Cookie law and profiting from Social Search – thank you WNW design

Google has revolutionised the way we use the Internet, quickly rising to almost complete dominance over the search market.

But for all its unerring ability to find what you are looking for, it has – up to now – still used a fairly ‘dumb’ comparison program to match your search terms to pages stored in its database.

But now, Google has unleashed its latest technology on the world – a ‘Knowledge Graph’ which can understand the relationships between real-world objects, and bring all this information back to the user.

Instead of simply matching your keywords, Google’s technology will try to understand your query, and bring back the information you are looking for on the right-hand-side of the traditional results.

Google says this is a ‘critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do.’

On May 26^th the Information Commissioners Office fully implemented the EC Directive to ensure website owners get  specific opt in consent for (almost) all cookies on the their websites.

However with literally hours to go the ICO changed the rules, which had already spread confusion throughout the industry.

What do you need to do?  Well that depends on your website, WNW Design will contact customers if there are implications for specific websites but with reports that the vast majority of Government owned websites are failing to comply with the rules, or at least the version of rules that applied last week, it’s likely that the confusion will last a while longer.

Click here for further background and a link to the ICO guidelines  

Google’s Chrome overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer recently to become the world’s most used browser. Rather surprisingly it’s taken longer than it might due to reluctance by Office IT staff to switch business users.

Whilst both programs are free, the power-shift is a big blow to Microsoft and helps drive Google’s search engine and Social network, Google+.  Many observers have argued that the release of IE9 was the final self-inflicted wound by Microsoft, finally testing the patience of its many loyal users.

There are lots of changes happening in the world of the search engines, you may well have read about the Panda and Penguin Google updates, changes to the algorithm to make search results more accurate and to reduce “spam” pages.

The other big change is how Google, Bing (Microsoft) and other search engines are incorporating Social Media results such as Tweets, Likes, Shares and Pins from Twitter, Facebook, Google+ and Pinterest into the search results.

To help you take advantage of the changes in Social Search WNW Design are offering a “Two for One Deal” on Social Media account set up and “12 months for the price of 10” on social media campaign management packages.

To take advantage of these limited offers and to find out more about how we can assist your business make the most of Social Media then call us today to discuss your needs, free of charge and with no obligation.