SERP

Awesome: ‘Google Grants is now available to AU non Profits…’

I click on the ad…

404!

Fail!

Background – In May, my car got trashed by a hail storm in Melbourne and After much back and forward it has been written off.

So the good, is I don’t have to go through the headache of getting it repaired, the bad – I love my car… and to add insult to injury, I’d spent $900 replacing the radiator 2 weeks before the attack of the killer hail storm occurred.

Anyway…  enough about me!

So my tweet was actually to see if CGU are monitoring their social media presence.

Verdict is no they are not.

In this day and age, there is simply no excuse for a consumer focused company to not be monitoring Twitter and Facebook etc. No excuse at all… CGU even have a Twitter Account!

I really wasn’t expecting much from them if they did respond to my tweet.

To be honest, I would have just liked a reply.

I’m also pretty sure the reason for the delay is the sheer number of claims post the ‘Killer Hail Storm’. That’s cool, I get it, but CGU, you need to communicate better if that’s the case.

The point of this post is that I was playing the disgruntled consumer who vented via twitter, and I got nothing back… Nothing! But the good thing, for CGU, is I’m actually not super disgruntled, just a little frustrated.

What CGU, and any other consumer facing service not listening to the social web, must ask themselves  is how many really disgruntled customers are complaining about them on Twitter every week only to have their voices go unheard?

Shame.

I like it – not sure why ‘Parisian Love’ was chosen as the theme, but hey maybe they’re trying to appeal to a global audience.

Thoughts?

Here’s the Ad:

But the rumor from Mashable & Search Engine Land seems to point to a Google TV AD for this year’s Superbowl.

SEL: “A Google Super Bowl Ad? Eric Schmidt Hints At It”

Mashable: “Google Buys Super Bowl Ad? [RUMOR]”

The rumor all started after Schmidt posted a cryptic Tweet saying:

Can’t wait to watch the Superbowl tomorrow. Be sure to watch the ads in the 3rd quarter (someone said “Hell has indeed frozen over.”)

All I can say is OMG – I never actually thought Google would run a TV ad. And to be honest, I still don’t think they will… not for ’search’ anyway…

If there is an ad, I’m with Mashable – surely it’s the Nexus One they’re promoting. Or alternatively Local Search? Or maybe they’ve a Google Tablet to launch as they thought they’d start with a bang!.

Maybe they just want to do a massive brand campaign – Google Kicks ass, connect everywhere and anywhere, search lots, get targeted ads you will love….

Who knows, but it’s got to be consumer focused, and not ’search engine’ consumer focused, if that makes sense…

Update: Eating My Shorts if the Youtube AD Blitz terms and conditions are anything to go by…

Droolr.com – the latest site from Stateless Systems – has launched!

I may be slightly biased*, but the inner Geek in me just loves this!

The idea is simple. Users find something cool online and then share it with the Droolr community.

Once listed, the users of Droolr then vote for Gadgets that they like via a  Want? voting button.

Other nifty features:

• Sign in via twitter of facebook accounts.
• Create wishlists of gadgets you love.
• Follow other Droolr’s so you can be notified about the stuff they WANT.
• Earn ‘Karma Points’ when other users ‘Want’ items that you’ve added – be the ‘Top Karma’ dude! …so far I have low karma…

You can add comments as well as recommend other sites to find particular gadgets shared by other peeps.

There are a few screen shots below. But do be sure to go check it out!

*Full disclosure: I work at Stateless Systems

Ok – so I made that up… completely fabricated… but it’s made me think.

On the 21st of January, Google AdWords blog announced that they’ve now release new targeting options for mobile ads. It’s a good read so go take a look.

I’m going to cover mobile PPC advertising in later posts, but the thing that caught my eye is this image that they posted…

In the ‘Devices’ section above you’ll note how Google now allow advertisers to target specific devices: – Android, iPhone/iPod Touch and Palm WebOS. This is actually huge for certain markets as it will allow precision targeting for platform specific applications.

Anyway, with the launch of the iPad today I thought, hmmm will the iPad just be another addition to the ‘apple’ targeting? eg. iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad, or will it be a device category in it’s own right?

My gut feel, and if what Steve Jobs has said is true, iPad may well open up a whole new level of possibilities for many different market segments. Surely then if this is the case, the iPad will indeed be an individually targeted device within AdWords because ultimately there are going to be products, services and applications that users will be more likely to interact with on a tablet type device than they would on an iPhone. Time will tell.

So it’s a ‘free for all’ now if you want to get your ‘do follow’ link from the ’sem samurai’!

But please make the comments worthy and relevant otherwise I’ll kick your virtual ass!

Naturally, spam, and shite will be be ‘cleansed’

…funny comments get bonus points.

Hats off to Guy and Bevan for building such a company. And more importantly, hiring such awesome people!

Fantastic effort by the whole team who continue to build cool stuff and are just all round great people to work with.

Stay tuned for more exiting stuff from Stateless soon.

Links below to the various awards

Best Search Strategy – RetailMeNot.com

Best Social Media – RetailMeNot.com

Best Site Under 20 Staff – RetailMeNot.com

And my favorite quote is from the award announcement for ‘Best Search Strategy’

…But co-founder Guy King says RetailMeNot has achieved search marketing success by ignoring practically every other method tried by rival websites.

“SEO is bullshit. Our philosophy is to focus on pages that are as useful as possible to as many people as possible. Basically this is due to our belief that Google is smarter than we are, so we’re better off spending our time building good products rather than abusing the system.”

“Out strategy is really just going against traditional strategies. One of the key metrics of a good website is time on site, but we are trying to get that figure down as much as possible. We want people to find what they’re after as quickly as possible.”

So to sum it up – Be unique  & add value -  SEO success is yours.

Two weeks ago RetailMeNot.com (One of our sites at Stateless Systems) was the focus of a question on Jeopardy!

I thought it was a joke at first when I got an email from one of my contacts in the US but, sure enough, it was true!

Needless to say, we all thought it was pretty damn cool.

Just wondering if putting an “As Seen on Jeopardy” logo on our site is maybe a bit  too much?

The clip is below.  Enjoy.