Labelled Google Drive, the product will challenge the supremacy of established cloud service providers; Dropbox and Microsoft’s SkyDrive.

Google Drive initially offers 5GB (gigabytes) of free storage space to users. Customers can then pay for more space on a rising scale.

And although experts have questioned Google’s late arrival in the market, they are still expected to mount a huge challenge to established companies already providing this service.

16TB of storage can hold up to four thousand DVD quality feature length movies.

Live Your Life in the Cloud

Sundar Pichai, senior vice president of [Google] Chrome and Apps, released a blog post stating: “Today, we’re introducing Google Drive – a central place where you can create, share, collaborate and keep all of your stuff.

“Whether you’re working with a friend on a joint research project, planning a wedding with your fiancé or tracking a budget with roommates, you can do it in Drive.”

Users will be able to upload, manage and access photos, videos, documents and all other forms of digital paraphernalia to the virtual cloud.

Google Drive can be installed onto a PC or Apple Mac or downloaded to an Android phone or tablet. Google is working on an iPhone app for the Apple mobile operating system. They anticipate it being ready within weeks.

Users who are visually impaired can access Google Drive with the aid of a screen reader.

Hanns Kohler-Kruner from tech research company Gartner said:”Google Drive will hit some competitors very hard and shake up the market.

“It will also create another stream of more focused and potential ad revenue for Google around the content of personal files on Google Drive.”

Movies that have been uploaded to Google Drive will become available on Google+ boosting the appeal of the fledgling social network.

Fully Searchable Drive

Drawing on its search engine expertise, Google will hope to differentiate the service from others.

The Drive will be fully searchable by keyword and file type, activity or user. The service will also use OCR (optical character recognition) to recognise text in scanned documents.

This will allow users, for example, to search a scanned newspaper clipping for specific words in the newspapers articles.

Image recognition will also be possible in Google Drive.

“If you drag and drop photos from your Grand Canyon trip to Drive, the next time you search for Grand Canyon, photos of it will pop up,” said Sundar Pichai in the blog.

A user will get the first 5GB of storage free of charge.

After that customers can upgrade to 25GB for $2.49 (£1.50) a month, 100GB $4.99 a month, 1TB for $49.99 or 16TB for $799.99.

When users upgrade to a paid account, their Gmail account storage will automatically expand to 25GB.

Microsoft offers maximum yearly subscriptions of $50, this will buy 100GB of storage.

Dropbox customers can purchase up to 100GB at a rate of $19.99 per month or $199 per year. They also offer larger amounts of storage to groups of people. The amount of storage and costs are determined by how many users share the space.

Will Facebook Join the Fray?

As people look to access their digital content from a variety of places and devices the cloud service market place is likely to become ever more popular.

Dropbox pioneered the storage cloud concept, but now runs the risk of being undercut by its competitors.

Principal analyst at research company Ovum, Richard Edwards, commented that Google was “very late” to get on board but that its move could encourage others.

“Facebook doesn’t have a cloud service but this may prompt it into an acquisition,” he said.

“If Facebook was to buy Dropbox that would be a game-changer.”

As news of Google’s intentions spread, existing cloud providers overhauled their own systems.

Dropbox began to allow its customers to grant non-members access privileges to their files via email links. Before this both parties would have to be signed up to its service and share common folders.

Microsoft’s SkyDrive has now integrated the virtual drive into Windows Explorer and Apple’s Finder so that it can be used as an extension of the desktop.

Microsoft has also improved the capability to access content stored on the drive from iPads and iPhones as well as Windows Phone-based handsets.

As from May 26th 2012, the European Union’s Privacy and Communications Directive will mean that websites have to seek permission from their visitors before they can drop a cookie onto their computer’s hard drive.

Despite the impending deadline, when KPMG scrutinised the websites of 55 UK corporations, many of whom are FTSE 100 businesses, they found that most were still to implement the required changes, meaning that they run the risk of receiving a heavy fine that could be as much as £500,000. It was also disclosed by the IT manager’s association Socttm that public sector bodies and councils would also find it incredibly difficult to comply with the rulings.

KPMG found that, out of all the websites that were analysed, only one site gave its users the choice to opt out of having a cookie dropped on their hard drive. Two websites indicated that they were in the process of modifying their cookie policy to comply with the legislation, whilst two of the other sites did not use any cookies at all. KPMG carried out the survey in March 2012.

Stephen Bonner, a partner in the Information Protection and Business Resilience business team at KPMG, told Computer World UK: “With less than 50 days to go before enforcement, our analysis has found that the majority of UK organisations still need to complete substantial work to their websites.

“Whilst the majority of the websites we analysed made a reference to the use of cookies under either the terms and conditions or specific privacy policies, and some also state how the cookies are being used, this is not enough to ensure compliance with the directive.”

He continued: “Organisations now need to focus their efforts on establishing an inventory of their websites and the cookies currently in use, before evaluating their purpose and establish a pragmatic plan to ensure compliance.”

KPMG has encouraged organisations to make a start by implementing requests for consent that are related to registration, log-in and other comparable processes.

The Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) has said that it is ‘vital’ that corporations start to make changes to abide by the legislation, and have recommended new guidance by the International Chamber of Commerce UK.

“The results of this survey show that many websites still have work to do,” an ICO spokesperson said.

“Last week the ICO welcomed the UK guidance launched by the International Chamber of Commerce. We recognise that this guidance provides organisations with a good starting point from which they can work towards full compliance.

“We are also receiving positive feedback from websites who are already implementing new and innovative approaches aimed at making their websites compliant with the changes. We will be updating our own cookies guidance to ensure that best practice advice is shared across the industry.”

As well as established businesses, the legislation will affect anybody who has an affiliate website, displays Adsense adverts or runs third party analytics on their site to track user behaviour and visitor statistics such as Google Analytics. It is yet to be seen what the full impact of the legislation will be, but the digital team at HROC will be keeping an eye on developments and will update the blog with any further news regarding the EU ruling.

Panda was intended to stir things up, and it certainly managed to do just that. This blog will take a look at the implications of the Panda update and what Search Engine Optimisers have learned a year on.

Quality Counts

One of the main aims of the Panda update was to penalise low quality content. The internet is full to the brim with interesting and useful content, but it is fair to say that it has amassed a sizeable amount of trash as well. Before Panda, the quality of a website’s content was never a deciding factor in determining its ranking on the Google results page, so a website with poorly composed and irrelevant information could rise high and enjoy top billing in Google solely down to a good optimisation strategy.

That was, until Panda prowled the web. The update was aimed at stamping out poor quality content and reminded SEO marketers that informative and useful content was what mattered, and search engine results would be determined by this.

Panda also concentrated on duplication of content as there were many webmasters that published the exact same articles across many different sites. This was something Google became unhappy with as the same content appearing in their result pages compromised the quality of its listings. Websites that contained duplicate content were hit very hard with the Panda update. In response to this, many of the so-called content farms took drastic measures by deleting most of their content and making dramatic changes to their publishing policies.

Did Panda Make a Few Blunders?

Regardless of all the hype and publicity that Google’s Panda update received, it was far from perfect and blunders were made. The algorithm changes did penalise sites that were guilty of containing low quality content, but it also affected a number of sites that were innocent of these crimes.

The websites that were wrongly affected mainly consisted of smaller businesses; this led to critics accusing Google of having a scatter gun approach to the little guys whilst turning a blind eye to the bigger corporations. To add to this, the update still managed to miss many of its intended targets resulting in a sizeable number of low content websites still ranking highly today.

What conclusion should we draw?

SEO marketers now know that the quality of content is king and it is more important than ever to make sure their websites reflect this. Panda has let a few sites slip through its paws, but the days of good optimisation carrying more weight than quality of content are largely over. Putting the accuracy of the update to one side, Panda’s main objective was to serve better quality results up to the end user and this is something that all SEO marketers should be realising and striving for from this day on.

Below I have listed a brief explanation of what happened and how a website owner can tweak their strategy to account for these changes and ensure they don’t suffer an unexpected drop to their search engine result page ranking.

Google’s image search algorithm received some minor alterations with the result that more relevant images would show in their recently expanded Universal Image Search. Plainly speaking, this means that image anchor text, descriptions and filenames should be tweaked to be more descriptive about the specific page’s content.

Accurate detection of ‘official’ website pages. Google hopes this adjustment will improve the detection of official web pages whether that is government, charity or simply a corporate main page. In plain English, make sure your website contains authoritative URL’s so that Google finds your official or main page. Many pages that were once misidentified as official (i.e. sites that targeted brand names or trademarks) will no longer be considered to be.

Improvement to the local search results. This amendment nicknamed ‘venice’ will deliver much better location targeted results. In short, if you are located in Birmingham, you’ll not have to worry so much about Wolverhampton-related results; the Panda update will detect results from a user’s location more reliably.

The ‘primary’ Panda update helped to make recent changes and updates to websites and blogs more sensitive; you should notice changes made to your website take effect much sooner. Ensure that your site’s content is fresher than your competitors’, this way your content will win through against others.

Google’s link analysis has been changed. The Panda update has done away with the old method that Google used to evaluate links to and from your website. Simplified, this means that you should make every link incoming to your site or outgoing completely relevant to the content it is linked to, thus maintaining a high relevancy score.

And finally…

… Google has tweaked their Turkish weather search feature, nicknamed ‘hava’ this update will let you know what the weather is like in Turkey should you fancy a trip to Istanbul.

In conclusion

The major updates to Panda 3.3 that could help or hinder your SERP rankings are listed above. Most of the other updates centre on user interface tweaks and other non-search specific features.

As usual, to avoid experiencing problems with the latest Google Panda update, make sure that you have good, relevant copy on your website and that you are linking to other quality sites.

If you always consider your visitors’ user experience when you are creating content for your site then you will be singing from the same song sheet as Google and won’t go too far wrong with any Panda updates past, present or in the future.

Search Engine Optimisation should be a cornerstone of your online marketing strategy, so if you have any questions or concerns regarding the Google Panda updates and how they might affect your search engine rankings, please do not hesitate to contact us, we will be very happy to help.

Pinterest was founded by American Ben Silbermann in December 2009 and was launched in March the following year. Pinterest is a social photo sharing website. Users of Pinterest are the owners of their very own ‘pinboard’ on which they can pin any images, videos or discussions they find interesting either directly from the internet or uploaded from their computer. These ‘pins’ can then be grouped into categories if you wish.

Users of Pinterest are also free to follow other people’s profiles, and their pins, which appear on your pinboard too. You can then re-pin these to your board – like a re-tweet in Twitter – so your followers can see them too, or ‘like’ them – just like on Facebook.Pinterest users are also able to search using keywords for items that might be of interest.

At the moment you can only join Pinterest if you are invited by a current Member, alternatively, you can apply for an invitation by requesting one via the link on their homepage.

In December 2011, according to Hitwise research and stats, Pinterest was averaging 11 million hits per week placing it in the top 10 social networks. ComScore – another internet statistics company – also estimated that in January 2012 the site had 11.7 million unique visits which made it the fastest site in history to achieve 10 million or more unique weekly users.

How can Pinterest help your business?

For a start, make sure your business is suitable for Pinterest. As it is essentially visual, any business that sells a product is perfect for Pinterest – you can upload images of your products and share them with the world! You can also use it to make contact with smaller independent businesses in the same field who may wish to share ideas and inspiration. If you are a new, independent company you can use it to befriend the bigger hitters in your industry to keep abreast of current trends.

Pinterest is also great for Creatives, whether freelance or in the form of Creative Agencies, as another avenue to showcase work and find information and inspiration.

Ideally, you need to ensure that, wherever possible, links to your pin board are from your website so that anyone who likes your pins is directed there. If this isn’t always possible, make sure that your Pinterest profile is as full as possible and all contact details are readily available.

Pinterest is already channelling more visitors to websites than Google+ and could very well be the next ‘big’ social networking phenomenon. Get your invite today and start pinning! It may seem a little bit strange at first but give it a bit of time and you’ll soon start enjoying the benefits.

Take a look at our Pinterest page and see what you think.

If you need help or advice setting up your Pinterest page, or need information regarding any other social networks and how they can help your business, please give us a call and we’ll be happy to help.

The standards are a guideline only, but any website designer or developer worth their salt will adhere to the recommendations issued by the W3C. In fact, many of the web programming jobs advertised on freelancer or agency boards specifically stipulate that the code used to build a website is W3C validated. And although this practise is commonplace for HTML and XHTML it is becoming increasingly important for websites that are created with Cascading Style Sheets.

Tim Berners-Lee, the Englishman credited with inventing the World Wide Web back in 1989, and other pioneers of the web created the consortium to support the standardisation of the technologies practised on the internet. If the W3C had not been established to police these standards, it is highly unlikely that the web would have evolved to be the global medium it is today. Interoperability between different IT machines requires common interface and data communication protocols to allow the systems to ‘speak’ to each other.

That was the ultimate goal of the W3C. To publish the standards necessary, enabling software and web developers to create applications that would be compatible with each other and ensure that web browsers render websites the same regardless of who developed them. The consortium also encourages and educates web designers and developers so that they will work together to design and build websites to W3C standards.

Because of the work that the W3C carry out, someone using an Apple Mac in Australia or a Windows machine in China can view a webpage that is hosted on a Linux server in Canada.

And, if the code that built that webpage adheres to validated HTML and CSS, the page should appear very similar and have the same functionality across the majority of different web browsers and operating systems in use today.

Why is Validated and Standardised Code So Important?

Despite all web browsers being capable of understanding and rendering HTML, they don’t all do it in the same way. Browsers have their own unique propriety extensions that they use to interpret the HTML and CSS code in order to create the special effects that the designers are trying to achieve. The result is that a web page that renders satisfactory in Microsoft Internet Explorer may very well crash in Google Chrome, Firefox or Opera and vice versa. From experience I know how frustrating this can be.

With the advent of hand held devices and tablets it is impossible to try out the HTML & CSS code across all browser platforms. Testing the pages on as many major browsers as possible is usually sufficient for most web designers and developers. But to ensure a higher compatibility rate it is essential that websites are coded to W3C standards.

So Why Isn’t W3C Validated Code Always Practised?

The problem can stem from older versions of software programs such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage. These outdated WYSIWYG HTML editors will be unable to generate the recently released tags or functions without an expensive upgrade. And superseded HTML tags that are no longer supported by the W3C will start to render differently in the newer browsers. Web designers and developers will have to make sure they are using the very latest software packages or be able to hand code their sites incorporating the very latest W3C releases.

In Conclusion

As the number of browsers and devices increases around the world, W3C standardised coding becomes more and more important for all credible web design agencies. The W3C organisation offers a Markup Validation tool on their website that will scrutinise the coding used on a site and highlight any errors.

If you would like to learn more about W3C compatibility or enquire about website design and development, please feel free to contact us, we’ll be only too happy to talk.

The European Commissioner for Justice, Fundamental Rights and Citizenship, Viviane Reding informed various media outlets including the BBC that they had found that “transparency rules have not been applied”.

The changes came into play today, meaning that rather than having separate policies for each of their umbrella platforms, one all-encompassing policy means that they can share private data collected by one of their services such as Gmail, Blogger, Google+ or YouTube with the rest of them.

In a statement released in response to criticism, Google has stated that it believed their new policy complied with the law, “We are confident that our new simple, clear and transparent privacy policy respects all European data protection laws and principles”. Google’s stance is that the new policy will improve the experience of their users by allowing them to tailor search results more accurately, therefore offering far better targeted results. This sounds like a plausible reason for the change in their eyes as they strive to continually improve their services further.

As they tend to do, Google went ahead with their plan despite warnings earlier in the week from the EU that it may not be acceptable. Most people are aware of the main Google brands; however the new policy has merged over 60 sets of guidelines. It means that if a user is signed in to a Google account in their browser (intentionally or not), browsing data and web history can be shared across all of their websites.

In theory, this means that a search on YouTube could affect the adverts that you see when later searching for something else on Google Search. Not being signed in to a Google service should obviously prevent this.

It remains to be seen whether the change will have a dramatic influence on search results and your own personalised user experience but we have a feeling that this is a story that could run and run for a while yet.

If you would like to find out more about Google and the most effective ways to promote your website in their search engine, please do not hesitate to contact us.

I have read somewhere that this button may have been named in honour of Clint Eastwood’s character in Dirty Harry – “Do you feel lucky, punk? Well, do you?” I’m not too sure about that myself, so I’ll carry on.

Normally when you type a keyword or phrase into the Google search text field and click on the search button (or tap enter or return on your keyboard), Google will return a list of results on the Search Engine Results Page (SERP) showing a number of websites that closely match your search query.

The ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button does away with the search results page and takes you directly to the website that is the highest ranking site in Google for that particular keyword or phrase.

Try typing ‘number 10′ in the search input box and click the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, you’ll be taken straight to the government’s Number 10 Downing Street website. If you enter ‘apple’ and click on ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’, you’ll go directly to Apple Computers official website. Try it for ‘fa’ and you’ll find yourself at the official Football Association website. Essentially, ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ is a shortcut.

Dependent on your search query, the first and highest ranking result is usually the result that you are searching for, so clicking on the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button will save you some time as the Search Engine Results Page will not be loaded.

The ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button is very handy if you are confident that the highest ranking result in Google is going to be the exact page that you are looking for, but not so helpful if you know that you are going to be searching for a lot of different sites.

Using the I’m Feeling Lucky Google Button with No Search Query

Back in December 2009, pressing the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button without entering a query in the search input box would take you to a countdown ticker to New Year’s Day. By doing the same thing today, you are taken to the Google Doodles page, where you can browse the different alternative logos that have featured on the Google search pages over the years.

The I’m Feeling Lucky Google Button in Other Google Tools

The Google Toolbar has the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ feature included and this works in the same way as on the regular Google search page. Picasa also has an ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, but in this instance, clicking the button applies adjustments and enhancement filters to the images.

Using the I’m Feeling Lucky Google Button with Google Instant

If your browser is set to Google Instant, the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button will disappear as soon as you start entering a search query. Fortunately, you can still use the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ feature even with Google Instant enabled by hovering your cursor over the list of predictions in the text input field. An ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ link will appear to the right of the prediction. If you are feeling particularly efficient, you can navigate this feature by using your arrow keys. Press the down arrow to scroll through the suggestions, and then tap the right arrow if you’re feeling lucky.

So, the next time you perform a search using Google, experiment a little with the ‘I’m Feeling Lucky’ button, you may be surprised at what you find.

If you would like to find out more about Google and the most effective way to promote your corporate website in their search engine, please do not hesitate to contact us, we will be very happy to answer your questions.

The battle between Google and Twitter appears to be getting bigger and bigger with what seems to be a good old fashioned slanging match currently taking place, and in my eyes there can only be one winner.

For those that don’t know, Google launched its Google+ (Plus) service in June 2011 after the demise of Google Buzz. Google+ generated a big buzz (pardon the pun) amongst techies and search engine experts alike as a sort of grown-up and professional version of Facebook with bits of LinkedIn, Twitter and other social platforms thrown in for good measure. The fanfare that its launch produced was pretty impressive in the early months due to its perceived exclusivity making it like that new toy or gadget that you have got to get your hands on. As such the number of sign-ups was massive when it was rolled out further to anyone over 18.

Last month the number of users surpassed 62 million, at that growth rate the number of users will hit around 400 million by the end of the year!! This won’t be the case though, the huge number of Google+ sign-ups in the early months was out of curiosity and when you actually get in to the nitty-gritty of what Google+ has to offer you, for want of better words, it’s pretty rubbish. It has a few cool features and potential but the problem is – everyone you know is already on Facebook and most of those are also on Twitter and this fulfils most people’s social needs at the moment. Is there actually room in Average-Joe’s busy day to browse a whole different Social Media platform? Most people I know signed up and since then have rarely looked at it. On a personal note, compared to Facebook and Twitter I find Google+ dull (but that may just be me).

Google clearly feel strongly about the potential of Google+, far more so than it did about Buzz and with a base of 62 million people already, it is unlikely to go away. They are going to continue to push, promote and improve it as heavily as they can, and that’s where Twitter seem to be getting their knickers in a twist and doing a lot of whingeing in the press.

Google have announced that they are making changes to its results in order to integrate Google+ in to it. Calling it ‘Search plus Your World’, it will push results from Google+ up the rankings and really put it in the faces of users. This will only apply to users signed in to their Google accounts and will fire back far more personal and tailored search results related to the information Google knows about you, your friends and your acquaintances. It sounds like a big change but until it’s fully rolled out nobody really knows how much of a difference it will actually make.

Twitter is making a big deal of it though, with their lawyer and ex-Google employee Alex Macgillivray labelling it a “bad day for the internet”.

Twitter expanded further with an official statement including “For years, people have relied on Google to deliver the most relevant results any time they wanted to find something on the internet.We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users.”

All sounds very right-on but would Twitter be kicking up a stink if their Tweets dominated the top of the search results for every Google search imaginable? Would this provide a good search experience for Google users? I think the answer to both of these questions is “no”.

At the end of the day, Google is just a website and just a business like any other, it just happens to have grown astronomically to the point where almost everybody on the internet in the world uses it and thinks of it first when they want to find something. Off the back of Google millionaires are made across the globe and that’s why any changes they make are scrutinised so thoroughly by anyone who thinks it may affect them negatively. Google is not a regulating body, it is a website, if they want to promote their own product (Google+) ahead of somebody else’s (Twitter) then surely they are entitled to do so.

My money’s on Google in this current battle. If you don’t like Google or are unhappy with it then the answer is simple – don’t use it. It isn’t compulsory and as the owners, they can do what they want with it. Maybe Twitter should remember that in a world where search and social media are becoming more and more entwined.

For more information on Google’s changes or to discuss any aspects of social media, don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Extremely Good Web Design

If you have designed a truly original, unique and innovative website you should find that it captures people’s imagination and this may have a positive impact on your site’s status as people will want to share their find with others by promoting it on social and bookmarking websites such as Twitter, Facebook, Digg.com and Delicious.com.

However, this does not necessarily mean that a visitor who appreciates the aesthetics of your website will go ahead and purchase the product or service that your site is offering.

and Extremely Bad Web Design

Conversely, there are websites out there that you wish you had never seen, visited or tried to navigate. If a web user has a bad experience on a company website, they will more often than not decide that they cannot trust you as a business and, once you have failed the ‘trust test’, you will have very little chance of doing any business with the visitor.

So what are the essential ingredients that you should consider when designing your website?

Less is More – Colour

Back in the pioneering days of the World Wide Web, website designers were restricted to a colour palette of 216 ‘web-safe’ hexadecimal HTML colours. These are the only colours that could be rendered accurately by the web browsers and monitors of the time. Improvements in browser and monitor technology have since meant that designers can now utilise a full spectrum of colours, but in most cases less is more. Think very carefully about the range and scope of colours that you want to use on your website. Try to keep them to a minimum; a clearly defined palette will give your site a professional look and will inspire confidence in your business.

Clear and Concise Design

Your website does not have to be complicated to do its job. Just because you can add all the bells and whistles to your design does not mean that you should. An effective website is one that is easy to navigate and allows a user to access the required information with the minimum of effort. Think about download speed: if a visitor to your site has to wait while an elaborate graphic is downloaded, then they are likely to go elsewhere. Similarly, if a webpage is over complicated or fussy, you are likely to lose potential business to a competitor who has a more user friendly website.

Compatibility is Key

Although it is a lot easier to ensure that a website looks consistent across the full range of web applications available today, it is imperative not to get complacent and make sure that your website is comprehensively tested on all browsers, tablets and hand held devices. Try to build in as many safeguards as possible to instil confidence in your site and corporate business as a whole.

If the three points above are considered and implemented in your website design and build, then you will go a long way to having a website that inspires confidence and generates your company plenty of online business.

If you would like to discuss your company’s website design, promotion and online marketing strategy, please do not hesitate to contact us – we’ll be only too happy to talk.