Real Time Search: good or bad for your brand?

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.
Here is real time search can drive business results:

Increased reach of your messages
Growth in social equity
Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now half to come to terms with:

Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond [...]

Earlier this week, I wrote a guest post on the Social Media Examiner about real time search and it’s affect on businesses. Now that Google and other search engines are displaying real time feeds from Twitter and Facebook in the search results, brands need to understand the implications. I would suggest reading the full article; but here is a quick synopsis.

Here is real time search can drive business results:

  • Increased reach of your messages
  • Growth in social equity
  • Potential customer acquisition

.. and here are some challenges that brands will now half to come to terms with:

  • Marketers need to be empowered and willing to participate on the social web
  • Technology today is still not fast enough to monitor live conversations. Real-time search requires “real-time” monitoring which translates to “boots on the ground” brand participation. If a brand is highly engaged and savvy with Twitter, it will be ready to respond when issues arise on the fly
  • Brands must be more strategic when posting updates on facebook and consider what keywords to use

The article is timely, since I wrote about how brands should be living in the conversational stream earlier this week.

Google Bug Removes Web Designers in Local Pack

Now, if you do a search for web design, web development, or most digital agency like queries, with or without a local qualifier (i.e. web design new york), Google won’t show the local 7 pack. Mike Blumenthal covered this well, but it needs more attention.

In the past, a search for [web design, suffern, ny] or a search for [web design] when Google knows your location, would trigger a 7 pack that looks something like this:

Google Maps 7 Results

Now, the same search triggers no local pack, just search results, like the old Google results. Here is a picture:

Google Missing Local Pack

There are two large threads about this at the Google Maps Help thread. In one of those thread, Googler, Linda said on November 11th, “Thanks for your reports. I will look into this issue and get back to you.”

Then Brian B from Google explained on November 18th what is going on. He said:

This looks like it’s closely related to the issue going on at the thread I’ve linked below. We realize there’s something going on here, and we initially pushed out a fix a while back. There was a little hiccup with the fix, which is probably why the results in Fresno may have gone back up and then back down as addoctane mentioned above.

The team is working on this issue. Stay tuned to the thread below where I will post an update as soon as I hear one.

Thank you all for your persistence!

Back in late October, there was a bug we covered where Google would show a single one box instead of 7 business results. Google fixed this bug in early November, which seemed to trigger a new bug with [web] related local queries.

Google seems to be working on a fix for this bug as well and hopefully it will be resolved shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.


Now, if you do a search for web design, web development, or most digital agency like queries, with or without a local qualifier (i.e. web design new york), Google won’t show the local 7 pack. Mike Blumenthal covered this well, but it needs more attention.

In the past, a search for [web design, suffern, ny] or a search for [web design] when Google knows your location, would trigger a 7 pack that looks something like this:

Google Maps 7 Results

Now, the same search triggers no local pack, just search results, like the old Google results. Here is a picture:

Google Missing Local Pack

There are two large threads about this at the Google Maps Help thread. In one of those thread, Googler, Linda said on November 11th, “Thanks for your reports. I will look into this issue and get back to you.”

Then Brian B from Google explained on November 18th what is going on. He said:

This looks like it’s closely related to the issue going on at the thread I’ve linked below. We realize there’s something going on here, and we initially pushed out a fix a while back. There was a little hiccup with the fix, which is probably why the results in Fresno may have gone back up and then back down as addoctane mentioned above.

The team is working on this issue. Stay tuned to the thread below where I will post an update as soon as I hear one.

Thank you all for your persistence!

Back in late October, there was a bug we covered where Google would show a single one box instead of 7 business results. Google fixed this bug in early November, which seemed to trigger a new bug with [web] related local queries.

Google seems to be working on a fix for this bug as well and hopefully it will be resolved shortly.

Forum discussion at Google Maps Help.



Seth Godin: Sliced Bread

Malcolm Gladwell: Outliers

Anthony Parinello: Your Price is Too High