Marketing Pilgrim

It’s Google’s second Searchology event this week, and they’re looking to make big headlines this time around. The first event, two years ago, heralded Universal Search (remember how they integrated image and video results, way back when?)

Today Google is announcing three new products and SERP improvements: Search Options, rich snippets and Google Squared.

Search Options

Search Options is a new feature in Google’s basic SERPs. Accessible from the blue bar above the results, Search Options allows you to resort or restrict your results by format and time, as well as alter the way your results are displayed:

If that’s not clear enough on its face, Google is happy to explain it to you:

I can’t remember perfectly, but I seem to remember a very similar experiment in Google Labs a while back. If that’s the case, they’re taking the feature mainstream.

App mania is certainly running rampant in the mobile industry led by the frenzy to create another fun little time waster to add to the over 25,000 apps in the Apple App Store. Fortune reports that both the Wall Street Journal and Forrester are talking about how Madison Ave. has embraced this medium to reach the nearly 37 million iPhone and iTouch users. It’s the 37 million and growing number that makes everyone stand up, take notice and create an app.

There are always two sides to every story. On the ‘apps are the only thing that matters’ side of the ledger the WSJ says:

It’s been almost 2 years since Dan Schawbel introduced himself to me via email. Barely a month later he asked me to help judge his Personal Brand Awards. At the time, I had never heard of Dan, so put him through the wringer–asking him lots of questions before agreeing.

Since then, I’ve kept in touch with Dan, did an interview with him, and watched him grow to become one of the foremost authorities on personal branding–all while yet to reach his 25th birthday!

Dan has taken his experience and expertise and distilled it into a new book entitled Me 2.0. While aimed at those leaving college–or early in their career–it’s really for anyone that has yet to build an online brand. We covered personal branding extensively in Radically Transparent, but Dan dives a lot deeper and uses himself as a case study for helping those that don’t yet have a reputation to protect!

Apparently Google was doing some window-shopping recently but decided to pass on one item for sale; a stake in the ‘Grand Daddy of Them All’, the New York Times. The Business Insider reports that Harbinger Capital has put its 19% stake in the newspaper on sale. It was just last year that the investor acquired the stake but is now looking for a buyer to remove the portfolio buster from their stable of holdings. Interested parties have included David Geffen but his price wasn’t right apparently.

The idea of buying the New York Times was apparently floated by one of the co-founders of Google in an attempt to stir interest.

Let me ask you something. Do you think we need Wolfram Alpha?

I know that’s the equivalent of asking someone circa 1999 “do you think we need Google?” but I’m just not sure what role the much anticipated search engine will fill.

Oh, excuse me. It’s not a search engine. It’s a “computational knowledge engine.”

The NYT tells us that Stephen Wolfram–Alpha’s creator–is “not keen” on the comparison with Google. But, even if it’s not a true search engine, will the average web user find value in Wolfram Alpha?

Consider some of the examples given to demonstrate the potential of Wolfram Alpha:

Type in “Pluto” and Alpha calculates the dwarf planet’s distance from Earth at that very instant…If you type “LDL 120,” it will return a graph showing the distribution of cholesterol levels among the United States population.

There’s an interesting debate going on about a potential new feature for Adblock Plus–a Firefox plugin that automatically blocks web site ads from displaying.

I’m not so much interested in the proposed new feature–it would allow webmasters to ask for permission to display their ads, in case you care–but the discussion that followed in the comments.

The majority of commenters reacted negatively and really opened my eyes to the sentiment many people have towards online ads. Comments included…

I use Ad Block Plus because I don’t want to see adverts, any adverts at any time. I will never click on them, I will always be annoyed by them. The tiny minority of a tiny minority (ad block users of firefox users) don’t want to see them either. If ad block plus starts allowing ads or constantly nagging me then it will be forked – because it’s defeating its whole purpose – and I’ll use the fork.