Who is in control of your brand?

So, last week I had a rant that Google+ will not cause the instant demise of FB and one of my points was that Facebook are smart and they’ll respond…Well they have. Already.

Tonight I discovered Facebook ‘lists’ which directly combats the Google+-Circle-mania that’s been going on. But it’s a whole bunch better because FB knows so much about YOU that it can recommend lists (i.e. your work place, or your suburb) and who’s on them. (Seems to have been rolling out over the last 6 days)

This is FB’s second attempt at grouping contacts, their first was back in 2007 and didn’t really get traction.

From what I can see there are a few standard ‘friend lists’

• Close friends
• Family
• Work
• High-school/University/College
• Who live near you

Here are some examples that came up for me…

It’s also integrated into your friend’s profile pages, suggesting which list they fit into if you haven’t assigned them already.

And it’s very helpful when creating lists

Hmmm… Google+ destroy’s Facebook? Anyone?

I also read an article tonight from ReadWriteWeb with “5 Things Google Plus Can Do To Outbox Facebook“ which provides some interesting observations. However, the FIVE things will really only bring G+ up to speed with FB, not outbox them.

Google+ hit 20M users in three weeks smashing all targets and overloading their server capacity.

I hope these points bring some kind of sanity to the current public debate about how G+ is going to solve global warming and dramatic demise of Facebook.

And if I’m being a completely hypocritical ass tell/punch me.

** I’m not saying G+ isn’t great and plays a role, but anybody predicting anything about what’s going to happen is lying.

Have you added Google’s +1 to your website yet? It’s Google response (in my opinion) to the Facebook like, and is currently in beta on search results, although I haven’t personally seen/used that version of it yet. And now you can add it to all the pages on your website.

It’s really easy to do, just like Facebook’s Like button, simply add two lines of code to your HTML. (Here’s the low down on how to do that: http://www.google.com/webmasters/+1/button/index.html)

What it does for you as a business isn’t 100% clear, yet.

Google does say (in the video below) that it’ll tell your friends if you like something (not sure how) and seems to infer that it’ll be effecting search results too. Either way it’ll be as big or bigger than the the Facebook like, so get on board.

And here’s how Google are explaining it to consumers.

You may or may not know that Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) is more of an art than a science whilst it’s well known that there are things on your site and things off your site that impact your ranking in Google.

The most important concept to understand is that Google see’s it your website very differently to you. Google loves text & links, images & videos are OK and flash (as a general rule) is BAD. Without getting into the details of how to develop content, links and a site structure that helps your ranking in Google (there are many people who talk at length about this) I’ll show how you can quickly see your site how Google sees it, and the results may not be pretty.

Once you’ve done the quick audit below the best way to resolve any issues is to talk to an SEO consultant or your digital agency or web developer, they will help you understand what keywords should be in there, how to structure it and write the content for you.

Approach 1 – Quick and dirty

1. Go to Google.com

2. Search for a term your know you already rank on

3. Click ‘cached’ just below your listing in Google

4. Click ‘text only’ in the top right hand corner

5. Now you’re looking at the text & link component of how Google see’s your site. If there’s not much there, or it’s not accurate then you’ve got some work to do.

Approach 2 – More detailed analysis

1. Go to http://www.seotoolset.com/tools/free_tools.html

2. Add your website URL to the Keyword Density Analyser

3. It will provide a comprehensive analysis and provide some direction for you

Approach 3 – Employ a SEO specialist

You can spend days, months and years analysing and optimising your website, if you want to be at the top of your category you may need a team of them.

Thanks to Krisite Wells at Social Media Club for finding this market research by Rubicon. It’s a very comprehensive study, however, social media‘s influence on purchasing decisions is second only to word-of-mouth/personal advice.

It’s funny when companies says “Social media sounds exciting, and we’ll getting into it once we’ve upgraded our website” as it’s in no way their choice if their product, service or organisation is ‘in social media’.

The following graphs summarise these findings well.

As Krisite comments

that shows online reviews and comments written by users are second only to word of mouth as a purchase influence for most Americans. Some great stats in this document for you all to chew on including items such as websites that Americans value most are (in order), Google, Yahoo, YouTube, Wikipedia, and Facebook.

I think woops would be a bit of an understatement when a guy at Google stuffed up on the weekend. (According to the Gaurdian)

He was updating the ‘blacklist’ which indicates which website’s might be harmful and when you search for them it warns you before you visit the site.

He accidentally added a forward slash ‘/’ which in Google speak aparently equals the entire internet.

This is what you would’ve seen on all search results on Google.

So for about 40 minutes over the weekend the entire internet was ‘down’ according to Google.

Thanks to Mumbrella for picking this up.

You can read more about it here on the Google Blog.

It’s scary to say the least that such a major event can be triggered by a tiny mistake.

In response to Tech Crunch’s story on Open ID

I love the idea and practicalities of the OPEN ID concept, however, my concern as a consumer and user is in the long term, with all my credentials stored in one place, doesn’t that increase the risk of identity fraud?

Its not the Facebooks or Googles that I’m concerned about, I love and trust them, but its the external forces and entities that can take advantage of this massive piles of data in one hit. Terrorists, Government, company buyouts, rogue staff…

In 2006 even the US government was weighing over Google to hand over data which would be considered private. Read more about it here:

http://www.siliconbeat.com/entries/2006/01/18/googles_privacy_fight_with_the_government.html

Related articles on Friend/Google Connect services

• Googer? Twittle? Google Meets Twitter
• What The Twitter/Google Announcement Means
• What The Twitter/Google Announcement Means
• Now You Can Sign Into Friend Connect Sites With Your Twitter ID
• Facebook Connect: The Pros and Cons

The ‘search team’ at google review all kinds of trends and actitivty throughout all the searches done throughout the year.

Zeitgeist is a snap shot of “The spirirt of the times”…

Here are the stats for Australia…

Welcome to the Australian Google Zeitgeist page!
2008 has been a year of crises, Olympics, elections and blockbuster movies, and people have certainly been using Google to access information about all of this. Searches for technology and internet terms like YouTube, Facebook, iPhone and Google Maps rose rapidly, as did the ubiquitous Sarah Palin and the new TV show about the Melbourne underworld, Underbelly. Australians used Google to find out more about the financial crisis and swimming star Stephanie Rice. It also seems that everyone wanted to find out about the movie ‘Australia’ as well as stores at which they could find a bargain. Each of these lists shows the most searched terms, meaning they were the top searched terms of 2008. Take a look below to get sense of the zeitgeist, or spirit of the times, in Australia for 2008!

Fastest rising

1. iphone
2. facebook
3. google maps
4. youtube
5. wiki
6. anz
7. wow
8. maps
9. sarah palin
10. underbelly

Most popular

1. games
2. sydney
3. youtube
4. myspace
5. facebook
6. google
7. ebay
8. my
9. weather
10. hotmail

Top Olympians

1. stephanie rice
2. usain bolt
3. grant hackett
4. michael phelps
5. eamon sullivan
6. leisel jones
7. melissa wu
8. libby trickett
9. lauren jackson
10. cadel evans

Top Crises

1. financial
2. time
3. credit
4. cuban missile
5. economic
6. subprime
7. final fantasy (don’t know why this one’s in here???)
8. mortgage
9. water
10. food

Top Movies

1. australia
2. the dark knight
3. indiana jones
4. iron man
5. hancock
6. cloverfield
7. kung fu panda
8. sweeney todd
9. quantum of solace
10. tropic thunder

Top Stores

1. harvey norman
2. target
3. coles
4. myer
5. ikea
6. kmart
7. bunnings
8. big w
9. woolworths
10. freedom

You can check out stats from other countries or categories, like “trendsetters” here

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/zeitgeist2008/index.htm