Just home through the door and feeling compelled to blog about the Google conference I attended this evening in Belfast’s Waterfront Hall. Perhaps a sign of the times we live in.
Apparently there’s more people blogging for a living in the USA than there are lawyers!
A few other messages received from this conference:
1. Smartphone sales are predicted to overtake PC sales in 2013
2. Only 25% of people worldwide currently have online access (via a computer)
3. However, 67% of people worldwide do have a mobile phone. This will surely be an interesting area as more people access the internet through their phones.
First Minister of Northern Ireland, Peter Robinson, also made an appearance. He made a sales pitch directly to Matt Brittin noting the talent of Northern Ireland. The stats are encouraging though. Northern Ireland has higher education pass rates than England, Scotland, Wales or the Republic of Ireland. Northern Ireland was also the first of these states to achieve 100% broadband access. Perhaps the Northern Irish work ethic is something that can make us stand out above the rest of the UK and Ireland. Northern Ireland, is maybe portrayed as a bit backwards from time to time – and Peter Robinson didn’t let us forget that.
His story went along the lines of this –
Google was created by two Stanford students as a project, specifically the Standford Digital Library Project. Peter of course wasn’t too slow to remark that that’s the best thing to ever come out of the SDLP, making a slight quip in Margaret Ritchie’s direction at them not being the most productive or effective of parties.
Getting past all that though, the conference was enjoyable, informal and informative. The point of the conference was to encourage local businesses to create a website and get online. With Google Sites they can do so very easily, quickly and for free. For those interested, you can find out more and get started on building your own new site in 20 mins here. They also touched on Google Insights for Search – demonstrating that ‘football’ is a more popular search than ‘sex’ in Northern Ireland.
So, if you’re among the 50% of businesses in Northern Ireland that don’t have a website, you’ve no excuse now. Set aside 20 minutes and build yourself a website for free here!
If you’re interested in marketing your website then contact Louise at Search Scientist, at louise@searchscientist.co.uk or 075-264-04106. We can arrange a free consultation and you can take it from there.
What do you think?
Does your business have a website? Are you interested in doing more online?
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I somehow missed that one!
There’s more than enough conferences to go to, so it’s hard to make them all. It was good though. Mostly a run down of the importance of having a website and how you can get a basic one through this scheme for free that you can have up and running in no time. PS. You can check out local upcoming events/conferences here I’ll update it again shortly 🙂