Call To Click Improves Mobile Experience
Posted by Neil Palmer in 
One obvious problem with browsing the Internet on a mobile device is the display size, and ability to find what you what on a web page. This is especially true of most e-commerce websites and search results pages on search engines.
Whilst most people don’t tend to look for retail items while travelling around, things we do actively seek are places of interest, restaurants and cafe’s and service providers like car garages. To help browsers get to the contact details of a page Google, through their Adwords programme, have introduced ‘Call To Click’. This is a feature designed to bring the contact details for a company to the top of the page in a mobile web browsing device, commonly known as Android phones.
By introducing this handy element into the handheld search results, Google have really made life much easier for the public to use the Internet quickly on their phones. While we wait for technology to improve, or even a different kind of application for web pages on smaller screens, this has resolved an issue many consumers had.
Google in turn will be hoping that local businesses will see the benefit in the service and sign up (if haven’t already done so) for Adwords. This means they will need to have a PPC campaign in place to use the service, something which undoubtedly inspired Google to invest in this new feature. The company will also have to opt in to the mobile content network.
In the past many firms have opted out of the mobile content network in favour of the desktop results (with Adwords). SEO firms target those paying for adverts in mobile network results as having a poor return on investment, and being harder to track for potential pay per click fraud. This is due to many millions of blogs around the World displaying ads through Adsense, and there are always reports of click abuse.
Twitter Eyes 2009 Profit
Social networking site giant Twitter looks like posting a profit for the first time in it’s history. The San Francisco based company, which averages 50 million visitors a month, have been looking for ways to monetise the traffic they receive.
The first step in this is the deals they have recently signed with Microsoft and Google Inc, for listings in the search results of Bing and Google respectively. Google have paid $15m and Microsoft $10m for the live feeds which they hope will enhance their search results.
Next up will be the advertising- don’t expect it to be long before you see pay per click adverts either side of your profile, from either of the aforementioned search providers. Long term will be to offer their own marketing plan directly to merchants.
Google Caffeine The Perfect Stimulant
With much more movement in the search engine market over the last few months (than we have seen in a decade), there are plenty of articles knocking about regarding the Google Caffeine treatment. Where this term comes from, we are not quite sure, as the search engine will not be renamed. In fact it looks from the outset like it’s just a set of much needed updates to a very polished search provider.
The main points to be aware of are the time it takes to display the results, the amount of indexed content and the relevancy of the results. Now we have already begun to see the changes go in place, namely the real-time results section you see about 3 or 4 positions down in the first page of the results. This is supposed to aid the user experience by offering comments and remarks from news sources, blogs, and the general public.
The speed of the results appears to have been increased, especially considering the indexed pages being higher than ever before. An article we read from a tester of the new Google robot noted that in some cases the SERP’s were displayed in half the time. And with the fact that there are so many social networking sites that will be just full to the brim with new posts every day means the number of results Google needs to offer is inevitably increasing.
In summation these changes are in response to smart features that are being offered by Yahoo and Bing, and has given Google Inc a little warning. They ned to stay on their toes if they want to maintain the two thirds of the search market they currently enjoy. These sharp alterations to the already popular engine will no doubt cement it’s place on top, though with Bing threatening big spending and increased usability, this won’t be the last shot of caffeine Google needs.
Real Time Results Questioned
With the recent launch of the real time results into Google’s search engine listings, there wasn’t going to be a real test until something tragic occurred in the global spotlight. With yesterdays sad news of the passing of Brittany Murphy, this new technology has again been criticised for the lack of censorship regrading the content on offer. Some of the results on offer from a search for this late actresses name reveal some unsavoury comments, although most appear to be based on condolences. The problem being they could contain anything.
With the display of Twitter comments from any profile, the results that appear for search terms are random, never monitored and pushed straight into the view of millions on the front page of the search results. This immediate turn around of the general public view point is sure to continue to create quality control problems. In the past the only sites to get this kind of exposure were the well optimized, news network channels and the most popular blogs.
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