Next week in MyCustomer.com I’ll publish an article that ties Google to Reputation Management that you’ll get to read soon enough, it’s appropriate to mention a post about Google Now Collecting Local Reviews From Non-Traditional Sources and how it  may complicate the reputation management of many venues and local businesses as Google trolls out for more and more off the beat comments that people have made online about a place (for Google Places).

… In order to increase the volume and coverage of reviews on its Place Pages, Google is now apparently looking beyond the range of traditional review sources to new, non-traditional sites (e.g., blogs, articles, etc.). Mike Blumethal has written a lengthy post on the subject. As Mike points out this could potentially complicate the emerging area of reputation management for local businesses.

In particular – Hyperlocal will become an even more important SEO Strategy according to Search Engine Land (my original link, above).

… “hyper-local” blogs or sites may gain significant influence if they’re heavily relied upon by Google. Mike speculates about what attributes a “hyper-local” blog review will require to be included in Google’s index (as a SEO strategy).

The other point in all of this is Google has more and more reason for being involved with Social Media Monitoring – and you’ll hear about that soon enough when you read my article next week at MyCustomer.com.

Yet another story comes from Jimmy Gilmore’s blog on Social media monitoring software selection: Why we chose Social Radar except I never heard of Social Radar – and there are so many entrants coming into this space of Social Monitoring now – but nothing that Jimmy shared really looks that impressive – sorry to say.  I looked at Social Radar’s site and I’m not seeing what is so much better about what they’re doing than any of the others I’ve tried -

Now, if it’s not what they do, but how it’s done, and if the results are more accurate, have less noise, maybe, just maybe they have something – but it’s impossible to see that from anything on the site.

And these platforms aren’t compared to one another for the same exact queries – that would be a very interesting study indeed … one that I have thought about doing.   I’m pretty convinced, as of this moment, almost none of the results from many of the platforms would agree, at least not in tone and sentiment – and probably, what is being picked up would be 80% the same stuff, maybe 20% of it would be different from monitoring platform to platform.

To be perfectly honest, many times I see people choosing a platform based on the diagrams that get produced – the more interesting ones tend to win pitches, but it’s hard to see how any of them would be actionable.  Take this one about Influencers on the Social Web from Social Radar , care of Douglas Karr’s blog earlier last year

… Econsultancy just released its annual Web Analytics Buyers Guide, and in conjunction with its Online Measurement and Strategy Report forms an in-depth analysis of the marketplace over here in the UK. On the whole it makes for very interesting (and heart-warming) reading.

That is, unless you are a paid-for web analytics provider residing at the SMB end of the market. In fact, even those at the top end are facing challenging times with the possibility of further consolidation following Adobe’s recent purchase of Omniture, which has emerged as a 42% market share holder (estimations were used where it was impossible to get official figures). The outlook for the industry on the whole is very good however.

The positive picture found by Econsultancy seems reflective of the current ascendancy of web analytics in the UK. By Econsultancy’s estimation the UK web analytics market is up 9% in 2009, from £78m in 2008 to £85m in 2009. Although this was down slightly on the 12% growth recorded in 2008, it still represents a good growth rate in a year where recession has hit many related markets. Interestingly, the user experience and usability market, increasingly a close cousin of web analytics, grew only by 5%.

…. “While the economic climate has compelled companies to take measurement and understanding of return on investment from digital activities even more seriously, there has been an inevitable slowdown as some companies have either delayed investment or cut budgets for technology and analysts.”

…. We also believe that marketers have had more time on their hands to finally get to grips with their website data in 2009, a side effect of a return to the tried-and-tested in their marketing efforts.

…. give you a point of reference to shoot for, an average CTR is probably in the neighborhood of 2% – meaning that for every 100 impressions, you would have received 2 clicks. I personally don’t think that a CTR statistic is particularly meaningful or even valid until about 1000 impressions have been received, however.

The good news for Facebook:

• Usability and reporting have improved notably in recent months.

The bad news:

• Click-through rates (CTR) have averaged only about 0.038%.

• Average effective CPM was a dismal $0.23.

I could write more but feel this post is long enough.   What do you think the picture I drew says?     I think it says that this is a year of many profound changes in Social Media that will make it indispensable – and yes, Google will dip their toe in this market, probably, this year, and you’ll read about my point of view soon enough at www.MyCustomer.com.

Plus, if your in London at the End of March - join me at Social Media Monitoring BootCamp on the 31st – buy your tickets now as they’re selling fast.