As Verizon Implements Bing Default Search Deal Company Sees User Backlash

The wide-ranging search and advertising deal between Verizon Wireless and Microsoft reportedly cost Redmond between $550 million to $650 million in revenue guarantees over five years, according to prior reports in the Wall Street Journal. The deal specifically exempts Android handsets, such as Droid, from the provision that Bing become the default search engine on [...]

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Google Updates Toolbar PageRank For New Years 2010

To kick off the 2010, Google is currently exporting the PageRank values to the Google Toolbar. Yes, there are major reports of a Google Toolbar PageRank update taking place right now.
This may become a New Years tradition for Google. Last year, Google pushed out a PageRank update for New Years 2009. [...]

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Year In Review: Local Search & Maps

While analysts and practitioners have been prognosticating the imminent arrival
of local search for the last several years, 2009 was finally the year that proved
us right. A number of innovations
and developments in mobile search, such as the widespread adoption of the
iPhone, the release of [...]

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Search Month European Edition, December 2009

In Search Month European Edition we bring you a monthly update of European search news, with related links to full coverage. Here’s what happened in December.
Google fined $430,000 dollars in France. A Parisian court ruled that Google should be fined over $430,000 dollars because it has broken French copyright laws by displaying snippets of books [...]

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Google to Host Android Announcement Event

Google is stirring up buzz to rival Apple’s yearly expectations with an invitation for reporters to an event January 5—yep, just days before the CES show. Apple has made a tradition of big (or not so big) announcements scheduled conveniently upstaging the popular Consumer Electronics Show. So Google will definitely be cutting into the speculation market between now and then—especially since they told reporters the announcement, hosted at the Mountain View facility—will have something to do with their mobile OS, Android. First launched on the G1 over a year ago, “this is just the beginning of what’s possible,” Google said in the email invitation.

The announcement comes less than a month after Google sent its employees home with an unlocked Android phone called the Nexus One, sparking a viral media frenzy when the employees hit social media. With free buzz already in the air and more to come, it seems entirely possible that Google will officially unveil the Nexus at the event.

Apple, on the other hand, appears to be keeping any major announcements under its hat for now, with a major product announcement scheduled for January 26, according to Reuters. The anticipated Apple tablet computer would definitely rival a Google phone for buzz, but it looks like they won’t be in direct competition for consumers’ presales attention.

So far, not a whole lot is certain about the Nexus One. Search Engine Journal takes a look at the definites and rumors from technical specs to carriers.

On the other hand, there’s been a lot of buzz (which seems mostly misguided) around the Chrome OS being used on netbooks. Recently Google premiered a netbook with a Google OS—Android.

What do you think? Will Google formally unveil the Nexus One? Or do they have something else up their sleeve?

Now That Everything Is Known, Will The Google Nexus One Phone Launch Generate A Collective Yawn?

The way that the “Google Phone” rumors and later Nexus One blogging played out probably mean that when Google finally announces the device on January 5 (in all likelihood) there won’t be much news. I could be quite wrong of course. Regardless, I imagine the event will be interesting — something like “a year of [...]

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Year In Review: Search Goes Mobile

The iPhone was introduced on June 29, 2007 and that was effectively the beginning of the mobile internet era. With the iPhone also came the acceleration of mobile search for Google, the default engine for the iconic Apple device.
This year mobile became a cornerstone of Google’s strategy with a string of announcements, product tweaks and [...]

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Survey: Online Shopping Satisfies; Bigger is Better

ForeSee Results has issued the results of its annual E-Retailer Satisfaction Index—a survey of 10,000 shoppers at the top 40 retailers—and the results are good—if you’re a big e-tailer. If not, well—let’s just say you’re pulling down the average.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, the 40 largest online retailers averaged a satisfaction score of 79 on a scale of 100, up five points from the 2007 and 2008 steady results. But for their sample of over 100 large and small e-tailers, overall satisfaction was down to 73, off from 75 in 2008 and 77 in 2007.

MediaPost adds an important finding, too:

ForeSee’s research also finds that shoppers who are highly satisfied are 65% more likely to purchase online, 44% more likely to purchase offline, 70% more likely to recommend, and 49% more likely to return than a dissatisfied shopper.

While satisfaction drives purchases, a leading indicator of satisfaction wasn’t competitive pricing or free shipping—but the website’s ease of use. ForeSee CEO Larry Freed noted that most of the top 40 also work hard to integrate their online experience with that of their offline brick-and-mortar. Only six of the top 40 are not associated with an offline retailer—with Amazon, the long-time satisfaction leader, one of those notable exceptions. (Amazon leads the satisfaction survey with its score of 87.)

Web-only stores, Freed says, succeed when they make sure to include information such a product reviews and continually invest in their user experience, including the look and feel of the site.

Naturally, the satisfaction index shows a strong positive correlation with sales. According to comScore reports, the top 25 retailers saw a 13% increase in holiday spending YOY, while small and medium companies saw a 10% decline. The overall holiday spending was up 4% over last year.

What do you think? Were you more satisfied with online shopping this year? Do you use smaller retailers or do you tend to stay in the top 40?

Photo credit: Joel Telling

Google Analytics Adds Annotation Feature

Google Analytics is one of the most robust offerings by the search giant and it manages to fly under the radar a little bit. It has almost become ubiquitous for a large number of companies that are not prospects for other analytics packages like Omniture, Coremetrics, Webtrends etc. Many will even run it concurrently with these other players that have one distinct and major difference compared to Google’s offering: they cost money.

Now, many people rail against the amount of data that Google has at its disposal as a result of their analytics offering (formerly Urchin). That’s fine and is great fodder for the Google conspiracy theory set, which is a pretty active community. On the street level though it is hard (read: impossible) to find a more robust offering that is free (another bone of contention for Google haters so go ahead and let’er rip).

Well, Google is not resting on its laurels as it has announced a new feature that allows for users of the program to include annotations on reports. Search Engine Land tells us

Following October’s release of Google Analytics new features, Google has just released another set of very cool new features. Among them is “Annotations,” a tremendously useful new feature both to analysts as well as executives, who are usually not up to date on granular details about website activity.

The annotations feature basically allows users to make comments on graphs regarding events that happened on specific days.

Here is an example of what can be done with the annotation feature:

The idea here is that there can be real collaboration between those who put together campaigns and those who see the analytics without that important data. There is nothing more dangerous than an upper level executive that sees a spike or a dip on a graph but has no idea that there may have been very good business reasons for why that type of traffic or conversion or whatever pattern exists. A simple note that outlines a “cause and effect” for the data consumer can save a lot of time and trouble.

Daniel Waisberg of Search Engine Land points out some great scenarios where this could be useful

• The PPC team can announce major changes to their campaigns.
• The seo team can annotate changes to the website so that results can be tracked over time.
• The PR team can update dates of events, enabling the tracking of offline activities into Google Analytics more easily.
• The media buying team can provide updates of major banner campaigns.

As per usual Google does a pretty good job on its blog showing how this feature is implemented as well a other additions to the analytics tool.

Here’s to a 2010 full of real communication and good cheer!

AT&T’s Struggles With Reputation Continue

You don’t have to look very far, especially in the online space, to find a disgruntled AT&T wireless customer. If you would like to increase your likelihood of finding a seething AT&T wireless customer just ask around in New York and San Francisco for iPhone users. This, in and of itself, is not news. As a result though, AT&T faces reputation issues that are extending beyond the initial complaints about service. As the company struggles to maintain some positive buzz it is running headlong into the ‘perception is reality’ of today’s world.

When there are article headlines on CNNMoney.com like this one, “AT&T: The Most Hated Company in iPhone Land”, it’s hard to not cringe no matter how you feel about the company, its service or anything else. One thing that the article does point out is that AT&T may be a victim of its own iPhone success.

Analysts say AT&T’s problems would have happened on any network that carried Apple’s (AAPL, Fortune 500) iPhone because of the overwhelming amount of data downloaded by iPhone users. Over the past three years, AT&T’s data traffic increased 5,000% because of the iPhone.

“The challenges that AT&T has are being faced by a lot of operators around the world: Very rapidly growing usage coupled with dense populations,” said Daniel Hays, wireless expert and partner at consultancy PRTM. “Would it have been different on Verizon? Probably not.”

Now, of course Verizon would dispute that position and they have been doing so with their “There’s a map for that!” campaign. Verizon’s ‘first to market’ ads had to be responded to, in a sense, by AT&T which put AT&T on the defensive. The results are some pretty weak ads using a B-list celebrity that don’t do much to fight off the perception that AT&T is just a poor service provider.

I was enlightened to some degree by the CNN article despite the headline. It pointed out some of the cold hard realities of being the network for iPhone users. The biggest is that iPhone users have increased the data traffic on the network at the incredibly large percentage noted earlier. AT&T admits that service in two of the most important metros for the wired set, New York City and San Francisco, are below their standards so they at least admit that they have issues.

Regardless of that admission though the following is the reality they face:

It’s not just New York and San Francisco iPhone users who are grumbling. An annual Consumer Reports study recently rated AT&T (T, Fortune 500) the worst in customer satisfaction in 19 cities across the country. (Rival Verizon Wireless rated No. 1 in the study.)

This stuff spreads like wildfire online and becomes bigger and bigger if not handled well. To this point it appears as if AT&T has not been doing such a good job of turning that perception around. A perception that may have some cold hard reality attached to it might come off better if addressed proactively rather than having the current reactive stance (My opinion of course and we would love to hear yours )

So how do you know that the ‘you know what’ has hit the fan with your company’s reputation online and offline? You become the butt of a Saturday Night Live joke.

“It was reported this week that Google would soon launch its own cell phone as a challenge to the iPhone,” said “Saturday Night Live’s” Seth Meyers on Dec. 19. “Also a challenge to the iPhone? Making phone calls.”

So, all of you online reputation management experts out there what do you think AT&T should do? Is there anything it can do? A little end of the year exercise in applying all that theory might do us all some good. Let’s hear it.

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