Brand-Centric Google+ Pages Gaining Ground on Facebook

77 Percent of Top 100 Brands Now Have Google+ Pages, Up From 61 Percent Last Month

San Mateo, Calif - December 21, 2011 - BrightEdge, the leading site, search and social management platform for global enterprises, today released analysis showing that Google+ page creation amongst the world.s top 100 brands jumped in the last month from 61 percent to 77 percent (93 percent of top 100 brands are on Facebook), while the number of people in circles increased over 50 percent from 147k to 222k.

It is still early days as top 100 brands determine how best to establish a Google+ presence, while continuing to attract more people in circles. Google continues to have the largest fan contingent of any brand with more than 77k fans, up from 65k just one month before. Brands like Starbucks nearly quadrupled their social followers in the last month and H&M and Pepsi broke into 20k plus people in circles, which is still a shadow of the millions of Facebook fans these brands have already connected with. In fact, a review of Facebook and Google+ properties for all top 100 brands, showed a collective total of almost 300 million Facebook fans for these top brands, compared to approximately 148k Google+ followers for these same brands.

"Google is embedding their popular new product with its dominant search marketing position, replicating the tie between social and search channels, just as Facebook.s Open Graph tied sites and search together earlier this year, blurring the lines between social and search engagement," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "Top 100 brands are realizing that they now need to address both channels. Now the real work begins, if they want to extend their social presence on the Web from Facebook to the new Google+."

To learn more about the Google+ analysis, please visit BrightEdge SocialShare to view and download the full report here.

BrightEdge: Search Marketers Want Tools to Interpret Social Signals

With a variety of digital marketing tools at their disposal, 73 percent of search marketing decision makers still plan to increase their focus on search engine marketing in the coming year

San Mateo, Calif - January 11, 2012 - BrightEdge, the leading site, search and social management platform for global enterprises, today issued the findings from their annual search marketers survey. Assessing the priorities for more than 300 leading brand search marketers and retailers, the 2012 survey found that marketers plan to invest more in search engine marketing (73 percent), and need both better tools to interpret social signals/data (83 percent) and an enterprise-grade infrastructure with redundant data centers, and ISO certification.

When it comes to top SEO priorities, digital brand executives are making sure that they understand the impact on search marketing and optimize for social signals including Likes, tweets and Google +1s, indicating that they have an increasing need for tools to leverage these insights in the coming year. In the past year it has become widely recognized that social signals are a new form of backlinks that drive search rankings, and leaders are committed to succeeding in this new arena.

The report also uncovered that brands are expecting their search marketing systems to have the enterprise-grade technology championed by cloud pioneers like salesforce.com. This includes security and associated certifications like ISO 27001, reliability and proven strategies for disaster recovery, and scalability to support customer needs.

The need for global support increased by more than 55 percent, with more than 70 percent indicating that their search programs are being run in multiple countries.

"The fact that so many executives are looking for things like enterprise-grade infrastructure, social signal measurement and global reach means that brands are focused on leveraging this technology for mission critical operations," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "At BrightEdge we have focused our technology team to be sure that we have what leading search marketers need in 2012."

For more on BrightEdge's annual search marketers survey, please visit www.brightedge.com/2012-search-marketers-survey-results. To join the discussion about the findings, please visit us at www.facebook.com/seoplatform, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.
 

Retail, Finance and Tech Companies Are Leaving Millions on the Table

Search Optimization Forecasting Available on BrightEdge S3 Platform to Seize Search Marketing Revenue Opportunities

San Mateo, Calif - January 20, 2012 - BrightEdge, the leading global SEO platform, today released analysis showing that brands in the Retail, Financial Services and Technology verticals are leaving upwards of $112 Million in unrealized sales on the table, that could be secured by more aggressive or effective search optimization activities.

BrightEdge analyzed terabytes of page rank, social signals, keyword, backlinks, ranking and CPC data from their cloud database to identify the real dollar opportunity available to specific vertical market segments. BrightEdge found that on average, Retail companies could drive more than $51 Million in potential revenue, followed by Financial Services at $51 Million. Hardware and software solutions are coming closer to the mark with leaving more than $5.4 Million in potential annual revenue.

"Search marketers are a part of the revenue generating organization, but they have lacked a forecasting tool to define the revenue opportunity for their company. Our research shows that there is a tremendous opportunity for brands to grow their revenue through search engine optimization," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "With the unveiling of these findings BrightEdge is excited to announce that we are also introducing the ability to accurately forecast the business opportunity for SEO as part of our S3 platform."

BrightEdge's search opportunity forecasting, which is currently available in limited release to BrightEdge clients and agency partners provides a complete solution to allow search marketers to build a solid forecast for themselves.

To join the discussion about BrightEdge's data, please visit us at www.facebook.com/seoplatform, or follow us on Twitter at www.twitter.com/brightedge.

SocialShare: Top 100 Brands & Google+ Fan Base Accelerating Fast

Many Brands Still Watch from the Sidelines

San Mateo, Calif - February 16, 2012 - BrightEdge, the leading site, search and social management platform for global enterprises, today released its SocialShare analysis showing that Google+ fans (number of people in circles) of the world.s top 100 brands saw big growth in the last month from 222K to 3.1M.a 1,400% increase. However, rapid growth among top 100 brands is largely being driven by ten brands that have established a powerful presence on the platform.

These top ten brands, the G+ Ten, account for more than 3 million of the 3.1 million followers (nearly 100%) and bring more than ten times as many followers as brands in the rest of the top 100. Clothing giant H&M now holds the number one slot with 462K followers, while Coca-Cola notably leaped from 1,800 to 336K, a 187x increase. Their direct competitor Pepsi, however, is narrowly ahead with 350K followers. Other notable top 100 brands that round out the G+ Ten include Samsung (372k), Starbucks (335k), Sony (258k), Intel (258k), eBay (253), Google (193K) and Amazon (184K).

The explosion of followers has also led to a Google first.the search giant and parent of Google+ has had the largest fan contingent among the top 100 brands since the social networking site.s debut, yet in the last month they have been surpassed by eight other brands and knocked down to number 9 among the G+ Ten.

"While the growth of the G+ Ten is impressive, in contrast we have noticed many companies seem to be taking a slower, wait-and-see stance to the search giant's social offering," said BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu.

Among the top 100 brands on the sidelines were major retailers, travel sites, automotive brands, and notables such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Life, and Apple.

There is tremendous interest among large enterprise players in how Google+ will evolve. Although the data shows that brands are embracing the social networking site, the success of the G+ Ten contrasts with lower activity among G+ Laggards (brands 11-100 on the list).

With search driving continued visibility of Google+, we expect to see continued consumer adoption of Google+, but broader brand adoption is still a challenge and increasing attention will be paid to the end-user engagement model. How Google expands from its G+ 10 core partners and spreads more broadly across brands will be closely followed by the industry, and how the engagement model involves end-users may impact the rate Google adds followers. Google+ still has less than 1/100th the number of total consumers interacting with the top 100 brands that Facebook has achieved.

To learn more about the Google+ analysis, please visit BrightEdge SocialShare to view and download the full report here.

BrightEdge Raises $12.6 Million to Fund Market and Company Expansion

Opens Offices in NY and London, Plans to Double Headcount Again in 2012

San Mateo, Calif - March 15, 2012 - BrightEdge, the leading site, search and social management platform for global enterprises, announced today that it has raised $12.6 Million in a series C round led by Intel Capital and joined by existing investors, Battery Ventures, Altos Ventures and Illuminate Ventures.

BrightEdge pioneered enterprise-grade search engine optimization (SEO) in 2008 by delivering the first and only cloud-based platform that systematically allowed enterprises to grow their web site traffic and revenue through organic search. Today, it is the most widely used enterprise-grade search engine optimization (SEO) platform used by more than 2,000 brands and top digital agencies to attract customers from the billions of searches that happen on the web every day.

The company's BrightEdge S3 platform is powered by a massive big-data foundation with an actionable analytics front end. In the past year BrightEdge has consistently delivered innovations that have led its market leadership position, including support for Facebook page optimization, Social signal measurement, Global SEO, SEO recommendations, and SEO tasks and workflow.

"We revolutionized how enterprises manage to be found when potential customers search for terms relevant to their business. Demand for BrightEdge S3 has been massive, and we welcome this funding to further grow our dominant market leadership position," said Jim Yu, co-founder and CEO of BrightEdge. "Last year was a watershed year for us. We saw more than 400 percent growth, and doubling of our employee base. 2012 will be an even bigger year as we expand our business operations across the US and in Europe."

"With consumer and business audiences competing for customers in search and social, BrightEdge's platform is an elegant and effective solution that makes it possible to manage and optimize the process for companies that rely on the Internet to acquire users," said Lisa Lambert, vice president at Intel Capital and managing director, Software and Services sector. "Their big-data technology, experienced cloud/SaaS leadership team and commercial success to date position them to be one of the core platforms for companies that rely on digital channels."

BrightEdge has experienced tremendous growth in the past 18 months. It now serves more than 2,000 leading brands around the globe. BrightEdge currently serves 7 of the top 10 retailers, 8 of the top 10 digital agencies, and software leaders such as Microsoft, Facebook, VMWare, Symantec, Intuit and Citrix.

The funding will be used to continue its team growth, which has doubled in size as well as help expand the company's footprint with offices in NY and London.

Brightedge Announces US Patent For Operationalizing SEO

Share of voice technology allows businesses to optimize their online search strategy

San Francisco, Calif - April 12, 2012 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO, search and social management platform for global enterprises, announced today that it has been awarded its first patent issued by the United States Patent Office. The patent, #8,135,706, is titled "Operationalizing Search Engine Optimization," and grants BrightEdge the ability to use its unique method for measuring share of voice in search engine rankings.

Share of voice is an innovation from BrightEdge that helps companies understand how their search rankings stack up against the competition. This unique and now patented capability allows companies to discover the entire competitive landscape for a group of keywords, what percentage of the keywords in the group they rank for, and the number of keywords for which they rank. This patented capability helps companies discover new competitors and create winning competitive SEO strategies.

"BrightEdge's rapid growth and leadership of the SEO market has been powered by our continuous technology innovation," said Jim Yu, CEO, BrightEdge. "This patent is the first of its kind, covering our unique, best-in-class enterprise SEO technology for calculating competitive share of voice in SEO. The 2,000 brands and digital marketing leaders that have chosen BrightEdge can be assured that with our patented technology, they have the edge to win at search engine optimization."

The number and types of digital channels that a marketer can leverage to out-rank their competition has exploded. Beyond their web site, they can also leverage blogs, social media, video sharing, mobile content, and many other channels. Until now, business owners and designers of web pages had to guess their share of voice and relevance manually, without a proven system. The new patent bridges the knowledge gap between guessing and knowing who has the greatest share of voice in organic search, which is incredibly useful information for any SEO practitioner.

"We are very excited to receive our first patent, the first patent ever awarded to an SEO platform company," said Lemuel Park, CTO and co-founder, BrightEdge. "As we continue to lead the SEO technology market with our best in class product, this patent award is great validation for our customers, our partners and our employees."

BrightEdge Joins the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer Program

Offers BrightEdge Social Site Audit, and BrightEdge Facebook® Social SEO

San Mateo, California - April 19, 2012 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO, today announced its acceptance into the newly announced and highly-selective Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer (PMD) program. The newly developed initiative was created by Facebook® as a way to connect brands with experienced developers who specialize in Page management solutions, ads management solutions, services and platforms for building socially enabled integrations, and/or tools for Page Insights analysis.

"It is an honor for BrightEdge to be included in the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer Program, it will help us to continue to provide the most innovative technology for the SEO and Social community," said BrightEdge CEO Jim Yu. "BrightEdge the global leader in enterprise SEO, so we are a natural fit for the Facebook® Preferred Marketing Developer Program. The 2,000+ brands around the globe that rely on BrightEdge for their digital marketing can be assured that they will benefit from our membership."

BrightEdge has been added to the list of Facebook-approved vendors in recognition of the company's ability deliver technology that make social marketing easier and more effective. This announcement comes on the heels of BrightEdge's recent patent for SEO Share of Voice, $12.6M in series C financing, opening of global office locations, and 400% revenue growth in 2011. The patented BrightEdge S3 platform includes unique and innovative capabilities that enable brands to succeed at digital marketing, including:

BrightEdge Social Site Audit

• Measure Open Graph implementation for compliance with best practices as recommended by Facebook® and BrightEdge.
• Audit entire sites and track pages and page templates with errors.
• Review a prioritized list of issues to address based on the value of impacted pages.
• Assign tasks using BrightEdge's built in task and workflow engine for success as a team.
• Maintain quality with continuous monitoring of content updates or major site changes.

BrightEdge Facebook Social SEO

• Optimize Facebook® pages for relevance with the search engines in order to increase organic rankings and traffic of these pages.
• Measure the impact of Facebook® Shares and Likes to improve rankings of any page on your website, especially pages targeting high-value head terms.
• Analyze the social SEO strategies of your competitors so that you can beat them.
• Create reports and dashboards that measure the impact of your Facebook® initiatives for SEO, including traffic and revenue metrics.

Download the white paper on best practices for Social SEO with Facebook®

Tiny Prints Joins BrightEdge to Prove the Impact of Twitter

BrightEdge Case Study Shows How Tiny Prints Achieved a 47 Percent Increase in its Search Rankings by Aligning Twitter and Organic Search

San Mateo, Calif - April 25, 2012 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO, today unveiled the results of its work with Tiny Prints to align posts on Twitter with search engine optimization (SEO) and improve online conversions and ROI. With search and social analytics from BrightEdge, Tiny Prints achieved a 47 percent increase in its organic search rankings on long-tail keywords and URLs that were popular and engaging on Twitter. The gains occurred as follower engagement on pages and keywords grew 300 percent during the month-long campaign, where Tiny Prints' tweets were aligned with digital content.

Tiny Prints, an online boutique that offers stylish cards, invitation, birth announcements, customer business cards and photo books, wanted to extend its brand and establish a meaningful way to engage with its customers through Twitter. Teaming with BrightEdge, Tiny Prints knew that by increasing the value of its digital marketing conversations and aligning their Twitter strategy with its organic search, they could maximize site organic traffic and convert more sales.

"BrightEdge helped us tap into the connection between search and social media," said Mitra Naeimi, Director, SEO & Social Media, Tiny Prints. "Visibility across search and social channels made it much easier for the social media and search teams to collaborate."

"Like most online businesses, search drives a large portion of Tiny Prints web traffic and conversions," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "As the Web becomes more social, savvy brands like Tiny Prints are finding that they can use their social activities to improve sales conversation, simply by aligning it better with their SEO strategy."

Satya Patel, Twitter's Vice President of Products, is an advisor to BrightEdge's Board of Directors, and has been instrumental in insuring that the company's S3 platform effectively monitors and maximizes the value of Twitter, as well as other social channels such as Facebook and Google+.

BrightEdge revenues have grown by 400 percent; employee headcount is up 200 percent, and have recently secured $12.6 million in Series C funding. The company's over 2,000 clients include seven of the ten largest retailers, nine of the ten top digital agencies, as well as technology and social titans including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, VMWare and Symantec.

To learn more about BrightEdge's work with leading brands to align search and SEO, please visit: https://www.brightedge.com/twitter-seo-tinyprints.

Marriott Selects BrightEdge S3 Platform for SEO Management

BrightEdge Deepens its Expertise within the Hospitality Industry

San Mateo, Calif - May 31, 2012 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO, today announced that Marriott International has selected BrightEdge's enterprise-grade S3 SEO platform to manage and improve its footprint for organic search.

Marriott joins BrightEdge's rapidly growing hospitality and travel client base which includes leading travel and hospitality agencies HeBS Digital and Vizergy, car rental giant Alamo, Travelocity, and the White Lodging Group.

BrightEdge's S3 platform incorporates the features requested most often by enterprise SEO customers and builds in deeper social and SEO insight, more customization in dashboards, and flexible reports for deep analysis and status reporting. The platform offers frequent enhancements, with more than 10 new releases in the past 12 months; showcasing the company's continuous innovation and commitment to customer success. The platform continues to add functionality such as Adobe integration and the ability to monitor and maximize social channels such as Facebook, Twitter and Google+.

"It was important for us to find an enterprise SEO solution that offered both automated reporting and customizable dashboards that scale for multiple brands and thousands of keywords," said Lynne DeRoche, Senior Director, Online Acquisition Marketing, Marriott International. "We also needed a partner that had a solid understanding of the travel and hospitality market, and BrightEdge fit the bill on both fronts."

"We approach the enterprise SEO channel from a background of delivering enterprise class solutions, and know how important it is to provide clients with high quality SEO data, customizable dashboards and best in class competitive visibility for SEO," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "I'm very pleased to include Marriott in our community of travel and hospitality customers."

Marriott joins as BrightEdge revenues have grown by 400 percent, employee headcount by 200 percent, and having recently secured $12.6 million in Series C funding. The company's over 2,000 clients include seven of the ten largest retailers, eight of the ten top digital agencies, as well as technology and social titans including Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft, VMWare and Symantec.

BrightEdge Announces Local Search Management

On the Heels of Google Introducing Google+ Local, BrightEdge is First to Innovate Again

San Mateo, Calif - June 8, 2012 - BrightEdge, the global leader in enterprise SEO, today announced Local Search Management, enabling clients to optimize their search rankings for location-specific searches. The development of Local Search Management addresses the growing importance of local results, which affects some of the most common searches for terms like "coffee," "ATM," or "hotel."

BrightEdge's announcement follows on the heels of Google's recent move to support local search as part of Google+ Local, and BrightEdge S3 is the first SEO platform to support the new approach. With this announcement brands can be assured that BrightEdge keeps them ahead of the changing search landscape, and will be first to deliver innovations they need.

With BrightEdge's Local Search Management, industry leading companies like HeBS Digital, a New York City hospitality marketing agency with over 1,500 hotel clients, can optimize content more effectively across geographic locations to give hotels a competitive SEO advantage. Local Search Management easily identifies variations in search performance based on geographic location of the query. "Geography is paramount in travel," said Jason Price, Executive Vice President at HeBS Digital. "Getting visibility on how the hotel ranks based on the origin of the search allows us to make informed decisions on how to optimize SEO. At HeBS Digital, hyper-local SEO is core to the business of managing our hotel clients and giving them the competitive advantage they need to grow the direct online channel."

"Our 2,000+ brands rely on BrightEdge to innovate fast and keep them ahead of the changes made in search, like Google's recent Google+ Local announcement," said Jim Yu, CEO of BrightEdge. "We are very pleased to be the first SEO platform to offer Local Search Management in an integrated platform, and to announce it with the support of an industry leader like HeBS Digital, and then introduce it to our rapidly-growing base of top-tier travel, financial services, consumer, and retail brands that we support worldwide."

"We always suspected that the brands that rank on common terms varied massively by location, and our research powered by BrightEdge Local Search Management proves it," said Brad Mattick, Vice President of Marketing at BrightEdge. "We applied our new and unique Local Search Management technology across typical hospitality and travel search terms in five key metropolitan areas: New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Houston. The results showed huge variation in rankings for brands ranging from 22% to 63% per search term. Being able to show local SEO performance side-by-side across locations in a single glance surfaces gaps by location that brands can now better target for improved organic search rankings."

Available to select BrightEdge customers and partners today, BrightEdge Local Search Management includes:

• Support for local search tracking in 6 major cities: New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Houston and London
• The ability to track local search performance side-by-side in BrightEdge's industry leading dashboards
• Full analysis of local performance by keyword group in BrightEdge S3
• Visibility into search from local feeder markets as well as corresponding destination venues
• Local support for local search with BrightEdge Customer Success staff available in San Mateo CA, New York City and London

This announcement comes on the heels of BrightEdge's recent social SEO case studies with Twitter, inclusion in Facebook's Preferred Marketing Developer program, and its patent for SEO Share of Voice. BrightEdge has established an unmatched track record of innovation and achieved a clear leadership position in SEO technology.