I just finished reading The Google Story, which I recommend to anyone interested in learning the history of this amazing success story (and for those of you that know where my office is, you’re more than welcome to borrow my copy).

At the end of the book the authors provide some very cool Google search tips and I thought I’d share a few of them:

• Phone book - type a person’s name or address in the search box and Google will deliver phone and address listings. Or if you only have a phone number, type that in to the search box and you’ll (usually) get the person’s information that it belongs to
• Calculator - type in a math problem and sure enough, you’ll get the answer
• Dictionary - type in “define” followed by any English word and you’ll get the definition
• Book learnings - go to print.google.com and you’ll be able to search actual books that Google has scanned and indexed
• The new stuff - to keep up with all the cool stuff Google is doing, check out their Google Labs page

And my personal favorite, Google has a text message service that is very impressive. Get any number of things (such as directions, airport delays, movie times, etc) by texting to 46645 (or GOOGL on most phones). Check the link above to find out all the possibilities with this one.

So, in the bizarreness that is celebrity endorsements, Kevin Federline, (aka K-Fed, Fed-Ex, aka white-trash baby daddy and bad rapper) has his own search engine.  You heard that correctly.  So, on this beautiful Wednesday, let me encourage you to explore the web via: http://searchwithkevin.prodege.com/ where you have a chance of winning a prize from him such as a copy of his new album or an invite to his birthday party.  Wow.  I’m speechless. Thanks?

If you aren’t enticed by Kevin’s generous offer, perhaps you’d like to benefit someone else while you search.  There are several search engines that donate to selected charities every time you search.  EveryClick and Click4theCause are good bets for your magnanimous searches…  Microsoft gives wads of their money pile to AIDS Charity ninemillion.org every time you search via Click4theCause.  EveryClick (and other sites like it) give a portion of their revenue each month to a selected charity. 

My question: Are these charity sites any good at searching?  I’m curious to hear your feedback.

Thanks to Dumb Terminal Live! for the idea.  http://blogs.pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/dumb-terminal/2007/03/nine_million.html 

Being a marketer does have its benefits sometimes. There are so many industries that seem to be stuck in the past when it comes to driving new sales. What do giant inflatable gorillas, brightly colored balloons and dancing clowns with signs have in common? They are all old attempts to drive sales locally.

Now I know that not all car dealers, real-estate agents and clowns know the power of local search, much less the simplicity behind AdWords. But imagine if those balloons and inflatable gorillas could be strategically positioned all around their competitor’s lots and listings.  Local targeted ad buys have been a great way for many businesses to target regional buyers searching for product and services at very low costs. For $0.04, less the cost of any balloon, a highly targeted ad can yield great results.

Let’s look into an example of a campaign that I am currently running for my beautiful, fabulous, well-priced (obviously still trying to sell it) townhome. With a very competitive real-estate marketplace and many new condo and townhome communities going up, it seems almost necessary to shorten the sales time with other non-traditional mediums.

My current locally targeted AdWords campaign gets about 150 clicks per week and over 8,000 impressions (people that might have saw the balloons). At an average cost per click (CPC) of only $0.20, it is worth every penny to have them view my property without having to schedule a showing with my agent.

My keyword strategy is a simple one… be found when people are searching for new homes, researching new developments, finding lenders, finding tax information and even researching local neighborhoods. The costs and impressions greatly range, but considering the sale price and the value of a click, it was worth the couple extra minutes of setup.

So next time you are looking to drive more traffic, don’t just think a PPC campaign is only for big budgets. You will be surprised what $4 a day can get you and you might even save a few animals from those pesky balloons.

Helpful Links

Google AdWords - Learning Center

A Darn Nice Townhome For Sale

Google recently launched a new testing site, SearchMash. It’s an interesting concept for multiple reasons but mostly because it is a live user experience test for their flagship product. The quote from Google about SearchMash goes something like this, “The goal of SearchMash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users.” It’s a great idea to field test something like this in a live environment and get data on the fly, I wish there were more companies doing it this way. It will be great when they start to integrate the findings into the actual Google search. I like what I see so far in things like bringing images to the same search results page, a separated call out for Wikipedia entries, and collapsable boxes. If they went one step further and made the boxes customizable like on the personalized Google Homepage (ability to “resize” and reorder) then this would be my default search engine.

The linking option menu is a nice touch as well, I especially like the “More from this site option” where it narrows the search to one particular site. They were also clever in adding a simple survey, “were these results useful to you?” in the right hand column. I think they should integrate AdSense next and see what users do.