The Influence of Branding

I've mentioned before the importance of branding and creating an important idea of trust for your website users. Every company needs and depends on this - even the search engines. Google's huge market share as a preferred search engine in the US is around 70% and only slightly less in the UK - so it's important to keep the branding up, to keep the users coming back.


There is a premise that you will always return to a search engine - like a store - to find what you're looking for, even if the products (in this case the results) start to worsen. With the arrival of Bing and Microsoft's intention of winning back some of that huge market share, Microsoft employee Michael Kordahi has developed a Blind Search Page which I think is a great idea.

The page has a search bar at the top, for you to search for anything you like - kind of like any normal search engine. However, the results page will show you three columns of results, from Yahoo! Google and Bing, but without the branding. You need to review the results, compare and then vote for the column you think has fulfilled your enquiry. Once you click, the results are revealed.



I think it's a very fun tool to play with - to have all 3 results on the same page right next to each other, and have enjoyed playing around with it. I suggest you give it a go and see what you think. Feel free to leave a comment below.

Want to appear high on these 3 search engines, too? I offer website optimisation in Barcelona to enable higher rankings for your chosen keywords. Or if your traffic needs an immediate injection then let me manage your Barcelona Adwords account.

Google - the king of search engines.

When we talk about search engines, there are many different ones. Some of the main search engines you may already know are Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, Ask, etc. but the lion's share of the internet goes to Google.


Google is a huge company with various products on offer - most of them free - and is the favoured search engine for most people. WebSideStory Inc. claim that 75% of people in thr UK use google as their main seach engine, and in the USA, it's closer to 70%. That's a lot of people so it makes sense that if you're going to be targetting a new market or beginning an SEO venture, that your main aim is to rank in google - preferrably on page 1 of the search results. However, don't automatically assume that if you're page 1 on google, you will also be on the other search engines, as each uses their own unique search algorithms, that very few people know.

Google's success is attributed to the fact that it gives the best results for your search query, and has earned itself super-status simply from the number of users and with very little publicity.

Search Engine Optimisation Barcelona

Let's start with the basics of search engines and how they work

I’m not going to assume that anyone reading this will already have any knowledge of SEO, web design, or anything related, so I’d like to basically try and very briefly explain the idea behind SEO.

Everyone has browsed on the internet, and everyone recognises a website when they see one, and have more often than not found things on the internet by using a search engine – whether or not they realise this or not.

Websites are actually just lots of text, written in a special code, called HTML (Hyper Text Mark-up Language) and do not contain images or graphics like you see when you open a website page. Your website browser (like Internet explorer, Firefox, Mac, etc.) is basically like a window which understands how to read and interpret this code and how to display it to you – complete with certain text you can click on to get to another page, or an image, or things that pop up, etc. Everything you’re already used to seeing on a typical website.

It is impossible to estimate how many websites there must be in the world (not just in your own language remember) so the internet and internet browsing is safe to a certain point, with it’s dangers like anything, and can also be time consuming if you need to look for something. This is where the search engines step in.


A search engine is basically like a big electronic yellow pages. The main difference is that the yellow pages tends to just list the different companies in alphabetical order - with the odd few bigger paid adverts dotted around a double page. So really it’s kind of pot luck as to who you find – who’s to say that ABC Plumbing will be any better than Zen Pipes Plumbing, right? Also, the Yellow Pages tend to be just for one area or city, whereas the search engines need to try and organise the whole of the internet. It’s like having millions and millions of magazines on the floor, and trying to organise them into categories, but you get another million while you’re half way through.

So what the search engines try to do is organise the list in terms of RELEVANCE to the subject. You can search for something in a search box of a search engine by typing in KEYWORDS – basically the words which describe what you’re looking for. So if you’re looking to find out about local Italian restaurants you could type “Italian restaurants “your city” and then you should get a list of restaurants and not travel agencies of language schools (although this has been known to occur!).

The search engines “read” the same HTML code that your website is created in and this is how it determines where you go on the list. There are many other factors which influence your position on this list, and the actual algorithms that the huge supercomputers use to index your page are only actually known to very few people.

This is where SEO starts. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimisation, and basically is the tweaking and changing internal and external components of your website to help the search engine index your page as more relevant and therefore move it up on the list. There is a common misconception that being number 1 on a web search means that it’s the best company. This is completely untrue. Think about the last reference of an Italian restaurant, and let’s use Barcelona as my example. So I type “Italian restaurants in Barcelona” and get the list given to me by the search engine – number 1 is a chain of restaurants called (for example) “Luigi’s Pasta” which produces pre-fabricated food with mainly frozen ingredients and has 7 restaurant chains in Barcelona. However, everyone in Barcelona knows that “Mama Mia’s” restaurant (again fictitious for the purposes of this example) is the best restaurant in Barcelona – home cooked, always full, and humble surroundings. So why is Mama Mia’s not top? Well, probably because Luigi’s has got more money to spend on advertising and therefore on websites and consequently on search engine optimisation. So you see, it’s all quite complicated, and depending on the sector you’re in, you may need to spend more money to achieve results in a shorter space of time.

It’s also important to point out, that the aforementioned algorithms that the computers use, are also always changing and getting updated, and this is something no-one (minus the search engines) can control or predict, so often work is done which works one month, will not be apparent the next. Be wary of any companies offering “ 100% GUARANTEED Page one results on Google” and the like

This is just a starter as to what this blog will tackle and try and introduce you to new and open ideas. Please feel free to comment and correct me as you may see fit. Thanks.

I also offer SEO Training in Barcelona. Please contact me for details.