A few months back, when there were still 24 X-factor contestants I predicted, based on Google search results, that the winner of the X Factor 2009 would be Danyl Johnson, followed by Stacey Solomon.

Today these two X Factor contestants are still part of the show, where only ten of them are left. So far my previous prediction has been proved right…but obviously since the month of September, a lot happened and there are many others new influences which will effect how the general public vote. Now lets see who the new X-factor winner should be based on the most recent Google searches.

If we look at the last 7 days (UK only) the 2009 X-Factor winner is the group John and Edward, but if you follow the show you know that they probably not going to win… so the proper X-factor winner would be Lloyd Daniels or Lucie Jones follows by Olly Murs and Jamie Archer.

X Factor Winner 2009 based on Google

Also based on this research the next contestants to be nominated will be Rachel Adedeji and Danyl Johnson.

Please find below the results:

1.       John and Edward
2.       Lloyd Daniels
2.       Lucie Jones
4.       Olly Murs
5.       Jamie Archer
6.       Joe Mcelderry
7.       Danyl Johnson
8.       Rachel Adedeji

After Google removed a penalty (on the Search ranking) from two different websites of Media Corp, the shares of Media Corp increase by 158%!

Effectively, Google penalised two websites of Media Corporations, gambling.com and creditcardexpert.co.uk for an undisclosed reason. Just after the announcement of Media Corp that the penalty was removed by the giant search engine the share increased significantly…153% in a week!

Google Result - Gambling.com

This shows you how powerful Google has become and also how important is to do SEO for a major company… if all the share holders know how many top companies don’t care about their visibility online, they would probably change some of their investments.

This is one of the first times that Google has officially spoken about search engine reputation management via its blog. It is probably because they have increased demand from businesses/users to remove negative results…

SERM was been big topic foe at least 4 years now… and is getting very important for most of the users to have a clear search reputation.

Google advise you to remove all the content that can be negative if you own the content or ask the people who posted the negative content to remove it. These advice provided by Google is pretty simple but good common sense.

Probably good advice if you are a simple user and a few of your friends posted some stupid pictures of you but if you are a business it would be a lot harder to remove the negative content.

Anyway, it is still interesting to see that search engine reputation (SERM) has become one very big subject.

Paranormal activity is a new low budget horror movie from the US. With a budget of only $11,000, it has still managed to reach the top 5 of the box office rankings in the US after only two weeks!

Obviously without any money for a traditional marketing plan, they used the new social media platforms and word-of-mouth fan buzz.

Paranormal Activity Twitter

Starting with a posting of the very well done trailer and utilising Twitter and Facebook as its only marketing, the movie is now a hit. It is a simple technique but very efficient. The main ingredient was the trailer and the rest is just a question of word-of-mouth.

In the UK we will have to wait until the 27th of November to see it…

Most of the search engine reputation management (SERM) issues exist because people are unhappy with the brand or the company has some negative news (strikes, delays, redundancies…).

When I was looking for Louis Vuitton on Google UK, the results page wasn’t what I was expected. There were no negative results about the brand but there were some ‘affiliate websites’ which sell Louis Vuitton hand bags. So far nothing wrong, but when I had a closer look at these websites I realised that all of them are selling replicas! Probably some website hosted in China or another country where is difficult for Louis Vuitton to close them.

Louis Vuitton Google Result Page

I am pretty sure that Louis Vuitton is spending a lot of money on legal action but doing nothing online regarding this issue. I am not sure that it is the right move…

This is why Louis Vuitton should set-up a search engine reputation management (SERM) campaign. Technically, they have to push down the replica websites on Google results page and it would be a lot more difficult for the people who are just looking for the brand to find these websites.

With this strategy they could possibly damage these websites more quickly than through lengthy legal actions…

This just goes to show how SERM can be used for different and unexpected situations.

On YouTube today I noticed that the most viewed video is one about Google. Quickly watch it; it is only a ten second video. It is about the test home page of Google, where the top menu and the links fade in.

My surprise wasn’t that Google had a new homepage, but that so many people are interested in it and the huge amount people watching this video (75,000 viewers in two days). Does everything that Google does important to everyone?

For me, this is a proof that Google is highly important for most internet users. Everybody seems concerned about any tiny changes to our favourite search engine.

The Federal Trade Commission (USA) has announced a series of new guidelines about blogging. Any blogger who receives any money, gifts or any kind of endorsement for writing a post/review should notify the FTC.

The FTC is trying to help the customer to identify authentic product reviews. It is a nice idea but once again it would be difficult for the FTC to apply this law. Most of the bloggers get gifts and no money which makes it more difficult to trace.

Federal Trade Commission - Blog Guides

Also, most of the time, the bloggers are independent to write whatever they want about a product even when they have been given a gift/money for it…

I can understand the initiative of the FTC but the negative effect of it would be that it would be harder for the customer to find independent reviews online – although most of them are truly autonomous and not managed by the company.

This guideline will also penalise the smallest review blog which get free products, under this law they will be not able to buy all the products that they want to review.

Let see what happens to some blogs, the USA based ones at least.