You can create and design a great website, but if no one can find it then it doesn’t have much value.  At Losasso we try to impart the importance of SEO to our clients.  We are not in the camp of “all traffic is good traffic” but rather we believe that driving qualified traffic to our client’s sites through solid search engine optimization is what is important.

There are some fairly simple steps you can follow to make sure your website is optimized and easy to find.  In an interview with USA Today, Google’s Matt Cutts imparts some of his SEO wisdom to the masses.  From making sure you are properly utilizing you “tags” to creating a blog, take a look at this article to read all the simple steps Cutts suggests in order to get your site in good SEO standing.

While 106.5 million viewers tuned in to the New Orleans Saints Super Bowl XLIV victory, a great majority also anticipated the creative commercial debuts. This year, many companies topped the list: Snickers featured a football-playing Betty White, Denny’s urged Chickens to lay low, Budweiser created a house completely made of Bud Light cans, and a life-long friendship between a Clydesdale and bull.

But it was Google’s low-production, highly emotive “Parisian Love” that made the biggest impact in the online viewing aftermath. As of February 11, the commercial gained over 3.4 million views on YouTube; the next in line with 1.7 million YouTube views is Doritos “House Rules.”

This year’s Super Bowl boasts viewer numbers so high, it ended the 27-year reign of the M*A*S*H series finale as the most-watched U.S. television broadcast ever. (There were 70 million fewer Americans back in 1983, making Sunday’s Super Bowl technically lag behind the M*A*S*H finale in share numbers.) Still, it’s an impressive feat: as record-breaking numbers of viewers tuned in Sunday, and word spread online, Google’s Parisian Love spot received the most hits.

It’s no surprise that the Google name is so highly recognizable it trumped brand giants like Doritos, Budweiser, Coca-Cola, Volkswagen, Dodge, and Dr. Pepper. As our society forges on with the online revolution, it seems only fitting that Google, the brand that just happens to be a powerful search engine, was viewed more than any others on the Super Bowl 44’s YouTube channel.

This week Google reps revealed the latest development in their search portfolio — social search. This latest feature displays social search results at the bottom of the search results page.

Users can access this feature in the Google Labs section of their Google account. Once activated, Google pulls their social circle from their Google profile. The results display relevant data retrieved real-time from their social networks.

When designing the feature, Google was careful to protect users’ rights – they will only pull information users’ choose to include on their Google profile. Google gives users the option to individually add the social networks they want included in their profiles and thus their social search.

Right now, Google has a contract to include Twitter posts in the social search results, but I wouldn’t be surprised if additional social networking platforms will follow in coming months.

Social Search Result:

Google results also allow users to see how they are connected to the social search results. For example, I did a social search for “Chicago Marketing” and the first result to appear is jslchicago – connected to his Twitter page via Gmail.

Google’s social search allows results to appear in real-time and without violating users’ privacy. Their strict parameters of choice and transparency ensure that users only share the information they choose to share.

Here’s an in-depth demo from Google:

I tried several social searches and was very impressed with the results I saw. It combines the granular search of Google with the real-time aspects of Twitter.

The fact that it only pulls information from users social networks ensures that the data users get in their queries is from a known source – not just another random insight from an unknown “expert.” Well done Google.

This week Microsoft’s Bing.com goes live to the public. According to Mashable’s Stan Schroeder, the site offers decent search results, but is very similar to Live.com (which now redirects to Bing.com)

As far as being an effective search tool, Schroeder had mixed results “If you’re used to entering precise queries, such as ‘Starbucks menu’, you’ll never see them. If you prefer entering a broader query ‘Starbucks’ and then choosing from subcategories such as Recipes, Menu, Franchise, Nutrition and Coupons, Bing will work great.”

I decided to test his results by doing a search of my own. I chose “Chipolte.” I did like the way Bing categorized the results into subcategories on the left, all results in the middle and related search items on the right. As far as breadth of coverage,I compared Bing’s search capabilities to Google’s. Bing pulled 92,900 results, while Google pulled 133,000.

Overall, it was an impressive display for a beta search engine, but I do agree with Schroeder in saying that Bing falls short of revolutionizing search. I’d say it will be a while until we can really access its value. While I liked Bing, I think I will stick with Google (for now at least…)