Anyway, long story short, they came!  They came!  They came!  They came!  Bearing Boston Cream Pie and Milk n Cookies flavors and coupons, they came!  Okay.  I’m okay now.

Thanks to this episode, I will say that now I “get” Twitter.  I had been on Friendster, MySpace, and most recently, Facebook since the early aughts, but only started a Twitter account last year, updating it infrequently.  While I was following the @BenJerrysTruck and tracking the truck’s movement (slightly obsessively), I began to read other people’s tweets and started following people I liked.  I felt like I was the first to know about special things (though I know I wasn’t the “only” one ). Today I started following TJ Maxx because I saw that a friend was and, damn it, I want a chance to win that handbag by retweeting too!

Now I’m hooked.

Before this I had preconceived notions that Twitter was too promotional.  Who cared what I was saying?  Why should I care about what someone else wanted to tell the entire world in less than 140 characters?  Turns out there are people who care about what I say and turns out I want to know what other people/places have to say, whether it’s promotional or not.  Twitter users can see what ideas their friends, idols, and favorite places have to say or offer in brief, digestible snippets.

I’m not the only one to hop on the bandwagon:  A very recent compete.com survey found that 31 percent (of 3,119 surveyed) report checking out Facebook fan pages or Twitter feeds of retailers, up from 17 percent in the third-quarter 2009 survey.  If my math is right, that’s almost double in less than a year.

As you can see, the reasons to engage with twitter are many!  You can probably tell that from my own examples.  And, it goes both ways.  If people are looking to learn about what’s hot in SEO, about life @451Heat, or random awesome recipes, they can follow me at @mlspriest. It’s really about finding that one “hook” (in my case, Ben & Jerry’s) to see how Twitter might work for you.

The process begins by creating a Google Places account (this used to be called Google local listings). It is one of the best and easiest ways to increase your customer base economically, as it is absolutely free! Recently, Google launched Google Tags, a new advertising feature, which helps you stand out from the competition. It adds a small tag beside your listing in the Google Places “7-pack” and charges a small $25/month fee to use this feature.

Once you set up an account, be sure to fill out as much information as possible because it definitely affects the rank of your listing and adds more credibility to your business. You will have to “verify” this listing, which can be accomplished by entering a verification pin you can choose to receive by phone or mail.

Here are some important factors you should consider when optimizing your Google local listing:
•    Put in your exact address and choose the most relevant business categories
•    If the opportunity presents itself, use a keyword in your business name (for example:  Brother & Sister Moving Company)
•    Add photos and videos of your office and products/service.  Many businesses aren’t currently taking advantage of this feature, so you can one up your competition quite easily in this respect.
•     Offer a special coupon in your profile, which will encourage users to both visit your business and (hopefully) write a positive review on your Places page.
•    Submit your business information on local search engines, local databases and local business listings
•     Make sure your information on superpages.com and other local-based information sites and user review sites is accurate, as these citations will show up on your Google Places profile and are thought to improve the optimization of the profile.

Hope this information helps your local search optimization efforts. Let us know if this post helped you set up your Google Places account. Share your thoughts and experiences.

Chitika, an ad network, recently published interesting results from a study of 41,103,403 impressions of search traffic coming into its network between June 13 and June 19.

Chitika found that 26 percent of organic search traffic was the result of three-word searches. Two-word searches followed with 19 percent of organic search traffic. Four word searches followed that with 17 percent, and finally, one-word searches accounted for 14 percent of organic searches.

Interestingly, Chitika found that queries beyond five words see dramatically decreased organic traffic, but this is different with paid clicks. The ad network found the highest ad click rates were for queries five, six and four words. After six words, clicks dropped significantly.

Are you surprised by these results? Will you change your SEO strategy based on this study’s findings?

For more information on this study, visit here.

What I find most interesting about this case is that the terms EBay were bidding on were not “Louis Vuitton.” In fact, EBay bid on misspellings of the brand’s name; Specifically, EBay bid on the words, “Viton,” “Vitton,” and, “Wuiton.”

While I don’t condone online drafting of a brand’s competitors by using the competing companies’ names as a search terms, I am not 100% comfortable with this court decision. Where does one draw the line? What happened to Caveat Emptor? I am REALLY interested in hearing how others feel about this.

Please voice your opinions!

-@ajgerritson