In the last few days Google announced that they have again made changes to their ranking algorithm. That’s the clever mathematical bit of Google that works out how far up (or down), the list your website appears.

Before Christmas we saw a major change which for the first time had Google paying close attention to real time search results. This meant that using platforms such as Twitter and Facebook suddenly had real impact when it came to position on Google’s search pages.

The latest change takes into account the speed with which web pages load and could see slow loading sites falling down in the Google league tables.

Google say that they have made the latest change because their research shows that people prefer to visit websites that load quickly. They also say in their central webmaster blog that the effect of a slow website can be cumulative: that is people remember their experience and are reluctant to repeat it.

I have to say that I agree with Google. If a web experience is poor I have to be pretty keen to persevere. I’m not the only one of course – your customers will be the same. In Google’s own words ‘faster sites create happy users’.

The good news is that Google have said that the most important criteria for search ranking is still the relevance of a page to a particular query.

If you want to test the speed of your website (or ours for that matter), you can do it here at WebPagetest.

Ursus Media produce usable, accessible, beautiful and, let’s be honest, pretty speedy websites and they’re all handcrafted here in sunny Swindon. Feel free to get in touch and if you’re in need of a new website take a look at our latest offer.

It’s rare that I do an unashamed plug like this in the blog. This is generally where you can come for good quality information about all things webby for your business and all you normally get dotted around my posts are subtle hints that you should be using us for your digital media projects.

Every so often though I’m going to reserve the right to tell you all about something that I think is too good to miss. This offer is for those of you who are just starting out in business or who just need a very simple website. Remember anything that we create for you will be designed and coded to the highest standard and built so that it can grow with your business.

The offer’s really simple: £495 for a 5 page website that gives you everything listed below:

• Unique professional design
• Four pages with your own content (text and images)
• One contact us page with a built in form
• A custom error page just in case
• One .co.uk domain name
• Two email addresses of your choice
• Hosting for your new site for a year
• Coding to the highest, best practice standards
• Guaranteed W3C standards compliant
• Thoroughly tested to work in all standard browsers
• Optimised for the search engines – Google here you come
• A simple CMS so that you can update your own site
• Basic site statistics
• Built to be scaleable to grow with your business in the future
• We’ll project manage things for you throughout
• If you’re in a hurry just let us know – we can be very fast
• You can talk to the project team at any time
• Peace of mind of knowing exactly what it costs: just £495!

The catch? Well there is no catch. You do have to order your swanky new site before 1 May 2010 and some terms apply but that’s it. Read more about the offer.

Related items:

• 10 Reasons your business needs a website
• 7 Questions to ask your web developer

Ok, let’s start with the basics.
Terms like Web 2.0 and the Semantic Web are regularly bandied around by ‘web gurus’, but for us mere mortals what do they actually mean?

Web 1.0 is in fact just the web. It’s a term that’s only been in common use since the term Web 2.0 was used by Tim O’Reilly to describe a step change in the way in which people and organisations are using the web rather than a new version of the internet. Technologies have grown up to facilitate this and take advantage of it but you should really just think of it as the natural evolution of the internet and the ways in which people use it.

Sadly for those of you hankering after a return to the black ash and chrome of the ‘80s Web 2.0 doesn’t mean a black background and ‘glassy’ buttons for your website. Users of the internet had always used it to communicate with each other but over time they started to do something else. People started to share information, to collaborate not just with one other person but with lots of people. Developers and designers responded to this by building and designing websites that made this easier, faster and in some cases more entertaining.

So a Web 2.0 site allows its users not just to read content but to interact with each other and even provide content. Right now you are looking at the Web 2.0 element of the Ursus Media website. I’ve provided content to you, you can comment on what I’ve written (the box right at the bottom of the page), other readers can comment on what you’ve written and suddenly there’s a whole new conversation going on.

I think the following video from the nice people at notinwords.com describes it really well:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bc0oDIEbYFc

Web 3.0, more commonly called the Semantic Web, again describes a natural evolution of the internet. This is where as well as millions of people linking together in lots of different ways; all the billions upon billions of pieces of information and devices will be linked together as well.

Things like search will be revolutionised, shopping, communicating, learning; in fact just about everything will change. The web will be more efficient and more useful. If you think the internet is a great resource now, just you wait.

Currently information is brought to you online because its content and code is seen by applications such as search engines. As the Semantic Web evolves not only will the search engines see this content and code they will also understand its meaning, intention and relationship to other pieces of information.

In this next video thought leaders STI International describe in more detail the Semantic web:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=off08As3siM

Hopefully between me, notinwords.com and STI International we’ve managed to give you a good idea of what these things mean.

If you still have any questions about the different flavours of web I’d encourage you to leave a comment and then I can reply and so can the wider web community (very Web 2.0) or you can simply email me and I’ll do my best to help.

What this all means for your business and how you can take advantage of the ever changing web will be the subject of future posts. If you want to keep up, you might want to subscribe.

Remember if you have a project coming up: anything from a new website to some help with a social media strategy, we’d love to help.  Contact us and we can talk it through.