1. Josh Powell
2. Madonna
3. Madonna half time show
4. Kelly Clarkson Super Bowl 2012
5. Tom Brady
6. Eli Manning
7. Gisele Bundchen
8. Kelly Clarkson national anthem
9. Roman numerals
10. Peyton Manning
11. Chad Ochocinco
12. Madonna Super Bowl halftime
13. Patriots
14. NSX
15. NBC
16. New England Patriots
17. Superbowl halftime
18. Katharine McPhee
19. Go Daddy
20. Best Super Bowl commercials

Madonna is well represented thanks to her halftime performance, and so is fellow singer Kelly Clarkson, who sang the National Anthem before the game. Also making an appearance is Giants quarterback Eli Manning, Patriots quarterback Tom Brady and his wife, model Gisele Bundchen. Eli’s brother Peyton has been in the sports news lately, and many people follow Patriots receiver Chad Ochocinco with interest. These may not surprise too many people, but a couple terms do stand out.

Number 9 on the list is “Roman numerals,” which could be a matter of viewers trying to figure out just how many Super Bowls we’re up to now. I’ll save you the search; we just saw the 46th game on Sunday.

NBC picked up a lot of searches at Number 15 on the list. NBC plugged quite a few shows during the game, which also explains Number 18 on the list. NBC has a new show called Smash, which stars Katharine McPhee (among others), who might only be known to American Idol fans. She was the runner-up in American Idol’s fifth season and probably warranted many searches by those who didn’t know that.

Go Daddy appears at number 19 thanks to its annual racy Super Bowl commercial. Go Daddy’s ads frequently encourage viewers to go to its website to see more content — so Go Daddy’s showing isn’t a shock.

Many of the other advertisers can count on people seeing their commercials online. You may have even seen a few before the Super Bowl thanks to YouTube and other video sharing sites. If you missed any, just follow number 20 on the list and you’ll be sure to find several places to watch them. But even more importantly: given how much hype the Super Bowl receives weeks prior to the game being played, you can and should optimize your marketing content to take advantage of terms that you can anticipate will be popular come game time.

Chris Maxson is an optimization analyst at iCrossing

The bottom line: Think Insights gives marketers the tools to successfully launch a Valentine’s Day promotion. You can use the research content for upcoming blog posts and social media posts, incorporate keywords relating to DIY Valentine’s gifts to grab some trending traffic, create travel-related videos for romantic getaway promotions, and understand exactly which types of display ads to create and where to have them placed.

Here is an overview of the tools that comprise Think Insights.

Latest Insights

Updated regularly to include information relevant to the season or recent events, the Latest Insights portal provides links to different information that you can use to plan new campaigns. Recent videos on the latest search trends and reports of online consumer behavior can help shape the content you create or improve conversions for the site or landing page you design.

This portal also links to Google’s Real-Time Insights Finder, which allows users to input keywords and see how those search terms ebb and flow based on the season or external event. This tool will help marketers plan targeted ads or content around keyword phrases right when they start becoming popular. Latest Insights is already highlighting Valentine’s Day 2012 trends, which includes the data point that searchers are interested in do-it-yourself gifts and dinner recipes. If you’re marketing products related to this information, it’s time to jump on targeted campaigns around DIY and romantic evenings in.

Research Library

The Research Library portal is my favorite (but I’m a nerd for research and data). Within this portal, you’ll be able to find research papers, videos, soundbites, infographics, interviews, and case studies to support your online marketing content. You can search these supportive documents based on industry, media platform, audience, and even marketing objective to better target your message from the beginning.

If you’re interested in creating an online video or blog post about Valentine’s Day gift ideas, the Research Library has a few resources based on a search for “chocolates,” which is something many people love to receive on this holiday. These research papers and case studies can help build out your content and give it some added validation.

Planning Tools

Just as the name states, the Planning Tools portal offers links to tools that will allow you to better understand the current search environment. The GoMoMeter tests a website to see if it’s mobile-friendly. Display Benchmark Tools gives data points for a variety of ad formats, creative ideas, and placements to help plan advertising campaigns.

And if you’re looking to tell a brand’s, or a concept’s, search story, you can create your very own Search Story Video. This video creator allows you to pop in search terms, select which Google search option you want to utilize, set music to the video, and upload it to YouTube. Now you’re able to showcase how a brand is viewed online, or how Valentine’s Day plans can begin and end in search.

Facts & Stats

If you’re looking for one killer stat to include in a post or to make a case for your planned marketing tactics, Facts & Stats is the place to go. You can search for facts based on industry, media platform, audience, and marketing objective to find the best information that first your needs.

There obviously aren’t many facts or stats based on Valentine’s Day listed here, as it mainly houses information related to Internet marketing and online advertising. However, you can take a look at some information in the travel industry, and see that 46 percent of travelers are watching travel-related videos online (versus 36 percent just two years ago.) This means that if you’re planning marketing for destination hotels and are featuring romantic getaways for this upcoming holiday, including video in your marketing plan may benefit.

Thinking Ahead

The Thinking Ahead portal can help you view recent research and projections to help you plan marketing campaigns over the next six-, nine- or 12 months (or beyond). Here, you’ve got quick access to videos discussing current online consumer behavior, and recent trends in the online marketing space.

Along with being pointed to the Real-Time Search Insights tool again for planning purposes, this portal shows us an article outlining some of the most popular gift ideas of this past holiday season. By taking a look at this list, it’s easy to identify those that will still make fantastic Valentine’s Day gifts this year.

All of this information is at our fingertips, allowing us to make informed decisions about planning and promotions, and to see how the search world evolves on a regular basis.

Now, marketers can go to one source to find appropriate information to make all their marketing plans and promotions shine. Content can be created based on past or upcoming trends, and past research is readily available to provide weight to any new plan. With Think Insights with Google, marketers can plan a cohesive marketing mix to integrate all channels for a better connected brand message based on real data.

Dana Notman is a search engine optimization strategist at iCrossing

Touch Computing

Tablet touchscreen technology such as the iPad might seem like a nice alternative to your modern-day desktop and laptop computers, but the new touchscreen input method will become the mainstream of computing in the future. Just as the command line gave way to graphical user interfaces, so will the mouse and keyboard be superseded by touchscreens.

The signs of this change are obvious: Windows 8 and Mac OS X Lion, the latest desktop operating systems, borrow heavy from their mobile counterparts. These new interfaces essentially impose a touchscreen-inspired interface, an experience commonly seen on tablets, over the traditional desktop environment. However, the transition won’t be complete by the end of 2012 but rather much further down the road. Just like cell phones slowly worked their way from luxury to necessity, so will touch computing simply become just part of our life and a feature that will come standard.

Tapping screens to select objects, pinching screens to zoom in, flicking two fingers to zoom out — simple finger gestures could potentially replace the awkward act of clicking, a functionality that doesn’t make sense in the evolving web experience. The touch computer will relieve users from having to conform to the traditional click-and-view computing interfaces (graphical user interfaces). Instead, computing will conform to how humans truly communicate (natural user interfaces).

As this technology continues to evolve, people can expect computers to become ubiquitous — in which the bathroom mirror, the smart window overlooking the backyard, or windows of the car provide passengers with augmented reality to the outside world are all forms of the touch computer. Without a mouse or keyboard, using just your fingers will make it easy to select different types of digital media, move them around, drag them into an e-mail attachment, receive the weather, play games, or even send instant alerts through various forms of messaging.

Spatial Gestures

One long-term attempt of the computing industry is to migrate the “natural” means that humans employ to communicate with each other with the way humans interact with the computer. This dream has motivated much research around automatic speech recognition – so much that many forms of speech recognition interfaces have been successfully deployed commercially. However, recently there has been an increased interest in introducing nonverbal human communication modalities that interpret the movement of the human body.

Microsoft’s Kinect, for instance, has given rise to interfaces that use spatial gestures that completely enhances the user experience on every level. Just like in Minority Report, your devices can be controlled simply by waving your hands in the air. In the not-too-far future, we can expect functionality that allows people to possibly conduct searches by signing, interacting with web content in a 3D virtual world, and even manipulate and/or dissect virtual objects — all of which revolutionizes the way people discover information by making the web a more physically interactive space.

Thanks to the many innovators who have hacked Kinect to operate other platforms, such as Windows and Mac operating systems — or even operate other technologies like controlling a quadrotor with spacial gestures or piloting a quadrotor with obstacle avoidance — we can expect to see more devices using this input method more in the years to come.

Hovering Gestures

It was about a year ago news first broke about Apple’s initial work on hovering technology and how it could improve capacitive touch and hover sensing with proximity sensors. On January 12, 2012, Apple submitted a patent application that reveals exciting advancements in the 3D graphical user interface (GUI) for iOS mobile devices. Apple’s new 3D-based interface for iOS devices will use orientation data from one to several onboard sensors to determine and project a 3D perspective display environment without a person ever having to interact by touching with the screen.

While the motion detection has already proven practical and applicable with the technology used within Microsoft’s Kinect, there are limitations to its current functionality. One of the problems using Kinect is that it doesn’t work when a person gets too close or too far away without modifying the depth perception by adding a lens or implementing changes to the firmware. Kinect work best when detecting players in large space, which is its intended use. However, Apple’s hover detection provides functionality for people that are just centimeters away from its sensors. In fact, the proximity sensors will be used to determine what the display should be based on its orientation and relationship with the user; providing an authentic 3D GUI on a device with a screen as small as the iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad without the display feeling cramped due to the lack of screen real estate.

With this type of technology – depending on the range of the proximity sensor – people could also potentially use hover sensing to detect the hover position of an object outside of a space directly above the touch screen surface and determine the height, mass, and dimensions of that object. The depth, range, and versatility of how Apple’s hover sensing will be is still unsure, but it’s obvious that motion detection and/or spacial detection is going to be a very popular among innovators looking to incorporate their functionality into more devices.

Voice Control

The novelty of Siri on the iPhone 4S — which allows you to send texts, create reminders, search the Web and perform other functions using just your voice — may be the start of a new trend in voice controlled devices.

Voice control has already been around for years, but until now voice control has suffered from being inaccurate and not very useful. Siri may define a new era in which we talk, and our devices understand — often on the first attempt. Other device makers will likely follow suit, including Google, Microsoft, and other big technology players.

Search engines have wrestled with the concept of “natural language” search engines for a long time. In fact, I remember the launch of natural language search engines like True Knowledge or Wolfram Alpha (currently, used in conjunction with Google, Yelp, and others to operate Siri), where many SEO experts would joke about how natural language search engines would never affect how people search for digital information. “Not a Google killer” they would say, and while it may be true that natural language search engines will not serve as a replacement for Google – or other search engines – it will surely change the way people will interact with search engines in the future.

The real impact of LUIs like Siri isn’t just seen with the speed and ease of use of her functionality, but the range of actions Siri can perform and the amount of information she’s able to access without ever having to perform an actual search query. The automating of the search process means never having to review search results for relevant resources; searchers would completely avoid the search engine results pages and pay-per-click ads entirely, therefore limiting the importance and influence of rankings and visibility.

Enabling a smart computer to participate in human conversation will completely change the way people interact with computing devices and search for information to fulfill certain needs whether it’s booking travel for that next big vacation or finding an amazing deal on that perfect gift. Either way, voice control is where future technology is heading.

Brain Computing

Originally intended for patients suffering from locked-in syndrome and other communication-impaired conditions, brain computer interfaces (BCIs) allows any person to input text and make computing commands using only their thoughts. Recent success has been made with EEG-sensitive headgear; where the recording and decoding of sensorimotor rhythms (SMRs) induced by motor imagination can be used provide continuous, intuitive, and accurate multi-dimensional control over computer systems.

Recently, the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Minnesota published research regarding the Continuous Three-Dimensional Control of a Virtual Helicopter Using a Motor Imagery Based Brain-Computer Interface, which revealed the department’s success in three-dimensional control of BCIs. Currently, people must first be trained to modulate their SMRs before being able to achieve continuous and accurate control. But once achieved, a user has the ability make virtual three-dimensional movement. The user also has the ability to type as quickly as one letter per second, which makes it possible to carry on a conversation and communicate complex thoughts without ever using normal communicative methods (i.e. speaking, facial gesture, or signing).

While we’re still a years from seeing consumer devices enabled with brain computer interfaces, research indicates that small steps are being made in that direction. So, be prepared.

Virtual Recognition through Augmented Reality

In last week’s post, we discussed how transparent screens and heads-up computer interfaces could add an overlay of computer-generated visual information on a virtual surface on top of the world. Well, augmented reality browsers like Argon are just the first steps in making a fully functioning device that will augment virtual information for people at all times, thus keeping people connected to friends, brands, and digital media throughout the entire day.

Augmented reality will allow people to view the physical world with a virtual media overlaid on top of it. This type of interface will not only affect how people search and consume media, but also improve game development, graphic art or any imaginable application where media content relates to nearby people, places, or things.

The driving force in this area of technology is Argon, a revolutionary augmented reality browser that adds information from the web into the world around you. It does so by taking video from a phone’s camera and rendering graphical content on a virtual layer on top of the video to provide people with an experience that merges physical space with cyberspace.

Argon will become even more exciting when its functionality can be fully executed through the latest of revolutionary innovations, transparent OLED screens. These screens has a contrast ratio of 4,500:1 with high-definition resolution and a 70 percent color gamut, making its color display as vivid as regular high-definition TVs. You an only imagine the capabilities of such a device once the functionality and designs of devices using OLED displays (or AMOLED displays) improve, and we truly marry the power of the Internet to the world of augmented reality – hands free.

Similarly, Toyota is also working on a prototype to create a multimedia system on car windows called, Window to the World. Similar to how Samsung’s AMOLED screen overlays computer-generated information on a virtual surface on top of the world, Toyota’s Window to the World will add detailed information on the window that describe objects in the landscape as the car travels from Point A to Point B.

Conclusion

The advances being made to touch computing, voice control, and spatial gestures, are changing the way people interact and experience digital media. Interactive computing interfaces will not only affect the way people search, stay connected, and consume media, but they will also influence the future of virtual 3D graphics and augmented reality as innovators work towards making a truly interactive medium to consume media.

Mary Callahan and David Strader are SEO strategists at iCrossing

What is Google changing?

According to Google, “The main change is for users with Google Accounts. Our new Privacy Policy makes clear that, if you’re signed in, we may combine information you’ve provided from one service with information from other services. In short, we’ll treat you as a single user across all our products, which will mean a simpler, more intuitive Google experience.”

While you are signed on as a Google user, Google will use anything and everything you do to inform the nature of the ads (and quite possibly even search results) you see on other Google products.

How it works: example

Say you get an email from your favorite technology retailer or maybe even a friend talking about a few of the latest tablets on the market, which leads you to perform a Google search for “Android tablets.” Google quickly reads the email you just received uses that information to inform and target the ads you are seeing in the search results. If you mentioned a brand name in your email, it’s a big possibility that you’ll see an ad around that brand name – because Google now knows the chances of you clicking on that ad is HUGE since that’s what your friend or retailer recommended.

Will the change lead to more relevant search results?

Although the policy change means Google will produce more relevant ads you see on Gmail and other Google products, the impact on natural search is still yet to be seen. I believe a lot of this data collection for more relevant search results is already being done and that this announcement is merely Google finally telling its users what Google have been doing for a while now. In other words, Google is making its privacy policy easier for users to read and understand.

Whether more relevant results come, this change may encourage people to say logged out of their Google accounts, which is actually good news for the search marketer. Why? Because the more people are logged out, the more data search marketers have on which to base their strategies.

Google: “Like it or leave”

The only way to opt out of Google’s tracking is to completely delete your account and move on to a different service. Google has provided no opt-out option, which has users and privacy experts around the Web in an uproar.

“Google’s new privacy announcement is frustrating and a little frightening,” said Common Sense Media chief executive James Steyer. “Even if the company believes that tracking users across all platforms improves their services, consumers should still have the option to opt out — especially the kids and teens who are avid users of YouTube, Gmail and Google Search.”

And more than 65 percent of people surveyed by the Washington Post say they will cancel their Google account due to the privacy changes.

Other indicators of customer outrage include a recent screenshot from Marketing Land, which shows some very interesting Google Suggest results when typing “how do I close.”

Similar outrage occurred when Facebook enacted major changes to its privacy policies in 2010 – having virtually no impact on Facebook. How do you feel about these privacy changes, and do you believe they will hurt Google’s user base?

David Strader is an SEO strategist at iCrossing

The report not only substantiates iCrossing’s mobile marketing expertise but also validates iCrossing’s evolution as a premier full-services agency: we are one of only three agencies to have achieved either a Strong Performer or Leader ranking in Forrester’s evaluations of search, mobile, and website design prowess.

The Forrester report card, known as a Wave, evaluates agencies across 37 criteria ranging from mobile analytics to strategy. As Analyst Melissa Parrish notes on her blog, providers of mobile marketing have matured to the point where clients now have some strong choices to help them strategize and implement mobile. In the report itself (available for purchase from Forrester), she notes that nearly half of interactive marketers surveyed by Forrester will increase their mobile marketing budgets in 2011. To maximize the value of their budgets, those marketers are increasingly turning to agencies to help them move beyond experimentation and apply mobile for business value.

Discussing iCrossing’s overall Strong Performer ranking, Parrish writes, “iCrossing does an excellent job of incorporating audience insight into strategic development. The agency uses its background in search to develop personas that are more detailed than those provided by most other agencies, informed by iCrossing’s history of understanding consumer language and behaviors.”

iCrossing receives its highest scores in the categories of client retention/growth, company vision, product/services roadmap, and measurement/analytics skills.

“Clients are particularly impressed by the proprietary technologies developed by the agency,” she notes.

To be included in a Wave, an agency needed to pass several rigid criterion and be counted among its peers as a commonly encountered competitor for mobile marketing. Even being evaluated is recognition of an agency’s maturity and experience for mobile marketing. iCrossing’s Strong Performer ranking is the second-highest ranking possible – “Just on the cusp of the ranks of the Leaders” in Forrester’s view.

iCrossing has been providing mobile marketing services since 2005, with offerings ranging from mobile strategy to social and location-based marketing.Our mobile practice supports our mission to build connected brands across paid earned, and owned media, with the customer at the center of the experience.

Our clients range from the Bermuda Department of Tourism to House Beautiful magazine. For instance, in May 2011, Crossing launched an iPad app that helps people find the right paint colors for their homes without needing to visit stores and thumb through swatches. The 500+ Favorite Paint Colors App was designed and built by iCrossing for House Beautiful, an interior decorating magazine published by our parent Hearst Corporation. More about the app here.

In 2012, expect iCrossing to continue to help companies use mobile to build connected brands — especially by using smartphones and tablets to share engaging content. We will also share thought leadership that reveals more of our insights into how consumers use mobile — insights that helped iCrossing earn a strong performance in the Forrester Wave.

David Deal is vice president of marketing for iCrossing

Take, for example, the results from a Justin Bieber tweet about how glad he was that he woke up to read his fan posts:

For Bieber, being able to finally see the true impact of his tweets is a major benefit because he has nearly 17 million followers, and social media is an important tool for him to build his brand. Likewise, brands such as Virgin America that aggressively use Twitter as a business tool can do a better job measuring the ROI of their efforts. Retweets are the one of the best ways to show that followers are engaging and that tweets are resonating.

We looked at three examples of larger Twitter users to see how often retweets of their content hit the 100+ mark:

PERCENT OF TWEETS WITH MORE THAN 100 RETWEETS

As you can see, 90 percent of Barack Obama’s tweets are retweeted 100 or more times. By contrast, 29 percent of Ron Paul’s tweets experience more than 100 retweets, and 7 percent of Billboard magazine’s tweets are retweeted in excess of 100 times. We looked at several major brands like Target and Walmart and found that 1.2 percent of their tweets experience more than 100 retweets — but those are the most interesting and valuable tweets for their attention.

Twitter has only guaranteed the change will be made for those of us who build software or analytics tools based on the Twitter application program interface (API).  The Twitter.com website may make the change at another time.

So go ahead and tweet away. If your tweet turns viral, you will soon be able to know how far it really reached.

Stan Pugsley is senior director of analytics at iCrossing

As data management platforms become more topical, it’s not been unusual for senior marketers to ask, “What the heck is a DMP? Why do they matter” A January 26 webinar by Michael Greene of Forrester Research and iCrossing Chief Strategy Officer Adam Lavelle addresses both questions. The main take-away: a data management platform helps marketers optimize audience relationships, not just digital channels. This blog post provides live coverage.

Lavelle first discusses how anyone who wants to understand DMPs first need to recognize an important shift occurring in the marketplace: marketers are transitioning away from optimizing channels to connecting brands – or creating close relationships with consumers. And to do so, CMOs need to improve audience segmentation and more effectively harness data, as eMarketer has reported.

“The likes of McKinsey are reporting that big data is a business requirement,” according to Lavelle. And as Forrester reports, marketers are investing in mastering the flow of customer in areas like real-time marketing customer intelligence.

That’s why the DMP is so important. The DMP – a technology that consolidates all information about how your customers interact with your brand across digital touch points – “is the emerging hub of digital marketing” in Lavelle’s view.

He adds, “We believe the DMP enables connectedness at a more personal level and in real time.”

In Michael Greene’s view, DMPs also address a fundamental issue: turning data into actionable intelligence. Granted, marketers understand the value of having useful customer data, but they are hindered by challenges ranging from online data overload to marketers managing customer data in silos.

Consequently, marketers have failed to give customers relevant experiences across touch points – not just via their email interactions or on a brand’s Facebook wall.

“We don’t believe successful marketer have any choice but to overcome those challenges,” states Greene. The marketers that do succeed will be able to:

• Have a single view of your customer based on multiple sources.

• Update and optimizing audience segments in real time.

• Break down channel silos.

And that’s what a DMP helps you do – or, as Greene puts it “the DMP is washing machine to clean up messy data.”

He defines a DMP as performing:

• Data intake and aggregation. Ingest data from 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd party sources – including universal container tag functionality.

• Segment building and manipulation. Functionality that allows a marketer to flexibly combine data sources to build custom audiences.

• Self-serving user interface. Web-based interface for direct access to tools, features and reporting.

• Linkages to relevant channel environments. Integrations with relevant channels through channel execution technologies – including website content, display and email today, with search and video likely to soon follow.

In essence, a DMP helps marketers expand your understanding of your customers across multiple channels based on a single view of your customer.

To use a DMP effectively, Greene urges marketers to think of the DMP as an enterprisewide effort that touches functions ranging from marketing to CMP.

“Think of the DMP as more than a media buying technology,” he adds. “You’re going to get the most out of a DMP if you manage it across various channels.”

After Greene defines the role of a DMP, Lavelle elaborates a bit more on its importance to marketers, including, of course, iCrossing clients.

“A DMP puts marketers in front of an important shift: We’re moving away from optimizing channels toward optimizing audience relationships,” he says.

Why? Because DMPs make it possible for you to create closer, more connected consumer relationships – which is a major reason why iCrossing bought DMP provider Red Aril, as announced in December 2011.

Moreover, a DMP builds a connected brand in real time, too – in other words, you can quickly adjust the content you share with your audience based on information from a DMP:

Consequently, marketers can achieve benefits like expanded reach and better performance from direct-response marketing.

“A DMP is not a technology that’s just nice to have,” he adds. “It’s mission-critical to your business” for these reasons:

• Marketing will only be more data driven.

• Making that data actionable is a business necessity.

• Today that data lives in too many places.

• Today that data lives in proprietary black boxes.

• CMOs will demand ownership of their own data.

• They will be expected to know their audiences better.

• And they will need that data in real-time.

Creating a personal relationship in real time – that’s what a DMP boils down to and why Red Aril is part of iCrossing. Lavelle adds that using real-time information provided by Red Aril, iCrossing can help CMOs “make sure you can take action in the moment to create a meaningful experience for the consumer.”

David Deal is vice president of marketing for iCrossing

In this post I address the question by looking specifically at “backlink authority.” Search engines view a backlink – or an incoming link to a website – as a “vote” for a website. The more “votes” a particular website has, the more authoritative that site appears to search engines. To be sure, search engines take into account many factors and metrics besides links when ranking a website within a search engine landing page. But links are among the most important barometers of search authority.

With that said, let’s dive in and do a side by side comparison how each of the GOP candidates are doing and determine what link strategies they are leveraging.

First, total links

When it comes to total internal and external backlinks Mitt Romney wins by a landslide. With 227,531 links ahead of his next competitor Ron Paul, more than twice his total of 144,039 links, it is evident that presidential candidate Romney is doing something right in the natural search world.

Could it be that this heavy weight search strategy could push Mitt Romney ahead in search results and dominate key topics that users are searching for? The results are yet to be seen but it’s definitely a possibility. Let’s take a closer look.

Second, total external links

If internal links are “votes to yourself” then external links are “votes from others.” External links are simply links that point to external domains. External links are generally considered to be much more valuable than internal links and are really the true indicator of how many people are actually linking to you (popularity).

Mitt Romney may be ahead when it comes to total links, but when it comes to total external links, Ron Paul dominates with Newt Gingrich coming in a “far behind” second.

This data suggest that Romney is doing a much better job a blogging on his site and interlinking his content, which does build relevance (and links), but is not as authoritative as links from external websites. It’s obvious here that Ron Paul is very much ahead on external links – and that’s a big deal to search engines.

Lastly, the big picture

As with everything in natural search, there’s never a ‘golden ticket’ to rankings. Influence or popularity can never be determined with one independent data metric which is why I really enjoy the big-picture view. The big picture allows us to analyze multiple raw data metrics including MozRank and MozTrust, a global link popularity metric from seoMOZ – all of which I’ve found to be very dependable.

When we take a look at the big picture we see a one-on-one battle emerging between Mitt Romney and Ron Paul in each and every data metric. Candidates Rick Santorum and Newt Gingrich, while they still carry a decent amount of link authority, appear to be “out of the race” in terms of natural search data metrics.

So, who’s the winner?

Presidential Candidate Ron Paul wins the natural search link authority/equity race with a stellar 72/100 domain authority rating, which predicts a domain’s ranking potential in the search engines based on an algorithmic combination of all link metrics.

Although Ron Paul took this win home, Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney follow him very closely with very favorable numbers that could change the fate of all the candidates at any time.

Source of data pulled from Open Site Explorer as of 1-18-2012

David Strader is an SEO strategist at iCrossing

Case in point: while catching up on news and entertainment this weekend, I saw a Mashable post about a new iPhone camera accessory that made its debut at the 2012 Consumer Electronics Show. This really cool accessory allows your iPhone camera to record video from the popular POV perspective, which is especially popular with athletes (and weekend warriors like me) who want to show off first-person videos of themselves doing half-pipes and body twists on snowboards.

So itching to learn more about this product (especially the price and how I could order one), I turned to my preferred search engine. To my surprise, I could not find the product’s website.  I used more more than five different branded keyword phrases to find the website, too. I tried “productname.com” and still nothing (no organic or paid results). I found many other websites talking about the product, but the company that produces the accessory really dropped the ball. This brand failed to look at connecting the dots from offline (the Consumer Electronics Show) to online.

Remember your online experience before launching your exciting, new product at an event.  The investment to launch your product at CES is not cheap, but you can recoup the cost by channeling the buzz towards a website to generate sales or continued interest.

Geoffrey Wilcoxson is director, client development, at iCrossing

Tablets

With more than 60 million units sold in 2011, tablets have completely revolutionized the computing industry as we know it. People around the globe are purchasing pricy tablet devices that offer instant entertainment, organization, and Internet access just a tap away. With apps such as Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, and Twitter, people are now consuming more media and getting involved socially via the web more than ever before.

Something as revolutionary as the tablet is bound to change the search behavior of people around the world. People who once used to do all their shopping locally are now using tablets to easily purchase their items. People who once visited the local bookstore are now going online via a tablet and searching the web for new releases with personalized results that only get better over time.

One of the largest opportunities brands have right now is leveraging the flood of tablet adoption by creating a branded app, optimizing directly around mobile related searches and providing content that tablet users will find. With more affordable tablets being released and an estimated 102 million tablets sales expected in 2012, brands need to incorporate tablets into their digital marketing strategies.

Devices with flexible displays

Imagine bendable/flexible interfaces that allow people to zoom in, zoom out, and scroll around a page simply by twisting the screen of a phone or tablet – pretty cool right? Though this scenario may feel years away, brands like Nokia and Samsung have both hinted they may release flexible, transparent displays in 2012. Currently, Samsung’s prototype is rumored to be encased within a rigid frame that will limit true flexibility, which delays true flexibility and flexible-gesturing further into the further.

The really exciting stuff, however — like paper-thin devices that roll up to fit in your pocket — is still years away. But the interesting feature that’s more likely to become attainable within 2012 is the emergence of transparent screens. Through transparent screens, people can hover over objects and conduct searches through visible recognition (which is currently only feasible by snapping a photograph through a mobile app like Google Goggles). This type of technology could make image searches more popular as framing an object and initiating a search by visual recognition becomes easier and quicker than typing out keywords or acting out gestures. The trick, however, will be to ensure the images being served up in the image search results will be correctly associated to pages that have also provide content about the subject matter of the particular image. Having a relevant and interesting image on your web page is no longer be adequate to satisfy people looking for content.

Searching via image recognition is going to require that the page displaying a relevant image will also have content that best informs the searcher of what the nature of the image’s subject is, where it comes from, and maybe even a brief summary of its history. The objects and content people can search for through image recognition can range widely — from whether a rare plant is poisonous to a timeline of a brand’s history. Consumers could search a brand logo, or even what a new product on the market is and who makes it. Image recognition software will associate images on the web with the shape, dimensions, and size of a particular object a person frames within his or her translucent screen and serves up content that best explains the details about that object.

Wearable computing

Making technology easy to use is one of the biggest challenges innovators must consider when coming up with that next big idea — and the second is mobility. Creating amazing technology that can be used by anyone and yet be completely mobile is simply what people want — and this wearable computing technology will change the way people search.

For example, there have been rumors of Google working on a heads-up computer interface prototype in the form of wearable glasses that would look similar to traditional thick-rimmed glasses that will project a virtual display right before a person’s eyes. It’s unsure what technology is going to be employed, but it is likely that the technology will use a transparent LCD or AMOLED display (such as the screen on Samsung’s Flexible AMOLED display) to transmit virtual content. Reportedly this device will not be peripheral to the Android platform; instead the device may be autonomous and universally compatible with any and all smartphone devices via a phone’s Internet connection through Wi-Fi or low-power Bluetooth.

So, theoretically Google’s heads-up displays could be compatible to any smartphone and create an augmented reality that would tie back into the variety of Google’s products (like Google’s location-based services) to serve up localized content into the display – Terminator-style – as a person approaches relevant geo-checkpoints. While it’s probably still a couple years out from being able to serve localized content instantaneously into a virtual screen, regular inputting methods (e.g. check-ins) could push media to people until the accuracy of location detection is perfected.

However, GPS-enabled goggles have already proved that head-up displays are great tools for tracking geographical movement, which may reveal that we’re a lot closer to having heads-up display glasses than we think. For example, Transcend Zeal Optics Z3 GPS Goggle is equipped with a spherical lens with low-to-no visual distortion, which provides easy accessibility to performance stats in an unobtrusive display. The more interesting concept, however, is that the newest generation goggles is equipped with Google’s Android platform that allows users to manage and playback runs overlaid on 3-D Google Earth and a social interface that identifies the location of a user’s nearby social connections and allows users to share information on Facebook and Twitter.  This type of interface that will prove most beneficial to brand marketers because marketers have an opportunity to expose people to new activities, brands, or local hotspots that they otherwise would never have found without the frictionless sharing of their own social connections.

A similar heads-up computer interface was also introduced recently within a study published in the December 2011 issue of the Journal of Micromechanics and Micro-engineering, where researchers from the University of Washington demonstrated the utility, safety, and versatility of a single-pixel contact lens. The prototype currently uses metal circuits a few nanometers thick to draw radio-frequency radiation from an external source to produce sufficient energy to store data and then transmit that information in a transparent viewing field, similar to that of the Google’s glasses prototype.

However, because the human eye has a minimum focal distance range of several centimeters, objects are still unable to fully resolve through single-pixel. In order to enhance and extend the display capabilities of the lens, further design and fabrication testing is being done on micro-fresnel lenses (multi-pixel display lenses) to render digital imagery more clearly. Improvements still have to be made to energy conservation before true high-resolution displays through contact lenses can be fully realized, but when successful, computing contact lenses could not only fundamentally change the nature of how humans experience and manage visual information, but also how humans interact with each other and the world.

A personal see-through device could add an overlay of computer-generated visual information on a virtual surface of the world that will be able to search for content through visual recognition. Glasses or contact lens systems will import data from external platforms (e.g., mobile phones) and provide real-time notifications or map out nearby social connections by placing virtual pins to indicate their location — keeping consumers connected throughout the entire day.

In fact, the wearable technology trend has already started at the 2012 Consumer Electrics Show with blogger, fashion geek and fashion designer Diana Eng creating a very interesting runway show called FashionWare. This show featured models wearing, interacting and carrying some of the latest wearable technology.

Conclusion

From tablets and flexible displays to wearable goggles and mobile phone dresses, the rate at which technology is evolving it bound to affect change in nearly every area including search and the way users stay “connected” to the things they love most.

However, the future of connected brands doesn’t end here; our next blog posts will explore technologies such as touch computing, voice control and HTML5. Stay tuned!

Mary Callahan and David Strader are SEO strategists at iCrossing