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Figures from Comscore report that Microsoft’s Bing search finally managed to overhaul Yahoo! in the US during December 2011, taking a 15.1% market share as opposed to 14.5% from Yahoo! Google remains dominant with a 65% share of the market in the US. Whilst this is not perhaps significant to UK searchers (where Google dominates with 90% of market share), what is impressive is the raw numbers from these statistics which illustrate the continued popularity of search engine usage. In total, over 18.2 billion searches were run in December – a 2% increase from November, with Google taking 12 billion of these, Microsoft 2.7 billion and Yahoo! 2.5 billion.

In the eyes of many SEO industry observers, the start of 2012 has not been great from a PR point of view for Google,

SEO practitioners (particularly in competitive niches) are well used to seeing the use of underhand tactics in order to gain an edge in the Google serps – however, it comes as a bit of a shock when we see the use of similar practices from Google themselves.

Firstly, Google was embroiled in a rather messy episode regarding a campaign to promote its Chrome browser, where the line as to what constitutes a ‘paid’ link was blurred by a media campaign that appeared to contradict its own rules. After an investigation, a surprised (they thought they were buying advertisements) Google took the action to demote the Chrome webpage and lower the PageRank of the site for at least 60 days.

Then, just over a week later, another story emerged that didn’t paint Google in the best light. Google was caught ‘scraping’ Mocality (a Kenyan business directory) in order to sell its own services to Kenyan businesses. The story takes a few rather unpleasant turns, and, after an investigation (there’s a pattern emerging here) Google was forced to admit that there had been wrongdoing from its end, releasing a statement that it was ‘mortified’ to learn that this was happening in its name.

Whilst it is disappointing to see Google using these tactics, there are wider implications of this behaviour to be considered. Many webmasters are (rightly) pointing out that if they were caught in a similar position, their websites would be banned from Google, possibly losing their businesses and livelihoods in the process. Also, the fact that Google has been caught contravening its own guidelines essentially gives licence to unscrupulous SEOs that it is ok to utilise these manipulative tactics ‘because Google did it and got away with it’.

If these tactics reach as far as Kenya (via India), then is it not possible that there are other cases where Google has behaved ‘inappropriately’ and pushed the envelope of what it considers to be acceptable? What’s certain is that many in the search industry will be watching any Google campaigns very closely in the coming months.

Google has recently launched Trusted Stores. Trusted Stores is an e-commerce certificate where e-commerce stores can apply to Google for the certificate – if accepted websites can display the certificate on their site, showing consumers the website has Google’s seal of approval.

Why would a webmaster want to apply for the certificate?

Google is trying to build more consumer trust in the online retail market. Having the trusted stores certificate badge displayed will let users know the site meets stringent requirements.

What kind of requirements do sites have to meet?

To qualify for a trusted stores certificate the webmaster must apply and agree to share information with Google. Google will use the websites internal data to determine if the website qualifies for the Trusted Stores certificate.

Criteria states participating websites must have a good reliable customer service team who quickly resolve consumer problems and issues. A good time keeping record on shipping products to customers is also required.

Google will grade each participating store based on customer service and shipping and display grades live on the retailer’s website.

For Google’s part, they will offer free purchase protection to consumers worth $1000. Google claim they have no plans to integrate other products like AdWords, Google Wallet, Check Out, etc, however if the scheme is successful, we would expect Google to try and take advantage of this at some point.

Early October saw another Panda update from Google – the 7^th update to date. The big news in this update is that video content is the big winner. Big brand video sites such as CBS, NBC, Hulu, HBO, MTV and of course YouTube are the biggest winners according Searchmetrics – basically, all these sites have huge amounts of video content on them.

Out with international websites like the ones mentioned above, the new update also looks to favour smaller websites who use video content, although it is still early days and more testing will need to be completed and analysed before this can be confirmed with conviction.

So why has Google decided to put more weight on videos?

Google are constantly testing search trends, click through rates, etc, looking for better ways to improve the overall search experience for users. Not that Google shows these results to anyone however; there are other clever folk out there trying to replicate the kind of tests Google does.

Mirametrix is one of those companies and specialise in eye tracking software. Recently they decided to test and share some insights through SEOMOZ. In a nutshell the eye tracker shows Google searchers are attracted to video results in the search engine results pages.

We’re also assuming Google has click through rate data to back this up hence the reason video content is the big winner in this Panda update.

Other ranking metrics to be given more weight in this update are Google’s +1s. This comes as no surprise, and we expect more of the same in future updates.  Google plus for businesses will be available later this year but in the meantime make sure your company website has the +1 button on all priority pages.

Google have been showing recently with some sleek new improvements to their free analytics package. Around four months ago, Google started a pilot scheme that linked web master tools with Google analytics.

For those of you who are not familiar with web master tools, this is a free package were webmasters can monitor various aspects of a site’s performance like search queries, impressions and click through rates. There is also a load of other cool techie stuff stored in web master tool accounts.

All of this helpful data has now been integrated with Google Analytics and can be found in the traffic sources section under the label ‘search engine optimisation’.

The biggest improvement is that Google has introduced real time analytics reports. This is a brand new feature that will be rolled out to everyone in the near future.

It does exactly what it says on the tin – shows activity on a website as it happens. It is worth noting this is an extra report that can only be accessed separately from the main reporting area. There is however still a 24-hour lag between the time it takes Google to process complete reports.

What live reporting looks like:

In September Twitter announced (http://www.clickz.com/clickz/news/2111480/twitter-rolls-uk-geo-targeting) that it will now offer geo-targeting in the UK for all advertising products.  Twitter has three types of ads: Promoted Tweets, Promoted Accounts and Promoted Trends.  With Promoted Trends now on the list, all three are available with UK-only geo-targeting (although Promoted Trends is still in beta with only a select group of advertisers).  Promoted Trends are featured next to a user’s timeline in a prominent position – promoting these means a priority spot for your trend.

We found this article (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/article/154587/) when doing some investigating on frequency.  With nearly 2 billion ad impressions analysed for the purposes of this research from Casale there were some obvious findings: above the fold ads were (7 times) more effective than below.  But there were also some more in-depth findings such as above the fold and within the first or second screen of a user’s browser window were far more effective.  Also, despite ad effectiveness dropping drastically after the first two screens, the study did find that repetition – frequency – does work.  “Ads shown five times or more to a user were 12 to 14 times more effective than ads shown less than five times.”  One thing is clear – to be as effective as possible, you need to consider the when, where and how much.

Video video video.  Anyone who has run a campaign with a video component knows that they are more difficult to put together, much more expensive but worth it.  From engagement to click through to conversion, video is the way to go.  The emergence of pre-roll video ads was simple – the problem is that there wasn’t enough inventory so inventory was created in the form of in-banner which would include targeting and other bells and whistles from larger, possibly blind buys.  But just because in-banner video exists doesn’t mean it’s good – or as good as pre-roll: http://adage.com/article/digitalnext/rats-attic-made-realize-wrong-video-pre-rolls/229934/ , it’s the context within which the video ad sits that makes it so successful.  In-banner video has all the flare of video ads but it is only one of many vying for attention.  Pre-roll on the other hand gets your target when they are captive and receptive: “they’ve actively selected a video to watch, and will happily tolerate a 15 second ad before watching their video.”  Of course you’re not always going to hit someone that the ad is relevant for but you will increase message recall and brand affinity.

During September Google announced that the latest part of their Google+ project is the addition of the +1 button to display ads. Prior to this Google had enabled websites to add the +1 button to site pages and search ads. With one of the main purposes of the Display Network being brand building (rather than direct response) it seems that the +1 button may be better suited in this domain than in the SERPs.

One of the things we’ve been most eager for since Google launched their Search Funnels is visibility of Display Network campaigns, specifically being able to determine what role they have played in assisting conversions. Sadly this feature was never available in the PPC-only Search Funnels but it looks like the Multi-Channel Funnels have one more string to their bow – offering end to end visibility of re-marketing campaigns. This is great news as it offers another dimension to analysis of re-marketing campaigns.

Remember the fuss a few years back when Google starting letting UK advertisers bid on competitor keywords (and the ensuing legal action from Interflora against M&S)? The case ended up at the Court of Justice of the European Union who ruled in late September that Interflora cannot stop M&S from bidding on their brand name.

On the one hand the outcome of this case was no bad thing. There has been many an occasion where tactically bidding on competing providers’ brand names has worked out well for our clients, serving as a solid source of additional revenue and of course increasing brand awareness for our client’s brands.  On the other it underlines the need to employ both paid search and SEO listings to dominate (as much as possible) the available real estate and protect our client’s brands.