Meme Moy: October 2008 Archives

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B2B services marketers surveyed said they would bump up their Internet marketing spending by nearly 18%, compared with less than 6% for traditional marketing. B2B product marketers planned to be even more conservative, increasing Internet marketing by less than 13% and traditional marketing by less than 2%.

"B2B marketers are increasing their online spending, particularly for customer acquisition, because they can measure it and determine quickly whether it is working," said Carol Krol, senior analyst at eMarketer. "In an age of heightened accountability, the ability to measure is critical. "They are also simply following customers," Ms. Krol said. "Their customers are researching and evaluating products and services online, particularly in the early phases of the purchasing cycle, so it makes sense to be where they are congregating." 

Hard to believe that Google just celebrated their 10th year on September 27th.  I guess in my mind 10th Anniversaries are reserved for old-school businesses that start placing qualifiers under their brand name like a highly curlicued - "Established 1899."  Google has aged well - considering a business that is ruled by twenty-somethings and count millions upon millions of people as daily users - 10 is the new 100 - at least in the internet world. 

I figure this is a good a time as any to take a step back and take a little refresher on the basics of Google. 

How do people use Google? 

Beyond the obvious, Google compiled both video and written stories in commemoration of their 10th Anniversary -- reading through the comments you do get a feel for how integrated Google and "googling" has become in people's lives.   A business utilizing google for advertising would do well to read through some of the first hand accounts to gather insights on their potential market/s and how they use Google in their daily lives. 

Did you know?

Users can restrict their searches for content in 35 non-English languages, including Chinese, Greek, Icelandic, Hebrew, Hungarian and Estonian. To date, no requests have been received from beyond the earth's orbit, but Google has a Klingon interface just in case. Google has more interesting factoids in their page called fun facts. 

How does it work?

Here it is according to google:

The software behind our search technology conducts a series of simultaneous calculations requiring only a fraction of a second. Traditional search engines rely heavily on how often a word appears on a web page. We use more than 200 signals, including our patented PageRank™ algorithm, to examine the entire link structure of the web and determine which pages are most important. We then conduct hypertext-matching analysis to determine which pages are relevant to the specific search being conducted. By combining overall importance and query-specific relevance, we're able to put the most relevant and reliable results first.

Google's Next Steps

Not to bore you with too many details-- BBC can do it for me with their pretty in-depth analysis of "Google at 10"  Tim Weber talks about Google's expansion as well as future plans that are in the works--

The company's next steps are already mapped. This week it launched its very own internet browser, called Chrome. Today's browsers were built to show web pages, says Google, not to be platforms for complex applications. Chrome promises to bring stability to our online experience - and the more computing happens on the internet, the more information Google can gather.

Coming shortly is an even more important piece of software called Android, Google's (Linux-based) operating system for internet-enabled telephones.

Google makes the same business case as for Chrome: today's smart phones were not designed for the mobile internet, so Google steps into the breach.

One thing is certain, Google after 10 years is now indelibly a part of our internet economic and social landscape - but time will tell, given the turbulence and unpredictability of the web-world, if they will be able to continue their evolution as they balance corporate growth and technological relevance.