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Google Instant, Google Caffeine & Brand Implications

Given the interest over the last couple of days in the changes to Google search, I asked Rhys Wynne to comment on this for us. Rhys is a Search Engine Optimiser based in Manchester, United Kingdom, with over 5 years experience working in SEO, as well as 7 years experience in blogging & social media. Check out his website for links to his blogs & social media profiles, as well as a shortened CV.

Google Instant CaffeineIn the past couple of days, Google launched Google Instant, its newest evolution of its search engine.

It’s probably one of the most striking changes to happen to Google, as famous updates in the world of SEO (such as Google Florida & Google Caffeine), were more gradual algorithmic changes. Google Instant, whilst having little or no effect on its actual algorithm in ranking sites, can have an effect on the way your brand is perceived by the public.

Google Caffeine & Its Implications

Google Caffeine was the last big change, mostly algorithmic, which gave positive weighting to respective brands. While in the past you had to optimise your site to rank for certain words, recognised brands can now rank for phrases even without simple on page optimisation for that phrase.

Take for example the word "stationery":
search stationery

Ignoring the top 3 paid-for results, the first three natural search results are Google’s best guess as to what I’m searching for (‘stationery’). Note that Staples appears in that list despite not having any of the best guess key phrases in the title or description. Furthermore, Google "Apple" and page 1 is dedicated to the company, rather than the fruit.

Google gives massive weighting to brands, which has huge benefits for large corporate entities:

  • They can build brands a lot more easily than smaller companies, with large PR & advertising campaigns.
  • It has become a lot harder for disgruntled individuals to manipulate search results for negative rankings for said company.

While Google Caffeine was largely a positive move for corporate brands in terms of SEO, Google Instant can be troublesome for some companies.

Google Instant & Its Implications

If you have searched on Google since the launch of Google Instant, you will see that Google provides results for searches as you type, furthermore it can also provide suggestions for related searches, as well as results for similar searches.

Not entirely sure what I mean? Here are the related searches for the word BP:

search bp

Stick the word "oil" at the end and you get this:-

search-bp-oil

Again, it’s a bit of an extreme example, but by even having that information on your prospective customer or client’s screen for a split second can be damaging, as Google’s Suggestions are based on other people’s activities, so if a majority of people are searching for your brand name in association with some negative press, it will likely appear in Google Instant’s suggest box.

What You Can Do In This Situation

Rarely does this happen, but it can. Luckily you can use the power of your brand to minimise the effect. Release a press release on your corporate news section, carrying out simple SEO tricks (such as mentioning the keyword you wish to target in the title, for example), that deals with the situation & communicates a satisfactory response to customers. Hopefully, you will rank for the negative keywords, as well as being picked up by sources.

Google Instant’s Implication For The Rest Of Us

In reality, if you have a strong, well respected brand that doesn’t suffer any PR nightmares, then the implication of Google Instant will be largely negligible. However, it is important to be aware of possible implications further down the line, as while ranking in Google hasn’t changed as a result of Google Instant, behavioural patterns by its users almost certainly will.

Thanks Rhys! Do let us know what you think, by commenting below: will this affect your brand?

If You’ve Got It—Flaunt It!


CTP Website

Recently, the Boston advertising agency Conover Tuttle Pace started its second annual Summer Sublet desk swap.  As reported by the Boston Globe, the Summer Sublet is a combination lottery/draft, in which employees maneuver their way to better quarters for a month.  This year’s big winner traded his spot in the communal workspace for the president’s glass-walled corner office–complete with TV and a garden view

Summer Sublet requires everyone, from the newbies to the bosses, to sit in a different place until Labor Day.  As a small company (just 35 employees), Conover Tuttle Pace is in a position to move folks around without too much hassle, and obviously, this kind of exercise would be logistically impossible in a big corporation.  But Summer Sublet is a playful idea that stimulates cross-functional interaction by mixing up the creative types, the techies, and the execs in new ways.  According Amara Bassiri, the company’s “workflow, wellness, and broadcast guru,” an “exchange of ideas happens organically.”

When the Boston Globe wrote up the Sublet caper, Conover Tuttle Pace swiftly put a big link to the story on their company’s home page.  (That’s it in the post illustration.)  Which brings us to the point:  This is a knockout story for their employer brand.

Again—this particular idea would not translate easily to a corporate milieu.  But there are plenty of clever, creative activities going on in big companies, and as a rule they are not exploited.  A few typical reasons:

  • The Careers/Jobs section is in a silo, not integrated with overall PR and marketing efforts.
  • The PR and marketing folks don’t pay much attention to employer branding.
  • The Careers/Jobs section is focused on job posting and application gathering, with only sporadic attention to the employer brand.
  • The Careers/Jobs section is updated infrequently, and may have no easy way to add newsy items.

Takeaway: The (very) slightly more relaxed pace of summer offers a good opportunity to find out about innovative ideas and activities in your company.  Even if there is no currently convenient way to report these activities on the corporate website, they make great blog posts, and can be included in social media—Facebook loves this type of item, especially if there are photos.  And “cool” stories provide an opportunity for recruiters to tweet something other than routine job postings.

To see fun done right, it’s always worth stopping by Southwest Airlines.   Check out the SWA Facebook page.

Jeremiah Owyang’s Roadmap for the Corporate Website

Jeremiah Owyang is definitely one of the most influential voices in the social media space–and he has questioned the relevance of traditional corporate websites in the new online landscape.  In this presentation he outlines the issues and projects a path toward integration of social media and corporate website.

Although his overview is mainly focused on consumer-facing aspects of the corporate site, and he doesn’t touch on Careers or employer branding, the presentation offers some very useful information and insights.  Worth watching!

Making your Corporate Website Relevant


And here’s the related post.

Interesting note:  This presentation has received more than 16,000 views on SlideShare and is embedded on more than 60 sites.

Economic Indicators: Pink Ties and Trash

economic indicator: pink tie

I must admit, I follow announcements of official indicators that measure where the economy is going. These are very involved data gathering and analytical endeavors. Currently they give no definitive picture.

I started to think that there might be other measures that are not compiled, yet might give less analytical but subtle indicators that would give an unofficial account of where the economy is headed. Then I found this article  “Economy: These Below-the-Radar Indicators May Signal Growth” on Bloomberg BusinessWeek. Seems that there are some uncommon economic indicators such as–

  • diesel fuel sales at roughly 7,000 truck stops across the country–climbed 3.1 percent in May from April, the largest monthly increase since February 1999
  • train shipments of waste and scrap materials–increasing at the fastest pace in 16 years
  • electricity usage and the service economy, ( this is compiled by the Edison Electric Institute releases weekly represents certain aspects of the service sector, such as office and retail space). Richard DeKaser, president of Woodley Park Research in Washington, D.C. says–

“When you’re filling up office buildings, and office buildings are working overtime—and the same for retail stores—that’s a good proxy for those sectors.”

This indicator for the week ended June 5 was up 10.8 percent from the same week in 2009.

  • While the the typical employment data is dismal, optimism in recent data concerning temporary workers. The May 25 report by the American Staffing Association showed May staffing employment up 3 percent from April and up 19 percent from a year earlier.

Then there is this article published by Forbes: “Uncommonly Clever Economic Indicators”. These indicators are a bit more interesting–

  • pink ties Bob Allsbrook, chief economist for Regions Bank, in Birmingham, Ala., looks for wisdom in neckwear–specifically, pink ties. … “Since the start of the summer(2009), I’ve seen lots of men wearing pink and fuchsia colored ties,” he notes.
  • the size of restaurant trash bags : Americans are eating out again, and that’s a good sign. You can see that trend in the size of the garbage piles behind restaurants
  • denim jeans sales –NPD market research firm says

    “Jeans are a relatively cheap investment and one of the first things consumers buy when the economy starts to bounce back. … denim sales have already started to pop: For the six months from January to June, denim sales jumped 5.3% to $7.6 billion vs. the same period in 2008.”

  • corporate hotel cancellations — cancellations for corporate meetings and events declined substantially. However, major event planners are booking space for 2010, 2011 and even 2012.

This article includes other interesting metrics such as shopping bags and Christie’s wine auctions.

Want to find out where the economy is headed? Put on a pink tie, get in your diesel truck and drive behind some restaurants.

Dog Food and Corporate Tone of Voice

Do you read the back of cereal packets?

puppiesI read tins and packets all the time, and was struck by a curious ‘tone of voice‘ mismatch I saw on the back of a dry puppy mix packet this morning. (What, you don’t read those?)

See what you think about these two elements on the packaging:

  • Daily Feeding Instructions

    The section describing how much mix to give your dog is very clear, laid out in a table, so it is easy to find the right amount for a dog by age and predicted adult size. Clear, that is, right up to the final item, which said that for really large dogs who are feeding puppies, the frequency of meals should be ‘ad libidum’.

    As I was taught Latin all those years ago in my north-eastern comprehensive, I can have a pretty good stab at the meaning of this, but I suspect that some people might be puzzled.

  • The Legal Stuff

    Below this section was the legal statement, preceded by a very friendly introduction:

    the legal stuff

    OK, so this next bit isn’t very exciting for everyone, but it’s really important.

    … By the way, this product doesn’t really contain ash, that’s just the legal name we have to use for all the minerals we include…

Interesting. I know it’s a cliché, but wouldn’t you usually expect the legal wording to be the one that included Latin? (Even there, though it isn’t a good idea because it isn’t always easy to understand, even if the meaning is precise, because it assumes knowledge of another language).

Instead, ‘the legal stuff’ is written in a very chatty style, with no legalese to be seen. And it matches the friendly and reassuring style of the copy on the rest of the site, right down to the lack of capitalisation on the header.

I think it likely that the section about the puppy mix was written by a subject expert (perhaps even a vet) and the other section by a good copywriter with the corporate brand in mind, but that nobody looked at the two sections as a whole.

You’re probably not selling puppy mix, but are you sure that the language and tone of voice on your site is consistent throughout? It doesn’t need to be identical – after all, your site has a range of audiences – but it should be consistent. And, even more importantly, it should be written in language that your audience will understand.

Repsol: An Engaging Website

Some companies understand the value of a well designed content rich corporate website. Repsol, a Madrid based energy company, understands this very well. Their homepage is an engaging array of content–

Seldom have I seen such an entertaining, informative and well designed corporate website. Some observations–

  • Quick access to more information about the company
  • Same for products and services
  • A 3D tour of a service station
  • More information for the visitor

Next take a look at the Who we are section and you will see an interactive section —

Abstract art, yes but when you move the mouse over the diagram you will see more specifics about the company–

Simply put this is innovative and a uniquely entertaining method of presenting company information. But there are more innovations on this site. For example, visit the Strategy section to see a lively and interesting display of the companies strategy out to 2012.

Next the Corporate Governance section–

 

Note the extensive menu on the left and the comprehensive display of Corporate Governance issues. Well designed, eye appeal and just about anything you need to see about Corporate Governance.

Bravo to Repsol for communicating with stakeholders in an engaging manner.

Note from Editor: Ed wrote this post some time ago, but it got missed in the publication queue. Here’s what the Repsol home page looks like today – you’ll see that it has been updated with content which reflects the current season (snow!) and is still bright, engaging and colourful:

Repsol home page