Genuine Interactive client Boston Harbor Cruises was highlighted on last night's American Idol season 9 premiere when contestant Mike Davis auditioned in Boston.

Davis, an 18-year old actor from Boston, works in the summer as a driver on BHC's Codzilla - an entertaining, thrilling boat ride that blares music and cruises across Boston Harbor at 40 miles per an hour. 

Last year, American Idol averaged 24.9 million total viewers and since the show aired last night, people have been flocking to Google and searching for both Mike and Codzilla as BostonHarborCruises.com has seen a 700% increase in site visitors and Codzilla's Facebook fan page has received a 50% increase in fans.

Congratulations to Mike Davis and BHC!

Finally. The long standing battle between meta keyword stuffers and relevant search results is officially over. Google does not use the keywords meta tag in their search ranking.

Matt Cutts, Google Software Engineer, confirmed the end of the battle with his latest "Google doesn’t use the keywords meta tag in web search" post on his blog and a YouTube video.

Genuine applauds this news as we've seen too many sites out there with too many irrelevant meta keywords on pages trying gain a cheap search ranking advantage. We've always thought that Google is smarter than that, but now we know for certain. Google is all about relevancy, and the elimination of meta keywords is only going to help relevant sites rank highly for appropriate keyword searches.

Creat Studios is an industry-leading game development company based in Canton, MA. At Creat, each employee, from developer to CEO, is a game enthusiast, devoted to future of the console. Creat publishes cutting-edge games for the Sony Playstation Network; in fact, they just announced that their PS2 hit -- Smash Cars -- will be available for download on the PLAYSTATION®3 computer entertainment system. Creat is an official developer for Sony PSP, Nintendo DS, Wii and Microsoft XBOX 360.

For nearly two decades, Creat Studios has been delivering high quality games, so Genuine was pleased to bring their expertise to the forefront in developing their new website. Using Flash and Adobe Aftereffects in combination, Genuine showcased Creat's interactive portfolio in a slick 3D wall, highlighting new releases, game trailers, and developer diaries. To further spread the word of Creat's superb work, Genuine developed a robust games section full of rich media, all the while maintaining SEM best practices and utilizing social networking tools.

We also wanted to ensure that Creat's fans were exposed to the people behind the games. The developer diaries and candid photography included in the careers and company sections demonstrate the passion and dedication behind the team's work.

Dr. Pepper really hasn't been known for its marketing efforts since David Naughton was singing and dancing to the "I'm A Pepper" commercials back in the late 70s. And it's been about 15 years since anyone has given a crap about Guns N' Roses. So when savvy marketers put two stale brands together and drum up some lame controversy the result is instant online marketing success.

It all started back in March when Dr. Pepper promised Americans a free Dr. Pepper soda if Guns N' Roses long-awaited album "Chinese Democracy" was released before the end of 2008. Well it may have taken 14 years, but Axl Rose and a bunch of random studio musicians calling themselves Guns N' Roses did just that.

On November 23 Guns N' Roses released "Chinese Democracy" and Dr. Pepper was ready to deliver on their promise - free soda for everyone. Dr. Pepper posted a coupon on http://www.drpepper.com and gave fans 24 hours to go the web site and print it out. There aren't too many guarantees in this world, but one thing is certain - people love free stuff. So many people attempted to download the free soda coupon that the Dr. Pepper web site crashed. Let me repeat that - so many people attempted to download the free soda coupon that the Dr. Pepper web site crashed. Talk about brand awareness!

Now here comes the lame controversy. Some of those people who weren't able to get their free soda because of the crashed site complained publicly on blogs, forums, and social media sites blaming Axl Rose and Guns N' Roses, who weren't even involved in the promotion. Today it was announced that GNR lawyers sent a letter to the Dr. Pepper lawyers requesting an apology.

It's all kind of silly, but you can't argue the success of building brand awareness. Since the debacle of free soda for a select few, the recent search volume for searches for "guns n roses" and "dr pepper" are through-the-roof according to Google Trends. Perfect timing for a band that's not been in the news lately and needs to sell some albums.

So whether you got your free soda or not, Guns N' Roses and Dr. Pepper are getting a lot of free publicity from this mess. Maybe it’s all just a coincidence, but I'm guessing it as something to do with some awesome web marketing. 

Recent search volume for 'guns n roses' and 'dr pepper' from Google Trends

I thought it would be interesting to see what Google is showing as relative volume of searches for the candidates and their running mates.