Thoughts from the frontline

It’s the end of an era! With CEO Carol Bartz sacked and a takeover imminent, many are claiming that one of the big internet giants has fallen. But I think these claims are a bit presumptuous. Let’s take a look at Yahoo and where the recent news leaves the brand and the wider search engine market.

At the start of August, Yahoo started offering organic search results directly from Bing as part of a deal struck in 2009. Why have they decided to bow out of the race you may ask? Well if you’re anything like the ninety-something percent of Brits who use Google every day, the answer is probably already pretty clear. ... read more

Many of you will have heard about Google+ – a new social network from everyone’s favourite search giant that it hopes will provide competition to Twitter and Facebook’s social dominance.

But, in an email to Wired magazine, Google has hinted that Google+ could be used by the company to influence how sites are ranked in search engine results: ... read more

Any long term user of the search engine will know that Google’s site links aren’t anything new but after five years or so relatively unchanged, Google has recently decided to give them a complete overhaul.

So how big a change is it and what do marketers need to know? ... read more

Would a rose by any other name smell as sweet? What about a rsoe?

According to this article on the BBC, little typos like this could slash your online sales in half. In total, it is believed that such inaccuracies could be costing UK markets millions in lost online sales every year. ... read more

A quick heads up to all those who’ve got their hands on one of our free ‘The Big Pink’ t-shirts.

There’s still time for you to win return flights to New York and help Macmillan Cancer Support, by taking part in The Big Pink charity campaign. ... read more

In many ways, the era of digital has made it easier than ever to integrate different aspects of a brand’s marketing strategy and create great, joined-up results.

However, in reality, it’s still shocking how easily the different areas become siloed within businesses and the lines of communication break down. ... read more

This post is a followup to a previous write up of talks from Google’s Think Mobile UK event. Read part 1 here.

Charles Dunstone, Carphone Warehouse (oh the irony of the name Carphone Warehouse these days!) ... read more

At dotSearch, we’ve been buzzing about the incredible opportunity for search on mobile for a long time now – it has been on the radar for years, but as important parts of the puzzle fall into place, it’s really exciting to see the possibilities it’s enabling for businesses today.

It’s partly for this reason that we decided to embrace the opportunity to speak at the Online Marketing Show, held last week, and explain why companies should get on board as well as giving some practical advice for how to get involved today – before your competitors. ... read more

It’s been a busy week over at the Googleplex. The major news in the digital world has been the launch of the greatly anticipated Google+: a new social network that is the search engine giant’s answer to Facebook and Twitter.

But perhaps the most noticeable development for Joe Public was the newly designed  search pages. Visitors to Google are now greeted by a black top banner sitting on a light grey band, atop of the existing characteristic minimalist whitewash background. The colour red also makes a prominent debut outside of the logo to accentuate key titles and headings, and the new blue search button features a prominent icon rather than the word ‘search’. ... read more

We wrote about Google +1 earlier this year when it was introduced, but now that it has been in the wild for a while, we wanted to take a closer look and provide a guide for those who feel like +1 maybe just isn’t adding up yet.

So what does it mean for marketers and web masters? ... read more