General

Twenty-Twelve

by Barry December 20, 2012

2012 has been a great year for me. On a personal level the year had a tough act to follow, as 2011 was a year of amazing highlights – I got married in February 2011 and we enjoyed a superb honeymoon in New Zealand in September. And while there weren’t similarly outstanding personal events in [...]

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We made the European Search Awards shortlist

by Barry May 31, 2012

Some weeks ago, when I submitted a number of  Pierce Communications digital client projects to the European Search Awards for consideration, I fully expected nothing to come of it.  We are, after all, just a wee agency in Belfast. We think we’re doing a pretty fine job for our clients, as evidenced by the results we [...]

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The 2012 Google Clusterfuck Countdown

by Barry January 13, 2012

Google’s not making things easy for themselves. Many people want to like the search giant for the great search engine it offers and all the cool things it builds. But Google makes so many mishaps, from small oversights to major PR catastrophes, that even their most dedicated fans are having a hard time staying loyal. 2012 [...]

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The Problem With Google’s Corporate Culture

by Barry November 9, 2011

Steve Yegge, the Google engineer that came in to recent infamy for inadvertently publicising a rant about all he perceived as being wrong with Google, has written another lengthy post, this time explaining all that is awesome about working for Google. In the first few paragraphs he touches upon something, probably unintentionally, that I feel [...]

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The Panda Made Me Do It

by Barry November 2, 2011

When my wife and I went on our honeymoon to New Zealand last month, one of the things we wanted to see were dolphins. One of my wife’s life-long wishes is to swim with dolphins. In between all the rugby and sight-seeing, we managed to do two boat trips that had a chance of spotting [...]

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New Job, New Challenges, New Opportunities

by Barry October 22, 2010

I’ll cut right to the chase: I’m moving jobs. The past year with Visual Script has been exciting, educational, and enormously good fun, but a new opportunity has been presented to me which was just too good to pass up. As of December 1st I will be the new Senior Internet Marketer for Search at [...]

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Internet and Ownership / UK SEO Poll

by Barry October 18, 2010

In my latest column for the Belfast Telegraph I explore the way the internet has changed our perception of ownership. We no longer truly own the stuff we buy, we merely lease it from the manufacturer, the latter maintaining near-total control over the product. Belfast Telegraph: How the internet has changed the concept of ownership [...]

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The Internet is rewiring our brains

by Barry June 4, 2010

(This article was originally published in the Belfast Telegraph on 3 June 2010. It’s been modified slightly for this blog.) In his forthcoming book The Shallows author Nicholas Carr argues that surfing the web has a negative impact on how we think. He quotes research stating that exposure to bite-sized chunks of information, from short [...]

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Are You Happy With Your Website?

by Barry October 13, 2008

Many small business owners that have a poor website don’t realize they have a poor website. This is often the case when: A) they’ve put a lot of time and effort into building their website themselves, or… B) a friend or family member claiming to be a web expert has built the site for them, [...]

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Welcome to the Great Websites blog!

by Barry October 6, 2008

Welcome to my latest blog project, the Great Websites blog. Here I hope to help you make more of your website by providing tips, insights, resources and advice. I will discuss everything: basic web strategy, layout and design, search engine optimization, search marketing, conversion optimization, and analytics. If you have any questions, feel free to [...]

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