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Londoners faceoff online in support of their candidates for the Mayoral Election

If the popularity of Facebook fansites was an indicator of how Londoners will vote on May 1st then Boris would be a clear winner with 7466 supporters whilst Ken and Brian trail behind with 2152 and 2130 respectively. Thankfully it seems that Londoners will vote with their feet rather than faces but latest results from a social media study reveal that online PR strategies could count for something in the electoral race.

Nielsen Online revealed today that London Mayoral candidates Ken and Boris are top of the blogs, dominating 80% of the social media conversation. Liberal Democratic candidate Brian Paddick is third with 9% of comments, followed by the Green Party’s Sian Berry with just under 4% and the BNP’s Richard Barnbrook with 2%.

According to Alex Burmaster, Internet Analyst from Nielsen Online, Londoners penchant for social networking continues to thrive and users are taking their opinions mainly to non-political forums, blogs & message boards including those of national newspapers and sites like Twitter and Facebook.

“Ken and Boris are the two leading candidates, neck and neck in the polls and the levels of conversation in the social media space utterly reflect this. If conversation levels were a guide, Ken would narrowly pip Boris to win. However, it’s when we look at the sentiment of these conversations that a far more interesting and revealing picture emerges.”

Controversy, positivity, negativity: sentiment towards the five leading candidates in social media

• Controversy: Boris is the ‘marmite’ candidate – being the most likely of the top five to generate some form of opinion either way. Only 30% of posts relating to him were of ‘no opinion’

The Green Party’s Sian Berry generates the least controversy / most apathy – having the highest percentage (54%) of ‘no opinion’ posts

• Positivity: Whilst Boris is most likely to generate positive sentiment, 29% of posts being ‘positive’ – Sian Berry had the highest overall ‘net’ positive score of 15% (positive sentiment % minus negative sentiment %). Brian Paddick is the only other candidate to come out with a ‘net’ positive score (11%)

• Negativity: Richard Barnbrook is most likely to generate negative sentiment, 38% of posts being ‘negative’. He also had the lowest overall ‘net’ positive score of -19%

Indeed Nielsen’s results seem to suggest that, shock horror, actually participating in blogs, forums and social media is effective in helping other people to form opinions on issues that affect them. The most active candidates online garnered a net positive score in total comments posted on social media sites. Brian Paddick employed a web ace, signed up to twitter, where he hosted a policy debate and also broadcasted himself via uStream.tv.

“Of the three leading candidates in the polls it’s not surprising that Brian Paddick is the only one to have an overall positive sentiment score in social media. His campaign, involving a US web strategist firm, has focused the most heavily on social media including a pioneering British political use of sites like Twitter, Facebook and UStream.TV – and it certainly seems to have paid dividends.

However, judging from the sheer levels of social media conversation on the election, it may not be enough to grab victory over Boris or Ken. If social media were a crystal ball it might tell us Boris is likely to get more votes than Ken. However, positive comments on Boris more often centre on personality rather than policies and only time will tell if this is a strong enough factor for voters when faced with putting the cross in his box to change the status quo.”

So, positivity is not the cure for apathy and clearly Londoners like myself, vis-a-vis this post, whether online or on the underground, don’t know what we really really want but we sure do love a good rant!

Microsoft Earnings Key Takeaways: Where’s the Search?

The biggest acquisition news yesterday wasn’t Microsoft-Yahoo but Arby’s-Wendy’s. In both cases, search marketers are asking, “Where’s the beef?”

Better yet, analysts on the Microsoft conference call should have asked, “Where’s the search?”

Microsoft search queries and page views are up year-over-year. By how much? No Wall St. analysts asked the question.

Microsoft reported $4.4 billion in net income for the quarter.

Microsoft’s online services business increased revenue 40 percent to $843 million, including $143 million from aQuantive, which added 96 new publishers this quarter to the Atlas Publisher Solutions, the ad management platform that competes with Google’s DoubleClick division.

Online advertising for Microsoft grew 39 percent. If aQuantive ad revenue ($47 million) is excluded, Microsoft was up 29 percent. Microsoft’s online audience is still growing. Live IDs increased to 18 percent to 448 million.

Microsoft remains focused on the online advertising market (doubling by 2010 to $80 billion).

Yahoo would accelerate growth but the core strategy won’t change: drive innovation and search, increase value to advertisers and publishers through innovation and scale and grow user engagement across MSN and Windows Live properties.

The weak U.S. dollar may be Microsoft’s best friend. While about half of Google’s revenue comes from the U.S., two-thirds of Microsoft’s revenue is derived from users abroad. In addition, about 15 percent of revenue is in high-growth emerging markets.

Microsoft’s strategy of reinvesting existing business, pursuing organic and acquisition growth opportunities makes the company a formidable competitor with or without Yahoo - except in search.

Google Pursues the Baidu-Dominated Chinese Search Market

In an effort to catch Baidu, the dominate search engine in China, Google has plans to add 200 employees to the 600 it already has dedicated to efforts in the world’s largest country. Some estimates have Baidu as enjoying a 62% market share there, comparable to the share Google has in the United States.

Google will also increase its ad spend on promoting Google Maps and Gmail, as well as boost the online advertising revenues. The advertisements will appear on Chinese web sites and hopes to develop profit-sharing partnerships with Chinese web sites similar to the partnership it has with Sina.com.

We May Not Need Standards But FTC, FCC Want To Gives Us Regulations

While the standards debate rages on, our industry is fast coming under the influence of government regulations. This week has seen discussions about behavioral marketing at the FTC and the FCC weighing in on ISPs filtering sites.

The behavioral regulations being looked at by the FTC had Google, Yahoo and Microsoft commenting from different angles.

Google wanting to make sure their method of selecting ads was not rolled into the mix stated “our AdWords program allows us to provide ads on Google.com in response to search queries… . We believe this type of advertising should not be considered behavioral advertising, even if such analysis takes into consideration previous search queries.” (from Alan Davidson, Senior Policy Counsel and Head of U.S. Policy, Google, Inc.).

Yahoo’s VP Global Public Policy David Hantman stated: “The information they will receive when they click through for more information will include an explanation of how customization works, how they can participate in the NAI opt-out, and a link to our privacy policy where they can find more comprehensive information”

While Microsoft provided a list of ways to possibly address the issue:
Sensitive Personally Identifiable Information Advertising - Opt-in Consent;
Personally Identifiable Information Advertising - Propsective Use: Opt-out Choice;
Retroactive Use: Opt-in Consent; Behavioral Advertising — Opt-out Choice;
Multi-Site Advertising - Pass-through Notice;
Online Advertising - Prominent Notice, Security, Data Retention.

Urban Mapping Unveils Geotargeting and Local Search Platform

7% of searches are local, including a zip code, city or neighborhood term. With over 10.8 billion searches conducted by Americans in the month of March alone, 7% is a lot of searches.

Now Urban Mapping is making it easier for search marketers to improve the effectiveness of their online advertising and paid search campaigns for local search. Today, the neighborhood data provider announced the launch of its Geomods platform, designed to “deliver more geographically-relevant results for users.”

Here’s what you can expect from the new platform:

• Platform utilizes standard web protocols and serves geographic terms relevant to a specified area.
• Provides a custom service area based on a variety of demographic, spatial and business factors (via a separate module)
• Leverages the installed user base of its neighborhoods boundary database, providing many of the same geographic keywords that power search portals, Internet yellow pages and mapping platforms.

“This geotargeting platform is a radical departure from traditional IP-based geotargeting,” said Ian White, Urban Mapping CEO. “It has been proven again and again that traditional geotargeting does not provide a high degree of confidence for local search, where granularity is of paramount importance—blocks, not ZIP codes or metropolitan areas matter.”

Urban Mapping’s GeoMods services includes US, Canadian and European coverage. The company currently counts SuperPages.com, YellowPages.com, MapQuest, Microsoft’s Live Search, Ask.com as customers.

Google Website Optimizer Tool is Out of Beta!

Google Website Optimizer is out of beta

Bye-bye beta!

Google announced today that its Google Website Optimizer (GWO) landing page testing tool is finally out of beta. GWO is a free tool for running A-B split and multivariate landing page tests.

As a charter GWO Authorized Consultant, my company watched its development from the beginning. It started out in the shadow of AdWords, and was only available as a tab in your AdWords account. Even though you did not have to spend any money on AdWords to use it, it was still seen as an add-on to the PPC advertising platform and did not initially get the attention that it deserved.

With today’s announcement, GWO steps into the spotlight in recognition of its important role in Google’s future. The company is committed to investing significant resources behind this product. As an example, GWO is now available in 27 languages worldwide: Czech, Danish, Dutch, English (Australia, UK & U.S.), Finnish, French, German, Hebrew, Hungarian, Indonesian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazil & Portugal), Russian, Spanish, Swedish, Tagalog, Thai and Turkish).

If a landing page has a higher conversion rate it clearly had more relevance for the person who clicked on the PPC ad, so Google can properly trot this out under the banner of improved relevance and a better user experience. At the same time, increased adoption of landing page optimization and testing can only benefit Google since more efficient advertisers will be willing to spend more per click while still maintaining their CPA targets.

Several key enhancements will make GWO even more powerful and useful to the wider online marketing audience:

Easier sign-up outside of AdWords - Google is making it easier for anyone to sign up and use Website Optimizer. In addition to accessing the tool through AdWords, people can now access it with any Google Account, such as the one they may use for Google Analytics or Gmail. They will see only the stand-alone testing tool features, uncluttered by other applications. Existing AdWords and Google Analytics users can still continue to use it as before (as part of their AdWords interface).

Easier Multivariate test setup - Based on user feedback, Google has improved the setup flow for multivariate experiments, with more straightforward tagging instructions and a sample tagged page for users to examine.

New Website Optimizer website and resources - The Website Optimizer site will be globally revamped to include more educational information, including archived webinars, articles on optimization, testing strategies, and best practices. Google Website Optimizer main site.

New Blog - Google is launching a new Website Optimizer product blog that will discuss the latest product news, industry insights, and testing strategies.

After the jump: free Google Web Optimizer Tool chapter (pdf) from my book, Landing Page Optimization.

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