IAB UK Social

By Katy Howell, from social media agency immediate future

“relevance isn’t just about pages—it’s also about relationships” The official Google blog

As a social media agency, we’ve been watching the dynamic relationship between social and search for a while now; and Google’s recent announcement concerning the development of its social search function is indicative of the changing shape of search.

In 2011, search is getting social.

Google has announced that it will now be integrating social results throughout the search engine results pages; noting if friends have shared these links on one of the social media platforms that Google is taking information from (Quora, Twitter or Flickr); and providing users with more control over which of their social media accounts will inform these results.

Google’s social search acknowledges the value of peer recommendation and personal relevance but it depends on a user being logged into their Google account. In other words, it is an add on service or an adjustment to the algorithm.  We think that social is affecting search at a much deeper level. Read more…

by , senior PR and marketing manager, IAB

Following on from Henry’s blog post about Moira and Pam (which I swear to God is true, a friend of a friend who works at the BBC told me) we’re all about the #searchandsocialmedia at the moment. It’s becoming increasingly apparent when brands don’t have any control over (or knowledge of) what people are saying about them online, because it has an inevitable impact on their profile within the search listings.

In fact, in acknowledgment of this occasional short-sightedness, some brands can be quite quick to hop into their competitors search results pages. I feel bad for kicking them when they’re down, but Nestle have fallen victim to this with Greenpeace buying their name on Google (not Bing though, keep up guys!) because it’s a hot social media topic and search volumes have inevitably risen.  Their PPC has the search result headline ‘Take a Break’ with the description “Which chocolate company destroys rainforests for palm oil?” Read more…