Toprank blog in voting competition

A very good friend of Web Certain's has managed to get himself nominated as one of the best 'Blogs on online marketing' - something with which we'd heartily agree.

We recommend taking the time to check out Lee's blog - and if you think it's the best in the category - then vote for it too. At Web Certain we certainly use the Toprank blog as a reference tool and would not even dream of trying to compete with it!

You vote here!

2005 Readers' Choice Blog Awards - Voting Form

You might find the list of blogs on the voting form a useful resource anyway!

Shocking UK performance on broadband

Recent reports on broadband penetration worldwide are embarassingly bad for the UK. For the country which leads the world in web marketing, according to certain statistics such as web spend per head, to rank 16th in terms of broadband use is just dreadful.

Even in Europe, the UK is behind Scandinavia, France, Finland and Spain - and some of the countries which the UK beats - such as Germany - have widespread ISDN usage so the figures mask the real tragedy of UK broadband.

Who's responsible? I think we can all guess....

Multilingual search: Worldwide broadband penetration shows Netherlands romping ahead in Europe engines, European internet usage statistics, search marketing, international growth traffic

Is Seekport a more relevant UK search engine?

The German organisation Seekport has moved its UK search engine out of Beta. Seekport launched in the UK in December and claims to offer more UK-oriented results - partly thanks to a team of editors who quality check the engine's results. The company is based in Germany and has plans to run locally relevant search engines throughout western Europe.

Testing of the algorithm suggests that it operates quite differently to other the American search engines currently producing results which seem odd. As far as Web Certain tracking of UK web sites is concerned, Seekport hasn't yet made it onto the radar and it will need some heavy promotion if it wishes to increase its share of the UK market.



Reported by....Netimperative - Seekport UK moves out of test phase

Search engine watch announces SMA-UK committee

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Watch has announced the new SMA-UK committee in his blog.

SMA-EU Formally Launches; SMA-UK Names Executive Committee

Search Marketing Association UK - results just in

The British Government is not the only one carrying out elections at the present time. The Search Marketing Assocation UK has held its own election for the first committee fully chosen by the membership.

Personally, I'm delighted that members have seen fit to give me the chance to serve on the committee in a formal way - and to continue the work I have been doing with the other founder members who were part of the original working group. I'm also very aware of the responsibility this entails and will certainly do my best to look after the interests of all members.

The full members of the committee can be seen on the SMA-UK web site, of course.

The next step is for the committee members to go forward to the full membership for the President and Vice-President to be chosen.

Election done, now let's get back to work

It has to be said that the UK election does appear to have affected decision-making. Studying our tracking across many UK web sites, it would appear that April was seasonally down on activity compared with March which was well up.

We're looking forward to seeing things pick up in terms of web buzz - and the usual pattern is that a quieter month is followed by much more activity. We'll let you know!

Espotting to launch pay-per-call in the UK

Netimperative reports that Espotting is to launch its pay-per-call service in the UK. Running already for some months in the US, the idea is that the web user clicks on an ad and is then presented with an online ad with telephone number.

Unlike pay per click, however, you only pay if someone calls. An ideal solution for call centres with web sites which are less than effective, you might think.

That's because the downside is your web site doesn't perform its normal role of conversion - and you are totally reliant on the call-caller relationship. This isn't necessarily an issue - but it does mean re-thinking your strategy.