Google Instant Profits

Posted on September 9, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

Today Google launched a new feature to its search interface – Google Instant – displaying search results as you type. The controversy on whether this feature has killed or will kill SEO has already started, as one would expect.

Google’s claim for this enhancement is that it radically improves the speed of search whilst not losing the relevance of the results – see their post on the official Google blog here. While their claim on speed is undeniable, I do disagree on the relevance factor, for Google has omitted one very important aspect of this search “enhancement” – its business purpose.

While I was impressed by the speed and the actual display of technology behind the feature, I immediately noticed that it completely changed my search behaviour and, more relevantly, the way my eyes cast the screen and visualise the displayed results. The majority of us don’t touch-type, and as you enter your search query your eyes are immediately drawn to the results present at the top of the page. You now probably start to get my point. These top-of-the-page results are all Sponsored links, i.e. paid advertising. From this perspective, nothing has changed, Google sponsored links were always displayed at the top of the page however I believe that the user’s propensity to click on them will exponentially increase with the introduction of Google Instant. This is reinforced by the fact that screens are getting smaller – not bigger as one would think – as laptop ownership now exceeds desktop. A smaller screen will immediately display the results that are right at the top: the mighty Sponsored links. And to further cement my argument, it is certainly not serendipitously that Google hinted coming improvements to its Google Adwords interface for advertisers. Below is a screenshot of the results displayed on 13″ laptop screen. Note the prevalence of sponsored links over “natural” results.

It’s important to remember that Google is not a public service. While I think that, given the monopoly it has acquired over search and search marketing, Google should be regulated as such, it remains a public company which purpose is to raise its market value, which it does through blatantly abusing its monopoly on worldwide search. My advice? Use Bing instead, it has better functionalities.

Posted in SEO | 6 Comments

No SEO tomorrow

Posted on August 26, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

Today of all days I decided to get out of my man cave and go for a walk. I had forgotten how even more beautiful it was just 20 mins from home. Bronte Bay is simply magnificent.

Well, now I know what I’m doing tomorrow. Tomorrow I’m not doing any SEO. Tomorrow I’m going to go snorkeling.  Life is way too short to be looking for job opportunities in robots.txt file (surely this guy must live somewhere really boring. Who has time for that? Who even thinks about that??).

Anyway, it looks like mother nature decided to reward me with 2 dolphins. So I’m definitely going to go for a dip and remind myself why I live here.

Dolphin in Bronte

Posted in Australia - The good, SEO | 2 Comments

The power of blogs

Posted on June 26, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

I recently read this article on how Google is asking online newspapers to remove the links to the websites they refer to in their online articles. This is because Google will give more importance to a site that is linked from a reputable source than to a site that is not. So if the BBC website links out to my website in an article on digital consulting, my SERP will increase significantly, exponentially accelerating the rise of my site to the Google page 1 stratosphere. I honestly doubt that Google would go asking the online news sites to do this because it could simply include an exclusion in its algorithm or simply minimize the importance of these links from jumbo sites like NYT or BBC.

However what this story tells me is that there is room for a new form or PR – something less traditional than the traditional PR that sends out press releases and pray for them to be published and hope for a link.

This something is called content – original, copious, keyword-rich and well-written content. After all it is definitely a good thing if my website is mentioned and linked from bbc.co.uk, but it is still better if dozens or hundreds of people are talking about me and linking to me from good articles in their websites.

PR agencies are going to have to face the fact that sending out press releases won’t be enough. The landscape of digital information is changing and more people now trust independent sources like blogs than they trust the traditional media websites. As a result, PR agencies are going to have to change and adapt their strategies considerably in order to establish relationships with bloggers who are gradually taking more and more space on Google’s search results and in the digital media scene.

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Lovely view this morning

Posted on June 16, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

I’m not so keen on getting in my car at 6.45am to drive to a freezing house where there is an internet connection (I just moved house), but this makes it worth it.

And what is it with Australians not having proper heating? Are they just tight are is it the remnants of the Aussie battler spirit? It’s not 1802 anymore, people.

Drummoyne's Bay Run

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Write from home

Posted on May 26, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

Calling All Skilled Writers!

Top London-based online agency is looking for freelance writers to produce quality web content in English.

What do we expect from you?

  • The ability to write no more than 3,000 words in a natural, interesting and stimulating tone of voice on topics ranging from sports and fitness to personal care or social responsibility.
  • On-time delivery of your work.
  • An internet connection (not a deal-breaker, but it would make your life and ours easier)

What can you expect from us?

  • A full brief that leaves no ambiguity on the content that we need: topics, keywords, number of words and delivery dates.
  • You pick and choose! That’s right, you pick and choose what you want to write. We need content for a broad range of subjects.
  • Flexibility – since you will be working from home we really don’t mind where or when you write. Just write your content, send it to us or post it directly into our content management system and we’ll pay you.
  • Accessible work for your portfolio – since your work will be posted online, it will be there for the world to see.

Who does this suit?
 Anyone who can prove that they can write well. Students, stay-at-home mums and dads, backpackers, travelers; anyone who has writing skills and who’d like to make some additional money in their own time.

Interested? Get in touch for more details and we’ll fill you in with what you need to know to get started and earn dollars for your creative writing skills.

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Thank you Arai

Posted on February 19, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

A while ago I wrote a very angry couple of posts (since deleted) and also tweeted about how Phoenix Distribution, Arai Helmet and Hein Gericke had been ignoring my multiple attempts to get my helmet fixed. Helmets are somewhat important in the daily life of a motorcyclist. A comfortable helmet will ensure that you can focus all your attention on the road and stay alive as you battle your way through obnoxious or careless drivers who cannot comprehend what can go on in the mind of a motorcyclist (until they decide to give it a try). At the time Hein Gericke, the retailer, wasn’t following up on my multiple requests to get my helmet fixed. I then turned to Phoenix Distribution who failed to respond to my emails. My last resort was to find a way to reach the higher spheres of Arai Helmet in Japan, which I successfully managed to do. What followed was at first a demonstration of Arai’s determination to keep all their customers happy, and a great demonstration of customer service from both Phoenix Distribution and Hein Gericke.

As a result, the helmet was fixed – free of charge – and Phoenix even replaced the cheek pads, which were showing ageing, as well as added a deflector to prevent the same future problems from happening.  Arai, though their representative Phoenix Distribution, also successfully managed to keep me happy as I was about to put the helmet in the bin and fork out about £300 for a new helmet (anything but Arai at the time). This was a really long shot at the start of this 2-month saga. And the Hein Gericke store manager was removed from his functions – not as a result of my specific problem, but it seems that there were problems in this particular store.

I do believe that mistakes happen and that everyone was a victim of some unfortunate circumstances, and lessons have been learnt by everyone.

  1. Never underestimate the power of isolated consumers.
  2. Never underestimate the power of the internet. Word of mouth can spread very quickly.
  3. Do check your contact form that sits on your website. If you haven’t been receiving enquiries over the net, something might be wrong with your website. Never blindly trust technology.
  4. A customer is never lost for good, but you do have to go to great length to get them back.
  5. If your brand image relies on a chain of representatives, do perform random quality checks. The quality of your service will always prevail over the quality of your products.

I did receive in the end great customer service, and was assured that it wasn’t special treatment (although I feel that it was, otherwise I would have been charged for the elements fixed and replaced, as originally quoted by the store). Now only time will tell if my next lid will be another Arai Helmet. At the end of the day I never experienced such issues with any other helmets before.

Posted in Customer Satisfaction | Tagged | Leave a comment

engage!

Posted on January 18, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

Customer engagement. We hear this all the time, we know it’s important and that it’s good for our businesses. But what does it really mean?  What companies show true customer engagement and why is it that some companies that don’t “engage” still survive?

I am always surprised that some brands are still alive and strong despite the zero customer communication that seems to be their rule of thumb . A great example of organizations that fail to interact with their customers are telecommunications companies. They are first plagued by their sheer size. Then comes a network of mobile resellers that just want to do the sale (the likes of Carphone Warehouse who represent every single mobile operator in the country), call centres that place you on hold for 40 minutes only to put you through an agent whose British northern accent is so thick you wonder if you haven’t dialled Reykjavik instead (Sky TV), and the only interaction you seem to have with them is in a shopping centre when a nineteen-year-old tries to flog you HDTV.  So how come these companies are still around and making profits? My view is that they are still alive not because they are good, but thanks to their position of monopoly and their aged brand presence (soon to become aging brand presence if they’re not more careful).

In the case of telcos, Sky and BT have been sharing most of the UK market between themselves for a while. However they are losing some of these shares to other, cooler, more engaging brands who try not as hard to sell all their products to everyone at the same time. They instead seem to try to sell the right products to the right people. Think O2 and Virgin. O2 brought the iPhone to the UK (associating themselves with the Apple brand at the same time) and they have been showing us some pretty good time at the O2 Arenas all around Europe, even giving their customers privileged access to concert tickets. It is after all at the O2 Arena in London that Prince established residency for 21 consecutive sold-out nights. Virgin, well, need I say more on a brand whose vision is to take down monopolies and who takes tourists into orbit?!! Clearly we see that companies who truly engage with their customers win market shares while the dinosaurs eventually plateau, or decline.

The bottom line is to talk to your customers, acknowledge their existence and recognise the fact that if your organisation is still around it is thanks to them. By speaking to your customers they will respond, and if you can listen to them just a bit, then you will be able to feed back products and services that they will want and will buy from you. As technologies have gone beyond entering our houses and now live in our pockets, do Tweet, do Blog, do Podcast. Simply interact with your customers at their level and never ever ignore them or underestimate their intelligence and the ultimate power of referral. In return, your customers  will reward you with the most prized success any organization can hope for: their long-term loyalty.

Posted in Brand strategy, Customer Satisfaction | Leave a comment

the happiness machine

Posted on January 13, 2010 by Boris Jacquin
Coca-Cola latest viral campaign. I like it. It’s clever and refreshing, no puns intended.  It places the Coca-Cola brand exactly where it wants to be.

Posted in Brand strategy, Viral marketing | Tagged , | Leave a comment

twitter power

Posted on January 11, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

Last week’s unusually snowy and freezing weather broke havoc in London and its transport systems. Millions were affected by mass transit transportation breaking down and most of us were left wondering what was working and what wasn’t. It is during such times of sudden unexpected crisis that the weaknesses and the strengths of organizations are revealed.

Transports For London decided to stick to their old fashioned written and verbal platform announcements, however their website is regularly updated with live travel news. However having updates posted on a website does lack instantaneity, much needed when one is standing on a platform wondering whether one’s train will be on time at a connection for later in the journey. Unfortunately for them, TFL being, well, TFL, they have been beaten to it and instant Tube updates are now available via Twitter thanks to a thoughtful man called Simon Whitaker who has found a way to post automated London Tube Twitter updates sourced directly from the BBC (@tubeupdates). To this date this Twitter feed only has 830 followers, which is surprising considering that there are 3 or 4 million users of the London Underground every day (this alone is a good reason to re-tweet this blog post). I remember being on a bus past Green Park station and reading one the Tube updates saying that there were delays due to fire at Green Park station. At this very moment I was seeing firemen making their way into the station. Not bad!

Which brings me to the use of Twitter that some savvy organizations use to communicate with their customers. So far we’ve seen Twitter being used for commercial purposes (vouchers and specials from Pizza Hut or Starbucks), but last week winter snowfalls highlighted in my house the very useful way Easyjet are using Twitter.

Easyjet managed their flight updates very well through the use of 2 web channels. Their website and Twitter. The website displayed a list of flights that were being cancelled for the day and the following one. It also clearly stated at the top when the list had been updated. Sometimes small details make a difference, and the simple fact that the “last update” info was displayed re-assured me, as a customer. It demonstrated to me that EasyJet actually cared about me, which is rare (as previously demonstrated in an earlier post). But to top it up, they advertised, on their website, a Twitter feed where a real human being was posting updates and personally responding to requests from customers. A real human being, in real time was posting updates and links to information areas on the Easyjet website! Simple, cheap and efficient way, in line with EasyJet’s brand image. As a result they have boosted my confidence in their brand and I am now even more likely to fly with them.

They showed that they cared and in my world empathy goes a long way, especially when the elements are against you.

Posted in Brand strategy, Customer Satisfaction, Social Networking | Tagged | Leave a comment

I want an Apple Tablet!

Posted on January 8, 2010 by Boris Jacquin

I am a Mac fan. A total devotee to the brand, which you might think is a little sad, which I don’t mind since you are probably using a PC like the rest of the world (that’s how special I am, you see).

Jokes apart, I do love a Mac, for the simple reason that they give me an uncomparable experience whenever I use one of their products. Let’s face it, I use the same browser on my Mac at home as I do on my PC at work, the same Microsoft word processor (yes, Microsoft, I am not that sad), the same spreadsheets; you get the point. What matters to me is the way I use it, how it makes ME feel when I sit in front of a beautiful piece of technology that looks good, works well, is fast and, let’s be honest, that I worked hard to acquire. Would you feel the same at the wheel of a Lexus as you would driving a Ford? And have you wondered why Apple have sold 40 million iPhones when everyone initially claimed that the price point was way to high? Or why everyone is now trying to copy the iPhone and why the iPod is so popular? The music on an iPod doesn’t sound better than on a much cheaper MP3 player. Your phone conversations are not any clearer on an iPhone, and iPhones don’t even work well in the cold and are often glitchy. Still, most people have rushed for them, just like most people queue at Starbucks. The reason is simple and it comes down to 2 basic things: the experience the brand gives you and how the brand makes you feel.

But this post is about what’s coming on 26th January 2010.

If Apple are releasing a product, and given the quality of everything they have released in the past 4-5 years (apart from the Apple TV, a blatant flop), Apple have more than proven their market leading position in terms of innovation. HP and Microsoft may have announced yesterday a couple of slates some three weeks before Apple’s expected official announcement, but where is the user experience? Users do not need just a flat laptop, they need something better than a laptop. Which is why I think that the Apple Slate or the iTablet or whatever it will be called will eventually replace the notebook and the laptop for those who can afford it. And before long expect the Apple Tablet to be copied, and we will see what we have seen with the iPhone. Cheaper clones galore, including better, more expensive ones (think HTC smartphones).

We all need a portable device with an intuitive OS that works with portability. The innovations that Apple have already made with the trackpads show very well that portability is a growing part of OS and OS X in particular. And I don’t see much of it with Windows 7, I’m afraid.

Slates will end up replacing laptops, as long as they are as powerful as their folding, heavier, bulkier counterparts. The only unknown to this date resides in typing, which can easily be solved with the adjunction of a keyboard (certainly not ideal, but until we come up with holographic keyboards, there’ll have to be a compromise somewhere). Then again don’t we all go through the painful process of typing urls on iPhones and Blackberries? At the end of the day, it comes down to what you use your laptop for most of the time. A slate would be perfect for travellers as it’s light and flat, with hopefully a beautiful display for watching videos on a plane, in a car on on a train. And should you want to type an essay on it, you could easily hook up a bluetooth keyboard and prop the slate upright (imagine a slate with a stand at the back to prop it up and you have the perfect device). Good bye Filofax, good-bye notebook, the laptop and the books can stay home on my holidays and I can now read the news and browse the internet comfortably while I have my coffee in the morning. No more sore eyes and painful neck trying to do that on a tiny screen.

So let’s see what Apple comes up with, but I am expecting an engaging and innovating user experience combined with a beautiful piece of technology that everyone will want to own, and that everyone will want to copy. Just like the iPod and the iPhone.

Posted in Brand strategy, New Technologies | Tagged , | Leave a comment