Cashing Out: Week of January 8th – 14th 2012 in Online Marketing News

Google integrates Google+ into search

Google unleashed a major update to its core search engine this week – one that angered Twitter, had marketers concerned for their SEO, and finally put the importance of Google + into perspective.

January 10, the search giant announced “Search, plus Your World,” a new integration between Google’s search and its social network, Google +, that will personalize search results to a higher degree than we’ve seen before. From now on, search query results drawn from your Google + Circles, or from content you’ve posted on the social network, will show up alongside traditional results.

For instance, searching for a particular band might bring up the band’s website or a Wikipedia entry for them, but results might also include a friend’s mention of the band or pictures of you at their concert. And if you’ve got a friend with a famous name in your Circles, they’re more likely to show up in your search than the celebrity namesake you were actually looking for. The feature will be a default for users that are logged into their Google account.

Google says that, by showing personal results, profiles, people, and pages, they are “transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”

But the response so far hasn’t all been positive.

Though the New York Times (NYT) cited one Google Fellow, Amit Senghal, who argued “what you search today is largely written by people you don’t know; we call that the faceless Web,” the NYT countered with the solid point that “many people turn to Google for links to expert information, and might not want their search results to be cluttered with friends’ postings.”

Twitter has taken an even harsher view of the change. In a statement quoted by the Wall Street Journal (WSJ), the company said “We think that’s bad for people, publishers, news organizations and Twitter users.”

The main qualm here is that, while the update integrates social into search, it does so only for social content from Google +, not from Twitter or Facebook. However, Google argues that’s Twitter’s own fault since the site does not grant Google access to its content. The WSJ cited the following reply on Google +:

“We are a bit surprised by Twitter’s comments about Search plus Your World, because they chose not to renew their agreement with us last summer.”

But marketers may yet outdo Twitter in their opposition to the update. In an article for Mashable, Erin Everhart, Director of Web and Social Media Marketing at 352 Media Group, took at close look at how “Search, plus Your World” could affect  a brand’s SEO.

“This could prove to be an even bigger search engine development than Google’s infamous Panda update, which aimed to remove sites with low-quality content,” Everhart writes. “Why? Because it’s easier to write good content (or at least, hire someone to write good content) than it is to get people to share your content.”

In order for brands to work the new update into their SEO strategy, she says, “You then have to get your Google+ brand page into as many influential people’s circles as possible. These people also have to be in many other circles if you have hopes of reaching people outside of your immediate network. This isn’t an easy feat.”

Scales start to tip in SOPA debate

Opponents of the the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) will be encouraged by developments this week that seem to be gaining ground for those who see the controversial bill as a threat to the open web.

Since it was first proposed, SOPA has been criticized and vocally opposed by internet leaders, like Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Twitter. Most recently, GoDaddy withdrew its support for the bill and, in an about-face, became an opponent, under threat of a boycott.

And while the battle lines so far have mostly kept politicians on the supporters’ side, some are changing their stance following the White House’s response January 14 to two petitions against SOPA.

Though the Obama administration clarified that “while we believe that online piracy by foreign websites is a serious problem that requires a serious legislative response,” the statement also asserted “will not support legislation that reduces freedom of expression, increases cybersecurity risk, or undermines the dynamic, innovative global Internet.”

Meanwhile, the bill’s author announced January 13 that SOPA’a DNS-blocking provisions will be removed from the bill, a move that Mashable is hailing as “a victory for SOPA opponents.” This provision was easily one of the bill’s most controversial points.

As TechCrunch noted, “Blocking DNS without a full adversarial hearing in a courtroom raises the potential for censoring speech and other lawful activities. It is also the same method China uses to block ‘offending’ content from China’s Internet.”

In a similar case, the Wall Street Journal reported January 12 that Senator Patrick Leahy, the Vermont Democrat who introduced the PROTECT-IP act (a bill also designed to attack online piracy) is now saying “he would recommend that ‘more study’ be given to a provision in the bill that would give the U.S. attorney general new authority to seek court orders compelling Internet service providers to block [...] sites’ domain names or Web addresses.”

eBay and PayPal forecast growth for 2012 mobile commerce volume

Speaking at CES this week, eBay CEO John Donahoe discussed both eBay’s and PayPal’s expectations for 2012′s gross merchandizing volume (GMS).

According to TechCrunch, Donahoe, who also recently took on the role of Interim CEO at PayPal believes eBay will hit a volume of $8 billion in mobile payments in 2012, as compared to $5 billion in 2011, which was itself double the figure for 2010.

Meanwhile, Donahoe expects PayPal’s mobile payments to increase too, forecasting the company will reach $7 in transactions this year, as compared to $4 billion last year (the original expectations for 2010 had been $3.5 billion).

The projection isn’t incredibly hard to believe considering the rate at which eBay has grown in just 12 months. Writes TechCrunch:

“eBay Mobile currently has more than 65 million downloads of eBay’s mobile applications across platforms. And more than 890,000 new eBay shoppers made their first eBay purchase through the company’s mobile apps in 2011, a 113% increase year over year,”

Bing steals second place from Yahoo in internet search

In terms of search engines, there’s a new second in command.

This week, comScore released its data on search engine ranking by market share between November and December 2011, showing that Microsoft’s Bing has taken over from Yahoo as the number two search engine.

While Yahoo led Bing by just 0.1 percent of the market in November, it now lags behind Bing with a 14.5 percent share, as compared to Bing’s 15.1 percent share.

Never mind that Google still dominates, with close to 66 percent of the market, but for other reasons that TechFlash lists, stealing second place from Yahoo isn’t entirely positive news for Microsoft:

“Microsoft’s Bing provides underlying technology used on the Bing and Yahoo sites under an agreement between the two tech companies. Taking that partnership into account, Bing-powered searches accounted for 29.6 percent of searches in the U.S. in December, down from 30.1 percent of searches in November.”

Alibaba wants $3 billion for Yahoo acquisition

According to Bloomberg, Alibaba Group, the Chinese Internet company that has been part of so much speculation about a possible Yahoo takeover, is seeking $3 billion to help finance an acquisition of all or part of Yahoo.

Bloomberg cites “a person familiar with the matter” who says the amount is in fact reducing the amount of the desired loan “from the original target of $4 billion in order to use its cash instead.”

“The company is examining a range of funding combinations for various acquisition options related to Yahoo, and a final decision on the size and structure of the loan has not been made.”

Alibaba may not be seeking for a total takeover of Yahoo, but as TechFlash notes, “Alibaba chief Jack Ma has long wanted to buy back the 40 percent stake Yahoo has in his company.”

With its value waning in recent years, Yahoo has not yet made clear what its plans for the future are, but selling off all or part of the company are definitely an option.

The roundup from CES 2012

Tech producers and tech lovers alike were in their element at this week’s 2012 Consumer Electronics Show (CES), running January 10 to 13 in Las Vegas. With over 3,00 exhibitors and more than 150,000 attendees, it is perhaps simplest to give an overview of the event in terms of stats and highlights.

By Mashable’s count (based on analytics from Simply Measured), this year’s most-Tweeted trends from CES were OLED, “while OLED display technology likely got a significant boost form the unveiling of LG’s 55-inch OLED HDTV, which dazzled us on Monday,” writes Mashable, “ultrabook laptops and tablet devices were the only other trends to garner more than 400 Twitter mentions with the #CES hashtag.”

Meanwhile, TechRadar‘s list of top CES highlights also includes LG’s new OLED television as well as its new rival, Sony’s crystal LED.

Steve Ballmer’s keynote speech, Microsoft’s last after 15 years’ participation at CES, also gained attention. Ballmer discussed XBox’s new partnership with News Corporation, about Windows Phone, and about Metro.

Microsoft also made a splash with the announcement of Kinect for PC, as did Intel, with their promise of touch-enabled Ultrabooks.

This week in studies and reports:

Flurry users spend more time on mobile apps than on the web

According to mobile analytics firm Flurry, a December update to their comparison of mobile apps versus web consumption showed their users spent an average of 94 minutes per day on mobile apps, while they spent 72 minutes on the web. In June of 2011, those figures were 81 and 74 minutes, respectively.

“The interesting thing about this data,” says TechCrunch, “is that the most recent growth in mobile apps usage hasn’t really been at the expense of browsing the traditional web. People have just been using mobile apps more. ”

Flurry chalks up the increase in the use of mobile apps to the fact that people are using Facebook more on their mobile devices than they are on desktop computers:

“In June 2011, the average Facebook user spent over 33 minutes on average per day on the website.  Now, that number is below 24 minutes. Time spent on the web without Facebook has grown at a modest rate of 2% between June 2011 and December 2011.”

Women bigger tech consumers than men

A new study from Parks Associates, reported on by Mashable found that women are more likely than men to buy, laptops, tablets and smartphones, “three out of the four top consumer electronics categories.”

The study, which asked 2,000 consumers what they planned to purchase before January 1 2012, found that 18 percent of women wanted a tablet, 20 percent wanted a smartphone and 20 percent wanted a laptop. Among men, just 15 percent intended to buy a tablet, 17 percent wanted a smartphone, and just 15 percent were planning to buy a laptop.

Men did surpass women, however, in their desire to purchase a flat-screen LCD TV, with 19 percent saying they wanted one in the new year.

Negative reviews help conversion by 67 percent

Econsultancy reported January 10 on research from Reevo that finds even bad reviews improve conversion rates:

“The company found that 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores, while 30% suspect censorship or faked reviews when they don’t see anything negative at all,”. “Not only this, but shoppers who go out of their way to read bad reviews convert 67 percent more than the average consumer.”