Yet another interesting study launched by HitWise related to search engines and social networks market share. Google has increased the search share in UK with about 1.50% when compared to May 2011, thus reaching a whopping 92% of all UK searches.

Maybe the most interesting part of this latest study is that with all the Google growth within search, the sources of traffic for most websites has declined, in terms of “sources from search engines” from around 40% to 34.29% in June 2011. Computers & Internet category holds the first position among all search categories, followed by Search Engines and Social Networking and Forums.

Although this could be seen as a decline in the search market, in fact it is not – this is a big sign that social media is getting higher and higher when it comes to sending traffic to a website. And indeed, according to HitWise, Facebook’s decline seems to have stopped in June – growing with a 0.11% last month and holding the first position in social networking visits from UK with 53.72% while YouTube is continuously growing its market share, reaching 20.76% in June – a 0.24% increase.

Social networking websites are far away from reaching search engines’ popularity however their constant growth is a sign that anyone serious about expanding an online business should keep a closer eye on everything that means social websites. Whether if we are talking about YouTube, Facebook or Twitter, these are soon to become some really big competitors for Google and also they can be a great source for traffic and sales.

According to Mashable, Google seems that it is going to re-brand two of its most popular products – Picasa and Blogger – from “non-Google name brands” to branded products. Exactly as they did in 2006 with JotSpot (re-branded as Google Sites) and in 2007 with GrandCentral (re-branded as Google Voice), it seems that these two popular websites are going to suffer a “face change” as well.

Mashable added that those will definitely not be discontinued while they enjoy a great online popularity but they will be renamed as “Google Photos” and “Google Blogs” (according to some of their reliable sources). Other services such as the giant YouTube are not going to “suffer” a re-brand.

Some time passed until Google thought about re-branding these two services, when compared to the above ones – Blogger was bought in 2003 and Picasa in 2004 – and we can only think that these new changes are strictly correlated with the Google+ wave. It seems that the re-branding will start in 4 to 6 weeks, somewhere around the long-awaited launch of Google+. If this is a smart move or not, only time will tell.

Blogger is one of the top 10 most visited websites from the world-wide-web and, if rumours are true, we will see the biggest re-branding in Google’s history. Some people will love it, other will hate it; however, as Picasa and Blogger are strictly related to “social buzz” they make the perfect target for Google’s social expansion.

A great feature from Google seems to have been discontinued a few days ago – the Google Wonder Wheel. Introduced in 2009, the Google Wonder Wheel was used for about 2 years as a great tool for keyword research, mostly for finding what Google considers “highly related” to a certain term/phrase.

Whether we are talking about search engine optimisation companies, business owners or pay-per-click advertisers, this feature was almost a “must be used” for getting the most data out of a keyword. This tool was mostly used for:

-          Discovering new keywords for building content upon

-          Getting new ideas/keywords for PPC campaigns

-          Getting low competitive long-tail keywords for SEO

There are many other keyword tools available on the world-wide-web, some paid, some free, but as most webmasters state “there is no better keyword tool other than one made by Google, using data right from the source”. Of course, the end of Google Wonder Wheel is not the end of the world but when trying to gather as much information as possible from multiple sources it was quite an impressive feature for all companies/SEOs.

These latest changes (including the new Google design) seem to be highly connected to Google getting more and more into social world. Whether if the Wonder Wheel will be available again in the future or not, only the folks at Google know, but we at WebCreationUK will keep a close eye on this subject.

After first launching the +1 button globally and announcing the Google+ project, folks at Google have “done it again”. They have incorporated new sets of reports related to social activity in both Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools – these new reports will be available only for people using the new version of GA though.

Whether we are talking about a Facebook’s Like or a +1 in the search results, all these actions can be tracked with the help of new reports and moreover, anyone can measure what kind of impact social interactions have for a certain website. Here are the new social-related reports anyone would be able to track from their Analytics accounts:

1.       Social Actions Report

This is solely created with the purpose of seeing how many social actions a website has received; from +1s to Tweets and Likes, all will be available in this report.

2.      Social Engagement Report

With this new report a webmaster can see how users that share a page/website behave when browsing and also how users that do not share behave, and what are the differences between them in terms of clicks, bounce etc. One can add as many sharing buttons with some coding while the +1 report is already added.

3.      Social Pages Report

Want to find out which pages/blog posts on your website have the chances of becoming viral? With this report you will be able to see what pages and articles are driving the most social interactions, thus getting the feel of what your visitors like reading most. Highly important!

These are all great changes/improvements but yet again, the questions that are on most SEOs’ lips are:

-          Is this a clear sign that social interactions will influence SERPs in the near future?

-          How can Google make a difference between real social actions and manipulated ones?

First it was the Panda/Farmer update – when it was released in the wild, Google suspected that around 11.8% of all US queries will be affected by it. However, this not only addressed to bad quality auto-blogs/websites with duplicate content but also managed to hit bad legit online businesses and websites as well.

Following the US Panda release, in April a new version of this algorithm update was launch, targeting all English websites that appear to be “bad” in the search results, due to their low-quality content. May came with the Panda 2.1 and as most SEOs/webmasters were expecting, it seems that Panda 2.2 has been released.

The main problem with this new version is that almost nobody knows what exactly will do on the long run, although Matt Cutts said that this latest version comes with an “improved scraper detection”. Will this fix the problem previous versions have created with legit websites?

Almost one week ago, many webmasters reported massive changes in their websites’ traffic behavior, from folks that regain their positions after first Panda hit to other people claiming they have been hit hard, yet again. Still, probably the best answer will be coming from Google on their official blog, stay tuned as we are keeping an eye on this big news and will update you once we discover new evidence of Panda 2.2 being released.

ICANN, the organisation that manages Internet domain names, recently approved in Singapore a change that it is supposed to be “the next big thing after .com domain names appearance” – the appearance of new domain names for private companies. ICANN Board approved the usage of company names instead of the usual .com, .org and so on and this decision represents one of the most important evolution steps for the Internet environment in the recent years. Almost all ICANN members voted “pro” for this radical change.

Internet addresses can end with a company name from now on, instead of .Com, .Org or. Net. “This is the biggest change for domain names, since the appearance of .Com domains, 26 years ago…” said Theo Hnarakis, director of Melbourne IT Services, a company specialized in Internet services.

The measure is seen as a great opportunity for brands to get more control over their online presence and awareness and to get more visitors to their websites. However, this will not come for a cheap price: only for applying to get a new personalised gTLD, a company will have to pay no less than about £115,000. Taking about prices!

Companies that will benefit most from this huge change are brands with a clear marketing strategy and a customer-oriented one, added Hnarakis.

One big question that should have a clear answer in the following days is how this change will affect search engine optimisation, Google algorithms and companies’ positions in the search results? This could mean not only the beginning of a new era in domain names industry but also could bring some major changes in search engines’ algorithms.