As of yesterday, businesses can pay to access all tweets written since January 2010.

Twitter has signed a deal with DataSift, who will be offering its clients the opportunity to browse a marketing goldmine.

“The sheer volume of data being produced by Twitter represents a huge challenge for companies trying to extract insights from past events,” says DataSift CEO Rob Bailey.

Privacy campaigners have condemned the move, as concerns rise about the way social media companies handle the data they collect.

More about CECOPS

CECOPS has been formed to act as a “body” to promote, manage and regulate the use of the Code of Practice. This will ensure that the Code of Practice gains, and maintains, a reputation as the Gold Standard for the sector. To ensure this is achieved, organisations who wish to use the Code of Practice need to apply for registration with CECOPS.

Clicky Media™ have been working on the CECOPS website for 3 months to develop their new image and online presence. The new interactive website has had a great response so far.

Home Page

Inner Page

Search Page

Profile Page

If you’re interested in developing your website, or building a brand new one take a look at what Clicky Media™ could offer you by checking out our website here >> or giving us a call on 0845 257 1225 to discuss what we could do for your website.

What does that mean I hear you say! Essentially mobile devices such as an iPad/iPhone will adjust the view of a website based on a declaration in your meta tags and if it doesn’t find one it will make its own mind up based on the widest part of your website.

The Meta tag looks like this and should go into the head of your website:

<meta name="viewport" content="width=1000,user-scalable=no" />

The “content=width=1000″ is the pixel width of your website you would like the mobile browser to zoom to on load. The “user-scalable=no” section declares whether you would like to allow your mobile user to zoom in to the content after load or not.

Take a look at this screen shot of our new Clicky Media™ website (which is due for launch next week!) on an iPad2 without the meta tag in place: (Notice how some of the content is cut out and none of the background is visible)

Without Viewport Meta Tag

And now with a Viewport meta tag of <meta name=”viewport” content=”width=1100,user-scalable=yes” /> (notice how the content has been scaled to allow a section of the background to be visible and more of the page content)

With Viewport Meta Tag

And because we have allowed the scalable attribute, we can zoom in:

Scalability Allowed

A very small and simple tip but very useful, especially when considering the number of mobile devices which are changing the way we view the web.

As they mention above, this change means that it is now possible to track the average load time throughout the whole site as well allowing you to dig a little deeper and look at individual page performance. This is useful from both a user perspective and for SEO campaigns. If somebody visits your site and the page they want to look at is taking too long to load, they will simply leave and get whatever they were looking for from somewhere else. Additionally, it has been documented the search engines consider load times when deciding where to rank a site on their results pages. This means that you can now see what pages are taking too long to load then look to improve performance. In turn, this may aid you when trying to improve your rankings.

The new feature can also provide you with a good insight into the effect load times has on conversion rates. Simply check for a correlation between high/low converting pages and fast/slow load times, then make changes accordingly.

If you would like further information on how to track page load times or would like help optimising your site for search engines, please visit our Search Engine Optimisation page or get in touch to discuss you requirements.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new website for our client On Hold Studio – www.onholdstudio.co.uk

On Hold are a leading On Hold company in the North West who create bespoke  on hold messages that communicate information to the caller and improves their knowledge of your business.

On Hold Marketing enables businesses to inform, advertise and market to their callers while they’re waiting ‘on hold’.

By combining the impact of on hold voice messages and easy listening on hold music businesses can see immediate improvements in their customer enquiries.

We are pleased to announce the launch of a new business storage website for our client Smart Business Storage – www.smartbusinessstorage.co.uk

Smart Business Storage are a leading self storage company in the North West and this new website will highlight the Commercial, Business and Archive storage they provide to businesses in Liverpool, Preston, Warrington, Widnes and on the Wirral.

We are pleased to announce the start of an internet marketing campaign for our client History Tourist.

History-tourist.com offers visitors to the UK tourist information on the many historical and leisure attractions in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland and a way to plan their whole vacation or sightseeing trip, from booking flights and hotels, to hiring cars, checking train and bus timetables and booking restaurants.

History Tourist is a unique and informative site that primarily promotes Britain’s number one tourist attraction – its rich and colourful heritage with a real insight into where to go and what to see listed by themes – Castles, Cathedrals, Royal Palaces, Stately Homes, Roman Britain, King Arthur, Prehistoric Sites or by County. Each historical site is described in great detail together with why it has a place in history.

To see the website click here – History Tourist

Bing is currently unavailable to the public, however, we are told that as of June 1st some Microsoft Live users will receive Bing search results. By June the 4th Bing will apparently be Microsoft’s default search tool.

According to Microsoft, Bing provides users with a greater search experience, helping them make better decisions. It has even been dubbed a “decision engine” by some due to the fact many of the new features involve assisting searchers chose the best option be it in making a purchase, planning a trip, researching a health condition or finding a local business.

So does Bing have a chance of competing with Search Engine powerhouse Google?

Well, that is the real question. One major factor is how much Microsoft are willing to invest in promoting the new search engine. Obviously, the company is certainly not short of money, but look at their rivals – Yahoo! and also more recently Ask who have invested millions with only little improvement in search market share.

Google’s dominance doesn’t look set to be challenged. Least of all by a brand new search engine, it is also key to remember that Microsoft only launched Live Search in 2006 – less than 3 years ago, with minimal success. Marketers have also critisized the branding of the new search engine deeming it a ‘fail’.

So what does Bing have to offer?

On the surface it may not seem to offer much different to Google, but Bing has some great features that are definatley worth investigating.

Check out the video above, areas of particular interest are: bing local, bing shopping, bing health & bing travel.

Sources: Microsoft , TechRadar & Cnet

Google have started an experiment that will see it placing visual ads within the image search results

“What we’re announcing today is a new suite of image-related experiments. We’re pairing images with images for the first time–display ads with image search,” stated R.J. Pittman, Product Management Director.

Google has made plenty of money off text ads appearing next to web search results but are now working to build up and develop the display ads on the image search results.

R.J. Pittman said that there is a “direct connection” between image search and commerce, at an event held at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. “If we can align the nature of the images from the advertisers with the nature of the images from Image Search, it will help users find more of what they’re looking for. You’ll see that these renderings show a fairly seamless user experience rather than just a stack of ads across the top.”

Similar to the text ads found in the web search, the ads are set aside from the natural results and are highlighted with a pale yellow background. Google is saying they want these ads to be useful for its users.

There is no confirmed date as to when these new image ads will be introduced but Marissa Mayer, Vice President of Search Products and User Experience has estimated 2009

This week Google have changed their trademark policy and there are now no restrictions on bidding on trademark names.

Google had previously not allowed this within the UK and had enforced the none use of trademarks as adword triggers.

The new policy has been in effect for a few days but it remains to be seen if anyone is taking advantage of these new changes.

When looking at big brand names such as Tesco there are still very few people bidding on these terms. When a search is made for a trademark name there is now a huge opportunity to recieve impressions and a possibility to “hijack clicks.”

One of the reasons as to why there are so few companies bidding on these terms is that it could potentially cause inflation among these trademark terms and companies may have to invest large amounts of money into keeping their brand safe.

This policy change how ever may allow smaller businesses to fight back against the brands. One company that has stated that they will make the most of this change is online agency cruise.co.uk.

Matt Brittin, Google UK Director, stated that advertisers were used to seeing their rivals adverts appear in the sponsored listings due to searches on connected words. He said, “This change just builds on what happens already.”

It still remains to be seen what implications this policy change will have on UK Marketing

Google Trademark Policy | Powerpoint Presentation Download