Let me just say from the outset; I have no problem with my search results being personalised. To me, it makes sense for search engines to want to deliver the best user experience because users will keep using them. And if I get results that are personalised, it only makes my life easier. So why then are some users not so thrilled at the evolution of search results pages, particularly the personalisation?

The inundation of negative comments on news articles/blogs/etc. has led us to ask: Is Google trying too hard to improve? To answer this with a yes would indicate that Google's results were already perfect and whilst Google does deliver quality results, I don't know if anyone would go so far as to call them perfect, including Google themselves.

There is always room for improvement. Things can always get better. Some ideas work, and others don't. Sometimes you don't know until you try, and if certain concepts don't go over well with the majority, sometimes they are scrapped.

As for personalised search, I wouldn't count on it going away anytime soon and why would you want it to? If your results are tailored to you specifically, does that not increase their chances of being more relevant to you? Does this not provide you with a better quality of traffic and increase your conversion rate?

Google has just announced the launch of a new feature that lets users start their search results for ones they like. This will lead to the starred results appearing at the top of the SERP in future searches, when appropriate. The feature is still rolling out, so if you don't see it yet, you should see it soon.

Has it ever occurred to you that you may have keywords on your site that mislead search engines? Have you ever thought about the different meanings of the keywords you are trying to rank for?

Now that Google is delivering more personalisation in search results, there is much more to understanding search behaviour, intent-based search, and how that should affect keyword research. You need to be taking into consideration things like how prior queries influence future queries.  

If you sell telephones, you have to actively go out of your way to ensure you don’t have certain things appearing in your site otherwise the search engines could get confused about what you’re talking about.

One of the most important things is work out is how to do keyword research without knowing the behavioural aspects of people actually looking for your product. The focus needs to be on these personas - what kinds of things are they likely to search on, in sequence - before they type in telephone. If you understand that behaviour in sequence, then the better you can do your keyword research and determine how you’re going to put the words on your page.

Personalised search is nothing new as Google has been personalising search results for some time. It just now appears that Google is looking for more ways to deliver users a personalised experience.

As social networking becomes the ‘in’ thing, people are beginning to question where that leaves the use of email. You’ve heard the saying, ‘video killed the radio star,’ so is this a case of history repeating itself? Is email about to fall victim to social networking?

Well, no we don’t think so. From a Ph. point of view, we just don’t buy this theory that “email is dead,” and there are plenty of reasons why:

• People still send hand-written letters
• Nearly all websites that require registration request an email address
• Email notifies you of updates from your social networks
• Email is universal, social networks are not
• Many people have no interest in joining social networks but will use email
• Email is still improving
• Even social networks recognise the importance of email
• More social media use means more email use
• As far as marketing is concerned, email is doing pretty well

Businesses should be merging social aspects with their email programs to not only expand the reach of their offers, but to maintain customer loyalty and ultimately grow their database. So if you’ve been questioning the life expectancy of email, stop now. Keep in mind that about 50% of content is shared through email and social media is a great way to get subscribers.

In case you’re STILL not convinced, here are some final thoughts for you;

• Mobile apps will continue to keep email relevant in the mobile world.
• Google recently released its own social media product, Buzz, which the company decided would fit best with Gmail.
• Microsoft Outlook only recently started integrating social networks into the inbox.
• The social networks themselves are creating email services - Facebook is said to be working on its own...and we know how popular Facebook is.
  

Tracking offline conversions has been challenging businesses for years. The Internet is a powerful tool in driving business but how can you track your online marketing efforts to an offline purchase?

For the majority of bricks and mortar businesses, a large percentage of conversions take place offline, despite a strong online presence and rigorous online marketing. Measuring offline conversions and proving on paper that the online marketing triggered the offline conversion is difficult, because you can’t often directly measure the process from start to conversion.

As local search continues to become more innovative, we can only assume that the web will continue to drive more offline purchases. With some consumers more likely to use their iPhone for online shopping research, businesses are going to see more mobile customers who may be more inclined to visit a physical location whilst they're on the go.

Google and comScore once conducted a study, which showed that 63% of consumers who search products online go on to buy the same items offline. No doubt that since this study took place, the numbers will have changed slightly but what hasn't changed is the fact that people are still finding products online and buying them offline.

So what’s the solution? Well, we recommend trying in-store surveys as a way to find out how people are arriving to their purchases. In addition, online coupons and offer codes can be tracked offline.

When it comes down to it, without a way to track an offline sale, it's going to be difficult to tell how effective your online marketing efforts are.

Google has just announced that public status updates from Facebook will now be included in their real-time search. This means that the largest social network is finally getting to play in Google’s real-time search alongside the likes of Twitter.  These real-time results feature prominently on the first page of Google’s search results for relevant queries – so don’t miss out.

This is good news for businesses, which should be getting a good amount of Facebook appearances in Google's real-time search results, and possibly in the real-time search results in general (due to Facebook's huge user-base). Right now, Facebook isn't dominating the results, but that is bound to change with it being the largest social networking site.

A lot of brands who don't have Facebook pages in place should be considering this news as the perfect reason to go and create one. Due to the increased exposure, your site will be looking at gaining more fans than ever before.

As the web becomes more mobile and social, we’re starting to see apps filling voids that were mostly left empty throughout the history of search and social media. People are increasingly sharing their locations with their friends, certain apps, certain sites, and even the world.

As people and businesses share their locations more and more, you might say that this is becoming a major part of search marketing, and we're not just talking about Google.

Sharing your location has become a way of sending out a generic query, and local businesses have some tremendous new opportunities as a result. Potential customers sharing their locations mean that businesses can provide a real-time call-to-action to get them inside their establishment while they're nearby.

So if you're about to start building up your content they try adding a field to your database around lat/long (latitude/longitude). You’ll then be able to deliver content based on that location information, whether that’s news, deals, coupons, tips, recommendations, etc.

When you can get to your customer this way, you can give them more relevant content, which is what search is all about.

It’s been splashed all over the web for weeks now, so we thought you might just be wondering what this buzz about Google Buzz is all about. Well, Buzz is Google’s new product that is being compared to social networks like Twitter and Facebook. It’s integrated with Gmail and other Google products and it has been called Google’s 'missing link' in tying Google together as a social network.

So what does it do?

•    Buzz will show you a thumbnail of a YouTube video and make it easy to play
•    It features a custom photo viewer which lets you flip through enlarged thumbnails of pictures quickly
•    If you share links, it will automatically fetch headlines and photos from the post (similar to Facebook)
•    You can "like," "unlike" and expand comments

Buzz may benefit your business as an organisational tool or as a way to communicate even more with existing contacts. The idea is that when you see what your Gmail contacts are saying, it will not only keep those people fresh in your mind, but it can encourage further communication. And this could possibly lend to better organisation of your communication, which could in turn save you time.

Depending on how many of the possibilities actually happen, Google Buzz could become a central place for that communication. The more services Buzz gets integrated with, the better it could become for organisation.

So now you know, why not take try it out yourself? Google co-founder, Sergey Brin says he wrote an opinion piece, posted it to Google Buzz, and quickly had 50 comments, and edited based on feedback. Easy for a Google co-founder to say! We’d much rather hear your opinions, so tell us. Let us know what you think of Buzz…

You’ll often have different visitors arriving to your homepage with different intentions and goals in mind. The key to a good homepage is to make it easy for visitors to find the quickest and easiest path to their destination.

As you can imagine, trying to find your destination is a lot easier when you have sign posts and a simple street layout. You need to make sure on your homepage you signpost the way for your visitors, keeping your layout clean and uncluttered.

Multivariate testing tools like Google Website Optimiser will help your develop a home page design so it makes it easy for you to land your visitors to their goal destination.

Let’s look at Debenhams as an example. As a leading department store group with a strong online presence at www.debenhams.com, they secure over 3 million unique visitors each month.

Debenhams has been using Google Website Optimiser to make online marketing decisions based on hard data and consumer preferences.

They have been testing creative design and placement to improve the sign up to Debenhams’ Beauty Club newsletter. Website Optimiser offered Debenhams’ Senior Web Manager, Brett Bennett, the ability to test and accurately measure the effectiveness of 4 possible combinations before committing to a final solution.

By using a new design for the promotional banner, and amending the layout for 2 of the variations, Brett set about testing. Within a week, a conclusive winner emerged from the variations.

The winning combination has since improved email sign ups by 89%.

So why don’t you identify an area of your site that you wish to test? This can be based on your analytics data, or a particular marketing or creative idea. By designing various combinations and running them through a testing platform, you’ll find a winning combination.

You’ve probably noticed all the recent bad press IE6 has been getting regarding its security over the past year – remember Google being hacked? Well, new figures out have revealed that IE8 has finally overtaken IE6 as the world’s most used browser.

IE8, the latest version of Internet Explorer, now holds 22.31% of the market, compared to the troubled IE6's 20.07%.

Users have been warned to upgrade their browser after a series of flaws in the nearly decade-old IE6 - including the vulnerability that led to Google being hacked.

The Department of Health have warned NHS staff to avoid IE6, whilst the governments of Germany and France have urged citizens to upgrade or switch.

The third most used browser version was Firefox 3.5 with 17.10%, followed by IE7 at 14.58%.

Overall, the group of IE browsers lead the market with 62.18%, followed by Firefox with 24.41% share in January. Both slid slightly, contributing to Google's Chrome browser climbing from a 4.63% share in December to 5.20% in January.

Safari and Opera also posted slight declines, down to 4.51% and 2.3% respectively, according to Net Applications.

You can directly traffic coming from an online advertising campaign by changing the content and display location but the key to a good ad performance is relevance.

Decide whether you think there are users on your platform (this could be Google) who might not want anything to do with your product? Are there keywords people would use in a search that might mislead them to your website?

Look at the negatives in order to filter out the visitors your products are not targeted to. You will then be able to attract more relevant visitors.

For example, if you sell cars located in Liverpool, then you should include this location because users from London are less likely to become customers. What’s more, if irrelevant users click on your ad, this will cost you PPC fees and lower your score in Google’s ranking.

Secondly, try and establish a strong connection between a search term and your advert. Think about explaining your product to new users or specifying the exact differences between you and your competitors’ products to expert users.

Now, take a look at the keywords you have chosen. Divide these into two groups and then think up two or more variations of your adverts that reply to your audiences needs.

Remember that your landing page must also be as relevant to the user as the advert. Your landing page and ad should correspond with each other and it should be blatantly obvious to your user that they have come to the right landing page.

To summarise - relevance is probably the most important way for you to achieve conversion success. Relevance separates good communication from ineffective communication.