However, with the industry in such a furious tailspin two months since the update’s inevitable roll-out in the UK, what has been the actual impact of Panda?  SEO forums are awash with Lovecraftian horror yarns of sites losing as much as 60% of their overall visits as a direct result of Panda’s swiping claw, all desperate for a quick-win; some expert-led cement to fill the cracks in their equally quick-win campaigns. And who can blame them? After all, such significant losses in traffic in the long term could be attributable to bankruptcy, particular for smaller companies who lack the necessary budget to engage in wide scale social media campaigns and content strategies.

Perhaps most disturbing is that in some cases, scraper sites are still outranking the very sites they’re scraping from – proof that Google’s been too quick in rolling out Panda; compounded by their recent backtracking and slurry of decimal point ‘updates’, all promising to ensure a more consistent vision of the SERPS and justice served to the original publishers of online content. However, more than 80% of webmasters hit by Panda claim to have seen no uplift or improvement despite making positive changes to affected pages. Google has asserted that no manual exceptions have or will be made in the near future, meaning these webmasters will have to sit tight until justice is automated – a definite contradiction in terms, but one the wider ecommerce community will just have to settle with.

There’s no doubt that the playing fields needed be levelled, and Google’s deep clean of the index has been warmly welcomed by the majority of a webmaster community tired of seeing the same boilerplate articles, duplicate content and ten-for-a-penny press releases. Those affected by the updates will be frantic, but provided they move into a more robust content model which focuses more on usefulness, authority and shareability, the traffic they once enjoyed will undoubtedly return. There’d be no long-term benefit in Google making manual exceptions to those who deserve it at this point, as doing so would serve to undermine the algorithm and make a lot of angry people even angrier. Far better is to continue to abide by the Webmaster Guidelines, resist the temptation to engage in quick win strategies (there’s a LOT of dubious SEO companies out there licking their lips after Panda) and get to work on improving their individual social channels and content strategies – particularly in terms of how they’re engaging their visitors.

The Panda Panic has been caused by both Google’s heavy handed approach and inexperienced webmasters’ inability to see the clearer path, but as long as brands and SEO’s continue to keep their noses clean, I’m sure we’ll all soon be able to breathe a huge sigh of relief, giving the Panda a big poke in the eye with a big social stick of content flavoured bamboo.

Although it looks like most links from these sites have been devalued, we’ve yet to hear of any personal stories of Panda penalties yet, though they’re sure to be on the way. Gulp.

Found in the “right-hand column” of some Facebook pages, for me they seem to appear in the Private Message area only. Quite a cool feature that adds a kind of historical timeline to your profile – might take you back down “Memory Lane” (sounds a bit crass as FB has only been going for 7/8 years)… The longer you have been friends with someone, from what I can gather, the more likely and more updates you’ll see.

Apparently they tested this in Dec 2010 and Jan 2011 for only a few hours at a time, but I think it might be staying put now.

Here’s an example from my profile:

My mate Stuart's memorable quips - not exactly who I'd call the "model citizen"..

Finite internal resources and an exhaustive list of mission-critical projects compete around-the-clock while external pressure mounts to provide Markets with news of positive results and appease shareholders with favourable dividends.

It is relatively easy to see when an organisations’ goal state is to just “ship”.  The sentiment permeates into website performance and it becomes evident in the web analytics data as funnel drop-off reports confirm a “leaky bucket”.  The tangible post-launch disappoint is testament to the fact that website content is rarely perfect the first time around.

Fortunately, there are many ways to mitigate the risk of visitor abandonment and one of the best results-driven approaches utilised on Client websites in the past is Landing Page Optimisation (LPO).   Embracing the theory of continual improvement, LPO takes a longer term approach to success than just “go-live” and targets key website pages for enhancement.

Recently, I had the pleasure of being invited to attend a LPO webinar organised by Paras Chopra who is the brainchild behind Visual Web Optimiser – an A/B Testing product that is creating quite a stir in the market place.  With complimentary speakers from Gazehawk and ConversionVoodoo this session provided a great introduction to inspire any business to move past the release goal line and into a state of perpetual optimisation.

Here are some of the golden nuggets that were shared for Landing Page Optimisation:

• Speed matters! For every 4 seconds page load time, website conversion is halved. Razorfish Tip: Start today and measure key pages performance with a free Firefox plug-ins like YSlow. Don’t forget, every second counts when a visitor is trying to convert.
• Size matters! Optimise web page layout for visitors’ browser resolution and not your design teams’ high end Mac’s.Razorfish Tip: Pull a “visitor technology” report from your web analytics tool to find the best browser resolution for website visitors. *If you haven’t already, it might be worth excluding internal IP addresses so they don’t skew the data set.
• Trust matters! Build confidence first and then pitch – Think about putting a customer endorsement before the “sales” message. Razorfish Tip: Finding usable and positive customer statements should be easy. Start searching online but, don’t be afraid to use customer support call centre sound bites either.
• Red matters! The optimal sweet spot for horizontal page content is 300-500 pixels.  Seeing red isn’t always bad as ConversionVoodoo demonstrated with their overlay image based on Jakob Nielson’s research.Razorfish Tip: First find out how your landing page sizes up with Google Browser Size and then go have the “below-the-fold” conversation with the design team.

If that has stirred your curiousity, you can watch the webinar in all its full glory here

And remember, don’t just ship – Optimise!

Over the weekend I spoke to my friends about their Internet habits and it turned out that we all have similar behaviours. We have up to five sites that we check every day, typically: Facebook, Twitter, a news site, a hobby site and something related to our profession (mine is NMA). Also, if we are looking to purchase an item we go directly to the site using the URL bar, typing in the full address. Google usage is fairly limited and often used simply to search for images or to answer that inane question which has come up in conversation and undoubtedly leads to the phrase: “let me Google it and you will see I’m right!”
However, those I know from the older generation seem to be developing a much broader experience of the internet. They seek information, find the deals, scratch further beneath the surface. They are no longer downloading the Pizza Express 2 for 1 offer from www.pizzaexpress.com, but printing off the buy six pizzas and pay nothing deal on www.obscurewebsite.com , found whilst routing around page four of the Google search results. (Personally, I haven’t scrolled below the fifth result on the list for at least three years.)
Maybe it’s because they have more time, maybe they are less frivolous with money (they have seen two recessions and survived both after all). Maybe it’s just those of us who have been Googling consistently for the last fifteen years have become lazy, and the over fifties have caught us up and learnt from our mistakes. As they say, slow and steady wins the race!

Either way I know that tonight I spent £5 pounds on a vegetable moussaka from Tesco’s and that my Mum and her friend are sharing two pizzas and a bottle of wine for £2.50 per head. I also know that Vonnie will continue to know more about hotels in Ealing than me.
As far as Brands are concerned this demographic needs to be taken seriously. Flashy display images that catch the attention of twenty-somethings may not work for those over fifty. They need some depth to the claims of cheap car insurance. Now, they will continue to look around and find out that the insurance might be cheap but the service is poor compared to the expensive insurer who looks after all your needs.

Would it be like an Urchin-Google Analytics love-child with the best bits from each gene pool and could Google finally provide a better support platform for the product (a major gripe from the ‘free’ user base).

The launch of Google Analytics in late 2005, gave many people access to the new world of web analytics for the first time and came with the added bonus of tracking integration with Search. Although, the new paint job on Urchin’s user interface was appreciated, the need to have (hosted) data storage at Google didn’t sit comfortably with everyone – namely, Germany and other small financial institutions.  The subsequent re-launch of Urchin addressed privacy concerns by enabling on-site data collection and provided additional product features not found in Google Analytics like historical data reprocessing.

The debate amongst the legacy players about what constitutes ‘enterprise’ in the web analytics industry shows no signs of abating and suggests a degree of complacency has crept into the mix. The fact remains that the introduction of a ‘free’ analytics offering into the web analytics market has substantially increased its size and is not dissimilar to way a DVD format transformed a dwindling the home entertainment [video] market.

Perhaps, mergers and acquisitions have taken priority over product innovation in recent months and there is latent appetite in the market for the introduction of a robust paid-for enterprise level solution. Whether or not the Google offering is able to stand toe-to-toe with the existing ‘enterprise’ players is yet to be seen but, provided there is sufficient support infrastructure in place it is certain to make a splash.

The move is seen as part of a growing trend with consumers increasingly using their mobile phones instead of credit cards – with Orange expected to introduce NFC-enabled sim cards to the UK later this year where users will be able to pay for items using their mobile by swiping it across a wireless reader. In addition, Apple’s iPad and iPhone are expected to include a mobile payments feature.

Places is a relatively new offering from the search giants that is set up for those customers, like me, who need to find the nearest bar with football on…or other local businesses that meet your needs.

Through the places addition on their search page, situated at the top right of the screen, Google aim to make their offering a far more Glocal affair. Places, claim Google, connects people to essential information on locations within their vicinity by collecting reviews, facts, map points and even photos from across the web aimed specifically to the users’ location through Geo Targeting.

Oh, and make no mistake, for location-based businesses there are plenty of benefits to glean.

Benefits for local businesses:
• An opportunity to drive more customers to local stores
• You don’t have to be a giant to advertise on this space, all businesses can make use of Google Places
• Places offers local businesses a way of competing with nearby megastores who could see a fall in places rank fall if customers post negative reviews
• Google lets business owners post real time updates to the shop listing, useful if you want to promote an offer or event

So, if you’ve ever wondered where the best places were in a local area, or where the football is on, you just need to type a query into Google and you’re away.

You may wonder why I have addressed the absolute obvious at the start of this blog post, but I believe that it is important to remember the whole point of social media communications – that you should be talking to your audience at the right time, through the right communications points with the right messages. This brings me on nicely to KLM’s latest social media communications idea.

KLM recently had the natty idea of using FourSquare check-in service and combining it with a bit of detective work to give customers a free gift. I know this idea might send the privacy bods into a frenzy of data protection questions & terms and conditions booklet, but truth be told what KLM is doing appears on the surface to be all above board.

The way the idea works is KLM takes note of passengers that check-in using FourSquare at various KLM locations around the world, such as departure lounges, baggage claim areas, ticket offices, etc. Using freely available data from Facebook, Twitter, linked-in it tries to understand more about that person so that they can give them a tailored free gift before they board their flight. The gift idea appears to be a two way street as KLM gets a quick picture of the lucky passenger along with a short story about what happened and why the received the gift that they did.

KLM recently ran another social media promotion which allowed Facebook users to incorporate pictures from their profile into plastic luggage tags, which were then sent them before they departed.

A lot of the hype around social media is down to how businesses can drive increased sales through these channels, which is why social media communications usually just end up as a relentless torrent of promotions and reasons why you should buy their product. Be careful that your business doesn’t fall into the trap of just talking to your customers with out actually taking the time to listen to what they have to say. KLM has managed to get this part of their social media strategy just right as they are talking to their customers at the right time, through the right communications channels whilst exposing their brand through their own brand evangelists and their social graphs.

My boyfriend is currently on gardening leave from his job and has all the time in the world to question my work hours, junk food intake and reality TV viewing.   He often asks why I care so much about what I do and I why I exert so much energy while doing it.  “ I mean it’s not like you are saving babies…it’s digital media ”  (p.s.  I cannot wait until he goes back to work so I can quote that exact same line when stuff hits the fan at his new job and he’s tired and cranky).  He’s right….we are not saving babies nor helping world peace nor fighting against Sarah Palin.  BUT I do think our Razorfish team is doing things that are changing the industry and helping beloved brands create experiences for their consumers AKA us.  I know that every digital agency would say the same about their own team, but they are lying.    Well not lying exactly, but I can say that I’ve never seen such commitment, exciting ideas and high quality of work come out of one group of 20/30 somethings than I’ve seen here at Razorfish.   I’ve very proud to be a part of this team and I’ve promised myself to go home today at 6pm sharp and ensure I never wear sun glasses to work again.  Well actually…it kind of makes me look like Cheryl Cole (minus the 23” waist and horrible hand tattoo…I mean what is that?).