Google

It's about time and really a necessity for any type of 3rd party review service to allow for the business to respond to a review. Without a response the business is vulnerable to attack and does not have recourse. This could happen for any type of reason but sometimes it is just an unhappy customer who makes a "mountain out of a mole hill" or really blows things out of proportion. In the worst case scenario it could be someone (a competitor) trying to sabatoge your buisness.

Either way it is not good

Google announced, Wed. Aug 4, 2010, on the Lat Long Blog that verified business owners can now respond to individual customer reviews on Google Places, good or bad. Google places, if you recall was formerly known as Google Local Business Center.

This is a great benefit for the business for two primary reasons:

Back in April, Google announced that it had changed the name of the Google Local Business Center to Google Places. They also announced a good deal of new features that businesses should be aware of. These include: service areas, advertising with tags, customized QR codes, business photo shoots, and more favorite places.

New features that come along with the name change include:

Late last year, Google announced that it was sending traditional brick and mortar businesses bar code decals to put on their windows, with these QR barcodes (a two-dimensional barcode that represents the URL of the company’s local listing) people can scan them outside with their phones and bring up business listings with all kinds of information like, reviews, menus, contact info, etc...

These codes have been made available to the businesses Google deemed "favorite places". It began with over 10,000 businesses in the US that received them right off the bat, and Google will eventually expand that number in the future.

While the intent is to place these decals outside of your physical business the real implications could be used on advertising in all media. Since the barcode can be scanned from just about any type of media including billboards, business cards, computer monitors (try the example above), TVs, and possibly even movie theater screens as well the opportunities for advertisers to use these codes is endless.

Last week, Google announced Personalized Search for everyone. Personalized search has been previously available, but only to individuals signed in with a Google account. They are now making it available to anyone via an anonymous cookie.

Privacy concerns aside, is this really necessary for relevance? Or is this just another way of aggregating data and producing a more focused demographic profile to advertisers.

When I am searching on Google I want the most relevant results, not based on my previous searches, just the most relevant results. Period! Now the option to turn this off is available but I assume the majority of users wont know or care.

While the 6 million dollar man may have been "Better, stronger, faster", Google Analytics appears to have gotten "Better, stronger, smarter." Back on October 20th Google released a blog post notifying the world of their enterprise class improvements to the excellent Google Analytics software that has become the standard web analytics tool (at least in our office). The 3 main new features they are rolling out are:

1. Expanded Reporting and Analysis Features
2. Enhancements to their API
3. Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts

While the expanded reporting and analysis features are good, I am not looking to jump in on that right away. Although the expansion of mobile website analysis is going to be awesome once it is implemented properly. Enhancements to the API are not relevant for us at the current moment either so we are not to excited about those improvements. However the Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts looks to be absolutely awesome. Check out their video of how it works:

Back in at the beginning of 2009 Google launched the beta of Google Sync. Google sync allowed Google users to synchronize their Gmail contacts and Google Calendar events to their iPhones or Windows Mobile devices (Android natively syncs data). Syncing mail was not included but that was until now. Google now has push email for Gmail. Now if I could only figure out how to sync my gmail (Google Apps) with MicroSoft Outlook and my Iphone.

Flash has been around for years. At the beginning it was an easy way to add animation to your web pages. As the technology evolved, the functionality of Flash became much greater to allow for full programming and applications to be created using Flash and not just simple tweens and morphing text.  But indexing the content of Flash files has always been a problem for the Search Engines (Google). Google recently announced that they are improving the way that they index Flash files. They are now able to read and index the content linked to an external resource of an SWF file. This is very valuable in that the most powerful Flash applications utilize this technology to distribute dynamic content. Unfortunately up to now, that content was blind to Google.

Could google have discovered swine flu in Mexico before the outbreak started to spread? Possibly. The Data is there, they may just need to be looking in the right place. Check out their Flu Trends Tracking for the United States. And the experimental tracking for Mexico. You can easily see the local search trends here because the data is older. Give the US a little time and we will see the trends show up. Hopefully we are looking in the right areas.

The recent outbreak of swine flu has kept the US Center for Disease Control on their toes posting updates to twitter. Even Google is helping out with tracking the spread of the flu. Sites like http://www.healthmap.org can track health concerns throughout the world and pinpoint geographical locations of events using google maps API.

However, a recent article by HealthCare IT News suggest that there is yet another trend in search that can be analyzed and harnessed for the good of all.

With all of the economic doom and gloom going on these days, its good to know that one form of advertising is still working... Online! Google recent 4th Quarter results were a glimmer of hope for online marketers that there is still business to be had online. Actually online appears to be the place to be. While many marketers are going to be rearranging their budgets for 2009 (compared to 2008), it looks as the good amount of marketing dollars have already been moved online. According to a survey, conducted jointly by Hearst Electronics Group and Goldstein Group Communications (GGC) , nearly half (47%) of all marketing spending is going to online strategies.