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What if those ubiquitous, generic male and female icons that appear on signs everywhere had a life of their own? In the Pedestrian Project, they do. The familiar icons in real-life settings are strangely mesmerizing.
Thanks to Armin at Speak Up for the heads-up!
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Hot on the heels of updating its own favicon (short for “favorites icon”) to mixed reviews, Google confirmed that it was testing the use of favicons in search results for select users. (A favicon is that 16x16 pixel square icon –usually a “mini-logo”- for any given website that appears in your web browser’s URL bar.)
Marketing VOX noted:
The change, if unrolled nationwide, will yield favicons a potentially high number of free impressions resulting from search. It will also add color and variety to Google's search results, which have statistically benefited from "blending": the process of incorporating different media, including images, company reviews, maps and videos, into standard text results.
Colour and variety – why should it matter? Because, we are inherently visual beings. Imagine scanning a list of search results for “winter boots” and you saw a logo that you vaguely recognized – maybe an online retailer like Zappos (which sports a large Z favicon) or a manufacturer like Kamik, whose favicon is an inukshuk.
Would you be more drawn to something that you’ve seen before, even if you couldn’t quite remember where?
The brand-building/web-presence aspect of the favicon is underestimated. When push comes to shove, favicons are visual shortcuts that jog our memory.
These little “brand bits” are everywhere. In the URL area of web browser, in our browser bookmarks lists, in our web browser tabs, in RSS feeds, and on and on. They may be small, but it doesn’t diminish their significance.
Back in November, The New York Times reported that Rosellina Ferraro, an assistant professor of marketing at the University of Maryland, and her research into fleeting glimpses of logos.
Subjects were shown 20 photographs of people in various situations and instructed to focus on facial expressions. What they didn’t know was that somewhere in 12 of those photos there was also a bottle of Dasani water. Afterward, each subject was offered a bottle of water from a selection of four brands. About 17% of those who looked at Dasani-free pictures, chose that brand. But about 40% of those who viewed a group of pictures that included a Dasani presence made the brand their pick.
“In essence,” Ferraro says, “we have these brief social encounters fairly regularly, and they may have an impact on our choices.”
So, if Google does roll out a new search results format that includes favicons, those 256 pixels could make a significant difference.
If you haven’t seen it, check out this video in which Derren Brown turns the table on some agency guys.
 to mixed reviews, Google confirmed that it …&topic=Online Content Tips Visual Things){kind=small}
From the very odd season's greeting from U.S. President Bush’s dog Barney to poor sad Billy Idol hamming it up to Jingle Bell Rock a few years back (My eyes! My eyes! Aiieeee!), it seems like everywhere you turn there is something new and mostly wonderful to watch. ( I suppose I should be grateful that at least the former Gen-X front man isn’t doing adverts for butter, unlike others.)
Of course, companies like to spread the holiday cheer as well. Every year Twist Image does something fun and witty. And, yesterday, I stumbled across this highly elaborate, wildly imaginative seasonal greeting from the London-based office of AKQA, a digital marketing company.
But the one that touched me the most was from Brainstorm, a brand development and communications company. Friend Ed Illig sent over the link and I was instantly captivated. On the BCause08.com site, the folks at Brainstorm share their favourite holiday memories, and as a reminder of what this season is really all about, they donate 25 cents to the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, up to $5000, for every viewing. (So, go, check it out!!)
As colleague @zoonini pointed out, the site doesn’t only look nice –it’s a great use of Flash- but in a salute to usability, they've included a notification to users that there is audio. Combine a lovingly designed website and good copy that has a distinct voice (“Peek at our past and we’ll give to the future.”) with a cause and a way to make a difference and it elevates a fun seasonal video into a feel-good moment. Nice work, Brainstorm.
For years I’ve advised clients against a Flash site, but rather to incorporate Flash sections as part of an html site, as search engines could not read the information embedded in the SWF files. Things might very well change. It looks like Adobe has found a way to make website both pretty and findable.
I just read on Search Engine Land that Google has teamed up with Adobe to "read" Flash files and extract text and links from it for better indexing and ranking.
Google’s Webmaster Central Blog answers some questions about how it works. Any caveats? Google does point out that its Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. So if your web page loads a Flash file via JavaScript, Google may not be aware of that Flash file, in which case it will not be indexed.
Keep in mind that Adobe still needs to make it easier for your average blogger/digital content producer to link to files within Flash as well. Those incoming links can mean the difference between just being visible and ranking.
At a web conference in Beijing, Google unveiled its new “VisualRank” technology – a new way of ranking images and improving image search through more relevant results. Currently Google’s image search is based on the text associated with each image.
VisualRank is a blend of image recognition software, techniques for weighing and ranking images that looks similar as well as textual cues.
The New York Times says:
The company said that in its research it had concentrated on the 2000 most popular product queries on Google’s product search, words such as iPod, Xbox and Zune. It then sorted the top 10 images both from its ranking system and the standard Google Image Search results. With a team of 150 Google employees, it created a scoring system for image "relevance." The researchers said the retrieval returned 83% less irrelevant images.
And as always, Danny Sullivan does a top-notch job of describing how VisualRank works.
Search Engine Roundtable says that this could be the beginning of greater software technologies that will "index audio spoken in videos" and podcasts.
Today Kevin Ryan at Search Engine Watch said that we shouldn’t stop labeling our images just yet. But “you’d have to be foolish not to consider this potential change when "amping up" optimization and popularity gaining efforts.”
You can read the research paper here. (PDF)
Well, finally, it's here. The new A.C. Riley Communications 404 error page. We hope that it gives lost souls a little smile. We'll be updating it from time-to-time, but for now, here it is in all its glory...
Don't get me wrong - I love Toronto. But it often amuses me.
The multitude of generic store names... (The Beer Store, The Cookbook Store, The Futon Store, The Casket Store - I kid you not), etc.
The various advertising fiascos as Toronto attempts identify itself through comparison to other cities. (I had a good laugh as I passed a block of condos on the weekend that some developer had archly named "South Beach", perched near the freezing waters of Queen's Quay.)
And, while shopping in Kensington Market (Oh, the joy known as Global Cheese), I stumbled across this sign...
I don't know about you, but I prefer a bike with wheels.
The shopping paradise and real estate frenzy known as Dubai now has another claim to fame - the world's largest ad. According to The Guardian, the advert, for Sorouh Real Estate, covers more than 20,000 sq m and will be seen by an estimated 14 million people. Sorouh Real Estate is paying UK based company, Ad-Air, an undisclosed amount of money for the mammoth ad. Ad-Air has also acknowledged that it has rights to 30 airports globally, so expect to see similar giant ads at both Los Angeles International Airport and Chicago O'Hare next year.
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