Google Partner Day
On October 24th, Google held its annual conference at their HQ in Sydney. Google Partner Day is an invitation-only event for the top online publishers in Australasia. This year there weren’t any major new announcements; however Google did reiterate two key trends.
Mobile Usage
The importance and permanence of the growing mobile device audience is not to be underestimated. With the extensive range of smart phones, tablets and mini-tablets being released every year, many websites are seeing mobile device usage averaging 10% or more. In real terms, that means out of every 1000 visitors, 100 or more might have a below-par user experience. Standard web design is optimised for desktop or laptop computer screen sizes, so websites can be difficult to navigate and hard to read on devices with smaller screens. These usage figures will only go up, so Google emphatically advises web owners to review how their site performs on a mobile device and ask if they can do more to improve this. If you’re using Google Analytics (and you absolutely should), Google offers a useful guide for measuring mobile usage rates and even which devices and screen sizes are most common.
g+
The second trend commented on was the rapid expansion of Google’s social network known as g+. According to Google, it has reached 400 million accounts and 100 million active users since it was first launched in Sept 2011, making it the fastest growing social network ever. Now’s a good time for New Zealand website operators to consider implementing a g+ strategy and creating a Google+ Business page.
On October 24th, Google held its annual conference at their HQ in Sydney. Google Partner Day is an invitation-only event for the top online publishers in Australasia. This year there weren’t any major new announcements; however Google did reiterate two key trends.
