To the amusement of many in online marketing this week, Sarah Palin has been caught out commenting and supporting her own posts and content on Facebook with a second, fake account. Needless to say, this is somewhat discrediting. Therefore, I write this post, partly for her so that she may learn and move on to greatness she is destined for. Ahem. I attended the annual Search Engine Strategies meeting this week and was lucky enough to catch Liana “Li” Evans’ (@storyspinner)session Killer Facebook Marketing Tactics. She talked about how Facebook is not a search engine and rather a connectivity platform. She showed us an example of a search she did for a hotel called “The Mint”. For obvious reasons Facebook does not show the correct, or in this case; desired result.

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In November 2009, Google launched it’s property search function in the USA (and later in 2010 in the UK, Australia, New Zealand and Japan). However, on Thursday February 10^th 2011, less than 18 months after its first unveiling, Google announced that they were to retire Google Properties indefinitely. This is not the only example of a failed Google product (consider Wave, Buzz etc), but due solely to the potential size of the opportunity; arguably its most fascinating failure. So, first things first; what was Google Property (or “Google Real Estate” for the rest of the world)? In simplest terms, it worked as an aggregator add-on to Google Maps, in which properties available for sale and rent were plotted over a map. Estate agents and private vendors alike could use the Google Base API to list their property location along with basic information such as price, contact details and general info about the property itself.

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