Social Is Overtaking Search.

New data collected from Hitwise is showing that social networking sites have overtaken visits to search engines. Anyone who has been following trends in UK web use – and if you haven’t, you should be – will recognise this as a continuation of recent developments. Social networks are obviously doing what they were designed to; attracting engaged visitors. And digital industries and the customer relations departments of other businesses have adopted them with vigour.

Implications? Well, the difference between visits to social and search sites isn’t exactly huge; social sites are currently 0.55% more popular than search engines when you compare percentage of total UK internet visits. Of course, every leading edge can be leveraged, and 0.55% of total UK internet visits is still a potentially significant amount of traffic. Search engines are still receiving 11.33% of total UK internet visits, a more than healthy amount.

While Facebook is becoming increasingly ubiquitous, there’s still no Google-equivalent amongst the social networks. Facebook’s share of social network visits is 55%. Whilst that’s impressive, it’s nowhere near the market domination that Google has achieved. Facebook is making some big steps interconnecting with other social networks, and diversifying its functions into areas like ecommerce. This latter development could have massive implications, but it’s still early days; we’ll be looking into it in more detail in a forthcoming blog.

Social network users are there to interact with each other and with organisations and brands. Hence the opportunities for brand exposure and customer relations that make social networks an important arena for businesses.

As surfing habits change, it’s important to redeploy your strategy where potential customers spend their time, whether that’s users looking for engagement on a social network, or within search engine results. More than ever, ensuring that there’s cohesion between your social strategy and your search strategy is important. There’s a need for a coherent brand message and targeting across both.

June 9th, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in Social Media | Tags: , , , ,

Brits Spend 65% Longer Online

New research from UKOM – UK Online Measurement – shows that there’s been a significant increase in the amount of time that British residents are spending online. According to UKOM, web use has grown by 65% in the last three years; web users are spending an average of just under a day a month on the internet.

There’s significant change in the way people are using the internet. Social networks and blogs are taking up the majority of time spent online. The growing focus on information sharing and interaction between users and the sites they visit is clearly reflected in UKOM’s report.

What does this information mean for the online marketing industry? An increase in web use means there’s more potential for engaging with visitors. Well, although UKOM’s figures might seem distressing at first, showing a relative 3% fall in the use of search engine websites, there’s a concurrent 10% increase in the use of portals, which increasingly incorporate their own search functions. Think Yahoo!, MSN’s integration of Bing on its homepages, the increasing ubiquity of iGoogle… People are using the web more, so they’re using search more, they’re just getting used to having search come as part of their portal.

It’s the increasingly social nature of web use that presents the biggest opportunities in our industry. Brands and businesses – i.e. our existing clients and our future clients – need to react to this change, and we need to be there to offer them the skill-sets and the tools that meet their needs.

It’s in the interests of the search platforms to facilitate effective advertising and marketing, hence Google’s quick response to changes in web use (Content network remarketing, for example). It’s in our interest, and the interests of our competitors, to do a number of things:

  • Continue to develop our analytics methodology so we can deliver actionable insights within a changing online environment.
  • Adapt our use of advertising platforms so we’re always exploiting the opportunities that will benefit our clients.
  • Ensure that we continue to deliver best-practice SEO which is always centred on the visitor.

We’re well up for it.

UK Time Spent Browsing The Internet

Does anyone have any other opinions on what UKOM’s report indicates for our industry? Leave a comment and share your insight.

May 21st, 2010 - No Comments »
Posted in General | Tags: , , , , ,

UK Government urge for end of Google domination

It has been announced that MPs are concerned over the growth of Google’s share of the search market, which increased by nearly 90% in the last year.

Twenty six MPs have strongly requested that ministers “consider measures to prevent monopolisation”, hoping that Google are referred to the Competition Commission.

The MPs and ministers have growing concerns for those who buy advertising via Google.

Andrew Dismore, Labour MP, commented: “A monopoly is unhealthy. Google cornering the market is not good for competitive pricing or quality of service.”

As a search management company we do have a slightly different view, we understand the concerns however with over 90% of all UK searches being performed on Google it is an incredible advertising resource.

For more info and to debate this issue go to Brand Republic.

February 26th, 2009 - No Comments »
Posted in General | Tags: ,

Page rank update completed last night

Within the last couple of months there has been some strange distribution of page rank form Google. Even so that a few months ago the team at Moo were under the impression that a page rank update was accruing.

Well yesterday it seems that Google has finally rolled out another page rank update showing live stats on most of their data centres around the world. It can be estimated that the page rank is updated every 3 months but in this case it has been approximately 4 or a little over since a full update was taken out.

With the improvements over the last months in the Google webmaster tools allowing the viewing of back links not yet seen in the link:wwwmoomarketing.co.uk feature of Google. This has open doors to a more realistic view of how Google looks at a site, although to giving too much away.

Hopefully we will see more tools form Google i.e. when the next update is likely to happen, allowing web masters to set goals, but it must be said that the Page Rank does always mean that a site will appear above another we can never forgot the trusted site factor and must only use page rank as an estimate of how strong a site could be

October 28th, 2007 - No Comments »
Posted in Search Engine Optimisation | Tags: , ,

Live market share on the up.

For many months now the Moo Marketing team have been convinced that the search engine Live would begin to start increasing their market share of search engine users and that is just what has happened. The search volume received by Live increased by 67% in May.

So the Live market share has increased but why? Primarily the reasons for the increased market share are IE7 and Vista, as more and more people upgrade their systems and software they will be finding that Microsoft have integrated their Live search platform into Vista and IE7 in a manner that makes the search engine very easy to use, especially by computer users who are perhaps less savvy with regards to the technology.

The big question now is will the increase continue throughout the year to show a positive trend for Live?

July 13th, 2007 - No Comments »
Posted in Search Engine Marketing | Tags: , ,

« Older Posts «   

Not sure how to increase sales?

Get in touch, you soon will be!

Request a Call Back