Google, Amazon and Apple – the new Big Three?

Once upon a time, a long, long time ago there were three American companies that were referred to collectively as The Big Three. GM, Ford and Chrysler were the biggest selling automakers in the world. Recently Toyota and Honda have staked claim to positions in this grouping.

The newest Big Three sell digital information and hardware to make use of it. Google has announced to fully join this group with the announcement of the Nexus 7 tablet shortly after launching Google Play which unified its sales of software, music and other media. Amazon still leads in sales of books and its Kindle players are well regarded. The newest Kindle is the Fire which is not quite an iPad killer but established the price point that Google is matching with far superior equipment in the Nexus 7. “iPad”, of course, references Apple – the king of the hill in digital music sales and the runaway leader in smartphones and tablets.

Google is the most successful search company which provides them the opportunity to market their other goods and services very effectively. The intensity of the competition can be seen in recent events like the patent wars between Google’s Motorola Mobility division v Apple, Apple dumping Google Maps on the iPhone and Samsung v Apple lawsuits.

What all this means to businesses is that mobile is increasingly important and looks to become even more important in the post-PC era that we are entering. All the more reason to make sure that your business website is mobile-friendly and that it is showing well in mobile searches.

Mobile is a part of what search optimization by sem[c] is all about. All you need to do is click to find out more.

Mobile rising?

Do you see people with smart phone and tablets everywhere? Everywhere I look on the train people are reading, texting or surfing (even, occasionally, talking). With the news that Google has entered into the handset production business mobile has moved to the front burner. They made the acquisition of Motorola in defense of the Android operating system. Google now owns thousands of patents related to mobile computing. This acquisition clearly makes the statement that Google sees itself as a mobile company.

Some of the various sites that we monitor are showing over 15% of the total visits coming from mobile devices. This emphatically underscores the importance of making sure that your website is mobile-friendly. If your site relies on Flash-based navigation alone it is likely that many mobile visitors will not be able to get any of the information that they are searching for. Apple’s iOS that runs on iPhones and iPads cannot see Flash animations. This makes it very unlikely that they visitors will return to your website on their mobile devices. The good news is that the Flash can be converted to HTML5 which will preserve the functionality while, at the same time, make it accessible to all Internet-connected devices.

It should be noted here that the Web crawlers used by Google and other search engines don’t handle Flash very well either.  For SEO purposes it is a very good idea to limit Flash usage or convert it the the HTML5 alternative.

Please contact us if you have any questions about search engine optimization, social media marketing for all types of Web browsers from the desktop to your mobile handset.