One small bad review will make an organization look terrible, and no matter how much effort a company puts to rank first within the top positions in Google, Bing or Yahoo, the negative content will still show up. Even if just one negative content appears anywhere within the SERPs it can still damage a company’s reputation.

To avoid such content from invading the SERPs, a company must dedicate a lot of time and effort to build up its positive presence on the result pages while at the same time pushing the negative content below the fold.

One way of doing this is by using social media. Establishing your company’s presence in recognized social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and LinkedIn can efficiently help reduce the negative results.

Another way is by blogging on a regular basis. Aim to publish one page blog posts on a regular basis about your company’s products or services and the benefits of buying them. At the same time, you can try to establish relationships with the press as well as bloggers in order to score a potential article or blog post that could help build a good name for you.

Lastly, another good solution is link building. Linking your company’s name or specific keywords between different social media profiles, blog posts and any good review you’ve obtained about your organization can also help increase your rank on the different search engines.

Online reputation management is vital for your organization to gain a priviledged position on the SERPs. Like I said, it takes a lot of time and effort to build a good reputation online. However, keep in mind that the more information there is available to readers, prospects and customers about your organization, the easier it will be to eradicate the bad press and generate good results for your online marketing strategy.

An interesting study about user-generated trends released by eMarketer earlier this year, discussed that by 2013, 155 million of US Internet users will consume some form of user-created content, up from 116 million in 2008. The number of user-generated content creators will grow by similar proportions, reaching 115 million in 2013, up from 83 million in 2008.

Along the same limes, I’d like to point out a graphic that Odden has used in a series of conferences which pretty much sums up the important relationship between a Blog and Social SEO:

Is it possible to increase brand visibility, create awareness, generate relevant content, interact with prospects and customers, while also being able to score a high rank across all search engines?

Odden breaks it down into some main insights for instance:

Social media involvement produces content- going back to our first phrase, relevant content is important and even so when it is optimized. Videos, images, posts, widgets can all be optimized therefore, people can find your content much easier because they will acquire a high position on search engines like Google, Yahoo and Bing.

Create distribution channels for content- if achieved well, this can drive both traffic and increase awareness and generate inbound links which are optimal.

One thing to keep in mind for marketers is that social media channels are not only useful to interact and foster relationships with existing customers. There’s also the other side of the coin which is that of posting new, relevant and engaging content through a blog and using social media sites as distribution channels.

‘The diagram above illustrates this situation well, where a blog is the central repository of content and social media sites around it are the developed networks of communities and channels of distribution for quality, keyword optimized content,’ explained Odden.

Google, the online search giant, is trying to boost the appeal of its graphic ads and is enabling advertisers to better reach internet users in specific geographic areas at specific times, as well as, offer a new interface that’s simple to use.

This new integration is only coming about a year and a half after Google’s $3 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the auctions site which connects web page owners with advertisers. Even though Google attracts more than 70% of  search ads  in the U.S. market, it still lags behind Yahoo and others in direct revenue from pictorial ads.

On one hand, this new alternative offers Google the opportunity to up-sell and cross-sell to its advertisers, while advertisers have a much better chance to effectively target their audience and precisely craft their advertising message seamlessly across the web. For web users, ads will be more engaging and load much faster.

Google says that in addition, ad space on Google’s third-party AdSense publisher sites, representing over 76% of U.S. online audiences and 73% of global online audiences (according to ComScore), is being made available through the new exchange.

The new exchange is designed for both ad networks and agency networks, which already includes over 40 ad networks across North America and Europe. Also, AdWords advertisers will be able to run ads on sites in the Ad Exchange, using their existing AdWords interface.

Google’s three main objectives for this integration are:

1. To simplify the system for buying and selling display ads

2. To deliver better performance that advertisers can measure

3. To open up the eco system for all users, publishers and advertisers to participate

Watch this video for more information on Google’s Display Advertising Graph:

According to the data firm StatCounter, Bing, which was launched on June 3rd, took 8.23% of U.S. Web searches in June, up from 7.81% for Microsoft search just prior to its rollout and 7.21 percent in April.

Interestingly enough, though, Google has gone through a slightly slow period since the launch of the new engine, from 78.72% to 77.48%, considering this to be the first time ever Google loses share to Microsoft.

Bing’s success, according to Microsoft, is attributed to its technologically advanced features. The world’s first decision engine, as they brand themselves, looks to provide users with a lot more information on the search results page, without requiring its users to click through to external sites. Also, it clearly excels in some everyday areas like travel, shopping, images, competing head-to-head with Google.

As pointed out in Affari&Finanza, Repubblica’s finance supplement, Bing is looking to fill the gap left by other traditional search engines like Yahoo! and Google. According to a research by Microsoft, 42% of Yahoo! and Google users are not satisfied with the results which then forces them to redefine or reword their queries. Only 25% of the clicks generated seem to be successful.

Although not all of Bing’s first month positive results are thanks to its meticulous engineering, Ballmer has commented Microsoft plans to spend a sweet $80 to 100 million in marketing and advertising campaigns, compared to the $25 million Google put aside for the same purpose.

As of now, we can’t really say Google’s users are switching over to Bing and making that their exclusive search engine, however, and as the previous numbers show, users are definitely willing to explore alternatives and test other options.

The platform is meant to send the message to marketers that display advertising isn’t just for the big companies, anymore. Yahoo! My Display Ads offers an easy, affordable way to create banner ads and run them across the Yahoo! network in a matter of days, as explained on the product page.

Marketers and advertisers will not only be profiting from this service as a way to tap into Yahoo’s vast audience of 1,651 million users, they’ll be able to create and customize campaigns catering to their communication and marketing objectives.

My Display Ads provides users with a selection of more than 800 display templates, this meaning that no graphic designers will be needed for the creation of the display ads, however, own creatives may also be uploaded if desired. Users are also enabled to select whether they wish to pay per click (CPC) or pay per impression (CPM); the number of times the ad is viewed.

In general, small to medium businesses tend to bid on search advertising by choosing keywords that are most relevant to the nature of their business and not necessarily spend large amounts of money.

My guess is that Yahoo! wants to slowly migrate those companies into display ads which will in fact bring them more benefits, not to mention the opportunity to build on their online branding.

Yahoo!, however, is not by any means encouraging businesses to abandon search marketing, instead it wants to encourage marketers and advertisers to integrate both search and display ads as to get their message across to an even wider audience.

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?

Instead, it was the third-party websites who were opening their doors to Facebook by allowing Facebook users to connect to their websites using Facebook Connect.

So what does it mean that Facebook is now OpenID? It means that if you wish to register or just log in to Facebook using another OpenID provider, you may be able to do so (see image below).

Some advantages this new merge with OpenID has to offer Facebook users are that it makes participation in the network easier since it is no longer necessary to start from scratch and create a new ID and password. Users can register using any of the accounts displayed on the image above ie: Gmail, Yahoo!. First timers are already showing to be most proactive due to the quick registration process this new modality has to offer.

Also, it carries payloads of user data (ie: contact lists) that can yield immediate personalization for a richer experience. And finally, it offers authentication that you really are who you say you are. That opens up a whole world of possibilities technically and culturally.

It would be very useful if more websites of the likes of Google, Microsoft or Yahoo! joined in and supported OpenID. As Jason Kincaid from TechCrunch says, users could really benefit from this as it would allow them to seamlessly jump from one service to another, and take advantage of the suite of products they each have to offer. However, since these are by no means comparable to Facebook’s, there’s a good chance they won’t be giving those up quite yet.

Is MySpace ID now a threat to Facebook Connect?

MySpaceID is said to be the equivalent of Facebook Connect in that it is an application that allows users to sign in to and export data to third-party sites using their MySpace identity.

Once users are logged in partner sites using their MySpaceID, not only are they connecting their MySpace profile data to partner sites, they also have the power of finding their own friends on these partner sites, as well as, post updates and profile information.

Other advantages include:

• Connect MySpace profile data to partner sites

• Find MySpace friends on a partner site

• Register on partner sites using their MySpace URL

• Publish activities from partner sites to MySpace

• Syndicate activities on MySpace to partner sites

However, the MySpaceID application is a few steps ahead of Facebook Connect in that it integrates OpenSocial, OpenID and OAuth, all of which make it more ‘open’, whereas Facebook Connect is a proprietary application which just makes it complicated for developers to tap into.

New updates are coming to MySpaceID, which will maybe gain some ground over Facebook Connect even though there has been lots of buzz going around Facebook Connect now available for iPhone.

Some of the changes include the recent partnership with Yahoo! which is currently running bucket-testing to implement the MySpaceID feature in its homepage.The official launch has not yet been announced to everyone, however this will definitely represent a major spike for MySpace since Yahoo! represents one of the most trafficked sites existent today.

So what’s it gonna be? Will people migrate from Facebook Connect to MySpaceID or will the latter pull in new members?

Check out Mashable’s post for more insight on the subject.

Rumors say Microsoft Corp. has begun testing the modified version of its revamped online search service, dubbed kumo.com, which is said to replace its current portal Live Search.

The unofficial search service will be launched in an attempt to seize first place position in the search engine market. According to comScore, search engine shares break down like this:

• Microsoft: 9.8% share on US online searches
• Yahoo!: 22.2% search engine marketshare
• Google: leads the bunch with 58.8% marketshare

Kumo is a Japanese term which means spider and it was discovered that the domain kumo.com was fully owned by Microsoft after news were revealed in an internal memo by Microsoft’s Senior Vice-President of research and development division, Natya Nadella, that said:

“Kumo.com exists only inside the corporate network, and in order to get enough feedback we will be redirecting internal live.com traffic over to the test site in the coming days.”

As of now, Microsoft’s Live Search, at live.com, still remains the company’s search engine for the public.

There’s much speculation on the matter and until Ballmer steps out to communicate the rebranded Live Search, it will still be a simple rumor.

Will kumo.com enhance its position in the search market?

I had already been hearing a lot of buzz about it, then last week while Tweeting with my friend from NYC, she told me she was switching to Twitter on Digsby…

Yeah, I’m talking about Digsby- with the easy name and funny “beany-head with a funky cap” that makes it hard to miss, is actually the “all in one place” application that:

• lets you chat with all your friends on the most popular applications (AIM, MSN, Yahoo, ICQ, Google Talk)

• manages all your email accounts all on the same website

• keeps track of your social networks and alerts you of new events

It’s been already a year since the Beta version was launched and it has already bagged several awards, including Best Apps of 2008 and several IM clients awards.  So how have I survived without it all this time?

I downloaded the application and read it carefully including the sponsors “proposals” in the registration process,  just so I make sure I choose the right options. The instant messaging option is great, plus it let’s you manage all your contacts from one simple buddy list. The email notification tool sends alerts every time a new email comes into your inbox which you can also delete or mark as spam. Finally, the social networking option works just like Facebook’s mini-feed, in the sense that alerts are sent to inform you what your friends are up to, forthcoming events, etc.

The end result: email + chat + social network all into ONE SINGLE application manageable all from ONE place… Great and simple!  And most importantly, loads of time is saved while having full control over your online stuff.

It’s true that sometimes the server can get pretty busy and updates take a little longer than usual, but believe me, it’s much better than having to log in and check for updates, emails and alerts in more than one website.

It’s cool and friendly, everyone should give it a try- then let us know what you think!