Let's all go to McDonald's

Dumfriesshire – September 2011

andrew1 — Fri, 14 Oct 2011 11:28:44 +0000

Southerness, Dumfriesshire – September 2011

Essentially had miles of the Solway Firth to ourselves, peace.

Southerness Lighthouse

Google: New Social Network, SERPS, Gmail and more – quiet week

andrew1 — Fri, 01 Jul 2011 09:05:03 +0000

The effects of ‘the ‘Larry revolution’ have rumbled through Google and emerged into the public domain in full force this week. Incase you missed it, amongst the torrent of developments were (deep breath):

The Google Plus Social Network launches

Click here to view the embedded video.

I only recently received an invite (and hardly anyone else on on it) so i haven’t really formulated any detailed thoughts yet. My initial impressions are that the interface is very clean and intuitive (the Android App is nice as well), and it seems to tie together nicely your Google Profile and +1′d sites – however, im not so sure what adoption will be like outside the ‘tech’ community. I keep asking myself ‘would my mother want to sign up for this?’ – and the answer is no, as she already has ‘one of those Facebooks’

Redesign of SERPS

I quite like it – not so sure about that red heading colour though. Pushing the URL above the Meta Description also seems logical – my eye is now much more drawn to the description text than the previous layout, making writing effective 165 or less speils even more important to CTR.

The new Google SERP layout

Google+1 button launches globally

This one has been coming and is tied to the launch of the Google Plus social network. All your +1 sites appear within your Google Profile.

New mobile layout

Big icons!

Google Mobile layout - Image from Malcolm Coles

New Gmail layout

Really like it – very much in line with the new SERPS layout.

The new Gmail layout - choose 'Preview' from the themes menu

‘Social tracking‘ and ’Search Engine Optimisation‘ in Google Analytics

Should be interesting to see what results are pulled in from these!

Social Menu in Google Analytics

SEO in Google Analytics

There’s probably been more but its near impossible to keep up.

I need a lie down.

Good old Matt Cutts

andrew1 — Tue, 07 Jun 2011 14:27:50 +0000

You have to hand it to Matt Cutts – his life must be a bit of a mad whirl of high level mathematical thinking, coupled with dealing with queries from a broad range of SEO types – some of whom looking to find out whether Meta Keywords matter anymore to their rankings. Outwardly, he seems to handle it all pretty well.

Well, recently Matt has been on the brunt of some good natured banter from the SEO community – partially to mark the fact that the Google Webmaster Central YouTube channel recently surpassed 5 million views.

First, we have the Matt Cutts debunking flowchart from Search Engine Land:

Matt Cutts debunking flowchart via Search Engine Land

This was then followed by the Matt Cutts Q&A Infographic, which includes vital details such as what colour of shirt he wears the most!

Matt Cutts Q&A Inforgraphic from http://www.click2rank.com

All in good fun – and to be fair to Matt, he seems to be taking it all in good humour.

Google Panda update hits the UK

andrew1 — Mon, 11 Apr 2011 21:44:17 +0000

Hold onto your hats folks – the Google Panda has chewed through the last of its Bamboo reserves and reached UK shores (SERPS).

Interesting times ahead……….

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2011/04/high-quality-sites-algorithm-goes.html

The Google Panda, earlier today

JC Penny Link-busted

andrew1 — Mon, 14 Feb 2011 16:42:48 +0000

This is a good one – and has opened up some debate in the world of SEO:

http://www.blogstorm.co.uk/new-york-times-outs-major-us-retailer-for-link-spam/

I like John Battelles take:

http://battellemedia.com/archives/2011/02/this_is_news_jc_penney_and_link_farms

“……..more than a few folks are feeling the wrath of Larry Page today”.

High Falutin’ SEO team

andrew1 — Thu, 07 Oct 2010 12:58:49 +0000

Just a quick nudge in the direction of a nice post from one of the newest members of the team here at Equator SEO – the SEOdolphin. Here, he explains what the first three months of working in SEO has been like – including references to some high-falutin’ authors and a picture of a Citroen 2CV. Somehow it all makes sense though.

Google tweaks search results: Vol. 3,454,908

andrew1 — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 09:54:41 +0000

The ever excellent Malcolm Coles discovered that Google is essentially treating some brand searches as site: command queries – allowing these brands to dominate natural search space, although how these brand queries are decided isnt quite clear as yet. Malcolm outlines a number of pertinent examples inclduing Apple, The Guardian and Sky Sports.

There is also a post over at Search Engine Land with some more insight, and patent guru Bill Slawski has the inside on this patent which was approved back in May 2009 .

……..and the Big G itself has confirmed that this is a ranking change, telling Search Engine Land:

“We periodically reassess our ranking and UI choices, and today we made a change to allow a larger number of pages from the same site to appear for a given query. This happens for searches that indicate a strong user interest in a particular domain.”

Is it any good then? Meh

andrew1 — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 20:15:48 +0000

Is this a good caption? Meh....

Via The Next Web Shareables.

You can get the Meh from here.

Exciting phone poll!

andrew1 — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 11:43:46 +0000

In light of a bit of a slating i got on this post on Smartphones by Rory-Cellan Jones over at the BBC dot.rory blog, i thought id ask the simple question:

What type of phone would you buy today?

Thanks – ill be back with detailed thoughts soon!

Great new music from Phoenix, The National, MGMT and Teenage Fanclub

andrew1 — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 14:11:38 +0000

There’s been some great new music released on the internet over the last couple of weeks. Here’s some of my picks…………

Free live album from Phoenix -’Live in Sydney’

French band Phoenix have been one of my favourite bands for years, there’s an effortless brilliance to their music. They never let you down – the albums are all great and they put on a superb live show. Ive seen them a few times, and was lucky enough to catch them on their latest tour at the Arches in Glasgow last October for the ‘Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix’ album, which pretention-fest Pitchfork is already tentatively calling a ‘modern classic’ (it is).

Anyway, in a thouroughly decent move which is typical of the band they have released a live album of tracks from this tour, recorded live in Sydney. The album gives a great impression of the atmosphere of the shows themselves, the songs take on a new light in the live arena (IMHO ‘Rome’ and the ten-minute ‘Love like a Sunset’ are the highlights of this set). You can download the album from http://wearephoenix.com/observer/.

Phoenix Live in Brussels (Photo by Kmerom @Flickr)

The atmospheric Phoenix photo above was taken by the excellent Kmeron – you can see more of his work at Music from the pit and Lost in Dublin.

The National - ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’

I first saw The National on Jools Holland a few years ago (see below) and i was immediately struck by the quality of the songwriting and how damn tight the band were. They have a unique sound that is fantastic live and on record – they have a real spacey quality. As you can tell ive become a fairly major fan, their album ‘Alligator’ is a personal favourite, and ‘Boxer’ is also a quality album. The good news is that they are back with a new record ‘High Violet’ from which they have released the track ‘Bloodbuzz Ohio’ as a free download. Its a great track which bodes well for the new album.

Click here to view the embedded video.

MGMT – ‘Flash Delirium’

MGMT bounced onto the scene a couple of years ago, providing the soundtack to many a summer with great tracks like ‘Electric Feel’, ‘Time to Pretend’ and ‘Kids’. Well, they are back with a new album ‘Congratulations’ – and the rumours that they’ve gone all Floyd on us appear to be true. ‘Flash Delirium’ is the first track from the album, you can listen to the whole of the new album on the official MGMT website.

MGMT - Congratulations - mad album cover!

Teenage Fanclub – ‘Baby Lee’

What can you say about Teenage Fanclub? Everone who was at school in Scotland in the early 90s and of a certain demographic will always have a huge respect for them. Anyway, the ‘Fanclub are back with a typically laid back and melodic slice of pop brilliance ‘Baby Lee’. The new album ‘Shadows’ is out in May and early word is that its up there with some of their best work.

New Teenage Fanclub - Shadows

Enoy the music people. Andy