Also here are a few links to articles that we have been mentioned in.

http://www.marketingvox.com

http://www.dmnews.com

http://www.benzinga.com

1,238,584 people had viewed the ad again on YouTube before the Vince Lombardi trophy was even presented to the Saints! This again only reinforces the power of search – over 1 million people to took time away from the Big Game to search online for an ad they had just viewed.

The ad is simple, almost Apple like in production. It shows the progression of different searches and results as a young mans life starts off traveling abroad to eventually settling down with a family. Google did a great job of adding emotion to something as technical and sterile as search. The ad brilliantly illustrates how these days we truly rely on search for so many different aspects of our lives wither we realize it or not.

The ad showcases many different uses Google has – regular search, spell check, language translation,  flight status, and local search. During the 60 second spot they featured local search in 3 of the results.

Cafe’s near the louvre
Chocolate shops paris france
Churches in Paris

Think about it – Google spent millions on this ad and featured local search results 1/4 of the time during their sop. If this doesn’t show how important local search is I don’t know what else would.

What did you think of the ad? Watch the Google ad.

To me there are pro’s and con’s of this. On one hand it is a way to deliver real time search and information on what is happening. For some topics that are not really “news worthy” it will be a much easier way to find information and to get a pulse as to what is going on. But on the other hand how credible are these results? Most often times people on Twitter post links to other sites, press releases and sources of information, (like a traditional search engine results page) so it’s kind of an extra step.

Either way it just shows how fast and powerful social media has become and how Google is always working on delivering relevant, up-to-date information to their audience.  It will be interesting to see if they continue to implement this for more results or only try it for a short period of time. So far I have only personally come across these results twice but will keep en eye out for them in the future. Have you seen these yet?

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EDIT

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I just updated our twitter to notify everyone that AgencyWeb would be closed on Monday for Martin Luther King day, and did a search on Google, sure enough they had the Twitter feeds embedded. A few minutes later our post came up. I have to admit I thought that was pretty cool!

So why am I talking about a baseball app as the regular season is winding down and with the playoffs approaching? This app is a great example of making a good thing better by listening to user feedback and not resting on their laurels. Other apps should take note of this and strive for improvements much in the same way MLB did.

The 2009 version of the MLB app has incorporated some amazing improvements. At the start of the season owners of the app could now listen to the Game Day Audio, even choosing which broadcast they want to listen to – home or away. Game Day Audio costs $15 by itself and MLB At Bat only costs $9.99. You do the math.

A few weeks after the all star break they added in Game Day Video. This allowed users to watch games live as the video broadcast is streamed into the phone. The quality on a wifi connection is simply amazing, looking like a miniature HD-TV. When on the 3G network the quality diminishes but still plays real time and relatively unaffected. One game a night chosen at random was available for viewing. I subscribe to the MLB.tv package every season for over $100.00 allowing me to watch any game on the computer and thought to myself it would be cool to have the ability to watch any game on the iPhone since I’m paying for it already. Sure enough a few weeks later this feature was incorporated into the app. Simply entering my login information into the phone I can now watch any game no matter where I am at.

This app is a must have for any baseball fan and is well worth the $9.99 price. I must say this is the most expensive app I have purchased though it is clearly my favorite. It would be nice if other major sports copied this model and offered a robust app so fans all over can follow their favorite teams.

Overall Tweetie is a great application for the mac and I highly reccomend it.

Follow AgencyWeb on twitter.

The first thing most potential customers will do is search for the name of your company and start to look at the sites listed instead of going directly to your domain. The more spots you have the easier it will be to control your message.

According to Jakob Neilsen the web’s leading usability expert and author of several books including “The Web User Experience”

“When we let users loose to go anywhere they wanted on the Web, they went to a search engine 88 percent of the time. Only in 12 percent of cases did they go straight to a Web site. In 93 percent of searches, the users in our study only visited the first SERP (Search Engine Results Page), which usually held ten search results plus a number of ads. In only seven percent of cases did users page on to a second SERP. Only 47 percent of users scrolled the first SERP, which means that 53 percent saw only those search hits that were ‘above the fold.’ “

So why would you want to create, actively work, and link these social profiles? Would you rather own 5 or more of the top spots for your company name or leave them open to potential competition, or bad press. Additionally these are the types of sites potential customers will visit to research more about your brand to gain a complete understanding. Sites like Twitter, Flickr, and Linkedin are well known and hold lots of weight. With fresh quality content, proper linking strategies and a little time we are finding these pages displaying right along side corporate sites. Then new platforms like our own Local Mojo is up and coming and also starting to show SERP results.

If your online reputation is important to your business it needs to be treated in such a manner with serious resources dedicated towards it. It is a continual process that needs to worked, and measured for optimized results. If you think we can help your company out with these services go ahead and contact us.

We have been recommending twitter to our clients as a way to communicate with their client base and potential customers, as well as an easy way to get into blogging. We found that approach works good, if a client can keep up with their simple twitter account we can graduate them to a blog. If they struggle or don’t have any time to put into something simple like twitter then they will never blog.

We have had several businesses come to us that just need a simple, small website for their local business. We helped out where we could but often times we were either booked or was not efficient for both parties involved. We like to keep our focus here at AgencyWeb on strategic marketing and really get engaged with our clients on a long term basis. On the flip side one of our other businesses which provides simple directory style listings in over 50 engines was often not quite enough for some businesses who needed a little more. We were unable to serve this huge gap in the middle which most businesses fit in that are too small for an agency, but too big for a simple directory listing. Then came Local Mojo.

Local Mojo provides businesses with a free optimized local site. The small business owner can provide detailed information that potential clients are looking for such as location with maps, hours of operation, services, payment options, and background history. Local Mojo goes beyond the basics with the ability to embed videos from your YouTube account, photos from Flickr, feeds from Twitter. Your local site will not only give customers the information they are looking for, but also help you brand your business as well as your self to help build a relationship with your customers.

For those businesses who wish to go beyond the basics Local Mojo offers simple and affordable ways to increase traffic to your page or existing site. This can be accomplished buy purchasing blocks of targeted localized traffic and adding click to call technology.

What makes all of this even better for the local business is the fact that everything is measurable. The small business owner will now be able to track everything about their local site and online marketing efforts. Local Mojo has high end analytics incorporated into the platform so everything is measurable such as site traffic, geo-targted results, pay per campaign management and more.

So head on over to LocalMojo.com to sign up for a free site for your local business.

I think this is an interesting strategy to drive traffic. Everyone will know to go to vw.com or vitaminwater.com if they want to look at the official site or find more information about those companies. But driving traffic to a social site like Facebook can help them build another web property and focus their message or campaign around a specific topic that otherwise may not flow with the message of the corporate site.

I guess there are some potential drawbacks though by not having the ability to have your own analytics installed on those pages to measure traffic and conversions. Though you have to assume that Facebook is providing them with some type of metrics and traffic reports on their custom pages. Either way you look at it it’s an innovative way of building our brand and directing traffic to a web site.