The media is still on the cloud computing bandwagon, but where are the clicks?

Microsoft plans to invest heavily in its cloud platform but expects to see little revenue for two to three years, Bob Muglia, the president of the server and tools business, said Tuesday.

Cloud computing is hyped, but it's no real surprise then that people aren't searching for “cloud computing” in the US on Google. This could be for many reasons - including real buyers are more sophisticated than to use the term "cloud computing" in their searches.

Still, some stats I found interesting:

• Total number of news articles in past 6 months mentioning cloud computing: 10,626 (source: ITDatabase)
• Local number of searches in January on Google for cloud computing: N/A (source: Google AdWords keyword tool for January, 2010)
• Global number of searches in January on Google for cloud computing: 673,000 (Google AdWords keyword tool for January, 2010)

Digging down, I found that:

• Although IBM is doing respectably well with its cloud PR initiatives, it significantly trails Google, Amazon and Microsoft's in terms of the number of searches for its cloud products.
• Companies like Oracle and HP, despite some positive momentum recently, have a small percentage of the total share of voice around cloud computing from media perspective.
• None of the major vendors do very well on organic search results for "cloud computing" on Google.

It could be that Oracle, IBM, VMWare and HP all agree with Microsoft that meaningful revenues around cloud computing are some years away. Based on what I see in the final column below, they certainly don't seem to see the value yet in optimizing SEO around cloud computing.

	% of articles on cloud computing that mention specific vendor (source: ITDatabase)	Google AdWords: Total # of “vendor + cloud” searches (e.g. # of searches for “Microsoft Cloud” and variants)	Google Organic: "vendor + cloud" Google Ranking. (e.g. what ranking Microsoft pages come up on “Microsoft Cloud”)	Google Organic: Google ranking for “cloud computing”
Microsoft	32.7%	26,000	2, 5	36
Google	26.2%	47,000	3	Not in top 50
Amazon	16.3%	40,500	1, 3, 4	13
IBM	16%	14,800	1, 2, 4	18
VMWare	11%	4,400	1, 4, 8	19
Cisco	8.5%	2,400	1, 2, 4	Not in top 50
Apple	8.4%	2,900	0	Not in top 50
Oracle	8.2%	2,900	1, 2, 4	32
HP	7%	5,500	1, 2, 4, 5	Not in top 50