A recent comment in my Facebook feed reminded me to check trending topics on Google:

“If I had to wikipedia “G6″ to find out what it means, does that mean I’m too old to listen to the song?”

This song has been everywhere recently, and I can’t even count the number of times I’ve heard someone ask “What’s a G6?” or “Do they mean the Pontiac?”

I was interested in learning a couple things from this case-study in motion: 1. How far does this phenomenon extend into the general, search-engine-suing public? and 2. How has Pontiac performed in maintaining their association with the product?

(In case you’re not familiar, the Facebook comment is in reference to a recently-released song that is getting a lot of airtime. Although the chorus contains quite a few references to other brands and bands, the most focused-on line is “Feelin’ so fly like a G6″. In this case, ‘G6′ refers to the Gulfstream G650 private jet, which might be considered ‘fly’ in a few different ways. Clever, no?)

Firing up the Google Trends machine, we can see the following chart for the search ‘g6′:

The first thing to note is that the search volume in the most recent 2-3 months has been an order of magnitude greater than the previous, “background” search volume. So the “What is a G6?” question extends pretty far into the mainstream, I would guess. To get some perspective, let’s compare this term with a “known quantity”: Audi’s R8.

As you can see, searches for ‘r8′ have been fairly stable over the last few years, with just a slight peak around the time the car was actually released. In fact, search volume on both terms was almost identical at the song’s introduction, with the difference probably explained by the fact that the R8 is more widely-known internationally than the Pontiac G6 (sorry Pontiac).

So, if you want your product to get 10x the searches it does now, you need a quizzical reference in a hip-hop song. But what has Pontiac done to convince the searching public that the song is actually about their sedan, and not a $60 million dollar private jet?

The first result for a search of ‘g6′ (aside from the music videos for the song) is a Wikipedia page, disambiguating the term ‘G6′. The sitelinks for the page provide links for the Gulfstream G650 and Pontiac G6 right next to each other. Score one for Pontiac, though the pictures on the Wiki-page aren’t exactly flattering.

The next link is a CNN article discussing the song’s impact on Gulfstream’s image. Of note here is that the author (or web editor) chose to make the title of the page “Fly like a G6″. The perfect phrase to capture searchers looking for more information on this confusing lyric. And when you’re CNN, you can rank for a lot of terms. But so could Pontiac, I wonder where they are…

#3 blogs.citypages.com… “Like a G6: What does it mean?” <-- Great title to get clickthroughs.

#4 Image search: all Pontiac cars, score another for the General (or "Chief" in this case). Unfortunately, one is from "pontiacg6info.com" an obvious Made-For-Adsense play, one is from Flickr, and two are from auto-magazines. No official sites in the bunch.

#5 UrbanDictionary.com "G6" entry. No help there. (Although the entertainment value of these pages is high, you get insight into the rationalization process behind song-listener's interpretations, for example: 'G6 can describe any person, place, or activity as long as it meets the requirements of being fly, no lame usages will be tolerated.')

#6... Finally! Pontiac.com with the stellar title: "Pontiac G6 - Four-Door Sports Sedan | G6 Coupe - Sports Coupe | G6 Convertible - Hardtop Convertible | Discontinued | Pontiac"

Ouch. Not only is someone over at Pontiac actually trying to rank for "four-door sports sedan" (which does not have enough volume to show up in Google's keyword volume estimations, by the way. Google suggests you search "four door porsche" instead), but their title also contains "hardtop convertible discontinued".

On second thought, that might just be a static part of Pontiac.com's title. I've been a Pontiac fan since my first car (a Pontiac Sunbird), so I know that they are famous for discontinuing anything that gets popular (the GTO, the Firebird, the Fiero...), typically in favor of ridiculousness like the Aztek, Trans Sport, or the Vibe. By the way Pontiac, if you're reading: I drive a VW now.

Since the title is so full of other garbage, why not just throw "Fly like a G6" in there? You own the trademark (I assume) so it's not like someone can sue you over the meaning of the song's lyrics. At best you might convince a few of the millions searching out there that hip-hop stars think your cars are "fly". At worst a few marketers will think you're trying to rank your site for something other than no-traffic, generic terms and news results about your discontinuations.

It would certainly make me feel better as a shareholder.*

Some takeaways here: there are many ways to take advantage of a social-media phenom in your space, even if it’s not about your product.
1. Get the major properties on your side: Wikipedia, Amazon, UrbanDictionary… etc. Make sure you have a mention somewhere on all of them.
2. Adjust your title-tags, don’t just set and forget. Web pages were designed to be living, evolving documents. Re-evaluate them constantly for opportunities. Google and Bing like sites that change regularly anyway.
3. If you’re in an industry with a high-amount of image search volume (cars, celebrities, yachts, jets, flowers, desks, tattoos… the list is huge) get your images tagged and into Google Image Search. The new interface shows your content behind the images, so if you can provide a compelling reason for people to close the lightbox, they will.

*American taxpayers owned over 60% of GM (Pontiac’s parent company) until this week.