I understand why people are angry but it’s misdirected. Instead of attacking the symptom (Carolla), try to help solve the cause. It’s easy to create a facebook page and ask people to sign petitions. Where is the same outrage when there’s a kidnapping? They fail to look at the root of the issue. Why does Carolla think these things of the Philippines? He must have got his info from somewhere. He receives his info where most of us get ours…..headlines and conversations. You can’t expect him to know all the great things about the country just like we are not expected to know the great things about other 3rd world countries. I’m sure Ghana has the equivalent of a Philippine Boracay (paradise beach) or Fort Bonifacio (high society area in Metro Manila) but we don’t know. The images in our head are Africans living in poverty wearing American donated clothes from the 80’s.

The Philippine government has to do two things any smart business would do.

#1 – Do a root cause analysis and fix the issue or lessen the impact. The presidential spokesman said that “Pacquiao is a national treasure in the impoverished Philippines, where even Muslim extremists and soldiers silence their guns during his fights.” A guy who punches people in the face is doing the job the government is supposed to do. Why not have him fight every week to stop the war that’s been going on for hundreds of years?

#2 – Once you sold the root cause or even make progress, the government has to do a better job at managing it’s reputation. How do you get counteract Imelda Marcos shoes, poverty and kidnapping? Just google Filipino or Philippines and see what comes up.

If the Philippines was on Yelp, how many stars would it get?

Hmmm, I wonder why people look down on the Philippines?

While read an article on the Huffington Post, a google ad for Filipinas came up. Duh!

So why is it important to be the 1st result in Google?

Google is the most used search engine (for now). They control about 70-80% of all internet searches. With new products on the horizon like the phones, netbooks, operating system, partnerships with the iPhone and etc, it’s projected to grow. If your future customers cannot find you on Google or any other search engine within the 1st few results, you DO NOT EXIST.

Being #1 on Google means that your the authority on that subject keyword. Why that may not be the reality, the #1 online authority says so. In my example for the subject Baybayin (a writing system in the Philippines that predates the Spanish arrival), I know I’m not the most knowledgeable on the subject. There are people out that that know more than I do but because of my web and real-word presence, I’m appearing as the #1 authority on the subject in the world. This has lead to an increase on translation consultations, art commissions, invitations to speak and media features.

Most people do not go beyond the 1st page – A study shows that about 93% of people do not go beyond the 1st result page. Eye tracking studies show a big difference in heat between the 1st and 2nd result. If your the 8-10th result, making it to #1 would mean about a 1,400% increase in traffic.

Privacy issues? Google answers some questions and provides transparency on the Google Blog post.

This kind of tailored advertising does raise questions about user choice and privacy — questions the whole online ad industry has a responsibility to answer. Many companies already provide interest-based advertising and they address these issues in different ways. For our part, we’re launching interest-based advertising with three important features that demonstrate our commitment to transparency and user choice.

• Transparency – We already clearly label most of the ads provided by Google on the AdSense partner network and on YouTube. You can click on the labels to get more information about how we serve ads, and the information we use to show you ads. This year we will expand the range of ad formats and publishers that display labels that provide a way to learn more and make choices about Google’s ad serving.
• Choice – We have built a tool called Ads Preferences Manager, which lets you view, delete, or add interest categories associated with your browser so that you can receive ads that are more interesting to you.
• Control – You can always opt out of the advertising cookie for the AdSense partner network here. To make sure that your opt-out decision is respected (and isn’t deleted if you clear the cookies from your browser), we have designed a plug-in for your browser that maintains your opt-out choice.

Check out the video for more info

I think it has a lot of potential once connected to Myspace and Facebook. Somebody make a Wordpress plugin please.