One example both point to is for York Fitness.

As Campbell points out, “Google has presented us with the page title ‘York Fitness: Gym Equipment & Machines | Weights | Boxing’ but the page title that York Fitness has set is ‘Gym Equipment & Machines | Weights | Boxing Equipment | York Fitness’ and truth be told, Google’s version of the page title looks far better.”

They appear to be doing the same thing on a variety of pages.

While it didn’t speak about the brand-specific method of retitling pages, Google has talked about its process for retitling pages in the past.

Google Webmaster Trends Analyst Pierre Far wrote on the Google Webmaster Central Blog over a year ago, “Page titles are an important part of our search results: they’re the first line of each result and they’re the actual links our searchers click to reach websites. Our advice to webmasters has always been to write unique, descriptive page titles (and meta descriptions for the snippets) to describe to searchers what the page is about.”

“We use many signals to decide which title to show to users, primarily the <title> tag if the webmaster specified one,” he continued. “But for some pages, a single title might not be the best one to show for all queries, and so we have algorithms that generate alternative titles to make it easier for our users to recognize relevant pages. Our testing has shown that these alternative titles are generally more relevant to the query and can substantially improve the clickthrough rate to the result, helping both our searchers and webmasters. About half of the time, this is the reason we show an alternative title.”

“Other times, alternative titles are displayed for pages that have no title or a non-descriptive title specified by the webmaster in the HTML,” he said. “For example, a title using simply the word “Home” is not really indicative of what the page is about. Another common issue we see is when a webmaster uses the same title on almost all of a website’s pages, sometimes exactly duplicating it and sometimes using only minor variations. Lastly, we also try to replace unnecessarily long or hard-to-read titles with more concise and descriptive alternatives.”

As far as brands go, brands are associated with trust and identity. We all know how important Google considers identity these days. A brand is the identity of a company or a product. Google seems to be be making sure content is clearly associated with the brand that puts it out.

That’s the takeaway from a new study from Napkin Labs. According to their findings, a large majority of your “fans” aren’t really interacting with your content at all.

Napkin Labs looked at 52 different Facebook pages that sport between 200,000 and 1 million likes, for a total of over 31 million fans. What they found is pretty staggering: only 6% of Facebook fans actually engage with a page’s content (liking, commenting, sharing, etc.). They also found that the more likes you have, the less engagement you probably have from them. For example, a brand page with 500K-600K likes has 60% more fan engagement, on average, than those pages with 900K-1 million likes.

According to these results, your 1 million fans don’t really add up to much – it’s those 60,000 that you really need to be focused on.

But Napkin Labs says that page owners need to narrow down their focus even more.

Apparently, “Superfans” are the real target. Defined as the top 20 most engaged fans on any Facebook page, Superfans are 75x more engaged than the average fan. And they can also spur others to engage, as they receive 2.3x more likes and 1.8x more comments on any content they post on your page.

“Superfans are vitally important to telling a brand’s story,” said Riley Gibson, co-founder CEO of Napkin Labs. “These numbers show that brand marketers need to focus less on the volume of fans and more on engaging the fans that they have. Involving engaged fans in richer experiences rather than just pushing messages is one key way to keep communities active and interested.”

Translation: don’t just post stuff and walk away, expecting your fans to share it. “Superficial interactions,” are the death of any page that wants to be successful, they say.

Having a ton of likes is never a bad thing. If a Facebook user is on the fence about liking your page, interacting with, or even choosing you for a service or product outside of Facebook, having hundreds or thousands of likes can’t hurt. It serves as a mass advertisement – “Hey, 1 million people can’t be wrong, right?”

But the content that a page puts out has to be focused and engaging. Knowing that only 6% of your likes really care about what your posting should probably make you want to produce better content – or at least not worry so much about having just a few more fans than your nearest competitor.

And I guess we have to talk about Sponsored Stories and Promoted Posts too. If only 6% of your fans are going to engage with content, you might have to consider making your content a little more prevalent on the site. A recent survey showed that 88% of marketers would forgo advertising on Facebook and simply “implement Facebook content” – or in other words, just maintain a page and push updates. Sure, it’s free promotion. But with this little interest and engagement, is simply having a page for your brand going to be enough?

So, if you wanted to go to the event, but did not have the opportunity, or if you didn’t even know about it, you won’t totally miss out. Here you go:

Clay Shirky presents “The End of the Audience

Brand Connect with David Hahn

The Mindset Divine

Transforming Your Organization For The Social Era

Redefining Relevance: Content Marketing In A Social Context

Measuring Success In Social Media Marketing

LinkedIn Products For Marketers

The Time Tested Truths of Scientific Marketing

David Hahn presents Influencers and Content on LinkedIn

The Time-Tested Truths of Scientific Marketing

Context is King: Building Meaningful Relationships on LinkedIn

Amplifying Engagement Using Social Media Management

In Australia, the Advertising Standards Board (an arm of the Advertising Standards Bureau) is responsible for investigating complaints into ad practices in the Australian media. In a decision that could have far-reaching implications for brands on Facebook, the Board has determined that ad standards apply to comments posted by users on Pages. If you can’t say it on TV or the radio, Facebook users can’t say it on your brand page.

As the Sydney Morning Herald puts it, the decision makes it abundantly clear that “Facebook is an advertising medium – and not just a way to communicate.”

In short, companies must be extra vigilant in removing comments on their pages that violate ad standards. Comments that are racist, obscene, or factually inaccurate fall into this category.

The case before the Advertising Standards Board involved Smirnoff (vodka). They were accused of violating standards with sexist, obscene Facebook content that also promoted underage drinking. While the Board let the complaint slide, part of their ruling stated clearly that the country’s advertising laws applied to all the content on one’s social media page – not just the stuff that the company generated.

So, in the future, companies could be liable for misleading claims posted to their Facebook pages. Let’s say someone left a comment saying that Taco Bell’s beefy 5-layer burrito is the most healthy fast food item out there, and that he lost weight and stayed in shape by eating six a day – Taco Bell would be responsible for removing the comment because it is false advertising.

For brands, this could be a harder task than you think. For big brands, thousands upon thousands of comments can pur in, and policing all of them for content that violates ad practices could be a full-time job – for multiple people.

That people are using non-televisions to watch traditionally television-delivered things isn’t really anything new, and while the new study doesn’t indicate any immediate upheaval in the way that brands target consumers, it does reinforce a trend that more people are going online-only when it comes to where people watch shows. More, consumers are increasingly going for the cross-platform, multi-screen experience for their entertainment and, although this might be obvious, the more screens a person has surrounding them, the more engaged and loyal those consumers are to a brand.

The study, which collected information from 10,000 participants in the United States and followed the reach of 10 broadcast network and cable brands, shows that 25% of consumers engaged with a brand via online access and 12% did so through online video. TV is still the screen de jour for most consumers, though, as 90% were TV engagers. What’s more is that 11% of consumers were the digital-only types while another 17% were doing the multi-screen dance. A solid 72% however remain committed to their TVs as the sole source of access to a brand.

“Once TV-centric media brands now engage with their consumers across a variety of digital touch-points,” said Joan FitzGerald, comScore VP of TV & Cross-Media Solutions. “While this enhances the quality of brand engagement, it also increases the complexity of media planning and analysis by orders of magnitude.”

Those consumers who were either multi-screen swingers and sought out online video content of a brand appear to be the most loyal, although that isn’t entirely surprising given that most of the time when a consumer goes for a brand online, they’re likely doing it more actively than passively, as is the case with television ads.

It’s peculiar that digital platforms aren’t supplanting TVs but rather just becoming a second media provider that runs alongside TVs. Does anybody ever watch TV nowadays without a tablet or smartphone somewhere within arm’s length? These implements for more media are never far from our grasp and nobody wants to choose one over the other: they want to have all the MTV they can handle. The study found that 60% of consumers accessed TV and online content of a brand during concurrent 30-minute intervals. 29% of consumers were dabbling around on Facebook while they watched TV, suggesting that it’s no longer enough to simply sit down and watch something. People want to share their invaluable opinions about tonight’s episode of ‘Law & Order’ or complain about the results of ‘American’s Next Top Model’ in real-time, not tomorrow at the office watering hole.

The most unsurprising aspect of this report is reflected in the age demographics of consumers. Overwhelmingly, more people under the age of 34 had made the transition to digital-only engagement but adults over 50 haven’t quite made the jump to abandon television altogether. Instead, the over-50 crowd is more likely to go the multi-screen route and to be users of TV and online video.

Consumers of all walks of life want to be able to access content across different mediums and platforms. This report from comScore indicates that there’s a whole new breed of media consumers growing out there who aren’t shackled to a TV set and would rather access material via some internet-connected device.

Hopefully studies like these will make it apparent to companies like HBO that their neolithic attitude toward providing access to content really needs to be updated.

Now, Facebook is helping marketers on the site with its “measuring success” series of blog posts. Today on the Facebook Studio blog, the company is revealing the results of a small study it conducted into brand engagement. From the blog post:

To better understand what makes a successful Page post, we recently conducted an internal study to discover which topics generate the most engagement. The study shows that speaking about subjects related to your brand is the best way to generate engagement. While the conclusion may not seem surprising, since your fans liked your Page because they like your brand, understanding how post topics relate to engagement can help you improve your content strategy and identify the best content to promote through Ads and Sponsored Stories.

Their study separated posts by brands into three categories: messages about the brand, messages related to the brand, and unrelated messages. Splitting the posts into those categories also enabled Facebook to determine what marketers should do to derive different outcomes from their posts. Facebook states that posts related to the brand, but not specifically about the brand, were the “sole universally significant predictor of all types of engagement.”

As for what works for each type of engagement aside from brand-related posts, Facebook had some tips on that too. If marketers want the posts to be widely shared, Facebook suggests using media such as photos and videos in the post. Getting users to “Like” a post is a matter of giving readers a “clear call to action.” In other words, requesting that the reader “Like” the post. Generating comments is most easily done by asking questions in a post.

Small, common sense, tips to be sure, but ones that could help your brand grow on Facebook.

This lovely illustration and web of brands that own brands was featured on reedit.com today and reveals something very interesting about our choices as a consumer or, if you will, lack of choices. It’s titled, “The Illusion of Choice”.

If you look at the brand groupings, it makes a lot of sense. Of course Nestle owns a bunch of animal feed, candy, cosmetics, and powdered food companies, they’re probably all made from the same ingredients. It’s the clothing brands that throw me. Perhaps some of the dehydrated horse meat they make the dog food with is set aside, and the best cuts are used for belts.

Regardless of how it goes down, all these brands seem to all be owned by about ten larger brands namely Kraft, Nestle, Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Co, General Mills (very fitting), Proctor & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, Mars, and Unilever.

It’s not just our products:

If you found “brands that own brands” to be shocking, than you should also take a look this infographic on who now controls the media in this country. It seems as if their’s hundreds of media choices, but in the end it all boils down to just a handful.

In 1983, 90% of America’s media was owned and powered by over 50 companies. As of last year, the media is owned by 6 companies. Talk about the illusion of choice. GE, Time Warner, CBS, Viacom, Disney, and News Corp. are controlling everything. No wonder it’s the same thing on every channel. How can the media be impartial when all the real decisions are made by only a few people?

Perhaps that’s a narrow-minded view, but this direction we seem to be moving in doesn’t sound like it’s very good for the greater good. Maybe I’m wrong, these people who own all this stuff are probably the nicest, most caring folks out there. How else could they be so successful? I’ll leave it up to you to decide.

Twitter Reacts to The illusion of choice:

But one company is hoping that brands on Twitter will look into a “Twitter Gate,” or an age verification prompt that makes audiences take a couple of extra steps before they can follow them on the site.

The company is a social management platform called Virtue, and they have worked with top brands like McDonald’s, AT&T, and American Express.

“Brands have a responsibility to make sure they take appropriate measures to ensure the right age group and demographic is looking at their content,” John Nolt, director of product management at Vitrue, told Mashable. “This will allow brands to demonstrate their commitment to that effort.”

So here’s the type of thing that they have in mind:

Virtue set up a fake Twitter account for a fake Brewery called @BrookstrutAle. This account was set up to demonstrate how the Twitter Gate system might work.

Once you decide to follow the company, you’ll receive a direct message that says something like “We only allow people who are of legal drinking age to follow us.” The message will provide a link to a site where Twitter users can verify their age.

The Twitter user will be taken to a verification site that says how the company in question needs them to complete the form in order to be able to follow them:

After that, users will be able to refollow the Twitter account of the company in question.

Like I mentioned before, it’s not like most of the age verification firewalls are cross-checking FBI records. And anyone can just lie about their age to bypass them. I mean, I definitely wasn’t born on January 1st, 1919 – but it hasn’t stopped me from checking out adult materials under that guise.

But do you think these extra steps would help limit the underage followers of brands like Budweiser or Sam Adams? Do you even think brands like this have a responsibility to try to prevent minors from following them on Twitter? Let us know in the comments.

Reaction to Timeline for brand pages has generally been positive; check it out, along with some brands that have already made the switch:

We’ve seen Facebook users getting creative with the new timeline pages, now it will be interesting to see brands do the same, possibly incorporating some of their companies history into timeline.

Facebook page administrators will have their work cut out for them when it comes to preparing for the change. Older posts that were well hidden may be visible again, and the overall page will need to be cleaned up and optimized, so that companies are representing the image they want on Facebook.

Here are some companies that have made the switch, tell us which ones you like best:

Brand insight firm Buyology has just released the results of their 2012 Most Desired Brand Index. The list “quantitatively types and measures consumer relationships with brands using rigorous quantitative tools that measure people’s deepest, non-conscious connections to brands.” The survey tested over 220 brands and pull their sample from 4,000 Americans. And one of the takeaways from the study is that both fo the sexes have an affinity for Google.

In fact, Google placed 2nd on the Women’s Most Desired List. For men, Google fell to 7th place. Overall, men and women agree that Southwest Airlines is their most desired company.

Check out the top ten lists for both sexes below:

“This year’s brand ranking demonstrates that it’s essential for companies to invest in creating deeper differentiated relationships with their consumers. These relationships provide the context that either amplifies or diminishes everything the brand does to connect with its customers,” said Gary Singer, Founding Partner and CEO, Buyology Inc. “Buyology’s neuro-insight tools provide rigorous analytic measurement of these deeper, previously unmeasured, connections to provide unique insight to brands and a roadmap for how to strengthen their relationships.”

This is the second year for the Most Desired Brands report, and the results in 2012 are markedly different from the results from 2011. In 2011, Johnson & Johnson sat atop the Women’s list while Crest sat atop the Men’s. Women already loved Google in 2011, as the company placed 6th. But for men, Google failed to even crack the top 20.