You might have noticed some movement on your search results today. This little scrolling news feed (screenshot below) is Google's answer to real-time search! What they have dubbed the "Latest Results" is a compilation of consumer generated content that streamed into the search results. Instead of going through the normal Google algorithm of indexing and evaluating content for popularity and relevancy, the "latest results" are pulled in as soon as they are published on the web. Google is of course doing a bit of filtering for obscenity and spammy content.

If you think about it, a big chunk of the "social" content (status updates, tweets, photos, comments, etc) out there is meant to be fleeting. It's relevant at the time, but may not be relevant 10 mins from now. For example, tweets about Ryan's ripped abs on So you Think You Can Dance made sense during his shirtless performance... but 10 mins later, he wasn't even on stage. For this reason, Google has historically ignored most of this social content when indexing. 

This whole idea of real-time search may sound familiar since Bing introduced it earlier this year. While it seemed cool at first, Bing's solution is about to get blown away by Google's. From the user's perspective, Google's real-time search is much easier to use. It's  integrated seamlessly into the results instead of on separate pages (like Bing is doing).  Google is also backed with tremendous reach and unparalleled technology. They'll be pulling content from more places than just FB and Twitter (like Bing is doing).

Why are search engines scrambling to find a real-time search solution? Well, this part I find most interesting. Because search behaviors are changing. Research has shown that users are searching the same query over and over again to see what has changed. Like monitoring stories, tv shows, sporting events, speeches, etc. This is much different than how search was originally intended to work - search for something, visit a site, leave search engine. This behavior points to an idea that real time search being used less as a utility and more as programming itself. Users are "watching" the feed for entertainment!

How does this change SEO? The search engines will still be indexing and evaluating content  as they always have. There will just be a new section carved out in the natural search results for the real-time content. We'll just have to be even more cognizant of the fact that the social web is front and center.

What about paid search? Since users are doing multiple searches on the same query, that  could present some fun sequential messaging opportunities for advertisers : )

Every week we take Internet marketing questions from friends, acquaintances and client business partners and unravel them at the end of these enewsletters. Is there something you would like to know about the weirdly wonderful world of websites? Ask us here and we shall answer.

Question: What is Google Website Optimizer?

Answer: Per Google's dry summation:

Google Website Optimizer is a free A/B testing and multivariate testing application that helps online marketers and webmasters increase visitor conversion rates and overall visitor satisfaction by continually testing different combinations of website content. But, if you're a website owner or an Internet marketer with "mad scientist" tendencies…

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Every week we take Internet marketing questions from friends, acquaintances and client business partners and unravel them at the end of these enewsletters. Is there something you would like to know about the weirdly wonderful world of websites? Ask us here and we shall answer.

Q: What should we do with all of our old pages when we launch our redesigned website?

Short Answer: Always back it up and map your legacy content to new locations.

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This report by Pew Internet & American Life Project illustrates how important search engine marketing remains in today's online world. According to the report, released in January of this year, 89% of online Americans "use search engines."

In fact it is the 2nd most frequent online activity overall, behind only email (91%). The 3rd most frequent activity was "research product," which 81% of online Americans reported doing. 

For comparison purposes, 47% reported getting info about a job, 38% of all respondents reported using instant messaging and 35% reported using a social networking site. These numbers are from all responses combined. Once repsonses are separated by age group, the younger generations obviously had a much higher percentage of adoption on social networking and instant messaging.

Still though, using search engines was still the 2nd highest reported activity in each generation.

This report is a good reminder that even in the rapidly evolving online landscape, where communication is being redefined on a daily basis, effectively marketing online means incorporating a solid search engine marketing foundation. It also means understanding what people are finding when they search for your company.

One of the greatest things about search engine marketing is that it allows you to be at that exact place and time where prospects are searching for what you have to offer. 

Search engines are still the biggest portal through which internet users are finding information on the web. What are they finding when they search for your company? And, when they search for your product or service, are you there to greet them?

Hark, a new Internet acronym is born! What was once a facet of a solid SEO program is now being discussed as a major branch of Internet marketing in general.  Like SEO, SMO is the practice of publicizing your site and business online ... the difference is that SMO is not search engine-focused (although search engines (and other Google products) can and should play a significant role (and proper SMO could likely positively influence search engine rankings). Mainly, social media optimization requires brand and visibility-building via 3rd-party apps and content syndication. The idea is simple: Visibility yields popularity and popularity yields more visibility, so start today.

Some examples of SMO activities:

• Blogging or Journaling (You're reading one!) -- Your industry knowledge is valuable. While a spartan website can get by on an "about" page, product listings, and a contact form, going the extra mile and generating content is what end-users demand these days ... because end-users are want to talk about what you said on their blogs. In short, talk about what you know and people will follow it and spread it around.
• RSS and content syndication -- If there's any kind of content you can create on a regular basis (news, events, product listings, blog entries, etc.), syndicating that info via RSS or social tagging sites like ShareThis will allow fans to keep tabs on you (and link to you on short notice) and acquaintances to become fans.
• Embrace community -- Media sharing sites like Youtube.com, Flickr.com, and hundreds of big-name blogs can deliver traffic unlike anything you've seen before. But more than that they can help you craft your brand's personality if you can invest the time and spirit.
• Share links -- Much of blogging SMO boils down to sharing. If you have something to share, people will come to you. And people will be much more apt to pass your content around if they know you'll do the same for them.

Feel free to pick our brains on what social media opportunities might fit with your business.

By now you've probably seen the new Burger King "Whopper Virgins" commercials which revolve around presenting people from remote places with a Whopper and a Big Mac, and asking them which one tastes better. If not, here you go:

Now while the content of the ads have created controversy on their own, an interesting Ad Age article tipped me off to another curious aspect of the campaign.

Have you Googled "Whopper Virgin"?

The article spoke about how a Google search for "Whopper Virgins" immediately returned the main site for the ad campaign. However, in a Google search for "Whopper Virgin", the site was nowhere to be found.The article goes on to point that a quick Google trends query showed that there were an equal number of google searches for the plural and singular phrases.

Undoubtedly, many people who see the TV commercial will forget what the exact site URL is, and undoubtedly they are going to go to Google or Yahoo to search for the site. Now, since the article was written, Burger King's agency has supplemented the campaign with PPC ads which are now appearing in the results for a "Whopper Virgin" search.

Nevertheless, this was a significant oversight. Not only was this a missed opportunity in neglecting the half of searches looking for the singular phrase, but searchers instead found sites critical of the campaign. Ironically, on the results page for "Whopper Virgin" - the very ad age article I cite here appears fifth from the top.

Search is a fundamental and instrumental component to any marketing or advertising campaign. It should never be overlooked. Search Engines are the gateways through which much of your target audience is finding information. Effective search engine optimization is a necessity.

Evri is a new search engine. Like many new search engines, Evri has a gimmick. The basic idea is to "explore connections" between subjects, accomplished with a diagram that actually draws connections between related subjects. Here is an example with one of the suggested topics on the Evri front page, Lance Armstrong:

We can see some related subjects (though they are skewed a bit towards recent news, rather than just basic relation, like say bicycle) connected to Armstrong. Beneath the chart is a snippet from Wikipedia and to the right are some news articles, pictures and videos. This integrated media search is nothing new (Ask has done it, as have multiple "specialty" engines) but the idea is that technology has improved recently to provide for smooth embedding of different types of media. I can watch some videos of Lance Armstrong without reloading the page or leaving Evri thanks to some slick API usage and AJAX-y page transformations.

Let's look for something else though. I always like to search for "car" on new search engines, because that is a topic that should be well covered by any engine, due to the sheer volume of car discussion and knowledge online.

The first result is for Car (royalty), which is about Greek mythology. Ok, not exactly what I was looking for, I just want information on the vehicle. Next we get 2 states, a business exec., sports teams and politicians. Nothing about the cars that you ride in, right? This is actually all you can see, because at the moment it's not possible to return more than 10 results, due to the lack of a "click here for more" choice. Let's click on that Greek mythology result and see what we see.

Pictures of cars, but Wiki information about mythology. Something just isn't adding up here. Add to this the fact that I can actually type too fast for the search box and get repeated errors with parsing my query, and you have a fairly frustrating experience. Evri is a new search engine. However being new is not an excuse to be so limited in your subject matter. The rallying cry of these new sites is "Give it time! Everyone had a small index once!" What bothers me is clearly a lot of the information is being determined by what can be found on Wikipedia, and a search on Wiki can return me all kinds of information on "cars." Also I don't really understand this "wait and see how great the site will be once we get it sorted out," mentality, because there are already perfectly functional engines out there. This should be a lesson to the Web 2.0 world, that if you release a "beta" product that makes a bad first impression, people may not stick it out till version 1.0.

On the heels of some recent updates to their Trends tool, Google has released another search volume tool called Google Insights for Search. Like Trends, it allows marketers to type in a search term and see search volume patterns. Insights takes it to the next level by allowing users to directly compare multiple search terms and filter the results by geographic regions, categories and time spans. Categories is particularly helpful for search terms with multiple meanings. (Google's blog used the example of "Apple" - computer or fruit? Just pick the Food & Drink or the Computers category.)

Insights even returns the search volume data in a geographic heatmap. (Much like Analytics) The map below shows the geographic differences in search volume for "green."

Google obviously released this tool with the marketers who use Adwords in mind. But it's also a great tool to figure out what's on people minds, either next door or halfway around the world. For example, which countries are searching the most for "olympics:"

The tool is aptly named and is a real step up from the features of Trends. Search engines are the portals through which the world looks for information, and it's certainly powerful to be able to see what information people are looking for. Go give Insights a spin and come back to tell us about some of your interesting findings.

A new search engine launched today.

Cuil (Cool) is the brainchild of a former Google engineer and her husband,  a Stanford CS Professor. The launch has come with great fanfare, and Cuil is billing itself as having over 120 billion pages in its index. Per Cuil, that's three times more than Google (though Google disagrees). Impressive if you're the quantity over quality type.

We've taken a little time to tinker with Cuil this morning, and we have come away... decidedly underwhelmed. They have a neat layout, and try to do some of the categorization and sorting work for you, but the core search system just doesn't seem to stack up. On top of the less-than-reliable relevance system, Cuil is having all sorts of problems keeping up with demand.

Maybe they weren't prepared for the deluge of visitors. I heard a quick bit on Marketplace, and there is no shortage of buzz on the tech sites. Still, I'd expect the Cuil servers to at least be able to answer my queries. In my searches, I've received timeouts or error messages on about 50% of my requests. Also, I've learned to beware of the back button, as it seems to have unpredictable results when paging through your matches.

Also, I think the logic they're using to pull those tiny thumbnails could use a little tweaking. I'm not sure what that thing is supposed to be, but it definitely doesn't have anything to do with Congruent Media.

It's great that new engines are popping up and trying to knock Google from its pedestal. Competition is good for everyone, and anything that pushes the envelope will make all of our lives easier (.... and our SEO team cringes). Cuil could use a little work in the scalability and relevance departments, but we're hoping they get over the hump and introduce a little more variety to the search space. Maybe they should retroactively call this a Beta launch.

Last Thursday, the Congruent Media team of Emily, Brian and Sean took an opportunity to pour wine at one of Greater Baltimore Technology Council's regular wine tasting events. It was a great night of networking. Of course, what networking event centered around wine (and a few unusual beers) wouldn't be?

Between telling tasters about Congruent Media, and the Australian wine we poured, we also managed to get people to fill out a short survey. (We enticed them with a Starbucks giftcard for their troubles.) The survey was simple: "Rate your company's activity level in the following areas: email marketing, SEO, PPC, banner advertising, lead generation, lead nurturing, social media, mobile marketing and overall internet strategy." The results were interesting. Remember, this was a tech crowd. 

SEO

27% of the respondents replied "none" to Search Engine Optimization activity.  Another 27% replied with "Beginner." So 54% of the companies surveyed replied with beginner or none? Wow. Remember, this is a tech crowd. Effective SEO should be instituted at ALL companies, if for nothing else than reputation management.

Email Marketing

1 in 5 respondents said they do not do any type of email marketing. Another 1 in 5 declared their company at the beginner's level. Email marketing is a very cost efficient way of beginning and maintaining client relationships, yet almost 50% of the companies surveyed were at the beginning stages or not using it at all. Again, this was a tech crowd too.

This is just a sample of the data. Watch out for the full report, hitting your Congruent Media website shortly. Disclaimer: this data is the farthest thing possible from scientific, it was collected at a wine tasting afterall. Still, the responses are interesting.

How would you rate your company's activity level in the above areas? Is your company taking advantage of the internet's cost-efficient and effective marketing power?

Oh, and if you'd like to see the rest of the pics from that night, check them out here.