For many, this is a natural evolution in the science of search. After all, internet use over the last few years has increasingly moved to social networks and therefore it is natural that search should follow into that web space.

However, opponents of the change (and there are many) argue that the results are far too heavily weighted in favour of Google’s own Google Plus network and represent a backdoor route for the company  to force people into adopting its network.

Currently, Facebook and Twitter results are not listed because, Google says, their competitors have forbidden the deep indexing of their sites. Google has publicly stated that it is willing to work with its rival companies to include their results, which may be necessary as a number of politicians in both the USA and Europe have questioned whether Google’s new update falls foul of regulations governing monopolies.

According to Google CEO Larry Page, the Google Plus network is growing at an impressive rate. Last week’s financial statement from the company claimed that the service had 90 million users and that 60% visited daily. However, many observers claimed the figures were misleading and Google has been coy about reporting how much actual interaction occurred on the network.

Whatever the truth, Google Plus still has a long to go before matching market leader Facebook, which claims 50% of its 800 million users log in daily.

The increasing rapidity with which Google changes its search algorithm is an indication of how fast things are moving in the world of internet marketing and SEO.

In the past year, Panda, Caffeine, Freshness and Search Plus Your World are all Google updates that have fundamentally altered the way search works. There is no longer a unified search return; different users will get different results dependent on their location and social networks.

The results of these changes are that online ranking is now dependent on many more factors. Today, SEO techniques require a fully diversified approach that takes into account on page optimisation, backlinks, a content strategy, social media and additional factors. The combined use of these practices is necessary to keep ahead of your competitors and maintain a highly visible presence over the whole of the internet.

The internet is evolving at such a rapid pace that staying ahead of the game is no simple matter. Large companies often have the resources for their marketing departments to keep abreast of the changes, however small enterprises do not have this luxury. Therefore, outsourcing to professional companies represents a sensible solution to the increasing complexity of internet marketing.

When undertaking a search the new update, known as ‘Search, Plus Your World’, provides search users with results drawn in part, from content shared by people in the user’s Google Plus network. However, the change has caused disagreement in the tech industry not least among Google’s competition in the world of social networks.

Twitter was particularly critical of the change describing it as a ‘bad day for the internet’ and claiming that it ‘warped’ search results. Other industry experts voiced concerns that the update skewed results and led to a decline in the world’s most popular search engine’s ability to provide the most relevant results. They claimed that the failure to include results from other social networks like Facebook and Twitter was a mistake.

Google hit back that its terms of service with both those networks did not allow it to perform the kind of deep searches required to include the information in their results and claimed it was prepared to discuss the issue with rival companies.

Quality of search results was not the only issue seized on by critics of the update. Google, which has already drawn the attention of lawmakers with regard to its potential monopoly over online advertising, was – according to some observers – in breach of anti-trust regulations regarding Search, Plus Your World.

They argued that Google’s dominant position in the world of search did not allow it to discriminate against rivals.

According to research by Experian Hitwise, the social networking giant now accounts for just over three per cent of all searches.

This represents a huge 46% increase from 2010’s figures.

Four variations of the term ‘Facebook’ also appear throughout the list of the top ten most searched-for items in the US. Altogether, these terms account for just under five per cent of overall searches, marking a 24% increase from 2010.

The second most searched-for item in 2011 was YouTube, which has moved up one space from last year’s third place on the list.

Third is ‘Facebook login’, which is followed by ‘craigslist’ and ‘facebook.com’.

A host of new terms also appeared throughout the list of the top 50 most searched-for items. These included ‘addicting games’, ‘amazon.com’, ‘cnn’, ‘chase online’, ‘face’, ‘facebook sign up’, ‘hotmail’, ‘pandora’ and ‘twitter’.

Simon Bradstock, general manager of Experian Hitwise, said: “Navigational searches dominated the top search results as users typed in terms versus typing in the URL in the browser bar.

“Hitwise saw 11 percent growth of single-word searches in 2011 as terms like ‘face’ and ‘you’ made the top 50 searches. Marketers need to be particularly brand-savvy when managing their search engine optimization campaigns because of this behaviour, which is a result of predictive search functionality across major search engines.

Today I thought I’d talk to you about the YouTube presentation at MIPCOM – called “The Next Generation”.

Most of us, particularly those who are on the likes of Facebook and Twitter, watch at least one video on a daily basis. Well if the stats (below) in Patrick Walker’s talk are anything to go by anyway…

Since we at NSDesign love our “stats” – both reading them and sharing them, I thought this would be a good time and place to share some staggering ones with you:

ON YOUTUBE THERE ARE:

• 3 billion views per day. (a 50% increase from the year before). BTW That constitutes to about half of the world’s population watching a video a day.
• 600 million unique world wide views per month (from 31 countries and 40+languages)
• 400 million youtube views daily on mobile (doubled in the past year)
• 350 million devices that youtube is enabled for (smart phones, smart televisions, game consoles – “that’s increasing dramatically”)
• 100 million times a week – “youtube is social” – getting shared (an example is…)
• 300 years worth of embedded video is consumed on Facebook every day
• 600 tweets per minute contain a youtube video link
• 20,000 partners, specifically revenue-generating partners on youtube
• 48 hours of video is uploaded every single minute of every single day

 Youtube’s aim at MIPCOM seemed to be to align themselves with more revenue-generating partners, and possibly to promote their True View (skip-able) advertising and Playbook (which I’ve had for months and months, but like so many e-books I download, still sits on my desktop gathering the proverbial cyber dust).

Video is where it’s at and anyone who is a content creator of any type should be utilising YouTube. Businesses, musicians, video/tv/film makers – to name but a few – should all have a presence on there and be adding content to it regularly. But like everything in life, it’s a matter of finding the time to go from idea, to filming, to editing, to uploading, and only then promoting it.

Do you have a video channel? How often do you update it? How many subscribers do you have? If you subscribe to our channel, we’ll subscribe to yours! [Well if it's original content you're creating. I'm not gonna subscribe to people who only post babies singing or dancing, or cats being cute...]

I started by taking a show of hands of how many were on LinkedIn (LI). Pretty much everybody – as you’d imagine. Then, I asked how many felt like they were utilizing it to its fullest potential (because frankly, most people, in my opinion, aren’t). About three people raised their hands. This talk wasn’t for them! It was my hope that the vast majority of the audience would go away with even just one tidbit to try at home later.

So if you’re not a LinkedIn expert, then this one’s for you. Starting at the top here we go…

(1) MAKE YOUR HEADLINE NEWSWORTHY

Make yourself interesting. Avoid sticking “Business Development Manager at ACME WIDGETS” as your headline. That tells me absolutely nothing about you or your company. If you don’t change the default text, LI just uses what you put for your most recent job entry.

You just have to remember you’re more than your JOB TITLE – so consider giving a bit more information. Imagine you were walking up to someone at a networking event, how would you introduce yourself and describe what you do to them in an interesting way?

Also your headline is a key search area on your profile – so use it wisely.

(2) CHANGE THE DEFAULT TEXT

Do you have a website? Does it have a name? If so, then put that. The default text in LinkedIn merely says “Company Website” or “Blog” on your profile (see above).

Honestly, I can’t believe how many of my contacts haven’t bothered to change the default text there, and are thus they’re missing out more key search optimization. As in the example above of someone who has more than 500 connections. Room for improvement there, my friend…

So if your profile says “Company Website” – or “Blog” then please do me a favor, go home and change it to its real name OK?

(3) PICTURE PERFECT

Stating the obvious here but don’t leave it blank (i.e. the grey default avatar), or stick your logo in as your profile pic – save that for your company page.

Instead use a good, professional headshot whenever possible.

LinkedIn is not Facebook – so avoid your holiday snap, a cropped picture from a night out with your friends, and always remember that first impressions matter.

So put your best FACE forward…

(4) DYNAMIC PROFILE

Don’t make your profile read like your CV – with bullet points listing the tasks you do. Ditch the dryness and find engaging things to say about yourself, your job and or company. Use positive wording, correct spelling and good grammar. (Write it in Word and paste it in if needs be.)

Make people WANT to connect with you. A good example, and I am not just saying this because he pays me – is NSDesign’s head honcho Gary Ennis. His profile tells a story, not just lists a bunch of things he’s done or achieved. It has personality (see the last paragraph – magic, juggling, geeks etc – you get a good snapshot of what he’s about…) and I believe it makes you want to connect with someone when they do go that extra paragraph if you will.

And speaking of connecting – that’s what LinkedIn is all about…so when you do….

(5) ALWAYS BE PERSONAL

If you’re going to add someone to your network, it’s good to start off with a comment on how you came across them, where you met (if you have met somewhere), or how you’re connected if by a group, contacts in common and so forth.

One thing to avoid is using “friend” for someone you’ve never met or spoken to.

Even if you have met, never leave the default text - “I’d like to add you to my professional network” – please, please, please, always be personal with a message. It only takes a minute.

One guy added me recently. I didn’t know him. We’re not in the same industry. He didn’t put a message and he called me a “friend”. For principle, I hit “ignore”. I know not everyone is as picky as me about this, but equally I’ve spoken to a lot of people who are!

If you want to connect with someone, then be worth connecting to in your request!

(6) GO ON GROUPS

If you don’t know a person, but want to connect with them, find groups they’re on and join and begin genuinely engaging on them.

Groups are an amazing opportunity to learn information, find jobs, become aware of opportunities and events – as well as to connect to people who you might not have ability to get in front of so easily otherwise.

Local groups are a fantastic source of getting relevant information, sourcing contacts, various specialist recommendations etc.

Recently on one of our local groups, there was a post offering a funded trip, for a content conference in Cannes called MIPCOM. I replied and I just returned (blogs about that to follow here soon!)

This was an opportunity I’d never have been aware of had I not been actively engaging and monitoring that group.

So definitely check out relevant groups to your interests or sector.

(7) RECOMMENDATIONS

You can use LinkedIn to get past OR present colleagues, suppliers, customers or bosses – to say a few nice things about you.

Some people I’ve come across have NO recommendations and others seem to go to the other end of the spectrum and have zillions.

For me, I personally would opt for few quality recommendations, over quantity but to each their own on this one and it may differ according to your sector.

(8) TAGS

Only recently, I discovered that if you go into your Contacts you can tag them. You may wonder why you’d want to do that, but say you were having an event in Glasgow and you wanted to message all of your contacts that were local, you can type in “Glasgow” and it shows you all the people you’ve tagged with Glasgow and you VOILA you can message them all in a ‘oner’.

Please don’t use this feature to SPAM people or you’ll quickly start losing connections!

(9) DATABASE DOWNLOAD

Has anyone ever lost their phone, or their contacts due to an email malfunction? I updated my software on my Blackberry a few months back and overwrote my entire address book accidentally (nightmare!). But with LinkedIn’s contacts area, you can export all your contacts (via a variety of formats) and import to your computer email program and/or into you phone’s address book.

I highly recommend periodic downloads of your contacts. Just because, you never know…

(10)  GET CONNECTING!

My top and final tip is just get out there and start connecting. Like anything in life, you get out of LINKEDIN what you put into it. It’s work to build up a solid network online just as it is to do so OFF. But if done right – it can lead to more contacts, mentors, suppliers, clients and maybe even friends.

Thank you.

PS: Feel free to connect with me on LinkedIn but only if you make your request personal

The latest stats from the USA show that the Microsoft’s search engine is finallly beginning to catch up with Google.

The new combined search site has won a four per cent market share within Stateside search, mostly at the expense of its rival.

Although the change has happened very slowly, it could point towards long-term challenges for Google as it finds itself with a more equal competitor.

According to figures from Experian Hitwise, Bing searches accounted for around 28.99% of all US search enquiries last month – an increase from 28.05% during the previous month.

Hitwise also says that Google’s market share currently stands at around 65%. Just over a year ago in August 2010, just before Yahoo! and Bing merged, Google had a 71.59% market share.

Microsoft have previously commented that they would keep “working and working”  to win their battle with Bing, rather than having expectations of a quick win over the search engine giant.

The news has ramifications for SEO specialists, as they will now need to factor Bing/Yahoo! increasingly into their strategies, rather than solely focusing on optimising search within Google.

Experts are now watching to see whether the trend will be replicated in the UK.

On its Webmaster Centre blog, the search engine takes a look at some of the bigger ticket issues that people should focus on when optimising their websites. Presented in a rough order of importance, the list “represents the ideal for a freshly planned website, prior to being built out”.

Although many web professionals inherit sites to work on, rather than having the advantage of building them from scratch, Bing says that the list can still be of help. They suggest focusing on one or two of the main points rather than worrying about what they are not able to achieve.

The top five points on the list are crawlability, site structure, content hierarchy, on-page factors and content production.

Writing about crawlability, Bing says: “If a crawler can’t access your content, the content won’t be indexed by search engines, nor will it be ranked. Enable and use XML sitemaps with a low error rate to build trust with search engines.

“Make sure your website navigation is clean and strive for a simple, search-friendly URL structure.”

To see the list in full, visit http://www.bing.com/community/site_blogs/b/webmaster/archive/2011/08/19/18-things-you-need-to-know-about-seo.aspx

According to a YouGov poll, UK organisations with less than 50 employees generated just 2.4% of their annual sales from online activities last year.

That’s in contrast with companies with more than 250 employees whose online revenue totalled 18.7% of their total income.
In monetary terms, that equals total online revenues for small businesses of around £36bn last year compared with larger businesses’ online revenues of £349bn.

A worrying 38% of respondents said that they were not investing in any online tools such as social media, email marketing or SEO.

A correlation between the low amount of investment in online marketing and low online sales is clear.

Phil Kingsland, from the not-for-profit resource knowthenet.org.uk, told the Daily Telegraph: “While small businesses are beginning to make considerable amounts of money online, many don’t yet see its full potential. There are limitless possibilities for small businesses to profit here – either by selling goods and services directly, or by marketing themselves to customers.”

For small businesses wanting to up their online game, an SEO strategy is a must – and it needn’t cost that much. In fact, small businesses can experience a great return on investment when working with a reliable SEO agency.

Researchers at the Pew Research Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism examined the ways in which online news consumers in the USA reached their favourite sites in the first nine months of 2010.

They monitored the 25 most popular news websites in the States and looked at behavioural traits including how users reached the sites, what amount of time they spent on the sites, the depth to which they investigated each site and where they went on to when they left.

According to the stats, it seems as if social networking sites will have an increasingly important role to play in traffic to news websites over the coming years.

Researchers found that Facebook was either the second or third most important driver of traffic to five of these top 25 news sites.

These click-throughs formed part of 40% of the overall traffic came from outside referrals, with Google Search and Google News being the biggest traffic drivers.

The authors of the study said: “If searching for news was the most important development of the last decade, sharing news may be among the most important of the next.”

The Huffington Post, the leftfield news and aggregated content website, was the most popular site in terms of Facebook referrals. Eight per cent of its visitors arrived through the social networking website.