People are generally vaguely aware that debates have been taking place in Europe over new legislation which principally affects the use of "Cookies". European legislation is inevitably more complex than elsewhere because of the way it is drafted by the European Commission and then individually interpreted, translated and re-drafted by each country. Today, I'm focusing on the implementation of this legislation in the UK. The short answer to the question, "Do I Need To Comply?" is "Yes" and you do need to make changes to your site. If what you wanted to hear was a "Maybe" or a "No", then I'm [...]

Related Topics: Legal: Regulation | Multinational Search

Most multinational sites will serve content via a Content Delivery Network (CDN). But not all CDNs are equal: what should you look for to get the best bang for your buck in Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs) across the globe? Since Google's Caffeine update to its server infrastructure back in June 2010, Google has stepped up the importance of page load speed to its core algorithm. But page load speed has always been important to Google in providing a good searcher experience for Google searches. And this is a logical stance if you take a second to think it through. After all, if you [...]

Related Topics: Google: SEO | Multinational Search | SEO - Search Engine Optimization | SEO: General | SEO: Host Crowding & Clustering

Wall Street wasn't terribly impressed with Google's figures for the last quarter of 2011 announced after the bell last thursday. To a normal person, you would think that generating $2.71 billion profit and significantly beating your own previous quarters would be a cause for celebration. But these aren't normal people and this isn't a normal market and share values immediately dropped by 10%. Nor is Google without blame. I started digging into Google's figures expecting to find that Google had actually seen a fantastic success at the end of 2011 - but had miscommunicated this with the city. [...]

Related Topics: Multinational Search | Search Marketing: Multinational

As we kick off the new year with replenished budgets, many of you are using your pot of gold to kick off new markets. Over the past few months I have surveyed over 150 companies on how they manage their keywords. The research will be presented in a forthcoming article. In the process, I received numerous questions about keyword research for entering new markets, expanding existing campaigns and using search for market research. The following are the most common questions I received that will hopefully help you get the new year off to a prosperous start. Launching A New Search Market If th [...]

Related Topics: Multinational Search

For Yahoo, the new year got underway with the appointment of a new leader, Scott Thompson. Mr. Thompson's appointment was announced on the 4th of January with him due to take up his responsibilities at the beginning of this week -- so right now, he'll be meeting his new team and finding out what really makes the Yahoo business tick. Most recently Scott Thompson was the President of PayPal and is credited, especially within the Yahoo announcement press release, as "Driving customer engagement built on strong technology platforms." But much of the chatter around Wall Street has questioned Mr. [...]

Related Topics: Multinational Search