Search & Social Weekly Wrap-up 10/23

Search & Social Officially Collide

Earlier this month, reports had surfaced that Twitter was in the talks with Microsoft and Google for deals that would integrate twitter results into the two search giants.  On Tuesday, the deal was finalized for Microsoft Bing and reports had begun to surface that Microsoft was also close to also striking a deal with FaceBook.  The Bing/Twitter search is currently Live but seems to be little more than Twitter Search with a Bing Logo.

Later in the week, Google also announced it’s deal with Twitter being close to final and in an attempt to one-up Microsoft, Marissa Mayer (of Google) announced the development of a new Google Labs product called “Social Search”.   Essentially, Social Search will use your Google profile, scan the social networks you are a member of (that you tell them about), and give you a personalized search engine of your social network.

Real time search and social search capabilities are nothing new, but these deals and products are a big step for the big players in the Search arena.  And their first into the real-time/social search niche.

Google Analytics Gets a Makeover

Google announced an update to it’s webmaster product Google Analytics on Tuesday.  The new version of the product promises to be more powerful, more customizable, and adds a variety of new features.

The most notable change is the added goal (conversion) tracking, now allowing up to 20 goals including new goal types like time on site and pages per visit (for those interested in branding metrics).  Some of the other new features include: expanded mobile reporting, advanced analysis features, and a host of customizable and intelligent data analysis.  For more information on the update, visit the official Google Analytics blog for some helpful videos.

Google profits from moving ads closer to organic results

Barry Schwartz, from Search Engine Land, reports that google’s great 3rd quarter is largely due to a change in placement of the sponsored results in Google results pages.  According to Barry, the move happened in early August, and the earnings report for Google this quarter reported an improved click through rate for it’s right side ads.  The following quote is from Google’s Jonathan Rosenberg on this quarter’s earnings:

We had a very good quarter from Ad Quality’s perspective. I can tell you the significant things that we did. The biggest things, probably in order, or close to order, were the UI tweaks that we did for results pages. We changed the maximum width, decreasing the spacing between the search results and the right hand side ads on wide screen. With that it increased the click-through rate on the right hand side ads and I think we did that some time around the second week in August.

Twitter users hungry for news

In a recent study on the link-clicking-habits of social media users it was found that the most common link-type clicked on for twitter users is news.  Not an overwealming majority, 28.5% of clicks were for news while Movie-related sites came in second with 22.5% of referrals.  Technology (13.39%) and medical sites (7.98%) followed while other sites included video games (4.64 %), celebrity (3.94 %) and how-to (2.88 %).

Facebook users favored technology related sites (33%) over news (18%) while Digg users overwhealmingly favored tech (57%).  The study was conducted in the first week of september and was taken from a sample of nearly one million impressions.

The Lighter side of Social Media:

• Sports illustrated is caught trying to solicit a Digg User for more Diggs and submissions in exchange for “SI memorabilia”.  Tsk Tsk!
• Yahoo! Hires strippers for their “hack day” event and apologizes…immediately.
• Here is the DUMBEST DOG EVER.  I’m not sure to laugh, cry, or BOTH at this…enjoy?