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Why is it so hard to find someone to talk to someone who works in a communications company 

All I wanted to do was clarify some international roaming options for our business options, as it's not clear on their website. A quick chat with a human being who understands how it works, and job done.

Instead, it is the EE wind up the customer with the most convoluted voice mail system in the world system 

After a second attempt at sitting on hold and being told how important I was, and these incredibly high call volumes only seem to be happening today, with deafening crappy music, I gave up. Maybe a call back option would be nice EE??? Maybe even live chat, or how about employ more people...

Right descended into a rant and have now delegated the track down an EE employee to Clive who is now sat on hold while I ingest more caffeine...  

Well it looks like our poll is running out of steam, facebook comments seemed to have stopped and only 1 comment on the blog at the weekend.

Votes are 6,452 with 80% saying leave, 16% stay, and 4% undecided.

Interestingly, had a call from a representative of the official stay campaign on Friday, so the poll has obviously ruffled some feathers. Wanted to know if it was regional or nationwide.

Did invite them to join the forum and fight their corner (speaking as a stay supporter) and made the point that the leave campaign seemed to be a lot more active, and I think the stays need to up their game. Was assured we will see lots more activity and coverage over the next 2 weeks, and then was given facts and figures about other surveys that have the percentages much closer.

I was told I'd be sent some official info via email which I could add if I wanted to.

Well it never arrived, and the impression I have at the moment is some bizarre form of complacency from the stay campaign, and that everyone will come to their senses on polling day.

If our (now not so little) poll is to be believed, then the party line and the average bod in the street are on completely different pages.

I've never felt more on a losing side than I have with this debate!

Just seen on the news that Nissan are being accused of emission dodging on their Sunderland built Qashqais 

President Trump - even the name sounds like a spoof sitcom 

12 months ago it would have been laughable. Now there is actually a possibility it might happen!

Where UK politicians made what they thought were safe comments against an outside contender with little chance of political power, these could possibly come back and haunt them if the Trump road show carries on and sweeps him into power.

So Trump now is being vocal about the UK, questioning the relationship between the two countries after Cameron called him stupid, divisive and wrong, while new London Mayor Sadiq Khan has upset the Mr Trump by calling him ignorant.

I know there is a lot more razmatazz and glitz in American politics, and it's all about deep pockets and expensive campaigns. But will the average US voter really vote for him? Has he polarised enough voters in maybe the way as the leave EU campaign seems to. Is tapping into peoples fears and stoking controversy the strategy to get people to vote?

I wonder if will we see a return to USA isolationism politics as we had before the Second World War? Maybe even trade barriers rather than trade deals, as the USA struggles with cheaper overseas imports.

So as we potentially steer a course to exit the EU, it seems we could also be potentially alienating the USA leadership. Looks like an interesting 5 - 10 years ahead

Will we prosper, or become an insignificant backwater? 

Bahh humbug 

My kids were in charge of cake decorating, I think it shows! 

The latest twist and turns of the emissions scandal.

After sorting out a legal agreement in the states to buy back nearly half a million vehicles, and with pressure mounting for legal action all over the place, including it's own dealerships, now its investors are turning on VW!

The beeb is reporting that one of VW's largest investors which is worth £592bn, is planning to join a legal action against the car maker.

"As an investor, it is our responsibility to safeguard the fund's holding in Volkswagen."

Volkswagen has put aside some €16.2bn to pay for the emissions scandal.

Volkswagen to be sued by Norway fund - BBC

Maybe I'm missing something here, but I'm not sure how getting sued by your largest investor is going to help VW and their share price? Some huge numbers getting bandied around, I wonder how big VW's rainy day fund is, or have they just spent the pension pot?

Made me smile, credit unknown.

Well I'm not the best one for giving blog advice after scrapping our blog, only to have it reborn recently 

Can't you just add a tab on your site called blog? Then I assume the plan is to use the blog to promote and drive traffic to your site?

The good old Google search page has been the subject of many changes over recent months, and is now receiving a subtle but important change that may impact you. 

According to the SEM Post, it has been widened from 500 pixels to 600, with decreases in the white space between the results and the panels that display on the right hand side.

So there is more room to display more information in the search results. It looks like the roll out landed in the UK this morning.

Impact to you - title tags and meta descriptions

Your visible title tags have now increased in size before Google Truncates them.

eg The below result for petrol stations show how our title tag and description were optimised for the old Google values which used to be around 55 characters. Add too much text and Google will truncate it with a "..."

The description tag is your ability to tell the world what your page is all about. Best practice used to be around 155 characters, after that it was truncated. 

The second result from esso fuel finder shows the impact of longer title tags, and they are now displaying 74 characters before Google truncated it.

Both results clearly show that longer descriptions are now possible. It's not 100% clear what the new values are, SEM Post states:

"Descriptions have also increased by about 16-20 characters per line.  The new description length per line is 100 characters.

However (important!) Google is still truncated the descriptions for many search results.  This means that the overall description is only displaying 150-160 characters total right now, for a usual 2 line snippet."

This seems to be the case, sticking with the petrol station theme and looking at Thomson Locals results:

So the description field has increased, but Google for some reason truncates it half way down the second line, which upsets my ordered OCD world!

PPC Adwords impact

If you are using adwords, then check out your adverts. It looks like the titles and descriptions have increased for those as well. I've just amended some of mine and can now fit in an extra keyword.

I suspect this will start impacting bidding and prices, on top of the other recent adwords changes by dropping the right hand sponsor advert display in the search results.

Comparison - The old days and how it looks today

I think it looks crisper and less cluttered than old, but here's an a screen shot from a couple of years ago, underneath one from today. Select the images to see a large version.

It just emphasises the amount of changes Google is continually doing, so make sure you take a look at your own website and see if you need to make any amendments.

May 2016

June 2014

You can clearly see the wider search results, but look at some of the other changes in the last two years.

• Google author tag - showing your author image - now scrapped
• We were showing two right hand information panels due to the chaos of Google merging maps and Google+, which has now changed again!
• Google review stars and address snippets for your homepage - now gone
• Bold text titles - now gone and looks better having less bold IMHO
• Bold text for search terms - this is a recent one, Google now only bold's  typed keywords in the URL, as opposed to the title tag and description as it used to.

Summary

Check out your title and description tags, and check how your sites look in the new style search results. 

Any thoughts, problems, comments?

Interesting stats on the BBC this morning about bank closures. In true Beeb style, you can add your Postcode and see how many local branches you have lost recently.

UK banks close more than 600 branches over the last year - BBC

But in this online world is it really a surprise? If High Street chains can't cope, then why would a bank be different?

From a business point of view, we have no need to have any physical interaction with a branch. It is all done online or in rare cases over the phone if there is an issue. We don't have many cheques, but our bank has a business address that we send those to and they are paid in.

So other than opening an account, when do you need to visit a branch? If you have serious business to discuss, such as refinancing your £1 million overdraft, I'm sure they will pop out and see you.

Retailers need regular visits to bank daily takings, then after that, the argument then normally goes to the elderly or vulnerable who need face to face banking, or remote parts of the UK that still has a decrepit infrastructure and poor broadband. So some kind of physical banking is required.

The beeb article points to the 11,500 Post Office Branches which already offers basic banking services. Surely this is the answer, with maybe a pot of cash contributed to by all the big banks to subsidise rural or unprofitable Post Office locations, but keeps face to face banking for those that need it.

Banks save a fortune by not having to maintain a huge branch portfolio, and the Post Office wins by getting branches subsidised. Plus they can pass savings onto us mere mortals and give us more than 0.5% interest!

What does anyone think? A realistic solution to a problem that will inevitably get worse?