With so much doom hanging over the economy, who would you expect to be doing well?

No surprises then that Google has posted outstanding third quarter figures, with revenues up 31% to a dizzying £3.2bn (though dwarfed by bank handouts from you and I) and profits up 26%.

And everyone’s favourite search engine is now providing 63% of online searches in the USA (August figures), which is double that of its closest competition.

Which somewhat supports Jeff Jarvis’ notion on Buzz Machine that the “Google economy is just different”.

Jarvis says that Google typifies the “small-is-the-new-big” economy in which the myriad of advertisers of all sizes using its services now adds up to a critical mass. This mirrors the inter-relationship between Google and online communities, whereby Google recognises the critical mass of activity generated by social media, including blog posts, user-generated comments, content sharing and bookmarking sites such as Digg, etc.

If people you need to reach are using the Internet to research before they buy or make decisions about something, the equation is this:

a) The majority of people are using Google to search the Internet.

b) Google’s techno wizardry ranks quality online destinations according to their level of activity and interactivity.

c)  Therefore, you might need to include some form of social media activity as part of your communications.

To paraphrase the old Clinton campaign slogan, it’s the Google economy, stupid!

Cuil, pronounced ’cool’, was launched yesterday as a new challenger to Google.  The credentials were good, big money backing and a number of ex-Google staffers on the team.  Despite, or perhaps because of the barrage of publicity, the launch has been widely regarded as a flop.  Why? Because the volume of coverage generated such a volume of traffic that the site couldn’t cope.  It ran slowly and some of the search results were surprising.   

I tried an acid test.  I searched for ‘Cuil’ in Google.  A news story on the launch appeared at number 1 and the site itself was at number two.  I then searched for ‘Cuil’ in Cuil; no such luck.  Towns and villages in Sligo, French cuisine, Lochaber, scenic sights in Scotland and even some Gaelic results but no search engine came up and it was definitely lacking in ‘Cuil’.   

Have a look at another search engine called Scour.  It launched very recently with far less of a fanfare but it’s interesting because it aggregates searches from other engines; Google, Yahoo and MSN.  It is also the first social media search engine because it allows users to rate searches which should improve its functionality over time.  Now search for  ’Scour’ in Cuil and it comes in at number one!  What’s more is Scour actually pays registered users for every search they carry out.  Now my money’s on that.