Marketing Pilgrim

You’ve seen it. I’ve seen it. We’ve all seen it. And now even Google’s head of spam prevention, Matt Cutts, has seen it.

What am I talking about? This:

In a post today, Cutts admits that Google has ”seen a slight uptick of spam in recent months.” Keep in mind that this is the company that doesn’t like to admit anything is ever wrong over at the Googleplex. Mention click fraud, search spam, or anything else nefarious and you’ll get flat-out denials. So, it’s interesting that Google’s chief spam fighter is admitting that search spam is on the rise.

If Google’s admitting it, it’s probably worse than we first thought.

OK, now that we’re discussing the elephant in the server farm, let’s look at what Google plans to do to rope this stuff in. First, the easy spam–keyword stuffing:

With all the attention that the SMB space is getting from the sudden realization that people shop locally (really?!?!), it’s important to see if all of this is just media hype or are the actual small and medium businesses of the world actually catching on.

If the findings reported by eMarketer are any indication then the answer is a resounding “Kinda”. The chart below speaks to the results from a study done by Ad-ology. The standard MP research warning alert is in effect. We keep our research validity threat level at a constant orange (high risk of PR drenched research) and we are not adjusting for this data. You have been warned .

So Facebook leads the pack. No surprise there.

Following yesterday’s headline grabbing news about Eric Schmidt being removed from his CEO post in early April, Google just happened to let the cat out of the bag on a new product designed to give Groupon and LivingSocial a run for their money. The new product is around the daily deal concept and will be called Google offers.

Of course, no one is naïve enough to think that this ‘leak’ was an accident. Even if it was in this day and age no one believes that anything is ever ‘leaked’ anymore but rather given to a publication in exchange for some drama filled presentation of the ‘news’.

This particular exclusive went to Mashable and they report on Google Offers

comScore’s latest study on email usage returned a result we already suspected was true – more people are using their mobile phones to access their email causing a drop in web-based email usage.

The shift is more about the advances in technology and less about the way we use email to communicate. Web-based email has always been about ease of access. If you’re only using Outlook then your work emails stay at work and home emails stay home. Forwarding emails from one computer to another was the only way to gather all of the information in one place and if you were traveling the you were stuck.

If you missed today’s earnings call from Google, here’s what you missed:

Google did $8.44 billion in revenue–a  jump of 26%. Net income was up 18% to $2.2 billion. Google ended the quarter with with $33.4 billion in cash and 23,300 employees.

Oh, and Eric Schmidt is no longer the CEO.

Say what?

No kidding! Google’s CEO for the past 10 years is stepping down from that role. In a blog post Schmidt states…

…we have also agreed to clarify our individual roles so there’s clear responsibility and accountability at the top of the company.

Parents with children under six years old spend more time using social media than those with older children. This is one of the findings of a new survey conducted by Media Audit and featured on eMarketer.

Starting with 67.1% (for parents with kids under six), the study saw a gradual but steady decrease in usage ending at 55.2% for parents with kids over 18. My guess is that the decrease is based on two factors, parental age and lifestyle.

Though there are exceptions to the rule (Elton John), most sources quote the mean age for a first baby at 25 to 27 years old. So the top level of responders in this survey are in their early-thirties and under. That alone, will account for more social media usage.