The IT, Legal & eCommerce site Out-Law have reported that Interflora is taking legal action against Marks & Spencer for bidding on the keyword 'Interflora' using Google AdWords.

In May 2008 Google allowed PPC customers to bid on somebody else’s brand name.  Previously this kind of bidding was strictly forbidden. 

There’s been a lot said of late about the future of search, and two common themes have appeared time and time again. We’ve already talked about semantic search (and its effect on PPC), and now seems an apt time to talk about personalisation.

Search is one of the most important ways that users find their way around web sites.

Google Site Search now features up to date search results following a recent upgrade to this service.

Google Site Search is a popular choice for web sites which do not already have a search facility.  It allows webmasters to quickly and easily set up a Google powered search engine specifically for their site.

Semantic Search is a term that’s been floated around the online industry for a few years now, but we’re only recently starting to see real progress in this area.

For those not in the know – it refers to the ability of a user to search in natural language phrases, and for the search engine to understand that natural language – rather than just returning results based on the main keywords within your search. To illustrate the power of semantic search – this would mean a query such as “where can I buy trainers”, would return local results of sports shops, not just websites optimised for the keyword “buy trainers”. Yes, this is big; this is the next-level of search.

As the old adage goes, it costs five times more to recruit a new customer than it does to keep an existing one. As a result, now seems like as good a time as any for us all to look inwards at how effectively we manage our existing customer relationships.

The need to do this will vary by sector and business. Supermarkets, Travel Companies, Mobile Networks, Car Dealerships and so on, each have an incentive to maintain a relationship with their clients; by understanding them better, they can drive increased revenues from their lifetime value.