Reporting to the company Directors, the successful candidate will head the Online Marketing/SEO team working on a number of external projects for a growing list of prestigious clients as well as contribute to some very exciting internal projects. The Directors of Atelier Studios pride themselves on creating a friendly and professional work environment where the team work towards common goals and all opinions and creative input is valued.

To find out more details, view the full job description at http://www.atelier-seo.com/about-us/careers/head-online-marketing-seo/

Since Larry Page took over as CEO at the start of 2011 we've also witnessed the shut down of Slide, Google Power Meter, and Google Health.

Shutting down in the foreseeable future will be:

Aardvark – A social search Q&A service purchased for $50 million in February 2010.

Google Desktop – Search application which allows users to text search emails, viewed pages, other Google applications, computer files etc.

Fast Flip – A news discovery service allowing sharing of articles and customisable searches.

Google Maps API for Flash – Allows developers to embed, manipulate and adjust Google Maps in Flash applications.

Google Pack – Added in 2005 to assist the download and installation of millions of software downloads from Google and third parties.

Google Web Security – Part of the Postini acquisition of 2007. Does what it says on the tin.

Image Labeller – Image labelljng game which partners you with a stranger and points are awarded when your labels match. It's available until September 16th if you want to have a go.

Google Notebook – Allows users to organise information gleaned from the web and save it in a usable format, the 'notebook'. If you use Google Notebook, fear not, your information will be transferred to Google Docs.

Sidewiki – Slightly odd application which allows users to 'contribute helpful information' about the website they are viewing in a side bar.

Subscribed Links – Allows users to personalise search result topics creating specialised results. Developers can access their information and download it until September 15th.

Alan Eustace signs off by saying “We’ve never been afraid to try big, bold things, and that won’t change. We’ll continue to take risks on interesting new technologies with a lot of potential. But by targeting our resources more effectively, we can focus on building world-changing products with a truly beautiful user experience.”

Will these Google products be missed or is it right to take the knowledge gleaned and move forward with new Google products and services?

For starters, the Like button has been declared illegal in Schleswig-Holstein. According to Afterdawn.com “Website operators in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein have until the end of September to get remove all Facebook “Like” buttons or face fines up to 50,000 euros.” The Data Protection Commissioner’s office explained; “By using the Facebook service traffic and content data are transferred into the USA and a qualified feedback is sent back to the website owner concerning the web page usage, the so called web Analytics. Whoever visits facebook.com or uses a plug-in must expect that he or she will be tracked by the company for two years. Facebook builds a broad individual and for members even a personalised profile. Such a profiling infringes German and European data protection law. There is no sufficient information of users and there is no choice; the wording in the conditions of use and privacy statements of Facebook does not nearly meet the legal requirements relevant for compliance of legal notice, privacy consent and general terms of use…To Internet users ULD offers the advice to keep their fingers from clicking on social plug-ins such as the “Like”button and not to set up a Facebook account if they wish to avoid a comprehensive profiling by this company.”

But this is not the first time Germany has taken issue with Facebook policy. The Friend Finder Facebook service came under fire in July 2010 from German officials concerned at the sharing of personal information and the sending of automatic invitation emails. In a rare move this January Facebook conceeded defeat and made drastic changes to the system in Germany.

Earlier this month Hamburg’s privacy commissioner questioned what he called “the collection of biometric data”, also known as the Facebook photo tag suggest feature. The tag suggestion feature came under heavy criticism from many angles at the time of it’s launch. Quietly rolled out as a default setting, no doubt in part due to the panic ensuing the launch and initial success of Google+, the ill-thought out launch met controversy from users and legislators alike from day one. Facebook has since apologised admitting they could have provided more information to users at the time of the launch. The Hamburg Privacy Commissioner has the power to impose a fine if it deems Facebook to have broken the law, which of course Facebook denies.

Facebook has over 20.7 million users in Germany, a 32% penetration of the online population, making them the 10^th biggest users of Facebook (source: Social Bakers). How will the rest of Europe view Facebook in light of these challenges?

What is the Panda Update?

Designed to hurt the ‘bad guys’, the 500 or so recent Panda updates are an effort to weed out scraper sites, while further increasing the quality of results returned to users. Panda Updates are rolled out about every 4-7 weeks, so SEOs and Webmasters need to keep updated regularly. Here’s Matt Cutts’ take on it: “This update is designed to reduce rankings for low quality sites—sites which are low-value add for users, copy content from other websites or sites that are just not very useful. At the same time, it will provide better rankings for high quality sites—sites with original content and information such as research, in-depth reports, thoughtful analysis and so on.”

What Does It Do?

Panda seeks out and penalises low quality, old and out of date, and scraper sites. Google want users to find what they are looking for as quickly and easily as possible, and by eliminating poor quality sites Google increase the probability of giving users the right answer, first time.

In an interview with Wired.com Matt Cutts & Amit Singhal give some indication of what Panda looks for. Most of it is pure good SEO practice, with Panda looking a levels of original content, duplicate content, and advertisements on page. It also seems to take into account ‘over optimisation’, low click through rates, high bounce rates, and social mentions.

Worst hit seems to be content farms, article sharing sites, auto-generated store fronts, and sites not updated often. A number of UK technology sites were also affected, as well as Microsoft’s shopping channel Ciao, and the European Commission. Unfortunately these well intentioned algorithm changes have had a negative impact on a number of sites who may not deserve such harsh punishment.

This table, courtesy of SEOmoz, shows some of the most badly hit sites.

After the first update many unduly victimised site owners were at a loss as to how they would recover and many suffered strong financial difficulties as a result of the reduced traffic their sites received. However, many of these sites are making a good recovery, and some have even improved on their original figures such as DaniWeb.

Remember that Panda is a site-wide penalty, individual pages which let you down bring down the quality of the whole site in Panda’s eyes.

The Panda Hit Me – What Can I Do?

Google’s official line is “If you believe you’ve been impacted by this change you should evaluate all the content on your site and do your best to improve the overall quality of the pages on your domain. Removing low quality pages or moving them to a different domain could help your rankings for the higher quality content.”

If you know you have been indulging in grey-to-black hat practices, stop it. They can see you, and they’re coming to get you. If you really feel you have been unfairly hit by the Panda updates you can contact Google and get your site reviewed. However it’s more likely that Panda has a point even if they have been unduly harsh. So what can you do?

First things first:

• Increase original content
• Edit or delete duplicate content
• Lose any pages which serve purely to link to other pages
• Lower your ad ratio if it looks high
• Edit pages which may be ‘over-optimised’
• Get into social, spread the word about your product or service
• Use robots.txt and 301 redirects

By filling your site with up-to-date, original content, keeping it updated, disallowing duplicate content, and generally applying good SEO practice should help to keep the Panda locked in it’s cage and away from damaging your visibility.

But stay updated on the mighty Panda, in the next 4-7 weeks he’ll have picked the lock again and be back on the prowl.

When Google+ first launched as an invite only test, Mark Zuckerberg quickly got involved and soon became the most followed person in all of Google+dom. Initially he praised the shiny new competition, gushing “it’s a validation of Facebook’s vision”, and grinning gaily as his nearly 30,000 Google+ followers watched his every move with baited breath.

A few months later and things have changed. Zuckerberg’s happy face has been replaced with a grimacing man who looks like he would rather be anywhere else. Well, it did, until he closed the account citing ‘privacy concerns’. Ironic coming from the CEO of of a company who’s privacy policies have been heavily, and repeatedly criticised. An Inside Google+ post compares his move to Dracula sending back a steak for being too bloody, and I have to agree.

But now Facebook have taken a rather underhand step, censoring Google+ invites on their network and keeping this information all to themselves. To confirm authentication, Google’s own Vic Gundotra has posted a demonstration video and has asked about people’s experience of this on Google+. If a user posts Google+ invites to their profile, or that of their friends, it seems Facebook will remove it without sending a warning or notification to the sender or recipient.

Tech writer Mike Elgan who created and shared the video later added “Some commenters are reporting that sending invites on Facebook does work for them, or is censored only in the Top News view. Possibilities that explain this include: 1) the video is a fake; 2) Facebook censored, then stopped censoring; or 3) Facebook is censoring only some people, using Edgerank somehow to censor or not censor according to some unpublished rules.”

I’m currently testing this myself, and in the last hour not one of my usually eager-to-participate Facebook friends have confirmed they can see the invite, though I can. Though this may seem a little extreme, one post I came across said ‘No big surprise. You don’t see McDonald’s adverts in Burger King either’. Food for thought indeed (sorry, couldn’t resist).

Have you had your Google+ invites censored by the Big Brother division of Facebook? Are Facebook within their rights to choose what we can see and not see, or are they just protecting their business?

A post from Larry Page today explains “Motorola’s total commitment to Android in mobile devices is one of many reasons that there is a natural fit between our two companies. Together, we will create amazing user experiences that supercharge the entire Android ecosystem for the benefit of consumers, partners and developers everywhere.”

He goes on to mention the threat Android faces from anti-competitive brands standing in opposition to Google, I think we can all guess who they are…”We recently explained how companies including Microsoft and Apple are banding together in anti-competitive patent attacks on Android. The U.S. Department of Justice had to intervene in the results of one recent patent auction to “protect competition and innovation in the open source software community” and it is currently looking into the results of the Nortel auction. Our acquisition of Motorola will increase competition by strengthening Google’s patent portfolio, which will enable us to better protect Android from anti-competitive threats from Microsoft, Apple and other companies.” If you want more detail you can read the full Google press release.

It seems some users have tested the download and a substantial number of usually reliable antivirus engines were able to detect the threat initially. A few definition updates later the questionable file was identified as Rogue:Win32/FakeRean, though this kind of fake anti-virus software uses many names.

Windows Secrets reported on this form of attack back in 2009, claiming that ‘maladvertisements’ were being shown along side genuine ads for search queries such as ‘malwarebytes’. Sadly it seems the criminals are still ahead in 2011, at least in part.

Search engines work hard to prevent such ‘maladvertisements’ and malware from entering the mainstream, but in this day and age, and with such an open ad auction system, it can be very hard to detect. Those working within SEO and related fields for a period of time may be more likely to spot malicious sites and links, but how is the non-technical user to differentiate between the ads below, one of which is linking to malware, one which is not?

Recently Google confirmed the addition of games to the network. Vic Gundotra’s official post lovingly declared “With the Google+ project, we want to bring the nuance and richness of real-life sharing to the web. But sharing is about more than just conversations. The experiences we have together are just as important to our relationships. We want to make playing games online just as fun, and just as meaningful, as playing in real life”. Mindful to keep users interacting with Google+ in other areas they added “Games in Google+ are there when you want them and gone when you don’t…If you’re not interested in games, it’s easy to ignore them. Your stream will remain focused on conversations with the people you care about.”