So far Google’s real-time search has proven quite effective for many of us. For those who are pursuing social media as part of their online marketing campaigns, Google’s real-time search capability is certainly a strong point in favor.

What marketers should be considering right now is that having an active role in social media can really help drive traffic to their websites and help them attain better rankings on the SERPs. With the inclusion of live Twitter streams,(and the likes), in the SERPs, social media has never been so important.

Here are some quick-tips we put together to get your brand found in Google’s real-time search:

1. Keywords are key- in our previous post we mentioned the importance of content and keywords. This time, we’re advising you to use keywords in anything you write, from content and titles, to updates on Twitter and status updates on Facebook.

2. Have a social media presence- create your brand’s Facebook Fan Page, Twitter profile, YouTube channel, but first understand your audience and harness the social media channels that fit your brand. Get social, go live, and gain exposure on the Web.

3. Share your content- make sure its easy for you readers to share your articles by including share links, icons and buttons that are visible enough to just click & share.

4. Fresh content- make sure you post information as it happens. Be timely. The quicker your post the news, the quicker you’ll occupya space in the SERPs.

5. Be social- once you have an online presence and have created a series of public profiles in diverse channels, the next step should be to engage and interact with your audience. Increase your community, your followers, your fans, and dont’ be afraid to foster relationships. The bigger your audience, the easier it will be to spread your content and give visibility to your brand throughout the web.

It might still be too early to tell how Bing’s new rich-media search feature will affect marketers and their ability to be found online.

However, it’s gone live and it’s working. The new Bing Visual Search feature that displays search results in a grid-like image gallery instead of the traditional list of search results, was announced yesterday at the TechCrunch50.

What’s the concept behind Bing’s Visual Search?

To display simple, clear imagery to help users sort through lots of data easily. Of course you might agree that certain categories of search might find this more useful than others. So far Bing has only launched the new feature in beta (bing.com/visualsearch) which only works for a particular set of categories: cars, animals, people and products.

As explained on Search Engine Land, users must have Silverlight installed on their browsers to fully experience Visual Search. Also, statistics from Rich Internet Application show that nearly 73% of users have Silverlight and its adoption has been growing fairly quickly since NBCOlympics.com relied upon Silverlight for live streaming and on-demand video coverage during Beijing 2008.

The newly launched feature only works for 50 different categories and it is said Microsoft will be adding a new category every month according to what they believe is a popular search result.

So how do you get your product out in the grid-like image gallery?

AdvertisingAge explained Microsoft gets the information from data providers like Zappos or PC World, for digital-camera information, for example.

‘Thus, to make sure your merchandise pops up in Bing’s galleries, make sure you’re present in the feed of more than one industry heavyweight.’

A lot has been discussed lately regarding the growth of Microsoft’s Bing, but how fast is it really growing?  And is its current gain in market share due to the number of people checking out the new search engine?

I think many are keeping a close eye on the new decision engine, wondering how it works and often running comparisons between Google and Bing. But the main difference lies in that Bing helps users make better choices empowering them to gain insight and knowledge from the Web, moving more quickly to important decisions, as their press release states it.

A significant fact that has caught people’s attention is that Bing has a lower bounce rate than all the other search engines out there.

Microsoft’s press release also highlights that previous results from a comScore study across core search engines showed that as many as 30% of searches are abandoned without satisfactory results. The data also showed that approximately two-thirds of the remaining searches required a refinement or requery on the search results page.

A more recent study by comScore revealed Microsoft’s share of the search market rose to 8.9% in July from 8.4% in June.

So as a marketer, how can you gain a high rank on this new search engine? I guess many of us are asking ourselves the same question. For starters, I would say that many of the principles that you put in practice with all other engines would also apply to Bing.

For instance, interesting and original content matters big time. Page titles, keywords all should be relevant and appropriate to the content of your site.

How about signing up with Bing and managing your analytics with them. Try running a PPC campaign. Its been said they have a reputation for delivering better conversion rates and ROI.

In the meantime, do you think it’s good for Google to have more competition? What do you think the panorama will be like in a few months time?

Emerging throughout the hype that is surrounding Twitter and FriendFeed, real time search is receiving heaps of attention throughout the industry. In turn, real time search engines have been popping up everywhere. Among the notable additions is BingTweets, which quite practically combines the search results of both Bing and Twitter Search. Owned by Microsoft, it is a separate entity from Bing and its slogan, “Fusing Twitter Trends with Bing Insights”, accurately describes its function as an opinion enhanced decision engine.

Recently, search industry authorities met at CrunchUp to define and discuss real time search. At the event, various real time search engines were introduced and demoed, highlighting the abundance of new platforms catering to trends, micro-blogs, and real time streams. Seesmic, Brizzly, Lazyfeed, and Wowd were all introduced and all exhibited new ways of embracing as well as displaying real time search results, or Twitter. Some of the main issues raised were how to filter results to keep them relevant and somewhat spam free as well as whether Twitter makes up all or most of current real time search and how long that may last.

BingTweets, in my opinion, seems to have considered all or most of the aforementioned issues. The site individually brings together a Twitter feed, Bing search results, Twitter trending topics, and a ‘share this’ box which allows users to tweet their results. One can search for something on Bing, follow another topic on the Twitter feed, browse trending topics, and share their various results all at the same time. Conversely, a user can have all results focused on the same topic, to receive the most relevant data (Bing) as well as what is currently being said about it (Twitter). An ideal setting for search, one could argue…

However, one thing that immediately jumped out at me was the fact that the compressed Bing section cut out the ads displayed to the right of the organic search results. Although it is possible to scroll over, it is certainly not your first instinct, as most of the search results are in plain view. This raises broader questions of how real time search might effectively implement sponsored links without losing clicks and whether PPC ads will get lost in these multi feed platforms.

It is clear, though, that Microsoft is keen on beefing up their search presence, and it would surprise me if they hadn’t considered all of the above. It looks increasingly likely that they will strike a deal with Yahoo, taking over a significant chunk of the search market and making them a viable contender to Google’s throne. Shockingly, Google is one of the few companies yet to drop a real time search engine. They continue to exhibit untouchable sentiments, with actions such as their recent snubbing of the concerns of European newspapers. One thing is certain; Twitter and FriendFeed have brought real time information streams into the spotlight. Who dominates this train and how is unsure, as it has not yet arrived at the station.

“If nothing else, it will at least get people to realize that Microsoft is in this game and that there is an alternative to Google…”

Bing has come out swinging and is currently experiencing more buzz than Live Search ever had. With what appears to be a good product, and an aggressive advertising campaign against Google ($80-100 million), Microsoft looks poised to cement its role in search as the ‘decision engine’.

Based on the assumption that Bing is successful in increasing Microsoft’s stake in the world of search, one benefit that instantly comes to mind is more competition for Google. Overall, this makes the web a healthier place. More specifically, though, this would make advertisers less dependent on Google Adwords. This potential tilt in scales would force Google to listen more carefully to the needs and wants of brands, advertisers, as well as users.

For example, as of June 4th, marketers are officially allowed to bid on competitor’s trademarked terms to trigger display of sponsored search ads on Google in about 200 countries. This has concerned many brands because it has driven up the cost of keeping paid search ads for brand keywords in top positions next to organic search results. In what Google is calling a pro-competitive move, advertising costs are being driven up without much retaliation. If Microsoft, which does not allow bidding on trademarked keywords, held a larger percentage of searches than advertisers would have an alternative and Google would have to think twice before making a move like this.

Google has already reacted to the release of Bing by adding a link to its home page that says, “Discovering the web“, that takes the user to a page outlining Google’s numerous search features. It’s a nice feature which highlights various search functions that many users may not have known about. But it took some pressure from Bing for Google to apply this.

Furthermore, Google has recently been criticized for its move to request and display work from top artists without paying for it. Google’s argument was that they will be giving the artists so much exposure that they should not have to pay for the art as well. The simple fact is Google is a healthy company that pulled in a staggering $21 bn in global revenue last year. There is no need for them to save a few pennies at the expense of hard working artists. This just highlights the greedy and expansionist attitude that has grown on Google without a significant competitor.

Bing’s success would, in turn, most definitely be a good thing. A healthy dose of competition could be exactly what Google needs. Last week, Steve Ballmer announced that Microsoft would be willing to spend 5 – 10 percent of operating costs (or $1.12 – $2.25 billion) a year over the next five years on search alone.

Not only may Google have a serious search competitor on their hands, but evidently, one that has both determination and very deep pockets.

What do pages at the top of Google have in common? Good content.

Marketers are always looking for the best ways to optimize their websites. Before getting into the details of things we can already think of a list of activities to achieve this, for example: URL structure, meta tags, website architecture, keywords in the URL and web content, relevancy, etc.

But before we get into all that, we must turn our attention to content. Google loves content and good content is key to website optimization. It’s very important that you understand who your target audience is when building your website in order to cater your content based on that target market.

In most cases, you have the audience who is looking or needs something in particular, but is not sure what. Then there’s the audience who knows exactly what he/she wants who will go straight to the place where they can find it.

First thing they will do is run their keyword search on Google, land on a specific website, and boom! purchase is made. It is much easier to appeal to a person who already knows what he/she wants because all they do is execute their search using the exact keywords and land on the right website.

Those who are hesitant are harder to convince, therefore, good content is required. Having the right content, a good selection of keywords and clear website strategy will definitely get you a high position in Google.  Some main aspects to look at: keywords, keywords, keywords.

It is important you review your Pages or landing pages against the keywords from search. Study all the possible keyword options, from the most relevant to the least, including stem variations of keywords, and review those generating high bounces or more conversions and make your modifications accordingly.

Also, revise your content thoroughly together with your site navigation as to guarantee a better website experience for your users. This will lead your audience to your final objective. Offering useful information will lead to a call-to-action, this in turn will generate more leads and most importantly, increase sales.

It’s official, Microsoft will be launching its new search engine (beta version) code-named Kumo next week according to a recent update we received from the Microsoft Advertising folks this morning.

However, The Wall Street Journal suspects the search engine will be officially unveiled at the D: All Things Digital conference which is to be held between the 26th and 28th of May. Microsoft has not given any confirmation to this, its spokesman refused to comment.

As we had covered on a previous post, the new search engine had been undergoing internal tests for several months. Wall Street Journal says the technology is designed to cut down on the length of typical Web searches by grouping the results of a search for, say, a particular model of car into helpful categories like parts, used car listings, online discussion forums and videos showing the vehicle.

In theory, results should be provided in a more organized manner as well as guarantee a more enjoyable search experience, resulting in increased consumer satisfaction and more users who use it more often.

While Microsoft and Yahoo! witnessed a decrease in marketshare in the U.S. for the month of April; Microsoft at 8.2% and Yahoo! at 20.4%, Google continues to lead the Internet share market with 64.2% after increasing up 0.5% that same month. How long do you think it will take before Microsoft catches up to Google?

So I guess speculation will be over soon since next week we will not only know what the new search engine is all about, but we will also learn its real name. Here is a list of names that have also emerged for the much anticipated brand:

Kumo

Bing

Hook

Sift

What do you think will happen to Wolfram now?

Wikipedia defines Wolfram Alpha as an online service that answers factual queries directly by computing the answer from structured data, instead of providing a list of documents or web pages that might contain the answer.

Wolfram Alpha’s creator, Steven Wolfram, both a physicist and software developer, who not only received his PhD. at the age of 20 but who has also launched one of the most powerful computational software in its field, Mathematica, is quite clear his invention will not be stealing marketshare from Google, especially at the early stage in which it is in.

The new engine is actually quite simple. It follows basically the same Google principle in that you type in your query in a small input box, however, results are rendered differently. While Google’s results provide users with pages and pages of links and recent articles related to the searvh query, Wolfram Alpha plots out a single answer for you.

Not only that, the engine also offers the most accurate calculations from questions such as the number of vertices on a great rhombic triacontahedron (182) or what gene is 456 base pairs upstream of another given gene, as explained by Bryan Bergstein from the Associated Press.

To give you an idea of what it looks like, this article on ReadWriteWeb displays a series of screenshots containing the different results generated by the search engine according to the different queries, ie: Oakland, California.

Along the same vein, the comparison run on MIT’s Technology Review between Google results and Wolfram results is also very interesting to look at as to understand how the engines both rationalize data in their very own ways.

And lastly, I will leave you with this video containing Steven himself presenting a sneak preview to Wolfram Alpha:

It seems like no search engine we’ve seen, including this one, comes close to making the quantum leap in performance required to get Internet users to switch over from one engine to the other. But then again, it’s too soon to tell. Differences however, are quite obvious; Google is an engine that provides its users with a list of relevant webpages which eventually lead you to the information you’re looking for, whereas Wolfram Alpha is more about presenting quantified numeric data and data comparisons.

Geico, LVMH…who’s up next?

Can we say Google is headed into dark waters? I guess we will only find out come June 4th.

After kicking some controversy in the US and Europe, Google has now decided to go global with an advertising strategy that, according to Business Week, will allow advertisers in about 200 countries to purchase rival trademarked keywords to trigger display of sponsored search ads on Google.

On one hand, trademark owners whose brands will be used as keywords will not be too happy with this new policy and will most likely sue the search giant..yeah, googd luck on that. Google’s spokesman Ben Novick has expressed that following a global legal review, [Google has] made the changes in countries whose legal and business practices are consistent with making the change, meaning-  it’s all 100% legit.

In continuation to my previous comment, such move from Google will mostly upset top tier brands who have been established in the market for years who will do anything to prevent any newcomer from piggy-backing on their brand name to send the message across to the consumer.

On the other hand, let’s be honest, if a consumer is looking for brand A and gets information on brand B, it doesn’t necessarily mean the consumer will change his mind about product A. Instead, the consumer will continue searching until he lands on product A’s website.

However, one downside to this new policy could be if the consumer is unsure or confused about his search and any tidy bit of stimulation will get him to switch products.

For example, if the consumer is looking for product A, but gets a discount ad regarding  product B, the outcome is quite obvious. Who doesn’t like discounts? But then again, this could be an easy way for consumers to run product comparisons to help them in their decision.  And is definitely one aspect marketers can take advantage of when working on their Adwords campaigns and deciding on the right message to consumers.

As a marketer, how are you preparing for this new policy? Do you think it’s fairplay? Share your thoughts with us!

Online advertisers and agencies are currently turning to behavioral targeting to communicate better and more directly with consumers. Basically, they’re willing to bid more for clicks based on behavioral information.

According to findings from the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) 2008 State of the Market survey, 75% of the respondents agreed to the previous statement together with 51% of respondents who are willing to bid more on demographic targeting.

Not surprisingly, social media continues to grow given that it requires minimal capital investment to implement it effectively. Over 40% of respondents who participated in the survey confirmed they use in-house marketers to promote the brands on social media, Facebook being the most used out of all networks. Digg comes in second as most popular social media site followed by Delicious, StumbleUpon and Reddit.

Additional findings revealed Google and Yahoo! as the most popular search advertising programs used by 80% of advertisers. Contextual advertising on both video search and mobile search also seemed to be of high interest on behalf of advertisers. Approximately 54% showed interested in such advertising through video search results while almost 2 in five advertisers claimed they are interested in paying the same for contextual advertising delivered to mobile search users as they do for traditional search.

In conclusion, we can say search marketing is not longer what it used to be. The strong and sudden emergence of social media has given search marketing a whole new meaning and has become one tactic on which more companies are planning to increase spending. Join the bandwagon!