Lighthouse 1204 and other online marketing lessons…

Google Lighthouse 1204 and you pretty much are going to watch a fun little thing happen. You see there was this website who uses as part of their marketing pitch that they can control Google. (Good luck with that unless your name is Larry or Sergei)

In the online real estate marketing industry we have a lot of fun with with noobies who don’t get it. We make jokes when they claim we are “manipulating the Google“. We have fun at their expense when they are “looking for link love in all the wrong places“. In general , we have a blast.

But we all know that in the end, it is Google’s world and we are just renting space there. And we certainly do not claim that we can manipulate things on the search results. That’s a bit arrogant. We only try to make our online reputation match our offline reputation by making sure that we do things correctly. Or something like that.

Back to the ad above about Lighthouse 1204. First one guy noticed it and put his thoughts on Lighthouse 1204 on his site. Then another guy chimed in with more about Lighthouse 1204 and making misleading claims. And then Lighthouse 1204 gets more famous.

You see how this works? (grin) There will be more to come and I will document them as I see them. (Mostly from pingbacks to this post, I guess.

Take home lesson for the day. Do NOT use search result guarantees in a mass distributed ad. No one can guarantee search results. Who knows, though…it might make you famous…or was that infamous. (grin)

Belgian Newspapers cry “Retaliation” by Google after lawsuit -there’s a lesson here.

Ok.

Here’s the story as reported in Search Engine Land. A Belgian newspaper consortium sues Google for copyright infringement for indexing their content in Google News. They win. And thus they lose.

The court ordered fine was not small. 25,000 Euros for each instance and day of non-compliance. In addition Google has to get specific permission from publishers in Belgium before indexing it in Google News. (that’s yet another impediment for them to do business in Belgium…nice going guys)

So Google has complied. Completely. It has removed (de-indexed) the paper’s listings from its main search index completely. They thought that being indexed in Google News was costing them traffic? Nice going guys. NOT being indexed in Google is going to make that traffic loss look like chump change.

Here’s the lesson.

Evaluate the total value of a relationship before you burn that bridge. If you are going to try and burn someone in court, you may want to consider the possibility that this person will take ALL of their marbles and go home.

And another lesson.

Online marketing is about relationships. Some pieces of a relationship may work for you and some against. If you cannot work WITH people, you will end up, bitter and alone. So, note to Copiepresse… the newspaper organization… don’t be that guy. Form relationships. Work within those relationships. Do not burn bridges. The toes you step on may be connected to the butt that you need to kiss tomorrow. ( insert 100 other applicable cliches here)

The final lesson.

I am NOT saying that Google is always right…or fair for that matter. I think that is an ideal that cannot be reached. I AM saying that in MOST cases, they are pretty open and transparent. In ALL cases, they have a HUGE number of eyeballs going to their site. And as such, a flimsy little newspaper (by comparison) or any other site for that matter, needs to realize that on totality, Google is providing them a good deal rather than arrogantly thinking they are on equal footing.