Google has a great sense of humour and they like to amuse the world with their April Fool’s pranks. Thisyear was no different and they created over twenty online tricks to amuse and confuse online visitors. Here are a few examples of their pranks:

Storing anything on Google Docs
On the official Google blog they announced that it was now possible to store real objects on Google docs:

‘Store your keys, remotes, rail passes, and other objects you commonly lose with Google Docs, and you’ll never have to worry about finding them again. Having trouble moving your piano from New York to California? Upload it from your home in New York, then download it once you’re in California. Change your mind and want to share it with your friend in England instead? No problem. With one click you can have your piano delivered to anyone you choose, anywhere in the world.’

Animal Translation

Google placed an advert that linked through to an animal translation app designed for Android phones. The application produces very funny translations based on the animal selected.

Lifesize Picassa

Google offered an option which allowed users to print out a life size model of themselves.object>

In the UK we take freedom of expression for granted but the restrictions imposed by The Republic of China onto Google China may ultimately lead to Google’s complete withdrawal from the country. Until recently Google China was the Republic of China’s second most popular search engine after Baidu.

Google first launched in China in 2006, agreeing to censor results in accordance with Chinese wishes and from 2009 China blocked access to Google’s YouTube. In January this year Google announced that it was ‘no longer willing to continue censoring’ searches in China and that it was considering pulling out of the country.  It redirected its searches to Google Hong Kong who are exempt from any restrictions under international law.

Google announced that it had been victim to sophisticated cyber attacks which appeared to originate from China. Other companies fell victim to similar attacks which consisted of a breach of Gmail accounts of Chinese human rights activists.

Google then entered into talks with the Chinese government to discuss ‘the basis on which we could run an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.’ A temporary ban on Google was imposed by China on 31st March but was quickly withdrawn.

The Chinese government do not like to loose face and Google’s public show of displeasure has not gone down well. Ben Cavender, senior analyst at China Market Research Group in Shanghai said:

‘It’s possible for companies here to work with the government and work around issues if there’s a vested interest for both parties. But if you bring it out into a public forum, the government’s not going to be willing to lose face like that and step down.

‘You have to work within the rules, and if you don’t, the government is going to make you follow the rules, whether that means shutting you down or censoring or something else.’

According to experts, ordinary Chinese are not perturbed that their search results are censored. Andrew Lih, a professor in journalism and media, said:

‘You would be surprised how little people want to or need to access stuff that is blocked or restricted by the Great Firewall.’

There is big business to be made for Google in China and their agreement to adhere to censorship restrictions in the past does contravene their distaste for censorship. Last year they reluctantly pulled a racist picture of Michelle Obama from their search after an enormous public outcry. Unfortunately for Google the current controversy is far from over.

Many companies have decided that social networking is not for them. However new developments online mean that companies who don’t opt in could be missing out.

Google search now includes a live search section which updates by the minute with information from all over the web including up to date blog posts, Tweets and feeds from FriendFeed. To a certain extent when Google moves in a direction it is unwise to ignore it. It is the search engine which generates the most traffic.

Choosing not to include a social networking element to your online marketing campaign means that you might be missing out on extra traffic. If your competitors are involved they could have the advantage.

There is also a possibility that you could be misrepresented online too. UK political parties, for example are leaving themselves exposed in the social networking arena. Tamar, a search agency, undertook research which looked at the reputation management of Gordon Brown and David Cameron to see how well they had positioned themselves online. They found that neither leaders had protected their position in Twitter.

The Twitter accounts with the names of the leaders were not official accounts. @davidcameron was featuring unofficial party news but currently has the message:

‘This unofficial Twitter is now shutting down, at the reasonable & very polite request of Tory HQ. Please follow @conservatives for updates.’

The Tamar report said:

‘With the explosion of real-time search recently, it’s even more important for the political parties to take both factual and ’social’ search seriously. Simple actions such as registering the names of key figures, opening Facebook accounts and engaging on Twitter.’

This is good advice for all businesses.

Search engines want to make it as easy as possible for people to find what they are looking for. The success of their business relies on efficient search results. Google are making search results more personalised in order to achieve these ends.

For some time Google have provided those with Google Mail accounts with personalised search facilities as long as they had the web History feature turned on. The basis of this is that when you instigate a search and find what you are looking for Google ‘learns’ from that information and provides you with better search results next time. For example if you are looking for a particular book and you end up buying on ebay Google will include that high up on your search list next time you are looking for a book.

Google’s aim is to provide the most ‘useful and relevant information on the internet.’ In the Google blog they explain how this works:

The new personalisation facilities allow those who are not signed into a Google account to be part of this useful facility. A user’s search behaviour is linked to an anonymous cookie which holds information for up to 180 days.

How can you find out about personalisation?
If you have the personalisation feature you can click on the ‘view customisation’ link found on the top right hand side of the search page. If you do not have an account and you cannot see this link then you do not have this feature available to you yet.

Can you turn personalisation off?
Yes, of course Google allows this feature to be turned off. Many consumers will not even realise that the feature is running in the background which brings up the issue of confidentiality which has been in the public domain for such a long time.

If you are logged in you can turn off the personalisation by turning off your web history. If you are not logged in then you can do one of two things: delete your cookies or disable your customisations via the web history link.

When personalisation is not a good idea?

• If you are looking for ‘fresh’ information or ideas
• If you are tracking search results as part of a marketing campaign or researching a business area
• If the idea of being ‘tracked’ online does not appeal to you
• If you have many people using the same computer then personalised search results will not be useful

If you haven’t considered using social media as a way of marketing your business now is definitely the time to review your position. Google search in the US is now streaming up the minute information from popular social media sites into their search facilities.  This feature will be coming to UK search soon.

Google revealed their plans for Google Livesearch on their official blog:

‘First, we’re introducing new features that bring your search results to life with a dynamic stream of real-time content from across the web. Now, immediately after conducting a search, you can see live updates from people on popular sites like Twitter and FriendFeed, as well as headlines from news and blog posts published just seconds before. When they are relevant, we’ll rank these latest results to show the freshest information right on the search results page.’

Posts from sites like Twitter and FriendFeed are displayed as part of the Google search engine results. This new development shows the massive impact that social media has had on society. Using this new medium will now bring new attention to businesses who use it effectively.

The main search results feature a few social media posts but you can expand the feature to get more.

Amit Singhal, Google Fellow, wrote on the Google blog:

‘Our real-time search features are based on more than a dozen new search technologies that enable us to monitor more than a billion documents and process hundreds of millions of real-time changes each day.

‘Of course, none of this would be possible without the support of our new partners that we’re announcing today: Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Identi.ca — along with Twitter, which we announced a few weeks ago.’