Thanks to a 10 day ban from Google, the lyrics website Rap Genius saw an 80% plummet in its daily traffic over Christmas.
The site has now been restored to the Google SERPs, but at what cost? Here I’ll take a look at what Rap Genius did to incur such a punishment from Google and what lessons or warnings your website can learn from this?
I’ll also answer the question, what the hell is Rap Genius?
If you weren’t aware, Google does indoor maps. If you were aware, you may not have known of the extent of the buildings that have been mapped already. You can view a list of over 10,000 buildings that have been mapped, here.
Users can upload their own building plans, as long as the building in question is public and there’s no problem with copyright or secrecy.
Uploading a building map of your stores, much like John Lewis and House of Fraser in the UK and Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s in the US, is probably a great idea. I’ve previously discussed the smartphone user journey, and indoor maps can slot right in to Google’s domination of that journey.
Even those who aren’t looking for anything specific on their phone, i.e. passing trade, might be tempted by maps. Certainly, if there is any pedestrian traffic outside of your stores, the extra detail may persuade potential customers to step inside, especially if there’s a marker on café, toilets, sportswear, perfume etc. (although the user has to be fully zoomed in to see the indoor map).
The initial benefit, of course, is that lost and tech-savvy customers (teens is likely to be a big demographic) can find their way to whichever desk or concession they need, once inside.
To some shoppers, the idea of needing a Google Map to find the toilets in a supermarket is a bit demoralising – surely we don’t need tech so far engrained in our lives? But, with malls, out of town shopping centres and bigger retail stores a trend that hasn’t abated, I think in retail there’s a good case for indoor maps.
And there are lots of good uses outside of retail, too. Let’s take a look at some of the best uses of indoor maps, taken from Google’s case studies.
Facebook has revealed that organic reach for brands will fall short, if it hasn’t begun to do so already.
In a recent tweak to the news feed algorithm, Facebook has begun to prioritise content from the people that users engage with the most, ensuring content from a ‘liked’ company’s Facebook page will become a negligible presence.
In a press release from December, Facebook urges marketers to buy ads instead of merely relying on the free content channel of running a Facebook page.
This ‘tweak’ signifies a dramatic change to the Facebook experience for users, brands and anybody else who may run a Facebook page, whether it’s for profit or not.
2013 turned out to be a monumental year for ecommerce. Twitter, Rocket Fuel and Criteo IPOed. Online sales closed at record highs, with more and more transactions taking place by consumers on smartphones and tablets. Overstock.com committed to become one of the early adaptors of Bitcoin as a method of payment. And in an economy […]
Facebook is still the dominant social site in the USA, but even more adults are now signing up to multiple platforms.
These findings come from Pew Internet’s latest research, based on a sample of 1,800 adults.
Currently 73% of online adults now use social networking sites, and with our friendship groups, colleagues and professional connections scattered across even more social networks than ever before, it has become a necessity to sign up to multiple platforms in order to engage with them all.
I’ve even had to adopt a second Twitter account to separate my own ‘church and state’ (or less-professional nonsense from even less-professional nonsense.)
Here are some more social network stats from the research, covering Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, and the relative audience crossover between each platform.
Five years ago pure play was the king of the ecommerce jungle. The lean business models, efficient tax structures and minimal property costs were destined to mean the end of bricks-and-mortar retail as we know it.
Now, however, the high street is fighting back from an unexpected quarter.
In the paid search world, 2013 was as busy at it gets. Major changes to Google included the Enhanced Campaigns migration and rise of Product Listing Ads (PLAs) not to mention the maturing of Facebook as an advertising platform.
However, one of the biggest shifts was outside of paid search with Google’s move to [not provided] on SEO keyword data removing visibility for advertisers in the SEO channel, boosting paid search in the process.
This is fantastic for those of us who work in paid search, but what is next? Looking forward I’ve been thinking about what will be the hot search marketing topics in 2014.
Tablet devices accounted for more than a third of conversions, revenue and spend from UK retail paid search on Boxing Day.
The data should come as no real surprise to anyone involved in ecommerce, however it is useful as further evidence of the continued consumer shift towards mobile devices.
It should also be noted that the festive period does present something of an anomaly in terms of site traffic, as data is skewed due to people being away from their work computers and also because tablets and smartphones are a popular Christmas gift.
Samsung was named as the most shared brand of 2013 during Unruly’s inaugural Video Sharing Awards (VSAs) held at the end of 2013.
Samsung achieved a total of 7.3m shares during last year. This is 2.3m more shares than second-placed GEICO and, according to Unruly, Samsung achieved a 201% increase on the previous year when it finished in eighth place.
Before we take a look at the best, and occasional worst, of Samsung’s social video strategy, here are the rest of Unruly‘s top ten social video brands of 2013. The figures of which account for shares across Twitter, Facebook and other social web platforms, rather than merely looking at the number of views on YouTube.
2013 was another fascinating year in mobile as many brands finally reached the point where smartphones and tablets now account for a majority of their site traffic.
This meant that businesses could no longer ignore the need to cater for mobile users, leading to a noticeable trend towards using responsive design as well as the launch of a number of excellent commerce apps.
The use of mobile technology in-store also became more prominent alongside a stronger focus on mobile search, location-based marketing and other related services such as click-and-collect.
So to round up some of the biggest developments in mobile from 2013 and look forward to what we can expect to see in the next 12 months, I spoke to mobile experts from eBay, Net-A-Porter, Schuh and Somo…
2013 saw many changes that affect the role of the SEO, most of which were instigated by Google. Some were good, some not so good.
The final removal of keyword referral data was the most obvious inconvenience for SEOs, but Google has also been busy tweaking its search results page, with more prominence for paid ads.
I’ve asked a number of SEOs for their views on the least welcome changes from 2013, as well as their hopes for the next 12 months. Please let me know yours in the comments.
Christmas 2013 proved to be a record-breaking period for several multichannel retailers as the trend for shopping online rather than in-store continued apace.
However for some brands the increase in online sales didn’t necessarily translate to an increase in profits.
All these stats and more are rounded up in more detail below, including financial results from John Lewis and Debenhams, as well as data from IBM showing the rise in m-commerce…