They must be busy down at Mountain view. Barely a day seems to go by when they don’t launch something new. I feel like the number of times I write ‘here’s a new service from Google’ has gone off the scale. And we haven’t even talked about Google Wave yet!

Well… predictably… here’s a new service from Google…

In its never ending quest to provide ever more relevant search results, Google has launched a ’social search’ service.

In a nutshell, this allows you to search for stuff; the search engine results pages (SERPs) are populated just with information posted by those in your social networks.

This might include information that people in your social networks have posted on Facebook and Twitter. But it might also include any entries they’ve made on blogs, forums, or other services such as Picasa.

At the moment the feature is only available in Google Labs.

Let’s say for example that you’re looking searching for a place to eat in the West End. Wherever a friend or colleague has made a comment or recommendation about a restaurant, their entries will be displayed in the SERPs.

The service is able to identify posts made by those a social network by making use of users’ Google profile. We wrote previously about how to set up your Google profile. The Google profile allows Google to link up services such as Gmail, Twitter, Friendfeed and LinkedIn.

Google are anxious to stress that they will only surface publicly available information, and not data and information from private or secure services.

“All the information that appears as part of Google Social Search is published publicly on the web - you can find it without Social Search if you really want to. What we’ve done is surface that content together in one single place to make your results more relevant,” said Murali Viswanathan, product manager at Google.

For information about how it all works, here’s a video by the mighty Matt Cutts that describes what’s going on:

As we’ve mentioned before, personal recommendations are the most likely reason to buy a product. Social Search makes it more important than ever to try and get recommendations from your customers, since these recommendations will be more likely to be read and followed by those in their social networks.

Can you see a future of social search? Are you interested to see the search results populated with information provided by those in your social network? Leave us a comment below.

We’ve talked plenty about how to effectively use Facebook and Twitter to effectively market your website. There’s no doubt that as a website owner these social networks offer a fantastic channel to reach out to new website visitors.

But what has been nagging at the back of every business owners’ mind is how much employees using social networking websites are costing them every day.

A survey from IT service provider Morse has tried to answer this question, by polling 1,460 workers on their use of social media during work hours.

The survey found that a whopping 57% of people spend 40 minutes every week on Facebook and Twitter whilst at work. Whilst we website builders want them to be using their social networks to market the company website, in actual fact its all for personal use. The estimated productivity lost from this has been put at £1.4bn a year.

And what are companies doing to plug this leak? The answer is ‘not a lot’. More than 75% of UK businesses have not issued guidelines on social media use.

Quite apart from the work time lost, unregulated use of social media by employees is also a potential brand accident waiting to happen. We’ve all ready about big company employees ridiculing ‘problem’ customers on Facebook, not realising that others could listen in to their conversation.

“Social media can be good for business, helping to extend ties with customers and employees, but organisations don’t seem to understand that it’s not being used predominantly for business but for personal use. This is a massive productivity black hole,” said Philip Wicks, a Morse consultant.

“Companies need to reinforce a corporate usage policy to ensure that people use their PCs responsibly and predominantly for business purposes.”

Do you think that this is another example of corporate Britain trying to stamp on the personal activities of employees? Have you any experience of social media indiscretions when discussing company issues? Leave us a comment below.

Almost every status update on Facebook can be interpreted as an indication of happiness (or otherwise) of the user. Since Facebook has over 300 million users and 40 million status updates, there’s a whole load of data about people’s wellbeing.

As part of a new prototype application called Gross National Happiness, Facebook engineers have tried to aggregate this data in order to gauge national happiness in the US.

As reported over on TechCrunch, here’s how the application’s developers describe it:

“…Grouped together, the status updates of millions of Facebook users from every demographic in the nation can work together to say something about how we as a nation are doing. Measuring how well-off, happy or satisfied with life the citizens of a nation are is part of the Gross National Happiness movement. This graph represents how “happy” the nation is doing from day to day, by looking at how many positive and negative words people are using when they update their status: When people are using more positive words (or fewer negative words) in their status updates than usual, that day is happier than usual!”

Here’s a screen grab from the graph that shows the peaks and troughs of happiness.

It’s possible to alter the view by using the slide bar along the bottom, By dragging it sideways you can see how happiness changes from hour to hour.

So what’s the big takeaway? Well perhaps unsurprisingly, happiness is lowest on Mondays and it then climbs throughout the week, peaking at the end of the weekend. Public holidays also generate large peaks.

For this year there is a drop around the start of June, which TechCrunch interprets as being associated with the death of Michael Jackson. Well, I know it almost took down the Internet, but that seems a bit extreme!

Have a look at the Gross National Happiness and let us know what you think!

Sometimes when I look at the number of followers I have on Twitter (580, very modest by general standards) I get all excited. What a lot of people! Are they really all interested in what I’ve got to say?

If you’ve read the guest blogs from Alison Cross, then you’ll know the answer to that question is probably no! Most of these people are following me just because I’m following them, so at the moment I’m following Alison’s advice and weeding out those that I’m not really interested in.

If you’ve signed up to Twitter, and have ever wondered how to turn your followers into money, a US based not-for-profit start-up called The Whuffie Bank is behind a new idea that rewards you for your online reputation.

The number of times your name gets mentioned, and the context of those mentions, can earn you ‘Whuffies’, a new digital currency that rewards popularity.

The Whuffie Bank then lets users cash in their Whuffies to buy virtual goods, and in the future even real-life products.

Using an algorithm, the bank monitors users’ activity across websites such as Twitter and MySpace, and then assigns Whuffies to posts, comments, and other mentions.

It also looks at when there is third party support of a positive Tweet or post, such as the number of times a Facebook post is ‘liked’, or their tweets are retweeted.

Participants can also trade using their Whuffies. For example, a user might offer 100 Whuffies for anyone to retweet one of their Tweets.

The website thewhuffiebank.org shows how many Whuffies each user has accumulated, along with some graphics that shows the rate of growth over time. All ‘Whuffiers’ are placed into a league, which hopes to highlight those with the best online reputation in different fields.

Looking at the league right now, it is topped by Rev Run from Run DMC. P Diddy ranks second.

Whilst this all seems like good fun, it has an important element. We’ve spoken before about the importance of having a social media strategy: in the online world, giving and getting feedback is so much more common than it used to be. As a website owner, you can put your online reputation to work, by getting good feedback and communicating with your users through social media. Take a look at how to integrate your WebEden website with Facebook and Twitter.

If you’re interested in finding out more about TheWhuffiebank, then you can start by measuring the strength of your online reputation over at Whuffiebank.org by entering your username.

Have you got a reputation that you’d like to trade on? Want to make some virtual cash out of your followers? Is this a good way to get you thinking about your online reputation? Check out TheWhufflebank.org and leave us a comment below.

In a recent blog post, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg has revealed that for the first time the service is starting to turn a profit. This is ahead of Facebook’s self imposed target of being cash-flow-positive by 2010.

Of course, many have argued that with such a large number of users Facebook could hardly fail to successfully monetise their service. Although it has come in for a lot of criticism, Facebook’s business model of selling advertising against user profiles has meant that it has managed to turn users into dollars.

And with the financial news comes that of user numbers, which have now reached 300,000,000. That’s a three fold increase on this time last year.

Zuckerberg said that the financial news meant that Facebook was now a serious independent Internet company. And with such a large and fast growing userbase, it is being seen as a rival to other big Internet brands such as Google and Yahoo.

And he also has much bigger plans for the userbase: 300million, he said, was just a starting point.

Last month of course we reported on the news that Facebook is now the fastest growing search engine. And the site is also currently testing an online payment method.

Are you a fan of Facebook? Have you tried advertising your website using their self serve advertising system? Have you integrated your WebEden website with Facebook? Leave us a comment below

When you think ’search engine’ what brand springs to mind? For almost all of us it’s Google. This is especially so in the UK, where Google powers around 90% of all Internet searches. Some of you may still think ‘Yahoo’. And a few pioneers might think ‘Bing’.

But according to the ComScore monthly search report, its Facebook that is experiencing the fastest growth as a search engine. Search volumes on Facebook grew by a massive 35% in July alone.

Other brands experiencing strong growth in search were Craigslist (8%), eBay and Bing (5%), Flickr and Delicious (4%) and YouTube (1%).

The growth in these brands not normally associated with search queries was very much at the cost of the traditional search engines. Google fell 2%, AskJeeves 4%, and Yahoo and AOL dropped 5% each.

In terms of absolute numbers, the traditional search engines still rule the roost. In July there were 12.9 billion searches on Google; 2.8 billion on Yahoo; and Microsoft sites accumulated 1.3 billion searches.

Google of course is fiercely protecting its users’ ‘eye-time’. They have recognised the huge revenue potential of social networking, by adding lots of sticky and social features to their web properties. The most recent defensive move was their shift to feature ‘real time‘ entries in the search engine results page. But if Facebook search continues to grow at this rate, it might be that Google will have to start to defend its pure search homeland.

And it seems that Facebook has real ambition when it comes to search. Facebook recently bought FriendFeed and also expanded its own services, which has boosted its ability to provide real-time search.

A few weeks ago Facebook unveiled a new search service that allows members to search for status updates, links, photos and videos. Whilst previously users could find entries for other users’ profiles, the new Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) serve them in categories depending on the search query.

Have you tried searching on Facebook? Do you think that Facebook could be a serious rival to Google when it comes to search? Do you think Facebook will be able to monetise their new services? Leave us a comment below.

Here’s a story that might surprise the marketing people: despite social networking sites such as Facebook, Myspace and Twitter being aimed at ‘young things’, a recent study has shown that it is the older generation who are adopting social media at the fastest rate.

Research from online measurement company comScore has shown that people over 55 are more likely to spend their time on Facebook than visit a travel, business or technology website.

In May, almost 70% of those over 55 visited Facebook, Myspace or Twitter.

That being said, these figures still lag behind a younger demographic: 89% of 25 to 34 year olds spending time catching up with friends on social networking websites.

Social Networking for older people is more than just a passing fad, or a quick glance: the average 55 and over spends 3.7 hours per month on Facebook.

Mike Read, MD of comScore Europe said:  “There continues to be a misconception that social networking is the preserve of the young. While those under 35 years old are certainly the more prevalent users, there is both a sizeable and heavily engaged audience of those 35 and older as well”.

What does this mean if you’re building a website that targets this demographic? Well to start with, you might want to consider advertising on Facebook. Facebook has a self serve advertising program that allows you to reach people based on not just their age, but their gender and interest group too.

Mike Read confirms the idea: “Advertising on social networking sites has a better chance of reaching these older demographics than site categories such as business and finance, which is a critical insight that might be lost for those trying to optimise their campaign against target audience segments.”

We’ll be showing you how to advertise on Facebook in an upcoming tutorial.

The second is that this should encourage you to get to grips with the new social networking tools available within WebEden. We’ve made it really easy for you to reach out and market to people in your social networks; invite them to become members of your site; and update Facebook from your WebEden website.

Even if you thought you are targeting people ‘who wouldn’t be into that social networking thing’, this research indicates you might be wrong.

Is social networking trans-generational?  Are you using your social networks to create interest in your website? Leave us a comment below.

As you are by now probably sick of hearing, the latest release from website maker WebEden allows you integrate your WebEden website with both Facebook and Twitter. This allows you to update both Facebook and Twitter from your WebEden site, and also invite people in your social networks to become a ‘member’ of your WebEden website.

And with the HTML widget, you can also display your Tweets on your WebEden site too.

Also, we have spoken elsewhere in this blog about good Twittering tools that help to drive traffic, and ultimately sales on your website.

But can you really measure the effects of all this social stuff?

Well, to start with, you can use Google Analytics or other link tracking tools to measure how many clicks and sales you make from the links you post in Twitter. (If you’re interested in finding out how to add Google Analytics to your website, then please let us know using the comments box below.)

Dell proudly announced recently that they had made more than $3m of sales from links that they placed in Tweets. The Dell account @delloutlet has over 600k followers, and whenever they have a good offer they Tweet a link to it. Dell reckoned that the people clicking on these links have bought more than $3m worth of PCs from them.

But many others are saying that the development of a social community around your product or service cannot be directly tracked to a boost in the bottom line. Social networks such as Facebook and Twitter should be about listening to customers, interacting with them on an informal basis, and finding out how they want your product to change and develop. It should also be about supporting customer needs, and communicating with them in a way they want to be communicated with.

Because all this touchy-feely interaction should ultimately lead to a recommendation and a good review. It’s that word of mouth stuff that is the jewel in the marketing crown. It just so happens that it is the most immeasurable thing too.

And maybe there is a flaw too in even trying to attribute the bottom line benefits to your social networks. It could be argued that in the example above everyone who was following Dell would have probably bought from them anyway, its just that they happened to click on the Twitter link. In fact, maybe they were going to buy a full price Dell but were lucky enough to get the same product for less because they saw the Twitter post.

Have you tried utitlising your social networks to connect new people with your WebEden website? Have you seen any direct or indirect benefits from Twitter or Facebook? Let us know about your experiences below.

Have you tried advertising your WebEden website on Facebook? It has a self service advertising platform that allows you to target Facebook users on their age, gender, job, and a whole range of self confessed interests.

It works on a ‘Pay per Click’ (PPC) model – you only pay when someone clicks on your advert and visits your website. That the same way that Google, Yahoo and MSN charge for advertising too.

Facebook has now come in for criticism from advertisers who are saying that Facebook is charging for clicks that never actually happened.

If you install a web analytics programme – such as Google analytics – on your website, you can see how many people are arriving on your site, and where they’re coming from. US advertisers are saying that their web analytics is showing them that the number of visitors that Facebook sends them is between 20% and 100% lower than the number of clicks that they’re actually getting charged for.

When advertisers get charged for clicks that aren’t ‘real’ it’s called ‘click fraud’. Facebook for its part are saying that they take click fraud “very seriously”. A spokesman said: “Over the past few days we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately.”

Google - which has previously been the target of the click fraud complainers - is open to a different type of click fraud to Facebook. This is because Google’s ‘AdSense’ programme lets website owners place ‘Ads by Google’ on their site. Those same website owners take a cut of the revenue when those ads get clicked on.

Of course, if you’re a website owner and you earn money every time someone clicks on an advert on your website, you might be tempted to click on a few yourself!

This idea has been taken to extremes in the past; programmes have been written that automatically click on adverts; and supposedly there are warehouses of people clicking in some countries.

And there’s other types of click fraud too: how many of you, on seeing a competitors advert, would click on it if you knew it would cost them a few pence each time?

All the clicks are ‘fraudulent’ in the sense that they’re not from people who are specifically looking for the product or service advertised.

So how can click fraud be stopped? Well Google say that they have very complex ways of determining what a fraudulent click is, and that they automatically don’t charge when they detect click fraud. They won’t actually reveal how they detect click fraud, since – they argue – that would allow people to ‘work around’ the system.

Despite this, the most generous estimates place click fraud at somewhere between 15% and 30% of all PPC advertising costs.

Having learned how to build a website, if you yourself want to earn money through having ‘ads by Google’ on your site, then you can do so from your WebEden control panel. We have integrated fully with Google’s AdSense programme. Just choose ‘edit’ and then ‘Google Adsense’ which will launch the ‘site settings panel, with the ‘Google ads’ tab open.

Don’t be tempted to click on the ads on your site though – you probably won’t earn any money from it…

Lots of you have grabbed to new social networking features of the WebEden Website making system with both hands. Last week we showed you how to send out membership invitations to your website. This time around we show you send updates from your WebEden website to your Facebook and Twitter accounts. This really is exciting stuff!

How did you get on? Leave us a comment below