Over on BBM there is a quick article about web 2.0 and how it may impact retail marketing as the web evolves. Check it out.

There has been a lot of comment on the new personalized search engine rolled out recently by Google, but what does this engine actually do? The features I like are;

You can list the sites you want included in searches. Say you wanted to buy electronics, you could create your own engine that searched only Circuit City, Best Buy and CompUSA.
You can custom display these results on your website, so if you own a network of websites, you could include a search bar that searched only your products. The search would by no means be impartial, but would certainly be good for business.
You can also use a Google Marker to add sites very quickly and easily to your personal engine whenever you please. You can also open up that process to additional users.

The impact on large, well known companies will be positive. People will add sites they know to their search. On the other hand, it won’t be helpful to smaller companies who rely on appearing on the first page of search results to attract new customers. They could be excluded from the new engine. It will be interesting to see how many people actually use personalized search. If it becomes pervasive, then it could open up a whole new pecking order for natural search.

New Media channels of today have expanded far beyond search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN. Directors of marketing simply aren’t delivering their company’s brand through these channels. Being reluctant to do so will simply put companies behind their competition that welcomes integration. The blogosphere is full of consumers discussing products and services. It’s a network of consumer generated content. Being part of their daily discussion is truly a viable resource for organizations capable of thinking outside of the box.

It looks like Wall Street traders now have access to what consumers have to say in the blogosphere. Monitoring what is being said in the blogosphere provides traders with quality information. The tool they use, scans blogs for information, like Google scans websites – and sends that valuable information to them via RSS feeds. Are investors or consumers finding your company in the blogosphere. Contact Retail Blog Marketing for information on expanding your brand’s online reach.

Google has launched a custom search engine in a new way to bring tailored search to websites and blogs. “The company said that in just minutes, anyone can use the Google search platform to create a search engine focused on any content they like, from Hollywood heartthrobs, to favorite sports team, to personal hobbies and more”  Google claims that they are merely following what other engines have done before.  What will Yahoo do next?  More….

Google Recently released it’s third quarter numbers, and not surprisingly reported a 70% increase in revenues over last year. During the third quarter, Google handled over $2.69 billion in revenue, and kept over $700 million in profits. That’s a pretty staggering amount for one quarter, and we should expect these numbers to do nothing but increase as the search giant begins generating additional revenues from the recently acquired UTube.

This tells us that search is alive and well. Despite a certain level of pessimism and a somewhat jaded attitude to online marketing from etailers, there is still a tremendous amount of money to be made online. It is the retailers who use every available marketing avenue who will see the biggest slices of the growing online pie. Blogs, podcasts, social media, message boards, online video. These avenues are and will continue to help webmasters gain a competitive edge.

Online video just continues to grow in popularity. It looks like Yahoo will soon be involved in rich media advertising. They recently purchased AdInterax, a company that delivers streaming video and other media rich advertising. This is a natural progression. People like looking at video, so there will be a lot more video advertising as search engines continue to purchase video related companies. That’s all very well for search engines, but how can etailers take advantage of this for their own websites?

They can use podcasts and RSS. They can build a retail blog and use it to deliver their own video to subscribers.

Over the last nine years or so search engine’s algorithms have become more and more sophisticated. Trying to figure these algorithms out will never happen by any in-house marketing team or their marketing director. Therefore it is important for marketing teams and marketing directors to think outside of the box when it comes to their online marketing strategy. Sure old tactics to achieve better organic positioning might have worked back in the day. However, with today’s new media channels and more sophisticated algorithms, marketers that do not adapt to this change are simply hurting their business’ brands.

More and more consumers are becoming a part of social networks. They use these networks as a trusted resource to find any information imaginable. Penetrating these consumer communities means marketers are faced with a decision. Continue to use the same SEO strategy that you used in 2003, 2004 etc. Or not.

New media channels such as blogs and RSS feeds can help companies achieve the same result in half the time – if marketers are willing to listen and apply a new strategy. Because of the shift in more consumer generated content retail blogs give smaller businesses the opportunity to drive deeper into their niche’ market by joining the consumer communities and talking with them about their products in their blog.

Exploit the weakness of your competitors. If you are a small business and want more revenue coming in from your website, the best way is to use a fully optimized retail blog. The staff at Triangle Direct Media will train you on proper strategies to apply when posting articles in your blog, support you and your staff when questions arise and give free updates to all of our clients. Be a leader in your space, not a follower. Start blogging about your products and reach more consumers online by thinking outside of the box.

With the advent of personal blogs and social networking sites, it has become easier than ever for consumers to share experiences and opinions. This trend was recently manifested in a recent study by Compete.com, where it was found that recommendations by peers are more influential than internet advertising. This certainly represents a move towards a world where interenet results are culled from the collective opinion of internet users. It also indicates to me that natural search is more valuable than ever. We already know that natural search results get more attention, higher conversions and more consumer loyalty than paid search. Will this become more pronounced with the influence of social media? Quite simply, yes. As natural search becomes more the result of the combined opinions of millions of people, rather then some mathmatical algorythm, it will become more and more popular, at the expense of paid search. In order for retailers to be involved with this shift of influence, the first step is to be a good company with good products. The second step is to build a retail blog.

In a previous article I talked about social media optimization and its role in natural search.  Another factor that relates to this topic is the use of tagging and social bookmarking. With bookmark sharing sites such as Del.icio.us rapidly gaining in popularity it is becoming increasingly useful for readers to be able to tag or bookmark your website. The addition of an “add to del.iciou.us” button makes tagging pages a lot easier for your users, but webmasters can go a few steps farther. They can make sure that their pages are tagged on bookmarking sites, and that each page in their site has a list of the tags that are relevant to that particular page. As with all aspects of online marketing, there are dozens of factors involved with gaining position on search engines. The use of Bookmarking plays a role, and is a valuable component, but more immediate value can be gained from the use of a business blog.