Considering it is the largest media owner in the world, Google is very bad at communicating with its users – which, lets face it, is most of us.

Back in December Google slipped Personalised Search into our lives, but few peopled noticed.

Google is always fiddling, or ‘refining’ as it calls it, with its algorithm, the one that determined which sites we see at the top of our search results pages.

Usually you need to be a search engine optimisation (SEO) expert or a real geek to spot the changes, or follow Google’s official blog.

But now even normal people are noticing that their search engine results are becoming very different to those of other people – even when they search with the same words!

Basically, Personalised Search means that once you have visited a website, via its results pages, Google is now more likely to offer you the site again, in future search results.

Now, if you’re an advocate of personal privacy, an international terrorist, or part of an organised crime syndicate you already know that Google records you’re every move and you’ve worked out a way of turning its tracking off.

However, those of us who don’t fit into the above categories have not really been that bothered. But now that Google is using this information to choose websites for us, perhaps we should be bothered.

Fundamentally, I use a search engine to find websites I don’t already know about. I have other mechanisms for recalling websites from previous interest; bookmarks and news feeds (RSS) for instance.

And whether my own previous misjudgment in site selection is a good way of determining what sites I see in the future is highly debatable too!

You can of course turn off personalised search, but it is now on by default and few users will be aware of this or work out how to turn it off. Previously you had to be logged into iGoogle to get this ‘useful feature’ but now everyone is unwittingly lumbered with it.

This makes it very difficult to prove money spent on SEO is justified. If everyone is getting different results, how can you know your SEO is working?

Alternatively, the unsuspecting client, who visits their own website on a regular basis, might think their SEO consultant is doing an amazing job, as their site seems to turn up on every relevant search they do.

So if you’re site has suddenly become number one in Google, for your targeted keywords, but this hasn’t turned into an avalanche of website visitors – and of course you’ve read this, you will now know why.

It’s easy to see how search engine optimisation (SEO) could affect the ancient art of grabbing readers attention, but will it really lead to the death of the creative headline?

It’s true Google’s indexing robots don’t have a sense of humor and unlike humans, cannot be shocked, or mislead by ambiguity into reading an article.

For instance, it is hard to explain to a robot why “Headless body found in topless club” ( NY Post 1983) is generally regarded as the best headline of all time!

The fact is that to gain readership, the BBC, like other online news providers need their articles to be found in search engines and that mandates them having more ‘accurate’ headlines.

But does accurate necessarily mean boring?

Well for SEO purposes, a headline should contain the keywords that people might use to search for such content, which can lead to longer and descriptive sentences being used than in print.

Sadly, pun headlines such as The Sun’s classic “Gord Help Us Now” just won’t cut the search mustard for identifying an article as being about Gordon Brown online.

The good news, for some, is that misleading headlines such as “WW2 bomber found on moon” (Sunday Sport) will still work as well today as they did in 1982.

But should the BBC worry so much about how they head their articles?

Although article headings are important for SEO, there are other ways to target potential searchers.  Using tags and categories for instance, or creating keyword rich excerpts, separate to the article body, works too.

And let’s not forget SEO isn’t the only way to gain readership.

While creative headline writing, might be on the decline for traditional media websites, it’s never been more essential for gaining audiences in the attention deficit land know as social media.

Creating a tweet, catchy enough to entice people to read a blog, in less than 140 characters, while still leaving room for the blog link, is an identical skill.

(Having said that, Twitter content will soon be indexed by Google and Bing, so even our tweets will need SEO scrutiny soon).

But just in case “it’s all over” here are a few more of my favorite headlines:

1)   Plane Too Close to Ground, Crash Probe Told (unknown)

2)   Ike Beats Turner to Death (NY Post) – on the Death of Ike Turner

3)   Hawk Kestrel Maneuvers in the Park (Daily Mail) – bird flock

4)   Singing Nuns in Drunk Suicide Pact – (Sun)

5)   Freddy Starr Ate my Hamster (Sun)

6)   Man Found Dead in Graveyard  (Evening Standard)

7)   Man Struck by Lightning Faces Battery Charge (unknown)

Why not add your favorites below?

1. Launch another attack on Google (Microsoft)

2. Charge for access to content (News Corp)

Two birds with one stone huh.

And from a business perspective it’s almost an obvious move – a match made in heaven (or, if you like, hell).

But this unholy alliance is seriously troubling. Why?

Because it threatens the whole credibility of search, as it has evolved. Google has, to its credit, worked hard to ensure that natural search results are based on merit – not on how much publishers are willing to pay them.

So what’s in it for Microsoft and big publishers like Murdoch? Joseph Tartakoff, in The Guardian yesterday, summed up the spoils for the victors :

“…not only would Microsoft presumably be giving the content of its partners better play, it would also be paying to ensure that their content could not be found directly via the search engine of its arch-rival.”

Should we really be bothered? Douglas McCabe, publishing analyst at Enders Analysis suggests we should perhaps take a chill pill:

“It doesn’t work unless they [Microsoft] get enough people involved”.

But Microsoft is on the case.

TechCrunch has reported that Microsoft have made presentations to major publishers (not just News Corp) setting out their proposition: we will pay you, the content owners, to de-list your content from Google, in exchange for priority listings on Bing.

But if Microsoft are trying to attack Google where it really hurts (their wallet) then they might have to think again.

Google earns virtually no revenue at the moment from news content on Google News, so no great loss there. In fact a recent study in Germany on google.de found that removing publishers’ content had a negligible economic effect for Google.

But lest we forget our old mate the Murdochosaurus.

The loser (money aside) could well be Murdoch. The removal of News Corp content from Google, and the consequent loss of exposure for their brands, will only mean more traffic and visibility for their competitors.

Take the UK, where nearly every one of us use Google – is the loss of The Times or The Sun from Google really going to make us use Bing instead?

Most of us won’t even notice it’s gone!

But, as Tartakoff says:

“For the newspapers… the question is whether Microsoft’s dollars can make up for the loss of traffic that Google generates for them.”

All of this, of course, totally removes the end consumer from the equation.

Microsoft might increase Bing’s market share and Murdoch might be satisfied with some cash from Microsoft – but what about us?

My hunch is that if we are wise to the fact that search results in Bing are based on cash rather than credibility, we’ll stick with Google who we already love and trust.

Or maybe there is a benefit, as one comment by GinSter highlighted in The Guardian yesterday:

“I hope this happens. Google – now with free Murdoch blocker…brilliant.”

The reality is that it could work to achieve short term objectives for Microsoft and the big publishers, but over the long term Microsoft’s strategy kind of stinks.

And as for Murdoch, well it seems to me that he put his stake in the ground earlier this year by saying he was going to put a paywall around all his content – paid for by us, the end consumer.

Since then, perhaps he’s realised it’s not quite as easy as all that and is now desperately hunting for a viable alternative.

And Microsoft have seized on this desperation and offered what looks like a very crude solution that we should care about – especially if more publishers do get involved and this is just the start of a wider trend.

friend has created a jargon free online PR guide for busy MD’s.

“Thanks to social media, good public relations (PR) has never been more important for your business.

People now listen to each other rather than your advertisements; good corporate social responsibility has moved to the top of the political agenda and thanks to the blogosphere, everyone is now a publisher!”

Read more here The Reluctant MD’s Guide to Online PR

You may not have any desire to inhabit the digital world but are starting to worry that, if you ignore social media any longer, you’re likely to be put on the endangered species list.

You’ve listened to the ‘kids’ in your marketing department rabbit on about consumer-to-consumer engagement and you’re wondering if they also speak English.

But strip out the technical jargon and the marketing double-speak and you’ll probably find it’s a more familiar world than you thought.

Firstly, you’ve been doing social networking all your professional life, just offline.

As every SME knows, in the absence of a large marketing budget, the best way to get new business is to “network”. By that I mean going to events where people you know introduce you to people they know, business cards are swapped and food is eaten on sticks.

You’ve spent a lot of time making friends and influencing people in your local business community. Recommending your business partners in the hope they will return the favor or at least buy you lunch sometime. It takes years to build an effective network and you’ll probably turn into an alcoholic by the time it’s complete.

Thanks to sites like Linkedin, this can be achieved in less time, with less geographical limitations and significantly less liver damage.

Secondly, you didn’t get were you are today, without taking every opportunity to be in the press.   You know editorial is far more powerful than advertorial.  The problem is fewer people are reading newspapers these days, especially local press but choose to get their news and insight online.

The press release is replaced by the blog post, mailing list by the Twitter feed and success is measured by the number of readers rather than by column inched, is about all you need to know about online PR.

Finally, personal recommendation has always been your goal. It’s customers that get you more customers if you treat them right. Now ,thanks to social media, this word-of-mouth has turned into word-of-mouse.

In this age of social media and online PR, fully understanding the marketing environment your business operates within is not just vital but now much more possible to do – and less forgivable if you still cut corners.

In the past, research for many clients was almost a dirty word. “Why should I pay to find out what I already know?”

Well it’s different now. The digital landscape is complex but it provides a mine of invaluable information, sometimes (at a basic level) at the touch of a button. The web offers us a vast ‘universe’ (in research speak) and therefore much larger sample sizes – this is good!

It also enables us to go down to levels of detail that often we couldn’t before. Through a defined approach we can fully research brand(s), audiences, products, competitors, channels, conversations, sentiments and so on.

This insight is crucial in order to create a social media or online PR strategy (or any marketing strategy for that matter) that is going to achieve your business objectives.

And it’s not just about upfront research and insight either. We are able to monitor and measure campaign results much more intricately than we could before. This means we can react quickly to market changes or under-performing marketing campaigns (both offline and online). Keeping the focus on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), we can fine tune ROI as we go.

Over the past few years, and in the past 12 months in particular, I’ve noticed an explosion in the number of web-based social media analysis tools that help us do this. I could write a book about all of them but for now there’s a great comprehensive list courtesy of Business Week.

I’ve used many of these – both free and paid for – and have my favourites but am always flexible, combining and switching between tools depending on which client I’m working with.

The important point is that one solution on its own is far too limited. Using Google alone to search the web is not enough from a social media and online PR perspective. And simply paying lots of money for the likes of Techigy or Social Radar is a good start but needs to be part of a toolbox – not the toolbox itself. Searching the social web demands a different approach.

And beware – you’ve also got to apply sound marketing and market research expertise to the process too – the information/data is one thing, how it’s organised, interpreted and presented is a whole other ball game.

The good thing is that smart businesses can more and more see the value of sophisticated online research and insight. So I’m still banging the same old drum but it’s a lot more satisfying these days.

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Image courtesy of Wordle.net