Debt ceiling debates, S&P downgrades of U.S. credit ratings, wild swings in stock market levels and a global economic crisis drifting back towards recessionary conditions. The last month has been nothing short of a seat belt-necessary roller coaster of a ride. And with continued European instability, debt panel negotiations and waning consumer confidence, one cannot be certain if the tunnel light is that of daylight or an oncoming train ready to crash into the struggling global markets.

That said, the intensive activity and consumer interest have created a unique opportunity in the biddable marketplaces online, specifically in the search markets. With any event, whether it’s entertainment, sporting or political in nature, there is bound to be increased query activity as users search out the topics of interest. Unlike entertainment-type activities where plans can be made and budgets can be allocated in advance, these economic market shifts create opportunities that advertisers still seem unable to act upon.

August 2011 proved to be the tenth most volatile month in the past 75 years, whereas the Dow Jones industrial average swung an average of 1.9% each day of the month. Research by GroupM Search in recent weeks shows a substantial increase in search query volume and advertiser visibility when the stock market takes a hit. In the days around the 4% stock market dip across the major indexes on August 4, searches for the Dow and S&P 500 increased by 231% per Google Insight for search data. Not surprising as everyone watched their net worth plummet then yo-yo off those lows to their current resting place. But what happened next is a cautionary tale for large advertisers and an opportunity for other advertisers if buying habits do not change.

In a normal search buying cycle an advertiser has months of historical data by which to set their bid strategy, including their daily budgets. When crisis hits, the spike in queries means excess opportunity which is desirable unless the crisis appears to have massive financial implications for your brand – just as stock market volatility has proven to have for the finance category. In a situation like this, the excess queries mean budgets are spread thinner and what may have been 100% share of opportunity coverage suddenly becomes a lot less. With less coverage, gaps are created for smaller advertisers – those with poorer quality scores or lower max bids – to enter the mix.

In the two weeks of stock market volatility and heightened debt ceiling chatter in early August, a combination of increased queries and fixed budgets from the primary advertisers led to a substantial increase in appearance of a secondary tier of advertisers. On average, there were 70 unique advertisers who found their way onto the front page of Google for core financial terms – an opportunity that didn’t exist prior to the market decline.

Weeks later, as the Dow Jones industrial average and S&P 500 index dipped again on August 18, our research revealed a strong and statistically significant correlation between total stock price change on a given day against their Google index for search volume. Since the first market drop, the average number of search advertisers to-date remains stable and high, having peaked again during the second market dip in the back half of the month.

What does this mean if you’re a brand in the finance sector – or for any advertiser at large? If you are a brand that struggles to crack through the green ceiling of well-funded major advertisers, a crisis or noteworthy topic capturing widespread attention such as this is a rare opportunity to gain exposure on key terms, even if it comes at the bottom of the page. If you are an advertiser whose first reaction is to hold the line, or worse, cut spending, then you must do so with the knowledge that consumers don’t stop when things go bad. As seen during other events of significance or widespread news, they flock, en masse to the web, and will seek out the brands willing to share valuable content.

If you are a big brand, you cannot run from search, ever. You must double down because the opportunity to get your message into the hands of people who find it relevant is even greater in these moments. If you have struggled to crack the first page of a Google search engine results page, then these opportunities are gift horses to be ridden, not stared at, and you should be prepared. Consumers have an unending need for more information. Moments like these show which brands understand the true power of relevancy in search.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published on Musings from GroupM at MediaBizzBloggers.com, September 13, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss

All of the commentaries, both scientific and anecdotal in nature, explore the impact Google has on us as a society and whether or not our brains are being rewired for a new normal. That said, if given a choice of life with Google or without, I’m betting few people if any would say life was better before the search giant led the information organization and discovery revolution. But, if people are OK with a trade-off of individual wisdom for collective or artificial intelligence, would they be OK with the potentially more catastrophic impact Google is having on our world? That is, the rapid disintegration of the middleclass workforce and its impact of the labor community in our society for the future to come.

Technology continues to change our world, often for the better. Google and many other companies just like it, including Microsoft, Apple, and Cisco, to name a few, are continuing to evolve and advance what we can realize as a people through technology. At the same time, entire sectors of industry continue to struggle with how to handle the changing landscape. In the U.S., river towns gave way to rail, which saw a decline with the construction of a national highway system. We now find a digital superhighway changing our world. Personally, the upside is huge. Professionally, the risks are as great as the opportunity.

Last week, Apple passed Exxon Mobil briefly as the country’s most valuable public company. Is this a staggering ascension? Not the least, because Apple currently has roughly 60 percent of the employee base of that of Exxon. In the advertising sector, you only need to look at the contrast between Google and some of the top marketing communications companies. WPP, the organization I work for, employs more than 146,000 people globally with revenues of more than £9 billion. By contrast, Google is on pace to generate more than $30 billion in 2011 with slightly less than 30,000 employees. These pressures extend to all sectors from automotive to retail as physical presence and headcount give way to virtual exposure and cloud power. Once mighty commerce businesses, companies like Circuit City, Borders, and Blockbuster, are now in the grave or circling the drain at the hand of a new era of commerce led by the likes of Amazon, Netflix, eBay, and Google.

The challenge at hand for every business and individual is to determine how to pivot into the modern realities of technology. It’s no longer good enough to assume that the companies of tomorrow will have a place for the employees of today, because that’s the way it has always been. Are Middle America and middle management destinations or stepping stones? If the American dream of realizing a better life than the generation before you is to be true at an individual level, there is little doubt that technology will play a key role.

But let’s be clear. Technology cannot be realized without the people behind it. Google and Apple only make people, companies, and sectors obsolete if they cannot, or worse, choose not to invest in the talent necessary to evolve into the reality of where the market is heading. The question for employees in this generation and the next is – how will your education, professional training, and personal dedication drive your positioning? Are you setting yourself up to be a player in the future, or allowing your number to be a part of a growing story of a generation without perceived and ready opportunities?

If not then, when the postscript is written on a generation, it may cite that industries and opportunities were rendered useless by innovation and evolution. It will also note that personal evolution and a lack of willingness to change are also cause for extinction. So, back to the thought at hand; Google is making us obsolete only if we are too stupid to change and innovate at the pace necessary to keep up with the leading companies of this age and the next.

This article was written by Chris Copeland, CEO, GroupM Search – The Americas, and was  published in ClickZ, August 16, 2011.  Follow Chris on Twitter – @SearchBoss.

This stance taken by Google is a bold move. 

Google has been in China since around 2006.  China has always been a challenge to penetrate for Google.  Unlike the U.S. and U.K. and many other parts of the world, Google only reaches about 30% of the Chinese market; in China, Baidu is the dominant player. All indications were that business from Google was moving forward in China, all be it perhaps more slowly.

A pull out of China would have great implications on Google’s long-term business plans as China is still a growth market for them — and potentially a very lucrative one.  To consider pulling out of one of the largest potential-growth markets in the world must have required a decision made at the highest level.  Even if Google only reaches 30% of the market, it still translates to more than 100 million users and a tremendous revenue growth opportunity.  The search engine market in China was worth more than $1 billion in 2009, with analysts expecting Google to make about $600 million from China in 2010 (Source: BBC).

A pull out by Google would also mean a less-competitive search marketplace from a media perspective, with really only 1 key player – Baidu.  The need for healthy competition is always important to deliver product innovation and provide a choice for advertisers. 

How talks will go with the Chinese government? We’ll need to wait and see. 

The official announcement from the engine can be found on the Google Blog.

Rosemary Lising is Managing Director, GroupM Search – Asia Pacific

There is No Europe?

This was outlined in a great post by Mikkel de Mib Svendsen on SearchCowboys. I definitely recommend reading it. Among other things he states: “There is a politically united Europe. There is a geographical Europe. But from a marketing point of view the fact remains that there is no Europe and there are no Europeans!”

Mikkel continues: “We (in Europe) don’t speak the same language, we don’t hear the same music, we don’t have the same laws, we don’t follow the same norms, we don’t laugh at the same jokes and we don’t share the same religions.”

Search is Pull Driven

Why is this important? This is important because it outlines the central and key approach of search engine marketing. Search stands out as one of the most pull driven media. Therefore, search engine marketing is most effective when you adapt to your target market in the best possible way.

The people who search have the power. They express their intent and tell you what they want. It doesn’t get easier than that. Adapt to that intent of your target market best, and you’re a winner.

If you want to market your product or service to Europe, and if you approach Europe as one target market, then you will fail. You will fail because you won’t be adapting to local language, culture, law, religion, etc.; and that is exactly what search engine marketing is all about.

Case: SEO in Western Europe

Based at Outrider’s Amsterdam office, where we work for both local and international clients, I am facing this challenge daily. For example, we are doing SEO (Search Engine Optimization) for an international client in Western Europe.

Just like Mikkel describes in his article, there are a couple of countries in Western Europe which are close to each other and seem to be alike. There are even countries like the Netherlands and Belgium or Germany and Austria where people speak the same language. But mind you, there can still be huge cultural differences between those countries, let alone differences in law and religion.

For example, our client wanted to do link building in several countries. While the coordination is done centrally – the clients headquarters are in Amsterdam – we used the local expertise of our SEO consultants in every country. We made each country develop their individual link building strategy to adapt best to the local market. Eventually, this resulted in a successful overall link building strategy with local expertise being key to the success.

Translation is Not Enough

As you might already conclude from the stated differences, translating your web site to the local language is not enough. You need to adapt to the local culture, law, etc. to get the most out of the SEO efforts.

Therefore, we have used our local SEO specialists in the countries. They know their local market best, and combine that with their SEO expertise, aligned with the overall SEO strategy.

The Results

In the end, it’s all about the results. The differentiated approach works best when targeting Europe, because search engine marketing works best when it’s differentiated. And that ensures the best results for our clients.

Is it worth the effort? Definitely! Countries in Europe are among the countries with the highest internet broadband penetration. Therefore, it’s not uncommon to reach 1 million search visitors monthly, even in smaller countries like the Netherlands.

Of course the U.S. cannot be targeted as just 1 market, but the differences in language, culture, law and religion are even bigger in Europe. Do you want to expand your products or services to Europe? Adapt to the local markets as best as possible and you will succeed. You’ll see it’s definitely worth the effort.

With regards to real-time search, the argument is that Google simply isn’t able to provide up-to-the-minute results for topical searches, and that the human powered search of sites, such as Twitter & Facebook, are much better suited for such tasks.

However, I decided to test this myself.  I searched on Google for cricket scores on the Sunday of the final one-day cricket international between England & Australia. The results brought up the latest scores, right there on the page. I then conducted a search on Twitter, and in their results were untold conversations about the cricket, as well as links to lots of places where I could find the scores, but nothing there on the page. Ditto on Facebook: cricket groups aplenty, but no sign of the score itself.

As for social search, many say that Google simply won’t be able to compete with search results created by mapping the connections of users of social networks. This of course ignores the fact that the whole reason that Google came to dominate search is because it looked at the inter-connected nature of the web and based its results on these connections. Years before anyone was talking about social networks, Google was using the wisdom of crowds to judge what people would be interested in and through Gmail and other services, it has been able to build up a database that allows it to show users unique results based on their personal preferences.

On top of that, whilst the failure of Yahoo! to take a lead in search despite having access to millions of pieces of social data through Delicious & Flickr, suggests that having access to such data isn’t a guarantor of success; it’s worth remembering that Google owns the biggest social network in two of the world’s largest emerging markets, India and Brazil, Orkut, before writing it off. Especially when one considers that most social networks have, to date, had to buy in search technology (Twitter & Summize) or companies whose staff should understand it (Facebook & FriendFeed) with, in the case of Twitter at least, pretty minimal improvements to show in their services to date.

Of course anyone making predictions about the digital landscape is almost always at risk of ending up eating their words before too long. So, will Google win at real-time search as it has in search up till now? Maybe. Will people increasingly start using sites like Twitter to find information? Probably. Will Google go ahead and buy Twitter? Who knows?

All I do know is that if Google really wanted to enter a partnership which would enable it to power its search results based on recommendations, all it has to do is fulfil the prophecy of Epic 2015 and organise a tie-up with the people-powered recommendation engine of Amazon.