Search Engine Land just published some news on Google’s new “Trusted Stores”.

At first glance I thought “Wow cool, looking out for the consumers!” which is something we do need, and it’s certainly a welcome gesture from Google. In fact Trusted Stores is a great idea all around, nearly. There’s only one problem I can see in my little crystal ball, and that’s only if I’ve read and understood it right.

This is the bit I’m talking about:

“To qualify as a Trusted Store etailers must apply and voluntarily provide a range of data to Google. Google believes getting data directly from online retailers is more reliable than doing consumer surveys.

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As I mentioned in my earlier post, I will be holding a SEO Q & A session at the A4UExpo London conference in a couple of weeks.

I will be there for an hour to answer as many questions as I can, to provide some good advice to help solve any issues that you may have, or perhaps you’re just not sure about something to do with SEO.

The session is billed as

“The beast is unleashed as David roams the stage and floor answering your SEO questions. Sure to be entertaining, sure to enlighten and sure to provide you with actionable insights to improve your Google rank.”

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I woke up this morning to find quite a few posts from the Google blogs – in particular the Google Analytics blog, which had 2!

Here’s a bit more about the changes:

Google Analytics Realtime

Basically it sits where your dashboard is and it gives you real time stats on your Google Analytics – quite frankly users have been crying out for something like this for almost two years, so it’s great that we are finally getting something like this.

Source: Google Analytics Blog

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In just over 2 weeks I’ll be heading down to London with Becky, to speak at the A4UExpo conference. This is one of the conferences that I really look forward to as its always packed with lots of speakers from a wide range of skill sets, has lots of enthusiastic affiliates, and most of all its really well organised and planned.

I’ll be doing 2 sessions this year, both of them on Wednesday 19th October.

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I wonder why so many businesses still think they can get quality SEO services by paying minimal costs. SEO is a skilled job, like anything it’s a discipline where a little bit of knowledge is dangerous.

Some companies want SEO so they get a bunch of quotes, then they go for the lowest quote. They’ve got a huge site and a fair bit of competition. They want to rank nice and high in Google for the keywords that will bring them loads more sales and somehow no alarms go off in their heads when they get a quote which is 50% cheaper than what it should be.

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I know we complain sometimes when things aren’t ranking where they should be, and we get junk for our search results… and some other stuff…

But Google’s claims to be an over-all ethcial company still hold true (they’re angels in comparison to other corporations anywhere near the size). Look at just the last few days:

1. Google are helping us in the UK out by building a huge technology community centre in London. This will help with jobs, training, and of course the over-all economy.

2. Google are offering to give $75 Million for a solar electricity project on peoples houses, helping to build a more sustainable future.

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I was just reading a great article on Forbes, written by Gene Marks (you can read it here), in it he talks about the potential to kill off a lot of jobs in Supermarkets. I don’t necessarily agree with what he is saying – Sainsbury’s near me allow people to checkout on their own, as do many other supermarkets – so whether they use Google Wallet to pay or not doesn’t really make much difference – it could however save on checkout queues, which would purely save people time as far as I can see.

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A ruling in a dispute between Interflora and Marks & Spencer by the European Court of Justice (ECJ) could now mean that the practice of using competitor’s trademarks as search engine keywords could breach trademark law.

The ECJ ruled that companies buying trademarked keywords to be used on search engines to advertise rival services could be in breach of European Law. In relation to the case brought against Marks and Spencer by Interflora, Marks and Spencer were found to be using the word ‘Interflora’ as a Google AdWord, which meant that anyone searching for Interflora on Google were served with ads for the Marks and Spencer flower delivery service.

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