Archive for the ‘Industry’ Category

Larry Page taking control: reorganizes Google management and bonus system

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It’s not even taken Larry Page one week in his new role as CEO to make big changes to how Google works. We already heard of the departure of executive Jonathan Rosenberg earlier this week, but now news has come out that Page has a major reorganization of his management team on Thursday.

Page put executives in charge of individual business units at Google, reporting straight to Page himself. Several executives have made a promotion, including Andy Rubin (became senior vice president of mobile) and Vic Gundotra (became senior vice president of social). (more…)

Can SEO companies be held responsible for counterfeit by their clients? Yes says judge

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Imagine this: a client comes up to you asking you to build them a new e-commerce website. Let’s say they are selling golf clubs. However, it turns out that the golfclubs were counterfeits, illegal copies of trademarked goods. Is that your problem?

No says an SEO company in the US, but yes, says judge Margaret B. Seymour of the U.S. District Court for South Carolina. She says the company “Bright Builders” was “guilty of contributory trademark infringement and unfair trade practices for allegedly assisting in the construction and hosting of the e-commerce site CopyCatClubs.com.”

And here comes the add on: the original owner of the website was fined $28,250. The company which build and SEO-ed the website however was ordered to pay $770,750 in statutory damages. Wow. (more…)

Why I’ve Stopped Defending SEO

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Yesterday I attended a fascinating lecture by Ben Hammersley, organised by the British council, about the future of the internet. Read my write-up of the lecture on the Pierce Communications blog here.

There was one small blemish on this otherwise superb evening. At one point an audience member – probably not coincidentally a grey-haired man wearing a checked shirt – in the course of asking a question, referred to SEO (with venom dripping from his voice as he pronounced the acronym) as “snake-oil” and the embodiment of all that was wrong with the corporatisation of the internet. (more…)

Google buys BeatThatQuote and is buying its way into the comparison market (Update)

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Comparison, it has one of the hottest subjects on the web for years. Try to compare a holiday and you’ll find tons of comparison websites. Try to compare one loan to another one and you will experience the same.

With Bing becoming a ‘decision’ engine it was only a matter of time before Google would be entering the market of comparison sites. After all, isn’t a search engine already a kind of comparison website?

With the acquisition of UK price comparison site BeatThatQuote (for £37.7m) Google has made a next step into the comparison market. And the game is on now. Sites like Go Compare and Compare the Market, who are now the major players, gained a huge competitor overnight. And if things go as planned for Google, within months they will be a major player on the comparison area for both financial and travel products, not surprisingly enough two areas which has a lot of money going around. But Google is moving on thin ice here.

<See update halfway through the post>

(more…)

Google Futuresight: Hotpot, AdWords and Robotic Cars

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This is a guestpost by Brandon Moreau – Webmaster for Citiguarda Sydney Security Company, and DelMonico Hatter, seller of Borsalino hats for over 100 Years. Opinions expressed in the article are those of the guest author and not necessarily State of Search. This article is the second of a series dealing with privacy, technology, and where we are all headed. Read part one here.

Brandon is simultaneously a Technophile and Techno-skeptic. He is an avid reader of Stateofsearch.com and is grateful to Bas for the opportunity to guest post on this topic.

Down the Rabbit Hole

Well ok, where do we go from here? What’s the true future of Search? (At least, my best guess?)

It’s fascinating to me, I’ve heard Eric Schmidt reference this more than once: “If you have a billion people using a platform, someone will find a way to monetize it.” (more…)

Dave Naylor about how search (not) sucks, Google and Bing

This weekend TechCrunch posted an article about how Search still sucks based on a story which came out through the New York Times last week in which a company was ‘caught’ buying links in Google. Arrington responded to this and Google’s attack on Bing last week by saying that search still sucks. It looked like linkbait from Arrington to me to be honest.

But there is a lot you can say about this, and a lot which will be said. We decided we would go to one of the experts on the matter to see how he feels about it. In the State of Search expert opinion we asked Dave Naylor about his views on the matter. He addressed Arrington’s article, but also the ‘battle’ between Bing and Google.

Industry News: SEO PR Training launches

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As you may know, one of my personal passions is teaching. I have a teaching degree and do a lot of training. For that reason I really like the news which is coming out today from one of our bloggers, Nichola Stott, and her business partner Claire Thompson.

The two specialists today announce they will launch a new joined venture: SEO PR Training. They will be offering “tailored SEO training to PR people and strategic media skills training to SEO practitioners.” The new company believes there is much work to do in the area of PR experts. (more…)

IPv6 and search – getting ready for the future

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Today we welcome a new blogger to our team: Martijn Beijk. Welcome Martijn, good to have you on board!

The Internet has integrated fully with our everyday live – some of us cannot live without. This has made (at least most of) us forget how the internet started to exist and what the underlying architecture is. Even with search we have to deal with the architecture of the Internet everyday.

Your computer is connected to the Internet via your Internet Service Provider or your router (which probably uses Network Address Translation) – which in its turn is connected to your ISP. You might be browsing via a proxy. Everything connected to the Internet uses an IP (Internet Protocol)  address. You might  not be aware that when you type in www.stateofsearch.com there is an extra service (DNS) translating the domainname to an IP address for you so you will not have to memorize all the  billions of numbers.

Not trying to get into too much technical detail, the IP addresses that are available in the IPv4 (version 4 of IP)  are now fully allocated. the last blocks have been depleted. none left. Time to look into the future, what can you expect. (more…)

SES London: the party is on (Wednesday)

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The first big SES conference of the year and the biggest one in Europe is getting closer and closer: SES London 2011. Which means you will see more and more coverage appearing about that conference right here on State of Search. And remember, you can still win a ticket if you nominate someone or someone nominates YOU for a ticket!

The conference which takes place between the 21st and 25th of February at the Queen Elizabeth II conference centre, in Westminster London, UK will see about 1500 marketers get together to learn about search, social and online marketing strategies. There are many sessions you can attend which are interesting to see, see the program here.

But one of the main reasons you should visit SES is the huge opportunity to network with not only these 1500 marketers, but also to get in touch with the experts in the field. Those who can help you get that step further. And there is no better place to that than in the pub! And that place to be is at the HMS President on the Wednesday 23rd of February. (more…)

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