photo credit: coquetboy

And that was 2009.

Hopefully yours was a good one, it certainly was for me.  On reflection, much happened in 2009 – both from a personal and web perspective. So much, in fact, it’s hard to imagine it all happened in just 365 days.

I felt like I learnt a lot this year. Much of which, I can say was due to Twitter. On the 5th of January 2009 I wrote my first blog post, entitled ‘What’s the point of Twitter?‘. I’d heard about it, wasn’t overly enthusiastic about it, but thought it was worth a go for a month. I never looked back and now check it at least a trillion times a day via my laptop or iPhone.

Twitter gave me access to the minds of brilliant people. Particular favourites being Chris Brogan, Brent Payne, Brian Clark, Lisa Barone, Scott Stratten and Steve Rubel. I’ve learnt a tremendous amount from them all (many thanks!), impacting my day job and the handful of personal endeavours that have spawned over the year. It’s been an incredibly enriching experience.

It makes me very excited about the prospect of 2010 – what on earth will we learn and acheive this year?

As we close the book on 2009, I’d like to thank everyone that has read my blog this year (or at the very least, come looking for images to re-use). It’s been a very enjoyable experience – one that I need to dedicate much more time to this year.

For one final look at 2009, I’d like to share with you the Top 10 It’s Digital Marketing posts this year. Enjoy!

1. Twitter Statistics: UK traffic increased 22-fold in a year (24th June)

2. Google Profiles to take on Monster.com in job market? (7th May)

3. 10 Insider Tips to win a Search Agency pitch (2nd March)

4. Ryanair: Cheap flights and cheap service (24th Feb)

5. Building an App for Twitter (2nd July)

6. 10 Signs you’re addicted to Twitter (25th March)

7. Social Proof: The wisdom of crowds (15th Sept)

8. To find a job think like a SEO (13th Feb)

9. Sex, Drugs & Rock & Roll: Google Maps Mashup Style (23rd Nov)

10. Social Media Innovation (9th Oct)

Have a happy and prosperous 2010 everybody!

Gary

Related posts:

1. Is Search Marketing Really That Important?
2. Ryanair Cheap Flights and Cheap Service

Sex toys, crime statistics and the Artic Monkeys.

Words I never thought I could unite in one blog post. Take a moment to consider where this could go…

Nothing quite so sensational, I’m afraid, but interesting nonetheless.

Anyone who knows my geeky side will know that I have a penchant for Google Maps Mashups (If you don’t know what they are, take a quick Google Maps mashup detour. Just remember to come back).

They don’t need to be all bells and whistles, fantastically designed or integrated. It’s the idea that always fascinates me. The imagination and breadth of subjects poured into Google Maps mashups seems to be infinite.

We can't help ourselves - we have to know!

I’ll produce a list of some of the best ones at a later date, but for now I’ll share three that have caught my eye recently. And perhaps shed some light on the cryptic start to this post.

The Sex Map from LoveHoney.com – If you’re at work reading this, don’t worry there aren’t any images here that you don’t want your Boss or Tech guys to discover. LoveHoney is an online retailer of adult toys, lingerie and associated paraphernalia.

They have been really clever with their Google Maps mashup. They have tied together sales data from their own site, data from the UK Census, competitor and manufacturer accounts, and internet traffic monitoring services, and mashed it together with the Google Maps API. The end result is an amusing, yet fantastic bit of linkbait, which no doubt has brought a few extra pennies to the pot from inquisitive visitors.

Oddly, I felt somewhat disappointed to find my home town ranked only the 530th sexiest place in the UK. What goes on in Upminster (ranked #1) is anyone’s guess though?!

The Drugs Map – okay, not just drugs, but all kinds of crime, be it robbery, homicide or car theft. Crimereports.com say the U.S. site was created to help law enforcement agencies make crime data accessible to the public. It standardises the data from the different agencies and enables individuals to monitor what is happening in their neighbourhood, right down to their specific street or block.

I think this is a great example of how technology can be utilised to harness disparate information, organise it and communicate it in an easy to understand way. The participating organisations should be commended for supporting the scheme.

My one concern would be how obsessed a worried user could become with monitoring crime outside their front door. However, on a more practical note, it would be a useful evaluation tool when house hunting.

And finally, the Rock & Roll Map. Whilst not a big buyer (or listener) of music, I’ve always been appreciative of good album cover design. So I found it interesting to discover this Google Maps mashup the readers of UK music mag, Word Magazine, have been putting together.

The Google Maps mashup plots the locations of where iconic album cover photographs were taken. Whether its ABBA at Barkaby Airfield, the Beatles at Abbey Road, or The Verve lounging in Richmond Park, flicking through the list is a quirky and fascinating tour of music’s historical landmarks.

These are just three of the thousands of Google Maps mashup examples out there – and I’m sure there are many more brilliant than the ones I’ve chosen here. If you’ve seen any, let me know. I’ll be featuring more mashups here at a later date.

Have you built a Google Maps Mashup you want to share? Seen one you loved, but secretly wished you’d had the idea yourself? Or maybe you’re just rueing the day you skipped programming class and have to wait for the day when Google can make a simple wizard, so you can build one of these cool things yourself? Whatever, just get in touch.

Related posts:

1. I see Aliens in Google Trends
2. Google Profiles in UK Search Results

You probably didn’t notice the subtle change that occured on the Google homepage yesterday. I’m guessing that at a glance you still wouldn’t know if I held up before and after shots of the page.

As reported by Mashable, Google have said they have increased the size of their search box to remind us that their focus is on search.

I don’t know about you, but I appreciate the timely reminder, because I’ve been finding myself staring at the slightly smaller box on the big white page recently and wondering “what’s this all about?”.

Image borrowed from Mashable - click for their article

Forgive me for being skeptical about the message Google have put out, but they rarely do something to their core product ‘just to remind us’ of something (in this case, the blatently obvious).

It’s more likely they’ve tested the varying boxes lengths and discovered the longer one performs better than the shorter one. Who said size doesn’t matter?

My hunch is that it may have something to do with the increase in popularity of long tail searching by the masses. According to Hitwise, the length of search queries is increasing. Longer queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, have increased 7 percent between April 2008 and April 2009 alone. Perhaps the longer box encourages the searcher to enter more keywords, resulting in a more relevant set of returned search results. End game, one happy searcher = increased loyalty, more visits, more ads to click.

I would be interested to know if they used their own Web Optimizer tool to test the two variants. If you’re not familiar with Web Optimizer, check the description from the product page:

“Website Optimizer, Google’s free website testing and optimization tool, allows you to increase the value of your existing websites and traffic without spending a cent. Using Website Optimizer to test and optimize site content and design, you can quickly and easily increase revenue and ROI whether you’re new to marketing or an expert.”

(The bolding is mine)

I’m in the process of using the tool myself in my work capacity – partly as an inquistive test drive and partly to tweak out a better return on some revenue generating processes. Small fry compared to changing the design of perhaps the most viewed web page in the world, but important nonetheless.

It will be interesting to see if Google make any further changes to the page over the coming weeks.

No related posts.

Updated 12:52 pm 23/07/09: Apparently the mysterious link is a ‘Adwords Local PlusBox‘. Yeah, I’d never heard to them either. Well apparently they were launched in December 2007, but as none of the search team had seen them before, I’m guess they’re a little under utilised.

Reading the blurb on them, they only appear for companies with ads running in the top position PPC slots. It’s an interesting idea, very useful for local business with a ‘shopfront’, but not so sure in the case of Reed, a web based business with multiple offices nationwide.

______________________________________________________

I noticed an extra link is appearing in some PPC ads this morning.

A search for the term ‘jobsite’ bought up the search results below. If you look at the second listing, Reed have an extra link in their ad – clicking it opens up a map of their offices from their Local listing.

Has anyone else noticed this on other brands? Is this something Google are trialing? With Reed or randomly selecting ads from brands utilising Local?

No related posts.

Today I noticed the new Google Profiles section inserted into the UK search results (see screenshot below).

When the new plans for  Google Profiles were announced last month, it was mentioned that they would insert up to four matching results in a Profiles section at the foot of the first page of the SERPs (for a search on a name). The roll out was due to start in the U.S., but with no announced timetable for the rest of the world.

Well, it seems the UK is ready. I noticed my face staring out at me from the screen over breakfast this morning.  Now at mid-morning, it had disappeared – that is until I login into my Google Account via Gmail. Now I’m there looking out at me again. So it seems the Google Profiles are being tested through account holders in the UK, before a likely launch in all results.

It will be interesting to see how the use of Google Profiles develops, not just here in the UK but generally as a global product offering from Google.

There is still time to go grab your own Google Profile vanity URL – get it before it’s gone!

Related posts:

1. Google Profiles to take on Monster.com in job market?

photo credit: Engin Erdogan

When you’re a search agency pitching to potential clients, how many times do you wonder:

What is it that they really want?

What are they thinking right now?

Are we doing okay?

Was this tie/shirt combo a good idea?

The last question is anyone’s guess (spots over stripes, really??) and whilst you can never truly tell what the people with the scorecards are thinking, there are plenty of things you can do to feel more confident about their evaluation of your pitch.

Over the past 10 years, I’ve sat through my fair share of pitches from search agencies, creative agencies, and PR agencies, and whilst there is some overlap, the approaches taken have varied considerably.

As the Client, it’s great every once in a while to meet an agency that just ticks all your (scorecard) boxes. You can tell that their preparation was thorough, that they have a bright team and have given your situation – and possible solutions – a great deal of thought.

Others, unfortunately, can leave you scratching your head.

If you’d rather be the former and not the latter in your next pitch, read on.

1. Prepare Thoroughly

The key to good preparation is a comprehensive brief. You can’t always guarantee getting one, so if the details are vague, ensure you can speak to the client beforehand to establish a more detailed understanding of what they need.

If you’re given sufficient time before the pitch meeting, make good use of it to find out about the company and its search activities. For a client, it becomes apparent very early on if you haven’t done your homework and that’s a distraction that is very hard to shake as the pitch progresses. If you can’t put in the effort for the pitch, I would wonder, what would you be like after running the account for 6 months?

As an agency, you’ll have a lot on your hands, juggling multiple accounts whilst pitching for new business. It’s understandable that your resources might be stretched. However, if you want to win this pitch you’re going to need to set aside time to properly address the brief and not leave it to the last minute. It won’t reflect well if you try to reschedule the meeting to buy yourself more time.

2. Don’t over-sell to the client

If the brief was comprehensive and you’ve asked the right questions before the pitch, you should have a very good idea what the prospective client wants. Use this as the basis of your recommendations and be mindful of the budget. Pushing additional products or services to raise the value of the account can irritate the client, and does little to build trust.

From my experience, the best agencies have been those who have engaged in a conversation with the business to understand what is needed, then made appropriate recommendations, ensuring the solution fits within our budget.

A client is more likely to extend its contract or increase its spend with an agency that takes this approach, than one that wants to empty its pockets as quickly as possible.

3. Wear your best white hat

There are some businesses that don’t really care how you do it as long as it works. They tend to be ones that are less concerned with a site being penalised in search engines, as long as it can bring in the money quickly. After all, they can always open another site tomorrow or switch to one of their 200 other sites.

However, a company with a less fly-by-night approach to commerce, one that is interested in building a reputation, customer loyalty and a brand, is going to be more risk averse and will be looking for reassurance that you won’t be harming their business.

It may be a given to your agency, but it’s worth stating your ethics to the customer early on in the pitch, providing you with an opportunity to assure them that you wouldn’t do anything underhand that might pose a threat to their business or reputation.

Of course, if you’re not white hat, that’s a whole different story…

4. Balance your pitch team

It’s awfully tempting to bring out the Big Guns for a pitch, especially if they have great credentials. As a potential client sitting there, it can be very impressive to hear about the experience and contacts of your management team.

However, be wary of only bringing your senior staff.

The best piece of advice I ever received about running pitches, is to insist in the brief that the person (or people) who will be your daily contact be part of the team presenting to you. And when they‘re there in front of you, direct your questions at them and not the Directors.

For me, the answers they give go a long way in helping me make up my mind about your search agency. Do they fill me with confidence? Can I trust them with my company’s budget and reputation? Do I think I could work with them day in, day out?

Ultimately, it doesn’t matter how smooth the Big Guns are, your company’s success in this process could come down to my impression of the person who probably earns the lowest salary amongst your pitch team. Now that’s something to think about.

5. Understand the details of the brief

If a prospective client has given a detailed brief, there is a good chance they’ve asked for specific things for a reason. Skipping something and hoping they don’t notice is a risky tactic. If they’re on the ball and you didn’t address it in your pitch, they may well have graded you with a ‘0’ in that area.

If you can’t provide the service they need, be honest with yourself – bluffing only wastes your time and the client’s. If you can do it, but overlooked the point or decided to focus on other areas in your pitch, then you could be doing yourself a disservice.

Be thorough in breaking down the brief. Make sure you’re very clear on what is important to the client.

If they’re following a structured process, they’ll have written a brief and used it to create a corresponding scorecard. They’ll be checking the headings throughout the pitch and scoring you on how well they think you match to the need.

The best way to ensure you score well (apart from having the skills and resources, of course) is to base your own pitch around the structure of the brief. This makes it easier for the client to complete their scorecard rather than trying to piece it all together from memory at the end of the pitch.

This is exactly the same approach as how you were taught to answer exam questions at school or university. Address the points requested and make it easy for the examiner to see that you have done so. You can even use the headings from the brief it you want to be explicit.

6. Avoid sucking up to the top dog

It’s very tempting to focus your pitch on the most senior person in the room. After all, in most cases this is the person who will ultimately make the decision on which search agency to hire.

This approach can go horribly wrong though, if you over do it. Dropping the senior person’s name into every sentence can become embarrassing for that individual, as well discourteous to the other members of the team.

Use this sales technique in moderation and don’t forget the other people present have scorecards too!

7. Be tactful

SEO can be such a subjective area at times and approaches and beliefs can vary considerably from agency to agency or company to company. If you don’t agree with something the potential client has done in the past, then you can say so, but do it with tact – especially if the client has an internal search team and they’re sitting in on the scoring panel. Criticising someone’s work can quickly put them on the defensive and will harm your chances in the pitch.

Even if the previous work was poor or risky, acknowledge the work done already and talk about how your agency can help build upon it (or remedy it) to generate a greater return on effort and investment.

8. Avoid the Me, Me, Me

This may well be an English trait, but bragging doesn’t sit comfortably with a lot of people. In a pitch, you have to find a good balance between confidence and humility. Your slides or handouts can do much of the cheerleading for you – featuring any accolades or big brand testimonials you may have earned.

Use the pitch to talk about how you can assist the business. You can mix in bits about you, but remember why you were invited – to help the company. Whilst this could be a big account win for you, the client is only really interested in making the right choice to improve their own situation.

Whilst it’s tempting to talk in detail about your big name clients, it might not the best use of your allotted time. It’s great to see the names you work with (for reassurance) and it’s useful to hear of any similarities between their projects and ours, but don’t forget to move on and address the situation at hand.

9. Be patient

With a bit of luck, your potential client will have laid out the timings at the beginning of the process – or at least let you know when a decision will be made at the end of your pitch. Whilst a brief follow up email or call can be a nice touch, ringing several times to ask if there is anything else the client needs is going too far and is likely to become frustrating.

If you’ve prepared thoroughly, fielded a strong team and delivered a pertinent and engaging pitch, you should feel confident to leave the decision in the hands of the client.

10. Be a gracious loser

If you have done all of the above and given a great pitch, but still didn’t win the account, then accept the decision gracefully.

It’s always disappointing to lose a pitch, especially if you feel that it went so well. Whilst it may be tempting to ring the company with counter offers or to question the decision, (or in one case, to tell them it’s their loss), it’s unlikely to get them to change their minds. If anything, you could be hurting your chances of an invite back next time or a referral to a different part of the business or another company.

Losing a pitch does not mean that they don’t rate you as an agency. It could just be that for this particular project, your strengths are not in the right area this time. The next project though, could have your name written all over it.

Best of luck with your next pitch.

Related posts:

1. What next for I Spy Search? Jim Brigden new CEO
2. Top 10 It’s Digital Marketing Posts of 2009
3. Is Search Marketing Really That Important?

Is Search Marketing Really That Important?

I was asked that question in a rather indirect way recently. It wasn’t exactly said outright, but the pained expression at the mere suggestion of doing it, told me all I needed to know.

The answer, in short, is Yes. Whether you’re a multi-national corporation, a high street retailer or a taxi service in Leeds, if you want to trade on the web or you want people to know who you are or what you do or where to find you, then yes, you need to be doing it. If it’s your business, you can’t leave this stuff to Lady Luck. Especially, as it’s highly likely your competitors are already doing it.

Okay, makes sense. Anything else good about it?

Plenty. In this economic climate, if you want a business online, you should certainly be looking to make it an integral part of your marketing mix.

1. It doesn’t cost a great deal to get started
2. It can grow with your budget
3. You can be incredibly targeted with it
4. You can limit wastage by only paying for action, not exposure (Pay-per-click)
5. You can get people to your website for free (SEO – apart from your time resource obviously)

How many of your other marketing activities can have that said about them?

Hmmm, so what should I be doing first?

If you read the media today, then apparently the most important thing you should be doing is signing up to Twitter and Facebook to look after your online brand reputation. That’s great, and a topic for another day, but perhaps not your most pressing need.

If you’re being smart about your marketing – and you need to be in this tough economic climate – you’ll already be looking at your marketing activity and checking what is working and what isn’t.

To do this, you’ll need to be very clear on what your objectives are. Ultimately, for any business, there will be a financial objective, so perhaps you’re be looking at which marketing activities are bringing in the greatest return on investment in terms of sales.

Or, depending on your business model, there may be other types of interactions you’ll be tracking – such as subscriptions, job applications, podcast downloads or sales leads. Or you may just be interested in visitor numbers (if supported by display advertising) or trying to raise your brand awareness levels.

The important point here is the need to measure your goals. The old adage applies…

‘You won’t know you’ve got there, unless you know where you’re going’

With some marketing activities it’s hard to measure the impact. Print advertising and PR are two prime examples. There is no direct link to a transaction, so you need to find alternative ways of monitoring, such as econometric tracking.

With search it can be much simpler. A web analytics package, such as Google Analytics, Intellitracker or Web Trends, can tell you all sorts of information about the visitors that come to your site, including what they did whilst they were there and where they came from. If you can tie this into your transactional data, you’ll have a very clear idea of the return on investment.

So is it Pay-per-Click (PPC) or Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that I should be doing?

It depends on your situation really, but potentially both.

If you have a brand new site, it will take a while for it to get listed in the search engines and for you to start seeing free traffic arriving. Paid search (PPC) can be used in the interim to bring visitors in immediately. Great if you need to raise awareness or generate revenue quickly.

If you’re on a tight budget and are not relying on immediate revenue streams from your website, then you can park the PPC and concentrate on SEO. This approach is often utilised by smaller businesses that generate revenue offline and are looking to reach a wider audience via the web.

In an ideal world, paid advertising should be a short term solution for your business, good for building immediate presence and then supporting specific campaigns, whilst SEO is your focus for long term success.

For bigger brands, using PPC for continuous traffic driving has become an expensive business. It’s easy to rely on PPC traffic from Google et al to provide all your new business, but in the long run it’s not a great way of reducing your cost per acquisition.

To avoid this, you need to ensure you devote time and resource to ensuring your site is continuously optmised – it’s not a ‘do it once and it’s done forever’ deal. The effort is worth it though, as the SEO costs are usually considerably smaller than your PPC expenditure.

In future posts I’ll be looking to answer the common questions:

Should I do my search marketing myself or should I outsource it?

How do I choose the right search marketing agency?

If you have any comments on this article please do feel free to share them here. Likewise, let me know your thoughts on the two questions above.

Related posts:

1. Top 10 It’s Digital Marketing Posts of 2009
2. 10 Insider Tips to Win a Search Agency Pitch

Competition for a job is usually fierce at the best of times, but in our current economic climate it’s become considerably more challenging.

With the announcement this week that unemployment in the UK has hit a 12 year high of nearly 2 million, the job market is flooded with people chasing a smaller pool of vacancies (approx. 500,000 according to PM Gordon Brown).

Whilst watching the news recently and pondering how these unfortunate people would be able to set themselves apart from the competition when it came to job interviews, it occurred to me that perhaps the biggest priority would be to be spotted in the first place. How do you stand out in the crowd and avoid being lost in the pile?

Then in an odd leap of thought, I noticed the similarities with search marketing and specifically SEO.

Think about it – millions of people and their CVs trying to be noticed by recruiters = millions of webpages trying to noticed by searchers.

So if a Search Marketer can apply SEO techniques to a webpage, can you take any of those learnings to optimise your chances of being discovered?

I think you can, thanks to online recruitment.

Most job sites nowadays have a CV database, where job seekers can upload their CV and make it searchable by recruiters. This can speed up the process of being found, open you up to wider selection of jobs and generally take some of the difficulty out of job hunting.

But with so many people potentially in the database how do you optimise your CV to ensure you get noticed? (for the sake of this post, I’m assuming you have employable skills that a recruiter is looking for)

The answer is all to do with the content of your CV.

To illustrate my point, I’ll reference what I wrote in an article for Jobsite.co.uk in January:

It is up to you to make sure your CV contains the correct information and key words that are going to make the recruiter take notice. The searching technology may be ground-breaking but it is only as good as the information you put into it.

And that’s a key point that many job seekers forget. There needs to be a mindset change from the traditional CV. The Word document you once used to hand over to employers needs a little more thought – in a nutshell, it needs to be optimised for search.

To continue from the article:

When you use Google or Jobsite, you type in words to describe the thing you are looking for, such as ‘books’ or ‘sales jobs’. Pages are returned in the results that contain these words. It’s exactly the same with your CV. To make sure you’re found you need to ensure you include the right words that recruiters are searching for.

For example, if you’re an IT programmer, you may mention in your CV: ‘For the past seven years I have worked on several large scale projects, utilising a variety of different programming languages.’

A recruiter with your CV in her hand might be very interested in you, liking your experience and your abilities. However, if she is searching online for an IT programmer with specific skills such as .Net, C++ and Java, there is no way she’ll be able to find your CV because it does not explicitly state the skills. You may have those skills, but the search engine cannot guess that – you need to include that information.

Another common mistake people make is not considering the variations on their CV keywords. In search marketing, you’ll do this as a matter of course – whether its optmising meta tags or on-page copy or building ad campaign keyword lists, you’ll think of all the alternatives. For example, when using the terms Search Engine Optimisation or Pay per Click, you’ll also use the alternative terms PPC or SEO.

A final piece of advice, which I’ve given previously in a forum discussion on Econsultancy.com, would be to be careful of keyword spam. In search marketing, we’re all aware of the consequences of trying to cheat the system, but it can apply to job hunting too.

From my Econsultancy comment:

Make sure your CV contains the relevant terms for your skills and job titles. Don’t spam it – that will put people off – just ensure the words are included in your text.

Having seen CVs full of spammed keywords, I can ensure you it is off putting and is more likely to negatively influence the recruiter, rather than make them want to congratulate the candidate on their ‘ingenuity’.

So for me, it seems there are some pretty solid parallels between SEO and preparing your CV for job hunting. Hopefully there are some useful learnings here for anyone who has the misfortune to suddenly be in the position to need to apply them.

No related posts.

Interesting times are ahead for UK search agency I Spy Search, as it was announced on Friday that former The Search Works CEO and Tradedoubler MD, Jim Brigden is to join the company as CEO.

Jim Brigden, new I Spy Search CEO

Brigden is quite a key figure in the search industry and is reknown for taking The Search Works from a £1m to £100m turnover business in just 3 years (2004-2007).  Seems he caught the wave of search marketing at just the right time as the company was subsequently sold for £56m by Tradedoubler in 2007.

As a client of I Spy Search, I look forward to seeing what Jim can bring to table. He has over 10 years of managing businesses in the UK Search industry, so I’m intrigued to see his impact on what I already consider a pretty strong team.

For more on the guy, check Jim Brigden’s LinkedIn profile or read the news story of his appointment on New Media Age.

Related posts:

1. 10 Insider Tips to Win a Search Agency Pitch
2. Is Search Marketing Really That Important?

If you’ve never seen the Google Zeitgeist, I’d recommend you take a look. It makes fascinating reading (at least for me).

In a nutshell, each year Google will collate all the search data and produce Top 10 lists for things like Most Popular Searches and Fastest Rising Searches. There is an obvious bias towards the U.S. in many of these but they do also produce localised Top 10s for countries around the world.

If you select United Kingdom from the list of countries here, you’ll see the top searches on Google.co.uk.

What was interesting for me was to compare it to the Zeitgeist from a few years back. Take a look at the difference between the searches in 2002 and those in 2008.

What a difference six years makes.

Providing these two lists are directly comparable (sourced both from Google, but the UK list was found here), there are some interesting observations to make.

For a start the internet and it’s use is wildly different between the two years. Back in 2002, the number of people online in the UK would have been significantly smaller.  The use of broadband technology considerably less too.

Looking at the list I would suggest that the way we use the internet was different too. It would appear a much more ‘one-way’ activity – to look up news on the BBC, book flights on the new cheap budget airlines (easyJet and Ryanair) and find out the latest celebrity gossip (with Kylie Minogue and Britney Spears it may have been more about the image search ).

Jump forward 6 years and the technology has moved on quickly. More people are online and the take up of broadband internet access has jumped dramtically.

Whilst we’re probably still interested in our celebrities (though it’s probably more Cheryl Cole than Kylie or Britney nowadays), there has been a significant move towards interaction and communication with the web and those using it.

Pretty much every top search term in 2008 involved user generated content – the obvious ones being the social networking sites, Facebook, Youtube and Bebo – but also increasingly the news websites, including the BBC. Where once these sites simply provided the news they now accept comments from users, as well video clips from those that witnessed the newsworthy event.

Three other observations:

1. the inclusion of Jobs into the Top 10 is a reflection of the current economic downturn and the inevitable redundancies. In addition, some of the uplify can be attributed to the increased awareness of the internet as a job hunting tool. High profile TV campaigns, such as the one run by Jobsite, are drawing jobseekers away from the traditional methods, as they begin to appreciate the benefits of moving to the online approach.
2. 7/10 search results in 2008 are navigational searches (typed with the intention of going to a specific site), compared to 4 in 2002. Could this be the effect of the high brand awareness  of these now established online brands? Interesting, the BBC is the only one to make the list on both occasions.
3. Amusingly, the 9th most popular term on Google was ‘Yahoo’. Why is it that people use a search engine to find another search engine? I think that says a lot about Google’s dominance in the market and it’s position as the ‘starting place on the internet’.

It will be interesting to see how the list looks in 2009 – what, or specifically who, will we be searching for this year?

Related posts:

1. For Google size is everything
2. Google causing global warming?