The internet is abuzz with the launch of Apple’s iPad. Modestly priced at $499 for the 16GB base version, this gadget packs in quite a punch. The iPad has received mixed reactions online. In order to better understand the reactions, we would like to present the share of voice analysis followed by overall popularity and sentiment analysis.

Share of Voice analysis

The iPad has drawn the wrath of a few critics owing to missing features such as a camera, flash and the fact that it cannot multitask. But the sleek new design and ebook features are definitely praise worthy. Overall, iPad had 2,900,000 twitter mentions, 106,816 blog mentions, 87,513 forum mentions and 83,513 news mentions.

Share of voice analysis

Overall popularity

The fact that iPad’s popularity has been decreasing is worth a mention. On the 27^th of January 2010, it had 898,000 mentions whereas on the 31^st of January 2010 it had 299,334 mentions. A 68% decrease in mentions in just 4 days. Are people losing interest?

Blogs

In the blogosphere, the overall sentiment was neutral at 49%. Positive sentiment constituted 32% whereas negative sentiment was a mere 19%. Negative sentiment towards the iPad is decreasing whereas positive sentiment is increasing. Country wise, U.S blogs talked most about the iPad followed by U.K and Germany.

Sentiment analysis – blogs

Sentiment trends – blogs

Top countries – blogs

Twitter

Twitterverse had a field day with the launch of the iPad. Globally, iPad had 2, 900,000 mentions on Twitter. While 74% of tweets were regular, 15% were retweets and 11% were replies. The popular phrases for iPad show that the most discussed keyword was ‘Grammys’. It was a popular phrase because Stephen Colbert touted the iPad at the Grammys to read out the song of the year nominees. Other most discussed phrases were ‘iPad tablet’ and ‘iPad may get video’.

Twitter popularity

The fact that iPad’s popularity has been decreasing is worth a mention. On the 27^th of January 2010, it had 757396 mentions whereas on the 31^th of January 2010 it had 159055 mentions. Will iPad die with the hype?

Popularity – Twitter

Google Base is another one of the hidden gems in Google’s magic box. You don’t hear about on a daily basis but it appears to provide a new way for publishers to distribute and promote content.

What is it?

Google Base is a free online database where you can post any information free of cost as long as it follows Google’s program policies. Products and services, recipes, classified ads, you can post almost anything you can think of. However it is a dream land for those who have a list of good stuff to sell and no forum to market.

How does it work?

It’s really very simple. Just open an account or use an existing account if you have one. Choose to submit a feed and look at the various options for feed types. If you already have an RSS feed for your product, you can submit this, but some information will still be missing, so it is advisable to construct a text file as per Google’s field pattern. This allows you to think and include keywords and key phrases for appropriate searches. After the content is ready, submit it.

What’s amazing is that you can register up to 10 data feeds in your Google Base account and almost one million items equally distributed between 10 feeds.

Google Base and SEO

Submitting your content to Google Base actually helps you get additional organic search engine traffic.

Algorithm for ranking Google Base products is more literal in Google Base. It is not as sophisticated as the algorithm for Google search. This should be taken into account while preparing your product feed. Points such as including factors relevant to your product especially the product name, model etc in your product title and description, become crucial. The keywords you are targeting should also appear in the title and description. The first 10- 15 words are quite significant, so must be used wisely. But beware; do not stuff the description with a whole lot of keywords as this could lead to your listing to be penalized.

Adding relevant images to your feed can increase your click-through rates. This is another important optimisation tip you can use. It will help you rank well in Google Base. Finally, Google product search uses seller ratings; customers leave feedback about their purchase experience with a company as on any online purchasing portal. So try and get as good a rating as possible as this will only positively impact your rating in Google Base.

Contributed By Shruti Kekre