New – Google Maps is asking users whether the details being displayed from the Google Local Business Centre are accurate.  Perhaps Google is trying to let users help clean up the spam in their database?

I searched for John Lewis Nottingham, and Google not only provided me with map and details, but prompted me if the details are accurate:

I clicked on the “Is this accurate” prompt to find out what happens next, as you do.

Now, with the most sincere apologies to John Lewis, I must confess that I pressed the “Confirm” button to say I thought the details are wrong.

What will happen to this “vote” that I just cast?

• Will John Lewis be notified?
• Will a Google attempt to verify the results?
• Can unscrupulous competitors get a company blacklisted?
• Will the user generated content have an impact on John Lewis’s rankings in the Local results?
• What about unclaimed business listings?

With thanks to Mike Blumenthal who has an interesting collection of Google Local blog postings including one on this topic. Some of his articles do not pertain to the UK yet, but worth keeping an eye out might be heading our way. See also American Google vs UK Google.

Google has removed the Page Rank score from WebMaster tools.  No more little green barchart tellinig me my score from 0-10.  This is about a strong a signal as you can get from Google to say Page Rank just isn’t important.

Susan Moskwa, Google Webmaster Trends Analyst, explained the reason for the removal:

“We’ve been telling people for a long time that they shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much; many site owners seem to think it’s the most important metric for them to track, which is simply not true. We removed it because we felt it was silly to tell people not to think about it, but then to show them the data, implying that they should look at it”

WebMaster Tools is Google’s essential, free set of tools to help you diagnose and  fix problems with  your website, discover links to indivdidual pages on your site, see the top queries driving visitors to your site, find suggestions for improving your site.

Despite removing the Page Rank information from Webmaster Tools, Google just can’t bring itself to remove page Rank Ran from the Google Toolbar.  Too many Page Rank Junkies would have a hissy fit, and it must be easier just to leave it there rather than take all the flak.

This isn’t something new;  we’ve been writing the misleading nature of Page Rank for quite a few years.  And our Page Rank articles still tend to be very popular in terms of readership:

1. Google Page Rank Update (Oct 2007)
2. Search Engine Optimisation Myths (Feb 2007)
3. Page Rank Update (May 2008)

Thanks to Marketing Pilgrim for the Google quote: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2009/10/google-is-finally-killing-pagerank.html

The East Midlands eBusiness Programme FREE one-day conference about doing business online will be taking place at the East Midlands Conference Centre, Nottingham on Thursday 3 December.

I’ll be speaking about Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses, and Ian Lockwood will be providing an update on Search Engine Optimisation.

Places are limited, so probably sensible to book your place soon.

The blurb from the recent e-shot let’s you know more:

If you want to keep up to date with the latest developments in Search Marketing and Social Media marketing, then this is the conference for you. Delegates who have previously attended any of the eBusiness Programme’s extensive range of workshops will discover brand new content with practical steps you can take to promote your business effectively on the Internet.

The conference will teach you how to effectively market your business online by bringing you all the latest in the rapidly changing world of Internet marketing. Attendance will benefit any business that uses search engines as part of their online marketing and those experimenting with social media marketing.

Registration for the conference opens at 09:00 am, and the presentations will begin at 10:00 am. The presentations will end at approximately 16:00 pm giving you the opportunity to network with conference delegates.

The Conference Programme in detail:

What’s New in Search? – Presenter: Ian Lockwood

The world of search engines is ever-evolving and businesses need to be up to speed with the latest developments. During the morning we will introduce you to the new business developments, changes to search engine algorithms, updates to pay per click engines and additional features added by the search engines that you could be using to increase your exposure, particularly on Google.

Social Media Marketing for Small Businesses – Presenter: Susan Hallam

Social media is hot, it’s trendy, and ever so sexy. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Blogging. But are they genuinely useful for small businesses? Do they give good value as a return in return for the investment of your time and effort? And what are the best ways to get started using these new marketing techniques?

The afternoon session will provide practical examples of how small businesses can use social media to deliver communication, collaboration, or online visibility objectives in support of your business Internet marketing strategy.

Booking Now: For more information or to register your place, click here to book your place, or  email events@businesslinkem.co.uk or contact the eBusiness Programme team on 0845 603 8370.

1. Link building tip: 10 reasons a journalist might write about your website.   http://bit.ly/cagvf11:38 AM Sep 29th from TweetDeck
2. Google Hot Trends : Search results show graph of fastest rising searches (but only in US and Japan…)  http://bit.ly/qINTl9:35 PM Sep 28th from TweetDeck
3. International SEO: MattCutts on how Google handles duplicate content on multinational ecommerce sites.  http://bit.ly/3krYOW11:55 AM Sep 28th from TweetDeck
4. 
   60% of the UK’s smallest businesses are performing as well as or better than last year. Source: FSB May 20094:40 AM Sep 10th from TweetDeck

1. How to improve your website: 12 examples of Great Error 404 pages. http://digg.com/d113XSA @econsultancy11:00 PM Sep 9th from TweetDeck
2. Google’s new super sized search box http://digg.com/u1CGjd3:07 PM Sep 9th from TweetDeck
3. @DaveChaffey ’s updated list of best digital marketers on Twitter now includes affiliate marketing & web analytics http://bit.ly/6L3Ln12:46 PM Sep 9th from TweetDeck
4. RT @patrickaltoft How Google deals with spam reports  http://bit.ly/ngwwx12:40 PM Sep 9th from web
5. Google’s UK Search Results are Ga Ga.  http://digg.com/u1CG6Q@mattcutts11:05 AM Sep 9th from TweetDeck

Are the questions in the Google AdWords Professional exam suitable for the UK market?

I’ve just passed my re-accreditation as a Google AdWords Accredited Professional (GAP) with a robust score of 89.5%.

I know it sounds petty, but as I was answering my 110 questions in 90 minutes, I was getting more and more annoyed with the references to selling houses in San Francisco, allusions to zip codes and area codes, and prices in dollars and cents.  Just as ex-smokers are the most intolerant, my  shiny new UK citizenship leads me to object to the American bias, Obama’s Nobel prize not withstanding.

Be sure to scroll to the bottom of this message where you can see a specific example where the AdWords Anglo/American relations went well and truly off the rails.

However, let’s start with particular  AdWords issues of significant importance to businesses in the UK that are not addressed in the UK exam.

Here’s a few I would suggest, and I welcome your proposals for additional exam questions;  put them in the comments below and we’ll get them over to the AdWords team.

1.   How is VAT charged on UK AdWords Accounts?

Be careful you are not being charged VAT at the Irish rate of 21%

2.  How effective is the use of Geo-targeting in the UK in light of the way IP addresses are handled by UK Internet Service providers?

Not very accurate for small businesses in the UK.

3.  How effective is mobile Geo-targeting?

Not very precise at this stage

4.  What is a Google AdWords reseller, and who are they in the UK?

There are 5 authorised UK resellers at the moment, and 1 in Ireland.

5.  What impact does “enhanced broad match” have on your ads displaying?

You ads may be displaying when you don’t want them to.

Along the same lines, are the exam questions tailored for British professionals?

I have taken the liberty of copying one of the questions from the Google AdWords exam. It asks “what is the typical spending level of advertisers paying in Pounds Sterling who qualify for the invoicing payment option?” The multiple choice answers, inexplicably, are offered in dollars.

So the first step is to convert the correct answer, £1500 per month, into US dollars.  Hmm, quick calculation… 1.6 dollars to the pound, that’s rougly $1000.  Oops, no it’s not, it’s the other way around.  I always do that.  £1500 pounds is about US$2400.

Oh dear, I’m given the choice of either US$500 or US$4000.  Which would you go for?

I did double check on the Invoicing section on the AdWords help and the answer is right there for us to see:

So, as you are looking for a company to handle your Adwords account, do make sure they are Google AdWords accredited, and that they can demonstrate their entry on the Google Advertising Professionals website.

And then double check that they are able to answer the extra questions that means they understand the UK market!

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This blog posting is a reprint of my article in the October 2009 issue of JAM: The Journal of Arts Marketing published by the Arts Marketing Association.  The issue is devoted to the topic of Mobile Marketing, and you can read the entire Mobile Marketing issue here. (PDF)

Mobile Marketing Research Round Up

Mobile phones aren’t just for talking on:  the UK’s burgeoning love affair with the mobile Internet means lots of new opportunities for arts marketing professionals.  Most handsets are now Internet enabled, mobile phone companies are offering “unlimited” Internet data tariffs, and 90% of UK residents live in postcode districts offering 3G mobile services with increased capacity for delivering high speed data and voice.[i]

But the love affair is still in its early stages, and adoption of the mobile Internet has plenty of potential for continued growth.   According to The Nielsen Company, over 8 million people in the UK, or 16% of adults, used their mobile phone to gain access to the Internet in the first quarter of 2009. And Nielsen also report that the number of people accessing the Internet via their mobile is growing more rapidly than those going online using their computer.

But do our audiences use mobile?  Is this mobile activity the sole preserve of geeks, and the younger generation? Orange’s Exposure 2 Research reports the average age of mobile media users as a surprisingly mature 36.  Men are twice as likely as women to access the Internet via their mobile phone , 15% and 8% of mobile phone users respectively, and the most popular activity for all users is sending or uploading of photographs or video clips.[ii]

Where do they use their mobile?  Exposure 2 reports the answer may be at home, with 67% of mobile users reading their email at home, and 56% engaged in mobile Internet browsing.  If they’re on public transport, they’re likely to be engaged with entertainment, and when about and about they’re looking for local information to help facilitate moving about.  This probably means more of your audience are looking at your content via mobile than you realised.  I may read your emails whilst at home, but there’s a good chance I won’t be reading them on my PC, but rather on my Blackberry.  How good do your emails look on a mobile phone?  How easy is it to interact with your website on a mobile phone if I want to see what’s on?

One surprising demographic that may challenge your assumptions, however, may be that teens browse the mobile Internet less than half as much as the typical user.  Today’s teens, or “Digital Natives,” are less likely than working adults to have all-day access to broadband connections, with 77% of teens saying they are not permitted to use their phone in class.[iii]

Apple iPhone users in particular are phenomenally busy on the Internet: comScore reports 79% of iPhone users accessed news or information via their mobile browser, four times the rate for all mobile phone users.  Keep in mind that only 2% of UK mobile phones are iPhones, and 75% of iPhone users are male, mostly between the ages of 18 to 44.[iv]

iPhone users personalise their mobile to suit their own preferences, and have downloaded more than a billion applications, or apps, in the first 9 months of the iPhone launch.  The all time most popular application is Facebook, but applications like “Artsnear Pro”[v] helps users to discover museums and galleries by city or by proximity, and includes calendars of events and openings.    The “Broadway in Chicago”[vi] app helps you to find what’s on stage, performance times, preview video, and purchase tickets. And here in the UK, Queen Theatrical Productions launched “We Will Rock You” in September 2009, professing to be the first UK theatrical iPhone game application.

This boom in mobile user activity leads inevitably to advertiser growth.  Advertisers spent £28.6 million on mobile advertising in 2008, and the Mobile Marketing Association predicts mobile will grow by 26% this year, despite the economic turn down, and despite the decline in traditional media advertising.[vii]

Developing a strategy for mobile marketing starts with understanding how, and why, your audiences interact with the technology.  Orange[viii] breaks the mobile users’ universe down into 3 groups correlating to age: Mainstream, Selective, and Tentative.  “Mainstream” users are under 25, accessing web based as well as mobile Internet sites, and for whom mobile entertainment is a key driver.  The 25-44 year olds are “Selective,” using the Internet to keep up to date, with email as their key driver, and wanting brief, to the point mobile information.  And finally, “Tentative” users are over 45, are aware there is a lot available on their mobile but not exactly sure what, and are using mobile to access sports scores or news.

There are specific mobile marketing opportunities for arts organisations, and one of the most significant is the mobile use of social networking sites.  The IAB reports (2009) that 25% of all social networkers use their mobile to check or update their pages.   44% of 16 to 24 year olds say they make updates via their mobile, with a further 17% of over 55’s also using mobile social networking. [ix] Facebook and Twitter have set up dedicated sites, formatted for the mobile screen. For lovers of social networking, mobile is now mainstream.

Mobile offers marketers a whole basket of new marketing opportunities.  Text messaging is a well established mobile application that integrates well with offline ads, and research from M-Metrics indicates 75% of mobile subscribers have sent text messages in reply to an offline ad.  Outbound SMS is already in use in a number of arts organisations around the UK including the Ambassadors Theatre who are developing strategies for outbound SMS messages to existing customers.

But mobile marketing isn’t just about text messages.  Other forms of mobile marketing will overtake SMS text ad spend in 2009[x] with growth  in mobile advertising in search engine advertising, display adverts and classified ads leading the way.

Mobile ticketing, which offers users the ability to store a ticket on their mobile phone for later redemption, is predicted to experience exceptionally high growth, with over 410 million users worldwide receiving and redeeming tickets by 2013.[xi] Benefits of mobile ticketing include reduced costs, reduced carbon footprint by reducing paper, and better security.

New forms of advertising will also show exceptionally growth, in particular “Idle Screen” advertising, which doesn’t interrupt a user’s activities.  Likewise, users are very interested in Location based advertising, which can be well targeted and the precision means relevant and engaging advertising.

So, how important should mobile be in your marketing mix? Is your audience using mobile technologies? Are there ways of using mobile services that fit your budget? And are you ready to experiment with some innovative marketing techniques?

References:

[i] Emily Keaney:  “The digital world: a review of the evidence” Arts Council England, May 2009

[ii] Exposure 2 Research Orange Home UK plc, March 2009

[iii] How Teens Use Media: A Nielsen report on the myths and realities of teen media trends. The Nielsen Company, June 2009 p.9

[iv] comScore releases First Data on iPhone Users in the UK. comScore Inc, March 2009

[v] Download at http://iphoneapps.oreilly.com/2009/07/artnear-pro.html

[vi] Download at http://www.broadwayinchicago.com/iphone.php

[vii] Mobile Marketing Buyers Guide eConsultancy, August 2009, pp 4-5

[viii] Exposure Research Orange Home UK plc, November 2007

[ix] Ten things you need to know about mobile advertising The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB) May 2009 http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/10thingsyouneedtoknowaboutmobile270509.mxs

[x] Advertising – the future’s bright, the future’s mobile, a white paper in Mobile Advertising: Delivery Channels, Business Models & Forecasts 2009 -2014 Juniper Research, June 2009. http://www.juniperresearch.com/shop/products/whitepaper/pdf/JRL_Advertising%20White%20Paper..pdf

[xi] Mobile – Just The Ticket a white paper in Mobile Ticketing: Transport, Entertainment and Events 2008 – 2013 Juniper Research, October 2008, p6 http://www.juniperresearch.com/shop/products/whitepaper/pdf/Mobile%20~%20Just%20the%20Ticket.pdf

Google has added a new function to the search results: the ability to view PDF files directly from the search listings using a link contained in the results.

The Quick View option looks like this:

The benefit of Quick View is that you don’t have to download the entire PDF, but can preview it directly in the search results using Google Doc’s own browser preview.

Previously, you could view PDFs as HTML but that stripped out all the document formatting.  Using the Quick View resulted in the document rendering correctly:

Approximately half of all docments in the Google index are now available for preview, with more documents as well as additional document formats becoming available in due course.

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4Q is a free survey tool that gives you feedback direct from your website visitors.

Why did they come to your website (their intention) and how satisfied they are with their experience of your site?

When you came to the website today, you may have been presented with an invitation to participate in a 4Q survey after your visit.

4Q stands for “four questions” that will help you to better understand their user experience, and most importantly task completion: did the visitor manage to complete what they intended to do?  And as a result, how satisfied were they?

The four questions:

1. On a scale of 0 to 10, how satisfied are you with my website?
2. What is the purpose of your visit?
3. Did you manage to achieve the purpose of the visit?
4. What do you like the most about the website?

It is all about conversion based on the tasks your visitors want to complete, and how to improve your website for a better user experience.

Setting up the survey is simple, and it designed to work straight “out of the tin.”  You can change the wording of some of the 4 questions, and upload your company logo.  You then need to upload the tracking code to your website, in much the same way that you installed Google Analytics tracking code.

iPerceptions have shared the typical survey response rate as 2-4%, although my response rate is significantly lower.  As a result, small businesses might want to set the survey invitation rate (the proportion of visitors invited to take the survey) to 40% or even higher so that you get sufficient visitor data.

And the system uses cookies so that, in principle, a visitor should only get invited to participate in the survey once.

Looking at the Survey Results

The data is presented in your 4Q dashboard, and you can also download the findings straight into a spreadsheet.

Why are visitors coming to my website?

And what do they value most on the site?

4Q shares the daily overall satisfaction measures of all the companies using the service, so that you can benchmark your own satisfaction results:

Great Ideas to Take Away From the Survey

The most valuable part of the 4Q process is discovering actionable ideas that your business can take away and work on.

For example, I discovered that a number visitors wanted to access the materials in the Client Area, but did not have a password to get in.  They took the time in the survey to write about their frustration.  I need make a way to provide delegates with a simple way to recover a lost password.

In terms of our course booking process, one visitor provided me with a detailed breakdown of how it didn’t work, and then asked me to give him a ring to discuss his requirements.  The survey provided another way for customers to get in touch with the business

And finally, I can see that that visitors value the free information, the impartial advice.

Conclusions

4Q is quick, it’s free, and it gathers valuable data for better understanding your visitors’ expectations of your website, and their experience engaging with your site.

Gathering the visitor data is only the start of the process;  the more difficult task is then making the changes to your website, and testing new assumptions for improving your visitor experience.

My main hesitation for recommending this service? I’m not keen on intrusive pop-up invitations, and have no way of knowing what the impact of that pop-up might be. Is there any chance a visitor would bounce as a result of the pop up?

http://www.4qsurvey.com/