Today is Black Friday and whilst this might sound quite ominous, it’s a day when Americans and now people in the UK can snap up some pre Christmas bargains. Black Friday is the day after the American holiday of Thanksgiving and is seen as the official start of the Christmas shopping season. Retailers offer discounts and massively reduced stock to entice customers to their stores and many open in the early hours of the morning to take full advantage of this mad shopping day. Non-retail workers are usually given the day off so that they can take full advantage of the Black Friday discounts and people have been known to queue from the early hours or even the day before and completely miss their Thanksgiving to make sure they are first in line to grab a bargain.

Whilst all this shopping and discounted goods might seem like fun, Black Friday has seen some crazy scenes over the years with many videos of stampeding shoppers appearing on YouTube. Whilst some of them are quite humorous to see the lengths some shoppers will go to make sure they get a discounted PlayStation3, there have also been some shocking scenes of arguments and fights breaking out with people even getting arrested for threatening other shoppers and store staff. It’s expected that 152 million people will be hitting the shops this year over the weekend in America and will be looking to take advantage of 60% discounts at The Gap and a 42-inch HDTV at Best Buy reduced from $499 to $199. As you can see there are some great deals to be had so it’s no wonder the effort some people will go to make sure they get what they are after.

Another day which has spawned from Black Friday is Cyber Monday which is the online equivalent and takes place on the following Monday. Cyber Monday is when online ecommerce sites get involved and offer their own discounts and began after analysts found that people were hitting the online stores after a weekend of window shopping and seeing the products they liked. As we all know, shopping from the comfort of your home can be a lot more enjoyable than putting up with the pushing and shoving that goes on in the high street.

Recently, Black Friday has made its way to the UK with Amazon and Apple offering online deals. If you head on over to the Apple website today you can find iPads, iPods and MacBooks at reduced prices whilst Amazon has been offering a range of discounted products all week including TV’s, watches, children’s toys and jewellery. Whilst not as popular as in America, it’s great to see some discounts for UK shoppers before Christmas so make sure to check out your favourite online ecommerce site on Cyber Monday to see if they are offering any deals.

It’s been a bleak week for both online and high street retailers this week with a number of announcements which are affecting shops both now and in the future. With Christmas fast approaching, now is the time when retailers will be expecting an increase in custom and sales. This hasn’t come true though with a number of factors effecting peoples spending habits including the continuing state of the economy and other factors such as the unseasonably warm weather throughout October and into November affecting the sales of winter clothes.

The high street reported this week on a poor month of sales for October which were 0.6% down from last year and this has raised fears within the retail industry that the high streets will miss out on the much needed boost that Christmas usually brings. Previously, sales used to be a highlight of the New Year but we now see ½ price sales and 40% off discounts all throughout the build up to Christmas. These discounts are applied in the hope of kick starting peoples spending but whether this will happen is still uncertain. Since this week has seen the closure of the Best Buy electronic outlet stores owned by Carphone Warehouse and the sale of the loss-making electrical store Comet for only £2, high street stores are going to have to work hard to improve their fortunes. Some stores are utilising new methods to entice customers into stores, such as John Lewis who are offering free Wi-Fi in stores so customers can easily compare prices on smartphones. Combining the Internet and ecommerce sites with store retail is a great way to add new benefits to shopping on the high street and hopefully help improve retailer’s fortunes.

The Government this week announced plans to stop online stores from selling cheap DVDs and CDs by using the tax benefit relief from shipping items from the Channel Islands. Play.com, Tesco and Amazon ship items from the Channel Islands as it means they do not pay tax on items due to Low Value Consignment Relief (LVCR) and this has been reported to cost the UK £140 million a year in lost tax. The idea is to create a more level playing field for smaller companies to compete in the market. The ruling isn’t coming into effect until April next year but it will be interesting to see how the companies reply to this change.

This news just further signifies the importance of having a strong ecommerce site and online visibility created by a strong search engine optimisation campaign. Coventry based companies can take advantage of the services offered by HeadRed to make sure they are competing to their best potential this Christmas and all year round.

Google as we all know is the most used search engine on the Internet and offers many other products that are used daily by a wide range of people. Google Maps, AdWords, YouTube and Google+ are used by everyone, from search engine optimisation specialists to an everyday family user. With all these products and services to support, you would think that Google is a company that is all work and no play. This isn’t true though as there have been many hidden features and jokes, known as easter eggs, that Google have been implementing across the Internet for years. Here’s a look at our top three, starting with one which has been featuring on many Twitter feeds this week.

“Do a barrel roll”

For anyone who was playing video games on the Nintendo 64 back in 1997, the phrase “do a barrel roll” will be very familiar. The phrase was uttered in the game Lylat Wars, instructing the player to do a 360 degree rotation to avoid incoming enemy fire. The phrase has taken on internet meme status with people adding the phrase to any image or video where a 360 degree rotation is taking place, normally resulting in comedic consequences. This week Google got in on the act to showcase the power of CSS3 in modern browsers. Head on over to Google and enter “do a barrel roll” into the search box to see for yourself.

Spoof Search Homepages

Google has created a number of spoof homepages for Google search over the years. Are you a big Star Trek fan and speak Klingon? Try the Google Klingon search. Enjoy talking like a pirate? There’s a homepage for you as well. Or maybe you’re a big fan of the Looney Tunes character Elmer Fudd? Well head on over to Google Elmer Fudd and do a Google Seawch. Although these pages only change the text and buttons on the homepage, it adds a comical touch to your daily search.

Google Doodles

The Google logo on the homepage has been altered many times over the years with over 300 different designs having now been designed. Whilst initially created for bigger calendar events such as Christmas and Easter, the doodles are now done for many other celebrations and anniversaries, some of which are global and others which are country specific. Recent doodles include ones to celebrate Google’s 13^th birthday and a pumpkin themed one for Halloween. In fact the doodles have developed and are no longer just images with some doodles being interactive or videos. Have a look at the history of Google doodles.

Our web design Coventry team would love to hear what your favourite Google easter eggs or Google doodles are, so let us know below.

• Facebook Setting up in Lapland

Facebook is moving to Lapland, but it’s not to assist Father Christmas in the run up to Christmas, they are setting up their first ever data centre that is not based in the US. The temperatures in the city of Lulea mean that the social media giant can use the natural cool air of the country to control the temperatures of its servers for up to 10 months of the year.

Even though Facebook has more than 800 million users, it sill continues to grow and this requires more computing power. The new server centre in Lapland is roughly the size of 11 football pitches so we’re talking about a serious data centre here. Not only will the centre process data from Europe, Africa and the Middle East but it will also help the company use less energy, with the new centre powered mostly by renewable energy and requiring 70% less generator power.

The rate at which social media is continuing to grow means that your business cannot afford to be missing from social sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Engaging with your clients and creating an online presence is very important for a business so if you want to discuss how a social media campaign can work for you, get in touch with HeadRed.

• “SEO is not spam.”

A video from the head of Google’s Web spam team, Matt Cutts, was circulating in the SEO world this week, stating that search engine optimisation (SEO) is not spam. Whilst this has been known for a long time, with companies such as ourselves offering search engine optimisation to Coventry businesses for years, it’s nice to hear the biggest search engine company go on record to clarify for anyone that is still unsure. What with Google constantly rolling out updates to its search algorithms, Matt stated the importance of only employing legitimate SEO to improve your search rankings and avoiding any ‘black hat’ tactics. HeadRed’s SEO team constantly keep up to date with what the guys at Google our up to, so with SEO services from us you can be sure that we are only using Google-approved optimisation on your site.

If you want to see what Matt Cutts said for yourself, have a look at the GoogleWebmasterHelp YouTube channel.

• Don’t Forget…

Don’t forget that the clocks go back this Sunday as British Summer Time comes to a close, although some would argue that it never really started. For some of the HeadRed team this will mean driving to work in the dark and heading home in the dark but we’ll take solace in the fact that it’s the run up to Christmas which means the busy period for all our e-commerce clients.

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.