Google began feeding news headlines to Twitter this week, but fewer Twitters seem to care about that than say, Oprah or Martha Stewart.

In the past few days Google News on Twitter has amassed only 2,900 followers, compared to just shy of 700k for Oprah, half of which accumulated over a weekend. It’s hard to say what to make of that; Oprah enjoys a massive and loyal television audience while Google generally only whispers things into cyberspace.

But it does bring up the question as to the type of account that succeeds on Twitter. So far, celebrity personalities any particular information service or branded vehicle. On top of that, with a 60 percent abandonment rate, one can safely cut a follower number in half. Twitters are interested in news, however, as CNNbrk now has 1.2 million followers.

The Google News blog boasts of aggregating 25,000 news sources for its services, but only a handful carefully selected sources seem to make it into its Twitter stream. Just a quick look at the first three pages of tweets shows so long as the news source is Reuters, CNN, Fox, BBC, New York Times, or LA Times, it’s trusted by whomever is running Google News’ Twitter account. But that could be a time-sensitive anomaly.

What’s also interesting is the URL shortener Google has chosen for its Twitter feed: bit.ly. One supposes that’s an endorsement over tinyurl or any of the other competing shorteners out there.

Google News’s new Twitter channel also brings up the question of how the AP and other news organizations recently so critical of Google will react. This almost seems like a good faith effort to extend more traffic to those outfits. 

AOL is reportedly buying back a 5% stake owned by Google, and it has a new CEO in Tim Armstrong, formerly of Google. A spinoff from Time Warner is also anticipated. These ingredients may make for a bright future for the company. What does this mean for AOL and Google’s relationship?

"It remains to be seen whether Google’s repurchasing of its AOL stake also means it will discontinue partnering with AOL to deliver its search advertising," says John Letzing at MarketWatch. "According to a deal secured at the time of its investment, Google has been applying its expertise to serving up AOL’s search advertising and splitting the resulting revenue."

Nielsen has AOL listed as the number 4 parent company/division, and the number 5 web brand in the US.

In January, AOL launched its MediaGlow business unit consisting of a slew of sites. Many of these and other AOL sites are ranked among the top five in their respective categories in terms of unique visitors according to comScore. Just this week, they launched a new "old-school" political site.

Still AOL’s ad revenue fell 17% in the first quarter according to MarketWatch, despite indications of strong performance of AOL homepage ads.

Also launched this week was Socialthing, a new platform that connects social networks with other sites. This allows for easy syndication of content through networks like AOL’s own Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. This could be a popular service in the realm of social media.

But what about search?

"AOL has made moves which show that the company is getting very serious about search, and may one day step out of the shadow it has cast upon itself as being a "Google regurgitator," Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal said earlier this month. It is being run by a former Google executive keep in mind.

"Furthermore, AOL controls some rather interesting search technology, ranging from semantic search to multimedia search," adds Baker. He mentions social video network Truveo, Relegence, Yedda Semantic Search, and Quigo.

One more piece of interesting info that Baker points out is that AOL’s search share grew more than Microsoft or Yahoo’s after last year according to Nielsen Online stats. The point is, AOL’s as much of the conversation as either of those two. And it may be independent soon.

Has Google’s model of spidering and indexing web pages in an ordered list become obsolete? Is the old static model of search about to be replaced? Does a real-time online conversation (a la Twitter) make for a more relevant and compelling search experience? These are the questions that I recently posed to a group of search and Internet experts. To say that these guys know their stuff would be a complete understatement. It’s more like these are the professionals that have defined the modern science of search and search marketing. You’ll see what I mean when you read the quotes below.

My premise started when I read a UK Techcrunch story about a Google / Twitter mashup. This was in February and there was a major snow event blanketing the UK. But if you were to try to get a satellite image of the snowfall in real time, you couldn’t. That’s because the cloud cover prevents the satellite from seeing the ground. So this genius named Ben Marsh comes up with the mashup. In brief, the idea was to get the general UK Twitter population to report on the snowfall at their location in the UK. Respondents reported their postcode and then selected a number from 1-10 to rate the snowfall amount. Ben’s mashup then graphically displayed the results on a UK Google map. Then it hit me – this Twitter data is yielding superior search results for the amount of snowfall in the UK than any other source. So will this type of real-time data stream become a rival to Google in search?

Daniel Foster is the co-founder of 34SP.com – the website hosting service that kept Ben Marsh’s mashup online during peak bandwidth usage during the February snowstorm. I asked Mr. Foster if he thought that Twitter could overtake Google in search, based on his experience with the Ben Marsh mashup site. Mr. Foster replied, "While this use of Twitter was certainly unique at the time and created a superior data set for UK snowfall for that time period, it is still a long way from a true search product. Google clearly has a corporate mission that drives search-related activities. Twitter just asks "What are you doing?". I don’t see Twitter search overtaking Google unless the business directives change."

Here is what a few of the other Internet and search experts I contacted had to say in answer to the question: "Will Twitter Replace Google in Search?".

Rand Fishkin is a legend in search marketing. As the founder and CEO of SEOmoz.com, Mr. Fishkin was recently included in Newsweek’s list of Best Young Tech Entrepreneurs 2009. His involvement in search marketing began in high school, and he is now generally regarded as one of the world’s authorities in search. Mr. Fishkin commented, "No. Twitter is not a search engine and cannot answer the vast majority of queries sent to an engine like Google, Yahoo! or Live. Twitter searches a single stream of user created data in 140 character slices. While searching this database of information can be fascinating and even relevant (particularly for those who are interested in what Twitter users are saying about a particular topic or person), it is not even an attempt to replicate the functionality or application Google provides. Google answers an inherent need that has existed since the web’s inception: users must navigate to web sites and pages that contain desired information. Twitter cannot achieve this function and therefore cannot be a replacement for Google in search."

Michael Gray is President of Atlas Web Service, a full service website and Internet marketing company. Michael has worked in website development and marketing for over 10 years, and shares his thoughts regularly on Graywolf’s SEO Blog. Mr. Gray opined, "Twitter is never going to replace Google for searches there simply isn’t the breadth of information available there. For example say you need to know: "Who was the 3rd Vice President of the United States?". Unless you happen to have a history buff in your stream – very few people are going to know it’s Aaron Burr off the top of their heads. It’s simple and easier for you and everyone else to type the question into Google and have it spit back the answer. However, if I have a tech related search like: "How do I backup my Firefox profile?" chances are I’ll get a few answers from my users. One way that Twitter is better than Google is if I know my followers and trust them. I might not trust Yelp or CitySearch when they tell me what a good seafood restaurant in San Francisco, but if someone who follows me gives me a recomendation, if I know who they are, I’m much more likely to trust their response. The one caveat is the trusted relationship of the person giving the response. 20 people I don’t know telling me someplace is good is never going to outweigh the 1 person I really trust telling me it’s bad."

Danny Sullivan is often regarded as a true pioneer in search. His seminal 1995 work published as "A Webmaster’s Guide To Search Engines" laid the groundwork for his career as an often cited expert in search. Mr. Sullivan he has been quoted in all the major media outlets such as The Wall St. Journal, USA Today, The Los Angeles Times, Forbes, The New Yorker, Newsweek and ABC’s Nightline. Here are Mr. Sullivan’s comments, "No, Twitter won’t replace Google search because it simply doesn’t cover enough of the topics out there. It can be used for question answering, but that’s largely limited to the number and quality of your followers. I do think it’s an excellent additional search tool, however, http://searchengineland.com/how-we-search-with-twitter-16920 has much more on this."

Andy Beal is an online reputation management consultant, award-winning blogger, and professional speaker. Mr. Beal shares his expertise via his blog at www.andybeal.com, and he is also the founder and editor of Marketing Pilgrim, an award winning news publication that covers internet marketing news and trends. Mr. Beal added, "Twitter’s real time data certainly compliments Google’s search results, but I don’t see it ever replacing it. Twitter’s data stream should be looked at in the same way as Google News or Google Blog Search. There’s tremendous value in tapping into a fresh, up to the minute content, but people still rely on the structured, ranked data that Google’s web index provides."

Neil Patel’s email identifies him as a ‘professional web surfer’. I know him as an incredibly charismatic, smart and friendly Internet, social marketing and search expert. He has also been named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, and was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. His current company is KISSmetrics, and Mr. Patel shares his insights in his blog – QuickSprout. Mr. Patel offered these thoughts on Twitter overtaking Google in search, "Twitter will not replace Google in search. You can use Twitter to find up to date information, but I doubt you will ever use Twitter to find products to buy or figure out how to fix a technical problem. Just the other day I had to search Google on how to program my router. I don’t think I will ever be able to do that on Twitter."

Todd Malicoat is a Marketing Consultant and on the SEO Faculty at MarketMotive.com. Mr. Malicoat is an Internet entrepreneur who has spent "near obsessive amounts of time on Webmasterworld.com, and Threadwatch.org. Here is Mr. Malicoat’s response, "I think Twitter definitely has an opportunity to swipe a bit of market share from Google on certain TYPES of terms. Anything very time sensitive, Twitter gives very good results for. I think Google will likely be a suitor, but they likely don’t want another youtube over-valuation debacle. Twitter has definitely raised some eyebrows, and what it does do is fill the need for ‘guided search’ that several companies including trexy.com, mahalo, and even yahoo answers (to an extent), and many others have been trying to do for years. Twitter has done this with a different model of getting the guides first with the critical mass of people, and the organization will come later. Most search results, however, don’t NEED a search guide or expert, so for now, Google is perfectly safe, but has the potential to lose out on some niche expert traffic to the new kid on the block."

By way of fairness, I did contact the PR department at Google requesting a comment for this piece. As of the writing of this article, they have not responded.

So there you have it. Practically no one thinks that Twitter will overtake Google in search. At best, in very time sensitive events – perhaps Twitter can be a good companion reference to Google. Of course things can change quickly – and if they do, I’m sure we can all check in with Twitter to learn about them. My thanks to all the experts who participated in this article.

Although the two developments are taking place for different reasons and on very dissimilar scales, both Google and Yahoo were affected by headcount reductions today.  Google’s going to lose an important exec, while Yahoo’s laying off hundreds of employees.

David Rosenblatt is "President, Global Display Advertising & Vice President, Google," according to his entry on an official page listing key executives.  Before that, he was DoubleClick’s CEO; he joined Google during the $3.1 billion acquisition in April of last year.

 

Rosenblatt’s departure (to destinations unknown) means that Google’s going to lose an advertising expert.  Stop a moment to consider Rosenblatt’s timing – he’s only spent about 12 months at Google – and you’ll see that his departure also doesn’t bode well for the company’s ability to retain top talent without signed contracts and/or financial incentives.

Meanwhile, Yahoo may have shown around 600 workers the door.  Sean Percival wrote, "Most of the affected are being notified during the day, Wednesday April 29th, while some traveling employees have already recieved [sic] notice while still on the road."

Since Yahoo announced during its first quarter report that it would make about 680 layoffs within two weeks, this doesn’t come as too much of a surprise, but the move is still likely to hurt morale.

The results of the 10th annual Harris Interactive Reputation Quotient Study have been released, and – thank you, automotive and financial sectors – 88 percent of respondents apparently feel the reputation of corporate America is either "not good" or "terrible."  However, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft are still well-regarded.

Google got the number two spot overall, coming behind only Johnson & Johnson in terms of individual companies’ scores.  Considering that match-up pits a faceless search engine against the "no more tears" shampoo intended for people’s children, you might say Google did all right.

 

Next of the corporations we usually cover was Amazon, at number six.  Amazon scored particularly well in terms of emotional appeal and vision and leadership, and Harris judged its reputation quotient, like Google’s, to be excellent.

Microsoft came in seventh place, and fell a bit below the cutoff for that compliment, but after its commercial wars with Apple and some antitrust issues are taken into account, this company, too, probably deserves some applause.

Finally, just in case you’re curious, Apple’s reputation quotient earned it fourteenth place, and for better or for worse, Yahoo’s name wasn’t mentioned once in the 32-page Harris report.

Google announced the launch of a new initiative called the Small Business Network in an effort to contribute what it can to the success of small businesses, which are Google’s bread and butter.

"It’s no secret that small businesses play a key role in Google’s success as a company and drive the economy as a whole," says David Fischer, Google’s VP of Global Online Sales and Operations. "AdWords, AdSense, Apps – you name it – have all grown because small businesses use them. Because of that, increasing their bottom line is very important to us."

The Small Business Network is designed to promote business-friendly policies at the federal and state levels. Fischer says the company asked itself, "What can we do to help broaden the collective voice of small business both on Capitol Hill and in the states? We want to know about the issues that are important to our small business partners so that we can better invest in their goals and objectives and ultimately, their success."

While Google’s intention is to take on a variety of issues, the company is getting started right off the bat with increasing broadband access and preserving an open Internet.

The network takes full advantage of Google’s Moderator tool, which allows interested parties to share their thoughts and others to vote them up and down, creating a sense of priority among them. Google is hoping that they will be able to use the Network to help encourage lawmakers to grant funds to ISPs to create broadband access for small businesses around the U.S.

Several months ago, Consumer Watchdog asked Google to "cease a rumored lobbying effort aimed at allowing the sale of electronic medical records."  Google responded by calling the claim totally false.  Now, Consumer Watchdog’s come back with evidence that Google lobbied for something health-related, and the group’s demanded an explanation.

A letter addressed to Eric Schmidt was released today.  In it, Jamie Court, Consumer Watchdog’s president, and John M. Simpson, a consumer advocate, wrote, "The public record shows that you were lobbying on H.R. 1."  Which is true enough.

 

The pair then continued, "Based on the records and the issues being debated at the time, the only reasonable conclusion is that Google was lobbying to prevent the privacy provisions applicable to HIPPA providers applying to Google Health – in plain English, that you were lobbying against strong privacy provisions and in favor of allowing the sale of information from medical records."

This part is more debatable, since the public records don’t state Google’s intention.  But Consumer Watchdog appears to have the search giant backed into a corner.  For the sake of not having consumers run screaming from Google Health, Google will likely have to get very specific about what stances it promoted.

Stay tuned.  And if you feel like doing a little more reading about Google Health, something interesting about openness and accuracy was posted on the Official Google Blog just yesterday.

 TechCrunch reports that Google’s CEO, Eric Schmidt and Microsoft’s chief research and strategy officer, Craig Mundie have been 

named to President’s Obama’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST). The council is designed to help the President and Vice President form policy related to science, technology, and innovation.

The council has an impressive roster of people associated with major academic and research organizations

The group is co-chaired by John Holdren, Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; Eric Lander, Director of the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard and one of the principal leaders of the Human Genome Project; and Harold Varmus, President and CEO of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, former head of the National Institutes of Health and a Nobel laureate.

I checked out the press release regarding the announcement of these appointments to see what other corporations were present on the council. Google and Microsoft are the only two. I realize that it is important for the private sector to be represented. It is worth noting, however, that the private sector representatives on this council that will be helping set public policy are leaders in two technology giants that many already feel have garnered unfair advantages that stifle competition. Also important to note is that prior PCAST members have included Michael Dell so this is not a precedent setting move, just an interesting one.

In all honesty, I have no idea what could actually be accomplished through this type of group regarding a company’s opportunity to gain further advantage and influence. It is interesting, however, that there appears to be little hiding the fact that people like Schmidt, who campaigned hard for the President, are now being ‘rewarded’. The difference between this appointment and people like Dell, is that Google has lately been under more serious government scrutiny with regard to data privacy concerns. You can connect the dots if you wish.

So what impact can this have to us Internet marketing types? That is definitely a ‘to be determined’. As Google expands further into services that are not directly related to search like health information and other areas where privacy concerns are being raised it does seem curious that their position with the US government is getting a little more cozy. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any means but I, like many of you, can observe and wonder what might happen.

Comments

Google has made some adjustments to its AdSense program policies page. It includes a change in placement of a certain policy, clarification of others, and a new one altogether.

The new policy deals with other Google products’ policies. Publishers are not allowed to place ads, search boxes, or search results on, within, or alongside other Google products in a way that violates the terms of that other service.

For example, you couldn’t place ads on a site that allows users to download YouTube videos. This is not permitted by the YouTube Terms of Service. Google explains other policy changes:

- Google brand violations: This policy has always existed in our Terms and Conditions, but we’ve now brought it directly to the ‘Ad Placement’ section of the program policies page so that it’s easier to find. According to this policy, we don’t allow ads or search boxes to be placed on pages which misuse Google logos, trademarks, or other brand features in the page content or URL, and which could mislead users into thinking the page is associated with Google.

- Ad placement in emails and email programs: This updated policy clarifies that Google ads , search boxes, and search results may not be placed in emails, as well as alongside emails.

The policy page itself has been somewhat redesigned. The layout has been updated in a way that lends to easier reading and navigation. Sections have been given expandable "learn more" features so users can obtain more details when needed.

In addition, Google has added more information to the " Webmaster Guidelines " section and created a new "Traffic Sources" section.

Google is facing an antitrust investigation by the Justice Department over its class action deal it reached with publishers and authors to digitize and sell books.

Last fall under a proposed settlement between Google and the Authors Guild and the Association of American Publishers, Google agreed to pay $125 million to set up a Book Rights Registry, where copyright holders can register works and receive compensation from book sales.

Google has said it wants to create an "iTunes for books" that would allow people to search for copyrighted books online and make purchases.

Under the deal Google would be able to digitize and sell so-called orphan books, those still in copyright, but with no clear owner. That has raised concern about antitrust issues.

"There are legitimate antitrust issues related to Google’s ability to solely commercialize this content," Peter Brantley of the Internet Archive told Reuters.

On Tuesday a New York judge approved a four month extension to a group of authors deciding if they want to opt out of or object to the settlement. A final settlement hearing will be on October 7.
 

Google began feeding news headlines to Twitter this week, but fewer Twitters seem to care about that than say, Oprah or Martha Stewart.

In the past few days Google News on Twitter has amassed only 2,900 followers, compared to just shy of 700k for Oprah, half of which accumulated over a weekend. It’s hard to say what to make of that; Oprah enjoys a massive and loyal television audience while Google generally only whispers things into cyberspace.

But it does bring up the question as to the type of account that succeeds on Twitter. So far, celebrity personalities any particular information service or branded vehicle. On top of that, with a 60 percent abandonment rate, one can safely cut a follower number in half. Twitters are interested in news, however, as CNNbrk now has 1.2 million followers.

The Google News blog boasts of aggregating 25,000 news sources for its services, but only a handful carefully selected sources seem to make it into its Twitter stream. Just a quick look at the first three pages of tweets shows so long as the news source is Reuters, CNN, Fox, BBC, New York Times, or LA Times, it’s trusted by whomever is running Google News’ Twitter account. But that could be a time-sensitive anomaly.

What’s also interesting is the URL shortener Google has chosen for its Twitter feed: bit.ly. One supposes that’s an endorsement over tinyurl or any of the other competing shorteners out there.

Google News’s new Twitter channel also brings up the question of how the AP and other news organizations recently so critical of Google will react. This almost seems like a good faith effort to extend more traffic to those outfits. 

This afternoon, Facebook users began receiving emails appearing to be from Facebook carrying an invitation from a friend. Following the link though, takes the recipient to a phishing site.

Reports say the scam has been spreading quickly primarily because it all looks very legitimate. The email itself spoofs Facebook and features the name of the recipient’s actual friend, who appears to have sent them a message.

The body of the message itself says simply “Hello” in the subject line and provides a link that redirects to fbaction.net. That site spoofs Facebook’s login page, prompting users to enter their user name and password.

A short time later, users discover they’ve lost access to their Facebook account because hackers have changed the password and taken over. Once the hijack is complete, everybody on the victim’s friend list gets spammed as well and the process starts all over.

In a statement, Facebook says it has blocked the domain from being shared on the site, removing referring content, and resetting passwords of senders so attackers can no longer access Facebook accounts. In addition the company says they’ve asked Markmonitor to blacklist the domain and they’ve reached out to ISPs for information to file a civil suit or criminal case. 
 

AOL is reportedly buying back a 5% stake owned by Google, and it has a new CEO in Tim Armstrong, formerly of Google. A spinoff from Time Warner is also anticipated. These ingredients may make for a bright future for the company. What does this mean for AOL and Google’s relationship?

"It remains to be seen whether Google’s repurchasing of its AOL stake also means it will discontinue partnering with AOL to deliver its search advertising," says John Letzing at MarketWatch. "According to a deal secured at the time of its investment, Google has been applying its expertise to serving up AOL’s search advertising and splitting the resulting revenue."

Nielsen has AOL listed as the number 4 parent company/division, and the number 5 web brand in the US.

In January, AOL launched its MediaGlow business unit consisting of a slew of sites. Many of these and other AOL sites are ranked among the top five in their respective categories in terms of unique visitors according to comScore. Just this week, they launched a new "old-school" political site.

Still AOL’s ad revenue fell 17% in the first quarter according to MarketWatch, despite indications of strong performance of AOL homepage ads.

Also launched this week was Socialthing, a new platform that connects social networks with other sites. This allows for easy syndication of content through networks like AOL’s own Bebo, Twitter, Facebook, and MySpace. This could be a popular service in the realm of social media.

But what about search?

"AOL has made moves which show that the company is getting very serious about search, and may one day step out of the shadow it has cast upon itself as being a "Google regurgitator," Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal said earlier this month. It is being run by a former Google executive keep in mind.

"Furthermore, AOL controls some rather interesting search technology, ranging from semantic search to multimedia search," adds Baker. He mentions social video network Truveo, Relegence, Yedda Semantic Search, and Quigo.

One more piece of interesting info that Baker points out is that AOL’s search share grew more than Microsoft or Yahoo’s after last year according to Nielsen Online stats. The point is, AOL’s as much of the conversation as either of those two. And it may be independent soon.

YouTube said today that it will offer a live stream of President Barack Obama’s press conference discussing his first 100 days in office.

"As citizens and pundits from all political perspectives analyze the President’s first 100 days in office today, Obama himself will address the nation tonight on the 100-day anniversary of his inauguration — and we’re going to carry a live stream of the conference from the White House YouTube channel. Be sure to tune in at 8pm EDT to watch it live," wrote Steve Grove, YouTube’s director of new and politics on the company blog.

The YouTube homepage is also featuring political commentary and analysis from major news organizations.

YouTube is encouraging users to upload a video about the Obama’s administration’s first 100 days.

"You can join in the conversation by making a video: How is the Obama Administration doing, and what advice would you give the President moving forward?" writes Grove.

"Upload your thoughts to YouTube and add them as a video response to this Citizentube video, and we’ll feature some of them on our News page tomorrow."