From Google Dance to Penguin in fifteen years
Net66 says: ‘Prepare for Penguin’
Only 24 indexing days till Christmas – and 31 till 2016
Winter has come to Manchester courtesy of Storm Clodagh. For December, it is usually colder in these parts, but the weather has been more autumnal. This apart from 80 mph winds in nearby Rochdale and Denton and heavy rain throughout the UK. At this moment, too warm for seeing penguins in Albert Square, yet Olaf and Elsa managed to appear in Stalybridge (but that was for a Christmas lights switch-on). Continue reading “Net66 says: ‘Prepare for Penguin’”
Cyber Monday: Safe Shopping Tips
Be Careful Out There…
Following the hubbub of Black Friday comes its other companion: Cyber Monday. It is so called owing to great numbers of online transactions made that day. The likes of Amazon, eBay and countless other online retailers make most of their money over November and December. Continue reading “Cyber Monday: Safe Shopping Tips”
Net66 Would Like to Thank Our Client
Net66 like to be there for our clients and strive to go above and beyond what “traditional companies” would do. We never ask for anything in return other than a continued business relationship.
That’s why it’s always nice when we receive something back from our clients. The Space Collective have been working with Net66 for years now and enjoy a great relationship with ourselves. We’ve presided over the rebuild of two of their websites and successfully optimise both of them. Continue reading “Net66 Would Like to Thank Our Client”
Net66: Typically Irish Google Doodle for St Patricks Day
As we all know Google LOVES making Doodles. None more so for special occasions and what a special occasion it is today.
Today, if you’re unaware, is St Patrick’s Day. St Patrick is the best know Patron Saint of Ireland and observations are held every year on the anniversary of his death to remember him. Or, if you’re a more modern observer of St Patrick’s Day, to make everything Green and drink Guiness until you’re…well, green.
Google are celebrating a bit more conservatively than the vast majority of people and has published an animated .gif of 6 little four leaf clovers having themselves a merry little jig. Continue reading “Net66: Typically Irish Google Doodle for St Patricks Day”
Whiteboard Friday: Keep Calm and #followrand
In our series review of Moz we are calling “Keep Calm and #followrand” today we are going to look at Whiteboard Friday.
In itself Whiteboard Friday is a genius of an idea in terms of marketing but profoundly simple, some guy (usually Rand but not always) stands in front of a whiteboard, on the whiteboard there is the topic of conversation for the week and the guy (or girl) will talk through the content on the Whiteboard for usally around 10 mins and it’s published every Friday, hence Whiteboard Friday. In terms of topic Moz will take an online marketing subject, any subject be it SEO, Social, Analytics or Sales Funnels.
What I’m most grateful for from Whiteboard Friday is I seldom have time to just stop and actually start a journey that ends up with learning something and think strategically about what I am doing. Unfortunately in an SEO environment the overwhelming majority of your time is spend doing SEO which leaves little time for keeping up to date which is critical in such a fast paced industry which most of you will understand. That all makes time itself a precious resource. Unless Google have just done a mammoth algorithm update, which is actually a great name for an Algorithm Update (hint, hint!) some weeks there isn’t enough think time in the week to begin to look at ‘what’s happened on planet SEO in the last 7 days?’ Continue reading “Whiteboard Friday: Keep Calm and #followrand”
Keep Calm & #followrand
Tweet
Introducing our “Keep Calm and #followrand” graphic. Each of the four images +1 can be uniquely downloaded (see the links at the end). Inspired by Rand Fishkin’s very English looking twirly moustache. Partly a touch of very English humour but also more seriously both by the prominence of Rand and Moz within the SEO community, so we thought we’d run a series of posts to review the top 5 features of Moz with the graphic to promote the series.
For those of who who don’t know, other than stating where have you been? Mr Rand Fishkin himself has been a vital personality in the SEO sphere for many years, indeed I remember hearing Rand speak at a SMX conference years back while I was just a wee bright eyed and bushy tailed SEO freelancer. Rand started Moz, or what was called SEOMoz back then and now is no doubt the premier suite of SEO tools available to SEO’s and non-SEO’s alike. We also quite liked the notion of promoting Rand’s Britishness, although of course (and sadly) he’s not British!
We’ll be publishing a series of reviews with what we think are the best 5 features of Moz and we’ll also be writing some follow up pieces. The SEO sphere has been shaken in the last couple of years, particularly though not exclusively by the Penguin updates. For me personally Moz has always been a place of stability in all of the chaos that working in SEO involves. Continue reading “Keep Calm & #followrand”
Net66: Google Releases Annual “A Year In Search Video” Check Out These Trends
Google has taken a look at the past years search and put together a nifty little web page and video looking at all of the search trends in 2014.
One of the trends Google focused on was Sport. And what a year for sport it has been. There’s been the World Cup, the Sochi Games, La Decima and more.
In fact one of the questions that trended most in 2014 was “What is La Decima?”, which is, of course, the 10th European Cup/Uefa Champions League Cup for Real Madrid. They finally won their 10th trophy with the last one coming in the 2001/02 season over 10 years ago.
Off the topic of Sport there were the more serious trending topics such as ebola and the Malaysian Airlines plane that vanished into thin air.
Ebola caused the 5th highest spike in search traffic in October this year, despite initial reports of Ebola all the way back in March. This coincided with the virus’ first appearance in Spain and most likely had the whole of Europe searching on the topic. Continue reading “Net66: Google Releases Annual “A Year In Search Video” Check Out These Trends”
Net66: Google Releases Festive Search Bars
Google LOVES a doodle, and this year it looks like they’re not letting the chance to throw one out there get away. They’ve already released a feature rich Santa Tracker, and now they’ve updated their search bars for queries relating to Christmas, Kwanzaa and Hanukkah (Chanukkah).
These bars are triggered when either of the seasons festivals are included in a search string. Check them out below of search for yourself. [Christmas] [Hanukkah] [Kwanzaa] Continue reading “Net66: Google Releases Festive Search Bars”
Net66: Google Launches Mobile Friendly Snippets for All Languages
A few weeks back Google announced the launch of mobile friendly labels for searches on mobile devices.
Today, they’ve announced support for all languages. Check out the results below: Continue reading “Net66: Google Launches Mobile Friendly Snippets for All Languages”
Net66: Penguin Goes Panda, Moves to Continuous Updates
There’s been quite a bit or furore over the latest penguin algorithm. Initially it rolled out, and then continued to roll out even over Thanksgiving which Google usually tries to avoid doing.
It now seems that there will be no “end” to the algorithm rollout. A Google Spokesperson has today confirmed that the rollout of Penguin will be continuous.
Here’s what they had to say:
That last big update is still rolling out — though really there won’t be a particularly distinct end-point to the activity, since Penguin is shifting to more continuous updates. The idea is to keep optimising as we go now.
This means that we’re likely to stop getting updates from Google when they do update the algorithm. As we all know Google stopped confirming Panda updates some while ago. And now it looks like they’re set to do the same for Penguin. Continue reading “Net66: Penguin Goes Panda, Moves to Continuous Updates”
Net66: Google Breaks Unwritten Rule with Penguin Update
Google is not a blank faced corporate entity that only cares about its profits and not at all about the user. Well, maybe a little. But it has always maintained that it will try not to release huge updates around holidays. Check out one of Matt Cutt’s Tweets from just before Christmas last year:
@Bessian Actually, we try to minimize major updates right before the holidays.
— Matt Cutts (@mattcutts) December 18, 2013
Reason being, if you’re away Christmas and Google release an update, it could be a few days before you find out exactly what has gone on and even longer to fix it. Which is unfair surely?
That didn’t stop Google releasing a huge huge Penguin update on Thanksgiving. Our poor American cousins eh.
Google have attempted to deny they intentionally set an update going before the holidays, they say that the update was part of the ongoing release of Penguin 3.0 that started over 6 weeks ago. Continue reading “Net66: Google Breaks Unwritten Rule with Penguin Update”
Net66: Yahoo Search Share Jumps to Almost 30% on Firefox
We’ve announced previously that the default search engine for Firefox has switched from Google to Yahoo. The resulting traffic boost has been huge for Yahoo with a reported 29.4% increase of searches on their search engine from Firefox users.
This was rolled out with the automatic upgrade from Firefox 33 to Firefox 34 and analytics firm Statcounter have released the following information:
They also added:
Yahoo search was used three times more on Firefox 34 than on Firefox 33.
Continue reading “Net66: Yahoo Search Share Jumps to Almost 30% on Firefox”
Net66: Google Launches This Years Santa Tracker
Google has today launched they’re annual Santa Tracker. As if the excitement of getting to open your Advent Calendar for a whole two days now wasn’t enough, you can now count down the days to Christmas Eve and the start of Santa’s journey online.
Check out the video below:
There’s also a whole host of festive games to play, along with some educational sections too. Including one that looks at the different Christmas Traditions around the world.
Check out the images below of some of the great features of this years tracker:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Google Doodles: Thanksgiving & St Andrews Day Celebrated
Google loves its doodles and at Net66, we do too. Check out the latest two celebrating St Andrews Day for Scotland and Thanksgiving for American users:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Net66: Tumblr Edges our Instagram and Pinterest as the fastest growing Social Media Network
A recent report into Social Media & Social Networks revealed quite a few facts to us. Most of which were very surprising.
For instance, although Pinterest leads the field of overall new signups, a massive increase of 57% new user signups, Tumblr remains the fastest grown Social Network by having a large increase of active users. In fact, their active user base more than doubled as it grew a massive 120%.
The surprising lackey in this report is actually Facebook. Which might shock you at first but then you realise that all your friends are already on Facebook. With a user base of 1 Billion people already, there can hardly be exponential growth there can there?
In terms of Apps, Snapchat was by the leader here with a 56% growth, followed by Instagram and Facebook Messenger. Facebook Messenger has probably only done so well because Facebook effectively forced us to use it. No kidding. Remember when your messages stopped working on your Facebook App? And what did you download to fix this? Exactly, Facebook Messenger.
Although Facebook still is the biggest Social Network out there, it will be facing a lot of competition. As in the case of Snapchat this year, it looks like Facebook can no longer just buy its competition, even despite acquiring Instagram.
The report had this to say on Facebook:
Firstly, people are growing tired of it, with 50% of members in the UK and US saying that they’re using it less frequently than they used to (rising to 64% among teens)… Since the start of 2013, we’ve seen behaviors like sharing photos and messaging friends fall by around 20 percentage points.
You can check out the full report here.
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Net66: Google Takes Action on Polish Link Network
Today Google announced that they have taken manual actions against a link network in Poland. You can see the Tweet confirming this below:
Today Google took action on a large link network in Poland.
— Karolina Kruszyńska (@karo_krus) November 24, 2014
There was a lot of speculation about which link network was targeted but now it seems that Prolink.pl was the network penalised. They actually confirmed it via a post on Facebook later. Check out the post:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
Latest Google Doodle Celebrates the Life and Works of Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec-Monfa, more commonly know as Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, was a painter from the late 1800s who was celebrated for his colourful work in Paris.
Along with Vincent Van Gogh, Henri was one of the most famous artists from the post-impressionist era and is well know for his colourful works of the life of Parisians and the City itself. Check out the doodle below:
Blog Post by: Greg McVey
