The Google, The Bing and The Social Search

There have been significant developments with Google, Bing and of course Twitter of late that has lead to some questions being delivered to us here at iCrossing. I thought it would be good to share some of these questions with the Connect readers and even try answering some of them…

What significant implications will this have for brands? How will this change their search marketing strategies?

The Twitter channel is another exciting space for people to have conversations and share their experiences with brands and products. As Twitter has grown in terms of usage we have seen users adopt applications such as TweetDeck to enable them to search, group and monitor Twitter activity more affectively where Twitter.com hasn’t so far (though Twitter Lists has now been released).

Bing and Twitter service is yet another platform to allow brands to operate within. With this service however it’s not just about serving the user the most recent tweets about a particular topic but also top links shared about a topic within the Twitter community.

What this means is that Brand will need to have a Twitter voice and search marketing strategies will need to continue to understand what language their customers are using The main variable that will change is the time factor. This will relate to execution of strategy, looking at trending topics and the brands that will win will be the one that knows their market best and what’s coming tomorrow.

What sectors will benefit the most from Google Social?

Google Social Google states that its new service called “‘Google Social Search” helps you find more relevant public content from your broader social circle”. This search can be described as a form of trusted search much like how Google may view authority sites or immediately give trust to ac.uk and gov.uk sites due to their domain extension. This is a separate service to what Bing is doing with Twitter. Bing is using real time searching and using Twitter as it data source. A search for Brighton only shows tweets within the last 8 minutes:

Therefore the difference is Google may use an old comment from within your social circle and apply that to a user search query. Whereas Bing will show an up-to-date related tweet that can come from any Twitter account.

Google Social Search and the way in which it works will benefit all brands that have already started to engage within their social space. This is because to appear in a Google Social Search a listing must have connection with the user executing the query. Google have reported that is uses a person’s Google profile to identify their social profiles such as Twitter and Friendfeed. They also use the people in your Friends, Family, and Coworkers contact groups in your Google Talk (gTalk) and Gmail. In addition to these sources Google uses its own Google Reader by using the websites that you subscribe to as well. It very much fits it nicely with the caffeine update in terms of Google improving its infrastructure as well and the ability, in the future, to provide realtime search for users.

Putting this in to practise a brand must have useful content that is engaging and on a platform such as a blog wh

ere users can subscribe to via Google Reader or they have Twitter account which the user directly follows or a Twitter friend that follows.

With regards to real-time, search travel will probably be the biggest sector to be impacted with distressed stock such as last minute deals being much more reactive via Bing’s twitter search and without having to constantly update PPC ads.

Retail brands will also be able to benefit as we come up to Christmas and New Year sales. Brands will be able to market time sensitive discounts and vouchers without having to rely on search engine spiders crawling their site immediately.

How will the deal affect customer service?

The scenario presents a positive and a negative in every case. If a brand creates a positive buzz about a new product and gets a great reaction from its community then people will know about it. However the door swings both ways. What the Twitter partnerships and in general social search will do is increase the brand exposure in which the consumer has. The brands have to accept this and join the conversation. Dell has in the past used feedback from user generated content to improve their products.

Some people may say SPAM the tweets and ensure only your voice is heard. This will be a childish attitude rather than listening to your customer and building relationships with them to ensure a better future.

How must brands prepare themselves for the change?

Brands are already trying understand social media in general. You’ll see many Fan pages on Facebook, brand related Twitter accounts and blogs all over the web. If they are not entering these channels and understanding the basics they are already falling behind and won’t be part of Search Engines real-time and social vision.

Normally in Natural and Paid search the search engines dictate how consumers and companies operate. However with social being somewhat independent of search engine services Google and Bing are being forced to react to the growing demand for social and therefore striking deals such as Twitter.

What should we do to make sure our digital strategy is lined up with Google Social once it is launched?

It has already been highlighted where Google draws its data from for its Google Social Search service. With that in mind ensure you have a Google profile, that your brand is on the right platform e.g. Twitter, blog and is articulately presented with the right tone of voice that their community or consumer group can identify with.

Let us know here at Connect about what your views are and leave a comment.