Since my first article over a year ago, Google has proven that they are very serious about their quest to take over the search engine marketing world - and beyond. Here are a couple of the top stories from our friends over at Google during the past year:

The Search Engine

Google has expanded their share of the search engine market to 63 % (read more in a recent Blizzard Newsletter post). The reason Google has the largest share of the search engine market is because they are continually improving their service. One of my favorite new features is the addition of a plus box in organic search results. The plus box allows some free listings to be expanded to show the property’s location, address, and telephone number. This has been particularly great for Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc. clients who are in the hospitality industry. You can expect to see more of the expanded listings in the coming year.

Google Goes Mobile

This is a cool feature that is very useful and easy to use. You can text message Google on your cell phone and receive almost instant results for a wide variety of searches. You can search for pretty much anything: local restaurants, driving directions, hotels, language translations, stock quotes, weather, and much more. For example, when I text “Hotel 81611″ (81611 is the zip code for Aspen, Colorado) to Google (or 466453), approximately thirty seconds later I receive a message with three hotel listings for the Aspen, Colorado area. The listings include the hotel name, address, and telephone number. If you have a cell phone with text messaging capabilities, you should definitely give this a try! For more details, visit the Google Mobile page and/or read the Mobile Search article in the Blizzard Newsletter. Google also made Gmail available through mobile devices, meaning you won’t miss any important messages while you’re away from your computer. I expect mobile search to be come very popular in the future, and Google looks like they already have a pretty good head start.

In the Stock Market

The opening price per share for GOOG in August 2004 (their initial public offering) was $85. On Friday, March 23, GOOG closed at $461.83, with a 52 week low of $337 a share, and a high of $513. Since my last Google article in February 2006, the price has risen about $97 dollars per share. I think GOOG remains a very intriguing investment opportunity.

Video Sharing

Probably the biggest story surrounding Google this past year was the purchase of YouTube, a popular video sharing website. In October 2006, Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion, the most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history. Eric Schmidt, Chief Executive Officer of Google, says “The YouTube team has built an exciting and powerful media platform that complements Google’s mission to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Only the future will tell if the acquisition was worth over a billion dollars.

What Google Services do Blizzard Employees Use?
Here is a list of some of our favorite Google services:

Kara Toedtli - Google Maps and Google Images.
“Google Maps is more useful than websites such as Mapquest since there is an actual satellite view of whatever I am looking for. Google Images is really helpful for finding out more information about certain client properties.”
Kathy Barta - Google Search.
“The search because they are more apt to give me the results I want. And the fact that they do try to filter out some of the junk sites and spam, even though those are difficult for them to detect, they make an attempt.”
Danielle Harchelroad - Google Image Labeler.
“It is fun and addictive!”
Josh Green - Google Calendar.
“All you need is internet access to get to it. You are able to share or secure whatever calendar want to so that others can or cannot see what you want them too. The other great thing is the ability to create multiple calendars so you can keep personal away from work. I use it on a regular basis and love the usability of the system plus it ties into my Google account so I can access my email, news, calendar, favorites, photos, and many other features from one central area.”

I don’t expect to see the search engine giant slowing down anytime soon, but will their constant unveiling of new products eventually hurt them? Are they taking on too many projects and perhaps losing their focus on the basics that made them the biggest search engine in the world? Can their stock possibly remain at such a high level? Only time will tell. But be assured that Blizzard will keep a close eye on Google’s offerings in 2007.

Ambere Cunningham - Blizzard Internet Marketing, Inc.

 Email This Post |  Print This Post

Categories: Travel Marketing.
Comments RSS 2.0 feed. Leave a comment, or trackback.