MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

A couple of weeks ago it looked very much as if Google would acquire Digg (at the not insignificant price tag of $200 million). Many people in the search/social marketing world thought that the deal was pretty much done and dusted, people such as Gyutae Park, from Winning The Web, who went so far as to compose a list enumerating the ways in which the Google-Digg deal would affect the internet. Even though the deal fell through or was called off, or whatever (who knows what’s going on the world of virtual acquisitions?), Park still believes that a Google-Digg is on the cards, and he is not alone.

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Advertisements are not my favourite things in the world. It’s not that I find them intrusive (aside from pop ups and unsolicited emails), and it’s not really that I find them annoying (aside from pop ups, unsolicited emails and property pamphlets), it’s that by and large I find ads to be bland, insipid and uninspired. In some instances it’s very difficult to believe that the ideas were actually sanctioned and given the go-ahead by a committee of supposedly informed decision makers. The thing that makes it all so much sadder is that you just know that someone was very excited and very proud of the concept. Take the Meerkat in the South African Vodacom ad, for instance, many people thought that it was brilliant, cool, funny and marketing genius. But an equal number of people, myself included, thought that it was ridiculous, inane and epitomised the gunk that is scraped off the bottom of the barrel of creativity.

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In mid-June, an NBC host died of a heart attack, and not unusually, the network delayed reporting it so that his family could be alerted. But the news broke on Wikipedia prior to the announcement on television, because a junior network employee updated a Wiki biography – and changed it to the past tense. The story probably got out of hand because people who heard the rumour Googled it, landed on the Wiki biography on the first Google SERP, noted the tense, and spread the news.

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Nicholas Carr wrote a very long, very interesting article in which he posed the question: Is Google making us stupid? In it he alleges that the way in which Google structures its information encourages us to skim over data rather than absorbing it. He says that after years of chasing down information on the Net in this way, his attention span is such that he can no longer read long bits of text, that his mind starts to wander after 2 or 3 pages, and that deep reading has become a chore, not a pleasure.

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We live in an age of gizmos and gadgets, where the people with the latest and most expensive toys get to lead a growing group of technophiles. Technophilia, far from being the depraved practice it sounds, is a much coveted and envied state throughout the world. As revealed in a report by consumer and media research firm, Scarborough Research, these are the people who drive trends and influence the behaviour of others, especially online. According to the report, this makes them important people to watch.

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When Google first began, no one knew quite what to make of it. They had a policy of “Do no evil”, they didn’t conform to traditional business practices, had unique hiring practices and took pride in their inherent quirkiness. For instance, they’re now famous for their dedication to staff satisfaction with their free lunches, massages and relaxation rooms. They also allow employees one day a week to work on whatever project they want.

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It looks like Google have pulled out some contradictory rabbits from their own black hat. They accuse others of following ‘black hat’ tactics, while it appears they are following similar procedures themselves. Should we believe everything they say? It appears that soon, SEO specialists will have to change their job title just to stay under the radar of Google’s incongruent accusations.

They appear to have set these rules and guidelines for online marketers and the entire industry to follow, especially when gathering backlinks, and then left evidence of being the biggest culprits by not obeying their own rules. Google have been bartering off backlinks to their own blog, an act which they say is ‘not best practice’. So is the ground that they are setting for us all that trustworthy?

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It’s refreshing to see a company stick to their ethos and honour their mission statement.

Of course, Performics was never going to be a massive moneyspinner for the giant, but the signal sent out to the SEO industry of impartiality is to be commended.

More often than not, spin teams are wheeled out in these situations to justify sitting on both sides of a corporate fence, but G has taken the high road and sold it off.

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Not only are women consumers, they are intelligent consumers. Their brains are wired differently to men, and they think and process information differently. Very few marketers, online and off, recognise this and tailor their campaigns to suit women, or create campaigns that are gender neutral.

Think of all of the adverts out there, especially for cars and beer. Do any of them really take female consumption into account? As a woman, I’m going to go with No.

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Google has a new Benchmarking feature! At last you can compare your data to that of the rest of your industry, or any other industry for that matter.

You can evaluate data such as number of visits to your site, number of page views, number of pages per visit, bounce rate, average time spent on your site, and new visits.

To obtain this information though, you have to be willing to share your data anonymously. See the message below that would have appeared in your AdWords and/or Analytics accounts.

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