Real Time Search

As I've mentioned before, the Engines are struggling to cope with the impact of real time search as seen on social sites such as Twitter. I think if you haven't claimed your social media name already, you're wasting time. At least your brand name or company name - even if you're unsure of what to do with it just yet.

We've seen steps recently that Google seems to be adding Twitter information (profiles, not Tweets) of fairly high profile users in the SERPs - where a normal search for your own name might throw up a Linkedin page, Ashton K's Twitter profile is showing.

Bing has also attempted to add real time search into their results, but it's a bit sketchy at best. Keep your eyes peeled for more.

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Facebook Click Fraud

I commented on this blog last year about Facebook Ads and them being a cheaper alternative to Google's AdWords and other Pay Per Click ventures.


However, a recent thread over at techcrunch has highlighted the fact that many people feel they're being over charged for their accounts, with conflicting reports of clicks from Facebook compared the third party web analytics software. This is worrying as in some cases the ratio was said to be as bad a 1:10.

Facebook is a huge company who many believe have not been able to monetise their vast growth - the same kind of rumours flying around about Twitter at the moment. They are expected to raise $550 Million this year - over twice the amount raised in 2008, so that might be a big ask, especially as they're not the bigger player in the Facebook vs Twitter game in terms of growth.

I have 2 clients with Facebook ads, but we have had them on pause since December last year, so I can't comment directly on any known discrepancies with our Weblogs vs Facebook's spending/Billing cycles. What I will say, is that I won't be resuming either campaign just yet, until I can see a transparent solution (which if you read the techcrunch artile, Facebook cliam they're on top of it).

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Search with a Bing

Microsoft recently released Bing, it's new Beta search engine, with a fairly powerful advertising campaign, and email campaign.



I have to say that compared to MSN search and Live! search, it's much much better. They've managed to clean out a lot of the spam from the listings, and there's a handy pop-up box to the right of the search results which displays what is on the page and other links on the page, too. It also looks more like a search engine home page, with no distractions apart from the search box (no news, no tabs, no other images) which is where Google has always steered clear from.

I can also say from the web analytics from my sites and some of the sites I manage that people are using Bing, or at least experimenting with it. It's not all just Google, which is good news I think. If people find the right information within Bing's results, they'll come back.

If you want to know how to optimise your site for the search engines like Bing, drop me a line at Barcelona SEO and we can chat about your site. Or if you're looking for instant traffic to your site, I can help set up and maintain your AdWords Barcelona Account, too.

How to Keep Visitors on Your Website - Part 6

Server Down time is an important factor in any website or online business. Google themselves have stated that if your server is down on more than one occasion that Googlebot tries to crawl your website, then you risk exclusion from the SERPs - obviously not something you want.

This is equally important for your regular customers or those which will visit your site either directly, or from another means that is not a search engine - other publicity or advertising you may do. Imagine if they visit your site ready to buy/sign up, and the server is down, so they get an error page. Not good. So how can you tackle this?



Some people would say pay for a dedicated server, so that you have a unique IP address for the site and thus avoid the possible pitfalls of shared servers, etc. However, there are easier ways of deciding whether or not to switch servers or hosts. For example setting up a website monitor service. This is not an affiliate post at all, but I'd like to share a free website monitoring service with you. The site is very easy to use and sign up for an account, and you will be emailed reports when your site is down, and when it comes back up again - handy to know and this kind of thing might influence a change of server, or dedicated server instead.

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Twitter Scam - TwitterCut

It seems a few people have been duped today by TwitterCut - a scam claiming to raise your followers by thousands in a short space of time. The page looks fairly convincing, but none of the footer links work, making me immediately suspicious.



Just a short while ago, tweets began warning about the scam, and I expect that to continue into tomorrow and there after.



While some web spammers will do anything to get spam on the go, it also seems that 12th June 2009 might be a day for all Tweeple to be concerned. Twitpocalypse is upon us!

Looking for better results in your web positioning? Barcelona SEO can help you achieve first page results in Google and improve your web traffic through sites such as Twitter. We also offer SEO Training workshops in Barcelona for one-to-one or group sessions. Contact me for more details.

Track Your Company & Brand Online

The rise and rise of social media and user generated content (UGC) has been taking a big place in the world of search for most of 2009 now. I've recently blogged about the ease of finding real time answers to problems and Google this week has also introduced it's own way of trying to apply a time filter to your results, in keeping with sites like twitter.


However, another big move (that will obviously be gradually introduced) is the inclusion of Rich Snippets. We've already had longer snippets introduced, and this is now based on user reviews, possibly including prices, star ratings, etc. There is a html code you need to mark up pages like this so that google knows to include these rich snippets, and you can also opt in for this "experiment" which will be introduced slowly.

This also raises another issue, which is how to control what people are saying about you or your company. Or maybe not to control, but how to track it.

Social media is a big mover in reviews and comments (often unintentionally), but Twitter for example, recently removed @ replies, making it a little more difficult. I suggest you do a Twitter Search for the name of your company and subscribe to the results via RSS. Another great tool for Twitter is backtweet which can help you control the mentioning of any urls of your website - even if they've been bit.ly or tinyurl'd.

Another quality and usually relaiable source of tracking your company or personal name is to set up e-mail alerts. Google Alerts can send you details of News, Blogs, Videos, etc. on a daily, weekly, or even "as it happens" basis helping you keep right on top of things. I've been using this for over a year for my sites and some clients, and sometimes things slip though the net, but it's a great tool to combine with other things, too.

Other things such as BackType Alerts which works in the same way as Google Alerts, but seems to pick up much more on sites like digg, reddit, etc. Yahoo! alerts is another you may want to consider. All in all, it pays to keep abreast of what people are saying or tweeting about you or your company, and it's free, too.

Like what you're reading? Feel free to leave a comment and broaden the discussion.

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