James Haslam

That survey was far too long. I couldn't face sharing it with colleagues because of it.

"The launch of a new algorithm shocked the online marketing world," ugh.

But yeah, it's in Google's interests to provide straight answers on their own page, especially when they're promoting questions. SEO providers might provide false information, so why not have the answer to "how tall is Ryan Gosling" or "what is the nutritional information on cake". I think it'll be up to us to guess common questions, and to really spearhead local SEO. 'Where's the best chip shop" is a subjective search, and so local businesses will need to work on getting good ratings in Google places (or whatever it's called now.) 

Ultimately eithical SEO isn't affected and we should continue to do what we do (i.e. create great content and build great links). No matter how searchers interact with Google in the future, whether it's by old-school typing methods of today or via spoken word, the fact remains that Google wants to display the best search results possible. This will never change.

They haven't optimised the sign as well as they could have...

I'm getting very tired of the word 'story' that's banded about. It's constantly being abused by people who think of it as the holy grail of marketing people, and usually used by the people who don't know how to make them. When I'm writing a brief, pitch, whatever, 'telling a story' is utterly incongruous with branding, image, etc. 

Maybe I'm ranting too, but I always feel these sorts of posts are utterly condescending. The only way to write better is to write (is to write.) That, and read an abundance of GOOD things.

The Guardian are very anti-SEO; searching 'SEO' brings up a Guardian article saying 'SEO is dead' as the sixth result. Personally I think that's just them trapping links from the guys with high pagerank, but still their stance is pretty shitty toward SEO. That, and as Mr. Curtis points out, it's an advertorial.

Maybe we should stop posting Guardian links instead of giving them the link juice they want?