Channel 6 is in the news!

Channel 6 has been in the news recently for our work on the Ed Fringe ticket micro website.

• The Drum
• Scotsman

What happened to 2008

Eh? I have been fairly busy in all of 2008 and the start of the year but back to now with the great news that we have a great new Ecommerce Web Design & Digital Agency called Channel 6 Multimedia www.ch-6.co.uk.

Some of our designs this year are great and will be added to the new Channel 6 website which will be launching very soon!

Channel 6 will be a one stop shop for Web design and Internet Marketing with Com.Motion eventually becoming part of Channel 6.

More posts to follow.

How Google Lists Search Results

Matt Cutt's from Google's webspam team talks about the anatomy of a search result and gives some useful tips on how you can help improve how your site appears in Google's results pages.

This talk covers everything you'll see in a search result, including page title, page description, and sitelinks, and explains those other elements that can appear, such as stock quotes, cached pages links, and more.

Matt uses Starbuck's Coffee website as an example.



The sound quality is a little fuzzy to begin with but stick with it for some useful tips and advice. More information can be found on the Google Webmaster Blog.

Google Webmaster Tools

We have all heard of Google Webmaster Tools, a great resource from Google that helps drive traffic to your website.

Google Webmaster Tools is a one stop shop for webmaster resources helps you enhance and increase traffic to your website and connect you with your visitors. You can:

• Improve website traffic
• Submit your content to Google
• Check out the Webmaster Central Blog
• Learn more about your site
• Enhance your site's functionality
• Get Help From Webmasters Help Centre
  

Webmaster Tools can have a positive impact on visitor numbers and sales on your website. For example, you can find out:

• Crawl info - View URLs that Google may have trouble crawling and fix any problem accordingly.
• Robots.txt file validation: See if Google is having trouble with your file and carry out any test before changing it.
• Website content: View the top web pages from your site and see the words that other sites use to link to them.
• Top keyword searches : Find the top queries that drive traffic to your site and where your site is included in the search results. This will allow you to learn how users are finding your site.
• Indexed information: See how often your website is indexed and which of your pages are included in the index.

The Keyword search tool is one of the most valuable features in webmaster tools. It allows you to see and what search terms are driving traffic to your website and also highlights the position of your webpages on the search engines as this example indicates.

We do use webmaster tools on behalf of clients and have to admit that it does help in maximising the potential of their websites online through increased traffic, sales and ROI.

Another reason to drop by Google Webmaster Tools is the price. Its free!

Site Search Reporting & Event Tracking - New From Google Analytics

The Google Analytics team has just announced recent updates to their software that will be rolled out over the next few months.

Two of the new Google Analytics features include:

1. Site Search Reporting
2. Event Tracking

Site Search Reporting
Google Analytics currently offers you the opportunity to track what your visitors are searching for and where these searches lead. The new Site Search Reports will offer even more information and will be located under the content section of Google Analytics reporting software.

They will:

• Identify the keywords and search refinement keywords visitors use within your website.
• Highlight the website pages from which visitors begin and end their searches on your website.
• See how search on your website affects areas such as site usage, conversion rates and e-commerce activity.

This will be useful information to know, as the findings will allow you to update and change your website to be much more visitor or consumer focused.

If you don’t have a search facility on your website then have a look at Google Custom Search. Custom Search allows you to host a Google search box on your own website - follow this link to find out more – Google Custom Search

Event Tracking
The Event tracking reports will help website owners understand how visitors use and interact with multimedia aspects of their websites i.e. areas such as flash, java scripts, Ajax and video.

This again will allow you to find out whether theses types of applications offer value to your visitors, whether you need them or if indeed your visitors to notice of them at all.

The Event Tracking application has a new tracking module called ‘ga.js’ which will have to be installed on your website. The event tracking addition is still being tested and available only to visitors who attended the recent eMetrics Summit.

More information on these and other changes can be found on the Google Analytics Blog.

Make Way for the Google Gadget!

Google has embarked on its next paid for advertising program and launched today the Google Ad Gadget.

Google Gadget Ads take the form of ‘mini’ websites that allow companies to market and promote their products or services on the Google Content Network. These ads offer an alternative to what Google already has in place and will compete with other ad formats such as text, image and video ads offers.

Advertisers will have the opportunity of two payment models - Cost Per Click (CPC) and Cost Per A Thousand Impressions (CPM) and will bid for keywords to place their gadget ads within Google’s network in the same way they do for Google AdWords and Google Website Targeting.

What is the Google Gadget?

The Google Gadget is a widget that allows advertisers the opportunity to display videos or trailers to tell a story and include RSS feeds that can be continually updated.

Visitors will have the opportunity to download the widget to their desktop or add them to other websites such as blogs. That in essence virally markets the widget for the advertisers i.e. free advertising. Also, you do not even have to visit the advertiser’s website and can read and watch everything within the Gadget itself!

In the example below, a user can watch the trailer directly within the gadget and at the bottom of the gadget, there are links entitled 'Chain of Events' that allow the user to read up on how events transpired and led on from one another. There is also a link to an RSS feed on selected stories concerning the advertiser.

All of this can be updated by the advertiser so your gadget can always be kept up to date and you only pay for your advertising costs and not your update costs. Obviously there are clear benefits for advertisers and marketers as the minute they update the media that makes up the gadget, these changes are immediately available to consumers on the advertising platforms you are using.

Click on the links at the top and the bottom as they appear:

The Google Gadget is currently still being tested and is not available to all Google AdWords Advertisers as it is currently in beta. However, Google did many test in the summer with a number of selected AdWords advertisers so the tool should be here soon for everyone.

This is an excellent new tool for marketers and something that big businesses will no doubt be embracing. The Google Gadget website has lots of interesting information on how to get started, tutorials and a Google Gadget Editor (a development tool that helps you build test and validate your ads).

For more information, please visit Google Gadget Ads

Google AdWords - Does The Highest Bidder Win?

Google AdWords provides each of your keyword phrases within your accounts a unique ‘quality score’.

This quality score is assigned to each keyword phrase and is calculated by a number of deciding factors including:

• your keywords phrase
• the bid amounts (cost per click)
• the relevancy to the ad group and if it is aligned to a users search.

The quality score for each of you keywords can be viewed by selecting customise columns on your relevant Google AdWords account. Select quality score from the drop down menu, example below.

The quality score is important as according to Google, it actively influences and determines your Ads position on Google's search networks. Therefore, it makes sense to consider the quality score guidelines from Google and follow them accordingly as the higher your score, the more prominent your ad position will be.

This is an interesting concept that has been introduced by Google and logically it makes sense. Ads with a good quality score along with other ‘relevant’ ads will appear on Google and its search partner network that are clearly attributed to what the searcher is looking for. Pay Per Click ads that are the most relevant will tend to achieve a higher position and be clicked on more often as a result of this initiative from Google.

Quality Score Criteria
Google AdWords uses a number of criteria to assign your quality score the main components of quality score are listed below (provided by Google AdWords) for information.

For calculating a keyword's minimum bid:

• The keyword's click-through rate (CTR) on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
• The relevance of the keyword to its ad group
• The quality of your landing page
  

For calculating a keyword-targeted ad's position on a search result page:

• The matched keyword's CTR on Google; CTR on the Google Network is not considered
• The relevance of the keyword and ad to the search query

For calculating a keyword-targeted ad's eligibility to appear on a particular content site, as well as the ad's position on that site:

• The ad's past performance on this and similar sites
• The quality of your landing page

For determining if a site-targeted ad will appear on a particular site:

• The quality of your landing page
  

Google AdWords will use this information to position your ads accordingly. So with this information in mind, its not just about being the highest bidder any longer. it is about doing a little homework to ensure that your keyword phrases, adverts and landing pages are all relevant to the product or service you are trying to promote to your consumer base.

Or is it?

Google AdWords Quality Score - Improvement to the Top Ad Placement Formula
To confuse us all a little further, Google will be changing and in theory improving how ‘high quality’ ads are picked for the top position in the sponsored search results. These changes will take place in a few week time and they are designed to improve the ‘quality’ of ads even further and to provide us with more control in our attempts to achieve the top positions.

Much of the criteria we have already mentioned will remain; however, Google will introduce new 'formula' that will look at ‘price’ i.e. your actual Cost Per Click. Google will now consider your maximum per click bid which you set at the outset of your campaign i.e. Information From Google :

Actual CPC is determined, in part, by the bidding behavior of the advertisers below you. This means that your ad’s chance of being promoted to a top spot could be constrained by a factor you cannot influence. By considering your ad’s maximum CPC, a value you set, you will have more control over achieving top ad placement

Therefore, in theory, according to Google, if you have a quality written advert and increase your maximum Cost Per Click, you will have more control in achieving the top positions for desired key word phrases. However, you will only pay the minimum price and not you’re maximum price for these top spots.

Sounds a little to good to be true if you ask me? I still think that the high bidders out there and the firms with a little more money than you or i will still rank the highest. Quality Scores and ads are all very well but Google is a business at the end of the day and will want its pound of flesh!

Maybe this is just the cynic in me but hey, hopefully i will be wrong. It will be interesting to see how this pans out. Calling all High Bidders..................