Money Magazine Online had an interesting article today, “Policing The Online Buzz“.

In short, an innovative and affordable buzz tracking tool about to be launched by Buzzlogic. According to their site…

Influence moves markets. It’s a basic tenet of marketing. But until now, it’s been impossible to understand influence — and who wields it — within specific conversations taking place in social media.

BuzzLogic changes this dynamic by uniquely defining and measuring influence in social media, and by surfacing the key influencers who are shaping and defining markets, issues and reputations.

….which all sounds good until things go horribly, horribly bad.

Two very interesting online posts today around Matt Cutts’ comments regarding search results of search results showing up in Google. One from SEORoundTable and the other from Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land.

In his example, Danny used “dvd players”. Curious, I scratched around the longtail terms, searching dvd players by brand names like “Sony DVD players” or “Panasonic DVD players” and I’m even more intrigued by the prospects. Not only will sites like Amazon.com and Bizrate be affected, but so will a couple of other lightweights like, oh, say MSN Shopping and Yahoo! Shopping who also show up in Google results.

If not the first in Canada, one of the first. Take a bow, guys!!!

It’s a two blog day!!

Under the auspices of striking while the iron is hot, Search Engine People is beyond thrilled to announce that we are among the first, if not the first Canadian company to become Google Adwords Qualified.

Not only has Search Engine People met the minimum standard requirements for qualification, we have surpassed them. (Google requires two Google Adwords Qualified Professionals, Search Engine People has no fewer than four.)

And, ripped from the press release, in the words of my boss:

90 minutes, fifty bucks and a little bit of knowledge goes a long way towards becoming Google Adwords Certified, which The (SEP) Guy is pleased to report he in fact did yesterday.

The exam, at over 100 questions is for the most part user-friendly. And there is a handy little study guide. Of course, for the really challenging questions, there’s the thing called Google that you can search with. (I think this Internet thing is really going to catch on!)

Under the auspices of better late than never, and after phone calls, emails, protestations and enquires, not the least of which may well have been a phone call from Andrew Wahl of Canadian Business Magazine, Google has reversed its policy, now allowing Canadian companies to become Google Adwords qualified and as such, a Google Adwords Qualified Company.

Becoming a Google Adwords Qualified Company requires:

Well, first of all, it requires being listed in the Google country participants which Canada is, here.

Yahoo has launched the new Panama system today, its new and improved sponsored search advertising that it hopes will have people including advertisers, users and investors alike saying Yahoo!

The system is a direct shot over the bow of Google and the two systems not only function in much the same manner, but offer many of the same tools and as such the comparisons will be inevitable. But what really matters to advertisers is conversions and sales and in the end the same things matter to Yahoo! as well.