There’s an interesting trend on Facebook. People use their real names and talk about real life events. While many of these same people want to be anonymous on most of the internet, they let those barriers down on Facebook. And it may be, in part, due to the fact that much of Facebook’s information is not available to search engines. Users can restrict their profiles to be seen by friends only. And that makes them more comfortable with sharing personal information.

On the other hand, there’s Google. You need SEO, page rank, and search results with Google. People only find you when they’re searching for you - or more likely searching for your product. If you want the walk-in customers, you still need Google. But if you want referral traffic, you’re increasingly going to need Facebook.

As more people use Facebook, it becomes a place to find product and service recommendations. Do you want to choose a random business from a generic search, or would it work better if you got reviews from friends? Most people are going to prefer help from a trusted source. As people post links to videos, news articles, or cool new things they found, others are seeing those links and clicking them.

Your marketing plan is going to need to accommodate both sites. If you want people to find your site through searches, you’ll need to continue optimizing your site for Google traffic. But as more people get their information from Facebook, you need to make sure you’re providing the content that people want, and make it easy for them to share it with friends.

image: morgueFile

Google seems to be a lightning rod for legal disputes nowadays, most recently coming into the legal limelight because of its ambitious book database project. However, Google, as well as its popular video-sharing website YouTube.com, have been absolved of several damages claims in several copyright infringement cases.
 
This ruling, however, only applies to U.S. damages claims, leaving the possibility wide open for foreign copyright holders to claim damages from Google.  Viacom Inc. had made a case earlier against Google for similar damage claims but the judge rules then as he ruled now, barring all claims.
 
Another door that is left wide open for those seeking at least some sort of restitution from Google involves statutory damage claims by those hosting live events that end up on YouTube. Live event promoters and all those involved could also see restitution of their profit losses, an amount that could end up somewhere in the billions of dollars.

Image: Flickr

As one of the most omnipresent entities on the Internet, Google has faced a slew of allegations from industry experts and competitors alike about its purported monopoly of the search engine business. While it has not yet been found in violation of monopoly laws, Google has yet another battle to fight, this time regarding Google’s plans to make an online database of books. 
 
Google’s $125 million settlement with several book publishers concerning copyright issues has raised several eyebrows. Antitrust supporters worry that Google’s plans to make an online database of out-of-print books would make Google the only supplier of these books, thus giving it a monopoly on these products.
 
Authors and publishers of books to be added to the database will have the final say on whether or not their works will be included in the project. Google would receive 37 percent of the revenue of book sales made through the project, as well as a cut of the revenue taken in thanks to advertisements running within the project.

Image: Flickr

If you’ve never seen Google Street View, you are missing out. The service takes online maps to a whole new level. Google Street View gives literally gives you a panoramic view of the street.

However, it hasn’t always been well received. Many individuals, businesses and government agencies have expressed complaints about a lack of privacy. One of the latest complaints was heard out of Germany — and Google has decided to listen.

According to multiple reports, Google will delete or edit part of their Google Street View images in Germany. Reportedly, the main focus on what will be deleted or edited are faces, license plates and house numbers.

It will be interesting to see if this begins a trend of Google editing what is shown on their Street View service. Perhaps Google will allow individuals, businesses and government agencies to opt-out of being shown. That may become complicated but Google Street View may keep causing problems if a solution isn’t reached.

Google Street View Car (Image: Flickr)

Yesterday, we went on an adventure to learn how to advertise on Bing. Today, we’ll take a closer look.

If you advertised on MSN Search or Live (or even Google Adwords, for that matter), marketing on Bing should be a breeze for you. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same.

Some Bing marketing features that should be noted:

• There is a tool that allows you to import campaigns from Google or Yahoo. With a few clicks, you can transfer over your entire marketing campaign — or at least copy it.

• To start out with, Microsoft asks for only five dollars. The controls on your marketing budget all seem to be very easy to use.

• You can advertise solely on the Bing or you can expand your reach to content advertising or even mobile search ads. (The mobile search ads aspect is in beta.)

• Bing’s demographics are listed. According to their stats, the average Bing user is a male 25-54 years old who is married and goes online every day. Their stats also claim that most people on Bing have purchased something online in the last thirty days.

• Bing’s reach is stated as 45,428,000 unique users and more than 1.3 billion page views.

• The appearance of the ads on Bing looks very much like what you’d see on Google or Yahoo.

Overall, marketing on Bing isn’t anything too out of the box. If you’ve marketed on Google or Yahoo, you can do so on Bing in your sleep. I’ll run a few marketing campaigns on Bing and I will report back with the findings.

Stay tuned!

Marketing on Bing (Image: Microsoft.com Screen Shot)

There are so many web sites and blogs and forums and social networks out there that it’s just plain hard to keep track of everything that’s being said about your business. You can try to keep up, but after a while it just gets overwhelming. Before you know it, your RSS reader has 1000 unread messages. Who has time to slog through all of that information just to see if someone’s talking about you?

Here are a few easy ways to monitor what’s being said about you online.

1. Monitor your business name on Twitter.
Now that Twitter’s search is up and running, it is really easy to watch for any mentions of your company name. In the search bar, type the term you want. For instance, I typed Bizzia. Once that result comes up, I can subscribe to the RSS feed for that query. And anytime someone mentions Bizzia, I can see it in my reader.

2. Subscribe to Google news alerts.
I use this one a lot. I have alerts set up that mention my web site name and url. That lets me see who’s linking to me or talking about my site. Additionally, I can see if someone is aggregating or stealing my site content. You can also use it to keep track of what’s going on in your industry, or even who’s talking about your competitors. I subscribe via email, but you can also use RSS to track items.

3. Watch blogs using Google blog search.
You might get a few duplicates from Google news if you tell it to search blogs, but sometimes you’ll get links here for blogs that you won’t get with news. You can exclude blogs from news and just use the blog search to keep track of what bloggers are saying about your company or product. If you’re lucky, you’ll find happy customers who mention you by name. If not, you have a chance to address concerns and turn an unhappy customer into a happy one.

4. Search Technorati.
You can use Technorati to search for mentions of your business, or you can create a ‘watchlist‘ using keywords or your company name. You can also see who’s linking to your web site and what they’re saying about you.

There are many other ways to keep track of who’s mentioning you online, but these are some of the easiest to set up and monitor. If you have something set up that you can’t live without, we’d love to hear about it. How do you keep track of conversations that can affect your business?

image: stock.xchng

Speculators continue to suggest that Google may eventually become the subject of anti-trust regulation on the part of the Justice Department’s antitrust division. The Justice Department’s promise last week to enforce regulations on monopolizing corporations strengthened these claims.

Several media companies and advertising groups have expressed concern over the search engine giant’s expansion from Internet search to several related markets. However, Google supporters argue that Google’s undeniable dominance in the Internet search business is in no way illegal unless Google tries to use its strength to stifle competition.

According to Google, the company would lose its dominance in the search engine business if a better alternative ever appeared. Until then, though, users tend to flock to Google because they find the search results the most relevant.

Image: Flickr

When it comes to marketing in the internet world, search engines remain king. A good placement on a search engine is worth the weight of the mouse clicks in gold. Which search engines are the ones you should target? Here are the top five search engines in terms of volume in the last week:

1) Google
Google is far and away the leader in the search engine industry. Combine all the other thousands of search engines on the planet and Google would still be bigger. Getting your website listed on Google is extremely important.

2) Yahoo
During the internet boom, Yahoo was the biggest search engine around. They used to be what Google is now. But while Yahoo has dropped far behind Google, they are still easily the second biggest search engine. Google and Yahoo combine to get more than 80% of the search traffic in the United States.

3) Ask
Like Yahoo, Ask used to be a heavier hitter in the industry. While now firmly in third place, they’re rebranded Ask.com website has many loyal supporters.

4) MSN
5) Live
Both Search.MSN.com and Live.com are owned by Microsoft. While they don’t represent a large amount of traffic now, Microsoft definitely working on it by pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into their search engines.

Live.com Search (Image: Flickr)

Disney’s new deal with Hulu to put their ABC shows on the site may hurt YouTube, which is owned by Google and has a revenue-sharing busines model, reports The Wall Street Journal. Google has felt pressure over the last several months to add better content to YouTube.

Disney’s deal with Hulu gives the site the right to distribute ABC’s content in exchange for a 30% stake in the company. Hulu already has deals with NBC and News Corp, which owns Fox. The deal with Disney further shows analysts that companies want more control over content distribution and involvement in the sites that YouTube allows. Although YouTube is still the king of video content in terms of traffic, many suspect that they’ll incur huge losses in 2009, while Hulu is gaining steam.

YouTube does have some deals in place to help attract more traffic, advertisers, and better content providers. Two of the top content providers found on YouTube are Sony Pictures Entertainment and MGM Studios. Disney hasn’t stated why they chosen Hulu over YouTube, but a Google rep has said that they weren’t willing to offer an equity stake in the company.

Picture via Hulu.com.

Billions of dollars has been spent on Google AdWords. Their advertising platform is flexible, affordable and has the potential to be extremely effective. Here are five marketing tips for successful AdWords campaign:

5) Precise Keywords
One common mistake is to go after too broad of a keyword. With a broad keyword, you’ll have a lot of competition and the price you pay per click will be higher. If you can find precise keywords that exactly fit your niche, you will be better off.

4) Start Small
A great aspect about AdWords is you set your own budget. No matter how large your company is, it never makes sense to pour in a lot of money before you figure out what is working. For at least the first month, you should be tight with your budget.

3) Test Different Creatives
Another great AdWords feature is you can test out all sorts of creatives. Test those creatives out to see if you can find something that’s a hit. You can also eliminate duds quite easily.

2) Landing Page Perfection
As important as your creatives are, your landing page is equally as important. Once a visitor clicks on your advertisement, the page they visit should be clean, simple and straightforward. It’s often a good idea to make a custom landing page for specifically for visitors who originate from AdWords.

1) Study the Results
AdWords can be effective but it’s also not for the lazy. You should track the success and failure at least once per day. That allows you to make changes to put more money into what is working and avoid wasting time and funds elsewhere.

Google AdWords (Image: Flickr)