Just in time for flu season, Google has debuted two influenza-tracking tools called Google Flu Tracker and Google Flu Trends. Two of the Internet giant’s software engineers came up with the idea to serve as a flu-outbreak warning system for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The Tracker and Trends tools provide statistics and graphs of where flu activity is occurring in each state, based on the number of people searching for flu-related terms. Graphs use color codes to rate flu activity as minimal, low, moderate, high, or intense. The site also has an FAQ section and downloads of past data. Visit www.google.org/flutrends for more information.

Google has applied for a patent on a new technology which ranks the most influential Social Media users. Although the details are still under wraps, it is likely that the new system will show great resemblance to Google Pagerank.

How does it work? The new technology will take several factors into account to determine your influence within social networks: your number of connections; the number of times that others post something on your profile pages and vice versa; the popularity of the video you posted … . Let’s not forget: Google ranks web pages based on their influence (i.c. the number of incoming and outgoing links). Why wouldn’t they extend this logic to social networks and the growing number of people who are active users?

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A couple of months ago we posted that Facebook has reached over 100 million users worldwide. A recent study shows that over 1% of all Facebook users are Belgian. 1 million Facebook users in small country like ours that only has a population of 10 million, that’s truly remarkable. Especially when you take into account that at the end of 2007, the Belgian Facebook userbase had less than 200.000 members. Given this enormous 400% growth, there’s even less reason to be hesitant on contacting professional social media consultants who have proven experience in social media optimization and social media advertising.

About three weeks before the U.S. presidential election, Barack Obama and John McCain crossed swords for the last time in a TV debate.

As you probably already know the current poll results favour Obama. But what interests me the most: how are they doing online?

In October 2007 Hubspot released a report on presidential campaign websites. With only two candidates in the running, I thought it was fun to give a quick status report:

• How good is the SEO of their official campaign websites?
• Do they rank in search engines on relevant keywords?
• Do they make use of online social media?

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The world’s biggest search engine is slowly but surely hitting puberty. These days Google is allready celebrating it’s 10th birthday. Check out the interactive time line if you would like to know more. The celebrations have generated a lot of buzz and new initiatives. One of them is a detailed look at Google in January 2001, the oldest available index. Just type in your (company) name and see if you were found back in 2001. You’d be surprised how few of us actually generated relevant results in a time when SEO, SEA and SEM sounded like exotic diseases to the majority of marketeers. Thank god those days are over!

Why should companies ever want to outsource their Pay-Per-Click campaigns? It’s a valid question. After all, isn’t Search Engine Advertising a simple question of buying a few keywords on Google, setting a high enough bid and waiting for the hordes of paid visitors and resulting revenue to come to you? Any search marketeer will tell you the truth is far less simple than this. Based on our own experiences and an fairly old but interesting article on SearchEngineLand, we have gathered 10 viable reasons on why it’s usually better and more cost-efficient to outsource your PPC campaigns to SEM professionals instead of trying to do it yourself.

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Several Dutch hospitals are seriously thinking about using Google Health or Microsoft’s Health Vault as their main patient’s dossier database instead of the outdated Electronic Patient Dossier (EPD) offered by the Dutch Government. “Google and Microsoft offer technology which is better and more efficient than anything what the government is offering. We need an integrated approach to healthcare in which the patient has control and insight into his own medical history.”, says a spokeperson for the interested hospitals which have a combined market share of 20% in The Netherlands. I,  for one,  am very curious on how this is going to turn out, especially given the rigid privacy restrictions in the EU. We’ll keep you posted.

Source: MarketingFacts

Yesterday, comScore launched a press release stating that the growth of the online health category has grown with 21 percent over the last year. This is more than four times the growth rate of the total U.S. Internet population.

John Mangano, senior director, comScore Pharmaceutical Marketing Solutions states:

Improved site functionality, increased content personalization, and overall consumer acceptance of the Internet as a source for health information have helped to breathe new life into the health information category

Most sites have become vibrant online communities rooted in sharing experiences and advice, rather than simply being one-way information resources for the consumer. As Google and Microsoft ramp up efforts with their respective health sites, Google Health and Microsoft HealthVault, it will be interesting to see how the category continues to evolve.

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BRAVE NEW WORLD: Maximizing integrated digital marketing and web 2.0 opportunities for pharmaceutical and other life science companies.

The pharmaceutical market is changing fast and so is the marketing mix. Most of us are familiar with digital marketing and terms like “Web 2.0” and “Social Networking”. However, very few companies truly understand AND integrate these trends profitably into their product strategy.
This is where Across Health BV, a newly established Dutch affiliate of Across Health, a rapidly growing international CRM and e-business player in the healthcare industry, is focusing its full-services offerings.
BRAVE NEW WORLD, the first Across Innovation Seminar, is the platform where you will meet renowned digital marketing and Web 2.0 guru’s, industry thought leaders, and peers from other life science companies who have successfully implemented integrated internet marketing and Web 2.0 elements into their sales & marketing strategies.
Keynote speakers will be Peter Hinssen, an international thought leader on web 2.0 strategies, and Fonny Schenck, a digital marketing strategy expert with over 10 years of experience in the healthcare industry. In addition, several pharmaceutical companies will present their best practices to you, and ample time is made for peer-to-peer discussion.

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Yesterday Google announced they are launching their own open-source web browser, called Google Chrome. According to Google, the browser is going to revolutionize the way people surf on the internet. Can’t wait to see who will win the browser-battle in the long run: Microsoft Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome? Check out the slideshare presentation below for more details on Google Chrome, which should be released in beta very soon.

Source: Official Google Blog