Web Development

Google has been introducing a new user interface, improving the look and functionality and I have been seeing it from my PC at home over the past week or so, but today I can see it at the office. Initially I didn’t like the look of it but the more I have explored the functionality improvements it has grown on me.

New Look
The most obvious difference is the look of the search bar which has been modernised. I thought it looked a bit like a “fake” Google branding attempt, but with time I seem to be getting used to it.

I think the new look is better than the old interface and it almost makes the rest of the SERP, which has not been updated, look a little dated.

At the bottom of the SERP, the related links are now listed in two columns of four, rather than the previous four columns of two.

A prominent left hand navigation with different search options has now been introduced to the SERP. The majority of these search options in this panel have been available for some time, but were only visible once “show options” has been selected, so it is likely that they may appear new to a lot of users.

You can see here all the search options which are available in the left panel, not all are initially visible and there are links to expand the list to view all. The top half of the panel displays different mediums of results within a SERP and the bottom half of the panel filters the standard SERP.

Depending on the search query different search options are displayed without needing to expand the option list. Looking into this with a variety of search queries it is becoming apparent that for a high percentage of searches the top half of the panel reflects the types of universal results within the SERP. For example if a search for ‘hotel in London’ displays normal listings as well as news results, a map and images then the panel will automatically show the filters for those types of results and the filter for blogs, books and updates etc are only visible once the “More” expanding list is selected. The bottom part of the panel also reflects the type of results which are displayed, if there is a recently indexed result then usually something within the “Any time” list is displayed. The “Standard view” section of the left panel however has foxed me for the time being.

The ‘pages from the UK’ radio button that was once under the search query field is now in this left panel and the navigation options at the very top right hand side of the page can now also be seen in the left panel with visual icons.

I believe that the new left panel will increases users knowledge and use of other Google functionality rather than just the basic search function.

Read more…

Content Strategy is lining up to be “the next big thing” to happen online, if you are to believe the hype.

The queen of content strategy Kristina Halvorson wrote this post in February which argued that: “Content strategy is more or less on the same trajectory as social media was three years ago”.

There does seem to be a growing interest. Google trends data show search volumes for content strategy and related terms in March 2010 running at about twice the rate as January 2007 (taking into account the growth in overall search volumes). Searches specifically for “online content strategy” have risen 70% during that time.

It’s a compelling story. And being honest, as Content Director at iCrossing, it has really helped when talking to people about what we want to do with content to help them to reach their business goals. No one wants to be missing out on “the next big thing”, do they?

But this post isn’t about the “sellability” of Content Strategy as a project or service.

It’s about the idea that this is a new discipline.

Charlie Peverett and I went to a stimulating and well-attended event last week in London’s fashionable Shoreditch. Content Strategy, Manhattan Style invited attendees to meet “three of New York’s finest content strategists… for an evening of informal discussions, socialising, and perhaps a little drinking”. Most interestingly for me, the event blurb suggested that this was “the place to be if you want to learn more about the business value, opportunities, and practical application of this emerging field of practice” [my emphasis].
Read more…

A few SEO guys have been talking about a couple of new things that are now available in the Google Webmaster Tools. Webmasters now have access to a malware search, and a tool to ‘fetch’ a URL as Google would.

The malware details tool is nice, and should probably be a standard item in the toolkit, but I think the more interesting development is the ‘Fetch as Googlebot’ tool. At the moment it is very basic, and only returns the header response of a page and the details of any redirects or problems with a page, but if this is the shape of things to come, this could prove useful. What I am imagining is a site header/redirect checker that highlights any 302’s, and allows you to submit a list of redirects that should be in place, and alerts you if they are broken. That would be nice, and I believe that these are the type of things that Microsoft’s IIS SEO Toolkit provides, but that is limited to people using Microsoft servers, as well as being comfortable changing their server configuration.

These new tools are obviously a first iteration of some potential new features, but it is good to see that the Webmaster Tools are still being looked at by Google, and there are new things on the way.

You may or may not have seen the recent coverage of our display and creative teams being appointed by one of our existing search clients, the Microsoft owned Multimap, to promote their specialist online mapping service. In a nutshell, this is what it’s about…

The new campaign will see Multimap launch a series of tailored creative executions that highlight specific use cases for target audience groups identified by research. Specialised ad-creative focused on promoting Multimap’s user functionality will be targeted at mums, business users, students and outdoor activity enthusiasts.

The campaign has been based around the insights gained through a social media audit. For example we found one common use of the service was to explore where an individuals could find routes for outdoor activites such as mountain biking. The creative has been targeted towards such groups.

…The story has been covered throughout the industry press, and although we don’t like to blow our own trumpets on this platform too much we thought we wouldn’t be doing the campaign justice without some examples of the great creative concepts in action.

So here it is… Read more…

The google.com homepage received on average 38 million unique hits per day over a 7 day period according to this compete story about the G1 release. This started me thinking, how much bandwidth does serving up Google’s homepage use in a year? Well some rudimentary maths left me with the following:

Homepage size = 15k (code + 8.5k logo image)

15k x 38 million page views x 365 days = 209,020,900,000k

209,020,900,000k = 24.3 terabytes of bandwidth

This is just to display the homepage of google.com and does not include the 165 local domains or the 400 million or so searches Google receives every day.

Of course, the bandwidth figure above assumes (and they are big assumptions!) that there is no browser or ISP caching and that the number of visits remains constant. However, it does highlight how for Google displaying even a low sized webpage requires a huge amount of bandwidth. It’s no surprise then that The Google’s biggest expense comes from running and maintaining their servers and why they are looking at new technologies to reduce costs such as creating their own renewable energy (wind, solar & geothermal), super efficient server farms and even server farms based at sea. 

And if displaying Google’s simple homepage takes up so much bandwidth it’s not surprising that running YouTube has been estimated to cost nearly 1 million dollars a day and that the site uses as much bandwidth now as the whole internet did in 2000!

Today Google announced they can better index text content in Flash files. With the help of Adobe, search engines are able to navigate a flash file and extract text and links, which on the surface sounds great.

I agree it’s a lot better than not indexing it, but, this has definitely sent the wrong message to Flash happy web-developers. If you think this opens the door for Flash in search, then think again.

Google has indexed, PDF files along with several other non-HTML file formats for many years, but you only see them in search results, when there’s a shed load of external anchor text pointing to the file or for a long tail query with little competition. Our e-Book on Social Media has ranked consistently in the top 3 for several  years, but it’s little to do with Google’s ability to index PDF, and everything to do with the 600+ links pointing to it with the words ‘’Social media’.

So why should this be?

1. Flash files won’t have the same HTML mark-up which in regular pages, Google use to judge relevance.
2. A lot of Flash navigation use non-text buttons, so no value from important internal anchor text
3. Deep links contribute heavily to Google rankings in regular sites. But most Flash sites are contained in a single file, and people generally link to the file and not to deeper pages

Add to these, clicking on a Flash listing in Google is unlikely to take you to the place returned in the search results, unless the file is broken into lots of unique URL sections – providing a very poor user experience. And let’s not get started about mobile.

Don’t get me wrong, it is great that search engines are trying to keep up with web technologies, but until they can provide the same opportunity for Flash files to rank as regular sites and provide a similar user experience, they must send the right message to the web development and creative community.

I’ll still continue to advice clients to use Flash only where necessary. But, for those stuck with their Flash site, at least we can make it a bit more search friendly.

But my concern is that a lot of traditional creative agencies will use this development as a blank Chequebook to continue building expensive Flash sites which may be search friendlier but has no real chance of competing with a regular website.