This week Google released Google Wave to around 100,000 trial users, described by Google as an online tool for real-time communication and collaboration.

Google appears to be trying to grab a hold of the Social Media world, by creating a tool that could rival MSN Live Messenger and perhaps even Facebook. This is what they hope to achieve anyway, but is it really that unique?

The BBC have had a play with it and described it as “little more than a combination of e-mail and instant messaging on steroids”

Although I am yet to have a go myself, I would have to agree with the above statement! Do we really need Wave? I for one am comfortable keeping my social contacts on Facebook and Messenger and my business via email. From what I have heard so far Google Wave doesn’t seem to be anything exciting other than the fact you can watch people typing, and have a quick game of sudoku.

Google do insist that they have lots of plugins and the potential for more which is good news, perhaps this is a building block for Google OS, something which I am a lot more enthusiastic about.

I would love to hear opinions on this, and if anyone has a spare Google Wave invite lying around so that I can do some “research” please get in touch

The new Yahoo campaign reported last week at Search Engine Land began today in the US!

This is the single-largest global integrated Yahoo marketing campaign ever and it is set to hit the rest of the world, on TV, Radio and Online from the 5th of October and throughout 2010.

For those who haven’t seen it yet, here is the TV advertisement-

The “It’s You” branding is designed to emphasise the whole “user experience” motive that Yahoo is now focused on, something which can be seen from the new search layout.

Personally it think it’s nice to hear the “Yahooooo hooo” again, there is something nostalgic about it and perhaps others will be reminded of Yahoo’s presence with this campaign too, if anything it will be interesting to see how much traffic Yahoo receive from this!

You can see more on this campaign at www.youandyahoo.com

Infoserve are the exclusive provider of Yahoo Local listings, get Listed now!

Often neglected by web designers and SEO experts is the use of alt attributes. Although these tags were designed to allow users with screen readers to understand the content of a webpage, they are also a valuable SEO tag.

You often hear people talk about the importance of using keywords in your heading tags and using bold and strong tags to emphasise text, but I very rarely hear people talk about the alt attribute. Recently SEOMoz did some studies on the usage of keywords and found that surprisingly the alt attribute had more weighting than the heading tags.

When I am doing SEO for clients or myself I try and make sure that my alt tags are as descriptive as possible without being spammy. I have provided a template and a few examples to help you with your own SEO.

Template

Service/Product | Location/s | Secondary Keyword

Examples

Accountancy Services, Guildford, Essex- Payroll Services
iPhone covers, UK- iPhone Accessories

If anyone would like further advice or help please get in touch

The BT Yahoo portal has recently changed natural search provider to Google. It appears that a deal between the 3 companies has permitted BT to use Google results.

Although BT has a deal with Yahoo to provide portal services until 2011, it appears that a deal has been done to allow Google to gain a bigger market share in the UK market.

A BT spokesman said: “We are delighted that we are continuing to work with Yahoo! through to 2011. As part of this new agreement BT Yahoo!’s web search will be provided by Google. We made this decision based on the fact that Google is the most popular search engine in the UK.

“The combination of Google’s search engine with Yahoo’s leading content and email services offers customers the ultimate broadband experience.”

It would be interesting to hear Yahoo and Googles comments on this deal.

35% of all UK Broadband users use BT Broadband, and I am sure a lot of those will have the BT Yahoo portal as their homepage, it will be interesting to see what affect this will have on both Google and Yahoo.

Google released a video this week detailing how they deal with spam reports.

Every time someone send a spam report to Google it is prioritised based on how popular a keyword is, or how popular a site is.

Matt Cutts says in the video that spam reports from lower ranking sites and less popular keywords will most likely be left to the bottom of the pile, wheras a popular keyword/website it will be looked into straight away.

Although I don’t submit spam reports myself, it would be intersting to know if anyone has had experience of how quickly reports are being dealt with!

Over the past few month’s I have noticed irrelevant results appearing in the Google.co.uk SERPS! Many of the sites are US sites and some are even Canadian, Australian or Even Korean. There’s no question that some of these sites are irrelevant to searchers.

One example I took a look at is “LG Laptop Battery”

The first 2 results are great, both .co.uk domains and both UK sites. However the next result is a .au site, an Australian site. The next is a US site, then another Australian site and 3 more US sites, lastly is a .co.kr.

Now I don’t have a problem with buying product from another country, sometime you can get great bargains, however the shipping fee is bound to be high, especially from Australia, not to mention it will take a while to get here.

I have noticed similar results to these when searching for other products, and to me these searches should be mostly UK, as that is where I want to buy from.

Dave Naylor had looked at the possibility of this being a conspiracy to promote US sites, however I think it’s purely a problem with the algorithm, especially as it’s not all US sites appearing.

Also with Google Caffeine just around the corner you would expect a fix, however using the same search term, although different results I am still getting US and Australian site, not good!

Google Caffeine might not be the pick me up after all.

P.S Here is a link to the UK version of Google Caffiene

There is often debate about the use of the w3c validator for SEO. Is it really worth your time and effort to get that green “Passed” sign on the w3c validator?

So Microsoft is trying to compete with Google, and in a big way!

Microsoft released Bing at the end of May and it looks like they are aiming to compete with Google, good luck with that!

Microsoft describe Bing as “a new Decision Engine and consumer brand, providing customers with a first step in moving beyond search to help make faster, more informed decisions”

At first look Bing appears to be very simplistic (not as simplistic as Google, but can you get any simpler than Google?). When you first view the homepage you might think you have stumbled upon a photographers holiday snaps site.

Simple and also very appealing pictures.

When I search for the term SEO here are the results I get

Similar results to Google (but not exactly the same) and with some related searches that appear to be taken from a list of most searched terms to the left.

The layout itself is pretty much just Google (why try and fix something that isn’t broken, right?)

Moving on to the Local results it appears they have adopted the same approach as Google, it appears that on Bing United Stated they are using yellowpages.com for the sponsored results and then a standard free listing.

It’s a shame that the UK version has limited results and not really that relevant either (see below image). I’m not sure if there is any official sponsored results reseller yet, but they do appear to be getting results from Thomson Local.

There is one area on Bing that I really do like and that is the Travel section, it’s pretty much a price compassion site, but it does have the potential to become to only place to search for flights, although its not on the UK version yet, the US version seems pretty well laid out and user friendly.

There is a lot of positives for Bing but is it really that feasible to be taking on the might of Google?