The most recent change affects everyone, predominantly leading brands in the UK (the US change happened in March). Vince’s change has altered the way Google ranks search results by placing greater value on the following:

• Trust
• Authority
• Reputation
• Page Rank
• Quality

Vince’s change has updated how Google looks at trust. It wants to show results for sites that are authorities on their subjects i.e. that people are talking about, as well as sites that people want to link to. Larger brands with established sites and reputations are most likely to benefit as they already have a wealth of online conversations. These online conversations about brands and organisations are the key. Google is now taking into account online conversation within their algorithm, resulting in sites hitting the top spots for keywords repeatedly found in parallel with the brand name.

Take the key word “hotel”. Hilton and Travelodge are at the top of the search results. However, neither of their websites are optimised for the term “hotel”. Social media chatter however is filled with conversations of both brands and the term "hotel", thus educating Google on their relevance.

What we can take from this is that SEO professionals need to work closely with or adopt some of the techniques of social media and PR practitioners to build online conversations around brands.

Turkish Airlines has come up with an innovative way to invite agencies to pitch that delivers really practical business results.

The brief was designed like a digital treasure hunt spanning key social media. The start point was a two-page treasure map which resembled a simple mind map with the keyword "thybrief" at the centre and the most important social media sites linked around it. From here agencies had to follow clues embedded in social media properties on Flickr, Twitter, Tumblr, Blogspot, FriendFeed and Slideshare. Only by collecting these hints were agencies able to piece together the scope of the brief.

By using this approach, Turkish Airlines are able to test out the digital capabilities of competing agencies instead of trawling through written submissions that merely claim to understand the space.

It seems our colleagues overseas had no trouble solving the puzzle and all that remains is for them to find an idea to impress. Good luck guys!

Top marks for MECH after the NHS announced our appointment onto the NHS NW Social Marketing framework. Even better, we're really excited to be the only agency of the 19 appointed to have a place on every lot.

There has been increasing emphasis on social marketing on the NHS agenda in recent years and the decision to create a framework to handle the social marketing activity in the NW over the next 3 to 4 years attracted huge interest with over 120 agencies taking part.

The framework is split into 6 lots covering a range of social marketing and related services including; research and insight generation, strategy and planning, media planning and buying, design and concept development and PR - and with our integrated approach we're ideally placed to provide a great service to any and all of these areas.

So now the work really begins as we get the chance to get our teeth into some great NHS Social Marketing projects – and use our expertise to make a real difference to people’s lives.

Well done to the Metro team for creating the Welcome to Yorkshire website that last night won the Travelmole award for Best Tourist website. The site was commended for its style and depth of information. Since it’s launch in April it has seen nearly 50 million hits.

Travelmole is the largest global online community for the travel and tourism industry with over 450,000 registered newswire subscribers from travel and tourism professionals worldwide. We faced tough competition since the awards received over 300 nominations in total and more than 15,000 votes were cast.

This award, voted for by the Travelmole subscribers and judged by an independent panel of travel and tourism experts, is great recognition of the Yorkshire tourism agency’s global plans to put Yorkshire on the map.

This is a brilliant start to Yorkshire becoming a top destination for national and international visitors and we’re glad to be a part of it.

For years digital marketers have been wrestling with “best practice” when it comes to HTML emails. It’s clear that for some brands (ASOS and other fashion brands in particular), usability and accessibility is a worthy sacrifice for an aspirational and luxurious art direction.

Many digital designers and developers find themselves torn between delivering the message in the most engaging, “on-brand” and creative way, and creating something that is simple, clean and pretty easy to read. Not to say that you can’t have both, but sometimes these two do conflict. Creative marketers thrive on the ability to strike the right balance for each and every communication they create.

However, just when it looked like HTML email clients were going to start swinging towards allowing richer content, Microsoft have confirmed that they will be using the Word HTML rendering engine to display emails in Outlook.

This has provoked mixed reactions, but many marketers will have their heads in their hands over the decision which will mean another generation of developers will have to learn how to write HTML the good old fashioned way.

This week over 20,000 Twitter users, initiated by the Email Standards Project have joined a “Fix Outlook” movement. fixoutlook.org has been set up which simply shows the visual consequences of this decision and encourages Twitter users to spread the word.

Whether this campaign will be in any way effective is yet to be seen, but it’s good to see people sharing their opinions with Microsoft.

US based jewellery brand Chamilia has selected MECH to help expand their recent launch in the UK. Chamilia is renowned for its bracelets, necklaces and unique beads allowing consumers to create a bespoke piece of jewellery personal to each and every individual.

Chamilia has appointed us to manage the creative work, along with the media planning and buying and will build on our expertise in delivering national campaigns in synergy with international activity.

This is another welcome addition to our increasing portfolio, following other recent wins from Visit Yorkshire and CrossCountry Trains.

Just goes to show that all that glitters can sometimes be gold after all!

It’s great news that Aldi has beaten tough competition to scoop an accolade of awards at the grocery retail sector’s equivalent of the Oscars, the annual Grocer Gold Awards.

Aldi won Grocer of the Year and Discounter of the Year awards at last week’s ceremony. The retailer was praised for its approach to providing high quality products at low prices, beating rivals including Asda, Morrisons and TJ Morris – Home Bargains.

These latest awards cap a successful few weeks for Aldi, following being named Supermarket of the Year at the Which? Awards 2009 and receiving 7 awards for its frozen food range at the recent British Food Federation Awards.

CrossCountry Trains from Tracey Harman on Vimeo.

Created by MECH, the Switch campaign is a fully integrated campaign that also educates travellers that they can save up to 75% if they book their journey early enough in advance.

Aimed at the over 55s, students and young people who want to stay connected this summer, the campaign will be rolled out across TV, video on demand, radio, press, PR and social media and will reach over 10 million consumers.

As well as encouraging consumers to Switch, the campaign will also seek to inform travellers that they can book their ticket for any British rail journey from www.crosscountrytrains.co.uk

Well almost...

The effect of layering virtual graphics and/or data onto real world objects has been building momentum and new applications of AR technology are starting to deliver some engaging experiences.

So far it has been used to add a bit of magic to presentations, achieve communication cut through and deliver information.

The Rubberduckzilla example for Oasis feels like a slightly silly way of delivering what is essentially a slightly silly message, which is a great fit with the nature of the campaign and, by allowing you to become RDZ and fire lasers out of your eyes, it pushes AR in an interesting and interactive direction.

However, it may be at the other (information delivery) end of the spectrum that the commercial future of AR could flourish.

In the below example, Wikitude, allows users to overlay information from Wikipedia onto a photo of a certain location, via Mobile Google Maps.

When combined with mobile in this type of format, you can start to see how AR could add some real value to real world experiences, beyond entertainment.

www.readwriteweb.com notes two executions that are particularly interesting:

1) When grocery shopping consumers could check information such as price, specials, reviews, comparisons with competing products, etc, by viewing products through their mobile phone while running an AR application.

2) The second execution considers the role social software will play in future AR apps. For example when walking down the street, you could use your mobile phone to point to a restaurant, and overlaid on a photo of the restaurant would be customer reviews, recommendations, and other relevant user generated data.

So it looks like the crazy cats of the 70’s may not have been so crazy, and as for flying cars... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ElS9BKSsezw

Twelve colleagues have just completed the gruelling 3-day McEd course and after a very late night last night, left the agency a couple of hours ago to start enjoying the sunshine.

Congratulations to the winning team, photographed above with our Seven Seas client, for their winning pitch idea - not that we can reveal the details!

McEd forms the first part of the MMU accredited Post Graduate Certficate in Integrated Marketing Communications which some of the people below have just signed up for.

The timing is perfect, coming on the back of the great news that the very first cohort have just got their final results - and they've all passed with flying colours and will be heading to Bridgewater Hall next month for their graduation ceremony. More to follow on that, but in the meantime, well done to all those people below and enjoy your weekend - you deserve it!