Google pushed out a PageRank update last night, and now both NickRoshon.com and NicksCarBlog.com have PageRank3. Search Engine Land has more of this surprising update, given Google’s recent statement that webmasters shouldn’t focus on PageRank so much, and consequently removing PageRank from Webmaster Tools. Many speculated PageRank might be dropped from the Toolbar soon as well – but this doesn’t appear to be the case. The last PageRank update was in June, which continues Google’s trend of updating PageRank in the toolbar every few months.

RustyBrick of Search Engine Roundtable has a good point in regards to PageRank in the toolbar from an SEO perspective, so I’m quoting him below:

Yes, a Toolbar PageRank update means nothing in terms of your ranking changing anytime soon. The PageRank scores shown in the toolbar are outdated and have zero direct impact on your Google rankings. That doesn’t mean that PageRank has no influence, but the toolbar score does not have any influence. Google shows us one thing, but yet uses another thing.

Well put.

It’s also important to consider the Webmaster Point of View here, and I think that is really where Toolbar PageRank matters: I’m looking for advertisers for my car blog. When advertisers see that I have solid PageRank, I think that gives me credibility that I might be a website they should consider to advertising on (after more due diligence, of course) – especially if I offer those potential advertisers a link on my blogroll, as that link should pass along some “link juice.” At a minimum anyway, potential advertisers will see that Google values my content at least somewhat, that this is a legitimate site that probably isn’t penalized or banned, and that my website is something they give further thought to- and they can tell all of this from a free toolbar in a matter of a second. Likewise, a site with PageRank N/A or 0 is likely to turn off potential advertisers nearly immediately,  so that PR can really be the “first impression” to either open the door or have it slammed in your face. Just my two cents, anyway.

What are your thoughts? Would love some comments on this.

iCrossing, a global digital marketing company, has announced the release of an-all new, free iPhone app called “Say What?” which allows users to search the web for a keyword, brand, or other terms you’d want to monitor, and then returns the results broken into four separate categories: Twitter, Digg, Forums, and Blogs.

While I don’t have an iPhone, I was able to borrow a collegue’s phone to test it out – and I was impressed (bias alert: I work for iCrossing, although I had nothing to do with the development or conceptualization of this app). A quick search for my name, nick roshon, returned some pretty neat results and I really liked how they were organized by network type and you could easily drill down for more information.

A quick tip: if you are searching for a phrase, put it in quotes (also works for normal web searches). The query: nick roshon had some good results but also returned a few results for Nick Jonas and Roshon Feegan hanging out (apparently they are teenage Disney stars…). Put the query in quotes: “nick roshon” and the teenie-bopper results were weeded out.

All in all, a neat little app that would be a great tool for marketers and brand managers who want to know what people are saying about a place, brand, company or product from the convenience of their smartphone…and its free.

Download it here: http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewArtist?id=330893554

Read more about the App from Rachel Pasqua, responsible for the development of this app and the Director of Mobile for iCrossing: http://greatfinds.icrossing.com/say-what/

Reminds me of the spirit of my previous post, “Social Media Experts” Are Really Only Experts at Cliche.

I have an internet blog and everything. In laymen’s terms, that mean’s I’m super fucking awesome.

Word bro, I know the feeling

So Bing had a contest to see which fan could create the catchiest Jingle for their search engine, and the winner was just announced via their YouTube channel today. Catch it in it’s full glory below:

Lyrics to Bing Goes The Internet:
Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet,
Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet,
Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet
Bing Goes the Internet…
If you’re looking to learn how to dance like me – Bing goes the Internet
If you want to find some pants like me – Bing goes the Internet
If you’re looking for answers to all of life’s questions – Bing goes the Internet
If you’re looking for fixes to all of life’s messes – Bing goes the Internet
Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet
Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet
Bing, Bing, Bing Goes the Internet
Bing Goes the Internet…

While dorky and a little strange (in all fairness, it is about a search engine), I do find the video pretty funny, catchy, and “viral” enough for Microsoft to choose it as the winner and generate some buzz (which it is succeeding in). A video doesn’t have to be high-quality and incredibly thoughtful to go viral, it needs to be something original & noteworthy – sometimes being awful will give it a better chance of it going viral than the opposite (for instance, had this video been sung by Kelly Clarkson with professional dancers…yawn)

MG Siegler of TechCrunch wrote a scathing review of the jingle, and I quote:

“Catchy” is one word for it. Another is “awful.”

Sure, the song will get stuck in your head, but so does the sound of seals barking, or cows dying, if you listen to them for long enough.

But as bad as the jingle is, the video is much, much worse. It’s some guy in pajama pants doing really bad interpretive dance nonsense with awful effects and a Bing backdrop. The entire time I’m watching this, I’m thinking: So this is what hell looks/sounds like.

Mashable posts a more favorable review of the song, describing it as:

And we have one word for the well-produced Jonathan Mann video: creepy. It’s actually polished – probably because this guy records a song every single day on YouTube, which alone is a weird shtick…The entire contest was a bit weird to us, but you know, most good viral marketing campaigns are a bit odd. And this barely cost Bing anything to do.

The entire time I’m reading this, I’m thinking:

1. This TechCrunch review is awesome. MG Siegler would have moved up a notch on my list of deliciously witty & sarcastic bloggers if I kept one.
2. This is an intentionally goofy/odd video, which the TechCrunch review didn’t seem to pick up on, but Mashable surely did (which blows my mind, I usually can’t stand Mashable due to their inability to ever be insightful).
3. It is fueling the fire for this contest, Bing itself, and particularly for Jonathan Mann, as this review is picking up steam and being passed around twitter. Consider it officially viral.

The author of the song fires back to the TechCrunch review, which you can check out here:

The bottom line is this: Microsoft paid $500 to the winner, and in return got millions of views between the buzz the competition generated and the resulting viral spread of the video. Now that is an awesome campaign, and I do believe that Microsoft was probably insightful enough to know this video was just awful yet goofy enough to do the trick.

When people ask how do you “make something go viral”, this is how you do it… (Editor’s Note: you can’t make something go viral or not…the content is either viral worthy or not, and there is little you can do either way)

Here’s one more from Jonathan Mann, where he was featured on the Rachel Maddow show a few months back for his song Hey Paul Krugman (A song, A plea):

Is it too soon to start worrying about Yahoo/Microsoft Search Deal?

The world of Search Engine Marketing (SEM) is going wild today with the news that Yahoo! and Microsoft announcing a 10 year partnership. Search Engine Land has been doing a great job covering this news, complete with liveblogging the press conference and getting inside interviews.

However, a lot of coverage out there is starting to speculate into what the SEM industry needs to do and how this changes things, particularly this post from SEOmoz speculating the Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo Deal Changes for SEO. I think we all need to take a few deep breaths and not get ahead of ourselves here. Here’s the fine print from the Search Engine Land article that is all to easy to overlook:

…At full implementation (expected to occur within 24 months following regulatory approval)..

That’s 2 years AFTER the Federal Government approves the deal. And don’t forget the shareholders need to approve too. Given the size of Yahoo and Microsoft, as well as the Government’s Anti-Trust folks and the DOJ’s interest in maintaining competitiveness in the industry, which is already in an oligopoly if not monopoly state already, neither the shareholder nor the Government approval of this deal is likely to come quickly (or possibly at all). The Washington Post has a great article explaining some of the legal hurdles and is already commenting on the scrutiny Microsoft and Yahoo will face. If it will take 2 years after this approval, we’re talking light years in the tech world.

Think about 2+ years ago. Twitter was practically unheard of. MySpace still dominated Facebook. The iPhone hadn’t been released yet. 2 years is HUGE!

As part of the professional SEO community, I think it’s important we keep this all in perspective. This deal could be ground-breaking, but not any time soon. It’s important to think about what all this could mean, but remember that right now all that has happened is Carol Bartz and Steve Ballmer shook hands with each other. We should educate our clients on the details of the agreement, but let them know its nothing to start worrying about yet. Even in a few years, when everything is “fully integrated,” at the current figures Bing will only have a miserable 15% of the market compared to Google’s 78%, making its market share less than 1/5th of Google’s.

So my message to you is this: stay calm, keep current on the deal (because the agreement is going to change, especially once the legal issues start being scrutinized), and continue go about your business focusing on the search engine that ridiculously dominates the other one or two out there, even when you combine #2 and #3’s market share. In all seriousness, Twitter could overcome Bing/Yahoo in two years in terms of number of searches, traffic, hits, revenue and more, as their new home page certainly shows a redoubled interest in search:

Will Twitter Have More Search Share than Yahoo/Bing in 2 Years?

Photo credit Yahoo and Twitter

I’m a bit suprised by this, because I thought MySpace was pretty much dead – but apparently, they make more ad revenue than the more popular (and more user friendly) social networking site Facebook. Take a look at traffic for each site:

Compete shows ~122,000 unique visitors for Facebook last month but only about ~61,000 unique visitors for MySpace – so Facebook has double the visitors!

Yet, according to a new report on social media by eMarketer, Facebook isn’t expected to suprass MySpace in ad revenue until 2011 – still a solid two years away!

What gives!? In my humble (and possibly misinformed) opinion, Facebook has a generally more wealthy, educated crowd than MySpace – the type of people who are more likely to spend money on products being advertised. When Facebook first launched (ahh, the good old days!), it was only open to Ivy League colleges (Zuck was a Harvard elitist, apparently), then it was opened to other top colleges that weren’t quite Ivys but still pretty darn good (yay, Northwestern), and then they opened the floodgates for 12 year olds, grandparents, and anyone else with an email address, even my dog Penelope!

The quickest growing demographic on Facebook is now older users, who also would presumably have more money to spend on the products being advertised. Here’s an interesting chart of Facebook Demographics during the first half of 2009:

My only guess is that these estimates by eMarketer are on the (very) conservative side – and that Facebook will beat out MySpace much quicker than 2011. If I were a betting man (and I am), I’d put my money on this occurring MUCH sooner – the demographics and growth of Facebook are too hard to ignore…and MySpace is a more or less a sinking ship! With Facebook ad revenue growing and MySpace ad revenue likely to shrink, it seems like the perfect storm. And with all the rage of Twitter these days (and Facebook redesigning to imitate it), MySpace gets less attention and new users, putting the nail in the coffin.

Update: Laurel Papworth’s “The Business of Being Social” blog has a great post on this topic that supposes MySpace still holds a commanding lead over Facebook for ad revenue because of the Google / Myspace ad deal that generates $2.17 per user for MySpace, as well as MySpace’s event planning services like product/album launches and etc. I bet she’s right, but I still wonder what is taking Facebook so long to find a way to arrange an even sweeter deal than MySpace, given their more favorable demographics, growth, and traffic. I know Facebook has their own ad channel as opposed to using an established channel like MySpace does with Google, which should mean more profit in the long run, but even then…c’mon guys! Quit poking each other and get on it Thanks for the linkback, Laurel!