Global Search Engine Marketing & Social Media News And Analysis » World Statistics

Australian Companies Are Employing More Digital Marketing And SEO Specialists In 2013

John Vlasakakis — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 00:48:28 +0000

Digital Marketing has become the buzz word in Australia over the past 3 months. Nearly every large company have now suddenly hired “digital marketing co-ordinators” to deal with the every day SEO practices and search activities for a business.

Many research and reports have been discussed with several of the large companies in 2012 and it seems that finally many of these organizations are breaking the chains and accepting that the industries they are in are moving into a new digital world, where areas such as search engine optimisation, social media and search advertising are pioneering these businesses to new heights.

The interesting statistic is that compared to this time last year, job advertisements for digital/online markeinting/SEO specialists has increased by 220%, this shows that many companies are looking to develop someone in-house or have an expert run the digital show for a company in-house.

The one issue with these companies hiring in-house is that as with anything search related in Australia, the industry moves quite fast. What is popular and works one day may change in a heartbeat.

Many companies fall behind in this and it is quite evident with Australia being by far the least innovative when it comes to digital marketing and SEO.

The pioneers in search are the Americans, and the best model to replicate for anyone is what the USA are doing. For example- Banner retargeting is a term that most in Australia are not familiar with. Only 3% of businesses use this and it is a very powerful marketing tool which can work wonders for an e-Commerce store. This clearly shows a lack of understanding of very important parts of an integrated search and online strategy.

Many companies need to grasp the concept of digital correctly this year, SEO, re-targeting, adwords, social media, multilingual website design, international brand and content marketing. The challenge for someone doing all this in-house can be a recipe for disaster if it all goes wrong, sometimes it helps to have an external agency deliver the marketing strategies. Leaving to the experts is not so bad after all.

Neighbours Are Not Twins – Why Knowing Every Market Is Crucial

Steven Plimmer — Mon, 26 Nov 2012 15:41:49 +0000

I work for a PPC agency that advertises across nations and in most cases, we use native language speakers to run campaigns for each country. This isn’t overkill, it’s essential.

If you’re based in a single country and trying to internationalise your customer base or formulate an international online strategy, it must go beyond simply regionalising your campaigns. This is because countries may be close to one another, or even neighbours, but they can harbour radically different characteristics that materially affect how you would build your digital marketing.

Even Europe, with the inevitable homogenising effect of EU membership and the common currency, nevertheless is enormously diverse in a number of societal, infrastructural and economic ways. I’ll take a classic example of this and outline the differences between Iberian siblings, Spain and Portugal.

There are lots of official sources of data available through EU sites but Google has helpfully brought them together in this tool if you’re researching countries and I’ll pick out some of the official statistics to illustrate the diversity I’m thinking of.

Tech:

Most of Portugal broadband penetration is only about two thirds that of Spain.
Portugal has prohibitively expensive data plans for mobile devices, so smartphone penetrations is much lower (at 18%) than Spain (at 44%).

Demographics:

Portugal’s population is older than Spain’s (Median age in Portugal is 40.4 vs Spain’s 39.5)
Portugal’s births are 5% less than its deaths, whilst Spain’s births are 25% higher than deaths so demography is continuing to diverge in this respect.
Under 20% of Portuguese 30-34 year olds have passed Tertiary Education vs Spain’s 40%
However, there are around 6400 Portuguese with Post-Graduate qualifications (e.g. Doctorates) vs the far larger Spain’s 7200.

Employment/economy:

Portugal’s unemployment rate is around 10% vs Spain’s 26% (up from 9% in 2008!)
Employment rates are 62.3% (Portugal) vs 55% (Spain).
Portugal, however, is in the deeper recession when measuring GDP.
Portugal’s GDP is about 80% of the EU average whilst Spain’s is slightly higher than the average.
Portugal’s average wage is around €6,000 lower than Spain’s.
Tax receipts are disproportionately higher in Portugal since tax on goods and services is double that of Spain.
This is not offset by the lower income taxes seen in Portugal.

Politics:

Portugal is a Republic
Spain has a constitutional monarchy

Daily domestic culture:

Lunch and dinner is taken hours earlier in Portugal than in Spain
The Portuguese don’t go in for Tapas – which are one of the causes for the late Spanish dinner time.
This means that the working Portuguese are more often at home than the working Spanish since tapas keep the latter out of the home until later in the evening.

So you put all this together and you can see that many of these disparate comparisons could play heavily into any marketing approach depending on what you’re advertising.

Did this challenge any of your assumptions? I was certainly surprised from my perspective at the large education difference, the big employment difference and the mobile data use difference.

So if I had simply done a “copy-and-paste” of my Spanish campaigns along with some translation, I would have started off completely on the wrong foot.

Have you discovered any large differences between neighbours that affected your marketing efforts? Leave a comment.

SEO Specialists Monitoring The September 18 Google Panda Rollout In Australia

John Vlasakakis — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 04:43:52 +0000

Word spread around of another Google Panda update in the SEO world. However, Matt Cutts later tweeted it was just an update to the diversity of domains in search results.

At a recent SEO seminar in Australia, all involved in the search industry discussed the recent changes in Google, prior to the notification from Google many believed it was just the diversity of domains update.

On the 18th of September, Google announced via twitter of another Google Panda roll out which will see many fluctuation in rankings over the next few days which will affect up to 0.7% of search queries.

Recent studies in Australia by Maps Gurus SEO have shown that the amount of search queries affected by this change are as high as 1.3%

Search specialists in Australia are baffled with the amount of times daily queries are fluctuating, many websites are changing from position 3 to position 8 for a specific term in the space of 15 minutes.

This notice on the 18th of September has definitely put all involved in Search in Australia on high alert as this roll out seems to be affecting more search queries than other countries. So far, out of all categories affected, some of the most fluctuating keyword categories are SEO and Internet Marketing!

This recent algorithm has forced many senior search managers to rethink there online marketing strategies especially in the search field and look at adopting better practices to avoid future roll outs which might in fact harm their niche.

Any further information about this search engine update, not only Australian but worldwide impact, will be presented once the roll out has finished and search rankings stabilise.

Highlights Of Google’s Q2 2012 International Performance

Immanuel Simonsen — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 14:11:30 +0000

Yesterday, Google announced its Q2 2012 financial results. Find below a brief overview of Google’s international performance (note that when subtracting Motorola revenues ($1.3 billion) from the figures, revenues amount to $10.9 billion):

Revenue from the U.S. was up 20% year-on-year to $5 billion.

Non-U.S. revenue accounted for 53% of Google’s total revenue or almost $6 billion, and was up 22% year-on-year.

The UK was up 20% year-on-year, close to $1.2 billion.

The poor macro-economic climate in Southern Europe hampered growth in this region, especially Spain, stated Google’s Nikesh Arora in yesterday’s conference call.

Growth in Asia is steady relative to the first quarter, Google announced.

Source: Google Earnings Slides

Infographic – Who Is Using Google Analytics Worldwide?

Christophe Bernigaud — Tue, 12 Jun 2012 12:33:02 +0000

Data privacy is a trending topic at the moment. Regulations and laws on cookies technology usage is now key.

Most websites will run a cookies based web analytical tool or software like Google Analytics. Over 55 per cent of all websites in the world run Google Analytics, giving Google a comfortable 81 per cent market share of the web analytics software industry…

Check TargetOnlineMarketing.com infographic – ‘Who is using Google Analytics Worldwide in 2012? ‘

Facebook Takes Top Spot In Europe For Most Pages Viewed

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 07 Jul 2011 13:52:05 +0000

Comscore has released its May data showing the popularity of various European websites for the month of May 2011 in Europe which provides some interesting findings, including the fact that Facebook now beats Google sites in Europe for number of page views per visitor per month. You have to bear in mind that “Google sites” includes the figures for YouTube.com.

Perhaps more surprising is that fact that Vkontakte, the highly successful Russian social network, manages almost as manage page views per visitor as Google despite the fact that it is disadvantaged statistically by only being able to count on users in Russia and demonstrating the growing importance of Russia in Europe. Microsoft sites, eBay and Yahoo all put in creditable performances but are followed by another Russian site, Yandex, the number one Russian search engine.

Comscore Date Shows The Most Viewed Pages for Sites in Europe May 2011

When “engagement” is considered, the Russian social network often considered to be a copy of Facebook, beats Facebook for engagement minutes per user by quite a substantial margin of 170 extra minutes per user per month. Meanwhile, Facebook remains well ahead of the Microsoft and Google sites.

Vkontakte Beats Facebook for Engagement in Europe May 2011

For reach Google still has it reaching over 90% of the European population. It is helped in locations such as Russia, where it is not the number on search engine, by Youtube.com and other Google sites. From an advertisers point of view, Google has by far the strongest reach of any site in Europe.

Reach of the European Population Comscore May 2011

How Do Journalists Search For Material?

Kristjan Mar Hauksson — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 23:19:24 +0000

In a research done by Nordic eMarketing in cooperation with the eNewsPR network, journalists are found to use less than 2.5 keywords most of the time. In the same research Nordic eMarketing found that French journalists are lazier than the English when searching for content and Scandinavian journalists are likelier to venture outside of their ccTLD and use .COM or other ccTLD endings when searching for content through their preferred search engine.

After reviewing well over 2 million individual visits and search referrals, filtering out various media from over 40 countries and all continents, Nordic eMarketing found among other that Twitter is a poor organic referrer and Google returns close to 90% of the reporters coming through search.

Stay tuned at Multilingual Search and be among the first to get this report/white paper on the behaviour of journalists and how they search for content.

It is due to be published late October this 2010.

Asia Is Fastest Growing Global Region for Twitter

Gemma Birch — Fri, 02 Jul 2010 15:34:55 +0000

A recent study by Semiocast has shown that more tweets now originate from Asia than any other region. 37% of Tweets are made in the region, an increase of 5.5% from March this year, while North America has seen a drop of 7% to just 31%. The USA is still the country producing the most Twitter posts, however Japan and Indonesia hold the second and third spots, with Indonesia overtaking Brazil. South Korea also makes it into the top 10.

Twitter is now a truly international tool and offers great potential to organisations looking to engage with a global audience. The challenge, however, is developing a multilingual strategy to effectively manage communications in multiple markets and reep the benefits of this ever-growing phenomenon.

Source: http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/asia_now_first_fastest-growing_region_for_twitter.php

Mobile Internet and Digital Mobility Findings from EIAA

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 01 Jun 2010 07:11:11 +0000

The European Interactive Advertising Association has published key findings from a recent study:

New Decade Heralds the Age of Digital Mobility

Europeans are more mobile and engaged with online than ever

Key findings of the study presented early March 2010 are:

Europeans spend an average of 6.4 hours per week on mobile internet (or “internet-on-the-move” as described in the study) compared to 4.8 hours reading newspapers and 4.1 hours reading magazines
The increase in laptops has increased media convergence with Europeans using the internet while they watch TV
The number of wireless broadband users in Europe is 121 million
71 million users access the internet via a mobile device averaging nearly 1 hour of mobile connection per day
Eastern Europe is a market opportunity for mobile engagement

The younger generation of early adapters is driving the increase in mobile internet access with:

24% in the age group 16-24 spending 7.2 hours per week online
21% in the age group 25-34 spending 6.6 hours per week online

The Internet is a popular source of entertainment with 25% of Europeans gaming or listening to the radio online and 30% watching video, TV clips or movies at least once a month

29% follow brands more as a result of the internet as the medium usage offers higher levels of emotional and rational connection.

The study shows a high consumption (49%) of video clips websites and images with 80% of those sharing the content with friends, a signal of a technologically sophisticated and deeply engaged audiences.

Countries with most hours spent on the Internet each week

Poland (10.3)
Italy (7.9)
Belgium & Portugal (7.7)
Russia (7.1)

Source: European Interactive Advertising Association

Global Search Engine Usage Grows by 46% in 2009

David Temple — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 02:24:20 +0000

comScore, Inc. released a study on the growth in global searches in 2009. The study indicated the U.S. remains the largest search market and Google maintained their global search market lead with a 58 percent rise over last year. Google had more than 87 billion searches or 66.8% of the global search market. Yahoo came in second with 9.4 billion searches but only a 13% increase and Baidu third with 8.53 billion searches and a lackluster 7% increase.

The United States had the largest search market globally with 22.7 billion searches or about 17% of the total number of searches. China was second on the list with 13.3 billion searches and Japan with 9.2 billion, was third. Search in Russia grew dramatically by 92 percent to increase to 3.3 billion searches.

“The global search market continues to grow at an extraordinary rate, with both highly developed and emerging markets contributing to the strong growth worldwide,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “Search is clearly becoming a more ubiquitous behavior among Internet users that drives navigation not only directly from search engines but also within sites and across networks. If you equate the advancement of search with the ability of humans to cultivate information, then the world is rapidly becoming a more knowledgeable ecosystem.”

Bing Hits the High Road in the US – Share Over 10%

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:41:21 +0000

Clickz’s Jack Marshall brings us the report that Bing has gone over the 10% share mark in the US – a truly remarkable shift. The data is from Nielsen and shows that Bing grew at a rate of over 22% in August against Google’s 2.9% growth. Yahoo meanwhile declined at a rate of -4.2%. Most of Bing’s share seems to have come from Comcast, however.

The list of ‘growers’ makes interesting reading too placing Google in 5th place:

Bing 22.1%
Local.com 2.9%
Ask.com 2.9%
Yellow Pages 2.7%
Google 2.6%
AOL 1.8%
My Web 0.5%
NexTag 0.4
Yahoo -4.2%
Comcast -21.6%

One thing to note is that even though the Bing algorithm operates in the UK and US – and it isn’t present through much of the rest of the world. If this growth were to be related to the success of the algorithm – rather than the publicity story surround the deal with Yahoo – then Microsoft is headed for an interesting couple of years!

Europe Overtakes Asia in Number of Searches

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 17:55:07 +0000

Comparing data released by comScore this year and comparing what they said last year, the story emerges the Europe has actually surged ahead in terms of number of searches. This is partly due to the wide number of countries in the European region – particularly including Russia which is surging ahead on all cylinders search-wise at the moment.

However, the fact that there are more searches in Europe – may surprise some.

Pear Analytics Report Shows 40% of all Tweets are Useless

Sante J. Achille — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 10:44:09 +0000

Pear Analytics has released a report on Twitter “in search of finding out what people are really using Twitter for”.

The study examined a sample of US Tweets and provides interesting insights on how people are using Twitter:

* 40% of Tweets are BLA BLA (people talking … about themselves)

* 37% are conversational (people talking to people)

* 8.7% are informational (RE TWEETS, people relaying useful, interesting information)

The report provides numerous metrics including a section called Why Teens Aren’t Using Twitter where a 15 year old intern at Morgan Stanley finds Twitter not safe, and explains why teens prefer FaceBook and MySpace.

(SOURCE: Mashable)

Nielsen report: Brazil leads the world in social network websites

Marcelo Sant'Iago — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 14:33:23 +0000

According to a new Nielsen report Brazil is the country with more people using social networks websites. Brazilian users are also leading on time spent.

Nielsen reports that 80% of online users in Brazil are registered on social networks, followed by Spain with 75%, Italy 73% and Japan 70%.

Facebook is the leading network in the world with more than 108 million unique users, but only 2% of brazilians are using the website. Undisputed leader is Google’s Orkut, with 70% reach, making it the world leader on domestic audience reach.

Using Mobile Phones as a Cultural Lens

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:00:01 +0000

The Complexity and Social Networks Blog presents an interesting paper on mobile phone users and data stored in service provider databases around the world, discussing the diﬀerent types of data captured and how it can be used to provide insight into human cultures.

Examples are provided from a variety of cultures and hundreds of millions of individuals, illustrating how phones can be used as a cultural lens, improving understanding of a particular cultures pace of life, reactions to outlier events, and social networks.

The paper in PDF format can be downloaded here.

Online profits to reach 33,7 billion online in Europe

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 15:23:57 +0000

According to the The European Information Technology Observatory (EITO):

Revenues from Internet access growing by more than 10 percent
Telephone flat rates and online video sales are stimulating business
Germany is the largest single market in the EU with a 25 percent share

The increase in revenue (+10,7% in 2008) is attributed to the falling prices of high speed DSL connections. Lower connection costs and higher speed stimulate consumption for online services (Music and Video on Demand).
According to the the latest EITO forecast, by the end of 2008 there will be an estimated 114 million broadband Internet connections in Western Europe, making fast data lines available to 26 percent of the population.

International growth saves Google as US flatlines

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 10:28:49 +0000

Yesterday, Google announced its second quarter figures showing that international revenues represented all revenue growth for the last 9 months with the US virtually flatlining. Growth in revenue compared to last year was 39% and 3% compared with the first quarter of the year giving a total quarter turnover of $5.3 billion. Clicks decreased by 1% over the first quarter of the year but were still 19% up year on year.

The revenue percentage from the UK was $774 million down from $803 million in the first quarter of 2008 but up by 33% from the $600 million against the second quarter of 2007. Seasonally adjusted this still means the UK is on a roll as January is a particularly strong month leading the first quarter to higher revenues.

Meanwhile, checkout this chart from Google’s investor relations information showing the situation in the US compared with their international revenues clearly showing static US growth with international development – including the UK – leading Google’s current growth.

Source: Google Investor Relations Webcast

Statistics on internet access in Italy by AUDIWEB

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 17:28:06 +0000

Audiweb, powered by nielsen, has published panel data gathered in the month of May.

24 million users went online at least once during the month of may, 2008, a 5% increase compared to April
The number of users increases to 25,6 million if instant messaging and software to download music or films are included
The average Italian user went online 30 times and was connected for an average of 21,5 hours (30 minutes more than previous month) totalizing 1.650 page views
19,6 million domestic users (+8% from April) averaging over 14 hours online with an average of 1.170 page views
Consumer electronic websites were up 6% with 15,7 million visitors: forums and news sites were those showing the most significant increase to 6,9 million
7 million flocked to price comparison shopping portals and online purchasing guideline sites (+10% )
5,9 million went to online game sites (+12%)
3,3 million searched for friends and romance (+26%)
5,3 million were in search for wellness and body building (+14%)
4,2 million were on the outlook for webistes on food and cuisine (+22%)
4,2 million took an interest in DIY and gardening (+15%)

Source: AUDIWEB

Visa Predicts E-commerce in Latin America to surpass $16 billion this year

Sante J. Achille — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 08:53:32 +0000

According to a new study by Visa Inc. “B2C Electronic Commerce in Latin America and the Caribbean: Beating All Odds.”, retail e-commerce in Latin America, including travel and tourism, rose to nearly $11 billion in 2007, up from about $5 billion in 2005 and $7.78 billion in 2006, and is expected to surpass $16 billion this year and reach nearly $30 billion by 2010.

Sales figures for leading Latin American markets, with sales in millions of dollars for 2007, 2006 and the percent change:

Country	2007	2006	%
Brazil	4,899	3,541	38%
Mexico	1,377	868	59%
Venezuela	821	490	68%
Caribbean (except Puerto Rico)	818	585	45%
Argentina	739	619	19%
Chile	687	472	46%
Central America	499	360	39%
Puerto Rico	445	384	16%
Peru	218	145	50%
Columbia	201	175	15%
Others	203	165	23%

Following are the categories cited by consumers, with the percentage of consumers saying they shop each category:

Books, music, movies	21.4%
Tourism and travel	16.9%
Electronics	13.9%
Software	12.3%
Appliances	9.1%
Services	7.7%
Flowers, gifts	6.7%
Food	4.3%
Games	3.1%
Spare parts	2.8%
Furniture	1.8%

Source: Internet Retailer

Turkmenistan joins the internet revolution

Nick Wilsdon — Wed, 11 Jun 2008 11:25:01 +0000

The Moscow Times reports that Turkmenistan has begun to allow private citizens to connect to the internet. The national internet provider, Turkmentelekom, said on Thursday that it has been connecting up to 20 homes a day since the announcement, mainly in the capital city of Ashgabat. It has a waiting list of 2000 people.

Previously internet access was restricted to government employees, diplomatic posts and offices of major international companies.

The average monthly salary in Turkmenistan is $200, so it is unlikely that many can afford the price of a home connection, nor is it known if the government will block any websites. Surfing the net will cost around $1/hr on top of a monthly charge of $8. The initial installation costs $42. Turkmentelekom is also offering a dial-up connection to users but this is reported to be extremely slow, which will frustrate many web surfers.

Russian’s largest internet provider MTS has also launched a new high speed wireless service in the country. They are covering Ashgabat, Balkanabat (former Nebitdag) and Turkmenbashi (former Krasnovodsk). This will create some much needed competition for the national provider.

Turkmenistan already has their own version of Google.tm but the market holds potential for Russian providers such as Yandex. As a former USSR satellite, the population of just over 5m speak Terkmen, Russian, Uzbek and Dari. The ccTLD for the country is .TM and is available to foreign owners but requires a minimum 10yr registration period.