Marketing Pilgrim

If you are not convinced about Google’s efforts to dominate the local search landscape then you may have a tough time believing anything at all. Google has been working on many different offerings on the local level. Some of the questions and concerns are around just how well these changes will play with Android v iPhone devices which is a fun thought to ponder. This particular experiment, however, which is discussed in the Google LatLong blog is not one of those (darn it!).

Google is experimenting, in a pretty small way apparently, with including hotel room rates with their Google Maps results. Here’s a look see.

Gmail has added a new security feature to identify suspicious logins to your account. Using the broad geographic region of IP addresses logging in, Google says, “a login appearing to come from one country and occurring a few hours after a login from another country may trigger an alert.” The red alert bar displays above the email box:

The feature is activated by default and will be coming to Google Apps customers soon. This may be a little inconvenient if you travel a lot, but you can click “Ignore” on the warning and move on with your life. If you’re not traveling, or are worried about the activity, the “Details” link shows the geographic areas of the last several logins. If you think your account has been hacked, you can also change your password from that screen.

Last fall Google made it easy for brands to make their paid search ads around their own branded terms stand out with its SiteLinks program. The idea being that these brands should have some advantage since they are, well, the brand.

Seems like a great idea except when some of these brands have been getting their search bills. The program works so well in some cases that the search spend because of these special ads have gone up dramatically for some.

AdAge reports

A typical search ad contains one link, or sometimes two — one to the advertiser’s home page and sometimes one geographic link. Ad Sitelinks allows advertisers as many as five links in three lines of text. Macy’s, for example includes links to “free shipping deals,” “shop online,” “find a store,” and “account login,” in addition to a link to its home page. Toys “R” Us includes a link that says, “Buy one get one free little tikes!”

Twitter would like you to know that the percentage of spam on its network is down—way down.

Of course, Twitter attributes this decline to its efforts to combat spammy tweets, but there are two other explanations to consider.

1. Notice the chart shows percentage of spam, not actually numbers. Could it be that actual spam tweets are on the rise, but the percentage is down due to an even faster growth of legitimate users? I’d love to see the actual numbers.

2. When a network plateaus are the spammers the first to show signs of fatigue? Is this decline a sign that Twitter users are simply not engaging as much these days–even with spammers?

Thoughts?

Google is launching a new beta feature for AdWords today: Search Funnels. The feature is a set of reports that show exactly what customers who arrived via a paid search ad saw or clicked before they made a purchase.

Right now, AdWords advertisers only have information about the last ad the customer saw—the last ad they clicked on before they made a purchase. Search Funnels helps advertisers to see all of their search ads the consumer saw or clicked on before they finally purchased.

The reports also let advertisers see other related terms their customers searched for before clicking. The reports include: Top Conversions, Assisted Conversions, First and Last Click Analysis, Time Lag, and Path Length. They display data for 30 days prior to the conversion.

Just in time for the iPad, Yahoo is premiering two new Apple apps based around their local/mobile search offerings. One is a fairly standard search app—but the other brings an interesting dimension to local search. Considering that, as Google reported, a third of mobile searches are local, there’s obviously a significant market for local/mobile search.

Using the iPod and iPhone’s touch-screen capabilities, users of the new Sketch-a-Search app can outline an area on a map and search within that area for a specific type of business. The feature is specifically geared toward US restaurants and lets users search by details including ambiance, ratings and types of cuisine. The app is slated to expand to other business categories and countries soon.