A few months ago Google tried to predict the result of the Eurovision Song Contest by studying the number of searches on each contestant. The weird thing was that Google was right, correctly guessing the winner of the Eurovision contest before everyone else.

There is definitely a relation between the number of searches and the results of a vote (at least where entertainment is concerned). We can also use YouTube to see how many users saw contestants on video, although it is harder to geo targeted the result.

This technique is not alwyas… accurate, do you remember Susan Boyle (Britains Got Talent) was by far on top of YouTube viewings as well as the number of searches but at the end did not win.

Now lets see if Google/YouTube can give us the winner of the X factor 2009.

Based on Google insight (UK search only), the winner will be……….. Danyl Johnson, followed by Jamie Archer.

Searches X factor Winner

If we look at YouTube top watched videos we have once again Danyl Johnson but this time followed by Stacey Soloman.  

X factor Winner - Youtube

So based on the above, the next X – Factor winner is Danyl Johnson! Let see in few months if I am right…

Google Suggest, a new form of search engine reputation management (SERM) issue has created a new form of entertainment….in which the creator is the victim!!!

Please find below the TOP 10 funniest Google suggestions about itself:

Google won't Search for Chuck Norris

1. Google won’t search for Chuck Norris because it knows you don’t find Chuck Norris he finds you
2. Google hates Bambi
3. Google is not God
4. Google is rubbish
5. Google is running everything
6. Google is lame
7. Google killed Bambi
8. Google doesn’t remember me
9. Google says sorry
10. Google has gone too far

Let me know if you find some more

This monday Google unveiled Fast Flip. Fast Flip is th new way of viewing the Google News results page. 

This innovation  will show you all the news pages relevant to a subject in a graphic version, more or less like Google Image results page. When you click on one page, you can read it like a newspaper and switch to the next results page via some links on the side. It is sort of like a news paper about one subject.

Fast Flip - Google

This new way of viewing the news is very impressive and easy to use.

The only bad thing about it is the limited number of sources available (although the BBC, FT and many others can be published on Google). We still don’t have all the sources like in the actual Google News.

Good innovations, but needs to cover more media…

An Australian company is selling Facebook friends, Twitter followers and Digg votes for a price close to 20 cents each.

 Obviously this offer is for companies who want to promote their Facebook page or Twitter page or syndicate their content via Digg because today these social media websites are a very powerful marketing tool.

 
To be honest it is a pretty good idea, but why it is so important to have a large number of friends, followers or votes?

If you are a media agency working for a client, the number of Facebook and Twitter friends/followers can be one of the Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and obviously more you have the better it is.

 
From a users point of view, a Facebook group or Twitter account with a lot of friends/followers is more attractive and will rank higher on Facebook internal search engine as well as Google.

 
A number of votes on Digg allows your subject (with a nice link to your website) to be on the home page (or main category pages) and will attract large number of user scurious to know why so many people ‘digg’ it.

It is sad but true that on social media websites everybody is a sheep who follows the mass… but it is also the fault to Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Google who promote more the most viewed, top follower accounts.

 
I think that this company have developed a good business and will have lot of confidential clients pretty soon…

Google is not a big player on social media, different projects have been attempted but have never really succeeded. Its rival Microsoft owns part of Facebook and Twitter doesn’t want to sell.

Instead of starting from scratch, Google has used its iGoogle. A pretty good idea considering over ten million of people use iGoogle. Google announced the Social Gadget for iGoogle last friday.

iGoogle Social Media Application

The principal is simple; on your iGoogle page you can include some applications that you can share with your friends. These applications include games, to do list, pictures sharing …

The concept is pretty nice; it is a good and cheap way to develop a social media platform. Maybe Google will even take some social media market shares.

This idea also shows that people want to have everything in one place – search engine, game, chat, on one screen.

Lets see how well this social initiative will work out for Google.

Most if not all of the big companies advertise on TV. A growing number of them will include their website address on the TV ad. TV advertising is an excellent way to reach a large number of people and to describe a product or service.

What happens after you have seen a TV ad? Most viewers will check online (81% are already online while the TV is running – Source: IAB Thinkbox) and this is where most companies and media agencies miss out… there isn’t any correlation between the TV campaign and the search campaign (in particular the SEO part).

People looking online with keywords relevant to the TV ad often cannot find the website, sometimes even if they are using the brand name!

For example, Samsung runs some TV ads with Chelsea Football Premiership team.

Lot of people are looking for the keyword relevant to Samsung and Chelsea (see below).

Samsung TV ad - Search trends

The bad thing for Samsung is that they are not on the top of the Google results when looking for both terms in correlation with each other. How much do Samsung spend on this TV ad campaign?! When you know that only one diffusion of a TV spot can pay for a full year of SEO…

Samsung Chelsea - Google Result Page

Most of the time, this problem is coming from the company and media agency organisation.s Digital and TV are two different groups of people. We can also blame it on the Media planners.

Companies should push for a full coverage (TV and Digital) and not waste any leads. The good news is there are some media planning agencies which are doing a great job at it.

I was surprised when, three days ago, I logged to my Google finance page to find there was a new presentation. Effectively, without any announcement from Google, the Google finance page has been updated.

This new presentation is clearer and goes directly to your portfolio (before the Dow Jones Industrial Average graph was the main page). It is also easier to navigate between all the pages by a navigation menu on the left (before it was on the top right).

New Google Finance

It is not a major update but there are some modifications which help the user. Pretty good job from Google.

Also compared to Yahoo! Finance, Google Finance is a lot better and more user friendly. Yahoo!  has not updated their service for a while now. Once again Google beat Yahoo! with an excellent service.