James Poole

Im sure everyone is aware that its very nearly Christmas, I for one am getting a little fed up of hearing the gloom and doom about the credit crunch and all the shops that are going to close down, Wouldn’t it be great if Woolworths turned around and said, “thanx for the past week, it was the best one we’ve ever had, it was all a big PR spin”
So I have put together a little list of the best ways to get to hospital this Christmas, after all over 80,000 of us manage to end up there every Christmas.

• Every year at least 3 people are reported with broken arms due to pulling Christmas crackers.
• In 1999 over 200 people were admitted to hospital after not removing all the pins from new shirts
• Over the last 10 years 27 people have died testing batteries on their tongue.
• In 2001 9 people needed hospital treatment due to Scalextric cars.
• Last year 2 people died eating Christmas decorations they thought were chocolates.
• Since 1997 26 people have died watering Christmas trees with the the Christmas lights on.
• In 2002 12 people sustained burns when trying on a new jumper with a cigarette in their mouth.
• Last year 22 children were admitted to hospital when swallowing wheels from diecast cars.
• 5 People suffered 3rd degree burns last year when trying to flame torch their Christmas pudding.

Thanx to ModelZone for some of the stats.

It seems Google is getting a few things wrong in their regional results, i blogged about them getting it wrong a few days ago. Now my colleagues at Freshegg are trying to get to the bottom of this.

Anyone have any thoughts on this?

Google, has quickly become the world’s most popular search tool. Hitwise UK tells us that, in October 2008, 75.11% of UK searches used Google.co.uk, 14.33% used Google.com, 2.86% used UK.Search.Yahoo.com and 2.16% used www.uk.ask.com. Clearly Google is currently the big boy in the UK search market.

But can you really trust the search results that Google provides? And how can a user verify that the search results provided by Google are accurate?

For businesses trading or promoting their services online Google is an important element in the chain that connects them with their prospective customers. If Google isn’t presenting a business in their search results then that business will not get any traffic from Google.

I’ve recently become aware of major differences between the Google.com search results and the localised Google.co.uk results. On investigation I’ve come across numerous reports from others who have seen similar, strange results.

In my case I came across a UK based business that is ranking very well in Google.com for a range of search terms, many including specific UK city and town names. However, entering the same search terms into Google.co.uk the results were far less favourable with a page that appeared at #6 in results from Google.com appearing at around #400 in the results from Google.co.uk. I tried this comparison with a number of UK-city-specific terms and observed similar results for a variety of landing pages in this site.

Initially I thought that there must be something wrong with the site or its hosting so I did a little investigation and found that the server is based in the UK, the site has been labelled as being in the UK in Google webmaster tools and they have a UK business address registered with Google maps.

I also conducted similar searches using the same queries entered into Yahoo. The results were the opposite of those received from Google with Yahoo UK ranking the various landing pages more highly than Yahoo global. So it would appear that Yahoo has correctly detected that the site is a UK based business with a market in the UK and would therefore be of interest to those searching from the UK. Google, however, appears to be under the impression that the site is focussed somewhere other than the UK (U.S.) even with the additional information provided via webmaster tools and Google maps.

So Google is getting it wrong, badly. If Google.co.uk were an employee or a consultant and they were found to have returned such inaccurate and misleading results they would potentially be sacked.

For businesses the implications of Google’s apparent inability to accurately determine the geographic location of their market (even when stated explicitly) is worrying. When investigating this issue I’ve come across similar reports from other businesses. In one case a business disappeared completely from the Google UK results, retained good positions in Google.com and somehow went to number 1 in the Google Russia results. Others have reported massive fluctuations in their Google.co.uk search results.

It would appear that there are currently some significant and worrying failings in the quality of the results delivered by Google.co.uk and I, for one, have very little trust for the results that are currently being provided.

The search term in question for anyone who would like to try and figure this out is “airport parking” and gosimply is the site in question

Juat a quick post about www.articlemarketingautomation.com, ok so a shameless affili link in there i know but i would never blog or recommend something i didn’t feel was worthy.
Basically you write blog posts with a max of 3 links in the content, rather that something like Ezine these links should go in content and look natural, then you submit the post and the system drip feeds it to other related blogs that are on the system, it does it slowly to make it look much more natural, you can also add your own blog to the system which means you get free content.
I wrote an article and have had it published on 15 blogs so far, what about duplicate content?
Well the great thing about this system is it has a very neat little article spinner option, when you submit your post it picks out certain lines for you to re write, the better the article and the more unique it is the more blogs it will get published on. Its a really easy way to build up some quick links or just to get content for your blogs.

Over the last few months the Government has been talking about introducing some new rules and regulations to the licensing act including the banning of happy hours, although it does seem as though the government has made a big u turn on this and decided to go for a softer approach which includes a ban on “all you can drink” offers, Pubs and clubs must now display the alcoholic content of drinks on their menus, there will be a new code of “responsible selling” and a complete ban on pubs offering alcohol as a prize in pub games.

The good news for all you drinkers who like to go down to your local pub in there’s no need to go and buy wine glasses to drink at home just yet as the government have relaxed some of the laws they were talking about.
There will be no ban on happy hours, also the idea of cigarette style health warnings on bottles have also been scrapped. This is great news for british pubs which have been closing at a rate of an average of 36 per week.