On Internet Business

Google Seller ratings and the advent of customer/competitor terror campaigns

Posted by Michael under Mobile Search, Paid Search, Search

Google’s latest changes have created an environment that can spell disaster for online businesses that rely on Google ad words. It’s recently unveiled seller ratings which mean that advertisers using Google ad words will have a star rating and a link to a page showing customer feedback.

At first glance, this would appear to be fair and reasonable for both seller and potential buyer. But as the recent TripAdvisor debacle illustrated it is essential that the reviews are from bona fide customers.

No problem. After all, Google has a source of reviews and ratings from verified customers. But instead of using its own verified customer reviews from customers using Google checkout, it has instead started using review sites. In order to leave a review on these sites, you don’t have to have bought anything. This opens the whole situation up to abuse. One disgruntled customer can leave a host of bad reviews – in fact, anyone who doesn’t like you or your company can leave bad reviews.

According to Patrick Altoft, seller ratings have a direct impact on quality score. A few negative reviews, perhaps from a competitor and a seller’s cost per click increases. The seller is left to find a way of quickly getting positive reviews in order to control their marketing costs.

Google need to stop doing this and presumably as the feedback works through the system to show that this is not in either the buyer or the seller’s benefit, they will. In the meantime online sellers will need to put effort into ensuring that they have four or five star reviews on Google product search. As Altoft points out, don’t forget that masquerading as a customer and leaving a review of your own product or service is illegal.

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Creating iPhone apps to generate business

Posted by Michael under Business Growth, Mobile Search

When Google announced the addition of a ‘businesses’ layer to Google Earth they essentially revealed that this is business advertising for the iPhone. iPhone users can now locate businesses at the push of a button and by clicking on related icons, they are given additional information  such as  telephone numbers, reviews and comments from other customers that have been found on social media sites like twitter or facebook, hours of opening and so on.

So should your business have an iPhone app? The first question is iPhone or android, or both. Creating an application for both mobile systems is obviously going to be twice as expensive and as the iPhone currently has more than 72% of the mobile search market, you may want to start with the big player. 

In which case – Apple’s own development centre tells you (almost) everything you need to know to create an Iphone application and what isn’t covered by Apple can be explored at Smashing’s one stop guide to getting iPhone apps right.

But there are other ways of accessing the iPhone’s business capacity and Webmonkey offers an alternative way to approach the iPhone revolution.

But should iPhones feature within your business as well as being a platform on which to advertise your company? Zdnet points out that the proliferation of iPhones in the office could be very bad news indeed. The problems could be complex where corporate security and confidentiality are concerned. The risks are:

1) The iPhone is an operating system platform that is not licensed to alternative hardware suppliers, meaning there are limited backup options
2) Design deficiencies that can increase support costs (for example, no removable battery)
3) Currently available from limited sources in both the USA and UK, so that if you’re not happy with customer service from your supplier, you may only have a choice of one (or no) other suppliers to work with.
4) Cost of each iPhone which may become necessary to equip your team.

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Google struggles to challenge the iPhone

Posted by Michael under Mobile Search

The iPhone has made the great leap from being ‘just another’ smartphone into the rare territory of becoming an essential organisation and communication tool. It’s pretty well unrivalled in this area, and with more than 65,000 applications in the apps store, you can find an application for almost everything you can think of.

Given the value of this territory, you’d expect challengers to be emerging and indeed, Google was predicted to challenge Apple in the smartphone market this year, but it doesn’t seem to be happening. In fact, according to the Sunday Times, Google is struggling. And this is against a background of some apps creators and technology pundits starting to express concerns about the tight control Apple maintains over its many apps, and the development process that brings them to market.

How Apple got it right

There are several reasons that Google isn’t cutting it: one of which is user-friendliness. The iPhone meshes with a number of systems that are likely to be familiar to the new user. 

Also, iPhone got the media buzz by launching early and keeping tight control of its apps system, while the Google decision to partner with a range of providers proved to be a problem – the claim that the G1 would be just the front runner in a whole range of Android-featuring products just hasn’t happened. The ‘thousands of different phone models’ that were going to use Android haven’t appeared in shops, and that means that the system just isn’t as attractive to software developers.

Google fights back
 
On the plus side, Google’s Android offers open standards, which give software developers a free hand. But the delay in getting Android out allowed the iPhone to build loyalty in the vanguard of tech leaders, a small but key market that can make or break new technology. If the CEO uses iPhone, the whole company will use iPhone … and to break Apple’s hold, Google–or rather Android–will have to win some of those trend leaders away from their dependence on the iPhone.

Another sign of hope is that Motorola is launching new, Android-powered, phones this autumn, to fight back against the Apple and BlackBerry systems, and Motorola’s share of the predicted 90 million smartphones in the USA by the end of 2009 could be enough to tip the Google/Android system into success.

And there does seem to be some evidence of that happening. According to Flurry, Google has a significant increase in apps projects being created on Android between January and July this year – in fact new apps projects starting on Android has doubled, in relation to the iPhone app start-ups, since the beginning of the year.

Photo courtesy of katielips at Flickr

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New iPhone launched

Posted by Michael under Mobile Search

The new iPhone 3G S, featuring improved speed and performance—up to twice as fast as iPhone 3G—longer battery life, a high-quality 3 megapixel autofocus camera, easy to use video recording and hands free voice control in comparison to iPhone 3G.

iPhone 3G S will be available in the UK on June 19th with pricing available at launch. iPhone OS 3.0 software will be available on June 17th as a free software update via iTunes 8.2 or later for all iPhone customers.

iPhone 3G S will be an O2 exclusive.

As stated by Apple, the pricing in UK will be available at launch, however O2 via its official Twitter feed has provided information on pricing – 3G S will cost up to £184.98 for the 16GB, and up to £274.23 for the 32GB, depending on what tariff you go for. 

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iPhone dominates the mobile internet

Posted by Michael under Mobile Search

It seems that everyone I know has an iPhone. I wanted a phone with a battery that lasted for more than 24 hours and was on a major network (Orange or Vodafone). I’ve got to say although I am happy with my Nokia E71, I now wish I had an iPhone.

It is incredible to see the impact the ipact the iPhone has had on mobile search. The iPhone represents a respectable 9% of mobile phone sales but 65% of all mobile searches are done on an iPhone.

Rumour has it that the next version of the iPhone will be available on all the major networks.

% of sales

Source: Gartner.

% of Web Pages Requested

Source: Net Applications.

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