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Google Settles Buzz Lawsuit With $8.5 Million Payment

In a recent survey about holiday shopping, 64% of the people said they’ll be spending less on everyone this holiday season, so that means marketers will have to work a little harder to make sure it’s their company that gets the cash and not their competitor. The trick is paying attention to how and why people are spending and customizing your marketing efforts to match.

eMarketer has a nifty new report called, “Online Holiday Shopping Preview: What Retailers Need to Know,” that can help, but here are a few of the basics. 42.7% of the people surveyed said they would only buy gifts that were on sale and 36% said they’d be doing more comparison shopping before forking over the cash.

In the past, Thanksgiving was the traditional start of the holiday buying season and most retailers kicked it off with a huge Black Friday sale. The upswing in online shopping led to the creation of the Cyber-Monday sale a the start of the week after Thanksgiving, but Fiona Dias of GSI Commerce told eMarketer that most consumers aren’t going to wait that long for a deal.

“For the holiday season, the earliest retailers start to make noise around Halloween. So by the time Black Friday comes around, the most savvy shoppers have already taken advantage of Black Friday–like prices and Cyber Monday–like prices a good month ahead of time.”

Dias also likes Twitter as a means of driving business this season as it allows retailers the opportunity to constantly put their name in front of customers with flash sales, gift ideas and answers to questions. As we’ve seen in the past, a good deal on Twitter can go viral in minutes which leads to another warning by eMarketer’s Jeffrey Grau who wrote the report. Now is the time to test your website checking for the ability to handle large amounts of traffic, looking at SEO strategies and just making sure that your shopping cart works. Even for a great deal, consumers won’t keep trying if a site doesn’t work the first time or two.

Experts are also saying this is the year that mobile shopping really comes into play. Brian Murphy, who handle New York-based mobile advertising sales at Google, told Mobile Commerce Daily that Sears sold two $300,000 tractors through their mobile site last year;

“If somebody’s going to buy a $300,000 tractor from a mobile phone, something unexpected is going to happen. We’re going to read an article from a major bricks-and-mortar retailer about how they sold a line of products through mobile that you never thought anyone would buy through mobile.”

The key says Murphy, is delivering information not advertising. He points to a program by Panasonic that offered a branded guide to buying a flat screen TV. Consumers could download the guide to their phone and use it while they were at the store to compare features.

Panelists at a recent holiday focused, Mobile Marketing Summit agreed that businesses need to step up and embrace mobile sales opportunities. And that these mobile sales effort must end with the ability to actually purchase an item from a phone. They felt that anxiety over the security of mobile payments was overstated and that new technology made mobile payment as secure as payments done over the web.

The message here is that retailers are going to have to be more creative when it comes to wooing customers. The urgency and viral nature of flash sales, the convenience of mobile, making the shopping experience as fun and error-free as possible – these are the keys to seeing green instead of red this holiday season.

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Mobile and Online Deals Expected to Drive Holiday Sales Dollars

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Google Announces Can’t Be Missed Press Event On Search – What’s Up?

No, not like that, but in the good way!

The following is a guest post by Jim Kukral highlighting one of the most fundamental tips to succeeding online.

Have you ever really taken a step back from all the technical SEO stuff and thought about why Google wins? The real reasons why they have mass-market share and why they continue to dominate? It’s time you should, because once you understand how to start thinking like Google, you can finally begin to go beyond just ranking better, but also how to be a master Internet marketer so you can get more sales, leads and publicity.

After all, once you’ve been found, you now have to convert. Otherwise, it’s a waste of time.

So why does Google win? Because Google is the world’s biggest, and best, problem solver. The truth is that there are only two reasons why we all go online, using Google or not. Those two reasons are:

1. To have a problem solved
2. To be entertained

That’s it. Everything, and I mean everything you do online falls under one of those categories. For example, let’s say you’re planning on cooking your wife her favorite chicken marsala dish for your anniversary. You go online and do a search for “chicken marsala recipes”. Boom, you now have recipes, and videos, and images and cookbooks and all kinds of information to help you solve your problem.

As another example, let’s say you wanted to relax after work and watch your favorite musician play some of your favorite songs. You go to YouTube and do a search for “Rolling Stones Videos” and boom, you’re now watching video content that entertains you.

YouTube, which is owned by Google, is already the number two most searched search engine on the Internet (behind Google of course). That means that today billions of people are actively searching the Internet for video content. That also means that because of the public’s fast-growing massive hunger for content in video form, that regular people and businesses alike are now able to profit from the creation of that said video content.

The truth is, Google (and your business) has to solve problems for their (your) customers, the Internet searcher. If they (you) can’t do that, they (you) lose customers. It’s that black and white.

So I’ll ask you again. Are you thinking like Google? Have you sat down and figured out what your target audience’s biggest problems are? If you haven’t done that you need to do it now. Anticipate what they need. Figure out their pain and then create products/services that take that pain away.

Just like Google.

For over 15-years, Jim Kukral has helped small businesses and large companies like Fedex, Sherwin Williams, Ernst & Young and Progressive Auto Insurance understand how find success on the Web. Jim is the author of the book, “Attention! This Book Will Make You Money“, as well as a professional speaker, blogger and Web business consultant. Find out more by visiting www.JimKukral.com. You can also follow Jim on Twitter @JimKukral.

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Are You Thinking Like Google?

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Facebook Adds Popular News Articles To Search Results

Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott is conducting an investigation into Google’s business practices as they relate to search listings, in particular whether Google is manipulating its [...]



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SearchCap: The Day In Search, September 3, 2010

by Mike Fleming

If you manage a PPC account, you know that for several years now
AdWords has had three match types: exact, phrase, and broad.

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Texas Attorney General Investigating Google & Antitrust Issues

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German Court Finds YouTube Liable In Copyright Case

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Google Power User Tips: SERP URL Parameters