Here at atom42, we are great believers in tracking everything we do – it’s why we love the online space. So, you can imagine the excitement we felt last week when Google announced they were launching their call metrics feature in the UK, allowing advertisers to track phone calls from their PPC ads, and report on them through the Google Adwords interface.

What is 'call metrics'?

Simply put, it’s a call forwarding system, which allows Google to track how many calls users make from your PPC ads (either from manually typing numbers they see in a desktop ad, or clicking on a mobile click-to-call ad).

Enabling call metrics in your PPC account will allow you to see a variety of metrics alongside click data in the Adwords interface, including:

•    The number of phone calls
•    Phone number impressions
•    A new metric called phone through rate (PTR)

You can also see more granular, call-related data such as call duration, area code of caller and call status (missed/taken etc).

This is a great leap forward for Google, allowing them to start competing with other call tracking providers, with the added bonus of Adwords integration.

Comparing the market for call metrics

Other providers need not worry just yet, however. Although Google will undoubtedly get there eventually, their offering isn’t quite market leading. For a start, it’s pretty expensive - at £1 per call for the advertiser (for calls from a desktop/laptop), this could add a fair amount to low CPAs. There is also the obvious downside which is that it only works for Adwords – whereas other suppliers integrate their technology with other channels such as online directories/organic sources/non-Google PPC sources.

Finally, a major limitation of Google’s Call Metrics is that tracked numbers are, like the current ad extensions, allocated on a campaign level. As a search specialist, it would be far more beneficial to see calls on a keyword level so that we can make more granular decisions – and this is something other providers offer.

‘Bid-Per-Call’ - sneaky or sensible?

Google, as always, have ways of making advertisers want to use their products, despite the negatives. In this case, they have introduced the Bid-Per-Call feature – which will only be available if you are also using Call Metrics. Bid-Per-Call allows advertisers to set a separate bid per phone call. For most advertisers, a phone call is one step further down the conversion funnel, so this bid is likely to be significantly higher than a click bid.

As someone who has previously sneaked phone numbers into PPC ads, I can tell you that my click through rate or ‘CTR’ (and therefore Quality Score) has been affected by the phone number itself taking up precious characters in my creative, which has had a negative effect on my CPCs.

Bid-Per-Call, combined with Call Metrics, will allow a phone number to sit outside the 25,35,35 character limit on desktops (as with the click to call feature on mobile), and will also aid quality score (oh yes, phone bids will contribute to overall quality score) – which could put any advertisers who don’t use the product at an immediate disadvantage. Sneaky.

Potential for success

Flaws and all, I think the Call Metrics system is worth testing as long as the £1 call charge doesn’t put you at an immediate risk of missing any CPA targets (the theory being that the higher conversion rate of a call should negate this cost). It won’t revolutionise my PPC campaigns (we already use keyword level call tracking here at atom42), but it will be interesting, all the same. Bid-Per-Call though, has the potential to be a game changer – watch this space!

Until recently, an unhappy customer was fairly limited in how loudly they could voice their negative opinion about a company; but since the arrival of popular review sites, it has become increasingly easy for a customer to be heard. A quick glance online can now reveal scores of well-meaning business owners who, in an effort to protect their company's reputation, have inadvertently caused a PR disaster by engaging in arguments with unhappy customers.

The four types of reviewer and how to respond to them

Instead of having a highly public row, it’s a good idea to try and resolve issues offline, before responding to customers online. Once the issue is resolved, this often makes a public response easier and naturally more flattering to your company as it shows that you help unhappy customers quickly. With this in mind, here are the four classic reviewer types, and how to deal with them effectively.

The honest reviewer

This type of reviewer has legitimately used the company's product or service and found it to have fallen short of the standard that they expected.

How to respond:  Honestly state that a mistake has been made, and to thank the customer for bringing the issue to light. A simple apology and sometimes a gesture of goodwill can go a long way to not only appeasing the customer, but also making your company look good to potential customers reading the response.

The mistaken reviewer

This type of reviewer has used the company's product or service, but due to an incorrect assumption or a misunderstanding, has expected something which was never promised by the company in the first place.

How to respond: The best approach here is to thank the customer for leaving feedback and politely explain the misunderstanding. Then outline the measures (if any) which are being put in place to avoid customers being confused in the future.
NB: Leaving this type of review unanswered can make your business seem prone to making false promises.

The mystery reviewer

This type of reviewer is sometimes quite vague - almost to the point that they seem to have never been a customer at all. This is sometimes because they’ve genuinely never been a customer!

How to respond: Be wary of competitors leaving unfounded or even slanderous reviews. We always advise our clients to avoid responding to ‘trolls’, and instead to simply report the review as being in violation of the site’s terms of service.Never feed the ‘trolls’ by accusing them of being dishonest - it only makes your company seem equally dishonest.

The unreasonable reviewer

This can be the hardest type of review to deal with, as it sometimes seems that’ no matter how reasonable you are with this past customer, they will never be satisfied. They often won’t be happy until your company’s brand has been denounced live on national television.

How to respond: It’s sometimes worth apologising to this type of customer, and explaining what measures have been taken to resolve the issue.
However, we do occasionally see that a response will only further provoke this type of unhappy reviewer. If so, you could respond simply by outlining the facts from your point of view and the steps taken to resolve the issue. This message is more for the benefit of future customers to see that the company is reasonable and logical, and that the reviewer is simply being unreasonable.

Taking feedback on board

People who leave negative reviews online are often very impassioned. They tend to be the unhappy minority of your customer base, so it's important to keep this in mind when you respond to reviewers by mentioning that poor customer service is unusual.

The other side of dealing with negative customer reviews is to take their comments on board and use them to actually improve your customer service. This is always the best way to address negative customer reviews - by preventing them in the first place!

It seems like new company review sites are popping up every week, and in such an openly opinionated review landscape, it's important to remember that the voice you choose to use when responding to negative reviews should be one you'd be proud to use not only to unhappy customers, but to future customers as well.

Pay-per-click advertising, managed well, can still offer businesses exceptional value for money, as well as unparalleled measurability in terms of your return on investment. But, for the time-rich and cash-poor, there are many other ways you can increase traffic and sales. Combined with traditional PPC and SEO techniques, these lesser-known strategies could see your visitor numbers skyrocket...

1. Use social media to engage your audience

By creating Facebook and Twitter pages where your users can communicate with each other, and which they will find interesting and useful, you can build a loyal community of followers for free. Incentives such as competitions and discounts will help to generate interest. Gradually introduce your brand over time so users don't feel too 'marketed to'.

2. Write and submit expert articles online

You can post expert articles on dedicated article sites, using advice and information you already have through experience. These articles link back to your website, thus creating valuable links, effectively for free.

3. Create a blog to engage with your consumer base

Create your own blog (there are free sites to help you do this) to engage your website visitors with what you do, you can then use your blog posts in a monthly newsletter to your list of contacts. This keeps potential clients engaged with the brand and helps current clients feel a sense of community, as well as (hopefully) providing them with useful hints and tips about your sector.

4. Write and submit press releases

Use PRWeb to send optimised news articles about your business straight to Google News and other sites and blogs. We think it's worth paying a little extra to add anchor text links, though this is optional. There are free sites as well which, while they lack some of the advantages PRWeb offers, can give companies on a very tight budget some much-needed PR, absolutely free.

5. Become a source

A journalist in a relevant sector can do wonders for a company in terms of free marketing, providing targeted 'advertising' on a regular basis, ideally both in print and online. All you have to do is prove yourself as a good source for topics they might be writing about.

6. Use local listings

Create a Google Places listing, which will appear on Google when users search for businesses like yours in your area. Eyetracking studies by SEOmoz have revealed how influential these listings are becoming - users gravitate towards them. Optimise the listing for target keywords you know your customer base is typing in, and ask customers to leave reviews there – this will help you to rank highly for local searches. If your customer base is local, you might also benefit by listing yourself on Foursquare, so people can see your location (and any deals you're willing to offer) on their mobile devices.

7. Add your website to directories

Directories can still work for you, if you do it right. Get listed on high ranking free directories, encourage reviews, and benefit from being at the top of the listings. The link itself can also work in your favour as it can potentially help with SEO.

And finally - once you have generated all those visitors, streamlining your purchasing process is the last, crucial step to online success. This is where, in the end, you will need to convert those visitors into sales, and even small changes at this final stage can make all the difference.

At atom42 we like to make sure we're making use of all the high quality resources available to us. Online tools such as AdGooroo, AdInsight and Crazy Egg come in very handy for the work we do, for example.

Content tools can be a little more complex, since a robot will read and process text in a very different way to a human brain. One example of this phenomenon is Grammarly, a content checking tool which markets itself as 'an automated proofreader and your personal grammar coach'.

I tried the basic version of Grammarly, which asks you to paste a section of text into a box for it to check for problems. Annoyingly, the two hour free trial of the advanced version asks users for credit card details, so I decided against it. I'm really glad I did....

Using the tool

It was interesting that Grammarly did a plagiarism check. However, those who work in content will know that it's also quite straightforward to paste a section of copy into Google on 'exact match' to check for duplicates. Grammarly also found huge numbers of mistakes in everything but it wouldn't explain what they were unless you signed up and gave credit card details.

I got fed up of seeing so many alleged mistakes on various internet pages, including the ones I'd written, without it letting me see what they were. So I chose two of my favourite classic novels (below) and checked their first pages on Grammarly - I reasoned that if the tool found fault with these works of art then it was not going to be a terribly useful service for me.

Hemingway and Suskind: 'weak'

Grammarly's opinion of both Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea' and Patrick Suskind's 'Perfume' was a dismissive: 'weak, needs revision', with Hemingway's classic receiving a particularly dismal overall score of 42/100.

But there's still hope: fortunately for Hemingway, the tool generated a number of 'vocabulary enhancement suggestions' for the text.

Keeping the pulse in proofreading

In conclusion, it's one thing making use of the tools on Word to check spelling and grammar, it's quite another asking a robot for an overall 'score' on your text and expecting it's detailed critique to really help assess the value of the writing to a human being - we're much too complex for that.

As YouTube gains more and more importance in the online world, it is necessary for us digital marketers to take it seriously - especially when it interferes with the natural search results!

Research has shown that videos are the most prominent category to be featured in the search engine results pages (SERPS) besides images, news, blogs, shopping and maps.

YouTube SEO will help your videos rank highly in the YouTube search results, as well as in the natural SERPS.

Here are a couple of quick techniques you can use to optimise your videos (perhaps surprisingly, many of them are very similar to traditional SEO):

1. Optimise your title, descriptions and tags with the keywords you are trying to target

2. Ensure that all of the above are enticing, as YouTube takes in to account CTR when determining rankings

3. Build keyword optimised anchor text links to your video

4. Ensure your title and description are relevant to your video, as time on page and bounce rates are relevant factors when determining rankings

5. Have a good preview image: as this image appears in the results page it essential to have an image which stands out from the crowd

6. Use the YouTube Keyword Tool to identify keywords with high search volumes on Google

Well optimised YouTube videos will appear in the natural SERPs, allowing brands to acquire more real estate – for free!

Google Analytics is a free web Analytics product which helps you analyse the activity of users who reach your website. You can find out where they’re coming from, how long they’re staying on your site, what keywords they’re using to get there, whether they’re buying, whether they’re using a smart phone, if they’re returning later, etc, etc. In Google’s own words; 'Google Analytics makes it easy to turn page views into profits and, from our point of view, is an invaluable tool when it comes to optimising online marketing activity'. But with so much data available, how do you find what you are looking for? Here are my top ten tips for Analytics success:

1. Set up Alerts

With so much data at your disposal, it’s easy for any mistakes or improvements to be missed or overlooked. The alert feature (found in the intelligence section) lets you specify certain events you want to be notified about. For example, I might want to be alerted if the conversion rate from my ecommerce site drops below 2% (suggesting something could be wrong with the payment process), or if organic traffic reaches a record high level (suggesting a new high position in the SERPS). With the ability to receive alerts via email or text alerts (only in the US), this tool ensures you will always be on top of your accounts.

2. Set up Advanced Segments

One main flaw of the old Analytics interface was that it didn’t allow you to compare trends for two types of traffic at the same time. Yes, I could filter keyword traffic looking just at brand using the ‘contains’ function, but what if I wanted to compare that to unbranded traffic in one graph? What if I wanted to look at my Yahoo! Display traffic against Facebook traffic for the last 6 months? The only way to do this was by exporting each variable separately and manually creating a graph in Excel. With advanced segments, however, you can specify a source/medium/keyword parameter and then compare multiple segments in one graph. GA also allows you to share these segments with other users (good for consistency) and copy across multiple profiles.

 3. Create Custom Reports to give you what you want quickly

Want to look at total clicks and conversions for each medium in one report? Not an easy task without the custom report feature. An under-rated tool but possibly the one that I use most often, Custom Reports allows you to, well, customise your reports to show only the metrics and dimensions you need. You can even segment your data by time of day to look at hourly clicks/conversions, which can inform any day parting strategies. One major flaw in the custom reporting feature is that you can only see aggregated data for one specified time period – not broken down by day / week within that period (for anyone who has used this feature, you know what I mean!).

4.  Exclude your own site usage

If you spend all day looking at your website, chances are you will be skewing all the site usage metrics - increasing time on site etc. Exclude your IP address in your account settings to make sure your Analytics data is only reflecting actual users, not you!

5.  Interrogate the data

So you are looking at time spent on site for your ecommerce site and you see that it has suddenly increased in the last week. Good, right? Users are engaging more with your site, right? Not necessarily! An increased time on site could mean that users are struggling to find what they are looking for or are clicking aroun aimlessly. Always think about your stats in context and don’t just assume that a line going up is a good thing!

6.  Link with your AdWords account

Being able to see your impression/cost/CTR data in the same interface as time spent on site/pages per visit/bounce rate is highly valuable when trying to optimise your PPC activity. This is why we always recommend our clients link their AdWords accounts to Analytics.

7. Personalise your Dashboard

Many people don’t realise that the dashboard in Google Analytics is fully customisable, allowing a user to see their most important reports on their welcome screen. To add a new graph/report, simply navigate to it as you would normally, then, above the graph, you will see an ‘add to dashboard’ button. Clicking that will make sure you can see that report immediately in the dashboard next time you log in. Each module on the dashboard also contains a handy link, allowing you to view the full report in its usual place, which can be moved around so that more important information can be displayed without scrolling down.

8. Use Google Annotations

You’re running historic reports and you see that your traffic doubled on a specific date three months ago and your immediate question is: ‘why?’ It’s difficult to remember what action at that time led to such a dramatic increase without a significant amount of digging in old emails or change history reports. The Annotations feature allows you to place a comment next to specific dates outlining anything that happened that may have an effect on results which you may need to refer to later.

9. Set up Goals

It might sound obvious, but how can you work out what is working and what isn’t without setting up accurate goals in Analytics? These need to be tested and sanity checked before being taken as gospel, (for example, ensuring the final step is on a confirmation/thank you page, not on the contact us page). Combining goal set up with a goal funnel (which outlines the steps on the way to the goal) will enable you to see where you are losing traffic along the way. You will be surprised how much difference tweaking each step can make to your overall results!

10. Track everything & be consistent!

If I could give you one piece of advice for total Analytics success (it’s like some geeky version of Baz Lurhmann’s ‘sunscreen’), then it would be this – track everything and be consistent with the way you do it! Make sure every link in email communication, every click tag on display creatives, every PPC ad, every voucher code listing and every directory submission has tracking parameters appended to their destination URL. Unfortunately, Google hasn’t quite worked out how to differentiate between upper and lower case and will track ‘google’ and ‘Google’ as different sources, so consistency is also key for making sure you have data you can rely on – as a rule I always use lower case - saves confusion!

In summary, Google Analytics is an invaluable tool for analysing your site’s traffic levels and quality. By using all of the features Google offers, you should successfully be able to navigate your way through the reams of data to find what’s most important to you right now. I said right now.....Go!

Love. Such a small word for such a big thing. Something which has spanned millions of years and comes in hundreds of different forms. The inspiration for poetry, paintings and playlists. Something beautiful and sacred, cherished and secret, between two people. Well... until Facebook came along anyway.

Love it or hate it, Facebook has become a crucial part of daily life for 500+ million active users worldwide, and when the key function of the site is to share information about your life it’s inevitable there will be a knock on effect for relationships. In fact for the Facebook generation it’s become just another step of the courtship process: Meet, date, date exclusively, make it “Facebook official”.

But Facebook, it’s not very... romantic, is it? That got us thinking, in a world where paper is increasingly a redundant commodity, what are the most romantic ideas on the web? We’ve come up with 5 ways to say “I love you” online:

1. Put it on an (online) Post-It
Run by Laureen Moyal and Yuliya Gorlovetsky from their lower East Side studio, Iloveyoumorethanblank.com is a more romantic version of postsecret.com, offering users the opportunity to publicly announce what they love their loved ones more than, from the worryingly common “Justin Bieber” to the considerably more romantic “anything”. Suggestion for SEO geeks – “I love you more than Google loves Wikipedia”.

2. Make your lover an online mix tape
What could be more romantic than a mix tape? Whether it’s heavy metal or JLS you’re into, taking the time to create a collection of songs you know your partner will love shows you’re willing to spend time and effort – always a good way to earn brownie points. While there are a lot of *ahem* illegal sites out there which offer this service, a more law abiding way to create an online mix tape would be to open a hypem.com account and fill it with your favourite songs, or share a playlist on Spotify.

3. Share your secret to love (and win dinner at Jamie’s Italian for your troubles)
Ok so it’s a bit of a cop out as it’s one of our campaigns, but it really is very romantic. In a nutshell, Mike and Alanna Clear got married in 2008 and heard shortly afterwards that 50% of all marriages end in divorce. Determined that theirs would survive, they started the Going the Distance project, asking hundreds of couples what they think is the secret to a lasting relationship. You can share your secret online at goingthedistance.co.uk or just enjoy the 600+ secrets that have been posted so far.

4. Send a personalised valentine from Moonpig.com
I’m sure 99.9% of you will have already have heard of Moonpig via their catchy TV advert (moooonpig.com) but in case you haven’t, it’s a site where you can create your own personalised gifts and cards by adding photos and customising the message. They’re then sent out to you or direct to your loved one by first class post. While it’s not strictly digital as you do end up with a card at the end, I’m not sure the women of this world are ready to receive Valentines emails just yet.

5. Set up a website for your lover
What could be more romantic than IloveAndyAtalla.com? Well probably your partner’s name rather than head honcho at atom42, but what an idea! Alright it’s a bit nerdy, but we like that kind of thing here at atom. What you put on your site is up to you, but the usual romantic mush – photos/videos of you as a couple, your favourite songs, mementos of your experiences – are always a safe bet. If you’re feeling even MORE creative, consider using your site as a medium to let your lover know what you have planned for the rest of the day... offline of course.

With the advent of New Twitter, or '#newtwitter' as it is referred to on the site by users, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at where Twitter has come from and how it has changed over time.

What is New Twitter?

New Twitter comprises a change in the Twitter interface which enables users to view a variety of different aspects of the site at the same time, in the manner of a much more complex web app.

A change such as this is one way to keep regular users engaged and to create a buzz around the site, which may encourage new users to join. However, the fundamentals of the site are still the same.

Where Twitter came from

Now that so many of us tweet on a regular basis, and take our Twitter feeds for granted as the business tools, news sources or amusing diversions they are, it may be hard to remember what we all thought of the site in the olden days.

To find out, I sought the opinion of a rare, non-Twitter using friend, who summed up the standpoint the majority of us probably had when we first heard about the site: "I can understand why people would want to read about celebrities like Stephen Fry," he said, "but why would I want to send everyone a text at the same time, and why would people want to read it?"

The answer lies partly with the enormous amount of timely information the site has gained the ability to disseminate, and allow users to expand and comment upon, as its user base has surged.

Twitter’s journey

With over 100 million users and an estimated 750 tweets per second worldwide, Twitter has increased its reach exponentially since its inception in 2006 by US software architect Jack Dorsey.

As Twitter grew and major events like the death of Michael Jackson came and went, users discovered an unprecedented wealth of information was available to them which traditional news sources just couldn’t keep up with.

That, along with the increasing opportunities identified for businesses to communicate with their customers, and, as more members of the public, superstars and major organisations signed up, the increasing ability to follow the goings on of any individual of interest, has helped boost the site’s visibility and usership.

The future for Twitter

Some commentators have noted the ‘facebookification’ of Twitter as an indication as to where it is going. The planned integration of multimedia into Twitter feeds, plus new opportunities to spend time exploring the site and of altering profiles, for example by creating ‘lists’, are all ways in which Twitter is seeking to increase its following to Facebook’s epic proportions (Zuckerburg’s site is still way ahead with an estimated 500 million users worldwide).

Over time, Twitter will continue to grow and transform to meet its users' changing needs. There’s no sign of this microblogging site going away any time soon.

The launch of Google Instant has created a mighty online stir with Google users and advertisers alike. Having previously worked for Google, I know the focus has always been on the end user and Google Instant will ultimately benefit Google's users.

However, from an advertiser standpoint many Google customers will be re-thinking how they build, analyse and evaluate their AdWords PPC campaigns. The launch of a new product like Google Instant isn't the first time Google has changed the rules, there have been a number of them over the last seven years, most notably:

2003 - Moving from an initial cost-per-thousand (CPM) model to PPC.

Why? Google has always been firmly focused on relevancy, so why should an advertiser with more money be able to pay more in order to rank higher than a more relevant advertiser with limited budget?  The launch of AdWords meant a level playing field for all.

2005 - Introduction of Quality Score (QS)

Why? Well, some advertisers were being penalised because they found their minimum bids on certain keywords were too high even though they had a very relevant QS flow from keyword to ad copy to landing page/content. QS allowed for minimum bids to be "variable" per advertiser / keyword rather than per keyword across the whole advertiser community. 

2006 - The relaxation of trademark restrictions.

Why? Google argued that if a company sells a product manufactured by another company (i.e. a hardware retailer such as PC world selling HP laptops) why should they be prevented from advertising it? Similarly, if a user searches on a specific brand name, why should the search results not show ads for other companies similar to that brand?

Google actually has never been under any legal obligation to protect TM usage and merely offered TM monitoring as a complementary service.

2008 - Making visible and destination URLs match.

Why? Google felt that some advertisers were deliberately misleading users. Before this change took place, you could effectively have a visible URL in your ad which pointed at a completely different, unrelated destination URL. There was plenty of malpractice over the years, and with its users in mind, Google put a stop to it.

2010 - Raising max bid caps

Why? The sceptic would say Google just wants to make more money, I don't know what Google's official line is on raising the bid caps, but am guessing that if some areas were getting too competitive (i.e. personal injury, finance, loans) then a higher bid ceiling would be the answer in order for advertisers to compete effectively and play ads in the auction.

Ultimately, as Google and its products change and continue to change, advertisers will need to change too; forget about complaining and instead spend their time thinking of new, innovative ways to appeal to potential customers. The end-user should always be front of mind.

The big question that SEOs are asking this week: what effect will Google Instant have on search marketing?

As you may have noticed, Google can now predict your search query and offer up potentially relevant sites as you type, a change which could affect the search world in a few different ways...

How will Google Instant affect search behaviour?

My view is that that the overall affect is going to depend on how quickly Google can display search results as you type.

It seems to take a little under half a second to display results at the moment, which isn’t quick enough to stop me typing in a longer query. Faster typists will be less affected, so I would imagine that younger, more computer-literate users will end up typing in the term that they originally intended most of the time anyway. And, if it only applies to users searching from the Google homepage, rather than a toolbar, the effect will be lessened further.

What about the search suggestions box?

The addition of the search suggestions dropdown box could influence search behaviour, with users selecting one of the suggestions displayed. I had imagined that a user might intend to type ‘acme anvils’, but end up typing an exact product name when they realised that they could be more specific. However, the options displayed are still quite generic, so I can’t imagine this changing too much.

I think the main effect this will have is to reduce returns from lower SEO positions, as all the results on the page are pushed further down the page by the suggestion dropdown menu. Those sites in positions 3-6 could end up with reduced CTR as they are pushed below the fold.

That said, Google's Matt Cutts commented that he ended up typing in a longer tail query which resulted in him clicking on a natural result that would have otherwise been on page 2, so this will probably depend on the nature of the query.

CTR in PPC will be affected, but as it’s the same for all advertisers I can’t see it affecting CPCs, unless you are displaying ads in positions further down the page than 4-5 as, again, these will be pushed further down the page by the suggestion box.

My initial predictions for search traffic:

•         Less traffic from PPC ads in positions lower down the page than 5.
•         Less traffic from SEO results in positions lower than 3-6.
•         Less traffic from long-tail keywords for users in older/less computer literate demographics.
•         More traffic from long-tail keywords from younger/more computer literate users, or those with slower connections.
•         More traffic from PPC ads in positions higher than 5
•         Smaller businesses may be squeezed out in certain circumstances

All of the above will probably differ depending on the nature of the query (searching for information, or searching for products/services).

Finally, it will become valuable to see separate Analytics data for users searching on the Google homepage versus those searching from a toolbar. I wonder if Google will offer this?

As many articles commenting on The Times paywall strategy have emphasised, there’s still a lot of mystery surrounding it. No one quite knows yet if it’s been successful or not, and I’m sure even Mr Murdoch himself won’t have come to any strong conclusions.

As our journalist contributor Jon noted, Mr Murdoch has deep pockets, and a stubbornness to match. It will certainly be a while before we find out for definite whether this new model has survived; and longer before Rupert Murdoch admits defeat, if it comes to that.

Personally, I think the move was a bad choice, but perhaps a necessary one with the direction that news, and online consumption, is going. As a regular Joe as opposed to a journalist, I’m here to vouch for the fickle reader; the one that doesn’t particularly mind whether he reads the Guardian, the Independent or The Times; and definitely the one that goes elsewhere when presented with a paid service that he can get free everywhere else.

Offer me something different!

Perhaps if The Times had something very different - something very special - to offer for the £2 per week subscription fee there would be stronger encouragement to join. Unfortunately, if 'something different' is what they offer, this is not the message the public are receiving. Publicity surrounding the paywall rarely reflects anything other than “success or failure”.

The problem is that genuinely unique news is hard to come by; we’ve seen the same stories reported in our newspapers forever. Why would it change now? The Times need to provide something to their readers to make them stick with the new model; something that really makes them stand out. This may well be the holy grail that The Times attempts to discover.

The Times fan club

I understand where Jon is coming from when he mentions ‘people like joining clubs’. But don’t people like joining clubs that are free as opposed to those that you have to pay for (and that used to be free). To use a sports club metaphor, this is the equivalent of paying to go to a sports club when there’s a free one next door with the same facilities, but yours has a slightly nicer reception. At the end of the day you still get the same work out.

There will always be Times die-hards who will stick with the paper through thick and thin. However I can’t help but think the majority of the public are fickle; and that the die-hards, unless presented with something worth sticking with, will eventually abandon ship if they’re not getting their money’s worth.

The great paywall

With the paywall acting as a divide between public and paper – without publicity for what’s inside, traffic is never going to increase. There’s no incentive for cold users to sign up; and why would they? There are many conflicting stories on the traffic decline seen since the paywall. The Guardian reported in July that The Times has seen a 66% loss in traffic, while many sources expected it would be much higher – up to 90%. Further stories reiterate the challenges facing The Times with the next hurdle; when the introductory rate of £1 is taken away.

Will this current test period have been enough to convince readers to stick with the paper despite the increased price? There’s surely no doubt that the will be some loss, but we’ll have to wait and see how much.

The Times they are a-changin'

For us there’s nothing further to do than to wait and hold our breath until we find out for sure whether Rupert Murdoch has made this work. For The Times, there’s undoubtedly more that they could (and should) be doing to encourage users to sign up. Visitors to the site should be enticed with what’s in store for them behind the purple subscribe button. Perhaps we'll see start to see tactics such as this as the service looks around for a more substantial user base.

There's been much jubilation from certain quarters of the news that The Times paywall is deterring users. The newspaper has been charging customers for its online content since June and is now £1 per day or £2 per week. According to Hitwise, there's been a 66% decline in traffic and some analysts reckon the site now has just 15,000 users.

It should come as no surprise there's been a steep decline in traffic, most news sites are free and The Times' stories no longer appear in Google News. However, the 'told you so' crowd are claiming victory too early. Murdoch et al are far from finished and even if the site has just 15,000 paying users, that's more paying users than any other UK newspaper website.

Placing a premium on content

The truth is, advertising just doesn't pay the rent for many publishers and the extra tough climate of 2009 saw titles close and journalists laid off in droves. I question the sanity of any journalist who doesn't want the paywall to succeed (even secretly). If it does then it places a premium back onto content and reconnects the user to the business model in a way advertising doesn't. Click through rates on skyscrapers and banners are a mere fraction of overall traffic on any site.

Personally, I don't even see any adverts when I peruse the web thanks to a very useful app called Adblock Plus, one of Firefox's most useful innovations. Everyone involved in online media can appreciate how vulnerable advertising-focused business models are for publishers and everyone is looking for alternatives.

Incentives

There should be no underestimating News International's commitment to this project. It's a bold step but its pockets are deep and I predict it will plough on for many months, if not years, before conceding defeat. There will be some trial and error along the way, but the company can afford to play the long game. Its marketing team will be constantly dreaming up new ways to entice users to spend just £2 per week for its services.

In truth, this will be an easier sell than many first thought. After all, how much incentive do you need to spend £2, or even £1 per day? News International is a vast media empire and has options to create any number of bundles and extras in return for your pounds. Also, once you've subscribed, how much effort are you going to put in to unsubscribe? Curiosity will also play a role. Is it better than other sites? Is the content more interesting? Want to find out? That'll be £2 please - can you really not afford that? 

Exclusivity

Perversely, The Times' disappearance from Google might just help its paywall. You don't feel very special reading a story already seen by three million people, it's not even worth tweeting about. Indeed, The Times is already talking about creating a 'club feel' for its readers and everybody likes joining clubs. Rupert Murdoch might not be your favourite club chairman. But he's already made us pay more for TV and football matches. My bet is he'll do the same for news.

The much-hyped Apple iPad finally made its long-awaited entrance to the UK last week, and what an entrance it was! Apple fans and obsessives queued all night outside the company’s flagship Regent Street store in London to get their hands on the ‘it’ gadget of the year so far. I’m still not really sure what it does, but I really want one. What dark magic has Mr Jobs cast on us...?

Billed as something that will plug the gap between a smart phone and a laptop, the iPad aims to succeed where the Windows-based tablet PCs have failed. They also seem to have Amazon’s Kindle firmly in their sights. Selling over 2 million units in 60 days is quite an impressive feat – anyone planning on launching a product would do well to analyse Apple’s marketing strategy in the lead up to the iPad’s release.

Why I want an iPad

So what does it do? Well, you can read your newspaper on it during your morning commute, watch a movie whilst on the move, do your emails, surf the web, all the usual stuff. Stephen Fry is a big fan of its usability: 'The speed, the responsiveness, the smooth glide of it, the richness and detail of the display, the heft in your hand, the rightness of the actions and gestures that you employ, untutored and instinctively, it's not just a scaled up iPhone or a scaled-down multitouch enhanced laptop – it is a whole new kind of device', he gushed.

But the main selling point is that it looks SEXY. I just want one. I don’t need it – it won’t do anything that my iPhone and laptop can’t do together, but I can imagine it making my life better in ways that shouldn’t be possible... I really can.

So, am I going to fork out £429 for one? No. My iPhone may have cost as much, but that was disguised by a monthly contract. I can’t replace my phone with an iPad and I can’t replace my laptop with one either, so this will be something I must own AS WELL AS those, not instead of both. I guess if I could use the iPad do all my laptop-based tasks and use it as a comedy-sized smart phone, I’d be joining the Regent Street queues. For now, this one is going on the backburner.

Top Five iPad accessories

If you are investing in an iPad, however, you will of course need to start thinking about which slick and sexy accessories will best compliment and personalize your beloved new appliance. Here are the top five:

Apple Keyboard Dock

The iPad has no separate keyboard, which surely creates a bit of an ergonomic nightmare. But thankfully the specially designed Apple Keyboard Deck takes care of that.

The Griffin Flexgrip

This flexible silicon protective case comes in a range of colours and will protect your iPad from scratches and scuffs.

The Cloak by Quirky

A non-slip, rubber carrier case which allows iPad users to view their prized gadget in landscape or portrait

iPad Camera Connection Kit

The iPad lacks a card-reading feature which would allow you to move images from a digital camera's SDCard to the iPad. The two dongles which make up the iPad Camera Connection Kit are therefore designed for importing files via USB and letting you plug an SDCard into it.

Scosche Kickback

This is a leaning device which solves the problem of having to look at your ipad while it's flat on the table or rested awkwardly on your knees.

I think it’s about time for a Bing update. It’s now a year since Microsoft’s ‘decision engine’ was launched, and the last few months have seen a huge marketing push.

The chances are you’ve seen one of the TV ads, which focus on reducing the information overload users can experience at the hands of other search engines. Which is all very well, but can Bing deliver on its promises, and what are the consequences of this latest push for an online marketing agency like us?

The obvious outcome is that the cost of search engine marketing could potentially come down. As Bing fights to eat into Google’s market share, the increased competition between Google AdWords and Microsoft adCenter is good news for search engine marketers.

One would also expect this battle for search dominance to drive improvements and innovation across the board, which can only benefit online marketing agencies and users alike. Recent Google innovations include placing more importance on the load speed when ranking pages, and the ongoing Google Squared project - intended to organise information related to the search term logically and quickly.

I’ve also noticed several changes to the Google interface over the last couple of weeks including going (even more) minimalistic for a while by removing the links across the top of the page including Gmail, shopping and news. These changes, both large and small, are a clear indication that the market leader is not going to let Bing’s advance go unnoticed. 

Bing’s market share continues to creep up

The polls show Bing’s market share is growing; ComScore’s most recent survey gives Bing a market share of 11.5% compared to Google’s 65.5%. But can this growth be sustained? I used Bing frequently back when it was launched, and have had another look recently after seeing the TV ads, but this was out of curiosity rather than because I’ve decided it’s the best search engine. If I used it out of curiosity then surely others did too and, like me, may revert to the comfort of Google.           

It’s been said, but for me it comes down to familiarity and speed and, as I’m familiar with Google’s offering, I get what I’m looking for more quickly. To break this cycle, Bing must strive to exceed Google’s engine rather than just match it.

Search on the move - the latest battleground

The forthcoming launch of the Windows Phone 7, with its dedicated Bing search button, can only bolster Bing's growth. However, the popularity of the Windows phone is unlikely to rival that of the iPhone (which uses Google as its default search engine), particularly with the hype already surrounding the launch of the iPhone 4G. Add to this the fact that Google is the standard engine on the iPad, and it’s evident that gaining the upper hand in mobile search is going to be tricky.

Online marketing agencies require search engines to deliver lots of relevant traffic as cheaply as possible. Whether Bing will ever dethrone Google in this respect is yet to be seen, but the ongoing competition is good news for the world of search engine marketing, and we should take advantage of the benefits wherever possible.

As the old saying goes, there are some things that money can’t buy: love, happiness, and until now – friends. uSocial.net aims to change that last one however, selling ‘friends’ to those looking to boost their online marketing profile.

According to Leon Hill, CEO of uSocial, $87 can buy you a whole load of friends: 1,000, to be exact – and his site offers online friends on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while also offering a service which can get you onto the front page of Reddit and Digg.

And it’s a business model that works, too. Hill’s business is so profitable that he is simply bored. “I really need a hobby”, the Australian entrepreneur said.

Why we mustn't ignore social media

If the value of social media is doubted by any online marketing agency, they only need to look to the survey which recently found that consumers said they are more likely to buy from brands which they engage with on social networking sites. Users also see companies as ‘irrelevant’ if they have little or no social media presence.

From this it’s clear that a thriving social media profile is a vital part of any online marketing campaign. This is where uSocial supposedly enters the frame: you pay them for friends, and the friends supposedly then become customers.

Can buying friends really work?

There are some who are sceptical of the promises made by uSocial. One customer reported his experience with uSocial’s Facebook package, saying that the company’s online marketing campaign was, "superficially successful, with a large influx of fans joining.”

However he went on to say, “Despite telling usocial.net that we are UK based and wished to have UK based fans, the fans we gained were all American. So while we gained pure numbers, we diminished our relevance and simply wish we hadn’t bothered.”

Any decent online marketing agency knows from experience that a key component of any online campaign is real, organic word of mouth. It’s this authentic element of social media which makes it such a valuable tool for companies; and by simply paying for numbers of fans or followers, you’re most likely setting yourself up for disappointment.

How to tell if your campaign is on track

While the number of followers you have is one indicator of social media success, it shouldn’t be the sole factor by which you measure how well your social media campaign is performing. Some important things to keep in mind are:

•             How much activity are your online followers generating?

•             Are your followers in a country in which you conduct business?

•             Do your followers fit your target demographic?

•             How many visits are your posted links receiving?

The task of any online marketing agency is to enable companies to grow as a result of social media – not simply to feel popular by accruing online followers who are at best, uninterested, and at worst, not even human.