Look, just because a competitor outbids you on Google AdWords, that does not mean you can file a lawsuit against them. OK, so that advertiser didn't actually have any of the products it was advertising, you still can't claim the ads were misleading. What's that? The advertiser is Groupon and if you sue them you might get some easy publicity? Have at it, son! Honestly,

It's been almost 5 years since social news aggregator Reddit was acquired by Conde Nast. Since then, the publisher has done its best to let Reddit go the way of a Digg Dodo, but thanks to some fundraising and running a lean team, Reddit has managed to achieve some epic growth-hitting 1 billion pageviews no less! It appears that Conde Nast is not quite ready to let go of the cash-cow that Reddit could still become and is instead mulling a sale of a stake in the site.

For the past few years, I've counseled clients that really the best way to get a negative web result-such as RipOff Report-removed from Google's search results, is to get a court order. I've always maintained that Google is simply not interested in fighting to keep one negative web page in its index. If you can get a judge to agree with your defamation claims against the content creator, Google will remove it from its index.

Google is rolling out an updated user interface to approximately )initial( 1% of Google Analytics users. In its announcement , Google says' Our goals for the new version are to make it easier and faster to get to the data you want and to enhance the Google Analytics platform to bring you major new functionality. Many of the changes in the new version are the result of your feedback. For example,

There's a lot of discussion surrounding a new video from Matt Cutts. In it, the prominent Google engineer explains why you should not be swayed into registering a domain name that includes the keywords you are likely to target for your SEO efforts. He provides many examples of successful companies that have a branded domain name-and not a keyworded one.

It's been almost 7 months since Google announced that you can make Google Voice calls from within your Gmail account. It's been almost 7 months of waiting and wondering just when exactly Google plans to add this feature for us Google Apps for Business users. You know, the ones that actually pay to use Google's services? You'd think that Google would have figured this out by now. But, no. Google Apps, despite being one of Google's few premium subscription products ,

Just a quick update. After speculating that Google's instant search would be the target of a patent lawsuit from MasterObjects-just as soon as they had finished with Amazon-it looks like the company's not going to hang around for an outcome. It appears that the company is ready to go after Google right now: I asked Masterobjects why they waited until now to sue Amazon.com,

TechCrunch picks up on an interesting lawsuit just filed. It appears that MasterObjects is suing Amazon for patent infringement over its use of instant search results. You know what they are; you start typing your search query and then Amazon suggests what you may be trying to find. It looks like this: Anyway, what's interesting is that MasterObjects names only Amazon as a defendant. Interesting, because Google, Bing and many others offer instant search results like this.

Google has announced the upgrade to Google Profiles. The only problem is, I have no idea what's going on with my profile and why it has multiple personality disorder. Take a look at the new profile that I see when I log in to profiles.google.com : Nice, clean, certainly something I'd be happy to have show up in a reputational search for my name. Problem is, this is not the profile that others see in Google.

Apparently today is "Android day" and I didn't get the memo. It's also a "no news so let's slap up some videos day" on Marketing Pilgrim. Exhibit B, Google's Mountain View HQ-aka the Googleplex-took delivery of a giant honeycomb to mark the launch of Android 3.0 for tablets. Pity the guy whose job is to go to work and dress in a bee costume and dance for the Googlers.

While driving 400+ miles over the weekend, Mrs. Beal suggested it would be a great idea to add Google Maps and local search information to our SUV's built-in navigation. I managed to impress her-OK, maybe just myself-but recalling the 2007 announcement that BMW was going to do just that. Four years on and I don't know if that ever came to fruition. However, I do know that Saab is about to get a whole lot of Android added its line-up of cars.

It's been more than two years since Loopt promised to bring local business advertising to cell phones. According to the WSJ, that plan is supposedly near to fruition: On Tuesday Loopt, a social network catered to mobile-device users, unveiled a plan to allow advertisers to send alerts to Loopt users, based on their location, when they want to offer them an limited-time deal. A restaurant looking to fill empty seats, for example,

After many rumors over the past twelve months, Yahoo has officially announced the shutdown of MyBlogLog in an email to users: Dear MyBlogLog Customer, You have been identified as a customer of Yahoo! MyBlogLog. We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011. After May 24,

I had a little "episode" over the weekend. You see, I finally got sick of seeing the types of tweets that have very little substance, yet seem to be the staple of many so-called "gurus." Instead of complaining, I decided to have some fun. In rapid succession, I tweeted what I consider to be the type of tweets that tend to get a lot of attention and elevate someone to guru status. I'm guilty of these now and then, and perhaps you are too,

I've never been a big fan of adding as many "friends" to my social networks as possible. Why add unwanted noise to my socially-connected world? Well, I'm now even more glad that I've been selective with who I friend and follow because Google just shoved everyone into my search results. First, social search results will now be mixed throughout your results based on their relevance )in the past they only appeared at the bottom(.

You've heard of a slow news day, right? How about a slow news year? So far, 2011 has been a bit of a snoozer. If you were wondering why JC Penney getting busted for blackhat SEO was such a big deal, it's because there's been little else to report on recently. For example, today's big story is that President Obama plans to meet with Mark Zuckerberg, Eric Schmidt and Steve Jobs. Sounds like a cool meeting,

Did you forget to send your sweetie a Valentine's day card? Is the florist all out of flowers? The candy-isle picked over? Never fear! Google is here to your rescue! Using a romantic interface and Google Maps, the search engine is hoping you'll remind your valentine of that special place you' [fill in the blank] Here's one I created, so you can see how it looks.

Hands-up if you'd like to sell your company for 100 times your projected earnings for 2011? Sorry, it will'take a little'longer to'type this sentence'with just one hand. On the back of a recent $200 million investment-and a reported $80m secondary market purchase-the Wall Street Journal is reporting that both Google and Facebook are sniffing around Twitter.

I guess when you're in a war, resorting to guerilla tactics is something that, while ugly, gets the job done. Take, for example, the kerfuffle over whether Bing copied Google's search results-or not. If the Microsoft search engine has in fact been copying Google, then it should just keep on keepin' on! According to Hitwise , Bing saw a 21% increase in searches at its own web site and another 6% growth spurt across all Bing-powered search sites.

If you're in the Triangle area of North Carolina, come and hear me talk about practical-and easy to implement-reputation management tactics at the next meeting of the Triangle American Marketing Association . The event is on February 17th at 11:30am and here's a teaser of what you can expect. See you there!