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9% of Mobile Web Page Views are Google Search

posted on February 25, 2010

Mobile search, like the rest of the mobile web, is really in its infancy. While we are definitely making leaps and bounds all the time, a lot of the future of the mobile web is TBD—including which provider, if any, will dominate mobile search.

Or so we thought. Using browsing info from its popular mobile client, Opera Mini, Opera Software recently found that Google search accounts for 9% of all page views on the mobile web. That’s right, not just 9% of all mobile searches—9% of all web page views.

That’s a lot of searches. Not all desktop behavior has translated well to the mobile web, but a preference for Google for web search might be one of those things we have a hard time shaking. It also helps that Google’s name has become synonymous with searching.

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Trackur Shakes Up the Social Media Monitoring Space with a Free Plan

posted on February 25, 2010

I’m not sure if you know the back story of why I decided to launch social media monitoring tool Trackur.

After completing Radically Transparent, I felt like there was a huge void between those that had outgrown Google Alerts and the monitoring tools available at that time. You had Google Alerts (free) then you had services that started at thousands of dollars.

Fast forward a couple of years–yes, Trackur is two years old this month–and Trackur has grown to be one of the most popular monitoring tools on the web. So popular in fact, that we’re racking up many agency clients–attracted by our quick, easy, and affordable tools.

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Fortune 100 (Slowly) Embracing Social Media

posted on February 25, 2010

Yes, it’s like a slow-mo hug: the 100 largest Fortune 500 companies are accepting and integrating social media into their marketing strategies. BUt for many of them, it’s a one-piece-at-a-time proposition. A study by Burson-Marsteller shows that many Fortune 100 companies are trying one or two popular social media avenues, few have taken an integrated, whole-hog approach to social media.

In short:

  • 65% have active accounts on Twitter
  • 54% have a Facebook fan page
  • 50% have a YouTube channel
  • 33% have corporate blogs
  • 20% (inclusive) use all four platforms

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Google’s Real Time Search Now Shows Facebook Pages Status

posted on February 25, 2010

While everyone is concerned about just how Google will eventually take over the world and implant chips in everyone so they can search for your real time position at any time in real time for real information (do you get the sarcasm here?) there is one area where Google is not going to do as well as the competition (read: bing). That is real time search results for Facebook.

Google has announced that Facebook Pages status updates have started to be included in real time search results. This is added to their addition of Twitter and MySpace info to search results as well. Where Google is not going to be effective, though, is Facebook and Venture Beat’s Digital Beat tells us why

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69% of Companies Focus on Twitter; 61% Have No Clue of Its ROI

posted on February 25, 2010

The Value of Social Media Report has been released by Econsultancy and the Online Marketing Summit. I was offered a sneak peek at the study and provided my analysis for the report. It’s definitely worth the investment, and as a taster, here’s my analysis:

What struck me the most is that 61% of companies feel their measurement of the return on investment (ROI) from social media is either poor, or very poor. It could well be that these companies are looking for ROI in the wrong places.

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Are Google’s European Union Troubles Driven by Microsoft?

posted on February 25, 2010

The news part of this story is that the European Commission (EC) has launched an anti-trust investigation against Google. I suspect that this is heard with little surprise considering the amount of chatter recently about Google’s dominance in the marketplace. I would think it is safe to say that Google has been preparing for this day for quite some time and suspecting that the first official volley in this war would be from “across the pond” considering the EC’s apparent obsession with controlling everything with regard to the marketplace. Now, Google is being brought to task for imposing penalties on sites and allegedly being a barrier to trade.

The Telegraph tells us a little more

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Display Makes Searchers Buy Faster

posted on February 24, 2010

Eyeblaster released a study yesterday showing that “display ads stimulate search by increasing the speed at which people searching enter the purchase funnel,” reports MediaPost. The study examined over 1300 search and display campaigns over a 15 month period.

They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.

And this wasn’t just in a single industry: Eyeblaster looked at more than 200 advertisers in over 20 verticals. 72% of conversions resulted from display advertising, while 23% of the conversions were a direct result of the search channel and 5% were the result of display ads that were followed by a search.