So far people have reported that up to and in excess of 20% of their keyword traffic has been hidden under (not provided) in analytics.

There is more doom and gloom to follow as Mozilla, creators of the popular Firefox browser have announced that anyone using Google on the Firefox 14 version of their browser will automatically be using the secure SSL version regardless if they are logged into Google or not.

17% of internet users in the UK use Firefox. That is another large chunk of data that will be discounted from organic keyword data in Google analytics and any other analytical platform for that matter.

This is impressive for many reasons. Not least of which is that microblogging – an activity that could once have been seen as a passing fad or a novelty – has become so much a part of everyday life that one tenth of the population is now a regular tweeter.

And Twitter’s accumulation of 10 million users here in the UK means that we’re the fourth-largest country in the world in terms of Twitter users, according to a report in The Guardian this week.  That puts us in a position where only the US, Brazil and Japan are ahead of us in numbers.

For anyone involved in business, there’s a twofold message here:

Number one – if you’ve got UK customers, then Twitter’s ever more importantly  somewhere you need to be. To engage, connect, advise, sell or even just simply converse with your audience. Because missing out on an audience that big should not be an option!

And secondly – the message is mobile. The UK is obviously a large market for smartphones as well as Social Networking. And according to the Twitter themselves, as their tweet above says: a very dynamic looking figure – 80% of Twitter users – are ‘active in mobile’ too.

Has the mobile web just got one step closer to world domination?

It’s obvious that Google will be all too acutely aware of the competition. And even with the respectable user volume they have so far, there’s still a distance to go before the search giant can equal Facebook in the social space.

Which is why the company’s Senior Vice President, Vic Gundotra, last week announced some new Google+ design improvements on the official Google blog. Under the heading ‘Toward a simpler, more beautiful Google’ Gundotra takes us through the changes – from silky smooth new ‘dynamic ribbon’ navigation at the side (replacing the previous static bar at the top), to user profiles with much more visual impact.

A big plus for me as a user is the way they’ve made trending topics visible within my updates, which adds a more immediate feel and – not unlike Twitter’s trending topics – is a reminder of the wider conversation taking place outside of your own circles.

Add in the fact that the pictures and video content now appear larger in your news feed, and suddenly Google+ is looking like a much more inviting place to be – whether that’s to catch up on all the latest stuff or even take part in a hangout on the new dedicated live video page.

What our online media team say:

You would have to be my mother to not have heard about Pinterest in the past few months.  Everyone’s in a frenzy over what to do with it and how to work it into their digital plans.  And it’s got us Media Buyers all excited over how they are going to monetise it.

This article presents a bit of inspirational thoughts around the platform but also reassures us that future advertising opportunities will be going the same direction as we’re seeing things now: you need to make your advertisements relevant to both the content/images as well as the audience.  There are more opportunities with this method to deeply engage, however it requires a lot more thought.  The author’s sound advice is to “listen first and enter second”.

What our affiliate marketing team say:

With Pinterest sending more referral traffic than Linkedin, YouTube and Google Plus combined, it’s no real surprise that affiliates have begun to see the financial potential in the social media’s latest phenomenon.

Savvy affiliates are placing affiliate links within their pins so that they’ll earn commission when a user clicks and buys. With Pinterest recently blocking Amazon affiliate links, it does seem to be just a matter of time before all affiliate links are stripped from the platform.

But are affiliates really doing anything wrong? They’re promoting merchants’ products, sending traffic and earning commission – so it could be argued that they’re just doing what they’ve always done. Perhaps Pinterest wants to avoid affiliates taking over their network and rendering it “spammy” – entirely understandable – but maybe its adversity towards affiliates is more a product of envy than moral objection.

In time, it could be that existing affiliate links are stripped out and replaced with Pinterest’s own publisher ID. This way, they would be the ones earning from the traffic sent via their platform – a very lucrative side effect of the already phenomenally successful craze.

The biggest improvement as far as we’re concerned is the ability to see contextual targeting results by keyword, ultimately enabling the sort of visibility we’re accustomed to in Search Network campaigns. No more optimising groups of keywords – you’ll see what works and what doesn’t, on a keyword by keyword basis.

Beyond this the more intuitive layout for all the individual sections of display campaigns (placements, topics, categories and re-marketing) will definitely prove a welcome addition – hopefully removing the obscurity often associated with such campaigns and adding that much-needed layer of insight.

Google have been championing the use of quality, highly relevant content on websites to improve the user experience on a whole. Any sites that have been set up to appeal to search engines rather than its users may be targeted by Google.

In the last few weeks Google has been targeting many blog networks and de-indexing any which it finds to be low in quality and in violation of their recommended guidelines.

Another addition to the Panda Update are planning is an ‘over optimised website penalty’. This isn’t entirely new as Google have been known to devalue any bad links in a site’s link profile discreetly in the past. What is new is that from now on, Google intend to notify webmasters of such penalties through notifications delivered on Google Webmaster Tools.

Most web masters will never see this notification aimed for one of their sites as most webs masters or SEOrs will be sticking to their whitish hat principles of growing link numbers steadily so link growth looks natural to search engines. For web masters and SEOrs who heavily rely on techniques like low quality blog networks beware! Google is after you!

Whilst blogging tends to begin as a hobby, those who publish regular, quality content sometimes find they can earn big bucks from doing so. There are many ways to monetise your blog, but  this is our guide on using affiliate links to do so.

• Start by signing up to an affiliate network. Affiliate Window is the largest in the UK, but you should have a think about what merchants you want to promote and research the networks on which they run their affiliate programmes
• Apply to the programmes you wish to promote. You can search for your chosen genre and see a list of all the merchants in your vertical
• Check back through your old content look for opportunities to earn some cash. Have you posted an image of a dress and linked through to where you bought it? If so, use your chosen network’s deep link generator to turn that link into an affiliate link. From now on, if your readers click and buy (not just the dress, but anything from the merchant’s site) you’ll earn commission
• Contact the affiliate managers who run your chosen merchants’ programmes. They might be able to supply you with a list of resources, including best selling products and even discount codes to shout about on your blog.

As ever, ensure you regularly analyse your results. Use your site stats to really understand what your readers are interested in – it might not be the same as your own interests!

Ready to monetise your blog?

Feel free to contact our affiliate marketing team at Jennifer.rogerson@eqtr.com if you’d like more information on using affiliate marketing to earn from your blog.

And the social element of television is getting stronger all the time: a recent study found that 39% of people use social media to help them find new and interesting television shows to watch.

It’s no surprise, then, that the broadcasters are looking for more ways to join up their product with social media. Channel 4′s forthcoming 4Seven catch-up service was announced recently, and it looks like this will be a television channel with a difference – its schedules are to be based on the buzz created by social media. Channel 4′s chief executive David Abraham says “It will schedule the main channel content that is creating noise – amongst social media, bloggers, commentators and of course via contact our viewers have directly with us – and incorporate this buzz into the look and feel of the channel”

We think this could be an exciting move forward for social television, both for consumers and advertisers. As the famous song says, “The revolution will not be televised”. Maybe not, but we could be about to witness television is being revolutionised!

Pre-Roll Insurance

We know that pre-rolls’ rates are hefty but we also know that it often pays off with the traffic it drives.  Unfortunately many believe that the pre-roll ad has gone the way of the TV ad (ignored or, worse, skipped).  There is a company that has come up with a solution to this pre-roll dilemma.  They are offering up a way to get people to interact with pre-roll, whether they like it or not.  They are calling it Pre-Roll Insurance and it “prompts consumers to enter a brand’s tag line or message in order to skip an ad.  This approach guarantees brand lift and safeguards against consumers skipping ads…”.  We think this is a fantastic idea that makes the most out of advertising budgets but wonder – if a user wants to skip your ad, is that perhaps a targeting problem?

Measuring Media

This article on the 5 Display Advertising Metrics you Should Know struck a chord with us.  It’s so basic.  It’s what we all should know.  But sometimes we need to be reminded: “online advertising is effective even at low CTR” (Click Through Rate).  If we depend mainly on CTR to demonstrate the success of a campaign we are losing out on the full picture.  For media campaign you also need to look at reach (how many people saw your ad), engagement (or dwell times), lift in site visits (in general, not just as a direct click), uplift in search (product or brand name) and the overall ROI or CPA (Return on Investment or Cost per Acquisition).  Equator likes to present the full roster to get the best possible picture of a campaign.

Prospecting, Retargeting’s Long Lost Brother

We all love retargeting because it works.  The problem with retargeting is its scope – being limited to people who have only been to the site already.  So how do we build scale off of this?  Prospecting.  This article defines prospecting as “the technique of finding consumers interested in specific products they may not know exist”.  The piece also covers the various success rates of applying this method, using prospecting (trying to generate top of funnelers) to create mass then retargeting to close them.  A very simple concept but needs to be part of your re-fueling retargeting strategy.

In recent months there have been two useful updates from Bing. Firstly, there have been new features added to the Bing Webmaster Tools interface – including the launch of a new keyword research tool. Bing has also launched an API for its Webmaster Tools, making its data accessible anywhere.

Along with these updates to its Webmaster Tools, Bing has also launched a ‘Search Quality Insights’ series, which it intends to give “deeper insight into the algorithms, trends and people behind Bing”.

With Google making a number of changes in the past few months – and the prospect of EU anti-trust legislation coming to a point on the horizon – there is a possibility that Bing usage may begin to grow in the medium to long term. These tools are therefore very helpful in helping gain insights into how Bing ranks websites.