thinks

Yesterday, we took a look at how Google’s Buzz screwed with its customers’ privacy. Well, it turns out Google’s customers are screwing them right back, hitting the search giant with a lawsuit. Um… whoops.

Facebook learned this one the hard way, with its Beacon program, which “only” cost the company $9.5 million dollars. Plus lawyer’s fees, of course.

You want customers to follow you on Twitter? Friend you on Facebook? Then remember that in the age of social marketing, it’s important for all companies – whether you’re a local retailer, a social media hub, or the biggest search engine in the land – to treat your customers like they’re your friends, too.

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Have you seen Google’s Buzz? The folks at This Week In Google have. And, they mostly like what they see. I do too. Except for this one little thing… During the podcast, Jaiku founder Jyri Engeström says (about 13 minutes into the show),

“One could argue, [this was] a brave choice from Google… as a brand to retain people’s trust… and I think that’s probably the single largest threat to Google that people would, on a large scale, lose their trust in Google… and I think this was one of those cases where a call had to be made…”

Seriously? It was a good idea for Google to say, “Privacy?!? We don’t need no stinkin’ privacy.”

Jyri’s right in that losing their customers’ trust is a huge threat to Google. And, given that, the right answer is never to say, “Eh. Let’s see what happens.” (A quick tip o’ the thinking cap to Jeff Jarvis, also of This Week in Google, for pointing that out, too).

Google could easily have sent an email, shown a banner or a content ad or all of the above to say, “Hey, here’s what we’re going to do in a week’s time: we’re going to immediately and automatically start sharing your Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public albums and Google Chat status messages. ‘K? Oh, and here’s how you opt-out if you’re really freaked by that notion.”

Because, as they’ve demonstrated with Buzz, they know everything about how to reach you. And all your friends, too:

OK. Cheap shots aside, couldn’t an argument be made for taking this more proactive approach? Well, Jyri steps up to that, too:

“…honestly, I don’t think it’s a bad thing for people to kind of be exposed to it, issues, this way and for us to be having this conversation right now because, um, y’know, it’s kind of necessary for us to shift, I believe, from this world of the silo-ed social networks into a world where the data can flow freely.”

That’s fair. Google wants as large an adoption curve as possible. The success of Twitter and Facebook – or, more tellingly, the failures of MySpace and Friendster – have shown us that. And it’s clear that many businesses benefit from robust social tools.

But, when you’re dealing with your customers’ information, you have to remember that it’s your customers’ information. Yes, Jyri, it’s a good thing to have this conversation with your customers. It’s a good thing, too, to take steps to open the dialogue. But it’s a real bad thing for Google’s long-term best interests if they don’t start to give a little more thought to their customers’ long-term best interests. Because, as I noted above, trust is just one of Google’s significant threats. Another – and they can ask their friends at Microsoft about this one – is government intervention.

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Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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Do you check your analytics dashboard every day? Yeah, me neither. We all mean to do it. We know it’s important. But, real life – helping customers, dealing with employees, what-have-you – sometimes takes priority. That’s what makes Google’s new “Analytics Intelligence” and Analytics Alerts so handy.

Basically, the new features within Google Analytics allow you to define events – a big jump in traffic, or worse, a big decline – and receive alerts when those events occur. Here’s what they say about it on the Google Analytics blog:

• Analytics Intelligence: We’re launching the initial phase of an algorithmic driven Intelligence engine to Google Analytics. Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods. For instance, Intelligence could call out a 300% surge in visits from YouTube referrals last Tuesday or let you know bounce rates of visitors from Virginia dropped by 70% two weeks ago. Instead of you having to monitor reports and comb through data, Analytics Intelligence alerts you to the most significant information to pay attention to, saving you time and surfacing traffic insights that could affect your business. Now, you can spend your time actually taking action, instead of trying to figure out what needs to be done.
• Custom Alerts make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur

And here’s Google’s video that explains how to use them:

What do you think? Will Intelligence and Analytics Alerts help your business? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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I saw a speaker a few years back who said, “If your business model relies on you being smarter than Google, get a new business model.” Harsh, maybe? But is it good advice?

After spending this morning with Google, my answer is a qualified… maybe.

Now don’t roast me for being noncommittal. It’s more a matter of nuance. I prefer to say, don’t try to outsmart Google where the risks outweigh the benefits.

Black hat SEO? Well, is it worth it to you to get completely bounced from Google? No? Then play nice and partner up.

Search? The only real risk is wasting a lot of time and money. If you don’t care about those things (i.e., you’re venture funded and it’s not your money), knock yourself out. If not…

Knowing your customer? Ah… Now we’re onto something. Google has ridiculous amounts of data and can know tremendous amounts about your customer. Google can find and target customers all over the place. Leverage their tools, like AdPlanner, where it makes sense to augment your understanding. But, ultimately, you should never outsource understanding your customer. Is it possible you’ll be able to outsmart Google when it comes to knowing your customer? Maybe not. But the risk of not trying is much, much worse.

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Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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You’ve really got to hand it Microsoft. Their new search engine, Bing, is getting lots of love from both customers and the media in its first couple months of life. Now comes a report that claims customers click on ads on Bing much more often than on Google. For anyone looking to get involved in search marketing – or any type of marketing at all – those are “sit up and take notice” kind of numbers.

Even more impressive is its relative share of clicks. Erick Schonfeld does a good job of breaking down the data in the report and for me, this is the interesting bit:

• 78% of all clicks came from Google.
• 12% from Yahoo!
• 10% from Bing

Considering they’ve only been around a handful of weeks, that’s very good news for Bing. Relative to their share of impressions (7%), they’re getting a disproportionately large chunk of the clicks. So, opportunities definitely exist, so long as they fit with your business.

What do I mean by that?

Well, Bing’s demographics – much like Microsoft’s historical averages – skew a little older and a little lower on measures of education and income when compared with Google. For instance, here’s a comparison of income statistics:

Bing Demographics [Source: Quantcast.com]

Google demographics [Source: Quantcast.com]

While that may not matter in all categories, some businesses may find that Bing’s users don’t fit their demographic profile. Or, they might fit the profile well, but not drive enough traffic to generate meaningful income. Back when I was selling an economy-priced product, MSN significantly outperformed Google on a cost-per-acquisition basis. The flip-side is that Google crushed MSN from a traffic perspective. Ah, the joys of trade-offs.

Clearly, you should always pay attention to items growing this fast. And there’s no doubt Bing makes the cut here. But it needs to make sense for your business, too. Don’t follow the herd just because they’re chasing a popular story.

If any of this sounds familiar to you, it should. It’s very much in line with our advice when Bing first launched: make sure it’s covering your basics first, then test for added benefit.

We’ll keep our eyes on Bing and keep you posted over time. In the meanwhile, how’s Bing working for you? Tell us about it in the comments.

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Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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It goes without saying that search engine optimization – SEO – is a Good Thing. You want your customers to find you when searching. And there are lots of individuals out there willing to tell you what constitutes best practices, what’s “white hat” and “black hat” (i.e., techniques that play closer to – and further away from – Google’s rules, respectively). But all this back and forth on tactics and techniques begs the question: Can you have too much of a good thing? How much SEO is too much?

In case you’re worried this is just a theoretical exercise, take a look at the recent back and forth on sculpting PageRank with nofollow – or not, as the case may be. I don’t usually go into the gory, technical details of SEO and you’re about to see why. But bear with me for just a moment or two and I’ll try to keep this from being too painful. I think you’ll find it worth the wait.

Google recently reversed itself on whether sculpting PageRank with nofollow – a fairly technical solution used by some SEO firms – is a good practice, now stating that it’s not. As Google web spam guru Matt Cutts recently said:

“…[nofollow] isn’t the most effective way to utilize your PageRank. In general, I would let PageRank flow freely within your site. The notion of “PageRank sculpting” has always been a second- or third-order recommendation for us.”

I’m not going to debate whether “…PageRank sculpting has always been a second- or third-order recommendation.” I don’t think that’s why you come here. But, it is a fact that the dangers of nofollow PageRank sculpting were already well known to many solid SEO practioners. Still, the SEO industry immediately leapt into action following this recent shift, with some suggesting Google is “criminalizing” SEO and others looking for practical solutions to “…plug the nofollow leak.”

The point being, you can waste a lot of time on technical arcana, when you should be investing your time in creating great marketing, offering your customers products and services that solve their problems. I like to call it Customer Experience Optimization. When the topic of PageRank sculpting through nofollow first started making waves, I referenced and expanded on Search Engine Roundtable’s advice, stating :

“…Search Engine Roundtable has the best approach: “why not [do it], if you have exhausted everything else you could have done on your site” (emphasis mine). Most small business websites have far bigger search engine optimization – and customer experience optimization – issues than this. In other words, know the basics of SEO. But once you get too deep into that rabbit hole, leave it to the rabbits.”

Bryan Eisenberg of GrokDotCom echoes this point, stating:

” I recommend that you do great marketing primarily. Then focus on making sure you publish the best content for the person doing a search. When that person has a list of options to choose from in their search engine results page, your content provides them with the best experience.“

To illustrate the point, Amazon.com has over 200 links on its home page – itself a “violation” of SEO best practices – and only 10 of them use nofollow. Clearly, they’re giving the topic some though -but not too much. Yet they rank well, don’t they? More important, their customers use them, talk about them, recommend them. And isn’t that what you’re really going for?

Great marketing, such as described in this recent post by Marketing Headhunter.com’s Harry Joiner shows what I mean. Joiner clearly benefits from search – and has a well-optimized site. But he benefits most when his marketing resonates with his target customer first. And so will you.

As long as Google and its competitors focus on providing the best result to searchers, we’ll continue to have an arms race between the search engines and SEO marketers. And that’s OK. It’s absolutely important to do a good job at SEO. But always sremember you’re playing by the search engines’ rules. In practice, the best way to win at marketing is to define your own set of rules.

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Are you getting enough value out of your small business website? Want to make sure your business makes the most of the local, mobile, social web? thinks helps you understand how to grow your business via the web, every day. Get more than just news. Get understanding. Add thinks to your feed reader today.

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And while you’re at it, don’t forget to follow Tim on Twitter.

Image credit: husin.sani via Flickr using Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

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