Microsoft is the top Superbrands 2009/2010 and has dethroned Google, who was the top Superbrand in 2008.

This Superbrands ranking is defined by the product quality, the brand trustworthiness and brand characteristics. The top five UK Superbrands 2009/2010 are:
1.Microsoft
2.Rolex
3.Google
4.British Airways
5.BBC

SuperBrands Ranking 2009/2010

This ranking is a little bit different to Top brand, organised by BrandZ where the most valuable brand comes up top. Superbrand is more about the idea/image of the brand in the business.

Anyway, the war between Google and Microsoft has just started…

Three days ago Google had changed its result page for keywords relevant to places (e.g.: Paris, London, Yellowstone park…)
When you are looking for information about London, the Google results page will now include the map result and four pictures of the city.

Google new presentation

This new presentation looks a little bit better but it is not a major change. When you click on the picture on the left of the map you are automatically redirected to Google Maps with the location where the picture was taken.
Compared to Yahoo!, Google is (once again), a little bit late with this update. The Yahoo! results page has a different view and offers its own content relevant to the city and not a direct link to the map. You can, for example, find information about hotel, restaurant, flights and maps. Yahoo! also proposes some pictures of the city and the top rated things to do.

Yahoo! London Search Result Page

For this kind of search the Yahoo! result page is definitely the best functional solution and they also eliminate the competition (because all the content proposed is from Yahoo! or partners). This is probably why Google did not propose any hotel, restaurant on its own result page.
Once again they Google seem to have attempted to copy Yahoo!

Ten years ago, Google used to be a nice little search engine. People liked Google for its independence and its different way of seeing the world (or at least Internet). In contrast, Microsoft ten years ago was the big corporation which wanted to control everything.

 
Today Microsoft is not so omnipresent anymore and doesn’t really annoy anyone. Google has still a got a good reputation and people still like them but I think that it going to change soon. Effectively, over the past three years Google has created these additional services: search engine, email, calendar, YouTube, phone, internet software, and now the new Operation System (O.S.) for computer.

Google Everywhere

They have done the opposite of Microsoft – starting via the internet to finally producing some software. Google has different strategy to Microsoft by trying to make its products free. It will be the same with this new O.S.

 
How very generous of them?…I’m not so convinced. A few months ago some senior Google managers decided they wanted to increase profits. Do you remember YouTube’s (owned by Google), new ads on the videos?. .. Google generally offers the latest innovations for free, but they almost all always come with advertising.

 
So when Google announced that they are going to develop a O.S. for free, I cant help but wonder where they are going to add some adverts to this nice O.S. or how there are going to make some money with this service.

 
Or maybe I am totally wrong and Google want to get back at Microsoft after they went after Google’s primary market (with Microsoft’s new search engine – Bing).

 
And to be honest, I starting to be tired of seeing Google everywhere…

Since the start of the Roland Garros Tennis tournament (French Open) you can follow the score very easily via Google or Yahoo!. Both search engines offer the possibility to see the scores on the search engine result page.

It is not the first time that Google and Yahoo have had their own shortcut on the results page; you can look, for example, at any conversion rate (money, distance…).

For the French Open, Google set up an RSS feed from the official website to its result page (for the keywords relevant to Roland Garros). This graphic version is pretty simple and the result links to the official website.

Google - Roland Garros

Yahoo! once again has worked a little bit harder with its own RSS feed. The result links to the Yahoo sport section. There are also some other links to some other pages of Yahoo! Sport (Scores, schedule, photos and video). The graphic view of the score is also a little clearer.

Yahoo - Roland Garros

It is a very good way for Yahoo! to promote is own content. Yahoo! also did a lot better job by proposing some other links relevant to Roland Garros. Google’s provides minimum services, but did it…

Today we have over a thousand confirmed cases of swine flu around the globe. The swine flu is huge news event covered comprehensively by the different medias (TV, Press, Radio…) and a large part of the population wants more information on it.

Based on Google traffic estimation, there were over three million online searches in April 2009 for keywords relevant to the swine flu.

Swine Flu - Traffic Estimation

The weird thing is that Google is making an incredible amount of money with this enormous number of searches via its Pay per Click (PPC) service. For example in England, the NHS (National Health Service) and the Directgov (official site of the English government) are the top PPC results, many others also bet on swine flu related keywords, the face masks manufacturers, pharmaceutical companies, online newspapers et.c.

Swine Flu - Google Result Page

With an average of $0.5 per click, over 140 bidders and three million monthly searches you can guess how much money Google is making.

This is the fourth time that Google has organised the Doodle Google. Doodle is a Google logo drawing competition. It is reserved for K12 students (5 to 18 year old kids) across the US .

Doodle - Google

This years topic is ‘What I Wish for the World’. Google invites all users to vote for their favourite logo based on the state finalists and regional winners. The winner will have his logo online on the 21st of May 2009 and the child’s school will receive $25,000 to go towards improvement of IT facilities.

Doodle - Vote

Doodle is a great online campaign (very similar to the one organised by YouTube, weird they are the same company!!!). It provides aid to schools….whilst promoting the brand awareness to the youth of America.

Once again it is a cheap and efficient online marketing campaign organised by the Google Group. Maybe next time Google will organise a world wild contest…

Today Google launched a lot of new services. A new interface for the Google Webmaster tool, some new options on the search engine results page and my personal favorite, the Wonder Wheel.

This function is really easy to access. On the results page of Google click on on the top.

Wonder Wheel - Google

The Wonder Wheel is a graphic way to search content by linking a topic to different sub-topic (e.g.: football to football training to NFL training).

It is a useful tool when you don’t know the best keyword for a specific subject. Just enter a generic keyword, click on the most relevant suggested link and Google will try to guide you to the right keyword.

This tool is not really an innovation, a few years back Microsoft devolved Tafiti with the same principle, with the exception that Tafiti uses the ‘new’ Microsoft technologies (Silverlight).

Tafiti - Microsoft

At the end of the day, I am not sure that a lot of people are going to use this option but it does explain a little how Google is working at the moment.