Are they swearing off China? Not remotely. It's too juicy to pass up.

But the new guidelines – drawn up by "leading Internet companies" along with human rights organizations, investors and academics – do lay out some do's and don'ts of the sharing of personal information in these emerging markets, the AP reports.

Only this time around, it's not with private companies who want you to buy their stuff, but governments that want to shut you up. Okay, maybe not you. But someone equally as opinionated – who is not as fortunate to live in a country as rabidly defensive about free speech.

The Global Network Initiative guidelines direct companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft to…

1. Consider human rights issues ahead of time as they decide which countries to operate in and what services to offer.
2. Train employees and develop mechanisms to resolve conflicts.
3. Require written requests for information, along with the names and titles of the authorizing officer.

…Ultimately figure out on their own which "practices" to change in order to comply. Because the guidelines are just, well, lines in the sand, and do not ban any specific
conduct, many of them are open to interpretation – and they are certainly not enforced by any third party.

Google and Yahoo have come under the gun for some of their practices in China – Google for censoring about 2 percent of its search results and Yahoo for turning over emails that led to the imprisonment of two Chinese journalists – though the repercussions of that gaff have already been settled, wrote Wired.

He may be all cute and cuddly with the kiddies, but online, Brad Pitt is one dangerous dude.

He and Beyonce have just been rated Public Enemy No. 1 & 2 in terms of dangerous web searches, as cybercriminals use their names the most often to plant viruses in users’ computer, according to security software company McAfee Inc.

A search for "Brad Pitt screensavers," for instance, turns up website results in which over half are identified as containing malicious downloads with spyware, adware, and potential viruses. "Beyonce ringtones" yields sites that promote misleading offers used to gather consumers’ personal information.

Justin Timberlake, Heidi Montag, and Mariah Carey took the remaining spots in the Top 5.

In 2007, Paris Hilton was considered the most dangerous celebrity, with Britney Spears at fourth, writes MarketingVOX.
This year, neither name makes the top 20. Just goes to show you: today you’re Miss Danger, tomorrow you’re a struggling starlet settling for book deals.

Yahoo and Google are still going full steam ahead on their awesome search deal, according to the Seattle Times. The two companies decided to pair up in June, and let the US Justice Department decide if their love was legal – even though they didn’t have to.

In a July 15 hearing, a Senate Judiciary Committee "expressed concerns" that the coupling would remove an important check on Google’s dominance of the $65 billion online advertising market. How goes it? Well, the deal would mean that Yahoo would show Google ads (which incidentally are more expensive) and get a share of the revenue alongside its own promotions.

By the by, did you know that the search market is actually benefiting from the slower economy? Advertisers are more into search than anything else these days. Online advertising in general, too.

Anybody who has taken a leisurely cruise through the Southeastern USA can’t help but notice the plethora of clever church signs by the side of the road. I’ve got my favorites: "Come in, we’re prayer-conditioned" –during the scorching heat wave last week.  Even better-timed, during this period of economic woe and penny-pinching: "Wal-Mart is not the only saving place."

And though most of us in the Bay Area would hesitate to agree with the wisdoms of the Bible Belt, perhaps we’ve got something to learn from these messages. I mean, you’ve got to give them credit for placement, targeted reach, timing. And there’s something about the juxtaposition of the old-skool lettering and the modern rhetoric and makes you think, hey, maybe these god people are up to something interesting.

Ahead of the times? Maybe. Having only recently realized how dependent I’ve become on Google, this sign in particular struck me —>

It’s not the first time the Google hegemony has been questioned. See here for an interesting article from Mike Troiano, the founding CEO of Ogilvy’s Interactive and Brandscape, on "why Google sucks." You can also ask our own JES the same question for a more, um, uncut response.

So, at the risk of sounding like SJP, I "couldn’t help but wonder:" where is the best place to find answers to our questions? Is it our peers – as seen by the growing popularity of online forums and product/service reviews? Is it BT marketers, with their fancy-schmancy recommendation algorithms? A search engine alternative? Or – dare I say it – should we be turning to a higher power?

You know, like Ouija.

From the Great British Isle: a report called "The Impact of Social Networking in the UK" says that social networks are going to give search engines a run for their (advertising) money. Emma Thelwell of The Telegraph writes,

Social networks know far more about their users than
search engines and traditional portals. They could, for example, choose
to show an advertisement only to men who live in Leeds, aged between 34
and 55, who enjoy Italian food. This information
could command much higher advertising rates than the straight forward
‘sponsored links’ that are shown on Google.

Seriously. Just as messaging may be replacing email, ad dollars on portals may shift towards social network sites, especially if they can get their act together and improve their search and navigation capabilities, making company/brand information easier to find and therefore boosting targeted
advertising campaigns. The current state of search on social network sites is "appalling", according to Robin Goad, a co-author of the report, so there is obviously a lot of room for improvement.

But let’s not put all the blame on the technology, or lack thereof. As Nick Burns of SNL’s Your Company’s Computer Guy might ask, "It’s the email that’s stupid, not you right?"

Right on. Even if places like MySpace, Facebook, and (let’s give the Brits a shout-out) Bebo even had sophisticated search capabilities, would users even know how to use it correctly? Yet another study from the UK reports on the habits of the "Google Generation" — concluding that "kids born
since 1993 aren’t quite the Internet super-sleuths they’re sometimes
made out to be." Their information-finding skills are not quite up to par. They might be better with technology, but they also "tend to use much simpler
applications and fewer facilities than many imagine." Not that I was imagining a 14-year old searching though the annals of the Library of Congress for primary historical documents, but we’d still like to think that they’re using relevant search terms, reading text instead of just looking at pictures, and not copying and pasting all the time. But it just ain’t so.

The Catch-22 of it all is that as search improves on social networks, which is considered this generation’s "space", traditional sources of information like libraries are going to have to be careful not to "invade" the space used primarily for social (and now commercial) functions. Should the search market be fragmented? Will we eventually have a different portal for every industry or category?

Hitwise just released a study that shows search engines to be the source for nearly a quarter of newspaper website traffic, reports Mediapost. In March, there were a record 59.5 million unique visitors to online news sources, possibly due to the purchase of news-related keywords or more search-engine friendly article titles.

But: red light! Due to user fragmentation, traffic to the top 10 News and Media websites – like the New York Times – is actually decreasing. Moreover, increase in traffic to alternative news sources like blogs and is not necessarily driving an increase in ad revenue.

Categories that are profiting from the change in way users are finding information include health and medical (43%), education (41%) and food and beverage (38%). More importantly, retail sites are getting 25% of their traffic from search engines, with the top ten paid search advertisers being retail or comparison shopping sites like eBay, Amazon, and Shopping.com.

Says comScore Search Solutions’ James Lamberti:

It’s clear that retail e-commerce sites are the most aggressive in using sponsored search to drive traffic to their sites. Given that retail e-commerce is now a $100 billion a year industry, it’s not surprising that top online retailers are willing to bid for premium placement at the major search engines.

What categories need to play catch-up? How about business and finance, at a lowly 14%, and computers and Internet (11%)? But – if this is because people seeking information on these topics are using more personalized methods rather than blindly typing in "pizza hut" or "girls gone wild" into an engine, all the better. Will search become more focused in other categories? If so, how will SEO firms adapt their methods? 

This has gone too far, I thought yesterday. It was all over the news that media outlets like The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN,
and Fox News were buying Virginia Tech related keywords on major search
engines. Some called this the modern-day equivalent of hiring a barker to yell
“Extra, Extra! Read all about it!” on street corners. Some called it downright
tasteless. My initial reaction was to side with the second camp.

But wait a second. Believe half of what
you hear, I could hear my mother saying. So before I got all upset
about this, I thought I’d check it out for myself.

Like Kaiser Soze – poof – they were
gone.

Nothing on Yahoo, and the only sponsored
result I found on Google was from a news organization in the U.K. called The First Post. Argh, Brits! At first I thought they purposely removed
it because so many bloggers
had pointed it out as “crass” or “tapping in on a business purpose on a tragedy.”
However, if it really is a business-driven action, maybe they’re down because
it’s no longer a front-page headline?

Social networks like Facebook are also creating
online bulletin boards as a method of keeping friends and classmates up to
date both on their whereabouts and thoughts on the tragedy.  Poof! Faith in humanity – and compassion – restored.

Back to business. The
NewsFactor
Business Report, that is. And the problem of local search.
Here we get another perspective on the issue – the
numbers.

In the TNS Media Intelligence
study of category ad spend allocated to the Internet, it is computer
products (18.6%), financial services (17%), diet and fitness (26.1%), and the
Internet itself (51.2%) that have the highest
percentage of their budgets for online advertising. But people, at least where
I come from, do not spend their days buying gadgets, stocks, and diet books.
They are working, playing, shopping, and eating.

Let’s talk eating. San Francisco is kind of an anomaly, but it’s my home and I’ll use it as
an example if I want to. The state
of the restaurant industry, despite taking some hard
hits, I would deem “healthy to quite healthy.” And restaurants are a prime
example of local business – particularly by neighborhood. The decision to eat
at a particular restaurant is not as impulsive as that mini-bag of Skittles at
the checkout counter of the grocery store, but certainly less in-depth than the
purchase of a new car. Either way, it is still a consumer decision – a decision
that, as we now know, can be made or broken by the quantity and quality of
targeted advertising campaigns.

Yet only 0.9% of all restaurant
advertising budgets go towards online ads, and only about 5% of small
and medium-size businesses are using paid search (Kelsey Group). In this case, 2 plus 2 is not coming out to 4. In
fact, it’s not even pushing 3. Local restaurants and bars are lagging behind in
their online & paid search efforts, and they are not going to increase them
unless they feel confident that they will see results from their local
community.

Where are these going to come from? How about a 4-5%
click-through rates – as opposed to the average at a lowly 0.5%? That’s what
Ted Morgan of Skyhook Wireless, the company that is attempting to bring local
search technology to the forefront, is shooting for. So far, they have mapped
the 100 biggest U.S.
cities (70% of the country) and enabled marketers to locate the exact
coordinates of any device with a Wi-Fi antenna, which means PCs and more importantly,
cell phones. The location-based Internet search toolbar is called Loki and
allows users to find services and product that are geographically relevant. This
kind of technology makes me go Whoa, Keanu-style, and makes consumers go, “Hey, that’s
right on my way home. I think I’ll check it out.”

What do you think? Is this the future knock, knock,
knocking on our door?

Methinks, too, that once restaurants jump on board,
retail food stores and department stores, which now also are on the low scale
in terms of online ad spend, at 2.1 and 4.4% respectively, will not be far
behind.

Research firm Kelsey Group is blowing the whistle on the
local-search market, saying that it will hit $13 billion in 2010. Two years ago
it was at a mere $3.4 billion – or a glint in the marketer’s eye, you might
say.

So it goes in this Ad Age article
which explores the multiple possibilities surrounding local search. Admitting
that the actual implementation of the system is “beguilingly difficult,”
Fredrick Marckini, founder of search-engine-optimization firm iProspect,
reveals that creating an efficient local search campaign is going to be a
serious challenge. “It looks simple, but it turns out to be really
complicated.”

Yes, yes.

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Well, the big search guys are already up on it. They
(Google, Yahoo, MSC, and Ask.com) been working on geographical targeting,
limiting search by city or metro area, but haven’t yet zeroed in on users who
are within say, a quarter-mile of the merchant. They’re also dealing with lack
of information. Listings, hours, driving directions, etc. are easily obtained
from big retailers, but smaller businesses are tricky little guys who elude
their crawlers. Also, in terms of user-generated content and reviews,
categories outside of the usual restaurant, bar, and boutique reviews are few
and far between.

Back to Rome.  I’d like to take a minute to suggest a thesis topic for some struggling
American sociology student who has not found their truly amazing and “original”
idea. Chew on this: the need for automated local search system is an
intrinsically American problem. Many other countries are composed of such
highly localized communities with in-depth knowledge of their own history,
residents, traditions, and economy, that the concept of local search might not
even exist. Looking for the best place to buy organically grown kale? Eh, my
boy Giuseppe’s wife’s cousin has a farm, che bello, and his stand is next to
the tabacchi off of what used to be Via
Castiglia but the sign got knocked over, but just turn right at the bike shop, which
by the way, just got in some comfortable seats that your parts will thank you
for tomorrow. I can’t even begin to tell you how many “local searches” I made
in Asia, too, began with “Well…” and ended with a
serendipitous surprise.

Wow, I just got really distracted by the organic kale and subsequent journey it took me on. But really, to make a point, that is the point. We fear distraction. No, I take that back. The sheer volume of forwarded "distractions" like this one is proof enough. No, we fear uncontrollable distraction (but not as much as we fear uncontrollable irregularity, of course). American culture is inherently selfish in nature – we want what we want, and how we want it – and it is also extremely efficient, perhaps because of that. Local search is, in fact, going to blow up, not only because we are creatures of habit, creatures of personal taste, but because we are also creatures of convenience.

Good timing, Jason Lee Miller. In his March 7 article on Web Pro
News called “Know Thy Market: Beyond the Click-through,” he states that search
marketers tend to focus more on the click-through than their relationship with
their customer:

Think of it this way: in the cartoons of old, two characters
are stranded on a small desert island. It doesn’t take long until one sees the
other as a pork chop, and the pork chop doesn’t appreciate it one bit. If
customers become dollar signs in your hungry approach to them, they’ll sense
it, and avoid you the best they can. It’s important to eat, everyone knows, and
click-throughs and bottom lines are what make the whole endeavor worth it. But
there’s an art to seduction, and if achieved, loyalty results – closing one
sale one time has little bearing on long-term success. Success, ultimately,
takes closing many sales many times over.

Branding. Presence. Target markets. Starting to sound
familiar? Being in the right place at the right time, and, as Martin says, over
and over and over again. Search is overrated: “People don’t just go to Google
and type in a word they’ve never heard of.” How did they get to that point? A
social bookmark? Viral video? A blog? Finding those factors – and quantifying
them – is how things are going to work from now on.