Google

25
Aug
2015

Video Ads on Google Search, News Media, Selfie Sticks, & Phone Calls

Google is testing promoted video ads on the Search Results Page

If you needed any more proof that video content is becoming increasingly important to promoting your brand online today then here you go. It seems that Google is beginning to test video ads directly in Search Results Pages, finally adding something new to the traditional ‘three lines of text and a link’ ads that we’re all used to. This opens up a whole new outlet for promoting your video content to a mass audience which, until now, has pretty much only been possible through YouTube and Facebook. This also calls for a different approach to video creation, catering to intent-based searches, such as for specific product information etc. Not to mention the potential of search hijacking your competitors — imagine Samsung sticking up video ads for the Galaxy S6 next to searches for the iPhone 6!

Either way, I think Google’s Search Engine Results Page (SERP) design has long been in need of a revamp, and making it more visual and interactive will provide for a more pleasing experience for users.

Vice and CNN are in a battle royale for the future of the news

The news industry is in a state of flux at the moment. Even ignoring the decline of print and the growth in ad-blockers, with so many different news outlets available online today, users are spoilt for choice and the race for eyeballs is fierce. With the lines between digital and TV media publishers continuing to blur, Fast Company looks at how the gap between traditional news channels (like CNN) and digitally native outlets (such as Vice) has shrunk over the last couple of years. One interesting note to point out is the fact that Vice has an in-house agency called Virtue that produces “fresh content for brands—published on its site and anywhere else on the web—that still feels like stuff its viewers want to watch”.

The Decline of the Phone Call

Not so long ago, mobile phones used to be used primarily for one thing. Making phone calls. Not so anymore. This article discusses the different reasons that have sidelined the humble phonecall, mainly the fact that today’s mobile-savvy youth have grown up using SMS and Instant Messaging apps, but also less obvious reasons like the fact that making calls on a mobile has always been an unreliable experience when compared to how we used to make calls with the traditional landline (i.e. mobile calls have to deal with poor signal, background noise etc.) But this raises the concern that, as more and more people avoid telephone calls, are we risking the degradation of our verbal communication skills? Either way, you still can’t beat a quick phone when you need grab someone’s attention or get a response to something and don’t want to risk the likelihood of an email or text being ignored.

What Selfie Sticks Really Tell Us About Ourselves

It might not come as surprise, but according to research outlined in this New York Times profile, people who take a lot of selfies “tend to have narcissistic, psychopathic and Machiavellian personality traits”. Selfie Sticks are one of the most annoying physical embodiments of our digital world. Even so, it’s interesting to hear of the different ways in which people’s behaviour re: online sharing has developed over recent years, and the role that selfies in particular have in many people’s sense of self in the digital world.

Posted by Rob in Google, Links of the Week, Mobile, Old Media
27
Apr
2015

Why Google Says You Need A Mobile Responsive Website

#Mobilegeddon day has come and past. And, while the world is still spinning and things might seem like normal outside, in the realm of the world wide web and mobile search, things are very much different.

The reason? The world’s largest search engine has made a major update to its mobile search algorithm that will change the order in which websites are ranked when users carry out a search on their phone or tablet.

Google may have been talking about this for what seems like forever, but they have finally made good on their promise, and begun to favour mobile responsive websites for when searches are made on a mobile device. Yes, your Google results will now change, favouring those sites that are optimized for mobile experiences.

The change will favour websites with large text, easy-to-click links, and displays that resize to fit whatever screen they’re viewed on, ranking these sites higher in the search results. This essentially deprioritizes millions of sites around the world that have yet to optimize for mobile.

mobilegeddon

This makes sense because, as more and more people carry out searches on mobile devices, Google wants to give them the best experience they possibly can. No-one likes pinching the screen to zoom in and squinting to find the information they want from a site on their mobile. For both Google and the end-user this is a win-win scenario.

But for businesses, things are different. It means that if one of your prospective customers searches for a product that your company provides, and your competitors have a mobile-ready website but you don’t, you are immediately at a disadvantage.

So what can you do to make sure that your company is not negatively affected? Well for a start, you need to make your website mobile responsive. In 2015, this is a necessity if you want to succeed online. This won’t only benefit your business by making sure that Google gives you priority in mobile search, but it will also give customers who access your site on their smartphone or tablet a much better experience. Over 70% of people in the UAE search for information via their mobile devices. Is your site ready?

Posted by Rob in Google, Mobile
23
Oct
2014

Google aims to reinvent email with new ‘Inbox’ app

Email is one of those services that, while not exactly broken, certainly isn’t optimized for our new mobile lifestyle. There’s a couple of decent applications out there already that try to modernize the age-old email experience somewhat but, on the mobile, it’s still basically the same process that it’s always been. Enter Google’s new ‘Inbox’ app.

Inbox uses some of the aspects of Google Now to contextualize and streamline email to give users a much better experience on mobile. It also uses Google’s slick new ‘Material Design’ approach that’s come to the fore recently. Inbox is invite-only at the moment, so good luck trying to test it out, but fingers crossed it gets a mainstream launch soon enough.

Posted by Rob in Apps, Google
02
Jul
2014

A quick look at Google’s new design approach

Android is getting a new lick of paint this Autumn with an update known as Android L. The design changes centre around a new ‘material design’ style which Google says is based on basic shapes and sheets of paper. This version features some slick new animations and what Google likes to call meaningful transitions. It seems that, in terms of design and intuitiveness at least, Android is starting to catch up with iOS.

Posted by Rob in Android, Design, Google
30
May
2014

Google’s self-driving car and the future of the taxi

Another week, another cutesy PR video, and another one of the Big Four’s moonshot projects gets a little closer to reality. While most articles that were circulating on the reveal of Google’s self-driving car dealt with it’s rather cartoon-like appearance or the multitude of regulations that will need to be negotiated before a concept like this becomes viable, The Irish Times looked at how self-driving cars could revolutionize the taxi industry in big cities.

Detailing a report by Lawrence D. Burns, former VP of R&D at General Motors and now a Google consultant, it was suggested that, if such a project becomes viable, it could reduce the cost of running a taxi service by almost 90%, significantly reducing wait times in the process.

The researchers found that Manhattan’s 13,000 taxis made 470,000 trips a day. Their average speed was between 10 and 11 mph, carrying an average of 1.4 passengers per trip with an average wait time of five minutes.

In comparison, it is possible for a futuristic robot fleet of 9,000 shared automated vehicles hailed by smartphone to match that capacity with a wait time of less than one minute.

Assuming a 15% profit, the current cost of a taxi service is about $4 per trip mile, while in contrast, it was estimated that a Manhattan-based driver-less vehicle fleet would cost about 50 cents per mile.

The fact that Google invested $250m in Uber just last year only makes this a more realistic vision. Imagine a fleet of 9,000 Uber / Google self-driving cars whizzing up and down New York’s streets ferrying people around for next to nothing. It’s all very ‘Minority Report‘, but I like it!

Posted by Rob in Google, Tech, Uber