Google has introduced Google Merchant Center, the new face for the Google Base.   It will enable e-commerce businesses to upload product feeds to Google which will make the individual products searchable via the Google Product Search that was once known as Froogle.

The new name definitely makes more sense to the average users.   Apart from changing the name, Google has also removed “beta” element of Google Base Logo that indicates Google Merchant Center to be a polished edition of Google Base.

The brand spanking new home page is also talking about the benefits of Google Merchant Center.

Bing has been very visible at SES and other conferences to promote their new search engine and it’s webmaster tools functions. Is this clip from SES’s You Tube Channel, Alessandro Catorcini and Rajesh Srivastav, both of Bing, discuss Bing’s search engine usability with John Mulligan, SEO-PR at SES San Jose 2009.

They also discuss Bing’s API which is open to everyone to use at  http://www.bing.com/developers.  Just simply register for their application ID tp begin using all of Bing’s products to call its API.

They also point out that Bing has features such as the outbound and backlink functionality not found  in other search engine webmaster tools.

Here is the video:

Yesterday’s New York Times had an interesting article that describes web users feelings about advertisers tracking their web usage.    The article details recent results from a joint survey by Penn and Cal Berkley.  The survey indicates that two thirds of Americans object to online tracking by advertisers-and that number goes up once they learn the different ways marketers are following their online movements.

The study’s authors hired a survey company to conduct interviews with 1000 adult internet users.  The interview, which last about 20 minutes, included questions like “Please tell me whether or not you want the web sites you visit to give you discounts that are tailored to your interests?  Overall tailored ads did not appeal to 66% of the respondents.

A full breakdown is shown below.

Recently, the European Commission threatened Britain with sanctions  for allowing an Internet service provider to use a new advertising technology to track the Web movements of customers.

In the United States, lawmakers in both houses held hearings last fall on targeted advertising. The topic may be technical, but it has become a hot political issue. Privacy advocates are telling Congress and the Federal Trade Commission that tracking of online activities by Web sites and advertisers has gone too far, and the lawmakers seem to be listening.  Although no legislation came out of the deliberations, one broadband operator, Charter Communications of St. Louis, dropped plans to conduct a test of behavioral advertising technology after receiving protests.

Marketers are arguing that advertising supports free online content. Major advertising trade groups proposed in July some measures that they hoped would fend off regulation, like a clear notice to consumers when they were being tracked.

The most important thing is to bring the public into the picture, which is not going on right now.  So how do you feel about being “tracked”, the government wants to know.

comScore, Inc. has released their monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the United States search marketplace. In August 2009, Americans conducted more than 13.9 billion core searches, with Google accounting for 64.6 percent search market share. Microsoft Sites grabbed 9.3 percent market share, a 0.4-percentage point gain versus July 2009.

Google led the U.S. core search market in August 2009 with 64.6 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! (19.3 percent), and Microsoft (9.3 percent). Ask Network captured 3.9 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 3.0 percent.

Aug-09 vs.
Core Search Entity           Jul-09        Aug-09          Jul-09
——————           ——        ——          ——
Total Core Search             100.0%        100.0%        N/A
—————–            —–          —–            —-
Google Sites                         64.7%            64.6%         -0.1
————                  —-           —-            —-
Yahoo! Sites                          19.3%          19.3%            0.0
————                  —-           —-             —
Microsoft Sites                      8.9%             9.3%             0.4
—————                —            —             —
Ask Network                          3.9%             3.9%            0.0
———–                    —            —             —
AOL LLC Network                3.1%           3.0%              -0.1
—————                —            —            —-

* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and
cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and
user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five
search engines are not included in the core search numbers.

You can read the full release here.

The votes are in! We’ve polled the office to see why the Stone Team enjoys working and/or living in Ann Arbor.

Top reasons why Ann Arbor is, awesome, a great little pocket of go-go despite the economy, where I live, pretty freaking awesome, two words,  super duper fun……

1. Excellent places for ‘people watching’ on Main & in Kerrytown
2. World class University (Go Blue!)
3. The Art Fair!!!!!
4. Named after early settler’s wife
5. Pacific Rim
6. ABC/Tractor/Grizzly microbrews
7. Zingerman’s (Deli and Roadhouse)
8. UM Art Museum / Botanical Gardens
9. Hill Auditorium / The Ark
10. 7 minute work commute door-to-door
11. Main Street at night
12. Port/cigars at Dolce Vida
13. great food!
14. Summerfest
15. Cultural diversity
16. Farmers Market
17. Sparrow’s Market
18. Beyond Juice on Liberty
19. Urban Outfitters
20. The Ark

I was recently reading an article in Fast Company magazine about the most influential women in technology. The article was the second in a series that was originally called,”The Most Influential Women in Web 2.0.” The first article became a heated debate on many social media networks, including Digg because some readers felt the article was sexist. Sexist? Come on.

This lead me to think about what a disadvantage that women have had in the technology department by any metric: average salary, top-management representation, board memberships and many geographic areas like Silicon Valley are still just a boys club. In fact, most of technology seems to be a “boys club.”

The fact of the matter is now that social media has taken off with such rapid fire, women are becoming very influential and making a dent in the technology world. For instance, look at some of the executives of large social media and technology firms. Susan Decker, President of Yahoo, Sheryl Sandberg COO of Facebook, Megan Smith VP, New Business Development of Google.

What about some of the fastest growing social networking sites? Caterina Fake Co-founded the photo-sharing elephant Flickr and then sold it to Yahoo for a reported $35 million. Everyone is buzzing about her highly anticipated project called Hunch, which is in development.

Women Bloggers? Look at the site http://www.blogher.com/ and you will find over 2,200 women bloggers and counting. This site has become its own community that even has its own blogging conference. Anyone can sign up and have your blog posted. There are even large advertisers on the site such as Cover Girl and Oil of Olay. Wonder what Eilsa, Jory and Lisa (the founders of Blogher.com) made on that contract?

It’s not just about money, although that is a great perk. Blogging allows us the freedom to write and discuss things that are relevant to us and to have them published. Anyone can blog and anyone can use blogging to drive traffic to his or her site, develop their own company or just have an opinion. It has become the way of communicating these days and it would be a shame to not take advantage of this great tool in marketing and PR.

Jennifer L Peak

Have news: When you sit down to write a press release, ask yourself, “Is this really news? If you answer no, put the pen down or step away from the keyboard.

Get to the point: Remember those 5 W’s in school. Put them to use. Who, what, when, where and why. That’s it. You will be sending this to reporters who have deadlines and thus skim the release looking for answers to those questions and your contact info only…you’ll have about 5 seconds. Your boring, robotic quote will not be used; if they want a quote from you, they’ll call.

Ditch the buzz words: This is why people hate press releases, “green” “eco-friendly” “foreclosure” “toxic tomatoes”, don’t use these words if they have nothing to do with your company or if you are a politician.

Grammatical and Spelling Errors: Proofread. Proofread. Proofread. Do not use all upper case…yes, not even for the title. Do not rely on spellchecker. Do not go in the complete opposite direction and sound like an English Lit. major…no one likes a pompous press release.

Spam I Am: You’ve sent 10+ press releases of similar “news” to a media contact and nothing has come of it. You are blocked. Make one, I repeat one, attempt to contact said media representative and inquire as to what releases would be of interest and abide by their suggestions.