Marketing Pilgrim

When the world looks at areas where the pure numbers are pretty staggering it’s the sheer size and potential of the Chinese market. Let’s face it there are a lot of Chinese folks. So it would only be natural that Google would like a piece of that pie. What is not normal though is the fact that Google is second fiddle by a considerable margin to Baidu, which is acting like the Chinese version of Google in its homeland.

CNNMoney.com reports that Baidu is pretty much putting it to Google. As one should expect though it is probably not wise to count Google out on this one.

I trust you had a great Christmas!

As our minds dream of how fantastic 2010 will be, it’s time to look back at the hot topics of 2009. Here are Marketing Pilgrim’s top ten most read posts in 2009.

1. Bing.com; Is it Worth Switching from Google? – A home run for Microsoft? While Bing certainly deserves credit for being the first serious challenger to Google, it didn’t hurt that 2009 was the year that Microsoft stepped-up its media outreach to us.
2. Social Media Monitoring Tools: 26 Free Online Reputation Tools – This post was written in 2007 and has been in our top five for the past 3 years!
3. Social Media Marketing Beginner’s Guide – A great guest article by Jon Rognerud and it still stands-up as a great primer for social media marketing.

As expected it looks like this week may be a bit light in the news department. That’s fine. Everyone needs a break from time to time. So as I am looking around this morning I come across an op-ed piece in the New York Times that is written by Adam Raff, a co-founder of Foundem, an Internet technology company.

From what I can gather, Mr. Raff is upset that his site was banned from Google’s index. There is no explanation as to why this happened so I am not going to assume anything although an article from eConsultancy looks at his plight and we get some insight as to why Google is so ‘mean’ to him. As a result, Mr. Raff contends that Google simply is too powerful and that the government should be considering a ‘search neutrality’ platform that falls in line with the ‘net neutrality’ platform. Here is a bit of his concern:

I’d like to be among the first to wish you a very Merry Christmas.

I’m not sure what Christmas means to you, but here’s what it means to me.

Thanks Linus, I couldn’t have said it any better!

Santa Claus Update: If you’ve not visited the NORAD Santa Tracker, you should head on over there. Google Maps is providing live tracking of Santa Claus–who’s currently in Ireland:

You can also track Santa via Twitter!

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As we’ve done for many years, it’s time to forget about marketing and focus on the whereabouts of Santa Claus (aka Father Christmas).

Fortunately, NORAD and Google make it easy to track Santa Claus each year, and this Christmas is no exception.

What to do next? Head over to the official Santa Tracking site, test out the new mobile Santa tracker, or just go play in the snow with your kids!

Merry Christmas!

I know you’ve been waiting with bated breath all holiday season to find out which of the made-up online shopping holidays would be the winner—Cyber Monday for the first time ever? Green Monday again? Brown Monday? Purplish-Blue-Like-a-Bruise Monday?

Sadly, none of the above. Nope, it was some no name: Tuesday, December 15. Coming from behind, that all-but-forgotten day of the week topped the online revenue charts for the first time with $913M in sales. That’s right, nearly one billion dollars in revenue online in one day—and yes, that would be the record for the most online spending in a single day, ever.