Lets start with some positive news for all of us in the search engine marketing arena before we talk about Google and massage their ego. E-consultancy have released figures that show that the UK market for search engine marketing is worth about £2.22bn in 2007, up 58% from 2006. Their statistics also show that over the past five years there has been an explosion in search advertising, with the UK spend on paid search valued at around £1.97 billion in 2007. Good times!!!!

Google has had some good news too recently; they have just been crowned the number one super brand in the UK.  Google last year was only in third place in the rankings but this year has pipped Microsoft to the number one spot. The survey was compiled by the Centre for Brand Analysis which, together with YouGov, canvassed the opinions of around 2,200 people in the UK about their favourite and most memorable brands.

Stephen Cheliotis, chief executive of the Centre for Brand Analysis and chairman of the Superbrands Council said that “The results are a further sign that Google is continuing its dominance in the UK,”

But the good news does not stop there, not for Google anyway! In the second quarter of 2008, data tracked by industry researchers showed that Google now owns 81.1% share of UK search marketing industry. The data was based on 23 billion ad impressions and 390 million clicks.

Their second quarter results also show that Google achieved revenues of $5.37 billion for the quarter ended June 30, an increase of 39% compared to the second quarter of 2007 and an increase of 3% compared to Google’s first quarter of 2008. Google have posted earnings of $1.58 billion, or $3.92 per share, compared to $1.55 billion (or $4.12 per share) for the first quarter.

However, Wall Street analysts had the company pegged for earnings of $4.72 per share, according to Thomson Reuters estimates. This fall in estimated value has caused Google shares to plummeting.

The figures released by Google also showed a dramatic slowdown in the company’s hiring process. Google only added just 448 employees to its business during the second quarter. This is a very significant sign that Google are watching their budgets carefully now because this new employee figure is their lowest since the fourth quarter of 2004 when they took on only 353 new workers.

So that should put a little semi smile on the face of Yahoo and Microsoft knowing that Google isn’t bullet proof after all. This is because EVEN Google is feeling the pince of the slow down in the economy. Google’s Chairman Eric Schmidt has been quoted as saying the current economic climate was “challenging”. However Sergey Brin, the co-founder of Google has reassured investors that Google is making ongoing search improvements. Brin stated that Google had launched over 100 search quality improvements during the quarter. He also stated that the mobile search advertising marketing was showing great promise for the future.

Even with this small set back in the state of the economy, the search engine giant is still currently hugely successful and I don’t feel anything yet will remotely unsettled their plan to take over the world!!

Is it a bird, is it a plane, no its Google the Super Brand. And unless someone soon can find their Achilles’ heel, then this giant of search will continue to dominate the UK and the rest of the world. I wonder if Yahoo or Microsoft have considered using Kryptonite!!!

Just a thought guys!!!!

I have recently been playing with Google Trends, a great free tool from Google Labs that allows you to search the most popularly searched keywords. From using this tool I have discovered something very interesting relating to the wonderful world of search marketing.

This year (2008) SEO has for the first time surpassed PPC in terms of people wanting to know about these services. According to the figures presented by Google Trends, more people are now searching the keyword SEO then PPC.

The results indicate that the keyword SEO is generally increasing in popularity due to the significant growth the keyword has achieved over the last year. I may even stick my neck out here and say that this is a big indication of the growing importance of search engine optimisation (SEO). I say this because these figures are purely based on Google searches and Google represents about 85% of all the UK’s online search activity, so with this in mind, this is potentially unprecedented proof in the raise of SEO’s importance.

Maybe the potential credit crunch has aided this increase in interest into SEO. The figures provided by Google Trends could suggest that companies are tightening their advertising budgets as the economy slows in favour of longer term investments to achieve a better free natural placement in search engines.

Pay per click is a great platform for online marketing and instant visibility but it does have its downsides. The moment you run out of budget your position on the search engines is lost and so is your potential to generate further traffic to your website. However an efficient and professionally crafted search engine optimisation (SEO) campaign, which does take longer to implement and index, would yield longer term results in terms of search ranking and traffic.

In essence, natural SEO is free and web users generally prefer natural to paid search results. It’s really a trust issue; Users generally click on PPC adverts less than natural search results.

As a SEO expert I may even go so far as to say that PPC is now second to SEO in terms of cost effectiveness. Is it possible that UK businesses that have an online presence have finally woken up to the potential of SEO? As an SEO company we most certainly hope so!!!!

Below is a graph that I got from Google Trends relating to this topic where you can see exactly what I have been talking about in terms of SEO becoming more popular then PPC. In the graph the red line represent PPC and the blue line represents SEO.

If you want to know more about SEO services then call us on 01273 704 771