Saab accused of cloaking – Media Culpa is not convinced

Saab is accused of manipulating search engine results via cloaking, a technique which generates one page for search engine’s web crawlers and another page for visitors, with the purpose of increasing search engine ranking. This practice may lead a page to become penalized in search engines. There are also of course legitimate reasons for showing one page for crawlers and one for visitors.

Wil Reynolds, an internet marketing consultant, made the allegations in a speech at a marketing conference in Las Vegas last week, according to BrandWeek. What made Reynolds react was that Saab was ranked in the top ten in Google for “luxury car”. Saab denies any illicit behaviour.

By checking Saab’s site with Webcab.de we can find this textual information, see below. I cannot see how this can be described as cloaking, but I’m no expert on the subject.

Luxury Car – Saab USA – Luxury Vehicle
At Saab USA, we pride ourselves on building a Luxury Car around its driver. Our Luxury Vehicles offer some the best safety features and first class options made available. Check out Saab’s newest 2005 Luxury Car Selection.
Luxury Car – Luxury Vehicles from Saab USA
[Saab USA by GM Motors]
Vehicles
Shopping Tools
Certified Pre-Owned
About Saab
Owners
9-2x AWD
Build Your Saab
About Certified Pre-Owned
Who Are We
Owner Center
9-3 Sport Sedan
Side-by-Side Comparison
Find Your Car
Saab Heritage
Owner Benefits
9-3 Convertible
Request a Quote
Vehicle Specifications
News and Events
Saab Clubs
9-5 Sedan
Financial Tools
Limited Warranty
Get Saab Email
Accessories Catalog
9-5 Sport Wagon
Payment Calculator
Request a Brochure
Gifts and Gear
Gifts and Gear
9-7X SUV
Financial Services
Current Offers
Concept Vehicles
Current Offers
Request a Brochure
Request a Test Drive
European Delivery
Military Sales
Corporate Sales
Dealer Locator

[Via SpinThicket]

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Super Bowl buzz is climaxing

On Sunday it’s Super Bowl time in the US and the blogosphere is all abuzz about the game. Technorati has a chart of posts that contain Super Bowl per day for the last 90 days.
Technorati Chart
Click on the chart to get a better view.

As always, there is lot of talk about the advertisements during the game. Frito-Lay’s snack brand Doritos is being promoted through a contest where users create their own online videos and the winning entry will be aired as a spot during the show. Voting has now closed for the five remaining videos which can be watched here (haven’t seen them myself yet, doesn’t work on my PC right now).

And, viewing at your own risk, here’s Kevin “K-Fed” Federline’s tongue-in-cheek (?) spot for Nationwide.

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28% of US internet users tag content

Pew Internet have just published yet another survey of internet usage. Turns out that tagging is becoming widely accepted. The survey (pdf) was performed in December 2006 and found that:

“28% of internet users have tagged or categorized content online such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day online, 7% of internet users say they tag or categorize online content.”

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Ikea in bed with consumer generated media

Ingvar Kamprad’s Ikea today kicked off a new campaign asking consumers to create online videos for the furniture giant. The campaign is a contest which offers $5,000 in cash to the user who creates the best online video on making a bed.

Ikea is using Shycast, a new kind of consumer-generated video network where “brands can reach out to receptive users and engage with them directly”.

So far 4 entries are up on the site.

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Survey of blog readers

Swedish marketing weekly Dagens Media has asked about 1,000 Swedes if and how they read blogs.

Respondents who read blogs:
* Daily: 11%
* Weekly: 14%
* Every second week: 4%
* Monthly: 41%
* Never: 31%

* 14% of the women read blogs daily, compared to 7% of the men

One caveat with the survey is that it is performed via market research institute Zapera’s web panel. From the article it is not clear what that means, but according to Zapera Quickwise’s web page, members sign up to this panel voluntarily and also get paid for participation. One could suspect that these individuals have a somewhat different profile than the average Swede.

And to be included in the panel you need to have both mobile phone and internet access. “Only” 80% of Swedes have access to the internet at home and a few more probably have access at work. So until more details about the respondents are published, I would be careful about attributing the findings to the average Swede.

[Update:] And another thing, I would not necessarily agree that Aftonbladet’s blogs are the most popular in Sweden. Why? Because Aftonbladet is a blog platform and portal, and should as such be compared to other blog platforms like Blogg.se, Webblogg.se, Bloggagratis.se and others. Aftonbladet may still be on top, but it’s not fair to compare their platform with individual blogs.

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