Marketing Pilgrim

From time to time I talk about sports and Internet marketing here at Marketing Pilgrim. I do it mainly because I am a fan but even more so as a marketer because sports sells. Now being in the US, soccer (or football to the rest of the world) is not as dominant in terms of shear numbers and impact as a spectator sport. It does, however, count millions of youngsters as players of the game and many others catching on during the start of the World Cup in South Africa today.

It looks like the US and the rest of the world are taking notice. Beet.tv reports

• Google calls Vietnam’s Internet rules restrictive
• 6 Tips on Image SEO
• Google Retires Web Alerts, Replaces With ‘Everything’ Option
• Canadian Court Notes That Keyword Advertising On Competitor’s Trademarks Is Not Deceptive
• Facebook and Google Submit Comments on Privacy Bill
• WordPress.com Down for the Count
• Tweeeeeeeeeeeeeet! Twitter Has A Way To Show Off Your World Cup Allegiances
• Google Kills Its Homepage Background Image Experiment Early

Google AdWords would like you to know that you’re a loser.

Well that sucks, doesn’t it!

Wipe away that tear–it doesn’t mean that your father-in-law was right about you all along. Nope! While Google AdWords wants to tell you that you’re not up to par, it’s doing so in a kind way–and it wants to help.

The just launched “Analyze Competition” feature will help you understand how your AdWords campaign matches-up with others bidding on the same type of keywords:

‘Analyze competition’ examines your account’s activity over the past two weeks and lists categories that represent the products or services you’re advertising. Categories are based on actual Google.com search terms and are matched up against your keywords, ad text, and landing page text. For each category associated with your account, you’ll see a bar graph, which shows your individual performance compared to the average performance of other advertisers in the same category.

There’s one question that seems to be asked of Twitter all the time: what’s the ROI?

I tend to reply with some smart alec comment such as “That’s like asking: what’s the ROI from my telephone!” Yeah, that doesn’t go down too well, but it’s true. Twitter is a channel, a tool. Just like your telephone, it has no ROI unless you put in place a strategy that can be measured.

Well, that may be all well and good, but Twitter’s not taking any chances. It’s not prepared to sit back and hope its business users are smart enough to figure out the “ROI of Twitter,” so it’s made an important acquisition. It’s just acquired an analytics company.

Is it Friday yet?

After last week’s abbreviated work-week, this week seems to be dragging on some. How’s your week going? Really? See if these Pilgrim Pick’s can brighten your day.

• Google Voice to Integrate with Gmail as a VoIP Service
• Flickr + Facebook!
• Linden Lab Lays Off 30 Percent Of Staff
• Google’s Wi-Fi sniff probe reveals ‘criminal intent’
• More And More Lawsuits Filed Against Google Over Street View WiFi Slurping
• Come On Yelp, Really? Dukes, Barons, And Kings Of Venues?
• Bing Tries To Launch Social Search Improvements

Google has to walk an interesting line at times. It needs to keep itself at arms length from government scrutiny and activity but at the same time needs to be close enough to call on governments (as in worldwide) for assistance.

That is certainly the case as Google looks to the US government and European government for help in addressing Internet censorship in China. Google’s woes in China have been well documented and it is one of the rare moments where Google appeared to walked away from a fight. What might have really happened is that they just stepped back to regroup as The Canadian Press reports:

Google Inc.’s top lawyer said Wednesday that the world’s leading search engine is asking the U.S. and European governments to press China to lift Internet censorship, describing it as an unfair barrier to free trade.