If you're planning to market to the world in August (or any other month, for that matter), you'll be needing one of these - a predictive calendar of recurring events that have strong search histories.

Meaning, you can now know in advance what consumers will be searching for online in August -- and can program your marketing activities accordingly.  It's a very easy way to stay ahead of popular market trends.

Viewpoint: Purchasing Search Ads Can Help Influence Consumer Conversation

A key distinction between PR and advertising has always been that public relations is earned media rather than paid. But now, just as search engines have revolutionized the way consumers access information, search marketing is evolving public relations.

At Ketchum, some of our newest PR offerings involve buying ad space online -- literally paying for the ability to reach the public with our clients' stories.

If you think that's odd for a PR agency, consider this: Google -- with upward of 5 billion views a month in the U.S. alone -- is essentially the largest publication on the planet. Tie your brand to the right search terms and you can instantly advertise your online offerings to anyone searching for topics that contain those words. But don't count on any real consumer engagement. That's where PR comes in.

(more at AdAge)

Say what you want about the potential of Microsoft's new seach engine Bing -- and many are -- but a hidden story in all of the hoopla has got to be that a good portion of Microsoft's planned $80-$100 million ad budget could be going to chief rival, Google.  In fact, it already is (towards Google Sponsored Links).

Just worth noting...

Not unsurprisingly - given the state of the economy - the relative number of search queries for they keywords "i feel depressed" have risen dramatically worldwide over the past year.

Interestingly, the UK, Australia, the US and Canada (in that particular order) lead the world in this particular query.

Much like the Google's Flu Trends tracker, seems like the opportunity is ripe here for pharma companies (among others) to track symptoms related to their diseases. 

Just a thought...

One aspect of media we're starting to study a bit more is the impact that the more traditional media placements have on online consumer search behaviors.  Obviously, knowing in advance which television programs (for example) are more likely to generate consumer search activity makes those media placement that much more valuable. 

Fundamentally, it means that marketers can position their clients online in ways that engage with this search activity and further extend the life of their stories.  And one such placement, for example, which consistently generates search traffic around its subject matter is 60 Minutes.

Last night 60 Minutes re-ran a fascinating profile of the Antinori family of Italy which has operated wineries for over 600 years.  This re-airing landed "Antinori Wines" and "Antinori Family" in the 3rd and 43rd spots (respectively) of Google's Top 100 search queries for all of yesterday.  And when the show first aired on October 12, 2008, "Antinori Wines" finished in the #1 spot that day.  Needless to say, this is a trend we see repeatedly with 60 Minutes. (read more after the jump)

Tomorrow is National DNA Day.  Gotta admit, I don't ordinarily celebrate this day (didn't even know it existed until it came up on our predictive search calendar (pdf)).

Which reminds me, check out 23andMe.com, Time Magazine's 2008 Invention of the Year.  For about $400, you can explore your own genome - see how your genes affect your health, what genes you have in common with other members of the 23andMe community and get information on your personal ancestory. 

Really cool stuff!

Last night, Dancing With the Stars kicked off another mini dance competition, the winner of which will be assured a spot in the line-up of professional dancers in the 2010 season.

The first round featured dancers Mayo Alanen, Brent Borbon, Afton Delgrosso, Anna Demidova, Genya Mazo, and Snow Urbin. And voting for the first round of eliminations (to be announced next week) commenced thereafter.  The female dancer and the male dancer with the fewest votes will be eliminated.

Question is, can Google Trends predict which male and female dancers will be eliminated first?  If you subscribe to the theory that online search interest is a good indicator of voting behavior, then next week expect professional dancers Brent Borbon and Anna Demidova to be eliminated.

Here's why: during the hours after the show aired, each of Mayo, Afton, Genya and Snow made it into Google's Top 100 search queries; with Snow and Afton surviving in the Top 100 for the entirety of yesterday.  (more details after the jump)

I know it's only April, but...

On June 6th, 2009, expect Google and Twitter trends to light up with the phrase "National Donut Day"; a day Americans across the country (or more specifically: Texans, New Yorkers and Californians) will be praying to our crispily creamed overlords for their deliciously dunked contributions to society.  And I, rest assured, will be foremost among them.

For the historically minded, National Donut (or Doughnut) Day started in 1938 as a fundraiser for the Chicago Salvation Army to help the needy during the Great Depression.

Fore more June predictions, click here.

If you're planning to market to the world in June (or any other month, for that matter), you'll be needing one of these - a predictive calendar of recurring events that have strong search histories.

Meaning, you can now know in advance what consumers will be searching for online in June -- and can program your marketing activities accordingly.  It's a very easy way to stay ahead of popular market trends.

You can read more about the origins of the Search Matters calendar here.  As it is still very much a work in progress -- please don't hesitate to feedback to us your thoughts and/or any suggestions for improvements you may have.

If you saw my earlier post about Wolfram Alpha, then you know that semantic search has been on my mind recently. To define it very broadly, a semantic search engine is one that understands human language as it is actually used. Current generation search engines operate by looking for keywords - we've all essentially trained ourselves to ask questions in a way that search engines understand. The challenge with this is that sometimes we're looking for something a bit too fuzzy for keyword-based search.

A good example of this is image searching. Suppose you were looking for a screencap from the scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone collapses in his tomato garden. Google Image Search is tremendously powerful, but it's keyword-based, so searching for this on GIS would entail a search string like "godfather collapse" and then trawling through the results until you find what you're looking for. An ideal semantic search engine could just be asked "Where can I find a screencap from the scene in The Godfather where Don Corleone collapses in his tomato garden?", and it would know precisely what you want. There's a lot of words in that query that are useless to a keyword search engine but that are essential for a human (or a semantic engine) to understand what you're after.