Marketing Pilgrim

Are you sure you’re using the best search engine available?

What if I told you that you, your friends, and your family spend almost half their time looking at search results that aren’t relevant?

What if I could show you a brand new search engine that has better results than the one you are currently using?

Would you want to try it?

Those questions are exactly the ones I’d ask consumers if I were in control of the estimated $80 million to $100 million Microsoft plans to spend on marketing its, yet to be launched, search engine.

We’re just days away from Microsoft releasing “Kumo” (the current working name) into the wild and for once, mounting an honest-to-goodness challenge to Google’s dominance. But, Microsoft can’t possibly expect something flashy and new to convince Google users to make the switch, so it needs to play the only trump card that it has.

We probably won’t post anything today, other than this photo.

Without the sacrifices of those who died to protect our freedom, who knows if this blog would even exist.

If you are traveling for the long weekend you can use Google Maps in a new and improved way. The team at Google is announcing additional features to go along with their cool new logos. This is surely a watershed day in Google’s history.

Ok, so it’s not exactly a banner news day but at least this update has some practical value. Here’s what happens. Google maps will now show a main route when you request directions but will also show available alternate routes for you to consider. They appear under a suggested routes option that you can move between to get the details on the trip. It’s actually pretty cool.

Below is the example given on the LatLong blog

So how do they do it?

There was a minor uproar last November when Google introduced its SearchWiki feature, allowing users to personalize SERPs by moving results up or down, adding comments or blocking them altogether. When it became clear SearchWiki was here to stay, SEOs really had to wonder to what extent the data from individual users would be incorporated into Google’s 200+ ranking signals.

But now there’s a way to make sure your friends, family and neighbors can see your SearchWiki changes. SearchWiki just got more social—albeit in a really, really primitive way. Yes, now Google offers a link to your personalized SearchWiki results, so you can share those pages with friends.

Here’s how it works:

You make your comment.

You know there’s a holiday weekend coming up when the top news story is Google changing its logo design.

There’s no way I can pad this post out to 400 words, so let’s just take a look at a typical Google logo circa 2008:

Now let’s look at what the new logos will look like:

I like the font change for the service name, what say you?

*If you only read one story!

An article over at CNN Money ran the headline “Oprah’s Skypefest draws backlash” while the page title included Twitter as well so I decided to take a look. Now honestly, outside of my mom, I don’t know anyone that is part of “Oprah Nation” and I like it that way. It’s the numbers attached to her every move that are at once intriguing and disturbing. Now with her supposed love affair with social media, marketers have to at least keep an eye out to see what happens through this highly influential channel.

Well, according to the article, if you are Twitter, the initial press was pretty cool but as Oprah’s first tweet of

“HI TWITTERS . THANK YOU FOR A WARM WELCOME. FEELING REALLY 21st CENTURY.”