E-consultancy - Andrew Girdwood's Blog

Is Google's First Click Free a blow to Facebook and Twitter?

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 09:30:00 UT

Google News publishers know all about the wonders and horrors of First Click Free.

Google News wants to include prestigious newspapers and let users click through to the stories which matched keyword searches.

Some newspapers still want to operate on a subscription model.�

Jargon I'd like to ban: Seeding

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 08:00:00 UT

It seems like a hundred years ago when a client first asked me: "What's Usenet and should we be seeding it?"

I don't know who they had been speaking to but whoever it was should be locked away in a room with angry toddlers.

Is your search marketing campaign legal any more?

Tue, 10 Jun 2008 07:30:00 UT

On the 26th of May there was an update to The Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations Act.

There's certainly been coverage of the Act on the likes of the BBC but the focus has been on buzz marketing. Search marketing campaigns could be affected as well.

SEO Wars: Alt Battles

Thu, 5 Jun 2008 11:09:00 UT

There is no such thing as the 'alt tag' in HTML. There is, however, the alt attribute which is applied to the image tag.

The alt attribute is designed to provide alternative text for an image. I've seen it create wars within marketing departments.

Are you coping with Universal Search?

Tue, 8 Apr 2008 09:00:00 UT

Google has evolved its search results to include images, news, recent blog posts, videos and related links.

Let's build a quick to-do list to spruce up your site for Universal Search.

A brief history of Poking

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 08:10:00 UT

If you waited until Facebook launched and opened their doors wide before you started poking your pals and professional colleagues online then you may have waited longer than you needed to.

Two terrible tales of tracking terror!

Wed, 31 Oct 2007 18:00:00 UT

It's Halloween and time for two true tales of tracking that went terribly wrong.

The scariest part of these cautionary stories is that either one could so easily happen again.

Google's agency subsidy - how badly will it be missed?

Fri, 21 Sep 2007 07:30:00 UT

Here in Europe, agencies have enjoyed funding from Google. It was there to encourage training and innovation. It's going.

Google has closed the purse strings and I thought I'd write down what this means to me.

What does PageRank mean today?

Tue, 7 Aug 2007 06:34:00 UT

Google's PageRank metric has become rather controversial. Some SEOs will argue that PageRank is now entirely meaningless. Are they right?

How much traffic does my competitor get?

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:00:00 UT

Even if you had a spy in the heart of your competitor's e-commerce team, you might struggle to answer this question.

It's far from impossible that your competitors are neither appropriately recording their web traffic nor confident in which metrics to analyse.

Graduates divided over online marketing courses

Mon, 4 Jun 2007 11:41:00 UT

I took advantage of bigmouthmedia's recent recruitment reception to survey 107 graduates.

Lots of�them thought their universities did enough to highlight the importance of the internet, but an equal number strongly disagreed.

How will Google's CPA offering affect agency pricing models?

Thu, 17 May 2007 10:17:00 UT

There are a number of different pricing models for agencies running paid search campaigns in the UK and it is just possible that Google's cost-per-action (CPA)adverts could bring about changes.

Affiliates can be your social media allies

Wed, 9 May 2007 07:00:00 UT

Brands who burn their bridges and leave behind angry affiliates risk losing valuable social media allies, writes Andrew Girdwood.

Using search to measure offline success

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 08:31:00 UT

One of the reasons why search is so great is its accountability. The same cannot be said for some forms of offline advertising. The good news is that you can use search to help gauge offline success.

Why to be great at PPC you have to be good at SEO

Tue, 10 Apr 2007 08:03:00 UT

Google�s Quality Score is forcing paid search advertisers to adopt joined up thinking in PPC campaigns, writes Andrew Girdwood.

Meta, meta, meta

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 10:52:00 UT

There is at least one constant in the everflux of Search landscape; the importance of meta tags ebbs and flows. Is 2007 a year where the value of meta tags increases again?