My Five: Five things worth sharing from the last week (or so), brought to you by a different member of the Browser Media team every Friday.
This week’s My Five is by James.
1. Someone names their child Hashtag!
Firstly, I am devastated that someone has beaten me to it.
But on a serious note, I feel for the poor baby who has recently been given the name ‘Hashtag’, by her social media enthusiast mother.
The name may seem fresh and cool to the mother now, but what happens in the future when Twitter loses its appeal? Imagine meeting someone called ‘Spectrum’ or ‘Amstrad’? Not cool!
2. 39% of Google search referrals are “Not Provided”
A year or so ago Google made some privacy changes which meant that search was automatically encrypted for signed-in-users. A recent study shows that 39% of all search traffic from Google now has the search terms withheld.
For webmasters, the dreaded ‘Not provided’ can prove a major annoyance when it comes to analysing website data in Google Analytics.
If encrypted search is giving you a hard time, please take a minute to complete our quick poll.
3. Catcopter
Losing a beloved pet can the worst feeling in the world. But not for Dutch artist Bart Jansen, who has transformed his recently deceased cat, Orville, into a helicopter. Yes you read that right.
Poor Orville (who was tragically hit by a car) is now propelled by four powerful engines attached to each of his feet.
God bless the Dutch.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Kslv7l75jQ
4. Scroogled
Bing has called out Google this Christmas, by asking shoppers “not to get Scroogled”! The campaign is directed at Google’s new paid ads which appear in Google Shopping results.
Google shopping has existed for a number of years now, formerly as a free, or organic SERP (search engine results page) know as Google product search.
It seems Bing, along with many others is not a fan of Google’s latest money-grabbing shenanigans!
5. Google confirms Google Panda update
A few days ago someone asked me why their website had disappeared from Google’s search results, seemingly overnight.
Chances are it has something to do with Google’s new search engine algorithm update, which was rolled out on the 21stof November.
Google claims that the ‘Panda #22’ update will affect 0.8% of search queries, which on the face of it doesn’t seem like a big deal, unless of course it’s your website which is no longer showing on Google’s SERP.
For more information about Google Panda, check out https://browsermedia.agency/2011/08/01/google-panda-update-what-why-who-and-what-next/.
