You know when someone writes a post entitled ‘On the increasing uselessness of Google‘ that all is not right in Web Land. Citing another blogger who ran into all sorts of junk when searching for a new dishwasher:

Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you’re done. On the web, no-one knows you’re a content-grinder.

The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed. It hearkens back to the dark days of 1999, before Google arrived, when search had become largely useless, with results completely overwhelmed by spam and info-clutter.

Well said, dishwasher-seeker. The first page of Google is no longer the clean, clear landscape it once was. Too many companies have realized that finding consumers with AdWords alone is like fighting a dragon with a dull-tipped sword, face on. Best to sneak around from behind and attack from a better place: hence, the raging popularity of so-called content strategy in online marketing.

It’s not just SEO anymore, clearly. With content farms run by Demand Media and sketchy link-buying techniques, everyone is in a race to own keywords, and they’ll do it any way they can. But what are consumers doing? That’s right, they’re getting wise and giving up. People are no longer looking on Google for answers, writes the Washington Post. They’re using (gasp!) Twitter and (another gasp!) Facebook, putting out queries and requests for recommendations from friends — and getting exactly what they need.

So here’s my proposal. To companies: Follow the consumer; find an authentic way to reach them via social media. To consumers: Know how to filter out the junk in Google results, and don’t rely solely on your “friends” to solve your problems. To that next group of bright-eyed engineers or MBAs leaving school: build the framework for a series of vertical search engines, and put them in a central directory until everyone knows the destinations by heart. Searching for a new dishwasher? Then go to the Kitchen Appliance Search Site. Sometimes it’s better to completely reinvent something — using a tried and true concept — then fix what’s broken.

The Post notes that Microsoft thinks the next big thing is going to be social search — scouring data from user accounts to show up in basic search. Okay, that might work. But I think there’s still a market out there for qualified advice, for “real” articles written by scholars, field experts, and yes even marketers and salespeople.

Last year we saw a enormous amount of deals struck between search giants and real-time data providers, aka social networks and microblogging sites.

• In October, Microsoft signed search deals with Facebook and
  Twitter to integrate real-time status updates and tweets
  into Bing's search results.
• Google followed suit in early December with the announcement that public updates from social media sites Twitter, Facebook and MySpace will start showing up in Google's general search results, a particularly nifty feature for smartphones.
• Even more proof in the pudding, this time from M&A (via TheDeal.com): Real-time search engine developer OneRiot Inc. closed its $7 million Series C, bringing the total venture capital raised to $27 million.

But real-time search is "not there yet," as proven by the magnitude 4.1 earthquake that took place in our ever-shifting city this week. At 10am on Thursday, a small earthquake shook the Bay Area, and within 6 minutes Google search was reflecting the event in the form of Twitter updates, according to Stephen Shankland
at CNET. (Google claims it was just 2 minutes, and Shankland attributes the lag to the fact that he was in Detroit at the time. And clearly, people in Detroit don't give a hoot about California.)

But while we can quibble over minutes, the takeaway here is that real-time search is certainly where it's at for the coming year, but it's going to be up to marketers to figure out how that can work for their brand. To be honest, it's a little scary that a real-time tweet about your company from some Joe in Minnesota can trump your hard-earned spot for your company website, blog, newsletter, video, or special deal — though it does introduce some exciting possibilities, like having access to top sellers and current sentiment data, and eventually, pairing real-time news with real-time ads.

It's not the sexiest topic, but it's got to be addressed. Search marketing is the rising star of this century, but it's also one of the most poorly misunderstood online marketing tactics. Without naming names, or should I say taking names, clients sometimes just don't get what it is, what they want to do with it, and what they can (reasonably) expect from a search marketing campaign.

Along comes Josh at Search Engine Watch, to unravel the mystery of how to discuss search with clients.

Some of the highlights:

• Develop a unified search strategy. Don't compartmentalize your approach
  because you have a paid search team and an SEO team. Many clients and
  agencies still try to keep these strategies separate…Begin with meetings, status calls, and sharing keyword lists. This gets
  the conversation going and forces the groups to work together
  cohesively.
• Local search is important for everyone. Locations, phone numbers, services offered, hours of operations, and reviews add relevancy to your listing for brand searches and
  service-related searches.
• Social media strategies definitely can be used for SEO benefit, so don't be afraid to
  poke around your client's social media plans and ask to be included…As long as you're thinking about it from the context of search and not
  as a way to steal business, this is a valuable conversation to have,
  and your client will welcome it.

You'd think that with retail sales plummeting and the Donnie Darko economy rearing its ugly head that the retail sector would be the first to embrace search engine marketing – outside of paid search, that is.

But according to a study by Conductor (which is, however, an SEM company, so take some salt) the vast majority of retailers and consumer facing brands in the Fortune 500 have little to non-existent visibility in natural search results for their most advertised keywords.

I did a little search for "smartphone" and found the only mention of a retailer, or manufacturer for that matter – outside of Shopping results – on the first page was from Microsoft Windows Mobile, and Palm. What is wrong with this picture? I know it's complicated, and it takes a little bit more time to get your product in natural search, but really kids – Microsoft? Palm?

A few more tidbits that Retailer Daily picked up from Internet Retailer's coverage:

• Within the retail category, accommodation and food service companies had the highest
  score; mining and oil exploration companies had the lowest score.
• Gap Inc., which focuses its paid search campaign fairly on about
  3,000 terms, was the highest scoring company. Office Depot, which bids
  on about 33,000 terms, trailed closely.
• Retailers generally bid on far more paid search keywords than other
  companies, averaging of 24,700 versus 5,100 for all companies in the
  study.
• A few online-only retail companies (e.g., Amazon, eBay) bid
  regularly on 250,000 to 750,000 terms.

 Among all of the things that are the LEAST LIKELY to happen – including the IAB saving online advertising from plummeting along with the rest of the country, Palin actually helping McCain get votes tomorrow – who would have though it would be the "merging" of two Internet giants?

The deal, which caused a lot of concern – and open mouths – last spring when it was announced, may be thwarted by the US Department of Justice as the two companies fail to convince it that it won't have anticompetitive effects on the online search advertising industry. In fact, they are failing so badly that the chances that the alliance will actually be formed are looking "increasingly slim," according to the Financial Times.

Maybe the letter that ANA sent last month to the DOJ – stating that the deal will likely diminish competition, increase
concentration of market power, limit choices currently available, and
potentially raise prices to search advertisers – had some effect. Or maybe that strong, surly Texas Congressman bringing up privacy issues did the trick.

Either way, apparently this dance isn't for everyone – only the sexy people.

If the deal does fall through, Yahoo's going to have to do some serious soul-searching and maybe even consider acquiring Time Warner's AOL or think about going back to Microsoft – if they'll have them, that is. And Google? WWGD?

I take it back.
Maka-Maka is not the worst Web name to date. It’s Android.

If you don’t
know what that is, well, as Roudy the last living American cowboy would say,
“god bless ya’.”

Google’s big
announcement about their open mobile service platform that will be implemented
in the second half of 2008 was definitely the big news of yesterday, and it was
splashed all over the news. And I’m not going to honor it much by talking about
it here. Not even a link, mind you! You can find it yourself.

The only thing I
have to say about it is I’m not surprised. Let’s recap, shall we?
Apple =
products.
Google = services.
Why would they make a G-phone when real telephone
companies, like Motorola and Samsung, have already jumped onboard and started
creating competition for the iPhone?

So, instead of
creating more print about a platform with such a displeasing name and quest for
world domination global presence,
I’m going instead to talk about something completely different.

Duck, duck,
duck, goose. Macro, macro, macro, micro.

Maybe you
thought microsites were just a fad. A product of an overactive imagination that
would fade. Well, think again. Used in the right way, they can be extremely
beneficial. Paul Smith wrote a brief
article that outlined some of the ways you can use them “for fun and
profit.”

1. Explore new technologies. In other words, play around without screwing up your whole website.
2. Smaller, but better, faster. Quickly put in place, so you can be on top of trends. Also, room to experiment with creative that you might not want to use on your website itself.
3. Targeting. Take, for example, MTV’s 300 microsites for specific shows. Imagine the measurement you can get from that. “A focused message can mean a focused audience,” says Paul. Video-ad microsites, I think, will also emerge as a trend this year.

And with the
holiday season looming, many marketers are going to be throwing microsites on
the table as possibilities for offline campaigns, as a way of bringing people
to the Web. The New York Times article Movies,
TV, and Magazines Work Together in Web Campaign details some of these
methods, noting that “the taste in the marketplace is strong” for campaigns with
significant online presences. Being careful, of course, not to “litter the
world” with too many of them.

Stephan Spencer on the CNET blog writes that "Search marketers and people involved in SEO must pay attention to the
importance of the new opportunities of blended search offers."

What is he talking about? Daquiris and frozen margs? No, he’s referring to the need to incorporate elements
like video, images, and blogs on an optimization campaign. As the Web expands beyond traditional pages, you’ve got to cover all your bases.

If you don’t have a nice Excel spreadsheet set up yet, now is the time.

Here is a cunning response to a Search Insider blog post on "blended SEO."

SEO is linguistics, and the use of those terms in all forms of a business’ digital marketing. Rather than studying the Google algo, SEOs should be studying the
vernacular of markets. Google is more than competent at giving you the
first page for any well researched high conversion / non-competitive
phase you place in any form of content.

Coding tricks in SEO are becoming more and more irrelevant as real
SEOs determine that this is about “sales/conversions” not “traffic” and
therefore ultimately “cultural linguistics.”

For a more efficient campaign, whether it be across cultures of nation and ethnicity, age, gender, or more narrowly defined social groups, it is necessary to go undercover and learn the lingo. Tagging a YouTube video of your latest spot as "wicked cool" may work in the Northeast, but not California. "Hella cool" might be more comprehensible. You’ll have to do the legwork and find out the British equivalent; I can’t be bothered.

Worth a bother, however, is an article on aimClear called The Respectable Social Media Marketing Evangelist that gives a good summary of the panel at Search Marketing Expo. With several experts residing, some of the ideas that came out of it are certainly valuable. Rob Key’s Rule #6 of social media marketing? Learn the linguistics. There’s that L-word again. It must be important…

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.

iMediaConnection reports an AdRelevance finding that for the week of Octber 23, Yahoo! had the largest search engine audience. Funny – for some reason I had it in my head that Google was crushing Yahoo!’s search. Anyone know if this is consistent?