Should we be alarmed? Well Google outline the main benefits to be faster searches, smarter predictions and instant results, which sounds pretty good to be honest! Surely everyone wins? But what does it mean for brands out there? How will they be impacted by this new tool?

Without going into too much detail, the most obvious change with Google Instant is that “you get to the right content much faster than before because you don’t have to finish typing your full search term, or even press “search”” and also that “seeing results as you type helps you formulate a better search term by providing instant feedback”.

Again, that sound pretty good to me! However, from testing this myself, it posed the question “but what if I was searching for something like an ipod case and I typed in A for Amazon or Apple but Argos came up first. What’s to stop me clicking on Argos?” I know this may sound like a silly example, but my point is – will the customer be persuaded by the predicted keywords that come up? I guess only time will tell! Also, for this reason, will we see affiliates bidding on partial brand terms (e.g. Ar for Argos?)

Another point is that the search results come up without actually clicking on the “search button”.

This leads nicely onto my (well actually Google’s) useless fact of the day – by using Google Instant we can apparently save 2-5 seconds per search and if everyone used it globally then they would estimate that it will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day! Imagine what you could do with all that saved time!

google · seo

The tech team at R.O.EYE found an interesting article in the Guardian this weekend about HTML5 and we think that this could spell the end for Flash based ad placements such as banners or content units.

Anyone who has ever worked with or experienced problems with Flash will be jumping for joy, it’s early days yet, but ultimately there will be better cross browser/platform support, as HTML5/CSS3 is a web standard, as opposed to Flash which is a 3rd party plug in. To see how this works in practice follow this link. If you open that example page in an unsupported browser (i.e. IE8) you still get the banners rendered fine, just without the glitz and glam.

In the same scenario Flash would just show an empty hole, and in terms of load time HTML5 wins hands down in a flat out Top Gear style drag race!

Most content units are a flash unit and the equivalent HTML5 unit could potentially be more seamlessly integrated with page content. The benefit of this is that the advert looks less like advertising and more like content. In addition, the content is readable by search engines, so jazzy HTML5 pages will rank for SEO. Flash doesn’t!

In summary, if you are an advertiser and you are looking to refresh your suite of banner ads/content units/live booking iframes etc make sure your agency is up to speed with these developments!

CSS3 · HTML5 · technical · technology

Ok, so I made the title deliberately abrupt for the sake of getting your attention and yes I’m going to be a little controversial for the purposes of generating further debate.

But what I really mean is – what is the overall objective of doing this? What do we hope to gain? Where do we hope to be at the end of all this?

There have been many admirable blogs and comments made about this that go into all levels of detail and cover a very wide range of points for all sectors of the market. But there has also been some actual research into multi-attribution which does give us some hard data to go off. Well done Vodafone!

But without going into all of the points made and responding to each with an opinion (there’s plenty of those about), I wonder what are people expecting to see as a result of all this?

If your answer is “content sites will be better rewarded” then I must disagree based on the data made available by Vodafone. My interpretation of the data is that sales are not being “stolen” to anything like the degree everyone (including myself) thought.

If your answer is something along the lines of “the networks will invest in providing this technology and people will use it” then you’d be half right as DGM already have invested in this, and someone at DGM please correct me if I’m wrong, but I understand there has been zero take-up at the time of writing.

If your answer is “we will be able to recruit more affiliates to our programmes” well yes you might be right, but will your sales figures increase as a result? More likely you will be paying the same amount of money for the same amount of sales, but to more affiliates.

If you answer is “it will make things a lot fairer” I would say that is a philosophical argument rather than a solid business case for multi-attribution.

In summary, while I think the debate has been excellent I’m struggling to see how multi-attribution will manifest itself in the affiliate programmes of the future and what it will offer. But perhaps we said the same about alternatives such as value attribution models which are now well established..?

The debate I am sure will continue to rage on!

debate · multi-attribution · value attribition model

This week Google announced they have finally released their long anticipated, and much talked about, Caffeine update. The update boasts 50% fresher results for web searches than the previous index. They have also released this extremely handy and useful diagram!

Much talk and speculation surrounds the release of caffeine as site owns and affiliates are a little confused about the current changes, do they relate solely to Caffeine or, as some speculate, is there an algorithm update going ahead at the same time, referred to as the “May Day” update. What will this mean for affiliates and site owners alike?

What is Caffeine?

Well for those of you not so familiar with why you see the results you see when searching Google let me take you back to basics. When you search Google for a product or service, or maybe you are searching for a cat playing the piano (it’s there), what you are seeing is not live. The results that Google present based on your search are actually an index of the web, much like the list in the back of a book, helping  you find the information you are searching for. Here is Google’s Matt Cutts explaining how it all works.

Why the need for Caffeine?

Well the web, even today, is growing at an alarming rate and the content that is being produced is becoming larger and more complex. On top of this, content being produced by news and real-time updates, such as Twitter, has also grown at a phenomenal rate. Searchers and web users are demanding more, they want not only the most relevant results but the latest information as it happens. Site owner and publishers are demanding more, they want their content available to potential customers quicker and faster, forcing Google to look at the way in which it indexes the web.

Google have developed Caffeine with the future in mind, with the real time web just around the corner, this update has made it possible for Google to index faster and ultimately produce more relevant search results.

Exciting times ahead!

google caffeine · search engine · seo · technical · technology