By looking at the Google trends tool we can see that the weather is a popular topic when it is snowing in England.

The number of online searches about the weather has exploded these past two weeks. Never before has there been so many people looking at weather information online. For example, the BBC has five times the usual number of visitors to it’s weather section.

Unsurprisingly, every time that it is snowing the number of searches increase significantly. Good time to advertise on the weather websites…

Google Suggest - Universal Search

This Google update is pretty simple. When you are on the home page, Google will suggest some ideas for keywords and shows some universal results even before you have pressed enter.

This new update is only available for the .com and doesn’t work with Google UK. It is also very limited; just useful for the weather and some basic functions (conversion rate…). It is far from what I would call a ‘universal’ search… if you are looking for ‘Nike logo’ nothing shows up (same for ‘London map’ or ‘tiger wood news)’.

Google Suggest - Universal Search

Anyway this function has the possibility of expanding, and consequently being more useful, with more media integrated into it (map, news, football result, image, video…)

Right now this update is too limited and very few people will even see it. However, at least Google is trying to do something a little bit different from Bing or Yahoo

Gillette has been accused of changing the french website, specifically the animation with Thierry Henry, Roger Federer and Tiger Woods.

Gillette may have changed the Flash animation after the France – Ireland football game and the notorious Thierry Henry’s handball. On the french animation, Thierry Henry doesn’t have a ball on his left hand but in the other countries versions Thierry Henry carries one white football in this left hand.

Thierry Henry - Gillette French website

Thierry Henry - Gillette UK website

Why doesn’t Thierry Henry have a football when Roger Federer has a racket and Tiger Woods has a golf club on the french animation?

Hard to check if Gillette did anything or it is just a weird coincidence. Anyway, lets see how Gillette is going to manage this crisis…

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

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…

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.

For people like me who spend their time devising social media strategies for various clients, not having a Twitter profile for a big company sounds pretty odd. It is even weirder when it is one of America’s biggest companies.

McDonald’s started its Twitter profile the 25th of September and already has 855 followers. There are only 33 Tweets and there is not a lot of interaction… but at least they are not only ‘pushing’ Tweets from an RSS news feed. They are also talking with different people who are talking about them. It is not a bad strategy.

McDonald's Twitter Profile

This is not the first time that McDonald’s has used social media. McDonald’s are already are on Facebook with an excellent fan group.

McDonald's Facebook Profile

In conclusion, Mc Donald’s did not spend as much time on its Twitter profile/strategy as on its Facebook group as but at least now they are doing it.