Things are going well when the Deputy Prime minister decides to visit!

Nick Clegg!

On Tuesday 26th April 2011, Nick Clegg came down to be involved in a discussion on the creative and digital industries in Bristol. Seems like we’re important or summink

After turning up… a little late (may have been something to do with the riots outside) he was answering questions focusing on “what’s involved with making Bristol a powerhouse comparable to places such as California, Silicon Valley”. Obviously no small task but the responses which focussed mostly around the government having ‘no money’ and ‘do it yourself pals’ were eloquently put across.

Nick Clegg speaking in Bristol

In the end the time seemed to rush away so very quickly and soon he was hastily escorted from the premises.

Next time, it’d be great to hear his thoughts on support for setting up businesses, new online privacy laws with Facebook, the digital rights bill or even if he’s got Angry Birds installed on his phone?

Either way, thanks for the visit, glad you wanted to talk! Who wouldn’t want to chat to this gormless looking pair…

Ben and Dan

Google on Wednesday (8th September) announced the release of ‘Google Instant’. This change made to the Google homepage allows for live, real-time “Search as you type” results updates. When you start typing your query, Google immediately starts offering results based on the prediction of the fragments already present.

Google Inside AdWords blog gives an example: “if someone types “flow” into Google.com, our algorithms predict that the user is searching for “flowers” (the predicted search) and therefore display both search results and ads for “flowers”. However, if that user then adds the letter “c” to the query, our algorithms may predict that the user is searching for “flowchart” and show the corresponding natural and paid results for flowchart.”

Screenshot of Google Instant in action

Interestingly, the results vary for every individual as it depends on your web history and location to offer up appropriate predictions.

From a BBC article Google estimates the typical user will take 9 seconds to enter a query and a further 15 seconds then looking through the results for answers. Google Instant Search is claimed to be able to cut between 2 and 5 seconds off a typical web search. They reckon that could be 11 hours saved globally every second.

All magical of course, however this is going to bring some serious changes to the future of SEO.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is the process of making your website or web page more visible in search results. It actively tries to push your site higher up the results list for potential visitors to find your site first.

Why is it affecting your SEO?

For instance “with Google Instant if you searched for ‘red striped socks’ you’ll whizz through results for ‘red’ and ‘red stripe’ first, but as these produce listings on the DVD rental company Redbox and Red Stripe beer, they’re unlikely to hit the term ‘red striped socks’.”

It is stated in a Telegraph article that Google’s main system for deciding relevant search results has not changed. So this means if you search for something in both static and instant Google, you will get exactly the same list of results. Google Instant just autocompletes your search query as you type, offering up results on-the-go related to your half-complete search.

It now appears you may need to capture the attention of the searcher earlier to create an SEO instant winner.

Further reading:

Mashable poll results – Google Instant Vs. Regular Google

The official Google blog has some interesting articles upon Instant Search if you are interested and want to read further. Take a look here and here.

Google is not the only search engine, even though it does control around 85% of the international search engine market. Please remember with SEO to remember the little people (Yahoo, Bing etc.)
(Stat from: netmarketshare.com

A nice link on an SEO’s point of view -
http://tupalo.com/en/blog/pass-through-impressions/

September 09 was a good month for Thought Den. There were subtlemobs in the pipeline and igFest09 was still leaving a warm fuzzy aftertaste. But most importantly, there was the prospect for the company to invest in a brand new sexy server to host all our clever sites & games.

Back then, in the haze of Autumn we read-up on and whittled down a list of providers to choose from. Deciding strongly to not be swayed by the sexiest newest thang’ out there with ample blinding gizmos, BOGOFs to fill your boots with and then all backed with snazzy marketing.

And we picked the Rackspace Cloud Sites. Knowing them to be a solid provider, we were already using their services on the clever  Parashoot site and their offering is aimed directly at companies like ourselves.

Rackspace cloud sites logo

So 6 months down the line… what do we think now? Is the snazzy server still flying high or have we needed to clip it’s wings? Here’s out personal thoughts so far. Bad news first as always!

The Bad news: We’re thinking clippers because…
- Setting up FTP is a chore. An actual chore.

- No SSH. We can’t do nippy logins, scp our files to the server, no mass chmod’ing. But now there’s no chance to accidentally “recursively delete” a whole folder+contents in one swoop.

- After setting up a domain aliases like “thoughtden.com” to point at your “thoughtden.co.uk”. The .com won’t accept emails, unless you give in and just create a whole new site.

- Web access to PHPMyAdmin is trial and error! There’s about 50 different databases choices to log in to, and they’re labelled by number, not name…
Enter the username & password, select database number 1, click login. wait….. nope. Enter the username & password, select database number 2, click login, wait…. nope. Hmmm.

Good news: Flying high because….
- Blazingly quick to get started!

- Simple & clean interface THROUGH-OUT the site. Very easy to use & navigate. Very easy.

- Pretend FTP details to login into your site while you’re waiting for the DNS to point. Makes our development really easy.

- Support. It’s just like Rackspace’s Fanatical support. Always useful, always speedy.

- All our sites are running up to speed.

- Dan’s free T-shirt all the way from America for saying “hi” in a blog-post.

Dan looking a goon

Conclusion: Good far outweighs the Bad, it’s still Flying!

We just had an interesting email from CBSNEWS. We know, already it doesn’t sound that interesting. Sure it’s just an email. Sure, it’s for an American Channel who have possibly bought our email address. But that’s beside my point.

CBS News mail out

What’s interesting is not the dull blues and greys. It’s how focussed the mail is on selling direct links to their twitter & facebook pages. But not their main CBSNEWS site.

Can you see how the lady, katiecouric, is always mentioned with an @ symbol (for her twitter feed) & the most prominent logo you can see is the facebook icon.

There is no direct mention of the CBSNEWS site.

So are some bigger companies more interested in getting people connected through their Social media sites rather than their own site?

Something to ponder while Thought Den wrap up their next MySpace app for aMap and plan a  twitter game =)

An exciting moment for me… my first blog post for Thought Den, infact first blog post that’s not on my own blog!…

So far I have been designing logos, web layouts and an iphone game, so lots of fun and varied projects for me to get my teeth stuck in to! See the subtlemob site – our latest creation, where I designed the layout with Ben’s guidance! Check the event out while you’re there.. it looks awesome!

I sit here in my room – (a place I am very proud of, my own little Thought Den.. ambient bubble of music and lighting, beneath drapes and walls carefully plastered with creative inspiration) – I think of how to sum up the past few weeks freelancing for Thought Den. My first paid job actually doing what I love to do… and what an amazing thing it is to do what you love every day and be guided by professionals who can teach you more at such a fast rate!! The highlights so far probably being white boards, creative brainstorming, jokes, drinks, paper throwing when ‘in the zone’, learning fast, and being a part of the thinking den!

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