I find this quite interesting and somewhat amusing. This was pointed out by Amit Singhal of Google, in a post called “This Stuff is Tough”.

What does Bing have to say?

And let’s go out on a limb here…Alta Vista?

I find it quite interesting that the most popular search engine only ranks in the top 3 in Alta Vista. I guess this proves that popularity only gets you so far in the world of SEO. No offense Google, I still love you.

Google announced today that they will include real-time search results in their search engine that will also work on iphone and android devices. Google real-time search results will show the most current news and information for your searches. They announced the real-time search results will include news, Tweets, blogs and more. If people are still unsure of the importance of Twitter for business, this should convince them. Twitter will be a great way for you to communicate with the world in real-time.

Also announced today was Google Goggles. Google Goggles allows you to search for things visually. Using your Android smartphone you are able to snap a picture and pull up search results based on the picture you snapped. This is very exciting! I have already installed it on my Droid!

These new technologies released by Google will present a new, but exciting challenge for web marketers. What is next to come in the world of search?

In today’s busy world, not everyone can check their analytics on a daily basis to ensure all is going well on the site. If your site is down…hopefully one of your loyal visitors will notify you, but that is not always the case. To help you monitor your website traffic to ensure nothing fishy is going on, Google has released Intelligence in Beta form within Google Analytics. Intelligence allows you to create custom alerts on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. For example, if you want an alert when your site receives no visits on any particular day, you can create an alert that will send you an email notifying you of the situation. This will give you a slight jump on contacting your hosting provider before you lose too much traffic.

Google has also provided several alert templates that are very easy to copy/modify in your alert list. Some of these alert templates include:

• Total visits decreases by more than 50%
• Unique visitors decreases by more than 50%
• Average bounce rate increases by more than 50%
• Goal conversion rate decreases by more than 50%

In less drastic cases as mentioned in my previous example, many of these pre-made templates can be very useful. For example if you see a drastic change in a specific goal day-over-day, there may be something wrong with your checkout process, email sign-up sheet, etc. depending on your conversions. To make things even easier, Google has created automatic alerts that will send you alerts if atypical traffic patterns arise as long as you opt-in to receive these alerts.

This is a great free tool to use as an aid in monitoring your everyday web traffic and site usage. I have incurred any problems with intelligence, but remember it is still in Beta and should not be an excuse to completely ignore your metrics.

Social media tools are really a time-saver…and they can help you avoid getting side-tracked. Website Magazine released some data regarding the most popular Twitter clients available. Without further delay, the list:

As I have said in previous posts, I am partial to TweetDeck. Although not uncommon anymore, TweetDeck allows management of multiple accounts, Facebook status updates, pictures and videos, easy RT, direct message and more. My favorite “tool” on-the-go is still Zannel. Although not considered an actual “tool”, it is very easy to update your status from a mobile device while including pictures and video with Zannel. Picking a tool for your social media marketing campaign is an important, but fun step!

In the past, social network demographics were mostly made up of 18-25 year olds, but those days are quickly changing. While the 18-25 demographic still has the highest rate of users, others are quickly growing. Check out these recent statistics provided be eMarketer.

What does this mean for marketers? I think many businesses have put social media marketing on the side burner because they did not believe their target demographic was active on the sites. It turns out that these businesses are most likely wrong. Although these statistics show changes over the past 30 days, the older age demographics have been turning to Facebook for the past several months.

Aside from age, businesses also avoid social media marketing because it is difficult to monetize its effectiveness. It is important to look outside the box with social media marketing. Companies are often set on seeing hard conversions because they can see the money coming in immediately, but soft conversions are key in the social networks. Pay attention to activity, followers, re-tweets, etc. Like never before advertisers can communicate with their audience on an extremely personal level. And while they may not turn into immediate sales, your company is building brand awareness, trust, loyalty and you will receive constant feedback from your customers.

If your company is staying away from social networks because of either of these reasons, it is time to reconsider. With an appropriate social media marketing strategy, this type of inbound marketing can pay off tremendously down the road. Start building your strategy today.

Have you tried the ‘inspired search’ engine, Spezify? Don’t worry, I hadn’t either until the other day. Spezify gathers their information from all media types and displays the results in a unique way. I don’t see Spezify as the next big thing in search…but it is pretty cool. It’s like taking universal search to the max. If you have a couple free minutes, check out the somewhat visually appealing, but not that extremely useful search engine, Spezify.

As you probably know, people spend a lot of time online. More importantly, these people are likely your customers. As the popularity of user generated content grows, the more chance your customers will have the chance to find reviews of your product or service. The bad news? People are more likely to post their comments of feelings if they had a bad experience than if they had a good experience.

You can’t stop them from creating the content, so the key is to monitor it. Anything has the chance to go viral, if it does and you haven’t taken the proper steps to resolve the issue, things can get ugly. Last month the Marketing Pilgrim made me aware of a video that went viral on YouTube. A music video called ‘United Breaks Guitars’ portrays an experience musician, Dave Carroll, experienced while flying United Airlines. Currently there are nearly 5 MILLION views for the video. This does not look good for the Airline. Also, it is important to understand, you don’t have to be a business the size of United for someone to make a video or post a blog about you. Even if it doesn’t go viral, you still may be losing business over bad product reviews.

So how do you handle something like this? First you have to be aware of it. Make sure you set up Google Alerts for your brand name or product name. This is an easy and free step in monitoring your online presence. Also make sure you monitor your brand name and products on micro-blogging sites such as Twitter. It is quite probable that before something goes viral there will be a Tweet about it somewhere. Second, make sure you handle the situation itself properly. In this case, United Airlines refused to pay for the broken guitar. David Carroll already had the attention of viewers and decided to post a follow up to the video. I’m not convinced that United understands the power of a viral video…and now a viral figure. This will not put United out of business, but a video like this could have enough power to force a small or medium size business to close their doors.

Bottom line is a business must monitor their online reputation. For a small business it could take less than 10 minutes a week, while companies the size of United will have to provide much more time to online reputation management. Comcast began monitoring their online reputation in the early stages of Twitter. They obviously recognized the importance and handled the situation in a timely and professional manner. Instead of further negative exposure, the blogs posts about Comcast quickly turned positive.

It is important to understand you can’t resolve every single issue that is posted online about your product, but a quick response to serious ones can certainly help. For more information about online reputation management contact us today.

A deal between the #2 and #3 search engines was announced today. Microsoft and Yahoo! have agreed to a 10 year deal, hoping to compete with search giant, Google. Some of the details about of the deal are:

• Shortly after the deal is finalized in early 2010, Yahoo! results will show ‘Powered by Bing’
• Yahoo! will continue to receive 88% of the search-generated ad revenue for the initial 5 years
• The deal will allow Yahoo to focus on other areas such as display, the mobile web, and audience properties
• Bing should be able to improve search results, as they will be able to gather information from the newly acquired Yahoo! users
• Everyone at Ask is very happy [RT @dannysullivan over at ask.com, they're prepping the "we're #3" banners]
• Danny Sullivan also provided a great chart at Search Engine Land detailing more changes.

My Question is Obviously…What Will This Do for Search?

At this point much of this is up in the air, but I do have some guesses. It’s a given that focus on Yahoo! optimization will move to Bing. Because they will providing the Y! organic results, optimization should be the same. I also assume that there will be overall changes in Bing optimization practices as the technologies of the 2 engines will apparently be blended. As technologies change, search professionals must adjust. As far as market share goes, I still doubt much will be taken from Google, but I do think that the general public will see this as a positive given the general idea that 2 heads are better than 1. I predict that some people will try switching away from Google simply because of the merger, which may stick given the new Bing look.

As for PPC, I am unsure. According to the Search Engine Land chart (which will be continually updated throughout the day), advertisers may have to purchase ads at both Yahoo! and Bing although Yahoo! will be targeting ‘premium’ users. For the most part, I don’t see a huge problem with this, as it really isn’t a change. There will still be users at both engines, so if you want to reach them through paid advertisements, it’s a necessity. I don’t foresee much of a change in CPCs, at least in the near future. '

What About Google?

Google is not the type to just sit back and let this all happen without some sort of fight. I assume they will have changes or ‘news’ to release in the near future. They do not want their users to have the perception that Bing results will be better because they are now combining technologies with Yahoo!. As I stated before, I don’t expect them to lose much, if any market share because of this deal. I assume that our potential clients will still come to us saying ‘I want my site to be found on Google’ not, ‘I want my site to be listed on the top search engines including Google, Yahoo!, Bing, and Ask’. Only time will tell, but Google always has something up their sleeve…even if it is not evil.

What else?

Well the first thing that comes to my head…Is Yahoo! really ready for this?

Honestly, I don’t think anyone can really be ready for that. But, we at protocol 80 hope the best for Bing and Yahoo!

According to a post at the Marketing Pilgrim, Baidu is experiencing great success as a search engine in China. Baidu currently holds 64.5% of the Chinese market, up from 62.3%, according to Bernstein & Co. It will be very interesting to watch these numbers over the next several years as more of the population gains internet access. Recent reports show that only about 13.4% of the Chinese population has access to the Internet…while only an an astonishing 5% of the Chinese Internet population uses the Internet from work.

What does this mean for advertisers? If China isn’t one of your target demographics, then nothing right now. If you aim to reach Chinese users, it is time to optimize! This is extremely important for B2B customers who are looking to reach that market. The Baidu search engine can be optimized much like Google optimization a few years back. Baidu pays attention to Meta tags, content, links, etc. Gaining links is currently easier than Google, as quality does not really play a roll. Baidu will look for a variety of links from various domains. For best results the anchor text of the links should use Chinese characters. Another best practice for the Baidu search engine is for the pages to have all content in the Chinese language. Using a translate tool on an English site will not do if you are looking to have success in Baidu. A best case scenario is to get a .cn top level domain if you can get your hands on one. They were originally designated for only Chinese businesses, but they are now available to the rest of the world.

For Baidu SEO, remember your best practices and implement strategies that would have been used in past versions of Google. But, don’t put all of your eggs in one basket! Just like Google and other search engines have changed their algorithms over the years to improve user experience, Baidu will certainly change as well. Keep up on the Baidu SEO news and adjust accordingly.

Contact us for Baidu SEO consulting or for questions about general web marketing.

How secure are your passwords? I know…its much easier to remember a password if it is simply the name of your first born or your favorite dog, but it is too easy to guess. This not only occurs for personal passwords, but many businesses don’t urge their employees to have strong passwords either. For example, I worked for a Real Estate Title Service company awhile back where sensitive information was stored on a daily basis. Yes, they took the proper steps in destroying their paper, but the passwords for each employee were not regulated. I am not saying they didn’t have security measures in place, but this is one area where they lacked. Employees designated their own passwords which had to be changed every couple of months. But, there were no specifications set for the passwords. It was easy for an employee to make their password as simple as their first name and year they were born. You may as well not have a password if it is not strong. Here are a 5 tips for stronger passwords.

1. Do not use personal information such as your significant other’s name, pet names, or your birthday…these are far to easy to guess.
2. Do not share your password with anyone. The is especially important if your business passwords are the same or similar to your personal passwords. Along with this, do not provide passwords through e-mail or based on e-mail requests. Also…do not put a post it note with your password on your monitor. This may sound silly, but it is surprising how much it happens!
3. Use capitalization, a special character and a number in every password (as long as it’s allowed). These are much more secure than a standard letter and number password.
4. Do not put your password into sites that you are not familiar with. Phishing has become an increased problem as the popularity of social media has grown. Along these same lines, be cautious when you use passwords on computers or networks that you do not control. Examples of this would be coffee shops, internet cafes, computer labs, airports, etc. Keystroke logging devices can be created or purchased by people and are easily installed on these types of computers. Hackers also have the ability to create ‘fake’ Wi-Fi spots where a user may think they are logging onto a secure Wi-Fi spot, but really they are logging onto a network created maliciously for the purpose of stealing information.
5. Change your passwords on a regular basis. This is very easy and can save you problems in the future.

These are obviously not the only things that will help keep your passwords secure, but these are easy steps to take in creating strong passwords.