Scoring Super Bowl 2010 Advertising: How’s the Search Visibility?

After the 2009 Super Bowl, I monitored how the commercials drove searches and reported back on how well the brands did at ensuring visibility in organic search results. It didn’t go so well. The primary problems were:

Microsites – Microsites aren’t inherently a bad idea, but too many of them can cause brand confusion, external link [...]

….

Why You Shouldn’t Trust Feeds For Social Updates

Social Media is still a fresh concept for many companies and the resources allocated to these efforts are usually a slim as possible. However, cutting corners to save time could end up hurting you and your accounts down the road.  One of the biggest time-saving items that can cause disunity and confusion when speaking to [...]

….

Google Search Gets Personal With Everyone

Personalization of search results has long been a point of great interest and contention in the search world. The battle has raged on, particularly regarding Google’s personalization efforts, about privacy for the Google user and how it will affect the search engine optimization industry.

One of the ways that Google’s personalization efforts have been ‘limited’ is that the only people that have any personalization measures applied to them were those who were logged into their Google account. That was the case at least until last Friday when Google announced that their personalization efforts now apply to everyone regardless of whether you have a Google account or not.

cnet reports

Google keeps a history of your Web searches for up to 180 days, using what it says is an anonymous cookie in your browser to track your search queries and the results you most frequently click on. For several years it has allowed those with Google accounts to receive customized search results based on that history, but now even those without Google accounts will receive tailored results based on a history of their search activity, Google said in a blog post late Friday.

So what’s the big deal? Well, if you are an seo practitioner it means that your job gets a bit harder but this should be no surprise since this change has been happening for years now. What makes this one different is that it now applied to all searches. What is going to make privacy watchdogs antsy is the fact that is an opt-out program. Sure, Google made a nice video and explained this process in their blog but the overwhelming majority of Google users don’t even know Google has a blog and don’t care. Also, they don’t pay attention to this kind of stuff so opting out is a nice PR move but not likely to be widely adopted.

So as to limit the confusion here is Google’s chart on how this whole thing shakes out. Please excuse the quality of the image.

Hope Google finds exactly what you are looking for! Don’t forget to opt-out if you’re creeped out!

Google Chrome OS Coming Next Week

Google first announced is Chrome operating system in July. Open source and targeted at netbooks, the OS could launch within a week, according to TechCrunch.

Although TechCrunch reports that Chrome will probably only be available for certain targeted netbooks in the coming launch, it may not be ready for even that. In its original, official announcement, Google said it would open source its code later in 2009, with devices coming to market in the second half of 2010.

Despite TechCrunch’s reliable anonymous source, this rumor may be more speculation and confusion than drastically moving up the launch timeline. Launching the OS to the open source community—part of the planned development process anyway—has always been part of the plan. And recently, some netbooks (such as one from Acer) have already come to market with a Google operating system—Android, the Google mobile OS that’s slowly taking on the smartphone arena.

Google Chrome will be better suited to a full-sized computer than Android is, however. Google wants their lightweight OS to be able to start quickly with a minimal user interface.

If you’re really that eager for Chrome, PC World reminds us that a developer build is already ready. But remember, even if Google launches the source code next week, can we say compiler?

Meanwhile, Google is also premiering a new programming language this week. “Go” is touted as dynamic as Python and safe as C++. Any coincidence that it comes out this week?

What do you think? Will Chrome be ready to ship in the next week? Or will we see open source files launched?

Twitter Not Giving Access To Private Tweets

Is Twitter allowing search engines access to protected tweets or not? Not, Twitter tells me, though the company probably needs to do a bit more to prevent this type of confusion in the future.
The LA Times reported yesterday about a “Twitter hole” that it believed allowed Google special access to protected [...]

….

Twitter Conferences Are In

As part of the Internet marketing industry have you done the conference circuit? Have you been to SES, SMX (put cardinal direction here), Adtech, PubCon etc, etc? On a yearly basis how many of these trips can you justify or get away with? Well, with shrinking budgets everywhere now you have to add the new spate of Twitter conferences to your hit list of things you absolutely have to do to get out of the office learn more about the industry.

TechCrunch tells us of the growing list of conferences that are starting to sprout up as a result of the use of (or confusion around the use of) Twitter for business purposes.

It looks like the trend of Twitter conferences is growing, with more events popping up around the country. As we’ve said in the past and will continue to say, there are tremendous opportunities for businesses, brands, non-profits and individuals to use Twitter as a tool for customer support, fund raising, brand management, advertising, job search and much more.

I have not attended one but I can imagine they must be pretty quiet because everyone is likely to be talking to everyone but those right in front of them. I gotta tell ya that when someone tweets that they are talking to someone I wonder if they are even listening to them or concentrating on their 140 characters of brilliance they are allowing the rest of their audience to ingest.

Of course, if you attended the 140 Character Conference in New York in June the venue itself (which was literally underground) forced Twitterheads to actually listen to others since there was practically no connectivity for the attendees.

Twitter is so fascinating in that it appears that so many folks are finding ways to monetize the service without the service monetizing itself. At least with Google (which face it, is why most of these conferences exist in the first place) makes money and knows that these conferences will only help it make more.

So if you are tired of the usual shows and you need more opportunities to ‘network’ then think about these:

• TWTRCN 09 DC- for non profits and government types. October 22 in Washington, DC.
• 140 Twitter Conference / LA – Endorsed by Biz Stone. Need we say more? September in Los Angeles (for those who didn’t get the LA part of the title).
• 140 Characters Twitter Conference – Jeff Pulver’s deal goes west coast on October 27th in Los Angeles.
• Cool Twitter Conferences- Apparently this is a traveling road show that has stops scheduled in Boston and San Francisco.

So don’t miss your chance to blow off work get out and learn more about Twitter and the future of communications. Hotel bars in the areas of these meetings can’t wait to serve you!

ICANN’t Believe It’s .butter

Let me guess. YourCompanyName.com, Your-Company-Name.com, Your-Company-Name-Industry.com (and all their .net counterparts) were all taken when you came to register your site. It’s understandable that you’re excited about ICANN’s new policy on TLDs—you’ll be able to register justabout.anything.

Yeah, well, I hate it. I’ve always hated the idea and I had a really hard time understanding how the ICANN, the organization that arbitrates Internet domain names, could reject the .xxx TLD two years ago and turn around to make it—and almost anything else—okay now. (Their reasoning for rejecting it at the time, compliance and “public-policy concerns,” doesn’t seem to have been resolved in the interim.)

But porn has nothing to do with why I hate this idea—and nothing to do with the ICANN’s still-shoddy logic. According to Slate, they’re doing this to help with the all-new (not) problem of cybersquatting:

Now ICANN, the international body in charge of domain names, says it has a way to rid the Web of cybersquatting. . . .

ICANN argues that adding new descriptive domains will reduce the chance for confusion. . . . And while cybersquatting is already prohibited by trademark law in many countries, including the United States, ICANN promises to implement a strict international review process to prevent miscreants from registering names that they shouldn’t own. Only Facebook will be allowed to manage the .facebook domain, for example, and if someone tries to buy Slate.webmagazine, Slate’s lawyers will be able to shut it down in a jiffy.

Worse still, Slate says, “ICANN’s plan to sell all these new top-level domains at very high prices—tens of thousands of dollars or more—seems like a scam.” Ouch.

Furthermore, site owners are becoming “more adventurous” in their domaining. Slate cites Icanhascheezburger.com and del.icio.us (though they note the upgrade to delicious.com) as examples of this.

Most of all, Slate argues, if this is supposed to stop cybersquatting, the new TLDs are too late. Very few people even bother remembering website URLs these days, relying instead on Google to find “Match.com” or “General Motors.” (Which, by the way, is yet another reason to invest in seo.)

In fact, I think that allowing these TLDs will make it harder for us to remember any websites’ URLs. It’s going to increase our dependence on search engines to find the right website for General Motors

What do you think? Will you be investing in .butter, or are you rolling your eyes along with me?

Twitter Starts New Verified Accounts Beta

In the wake of the run-in with St. Louis Cardinals manager Tony LaRussa last week Twitter has officially launched its verified accounts beta. The service was mentioned over the weekend in Biz Stone’s blog post that made it known that Twitter would bow to no one on legal concerns that they viewed as frivolous.

Mashable’s Pete Cashmore tells of the new process

The feature has been a long time coming, and many celebrities will jump on the opportunity to prove their legitimacy. It’ll also solve the entrenched problem of celebrity impersonations, which are confusing for users and unwelcome by those being impersonated. Businesses, however, will have to wait: the feature has not been rolled out to corporate entities yet.

Cashmore also says, “The process to become verified appears to be limited to power meaning that celebrities, musicians, athletes, actors, public officials and public agencies on the service can now display a “verified account” button on their Twitter pages.” Well, one thing is certainly a relief here. I wouldn’t want any public officials being portrayed as lying or bending the truth to fit into 140 characters at a clip. That would certainly be seen as unusual for that group (my apologies as to my level of sarcasm, when it comes to politics it’s hard not to be at least a little cynical).

To see if you meet the standard of requiring account verification you can visit the verified account page for more information. There will probably be confusion and wondering whether someone is ‘verification worthy’ (remember Elaine’s ‘sponge-worthiness’ measurement from Seinfeld?) and what does it mean if the verification badge is absent?

With this feature, you can easily see which accounts we know are ‘real’ and authentic. That means we’ve been in contact with the person or entity the account is representing and verified that it is approved. (This does not mean we have verified who, exactly, is writing the tweets.)

This also does not mean that accounts without the ‘Verified Account’ badge are fake. The vast majority of accounts on the system are not impersonators, and we don’t have the ability to check 100% of them. For now, we’ve only verified a handful of accounts to help with cases of mistaken identity or impersonation.

Twitter left the door open for expansion of the service but also covered their bases just in case it doesn’t scale easily

We may verify more accounts in the future, but because of the cost and time required, we’re only testing this feature with a small set of folks for the time being. As the test progresses we may be able to expand this test to more accounts over the next several months.

And for those who are of the belief that they are truly important and suffer from impersonation issues on Twitter but don’t fit the initial verification profile there’s this

Although we’re not verifying all accounts, we’ll try to work with you if your account is constantly competing with parody or impersonation accounts. Fill out this feedback form so that we know your situation.

Twitter’s ‘Good Tweetkeeping Seal of Approval” has been launched. Will you be the first on your block to get a badge?

Twitter Study Shows that Tweets are Few and Far Between

If you are in the social media space you would look at this headline and ask “What is he smoking?” There is no way that most people don’t produce many tweets because how else can the tweet stream be more cluttered and crowded than the start of the New York City Marathon?

HarvardBusiness.org reports on a study of a significant sized sample of Twitter users. They intro their findings with

We examined the activity of a random sample of 300,000 Twitter users in May 2009 to find out how people are using the service. We then compared our findings to activity on other social networks and online content production venues. Our findings are very surprising.

Surprising? What’s surprising about Twitter any more? Don’t we already know everything about Biz and Ev and the cool kids in San Francisco? Despite the service being around since March of 2006 as Twitter (it was part of Obvious Corporation before that) its recent rise to stardom has created, among other things, a lot more users, a lot of confusion and a growing mountain of research.

Add to the list this study that was produced by a Harvard MBA candidate and an Assistant Professor of Strategy who teaches a class on Competing with Social Networks. The highlights:

• 80% are followed by or follow at least one user
• Men have 15% more followers than women and are hunters meaning they are driven more by numbers than relationships. The study suggests

Men also have more reciprocated relationships, in which two users follow each other. This “follower split” suggests that women are driven less by followers than men, or have more stringent thresholds for reciprocating relationships.

• Among Twitter users, the median number of lifetime tweets per user is one. This translates into over half of Twitter users tweeting less than once every 74 days.

These are all interesting but the one that will be of most interest to Pilgrims is that

There is a small contingent of users who are very active. Specifically, the top 10% of prolific Twitter users accounted for over 90% of tweets. On a typical online social network, the top 10% of users account for 30% of all production.

So much for the 80/20 rule. What does this say about Twitter? Is it still a small community of real heavy users that assume that the rest of the world is as interested in them as they are themselves?

What does this suggest to marketers? Quite possibly it may be time to hit the brakes a little on the actual reach of Twitter. From a business perspective it seems to be more effective to build your Twitter following in a Pied Piper kind of fashion rather than fishing for people who may be interested in your business. There simply may not be that many people actively using the service yet. You need to lead them to it for the specific reason that you will help them in some way. There is real value to both parties in a situation like that.

Look at Comcast. They took a history of bad customer service and turned it into a following of people who appreciate their outreach. You gotta figure that many of those followers were not on Twitter until Comcast started providing service to customers on it. Either that or among the 20,000 plus followers of @comcastcares are just more social media types who are trying to keep busy.

So the never ending dilemma of what is the business value of Twitter continues and will for quite some time. With social media there is no right or wrong, there is no up or down there is only doing and finding out what actually works for each individual situation. I’m going to start selling antacids and sleep aids to marketing executives for obvious reasons.

<img border=”0″ src=”http://constanthit.com/wp-content/plugins/wp-o-matic/cache/b70bf_vertical-leap-seo-234.gif”>

Google Android To Release 18 Phones by Year End

Google claims we can expect to see at least 18 phones with the Android operating system by year’s end, possibly 20. Which phone carriers they will be on has yet to be determined, according to the New York Times. Currently T-Mobile’s G1 and a phone available in Europe called “Magic” by HTC are the only phones that give Google credit for using their Android OS.

If the Android phones can be released sooner rather than later, it should provide some interesting competition for the summer phone war against the iPhone and Blackberry, among others. The applications available for the Android will play a major factor in consumer’s buying decisions.

This is where there is still some confusion regarding the Android OS. According to the Times, there are three types of Android platforms. Each places different requirements on the handset manufacturers and wireless carriers. The Times broke each of these types out, here is a short summary of them:

1. Obligation Free—Popular Google applications cannot be preloaded on the OS, but device manufacturers are allowed to provide access to as many or as few applications as they wish. This type is free for device manufactures to use.
2. Small Strings—This version encompasses everything above, but manufactures sign a distribution agreement with Google. Google expects 12 to 14 of the 18 phones released this year to use this version.
3. The Google Experience—The actual Google logo appears on these phones, and include a variety of Google applications that cannot be removed by the handset maker or carrier. Additionally, the Android market must remain censor-free. This means that no matter how horrible/distasteful a application available to some users may be, they cannot restrict access to it. Five or six phones are expected to be released with this version.

Are you thinking of switching to a phone with the Android OS?