The new Drew Carey show the Power of Ten, made me realize that user generated content is being employed more and more often to create network ratings.

The premise of the show is simple: The contestant who can most accurately predict the American public’s response to intriguing poll questions could walk away with 10 million dollars.

User generated content has a variety of applications on the airways… generally in one of two ways: Voter results a la country Idol of your choice, or contests a la Survivor, Apprentice or Big Brother.

In what may well be a sign of things to come, it appears Google has removed 30% of organic listings on local market searches in some markets.

Note that in the above images, local maps appear, however, where there was once 10 organic listings there are now 7.

Do maps qualify as organic results?

Could Google increase the page to put the 10 listings back? That would mean they have to reassess the paid landscape on the side and that’s unlikely.

These results are not typical of Google.com, but are pervasive in alternate Googles.

For a long, long time, I’ve maintained that the Internet is about habituation.

In much the same way your paper comes came to the doorstep every day with the headline, a sports section, classifieds, local news, entertainment, etc., in it’s very predictable manner, people should little variation in how they use the Internet in their every day. There may be the occasional departure from protocol, in much the same way you may spend more time with the classifieds when you have to find a new apartment or a used car but for the most part, tis the same old, same old.

There is an absolutely fascinating article on TheStreet.com (also interesting because the URL string tracks the source): eBay Snub Suggests Google’s Big Troubles.

It’s not so much interesting because it espouses everything I’ve said for the past couple months, not the least of which include the whole ebay thing and the fact that the loss or removel of paid advertising does not necessarily impact traffic IF (BIG IF) you have the organic results in place. (BTW ebay does, both in organic listings and in product listings.)

The infinite dichotomy is whether the domain of search is a content or technology proposition.

For Google it’s a technology proposition: that’s their mandate and they adhere to that tenet with everything they do. For Yahoo, content is the play.

And despite the market value, in truth for each company, it’s a winning proposition.

Nut it down a little, to your site or my site. How you play it generally depends on the budget at hand. With little or no budget, the dependency tends towards content to garner stickiness and ranking.

With budget, it tends towards paid search and a technology play.

Do users really care that Terry Semel has left the building? Do they care that Jerry Yang and Susan Decker are the next net generation?

Do users really care that ebay has publicly stated that they won’t rely on Google Adwords with quite as much dependence having finished their ten day “test” and realized it’s a risk they can afford to take?

I doubt it.

There’s an interesting article today in Business Week regarding vertical or niche search.

And in watching everything that’s gone on recently regarding Yahoo, MSN, ebay and Google, my first thought was that Google was bullet-proof and had pretty much sewn the game up.

Hi, my name is Tom Tsinas and I’ve been a V.P. Business Development at Search Engine People for three weeks now. Being new, I should tell you about myself. I had been with the world’s original search engine, the Yellow Pages Group, for 10 years in variety of roles ranging from Marketing, Business Development, Product Management, National and Local Sales.

In the last few years, I noticed that local advertisers began asking me about search engine positioning, pay per click advertising and advice on how to improve their websites. For small businesses, their Yellow Pages team function as their chief marketing officer. As a result, I began to investigate what all this SEO SEM fuss was about.

USP. It mean’s Unique Selling Proposition. But you already knew that. You also know that having a USP will dramatically increase your business in sales, revenue and overall goodwill. But what does it mean to be Unique?

Unique means you carve out a corner in your market for yourself. Define your business as the 800 pound gorilla in it. And open your doors for business. Talk about making it hard on your competitors …

Peter Mosley demonstrated this at SES Toronto 2007 with a very unique presentation …

What’s your unique selling proposition?  It’s not so much the proposition that matters, as how it’s framed.

This was previously posted but we had a blog burp so we’re reposting it now. Cheers.

Earlier this week we had the pleasure of being the pleasure of being taken out to dinner by some Google folks up from Mountain View.

There were few surprises, but we all wound up with one unanimous and pleasantly surprisingly opinion: these were very pleasant, amicable folk.

Perhaps it’s our genteel, Canadian way, but we were, frankly, expecting alpha geeks with IQs off the charts and frankly little in common and less to talk about. Not so.

Week 4 of the contest has seen an increase in the number of submissions. And the quality … WOW! See for yourself below. We’re also seeing a number of people using social media very effectively … good ’cause that’s a compontent of the scoring algorithm.

1) ‘The Real Search Guru’ - Parody of ‘The Real Slim Shady’ by EscapeTheRake

2) ‘Dave Naylor Went Down to Google’ - Parody of The Charlie Daniels Band tune‘The Devil went down to Georgia’ by CountryCritter.com

3) ‘She Thinks My Ranking’s Sexy’ - Parody of Kenny Chesney’s ‘She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy’ by LunaMetrics