This Penguin update has been rolled out across all Google data centres, including Australia, and will affect around 3.1% of English Google queries. Further to this, the update will also have an impact on around 3% of German, Chinese and Arabic search queries and 5% of Polish search queries.

Based on initial analyses and reports, sites affected by the Penguin update tend to show the following patterns:

• They possess high traffic, keyword matching domains;
• They have a high proportion of links with the same anchor text;
• They have a lower number of site pages; and
• They generally have higher keyword density throughout the site.

This update has been targeted at reducing the the prominence of less reputable websites in the search engine results. However, as with all Google updates, some genuine sites have also been affected. Google often makes changes in the following weeks to correct any obvious adverse algorithmic side effects.

So what is the purpose of the Penguin update?

This seemingly harmless penguin has been released into the wild with the sole purpose of penalising any site which it believes is involved in ‘Over Optimisation’.

The general consensus within the SEO industry is that this crafty Penguin is actually hitting some websites harder than its black and white cousin – last year’s Panda update.

The sites that have seen significant drops for a majority of their keywords (drops of between 50 – 100 places for major keywords) are those sites that have been marked as receiving too much obvious over optimisation. However, sites that have only dropped a few positions appear to have only had a few of their search signal factors  over optimised.

Have you been affected by Penguin?

Here are a few quick tips to discover if the Penguin has waddled through your site:

• Check keyword rankings for your high rankings terms and compare now with dates prior to April 24;
• Check your webpage analytics to see if there has been an obvious traffic drop after April 24.  Another way to confirm this would be to compare weekly traffic from April 24, with previous traffic;
• You should also note that, if your rankings and traffic have increased since April 24th, you might have actually benefited from the update!

How to recover?

The Penguin update targets sites, which they believe have been involved in over optimisation.  If you are one of those affected by Penguin, we recommend following these tips:

Vary your anchor text: Penguin hates optimised anchor texts.  For example, if you’re targeting the keyword ‘Hotels Sydney’, and you’re building links using the exact keyword, Penguin may penalise your website. We recommend building links to your site with varied anchor texts.  For example, use anchor texts like ‘Hotel Accommodation Sydney’, ‘Your Brand name’,  ‘Accommodation Sydney’ etc.

Get Social:  Google plus has changed the way Google ranks organic results. Social Media should be an integral part of any SEO strategy.  We recommend promoting your site on Facebook, Twitter and especially Google Plus.

Usability:  Redesign your website to ensure visitors find what they are looking for. Follow Google’s guidelines to ensure, you are not affected by any search algorithm updates.  For more information visit http://support.google.com/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=35769

Content:   There is a saying in SEO Land ‘Content is King’. Quality content provides value to users, which make them stay longer and hopefully recommend it to their friends through social media.   This in turn will generate more backlinks to your site, without any link building!

And on a final note, stay away from keyword spamming, high keyword density and remember to write content which provides that extra value to your users.

If you find that your site has been penalised by mistake, Google has provided form to submit reconsideration request.

Let us know in the comments section below how the Penguin has affected you. Was the Penguin warm and cuddly or did you get a flipper slap?

So what does this mean for your page?

Below we’ve outlined a few of the more major updates and changes along with some of our recommendations to help you address each of these before Facebook hit the big green ‘on’ switch at the end of the month.

Note: If you are an admin of your page, you can preview your page changes up until March 30th and, if your happy with your updates, you can publish them prior to the rollover date.

Cover Images and Profile Pictures

As has been the case with personal profile pages, brands can now also join in on all of the cover image fun!

If you haven’t seen a Facebook cover image before, here is a cracker that will surely get your creative juices flowing:

Our Hints and Recommendations

• First of all, for your cover image use the native dimensions of 851px by 315px for best results.
• For your profile picture, use the dimensions 180px by 180px and ensure this will still look good as a thumbnail for your posts.
• Get creative with your image and profile picture and think outside the canvas
• Ensure your cover image and profile picture work cohesively together.
• Remember to follow Facebook’s (strict) cover image guidelines! You may not include:

1. Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website”
2. Contact information, such as web address, email, mailing address or other information intended for your Page’s ‘About’ section.
3. References to user interface elements, such as Like or Share, or any other Facebook site features.
4. Calls to action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends”

Application Icon Changes and Application Position Changes

One of the first questions that will be popping into many marketers and business owner’s minds will be “…but what’s going to happen to my apps?”

First things first, let’s start with your app positions and icons and then we’ll move onto the apps themselves.

If you scroll back up to the Livestrong example, you’ll see that under the cover image there are four extra images visible. These are your apps.

There are two things you need to know about this app repositioning:

1. As the ‘photos’ app is immovable, you really only have space for three featured apps on your page. The rest of your apps can be accessed via a drop down function to the right of the last featured app.
2. The apps utilise larger icon images with the dimensions of 111px by 74px.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Make sure that you devise a creative strategy to integrate your app icons with the look and feel of your cover image and profile picture. If this is too much of a brain fry, at least upload some attractive images to represent your apps and to keep your business timeline page looking clean and tidy.
• Although Facebook says you cannot include a call to action on your cover image, they have not yet ruled out the option to include a call to action on your app icon images.
• Choose your three featured apps wisely as it is likely that these will gain the most organic click through traffic. Ensure you have analytics installed on your apps to determine which is currently engaging your users the most.

 -Intermission-

Now, if you’ve at least completed the tasks above you can safely get to March 30^th knowing that that at least your timeline page will be up to date, looking nice and spiffy. Phew!

However, if you’d really like to hit your customers between the eyes with a fully fledged timeline integration and app optimised business page, read on!

Timeline and Milestones

Again, just like with your personal timeline, brands can now upload all of the historical content relating to their brand. Coke have (as they always do with new marketing platforms) executed this extremely well.

The giant cola company has invested some real thought into their timeline and have combined imagery from their bountiful archives with an integrated design theme in order to create a truly engaging historical account of their brand:

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Go through the history of your brand and add as much of it as you can to your timeline in order to create a more engaging user experience for your audience
• Try to have an integrated design theme for all of your timeline content and make each piece of history interesting for your users.
• For best results, design your milestone images to 843px by 403px.

Application Width Changes

I mentioned earlier how applications would be affected by timelines didn’t I? Well hold on to your seat. This is going to be one of the biggest changes to your business page.

Previously, Facebook in-page iframes (applications) were limited to 520px in width. This was the maximum app space businesses had to play with and generally resulted in long, narrow facebook apps. Now however, with the rollout of timelines, the new width for applications is 810px wide!

What does this mean?

1. Unfortunately, your old apps will be centered smack in the middle of the new app canvas with a bunch of white space on either side.
2. On the bright side however, you have much more space to work with when developing new apps for your page. You no longer have to squeeze everything into that darn 520px!

Our Hints and Recommendations

• With this huge increase in canvas space, we’re licking our lips at the new creative opportunities this expansion will enable for our clients and you should be too. We are all starting fresh here so it could even be YOU who creates the next big Facebook app that everybody is talking about!
• If you have already invested a bunch of money into your current app suite, don’t fret, there are plenty of ways to integrate your old app functionality into a new design. Just ask your design team or agency to get creative and come up with a workable solution.
• If you are keen to start fresh, start thinking of featured app ideas that will really intrigue and attract your audience. Then, go ahead and develop them while utilising the 810px of space in the most creative and engaging way.
• There appears to be a compulsory white border around the edges of the new app canvas so just note that your design will not be able to go to the edge of the app.
• With the compulsory borders, it appears that, the actual space you have to work is actually 779px.
• Users can add their favourite apps to their own timelines now so try to make sure your app is ‘sticky’ enough to be used on more than one occasion. We envisage that page apps will begin to function more like reusable smart phone apps. The price however will be a ‘like’ as opposed to 99 cents!

Default Welcome Pages Changes

Previously, best practise for a Facebook business page was to ensure you were welcoming your fans via a default landing page tab. As the new Facebook changes don’t allow for a default landing page tab, your ‘welcome’ page may become somewhat obsolete. This reinforces our position that app strategy will become more focused on creating unique, content moments between you and your Facebook community.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Don’t worry if you still have a ‘welcome’ page, you can still direct advertising traffic to your apps!
• Consider developing featured apps with a more unique and focussed purpose.

Pinning

Facebook have also rolled out a new ‘pinning’ feature to be available for updates made by your brand. What is pinning you ask? Pinning is a tool that allows you to ‘pin’ status updates to the top of your page for up to seven days so that it is the first piece of page engagement that a visitor sees. We also assume it will therefore become your default sponsored story ad copy. Very cool.

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Use pinning to push traffic to your promotions or apps for seven days after launch.
• Be sure to include pinable content into your social media content schedule.

Fan Gating and Advertising Changes

As mentioned above, I assure you, advertisers are still able to direct Facebook advertising to their specific page apps. Further to this, fan-gating is still allowed. Therefore, some tried and tested community building strategies will still be applicable. However, there will also be some very exciting advertising changes coming your way.

Facebook are looking to add advertising to sit within user’s desktop and mobile Facebook news feeds, allowing your brand’s content to be ‘sandwiched’ between their friends status updates and activity. With over 350 million people using Facebook on their mobile, this initiative will increase your potential audience significantly.

On top of this, the new ‘reach generator’ advertising solution appears to allow advertisers to dodge any EdgeRank issues and reach up to 75% of their audience through paid status updates. As most pages are currently only reaching approximately 16% of their user base, this is definitely a tool that will be making most marketer’s eyebrows rise a few inches!

There are a slew of other exciting advertising improvements and additions but that’s for another blog post….

Our Hints and Recommendations

• Keep using fan gates, just be sure to utilise the new app width you have to work with
• Keep sending ads to your apps.
• Look into some of the new advertising options for yourself. You will be impressed I guarantee it!

Send Your Audience Messages

Finally! Brands can now send direct messages to fans. This will help with your social media response strategy as brands can now respond to disgruntled users or private matters through a personal message. This will help to move any conflict out of the public eye or discuss sensitive matters without having to move to phone or email communication.

Furthermore, for businesses that have ever had to remove a post due to page guideline breaches, this feature will allow admins to proactively inform the offending user.

Final thoughts

There’s definitely a lot to take in here and it can all seem a bit overwhelming. Our advice is to just start making the relevant aesthetic changes in small chunks in the lead up to March 30^th in order to ensure your page looks visually pleasing when the rollover occurs. However, if you need some assistance or would like to implement a full transition strategy, contact Reload Media about one of our Facebook Timeline rollover packages today.

Countless others, including Google, have also used today to come out and publicly oppose the legislation. Thousands of Twitter users have also joined the movement, voluntarily “blacking out” their own profiles for the day.

But whilst most of the hype surrounding SOPA and PIPA has been confined to the US, the ramifications of the bills extend much further. For those who don’t know, the SOPA and PIPA legislation is designed to protect Intellectual Property rights on the web (a good thing), however the legislation extends so far that many are labelling it an infringement of freedom of speech and give a select few the power to control what is and isn’t allowed on the net. Gizmodo gives a good (and slightly scary) synopsis here for those interested.

The question for Australia, and most other countries outside the US, is what does this mean for us?

If you think we’ll be unaffected, think again. For a start, any Australian business with a website that has US visitors, US customers, US hosting, relies on US-based adserving platforms (such as AdWords) or has a connection with any other US-based website (like search engines) will fall under the Act’s powers.

One of the major problems with the legislation, as Gizmodo pointed out, is that the potential for abuse is rife. One complaint (made by the right people) about your site to the appropriate authorities has the potential for your site to be instantly blocked by US internet service providers (ISPs), search engines, social networks and more. Basically, you would disappear from the web (or the US version) overnight.

Now you might be thinking “I’m not hosting pirated movies on my website, so i’ll be fine…” which in theory should be the case. Much opposition to the bill however, has focused on the fact that the interpretation of it is so broad that the smallest indiscretion can cause major backlash. For instance, if you have a forum or blog and a user posts a link to a site considered by the US to be promoting IP theft, your site could disappear. Linking to a Youtube video with copyrighted content could incur the same fate.

If you’re hosting in the US, this may not just be blocking the site of US traffic, but deleting it all together.

And then of course there’s the fact that if the US enact SOPA to protect its copyright holders, other countries around the world will follow suit, blocking content that it deems inappropriate too. What different countries deem “inappropriate” will vary greatly, making doing International business a nightmare.

At this stage there’s a long way to go, but if you’re an Australian business who relies on International (in particular US) traffic for sales, you need to watch the developments very closely.

As a starting point, every business should be reviewing how much of their sales is tied to US customers, and how much they rely on US sites to direct traffic their way (think Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc)…

Reload is determined to aid the education and success of these children through donating towards not only the basics that many of us take for granted such as school shoes and uniforms, books for school, stationary and sports equipment but also sponsoring a number of primary school, high school and tertiary students to achieve their education goals. After all, the children are our future.

How can you help?

If you are a client of Reload you are already contributing! Every Reload client automatically contributes to our One for One program as 1% of all service fees and 1% of our time is contributed. The broader Reload’s shoulders get the more capacity we will have to lend a hand for these kids towards a better future.

We’re excited about our One for One program, and look forward to sharing in the life and educational goals of the young people we are sponsoring. Stay tuned on our Facebook page for updates on what we’re doing and how One for One is giving back.

In an unsurprising move, Google has this week launched its own social networking platform in direct competition to Facebook, called Google+.

The signs had been there for a while that Google was planning a move into social. The launch of +1 earlier this year was obviously a precursor to something bigger.

But now that it has been released, there’s two big questions:

1. Why has Google gone head to head with Facebook?
2. Will Google win?

Why has Google Gone Social?

Let’s start with the first question. The reason is simple, they want to make their search results better (and tap into the ad revenues that come with it).

Google has realised for quite a while that social recommendations play an important role in determining what content is best on the web.

With Facebook and Microsoft having previously signed a deal to incorporate Facebook ‘likes’ into search rankings in exchange for Bing powered search functionality on Facebook, Google was left out in the cold when it came to ‘social search.’

Google is very aware that social recommendations, likes, tweets, etc, are just the newest form of ‘link juice’ that search algorithms have been based on for the last fifteen years. But with Facebook closing ranks and giving access to Bing/Yahoo, Google was in real danger of missing out on social ranking factors.

Their solution was to launch +1 (Google’s version of a ‘like’).

However, this only gave them part of the picture. Without knowing anything about the person doing the +1′ing, Google was in the dark as to whether the user was a real social influencer or a ‘Nigel no friends.’ In other words, they didn’t know whether any given +1 was a really valuable recommendation, or one worth next to nothing.

Hence, along comes Google+. By creating their own ‘Facebook’, Google can now see actual information about the person doing the +1′ing. Things like how many connections they have, how influential they are, how often they “hang out” with other influential people, etc. In other words, they are now able to weight +1′s so that a really influential person may be be worth +1, but others may only be worth +0.01.

Relating this back to search results, if all the really influential people (or “cool kids”) are +1′ing certain sites and pages, then those pages are likely to appear higher in the search rankings.

Obviously this has major implications for SEO, but that’s an article for another day!

So will Google win?

I’m going to go out on a limb and say “yes.”

But… not overnight. Google has made a product that takes the best parts of Facebook (connecting with friends, sharing photos and links, etc) but has seemingly managed to overcome the areas that Facebook has continued to struggle with.

In areas like the grouping of friends (called ‘circles’ in Google+), default privacy settings, “hanging out” (by location) and mobile use, Google has a clear upper hand.

The privacy and grouping of friends will probably be the biggest reason users will switch, and every time Facebook has a privacy saga (which is quite often), Google+ will be there to recruit the deserters. There’s also rumours that Google is working on a Facebook import tool, so you can bring your entire Facebook life across (photos, posts, videos, etc) in one go. If that’s true, it’s brilliant.

They also couldn’t have launched it at a better time, with Facebook usage in the United States falling for the first time in Facebook’s history.

What’s more, Google have followed the tried and tested ‘by invite only’ launch that worked so effectively for Gmail.

So, my big call for the day is this:

By 1st July, 2016 (exactly five years from today), Google+ will have more users than Facebook, and by a considerable amount.

Some of you may be calling that statement ridiculous given Facebook’s size and massive head start. But consider what happened when Google took on Microsoft’s Hotmail with Gmail using a very similar strategy.

Also consider MySpace, which only this week was sold off by News Corp for a paltry $35 million (a whopping $550 million lower than what they paid for it) and less than 4% of it’s all time high valuation of close to $1 billion. (As a side note, this massive loss is attributed to the same person who says he “knows users will pay for online news content”, but again an article for another day).

So whilst I do feel that Google+ will ultimately become more successful than Facebook, today marks just the ‘beginning of the end’ for Facebook.

Facebook will continue to be popular, and the companies that have invested into building Facebook fan bases will still see great returns on their investment for a number of years, and probably even after Google surpasses it. What this case shows, however, is that you need to be prepared for when the next social platform or web trend comes along.

The really smart companies are already making a move with Google+ to see how they can reach those ‘early adopters’ and get the jump on their competitors.

But rather than summarise the last decade of innovations, in this article I gaze into the crystal ball to see what search could be like in the next decade.

A challenger to Google?

Quite probably. I doubt that anyone will be able to catch Google’s monopoly-like market share, but there are a few contenders that will surely give them a shake.

The most obvious choice is the Bing/Yahoo combination (or Binghoo!). With pooled resources and a greater focus on delivering features comparable to AdWords, marketers and consumers alike may see the benefit of switching.

But realistically the development cycles at both Microsoft and Yahoo are too slow to keep up. Google’s massive innovation budgets and focus on NPD (new product development) keeps them ahead of the game.

The real challenger is actually Facebook. The way they have infiltrated the web with ‘Like’ functionality paves the way for a search engine to be based not on links (like Google’s PageRank), but on likes, creating a social-powered search engine.

Of course, this is conditional upon Facebook maintaining its own popularity for the next decade (which I have some doubts about – but that’s an article for another day).

The big caveat to Google maintaining its supremacy is the top three; Larry Page, Sergey Brin and Eric Schmidt. Whilever those three remain Google is unlikely to lose top spot. The danger for Google is a shift in approach that alienates users (like charging for search or other services that have traditionally always been free) and that won’t happen while those guys are still there.

TV

Television is the next big medium for search. Google have already started to dabble in it with Google TV and broadcast rights on YouTube. Yahoo and Microsoft have been teaming up with networks for years (think Yahoo!7 and Ninemsn in Australia).

However, the big stumbling block for Google TV at the moment is the opposition of the major networks and media buyers.

AdWords already lets you buy TV ads on major commercial networks in the US, and Google TV aims to allow free-to-air shows to stream via the net. The big problem the networks will have in trying to oppose Google TV long term is that the push for Google TV is likely to come from the advertisers themselves (and their million-dollar budgets).

By allowing anyone to buy TV ads through AdWords (eliminating traditional media buyers) and streaming shows to a wider audience, advertisers have the potential to reach more people for less money.

Furthermore, with real-time Analytics being fed back into the system about individuals viewing patterns, there’s nothing stopping advertisers micro-targeting certain demographics. From a viewer’s perspective, it means that you could be seeing different ads each ad break than the guy in the house next door!

There’s obviously many issues to overcome, and failing an agreement with the major networks, don’t be surprised if Google do an Oprah Winfrey and establish their own TV network. Remember, they’ve already got broadcast rights through YouTube.

The Search Algorithm

Most search algorithms have gone through many changes in the last decade, but there has always been one constant; the number and quality of links. I don’t foresee this changing within the next decade either.

Over time, we may start to see social connections play a bigger role, but these are still a form of link.

New Search Products?

Undoubtedly. What products, you ask? Well, that’s a tougher question.

As society becomes more and more mobile, expect a greater focus on location and geographic based search products. Also expect a greater focus on augmented reality products, particularly in the areas of retail, real estate and maps.

As a general rule, expect to see a Google powered search bar everywhere, from your TV to your fridge, the world is going to become very searchable place.

Update: Two days after posting this, Google announced the launch of Google Wallet, a mobile payments platform (partnering with MasterCard and Citibank) that they’re calling a merge between “mobile” and “local.” Looks like a good start to the decade.

An investment in Australia’s future or a needless waste of money? Regardless of your political stance on the impending roll-out of the National Broadband Network (NBN), it’s coming – and it will be a game changer.

Imagine this….

It’s the morning peak hour rush. Driving down what’s normally a 100km/h highway, you’re ploughing along at a measly 20. Tediously churning through first and second gears, your frustration levels teeter on the brink of capitulation. A glance over your right shoulder only compounds your irritation as countless cars fly past you in the transit lane…

Annoyed? You betcha!

Why? Because you know that you are capable of travelling faster.

A comparable situation will arise coinciding with the introduction of the NBN. Tasks that internet users currently consider ‘normal’ will be completed with ease, while a wealth of content-rich sites and pages will become more and more prevalent. The early adopters of the NBN will have a renewed plethora of available information, while users still ‘stuck in the traffic’ of current broadband technology become increasingly frustrated.

Given the exceeding willingness of modern consumers to quickly adopt new technology, the transition to faster internet is likely to be as swift as the NBN itself.

But what does this mean for your existing methods of internet marketing, or for businesses that are yet to engage in marketing through the online portal?

Below is a list of tips to ensure you stay ahead of your competitors in the diverse and ever-evolving world of internet marketing.

1. Ensure That You Can Be Found

Visibility is paramount. With more and more content set to be created and posted online, businesses risk getting lost in the clutter. The advertising industry is tipped to be worth $14.16bn by 2014 [1], and with the bulk of this expenditure expected to be online, advertisers must be conscious of competing within a highly competitive and saturated market.

With conventional domain names rapidly being exhausted, and with a growing proliferation of pages on the internet, it is vitally important that your visibility within search-engine results is high.

2. Integrate a Digital Marketing Strategy Into Your Marketing Mix

Australia already boasts one of the highest internet penetration rates in the world. The addition of the NBN is likely to increase penetration and usage, adding weight to the importance of digital marketing as part of your marketing mix. Below are some interesting statistics about internet marketing within Australia.

• 80.1% of Australians used the internet last year, placing the nation among the top ten in the world for internet usage [2]

• Last year, online advertising expenditure grew by 21% – double the previous growth in 2009 (PwC) [3]

• Online advertising is expected to increase by 15.4% each year [4]

• By 2014, internet advertising is forecast to overtake television and newspapers to become Australia’s biggest advertising medium [1]

3. Ensure That Consumers WANT To See Your Ads

When developing online advertisements, placement is crucial. Well targeted ads relevant to the content a consumer sees on a particular page are generally more successful than ads without such a positioning strategy.

Countless studies have shown that consumers despise intrusive ads (like pop-ups) and are unlikely to retain brand messages communicated within them. Conversely, Search Engine Marketing produces ads relevant to the search terms of consumers and are more likely to generate a profitable ROI.

SEM remains one of the most effective promotional tools available online and with the number of daily searches increasing exponentially, the opportunities available to businesses are too good to pass up.

4. Adaptation Is Essential To Survival

In the ever-changing and constantly evolving world of digital marketing, it is essential that advertisers pre-empt market trends and are not resistant to change. Here are some considerations for businesses currently participating in internet marketing.

• Continually monitor performance of your online campaigns

• Frequently update, change and optimise campaigns

• Don’t be complacent when achieving good results – Internet trends change quickly!

• Never be afraid to try something new! Consider the first-mover advantages of successful online models like Wotif, YouTube and eBay

5. Build Business-Brand Relationships

The online realm presents a wealth of opportunities for businesses to engage with their target markets. Implementing a Social Media Marketing campaign is an increasingly popular avenue to do this.

By December 2010, 9.5 million Australians [5] (around 40% of the population) were actively using social media site, Facebook, with the average session lasting 25 minutes. Embracing the vast potential of mediums such as these provides an opportunity for companies to engage with their target markets to build solid business-brand relationships.

Remember, brand equity is something that no competitor can take from you!

In Conclusion…

The introduction of the NBN and the failure to adopt new technology may have significant repercussions for your business’s profitability. If you are not already actively participating in digital marketing, you risk getting left behind in the ‘traffic jam’ of businesses without an online presence.

1. Lara Sinclar; The Australian. August 2, 2010. Internet Advertising to Dominate as NBN Tipped To Stimulate Media Growth
2. Australia: NBN – Far Reaching Implications for Existing Carriers and CSPs. April 5, 2011. www.mondaq.com
3. PwC Chief Media Analyst David Wiadrowski. As quoted in The Australian. August 2, 2010.
4. Australia – Digital Economy – Advertising, Statistics, Revenues and Forecast. ND. www.budde.com.au/research
5. SocialBakers Facebook-Statistics. www.socialbakers.com/facebook-statistics

For those who haven’t heard, the New York Times (which is starting to get a reputation for these types of exposés), ran a story outlining how JCPenney had been allegedly engaging in dodgy SEO practices (you can read the full article here) in an attempt to artificially influence Google’s ranking algorithm.

Whilst not illegal, these dodgy SEO practices do go against Google’s policies, and as a result, Google responded by manually penalising JCPenney’s site, causing them to drop from high on the first page for most of their key search terms to somewhere on page six and below.

What JCPenney, or more accurately their SEO firm (who was subsequently dumped by the company), were doing was engaging in extensive paid link schemes on completely unrelated sites. Basically, what they were doing was paying thousands of dodgy or unrelated websites (like a nuclear engineering site and a Bulgarian property site) to link to them, thus artificially increasing their popularity in the eyes of Google.

Now most, if not all SEO firms engage in some form of link-building for their clients. However, this is perfectly fine providing you only get links on related sites or those with high authority themselves. In other words, a genuine reason for one site to link to another. Extensive (and/or paid) link building from what is often referred to in SEO circles as “bad neighbourhoods” is likely to result in Google issuing some harsh penalties for hanging out with the wrong crowd.

The issue for all businesses who are undertaking SEO services is to make sure their SEO firm is not engaging in dodgy or black hat techniques.

What will be interesting to see over the coming months is how long Google impose this ‘manual penalty’ before allowing their algorithm to re-rank JCPenney back where they belong (probably somewhere low on page one or onto page two).

Google have always claimed that their algorithm is very intelligent when it comes to detecting when a site is engaging in dodgy practices, and most ‘penalties’ are handed down algorithmically without the need for manual intervention. So what happened with JCPenney? Why were they able to get away with it for so long before someone noticed?

Cynics have suggested it’s due to the massive AdWords budget JCPenney spend with Google each year, but I don’t believe so. Google have always kept the paid and organic side of their business very separate and there’s also plenty of brands with far bigger budgets than JCPenney that would probably get the preferential treatment (if they were doing it, which I don’t believe they are).

In my opinion, the reason why they were able to get away with it without drawing attention from Google’s algorithm is due to the weighting in Google’s search algorithm regarding the strength of the brand. It’s been rumoured for a while that one of the factors Google uses in assessing a site is how much of a “brand” it is.

This may sound like a hard thing to gauge, but when you have the resources of Google, it’s actually not. For instance, by checking the ‘About Us’ and ‘Contact Us’ pages of a website (and verifying against Google Maps listings, Yellow Pages, other directories, etc), Google’s able to get a picture of how many offices a company has, where they’re located and generally how big a business is.

They’re also able to use social signals like Facebook fans, Twitter followers, LinkedIn connections, Youtube views to assess the size of a company.

Even other factors, like a company’s Wikipedia page or how many searches occur each month for a ‘brand name’ help Google to assess how big a brand is.

JCPenney would have ticked all these boxes, meaning Google would have had leeway in its algorithm for some dodgy links (either because of others pretending to be affiliated with the brand for their own personal gain or even sabotage by competitors).

The second point is probably the most valid because Google have always said it won’t penalise you for something your competitors could do to you. (Eg: Theoretically, it could have been one of JCPenney’s competitors that planted all those links to deliberately sabotage them).

Now normally, companies engaging in dodgy linking themselves leave a trail. This might be in the form of a link wheel where one of the dodgy linking domains is actually registered to the original company, requests left up on forums for paid links or even ‘honeypot traps’ set by Google where they pose as webmasters of dodgy sites trying to see who approaches them. In any case, if someone involved in dodgy linking has forgot to ‘dot an I’ or ‘cross a T’ somewhere along the way, you can bet Google will find it.

What this suggests is that either the firm engaged in the dodgy linking was covering their tracks perfectly or the few blemishes they did have were being offset by the ‘value of the brand.’ Either way, Google’s algorithm didn’t have enough evidence to punish them.

However, when the story broke and JCPenney fired their SEO firm, it gave Google enough evidence to suggest they had been doing it deliberately and imposed a manual penalty on them.

What this case highlights more than anything is that the world of link-building, whilst necessary to get solid rankings, has a very black underbelly and all businesses need to be careful about which SEO firm they choose to deal with, as picking the ‘wrong’ one can have disastrous consequences online.

For those who haven’t heard, Yahoo and Microsoft agreed last year to a deal whereby Microsoft’s Bing search engine algorithm would power the organic results in Yahoo; and Yahoo’s Search Marketing software would supply paid listings in Bing.

What this means is that, in theory at least, the results in Bing and Yahoo will be identical.

However, I suspect that this won’t be the case in reality.

For one, paid search advertisers may choose not to advertise on one or the other, or have different sets of keywords in different engines, meaning the paid listings will vary.

Why would they do this? Mainly because the demographic makeup of users on the two search engines vary, and so advertisers who know that their target market is more aligned with Bing’s userbase will only advertise there.

However, this difference in demographic usage is also the reason why the two search engines probably won’t spit out the same organic search results.

The deal between Yahoo and Microsoft will see Bing’s search algorithm used on both engines. However, search engine algorithms are made up of thousands of individual factors and one of these is the actual search and click patterns of its users.

Eg: If, for a given keyword, a search engine discovers that the listing at number 3 is proving more popular (i.e. getting clicked on more) than those higher up, it will adjust its search results to reflect this.

Given that different demographics will have different interests and tastes, it holds to reason that the website that attracts them the most in a given list may not be the same one.

Based on that, results in either Bing or Yahoo may start to vary (because of the underlying algorithm) if users of one of those engines are preferring certain sites.

What this means is that you may still see very different sets of results in Bing and Yahoo (and the disparity will probably grow larger over time).

Google have updated their AdWords blog to announce the change of display url appearance. From now on, your primary domain will be in lowercase but your tail at the end can still be capitalised. See some examples below:

Time to put those w’s back in!

To read Google’s official statement, click here.

[Previous Post - December 17th 2010]

About two weeks ago I noticed on my computer that all AdWords display urls on the Google search results pages were showing up in lowercase.

I did a quick whip around the office to check to see if anyone else was seeing what I was seeing but to no avail.

However, I am now convinced that Google were testing a new ad format on a limited sample of users.

My ads have gone back to normal for now but another blogger identified the same phenomenon last week.

Why do I believe this was a deliberate test by Google:

1. For some reason, my PC has been included in other Google trial runs in the past. This included access to Google Instant prior to launch and the appearance of the new purple AdWords background colour a week or two before the full roll out.

2. It makes sense for Google to try & make their sponsored links look as similar to their organic search results as possible in order to blur the lines between paid and organic results. This would help to increase the CTRs of the top three paid ads and, therefore, increase revenue for Google.

3. We have seen other efforts on Google’s behalf to try and get advertisers to aim for the top 3 ad positions in recent times. The most significant change has been the new places map overlay which now covers up ads on the side of the screen when a user scrolls down the page:

Conclusions

Google don’t appear to have announced anything yet so they may have just been doing a limited test to see what would happen in terms of click through rates. However, if there were to be widespread changes to display urls in the future, many advertisers would need to:

• Rethink display URL capitalisation tactics (e.g ReloadMedia.com.au vs reloadmedia.com.au)
• Perform new www vs non www split testing. Currently, in most split tests, non www ads perform better than www ads. However, this is likely due to the extra capitalisation that is allowed in AdWords display urls (e.g. ReloadMedia.com.au ads will generally have a higher click through rate than www.ReloadMedia.com.au or www.reloadmedia.com.au ads).
• Amend every ad in every campaign in order to harness the results of aforementioned split testing.

As mentioned, this may have just been a case of Google experimenting with AdWords results to see what would happen. Only time will tell if this new Ad format will be rolled out and how they will affect current AdWords campaigns. However, considering the rapid rate that Google have been making changes to their search results pages lately, I would keep a close eye on this one!

If you’ve seen these lowercase urls in YOUR search results or would just like to discuss the implications further, feel free to comment below.