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:

Screen-Shot-2014-12-03-at-3.38.35-PM-800x494

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:

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ST_Android

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:

Thanksgiving-Day-2014-Google-Doodle

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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:

Screen Shot 2014-11-24 at 17.28.03

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Yahoo! Usurps Google as the Default Search Provider for Firefox

Firefox has been very busy updating itself as a Web Browser recently. Not long ago it announced an update to itself and also added support for DuckDuckGo to be a default browser.

With the news that Yahoo were going to be the default browser, they’ve changed the layout of their search results and it’s eery how similar they are to Google’s own results. Check out the images below:

Yahoo Results

Google Results

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Google Test New, Scrollable Quick Answers

For a while now Google has displayed “Quick Answers”. These are usually factual or instructional answers. All the while Google has offered these answers, they have only offered one.

Now it seems like that is to change with Google adding a quick answer slider so you can scroll through results. Check out the two formats below:

What do you think to the new layout?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Finally Announce Launch of Mobile Friendly Labels in Listings

We all know that Google have been testing mobile friendly and none mobile friendly labels for search results. They initially tested out different formats such as icons and then written labels.

Well now, in an official blog post, they’ve confirmed the support is rolling out. They’ve added some best practices, an example mobile friendly listing and even a mobile friendly testing tool.

Check out the example image Google sent out:

They also offered a bit of advice on what you can do to get these labels and advise that your website will get the mobile friendly label if it:

Avoids software that is not common on mobile devices, like Flash

Uses text that is readable without zooming

Sizes content to the screen so users don’t have to scroll horizontally or zoom

Places links far enough apart so that the correct one can be easily tapped

They’ve even released a tool that can use to test your mobile website friendliness.

Net66 Qualifies as Mobile friendly, does your site?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

New Google Easter Egg Responds to Hodor!

Hodor is a character from the ubiquitously popular book series A Song of Ice and Fire and TV series A Game Of Thrones. Hodor is a character who, much like a Pokemon, can only say Hodor. Everyone refers to Hodor as Hodor, even though his actual name is Walder.

In recognition of this character, Google have released a little Easter Egg celebrating the popularity of Hodor’s speech. Simply type or talk “Hodor” into your Google browser and you’ll get a response from the man himself. Check it out:

Are you a fan of this new Easter Egg from Google? For all you web developers out there, here’s a bonus Hodor Ipsum Generator.

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Launches A New Google Doodle In Celebration of the Philae Satellite Probe

If you’ve ever sat in the office and managed to throw a piece of rubbish/balled up piece of paper 10 yards into the nearest bin and celebrated (we all have), then the achievement of the Rosetta Mission last night will have blown your mind.

I know it can be a difficult throw to make what with office distractions and the potential of fan heaters knocking it of course, but just listen to the shot the European Space Agency made last night.

In 2004, that’s 10 years ago now, the Rosetta mission was launched. It has since travelled 6.4 Billion kilometres, swinging round the Earth twice and round Mars once in the process, to land on an object that’s travelling at around 18 km/s. Shot!

In honour of this great achievement, Google launched an animated doodle today with a space themed font and an animation of the Philae lander too. Check it out below:

philae

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Surf Google Like a Boss! Do you Know These Hidden Commands? [Infographic]

We all know of certain Google Easter Eggs. Those rare phrases you get that, when typed into Google, have a funny affect on our favourite search engine. They have quite a few of these trigger phrases such as askew, Zerg Rush, Atari Breakout and Kerning.

You also get seasonal Easter Eggs that appear around certain holidays.

But what you may not know is that some of these hidden commands are actually very useful. Whilst not technically hidden, a lot of these commands aren’t widely know. For example, the use of two full stops between two different years or prices tells Google to search for results within this range. Perfect for if you need a new phone and have a set budget. You could search for “Latest Smartphones £200..£300” which would bring up results for the latest smartphones, but only those costing between £200 & £300.

Check out the full infographic below for more useful tips:

Blog Post by Greg McVey

Net66: Are Apple Launching a Google Search Competitor?

A developer recently found a bot crawling his website and found that that bot originated from Apples servers. Check out the below:

Apple have most recently partnered with Bing who provides suggestions to users of Apple’s new OSX Yosemite version of Spotlight. Again, check out below:

So do you think Apple will launch their own search engine in earnest?

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

Net66: Google Launches New Redesigns Maps App to Boost Local Search

Yelp and Tripadviser dominate a lot of the local search listings. If you’re looking for a nice local restaurant with good reviews, the websites above are probably the most prevalent out there in regards to reviews.

That’s something Google wants to stop. Not because they’re doing a bad job, in fact the opposite. Yelp & TripAdvisor are doing great and Google wants a slice of that pie.

They’re aiming to make their maps app so useable that rather than load up Yelp or TripAdvisor for the latest reviews of the local restaurants, you open up maps and search that way.

Check out the new look below:

Blog Post by: Greg McVey

How are SEO Agencies Doing in the Industry? [Infographic]

Take a look at the below infographic, put together by Linkbird, that takes and in depth look at the state of SEO Agencies in the current climate:

Blog Post: Greg McVey