Happy to hear that Google will Distribute Mobile Devices To Businesses For Checkins, Ratings And More and we are talking about millions of custom mobile devices to small businesses around the U.S. and that’s a big deal.  According to TechCrunch …

In an effort to compete with services like Facebook, Yelp and Foursquare, Google is preparing to distribute millions of custom mobile devices to small businesses around the U.S., says a source with knowledge of the program. These devices will allow customers to check-in and rate the businesses and perhaps even purchase items via Google Checkout. Eight million of the devices will be distributed, says the source.

Another source has said the 8 million devices figure may be significantly higher than the actual number of devices being rolled out.

And in a very common sense and brilliant way Google has told us what it considers to be the signs that searcher in frustrated with their search on Google.   Some of the  signals may be pulled out of Google Analytics if you have site search enable and it is certainly easy for Google to pick up on thee characteristics in any searches.

1. Searchers  type their searches as natural language questions after first trying regular search expressions (use of question queries).
2. Searchers spend  a very long time simply staring at the results page after trying several regular searches first (spending more time on the search results page).
3. Searchers get fed up with their search results and  completely change their approach to a task (by using advanced operators).
4. Enter the longest query in the middle of the session
5. Spending a larger proportion of the time on the search results pages (as a proportion of total amount of time searching, period)

In yet another story about Google, Google-Me is going to be released soon and JaTin thinks it just might be as good or better than Facebook by integrating most of the parts of Google together via a Social Stream…

.. Michael Arrington at TechCrunch was able to pick up one specific detail from unnamed “sources who’ve worked with Google on the product”. They say that Google Me will produce an activity stream generated by all Google products, and that Google Buzz has been rewritten to be the host of it all.

I’m guessing the existing Google Profiles, which already host the Google Buzz content will be central.

On the other hand, Fred Wilson thinks that Google is missing the point by using a social stream to connected up various parts of Google via  Google-Me, just see his post on Social Layers and Social Intention

… There is value in social aggregation but not huge value. Not “this is how we are going to compete with Facebook value”. If you want to compete with Facebook, you have to build a service that offers users a specific social intent and the ability to engage directly around that intent.

Getting off of Google (whew!) there’s a good post on Why PR May Not Win The Social Media Agency Wars in Social Media Explorer.  According to the post:

1. Many VPs and SVPs often can’t manipulate their own Blackberries, let alone use a QR code scanner.  So how is this group going to be able to embrace, sell in, and deliver on technologies that will create or enhance social opportunities?
2. Aversion towards using Paid Media dooms many Social Media Campaigns to fail – PR usually wants to work in the world of earned media, not paid; however, without a social media ad spend, some social campaigns will fall short.
3. PR departments need Marketing Money (larger budgets) in order to cover social media costs will be an uphill battle in many companies.

In particular Organic an Paid Search can be done together and combined with selective paid link buying but buying links  costs money.

Comscore is doing some very interesting stuff including a study with NedStat (which it  acquired recently) of the  Results Of A New Online Engagement Study featuring Eric T. Peterson’s and Web Analytics Demystified.    I briefly took a look at the paper but haven’t had a chance to take in the information in any detail, noticed the paper was based upon a scoring approach that is often used in Web Analytics.  The paper is probably worth reading.

An even more interesting story is what Comscore is doing with Radian6 which speaks to the convergence  that is rapidly evolving between Social Media, Web Analytics and Search.   Having used Comscore quite a lot when I worked at Monster.com I have a good feel for what Comscore’s products can do, including the MyMetrix, AdMetrix, Segment Metrix, Video Metrix, etc.

For a while I wondered why Comscore, or Compete for that matter, did not combine their Panel based data with Social Media Monitoring.   Like most of my insights this one appears to have come to pass with Comscore’s Social Analytix™ for Social Media Monitoring

…. comScore Social Analytix will enable clients to:

• Monitor consumer-generated word-of-mouth brand mentions and gauge consumer sentiment toward their brands, products and/or competitors
• Listen and respond quickly to potential customer service issues as they arise
• Help identify key social media influencers, reach out to them and form strong relationships with their customers
• Engage with social media users and scale listening and response across their organization
• Track the lifecycle of campaigns, announcements and communication efforts

Curious to see how Comscore overlays Radian6 data; a quick search on Google shows that no one yet has any screenshots.

But with Foursquare Launching New Must-Have Button for Websites we have a real chance of beginning to integrate foot traffic with web traffic

I haven’t played with the new button so I can’t really speak to how it will change things more than what has already been written.

Finally JaTin has an excellent review of the Link Analysis software called InfluenceFinder that is somewhat similar to finding Influential Bloggers, except this program uses links to do the heavy lifting.  Here’s what the output of the tool looks like:

JaTin’s post is pretty long and comprehensive; I’m not likely to use this tool anytime soon but would not mind taking a look.