This morning we got an email from the big G regarding changes that are coming in the next few months, and if you dont adhere to the changes your feeds will be suspended and you wont get traffic from google product search any more!

The changes they are putting forward are to improve the google product service, by expanding the required attirbutes for each product – meaning they now require more info on each product which can only be a good thin for the public who use the service.

Detailed info on the new/adjusted requirements can be found here.

Most pre-made eCommerce software should be updated to include these new requirements, please contact your web developers or if you bought the software yourself contact the software author – there could be charges incurred if your site is very customised.

If you are not a dijitul.com customer, but need help getting your eCommerce platform up to spec in regards these new google base requirements then contact our eCommerce development team on 01623 650 333 or click here to email us.

The invite only beta format of Google+ was picked upon by the group known as ‘Partnerka’ and they have reportedly sent emails with fake invites which apparently look very similar to the actual ones, only for the user to have their hopes dashed when they arrive at a website selling viagra.

A statement from security firm Sophos said that the attack was very ‘amateur’ and not many people would fall for it as it still requires the user to enter their details on the pharmaceutical site for any to be taken, however the emails are still being sent in growing numbers.

Users have been warned to not enter their details into any untrusted websites and to check the identity of who sends you any Google+ related emails.

For more information regarding social media marketing please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

He declined to comment further on the what this could be, however rumours are circulating that it could be anything from the release of an iPad app, to integration with skype, a music service or a photo sharing app.

The announcement of this launch comes at a time when most media attention has been on Google’s new ‘Google+’ social network, which has had positive reviews from the vast majority of its invited testers (including ourselves) and is thought to be a really challenger to Facebook in future.

Can the Harvard graduate’s self built multi-billion dollar social networking juggernaut fend off Google and place the attention back on itself, or will the power of Google, with search and Youtube in its locker to name just a few, prevail?

For more information regarding social media marketing, please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

Much like with their Gmail service, Google only rolled out the new network to a selection of people, and gave each of the invited people around 12 invites of their own to pass onto friends, before giving out ‘thousands’ more invitations on wednesday, which then led to chaos.

People without invites reportedly took to Twitter and began sharing secrets on how to register with the site without an invitation, which then caused Google to shut the service down with Google’s Head Of Social Vic Gundotra saying We’ve shut down invite mechanism for the night. Insane demand. We need to do this carefully, and in a controlled way.”

Following the failed attempts of Google Buzz and Google Wave, th is is expected to be Google’s most serious challenger in the social networking world as they attempt to take on Facebook.

Google have played down the impact of the initial demand, saying ‘this is the Google+ project, we still haven’t launched Google+ in its entirety’. Either way though, if the demand continues as it has been, Google+ could well join Facebook and Twitter in the big leagues of social networking.

For more information regarding social media marketing, please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

Google’s attempts in the past – Google Wave and Google Buzz – have failed to generate the required interest, however Google+ has 4 features which they believe can turn them in to a permanent player in the social networking industry.

• Circles – A function which allows people to place friends into specific groups, and then sh are different levels with information and content with each group.
• Hang Outs – Live, multi-user video conferencing which permits friends to drop in and out of live group conversations.
• Huddle – Group Instant Messaging
• Sparks – A feature which connects individuals to others with similar interests.

The current version of Google+ is only available to a limited number of people, and has currently met that capacity, however they hope to release it to the wider public soon and begin to eat away at Facebook’s massive market share.

Critics of Google+ have said the idea sounds to similar to Facebook for it to work, but with the above mentioned key features, along with integration with Youtube and Google Maps, Google may have their first real competitor to match up to Google.

There is also doubt over whether Google+ can get the devoted Facebook users to break off from their social circles and make a fresh start with Google+, however if they can get even a fraction of their search traffic to sign up, they will have a truly strong competitor to Facebooks near 700million strong army.

For more information regarding social media marketing please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

The ‘Transparency Report’ listed 26 developed countries in order of how often their governments requested data. The USA had the most requests with 4,601, however when population size was taken in to consideration, they slipped to fifth and the UK which made  1,162 shot up to second.

The top 5 were as follows -

1. Singapore
2. UK
3. France
4. Australia
5. USA

Details were not released on the specific details requested, however it is thought that web search terms, emails and Youtube activity will be amongst it.

Information was also released on countries who made the most requests for content to be taken down from Google, where the UK’s 38 requests were significantly lower than Germany who made 118 requests, and Brazil who topped the chart with 263 requests.

Despite the British governments higher tendency to requests browsing information, this should not scare you away from the internet, as it is still a safe place to operate, and the best marketing tool available.

For more information about taking your business online, please call the web design Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

These statistics show an 8.4% rise of users on year, and 50% more than the number of users they had when the first survey was done back in 2006, where they had just shy of 500million, and Microsoft was top with 569million.

The new statistics show the evolution of the internet over the past 5 years, with Google’s 1billion followed up by Microsoft in second place with 905million (a 15% increase) and Facebook in third after a 30% increase took the social networking giant to 714million unique users throughout the month. Yahoo meanwhile fell to fourth despite an 11% yearly rise taking it to 689million users.

These figures show the power of the internet, and how marketing via the internet can help your business, with Google and Facebook extremely popular.

For more information regarding SEO or social media marketing please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

The machine which is made by Samsung replaces traditional ‘desktop’ files with browser based apps which store files online, a system whcih Google claim will help enable a new way of computing, whilst eliminating the need for anti-virus software and optical drives.

However, one potential ‘put off’ is the fact that neither Windows, Linux or Mac are yet compatible with the chromebook, meaning all users will have to be content with the chrome OS on the devices which are being sold for $429 (wifi only) and $499 (3g). They are expected to go on sale in the UK in August for between £349 and £399.

A second chromebook manufactured by Acer is due to start shipping soon, however despite chromesenior vice president Sundar Pichai claiming that the chrome OS would ‘End to end, make your computing experience simpler, safer, and faster’, early reviews of the system have criticised it for its poor usability when used offline.

Ruper Goodwins from ZDNet said ”For all the things that are on the web browser, this works really well – better than anything else. But for all the stuff you do on the desktop, it doesn’t do very well at all” before summarising with “The idea that this doesn’t matter – that you’re always connected and always online – isn’t quite true yet. The idea is very good but it’s a little premature.”

Whether Google can transform their dominance in other sectors such as search in to the operating systems remain to be see, but it will be interesting to see how it takes on the big players such as windows.

Be sure to check back on Monday for more of the latest internet, technology and business new from the Web Design Nottingham team.

The 2 newest updates see the introduction of Google ‘Instant Pages’ and also Voice Search. The instant pages update will take the already used ‘Google Instant’ – which brings up search results whilst typing – to the next level as it pre loads the result it believes you are most likely to click in the background, something which Google says will shave an estimated ‘ 2 to 5 seconds’ off the amount of time it takes for a web page to load.

The other, voice search, is rather self explanatory, as Google chrome users will be able to click on a small microphone button – expected to be added in the next few days – and speak their search term which Google will when search. Despite some scepticism over how well this would work it is already used on some mobile devices, and at its revealing it was proven that it is able to understand the difference between ‘Worcester, Massachusetts’ and ‘Wooster Collge’ two words spoken the same, but spelt differently.

Google will hope that these new innovations help it strengthen its lead at the top of the search engine market, as the joint Bing/Yahoo! effort continue to slowly eat into its market share, with the most recent figures seeing Bing on 14%, Yahoo! on 15.9% and Google on 66%.

For more information regarding anything Google and your business, please call the SEO Nottingham team on 01623 650333.

The move is step to stop the usage of older browsers which are often insecure and unable to support the latest web technologies. Those using browsers such as Internet Explorer 7, Safari 3 and Firefox 3.5 (along with their older predecessors) will begin to lose some functionality when using the Google ‘Docs’ ‘Calendar’ and ‘Talk’  apps and sites, before losing them altogether.

Statistics have reported that an estimated 17% of users will have to change browsers when the changes begin to happen. Google have said the reason behind this move is their engineers wanting to use the latest web technologies, and thus needing people to use browsers with support for HTMl5.

This is not the first time big companies have made moves to get users off of older browsers, in mid-may Mozilla underwent a big campaign to get the 12million or so users of their Firefox 3.5 browser to upgrade – which managed to cut numbers down to around 1million. Microsoft’s campaign to get people away from IE6 is one of the longest running campaigns, however still many companies prefer to stick with the old, unsafe browser due to familiarity with it, meanwhile in the Far East, 34% of Chinese users are still on IE6, along with 22.3% of South Koreans and 11.6% of Vietnamese – making up a large part of the estimated 11% worlwide market share IE6 still has.

For more information on browser compatibility with your website, or for getting your business online, please call the friendly Web Design Nottingham team on 01623 650333.