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People Looking for Google on Ask.com

posted on December 17, 2007

We’ve seen Yahoo’s most popular queries this year; we’ve seen Google’s. But we didn’t tell you about Ask’s top search queries for 2007.

Ask.com says they didn’t “sanitize” the list—as evidenced by including #3:

1. MySpace
2. Dictionary
3. Google
4. Themes
5. Area Codes
6. Cars
7. Weather
8. Games
9. Song Lyrics
10. Movies

And when they say they don’t sanitize it, they mean they didn’t take out porn terms, either. Odd . . . I could’ve sworn that the premise behind their big ad push this year was that Ask was a good way to find porn. . . .

Does it seem a little strange to anyone else how extremely generic these searches are? Other than MySpace and Google, what are these people looking for? “Themes”? The weather all over the entire world? Every movie ever made? Come on.

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Auto Industry Banks on Internet Advertising

posted on December 17, 2007

You might notice by now that the Marketing Pilgrims appreciate numbers about online spending. In particular I like the ones that capture the interplay between the on and offline world.

How is this being done? I’m sure there are other examples but Google has put their technology in certain models of cars. They are also planning to put driving directions via Google Maps at the gas pump. And when I did a search to see what people near me are searching for online, I was surprised how many searches are for cars by specific brand name and location. This is an opportunity.

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Pilgrim’s Picks for December 17

posted on December 17, 2007

Have you been a good boy or girl this year? While you might not be able to count on a visit from Santa, we won’t judge you: you get to read these picks, even if you’ve been a black hat this year. ;-)

  • According to Shoemoney, Yahoo can’t tell where spam traffic is coming from and have shut him out from their affiliate network–despite him being one of their top affiliates.
  • BusinessWeek has an interesting article on Google’s “cloud computing” initiative. The guy behind it, was a boy genius. He didn’t learn to talk until age 2, but his first words were (after swallowing a fly): “Mommy, there’s something artificial in my mouth.”
  • Mainstream media wants to impose standards on citizen-journalists. Why, is there an approved MSM way to get the facts wrong? ;-)

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47% Internet Users Check Their Google Reputation

posted on December 17, 2007

In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a little obsessed with online reputation management. :-)

So, you can imagine my interest in Pew Internet & American Life Project’s update to their 2002 study on how many people plug their own name into Google. Back in 2002, just 22% of Internet users Googled themselves. Today, that number is at 47%.

Still, that leaves a whopping 53% who have never taken the time to see what Google has to say about them. Worse, 60% of those polled don’t even care!

Well, they should! Studies have shown that potential employers, business partners, and romantic dates, are among those that will type your name into Google and see what’s returned.

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Re-Gifting for Charity

posted on December 17, 2007

This past week was the Christmas edition of the Rocky Mountain Affiliate Marketers Association (RMAMA) meeting at the 1-800-Contacts building. As tradition holds we exchange white elephant gifts. Most are company swag and Doba did not disappoint. I forgot all my blogging t-shirts from BlogWorld but I think I’ll bring them to my company party next week.

Most of the gifts are re-gifts like VHS movies no one has watched for years. The big hit was a Camelbak with a first aide kit, which I opened but was promptly snatched up. Someone got “Web Analytics for Dummies,” which for our group, is a useful gift.

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Dear Google, My Friends Are Scary, Can I Opt Out?

posted on December 17, 2007

profileCards.jpgIf you’re a user of Google Reader, you’ve probably already discovered that your friends shared items are starting to show up in your account. In addition, you may have also spotted that Google is moving into the social networking business with the introduction of “Google Profiles.”

Both of these services scare me!

OK, so my friends aren’t scary–although I’m sure it won’t be long before they start sharing stuff that my innocent eyes would rather not see–but what is scary is that Google won’t let me opt-out of these services. In fact, according to Google, I’m pretty much SOL.

Take a look at the shared items in my Google Reader account. Sure, I can manually hide items, but can I stop new ones from showing up? Here’s Google’s suggestion:

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Google Online Marketing Contest Coming Soon

posted on December 15, 2007

Google needs a Google contest page to track their list of contests both past and present all in one place. They use contests in different ways (to get work for free, to train future employees, and to expose more people to their products).

Since I’m an optimist I try to imagine they do it mainly to encourage innovation and better solutions to the world’s problems both on and offline. Even if that’s not the whole story, it’s very feel good. It infuses a sense of fun and open-mindedness since they are always a bit quirky are aimed a broad age and range of people.

Contests can be a good way to get things done and you don’t have to fly people to company headquarters either. Guy Kawasaki got his book cover designed by running a contest.