Marketing Pilgrim

Let me ask you something, are you happy with the search results you receive from Google?

If you were to guess how often Google gives you exactly the result you were searching for–on your first search query–what would that look like? 40% of the time? 60%? 90%?

I’d say that for me, Google gives me precisely what I was looking for, less than 50% of the time–at least out of the gate. I find I have to refine my query before I get the desired set of search results.

Would I be better off asking my network of friends? Social search engine Aardvark’s new research paper suggests that might be the case:

70.4% of answers were deemed to be ‘good’, with 14.1% as ‘OK’ and 15.5% were rated as bad.

Google continues to reach into the application side of the web wholeheartedly while dabbling in the device area as well. It is likely that Google is smart enough to see what happened to the PC industry when it was finally realized that “It’s the application, stupid!”. As a result it looks like Google is readying another opportunity to get deeper into the application game while turning the corner from being totally “free” to generating revenue from their efforts. Imagine that. Revenue.

The Wall Street Journal reports

Google Inc. is preparing to launch a store selling online business software that integrates with its Web services, according to people briefed by the company, enlisting software developers in its battle against Microsoft Corp.

Is Apple’s Steve Jobs the king of subliminal marketing?

You decide:

Wow!

(via)

Basically since Twitter became popular, there have been companies offering “pay for followers” services. Back in August, for example, we talked about one company offering 1000 followers for $87. But it turns out those followers are way overpriced—the going rate on eBay is less than 1¢ per follower, as TechCrunch reports.

Some of the Buy-It-Now listings include 5,000 followers for $20 (which comes to 0.4 penny/follower), $5,500 for $40 (0.7 penny/follower), $1,100 for $10 (0.9 penny/follower). You are not actually buying followers outright (Twitter doesn’t allow people to transfer their followers), but rather services which “guarantee” getting your account up to the promised number of followers through “proven and safe methods.” Some even only count reciprocal followers (followers who follow back).

In case you missed it, Facebook updated its privacy settings in December. The resulting debacle resulted in complaints to the FTC (even though Facebook consulted with the commission before the change).

But, as it turns out, the new privacy changes—where a message prompted users to update their privacy settings—have (surprise, surprise) gotten more Facebook users thinking about their privacy. In fact, Facebook Director of Public Policy Tim Sparapani said that 35% of Facebook users who had never before consulted their privacy settings have now updated them.

Let me say that again, quoting the BayNewser:

In other words, [35% of] Facebook users who had never previously configured their privacy settings now configured them. (Not, as it could be read, one-third of the subset of Facebook users, in which the subset included all people who had never configured their settings before.)

Jeff "Dell Hell" Jarvis sat down recently with an impressive line-up of Google executives, including CEO Eric Schmidt, President of sales Nikesh Arora, search boss Marissa Mayer, YouTube founder Chad Hurley, and counsel David Drummond.

During that meeting, a lot of interesting topics were covered, including a potential new level of transparency for AdSense’s earnings split:

Google told me today that they would consider giving more transparency about revenue splits in Adsense…Arora said that the company was considering more transparency. I confirmed with Google’s people that this was new. I suspect that they’re not going to promise the possibility and not deliver something.

And now that Jarvis–and now us–are blogging about it, let’s hope we can push them forward with this new transparency!