Google recently released data about multiple screen use, under the title “The New Multi-screen World: Understanding Cross-Platform Consumer Behaviour.” Whilst it’s not the catchiest of titles, the document itself does provide an interesting insight into consumer use of certain devices, which could prove particularly useful to web designers and digital marketers alike.

The report separates multi-screen use into two primary categories – sequential screening, where the user moves from one device to another to achieve a single goal, and simultaneous screening, where they use multiple devices at the same time. 90% of people use their devices sequentially, with 98% moving between devices on the same day.

Online shopping in particular is a multi-screen activity – 67% of people have used multiple devices sequentially to shop online. Interestingly, tablets are most often the starting point for shopping and trip planning, and 81% of smartphone purchases are spontaneous, highlighting the opportunity to target certain types of ads more specifically towards these mobile devices.

With the average consumer using a combination of 3 different screens every single day, it seems that the multi-screen world is truly upon us, and this is having a knock-on effect in a number of industries. The web design industry, for instance, must recognise the necessity to optimise sites for a variety of platforms, whereas digital marketing has needs to focus on directing appropriate ads to various types of devices.

Are your company’s strategies up to speed in the multi-screen world?

Speaking at the recent SES San Francisco conference, Google’s head of webspam Matt Cutts confirmed that an update to the infamous Penguin algorithm is on its way.

Cutts himself described the impending updates as potentially “jolting”, explaining: “We’re still in the early stages of Penguin where the engineers are incorporating new signals and iterating to improve the algorithm. Because of that, expect that the next few Penguin updates will take longer, incorporate additional signals and as a result have more noticeable impact.”

Cutts’ warning has sent many SEO specialists into panic mode, with worries about whether Google will recognise the quality or relevance of their respective sites. But is there truly cause for concern for those who are using legitimate SEO strategies?

Whilst no specifics of the upcoming developments have been confirmed, it seems reasonable to predict that the intention of the latest incarnation of Penguin will primarily be to penalise sites that are still using black hat SEO techniques such as link spam or keyword stuffing.

Google’s next Penguin update is likely to have a significant impact on the majority of site rankings, but it is just as likely that this impact will benefit those who are using SEO techniques in the way that Google intends them to.

Its social media platform Google+ may have failed to flourish, but search giant Google has added a new offering to its arsenal, and increased its social media and marketing efforts simultaneously – thanks to its recent acquisition of Wildfire Interactive.

Wildfire is a company which helps business to market their services on a variety of social media channels, from Twitter and Facebook to Pinterest and LinkedIn, and has proved to be hugely successful, working with big name brands such as Virgin and Spotify. It seems that Google hopes to use Wildfire’s tools to gain an edge over competitors in terms of social media ads, content and promotions, as well as the related analytics.

Jason Miller, Google’s product management director, further explained the decision, commenting: “A social presence can complement all marketing campaigns – search, display, video, mobile, offline ads and more.”

Wildfire founders Victoria Ransom and Alain Chaurd also commented on the deal in a blog post: “We believe that over time the combination of Wildfire and Google can lead to a better platform for managing all digital media marketing.”

With the transfer costing a reported $250 million, it seems that Google is serious about retaining and improving its share of the digital advertising market. What’s your take on the Wildfire acquisition?

The internet is now an essential part of everyday modern living – which is why every business, enterprise or even personal project needs an online presence. If you’re considering making a webpage for your company, no matter what it is for, one of the first things you will need a good domain name. Here are some tips to help you choose a memorable moniker:

•   Get inspired! You can use anything from a standard dictionary to the cereal boxes in your cupboard to come up with possibilities. Take pertinent words and see what works together, or abbreviate or combine them. You might be surprised where your idea eventually comes from.

•    Stay relevant – if your domain is for business use, it’s best to keep the name as close to the company name as possible, as this will make it simpler to relay to potential clients (and easier for them to remember!)

•    Use an online system that will allow you to see if your chosen name is already taken – why not try the NS Design domain checker?

•    Consider buying a second hand domain. Although it may seem like all of the good options have been snapped up, domain name collectors will often sell off old addresses that are no longer in use. This can be particularly beneficial for Google rankings – the search engine will think that your site is more reputable than one created a week ago.

The latest change to Google Analytics will be a welcome one for many digital marketing professionals. The free service has expanded its In-Page report tool and can now show site visitors’ browser size.

The development of this new facility comes at a pivotal time in the online industry. There is increasing evidence that more and more people are using remote devices such as smartphones and tablets to access webpages, rather than conventional methods such as laptops or desktop PCs. As a result of this difference in browser size, access to a website’s available content may be compromised, resulting in a negative user experience.

Gaal Yahas, from Google Analytics, reinforced this, explaining that “excessive toolbars and other clutter” meant that pages often appeared cramped.

The updated Google Analytics service will mean that webmasters can see a visual representation of their page and assess whether the content is easy to view on smaller screens, therefore allowing them ascertain the need to optimise their website for mobile or tablet users.

In light of the growing trend for using mobile devices to access the web, it is likely that businesses of all sizes will need to update their websites so that they are easily accessible from remote devices. Google Analytics’ new offering will make the process easier to justify and implement, as well as offering digital marketers more in-depth knowledge about the sources of their website’s traffic.

Web giant Google is expected to officially announce its new storage service, known as Google Drive, in the very near future. The service will provide users with remote storage for their pictures, notes and any other documents on the Internet, thus making their files available for access from any web-connected device, including smartphones, tablets and desktop computers.

Google Drive will offer free storage of up to 5 Gigabytes (GB), or the option to pay on a monthly basis for premium versions, which will offer incrementally more storage capacity up to 100 GB. It is not yet known how much consumers will be charged for this premium service.

The cloud storage system will combine search capabilities and advanced image search technology to allow users to access a wide range of document types, which could include Adobe PDF files and photographs. It will appear as an icon on Windows and Mac desktops, into which users can simply ‘drop’ their files. The service will advance on the already popular Google Documents, which already allows users to store 1 GB of files online.

Competitors such as Skydrive and Dropbox, which also offer cloud storage services, are sure to be affected by Google’s new offering, and it seems that they are upgrading their services accordingly. Dropbox recently altered its service so that users can share simply by sending an emailed link, rather than sharing folders, allowing for easier access.

A couple of weeks ago I blogged about an announcement by Google’s Matt Cutts that sites would, in future, be penalised for over optimisation. This move is part of a systematic effort by Google to eliminate sites with low quality content ranking highly on SERPS (search engine results pages) through massive back linking campaigns. While many have applauded this move to improve the quality of search results, a number of people within the industry have expressed concerns about negative SEO; sometimes referred to as ‘Google bombing’.

The theory behind the nefarious practice of negative SEO is simple; companies can harm their competitor’s website rankings by creating large numbers of low value, artificial and farmed links that Google will penalise by downgrading the site’s ranking. Although it is not the first time the fear of negative SEO has raised its head, it is one that is causing fresh concern for some businesses. A year ago Matt Cutts addressed this issue in a video claiming that Google did consider negative SEO when building their algorithm. At the time he said Google did not consider it necessary to provide webmasters with a forum for reporting negative SEO by competitors, however in the future that may have to change.

My advice to businesses who are concerned about this issue is to monitor the numbers of backlinks to their sites on a regular basis to see if their competitors are taking part in any unethical practice. If you need assistance with this please do not hesitate to contact me.

For those wanting to attract organic traffic to their website, search engine optimisation (SEO) has long been the key to success. However at a recent conference in the United States, Google’s Matt Cutts, probably the most influential man in the search world, warned that the company is planning an update to penalise ‘over-optimised’ sites. It is a statement that will cause some anxiety in the SEO world to say the least.

Matt’s comments took place during a panel discussion at the SXSW conference in Austin, Texas. He claimed a Google team were actually looking at the issue and were expecting to introduce an update within the ‘next months or few weeks’. However, before we panic let’s take a look at what he actually said:

‘We are trying to level the playing field a bit. All those people doing, for lack of a better word, over optimization or overly SEO – versus those making great content and great site. We are trying to make GoogleBot smarter, make our relevance better, and we are also looking for those who abuse it, like too many keywords on a page, or exchange way too many links or go well beyond what you normally expect.’

Obviously the new policy will cause disquiet among businesses that have invested significantly in SEO, but I don’t think there is any need for undue concern unless you have packed text with keywords or followed a completely over-the-top backlink strategy.

What Google is saying is what it has always said regarding search; it aims to produce the most relevant pages for any keyword or query. Google is putting the emphasis on the quality of the page and that is what ensures it remains the leading search engine.

If you are concerned that the new update will have a negative impact on your website, contact us and we will take a look for you.

Google’s Chrome web browser has long been considered one of the safest ways of surfing the net, in December it was named the most secure of the top three browsers by security firm Accuvant.

Further confirmation of Chrome’s pre-eminence as a safe browser came this February with the German government’s Federal Office for Information Security (BSI) officially recommending the use of Chrome for government departments. The BSI gave Chrome the ringing endorsement that using Chrome, ‘can significantly reduce the risk of a successful IT attack’.

However earlier this month it was revealed that Chrome was not infallible when it was publicly hacked three times in the space of a week. Russian student, Sergey Glaznov, brilliantly hacked Chrome by exploiting a bug to bypass the browser’s sandbox.

However, rather than being carted off to jail the hacker was rewarded with a $60,000 prize for discovering Chrome’s vulnerabilities. The prize money was part of $1 million that Google has made available to ethical hackers who reveal security problems with the browser.

Google had to pay out a further $60,000 just a couple of days later when a hacker identified another way of breaking into the browser. The enigmatically named PinkiePie revealed that he had worked for a week and a half to hack through Chrome in order to make an axe wielding pink pony appear on the designated target computer.

Google has already issued automatically loaded patches to fix the vulnerability exposed by the two hackers.

Google is integrating like mad. Earlier in the year, Google search incorporated results from its social network Google Plus then, at the beginning of this month, its new controversial unified privacy policy replaced up to 60 different sets of terms and conditions with a single policy.

Now the company has focused on bringing together some of its smartphone services with the introduction of Google Play.

Google Play brings together a host of separate Android smartphone apps into one location and rebrands different media services under one banner. The new service incorporates the Android marketplace for apps, Google Music, Google Books and Google Movies.

According to the company, Android phone users will notice very little difference in the functionality of their devices as Google Play will automatically recognise a user’s previous accounts and transfer them seamlessly to the new unified service.

According to Google, the company intends to build Play into a brand that will offer a strong identity and result in an increase of investment in mobile entertainment services. Google claim the new brand will increase connectivity and interaction and as a result, benefit both customers and developers.

The change is another step in the consolidation and integration of Google’s many individual services. Many observers believe that the company is positioning itself to deal with the commercial threat from Facebook which will see its first publicly traded shares come onto the market in the next couple of months.

The Facebook IPO is predicted to raise anything between US$5 and $10 billion and the influx of new finance may allow it to offer a challenge in markets where Google has traditionally been the preeminent player.