Right now, “Search, plus Your World” is gradually rolled out over the next few days, but it only be available when you use Google.com in English and you sign in.

While Google+ data can certainly improve search results, we feel like there’s too much information that’s not really useful and too much Google+ bias. When Google developed the OneBoxes for maps and stocks, it linked to its own services, but also to competing services. Today Google no longer tries to be fair. Showing the number of people that added the author of a news articles to their circles is not more useful than showing the PageRank of the page or the number of Twitter followers. Showing the latest Google+ posts below the homepage of a business is not more useful than showing the latest Twitter posts. Google profiles are not necessarily better than Facebook profiles and the number of +1′s is not more useful than the number of likes. To make Google+ more powerful, to attract more celebrities and businesses, Google might end up making Google results less useful. It’s a tricky balancing act to use Google search’s popularity to increase Google+ adoption, while also improving Google results using Google+ data and there are many mistakes to be made along the way.

Predictions are popping up everywhere as the New Year begins. Instead of producing another list of things that are likely to happen, here are the five things I’d like to see happen in 2012 but in reality probably won’t.

Bing Takes 15% Search Market Share From Google

It’s not the first time I’ve found myself writing that competition spurs on innovation. While Google might be innovating without a strong search competitor in the west, increased competition can only be a good thing – and helps keep large companies honest.

Which brings me to one way Bing might achieve this, in my idealized version of 2012.

Bing and Facebook Crack Social-Assisted Search

Word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing, with search engines often ranking as the second most effective. So taking the word of mouth nature of social and using this to influence search results sounds like a perfect marriage, but nobody has made it work, with scale, internationally – yet.

If Bing and Facebook could crack this, they might just have a competitive advantage over Google, which will be focused on growing their user base on Google+ and lack much of the data Facebook have. Microsoft invested in Facebook and powers its web search, after all.

Yahoo is Reinvigorated With a New Strategy

Poor Yahoo. Left behind in search by Google, lacking a CEO, and the subject of constant speculation, the company is a long way from the Internet pioneer it once was. A reinvigorated Yahoo would be great to see; they still have many great services they’ve built or acquired.

Clients Appreciate That Specialists Deliver Better Campaigns – and Are Worth Paying For

Recessionary pressure and the power of procurement departments has meant some clients have consolidated activity under one all-service agency – even if that agency isn’t strong in digital areas like search, ad exchanges or conversion optimization.

These brands are getting a “cheap” deal overall but are often missing a vital point – as Honda CMO Steve Center has said, “If you grind the margin out of your agency you will get a marginal agency.”

This especially applies when a digital department is charged out with a low fee to protect an all-service deal; that department’s P&L might not be funded to hire the best digital people (or simply enough people). Specialist agencies know these accounts well – they’re the ones you onboard and have to rebuild from scratch, or achieve amazing results for quickly – because there was so much low hanging fruit left by the other agency.

CMOs and CEOs Finally “Get Digital”

Many digital marketers will tell you how frustrating they find senior executive attitudes to funding digital. They’re happy to spend millions on TV ads, but ask them to agree to fund a landing page optimization tool and they recoil – even though the latter will bring concrete sales improvements.

Offline and branding are vital parts of the marketing mix – but the appropriation of budgets between channels is often out-dated. Twenty-five percent of time spent in media was on the Internet in 2010 in the U.S., but only 19 percent of budgets were spent on the channel; mobile saw 8 percent of time with only 0.5 percent of budgets. Print, by comparison, received 27 percent of budgets but only 8 percent of time.

There’s still a long way to go before the top execs at many brands truly “get” digital and budgets are more fairly apportioned.

Do you have a wish list of digital in 2012? Leave a comment below.

Image Credit: Felipe Venâncio

Did you know one out of three mobile searches is for local information? Customers want to find the nearest store, how to get there and a number to call. Make it easy for your customers to find you when they’re searching on the go by adding your business location information to your mobile ads.
Benefits of Location Extensions

• Drive traffic to your business: Providing a map, address and access to directions in your ad helps customers easily get to your store.
• Let customers know how close they are: Hyperlocal distance information automatically displays with a blue pin when customers search nearby your business.
• Offer more ways to reach you: Including your local business number lets customers easily connect with a click to call..
• Reach customers at the right time: Mobile local information seekers are ready to take action. Research shows that 59% visit a business and more than 40% purchase after looking for local information on their smartphones (US Smartphone Consumer Behavior, Google & Ipsos, 2010)
• Easy setup: Simply enter your business address or link your Google Places account to your campaign as a location extension.

Whether you have multiple storefronts you’d like to promote locally, or a single storefront you’d like to attract a user’s attention to, location extensions can help grow your business by bringing more customers through your doors.

Ready to Mobilize? Start now and speak to Digdugmedia today!

Are you capturing the growing mobile opportunity? Mobile searches have grown by more than 4x over the past year and by 2012 more people will connect to the Internet via a mobile device than through a computer (Google Internal Data; Top 10 Mobile Internet Trends, Mary Meeker – Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers). This shift in consumer behavior means that increasingly your customers will be looking for you on mobile. Be there when they’re searching for your product or business with Google Mobile Ads.

Benefits of Google Mobile Ads

• Reach customers on the go: Today consumers are using their smartphones to search, shop, and look for local information with their always on, always with them mobile devices. Mobile ads enable you to reach the constantly connected consumer.
• Connect with mobile savvy shoppers: From finding a store to comparing prices to reading product reviews, smartphones are used throughout the shopping process. Research shows 74% of US smartphone shoppers have made a purchase with the help of their smartphones (US Smartphone Consumer Behavior, Google & Ipsos, 2010). Mobile ads form a critical component of any mobile commerce strategy.
• Reach and target consumers at scale: Google Mobile Ads reach millions of customers around the world across devices such as iPhone and Android powered phones. And with AdWords’ device and carrier level targeting, you can specify and reach the precise mobile audience you desire.

Don’t miss the mobile movement. Mobilize your AdWords campaigns with Google Mobile Ads to reach the new mobile consumer.

Ready to get Mobilized? Start now and speak to Digdugmedia today!

Twitter, however, is one of the few hugely lauded startups to come out of Silicon Valley about which brands have been ultra-cautious. Its rapid growth and influence point to a perfect place to advertise, but brands have looked on it with some degree of fear.

For every story in the press that has said it’s the new place to find news (the Hudson River emergency landing, Michael Jackson’s death) and that it’s a true influencer (Egypt’s uprising, super-injuctions), there’s another saying it’s an unruly playground where you can be attacked by anyone and everyone within seconds.

The fact there isn’t a clear ad model hasn’t helped. But things are changing. In the past month we’ve seen Twitter step up its UK operations, appointing Tony Wang to head the growing team and attract local advertisers. In the past week we’ve also seen tweaks to its search engine that bring up image and video results. Sound familiar? It’s the clearest move yet that Twitter sees itself as a search engine.

So brands should too. This is no longer a place solely based around 140 characters. It’s a multimedia platform where you can share any form of content. Content owners should be working with their agencies on seeding and distribution strategies.

Given that Google, Bing and Yahoo are increasing their integration with Twitter (and Facebook), popular content on the site is influencing a brand’s position on the biggest search engines to a much greater extent than ever before. It’s easily forgotten, for example, that paid-for tweets are shown in Google results – the only example of third-party ads appearing on the world’s largest search engine.

The problem of who curates this remains – the brand itself, PRs, search specialists, media agencies or, most likely, a blend of them all – but it’s a good problem to have.

What’s clear is that a Twitter search strategy is no longer advised but essential.

From: NMA| By Will Cooper

http://www.google.co.uk/intl/en/adwords/watchthisspace

In the United Stated Facebook has beaten even Google trafficwise.

Below are  collected 40 interesting facebook statistics, which will get updated with time.

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1. More than 500 million active users

2. 50% of our active users log on to Facebook in any given day

3. Average user has 130 friends

4. People spend over 700 billion minutes per month on Facebook

5. There are over 900 million objects that people interact with (pages, groups, events and community pages)

6. Average user is connected to 80 community pages, groups and events

7. Average user creates 90 pieces of content each month

8. More than 30 billion pieces of content (web links, news stories, blog posts, notes, photo albums, etc.) shared each month.

9. More than 70 translations of Facebook are available on the site

10. About 70% of Facebook users are outside the United States

11. Over 300,000 users helped translate the site through the translations application

12. More than one million developers and entrepreneurs from more than 180 countries

13. Every month, more than 70% of Facebook users engage with Platform applications\

14. More than 550,000 active applications currently on Facebook Platform

15. More than one million websites have integrated with Facebook Platform

16. More than 150 million people engage with Facebook on external websites every month

17. Two-thirds of comScore’s U.S. Top 100 websites and half of comScore’s Global Top 100 websites have integrated with Facebook

18. There are more than 200 million active users currently accessing Facebook through their mobile devices.

19. People that use Facebook on their mobile devices are twice as active on Facebook than non-mobile users.

20. There are more than 200 mobile operators in 60 countries working to deploy and promote Facebook mobile products

All of  the content above is from facebook’s official press room stats page.

The remaining stats below are from elsewhere on the web.

21. Over 80% of businesses today are using facebook today.

22. Facebook has over 1,700 employees

23. Facebook is valued at between 7.9 and 11 billion dollars (and rising).

24. Facebook is an international phenomenon: 70% of Facebook users live outside of the United States.

25. There are over 3 million active Facebook fan pages.

26. There are over 1.5 million local businesses with Facebook pages.

27. More than 20 million people become fans of Facebook fan pages every single day.Join the FacebookFlow fan page today!

28. Facebook fan pages have created more than 5.3 billion fans.

29. The average Facebook user spends over 55 minutes on Facebook per day.

30. Women have 55% more posts on their wall than men.

31. More than 6 billion minutes are spent on Facebook each day.

32. More than 3 billion photos are uploaded to Facebook each month.

33. The United States is the country with the most Facebook users with 143,583,400 users. (via CheckFacebook.com)

34. 26.22% of the World’s population are currently Facebook users.  (viaCheckFacebook.com)

35. More than 250 applications have more than one million monthly active users

36. Facebook has more than 45 million active user groups.

37. Over 30 billion pieces of content are shared on Facebook every month.

38. Texas Hold’em Poker currently has the most fans with 26,973,501. Via the Facebook Page Stats Leaderboard by allfacebook.

39. Static FBML is the most popular Facebook app with 86,294,450 monthly application users. Via Facebakers Facebook stats.

40. If Facebook were a country it would be the third largest country in the world.

There you have it, 40 amazing Facebook stats!