It has been out for a few weeks now and the new Google design has been stated as a success by most people I have spoken to. Google has always tried to deliver uncluttered results and its homepage is still probably the most expensive web real estate in existence, yet offers nothing more than a search box a Google design logo that changes to suit specific dates of the calendar. Unlike Yahoo that fills its homepage with news horoscopes and anything they can squeeze in, however recently Bing the new MSN search engine has mirrored Google and has a simple search page too.

But when it comes to inner pages, Google has started to add twitter comments and quiet a lot of adwords stuff, making the search results more cluttered than we had been used to. the new design offers more information, but changes in fonts and what they call the “Search Options Panel” offers more information in a neater presentation.

The challenge for Google was the sophistication of searches now being used every day on Google and hoe to represent many different options to that search result, form images, to books, and results that are related but not necessarily directly relevant. the conclusion is search results that delivers relevancy through the main page, but many other options on the “Search Options Panel” to the left.

Apparently this change has evolved since 2006 with many different designs being trialled, we presume it has been implemented to coincide with the huge hardware update called Caffeine, where there is still no confirmation that the roll out is complete across all data centres. SEO Companies are trying ascertain how this affects the performance of commercial websites and what they can do to enhance visitor experience through these changes.

We do a lot of “in house” projects and Leasbam is one of the latest lead generation sites we have developed that has now gone live. This project was conceived over a year ago and with funding from Business Link was published to web around July 2009. Now a good 6 months later there is sufficient traffic to justify charging for the service.

Customers are drawn to the service, because it delivers several quotes from filling in one form and the prices are presented in a way they can compare, as well as look as previous feedback and vehicle supplier details. The car lease suppliers are drawn to Leasebam, because the cost of receiving a lead is considerably cheaper than doing it themselves.  Some sources claim it can costs £200 to gain a customer in the motor trade, so even with a poor conversion rate, Leasebam will cost only a fraction of that, making the service a no brainer for contract hire companies needing more business.

This type of site, requires a huge amount of SEO and constant work to deliver customers and is more likely to do this with specific search terms, rather than the basic “car lease”  generic terms that attract window shoppers. Most people, who are looking for car lease, know what they what in terms of makes and models, so the research prior to the sites creation was critical.

There are other projects in the pipeline and as they are delivered, we will update with our news section here at FOK Marketing

It is a usual name and I suppose related as to giving its searchers and energy boost, but Caffeine is the name for Google newest search engine. According to Matt Cutts, Google’s software engineer, to the searcher nothing will look any different and it will not deliver different search results, it is what happens within that is changing.  The question then is, if it looks the same and does the same, why change its name? Or in fact will this name be present on the Google search page?

The changes are related to speed. How fast is delivers results and how fast it indexes new data? We have been told that searches will not be affected but us search masters cannot see how results can remain static after such a huge change. In better words, a website that cannot be spidered quickly may find itself being thrown out of the SERPS. As pages are indexed quicker, then surely search results will alter as new links and new content is found.

We are sitting here, thinking remove all java script all videos or anything that will slow down the Google spider or suffer on Google. For those bloggers out there, this could be good news, ensuring your content is found straight away must be good for them. Here at FOK marketing we have found certain news items on our blogs being found by Google in minutes and now we know these were probably trial algorithms.

It si possible that is some of the technology is already there, that the impact is smaller that we are expecting, but Matt Cutts has stated that Caffeine will not be launched until after Christmas and then only one data centre as a full roll out.

One ting is sure, that Google data centre will get some usage as SEO gurus around the world will be tapping in to compare search results.

Keep your own house in order should be the lesson of the day. Bt at last we are starting to add our own promotional videos to the FOKM site. Gary is the video man for FOKM and has dedicated page to his video production side of the business. Adding videos to a site can give dramatic conversion rates above the norm and in a world where every sale counts; this must be a worthwhile investment.

Gary has finished the Leasebam videos which is car lease lead generation site developed by FOK marketing and is currently going through a trial period with 5 car lease companies. Anyway this week has been dedicated to bring some videos and some pages of life with content and a greater explanation of what we do.