Some interesting points in the news for the day, a game of copycat, a story about stories and a trending term late in the day, GaGa going Google.

When it comes to playing copycat, the internet made it almost second nature to find an idea, make a change or two and launch it as your very own. And almost never have the world know better. But this version has to do with Yahoo and it’s own iteration of the Google Instant search tool. It’s not a revolutionary shift in the way search will be conducted on the web, but for the users of the Yahoo search portal it fits into their mantra of search by click. As you type your search into their search box, it’ll give you the drop down list of anticipated searches. It’s limitation however, dwells within being tied to the Yahoo engine, the anticipated searches are limited to Yahoo categories.

A story about stories that has made the rounds has to do with Google as well today. A judge has essentially told Google that no, you can not digitize the worlds books. The search giant had reached an agreement with publishers and authors late last year with a payment to reimburse the creators of the works. Federal judge Denny Chin was quoted as saying of the idea: “..would grant Google significant rights to exploit entire books, without the permission of the copyright owners. Indeed, the Amended Settlement Agreement would give Google a significant advantage over competitors, rewarding it for engaging in wholesale copyrighted works without permission, while releasing claims well beyond those presented in the case.” Where this will be going in the near future is completely up in the air for the moment, as is the future and longevity of untold amounts of orphaned pieces literature.

As for Gaga going to Google, she answered some fan questions, cracked some jokes and had a generally good time. You can find her video on Youtube, it’s an interesting view of the most searched artist who leveraged the power of the web, social media and online marketing to become a music sensation.

Here is a great pictorial from Aaron at SEO Book & Jess Net. Click to make Larger

Infographic by SEO Book

In what’s sure to be a precedent utilized around the world, Google and their Street View product has been absolved of any wrong doing. Well, in Germany that is for the time being.

A court in Berlin has rendered the verdict of basically not guilty of infringing on personal privacy because the pictures from the cars are taken from the street and not the sidewalk. A number of the claimants used the fact that the cameras were mounted so high up on the cars they could see over privacy fences and the court told them in short, to just opt out as 240,000 other Germans already had.

The way which German courts are laid out, this is a final decision in thhe matter for Germany, but it hasn’t affected global matters as of yet. Perhaps for the moment, all eyes will turn to France and their courts as news of the German verdict was handed out, French courts levied a fine of $141,000 against Google.

Since it’s inception and it’s growth to become the go to search engine for the majority of internet users, Google has tweaked, modified, upgraded and changed the way you search continually. Under the hood that is, the algorithm has been tweaked so many times it barely resembles that innocent little spiderbot that began it’s journey 10+ years ago.

Every time that they make a change in the coding, or an indexing priority change it effects the search results page and it’s relevance for the users. Last year for example in order to speed up the experience of search, Google implemented the Caffeine update which indexed and cached pages faster than ever before. Doubling the experience with Google Instant they brought the average search down to less than 10 seconds for the average user. The most recent major change was the Panda or Farmer update which was put into play to try and exlude major content farms and spammy websites from search results.

And a new shift which is underway, which only Google knows will take place, Google is currently reevaluating the relevancy weight that’s given to keyword rich domain names. In a short video blog, Matt Cutts discusses a few differences between domains in that you can go differing ways in search. With a brandable name, or with a keyword rich domain. And while there’s something to be said for having a keyword rich domain, it also needs to be pointed out that more often than not, brandable urls and company names prevail online. Take Twitter for example, you wouldn’t search for twitter by using social micro blogging site, you’d type twitter in the search bar, or even just directly into the address bar.

So just to be a little more clear in what Google has admitted they’re currently working on. They’re analysing the relevance of keyword rich urls to ensure they’re delivering proper results. And they’re going to be adjusting the level of relevance they give to keyword rich domains. Bear this in mind when the next SEO “expert” you speak to, who’s working from his basement or garage urges to you that you need to have a url with your keywords in it. Because after all is said and done, what’s in a name?

And the winner is? Mozilla and Chrome browsers at last weeks Pwn2Own web security conference. Internet Explorer 8 as well as Safari web browser were hacked within the first few days of the contest which tests browsers and internet security. Neither the Chrome browser nor the Mozilla Firefox browser were breached as teams who signed up to tackle the browsers withdrew as they failed to come up with a technique to exploit them. It’s Firefoxs first “win” at the event and Chromes third year of survival.

Both surviving browsers: open source, have bounty programs, have embedded security teams, better at faster fixes. Co-incidence?
via Chris Evans Twitter, a Chrome security engineer

Mobile browsers were also targeted and all fell to the exploits which researchers found, Google however was the first to offer a fix for the exploit which was addressed.

The contest doesn’t mean that you’re completely unsecured using IE 8 as your dedicated browser, or that by using Chrome and Firefox you’re completely protected from malicious attempts at snagging your data. The researchers at the Pwn2own event dedicate a fair amount of time and resources into breaking or hacking a specific browser, all with the intent of passing on their methods and thinking to the manufacturer so they can be patched.

With JC Penny & Overstock.com getting penalized from Google for trying to outfox the search engines, what lesson can you learn from these stumbles?

Be careful when it comes to technology you may not fully understand. Let me say this again, Be careful when it comes to technology you may not fully understand.  

Today, countless organizations—small businesses especially—are being told that their fortunes will improve if they learn to harness the magical powers of SEO. If you own or operate a Web site for your business, the come-ons are no doubt familiar: “I visited your website and noticed that you are not listed in most of the major search engines,” goes one popular one.

Do organizations fall for these pitches? They sure do. In fact, entire industries have become enamoured with SEO. Take the media business. Today, many publishing companies are putting more investment into search gimmicks than in quality content. The result? Fewer impactful features, more animated slide shows and plenty of SEO-optimized headlines, including one from The Washington Post that read simply, “SEO headline here.”

Infatuation with SEO and related technologies extends to companies of all types. According to the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), North American spending on search marketing is growing nearly 15 percent annually and will top $17 billion this year. This is in addition to the vast sums spent on SEO technology and consulting.

With these figures search has seized the attention of scores of business executives worldwide, Sooner or later, every competitive company will develop or invest in SEO capabilities. When this happens, distinguishing your organization with basic SEO technology and knowledge will become very difficult.

There are signs that some SEO companies are having to go to greater extremes to produce results for their clients. Is the sun is about to set on SEO. It might, but don’t cancel your contract with your SEO provider just yet, For the foreseeable future, SEO technology will remain a very valuable business tool, but only if you keep a competitive advantage. For that, you’re going to have to focus on business basics, including your innovation, prices and operational excellence.

Some thoughts echoed from Inder Sidhu the Senior Vice President of Strategy & Planning for Worldwide Operations at Cisco

So there’s this thing called the internet and people are able to create their own little slice of it to tell their story or maybe even to sell themselves! It’s an amazing tool, sadly it bears the responsibility of granting anonymity to those using it, and as such it’s becoming more and more crowded with imprudent users. Massive sites of good, bad and just plain terrible information. Sometimes it seems that no matter what you want to find, you can’t help but have dozens of trash and spam results to filter through to find those nuggets of wisdom.

Well, Google has listened to your cries for spam control. And with their recent Panda (Farmer) update, it’s helped clean up as much as 12% of the overall searches performed with the service. When you’re talking in the billions of searches per month, 12% turns out to be a rather significant number. And yet, that still leaves 88% of the searches performed which may still be plagued by spam sites, scraper sites and poor quality sites. Well, Google has listened again, and now even more control of your personal search experience has emerged.

Now as you perform a search, a new option to shape your experience, block all results has been implemented. It may sound like it’s just too simple, but it does in fact allow users to form their own modified algorithm of sorts. Not interested in E-How.com? You can now choose to block those results from your searches. After you’ve blocked a url, simply reenter your search terms and voila! Cleansed and purged from your future results.

The search engines are in the business of bringing you, the user, what you want from the web. The added amenities that they provide, whether it be maps, documents, pictures, or Facebook integrations are bonuses designed to help further shape and enhance your user experience. Just like the new feature of blocking searched sites with Google.

It’s the newest multi-billion dollar industry, with only 5% of it’s market being currently tapped as a resource and who owns the biggest slice of the pie? According to a report released last week from banking and investment firm Macquarie Group, Google is absolutely dominating the mobile search share in the US with 98% of the market.

Even Eric Schmidt, the Google CEO admitted that the mobile arm of the company is growing faster than was expected and completely surpassed all of the internal projections of growth. In a somewhat disturbing pattern in the mobile market however, it has shown that costs per click (CPC) are higher, with a lower click through rate (CTR) in the big picture. The average CPC on mobile is 13% more expensive than the PC version while the click through rate is around 30% lower than PC users. To be successful in mobile you need to be relevant, consistent and a way to grab those impulsive searchers. That one dollar adsense ad you put up is now going to cost you $1.13, and if your copy isn’t eye catching or compelling enough to bring the customer to you, it’s the beginning of an expensive lesson.

Organic search engine optimization boasts the highest return on investment in the marketing world today. With measurable results, proactive and engaging marketing can drive your company to it’s limits for productivity. Finding a truly competant SEO expert in the most recent world might seem like shooting fish in a barrel, but it’s much more akin to a needle in a haystack. There’s a thousand impersonators out there, but only a handful who can truly get the job done. SEO performed by the experts is like leaving a fingerprint on a website, the real players know when work has been done properly.

Becoming an expert in SEO isn’t a matter of taking an online course, attending a seminar or reading a book. It’s about cutting your teeth by attempting to rank your own sites, earning your wings by surpassing all other players in competetive niches because you’re just that good. You don’t pick up SEO overnight, you don’t learn it by watching the pros and you certainly do not venture into the market without prior experience and knowledge.

Content You have 2 options: 

1) Good content without promotion

or

2)  Good content with promotion. 

#2 wins every single time.  As long as there is a profit motive for good content, there is a profit motive for promoting it.  SEO is one tool.  SMO is another.

Advocates

So why does word of mouth from brand advocates work?

Consumers trust Word of Mouth. Which means conversion rates are higher.
You don’t pay advocates. There are costs of course, but you’re not paying advocates to make referrals.
Brand Advocates are not just for Christmas. Paid clicks are ‘perishable’ advocates are not.

I’d add a couple of other reasons myself:

Advocates are integrated marketers. They are online, offline and through the line. They don’t differentiate the way your agency or media campaigns do.

They give your marketing campaigns wings. Advocates are often spurred to advocate your products and services when they come across your marketing messages. They increase coverage and impact of your other marketing activity.

Advocacy means UGC. Brand Advocates write nice things online about your brand. They create keyword rich content just because they love you. And we all know what search engines love.
Longer and Deeper love. One other benefit of identifying and cultivating your brand advocates is of course that they are likely to stay more loyal for longer – so your CRM gets a boost too.

So advocates are great, but how do you find them? aren’t they as elusive as a four leaf clover?

The answer is so simple it hurts. You ask them! The simplest survey question of them all ”How likely are you to recommend us?” – and BINGO, you know who your advocates are. Now you just need to cultivate them.

“Traditional marketing has companies speak to many to reach one. Today we speak to one to reach many.”

In a little shown display of power, Google excercized it’s mobile muscle on it’s Android operating system over the last few days. It came to the attention of the mobile team of malicious software being made available on the market, and they quickly stepped in to isolate and destroy the offending apps.

What they did next, was show how much control that they have remotely to your Android software. I’ve read estimates that tens of thousands of users were affected by the software, and with the flick of a switch, Google removed the software from the infected devices. They remotely uninstalled the software from the handsets and for a final resolution recommend resetting the phones to factory default for good measure.

The Android Marketplace is being updated with better tools to manage applications, but the largest point made I noticed was the control Google was able to exert on their mobile operating system. It’s a touchy subject of privacy when users are subject to a websites constantly changing privacy policy ala Facebook, but it opens up a whole new can of worms when your mobile device is openly controllable from a remote location due to it’s operating system.