All entries for March 2015

Solar Eclipse viewed in Trug of Water.

The simplest safe way to look at the sun is reflected in water. For the 1999 total eclipse of the sun I took the family to France for a holiday around the event.

We went to a dark ages recreated village park in the Somme valley with large peaty pools and got a great view. Actually some ducks looking to be fed ruined our perfect mirror till the strange colourless dusk set in and they returned to their resting places. During totality we could look directly for a couple of minutes.

My best photo from the time, right, was pointing direct with an early digital camera. You can get the correct settings easier these days with DSLRs as some of today’s wonderful photos on the web have already demonstrated, especially when coupled with telescopes.

Today, I just set up a large trug of water in the street.

Richard caught this more ‘arty’ shot through the thin branches.

Robert McGonigle : 20 Mar 2015 11:28 |  Tags: Solar Eclipse Solar Eclipse Reflected In Water Solar Eclipse Safe Viewing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Will Google's next search update boost mobile–friendly sites beyond Mobile devices?

The new Google Mobile-Friendly Ranking Algorithm is due on April 21st.

Google have briefed that the new upcoming search change will have a greater impact that the Panda changes.

Some have assumed that this will only impact mobile search results, see this searchengineland post but I am not so sure.

Two years ago when Google were stopping us running completely isolated mobile and desktop Ad campaigns they explained that searchers were continuing sessions over multiple platforms.

Starting at lunchtime on the office PC, follow up on the phone on the train home before sealing the deal on the tablet during the Ad break of a TV soap.

Google were seeing this impact back then but I have seen the growing evidence in the Analytics of my client’s websites. Mobile device session shares are growing with some sites beating 30%. Up to 44% of visitors on an ecommerce site will return 2, 3 or more times before buying using a range of channels; search, direct, referral sites and social media. People are regularly using at least 2 of the 3 platform categories: computer, tablet & mobile.

I believe that a poor mobile usability score will soon start to hurt a website’s SEO on all platforms as visitors will be disappointed when they increasingly return using their mobile.

Robert McGonigle : 18 Mar 2015 09:40 |  Tags: Google Update Mobiile Friendly Google Algorithm Multi Channel Paths |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem