Time and time again, the online community has watched Google try and fail to break into the world of social media. Buzz turned out to be more of a drone, Wave crashed seriously short of the social shore and Orkut just couldn’t cut it on the international networking stage. Give the folks at Google their due though, they never gave up – and with the advent of Google Plus, it seems they may have finally got it right.

The Google Plus concept has turned out to be wildly popular; in fact, within a mere 2 weeks of its launch, the service reached 10 million users, and a week later, there were 20 million Googlers looking to join the Circles, Hangouts and Huddles of Google Plus.

Google last week announced the launch of 2 new social engagement reporting tools that have been included in Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics. This comes shortly after the launch of “Me on the Web”, Google +1 and Google+ which have been great motivators of getting more and more people to sign up to a Google account, effectively giving Google access to a lot of the information necessary for enabling social engagement tracking in Webmaster Tools and Google analytics.

Let’s take a brief look at the latest reporting tools introduced by Google:

1. Google +1 Metrics in Webmaster Tools

Google has introduced what they’ve called the “+1 Metrics” section to Webmaster Tools. This section essentially gives webmasters the ability to see how Google +1 is affecting the traffic coming into their site from Google’s SERPs. The +1 Metrics are split into 3 sections:

What you say on the web is forever and social media is the permanent marker on the white wall of the giant warehouse. By now you should know that Google permanently indexes everything said via social networking platforms. You can consider tweets, Facebook updates, LinkedIn messages and all other forms of social media updates to be an online tattoo. If not carefully planned and properly thought through these social media will be a tattoo on the forehead of your online presence… and that is not a pretty sight. Social media is a responsibility, not a job for the intern who knows about this “MyFace” stuff.

Google recently announced a new service that is now available to all Google account holders. “Me on the Web” is supposedly a product aimed at assisting all Google users with the ability to more easily control their online reputation on the web via an easy to use interface that gives one the ability to receive alerts whenever their name or profile of some sort is mentioned. But in a recent post by Danny Sullivan, Danny reveals some interesting insights into what he thinks Google’s real motivation behind Me on the Web is.

Let’s start by taking a look at Me on the Web:

Now, the more tech savvy amongst us will be screaming out “what about Google alerts?” and the truth is, they have a point; Me on the Web is very much like Google alerts, but is far more accessible and easy to use. Below is a screenshot of the interface that comes with Me on the Web and the numerous options and filters that are available:

DEMO Spring 2011 has just wrapped up, and the world of emerging technology is abuzz with news of the launches seen at this year’s conference. There was a clear focus this year on harnessing social networks to give Internet users an opportunity to personalise their online experience even further.

The DEMO conference is a global event designed to showcase the most exciting new technology and provide industry networking opportunities. One launch that might be of particular interest to a search marketing company was Heystaks.

Social media has taken the internet by storm with the social media platform Facebook having the third largest population in the world. With the advancements in mobile technology, more people are accessing social media sites via mobiles than via desktop computers. Companies offering search marketing services are realising the power behind social mobile and are gearing their budget spend more into mobile advertising rather than into traditional advertising.

Social media statistics from a recent study showed that mobile users spend 91% of their time socialising compared to desktop computer users who spend 70% of their online time socialising. People almost always have their mobile phones with them whereas they are not always near a computer. It is much easier to check or update social media websites on the go via a mobile, which is another reason why social mobile is becoming so popular.

It’s impossible to ignore the power wielded by social media in both business and personal networking; but while any SEO agency would agree that these platforms are ideal for the promotion of content and the sharing of ideas, the privacy concerns posed by these platforms are also unavoidable. Recently, a bill known as the Social Networking Privacy Act was proposed by a US senator eager to impose stricter privacy laws on networks like Facebook.

Bing Social Search was announced on Wednesday, with the aim of personalising search and hopefully giving industry giant Google some significant competition. The third quarter of 2010 saw positive growth in the search marketing services industry, and unsurprisingly a study revealed that Google dominated search with 66.1% share. The study showed a decline in Yahoo’s share and slight growth for Microsoft search engine Bing. Currently Bing trails behind Google and Yahoo with only 11.2% search share, but the Social Search initiative could boost their growth in the coming months.

“Information about people is indeed the most important information in the world,” says Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg, and the partnership with Microsoft Bing aims to harness the relevance of this information for individual users with Social Search – using the slogan “Now it’s personal”.