Dragon’s Den terrifies me, it’s addictive viewing but I find it provides more hiding behind the sofa moments than any episode of Doctor Who ever did! Sunday night rolls round and there I am, on the sofa, glass of wine in hand preparing to cringe and watch through my fingers!

The first pitch was pleasantly surprising though, Emma Jones and Mark Ferguson from Cheshire came up with the idea for ‘My Bungee’ whilst relaxing on a skiing holiday, the ingenious rubber cord was designed to help prevent mobile phone loss and breakage, and it fitted any phone from the latest smart phones to ancient Nokias. An ex headmaster and celebrity PA they had knocked on doors, been persistent and had secured 12 distributors including one in Australia, but they were struggling to secure a network in the UK. Emma blamed this on many businesses in the UK having a ‘no name policy’ when you cold call them, I found out early in my career that in the absence of a Dragon to mentor you and give you access to their contacts then buying high quality lists was vital to achieving good sales and distribution.  Whilst he wanted the biggest stake in the business asking for 35% it was Peter’s promise to get them ‘in front of the top 50% of mobile phone retailers in the UK overnight’ that was the most compelling.  This offer of none financial support and access to UK distribution channels was almost more valuable than the original £70,000 sort .

Next up a .com business, skill sharing site called ‘Amazings’, it promoted and sold the skills of the  over 60’s, examples included knitting lessons and hairdressing.  It was really hard to see how money could be made from it, as the Dragon’s got into the figures it became clear that despite recruiting 25 Amazings it had failed to return a profit. They were making a small bit of commission on each of the lessons sold by the ‘Amazings’ but this had only turned over £6,000 last year. The Dragons liked the idea but they advised the entrepreneurs to keep it ‘not for profit’. It is very difficult to for something so altruistic make money, people like the feel good factor but they are not prepared to pay lots of money for services like these.

DJ Mark Thompson was next to hit the decks and treated us an excruciating role play that involved two scantily clad females dancing in extremely high heels . It was all in the name of some insoles he had invented to combat women’s achy feet at the end of a night out. His idea had some from his time as a club DJ he had made the revolutionary discovery that women a. like high heels and b. they hurt when you’ve been dancing on them a few hours! It was a good idea but as Deborah Meaden pointed out, Scholl party feet already provide a solution to the problem and his invention wasn’t different or unique enough to warrant further development or investment. As she said ‘what reason does the consumer have to leave the market leader and buy into a newcomer in the market place?’  Mark had already invested a lot of time, money and heart into creating his product, he was not though, as pointed out by Hilary Devey, ‘a natural born marketer or sales man’, he had been unable to shift 2,000 units for over a year. Mark had fallen into the trap of failing to be honest with himself regarding his business limitations and wasn’t going to make this business work.

A bit of light relief was provided by the CARBQ: a BBQ in the bonnet of the car! Danny Kean & Phil Austin,  two amiable chaps from Gloucester, had created the CARBQ to be the envy of their friends and neighbours!  They had sold ‘two and a half’ models to date! Whilst they enjoyed the pitch none of them were biting, the feeling in the Den was summed up by Deborah Meaden when she said they should enjoy doing what they’re doing and not formalise things with an investor. Important point that, not all hobbies make good businesses!

Lastly it’s a classic ‘behind the sofa’ moment for me, two blokes so nervous it made for very uncomfortable viewing. Luke Booth & Chris Eves are design graduates from Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design. Focusing on the food and drinks carriers they were showcasing two of their revolutionary designs. By their own admission they aren’t business men, they are designers. It soon became apparent that they need investment in them and their designs rather than the business, without a Dragon’s mentorship they wouldn’t be able to move the business forward. Yet again for different reasons we see that none financial support is just as important as the money. After a bleak start their passion, intelligence and talent managed to convince Theo to take a punt, they eventually did the deal for £50,000 for a stake of 30%

Could Google be losing its dominating share of the UK search market? The latest data from Experian Hitwise would suggest this, as it revealed that Google’s share of the UK search market in October had fallen below 90% for the first time in five years.

The internet tracking company announced that Google had dipped to an 89.33% share of the search engine market in October, while Bing, Ask and Yahoo upped their shares.

However this latest data is unlikely to worry the search engine giant too much, as searches are only down by 1.41%. In fact, Google still receives eighteen times as many searches on its sites than all other search engines combined.

But the news is particularly encouraging for Microsoft, who have struggled with getting Bing off the ground for years. Despite relentless advertising and celebrity endorsement, Bing has failed to make a mark on Google’s market dominance.

Finally though, Microsoft’s search engine is gaining more momentum and now holds 5% of the market share. Part of this rise in Bing’s popularity could be attributed to their aggressive promotional tactics as well as the Microsoft 8 operating system being installed with Bing as default rather than Google.

The news does suggest that more attention should be paid to alternative search engines. While Google vastly holds the majority share of searches, it is also worth exploring optimisation for Bing as well as Google. By investing in Bing early, you can allow yourself to generate extra exposure before market rivals and showcase your business to a largely unexplored market.

Overall however, the best thing you can do for your business’ website and to optimise for any search engine is ensure it ranks as naturally as possible, with strong original content and natural linking. Content marketing is one way of achieving this and is now becoming an essential part of any business to attract new customers and build a reputation for brand name.

For now, however, Google remains the dominating search engine and looks to continue its hold for some time.