Google’s aim with this change is to make the user experience much more enjoyable and find the content they are looking for more easily.

The upshot is that if you have a lot of ads on your site on the top part or “above-the-fold” (The part visible when the browser opens a page) and the user has to scroll down to reach the actual content, or the majority of the site’s initial screen space is ads, Google will determine that this is not conducive to an enjoyable user experience and as a result, such sites may not rank as highly going forward.

This algorithmic change does not affect sites that place ads above-the-fold to a normal degree, only sites that go much further to load the top of the page with ads to an excessive level or that make it hard to find the actual original content on the page. It will tend to impact sites where there is only a small amount of visible content above-the-fold or relevant content is persistently pushed down by large blocks of ads.

Google claim that this change noticeably affects less than 1% of searches globally. If your website has been affected by the page layout algorithm change, consider how your web pages use the area above-the-fold and whether the content on the page is obscured, at the bottom of your page or otherwise hard for users to discern quickly.

If you decide to update your page layout, the page layout algorithm will automatically reflect the changes as Google re-crawls and processes enough pages from your site to assess the changes.

This change is just one of the over 500 improvements Google expect to roll out to search this year.

Micrositez is a Digital Agency.

Users of the platform have been using the domain yourblogname.blogspot.com for some time, but Google will now redirect this to a domain based on your location, so instead of .com at the end of your blog, you’ll see .uk or .au, etc.

This move will allow Google to filter content on a country by country basis, and block content that would be illegal to view in certain locations. The idea is to remain within the limits of the law in countries Blogger operates in, while still permitting freedom of expression within your own domicile. In the current climate, any increased internet censorship is viewed with a certain suspicion, and there are already concerns that some oppressive legal systems will use the rules to prevent access to information and restrict freedom of communication.

For now, to avoid the redirect when viewing blogs, follow the blog address you are looking for with “/ncr” (NCR stands for No Country Redirect). This will take you to the .com domain, and the US English version of the blog you are trying to view.

Other blogging sites, such as Tumblr, could see an increase in traffic as a result of this move, as users move their content and blog posts to less restricted services.

Micrositez Digital: Glasgow web agency.

Most people with a Facebook profile will be unfamiliar with IPOs (initial public offerings) and the financial ins-and-outs of the company, but this move from Facebook is significant.

How much?
Facebook is expected to sell of a 10% stake in the company for anywhere between $7.5billion and $10billion. If they achieve this price, the total value of Mark Zuckerberg’s dorm room brainchild will be £75billion to $100billion. That makes this offering the biggest tech stock market floatation since Google. Crucially, it cements the social network’s position as an essential tool, just as Google has done with search.

Who benefits?
The biggest beneficiaries will, of course, be the current owners. Founder Mark Zuckerberg holds the largest share in the company, which could be valued at up to $24billion from May. Other early investors expecting big investment boosts include Sean Parker (Napster co-founder), Dustin Moskovitz (Mark’s old college roommate), Eduardo Saverin (Facebook co-founder) and Russian tycoon Yuri Milner.

What does it mean for users?
Firstly, as a public company Facebook would be under more scrutiny and obligated to be more transparent. What this also means, is that there is likely to be increased use of personal information on users in order to maximise profits for shareholders. Personalised ads could expand and be based on your friends’ likes, and more targeted advertising is likely to be encouraged. Because there will now be an obligation to please new part-owners, more priority could be given to revenue making operations in the company instead of innovation. Google were a victim of their own IPO success in this manner, as their previous boast that staff could spend 20% of their time on anything they wanted had to be pushed aside, and Google labs was closed off to “devote more resources to high-impact products”.

Micrositez Digital is an award winning web agency.

Apple has been surging ahead in the tech industry for some time, but how have they managed to so spectacularly outperform their rivals? One simple answer: the iPhone. The iPhone is now Apple’s key product, and accounts for over 50% of the company’s revenue.

Apple sold 37 million iPhones this quarter, which is a mind-boggling figure. This surpasses last year’s Q1 sales (16 million), and the previous quarterly record for iPhone sales in Q3 2011 (20 million) combined. A large proportion of that has come from enterprise customers, as RIM’s Blackberry handsets lose their hold on business customers.

What does all this mean for Apple competitors? As quick as tech media are to suggest the next big thing in mobile or consumer electronics, the fact is that no other tech firm has come remotely close to that kind of earning power. Facebook may be a behemoth of social media, but its $250million 2011 Q4 earnings look paltry compared to the cash that Apple are bringing in. Google’s recent quarterly earnings posting of $2.71 billion was impressive, but classed as a “disappointment” by shareholders. Despite Android’s impressive growth in mobile, Google does not control the hardware of their mobile product, which means that growth is shared with manufacturers like Samsung, HTC and Motorola.

It appears to be the case that Apple is so far ahead of the competition, that it’s not going to be possible for other companies to catch up financially. Apple’s limited (but highly desirable) product line could be seen as a key to their success, but may leave space for companies to compete in terms of variety and innovation instead of profit.

Micrositez Digital is an award winning digital agency.

Clicking the notice takes the searcher to more information on Google’s Help Center, and a link is also provided on the blog for webmasters who feel their site has been unfairly labelled as compromised.

This interesting update has been mostly ignored however, as most users are concerned with what has appear on the official Google blog today; a privacy update. The update, which Google say Is designed to provide a more seamless experience for Google account holders across their various products is explained here:

Essentially, your preferences will be shared across search, social, mail and other activities, making it easier for Google to determine what you mean when you search for certain terms. The problem is, as Facebook have learned, that users are none too happy when their privacy is tampered with, especially when there is no facility to opt out. If you hold a Gmail, Google+, Youtube, Google Docs or any other account, this will affect you.

Google’s position is outlined in their blog:

“Finally, what we’re not changing. We remain committed to data liberation, so if you want to take your information elsewhere you can. We don’t sell your personal information, nor do we share it externally without your permission except in very limited circumstances like a valid court order. We try hard to be transparent about the information we collect, and to give you meaningful choices about how it is used—for example our Ads Preferences Manager enables you to edit the interest categories we advertise against or turn off certain Google ads altogether. And we continue to design privacy controls, like Google+’s circles, into our products from the ground up.”

It’s another controversial move from the search giant, who are already dealing with a lot of heat online after the launch of Search Plus Your World and forced signup to Google+. Is it possible that users will take their data elsewhere?

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

The result of this work can be found at focusontheuser.org. From there, users are encouraged to click and drag a button to their bookmarks bar, and this button can then be used to alter search results. Or, as the team call say “try a more relevant Google”. It works by using Google’s own relevance measure to determine which social content should appear in the People and Pages section of search results. So the social results better match the most relevant and popular social locations for search terms. It doesn’t exclude Google+, but it does categorise it more accurately according to how relevant it is.

The name of this bookmarklet?

the "don't be evil" button

If this phrase sounds familiar, that’s because “don’t be evil” is the informal corporate motto of Google themselves, and an ironic reminder to the company that perhaps they’ve slipped from that ethos with their promotion of Google+ above all other social networks.

It’s an interesting project, and it could become very popular. Search engine users value relevancy over anything else, and if they’re given the tool to get it, why wouldn’t they use it?

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

The change specifically applies to positioning of ads on a page, giving reason to their actions Google announced in yesterday’s webmaster blog;

“We’ve heard complaints from users that if they click on a result and it’s difficult to find the actual content, they aren’t happy with the experience.”

They say; “rather than scrolling down the page past a slew of ads, users want to see content right away. So sites that don’t have much content “above-the-fold” can be affected by this change.”

For many websites placing ad’s above-the-fold has been a popular choice for many website owners as ads have proven to monetize well at the top.  Websites will need to be mindful of today’s news moving forward, and make changes where necessary to avoid being kicked similarly to many who fell short during last year’s Panda Update.

Google says that although the changes will be noticeable, the percentage of searches this affects globally is less than 1%.

If you own a website, or help maintain one then there are a few things you can do to make sure your website doesn’t fall into Google’s ‘top heavy with ads’ category.

1. Make use of Google’s browser size tool
2. When placing ads make sure they’re relevant, and placed beside relevant content
3. Watch the video below for Google’s tips and recommendations on ad placement, and increasing revenue on content rich sites.

Micrositez Digital is a Internet Marketing Agency offering SEO, and Web Design Services.

The initial partners include some familiar names like Zynga, Pinterest, Ticketmaster and Rotten Tomatoes. Facebook has confirmed they will start approving new apps from developers straight away.

Some Open Graph features were already in use, and users have been sharing their music activity through apps like Spotify, and their news habits through social reader apps. These features were already using frictionless sharing to update users’ timelines, and the new apps will work in the same way.

The difference with the new apps will be the range of activities users are now able to share. Facebook’s ubiquitous “like” button has been criticised in the past, and even Mark Zuckerberg has admitted that it has limitations for users and marketers alike. The new Open Graph apps can use frictionless sharing to update activity on other sites. For example, for e-commerce sites a user can update that they “want” or “own” a product, and this will be shared to their timeline. With the range of apps available there is a lot of potential for reported activities, and users’ timelines will soon share what they “read”, “cooked” or “ate” on their timelines.

The idea of frictionless sharing is to turn the timeline into a type of noticeboard where users an update all types of activity. Some people are concerned that it could mean more corporate updates into already crowded newsfeeds, or that it could be the very definition of oversharing. Facebook users are not known for keeping their opinions on such changes to themselves, so we will soon be able to see how well the changes have gone over.

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow.

Yang had been serving on the board of directors, and held the unofficial title of “Chief Yahoo”. He was CEO of the firm from June 2007 to January 2009, but resigned to make way for Carol Bartz. Carol was then famously fired over the telephone in September 2011.

Yang’s place on the board of directors at Yahoo had been a divisive issue, with criticism from some employees and shareholders. Yang was believed to have been instrumental in blocking takeover attempts on the company, and a barrier to potential buyers in future. One notable shareholder, Daniel Loeb, wrote a scathing letter to the Yahoo board in November, criticising Yang’s continued presence at Yahoo and gossip about his supposed negotiations with private equity firms.

Since Jerry Yang’s resignation was announced, stock in Yahoo has rallied and speculation on the future of the company is a major talking point on tech news sites today. It is believed that his departure could open negotiations for a sale of the company, or some of its Asian assets, or that a whole new strategic direction for Yahoo is on the cards. Either way, it’s doubtful that Bing or Google will be quaking in their boots just yet.

Micrositez Digital is an award-winning digital agency.

This confirms that Wikipedia will go ahead with a planned protest on Wednesday. In an unprecedented move, the world’s 6th most-visited site will “go dark” to raise awareness of their opposition to the proposed Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP Act (PIPA). Anyone attempting to access any of the English Wikipedia pages will be greeted with something that looks like this.

Wikipedia has never attempted a blackout on this scale before, but the Italian Wikipedia did close down in October 2011 to protest changes to libel laws. Link-sharing site Reddit will join the protest with a similar blackout.

The reason that Wikipedia, Reddit and others are so concerned about SOPA and PIPA is that they impose additional responsibilities on websites to thoroughly monitor their content for copyright infringement, and suggest harsh punishments where the law is broken. Wikipedia’s stance, which is outlined on their site, is that PIPA and SOPA “have the potential to significantly change the way that information can be shared through the Internet.” The SOPA initiative/action statement on the site today continues: “It is the opinion of the English Wikipedia community that both of these bills, if passed, would be devastating to the free and open web.”

The protest itself has met with plenty of criticism. The Guardian reported that Dick Costolo, CEO of Twitter, tweeted that he thought Wikipedia’s plans were “foolish” and “silly”. (Although he has since stated on his twitter feed that he is in support of Wikipedia’s plans). Costolo has reassured users that Twitter will not be participating in the blackout.

Whether the protest will have any impact remains to be seen, but surely some of the 23 million unique daily visitors to English Wikipedia’s sites will be at a loss on Wednesday.

Micrositez Digital: Web Agency Glasgow

The big story this year is television. Last year saw a big push in 3D enabled televisions (that were notable by their absence this year) but this year was all about smart TV. Speculation is rife about the impending launch of Apple TV, and whether it will impact the television viewer as much as the iPhone impacted the mobile phone user. Not to be outdone, Google TV was a big presence this year, as Samsung, Sony, Sharp and LG displayed new OLED and super-thin hardware that could one day appear in our living rooms.

Despite plenty of hype before the event, ultrabooks failed to make any real impact or headlines. There were plenty on show, but many similar products from manufacturers, with nothing standing out from the pack. Surprisingly, streaming and media services were on everyone’s lips, as manufacturers take note that consumers want devised that will allow them to stay connected and control their own content, regardless of the type of device they use.

As far as innovation goes, you can’t get more forward-thinking and Minority-Report-like than gesture control. This technology is still in its infancy, but was still one of the most talked-about technologies at the event. Intel’s booth with gesture controlled television was a big hit, and PrimeSense (developers of the Kinect sensor for Microsoft) spoke openly of their belief that gesture control replacing touch on many consumer devices. Expect to see a lot more of this at the 2013 show, as the next generation of gesture control devices really wow us.

Micrositez Digital is an award winning digital agency.

Today, Facebook dominates the social landscape, and has infiltrated popular culture to the point that the brand, like Google, peppers people’s speech as a verb:

“I need to find a car hire company, I’ll Google it”

“I don’t have her number, I’ll just Facebook her”.

The growth of Facebook has been well documented, and recent figures now suggest that the social network could hit the 1 billion user mark this year. Local big players in countries around the world are being usurped one by one, from Hyves in the Netherlands and StudiVZ in Germany to Orkut in India. Mark Zuckerberg’s creation now has unparalleled global reach, and that makes it an incredibly attractive platform for advertisers. Facebook controls approximately half of all social media traffic in the UK.

But this figure indicates that Facebook is in decline here. Recent figures are suggesting that Facebook’s share has fallen by more than 7% in the last year, and analysts are suggesting it has reached saturation point. Social media users in the UK are gaining a reputation for being a fickle bunch; MySpace’s dominance a few short years ago was shaken by Bebo, which then stepped aside for Facebook. Now, Twitter, YouTube and even Yahoo! Answers are showing considerable growth. Meanwhile, Google+ isn’t in the top 10 social networks in the UK yet, but it is growing incredibly quickly.

So how do you keep social media users in the UK interested in your online social media presence?

The important thing is to watch and engage with the movers and shakers on the social media landscape. The popularity of niche social networks and forums like Moneysavingexpert and Pinterest, and even local social networks such as KILTR, make social networking in the UK a different experience. Make sure your business establishes a presence in these networks before your friends start to explore them as well. It’s a lot of work, but there are big rewards for those who invest in this kind of brand awareness.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

As an example, Search Engine Land used the search term “music” to measure the impact of the nee social integration. The search as done using the chrome browser in incognito mode, meaning that Google had no access to personal data when amalgamating the search results. These results turned out to be quite interesting. The results area on the right hand side immediately listed the most popular musicians on Google+, Britney Spears, Snoop Dogg and Mariah Carey. Despite this being a people and places recommendation there was no mention of any of their Twitter accounts. And what about other musicians? Katy Perry has broken many Billboard chart records in the last year, and has a huge loyal online fanbase (over 40 million fans on Facebook alone), but her absence from Google+ means an absence from Google’s people and pages results.

A search on the top music suggestion – Britney Spears – immediately prompts the user to select her Google+ profile. Ignoring the suggestion still prompted at least two Google+ links on the front page, and four links to Google-owned YouTube. Her twitter account languishes in 10th place, and her Facebook (with over 16 million fans) isn’t even on the front page.

Feeling a little mischievous, they searched for Facebook. The top people and pages result is Mark Zuckerberg; but it is his Google+ account. This account has never been updated, and this raises some questions on the relevancy algorithm of this feature.

Today, some tech news sites and blogs are speculating that Google could face antitrust legislation over the changes, but it remains to be seen whether this will come to pass.

What this indicates, is that having a Google+ account is more relevant and essential than ever for businesses who want to succeed online. In order to be noticed, companies will not just want their website to appear near the top of Google search results, but to attract users with a Google+ page link. Remember, if your business isn’t considering a Google+ presence, your competitor probably is.

Micrositez Digital is a Social Media Agency.

Google announced that their latest step in the direction of social search would transform; “Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”

The changes, which come in the form of three new features;

• Personal results
• Profiles in search
• People and pages

Will, according to Google enrich users’ experience.

What does this mean for users?

It means that when you’ve signed into Google+ and search for information on a particular individual Google will help you by drawing out relevant information from Google+ pages, and display them for you in the first few pages.

The response seemed positive, at least for a few short hours. Twitter was among the first to raise its angry feathers making the following statement;

“As we’ve seen time and time again, news breaks first on Twitter, as a result, Twitter accounts and tweets are often the most relevant results. We’re concerned that as a result of Google’s changes, finding this information will be much harder for everyone. We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organisations and Twitter users.”

Search strategist, Rishi Lakhani, shared his views on the news in a recent report by Econsultancy; “I think it’s a desperate attempt to make a rather poor product become mainstream. Google has the largest universal audience base, but not the largest social network. So what they are doing is to try and compete with the powerhouses that are Twitter and Facebook, by using the one super strong property they have, search.”

The changes will only be available for users in the US via their Google account.

Figures on reported spending in 2011 still show that small businesses are still spending most on email marketing, closely followed by search engine marketing and key word purchase. Social media marketing spending is now right behind these types of marketing in spending share, ahead of business directory listings, sponsorships, mobile advertising and banner/display ads. Social media now accounts for just over 15% of total online marketing share for SMBs, which equates to roughly $1.14billion in the USA alone. In total it is estimated that over $6.2billion was spent on social media marketing in 2011 with over 65% of that social media marketing concentrated on Facebook. This shows that the SMB share is a small but sizeable portion of the total market.

The median number of users engaged with small businesses is around 250, but the mean amounts to some 4,000 users. This is because a few SMBs are claiming to be engaged with tens of thousands of users, according to the figures they reported to Borrell. Having 250 fans/likes/followers is a far more realistic picture of an an achievable level of engagement for a small business.

What is clear is that the trend of increasing social media marketing is likely to continue throughout 2012. With over 57% of SMBs measuring return on investment based on new customers, what remains to be seen is how effective their methods will be. At Micrositez Digital we understand the importance of an effective and engaging social media campaign, and also the risk some businesses take by managing their social media ineffectively.

Micrositez Digital: SEO and Social Media Marketing.

CES has been the main stage for tech companies to showcase the best of their upcoming technologies to journalists and retailers. This year’s exhibition is the second biggest since its launch in 1967, when the first CES was held as a spinoff to the Chicago Music Show. Notable products that have been launched at CES include:
• The Video Casette Recorder (VCR), 1970
• Atari’s Pong video game, 1975
• Camcorder, 1981
• Nintendo NES, 1985
• DVDs, 1996
• Hi definition TV, 1998
• Microsoft Xbox, 2001, and
• Blu-ray and HD DVD, 2004.

The big news this year is Microsoft’s announcement that this will be the last CES they will exhibit at, and speculation is rife that they’re planning to go out with a bang. At the most anticipated exhibit of this year’s conference Microsoft are expected to demo Windows 8 in tablet format. Other big exhibits that are expected include a large range of ultrabook portable laptops, the follow-up to the Nokia Lumia 800 smartphone, a new super-processor chip from Intel, and TV powered by Android’s Ice Cream Sandwich OS.

There is talk that Microsoft’s move away from CES could signify a challenging future for the show, if it even has a future. The big trendsetter in tech over the past decade has been Apple, and they have never exhibited at CES. Their brand is strong enough to create buzz around their own events, but if the future of CES is in doubt that leaves little space for the smaller tech companies to create buzz around their own innovations.

Micrositez Digital: Social Media Marketing.

Google has given some interesting launch codenames to these changes, incuding:
• “old possum” – a faster redirect system to speed up mobile browsing
• “Hoengg” – an update to the SafeSearch tool
• “simple” – an improvement to image search which adds value to high quality source pages
• “SweatNovember” – an improvement to Hebrew synonym handling across multiple languages, and
• “baschi” improved lyric search results.

Among the tweaks and updates undertaken in December was given the project codename “megasitelinks”. This is what Google is calling an algorithmic improvement for selecting and displaying sitelinks, including a new localised sitelink update. The aim is to show sitelink specific to users’ region, which can be controlled through location settings. SearchEngineLand have reported that the localised sitelinks don’t appear to be completely up and running as yet, but it will be one change to look out for in future.

These aren’t the only Google projects and changes to be given some interesting and amusing names, many people will be familiar with the delicious codenames for Android versions, such as FroYo, Gingerbread, Cupcake and Ice Cream Sandwich. Today’s blog is unusual because it is one of the few occasions that Google has openly published the codenames for search updates. Inside Search explains that the codenames make projects easier to talk about and gives employees a memorable moniker to refer to the project.

One example they provide is their old question answering feature, nicknamed DAFFIE (Database of All Fact Fiction Information and Exaggeration). When the feature was overhauled and a new system put in place in a project led by Amit Singhal, he nicknamed the system Porky Pig because, according to Amit “Porky Pig was trying to kill Daffy Duck.” Google staffers, convinced Amit was confused, had their giggles stifled when it was discovered that in the original 1937 cartoon, Porky Pig was indeed hunting Daffy Duck.

You have to wonder if the team Googled that little fact…

Micrositez Digital: Social Media Marketing.

It should be safe to assume therefore that when searching Google for a web browser the first result you’d see is Chrome. Not anymore. In a demonstration that even Google plays by their own rules, they have temporarily demoted pagerank on the Google Chrome homepage for no less than 60 days for breaking rules on sponsored blog posts.

Google hired Essence Digital as a contractor to handle their online video marketing campaign for Chrome, but Essence Digital contracted a company called Unruly to implement the campaign. Unruly arranged some paid-for or “sponsored” blog posts to spread the video as widely as possible, and included a link back to the Google Chrome homepage, however the links did not have a “nofollow” attribute. What this meant, was that Google was paying for links. As a company already under scrutiny for allegedly promoting its own sites at the expense of their competition, once Google had discovered the error they had no choice but to act.

Google issued the following statement to SearchEngineLand on the matter: “We’ve investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site’s PageRank for a period of at least 60 days. We strive to enforce Google’s webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users. While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site.”

So Google’s reputation as a stickler for rules is maintained, but as Chrome no longer appears on the first page of Google results for “browser” they may also have handed advantage to Mozilla’s Firefox and risked the future growth potential of Chrome.

Micrositez Digital: SEO and PPC.

1. The sad passing of Yahoo Site Explorer
Yahoo Site Explorer closed down in November, and integrated most of its services with Bing Webmaster Tools. SEO professionals and webmasters everywhere were sad to see it go. Yahoo’s free analysis tools for webmasters were unrivalled, and Site Explorer’s ability to check rival websites was a huge advantage. A number of similar services have benifitted from its passing, but as yet there’s no frontrunner for the title of natural successor to the popular service.

2. Google’s caffeine injection
The Panda update in February 2011 was big news; up to 12% of searches were impacted as Google got tough on content farms and low-quality content. This was nothing compared to what they had up their sleeves for later in the year. Google’s move to the caffeine infrastructure in 2010 was an indicator of the move toward fresh and relevant results, and in November this year they took some of that caffeine buzz and implemented a massive algorithm update. Up to 35% of searches were impacted by the update, which rewarded new, up-to-date and relevant content. The message to webmasters was clear: freshness matters.

3. The social boom
It would have been impossible to miss the social media boom this year. Facebook and twitter saw record users, updates and traffic, social sharing sites like StumbleUpon and Reddit soared in popularity, and photo sharing from mobile devices took off in a big way thanks to Instagram. The biggest social impact on search is still in its infancy: Google+. Google+ is a new player on the social field, but with 25 million users, Google search integration, business pages and the “+1” button, it’s a force to be reckoned with. Google’s integration of the “+1” button into search results is an indicator that influence on Google+ may well impact on search engine rankings. We’ll be keeping a close eye on this one.

At Micrositez Digital, the big search engine marketing trend this year has been success. More clients than ever are enjoying soaring search engine rankings, and even number one rankings. Our small company has grown into an international digital marketing agency, and continues to work hard to achieve the best results and increase traffic to our customers.

We’d like to thank all our clients for sticking with us through 2011. We’re excited about 2012, and look forward to continuing our successful relationships, and seeing all our customers’ search engine rankings climb.

Micrositez Digital: SEO and PPC.

1. Circle Volume
Google+ now allows users to turn up and down the “volume” of their circles. This means users can choose which circles are more important and make their posts “louder” or more visible, allowing people more control over which content they access first.

2. Google+ Pages admin
A particular bugbear of users when Google+ Pages were introduced was the lack of multi-admin. All pages could only be administered by one person. Google+ have amended this, and up to 50 users can administer a single page, making it easier for multiple employees of a company to work on their Google+ page. We have to admit, this is our favourite new feature in the Micrositez Digital office!

3. Photo Lightbox
Google has boldly claimed on their blog that their new Lightbox feature is “a more beautiful and useable photo experience”. We are prone to agree with this. The new interface is uncluttered and focuses the user’s eye on the photo. Coupled with improved navigation and better photo-tagging, this should be sure to please the large and vocal photography community on Google+.

In addition to these changes, the Google+ app on Android Market has been updated and improved, with easier access and use of the popular hangouts feature. It is hoped that the video chat capabilities of Hangouts will help the community to grow, and entice users away from Facebook (whose mobile apps are notoriously buggy). While the new Google+ changes aren’t quite as revolutionary as the Facebook timeline, they are certainly a small step in the right direction.

Micrositez Digital: Social Media Marketing