What will Google do in 2008??

After the fast paced developments in 2007 for the online search arena a lot of people are wondering what Google will be looking to achieve in 2008 to keep the momentum up. I was reading a post on the 'Google Operating System' which is an unofficial blog and has been going now for a few years giving some great opinions on the search giant.

They posted a great blog on their thoughts of what will Google do it 2008. And I thought I would throw up a quick post as their are alot of interesting views and scenarios within the 15 or so areas they think Google will develop in 2008. And as we are 1 day away from 2008 the timing seemed right.

As they say "Some of these items are obvious, others are mostly wishful thinking." but all in all I think they make for some interesting reading:-

1. Google will try to unify its application and transform them into a big social network. The Maka-Maka project (or Google's activity stream) will enhance the already existing profiles. If Google doesn't understand that your Gmail contacts aren't necessarily your friends, we'll see a huge privacy backslash.

2. Google should finally go beyond indexing text and start to use image analysis and speech recognition in Google Image Search and Google Video. The NevenVision acquisition should produce visible results in the image search engine and we could see better results for famous people or the option to find similar images.

3. Google won't give up on universal search, but we'll see a different interface that separates standard search results from OneBoxes and other additions. Google's snippets will become smarter and they could include information about authors, locations, concepts.

4. Gmail will add another batch of new features, one of the most important being task management, and will finally go out of beta. Gmail will launch a Google Labs-like site with experimental features that could be added by those who are curious to see the next features before they are officially launched.

5. The first Android phones will be a disappointment, but developers will create a lot of interesting applications that could compensate for the poor designs.

6. Most Google applications will work offline using Google Gears, even if the functionality will be limited. Google Gears will also work on mobile phones and could become a part of Firefox.

7. Google Maps will be redesigned and could include more space for user-generated content. We'll start to see user's locations, important events from our area, recommendations from friends. Google Maps will become more personal.

8. OpenSocial won't work as well as expected and Google will focus on its own social network(s). iGoogle gadgets are about to become social and aggregate data from your contacts.

9. Google will launch a people search engine that gathers data from the web, especially from social networks.

10. Google Books will be more present in search results and Google will start to sell access to the full content of some of the books.

11. One word: sync. At the end of the year, Outlook and most mobile phones will be able to synchronize with Google Calendar and Gmail's contacts. Google Docs will have plug-ins that let you edit documents in Microsoft Office or OpenOffice and save the changes online. Google Toolbar will integrate Browser Sync and start to synchronize your bookmarks, cookies, passwords and your browser's history.

12. Multi-faceted search, searching from different points of view (objective information vs positive/negative opinions, official information vs comments from blogs, forums).

13. Google will differentiate commercial search results by integrating data from Google Base. Google will continue to try to promote Checkout, this time by showing small badges next to the search results from sites that accept Google Checkout.

14. Google Talk will move completely online: the embeddable gadget will let you create custom chat rooms, talk with other people and maybe even see them if they have webcams.

15. Picasa Web Albums will add some of the photo editing features from Picasa and will increase the free storage.

16. GDrive will finally launch, but it won't offer infinite storage or advanced features. It will let you access the files stored in different Google applications and upload new files from a single interface. Storage: 20 GB.

'touchEarth' - Google Earth Via Multitouch

We have all probably seen the facility on the likes of the iPhone to manipulate Google maps via touch and the ability to 'Pinch' in and out. The Youtube video below I just came across that has been uploaded today shows how much more you can manipulate this. The demo of 'touchEarth' application shows how you can control Google Earth via multitouch gestures on a much larger scale.

It really is getting to the stages of the film Minority Reports a few years ago and for me starts to show how the Internet can start to move towards an integrated media centre option in the house bringing Internet and the likes of TV closer together. Microsoft have also been looking at these options as well with their 'Surface' table technology for a while now.

Steve Ballmer Goes Search Dunking!

Here is a video of part of a longer interview with Microsofts Steve Ballmer at Web 2, he is asked about how Microsoft Search is coming along against the competitors like Google. The answer he gives is fantastic and delivered in only a way Steve Ballmer can!

Social Importance

Theres been a lot of talk (myself included) for about 6 months now in the improving prominence of Social Media. Everyone seemed to warm up to the likes of Facebook in 2007 here in the UK. And we now have Social Media panels at the likes of SES and SMX conferences now. I had been a member for over 6 months on Facebook with no volume of interaction with it. But suddenly in a 6 week period around June/July time there was an explosion of interest and everyone wanted to be your friend!

I think the market can see the value and requirements to be as Search Marketers looking at strategies to integrate a social product as a string to the bow and be able to offer advertising insight to tap into a new market place.

I have always been trying to quantify the value of taking the time to position some marketing solutions and some statistics published yesterday by Hitwise really hit home the culture change here in the UK.

For the fist time last month, UK visits to social network websites was more than visits to web-based email services. The Hitwise chart below shows, a line for social networks, which includes Facebook, Bebo and MySpace, accounted for 5.17% of all UK Internet visits, compared to 4.98% for Email, which includes Hotmail; Yahoo! Mail and Gmail as the main factors.




















This gives some real concrete information that Social has had a very speedy growth within the UK market and all projections say it will continue to climb as the mentality it seems is to drop your friends a quick Facebook message rather than send them an email these days.

For me the ironic thing is that you get an email notifying you when you have received a Facebook message.

So on that basis email can never die! ;0)

Google Analyst Day 2007

Thought I would throw this one up on the blog. It is the Search and Apps Overview at Google Analyst 2007 day. It is a bit of a long video at 67 minutes but well worth a watch. The vid gives some great insight into the history and theories behind Google. Where they are today as well as looking to the future developments.

It is the 3rd year of the Analyst Day and it has an all star line up on the speakers front.

Google Partners Conference Interview

Was reading an article on Andy Beals Blog the other day which covers a video which was part of Google’s annual closed-doors partner conference. It is an interview with Sergey and Larry, hosted by journalist James Fallows who asks them some pretty direct and interesting questions.

The video which was posted on Youtube is just over 30 minutes long but is well worth a watch as it give some great insight.

Who wants to be a millionaire with Google?

I was at an event today and got shown this video on Youtube. I know it is a year old but I have never seen it and thought is was worth a blog. It is part of Australia's version of Millionaire where they go to Phone a Friend as they have no idea of the answer and are quite open to the fact his friend will have Google ready to look for the answer! (often wondered if people did that)

Host is adamant they should use MSN....see what happens for yourself but a very funny clip.



It was an easy find! Think they just used the wrong friend.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0066244/awards

Youtube now on Google Earth

Was having a look on the Google LatLong blog today and thought this was a really cool idea. In some cases now on Google Earth you can play videos of what you are looking at. It seems like the obvious natural progression after we have had detailed pictures on there that are clickable for about a year now.















The video's will be geo-targeted across Google Earth meaning again that you could find any videos you may have done and tagged geographically or with a specific landmark name will start to appear to the masses of dedicated Google Earth users.

Great idea and as an online marketer I will be looking at ways to utilise this content opportunity!

The Blog is Back!!

Well it has been 4 weeks now since I have had a live blog! I was living in a world of Redirect hell on my domain name and it has taken till now to sort it out (big thanks Dixon).

It's great to be back and I thought I would get straight back in with a quick news piece I noticed today which I felt made some interesting reading. Adsense Video Units from Google came to the market as a closed test earlier this year but it is now available on open release as of today. Google pitches it as:

"A new way to enrich your site with quality, relevant video content in an embedded, customizable player"

You can read about the full functions on the Google Adsense Blog and it looks like an interesting concept.

So I thought it would be correct to embed a video on it below ;0)

Gorilla's + Chocolate + Drums will never work online!!

Well I would have to say it has! By now I am sure that you have all seen the advert on the TV with Phil Collins and the amazing drumming ability of the gorilla. If you haven't here it is:



Probably about 1 million people have now watched the advert on Youtube which is great advertising in its own right.

But in the Facebook world we live in now it has also created 4 Facebook groups called 'We love the Cadbury's drumming gorilla ' with 2,952 members so far.

Google is on the up!

I was reading and article today which to me is a stark reminder on how powerful the mighty Google really is. For years I have talked about Google market share and the dominant position they hold in the UK and generally globally but recent numbers published from JMP Securities analyst William Morrison's analysis of Comscore data, Google is still growing and at a frightening pace!

From July06 to July 07:

• worldwide users +20%
• US users +18% (now 22% of 552 million global total)
• time spent on sites +113%
• page views +56%
• Google Maps: blows past Yahoo to 682 million pageviews/mo +98% (vs. Yahoo's 397 million, +32%)

And even more amazing is that little thing called Youtube. It now accounts for 28% of total minutes spent on Google worldwide and an astounding 35% of global users time.

San Jose the Recap

Well as I mentioned on my blog last week I was out at SES in San Jose last week as well as most of the usual search culprits. Looking around all the blogs most people have beat me to a post on it, but work comes first!

There are a couple of good ones, my old search mate Mike Grehan who never stops amazing me as he manages to go from place to place and keep racking up the miles! Bet you it is not very often you go from San Jose to Liverpool to the Lake District. Denis down at Indextools has a full post as well from his week of analytics and talking to a lot of people by the looks of it in San Jose. thanks for the mention by the way Denis!

Well I left on Sunday morning and arrived at the hotel late Sunday night after about 18 hours of fun filled traveling and a lot of film watching. It is amazing after going out for a quick walk after traveling around 5,500 miles the first person I see is Mel Carson from Microsoft in London, we just keep turning up in the same place. As you can imagine it was an early night and up the next day to be greeted by a sun filled half decent view from the hotel.

Nothing like sun and heat after the summer we have had in the UK. First up I was lucky enough to get a trip up to have a look around Googles head office up at Mountain View (The Googleplex). Really interesting to see how the search giant operates and also have lunch there. They always say the food at Google is good and I have to say it was. Below is a picture of the main buildings from the outside, I was not aloud to take internal shots at Google so I cant show you the one of the X Prize Space Challenge ship in the reception I took (I didn't say that did I?) but it was actually a Paul Allen of Microsoft project which I thought was quite ironic to see it hanging in a Google office!


You can also see in the picture at the back a little sneak preview of the Google Dance main stage. But then it was down to the first day of SES San Jose. I was not speaking till the second day so it was good to go and see the sights and see some of the other guys do there bit.


The first day was very good and it was nice to see a lot of old faces again and meet a lot of new people in the process at the speakers and exhibitors early evening reception. Day 2 came around and so did my session, it was a touch different to the norm as for the first time it was split in two with Search Marketers up first followed by the Search Engines in the next session. For me it worked really well and has had some good coverage from the likes of Search Engine Roundtable and a good piece the other day from Greg Jarboe who talked about Click Fraud have the second most buzz behind Google Universal on the blogs around the conference period when searching for 'Search Engine Strategies' which is great to here.

Here is a picture of the start 'Search Engines on Click Fraud' panel which followed mine as the room started to fill...and I lost the good view I had at this point! (bit of a struggle to take your own pic while speaking hence none).


Overall the sessions worked really well in the new format and long may it continue! That evening was the long awaited Google Dance. And you have to wonder if the queues for the buses set a world record for the 'most search marketers' stood in line. What you can see below is only about 2o% of all the queues. This one includes my mate Dave Naylor towards the back. Sorry Dave my queue moved first! As I took this as we got on the bus. Was good to see you at the event later and over the next few days and well done on a good session on Day 4 early doors!

Was nice to spend some time again with a fellow friend and Search marketer from the US in Jon Kelly from the agency Sure Hits. He has just started blogging again (probably after we spent about 2 hours catching up with Andy Beal and Loren Baker who talked him round) So check him out as he has a lot of good things to say about search and optimisation.

He is the queue for the fabled Google Dance T-shirt, which did run out towards the end of the night so they are a sort after item!

There was two great keynotes which all the bloggers have covered from Ask and Google giving some good future views on where their direction is heading and Jim Lanzone used the Ask commercial I mentioned in one of my last blogs before heading out there.

Well I could go on to talk about the next 2 days in detail but this is already turning into a long post. Overall great conference and session on all 4 days and some great events though out the week. Search is still riding high and with so many exciting things being developed with in the media space I think there are a lot more SES San Jose's to come in the future.

Ask.com New TV Commercial

Saw a piece by Lisa Barone on the Bruce Clay blog yesterday about the new commercial in the US for Ask.com. First of all you sort of ask yourself who the heck came up with the line 'Experience Instant Getification' I Ask you! (pardon the pun).



But I think they have positioned it really well the new interface works. I have been playing with it for about 6 months or more now since it was launched as 'AskX'. Loved it back then and it has grown on me even more now.

Everything is there that you would want functionality wise and you can tell they have really thought about how to effectively position 'Vertical Creep' but still let the different products stand in their own right. The ability to move between text, images, local and other areas of the search results returned works well and at first I was a touch annoyed by the preview function as you roll over the search results but in all honesty it makes perfect sense and you actually start to enjoy using it.

Looks great, works great and the commercial isn't bad either!

On the Speaking Road Again

After a break of a couple of weeks its was good to get out again last week and talk about Search. I did a great session for the Marketing Society in London perfectly entitled 'Search Me!'

Well not literally! it was an event run by Microsoft so it was good to hook up with my old mate Mel Carson again to present search in the UK space, Mel has blogged about it as well on his brand new blog on Brand Republic called Digitales, definitely stick it in your favorites.

It was a good session and well received by the attendees but as Mel mentioned in his blog and I will as well the hot topic was 'Privacy'. We here about it more and more in the media press and it is interesting to see that this is echoed in the industry as well as the public domain.

We talked a lot about how the search engines need to deal with it and as the search landscape moves more into maps, mobile and particularly social search the lines need to be carefully defined.



Well the next speaking stop is in a few weeks over in the US at San Jose SES Conference where I will be speaking on the 'Search Marketers On Click Fraud' panel. I have done this panel for a few years now at various SES conferences and it always makes for lively conversation you could say.

Should be a good session so if your there come and say hello!

Google v Microsoft...the Road Wars

I Was reading a great post on gizmodo.com today which I though I had to share. On the blog they have gone on to compare the vehicles that Google and Microsoft are using and the performance that they will be both getting around town from an MPG stance.

Initially you sort of wonder what the concept is about but this is one of the hottest areas online at the moment with both of the parties really pushing hard to create the next online mapping technology.

A few years ago we were in awe at the launch of the satellite imagery on things such as Google maps. but now they have moved forward with areas such as Google Earth and then Virtual Earth from Microsoft and then pushing the boundaries into better quality higher resolution images and 'Mash Up' map overlays for buildings and monetisation opportunities for businesses on the maps.

The next area that both parties are looking more into the the 'Street View' concept. Google has already done some limited street view testing in 5 cities across the US but imagine taking it to the level of higher quality imagery, maybe video and having advertising options within this. And early runner in this concept can be seen at Everyscape.com.

Jon Myers....who are we???

Well I was having a play with a site called http://www.yournotme.com which is basically a website where you can find out how many other people with your name there are in the UK. It was great to see that there are only 6 of us....as in 'Jon Myers'.

There are 338 John Myers so that 'H' makes you a whole lot more common (no offense intended as we are all Jon Myers together!).



So I am thinking it would be good to try and find the other 5 Jon Myers here in the UK and try and see if they have blogs which means we could create a blogging group for Jon Myers named people. Watch this space and I will let you know how I am getting on.....THE SEARCH COMMENCES!

Yahoo One Search

I noticed the other day that Yahoo has started to push out commercials for the new yahoo Onesearch Mobile Platform. I think it looks really good and works very well but I guess the touch of irony is that i am posting it here for you to watch via Google's You Tube.

Come on Yahoo get the video package up to speed as well!!

Tunnel through the earth will Google

No I haven't lost it (well a few people I know may beg to differ!). Do you remember when you were a kid and you would be digging a big hole and someone usually a 'grown up' would say "if you carry on digging you will reach Australia"!

Well I always used to think what are you on about, the centre of the earth is full of liquid and you would never make it! But if you were able to negotiate the 4000 degree heat (thanks Wikipedia) you would not come out to far away according to Google.

As you can imagine I started my journey from Newcastle upon Tyne and you can see it here



Unfortunately it would have been a doomed trip as upon digging out the other side I would have come out on the bottom of the Southern Ocean around 1100km south of New Zealand so would have drowned or been lost at sea.

Real shame as I was starting to enjoy this expedition!

Have a go and see where you can dig to around the globe at Google My Maps

One less Apple iPhone in the World

Those boys down at Will It Blend have done what I only thought they would....go Tom blend that phone!

Bourne Identity meets Google

At first you may ask what am I on about with the tile of this blog, but Universal Pictures and Google announced a new online game, The Ultimate Search for Bourne with Google. It is designed to promote the new ‘Bourne Ultimatum’ film and is designed for the player to use a suite of Google products such as Search, Maps, Images and of course YouTube.

The game will be promoted on Google via search results and customized iGoogle home pages. The film is released in the US on 3^rd August, but don’t worry we don’t have to wait that long for the game! It is only 4 days away (16^th July) and you can sign up at www.google.com/bourne from then

It will launch in seven countries and incorporates a sweepstakes element. Players will have to track rogue agent Jason Bourne across three continents and solve clues that bring them closer to uncovering Bourne's identity.

But here the best bit…the prizes! Top prize is a Volkswagen Touareg 2, Mastercard are awarding 15 daily $1000 gift cards, a $25,000 prize, 4 trips to New York, Paris, London, Madrid or Tangier and in my eyes best of all 10 Apple iPhones.

See you in there on the 16th I know I am going to be there.

Advertising search marketing the Microsoft way

Microsoft has started using the power of Soapbox video to advertising their search offering from Live Search. Historically search is not an easy thing to advertise and you could say there is no hip and trendy way to do it. But this is a dam good attempt from the Microsoft guys.


Video: Live Search commercial

I have to say mind, I don't have the version of Live Search that allows me to do a search on Live Search and find things around the house such as underwear. Is this in the new Vista? Can I get one of those please Microsoft?

Google Mapped not Google Maps!

Great link here to see the history of all Google products, it comes from a Google french blog but you can always use Google Translate Tool in the toolbar to get it into english!

http://logiciels.zorgloob.com/graphe.php

Just click on each of the Google product icons to see the background on each one. For those who don't fancy navigating the map (its big!) you can get a list version as well

http://logiciels.zorgloob.com/liste.php

Nothing like a good interview

While I was down at the Online Marketing Show last week doing a speaking session we decided to set up a series of interviews with some of the main search providers in the industry which I was able to sign up on the day and get them in front of the dreaded video camera.

We have just published interviews with Richard Firminger - Yahoo, Mel Carson - Microsoft, Ajay Syal - Yell and Steve Miller - IAB to the Latitude Website and Youtube.

Google will follow shortly as it is still getting signed off by their legal team, but it will be added as soon as I have it.

I decided to ask in general only two questions to them all:

1. What is the next big thing in search marketing in the next 12 months?
2. How do you see search developing in the future over say the next 3 to 4 years?

What was interesting to here is that generally everyone had a different opinion! Obviously they had to talk about products from their own organisations (who wouldn't!) but when you listen to their concepts in makes for great insight and a lot of different opinions.

I have put the interview with Richard Firminger - Yahoo Regional Sales Director Northern Europe below. But I recommend going and having a look at them all. You can see them at:

http://uk.youtube.com/user/latitudegroupvideos



Watch out for the Everyclick blue mouse putting in a guest appearance as well on the Yell.com interview. that mouse was everywhere for the whole 2 days at the show, you couldn't get away from him!

Photosynth meets Google Street View

I was speaking earlier this week at the Online Marketing Show in London doing a slot on how we see more rich media integrating to search.

but for me one of the interesting little tech developments that we have coming later this year is something called EveryScape.

I have always been a big fan of Microsoft Photosynth and always will be and when a bout a month back Google launched Street Views in Beta on the maps in the US.

But what Everyscape does it to combined the two and give you the directional ability of Maps but then takes the like of the views from Google Street Views to the next level by giving you the ability to navigate in a virtual world of cities and step off the street in to shops and cafes and view the interior as well. The possibilities are endless and the marketing opportunities great.

Watch out for the launch later this year.

Where will this lead? Interesting eye project.

KDDI Corporation is a Japanese technology company and the have set up a form of imaged based viral marketing site. it is well worth a look as there is nothing around quite like it.

The project that assembles photos, Web images and movies into a constantly morphing display which will show thousand of individual images making up one consolidated picture you can then choose to zoom in and out on the individual panels

Will be interesting to see what the plans are for it, i recommend giving it a go at the Eye-Project site will send you crazy hunting round all the images but it is very addictive!

The Power of the YouTube

I have to say when you think about it after seeing some of Britain has Got Talent last week you could never have imagined a phone salesman called Paul Potts from Carphone Warehouse would let alone be able to sing Opera but actually win the whole thing.

But that's enough about that as it has nothing to do with search. What I am keen to watch is how many views it gets on YouTube. I have found 2 instances of it uploaded on there and already 3.2 Million people have looked at it and with YouTube growing a gathering pace a a rapid rate how high will it go and who will seize the chance to use the space as a marketing opportunity?

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA

I have seen the future and the future is 'Surface'

I was having a play with this concept the other week and for me it it a sign of things to come. www.surface.com is another one of those rare things that you look at and it genuinely makes you take a sharp prolonged intake of breath and go 'wow!'

Check out the video on the right hand side and imagine being able to pay for bills, pass directions and images between devices without cables. Fantastic! Very cool website too!

Steve Balmer as you have never seen before

Here is a blast from the past!

Photosynth.....Oh Yes!

Now I was talking to my mate Mel at Microsoft today and he pointed out that the Photosynth technology is now live on the the BBC website for buildings in the UK.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/britain/photocollection/index.shtml

This is one cool product, I first saw the video for this at the back end of last year giving the vision of how a wire frame was created of St Peters Square in Rome and how you could potentially upload images to the wire frame. It was one of the few products as you say made me sound like the dog from the Churchill ad when I first saw it and i let out the usual advert line of 'Oh Yes'.

Go and check out the product as Mel can always be heard saying at........ http://labs.live.com/photosynth/bbc/default.htm

It really is worth the time to check it out! Cheers Mel.

Natural Mapping....a good thing??

I was looking at Google the other day and playing a bit with trying to get map data at the top of the natural listings. This seems to be generally the case now in some sectors if you do a location specific search such as 'Gym Manchester' on the main SERPS page.

You will then get a Google Maps listing at the top which links you through to the Maps functions from there.

But I did see another I have not seen before which is a expand function within the Natural Listings.

This seems to be a Google Base upload which integrates through into the Google Maps technology. It shows Google pushing more product to the natural listings offering more control as well. Is this a good thing?? Only time will tell......

What a week of Talking!

Last week was one of those weeks but of Great value. On Tuesday Latitude participated in one of the first ever live video Webinars in the UK. myself, Richard Firminger (Yahoo), Mel Carson (Microsoft) and Phil Buxton (Revolution) all sat down in front of the cameras for an hour of chat with questions about the Search Landscape.

It all went well and you can watch the event back at:

http://revolution.webseminars.co.uk/index.php?c=406

Wednesday was another full day and spent it with a good friend of mine Mike Grehan.

We were doing the NMA Search Training day which was a good event and a chance to impart search knowledge to people looking to run camapigns in the industry. u would highly reccommend anyone attending courses like this (not just because i was one of the trainers!).

Great day and a great chance to catch up with Mike as even though we are both Geordies it is not often we are in the same place at the same time!

the final of the trio was on Thursday where i got the chance to be the Chair of the Marketing Weekly Killer Search Conference this was another great day with some great speakers and the event always seems to go down well.

Onto the next ones in the coming months with the likes of the Online Marketing Show at the end of June

The Search is Over!

Well today was a big day and the search is over...I know my blog is generally about Search Marketing but there has been another big Search going on within a big passion in my life and today the search is over!

Newcastle United need to search no more as Big Sam is now in town!

Sam Allardyce has become the next in a long line of recent Newcastle United managers and for one I hope the search is over for a while!

Come on the Toon!

Another Wag at Internet World 2007 with a little Excite

Well we did it again last week at Internet World 2007 on Wednesday. After the success of Chinwag Lives PPC Earthquake event I was on the panel at few weeks back in london we gave it another go!

Same format and panel just a new audience and I have to say it seemed to work just as well if not better. All seats were taken and a lot of good questions asked.

The hour seemed to fly by and chatting with Mike and Sam from Chinwag after the event we were keen to do it again and make a regular occurrence of the format at shows. Mike fancied a European tour.

The day finished wit a few celebratory beers at the pub just down the road where all the chinwag crew attended.

I got talking to a couple of people from Excite one of my personal favourite search engines over the years and I promised that I would say on my blog as I did on the night (exite people thought I wouldn't!...but here you go guys) that I feel that the web based RSS reader functionality on the homepage of Excite is second to none out there!

Keep up the good work and long may it last Excite!

Its a long and dangerous journey from New York these days....according to Google!

Well most of us would take a flight I would say and arrive into London in about 7 hours. Google Maps has another idea I am afraid which I would not take literally! Go on to Google.com and do the following:

1. click on "maps"
2. click on "get directions"
3. type " New York " in the first box (the "from" box)
4. type " London " in the second box (the "to" box)
5. click on "get directions"
6. Read step #24

Yes they are actually asking you to swim the Atlantic!! Best of luck to all that follow these directions.

Marge Simpson uses Google

Well it has been a while since I posted due to my blog being broke! But I thought I would start again with a light hearted one. It has happened and Google is now being used by the Simpsons!

It is interesting to see her say "629,000 results. Wow, and all this time I thought 'googling' yourself meant the other thing,"

She then clicks onto Google Maps to find the house, where husband Homer is sunbathing naked in the backyard.

Will be interesting to see if Google ever get to a live video feed in maps....imagine that! Until then only the Simpsons have it!

Chinwag the Online Re-Run (If you fancy it)

The guys down at Chinwag have put the pod cast up now on the site so for all you who missed it first time due to not being there! Can listen to the event on the following link.

http://feeds.feedburner.com/chinwaglive

All 'Joost' Up

The world of Internet TV wonder and as they say 'TV Anywhere, Anytime'. Thanks to an old mate of mine Satish (Carnelite), I am finally hooked up. At first glance it is looking like a good idea and generally the quality is pretty good.

All I can say is come on Joost get some more mainstream TV on there! But there is some good stuff to keep you entertained if there is nothing on the BBC! (which isn't unusual these days!)

Nothing Like a Good Chinwag!

On Tuesday night this week in London I decided to go down to the PPC Earchquake Chinwag event at the Slug and Lettuce in Soho. I was looking forward to having a beer and a good night of being in the audience for once and listening in rather than speaking.

But within 3 minutes of arriving I was asked by the organisers to be on the panel, as a member of the panel had dropped out! No search rest for the wicked you could say!

Chinwag managed to get a great turn out of people across the board, the event is to be put out on a Pod Cast next week to boot. With a follow up session at Internet World on 3rd May.

Not the best picture but that's me in the middle! There was some good questions and some contention... which is always good! The 90 mins of Q and A flew by and it was nice to see me old mate Teddie from Neutralize again, even if we had only been at Search Marketing World 2007 in Dublin the week before!

Good event Chinwag look forward to the rerun!

The £2 Billion is here!

Today I attend the IAB Conference at which the annual media spend figures were launched. It amazed me to hear that this has been run for 10 years now and in the first year 4 media owners supplied figures. This year 102 did!

Online has finally passed the £2 Billion mark in 2006. And it is great to see that Paid Search makes up 57.8% (£1.165 Billion) the second largest segment in the online area was Display at 22.8%.

Looking at this against 2005 which was around £1.4 billion online spending, it gives us a year on year growth of 41.2%. This is great and shows the shift in media spend with areas like TV dropping by 4.7% year on year and the whole industry only up by 1.1%. the market is being driven by Online and within that paid Search is the main driver.

Looking at the big picture of all media spend, Internet now has an 11.4% slice of the media pie in 2006 which is up from 7.8% in 2005.

More data on the numbers can be found at http://www.iabuk.net/en/1/iabadspend2006.mxs

Bamber Gascoigne launches a search engine. yes, really!

Got an email today from a Colleague at Latitude with a url to this site and at first I must admit I though Bamber Gascoigne....No Way!

You have to ask yourself what is Bamber upto, but once you start to play with the concept it actually becomes quite addictive, you can find out anything that happened in any year, so quite useful. You still have to ask you self why Bamber? but it is something that will come in handy at quiz night!

http://www.timesearch.info/timesearch/default.asp?conid=home

The Church of Search!

This week I was over in Dublin speaking at Search marketing World 2007 conference. This was Ireland's first ever Search marketing event so as a lot of the speakers arrived the night before and we were catching up. I think it was fair to say that we did not know what to expect the next day.....would many people come!!!!

In the usual way people had descended on Dublin by plane for the corners of the Globe with the like of Chris Sherman, Danny Sullivan and Jeffrey Rohrs coming in from the US and a whole host of us appearing form Europe.

As ever great to catch up with all the usual faces and see what was new in the World of Search and a thanks to Martin Murry the event organiser for hosting us that night! It was also good to see the only other Geordie I have known for a lot of years in search Mike Grehan.

On the day of the event it was great to get there in the morning and see so many attendees buzzing around in anticipation of the days events at a location that was steeped in history.

You may be wondering why i have entitled this blog the 'Church of Search'...well this purely comes down to the location of my talk. On landing I went to look for the speaking room to survey where I would be doing my bit later and all I can say was WOW!


This is the Baroque Chapel which we renamed the Church of Search on the day and is has to be said it is not often you get to speak in places like this!

On the day the choice of topic for me was Click Fraud and myself, Jeffery Rohrs and Shuman Ghosemajumder met up again from SES London panel in February this year to pitch in with Matt Trimmer being a new addition to the panel.

On the whole the event was great and hats off to the organisers for getting us all together and all those people down to listen.....looking forward to 2008!!