Google and Darwin's Finches: Where's the .com logo?

200 years ago today Charles Darwin was born, one of the most influential figures in science. However, despite being a revolutionary global figure Google gives him a rather weak chocolate-box-painting of a logo:

Even worse, at the time of writing, there is nothing for Darwin at Google.com! Whilst I thought it might be due to the time difference, both Google Mexico and Google Canada have the same logo as the UK. Is Google.com waiting for the 200th anniversary of Charles Thaxton's birth instead?

Paddington Bear v. Queen Elizabeth II

Last week saw two special logos on the Google.co.uk site: one for Paddington Bear and one for the Queen. Using Google Insights for Search it is possible to compare the effect of the Google logo on the different search terms.

Whilst the logo quadrupled the number of searches for the Queen, there was ten times as many searches for Paddington as normal! With the honours even (the Queen held on to the most searches), hopefully the results won't dent the chances of any future joint birthday parties (according to the BBC they share a birthday).

It is a shame that the daily details are only available for the last week, as it would be interesting to compare these logo results with those of some other famous people/events.

Google's Royal Visit

If the Queen was visiting my office I'm sure I would tell everyone, but you have to think today's Google logo (.co.uk) is a bit tacky...and possibly even treasonable.

Fair enough if you want to turn Paddington Bear into a letter 'g', but the Queen's head? Why not have Prince Charles' ears as the two o's and be done with it.

Paddington makes Google more appealing

There are few things that could tempt me into using Google search on a regular basis, but admittedly a picture of Paddington Bear is a step in the right direction (currently on Google.co.uk, not Google.com).

Paddington's 50th Birthday, and still as youthful as ever!

Happy Blog-iversary!!

Today is the one year anniversary of my Webometric Thoughts blog! Unfortunately, despite having a Google anniversary logo commissioned especially for the event (way back in January), Google have decided to give preference to another Olympic logo today instead.

Over the last year I have managed to blog fairly regularly (this is my 286th post), and this has been reflected in a steady increase in traffic. Since I started using Google Analytics in October I have had 15,484 absolute unique visitors:

Most importantly, the number of unique visitors can be seen to be increasing month on month. This increase can also be seen in my Alexa ranking:

When checking my Alexa ranking back in September my ranking was 8,926,204, whilst in January it was 3,816,072. Whilst Alexa changed its ranking algorithm in April, today's results show an improvement on the 1,607,649 I got then. Even Technorati shows an improvement, as I am now in the top half a million blogs!

So, what are the aims of Webometric Thoughts over the next year:
-Break into the top 100,000 web sites (according to Alexa)
-Break into the top 100,000 blogs (according to Technorati)
-Make the blog self-financing (since starting to use Google Ads in March I have earned $14.05...I need to earn approximately $50 a year).
-And, obviously, write higher quality posts.

A response to Google's latest logo!

Boo, hiss.

Really obvious anniversary logos are just getting on my nerves these days.
I want less of this:

And more of this (or this):

In fact the frog is such an annoying logo I will probably be forced to use more alternative search engines than usual today.

Happy Anniversary Webometric Thoughts!

In response to GeekAnt's comment on Google's Lego logo, the gauntlet was thrown down to two of London's top graphic designers (Heena Varambhia & Mark Bowerman):
What would a Google logo look like if they had one on the 14th August to celebrate the anniversary of my blog??

After much deliberation, it was decided that Heena's entry would be Webometric Thoughts official anniversary logo:

With Mark's impressive entry suffering from a lack of celebratory cake:


We will have to wait and see whether Google makes the same choice, or designs a logo of their own for the 14th August.

Lego Google

The Google 'special occassion' logos can often be a bit tiresome. After all, I don't actually need a snowman to let me know its christmas, or a pumpkin to remind me I am liable to have scrounging children banging on my door. However, I guess most people don't have a diary with the 50th birthday of Lego written in it:

Please continue with more interesting logos Google.