Would You Like a Free Apple iPad With Your Trackur Account?

As you know, a couple of weeks ago (my company) Trackur launched Trackur Free–a competely free version of the popular social media monitoring tool.

To celebrate Trackur Free’s success–and to get as many people protecting their reputation as possible–Trackur is now giving all users a chance to win a free Apple iPad!

Yep, you can get your hands on a free online reputation monitoring tool AND enter to win the hottest gadget around!

Want to enter? Head over to the Trackur site pronto!

Holy 1999: MySpace in Google Search (Oh, with Real Time)

Buzzy buzz buzz. Google would really like to keep us from thinking about PAY NO ATTENTION Buzz TO THE MAN BEHIND THE CURTAIN, and old pal MySpace is here to help: the real time search deal the two discussed in December is now live. Oh boy, oh boy, real time updates from that cutting edge social MySpace right in Google!

Hm? What’s that? Is 2010 and Google’s had real-time results from social networks including Twitter and Facebook for months?

Oh. Much less cool .

Yep, as they said a while ago, Google’s using MySpace’s real time API to import real time updates (they do that on MySpace?) into selected SERPs. I’d go out looking for these results in the wild, but somehow I think they’re pretty hard to find. Even when I look for updates on news and current events in Google, I seldom see the real time results (or maybe I just don’t scroll down). Luckily, MySpace provides a few examples for me:

I love the Olympics. Every (other) year, I think, “Meh, I don’t really care about the Olympics,” and then I get sucked in and watch them obsessively. (“Go, go, person I’ve never heard of, representing a country I don’t care about, in a sport I’ve never seen before! Win!”) And I’m super glad that I can see what MySpacers think about the events. (Not. Did you read those comments?)

Um, anyway, I like that MySpace’s integration with Google is so flawless that the best way to get their real-time results is to actually include “MySpace” in the query. I suppose that’ll keep extraneous social results from showing up in my SERPs, though, so I’m happy .

On the other hand, it is convenient if you want to know what people are saying about a topic on MySpace. I can’t imagine a scenario where I’d want to, but . . . you know, it could happen.

What do you think? Are you looking forward to oh-so-pertinent results from MySpace coming to a SERP near you?

Human-powered Search Gets More Humans: ChaCha Hooks up with Facebook

Human-powered search engine ChaCha has hung on (let’s face it) longer than anyone thought possible. Although it abandoned guided web-based search almost two years ago, ChaCha is still thriving in the mobile Q&A market. Back in December, they raised $7M in funding—and it looks like the ultimate result of that cash was an API and a Facebook app.

Yep—ChaCha’s getting into social search. The Facebook app takes questions users post to friends and connections and broadcasts them to ChaCha. The app checks the database of pre-loaded answers to see if they’ve already covered that topic.

Definitely not an app I’m interested in. I’ve joked with friends in Gmail chat that Google should just popup with the answer to any of our factual questions right in our chat window. But really, we definitely wouldn’t appreciate the intrusion (even if we were just going to google that same question in a minute anyway—although TechCrunch doesn’t clarify whether ChaCha actually supplies the answer or just suggests that it might already know the answer). Most of the questions I pose my social network are going to be opinion-based, rather than factual—so ChaCha’s can’t to help there.

However, ChaCha has also turned this into a kind of game—the more participating questions you answer, the more points you get. They’ve also added a number of social features, including the option to have an “Ask ChaCha” box on your profile, share questions and their answers on selected friends’ walls and more.

Meanwhile, ChaCha has also developed an API to allow other developers to interface with their Q&A database. They’re also the #1 SMS search service, according to Nielsen Mobile, answering more than a million SMS questions a day.

What do you think? Should ChaCha even count as a “search engine” since they’re serving up solely structured data? Do you use ChaCha, and will you use their new apps and APIs?

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Cup of Joe: Your Business Needs To Be Like a Wet Noodle

As I write this post, it is my birthday, and there is a White Russian with my name on it, after this post is done. So you will have to excuse me if today’s column is a bit short, but I have a party to go to!

Even though all of the data says something different it is clear that the life span for most small businesses is incredibly short. Yep that’s right, people fail all the time.

If you ask most defunct small business owners why they failed, they will point towards one or two key areas of their business. Some will say that they didn’t have the right marketing mindset, others might say they didn’t have the right product. And all of these reasons may be true. But one thing that many won’t even recognize is because their business wasn’t flexible.

Flexibility is important in a small business plan but is often times overlooked. Many times we focus so much on our core products or services that we build a mindset and infrastructure that limits our ability to be flexible when needed.

So why is it so important to be flexible? It’s important because you can’t control markets. It’s important because you can’t force people to buy. It’s important because no one can produce the perfect product or service. It’s important because your competitors might be better than you.

If you want to keep from failing all you might have to do is hustle. But if you want to <a href="http://raven-seo-tools.com/blog/2478/the-ethical-dilemma-of-providing-marketing-services-and-tools”>grow your business and create more wealth then try being flexible too.

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?

Yahoo Moving in on Twitter

Yahoo (moves toward the little blue bird, the center of attention at the party): Well, hello there, baby. You sure are popular here.

Twitter (BIG SMILE): Yep! And I have #friends @overthere and @overthere and—

Yahoo (slips an arm around the bird): How would you like to come back to my place for a little . . . integration?

Twitter: Whoa, buddy—this is why I carry an API at all times!

Back in July, Twitter was popping up everywhere: first a deal with Bing, then a deal with Google. Not to be left out, Yahoo made a real-time foray with OneRiot, but apparently they still had their eyes on the life of the party: Twitter.

Last month, Yahoo News integrated Twitter into its results for breaking news via a tabbed shortcut:

Apparently this went well, because now more of these Tweet results will be directly integrated into the SERPs—and they just might be doing this right:

However, Yahoo won’t be adding Twitter to all its results. According to the Yahoo Search blog,

So how does this work? We continuously keep track of queries searched on Yahoo!, and when there is a spike in interest in a topic, our search algorithm selects relevant tweets to show on the search results page, either as a part of the Yahoo! News shortcut or in a Twitter section, like in the examples above. The age of the tweets will vary – some will be a minute old, while others may be hours old. Our goal is to feature interesting Twitter content that is relevant to your query and complements the other results you find on the search page.

And if they do that, that might be just the way to integrate Twitter into SERPs: filtered for relevance, used only for topics generating a lot of discussion, and sequestered in a section of the SERP.

What do you think? Is this too little, too late for Yahoo? Or is this more than you want to see of Twitter in your SERPs?

China Accuses Google of Censorship (Seriously)

Google wants a book deal. And no, not so it can spill all the secrets of the Internet, but so they can offer electronic versions of books. But their proposed settlement faced so much opposition that they had to drop it, although they’re still pursuing other avenues. Aside from Yahoo and Microsoft, authors also challenged the Google book deal—including Chinese authors.

But the Chinese authors’ complaints, when indexed by Google, were listed as potentially harmful in SERPs, The Inquirer reports. Baidu gave no malware warning in its SERPs for the page. After readers reported this, the newspaper of the Communist Party accused the search engine of keeping its users away from the information. Meanwhile, an unnamed paper official said the section with the complaint was “maliciously blocked by Google.”

Yep. That’s right. The Chinese government’s newspaper accused Google of censorship. Now, we all know that the Chinese government would never censor the Internet, so clearly, we can definitely believe everything they say. Riiiight.

The facts: Google is serving a malware warning for that page. But, Google claims, that warning is handled by an algorithm. No human hands, etc. And we’ve seen in the past that’s the way this works.

So what do you think? Is Google trying to keep its users from seeing the Chinese authors’ complaints? Or is it just their crappy luck that their software flagged the page and now it’s getting even more attention?

via

Is Google Deliberately Sabotaging Bing’s Search Listing?

Despite the millions of dollars Microsoft is spending in an attempt to get us to use Bing, it’s apparently still well aware of the hand that feeds it.

A lot of searchers are still conditioned to begin all web browsing at Google, and Microsoft knows that it’s crucial that Bing is easily found. So, you can imagine their angst at seeing the following in a search for Bing:

Yep, the second result for Bing suggests searchers might wan to stick with Google for a while. Now, if you read the snippet, you’ll see why we even got to this situation–a power outage last Friday temporarily took out Bing’s Travel site.

Apparently, Google’s spider has been on vacation since then:

Notice, Google hasn’t re-indexed the page since July 4th! Do you smell a conspiracy theory? Since when does it take Google that long to revisit a site as popular as Bing?

Bing employees may not be crying foul, but they’re disturbed enough to send a public tweet to Google.

It’s kind of hard to puff up your chest and go cap in hand at the same time, don’t you think?

(via)

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Google: Pay No Attention to the Behemoth behind the Curtain

“Competition is just a click away,” Google Senior Competition Counsel Dana Wagner reminds us. “We are in an industry that is subject to disruption and we can’t take anything for granted.”

I hear him loud and clear. I spend hours a day fretting about the future of Google. (Um, NOT.) But Wagner is doing something few companies have to worry about these days: campaigning to remind us how vulnerable they are.

Then again, as the New York Times points out, convincing people (or the government) you’re no big deal is kind of a big deal when you’re one deal away from anti-trust proceedings, and

[handle] roughly two-thirds of all Internet searches, . . . [own] the largest online video site, YouTube, which is more than 10 times more popular than its nearest competitor, [a]nd last year . . . sold nearly $22 billion in advertising, more than any media company in the world.

Oh yeah, and that “two-thirds of all Internet searches”? That’s only in the US. In some countries, it’s more like 90%. Yep, totally threatened by their competition.

The Times says Dana Wagner is just the guy to be doing the convincing, too. As a former DoJ antitrust prosecutor, Wagner is highly respectful of his former colleagues. This is a marked contrast, says the Times, to “Microsoft a decade ago, whose executives would rarely hide their disdain for regulators.”

But the “boyish” Wagner, with his “aw-shucks grin,” hasn’t been enough to defray government scrutiny of Google’s hiring practices, its agreement with book publishers or ties between its board and Apple’s.

While Google has been spared a government investigation of its core advertising business, no one is fooled by its pretending to be weak:

Eyes are rolling, especially in reaction to the idea that Google is a relatively small player in a giant market. “They describe where they are in a market under a kind of a fairy-tale spun gloss that doesn’t reflect their dominance of key sectors,” said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy. “Google search is an absolute must-have for every marketer in the world.”

In the end, Wagner makes no bones about this. “We know we have a lot of people doing searches and we are very proud of that,” he says. “We are not asking for sympathy.”

What do you think? Does this fall under Google “protesting too much,” or is Google truly vulnerable? Will the government ever investigate AdWords? Will they like what they find?

74% of Employees Agree Their Social Media Antics Can Ruin Your Company’s Reputation

Have you had the big talk with your kids? You know, the one where you explain the risks and how one night of craziness can result in them throwing their life away?

Good. How about with your employees?

No, I’m not talking about the importance of abstinence/protection, I’m talking about the importance of ruining your company’s reputation via social media!

New data suggests you should sit down with them right this minute!

Yep, you read that chart correctly. A whopping 74% of your employees agree that their social media antics could damage your company’s reputation. With that in mind, you absolutely need to have the talk with your employees and let them know what they can and cannot do in social media.

If you need some reading material, might I suggest the rather good Radically Transparent.

(Hat-tip @MikeMoran)

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