Go to www.google.com (if you are outside America you may need to then select “go to Google.com”) and you will see that the Google search box is now larger than what you are used to.  In fact it is all larger – the box, font, buttons – are all a lot bigger than they previously were.  By rough estimate I would say 33% bigger.  This increase also includes the Google suggestions that drop down as you start typing.  These are now more eye catching and I think it will lead to more long tail searches occurring.

This is not the only change to Google’s layout recently.  At the end of last month Google started publishing the PPC results further left on the screen so they are closer to the ‘natural’ results.  This makes a lot of sense as all the eye trackers I have seen have shown that user’s attention is concentrated at the top left hand side of the page and then flows down with only skimming on the right hand side.  The closer the PPC ads are to the natural ones will increase people seeing them and therefore clicking on them.

Here comes some excellent PR for the SEO industry – Searchengineland reports on the case of SEO’s taking on the Google Cash Scam.

Google Cash is a scam, unaffiliated with Google but using their name, which is basically a get-rich-quick scheme, which of course benefits the founders, at the expense of the people who fall  for it.

SEO White Knights are attempting to reduce the damage done by the scam, by SEO-ing articles telling the truth about the scam to the top of the search results.

I LOVED reading about this – the SEO industry takes a lot of crap from people who don’t understand what we do, and who think we are spammers/scammers ourselves. This story shows the good behind SEO – that it can be used to positively affect the status quo – by burying dangerous stories, or promoting important ones.

SEO is democratic. It takes time and effort, but anyone can do it, or hire someone to do it. So if you feel strongly enough about something, you could join the cause to promote or destroy it. There is nothing unfair about SEO – if you think your site deserves to be higher, then do some work on it. If it is a good quality site, with some work it should be able to get really good rankings.

The SEO White Knights show how SEO can be used for public use – health awareness campaigns, scam alerts, anything the public needs to know can be promoted. PPC could also be used (although maybe not as effectively), and is currently being used by the Google Cash scammers (not sure why Google is allowing those ads?!).

SEO can be used not only to directly increase visitors, but also for proactive PR, defensive PR, branding and influencing people for the better. For example, imagine an SEO campaign which optimised the sites of local animal shelters for searches about buying pets? Or campaigns which optimised recycling or reusability organisations for searches about waste disposal or dumping?

Now this is what I call a feel-good Friday….

Comscore has released some interesting social media data, focussing on Australia.

The data shows that not only is social media huge (as we already suspected), but that it really does capture a significant amount of the publics attention, and is therefore a BIG opportunity for marketers, PR people, companies – really anyone that has anything to say or sell.

Comscore found that more than 70% of Australian internet users used a social networking site in June 2009 – almost 9 million people.

9 million people were on social networking sites, which included Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Twitter and others. Thats a pretty big audience for a relatively small country. It is even better for companies that target internationally, because once you leave our shores, the numbers simply skyrocket, and that international audience can be targetted through social media campaigns you can create right from your own desk!

Surprisingly, the fastest growing group of users are the over 30’s, and unsurprisingly, the fastest growing membership is for Twitter. I was surprised that Twitter wasn’t already bigger than its small share (5%), but it is relatively very new compared to things like Bebo and MySpace, and catching up fast.

Of the 9 million Australian social media users, 6.1 million use Facebook.  Social networking is a medium whereby you are often engaged daily, or even multiple times daily. Compare this with other media, and you can see that social media is becoming pretty ‘main stream’:

    * SMH newspaper readers (offline) – 0.8 million daily
    * SMH online – 12 million in June
    * Daily Tele readers (offline) – 1.1 million daily
    * Channel 7 news – 1.5 million daily

Comscores executive VP for the Asia Pacific had this to say:

    “Knowing that the vast majority of a site’s visitors are social networking users should be a wakeup call to any marketer trying to understand its audience. Engaging your audience is not only about how you interact with them when they are on your site, but also about how you reach out and interact with them through other online channels, including social networks. As social networking sites increasingly become one of the Internet’s most popular destinations, it is especially critical for media companies to engage their audience where they are spending the majority of their time online.”