Search giant Google has just announced on their blog they have reached a deal with Twitter to include Twitter tweets in search results.

Given this new type of information and its value to search, we are very excited to announce that we have reached an agreement with Twitter to include their updates in our search results. We believe that our search results and user experience will greatly benefit from the inclusion of this up-to-the-minute data, and we look forward to having a product that showcases how tweets can make search better in the coming months. That way, the next time you search for something that can be aided by a real-time observation, say, snow conditions at your favorite ski resort, you’ll find tweets from other users who are there and sharing the latest and greatest information.

This means a great deal for the online marketing industry in so many ways. “#Hashtags” that were once Twitter trends now have become very real to non Twitter users. What people have previously said about your brand on blogs and forums is now joined by the inexpliccably huge volume of tweets. Twitter’s power is now vastly increased – and so is Google’s, once more.

Interestingly, for web marketeers, Twitter is now the 30th biggest source of traffic to sites – driven by people posting links in their tweets (Twitter messages).

We are seeing a lot of traffic to our sites from Twitter and strongly recommend including it in the online marketing mix.

In the recruitment sector we have been feeding our recruitment clients jobs to Twitter both by using RSS feeds built into our FXRecruiter e-recruitment website system and also by sending XML feeds to Workhound who use them in their TwitterJobSearch site.

If you are a recruiter and are interested in feeding your jobs to Twitter and also to the other job search engines (including Indeed, Trovit, SimplyHired) then get in touch!

Just a reminder that its not just us smaller companies who have problems with website availability!

Also a reminder that the internet, as it stands, was not built with these kind of large scale systems in mind.

If the government finally get round to getting broadband internet to every household in the UK (following their announcements yesterday), will these systems survive under the sheer weight of traffic?

Meanwhile, M & S are also reporting record online sales growth of 29% in Q3.

I can’t help but think that high street retailers are not only facing the very real effects of a recession, but also the increasing threat from online.

Even my parents generation admitted to doing some of their Christmas shopping online this time with M & S a favourite due to late delivery dates and ease of use. I’m guessing their Q4 figures will be very good.

So while its doom and gloom on the high street, for some theres not been a better time to be trading online.

We have given a donation to Oxfam this year so that they can supply goats and donkeys to some of the poorest people in the world.

You can make your own donation here – experience the joy of adding a donkey to your basket!

All the best
Dave, Dave, Andy, Andy and Jane

They are now at such a size, with a wide range of products and services that even the colossus Microsoft is getting the jitters.

It’s latest offering is a web browser. On initial inspection Google’s Chrome browser looks fantastic. It is much less cluttered than other browsers, but more importantly it is very fast, using multi-threading techniques and advanced memory management to keep it running smoothly.

Also, interestingly, Microsoft are not only concerned about the challenge to Internet Explorer’s dominance; Google Gears has been around for a while but is now part of the browser. This allows you to store data used in your Google Apps (Word and Excel replacements) on your own PC. This means you can still use your Google Apps if you don’t have an internet connection: one of the limitations of Google’s online Apps when compared with Microsoft Office.

Some are saying this is more than a browser: Chrome + Gears may well turn out to be the new desktop operating system – a serious threat to Microsoft’s dominance.

Early days, but this is surely the technology of the future: all your apps online, data stored in the cloud, and monthly subscriptions – like TV. The software companies certainly want us to go that way: it will reduce software piracy; make rolling out new versions much simpler and overall keep much tighter control over their intellectual property.

With YouTube threatening the dominance of the big TV companies and the Google Phone, Google are getting bigger all the time: an incredible growth in such a short time.

Happy Birthday Google!

As a SEO person, I’ll repeatedly advise my clients that Google is THE one to optimise for in the UK, largely on the grounds that it’s simply the search engine that people use most.

What’s really perturbing, (or perhaps really reassuring?) is that Google gets it wrong.  It’s a natural thing, and people in Google spend so much time striving to get it better and better, but inevitably at times they just get the results plain wrong.

A couple of classic examples can be seen in my hobby and obsession of cycling.  I scour the internet for content on cycling from all sorts of angles; best bargains – niche, bespoke advice – hard-to-come-by event results, etc.  It’s a microcosm of the SEO world… commerce, blogs, forums, mainstream, niche, etc.

I wanted to check out some reviews this evening of “Frogglegs Cantilever Brakes” – a pretty niche product as it happens – something important to me at this particular time for whatever reason. Top of the Google results this evening for “frogglegs review” was this page. It sums it up for me – when things go wrong. I searched for a review – of which there are many on the internet, but unless you’re a search maestro, you’re going to have to wade through a good number of ‘SEO’d sites before you get to the ‘real thing’.

Another classic irritation is – perhaps more seriously – a very well respected site – Wiggle – who have made much of their ‘Hitwise’ awards for great SEO. So much so, it seems, that they attract clicks from people (experienced SEOs included… ) for products that they don’t actually have for sale. I went on their site having Googled the prices for a particular set of cycle road racing tyres and found that they weren’t immediately available. No bother – they were available in 2-5 days. But hang on… 2-5 days passed…. two weeks passed… I had to check my account to find out where this product I’d bought – on the strength of its visibility in Google – was. “Should be in stock within 30 days”. Hang on…? I’ve already paid – I Googled it – you came up tops…!

The lesson for today is that sometimes SEO does its job a bit too well. Yes – sometimes it pays my bills, but I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if I knew I’d just brought traffic to a site only for that traffic to be effectively useless. (And okay smart alecs… I also can’t sleep at night because of a three month old baby !)

Mother and baby are well, and Dave and Kate are looking forward to a few sleepless nights

Crayon Physics is a game that uses child-like crayon-drawings to understand the basics of physics.