Tug Search Engine Marketing Blog

Google Makes Changes to Search Results Page Layout

David — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 11:04:37 +0000

Google have made a slight change to the search engine results page layout, they have decreased the size of the Google logo (next to the search box) and increased the left padding on the results, giving the results page a more spacious look and feel. Could this be due to a new design altogether? or just a slight change? Post your comments and let us know what you think this is for…

You Know You Work in Search When You…

David — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:35:21 +0000

You know you work in search when you:

1. have more logins than you do pairs of socks.

2. friended Danny Sullivan before you met him.

3. don’t think you’re a Cuttlet.

4. typically have at least 3 different browsers open simultaneously.

5. have considered dating a college student/education professional to get links.

6. grocery shop and think “my average CPC is higher than that apple/steak/wine bottle.”

7. get really excited when your map overlay is light green in a 3rd world country…..

Read the rest here.

Bing vs Google - Catalyst Group Study

David — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 10:20:15 +0000

Catalyst Group have performed a study on Google vs Bing, the results came out with the majority of searchers preffering Bing’s Search Interface over that of Googles. Altough searchers preffered the Bing Interface, they still choose to stick to the search engine they are familar with, which ofcourse is Google. See below for the presentation, showcasing the results:

Catalyst Group Bing V. Google Usability Study -

Adobe Officially Announces Flash for Android

David — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 15:10:38 +0000

HTC have just announced their long awaited Android phone known as the ‘HTC Hero’, just after they released details of the new phone a video and press release poppped up on the Adobe website. This video shows Adobe Flash being used on the new Android HTC Hero handset, this is a long awaited feature for Smart phone users and great news for Google’s Android smartphone platform. The press release also details further, Adobes support for the Android platform. See below for a quote from the press release:

““As the first Android device with Flash, the new HTC Hero represents a key milestone for Android and the Flash Platform. With close to 80 percent of all videos online delivered with Adobe Flash technology, consumers want to access rich Web content on-the-go.” said David Wadhwani, vice president and general manager, Platform Business Unit at Adobe. “The collaboration with HTC offers people a more complete Flash based Web browsing experience today and presents an important step towards full Web browsing with Flash Player 10 on mobile phones in the future….””

Read the full press release.

Watch the original video.

Coca-Cola Admits to Failing to Keep Up With Social Media

David — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 16:52:50 +0000

NMA report that Coca Colas VP of global advertising strategy, Jonathan Mildenhall, has admitted to not keeping up with the Social Media but plans to increase its social media exposure. See below for a quote:

“Speaking at the international advertising festival Cannes Lions 2009, Mildenhall admitted the multi-national corporation had been slow to embrace UGC and social media.

“We’ve been really nervous about user-generated content and, in terms of other brands in the space, we’re playing catch-up,” he said…”

Read more here. Contact Tug today for a bespoke social media campaign!

Google Update Flash Indexing Capabilities

David — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 11:50:44 +0000

Google have updated their flash indexing tools, with the ability to load external resources. See below for a quote from the Google Blog:

“We just added external resource loading to our Flash indexing capabilities. This means that when a SWF file loads content from some other file—whether it’s text, HTML, XML, another SWF, etc.—we can index this external content too, and associate it with the parent SWF file and any documents that embed it.

This new capability improves search quality by allowing relevant content contained in external resources to appear in response to users’ queries…”

Orthodox Jews Launch Koogle.co.il

David — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 17:18:58 +0000

As you may or may not know, devout Jews are banned by their rabbis from surfing the internet. Now a group of jews have released a new search engine called Koogle, of which rabbis have allowed Jews to view. See below for a quote from a Reuters article:

“The site, at www.koogle.co.il, omits religiously objectionable material, such as most photographs of women which Orthodox rabbis view as immodest, Altman said.

Its links to Israeli news and shopping sites also filter out items most ultra-Orthodox Israelis are forbidden by rabbis to have in their homes, such a television sets.

“This is a kosher alternative for ultra-Orthodox Jews so that they may surf the Internet,” Altman said by telephone….“

MySpace Cuts Staff By Third in US Offices

David — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:32:54 +0000

MySpace laid off 420 employees in its US offices yesterday with more cuts in its international divisions and other News Corp Fox Interactive Media (Fim) properties expected to come.

The cuts, making up about a third of its staff, had been rumoured for a number of weeks and affect all divisions of the company.

MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta said the layoffs will help it “operate as a nimble and entrepreneurial company with the adaptive mentality of a start-up”…Read the rest at Brand Republic

Matt Cutts Talks Page Sculpting

David — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:28:20 +0000

People think about PageRank in lots of different ways. People have compared PageRank to a “random surfer” model in which PageRank is the probability that a random surfer clicking on links lands on a page. Other people think of the web as an link matrix in which the value at position (i,j) indicates the presence of links from page i to page j. In that case, PageRank corresponds to the principal eigenvector of that normalized link matrix…read the rest at Matts Blog.

Microsoft Act on Click Fraud

David — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 16:25:53 +0000

New York Times reports that Microsoft have filed it’s first law suit against 3 men over Click Fraud. Microsoft are seeking atleast atleast $750,000 in damages. The law suit is agianst Eric Lam, Gordon Lam and Melanie Suen, of Vancouver, British Columbia, along with several other corporation names they were believed to have used, and several unnamed parties. Tim Cranton, the Associate General Counsel for Microsoft had the following to say:

“We have decided to become more active in the commercial fraud area on the enforcement side. The theory is you can change the economics around crime or fraud by making it more expensive.”