Check out the video below to see how it went down today. Chuck was crowned the winner but I think I held my own and am already working on getting a rematch!
As Rob Wilk from Yahoo put it, “If it’s any consolation, out of the 100 people in the room, you were the second best rapper.” (To which I replied, “And if it’s any consolation, Yahoo is the second best search engine.”)
FYI, you can watch the 12 minutes leading up to the freestyle on the MediaPost Facebook page.
And make sure to peep the Round 3 video I debuted on stage before the live battle.
Debuted this vid just before the live SEO PPC Rap Battle at the Search Insider Summit today. Had intended to get it out last week and give Chuck some time to respond but work and family got in the way of my rap. Damn priorities!
Big ups to my main man Will Crew for the backing track here.
Lyrics below…
Check it out, I’m back, picked myself off the mat.
Thought you had me knocked down? I ain’t goin’ out like that!
I came to bring the pain, can you feel it mayne?
And speaking of mayne, what’s up with rhyming everything with mayne.
You’re like Snoop Dogg, mayne, except he’s got the izzle.
Put it at the end of each line to make it rhyme in a tizzle.
Mayne.
Lyrical G.
He’s so lyrical.
You got one move, you’re totally mono.
But I’m versatile. Don’t like my shades? Call me Bono.
Your rap’s overproduced if you know what I mean,
Tryin’ to cover up broke rhymes by flashing words on the screen.
Wearin’ a Google Me shirt, man you like hell.
Had to make your own cuz they don’t sell quadruple XL.
Back to round 1 when you were rappin’ in your crib,
Man your rhymes were dribblin’, you needed a bib.
Looking larger than life, thinkin’ that you’re winnin’.
Man, you’re so big you made that hoop look mini.
And then in round 2 you found a brick wall to mess with,
Hope you had that ceiling checked for asbestos!
Lyrical G.
He’s so lyrical.
And speaking of bricks, how you gonna call me out?
I own Chicago, mayne, so don’t make me shout.
Damn right I was all state back in the day,
When MJ was winnin’ rings, I was making hay.
Check out these hops, that’s my high school musical.
You can’t get off the ground with your 1 inch vertical.
Now I’ll spare you the rest of my greatest hits,
Just call me the champ. Hey, if the shoe fits.
Size 14 baby, you know what they say,
The bigger your paycheck, the bigger your pay.
We ain’t even in the same league, you call that lyrical abuse?
Man if I’m on tiger blood, you on kitty cat juice!
Lyrical G.
He’s so lyrical.
I’m CMO fool, got no time to produce vids,
Tryin’ to keep battlin’ you and raise my 3 kids.
No way I’ll take off my visor and bow to your Astros hat.
Hey, let’s hope your bros can come wake up the bats.
When this video comes out, your first 2 will be rated flops,
My production may be amateur but I got more props than Carrot Top.
You’re all sizzle, Chuck, time to show me the steak.
Step out from behind the computer if you ain’t a fake.
Callin’ yourself the SEO king…
You ain’t even on page 1 if you know what I mean.
But you can Google me and you will see,
I even got people bidding on me!
Lyrical G.
Cuz I’m so lyrical.
Don’t talk to me about ad groups and other PPC tactics,
My quality score’s so high, I don’t even need practice.
I launch right out the gate and Google knows,
My ad copy is tight and my landing page flows.
I scream relevancy from my head to my toes,
And my rhymes are tight too, like a poet’s prose.
It’s prophetic… Ya get it?
PPC’s so sexy that you Right Said Fred It.
SEO keeps you waiting while traffic lags,
As you toil away over meta tags,
I make it rain at the register with instant clicks.
While you tryin’ to catch fire by rubbin’ 2 sticks.
Lyrical G.
He’s so lyrical.
Now I ain’t sayin’ SEO don’t have its place.
But I am sayin’ if you wanna win the race.
Sometimes ya just gotta pick up the pace.
So sit back while I bring these rhymes to your face.
Bad reputation you wanna erase?
PPC is instant, it’s like mace!
SEO like’s the thrill of the chase.
But PPC eliminates all the waste.
So, if you want results you can taste.
Then, get hip to PPC with no haste.
So there, I think I’ll rest my case.
That’s my lesson for today, no need to thank me.
I don’t use link farms so Google won’t spank me.
In fact they’ll reward me with all kinds of tchotckes
It’s like 8 days of Hannukah and I got the latkes.
Lyrical G.
He’s so lyrical.
When we’re down in Florida for SIS,
We will settle the score, but if I’m taking bets.
It’ll be PPC MC 1, SEO Rapper 0,
I’ll walk outta that joint an SEM hero.
You’ll catch the early flight back to H-town,
While I assume my title and don my crown.
You’ll be left with your lame moves, call it the page rank.
You’ll wonder what went wrong when your street cred tanks.
So here’s the deal, crowd will vote for the winner.
The loser does the other’s dance at dinner.
If you win, I’ll get on the table and do the page rank.
But if I win, Chuck, you gotta take the Google spank.
Lyrical G.
We got a deal?
You know I’m for real.
Cuz I’m so lyrical.
PPC MC,
Just won round 3.
So next time we’ll see you in Captiva, Chuck.
I wish you luck!
Today I participated in a session at ad:tech San Francisco called, “Connecting the Dots with Paid Search” moderated by “Marketing Pastor” Melanie Mitchell.
My presentation focused on a new approach to search engine marketing that can not only help improve performance within the SEM channel but across other channels as well. The idea is focusing on the people behind the keywords to get a sense of their true value to your business. It’s not rocket science. It’s people science.
In yesterday’s MediaPost Search Insider column (+10 and -10 for Google +1), I shared 10 things I love and 10 things I hate about Google +1. It just so happens that the lists contained the same 10 things. Behold the definition of a love/hate relationship!
In Chapter 19 (Make Your Company a Great Story), I cover all of Google’s April Fools Day gags over the years and the amazing amount of free press they drum up (not to mention, employee engagement). Yesterday, Google outdid itself with no less than 16 jokes. Matt McGree has a great roundup for Search Engine Land (my personal favorite is Chromercise).
In an effort to practice what I preach in the book and make Kenshoo a great story, we announced the release of a “cloudvertizing” platform. I think there are more puns in the press release than the 343 pages of my book combined! This is the very definition of “fluff” news…
Just got word that the book won the Gold medal in the “Advertising/Marketing/PR/Event Planning” category from the Axiom Business Book Awards. No cash prize but will be receiving one of these fancy medals.
Very honored and appreciative but seems like a miss that these guys don’t give out online badges for winners to display on their websites. As covered in chapter 7 (Act Like Content) this is a great opportunity to build up link juice by offering something of value that people would be happy to put on their sites along with a link to the authoritative domain.
Update: Chuck came back strong… see the bottom of this post for his response.
Alright stop whatcha doin’
Cuz I’m about to ruin
The rapper known as Mo Serious.
See he came after me
The PPC MC
With some rhymes that were quite delirious.
Talkin’ bout I’m on drugs and other crazy things.
The only drug I’m on is Charlie Sheen.
Winning!
Yeah, I may be a diva but I earned that right.
I got more screaming fans than those dudes on Twilight.
Maybe I should quit rapping and stick to writing books,
But I can aways get by on these good looks.
You’re like the cat from Jersey Shore that nobody missed,
With that way in every video that you’re pumpin’ your fist.
C’mon, what is that move, Chuck? Seriously!
But enough about you and enough about me.
Let’s get back to SEO and PPC.
Chuck, you backed the wrong horse, now you’re going down.
I’m gonna slay you in Florida and steal your crown.
Cuz PPC’s the one that pays the bills.
SEO’s for them with those hacker skills.
You’ll do anything for links, beg, borrow or bait ’em,
You worship Matt Cutts. Man it looks like you ate him!
You’re obsessed with position, aways tryin’ to get on the top.
But with PPC you buy your way in like K-Fed with hip hop.
Yeah, I may look like that dude. Hell I’m probably whiter.
But I can guarantee you that my rhymes are tighter.
“Oops I did it again” is what you say when you screw up,
Get your client blacklisted when your link farm blew up.
PPC’s more controlled. Sure you pay the price.
But I’d rather do that then roll them SEO dice.
It can take IT forever to update your website.
But with PPC your ad is up overnight.
Now I’m gonna save somethin’ up for when we battle in Captiva,
You best stay out the sun so you don’t catch a fever.
When we go live, we’ll all see what you’re worth.
You call yourself the King? More like Colin Firth.
S, S, SEO… heeeell no.
Chuck, you’re quite the producer. I ain’t gonna lie,
But let’s see what happens when we go on the fly.
No machines, no rehearsals, no do-overs,
And I know the SIS crowd won’t be sober.
It’ll be like 8 Mile and I’m B-rabbit.
I’m gonna make owning you my personal habit.
That’s all I got, Chuck. Time to take your lumps.
And while we all fade out, let’s do Chuck’s fist pumps.
C’mon. Pump it up. Pump it up.
I got him.
Peace.
Today I logged in to my Google Apps account on a whim to see if anything had changed a lo and behold, I was greeted with the message below.
This got my thinking about how valuable an asset it is to Google to have over 3 million businesses using Google products to power their internal operations. And why Facebook needs more small/medium business (SMB) apps if it wants to continue growing it’s share of the digital advertising pie — which is already growing quite nicely, mind you, with 1 in 5 online display ad dollars going to Facebook this year per eMarketer.
By working its way into the SMB infrastructure, Google makes itself indispensable to businesses. And with that level of penetration, cross-selling advertising products becomes much easier. Just check this box to send traffic to your domain!
I was talking to a friend the other day who works for Facebook and joking with him about why Facebook doesn’t use its own messaging system for internal corporate communication. Then the light bulb went off. Why not create an messaging app for SMBs? They gave everyone a Facebook email address. Why not let people use Facebook to manage messages to their own domains? And do it for free to trump Google App’s $50 a year.
Of course, creating business products like this would require a ton of new development around security and other protocols that are critical to servicing SMBs but, in the long run, this would really pay out for Facebook by getting businesses more active on the platform beyond managing pages. And once they’re more active on the platform, getting SMBs to fork over some ad dollars would become a much easier proposition.
Penetrating SMBs is the key to Facebook doing better than 1 in 5 display ad dollars and closer to the nearly 1 in 2 total online ad dollars that Google gets today per eMarketer. Now that would give Facebook investors something to really like!
Today’s Montreal Gazette has a great piece exploring the “Risky Business of Google.” I shared a wide range of opinions and sound bytes with Jason Magder as he prepared this column. Here are some of the ones he used:
“Many of the new initiatives that Google launches can still somehow be tied backed to monetization from search advertising.”
“With the social network movement, people are now finding new ways to get information online that doesn’t require Googling it.”
“Goldman said he believes there is no limit to Google’s growth. He believes the company will figure out how to bring a social context to searches, and can have success in virtually every product it develops. He sees the company as becoming an all-encompassing life tool, that will power everything from televisions to computers, phones and cars.”
“Google has the advantage of having 5 million advertisers behind it, so it can go into pretty much any market it wants and find a way to monetize it with its slew of advertisers.”
To balance my seemingly eternal optimism, Magder includes some points-of-view that are a little more skeptical about Google’s future.
“If they lose relevancy, they’ll lose everything.” — Christian Russell, Dangerous Tactics.
“The company has spread itself too thin.” — Ian Lurie, Portent Interactive.
“Google’s biggest problem is that it has consistently failed to produce any new lines of business apart from keyword-related advertising, which still produces over 90 per cent of its income.” — Matthew Ingram, GigaOm
“Maybe they can’t innovate anymore. It takes them meetings and processes to make decisions. Things don’t get launched as quickly.” — Fred Wilson, venture capitalist.
“They also tried to get into social networking and failed, so they’re not impregnable,” Ken Auletta, Googled.
There’s definitely no question that Google will face increasingly bigger challenges in the coming years — from Facebook, Apple, Microsoft, and itself as it grows bigger still. For what it’s worth I think Google’s future will bring new ventures that are at times risky (as in the imminent launch of a new social network), at times frisky (as in the frivolous pursuit of self-driving cars), and at times briskly (as in the pace of innovation and new product releases).
Let’s just hope we never see Larry or Sergey emulating Risky Business too closely…
