Back in November, Resource Techniques released an article covering the word 'unfriend' becoming Oxford American Dictionary's word of the year, showing that social networking has taken one of the final steps towards becoming omnipresent within our society and mainstream media. Many estate agents have very different views on their social networking policy and now Twitter fans can rejoice with two pieces of good news.
The first piece of news is by the Global Language Monitor who has announced that Twitter is the most popular word for 2009! This may not come as a surprise for those estate agents that use Twitter, not only is it main stream media but it is a fantastic way to interact and direct traffic to their website online.
The most popular words of 2009 are:
1. Twitter
2. Obama
3. H1N1
4. Stimulus
5. Vampire
6. 2.0
7. Deficit
8. Hadron
9. Healthcare
10. Transparency
11. Outrage
12. Bonus
13. Unemployed
14. Foreclosure
15. Cartel
Many estates may notice that this list may have an American bias but remember that America has roughly 5 times the population of the UK. Unfortunately 'foreclosure' is also on the list, fingers crossed that 'contract exchange' is on next year's list!
The second good news for twitter fans is that Bing has announced their top 10 search terms for 2009 and Twitter is number 2! Unsurprisingly Michael Jackson was at the top of the list after his demise in June. The rest of the list includes 3 other celebrities who have died, a celebrity divorce, Jaycee Dugard (who was kidnapped in 1991), car scrappage scheme, stock market and swine flu.
Retrospectively this is good news for Twitter and Twitter fans, but the other popular words and search terms could be seen as slightly depressing. Just one question remains, will we look back and see 2009 as being a good year this Christmas?
Estate agents, let us know by contacting us via our Facebook or Twitter account.
Showing posts with label bing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bing. Show all posts
Monday, 30 November 2009
Tuesday, 15 September 2009
Bing launches new visual search that will keep users coming back again and again
Bing is in the news today for launching a new feature called visual search. Visual search is escalating the competition between the two search giants and the clear winner will be the consumer. Currently Google is still the giant in the UK, conducting 91.44% of all searches in the UK, whilst Bing has a market share of 2.68% (statcounter.com Sept 2009).
Estate agents, and general Bing users, might have trouble finding visual search. Visual search does not feature on the Bing homepage so users have to search for 'visual search' in Bing's search bar. Once on the results page, users will see news about visual search at the top of the page with the required link below. To help users find Bing's Visual search, Resource Techniques has provided the Visual search link.
Once you've on the visual search link, users are required to download Microsoft Silverlight which is a graphics system that is supported by multiple browsers. The download takes a minimal amount of time, but once past these two hurdles, users are able to fully enjoy what the feature has to offer.
Currently, there are 47 available galleries ranging from Popular Books to the FBI's most wanted. The 5 different galleries are; Entertainment, Famous People, Reference, Shopping and Sports and these galleries have the full range of choices available. For example, under 'New Cars', there are 357 cars to view. You can sort these results by; Most popular on Bing, Safest, Most Expensive, Best Highway MPG, Hybrid, Sports or SUV and users can narrow each result by type, make, base price, and fuel type.
Options like these will prompt users to use the feature more as a point of reference rather than something pretty that they can use. Once the feature is used as point of reference, then users will keep coming back to see which mobile phone to buy or which dog breed that they saw that day.
Resource Techniques provides a similar feature on our estate agent web sites, in which users are able to use as a point of reference. Our enhanced mapping allows estate agents to map the local amenities on their Google Map search. Not only is the feature embedded into the website (not in a pop-up or external, but users do not have to download any files to view them!
This is a very popular feature with users! Local amenities from schools to restaurants are able to be plotted alongside properties for sale or rent which means that users can plot their children's route to school or even the nearest train stations to get to work. Features like this, and visual search, keep users coming back again and again. Click to view our portfolio or contact us for web sites for estate agents or SEO for estate agents.
Estate agents, and general Bing users, might have trouble finding visual search. Visual search does not feature on the Bing homepage so users have to search for 'visual search' in Bing's search bar. Once on the results page, users will see news about visual search at the top of the page with the required link below. To help users find Bing's Visual search, Resource Techniques has provided the Visual search link.
Once you've on the visual search link, users are required to download Microsoft Silverlight which is a graphics system that is supported by multiple browsers. The download takes a minimal amount of time, but once past these two hurdles, users are able to fully enjoy what the feature has to offer.
Currently, there are 47 available galleries ranging from Popular Books to the FBI's most wanted. The 5 different galleries are; Entertainment, Famous People, Reference, Shopping and Sports and these galleries have the full range of choices available. For example, under 'New Cars', there are 357 cars to view. You can sort these results by; Most popular on Bing, Safest, Most Expensive, Best Highway MPG, Hybrid, Sports or SUV and users can narrow each result by type, make, base price, and fuel type.
Options like these will prompt users to use the feature more as a point of reference rather than something pretty that they can use. Once the feature is used as point of reference, then users will keep coming back to see which mobile phone to buy or which dog breed that they saw that day.
Resource Techniques provides a similar feature on our estate agent web sites, in which users are able to use as a point of reference. Our enhanced mapping allows estate agents to map the local amenities on their Google Map search. Not only is the feature embedded into the website (not in a pop-up or external, but users do not have to download any files to view them!
This is a very popular feature with users! Local amenities from schools to restaurants are able to be plotted alongside properties for sale or rent which means that users can plot their children's route to school or even the nearest train stations to get to work. Features like this, and visual search, keep users coming back again and again. Click to view our portfolio or contact us for web sites for estate agents or SEO for estate agents.
Wednesday, 2 September 2009
B.I.N.G (Bing Is Not Google); Google respond
It's not like Google to stand by and watch as a possible competitor was about to enter the search engine market, possibly taking a larger market percentage than any company would be comfortable with. Bing, Microsoft's replacement search engine for Window's Live search and MSN search, was launched on the 3rd of June 2009. With an advertisement budget of $100 million, they weren't planning on creating a small wave.
It was widely believed that Google will have to respond alike and that increased competitiveness for the search engine market can only benefit the end users in the long run, but nothing happened straight away. Finally there have been rumours of Google using code name 'caffeine' and until now, people weren't sure what Google was up to.
Code name 'Caffeine' has apparently been in the pipeline for several months now. This secret project has been revealed as 'the next generation' of online search. It has been hailed as the next-generation of search. In other words, the face of Google will still look completely the same but the software under the hood will be upgraded. This could suggest that even though Bing is a new search engine, Google is updating to an even better search engine than before!
Troy Stanley, CTO of resource Techniques, is excited about the change: "Google, the most popular UK search engine, is basically giving a better basic search facility. This is the primary reason why people started using Google in the first place."
"The upgrade will have enhanced search whilst crawling and indexing the internet at a much faster rate. This allows them to narrow the real-time search gap to provide one of the best up-to-date search results."
So how does this affect estate agents?
Troy Stanley continued, "Currently Google is used by 90.55% of people in the UK whereas Bing has a 2.71% market share. With that in mind it is easy to think that Bing can be dismissed or ignored, but still almost 1 out of every 37 people in the UK use Bing. With a population of 61 million people in the UK, roughly 1.6 million people in the UK use Bing (give or take a few, as not every single person in the UK has the internet)."
"This million or so will be, at one point or another, using Bing to search for their local estate agents to search for property. Estate agents with an estate agent website should be asking their website designers or website providers what they are doing to make sure they capture this amount of people. Ignoring any search engine, even one with a smaller market share, can cost estate agents business." - Troy Stanley.
To try out the new version of Google, go to www2.sandbox.google.com and see how your estate agent website performs.
We at Resource Techniques, regularly cross checks search engines, to guarantee that estate agents that we supply for have Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that they can be proud of. SEO, for those that are unsure, is the process moving each individual estate agent website is as high as possible on a particular search engine. SEO is important part of every website design for estate agents.
Resource Techniques is dedicated to staying on top of any industry changes regarding SEOest or website design for estate agents. Click to read more on 'website design for estate agents and SEO' or 'estate agents, SEO services are not just for Christmas'. To see how we can help your estate agent website design, ensure that you are getting as many people accessing your website and searching for property on your estate agent website by contact us.
It was widely believed that Google will have to respond alike and that increased competitiveness for the search engine market can only benefit the end users in the long run, but nothing happened straight away. Finally there have been rumours of Google using code name 'caffeine' and until now, people weren't sure what Google was up to.
Code name 'Caffeine' has apparently been in the pipeline for several months now. This secret project has been revealed as 'the next generation' of online search. It has been hailed as the next-generation of search. In other words, the face of Google will still look completely the same but the software under the hood will be upgraded. This could suggest that even though Bing is a new search engine, Google is updating to an even better search engine than before!
Troy Stanley, CTO of resource Techniques, is excited about the change: "Google, the most popular UK search engine, is basically giving a better basic search facility. This is the primary reason why people started using Google in the first place."
"The upgrade will have enhanced search whilst crawling and indexing the internet at a much faster rate. This allows them to narrow the real-time search gap to provide one of the best up-to-date search results."
So how does this affect estate agents?
Troy Stanley continued, "Currently Google is used by 90.55% of people in the UK whereas Bing has a 2.71% market share. With that in mind it is easy to think that Bing can be dismissed or ignored, but still almost 1 out of every 37 people in the UK use Bing. With a population of 61 million people in the UK, roughly 1.6 million people in the UK use Bing (give or take a few, as not every single person in the UK has the internet)."
"This million or so will be, at one point or another, using Bing to search for their local estate agents to search for property. Estate agents with an estate agent website should be asking their website designers or website providers what they are doing to make sure they capture this amount of people. Ignoring any search engine, even one with a smaller market share, can cost estate agents business." - Troy Stanley.
To try out the new version of Google, go to www2.sandbox.google.com and see how your estate agent website performs.
We at Resource Techniques, regularly cross checks search engines, to guarantee that estate agents that we supply for have Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) that they can be proud of. SEO, for those that are unsure, is the process moving each individual estate agent website is as high as possible on a particular search engine. SEO is important part of every website design for estate agents.
Resource Techniques is dedicated to staying on top of any industry changes regarding SEOest or website design for estate agents. Click to read more on 'website design for estate agents and SEO' or 'estate agents, SEO services are not just for Christmas'. To see how we can help your estate agent website design, ensure that you are getting as many people accessing your website and searching for property on your estate agent website by contact us.
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