content, this could be generate about $5.74bn (£2.87bn) by 2012.

One of the most attractive elements which could be the key factor for success is that everybody would be able to keep in touch with their friends wherever they are and keep up-to-date with their online profile whatever they do. The user can type "I'm at the beach right now" or "I'm doing some Xmas shopping" directly on your mobile phone. Of course we can debate about the importance of this type of messages and the already existing overload on information.

Some facts about the power of social networking - an increase of 270% of Facebook's users for the last 2 years. We can notice an increase for MySpace (72%) as well but lower as the less saturated market of Facebook. MySpace now has more than 114 Million users world wide instead of 52 Million on Facebook. Bebo, with it's majority of users in Europe, grew 172% to more than 18 million users.

Research has shown that the user profiles of people who are using web sites like Facebook is very similar to the one's likely to be interested in using the internet on a mobile phone. (Comscore)

The results show that people who are experimenting with the internet on a mobile phone are younger than users who access the web only with a computer. In Britain, more than 25% of mobile internet users are aged 15 to 24, compared with 20% who go online using a computer; a further 41% of mobile internet users are 25 to 34 compared with less than 20% using a computer.

Different social networks are now available on some mobile operators such as Facebook in the US with Verizon or AT&T or even YouTube with an exclusive deal with Vodafone.

With this in mind it also becomes clearer why Google would want to join this profitable market with its own Gphone.

Tetridia's advice: Get your mobile marketing strategy ready!

Facebook opens profiles to the public!

07. September 2007

Facebook is transforming its social networking web site into something similar like the "White Pages" online. Following the trend of Spock.com and ZoomInfo. Not only has Facebook now opened users profiles to the public. A publicly available search functionality has been added, which allows anyone, Facebook member or not, to search for a specific person. In about one month time, people will also be able to track down Facebook members via search engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn or Ask.

What about the privacy?

People who are not registered can only see the picture of Facebook members from their profile image, But if you are or you wanted to be an user, you can add this person as your friend or send him a message and sometimes see its profile. The problem still remains the same: this site can be dangerous. Tetridia has reported on privacy issues of Facebook in the past - about Facebook members reveal their personal details too easily. Many have never modified their privacy settings, where you can restrict the information available. So if your profile is not private and can't only be seen by your friend, anyone can have access to your mobile telephone, date of birth, interests or events you will attend.

This site is a goldmine to anyone who want to exploit people's private information this to include identity thieves, hackers, cyber criminal and of course the all prominent advertisers. Indeed they will have all the information to target YOU. Considering that Facebook has 39million members it really is a great opportunity for marketeers. The new regulation will come into force in the beginning of October 2007 - so you still have one month to change your settings and protect your Facebook profile.

Article by Sonia Langevin @ Tetridia

Google - the master of Easter Eggs

06. September 2007

Google has big dreams - and as a big company it can even effort to put those dreams in reality. Apart from putting rather real dreams into action - like buying "YouTube" for the bargain price of $1.65bn, sometimes their fantasy runs wild.
Google is well known for their little gadgets be it to change their logo for various occasions or seasons or the equally entertaining "Easter Eggs".

Earlier this year we heard about weird things happening to the Google templates at 3.14am sharp: the Loch Ness monster or the “Pi” symbol with the sky template at 3:14 am ( Pi = 3.14159265!!!!!) suddenly appeared on your personalized Google homepage template.

Google Earth - Flightsimulator

Using Google Earth we can now even fly between buildings with a secret Flight Simulator that takes full advantage of Google’s extensive satellite imagery.

To access these hidden feature, open Google Earth and hit or Ctrl+Alt+A (with a capital A) if you’re using a Windows Machine. (or Command+Option+A with other hardwares)

The Google Earth Flight Simulator comes with two aircraft options, a F16 Viper and the more manageable SR22 4 plane. Players have the option of commencing the game from their current location in Google Earth or can pick from a list of pre-determined runways.

Get more information about control instructions from Google.

Overall the game is fairly simple to play, but the striking difference is flying over real images of locations.

For example you can take a quick trip from San Francisco International Airport, heading north to the Golden Gate Bridge then turn back over the city before heading towards the Valley. The software is not perfect but you can have some good fun and an (let's say semi-professional) overview how a flight simulator works.

Fasten your seat belts and enjoy your flight: Click here to download Google Earth now

Firefox - USE ME!

05. September 2007
Research has shown that only 25% of the users who download the Mozilla built browser Firefox use it regularly. That is a very good start but not enough...

Why is it so hard to outrun Internet Explorer?

First of all and most importantly - Internet Explorer comes with Windows and is ready to use. There is no additional work for the user and all Windows applications work hand-in-hand with it.

Another part of the users will simply not want to switch because they feel more comfortable with Internet Explorer and don't see the reason why to make the switch.

How to increase the Firefox market share?

Mozilla has build valuable partnerships to further increase their market share. Google Pack now includes Mozilla Firefox. When a user downloads and installs the software pack the possibility is given to choose to install every single item separately but also as a bundle. It is all about the ease of use - and the possibilities are much higher for people to install the software if less work = less hassle is involved.

Mozilla Firefox has agreed on a new strategy with a 12 point plan retention to increase its usage:

Change Firefox icon label to resemble action of getting to the Web
Put the Firefox icon in a better location
Make default browser settings easier to use
Big outbound marketing program driving brand recognition
Improve download page and first run pages
Improve support page
Make plug-ins work out of the box
Make add-ons and personas more accessible
Make the Web feel more human
Improve messaging through communications channels
Stickier start page
Explore Changing the Firefox icon image to closer resemble the action of getting to web

Tetridia's advice - be adventures and you will not regret it: download Firefox !

What you need to know about Podcasts

Hearing the name 'Podcast' could give you the idea its coming from the all famous iPod from Apple don't you think? But what is really behind it?

We like the following explanation: Portable On Demand - broadcast.

What is a podcast?

Basically podcast is a digital media file (mostly but not exclusively used as - audio-mp3 or video-mp4) which is distributed over the internet using RSS (syndication feeds) and than listen to on a mp3 player and a desktop computer. Using RSS ensure you get the latest podcast as soon as it has been published.

Undisputable the biggest advantage of podcasts is to have the option to listen/view the content whenever you have time and only the content you are actually interested in. You can keep old shows and listen again later if you wish.

Is an iPod needed to use podcasts?

Contrary to popular belief, listening to a podcast is not restricted to the famous Apple product. Any other mp3 player will do perfectly well too. There are also many programs available online to be downloaded and used with your desktop computer.
The most popular software to use to manage your digital content such music, videos or podcast is iTunes from Apple also available for MS Windows.

Possible Podcast use cases

News / Talk Shows - Industry or organisational news, investor news, sportscasts, news coverage and commentaries.
Business- Business audio advices or business news in general.
Music - Band promotional clips and interviews.
Training - Instructional informational materials.
Story - Story telling for children or the visually-impaired.
Self-Guided Walking Tours - Informational content.

How to find Podcasts

The best way is to use podcast directories - you get a wide choice and many also have a rating/voting system in place which can give you an indication on the quality of the content. Mostly pod cast are available free of charge.

http://www.digitalpodcast.com/
http://podcasts.yahoo.com/
http://www.podfeed.net/feedburner_rankings.asp

News Provider

BBC - Podcast Directory
The Guardian - Podcasts
The TimesOnline Podcasts

Create your own podcast

To create your own podcast for your company or for your friends, have a look at this podcast tutorial which will guide you through the technical requirements and what else is needed to get your voice published and broadcasted online!

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia

Citizendium, the rival twin of wikipedia

28. August 2007

Unbelievable but true - TimesOnline and the Guardian have revealed that larger companies are editing their entries in Wikipedia in order to brush up their public image in the free online encyclopedia. If we are truely honest - who would not do the same....

Wikipedia is among the top ten of most visited websites (it has Rank 9 on Alexa). Several times the website has been criticized for their way of editing and in consequence of this the rather high possibility to hold inaccurate and nonsense articles. The fact that anyone can edit articles degrades the quality of the content and has raised the question of the credibility of the authors.

Larry Sanger, ex co-founder of Wikipedia and new competitor, has launched a new services about 6 months ago - his online encyclopedia Citizendium. The big difference to Wikipedia's service are editor experts. The website is also open to public collaboration but volunteer contributors don't remain anonymous. Authors have to provide their real names and the accuracy of their articles is checked and approved by experts. The goal of Larry Sanger was precisely to avoid all the criticism that Wikipedia is now facing.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by Sonia Langevin @ Tetridia

Google reveals advertising strategy for YouTube

23. August 2007

You Tube, which has been bought by the Big G (a.k.a Google) in November 2006, has revealed its new online marketing strategy - small half transparent adverts are incorporated in a selection of video clips.

How does it work?

The advert will be shown for 15 seconds after a user has started to watch the video. It will appear for 10 seconds on only 20% of the bottom screen without much disturbing the viewer. The user will have the choice during these 10 seconds to close the ad or even let it run throughout the video clip.

Who would apply for this new marketing channel?

For the moment more than 1000 partners such as BMW or Warner Bros. have the possibility to broadcast their message through YouTube.

Will the ads show on all YouTube videos?

This new advertising system will only appear on selected partner videos and not on the personal movies.

How can the target group be selected?

Companies will have the possibility to target their ad through different criteria like demographic, geography or even day part.

According to Google “Less than 10% of viewers actively move to close the overlay when it appears and that there is a 5 to 10 times “click-to-play rate” compared with standard advertising format”.

This means it could be a good opportunity to diversify the way to broadcast an advert and try to get other people or new target groups never reached before. With this new way of presentation, community and sharing websites like YouTube will capture the interest of more people and as a result generate more revenues for Google and its partner companies.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia

Knowledge is power! - The Power of Search Engines?

23. August 2007
The American company SPOCK has recently launched a new search engine :SPOCK (public beta) which can track down the names of the world's six billions people. The idea of Jay Bhatti, founder of Spock.com, is to create a people search engine to help its users finding and discovering literally everybody on the web.

Google, Yahoo or Ask.com already do provide a similar service but they only work well if the person in question has a rather unique name, otherwise they have difficulties to filter out relevant information. Spock.com wants to do better and overcome this difficulty by delivering specific results to the people requests.

How does it work ?

When you are looking for a specific person - you enter the full name and the results will come up in the form of profiles. These information is found online from social networking sites like MySpace or Facebook.
Spock.com is not the first search engine doing this - Zoominfo was the precursor. In 2001, this site gathered informations from websites and was used by recruitment companies or sales people who could subscribed to the service. In 2005 a service for conducting personal searches was made available for the public. At the beginning these new websites were a way for headhunters to review job applications but now it is used by everyone who is trying to find information about somebody. As simple as this.

The danger of these sites!

Even if the concept is very interesting, it can be dangerous - as we all know it is not just us searching for an old schoolmate. EVERYBODY has access to this data and can search for a person, find every information about him or her online.

This raises several issues: first of all - privacy , for example if you don't want that your headhunter knows if you are gay or Muslim, cat lover or dog hater...

This kind of application will create a massive catalogue listing every person on earth and everybody can look into it. It invates your private space. There is also the likely risk that the information available is being abused. This has already been confirmed from public figures. Give it a try, type "Mel Gibson" on Spock.com, the result will show the actor among the most famous anti-semitic people behind Hitler and Osama bin laden and described as a drunk driver.

So be careful when you add something on your Facebook or MySpace profile, your Boss/ Neighbor/ Dad/ Husband/ Children/... could see it!

The Sky is not the limit for Google

22. August 2007
To commemorate the first lunar landing on July 20 1969, Google gives the opportunity to its users to 'fly' around the lunar surface themselves.

Indeed Google Moon is an extension of Google Maps and Google Earth. The image was taken from the U.S space agency NASA which signed an agreement with Google in December 2006. This agreement promises to make some of the NASA information publicly available online. According to the NASA administrator Michael Griffin, this could soon allow everybody interested to experience a virtual flight over the surface of the moon.

But Google doesn't stop here with the launching of Google Sky it will allow astronomers a chance to slide through images of more than one millions stars and 200 million galaxies. These images can be seen from the Hubble space telescope. To use Google Sky, Google Earth needs to be installed too. With just a click, you can than see the earth and the sky from a particular location. It is not the first time that Google explores space. Launching Google Mars in March 2006, it allowed users to explore the surface of the red planet. With Google Earth, Moon and now Sky, there is no limit for the Internet giant - and we enjoy the novelty to see something which only a few could until now. At least so we believe :)

Facebook's chamber of secrets has been opened

20. August 2007
Facebook is the victim of its own success, with now 32 millions users worldwide, the social networking website is more likely to be subject to be attacked. Last week part of the source code had been published on a public blog. Bad Press for the social network starlet.

It is the first time that some of the site 's secret code has been made public and the lack of users private data security is seriously questioned. Hopefully this incident does not permit hackers to have direct access to private information but it is an open window for identity thieves. Indeed Facebook users, 2 out-of 5, divulged too easily their personal details like phone number, address or full name - they happen to be too friendly and trusting with people they have never met.

The UK fraud prevention is worried because this trend is increasing especially in the younger, more vulnerable generation. It has been shown that in the last six month a record number of fraud has been committed including an estimated of 40.000 identity thieves.These cyber-criminals can create a false identity by gaining access to personal information displaying on Facebook online accounts or infiltrating employers computers networks. Even if Facebook guarantees that users private data has not been compromised by this leak - people are now questioning the security of the website.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the online marketing industry.

Article by Sonia Langevin @ Tetridia

Google is now attacking the media industry

16. August 2007

Google has added a new revolutionary feature to its Google's news section. The search engine giant is giving the chance to the people who are related to a story published in Google news to directly respond to it.

So called ''participants'' (...of a story) can send their comment to news-comments@google.com and their contact details in order for Google to verify their identity. These comments are linked alongside the normal media coverage of the story.

At the moment, it is up to Google to contact people and organisations concerned by a specific story and ask them to comment. This idea is not new, Yahoo news has already experimented with this by displaying forums based around specific news stories. But the experience was a disaster and they stopped it again last year because the site had been quickly encumbered by spams and other irrelevant comments.

Even if Google pretend to only give to 'Google News' users different points of views and information on the story written, the media industry are skeptical and worried. This could be a way to control the content of information and even worse it can 'decredibilize' the entire article because how Google can guarantee that the comments come from a true ''participant ''.

Article by Sonia Langevin @ Tetridia

Search Engine Optimisation - The pitfalls!

14. August 2007
If you are planning to relaunch your company's website keep Search Engine Optimisation in mind from the very beginning. Avoid making mistakes which can lead to a much lower ranking than expected. Find below some of the most common mistakes and how to overcome them:

1. A bad title is a bad web page

The title tag is one of the most important website elements to keep in mind. Because of the "title tag" we have a general idea about the subject and content of a website. It also works well for human visitors and search engines. The human visitor will know he/she is on the right web page, but also a well chosen title is a sign of credibility and professionalism.
For your "not so human" visitors - the search engine robots - title tags play an important part in ranking your website if used properly with the valid keywords corresponding to the content of the web page. Don't forget - every web page is unique, it is therefore recommended to be very precise with the title of website if you have web pages which are similar to one another. Should you have web pages with a very similar title - consider merging the content.

2. Bad or duplicate content

A website is unique ans so should your web page as well. Sometimes we found that webmasters lacking originality and use plagiarism techniques. This is not only unethical but will also lead to a low ranking and in the worst case - the website can be banned.
Advice: hire a professional editor who will write the content of your website.

3. Cross link your website

Just because you have a great website and perfectly optimised web page does not mean you are going to be ranked on top of every search engine. This would be too simple.
Link building is often referred to as OFF Page optimisation. When linking from other websites to your own remember that a website with a high page rank will have more weight than one with a low rank. It is probably the most important SEO element on your way to the top. The principle is to sell you own pages to other website owner. One way is to buy text advertising linked to your website.

4. The incoming link anchor text

Anchor texts for incoming links are probably as important as the link itself. The text should be targeted at your main keyword/s and the page it points to should also have those keywords in relevant prominent positions. The website you link from should be relevant to your website.

5. Be patient!

Patience is the virtue of online success. In fact a website has to be updated often to stay on top of the game. You need to check, validate, may be even re-build the website and add new content etc...This is vital because achieving a high ranking once does not mean that the website will keep this rank forever. Search Engine companies are constantly changing their ranking criteria.

6. Keyword selection: The Key of Online Success

Keywords are the foundation of SEO. A well chosen selection of key phrases is vital for the future success of a website. It is important to think like a person who wants to find you - therefore chose key phrase which are actually been used by visitors, where is less competition to other websites and of cause is strongly related to your website.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia

The World is not enough! - A Google & Gphone story

09. August 2007
It looks like the Search Engine “Giant” Google has been inspired from the recent launch of Apple's new iPhone in the US. Countless articles, as found in THE TIMESONLINE, have speculated about Google's mobile phone venture and it's reason to 'go mobile' - is it time to put ideas and plans into action? Lets look at the facts:
The mobile advertising market is growing fast and is set to be more than 11.3 billion annually in 2011. Google can extend its dominance of online advertising by offering free services like google maps, google mail through Gphone's pre-installed applications which of cause are subsidised by advertising revenues.

Many speculations go around this, one of them saying that Google's potential new phone would have its very own Google operating system. But this is not all. Google has already discussed partnerships with operators and mobile manufacturers like Orange , T-mobile or LG. If we can believe 'Big G' the aim is not to compete with brands like Nokia who control 36.2% of the mobile market, but only to get their share of the advertising market which is very targeted and therefore more attractive for businesses.

Tetridia's Tip: Get your wishlist ready for the big IPhone/GPhone battle at Christmas!

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the online marketing industry.

Article by Sonia Langevin @ Tetridia

Google AdSense – easy money?

27. July 2007
How about making some profit with your website? All you need to do is to provide space for small advertisements in relation to your website's content. The magic word is: Google AdSense.

Google AdSense is a service which places ads on websites and pays the owner for each click or pageview the advert receives. The scheme is the counterpart of the Google AdWords program. The ads are being selected automatically by Google but are corresponding with the selected website. A crawler is reading the content of the particular website and feeds through matching adverts. In addition you can filter out various attributes - as of course no one wants to feature your competitors on your own website.

First you need to register with the AdSense program, your site will be included if your website meets a certain level of quality. Google offers you a toolbar with which you can adapt the ads to the design of your website. In addition to that you can adjust their size and format.

Payment time!

Google is keeping a low key attitude about the payment. The advertisers pay Google for posting ads, but the final share of that amount going to the website's owner where the ad is posted is still unknown. The average payment per valid click is said to be 0.20$. According to a New York Times article Google spends approximately 78.5% of the AdWords income for AdSense ads.

Logically, click fraud is not far, since it seem to be an easy way to earn money by clicking on the ads on your own page again and again and again. But Google is carefully observing all AdSense participants and actions taken. Whoever offends those rules will be banned from the AdSense program.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Who owns Facebook? - story continues...

26. July 2007
We always kept a close eye on Facebook and the news are hitting fast these days. Headlines like "Facebook users run risk of fraud", "Nosy 21st century neighbours" and the latest this morning from the MediaGuardian -"Facebook in court over ownership"

Website optimisation is not enough!

25. July 2007
If you still think it is enough to optimize your company’s website for search engines - look again! The competition is fierce out there and everybody want to be the best and of course winner in this ambitious “cat&mouse” game – website owner/designer vs. search engine. It might be hard to believe, but it is actually not the main task for search engines to chase cheating web designers or invent countless ways to prevent their dubious search engine optimization methods.

The emphasis should be on their and also your companies clients – basically everybody who is using a search engine. We all have one aim: to find what we are looking for easy and fast! To achieve this search engines have been developing very sophisticated algorithms.

We distinguish between 2 types: ON and OFF pages optimisation. It can be safely said that ON page optimisation is only about 20% of the total effort and the remaining 80% in down to a well organized OFF page optimization.

What is relevant to Search Engines?

The amount of links pointing to your site and its pages – increases credibility.
The actual linking text (anchor text) of these links, indication for the “value” of the link
The quality of the pages where these links are on

But why is off-page optimisation so important and why do search engines focused on these methods rather than OFF page optimisation?

A simple reason is that “on-page SEO” is controlled by the owner and can easily be abused in the hope of gaining an unfair advantage in the Search Engines result pages. OFF page optimisation is controlled by other mostly external sources (other website owners, online communities…) This makes it much harder to bend the rules in one single websites favor and relevancy is spread to be judged by many.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia Ltd.

Keep in touch with the world – with newsletters

Sending out newsletters to clients, both existing and prospective, is a good way to keep in touch with them and to stay in their minds. But, as usual, there are a few points which should be well considered to use this online marketing tool successfully.

Brevity is the soul of wit. No one will read your newsletter you open it and are already slain with text on first sight. Always keep content clearly structured and simple.

It's all about style. Indeed, it is more likely that people will have a closer look it the newsletter is visually appealing. Try to make it well designed and put some pictures or graphics in. Furthermore provide various links back to your website.

Professionalism scores. Do never send your newsletter before you ensured that it looks appropriate and eventually that the links do all work. The newsletter should attract potential clients and not make the shake their head due to sloppy appearance.

Timing is everything. The time to send out your newsletter is very important and will have an influence on the reaction. Generally it is advisable not to send it on Monday mornings and Friday evenings. But the right time also relates to the particular target group and their habbits.

Keep track. After the newsletter is sent out don't just sit and wait, but test its effectiveness and track its progress.

Last but not least. It should be easy for the reader to find your contact details and also to unsubscribe for your e-mail list

There are many e-mail-newsletter programs around which will help you creating and distributing your message.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about online marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Facebook used to spy on students!

Oxford University is accessing student profiles on Facebook to note "troublesome" behavior and
penalize them with fines.

We all love to share - but be aware of the consequences too - your first "boss to be" might have heard of facebook too but will most likely not be as impressed by your activities as your friends back in uni.
(19.07.07 -NMA magazine)

Google your website with Google Custom Search!

17. July 2007
This Tuesday Google has launched its new search facility for business users called "Google Custom Search". Google now offers 2 different versions including the Google Custom Search Business Edition. This version is similar to the free one but available without any adverts distracting the user.

Google Custom Search can be:

Included in one website, multiple or even specific web pages
customised adapting the websites branding criteria
Host the search box and results on your own web pages.

This service launched by Google may look technical but with the new system everyone without any HTML background can add this new search engine to the website in about 10 minutes.

Who can use Google Custom Search?

Websites, blogs, or special internet groups
Companies of any size (Business Edition)
Non-profit, government or educational organisations

Google's new system is indeed open to every website which needs to include a search facility to help clients or visitors to find the product or information they need.

In fact this system could even help increasing the conversion rate by helping visitors find the products they are looking for and guiding them to the product. It can also improve usability and reduce support enquiries by allowing users to quickly help themselves...

The business version comes with a pricetag attached: starting from 100$ per year to 30,000$ for the most advanced search engines with a high level of traffic.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia Ltd.

SEO for domain names or How to choose a catchy web address

When building a website the point will come where a domain name (also called web address or URL) has to be chosen. Sound easy at first, but there is more to it. A websites domain name influences your search engines ranking as web crawlers judge a fitting title as a match. The result is a higher ranking.

What do you need to consider?

1) you want to promote your brand, so it would be a good to include the companies' name in the domain name.

2) a reference to the service or product offered on the website is also useful - search engines check if the websites content relates to the domain.

3) make sure that the domain name is not too long, since the "type-in" traffic is likely to drop down - plainly - the web address should be easy to remember!

It is getting more difficult to find the right domain name as so many are already taken. Friends or family can possibly help with brainstorming for names. They can also judge from an outside point of view just as your clients or web visitors.

Last but not least: Before you finally buy a domain name, always check if you do not have any legal or trademark indications in all the countries you wish to trade in.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Optimisation.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Out now: Google's Pay Per Action

In one of our previous articles we discussed already that Google was about to launch a "new" search engine marketing feature: Pay Per Action.

Just recently they finally added it to their Google AdSense program for the UK market after a beta test version started in the US in March 2007.
The number one search engine is again setting new standards in the never stagnating world of web search.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about search engine marketing and new developments in the search industry.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Next Generation mobile phone - THE iPhone

When there are hundreds of people queuing outside a store, some even during the night, there must be something special going on - the premier of a Hollywood Blockbuster perhaps? Far from this - it is just a mobile phone - the brand new iPhone. Lets see what the hype is about...

On June 29th 2007 Apple launched its iPhone in the US, which they are offering in cooperation with mobile phone group AT&T Wireless.
Taking a more detailed look at the new gadget it becomes clear that the times where a phone was supposed to work as a "mobile phone" - are definitely over. The iPhone additionally includes the functions of an iPod-video-player, a camera and it even has access to the internet. So, what else do you want?

The iPhone has a total of only four buttons, the rest is navigated via touch screen, where you can choose either a digital number keypad or a letter keypad. It is yet another technical design masterpiece from Apple.

With around 500,000 sold items on the first weekend Apple's expectations were exceeded tremendously. Now, everyone is waiting in tension for the release in the UK. Guess there will be some geeks queuing the night in front of Apple's flagship store on Regents Street.

We love it and can't wait for it to come out in the UK!

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

ChaCha.com: The future of search engines?

27. June 2007
This new search engine could become one of the most powerful and useful search engines. Infact Chacha.com can make the way you search easier and the results better with it's instant-message chat. There will be always somebody who can help you in case you are unable to find what you are looking for.

According to Scott John, CEO & Co-founder of Chacha.com, this new search engine, is “the ultimate fusion of computer technology & human intelligence. Live human guides are available to provide additional assistance. - The human brain.”

ChaCha has two options for searching:

the user searches without the assistance of an adviser
or the users can get help in real-time via an instant-message chat

But what is the main goal of this new way of searching when we are used to do it all alone?
When somebody is trying to find very specific data, or is a novice with the internet in general, he or she has the possibility to refer to the chat function and ask one of the 10,000 advisers for help. ChaCha currently is a beta version. That means they are still working on the functionality of the website and try to update and finetune it according to new user experience.

Lets keep our eyes open to watch out what is going on in the search world. Not that we believe ChaCha will outrun Google, Yahoo or the like in an instant - but it is always good to have a choice!

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by David Datour @ Tetridia Ltd.

How to find the right SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) Company

12. June 2007

You have made the decision to move the marketing of your business online.

But now it is very important to check carefully before choosing a SEO company. Look out for a professional and reliable partner you know you can trust with your brand values. Read on if you want to know which crucial points you need to consider when looking for hiring a company to raise your online business.

Does the company follow good SEO practise?
First of all check the website of the company or consultant you consider – how does it look or work for you? Does it bring the message across and is easy to read and understand – or is it repeating terms such as SEO, SEM, Search Engine Optimisation all over the site? -> than you better stay clear of this provider.

What is their own SEO strategy?
Then of course check if the company itself is represented in common search engines.

Customer Relation
It might also be helpful to contact their clients and hear how they judge the work of this particular SEO agency. Find out if the company has long-term clients, which is a sign for good service and satisfied clients.

The company’s background
Find out how long the company/consultant is working in this field and what the core business is - you don’t want a part time student/office worker/freelancer dealing with something that important as your companies marketing strategy.

SEO Expertise/ Knowledge
Before you put your trust in one SEO company, make sure they have a solid and up-to-date understanding of the industry, which is a vital quality since there are constant changes going on, requiring quick actions and decisions.

Transparency
As you trust this SEO company with your brand you should ensure that they introduce you to their actions taken. You need to know exactly who is the one responsible, who to talk to.

Reports
Ask the SEO company of your choice if they can show you a sample report you will receive . This will provide you with some insight on the level of the quality of their work.

Last but not least: Ownership
A trustworthy SEO agency will ensure it is always your company who is in control and not the agency. If the campaign includes buying new domain names – than your company should be the owner of it.

The company of your choice should be experts in the industry through and through and show a high degree of professionalism. They should provide a detailed overview and, very important, they should be able to make you understand what they do and how they planning to proceed.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Optimisation.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Get your business noticed - the right way!

06. June 2007

80% of first time visitors arrive on a website by following a link from a search engine, which makes clear how important it is to appear high in their ranking.

To increase traffic the website should rank top in the search engines, such as Google or Yahoo; the higher the better. In order to have a successful ranking website it is vital to optimise 'content and code' for Search Engines, now even more than ever.

Search Engine algorithms had to adjust their strategy to continue achieving a high relevance in their result pages. Because: if the user can’t find the information she is looking for she might quickly press the back button and click on a competitor’s link. Social Media websites like YouTube or MySpace have increased their popularity and now heavly influence Google and Co.

And with this - it is important that content as well as language adapt too. Real users use real words to find what they want - no marketing blurb which might work for magazines or TV advertising. The common brand jargon does not have the same effect online, so there is no need to use it!

Create a healthy balance between the needs of the company and its aims regarding to the commercial point of view. It is important not only to focus on the Google ranking, because being number one will not pay off if the website is not delivering what the user was searching for. Good SEO should actually enrich the user’s experiences but not annoy the user if she can not find on the website what was promised on the Search Engine.

The following points are guidelines for a search-optimised copy:

Use high-volume search terms
Choose words that receive large amounts of searches per day

Place the keywords at or near the top of the page
The start of the body tag is best. If site navigation does not allow this, try to put the Keywords/Keyphrases as close to the top of the page as possible.

A 5% high-volume keyword density
If a web page contains 100 words, then five should be high-volume keywords.

Include high-volume keywords in title tags and meta description tags
High-volume keywords in the body copy should be complemented by these tags.

Body copy should include link text to similar products
Try to get at least three or four links that go to product pages with one or more similar keyword targets.

Don’t use images when text will do
If you cannot avoid using images, add descriptive text to their alt attributes.

NMA - search marketing report 11/06

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Black Hat Search Engine Optimisation

or: What you need to be aware of when you are looking for a professional SEO company!

22. May 2007
As long as Search Engines are around, people have made every effort to get their website on top of the results. The race of being number one on google is still on and now known under the name - Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). But as much as we want to know how to get there - the more Search Engine developers try to hide the big secrets. It has become a real “cat & mouse” hunt.

People have tried many things to win this game. Some of them "good" - some "bad". Hang on, you may think, if there is a way to get my business up to the top and increase my sales - I dont care how I get there! NO - that's a very plain and shortsighted assumption and would only work for a short time, if at all! The consequences are disastrous. The following Search Engine Strategies can and will put you on the search engine's "blacklists" which in simple terms mean - you are out! Banned from Google, Yahoo... and such like.

The commonly used term for bad SEO techniques is “Black Hat” SEO in contrast to “White Hat” SEO techniques which use an ethical ways to optimise a website in order to achieve better ranking positions. Watch out which methods SEO companies are using, promising your business immediate number 1# results. This article will help you to understand the various "bad" methods, so called "Black Hat" techniques - and yes maybe there is a little bit of magic involved.

Let us put the "black hat" SEO into two categories: Content Spam and Link Spam.

Content Spam:

The first search engines were using only the website’s content to measure the site's relevance to certain search keywords.

Hidden & Invisible text:

This is the easiest and the most common spamming method. It simply means to set text in the same colour as the background, use a tiny font size or hide it in HTML code sections. For a real person looking at the website nothing will change, but for a search engine crawler, it will make a difference. The code will have more content and so it will find a higher keyword density. This problem was quickly fixed with an algorithms to check the accessibility of the text before the search engine consider it as relevant content and then take the appropriate actions.

Keyword stuffing:

This can be a “black hat” method, but is also used for “White Hat” SEO.

A website can be penalised when its overloaded with a specific sentence/keyphrase in order to make a search engine think the content is more relevant than others. This technique can be used in combination with hidden text too. Most of the search engines now have mechanisms in place to avoid the abuse of keywords.

Scraper sites:

Web scrapping is copying content from one or more other/unrelated websites and put it on this 3rd party website without copyright permission, it's a mirror site adding no new value. Most of these websites are overloaded with advertising - which is their source of income. One should be careful to use this method, as it is severely punished.

Doorway pages:

A doorway page is a fake page that a real user will never see. It has been created to optimise search engine results, but if you click on the link, a redirect will lead you to a different webpage.

Cloaking:

Basically, cloaking is quite similar to doorway pages. The difference is that the website will show a different content depending on the IP address the user requesting the page has. If an IP address is recognised as a search engine spider, a script will deliver a different version of the page.

Link Spam:

Search engines have step-by-step changed their search algorithm judging the value of a website and therefore the websites ranking. Incoming links are only one attribute checked by the search engines. The more relevant the referring websites are, the better.

Link farms:

On these community-like websites each member is linking to the others, trying to pretend high relevance to the search engine crawler. These communities were commonly named “mutual admiration societies”.

Hidden links:

The technique is the same as it is with the hidden text: Links are added to a site which visitors won’t see in order to increase their link popularity.

Sybil attack:

The principle again is the same as with link farms. One person will buy multiple domain names and then create various websites linking to each other in order to pretend high value of content and importance.

Wiki Spam:

A wiki is a website that everyone can edit and modify. Black Hat SEO will use it to add links to their website, most of the time on unrelated pages.

Blog Spam:

As on wikis, people can add comments on blogs, forums or guest books. Posting links to a website is an easy way to increase your link popularity.

Page hijacking:

This is one of the most unethical ways to increase your website's link popularity. It simply means to copy the content of another website but modifying the out-coming links. It is often referred to as 302 forwarding.

Always keep in mind that the techniques mentioned above truly are unethical ways to optimise your website for search engines. Using "Black Hat" SEO can and will add your website to the blacklist of most search engines, and has the opposite effect. And it does not stop for big companies either many have already tried to use "Black Hat" SEO techniques and were banned. Imagine - people who will type in a banned brand name or keywords related to it and they will simply not find the website and end up on your competitors website enjoying their offers.

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information about successful long term SEO strategies.

The importance of Search Marketing

In the past years the Internet has become increasingly popular and is now an essential part of our daily life. With its popularity steadily increasing companies realised this new and untouched opportunity to win new clients and started moving their business online.

About three years ago a new industry sector evolved as a result of the growing web: Search Engine Marketing.

Search gurus nowadays spread the message that search has already overtaken print and radio advertising and television advertising is apparently steadily losing its importance. According to them most marketing budgets will be spend online.

Sure, the return on investment (ROI) in search marketing is amazing and the costs per new costumer are lower as with 'classical' advertising, direct marketing or yellow pages. However, search engine marketing alone won’t be as efficient. Integrated in a healthy marketing mix, conventional marketing can add a huge boost to search marketing and other marketing channels, and hence push you company’s success.

Now, let us take a closer look at search engine marketing. There are two main sections: ‘organic’ and paid marketing. ‘Organic’, or 'Natural' refers to the results down the left hand side/center of the search engine's result pages. You can’t influence the ranking directly, but optimising your website can push your position higher.

The results you are able to influence are the ones to the top or down the right hand side of the result pages in most search engines, such as Google, stated often as ‘sponsored links’. These are referred to as pay-per-click (PPC) adverts. Every single click the advert receives will require the advertiser to pay. The more you are willing to pay per Click the higher the ad will appear if a particular keyword is entered. As you can imagine the prices for the top keywords, such as ‘car insurance’, are enormous.

Finally, a good mix of paid and ‘organic’ online marketing in combination with conventional advertising is the best solution to push your business efficiently.

Our next article will talk about Search Engine Optimisation methods which are well known to be bad practice and can lead to have a website banned from search engines.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Social Media - a new Marketing Hot Spot?

14. May 2007
In the last few months community websites or blogs became increasingly popular. Everyone wanted to share his or her thoughts or experiences with the world by posting blogs, comments, pictures or even videos. The best known websites are such as YouTube, MySpace or Flickr.
Due to the high attention those pages get, companies got the idea to use them as a part of their online marketing mix. They post news articles linking back to their website or even submit short ad movies on YouTube.

To make it easier to integrate a website in these Social Media services, it needs to be optimised (Social Media Optimisation = SMO), which includes the offer of RSS-feeds or the integration of flickr-galleries or YouTube videos. The result of those marketing strategies is to achieve a higher brand visibility and to increase the traffic on your website. However the kind of users who will click on your website might not necessarily be 100 percent the right target group. SMO on its own is not enough to raise your business to the next level - but combined with other classic marketing activities, SEO and/or Pay Per Click campaigns you will soon be able to see the rewards of your work.

Read your Do's & Don'ts list to ensure that your SMO campaign will be successful:

Do's

Participate in the community and build a good reputation
Build friendships within the community
Spread outlinks ; people might link back
Choose the right time of the day to submit your article; it is said that mid-day during the week is the best time

Don'ts

Don't publish biased information
Don't cheat by buying votes; in the long term it won't work and you will loose credibility and your reputation
Don't break any rules in the community
Don't publish irrelevant content

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Ask.com – the information revolution?

08. May 2007
Ask.com is getting more and more traffic and is now standing as a real alternative to Google, Yahoo! and MSN Live Search.

What is Ask.com?

Ask.com is owned by IAC Search & Media (InterActiveCorp), a company which use many websites, portals and downloadable applications in order to deliver information - ask.com, askforkids.com, bloglines.com, evite.com, excite.com, funwebproducts.com, iwon.com, myway.com - to name just a few. IAC is an American company with its headquarters in New-York headed by billionaire CEO Barry Diller. In 2006 revenues were up to $6.3 billion and they are now employing more than 20000 people.

A bit of history: Ask.com was founded in 1996 by Garret Gruener and David Warthen. Originally, the search engine was named Ask Jeeves. The concept was good, Jeeves was “answering” questions placed in natural language. Outrun by Google, Yahoo! and MSN, “the big 3” indexing every day more and more pages and are known for presenting relevant answers based on keywords researches. But what was their strength became a weakness. Fast indexing and enormous databases, with the link spam and other problems, the number of irrelevant results are increasing. At the same time, Ask.com is indexing pages slower and more thoroughly, so it didn’t suffer the amount of computer-generated spam and is still finding significant Web pages nevertheless.

Something new?

In late 2005, Ask Jeeves started to change its image. The immediate result was a disassociation of Ask and Jeeves by February 2006. They then implemented a complex relevancy evaluation algorithm like link popularity, click popularity, etc. They establish keyword-based research, but maintained the natural question answers. This has shown to be very successful, so that major search engines have implemented this way of searching too. Try the "Ask.com way of search" - go on Ask.com and state a natural question like “Who invented the World Wide Web?” or “Who is Sherlock Holmes?”

What is Ask.com trying to do?

In early 2007, Ask.com started an massive advertising campaign in London. The main theme of this campaign is disinformation and change of public information resources. Directly, the big search engine, Google is targeted, with Ask's information-revolution, as they call it.

If you go to the information revolution website, you can read on the main page, “Most people get online, use whatever search box is there, and just click on whatever results they're given, without thinking about what they might be missing. We're trying to spread the word about searching differently. Different results, different tools, different features & things that could help you get stuff done faster.

Unfortunately, most people have stopped searching for better search. They use the search engine that came with their computer, the one that's attached to their email, the one the press writes about, the one their friends use, even the one their mum uses. The environment for 'other' search engines has become downright oppressive.”

The Ask's “Information Revolution”

A real revolution or just a big marketing trick? I bit of both I believe.

On YouTube, you can see the whole marketing campaign they are currently running.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PgV-ykRfMak

Acting like underground rebels, their advertising campaign is well planned. They have created interrogations and waken the curiosity to try something new. Because if you think further, there is a real information monopole status for Google. 50% of people are using Google for finding information on Internet without trying another way.

If you would like to know more about search engines, read this article...

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Optimisation.

Article by Guillaume Rembert @ Tetridia

Running Microsoft Vista on MacBook - works like a charm!

26. April 2007
I was once again in the situation where I needed to buy a new laptop. My old one was still perfect but unbearably slow. Looking around there was not much out there as I had a few hardware specs which I did not want to give up - 13" crystal widescreen, light -about 2.3kg, easy to open & close the screen… So I ended up looking at an Apple Macbook, Intel Core 2 Duo. (I am usually 99% working with Microsoft products.) A little bit of research later - and I decided to take the risk and try to set up Vista on the MacBook. And this is how:

The very first thing after setting up my brand new sparkling white MacBook (2GHZ) to install necessary updates and download Boot camp (Bootcamp) . Bootcamp is a partition manager and currently still available for free as it is in BETA. By then I already had some concerns as I had only bought an update to an old 2K license I have which would require a "clean" update anyway - so fingers crossed and let's hope for the best!

I should have read the Boot Camp user file first - than I would have know that the Win2K update was a bit too ambitious! Luckily I had not opened the my Vista Home Premium upgrade box an could return it and buy the FULL version.

With all the requirements fulfilled I took a deep breath and started the process in MacOSX:

Read the "read me" file coming with Bootcamp

Print out the User guide (or have it on a second PC)

Installing Bootcamp - no problem at all - just double click the file you just downloaded and follow the screens, I decided to go for the 32GB FAT partition and will most likely use the laptop with a small external Hard drive or maybe upgrade to a bigger one later on.

During the process you will have to insert a CD where Bootcamp will save the required vista drivers for your MacBook.

The MacBook then restarted directly in Windows mode and asks you to insert the operation system you wish to install. In my case the Vista Home Premium CD followed by the serial number. I also allowed the system to check the number directly online. (You can also upgrade from Microsoft XP but will need in this case to install XP first and upgrade with Vista later.)

Vista Installation started and about 30 minutes and a few restarts later everything was done!
That certainly was the easiest OS installation I had done so far - and I now have the choice between OSX 10 (Tiger) and Vista - on a beautiful sleek looking laptop - what more could I want?????

I cannot say much about the performance with this setup - but I would not count on the promised 6 hours maximum battery life With regards to software running under Vista - Firefox and Skype work just fine as well as of course Office applications. If you are using Zone Laps as a firewall you will be disappointed as I could not get it running just yet.

So far so good - that's all I can report at the moment but I thought I let you know anyway. Simply because if you are going into a computer store and ask the staff - I only got a very weak smile when I wanted to buy the Apple Mac + Vista, alongside some recommendations buying "VistaforMac" (which as far as I know does not exist!) or emulator software.

Anyway - It works!

Best regards,
Anja

The End of Pay Per Click?

20. April 2007
It seems like the days of Pay Per Click advertising are counted as there is a new online marketing payment model on the horizon: Costs Per Action (CPA) a model which Google is currently testing and about to add to their Google AdSense program.

With the existing Pay Per Click campaigns payment will be taken for every single click which the advert is receiving, no matter if you actually make a sale, get a new business lead or not. After all PPC can bring you visitors and potential buyers to your website but this is where the measurability ends. Does this bring the expected return of investment for your business. And not to forget there is click fraud - people click on your ad without having a real interest in what is offered and with the increase of companies using PPC there also is a keyword inflation n- pushing costs up.

Will Costs Per Action bring the change?

As the name already promises with running a CPA campaign costs will only accrue if an 'action' is reported - this could be selling an item or a visitor subscribes to the services on the website. The type of action is dependant to the type of business and website, whether the user will sign up for your newsletter or purchase a product.
The aim with this way of online advertising is to protect companies from being charged for nothing in return and more control over budget and results. Furthermore there will probably be a higher Return on Investment. The future holds if CPA will replace PPC soon.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Learn how to use RSS to increase your Search Engine Ranking

The three magic letters “RSS” can really make a difference on how you communicate with your clients and even better, it will help to increase your websites ranking with Search Engines such as Google or Yahoo!

What is RSS?

RSS, short for Really Simple Syndication, is a technology which automates the process of publishing digital content. It is mostly used for frequently updated content, such as blogs, news feeds or podcasts.

Why use RSS?

First of all, it makes publishing articles or news really easy. Every time you want to get your message across the whole world will know about it in only a few minutes.

Second of all, and this is, on the Search Engine Optimisation point of view, the most important argument: using RSS on your website, will increase its “search engine friendliness”. Search Engines LOVE frequently updated content.

To make this really work it is recommended to publish at least an article every two days.

How can you read RSS feeds?

Available are stand alone RSS software, integrated RSS readers (such as Thunderbird, or Outlook) or even online RSS readers (Google).

Specialized RSS software is commonly called feed (RSS) -readers or –aggregators. After you have chosen one and installed it on your computer you then need to subscribe to the RSS feed by adding the RSS link to your reader.

The software (RSS reader) will now check the subscribed RSS and see if this feed has new content available. From now on you can let the news come to you. The software will check if new content has been published since the last time it has been updated, and if this the case it will retrieve that content automatically. (List of RSS readers)

The same procedure applies if you are using Thunderbird® or a similar product (ie Outlook®).
As a example add the Tetridia RSS feed to your list:

copy the following link: http://www.tetridia.com/673/rss.xml

open your Thunderbird > File > New > Account
select "RSS News & Blogs"
hit OK

right-click on the new folder and select "Manage subscription"

then paste the link. hit OK

You will see the result after a few seconds - the Tetridia RSS NEWS will appear...

How can you create an RSS feed yourself?

There are various ways to do this. You can use notepad, create an XML file manually and to put a link on your website.

Or - you can use a RSS creator ( just like this one RSS Editor), which will work like a text editor and let you then save your work in XML format. If you would like to know more about this have a look here: Wikipedia.

The easiest way is to use a Content Management System such as Tetridia’s own CMS SymLink. Your Benefits:

No need to wait for your IT person - anybody in your company or even external can do any changes at any time including setting up various incoming RSS feeds in different sections on your website.
Perfect for your Search Engine Ranking - relevant content, updates done easily and fast - means for you a better position in Google, Yahoo or MSN - and therefore most likely increased traffic.
Publish your RSS news with a familiar looking tool similar to Office Word.

... and that is all you need to do to add another communication channel to your Marketing Mix. It is all about spreading your message and keeping in touch with your clients on a regular basis.

Article by Guillaume Rembert @ Tetridia

Double Click sold! Google strikes again!

17. April 2007
Google, the Internet search engine giant is stirring the market again with its acquisition last weekend of the well known online advertising company Double Click.

$3.1bn

The number speaks for itself. This is the total sum Google will have to pay to Double Click.

What is Double Click agency doing?

Founded in 1995 by Kevin O'Connor and Dwight Merriman, the company started providing online media services. Two years later, in 1997, they offered online ad serving and campaign management technologies. They are now selling web based advertising & tracking software.

Who was in the race?

It sounds like an online advertising VIP list: Yahoo!, Microsoft and WPP (a worldwide marketing leader) all made their offers. Second best candidate, Microsoft, was prepared put $2bn on the table.

What will change?

"It has been our vision to make Internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful. Together with DoubleClick, Google will make the Internet more efficient for end users, advertisers, and publishers" said Sergey Brin, Co-Founder & President, Google Technology.

True? Or will it simply expand the Google empire of information?

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on online marketing from an independent voice.

Article by Guillaume Rembert @ Tetridia

The Search Engine Strategies 2007 in New York

16. April 2007
The largest search marketing event in the world, the Search Engine Strategies 2007 was taking place in the New Yorker Hilton Hotel last week. Thousands of people aiming to improve their knowledge as well as their online marketing skills came to learn about search engine marketing and optimisation techniques.

IT experts and marketers discussed Click fraud, Return on Investment, Pay per Click or web metrics. The event was organised by search guru Danny Sullivan, who has been helping webmasters, marketers and Web users for the last 11 years, to understand how search engines work and how to make profit.

The SES event is the perfect place to network with fellow markerts and professionals form the search engine industry and to discuss latest developments in search engine marketing.
After four days of presentations, panel discussions and high-level-learning now everyone is returning to his normal business, waiting for next year's Search Engine Strategies. Maybe we see you at the SES in London 2008.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

WordTracker now also available for UK-Keyword-Search

WordTracker is the leading keyword research tool on the globe. They are your partner if you want to find the best keywords for you homepage. And now this is even more true since WordTracker has launched a UK specific database. These are great news for UK or UK targeting companies, as you need geographically relevant keywords to get more targeted traffic to the website. Your reward will most likely be an increased return on investment.

How can WordTracker help to achieve better Search Engine Optimisation results using effective Keywords?

WordTracker receives the data from UK based ISPs (internet service providers), to keep the quality of the final results high, the data is going through numerous filtering processes before being added to the WordTracker database.

When logged in on WordTracker.com you can research keywords which you believe to be relevant for your website. WordTracker will then suggest a wide range of similar keywords or keyphrases. It will then match those words to create the Keyword Effectiveness Index. The KEI will also take in account the number of searches using this particular keyword or -phrase and the number of competitors - researching the results from the top search engines such as Google. This makes researching easier as the higher the KEI metric - the better the keyword.

Keywords are, as the name says, the key to success and well chosen they will increase your business. With WordTracker's new feature your research can be even more targeted.

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Push your Quality Score in Google AdWords

31. March 2007
Surely you have seen the small adverts on the top or right hand side of Googles results page. Maybe you even have already used Google Adwords to place an advert for your business right there. For each click on one of these adverts, you - meaning the business which has placed the ad - has to pay ("Pay Per Click")... so far so good....

To achieve a high ranking in these sponsored link sections is also (apart from the amount of money you are willing to spend) depending on the quality of your advert. This is measured taking in account the quality of your adverts content and your chosen keywords.

The higher this score is, the higher your ad appears in the listings. Furthermore a high score can also reduce your costs per click.

But how to get a high quality score?

Here some of the factors we know about - of course google is constantly updating there algorithm.

First you should ensure that your adverts are optimised, which means its title, the keywords, display URL etc. It is also important your landing page's content matches to the search query, so that the information the user will find, is what they are looking for.
Also it is very useful to split up the keywords you use for certain adverts into more targeted groups or categories. Googles AdWords are highly targeted (compared to other marketing channels) as you can even select geographic regions, languages and time when your advert should appear.

A high quality score in Google AdWords will make your campaign more successful and lead to a higher ROI (Return on Investment).

Contact Tetridia on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Marketing.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Can Lycos jump to the top again?

27. March 2007
A few years ago Lycos was a big player in the web 1.0 era operating as a search engine as well as offering a wide range of web-services such as "build your own website", web-hosting, online-communities or e-mail-accounts, but nowadays it seems as if it has vanished into thin air.

Google, Yahoo and MSN are today's big players in search engine business, investing large amounts of money on new search technologies and advertising to hold their positions. And now the managing director of Lycos, Christoph Mohn, is saying that Lycos is going to be top-player again in just a few years time. Looking at the search engine market share for february 2007 it becomes clear that Lycos has a very long way to go. The search engine Lycos currently attracts only 0,02% of the market.

Lycos Europe is planning to attack the US market with some new services combining search, email, photo and file storage, blogging and text messaging, which have become very popular especially to young internet users. Lycos is trying to catch up on "The Big Three" mentioned above in web 2.0. In the US it won't be possible to trade under the Lycos brand, because it is owned by South Korean-based Daum Communications, the desicion is made to use the name Jubii which is a Danish subsidiary of Lycos.

Experts don't think that the project will succeed as the gap to the three market leaders has grown to big in the past years. Nevertheless Mohn is convinced Lycos will be back on top again and says that in only a few years, people will see a whole different "Lycos" than nowadays.

We will see what the future holds, but never hesitate to invest on Search Engine Marketing and Optimisation, as the advantages for YOUR business are clear.

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information on how to raise your marketing to the next level using Search Engine Optimisation.

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia
Source: Financial Times

Register for a FREE Search Engine Ranking Report

26. March 2007
Do you want to know where your website is ranking on Google or Yahoo? Send us a short message with some details about your company. Filling out our online form will only take a few seconds.

Marketing TO GO - on your mobile phone

21. March 2007
New media marketing for the world wide web is getting more important everyday. Companies should not hesitate to use or at least to investigate in all the exciting new opportunities to find new clients and increase business. A higher ROI (return on investment) could be your reward. As we could read in todays Guardian, mobile phones soon will be the most popular device to access the world wide web, which causes a new target group to reach via internet.

It is about time to think about online marketing.

Google is getting closer to launch its very own mobile phone by the minute (in December'06 mobile giant Orange was joing discussions). With the mobile phone becoming the most popular device to access the internet, it is a logical step for Google, as the No. 1 search engine to get their share out of it.

People will and already do use their mobiles to get the latest news or required information, without being forced to access a computer. The target group of online advertising will increase enormously.

Keeping this in mind a clever online marketing strategy is even more important. Get your campain right and all these new mobile internet users could be your future clients!

So, if you have any questions about online advertising and marketing, do not hesitate to contact Tetridia. Because our priority is your success online!

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Will Yahoo's Project Panama stand as an AdWords rival?

20. March 2007

Launched on February, the 5th, the "Project Panama" seemed to be really successfull. Behind this military style project name, a software upgrade for the search advertising results in Yahoo! Search Marketing (former Overture) is hiding .

Yahoo, as Google or MSN LiveSearch, have implemented their Search Marketing advertising on the result pages years ago. As an example, when searching for “Business Development” using Google, you will see the organic or natural search results (the ranking is done by google's software and can not be influenced by paying for it), looking at the right part of your screen - will see "sponsored links" in a slightly different format: Pay Per Click advertising. The advertiser will enter for which search terms they want their advert to appear and how much they are willing to pay for this.

Project Panama is a significant upgrade in Yahoo!'s search algorithm, to increase the possiblity of a perfect match - placing an advert offering the right product to the right customer at the right time!
Yahoo! is hoping for two direct consequences: more advertisers will post their adverts on Yahoo!'s search engine and web searchers will trust more in the sponsored links - and in simple words more traffic ~meaning~ more money for Yahoo!

Are the results as positive as expected? It does look like it at the moment. Click-through rates for Yahoo search advertising increased by 5 and 9 percent during the first two weeks (11^th & 18^th February 2007) when the company began delivering ads using the Panama technology (according to a report issued by comScore Networks). Will this dethrone AdWord (Googles solution) market domination?

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information how to use Search Engine Marketing and Pay Per Click campaigns for your companies website.

Article by Guillaume Rembert @ Tetridia

How to increase your PageRank?

19. March 2007
Let’s get the facts together first: PageRank, trademarked by Google, is an indicator for the importance of a website, measured on a scale from 1 (not very popular really ) to 10 (you’ve made it! ). Of course Google is not telling us how they calculate this value but a few things we know will help increasing your PageRank:

One of the relevant factors measured are incoming and outgoing links. But be aware that quantity is not everything – the opposite is the case.
Google does not only count your links but also validates the quality of the website you are linking to.
In addition to this – the website you are linking to or from should offer a real value to the content of your website to benefits your case.
Be clear about your target market – if you wish to establish a good position on Google UK make sure you chose your link partners according to your campaign i.e. get *.co.uk websites to link to you.

A Content Management System such as SymLink can help you to turn your strategy – in to practice. Using SymLink will give your company the flexibility and scalability you need to quickly add new links or articles anywhere on your website – at any time! Don’t forget this is just half the story – you need to find link partners which will publish your articles and links on their website. So 'spread your message' and never forget to link back to your own website, when sending out press releases.

Always keep in mind: A good linking strategy is vital for your success online!

Article by Lea Loana Roelz @ Tetridia

Tetridia Keyword Suggestion Tool

15. March 2007
One of the keys to a successfull online business are finding the right "keyphrases" which you can then use to optimise your website and achieve higher ranking. We thought we help you with this process and the great thing is - it is free - our keyword suggestion tool.

Just type a word which describes your business or website as “marketing”, “business development” or “sales”, select which country you are targeting and press the Submit button.

Immediately you will see a list of suggestions relating to your initial phrase, including the search volume on the three most popular search engine of the world (Google, MSN and Yahoo!).

More information is accessible by selecting Google Trends, such as details on where the search volumes are coming from.

Further we have implemented Google AdWords Traffic estimator to calculate an average cost per click (CPC) for your search engine marketing campaign. This can be useful when you want start planning a new Pay Per Click campaign!

With this free tool you can increase traffic to your website, get a better ROI or simply be in control of what is going on ..- online!

Take this opportunity and try our tool, I believe I have mentioned it before: it’s free!

Article by Guillaume Rembert @ Tetridia

A new competitor for Google, Yahoo! and MSN?

12. March 2007

Jimmy Wales, Wikipedia’s founder, has announced at a news conference in Tokyo that Wikia Inc., the lucrative company owned by himself, will enter a new market and soon build an open-source search engine.

Wikia Inc. was set up in October 2004 with the objective to create freely hosted wiki communities. At this time, there was already a search engine project named Wikiasari but it became inactive during 2005.

Recently, the idea re-emerges with the possibility of a wiki-based search engine at the end of 2006 and forces Wikia Inc. to re-launch his last Wikiasari under the name of “Search Wikia”.

It will be collaborative work where everybody can contribute. The aim is to get 5 percent of the search market. With this open-source search engine, we expect more spamdexing (achieving a higher rank for a website even if it has nothing to do with the search topic), because people can easily get the search algorithm and then make all necessary changes to optimise websites in order to be on SEO's pole position. But as this might be true - a solution is already evolving: the creation of spam-website blacklists.

Is Google’s monopoly finished? Will we see a “new way of search” emerge?

See the official website for more information about this search engine.

Article by Guillaume Rembert

Include RSS News in your website

9. March 2007
Maybe you are already using RSS to receive your daily World (WideWeb) News direct to your doorstep. Seamlessly delivered from the BBC (or any other source) to your Outlook. And of course you would also have set up different categories such es "Business", "Sport" or "Technology"... Wouldn't it be nice...

...to add something like this to your website? Have a look at our Tetridia front page - where we feed our own "Latest News" back in to our website. No additional work - we simply publish our news and have an automatic update on our 'Homepage' - and the plus is - Search engines love regularly updated websites.

How can you do this: ask your web designer or IT person if they can help you. Chances are - they are busy doing ...mmhh ...something... and won't have time - right now.

So maybe if you need a tool which does everything for them - you can chose one of those free conversion tools such as RSS include, but you have to take their little bit of advertising too.

or:

you change your website to using a Content Management System such as SymLink. Your Benefits - no need to wait for your IT person anybody in your company or extern can do any changes at any time including setting up various incoming RSS feeds in different sections on your website. Perfect for your Search Engine Ranking - relevant content, updates done easily and fast - means for you a better position in Google, Yahoo or MSN - and therefore most likely increased traffic.

What you always wanted to know about Search Engines!

7. March 2007
Certainly you must have heard and most likely even used search engines - such as Google, Yahoo or MSN, just to name a few. There even is a strong possibility that you have found this article using one of them as about 80% first time visitors come through a search engine. So everybody is using it but do we really know what it is?

Definition for the tech savy:

On Wikipedia I found the following definition for search engines: “information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system, such as on the World Wide Web, inside a corporate or proprietary network, or in a personal computer”. Lets scale it down a bit...

The origins of search engines:

With my own words: a search engine helps us to find documents or information on a network. The World Wide Web (WWW) apparently connects around about 2^32 = 4,294,967,296 different hosts.And - there will be more. This is why computer programmes have been developed "search engines" because it is sheer impossible for any human beeing to know about all the web-addresses of the websites we are using and of course what information those websites hold.

How it works:

There is nothing magical behind these search engines. When you type a search phrase in the appropriate box, the results that you will see are web pages or web-documents that contain the word or the sentence you are searching for. But before you will get any results the search enginehas to do its homework:

Web crawling: a program browses automatically the WWW in search of new websites, documents, news or blogs
Indexing: the search engine now “reads” all the documents or web pages and generates a file (Index) holding all the existing words that at this location
Searching: when you search for a word, it will look at the Index and present all available and relevant links. There are a lot of algorithms that will sort the result by relevance (with the help of word density, popularity of the website, trust of the content…)

Most important search engines:

You can find more here (wikipedia article)

Article by Guillaume Rembert

Microsoft versus Google

6. March 2007
Today, Microsoft is attacking Google on its "cavalier" approach to copyright. They are accusing the successfull search engine giant of exploiting books, music, films and television programmes without the authors consent.

Have a look at one of Google's projects - millions of books scanned and available online: (http://www.google.co.uk/books?hl=en).

In the eye of Microsoft Google is one of the “companies that create no content of their own, and make money solely on the back of other people’s content, are raking in billions through advertising and initial public offerings”.

Will we have a "battle of the titans"?

Article by Guillaume Rembert

Bloggs - How to increase Search Engine Visibility

5. March 2007

What is a Blog?

Coming form the Word " Web-log" it is the modern ie digital version of writing a journal. It is a website publishing ideas and opinions on any topic the owner wishes in chronological order.

Why use blogs to improve Search Engine Optimisation?

A web-log/Blog is certainly one of the best ways of getting traffic to your website. An interesting blog will also increase the chances that other website link to yours. But be careful it easily can go wrong.

What should you publish?

Let the reader or customer be the hero of your blog! Do not bore them with your problems. Your potential clients will only show interest in their own problems and needs, so do your research, find your niche and write about your target market.

Your blog should be a valuable source of information on the product or service you sell - this could be articles, pictures, audio as well as video.

Be active!

To really make a difference with your search engine results you need to work on your bloggs - only once a month is not good enough. Publish news once a day - twice is even better. Then use the following tools to tell the world about your blog! The more people know about it the better - and the more links will be set to your website. Use pingoat to speed up the process of search engines to update their info on your latest news:
http://pingoat.com/
http://digg.com/
http://reddit.com/
http://del.icio.us/

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information how you can improve the Search Engine Ranking of your companies website.

Article by Guillaume Rembert

Yahoo growth overtakes Google

5. March 2007
According to Nielsen//NetRatings - Yahoo with over 30% growth has outrun Google with over 22%.

Looking at the number of searches and the marketshares of the two leading engines, Google does not have to fear to lose out on Yahoo.

Google Search #Searches(k) 3,035,617 // Market share 50.8%
Yahoo! Search # Searches(k) 1,412,904 // Market share 23.6%

Source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=206586

SEO and Accessibility

28. February 2007
By creating an accessible website you automatically increase the possibilities of getting higher Search Engine Rankings!

Where is the business case for accessibility within SEO (Search Engine Optimisation)?

Accessibility on the web means making changes to a website so everyone, no matter what browser or computer they're using, disabled, visually impaired or not, can benefit of the same online experience like everyone else. Search Engine Optimisation can benefit from it in many ways.

How does web accessibility help Search Engine Optimisation (ranking) ?

The search engines use small scripts -so called crawlers- which 'run' through the internet and collect information in a similar way as a screen reader goes.

Conclusion:

If the screen reader can't read it, the search engine crawlers won't be able to see the information either...

But there is more...

There is another relationship between the accessibility and search engines. For people with disabilities it is very important that the search engine get them to a relevant page quickly; because mostly their impairments mean that it takes them longer to surf the net and so every unnecessary click or page read is time-wasting and frustrating.

We asked Anja Glauch, Managing Director, Tetridia Ltd.

Q: Do you think that making a website accessible is important and does it have a real business case?
A: Absolutely yes! It allows your website and therefore your business to increase its market share and the audience reach. It also shows that your company takes its social responsbility seriously.

Q: How can we test the accessibility and search engine friendlieness of a website?
A: There are many tools available and I would like to mention that is not enough to "just run a program" and be done with it. It can be quite revealing to test your website with a screen reader - and listen carefully. Make sure your web site is using proper XHTML coding and self explanatory descriptions for the images. Online tool for

Accessibility Test: http://webxact.watchfire.com/
Check your Google PageRank: http://www.checkpagerank.com/

Contact Anja on +44 (0)20 8144 6655 for more information how you can improve the Search Engine Ranking of your companies website.

Article by Guillaume Rembert

Tetridia @ Strictly Business! 2007, City Hall, London

21. January 2007
Not only was Tetridia one of the exhibitors at this fantastic venue – we have also put all our energy into making this event a “visual” success! From the design of name badges over conference packs, glossy paper bags, various banner stands and other promotional material such as pens, pads – we took care of it. It was a fantastic day where over 400 people enjoyed interesting workshops and networking. Watch out for Strictly Business! 2008 !

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