The last few weeks our blog posts have been focussed around Google so for this week we were adamant that we were going to change that and write about something that didn’t mention the search engine giant. But then they went and released their yearly Google Zeitgeist which details “the most popular and the fastest rising” search terms for the year. The Zeitgeist lists the top ten searches across different categories across different countries and gives an insight into the events, people and products that shaped 2011 so we couldn’t help but let you know about the fastest rising worldwide search terms for 2011.

The top ten features a wide range of people and products, with three searches relating to Apple appearing in the top ten. At number 10 we have the “iPad2” which was released throughout the world during the first half of 2011 and sold 500,000 tablets in the first weekend. The sad death of Apple founder “Steve Jobs” in October made him the first or two deaths that feature in the top ten. Number eight is “東京 電力”, which relates to the Japanese Fukushima Plant nuclear reactors which were damaged during the devastating earthquake. Two days after the earthquake saw a massive rise in searches as support and donations poured in from around the world.

Pop star “Adele” was the seventh fastest rising search of 2011, with a 1,588% increase in searches from 2010. An interesting thing to note about this search is that it maintained constantly high searches throughout the whole year, where as other search terms peaked at a sudden point in the year. Another Apple search was at number six with the “iPhone 5“, even though the product wasn’t actually released. Many people expected Apple to unveil the product this year but they revealed the iPhone 4s instead. Video game fans made “Battlefield 3“ a high search term of 2011 with much anticipation for the first person shooter. The American case of “Casey Anthony“, who was charged with the murder of her 2 year old daughter but then found not guilty in July, was a high search term with people not only interested before and during the case but also in Casey’s life after the trial.

We begin the top three with the sad death of “Ryan Dunn” after the Jackass TV and movie star died in a car accident in June. During the news of his death there were nearly as many searches for his name as there was for the keyword ‘weather’. With speculation about drink driving and an emotional Jackass highlight reel shown at his funeral, fans kept searching for Ryan to make him the third fastest rising search of 2011. At number two we have “Google+“ as Google launched its newest attempt to capture the social networking crowd. Throughout the second half of the year the search term had a constantly high search volume due to the announcement, launch and then open sign-up of the product. Whether Google+ has the momentum to take on the might of Facebook is yet to be decided but as SEO Coventry specialists we will still be searching and following this throughout 2012.

And so we come to the number one fastest rising search term of 2011 and it’s safe to say that it most likely won’t feature again in the Google Zeitgeist in feature years.  A 13 year old American girl called “Rebecca Black” made a splash after releasing her pop song ‘Friday’ onto the unsuspecting public which went viral and resulted in over 167 million views on YouTube. At one point in the year Rebecca Black even beat global superstar Lady Gaga in search terms. If you are unaware to the phenomenon that is ‘Friday’ then have a look on YouTube to hear the song which made Rebecca Black the fastest rising worldwide search term of 2011.

There are many facts, graphs and information about the searches of 2011, so if you have some spare time then we’d highly recommend having a look at the full listings on the Google Zeitgeist with the top ten ‘Fastest Rising in Sports’, ‘What is…?’, and ‘How to’ searches for individual countries.

As we all know Google is the main go-to-point for the majority of people’s Internet searches and has been for the past decade. It also looks like Google will be the main search engine in the years to come with the search giant constantly improving its search algorithm and looking to add new products and services to its extending portfolio. The other week Google released a video via its official blog which featured a video chronicling ‘The Evolution of Search in Six Minutes‘.

The company are said to make roughly 500 different improvements to search in a year and 2011 alone has seen big changes including the much talked about Panda update which is said to have affected 12% of search results and crack down on sites with poor and duplicate content. Other changes over the past year include multiple updates to the Panda algorithm, the introduction of the +1 button, expanded site links when searching for brands and a ‘freshness’ update that focussed on returning recent content.

An interesting point mentioned in the video is how the terror attacks of Sept 11^th inspired Google to improve search results to return the latest news. When entering “the Twin Towers” as a search term, the results returned were sites with information about the buildings and not news about the attacks. This led to the development of Google News results to provide users with up to date news with multiple points of view.

Since the web has develop at such a fast pace with images, video, blogs and products appearing on more and more sites Google developed Universal Results to give search results that also covered the rich web to make sure users were also receiving these types of content in their search results. Other major introductions included paid adverts appearing with the search results in the form of AdWords and Google Instant with the goal to provide quick answers as users are typing in their searches.

Google looks set to continue its dominance of the search engine market with continued improvements such as the ability to drag an image into the search area to get results and voice search which will have great benefits for mobile phone users. To back sure you stay on top of these improvements and changes then get in touch with HeadRed, the search engine optimisation Coventry agency.

An unlikely new contender in the search engine market emerged this week with the news that the hammer pants wearing rapper MC Hammer is to launch his own search engine. The rapper, most famous for his 1990′s hit “U Can’t Touch This”, was at a Web 2.0 summit in America this week and announced his new search engine – WireDoo.

Now this may come as surprising news to anyone who is only aware of Mr. Hammer for his baggy pants, dance moves and the fact that his music will hit you so hard, it will make you say oh my Lord, but he has also been involved in many successful online business ventures. MC Hammer, real name Stanley Kirk Burrell, has been sharing his passion for social media for many years now and in 2008 launched his own social media website, DanceJam.com, which is a web community where hip hop dancers can watch, share and learn dance skills and techniques. Since then he was been working on WireDoo which is currently in pre-Beta stage.

Mr. Burrell obviously has a keen interest in the web and social media but can he really enter a market that’s dominated by Google and already has other alternatives such as Bing trying to claw their own share of the search engine market? The selling point of WireDoo is that it is aiming for ‘deep searches’ which will return results that are “about relationships beyond just the keywords”. The example Hammer used related to cars and that if you searched on Wiredoo, instead of just cars coming up in the results, you would also see results relating to mileage, price and car dealerships.

He further explained that searches should be amount “more than just keywords and those ten blue links” and that the aim of the new search engine is to provide results that are not just related to one keyword. Another example used was that if you enter the post code for Beverly Hills, 90210, you will actually receive many links relating to the popular TV show of the same name instead of sites relating to the city in Los Angeles. WireDoo aims to bring up several searches for different topics and showing many related topics at once. This is described as a ‘vertical’ search whereas Google is ‘linear’.

Whilst this sounds like an interesting idea that could provide a better search experience for users, can anyone really topple or even make a dent in the control that Google has in the search engine market? The phrase ‘Google it’ is synonymous with searching on the Internet and we can’t see that changing anytime soon but competitors are always needed to encourage companies to provide better services to consumers. It will be interesting to see if Google responds to the threat of MC Hammer and WireDoo, although no release date has yet been announced for the project.

So we’ve made it this far without mentioning any real MC Hammer/search engine related jokes so how about changing “Stop! Hammer Time!” to “Stop! Search time” for the WireDoo slogan or how about when users search for inappropriate content they could be met with a “U Can’t Search This” warning?

Sorry, we couldn’t resist.

There are many e-commerce sites throughout the Internet selling all kinds of items and sometimes it can be hard to decide which site to purchase from. Do you favour the cheapest price over a trusted site or are you happy to use a new site that you haven’t used before? Google has now announced its own way of giving sites its stamp of approval with ‘Google Trusted Stores‘.

The aim of this new program is to help shoppers in finding online stores that offer a compelling shopping experience by awarding them with a Google Trusted Store Badge. To qualify for the award, sites have to have a proven track record of reliable service, shipping products on-time and excellent customer service. To partake in this program, sites have to apply to become a Google Trusted Store and have to share shipping and customer service data with Google and meet the standards set out by the program.

So what are the benefits for customers? As well as knowing which sites have been given a trusted award from one of the biggest companies on the Internet, the program is there to help shoppers feel confident in their purchases and offers shoppers help if they have any problems with their online order. Purchase protection means that you can get help from Google in the case of any disputes that arise from your order and they will assist you in working with the store to solve the issue. This can only be a benefit to consumers since they have the knowledge that they can get outside assistance in dealing with complaints when dealing with sites they haven’t used before.

There are a number of stores that are testing the program to see whether it has the intended outcome of improving and promoting shopping and Google will be looking to extend the program over the coming months. It will be interesting to see what effect this could have to some online stores and whether customers will only shop on sites that feature the Google Trusted Store Badge when the program is fully launched. Could it also have any effect on SEO for online shops?

We will be keeping an eye on the Google Trusted Store program over the coming months and monitoring whether it will be beneficial for our clients to apply for the badge and any kind of effect it may have on our Coventry search engine optimisation clients.

Today sees the start of the first ever GAMEFest event at the NEC in Birmingham, with the three-day event running from Friday 16^th - Sunday 18^th September 2011. Hosted by GAME, it is a showcase of the latest video games from the biggest companies and publishers in the industry.

With the likes of Nintendo, Electronic Arts and Activision on hand to show off a range of games including Modern Warfare 3, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, Batman: Arkham City and more, there are some great games to get your hands on. With it being the first time these games have been available for the public to play, presentations from the developers of the biggest games this year and lots of freebies, GAMEFest promises to be a great event for video game fans.

Since GAME is Europe’s biggest specialist videogame retailer, we have been looking at how they have been using social media to help promote and gather interest in the event and interact with the people that are attending.

The GameDigital Twitter account has been discussing GAMEFest all week, with the hashtag #GAMEFest being used to categorise all Tweets discussing the event. They have been teasing followers with snippets of information and behind the scenes photos of the event being set up, as well as answering any questions people have had. Using social media is a great way to build up an online interest in a product or event before it is released or happens and getting people talking about your company is a great way to increase visitors to your site. It’s also important to make sure your account isn’t just one way though because, after all, the purpose of social sites is interaction, so it’s great to see the company responding to its customers and engaging them in the build up to the event.

If you have a Twitter account for your business then you should try and be active in responding to people and being involved with your followers. You don’t have to be constantly tweeting away but spending a little time each day will help you build up an online profile and having people talking online about you should increase links to your site, which should in turn have a positive effect on improving search rankings.

Now that GAMEFest has begun, GAME are also getting people to engage in the company brand by running a competition on Facebook during the course of the event itself. Asking people to take the most interesting photo they can at the event and then submitting it to them on Facebook (or Twitter) will result in someone winning a new Nintendo 3DS and copy of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. With all the photos that will be submitted, GAME are getting free advertising across Facebook not only for themselves, but possibly also for other companies if their stands feature in the photos. This kind of activity across the social Internet is an easy method to build brand loyalty and keep GAME in the front of people’s minds for their video game needs.

Instead of just setting up a Twitter, Facebook or Youtube account for your company or organisation, think about how you can actually use social media to promote your products or events. Building up hype, offering sneak preview information and running competitions are all great ways to engage your followers and promote your business, so think about what methods would work for you. If you want to discuss the benefits of an online marketing campaign then get in touch with us here at HeadRed.

P.S. If you are going to GAMEFest then make sure you check out one of our clients, BoysStuff.co.uk, who will be there showcasing their range of gaming chairs, some of which they sell exclusively in the UK.