Tom Doyle

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Posts Tagged Google

What’s the Buzz with Google Buzz??

Feb 11

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Online Marketing, Social Media Marketing

Google have yet again started rolling out a new application with stealth for the last couple of days. Users of Gmail are gradually being presented with a new screen when they login to Gmail. Rather than being brought directly to their inbox, they are shown a page promoting their new “Buzz” service. “No sign up required” the message happily proclaims.

But what is it and why would I want it?

Basically, Google Buzz is Google’s take on a Twitter styled system. I guess you could say it has everything that Twitter doesn’t. Do we really need another system like this? I’d have to say no, but it is a great way to get people engaging online. For example, Facebook brought in a similar system last year and it’s use grew substantially. Twitter still lags way behind Facebook in terms of users, but it’s simple system is appealing to a lot of people. People new to Twitter will probably feel that Google is trying to rip off Facebook, but that is not the case.

So where does this leave Twitter? For months there were rumours that Google was on the verge of buying Twitter – but it never it just never materialised. Most people within the online community expected it as a fact, rather than something that was about to happen. Personally, I can’t see Google buying Twitter now that it has built it’s own system that is very similar (or a complete rip!) with a lot more features.

It will be interesting to see if this has an effect on Twitter if any at all! One things for sure, Twitter will have to start working extra hard at trying to build a revenue model for the site as it doesn’t look like anyone will be interested in buying them now… unless of course Microsoft want a piece of this! :)

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Is your site ready for Google’s speed ranking factor?

Jan 14

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

Image representing Google as depicted in Crunc...
Image via CrunchBase

Back in November 2009, the infamous Matt Cutt’s mentioned in an interview at PubCon that there was a push within Google to make the speed of your website a factor in ranking criteria. Considering that there are many factors that will affect the speed of your website, it seems a little unfair to me. None-the-less if that’s what Google plan to do, we all need to prepare ourselves for this possible ranking factor.

What can you do to ensure your website is running at optimum speed? Well as mentioned, there are a number of factors to take into account some in your control and others not. Here’s my list of things you should work on.

  1. Hosting
    First and foremost you should ensure your hosting is with a reputable hosting company that provide fast reliable hosting. Judging by the page speed test in Google’s Webmaster Tools, they will POSSIBLY take the average speed of your website over a set period of time.
  2. Reduce use of and optimise your image files
    There’s nothing easier than reducing the use of images on your website. For more complex designs, it may not be the easiest thing in the world, but when designing your website you should be conscious of the fact that larger images increase download times.

    Optimising your images is also of key importance. Make sure you choose the correct file format for the image type you are using. For example, don’t save a photograph as a gif!

  3. Clean Code
    Make sure your websites HTML code is as clean as can be, if possible don’t use tables. Apart from the fact that using tables for design is a no no in terms of web standards, tables tend to have a lot of code associated with them. If you can avoid using them, do so.
  4. Combine CSS files & Javascript Files
    Another obvious way to reduce the load time of your website pages is to combine your all your CSS into one extermal file rather than placing it all on the page. Similarly you should do the same with with all your javascript.
  5. Reduce HTTP Requests
    Following on from point number 4, you should try and limit the number of HTTP requests you make from your webpage. So for example, rather than having 2 or 3 external javascript files, try limit it to one file.
  6. Gzip Compression
    If your server supports it, make sure it’s turned on! Need I say more?

Of course, there are a number of other ways to reduce the load time of your website, but by sticking to these simple steps, it should be enough to keep your website running at an optimum speed. There are also a number of free tools available for you to test your web sites page speed. The Page Speed plugin for FireFox is really good as is the website www.webpagetest.org !!

Oh and don’t forget to check out the Page Speed test tool within Google Webmaster Tools to see how your page is currently performing!

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Web design search volume in decline

Jan 7

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development


As the recession hit, most web design companies were busier than they had ever been before. There seemed to be a sudden rush of businesses trying to get online. In the majority of cases it was a knee-jerk reaction to prop up their falling incomes. During the latter half of 2009, this sudden rush seemed to have abated. There are many stories flying around that some of the major web design companies in Ireland are hanging on by the skin of their teeth and offering well below cost websites in order to generate some sort of cash flow.

Although they say that 99% of all statistics are made up, it’s still worth looking at some… :)

Google Trends is a great tool for researching keyphrase search popularity over a number of years of traffic on Google. So I used this tool to run a few searches on terms relating to web design to see if it could paint any sort of picture of what the state of the web design is in.

Web Design Search Stats - Google Trends

As you can see from above graph, the search term “web design” has been on a massive decline since the recording of the statistics began. Interestingly, if you take a close look at the latter quarter of 2009, you can also see a steady decline in searches for “web design”.

December is generally a slow time for new business in web design terms, so there are no surprises when you see the massive dips in searches across all years. Also quite interesting, is the steady performance of the term “website design”. In fact, there’s possibly a slight growth in searches for this term throughout 2009.

Does this mean that the web design industry has finally entered the recession with everyone else?

Only time will tell I guess…

Looking at the other side of our business; online marketing, it appears to be performing quite well. There is an obvious increase in searches for “SEO” – everyone seems to know what it is now or at least know someone that fancies themselves as one. There is a decline in searches for “Internet Marketing” though, maybe a phrase that has been lost to the popularity of “SEO”.

Although it’s hard to see from this graph, there has been a surge in searches for “Social Media Marketing“, which started showing up on the radar in 2007. No surprises there, since it’s the latest and greatest buzz word on the planet!

Online Marketing Search Trends

We’ll never get a true picture of the web design or online marketing industry from statistics like this. For example, the searches for “SEO” are being diluted by people trying to figure out how to market their own websites rather than actually looking for those services. None-the-less it’s interesting reading for anyone in or trying to get into this industry.

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Mugurdy – The New Irish (made) Search Engine

Oct 29

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Online Marketing, Web Design, Web Development

I always love to see new indigenous Irish companies getting a break. But when I read a newspaper article about an Irish company who were about to launch a new visual search engine, I thought to myself “oh no, someone else has been duped into parting with their hard earned cash!”.

A “visual search engine” is nothing new by any stretch of the imagination. There are a number of high profile visual search engines already up and running on the web for some time. In fact one of the leading visual search engines (searchme.com) has recently shut its doors. Their once innovative website sits looking deserted, with what can only be described as a desperate plea to raise cash by selling their IP to anyone who will take it off their hands! In the company press release, they stated that they needed to raise at LEAST $100 million to compete with the likes of Google, Bing or Yahoo!. This should be a stark reality check for Mugurdy, since it’s straight from a company that had already pumped $44m into their doomed idea.

But who cares huh?
We’re Irish after all and we all love the under dog… Surely Mugurdy can pull this one out of the bag with their Irish fighting spirit!

Wrong…

I stumbled across the sites release after reading a post on Boards.ie which said:

“I just thought I’d drop in a link to http://www.mugurdy.com which is a search engine we’ve been working on for a while now. It’s not finished, is basically still in beta, but I’d be interested to hear any feedback on it!”

I’m not entirely sure what Mugurdy’s strategy is here. If this is their plan for promoting the website, they really need a reality check. Remember, Microsoft pumped $1 billion into the marketing of their new Bing search engine to try compete with Google. If Mugurdy think that posting a link on one of Ireland’s most popular web properties is the way forward, they should really think again. I do hope they have a better strategy for promoting their site than this.

Anyway, I decided to play around with the search itself, to see if I would ever use a search like this. Now I know from using other visual search engines, that they just don’t give me what I expect from a search engine that I would be someone hard to please. Let’s face it, I search for information, not for pictures. I can see a use for a visual search engine for certain things, like looking for the prettiest website in a particular sector or to find a website that I a visual memory of what the website looked like. But for finding specific information, visual search just doesn’t cut it.

The first thing I noticed when I visited mugurdy.com was the homepage… They obviously went for the simplistic look made famous by Google. But they left out one key element of the Google homepage that Google value so much, their copyright notice. I’ve spoke before about why Google value their copyright notice (click here to read) and if Mugurdy want to compete with the big boys, they need to start researching in depth why things work so well for Google. There is plenty of free material available out there with studies on how people interact with Google.

As I continued on, it was clear that Mugurdy simply didn’t have the quality results that Google would have. I don’t knock them for that, we’ve seen how hard it has been for every other search engine on the web to come up with the quality of results that Google possess.

It didn’t take me long to realise (again) that visual search just isn’t for me, and never will be. For me, it’s much quicker and easier to hold my ctrl key and click each link on Google results to open a new tab. I can click 4 or 5 that interest me and by the time I’ve clicked the fifth result, the other 3/4 before that will have loaded into a full browser window in a new tab. You just can’t beat that simplicity.

It really makes you think about how companies are getting investment in Ireland. In the past year or two I’ve seen a lot of good start up businesses with great web ideas struggling to raise investment. Then you see companies like Mugurdy being invested in when they clearly have little chance of success. If our investors keep investing in ideas like this, we’ll have no money left to put behind really high potential start ups.

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Business Blog or Not?

Aug 21

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Online Marketing

Here’s a little scenario I’d like you to think about. It’s something we come across on a regular basis.

Tom runs a landscape gardening company and has a small 5 page websitewith the following structure:

Home Page
About Us
Services
Examples of Our Work
Contact Us

At the moment, Googlehas listed all 5 pages from his website on their search results. Tom knows that he shouldn’t really target more than 2-3 keyphrases per page and that his contact page and examples page have very little content, so therefore would be pointless to use for keyword targeting.

That leaves Tom with 3 pages that he can use to target Google for his chosen keyphrases. He thinks to himself, “surely there’s an easier way to get more pages on my website, so I can target more phrases”.

Tom notices that there’s a one day seminar being run in his local enterprise centre on online marketing. So he decides to attend. An apparently well respected Online PR expert recommends that he should use a blog as it will “significantly increase his ranking on Google”.

So after the seminar, Tom’s mission is to install a blog on his website. The first article he write is titled ”how to create a perfect lawn”. He remembers the Online PR expert mentioning that most blogshave a system whereby they “ping” Google to let it know that you have published an article. In most cases, your article should appear pretty quickly on Google, in some cases in less than 15 mins.

After publishing his article, he does a quick check on Google to see how many pages of his site they have indexed (site:yourdomainname.com). “Brilliant”, he exlaims! “I now have a 6 pages listed on Google! If I keep going at this rate, I’ll have hundreds of pages indexed by Google in a few weeks. This is gonna be great!”, Tom thinks to himself.

As days go by, Tom keeps a close eye on his website statistics and notices that the site is getting a lot of traffic for “how to create a perfect lawn” and “a perfect lawn” etc. Surprisingly for Tom, he hasn’t yet got one sales enquiry. “Why could this be?”, he thinks.

Tom contacts his local SEO expert and asks for some advice. The SEO expert quickly points out that anyone searching for “how to create a perfect lawn” are unlikely to be looking to hire someone? “Isn’t it most likely that they will be trying this themselves since they searched Google on how to do it?”, the SEO expert says. “Ah, that makes sense”, says Tom.

So the next day, Tom decides to create an article that is more tailored towards the keyphrases he wants to target, rather than providing free tips and tricks. His new article is called “Landscape Gardening in Ireland”. He doesn’t want it to appear as a spam article, so rather than just filling a page with keyphrases, he spends quite sometime researching and writing a post on “Landscape Gardening in Ireland”.

After a few days, he checks his website stats again… “YES!”, he exclaims. “I’m being found for “landscape gardening in Ireland” and Google has 7 pages of my website indexed!”, he says.

Tom is delighted, this is great news. Tom thinks, “But why have I not got any sales enquiries?”. “Surely this time, people searching for “landscape gardening in Ireland” are looking for a landscape Gardner?”, Tom thinks to himself.

On further inspection of his website statistics, Tom notices that most people finding his website are going directly to his blog article and then leaving the website. They’re not even bothering to have a look at his wonderful portfolio page of all his great work. Tom’s unsure where to turn next. He has wasted time writing these articles that he doesn’t even enjoy doing and he has plenty of other things that he could. On top of this, he’s not too sure what to write about next… But what should he do??

Does this sound like you?

The simple answer to this is – Tom should talk to someone who can help – www.2bscene.ie would be a good place to start! :)

The above scenario is similar to situations we encounter on a regular basis. Website and business owners are led to believe that blogging is the be all of a successful online marketing campaign. The simple fact is that they can be, but NOT for everyone.

The truth is that most of those requesting a blog have been ill informed about the true value a blog provides. Most don’t really understand how to use a blog successfully as part of an online marketing campaign. They expect miracle results even though they’re not sure what exactly a blog does or can do for them.

The increase in requests for blogs can lie squarely at the feet of fly-by-night SEO Experts and ”social media and online marketing experts”. These guys love to talk the talk, but most have never really walked the walk. They hype blogs as the saviour in terms of promoting and marketing your website. Unfortunately, they only give away half the facts.

To get the answers you need to see if you it’s worthwhile you need to ask them the following questions:

  1. Do you think it would suit my business?
  2. Do you think I could generate business from a blog?
  3. If so, what would my best approach to doing this be?
  4. Have you examples of clients you have helped create a return with a blog?
  5. If so, can I talk to them!

That should be enough to have them either running away or helping you understand how a blog might help your business.

Here are the simple facts:

  1. Blogs DO NOT increase your search engine ranking
  2. Google loves content – the more you have – the better (ideally it should be related to your area of business)
  3. Blogs DO help you create more content for the search engines – therefore, you should increase the traffic to your website, because your website is likely to be indexed for more search terms
  4. Blogs are a great way of building your profile and help promote you as an authority in your field

Whatever your reason for wanting a blog, please don’t be fooled by those selling it to you as a “magic bullet” solution for search engine rankings. It’s not, if it was everyone would just install one rather than hire a SEO expert.

Blogs can be good for your business, but you need to seriously consider why you are creating a blog. You also need to consider if you plan to create business from your blog and if you do, what is the best approach to achieve this.

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Google local business search – how important is it?

Aug 17

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

I had a conversation recently with a respected SEO expert, that shall remain nameless for the moment in relation to Google’s local business search. I told him how I felt that I had yet to fully crack how results appeared at the top of these search results. Of course I’d read a lot about how in theory it worked, but hadn’t yet (with my own tests) seen examples of it actually working. For

Something he said to me triggered my thought process and I made a few changes to 2bscene’s listing to see how it affected it. Within days I was ranking in the top local business search results for “online marketing dublin“, “internet marketing dublin” and a phrase we hadn’t ever ranked for before, “web design dublin“. We’ve been there for the past week now and have had time to assess the value of it to our business.

The reason this SEO guy brought up the local business search with me was to see if I was getting any business or even traffic from it. During our conversation, I obvioulsy couldn’t help, but now with some statistics behind me I can give some indication of its use in terms of traffic and business development for people visiting our own website.

In the past week – we’ve seen an obvious increase in visits from people finding us through Google local search. I can only truly say that one of the 10 odd visits from these searches has turned into business. This isn’t bad considering we weren’t appearing for that search phrase until last week.

I know this is very little to go on so we will be working with many other clients to help them get to the top of the local business search on Google, as I do and get more meaningful data, I will let you know how important we feel it is for your business.

If you need help getting found in Google’s Local Business Search results – contact us @ www.2bscene.ie

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Google continue to expand its social network with social gadgets

Aug 14

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Online Marketing

It’s not long now since I wrote an article about how I felt Google was planning to build the webs largest Social Network by stealth. Now it seems to have taken another step closer to their complete social network website.

On Wednesday Google announced on their official blog the release of 19 new social gadgets for iGoogle. Google social gadgets allow you to collaborate and play games with your friends from your iGoogle homepage. One of the cool games is the “How Big is your Brain” game which is similar in ways to the many brain training games available for the likes of the Nintendo DS. It allows you to compete with your friends online to see which one of you have the biggest brain.

Although this is obviously another step in terms of building that big social network, they seem to be missing the basic fundamental attractions that Twitter and Facebook have. But maybe that’s what Google Wave will do….

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Google Experts or are they?

Jul 30

Posted by Tom Doyle in Online Marketing

Over the past few months, we’ve had a number of clients contact us here at 2bscene to inform us that they’ve been offered these great deals by so called “Google Experts”.

Not only are these Google Experts promising them the sun, moon and stars, they are also insinuating that they are better than any other SEO company out there because of the speed at which they can get you to the top of the Google search results.

Quite frankly, they’re lying. Any SEO company that tells you “they can guarantee you a number one position”, “are better than other SEO companies” or that “they have inside knowledge of how Google works”, are quite simply lying and trying to scam you out of your hard earned cash.

Any true Google Expert will know that there is no way to control the results that Google presents in it’s search results, so therefore guaranteeing no. 1 position is impossible.

Yes, there are ways that SEO experts can manipulate the search results by carrying out specific search engine optimisation techniques on and off your website – but that’s really all that they can do for you. unfortunately, there is NO magic bullet when it comes to appearing at the top of the search results in Google.

In a way I’m glad there isn’t because it would probably mean that there wouldn’t be an SEO industry there for us to work in.

So what are those signs that you should look out for if someone is offering you a great SEO deal? Well here’s a few things you should know…

  1. You won’t be cold called by a Google Expert – the best SEO companies aren’t likely to need to ring you, they will most likely have a lot of business already and if really good, will be getting a lot of business from the web!
  2. If they promise you the sun, moon and stars – such as a No. 1 spot on Google – they are unlikely to be a genuine company.
  3. Promise to get you to the top of the search results for the name of your business – only 15% or so people searching the web will look for you business name, plus it’s one of the easiest things to do in terms of SEO.
  4. If they tell you the have inside information on how Google works – they are lying.
  5. And if they tell you they are the best…. well what can I say….

It’s like everything else in life… if it sounds too good to be true… it probably is!

If you receive one of these calls (or emails) – please don’t hesitate to contact me for some advice. Or of course, if you need help with your online marketing strategy contact us at www.2bscene.ie

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Bing – a better way to search?

Jun 2

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers

Microsoft’s latest attempt at taking the search world by storm… www.bing.com

The full search service as described in their launch video doesn’t seem to be live yet (certainly not in Ireland) – You can view their demo video by clicking here.

Some features look great, like how you can search for holidays from within the search engine itself, which means you don’t have to visit loads of different websites. The shopping system is very similar to Google’s Froogle, but more integrated.

I’m not sure that we really need another search engine, but this is certainly an improvement on their last attempt at making an improvement. I just fail to see the innovation from Microsoft, but maybe they simply can’t be innovative anymore?

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Google Wave – the next generation of communication?

Jun 2

Posted by Tom Doyle in Internet & Computers, Web Design, Web Development

Lars Rasmussen introduces Google Wave
Image by dailylifeofmojo via Flickr

Within minutes of Microsoft launching their new search system that is set to revolutionise the way we search, Google announced one of the most innovative applications yet to grace the World Wide Web.

Microsoft must have been so disappointed when all the web and blog headlines were NOT about their new search engine strangely named Bing. No, what caught every web enthusiasts eye was the launch of Google Wave.

Google Wave is Google’s attempt to rid the World of our archaic emailing system. They began their presentation with the notion of how old email has become in its 40 years of existence. It’s something that was designed and developed in a time when instant messaging, cloud computing, Facebook, Bebo and other social networking sites didn’t exist. They believe that now is the time to make the change to a new more advanced system that will incorporate all the “real-time” functionality that most of us live and breathe today.

Although I have to admit some of the functionality is mind-blowing and in places hugely innovative -  albeit that the system is developed with the yet to be fully HTML 5 standard – I’m yet to be convinced that it will actually replace people’s use of email.I just can’t see the normal joe soap trying to get to grips with this system when they hardly understand how to cc a number of people in a simple email.

Google plan to release a lot of this innovative code as part of their Google Web ToolKit which is an absolute dream for any web developer. They will also provide a fully open API which will allow developers to use the power of the system for their own applications, whether it be web, mobile or desktop!

One side of me is so excited about the release of Google Wave. That is the programmer side of me, the one that lives and breathes web innovation – we haven’t had anything like this in years! The other side – I’m kind of like, “so what?”. I personally see it as being the final string in Google’s stealth approach to building the World’s largest social network.

What do you think? Have a look at the launch here:

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