As a paying Google Apps customer, the lack of communication during recent outages left a bad taste in my mouth.

I’m pleased to report that I just received an email from Google with details of many improvements coming our way. These are much needed and welcomed.

We’re committed to making Google Apps Premier Edition a service on which your organization can depend. During the first half of August, we didn’t do this as well as we should have. We had three outages - on August 6, August 11, and August 15. The August 11 outage was experienced by nearly all Google Apps Premier users while the August 6 and 15 outages were minor and affected a very small number of Google Apps Premier users. As is typical of things associated with Google, these outages were the subject of much public commentary.

Through this note, we want to assure you that system reliability is a top priority at Google. When outages occur, Google engineers around the world are immediately mobilized to resolve the issue. We made mistakes in August, and we’re sorry. While we’re passionate about excellence, we can’t promise you a future that’s completely free of system interruptions. Instead, we promise you rapid resolution of any production problem; and more importantly, we promise you focused discipline on preventing recurrence of the same problem.

Given the production incidents that occurred in August, we’ll be extending the full SLA credit to all Google Apps Premier customers for the month of August, which represents a 15-day extension of your service. SLA credits will be applied to the new service term for accounts with a renewal order pending. This credit will be applied to your account automatically so there’s no action needed on your part.

We’ve also heard your guidance around the need for better communication when outages occur. Here are three things that we’re doing to make things better:

1. We’re building a dashboard to provide you with system status information. This dashboard, which we aim to make available in a few months, will enable us to share the following information during an outage:

     a. A description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact. Our belief is during the course of an outage, we should be singularly focused on solving the problem. Solving production problems involves an investigative process that’s iterative. Until the problem is solved, we don’t have accurate information around root cause, much less corrective action, that will be particularly useful to you. Given this practical reality, we believe that informing you that a problem exists and assuring you that we’re working on resolving it is the useful thing to do.
     b. A continuously updated estimated time-to-resolution. Many of you have told us that it’s important to let you know when the problem will be solved. Once again, the answer is not always immediately known. In this case, we’ll provide regular updates to you as we progress through the troubleshooting process.

2. In cases where your business requires more detailed information, we’ll provide a formal incident report within 48 hours of problem resolution. This incident report will contain the following information:

a. business description of the problem, with emphasis on user impact;
b. technical description of the problem, with emphasis on root cause;
c. actions taken to solve the problem;
d. actions taken or to be taken to prevent recurrence of the problem; and
e. time line of the outage.

3. In cases where your business requires an in-depth dialogue about the outage, we’ll support your internal communication process through participation in post-mortem calls with you and your management team.

Once again, thanks for you continued support and understanding.

Sincerely,
The Google Apps Team

(emphasis added)

Today I wish I were a political blogger. I supposedly had a ticket to the Democratic Convention, which fell through. Then I had the misfortune (in this situation) to live in a state that didn’t get a lot of tickets. Some lucky bloggers - one from each state - were also part of the State Blog Pool or Corps (here’s a list of the bloggers by state).

I have a feeling, that while it would be fun to attend the parties and see the speeches, I would want to hang out in the Big Tent. That’s where the bloggers are. It’s not air-conditioned, and you’re not as wined and dined, but from the looks of it, you’re in good company. Google and Digg set it up and sponsored it. If you’re Republican they’re sponsoring a tent at the Republican convention too.

And there looks to be a mass of passionate, opinionated writers. A sea of laptops. The tent housed the counter-culture diggs — not that bloggers were ignored.

“…the Democratic National Convention Committee handed credentials to a record number of bloggers for the Denver convention this week, but more nevertheless appear to have gathered at the Big Tent. Adding to the lure of the unofficial venue is that the workspace’s location on Wynkoop Street is around the corner from a multitude of restaurants and private parties, including a massive Tuesday reception organized by Emily’s List, a late-night jazz festival, and an AT&T-sponsored brewery bash.” - CNET

There are also couches, free massages, and free food. Sounds like it’s not all work no play. I particularly liked “Left in Alabama” - not for their blog’s design - but for the spirited writing and observations. It’s charming to have a story about bloggers because in upcoming elections I’m not sure it will be so much of a story as much as how things are. And I’ll bet they get air conditioning.

Andy needs your help! Please vote for Andy’s panel to be among those selected for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Thanks!

Today’s Picks are just too good, so let’s jump right in.

• Researchers used Google Earth to study the alignment of 8510 cows around the world and discovered they tend to align themselves with Earth’s north-south magnetic fields. Sounds udderly ridiculous to me!
• Maybe a better use of Google Earth from Olympic gold medallist Kristin Armstrong. She used Google Earth to help her train for the varying elevations in China.
• Mozilla has announced Ubiquity–a new browser interface that brings useful information to your fingertips.
• Two internet security researchers demonstrate just how easy it is for hackers to intercept your web activity.
• Who spent the most money on internet display ads in June? That would be Microsoft. The top display ad publisher for the same period? Fox Interactive Media.
• Google Ad Manager has left beta. Actually, it’s still in beta, but at least now everyone can sign-up for it.

Training from Om Malik, Biz Stone, Dave Taylor, Andy Beal and more! Attend October’s Aloha Social Media Summit in Boulder, CO and learn social media marketing secrets from the pros! Hurry, space is limited to just 25 attendees!

Don’t mess with the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority! Pedantic is its middle name and it’s well versed in the ancient art of filament-slicing.

According to the Guardian, it took just two complaints about an Apple iPhone TV advertisement (watch it here) for the watchdog to take action and ban the ad.

The Advertising Standards Authority received two complaints that the claim was misleading because the iPhone did not support Flash or Java, which are both integral to many web pages.

Apple said the aim of the ad was to highlight how the iPhone can offer access to all websites…and that the line “all parts of the internet” meant website availability, “not every aspect of functionality”.

I’m not sure what’s more incredible. That the ASA thought the ad was misleading–even my Firefox browser can’t access all of the internet–or, that it took just two complaints to see the ad banned.

Don’t like the TV ad, your competitor is running in the UK? Send in a complaint, and have your grandmother do the same–you’ll never have to worry about it again!

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

Yesterday, we talked about the importance of A/B and multivariate testing. Google offers Website Optimizer (for free) and now we learn just how much the search engine eats its own dog food.

Here’s an A/B experiment that Google has conducted. See if you can spot the difference.

Page 1:

Page 2:

Yeah, I didn’t spot it either, but apparently there is slightly more white space around the first listing, in page 1.

Should you be that granular with your A/B testing? Maybe not, but Google explains just how subtly it’s messing with your mind testing your preferences each day.

In case you’ve not yet bought a copy of Radically Transparent, or perhaps you just need a reputation management refresher, you can check out an interview I did recently with MarketingSherpa.

Consider it a mini-guide to managing an online reputation crisis. In it, I discuss the following seven steps in detail:

• Tip #1: Perform an honest self-analysis
• Tip #2: Control communication
• Tip #3: Monitor online conversations about your company
• Tip #4: Analyze complaints before reacting
• Tip #5: Strategize responses
• Tip #6: Control the conversation
• Tip #7: Don’t shoot yourself in the foot

You might want to bookmark it and pray that you don’t actually have to use it.

Usability guru and best-selling author Bryan Eisenberg is back with another great book. Always Be Testing: The Complete Guide to Google Website Optimizer sees Eisenberg team up with John Quarto-vonTivadar, and Lisa T. Davis to deliver the definitive guide to Google’s web page multivariate testing tool.

I’ve just finished reading Always Be Testing which finally opened my eyes to just how easy Website Optimizer is to use and just how valuable it is for any web site owner. Following Eisenberg’s advice, I’ve not only set up the perfect multivariate web page test, but I also know which variables to test.

If you rely on your web site to generate even just a few pennies in revenue, you must pick up a copy of this book! And, in case a new book purchase is not in your budget, Bryan Eisenberg has graciously offered to give away some copies to Marketing Pilgrim readers.

We have 3 copies of Always Be Testing to give away. One of the three lucky winners will receive a signed copy AND copies of Eisenberg’s other great books Call to Action and Waiting for Your Cat to Bark.

How to enter this contest? Simply leave a comment below and we’ll randomly pick 3 winners (deadline for entry is 9am ET Wednesday).

That’s all you need to do! And, if you’re not a lucky winner, you can be a winner anyway by picking up a copy of Always Be Testing!

If you’re following me on Twitter, you’d have read my reaction to news that Google Suggest had finally made its way to Google’s homepage search box.

Turns out, that’s probably the biggest news of the day. Today really is a slow news day. I’ll keep digging for something worthy of your brilliant mind, but in the meantime consider these Picks an amuse-bouche for the day.

• I’ve not checked the accuracy of the data, but you have to be impressed with Khalid’s attempt to provide the "Ultimate Rank" of SEO blogs. Yeah, it’s linkbait, yeah he’s massaging the egos of those on the list–wohoo, we’re #8 –but it looks like a lot of work went it to compiling the list.
• Before Google, there was no such thing as a 4-year beta. Seeking Alpha suggests Google’s beta label is a free pass to ignore glitches.
• Only 20% of Facebook’s users have voluntarily switched to its new interface–which looks a lot like FriendFeed’s. How will the other 80% react when they’re forced to make the switch?
• Mobile search and advertising startup Jumptap has raised more than $26 million in a series D round led by AllianceBernstein.
• Google’s dumped Bluetooth from its new Android phone? Don’t panic, you’ll still be able to where that fashion accessory over your ear and use an Android phone.
• Google’s built in calculator needs to go back to school as reports suggest it can’t handle some simple calculations.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

The Olympics is over and US advertisers should be pleased with the results. Not only did we take home a lot of gold from athletes, this Olympics brought record web site traffic - and an experiment in online video advertising. The two weeks long Olympics was a test in how video advertising would play out.

According to eMarketer - NBC - the lead sponsor of the games, gets a bronze for their work. They brought in $5.75 million for running video ads. The Wall Street Journal reported NBC made only a quarter of what CBS Sports made streaming a college basketball tournament earlier this year.

The number would probably be higher but NBC made some mistakes. First, they required people to download software to watch video clips. NBC used Microsoft’s Silverlight instead of Flash to stream video. Since most of us don’t have Silverlight, we had to download it - but I’m sure some skipped it altogether. Second, NBC didn’t preimere footage on their site. So while NBC doubled traffic to their site, Yahoo did even better, according to Nielsen. Yahoo showed some events online before they aired on television. Exclusivity tends to work better on television than on the web.

As far as the official site of the Olympics - Beijing2008.cn - Neilsen says the US averaged 554,800 unique visitors a day the first week (from 9 August – 15 August 2008). The site is in Chinese, which seems like quite a barrier, until you click on the English version. When you go to video you’re back to NBC.

Overall, I’m going to miss watching the Olympics, yet like many other Americans, I stayed up late watching them and I’m looking forward to getting more sleep. However, if I could’ve watched more online, sleep deprivation wouldn’t be such an issue.

Surprisingly, I didn’t watch any of the Olympics online - with high definition television and the family around - I’d rather watch it in the living room than on my laptop. But since I did miss the closing ceremonies, I’m downloading Silverlight right now.

Andy needs your help! Please vote for Andy’s panel to be among those selected for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Thanks!

There’s only one thing on my mind: Football!

Yep, the college football season gets underway this week and I’m hoping NCSU can pull off an upset down at South Carolina on Thursday.

I need a distraction-to keep my mind off football–and these Picks will do nicely!

• AdAge reports on rumors that Microsoft and WPP might do a deal that involves the exchange of Avenue A/Razorfish and 24/7 Real Media.
• Want some creative ideas for your site’s "Add to Cart" button? Linda Bustos takes a look at a bunch of before and after designs for popular etailers.
• Daniel Jacome makes his argument for why Google’s entry to the web measurement space won’t hurt comScore.
• Real estate search engine Trulia announces a bunch of new features including an interface for mobile devices.
• Google adds geolocation to its Gears offline plug-in.

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A California resident is suing Google for trespassing. Apparently Google’s Street View driver ignored a "No Trespassing" sign, drove down a private road, and snapped photos of the resident’s house.

The resident decided that simply submitting a removal request was too easy–and lacked any kind of chance for a settlement from Google–so the case is now before a judge. While legal-eagles will enjoy the debate over whether this truly is an invasion of privacy, or trespassing, I got a kick out of Ars Technica’s comparison to how Google should have treated the sign:

In the real world, things like private roads and trespassing signs serve the same purpose as the tools Google provides for turning away its indexing robots; they are opt-out mechanisms from an earlier age. Forcing people to build a private road, erect a sign, and then still use some online tools to have the pictures pulled (after already being available to the world) seems unduly burdensome on a common-sense level, and it has little to do with whether a stranger pulls into your driveway simply in order to turn around.

The lesson here? If you don’t won’t Google driving on private property, use a "NoIndex, NoFollow" sign instead of "No Trespassing."

This Washington Post piece about business blogging both perplexes and delights me.

Why perplexed? It opens and closes with a case study about Jason Calacanis. While Calacanis was at the frontier of blogging for dollars–and extremely successful with Weblogs Inc–the case study talks about Calacanis’s decision to dump blogging in favor of a newsletter. It simply doesn’t fit with the remainder of the article. It’s almost as if the journalist had the interviewing lying around and decided to push a square peg into a round hole.

OK, that aside, if you are weighing the advantages of your business joining the blogosphere, then you should make time to read the article. While it won’t offer all the answers to your questions, it will provide you with some real world examples of how businesses are growing thanks to blogging.

I’m often asked “where’s the ROI?” in business blogging. I’m excited to see that Marriott is tracking the direct revenue generated from its blog:

Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s blog.

Is your business blogging? Care to share your success (or failure) stories?

Andy needs your help! Please vote for Andy’s panel to be among those selected for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Thanks!

Saying "I told you so" often smacks of smugness, but it appears we were right about Google’s decision to make the AdSense for Feeds migration a manual process.

Google will soon provide a self-service process to migrate from an account on the original FeedBurner website to a Google Account. We have temporarily paused processing of new manual migration requests; we are working doggedly through the initial queue of requests and will re-open account migration services as soon as the first batch is completed.

(If you have already submitted a migration request, please look for an email response from Google once your migration has completed).

(Emphasis added)

Training from Om Malik, Biz Stone, Dave Taylor, Andy Beal and more! Attend October’s Aloha Social Media Summit in Boulder, CO and learn social media marketing secrets from the pros! Hurry, space is limited to just 25 attendees!

Back in June of 2007, we conducted an in-depth analysis of the search engine reputation of the presidential candidates in contention. As part of our report, we noted that of the Democratic hopefuls, Barack Obama had zero negative search results–the best of all Democrats. Who had the most negative search results?

Joe Biden.

Yep, the newly anointed running mate to Barack Obama had more negative search results–across Google and Yahoo–than any of the 8 candidates, vying for the Democratic nomination.

Before you rush off to review Joe Biden’s search results in Google today, keep in mind that the freshness of Google’s results mean that Biden’s naming as Obama’s vice president, will skew the current sentiment.

While search engine sentiment doesn’t remain static–John McCain made dramatic improvements to his, when we checked again in February 2008–Joe Biden is a strange choice for Barack Obama.

So, do I have any suggestions for John McCain? Well, the search engines aren’t exactly a crystal ball, but if Google results are anything to go by, Ron Paul has maintained the best reputation of all Republican hopefuls. Something to think about, John.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

I don’t normally share my presentations online, but I thought some of you might want to take a look at the presentation I gave recently at SES San Jose.

It’s an intro on using Twitter as a marketer and covers the basics and a few advanced tips. There’s no audio, so some of the information (and gags) are missing, but hopefully it’s still useful.

I’m back from SES San Jose. I wish I could have spent more time at the conference, but alas, work called and it wanted its one, and only, employee back.

Still, I had a lot of fun and made some great new friends–and met with some great old friends too. If you’ve not had a chance, check out the SES San Jose photos I took.

OK, on to today’s picks!

• Jason Calacanis shares ten tips on how to do PR for your startup.
• Jeremiah Owyang provides a sneak peek at Facebook’s upcoming "Engagement Advertisements."
• Starting Sep 4, you’ll see new Microsoft TV ads starring Jerry Seinfeld. The company is reportedly paying him $10M to help challenge the perception that Windows is not as good as Mac.
• The City of West Des Moines will serve as the site of Microsoft Corporation’s newest data center. Yay for Iowa!

Sometimes I wish I didn’t have such a cynical eye. That way, when I saw news–such as Google’s Quality Score improvements–I could simply enjoy the updates in my naivety.

This is what Google announced:

A more accurate Quality Score

Most importantly, we are replacing our static per-keyword Quality Scores with a system that will evaluate an ad’s quality each time it matches a search query…

Keywords no longer marked ‘inactive for search’

The new per-query evaluation of Quality Score affects you in that keywords will no longer appear as ‘inactive for search’ in your account. Instead, all keywords will have the chance to show ads on Google web search and the search network (unless you’ve paused or deleted them)…

‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’

As a result of migrating to per-query Quality Score, we are no longer showing minimum bids in your account. Instead, we’re replacing minimum bids with a new, more meaningful metric: first page bids. First page bids are an estimate of the bid it would take for your ad to reach the first page of search results on Google web search…

This is my translation:

"A more accurate Quality Score" - more revenue for Google.

"Keywords no longer marked ‘inactive for search" - more revenue for Google.

‘First page bid’ will replace ‘minimum bid’ - more revenue for Google.

I’ll admit, I use Google AdWords about as often as I wash my car–which is not often–so, if you’re a big time AdWords user, please tell me what you thought, when you saw the new Quality Score updates.

I’ll admit, I only ever use Yahoo Site Explorer when I want to check out a web site’s backlinks. If you’re not aware, YSE will show backlinks in pretty much the order of authority (unlike Google).

Well, it appears I may soon have reason to use YSE for more than just snooping.

Today, we launched a new look and feel for Site Explorer (http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new) that provides a more dynamic interface to accommodate future feature roll-outs. The new interface also includes a new Site Summary page to provide statistics for authenticated sites. On top of this, we’re also increasing the number of rules for Dynamic URL Rewriting that you can enter from 3 to 10.

You have to click the above URL to see the new interface–at least while they test it for feedback. Don’t want to waste the click? Here’s how it looks:

I know the folks over at Yahoo Search are always spying on reading Marketing Pilgrim, so leave a comment with any features you’d like to see added to Yahoo Site Explorer.

Pilgrim’s Partners: Is a blogger attacking your company without you knowing? Monitor your online reputation with Andy Beal’s Trackur–try it for free!

I’ve heard of "keep your enemies close" but Google and Verizon are rumored to be taking that to the extreme.

While Verizon has been a little frosty to Google’s Android, the WSJ suggests the two companies are about to get cozy–at least as far as mobile search is concerned.

The deal under discussion, which would make Google the default search provider on Verizon devices and give it a share of ad revenue, is aimed at dramatically simplifying what is now a confusing set of search options for cellphone users. Today, users have to go to different places to look up services such as ringtones, restaurants and Web pages. Verizon wants to create a new search platform that would be a one-stop shop.

It’s not a done deal yet, but, as a Verizon customer, I’d love to be able to show iPhone users that my phone can do more than "GET IT NOW."

Andy needs your help! Please vote for Andy’s panel to be among those selected for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival. Thanks!

The government can’t be all that bad. They Twitter. They don’t make us practice until we’re almost dead for the Olympics. Plus they use other social media sites to communicate and encourage freedom of press. Now, if they could just let reporters live twit during press conferences it would look just like BlogWorld - speakers could look down at an audience of laptops.

Silicon Valley nerds may be early adopters of social media - but the government is not only twittering, they are blogging and using other social media platforms (and maybe they should subsidize it too!).

The Department of State has started “Project Dipnote” (Not wild about the name but still kudos for the idea. Then I read this: “Dipnote” means a diplomatic note and is one of the many ways in which governments formally communicate with each other.). They have a YouTube Channel, a blog (with comments!), a Flickr photo album (http://www.flickr.com/photos/statephotos/), a Twitter account (http://twitter.com/dipnote), an account iTunes for podcasts, RSS feeds (here’s the list), and a Facebook page (with almost 500 fans).

Most businesses don’t have that impressive list (though I’m doing my best to change that). Some don’t want to open themselves up to criticism by allowing comments or participating in social media. Most just don’t understand it.

But what will be the impact of social media on government? Right now, it’s probably marginal, but in time…

“It may not be quite clear yet as to what impact social media will have exactly on foreign policymaking. What is evident, though, is that foreign policy does not operate in a vacuum, and it must incorporate or respond to changes in communications. We are interested in your thoughts on how social media — how these changes in communication — will affect foreign policymaking in the years ahead…”
- Editor-in-Chief of DipNote.

Getting involved in government on any level takes time - to understand the issues - and to keep up with the developments. If government can engage us with social media we can build a stronger democracy. I wish I could direct message and follow (on Twitter) not only my local city council (or neighborhood group), but members of Congress, and others on up to the federal level - just as long as they don’t tell me what they ate at the cafeteria today.

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