How to create your own Branded page on Google Local Maps

Writing about web page https://www.google.com/accounts/ServiceLogin?continue=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.google.com%2Flocal%2Fadd%2FbusinessCenter%3Fgl%3DGB%26hl%3Den-US&service=lbc&hl=en-US&gl=GB

I have been linking to Google Maps in emails and on webpages for some time to help visitors to find locations and to get the directions from where they are.

The page displayed is a lot better if the company or organisation is registered with Google Local. When Google allowed images to be added you can create a branded page on Google Maps, with links back to your site and all the functionality of Google maps, see below.

To set up you own ;

1. Register your company or organisation on Google Local
2. Correct your position on the map if needed and add pictures, logos, etc.
3. Search Google Maps for your postcode to zero in on the area.
4. Then search for your company – producing one result.
5. Zoom to the right level to be helpful for navigation.
6. Click ‘link to this page’ and copy the link.

Click to see Frost’s complete map on Google with Get Directions

Click to see Frost’s complete map on Google with Get Directions

To add these maps to your own website follow the ‘Customise and preview embedded map’ link within the ‘link to this page’ box. This will allow you to change the size & details and generates HTML code for an Iframe that works on most blogs and websites.
See example on the WMCCM Site .

Robert McGonigle : 16 Aug 2007 15:41 |  Tags: Google Local Google Maps |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Over 20% of Google's Searches have never been seen by Google before.

Writing about web page http://www.johnston.co.uk/2007_06_01_blog-archive.html

I happened across a couple of ‘long tail of search’ quotes recently that confirm the rule that half of all search terms are unique.

Chris Anderson’s ‘Long Tail’ blog quoted a senior Microsoft executive’s letter confirming this ratio.

Steve Johnston’s blog confirms this ratio for Google and goes on to quote an even more amazing claim.

Udi Manber, VP of Google Engineering said at a recent conference, that there are three reasons why Search is only going to get harder in the future. One of these I already use – “scale and diversity are almost beyond comprehension” – one of which is not particularly relevant to this point, but the third will replace my previous reference: “20 to 25% of the queries we see today, we have never seen before”. I will convert this into ‘1 in 4 of the expressions typed into Google today have never been seen by Google before’. Ponder that for a moment. Google is tapped into our collective consciousness. It’s astonishing.

Truly astonishing indeed! My experience, where no matter the size of the server logs that I processed, 50% of the search terms were unique also confirms that these figures are taken from unprocessed logs. So extraneous characters, ignored by the search engines, have helped reach these easily remembered ratios. The other route causes are synonyms and word ordering, see word order counts.

Most of these ‘very long tail’ search terms can include words from the ‘short head’. My findings that 80% of visitors to a well titled page will have used one or more words from the title yet 50% of the page’s search terms will still be unique! Having looked at all of the long tail terms for a page titled “klaxon horn” (and many others) I can also believe that 20-25% had never been seen by Google before!

Robert McGonigle : 25 Jul 2007 11:18 |  Tags: Chris Anderson Google Long Tail Internet Search Long Tail Long Tail Of Search Search Engine Results |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Longest Tail of Search because word–order counts.

Writing about web page http://longtail.typepad.com/

I have blogged before about how my OU MSc project found Chris Anderson’s “The Long Tail” distribution throughout my results. I have also found ‘long tails’ within ‘long tails’, as predicted by Chris, when I filtered the overall visitors to www.wmccm.co.uk to record the visitors to company showcases and profiles.

I noted before that the last 30,000 visitors to www.wmccm.co.uk referred by search engines used just over 20,000 different search terms. The most popular search terms are used by hundreds of visitors resulting in over 15,000 terms being used uniquely by only one visitor.

These unique terms were captured raw from our server-log and the diversity of unique terms were generated in two ways;

• The permutations of words; caused by search refinement, sorting and the flexibility of the English language.
• Extraneous characters, commas, brackets, etc., probably as a result of copying.

The extra random characters will be ignored by the search engines but does the order of words matter? I was finding really competitive ‘short head’ terms in our results for companies that could not compete with the top global sites. Where variations of popular ‘short head’ terms appearing in the ‘long tail’ because of word order?

Search on Google for “bookshops online” and “online bookshops” and you will find that the order of the top 10 results changes with a couple of new entries. Research using Google’s Adwords proves that closely matching the searchers search term generates better Click-Through-Rates, CTRs. So if the search engines are using CTR as a small factor in producing their results pages then word order will make a difference. I am convinced that the searchers ‘votes’ count with Google and can demonstrate that word order also varies results with Yahoo!.

The visitors using these ‘long tail’ terms found our pages because they addressed the human audience and used natural, varied, English. This “long tail” of unique search terms cannot be addressed by mechanical key term stuffing and explains why all the search engines recommends good copy in the human voice.

Chris Anderson has explored many significant long tails. His expertise from the music arena and the media has taken him from tracks to books, TV episodes and films. His long tails were all of physical goods or downloadable entities with one correct title.

I have found that searching on the web has created the longest tail, of natural language, because the word order counts.

Robert McGonigle : 20 Jul 2007 18:02 |  Tags: Chris Anderson Long Tail Search Engine Results Word Order |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

How the OU's M801 Research Project set me up for further research with 1 word of feedback.

Writing about web page http://www3.open.ac.uk/courses/bin/p12.dll?C01M801

I finally received the last module with the OU to complete my MSc in Computing for Commerce and Industry.

The news has left me disappointed due to the lack of meaningful feedback.

The last two submissions for the M801 Project and Dissertation were the 15,000 word dissertation and a 1,500 word webposter. This was the first time that I had ever come across the webposter idea. So when the combined feedback and guidance for these two substantial pieces of work added up to one word I felt let down.

The OU claims;

After completing this project you will be able to plan, organise and execute similar studies in other areas, understand their essential elements, and know which general approach is likely to lead to success.

Here at WMG, University of Warwick, we give feedback after the aural examination on the student’s progress, dissertation and their exam. Indicative marking ranges are also shared with the usual words of caution about moderation and exam boards.

Robert McGonigle : 16 Jul 2007 16:10 |  Tags: Dissertation M801 Open University Ou Ou Project Project And |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Collaboration in Action, in Research Funding, Plant Based Futures & for 2012

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk/WMCCM/DesktopDefault.aspx?tabindex=3&tabid=3760

I was struck recently by the wide ranging organisations that are now using the West Midlands Collaborative Commerce Marketplace, www.wmccm.co.uk at their collaboration platform.

Nikos brought together all the EU Framework 7, FP7, Challenges and requests for partners for the recent round of bids.

Grant has set up the http://www.ready-for-business.co.uk site bringing together an active cluster of the regions companies to bid for the new business generated by London’s sucessful bid.

I have been working with on www.district-rice.eu bringing research organisations and SMEs in Saxony, Västra Götaland in Sweden, and the West Midlands to explore plant based alternative products. The RICE Marquee at the Royal Show will bring together three teams from WMG as seen on WMG’s Events Page

Find out more about the other team members on WMCCM’s Who We Are

Robert McGonigle : 21 Jun 2007 16:44 |  Tags: Co-Operation Collaboration Fp7 London 2012 Research |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Xiao Ma launches Global Self–Help Medical Tourism Gateway

Writing about web page http://www.mediigate.com

My ex-student and colleague Xiao Ma is starting his PhD studies into self-help portals for healthcare. You can see his work extending the CCM framework at www.mediigate.com

Robert McGonigle : 20 Jun 2007 15:31 |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My Profile on WMG

Writing about web page http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/wmg/about/people/profiles/robmcgonigle/

I now have a profile on new WMG website. These also use the sitebuilder tools and are quite easy to use. I will be encouraging other WMG staff to set these up so that we can find out more about what is going on.

Robert McGonigle : 20 Jun 2007 15:00 |  Tags: Profile Research Interest Wmg |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Finding the backlinks to your site using Yahoo's SiteExplorer

Writing about web page http://www.wmg.warwick.ac.uk

WMG has recently relaunched its branding and website. I was asked to help identify all of the links that other websites had made to the old site to try and repair all those that were broken. These links are often called backlinks or using Inlinks in the tool that I am to introduce.

I recommended Yahoo’s SiteExplorer as the most comprehensive and accurate on-line tool, http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/

When you first enter your domain name into this tool it will show the pages that are cached on Yahoo’s databases. Click Inlinks to see the pages linking to your site.

To remove the internal links select ‘Except from this domain’ in the first option drop-down list.

On the second drop-down list you can choose ‘Only this URL’ (your home page) and ‘Entire Site’. Select both to find out the number of links to pages other than the home page.

If the links to your old home page are broken then all the link providers need to be contacted. When the links to the old home page are redirected then you need only contact those who link to the other pages.

I recomment re-using the domain and many of the old page addresses when changing websites. Indeed it is a very good idea to know the links to your website before making major changes.

Robert McGonigle : 11 Jun 2007 10:49 |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Split Testing goes down to the Web–Page with Google's Website Optimiser

Writing about web page http://www.themarketingleaders.com/articles/june07/rob_mc_gonigle.html

With the six months delay to publication I have critically reviewed my article to find anything that is out-of-date.

The main development in split testing using Google’s Adwords has been the launch of their Website Optimiser. Google has already provided tools to measure conversions. You put a little code into the sale completed or ‘thank you for leaving details’ pages. This idea was extended so that Google can track your visitor statistics using Google Analytics.

Many Google Adwords professionals have been split testing landing pages. Creating more than one possible landing page and alternating traffic to it and measuring the conversions. One of these is my old student Kunle Campbell on the www.propertyfrontiers.com site.

Google has taken this to the next level. With a bit more code, Google can alternate 3 images and three different page text copy versions then optimise your page from the results.

The key to ALL these enhancements is access to your website and the ability to add these bits of code without breaking your site.

Robert McGonigle : 11 Jun 2007 10:12 |  Tags: Google Adwords Ppc Relevance Advertising Split Testing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"PPC Advertising as a Marketing Intelligence Tool" published as …

Writing about web page http://www.themarketingleaders.com/articles/june07/magazine.html

Back at the Christmas break I wrote an article for The Marketing Leaders magazine that was published yesterday.

The editor has clearly done a good job in presenting it and even enhanced my web mugshot.

The words and flow are all still mine but it was interesting that the ‘link title’ and additional line, below, were all new;

Sensing customers with pay-per-click advertising
How can PPC be used to increase the effectiveness of your online advertising, and bring in sales and leads and a return on investment?

Should I be upset? Well Graham Jarvis, the Editor, knows his audience and clearly thinks that this is a better advert for the article.

So I wouldn’t argue with him.
But in the theme of the article; What about two versions of an e-Newsletter and split testing?

Robert McGonigle : 07 Jun 2007 12:26 |  Tags: Editors Google Adwords Marketing Ppc |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Marios Molfetas spotted on Poros rowing a boat!

Writing about web page http://www.wmccm.co.uk

We have heard reports of a sighting of our ex-colleague Marios rowing a boat off Poros. This is good news as it means that he succeeded in avoiding Greek National Service in the Army by volunteering for the Navy!

With any luck he will get posted to the Military Museum in Athens were Navy ‘conscripts’ were posted when my family visited recently. Alison noted that it was a nice quiet, cool, place to nurse a hangover.

Our last meeting with Marios and his parents was in Kifissia. Alexios Gegios and Helena also joined.

Robert McGonigle : 01 Jun 2007 11:09 |  Tags: Ex-Colleagues Wmccm |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Filtering Spam from the University of Warwick's mail relay

I have spotted that IT Services in processing all mail for viruses also Tag the message if it suspects that it is spam. See the example and rules below. (These has been inserted as a picture because all the asterisks were confusing the blog editor.)

Robert McGonigle : 31 May 2007 15:00 |  Tags: ITS Rules Spam Spam Filter Spam Filters |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Spam–filter algorithm rule.

I have observed that behind the spammers almost plausible senders name the underlying sending email address is far more complicated. Because the lists of barred email addresses continued to grow each spam address is only short lived so thousands are machine generated.

My rule: If an email address has truly random characters it is spam.

So spam filters should just pass the fields of email addresses through a password strength test. If the result is strong it should be labelled as spam. (They might like to add a pile of Polish names to the trusted list.)

Robert McGonigle : 30 May 2007 10:36 |  Tags: Spam Spam Filter |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

My ISP unleashes loads of SPAM but I must delete it.

Writing about web page http://www.plus.net

My ISP PlusNet, now a BT subsiduary, has unleashed a whole torrent of the vilest SPAM, the sort of stuff that dried up 2 years ago. Their webmail platform was hacked and about 25% of their email addresses were passed to these old-fashioned spammers.

My family’s emails addresses were amongst those that were stolen.
Luckily most of the addresses use a slightly different form of our addresses so I have been able to create rules to filter the great bulk of these.

The ISP is now offering a ‘free service’ to filter SPAM remotely before download. They cannot delete any emails so I still have to clear our the junk. I will be contrasting this with other policies in a later posting but I can understand why this is necessary.

Interestingly PlusNet have moved to SquirrelMail as their webmail platform, the same as our students use here at the University of Warwick. This is yet another example of an open source application that seems to be winning large academic and corporate clients. I will pass this note on to my colleagues at the NB2BC as they are more knowledgeable about the use of open source software by business and track these things closely.

Robert McGonigle : 30 May 2007 10:19 |  Tags: ITS Spam Spam Filters Squirrel Mail Squirrelmail |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Most Useless Webpage Titles

An earlier entry described how important webpage titles can be in attracting visitors. Visible, bold, larger font, title keywords in search results encourage searchers to click. The closer titles get to echoing searchers queries, the more they will click.

I collected this list of the five most common errors with examples of useless titles.
Have I missed any?

Common Mistakes with Webpage Titles.

• No titles at all.
• Useless titles; “New page 1” “Welcome”
• The same title for every page.
• The same very long title for every page.
• Template titles; “About”, “Contact”, “Location”, “Products”, “Services” etc.

Robert McGonigle : 29 Mar 2007 23:09 |  Tags: Internet Search Search Webpage Titles |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

A 'thank you' to Mike Smith and other messages

Writing about web page http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/bexliveshere/savethumbs?.dir=/.e3e6scd&.src=mail&.tok=phyFrXGBDhopCxzU

I have been pleased to have gathered comments from the community who met Mike through business but who grew to know him as a friend.

I have also found this thank you email from Rebecca.

Dear Mike,
I am sure you have probably forgotton about the parts you made for me as its almost a year ago, but here are some pictures of the bird boxes I made for my final project whilst I was finishing my three dimensional degree at Northumbria University.
The part you made became the back-door which you can see in a couple of the pictures.

Sorry it has taken me so long to send these picks, but I wanted to say thankyou. I came out of the degree with a first and am now back at Northumbria University as a designer in residence under Trevor and the other tutors guidance. I am finally recieving orders for the boxes and so will be intouch, if thats ok to place another order for the same sort of thing.
Rebecca

Rebecca’s project was the latest in a series of student design projects at the Northumbria University that Mike has helped with. Mike Smith has also been involved in the design projects of some of the department staff there and they are looking through their photo library to see if they can compile small gallery of Mike’s work.

When I have these images I will add them here, to a photo share somewhere and onto www.skillspin.co.uk.

Robert McGonigle : 14 Mar 2007 10:30 |  Tags: Bird Boxes Mike Smith |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Mike Smith, Craftsman, Metal Spinner, R.I.P.

Writing about web page http://www.skillspin.co.uk

One of the best things about working for WMCCM is getting out and meeting owners, managers and many skilled and interesting people.

The project’s best assistances have been, not surprisingly, where we have built up a close working relationship with our company contact. Mike Smith has been one of those.

I was introduced to Mike by Iain Robertson of MAS-WM three years ago. Mike’s business Skillspin had lost their biggest customer as a result of changes at Laura Ashley’s furnishing business. With some excellent pictures of his work we were able to help him straightaway with a catalogue. The combination of words and pictures were so effective Skillspin became an early case study for the marketplace.

I continued the assistance by setting up an easily modified web-site and our team got to know Mike better as he attended events and spoke at one. Mike introduced me to Tony Ashford and Peter Davies, friends with small businesses in Birmingham’s Jewellery Quarter and so I have found it easy to keep in touch.

In recent months Skillspin’s business has been picking up some excellent new business from the web. He was also battling on another front with cancer and chemotherapy treatments. A battle he recently, sadly, lost. This came as a shock to our team, many of whom remember Mike as “a really nice guy”. Dr. Mark Swift and our director Dr. Jay Bal both expressed their deep sadness as they remembered Mike from some fine times.

Mike’s business will probably be run to an orderly close meeting outstanding obligations. Just another craftsman, metal spinning, business to fold in the West Midlands? Sadly probably true.

I did get to learn something of another side of Mike’s life, his family. Married to Bridget with four daughters, two have grown up to become pharmacists. I know more about the youngest, as she is the same age as my son John. She is another academic high flyer, a talented musician and choral singer and at the last I heard considering reading Mathematics here at the University of Warwick. A NAGTY kid she will not need any more orienteering tours of this campus!

Mike has left us too early. He lived life with a smile on his face and often a cigarette in his hand. He has left behind a family that Bridget and he were very proud of and he lived to see the next generation of grandchildren set off. Mike and family are Catholics and I am sure that his family will be supported by their wider Church family at this difficult time for them. There will be prayers said for them at St. James’, Whitley and in other places around Birmingham I am sure.

Robert McGonigle : 07 Mar 2007 12:51 |  Tags: Memorium Mike Smith |  Comments (7) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cactus Garden in Marjorelle Gardens, Marrakesh

Writing about web page http://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markswift

Mark Swift has sucessfully completed his latest adventures in the desert in Africa to Timbukto, see the Kramblog, and watch out for the photos & videos! He has reminded me that the part of his trip that this softie would g back to was Morrocco and particularly Marrakesh.

This blog was also lacking colour again so here is a photo of Jacques Majorelle’s Studio and Gardens in Marrakesh.

There are more Morrocan photos over at My Flickr Photos feed, left.

Robert McGonigle : 31 Jan 2007 22:47 |  Tags: Marrakesh Morrocco |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

"The Long Tail" coined by Chris Anderson, exploited by Amazon.

Writing about web page http://longtail.typepad.com/

Having touched on ‘The Long Tail’ in my previous post, pondered about the many long tails within the overall long tail of search queries, I went back to Chris Anderson’s book, The Long Tail – Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, Hyperion, 2006.

I first read the term in Anderson’s Wired article back in 2004. His Blog, see link above, carries the discussion forward to the publishing of his book and beyond.

Chris introduces the tremendous opportunities of selling to the endless niches that make up the long tail of search queries. He uses Amazon and eBay as examples of businesses that have grown by selling to the long tail. Up to 25% of Amazon’s lines are thought to be unavailable through more traditional physical stores. Remembering that a good bookshop was always willing to order a title if you knew to ask, this is quite notable. On eBay markets can be made for the rarest and strangest of things.

The point that I had missed is how Amazon conciously directs customers into the long tail where Amazon have less competition and provide the widest choice.

“If you like Britney you will love … Pink” -> No Doubt -> Selector.

In three steps from #340 to #32195 in the Amazon sales rankings. (Data and numbers from Amazon quoted in the 2004 Wired article.)

Robert McGonigle : 31 Jan 2007 21:22 |  Tags: Amazon Long Tail Niche Marketing |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Well–titled pages hook 80% of visitors with title keywords.

Writing about web page http://www.skillspin.co.uk

Many pages that I have analysed in my data mining exercise have attracted over 80% of their visitors with keywords in their titles.

The power of a good title for your webpage has been well documented in the SEO websites. When you look at the search engine results pages, SERPs, on Google, Yahoo! & MS Live, you can understand why. The top line of all the results, whether 4 or more lines per result, is the title.

These are in a bigger font and the words from your search terms are in bold.
Searchers are more likely to click on a title with more of their search words. It shouts out that this is a page that answers their question.

So how does this line up with the 'long tail' of searches described in my previous entry?

A single title keyword "tracker" brought in 71% of visitors to one page. This word was also in 915 different search terms, 3/4 of them entered by only one searcher. So these two facts do line up.

To bring visitors to a page it is essential to have a good title that accurately describes the content.
To attract the visitors from the 'long tail' the page should be written in natural language with real information, enough words and variation. How many words are needed could produce another post.

Robert McGonigle : 12 Jan 2007 21:28 |  Tags: Internet Search Page Title Search Web Page Title |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem