NETWORKED INSIGHTS BLOG

Google will own monitoring

  • Posted October 22, 2009 by Dan Neely, Founder & CEO

The nimble behemoth lumbers forward. It is only a matter of time before Google owns the brand-monitoring space. Radian6, Scout Labs, Techrigy, are probably looking over their shoulders as they compete for business among the PR firms scrambling to keep tabs on the social web.

Google introduced Alerts in 2004 and became the first true technology solution for the PR industry. The digital clipping service has now become an indispensable tool for PR practitioners everywhere. In May of this year, Google rolled out near real-time search with their search-options functionality. Whether or not this was in response to the growth of Twitter, it made the search giant even more of a player in the crisis-management game. Now, hot on the heels of real-time search comes Google’s patent on sentiment analysis — a clear sign of their desire to own the monitoring space.

This combination of features now competes head-to-head with most of the monitoring companies at a price none of them can match. Ever wonder why all of them give away a free month? They have to; they’re competing with free. For PR, this is the land of milk and honey: one of the most innovative and technologically advanced companies on the planet providing the exact tools needed for crisis management… for free!

Advertisers and marketers need more sophisticated tools geared toward marketing and business strategy though. Google has yet to explore things like semantic search (understanding the meaning behind words, not just the words themselves) because the Google infrastructure is focused on searching for specific things and retrieving that data as fast as possible instead of using large-scale analytics to uncover themes in the data. In addition, Google still has not moved beyond its rather simplistic influence analysis and towards ideas like the evaluation of idea propagation. All this means that analytics companies need to get focused.

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1
Written by:
Paul Dunay
Posted on:
October 23, 2009 at 5:31 am

Very interesting Dan – but the Nimble Behemoth needs to get going – these other tools are not only getting a really good head start but they are working on the next level of integration with CRM tools like SalesForce and Contact Center tools like Avaya Interaction Center.

A come back strategy is always a challenge even for major players (see GM for details ;-)

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Written by:
Jonathan Moody
Posted on:
October 23, 2009 at 5:50 am

They’re all jumping on the bandwagon – Micrsoft with Looking Glass and now Google. Granted, they’ve got the tech chops and development & marketing clout (read $$) to take a big slab of the market. What they lack (although can acquire it)is the tacit knowledge of the social web acquired through years of working with companies in filtering out the noise, determining influence and distilling insight for action from mobilizing opinion on the web.

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IDG Knowledge Hub : Blogs : Google will own monitoring
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October 23, 2009 at 2:46 pm

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uberVU - social comments
Posted on:
October 24, 2009 at 12:18 am

Social comments and analytics for this post…

This post was mentioned on Twitter by dneely40: Google will own the monitoring space…. http://bit.ly/1eBiRN...

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Written by:
website monitoring
Posted on:
November 5, 2009 at 8:17 pm

Nice post. Thanks for sharing it

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Written by:
Tim Marklein
Posted on:
November 10, 2009 at 9:35 am

Interesting post, Dan. Just like they have with web analytics, it’s clear that Google will create the lowest common denominator solution that will be “good enough” for many people. The smaller players will need to innovate beyond that base.

Your post, unfortunately, implies (intended or not) that PR firms need less “sophisticated tools” than advertisers or marketers. As the leader of Weber Shandwick’s global Measurement & Strategy practice, I would argue that we’re using a lot of sophisticated tools already and always looking to push the envelope with more. In-depth content analysis has long been a foundation of the PR industry, and social media is simply making that easier and better every single day.