I often show examples of how to use twitter and youTube as part of your social media marketing strategies.

At a recent seminar in Wichita Kansas I used twitter to promote the seminar, show the audience how I can use Twitter to promote a video of the seminar I created (while at the seminar),

What I noticed today was that my twitter account was ranked #1 on Google for the terms “search engine marketing seminar wichita“.

Yes, I realize that its a long (long) tail keyword, however, its the first instance I have seen of my personal twitter account ranking for a term so high.

My quick video I did that is a whole 12 seconds long ranks #2.

In all the searches I have done for anything, I have never seen someones personal twitter account rank #1, or top 10 for that matter.

It’s interesting where things are going and how my “entire” twitter account can rank for a term.

A quick update, within 3 minutes this post itself ranks organically at #4

This is not going to be a long post, just a “topical” post related to current Tiger Woods troubles and his sponsorhips.

Tiger Woods chose TLC…but he still hit the tree.

Tiger Woods chose TLC…but he’s made a bunch of bad decisions lately.

Maybe it’s time to find a better sales angle.

“I’m just sayin’” maybe you should update the title of your Ads, or better yet, let us all know what the CTR is 30 days before and 30 days after d-day for Tiger.

I have noticed over the last week that my searches in St Louis Missouri are yielding some paid results with the blue marker that is the new Local Listing Ads that are being tested in San Diego and San Francisco.

The icon is appearing next to the paid result and NOT where it does on the paid Local Listing Ads in SD and SF

This is the BETA in SD California:

and this is what I have been seeing in St Louis. Notice the phone number is also displayed. Click the image for a full-size view.

Close up shot:

Another example:

and one more for event planning 

I also have found it in Chicago (click for larger image):

I have not determined why this these are being selected for the blue marker. I am very interested to find out. I have also not seen the option in AdWords.

I would love to see data on CTR with the new blue icon. I wonder if any of these advertisers are getting that data in their adwords account? I will attempt to contact one and see if they even know.

Does this effect the Quality Score in any way? Advice often given is to not include a phone number in your Ad copy. I realize this is NOT in the Ad copy, but it will affect CTR.

They are giving the person performing the search a way to contact this advertiser without clicking, which in turn saves the advertiser money, however, it might also make the advertiser think their Adwords is not working because nobody is clicking on the Ad. The phone number is not a unique tracking number, it is simply the advertisers real phone number.

I think having a phone number will skew the data for their Adwords account significantly.

thoughts?

I am still waiting for the Local Map to be 100% relevant (in my opinion). Let me give you an example of a query I did today. A search for “kitchen cabinet stores st louis” on Yahoo gave me this:

I am 100% that CK Concrete does not offer kitchen cabinets.

On Google, I got this:

I know Kohls offers things for the kitchen but not kitchen cabinets.  I was in pottery barn kids over the weekened, I guess maybe I missed the new kitchen cabinet section?

I am also going to put the query I did right here ”

kitchen cabinet stores st louis

” and see if either google or yahoo indexes it into the top 10 results. I am also making that the link name for this url.

I know the search engines are “trying” but there are hundreds of sites with relevant content and local addresses that they have indexed that should be a better option on the Local Listings.

Just my thoughts, but usually when speaking with clients they are always confused as to why the choices in the ‘map section” (as they call it) are so bad.

* * an update, this post is now the #2 organic result on Google (#4 on BING)  for that term an for some reason on Google.ca it is the #9 organic result for “cabinet stores” !* *