SEARCH CLINIC

The Advertising Association (AA), an industry body that represents the UK’s advertising and media industry, has just agreed proposals to tighten non-paid-for digital advertising practices and ensure that the ASA has the right to enforce the new rules in the same way that it currently does for TV, press, poster and radio adverts.

The ASA currently regulates all paid-for digital advertising such as online banner and display ads as well as paid search, but does not police advertising on a company’s own web site, a campaign microsite or profiles on social networking sites such as Facebook or Twitter.

The AA has now submitted its plans to both the Committee for Advertising Practice (CAP) and the ASA for ratification, with a public consultation due to be held in the interim. 

5. You don’t need to be at your desk to need an answer.
The world is increasingly mobile and unwilling to be constrained to a fixed location. Whether it’s through their PDAs, their wireless phones or even their cars, people want information to come to them. Google’s innovations in this area include Google Number Search, which reduces the number of keypad strokes required to find data from a web-enabled mobile phone and an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. 

6. You can make money without doing evil.
Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That’s because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they’re relevant to the results page on which they’re shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.

Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you’ve requested. We’ve found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher click-through rates than ads appearing randomly. 

Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a “Sponsored Link.” It is a core value for Google that there is no compromise on the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google’s objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

The firm, which has a substantial presence in London, diverted all its advertising earnings from customers in Britain to its Irish subsidiary.

The arrangement allowed Google legally to avoid paying more than £450m in corporation tax to HM Revenue & Customs in 2008.

The disclosure prompted politicians to criticise Google, widely lauded as a pioneer of the internet age, for “ducking its social responsibility” and for “tax avoiding”.

Accounts filed with Companies House in the past week show Google’s 2008 UK corporation tax bill amounted to just £141,519 — and that was tax on the interest generated by its cash pile in UK bank deposits.

Vince Cable, the deputy leader of the Liberal Democrats, urged the search firm to “pay its fair share” of tax.

“Avoidance like this is hard to stomach at the best of times,” said Cable. “But when the country is in recession and everyone is feeling the pain, it really sticks in the throat — it means higher taxes for the rest of us.

“Google’s reputation will be severely damaged if it continues to behave in this way. It is ducking its social responsibility.”

Google says its structure complies fully with UK tax rules and that the company makes a “substantial” contribution to tax receipts wherever it operates.

About 13% of Google’s global revenues now come from the UK, and 770 staff are based at its London offices.

Accountants said that if the firm’s £1.6 billion UK earnings were paid directly into Google UK Limited, the London operation, it would have been liable for UK corporation tax of between 28% and 30%.

This could have raised about £450m for the public finances— enough tax to fund three NHS hospitals, buy at least eight Chinook helicopters or pay the annual salaries of about 15,000 policemen.

Any British individual or company who places an advertisement with the search engine pays a fee to Google’s European headquarters in Ireland, where corporation tax is levied at between 10% and 25%.

The Dublin operation’s latest accounts show that only €7.5m (£6.7m) of Irish tax was paid in 2008, even though the bulk of Google’s €6.7 billion (£5.9 billion) European earnings flowed into Ireland.

Austin Mitchell, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, who campaigns against tax avoidance, said: “Google isn’t just sucking money out of local newspapers and other people who rely on advertising for a living — it’s also draining money out of the public finances.

“The search engine is a marvellous service, but the company is run by tax avoiders. If they are going to make so much money here they need to give more back to society.”

As well as paying little tax, Google UK Limited’s latest accounts disclose that it made modest charitable donations of just £5,662 during the year.

The document also reveals that Google’s highest-paid UK director earned nearly £1.1m — an 80% rise on the previous year.

The average British based Google worker earned more than £90,000 last year, with the company paying National Insurance and other social security contributions of £10m.

From the Sunday Times article at
http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech_and_web/article6962880.ece

In 2008, Cyber Monday spending hit a record high, with consumers spending a whopping $846 million online. 

So the big question is: are you ready? The key to improving your sales during this period is to focus on marketing that can deliver instant results.

In the online world, this typically includes:
    * Google AdWords / PPC Advertising
    * Local Search Listings
    * Featured Listings on smaller search engines

Google AdWords (PPC) Advertising
Google AdWords advertising would definitely be the number one way to target holiday shoppers. It offers pinpoint targeting and instant exposure enabling you to get on the first page of Google when customers are searching for your products and services.

Key Benefits:
    * Campaigns can be live within hours.
    * Ability to target customers via keyword and location.
    * First page placement on Google.

Local Search Listings
If you’re targeting local customers, a local search listing across Google, Yahoo and Bing is another way to get on the first page of organic search results. It’s simple to setup and there’s no limit to the number of people who click on your listing.

Key Benefits:
    * Once verified, listings are live almost immediately.
    * Can be included on the first page of results.
    * Free organic traffic.

Featured Listings
If your customers use a search engine besides the top 3, there’s no harm in being found there either. Top 10 featured listings can help boost the efforts of your PPC and Local campaigns.

Key Benefits:
    * Listings are live within 48 hours.
    * Traffic is free – no click fee’s.
    * Keyword targeted traffic.

This year, Cyber Monday falls on the 30th November, so there’s only a few weeks now to get prepared. But don’t leave it to the last minute!

“I know that webmasters can get anxious around this time of year, so I wanted to reassure site owners that the full Caffeine roll out will happen after the holidays. Caffeine will go live at one data center so that we can continue to collect data and improve the technology, but I don’t expect Caffeine to go live at additional data centers until after the holidays are over.”

Google’s caffeine update is a major upgrade to their search technology which is expected to improve speed and accuracy of search results. 

Users have been testing the caffeine-powered search results via the Google sandbox for the past few months, but this has now been pulled, with a message that Caffeine is ready for a larger audience.

We’ll be sure to update our blog as soon as this starts being pushed out across more data centers.