Looking through Google’s search results, it’s obvious what side of the spectrum they chose for their results. However, color psychology goes deeper than just warm and cool. Can brightness play a factor in how people react? Google seems to be testing this theory out, as noticed by a Blogoscoped user.

The problem with researching colors for design purposes, is everyone reacts to colors in different ways. Some people are drastically affected by color and brightness, while others are able to simply look past it. Looking at the image above, the lighter colors seem less attractive to me. However, there are some looking at it who perhaps see the increase in brightness as a positive.

It will be interesting to see if Google explains their testing, but considering it’s such a subtle shift they might roll it out the door without much fanfare. Or perhaps they’ll see a negative response, and decide to eventually keep the darker tones.

What are your thoughts on the color change. Does the brighter tones give a more positive feeling, or do you prefer the darker shade?

Based on a post for the General Counsel for Facebook

As I read the post my greatest question was did they actually get 30% of their active users to vote so the following statement in a post from Facebook’s Grand High Poobah, Mark Zuckerberg, would play out

We encourage you to participate and make your voice heard. For this vote and any future one, the results will be binding if at least 30 percent of active Facebook users at the time that the vote was announced participate. An active user is someone who has logged in to the site in the past 30 days.

There was a ton of speculation around what that number actually was. Based on Ullyot’s post announcing the results (this seems so silly in light of covering important votes like political elections, doesn’t it?) there are a few questions raised. Ullyot states

The more than 600,000 users who voted constitute a significant number of people, but at the same time that’s a small number compared to our user base of more than 200 million. We made significant efforts to make voting easy and to give everyone the opportunity to vote — including by translating the documents and voting application into several of the most popular languages on the site, showing a message about the vote on users’ home pages, and running advertisements and videos across Facebook promoting the vote.

Ok, 600,000 voters. If this were to be binding then that means there are only 2 million active users. Even if only 50% of the total Facebook user number that is popular to quote now (200 million) are active then 30 million votes would be needed for a binding result. Either way this is some bad math for Facebook.
So what’s the real deal here? Facebook is saying that

the preliminary numbers indicate that approximately 74.4 percent of users who voted chose the proposed documents – the new Facebook Principles and Statement of Rights and Responsibilities – over the existing Terms of Use

74% of 600,000 remember. So unless Facebook fesses up to much lower usage numbers or they choose to ignore the 30% rule this vote is strictly a PR move. They can actually still do whatever they want because their requirement of 30% of the total users being involved in the vote for the results to be binding probably was not met. If it was met then advertisers are going to be very interested in that ‘unspoken result’ that says ‘well, looks like we only have 2 million actual users in the last 30 days’.

Ullyot’s post says further

We’d hoped to have a bigger turnout for this inaugural vote, but it is important to keep in mind that this vote was a first for users just like it was a first for Facebook. We are hopeful that there will be greater participation in future votes. In the meantime, we’re going to consider lowering the 30-percent threshold that the Statement of Rights and Responsibilities establishes for a user vote to be binding.

Also, in an attempt to look like this vote is ‘rubber stamped’ by the loudest proponents of change the Facebook post gives links to the 4 biggest people involved in the ‘movment’. Looks good unless you actually click on the links and see that they are all dated prior to the results being reported.

So basically this ‘result’ is in question still. Advertisers will be very interested in how many people are actually using Facebook vs. those who just have an account. Also, all of this reaching out to the people stuff could really be just a big PR play with little substance. Or, if there is an actual statement buried somewhere that says this is or is not a binding result, either there are only 2 million active users in the last 30 days of Facebook or people don’t care nearly as much as we think. Either way the folks over at Twitter must be snickering because once again Facebook’s attempts to be transparent leave the waters more muddied than ever.

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The report can be highlighted by this finding alone: Fortune 500 companies spend $51 million per day in aggregate on 88,792 keywords–yet only 20.82% rank in the top 100 of natural search results.

The company did a similar study in November of 2008 but looked at a much smaller subset of keywords. The findings were broken out based on company sector using the NAICS (North American Industry Classification System). While the findings of the report spoke to the overall lack of real success for these biggest of the big firms there were some winners including MGM Mirage (accommodations & food services); Whirlpool (manufacturing); Viacom (information); Amazon (retail trade) and IBM (professional, scientific & technical services).

Seth Besmertnik, Conductor CEO said,

“It remains alarming that although we included branded keywords in the study for the Fortune 500, more than the lion’s share are not showing up anywhere in search results for their most important keywords, including their own names.”

Some other highlights (or low lights depending on your point of view)

• Only 1.41% of the domains surveyed show significant number of their terms in the top results

• 10.14% of Fortune 500 companies studied showed mid-to-strong presence for their most advertised keywords, and 41.69% of Fortune 500 companies have low to mid presence. Visibility decreased as search queries grew in length

• Fortune 500 companies did worse as keyword searches became more complex and longer.

So what’s the takeaway here? If you have ever worked on one of these campaigns from the agency side you are probably all too well aware that the pace of change and implementation for big companies is often slow or non-existent. In addition, there are so many people / departments that have some ownership stake in the company site that it can take a committee meeting to decide the next time the committee meets to set a committee meeting. These big companies are still not moving at Internet speed and getting hurt in the process.

Also, with a significant push toward developing in house teams at many companies, not just the Fortune 500’s, the question begs if this is working?  It’s not fair at all to make any blanket statements based on this study but it is interesting to consider the implications for those more nimble and flexible than the big boys. What better place than the search engines can a smaller player both look bigger and, in essence, clean the clock of the industry behemoths? Goliath meet David and look out for that slingshot!

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Say it with me: IDIOT!

While Phelps has admitted the photo is legitimate–and apologized to his fans–there can be no doubt that for an athlete of Phelps’ caliber, any scandal that involves drugs is going to have a hugely negative effect on his reputation.

To prove just how quickly a squeaky clean Google reputation can come crashing down, here’s a look at Michael Phelps’ Google reputation after just 24 hours!

If the swimmer’s sponsors decide that they no longer wish to be associated with a drug-taking athlete, Phelps could lose as much as $100 million in endorsements.

Some observations:

1. It didn’t take very long for the negative news to hit Google’s search results.
2. Despite many, many positive web pages about Phelps, this proves that a scandal can easily infiltrate the first ten links.
3. Google is already suggesting “michael phelps smoking weed” as an alternative search suggestion. What’s interesting is that this is not showing up in Google Suggest for the search box, which indicates that the “searches related to” algorithm at the footer of search results may be based on very recent search queries–with Google Suggest using a larger timescale for its suggestions.

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Joe Biden.

Yep, the newly anointed running mate to Barack Obama had more negative search results–across Google and Yahoo–than any of the 8 candidates, vying for the Democratic nomination.

Before you rush off to review Joe Biden’s search results in Google today, keep in mind that the freshness of Google’s results mean that Biden’s naming as Obama’s vice president, will skew the current sentiment.

While search engine sentiment doesn’t remain static–John McCain made dramatic improvements to his, when we checked again in February 2008–Joe Biden is a strange choice for Barack Obama.

So, do I have any suggestions for John McCain? Well, the search engines aren’t exactly a crystal ball, but if Google results are anything to go by, Ron Paul has maintained the best reputation of all Republican hopefuls. Something to think about, John.

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