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Isn't great 

image courtesy of TopGear

Self confessed Landrover and Rangerover anorak. If it stops leaking oil it's run out, if you don't get wet when it rains, it's not a real Landrover 

That's why he got the boot 

Just about to be a surprising receipant, well my daughter not me! Wasn't aware of this until recently.  I think the idea in principle is sound, although looking at the menu, I'm not that convinced the Jamie Oliver campaign had a lasting impact! Lots of treats and puddings.

We are lucky as our school is well prepared and already has full kitchen facilities. Can see the benefit for kids from poor backgrounds, ensuring they have a hot meal, but the cost must be huge to do a non means tested scheme for all. Isn't this kind of policy that got the country in hock in the first place?

Great advice from Linda.

In the old days, people would happily spend thousands of pounds on Yellow pages advertising, knowing that big yellow book was in everyone's house, and it was good source of leads and great ROI.

With the internet, habits changed, Google took over the world and everything changed. Online directories have their place, from Yell, ThomsonLocal etc, as they are now used as reference points for Google, "citations" against your business, ie multiple sources say you are who you say you are so you must be all above board. Directories will also be a source of reviews, and everyone wants to read about other peoples experiences, as well as lead generation and hopefully targeted traffic.

Get reviews across as many review sites as you can. Then there is Google Local, ideal for local marketing, review generation and brand searches. Here's a post about setting up a Google Places for Business Listing if you haven't done it already.

Social media can be effective for getting your brand and message out there, but don't expect a flurry of leads from just social media activity.

A well structured web page as you have mentioned is definitely important, and there is no better traffic than free targeted organic traffic, so look at your onpage optimisation, and evaluate how any campaigns are doing.

For quick fix marketing with instant results, there is always PPC, but that's a different conversation!

Hope that's useful? Feel free to shout if you want to explore any avenue in particular in more depth.

Saw this on the news while on holiday and I think the media reporting of this was disgusting.

We seem to be in a new age of gutter press and lazy journalism. Fair play headlines sell newspapers or attract viewers, but putting innocent people, from celebrities to normal people like me or you through the news funnel, to be picked over and speculated at is going too far.

From recent events such as the Levistan enquiry, it seems little has improved

Can't get over the fact our man Jan worked for the Dandy, how cool is that! 

So I wonder if we can get a close representation but obviously slightly different for copy right reasons of Desperate Dan!

I see the Dandy is no more, ending in print in 2012 and the digital replacement flopped and got axed in 2013. What a shame, I suppose kids are now into apps and games rather than comics

All 3 links seem to work ok, given them all a like 

This is obviously an issue close to your heart.

The only badger I ever see is normally lying at the side of the road. I've seen media reports of badger culls, and from memory its something to do with passing TB to cattle? 

Knowing absolutely nothing and being uneducated about badgers, is this a bit like the fox hunting debate. One side sees them as a pest or a threat to their lively hoods and the other side sees it as cruel and inhumane.

Is there a middleground for both sides or another solution? Are badgers known to spread TB to farm animals, and if so is there another way of dealing with it? Or is kneejerk reaction to incorrect data, and there is no proof badgers are to blame?

Well it had to happen and after mocking mates for many years about the lemming summer holiday ritual and getting stitched with high prices, crowded attractions, and quite frankly a sea of humanity, I'm now stuck in the same cycle

Bloody school holidays. Means now everywhere we go we are surrounded by kids. Don't get me wrong, my well behaved little angels seem to quite like having lots of snotty runny nose kids to play with. But I'm longing for the quiet camp sites, salad bars without child residue in them, and Engerland groups of parents whose sole mission is to get noisily hammered and let their kids run riot until late.

To be fair, we chose a bad caravan site and strayed from the normal tried and tested caravan club. We then thought we would box clever by sneaking in a Legoland visit on Tuesday thinking all the schools had gone back, and our eldest doesn't start her reception year until Thursday. Wrong!

I now know different parts of the country start back to school at different times! So 45 minute wait for a 2 minute train ride and a kiddie play area that resembled the English Civil war from an army of hyper active 4 - 6 year olds.

But change is as good as a rest... so they say?

Next year, it will be a letter to the head, kids down with bird flu, and we're off to France to recuperate during term time. Or just invoice me with the fine.

Looking forward to getting back to the office for a relaxing break 

Well the Google God giveth and the Google God taketh away...  Authorship markup or rel=author to the more techie minded is no more.

To those who still have no idea what I'm waffling on about, here is an authorship enabled search result before and after pic!

So no more pretty pics (or ugly mug shots in my case) cluttering up the search results, and no more signposting in the search results back to Google Plus pages.

Theories aplenty abound as to why, from a Dallas soap type scenario where a Google Engineer woke up from a dream, to the more official reason that it was a 3 year Google experiment which didn't go the way Google liked.

So was it good while it lasted? I think click through increased in the early days when mug shots were a novelty, but as they became common place, I think people almost tuned them out. I was more interested in the much speculation about author rank, and it's use as a possible ranking signal for search results. But that's all gone out of the window (for now at least).

So the question for the average small business, is there any great need now to utilise Google Plus?

I'm still a fan.

I think it has lost a lot of credibility with the loss of the authorship and just ditching the photos would have done the job.

But it's still very worth while having a Google Local listing, which will show up in Google maps, using Google reviews, and using the odd post (once a month) so it shows up in your brand name searches in the results, on the right:

But will you still have the same interaction on Google Plus as you did before when every potential post may generate a bigger following, or contribute to a mythical author rank?

Who knows. Google recently added visible pageviews to Google Plus profiles leading to speculation this could be a new kind of author rank. There has also been talk that there isn't a relationship (at least algorithm wise) between follower numbers and pageviews. But is there?

You may have gamed the system and generated 10,000 followers, but if no one ever views your content, then your follower to pageview ratio will be low suggesting your more interested in acquiring vanity numbers rather than generating quality or engaging content or discussions?

Could this be the new authorship?

Google these days seems to be one giant ongoing experiment, and it can be hard work to keep up with the speed of change, especially when figuring how to incorporate the current best practices into new code releases.

But at least there is one silver lining. Now authorship is dead, so are the rules saying you need to have a head and shoulders mug shot on your Google Plus profile!

So the world no longer has to see my mug, and I can wheel the old faithful avatar back out 

Does anyone mourn the passing of authorship or have any views on the impact it may or may not have on google plus?

Great idea. New Horizon Logistics are sponsoring the Air Ambulance Service. Great marketing as well 

They are asking people to share photos on their Facebook page if you see it out and about.

www.facebook.com/NewHorizonLogistics

It would certainly make you look twice seeing that pull alongside you!