Search 3.0: The Dark Side of Search 3.0
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Written By Noah Mallin | April 14, 2009 | Share This
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For every day there is a night, for every Two-face a Harvey Dent, for every Abbott a Costello. We have been talking about Search 3.0 for a while now – the convergence of social media and search that is happening as we speak (or blog, or tweet, or however you are reaching this post). Search 3.0 is neither good nor bad, it simply is. However there is a dark side to it that can have consequences for brands large and small.
The best illustration is a viral (in so many senses of the word) video that’s making the rounds today and which rightfully cost two morons at a local Domino’s Pizza their jobs. For those of you who do not want to see what happens suffice to say that their conception of food prep is not up to acceptable standards. Shortly after these two valedictorians uploaded their video to YouTube, it began making the rounds – embedding itself in the increasingly interlinked web that binds one social media site to another.
I first saw it on Facebook, but I could easily have been on Twitter or YouTube or - and this is where Search 3.0 comes in – increasingly I could have found it on a search engine. A perfectly innocent search for “Dominos” on Google turned up this hit on the first page of results:
Granted it’s below the fold, but it’s there – barely more than 24 hours after the clip was posted. Google News is predictably even more saturated with the story:
A search for “Dominos Pizza” on Google Video search not only brought a re-edited version of the offending video up, it highlighted it reaaaaaal nice on the right side of the page:
Part of the developing Search 3.0 world is that even without the vid clip in search results, I’ve already seen it a few times over through my interconnected network of friends in social media. As search engines tweak their display and get ever closer to real time search these kinds of stories, blog posts, and user created content will migrate closer to the top of the page, sooner.
This makes the FTC’s proposal to regulate social media marketing even more significant. For the most part the agency is responding to the rise in paid blog promotions and the like, which can too often appear to be unsolicited to the general public. The concern is that these seemingly independent voices will make product or service claims that are incorrect or not verifiable. Realistically this is a devilish standard to try to enforce and variables such as location of the blogger will play havoc with the FTC’s ability to actually do anything.
Unlike the Domino’s issue this is a case where the social communities are more likely and effective at meting out rough frontier-style justice via ridicule, unfriending, and exposure of the culprit than a government agency would be.
Just as in the Domino’s incident though, brands can find their reputation tarnished in a matter of hours through unintended and unforeseen actions taken by employees or sub contractors way down the line.
What this requires of brands and their marketers is the ability to respond rapidly and, most importantly, portably. It’s not enough to issue a statement – film a response and post it to YouTube, your Facebook page, link to it from your Twitter account. While some might argue that this merely fans the flames of bad publicity, taking the bull by the horns and being sincere, forthright and direct instills confidence and trust in a brand that can transcend the immediate crisis.
More importantly, the time to respond is being compressed by Search 3.0. When it takes less than a day to make it to the first page of Google’s results against every other site that has the word “Dominos” in it, you know that things are moving at a faster clip than ever before. Search indexing is only speeding up, as the “real-time” search debate shows and as a consequence brands need to be nimble and smart when it comes to dealing with unexpected events online.
Meanwhile, like Tyler Durden, I’ll have clean food please.
Questions or comments? Feel free to leave them here or check out Reprise Media folks on Twitter.
Topics: Advertising: Online, Facebook, Legal Issues, SEO, Search 3.0, Search: Video, Social Media, Technology, Twitter, YouTube |
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