Archive for May, 2012

May 24th, 2012 | Category: Technology, Websites, WhiteRhino

Penguin: Who’s out in the cold?

It’s pretty well documented that Google updated their algorithm last month leaving users in a frenzy as they scrambled to recover rankings. As with all Google updates, spokespeople for the search engine giant have stayed tight lipped on the specific details of the update to protect its integrity but that hasn’t stopped speculation from industry experts who claim to have the answers.

Headlines preaching ‘how to recover’ have filled online news channels over the past few weeks but as with all algorithm overhauls, the real results will take time to appear and few are in a position to guarantee immediately improved rankings.

What Google has made public is the intended effect of Penguin on link farms and disingenuous inbound linking. Link farms have proved fairly successful in skewing organic search engine results, raising site rankings through the use of outbound links which Google views as authentic. Penguin has been designed at least partially to combat this mercenary tactic and evidence to date seems to suggest it’s working.

In the same vein Penguin is meant to significantly reduce the rating achieved by Pingbacks (links that send readers straight back to the original source), which has seen blogs in particular rank higher than usual due to the publication of links to credible outbound sources. It has also be revealed that sites with too many ads above the fold will be penalised, reducing their ranking and overriding the effects of any permissible SEO strategy.

While no one is denying there have been some negative effects with legitimate sites losing rankings, Penguin is yet to fully take flight and organic ratings will return to normal eventually. What else is hidden in the new algorithm will only surface over time, so hold tight and beware the promise of a quick fix – the truth is we’re all out in the cold on this one for now.

By Grace Taylor // Posted in: Technology, Websites, WhiteRhino // Tags: , , // Comments (0)

May 17th, 2012 | Category: Advertising, Social Media

Facebook IPO

The Facts Behind the Sale

On the cusp of Facebook’s initial public offering (IPO), we take a look at just what’s on offer, and what that might mean for the social media giant’s more than one billion users.

Listed as a public company, Facebook is hoping to raise $5 billion from the sale of around 421 million shares, an ambitious goal which if achieved, would land them on the shortlist of largest IPOs of all time.

Next to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s 28.4% majority share, the sale would see nearly 18% of the company become public, valuing it at around $100 billion and placing fourth on the list of the world’s biggest companies behind Apple, Google and McDonald’s.

Analysts have been quick to warn against investing, citing the notoriously volatile performance of .COMs on the share market, but there has been significant public interest in the shares which are set to debut on the market later this week.

A cause for concern for some is the last minute release of a further 84 million shares by early backers last week including PayPal founder Peter Thiel who increased his initial release from 7.7 million to 16.8 million.

Not everyone is selling though, Instagram founder Kevin Systrom will be watching the IPO closely following the sale of his App to Facebook earlier in the year for $1 billion, much of which it was later revealed came in the form of Facebook stock.

What It Means for Users

For Facebook’s 845 million active users who generate an average 2.7 billion daily likes and comments, the move to public company might see some unwelcome changes in daily functionality.

By law, when a company goes public they are obligated to continue creating increased value for their stakeholders, and while Facebook’s value has grown exponentially year to year, it has yet to keep up with the demands of a large public stakeholder base.

So far advertising has proven their single greatest source of revenue, bringing in $3.7 billion last year alone, but while user numbers continue to grow, reports show overall advertising revenue from the last six months is down.

While it’s safe to say advertising revenue is unlikely to dry up any time soon, there are concerns from users that options to minimise advertising on your page will disappear in the fight for advertising real estate to keep its value.

In an initial step, Facebook has announced the introduction of advertising on their mobile platform, currently an ad free space. Whether this is enough to combat the dip in ad space value however remains to be seen.

By Grace Taylor // Posted in: Advertising, Social Media // Tags: , , // Comments (0)