Marketing Pilgrim

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Google’s Page Speed Online tool has been moved from what’s left of Google Labs to make the cut and move into the real world. This means a few things.

1. Speed of your site is a serious consideration for website owners. Is it the highest priority? Probably not the highest but from a user experience point of view Google wants you to speed things up. Actually so do users so this works pretty well.

2. Google looks more transparent which doesn’t hurt in the world they currently live in which is having the government looking for a reason to get more involved with Google’s way of doing search. I don’t know about you but just the thought of this creates nausea and more than a fair bit of “WTH?!”.

But I digress. The tool is ridiculously easy to use. Drop in your URL to be tested in the box seen below.

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comScore has released their search engine market share reports for September of 2011. The real story seems to be that across every measurement, Yahoo lost share but Microsoft stayed flat while Google inched up. Are Yahoo users seeing something in Yahoo (search is powered by Bing) that they don’t like thus moving to Google? Do regular Joe searchers now realize that Yahoo results are Bing results and they see no reason to jump from one brand to the next when the results are the same (I doubt it but it had to be asked).

Here are two of the measures from comScore. First explicit core search share

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Social Q&A company Friend.ly has been acquired by Facebook. Hooray?

Friend.ly refers to their app as a conversation starter that will help you find new friends and meaningful relationships on Facebook. The app is designed to offer you a list of thought provoking questions that you can either answer or simply approve of answers given by others. Friend.ly suggests that if you say someone’s answer is cool, they’ll probably say you’re cool and there’s no telling where it will go from there.

According to All Things Digital, the two-year old company had an impressive growth spurt earlier this year but the numbers don’t tell the whole story. Like many Facebook apps, there’s a big difference between those that signup and those that actively use it on a regular basis.

As human beings, we like to follow the crowd. That’s part of the reason group deal sites works as well as they do. If only five people jump on a deal, then maybe it’s not as good as it sounds. But if 200 people buy in — well, then you know you’re in on something great.

Groupon wants you to feel the satisfaction of knowing you’re part of the popular crowd, but they’ve decided to be less specific about it.

Going forward, Groupon deals will no longer show the exact number of deals purchased. The wording on tipped deals has been changed to “Over INSERT NUMBER bought” and even that’s not necessarily true.

According to Groupon’s blog, they’ve been testing a variety of ways of covering the numbers including including this gem.

Tweety bird should have seen this one coming. According to the Wall Street Journal, Twitter is about to gain possession of the word “Tweet” and birds all over the world are angry .

Twitter has been trying to trademark the word for a while now but has consistently been blocked by the US Patent and Trademark Office because two other companies had already applied for variations of the term.

Back in September, Twitter filed a lawsuit against Twittad, a company that arranges for people to get paid to Tweet. But instead of a long drawn out battle, it turned into a short fight. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that the two companies have come to an agreement. Twitter will withdraw their lawsuit and Twittad will give them the trademark on the word “Tweet.”

Maybe Walmart is finally getting the idea that they need to be a local company despite their mega-corporation status. For years they have let their Google Place pages languish in the territory of “unclaimed” but that appears to have changed.

Now they have gone social in their local attempts by creating a Facebook Page for every one of their more than 3,500 stores. An AP story tells a bit more

The world’s largest retailer announced Tuesday a partnership with the social networking site that offers Facebook pages specifically tailored for each of its more than 3,500 locations. Those pages are designed to allow its customers to interact with its local stores as well as get information on new products, events and discount offers. The partnership marks the first of its kind for a merchant and underscores how companies are using Facebook to develop a deeper relationship with its shoppers by responding quickly to their demands with the goal of increasing sales.