SearchInfluence

Recently, I decided that life would be simpler if I got a Mohawk — but a nice Mohawk, one carefully mown and primped into shape by a professional.  I looked up my options with Google maps. This way, I could see where the salon my friend recommended me was located, how far it was out of my daily route, and what other closer options were. Google Maps gave me a pincushion map of the New Orleans area, and I started browsing each salon along my route from work to home.

When it comes to how we consume, things have dramatically changed over the last twenty years. For instance, if your mother and father wanted to go to a restaurant in the seventies, it was probably because they heard it was good from friends or neighbors or simply wanted to give it a shot. 1979 brought about the debut of the Zagat guide, which of course gave people more of a guideline than ever before. Fast forward a few decades, and there’s suddenly more information than you could imagine available for everything from eateries to shopping for clothing. Because of the popularity of the internet as a means of sharing information, people can now log on and leave reviews for all sorts of experiences, making it that much harder to pass off a bad meal or a sleazy transaction than it used to be. In some ways, it’s great. But how is it affecting us as consumers?

Google’s New Privacy Policy May Violate HIPAA, Congresswoman Says - Search Engine Land
Because Google’s new privacy policy intends to make its services more user-friendly by integrating all of its privacy policies into one.  Some members of Congress, however, fear that this single new policy will violate HIPAA, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act. Google states that ads will not be associated with sensitive issues, such as religion, sexual orientation or health, but should Google be forced to comply with HIPAA regulations?

LeGoogle

Google has landed in hot water in France after offering its Google Maps product for free in the country. America is known as the land of the free, and we all know big businesses get to do pretty much whatever they want. The idea of a government stepping in to say a business can’t give away a service for free strikes me as particularly French.

But while this move may not slow down the Google machine, it could open the door to similar lawsuits as Google sets its sights on new markets in previously un(Google)mapped countries. Could this be the beginning of a real life game of Risk that Google might not want to lose?

No joke, this is what my wife's inbox looks like.

I’ve sent out a few newsletters in my time at Search Influence, and I’ve had to curb the client’s expectations more than once. Email marketing can be a time-consuming, arduous process and returns what seems to be very little. While email marketing is becoming more obsolete in this social media-dominated world, it’s still worth pursuing. Your expectations just need to be adjusted (read: lowered). Below I’ll break down the different metrics, what they mean, if you should care about them and what you should be expecting out of a successful campaign.