The Google Keyword Volume Tool has been around for years in some form or other but via the odd tweak here and there has now evolved into a ‘must visit’ site for anybody designing a new web project.

The Keyword tool is linked with Google Adwords designed to find you words you might want to bid on and use in any paid for campaignsm but you don’t need to be logged in to use the Keyword Tool.

Searching is simple and the results show you how many searches have been made for that term in the past month – both locally, based on your location and globally. The Competition bar also shows how competitive the market is for buying up adwords for that term.

If you think there is value in you moving into a pay-per-click  campaign then you can get an idea as to how much that might cost you by using the Traffic Estimator link on the left. This will provide as estimate on the likely cost per click of the keyword and also the likely volume of traffic and how much that is then likely to cost you per day. All your research ready prepared and easily presented.

If you are designing any new site, even just planning a new project the Keyword Tool is something you can’t fail to ignore, the results offfer valuable insight into words to use on your site both hidden and visual and even your site name.

Do you use Google’s Keyword Tool? Any tips?

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You may have noticed more and more television shows plugging their Twitter accounts or Facebook pages in recent months? It seems the TV executives have finally acknowledged that social media is here to stay and while maybe a potential threat to their own livelihoods longer term, is certainly a necessary evil they need to be involved in.

Yet, TV is about to take an even bigger step by encouraging greater interaction with shows via established social media channels. Even a show like BBC’s Question Time encourages ‘live’ interaction with the debate by viewers using the shows’s hashtag #bbcqt, and it is almost becoming a must have for any live-programming.

So the debate this week that ‘talent’ shows like X-Factor are set to reveal Facebook-integrated voting systems is perhaps not as big surprise as it may at first seem. The hurdle has always been that encouraging viewers to login to Facebook or similar is a bit like encouraging them to make a cup of tea or press play on their DVD player during the show -it risks potentially losing them as an audience member with one quick move.

Yet, reports suggest this Autumn’s X-Factor show will feature the new integrated voting system and with similar show in the US American Idol expected to use similar technology in its new series next month, it seems the era of calling premium rate numbers and even pushing the red button on your tv remote may be coming to an end.

Do you think TV, Facebook and the like will ever fully integrate?

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While Google remains one of the most sophisticated ‘automated’ search engines around it still has a crack commando team of human experts checking content is suitable and meets its guidelines and dealing with those sites that don’t.

This YouTube video presented by Matt Cutts, a Search engineer at Google explains more about its search rank penalties.

The first in the process is the web spam team acting manually on flagged issue such as an adverse spam report or the discovery of off-topic porn within a site. Such issues are dealt with a “time-out” punishment, excluding that site from search results. These seem to be fairly arbitrary with Cutts suggesting those found guilty of using hidden text perhaps likely to get handed a time-out that expires after 30 days. Yet even the more serious offenders also get given a second chance. Found guilty of using cloaking and / or perhaps something more malicious and the time-out punishment will be longer but even that will expire at some point in time.

Yet every flag and manual intervention also improves the automated side of Google’s search. Learning all the time, the Google techies then try and use that information to update and improve their algorithims, to hopefully minimise the need for manual intervention in the future.

For those hit with a time-out the ‘suspension’ can also be brought to an end quicker. Clean the offending bits up, submit a re-consideration request and Google could lift the ban earlier.

The three minute video is an interesting insight into how Google is using human intervention to improve its already leading automated technology.

Have you been the subject of a Google time-out? Were you able to lift it easily?

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The latest IMRG Capgemini e-Retail Sales Index report out last week showed that the number of online transactions continues to rise as more and more people accept it as the quickest and easiest way of doing business. The report revealed a spend of £5.1 billion during January in total equating to a year-on-year increase of 21%

Unsurprisingly, in the dark weeks of the opening month of the year, there was much interest in people making future travel plans.  A year-on-year increase of 31% for the travel sector and a massive 173% increase on December 2010 meant more and more people surfing and clicking to sunnier climes. Interestingly, despite the economic times, the average basket value for travel sector transactions was also at its highest (£886) since the launch of monitoring of the sector in December 2008.

If going away was popular in the January spends, home was too. There was impressive growth too in the home and garden sector, after five months of annual decline. Up 56% year-on-year an average basket spend of £120 perhaps reflected the expected early spring after December’s snow.

It seems 2011 could be a much healthier year too. Alcohol sales in January declined by  67% after some strong Christmas spending.

You can read the full report here.

Are you spending more online? Are you noticing customers putting more faith in online transactions?

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Google go and change the rules…

Or rather, they re-interpret the rules.

This article shows an interesting move by Google to fiddle with site titles. It appears that no matter how well planned or thought out your site titles, maybe with enhanced SEO in mind, Google may change that when it appears in site listings, if the Google machine deems it’s own interpretation of your site is better.

Apparently, Google has been inundated with complaints over its stance but it is standing firm. Google’s Matt Cutts is quoted in the article as telling SEOs: “We reserve the right to try to figure out what’s a better title.”

So, all that you have learnt about SEO and the need for descriptive titles may have just gone out of the window if Google deems the title of your page to be ‘sub-optimal’!

It appears repetition of your title in keywords or header tags is a definite candidate for Google intervention but the biggest problem is not even Google appear to be clear on when, how and why a site’s title will appear differently in their rankings from the one included in the page meta-tags.

Have you been affected by Google’s intervention? Is this Google abusing it’s power or just some simple editorial control?

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Image: Tina Phillips / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

This blogger has been online for too many years to mention and one of my earliest ‘jobs’ was reviewing new websites submitted to a then leading search engine – oh how things have changed. So it is fair to say that I have come across websites about pretty much every subject under the sun, doing almost anything that is physically possible – and many things that are not.

However, the world of online still continues to amaze and excite with a prime example the details landing in my inbox of the launch of a new site today called Hauctions. Hauctions, I am led to believe is “an international horse auction site providing the world’s first automated online auction environment for trading animals”. Now I’ve been using online auction sites for as long as I’ve been online and seen many come and go, but I have to admit I don’t ever recall seeing an equine ebay-style site before.

Horse breeders and horse agents from across the world have united apparently to “drag the age old tradition of selling horses at auction into the modern age by using the internet to match the right horse to the right buyer at the right price, whether 50 or 5000 miles away”. The actually auctioning doesn’t commence until April but from today those with interest in selling and buying horses can pre-register with the site, and by doing so have a chance to ‘win’ a spanish horse.

I for one wish them well in the new venture, though I am not sure I presently have the need or desire to pre-register. I just wonder what will be next. Perhaps the trading of professional footballers in the next football transfer window?

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We’ve written before about the move by some providers to charge for content and suggested that before too long it will become the norm. This week that scenario came another step close with both Apple and Google announcing payment systems for subscription to online content.

Apple was first with a service for newspaper, magazine, music and video purchases through its App Store. Apple plan to take a hefty 30 per cent of the subscription charge, but publishers will be able to set prices and subscription length. The move follows an earlier Apple announcement that from 1 April this year  in-app subscription methods would need to be adopted, to drive traffic into the iTunes store. The aim was to stop publishers selling subscriptions only via their own websites, thus cutting Apple out of the deal. As a concession the new system will allow publishers to sell app subscriptions through their own websites thus bypassing Apple’s 30 per cent stake – however they will also have to offer subscriptions through Apple from within the app for the same price or less.

Following this announcement, Google has launched its own much whispered online payment service for newspaper and magazine content. Google One Pass aims to provide a single point of payment for content across a variety of websites. Publishers will again – like through the Apple system – be able to set their own prices and terms. However, instead of the 30% Apple charge, Google will only take 10 per cent of revenue. Google’s system appears to be the more flexible too with a variety of business models allowed including metered access such as a certain number of visits instead of a specific time period.

So with two payment systems in place, backed by two of the biggest names in the online world, the only barrier to more moving to paid content models simply appears to be consumer attitudes. In a tougher economic world, expect a lot more being done by publishers looking to change those attitudes.

Have you paid for content yet? Is the move to paid content now inevitable?

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Image: Suat Eman / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Tesco do it, QR codes are perfect for it, FourSquare added another dimension to it, and it’s currently the buzzword amongst marketing and IT geeks worldwide.

Gamification is all-about taking the concept of game playing and putting it to use in non-game applications. “Making a chore fun” is one definition we have heard and seems to fit well. As Mary Poppins once said: “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the job and snap the job’s a game”. It is all about encouraging engagement from the customer to get them doing things they might not otherwise be motivated to do, but are moved to take part in because it is fun and exciting.

In an obvious way the location-based systems like Foursquare, Gowalla and Facebook Places have their success in gamification. Collecting badges, appearing on leaderboards, doing battle with other users, are all aspects of gamification.

As these applications took off, more and more marketeers began introducing the ‘game’ element as a way of increasing customer engagement. The end of 2010 saw gamification make real in-roads into the way marketeers thought and 2011 is set to see that further increase. Some say it is just a new name for an old trick – the tradition of happy hour in pubs is often cited, getting people to join in at a certain time at a certain location – but certainly gamification appears to be a hit with the younger generation looking for constantly evolving methods of entertainment. Indeed it is such a buzz-word that the first Gamification Summit held in California in Janaury this year was a sell out.

With brand-leaders like Tesco plugging its own gamification – their iphone app encourages you to scan items from your cupboard to put in your next online order – the concept is only set to grow. With reward point and loyalty cards already fully embraced by consumer culture, gamification would keep us entertained for a while yet, while helping under pressure marketeers increase customer engagement.

The phone app is likely to be the driving force begin this too. The level and diversity of information now available continues to grow and more and more developers are finding new ways to incorporate these into apps that make the information fun but informative. For example, Chromaroma is a game that allows London commuters to track their journeys and score points, while creating a colourful visualisation based on their use of their Pay as you Go Oyster card. Their travel habits are plotted in a Chromatic pattern, with points earned for making the trip quicker or varying their route.

Are you hooked by gamification? Does it really change spending habits?

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Last week we blogged about how the latest technology was still vulnerable to security attacks and this week it appears that too many are forgetting traditional threats are still around.

According to a report released last month by Akamai Technologies Inc an increased number of cyber-attacks are being made via the port traditionally used for Telnet activity. The quarterly report on global Internet traffic revealed that 10% of attacks from mobile networks during 2010′s third quarter were directed at Port 23, which Telnet uses.
Secure Shell, or SSH have pretty much replaced Telnet as a means of accessing servers remotely and many administrators now disable the Telnet port as a precaution. However, many also overlook this and it appears hackers are using this oversight to exploit systems worldwide.

Interestingly, Telnet’s Port 23 was “overwhelmingly the top targeted port for attacks” in Egypt, Peru and Turkey, according to Akamai’s report. The most targeted port however remains Port 445, commonly used for Microsoft products, although the number continues to decrease as security and awareness increases.

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As more and more and of us live our lives via our smartphones, the more appealing those phones become to thieves and criminals. News now reaches us of two security researchers who have been able to access saved passwords from iPhones previously locked with a password.

The two researchers from the Fraunhofer Institute for Secure Information Technology (SIT) Jens Heider and Matthias Boll, used a modified jailbreak to crack an iPhone 4 running iOS 4.2.1. The crack installed an SSH server which launches upon booting by-passing the passcode. Then usuing a simple script they were able to grab all saved passwords on the phone including those for Wi-Fi networks and VPNs.

The pair admitted certain data was inaccessible thanks to Apple’s latest security updates to iOS 4 but worrying their overall conclusion is that should an iPhone fall into the wrong hands, owners should change all passwords which are stored on the lost iPhone ASAP.

Does mobile security worry you? What security measures have  you taken to protect your mobile internet usage?

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