Author Archives: ghotchkiss

The Social Fabric of Search

First published February 1, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

You know the phenomena of Synchronicity, where once you become aware of something it seems like everyone is talking about the same thing? You can’t turn a corner without seeing some reference to something that just a week ago didn’t even register on your social consciousness. For me that was social search and the time was last week. While I was certainly aware of social search before that, for some reason, last week was the week where the knocking got so loud I had to pay more attention.

In looking at the referrer logs for my blog I noticed that Stumbleupon seemed to have emerged as a major traffic source. Also last week, I was on a panel with Danny Sullivan and he mentioned that we have to start watching social engines like Digg and Stumbleupon as emerging trends in the search space. Finally I did an interview with Larry Cornett, one of the key usability people at Yahoo, and when I asked him what the differentiating factor was for Yahoo in the future, he pointed to the emergence of social search and gave me Yahoo! Answers as the current example of that in practice.

There seems to be a lot of buzz around social search but exactly how is social search shaping our search experience and why we should be looking at it in the future? When Danny Sullivan mentioned that social search is something to keep your eye on, I made the point that different types of search engines lead themselves to different types of search activity.

Serendipitous Search

What I noticed Stumbleupon show up in my referrer report, I did some investigation into what Stumbleupon is about. Stumbleupon is the embodiment of serendipitous search. Its whole purpose is to help you find new sites that you might think are interesting. And here’s where the aspect of social search, or community, comes in. Stumbleupon depends on a network of like-minded people to earmark sites that would be of interest based on your profile. It’s based on the concept that great minds think alike. Apparently, someone in the online universe had pegged my blog as one that might be of interest in some particular niche and suddenly dozens of other people were stumbling upon it, guided by their online friends.

Stumbleupon is probably the best example of serendipitous search but Digg is another one, albeit with a slightly different flavor. While Stumbleupon helps you find sites, Digg connects you directly to new content about specific topics. Like Stumbleupon, Digg uses a rating system to allow community members to vote on whether a site or story is noteworthy. Both Stumbleupon and Digg have emerged as significant drivers of traffic in recent months so as marketers, we have to keep these sites on our radar.

From the user’s perspective, the aspect of social search becomes interesting in these two examples because they help guide us to explore undiscovered territory online. We’re going where we haven’t been before and it helps us when people who share our interests can guide the way. In each case, social search lends credibility to new sites with which we have no previous experience.

The Wisdom of Crowds

James Surowiecki wrote a book called the Wisdom of Crowds. The basic premise of the book is that crowds, given the right conditions, can be amazingly intelligent. He cites a number of examples where a large group of people, acting independently with limited amounts of information, collectively came to decisions that were more valid than those of all but the very smartest individuals within the group. The whole became greater than the sum of its parts.

This is the basis of a new flavor of social search where the community collectively builds the index of the search engine. Consider Yahoo! Answers. You pose the question and Yahoo’s community kicks into gear to provide the answers. These answers are aggregated and provide searchable content that make up Yahoo! Answers. Based on my conversation with Larry Cornett and recent comments by Yahoo CEO Terry Semel, it appears that Yahoo Answers provides a clue into their strategy for going head to head with Microsoft and Google. This concept of community building a better search experience is key to Yahoo and a main strategic platform for the future.

Another example of this variation of social search can be found in Search Wikia, the new search initiative that “is going to change everything” according to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales. In Search Wikia, it’s a case where the broad concept seems to be in place but the specifics on how it’s going to be executed still seem a little thin.

The biggest challenge with this variation of social search is that it depends on the engagement of individual members of the community. Unless you have volunteers that are willing to spend their time enhancing the search experience, the scalability of the project breaks down. Anything that depends on people to take time to tag results, to contribute or to answer questions is dependent on the person’s motivation to participate. While that’s present in a very small percentage of our population, it’s not a commonly found trait in most of us. It’s generally been proven that hardware is rapidly scalable, people are not.

However you define social search, the fact remains that the combination of search and the very notion of an online community are inherently aligned. Communities are all about connections, and nothing can connect faster than online search. It will take us a while to smooth out the wrinkles, but search is fundamentally social and communities are fundamentally connected. These concepts will live together in the online world.

 A new study from BIGResearch has shown that Word of Mouth continues to be the most influential factor in consumer decisions.

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There’s nothing too earth shaking about this. But consider how Word of Mouth is defined today.

The Web has taken Word of Mouth, which used to be restricted by geographic realities, and exploded it outwards in all directions. Even the very phrase implies a face to face conversation, which by necessity restricts how quickly word of mouth could spread. But now, word of mouth encompasses consumer generated media, which means that stated opinions can spread much further and faster than ever before.

Perhaps the easiest way to judge the implications of the web effect on word of mouth is to strip it back to it’s essential meaning, and then work outwards again.

Word of mouth implies that you’re getting an opinion from someone who:

    1. is familiar with a product or service through personal experience; and,
    2. can be objective because they have no vested interested in whether you buy the item or service in question.

If it meets these two criteria, word of mouth has the ring of authenticity, which is rapidly becoming a valuable commodity on the Web. Historically, word of mouth came primarily from friends and family, so our circle of potential influencers was limited to a few hundred people at the most. We received our word of mouth recommendations in two ways. Either the person giving the opinion had become an evangelist for the product and was offering their opinion whether it was asked for or not, or we would seek out someone we knew who we trusted and who we knew to have previous experience with a product or service. For me, the second type of word of mouth was generally a little more influential. In either case, the reach was restricted, because there was no way for the average person to expand their communication network beyond their normal contacts.

If you took an evangelist and tried to expand their coverage, the value of the message eroded. If the vendor facilitated this, the authenticity decreased and the message became a testimonial. Influential, yes, but not truly word of mouth. Or if the person happened to have a forum that allowed them the spread the word farther, i.e. a newspaper columnist or a TV personality, the authenticity was lost and it became another celebrity endorsement. Again, influential, but missing the grass roots power of true word of mouth.

For word of mouth to be truly powerful, it has to live close to the ground, come from real people, and not have the faintest whiff of commercialism about it.

Now, look at what the empowerment and connectivity of the Web has enabled. If a person chooses to be an evangelist, they still sacrifice authenticity, even if distribution of the message is done digitally. But search allows consumers to connect to real people, just like you and I, who have shared their opinion on something with us online. This maintains authenticity, and opens up the new power of word of mouth.

Think of what sites like TripAdvisor has done for travel. If you were going to go to Florence and you wanted to find a hotel, what would be the odds 15 years ago of finding someone in your social circle that would have the personal experience necessary to give you the advice you were looking for? Probably slim. But now, through search, you can find a number of people who have all stayed at hotels in Florence and have shared their experiences, both good and bad. TripAdvisor uses this collective “word of mouth” to rate the hotels. It’s tremendously influential and it’s available to all of us.

This tying together of consumers into ad hoc ideological communities around a product or service is becoming tremendously powerful, and is completely redefining the principles of marketing and branding.

Kevin Lee on the Lee-ching Effect of Search

Kevin runs a great column on a topic I explored awhile ago in SearchInsider: are search engines leeching value from the web? Kevin approaches it from a slightly different angle than I did, but the conclusion was similar. Vendors are beginning to resent having to pay for every search generated touchpoint with a consumer. Kevin’s point, which I share, is: Get Used to It!

Here’s the 10 second summary of the idea, but please take some time to read the column. Consumers continue to turn to search to connect with an online vendor, even after the initial introduction. The vendor has to either maintain a prominent position in the sponsored ads, or, in some cases, pay an affiliate who is maintaining a high organic position (this reference is somewhat ironic, coming from the company that says SEO is simple enough that these affiliate sites should be cut out of the ecosystem). The vendor resents having to pay this recurring toll every time the customer visits them.

Having to invest to maintain share of wallet with a consumer is nothing new. It’s just that the new power of online and search in part makes this investment more focused than it’s ever been before. It used to be that maintaining enough top of mind to ensure a continuing connection with a customer was spread out over a number of marketing channels. Somehow, advertisers would accept this. But now, with the focused use of search to navigate the web, including return visits to a particular site, the cost is being concentrated in one channel. If anything, this introduces efficiency into the marketplace and could potentially save the marketer money, but all they see is a growing cost they have to pay to one channel to keep customers they thought they had already won. The missing piece here is solid data about the shift of influence from more traditional channels to the new search one. The marketer doesn’t know whether they have to maintain all the previous marketing activity, or can they confidently begin moving budget to the new one, namely search.

Read Kevin’s column, and then take a look back at my view. It’s a thoughtful look at an interesting shift in marketing dynamics and is a refreshing change from some of the other opinions currently coming out of Did-It.

The Goodman – Hotchkiss Smack Down

Okay…maybe it’s nowhere near the Pasternack vs the Rest of the SEO World Debate that’s currently going on (which is apparently now even spawning it’s own T-shirt), but Andrew Goodman took exception to my recent SearchInsider column, where I also ponder the future of SEM/SEO.

To save you a ton of reading, I’ll summarize the salient points of both.

My take:

SEM shops, and in particular, SEO shops, have been so tactical and have developed such a specialized set of skills that it will be difficult for us to step back and look at the bigger picture necessary to guide us in the next evolution of search into a more personalized channel. Further, as the current reality of universal search results pages gives way to personalized results, the market value of this highly developed skill set, largely based on the current paradigm of optimizing to gain rank, will begin to lose value to potential acquirers as rank ceases to have any meaning. This will create a shakeout in the industry as some of the best practitioners become employees with large companies and others can’t keep up with the new evolution of search.

Andrew’s take:

I missed some factors, in particular the fact that you can’t predict financial fads and roll ups and acquisition are often driven more by buzz from Wall Street than logic, and that acquisition is often driven by the target’s client list and expertise in a skill set that the buyer doesn’t currently have. Further, Goodman feels that contrary to my point, SEM’s are actually pretty strategic in their execution of campaigns and that our front line approach in customer acquisition is giving us exactly the skills needed to market in the new online reality. He goes on at some length about how the majority of the agency world is drastically out of touch with this new reality.

Of course, both Andrew and I being Canadians, we’re probably both way too polite and pragmatic to create much of a stir. Note the carefully worded way Andrew threw down the gauntlet:

Gord Hotchkiss argues that SEM firms aren’t getting acquired for large sums mainly because they’re too tactical and don’t have skills that help them work on segmenting and customer profiling. I tend to think that the picture is more complex. Or maybe, it’s actually simpler. Either way, Gord’s assessment of current reality is correct, but his analysis is wrong.

It’s kind of like Mac n Tosh, the really polite Warner Brothers gophers, in the WWF. “You hit me first.” “No, I insist, you take the first swing.” “No, no, that would be rude, please put me in a pile driver.”

But I do encourage you to read Andrew’s post, as I think it definitely adds to the perspective. And here, I’d like to dive a little deeper on some of the points Andrew brings up:

I happen to think search marketing is a fine training ground for the strategic mind. Of course, no small consulting firm is given the keys to the entire marketing strategy for a large client, but discounting for size, the influence of the search marketer is impressive. Look at all the data clients already let search marketers work with! While expensive, ponderous segmentation and market research exercises are not the typical MO of the searchie, that’s often because these don’t translate very well to the particular campaigns they’re asked to work on.

Well, in most instances, this usually contradicts the point Andrew is making. While I agree that we often get access to a lot of data, it’s usually in support of the crushing load of tactical work that has to be done in search. We need to dive into conversion data, site stats and a mound of other data to tweak and optimize the campaign. And it’s this deep dive into the data that often keeps us from seeing the big picture. And yes, segmentation and market profiling are ponderous work, and that is tactical, but it’s the ability to take the results and apply them strategically that truly sets apart great marketing. I agree with Andrew that there’s a real danger of misuse of profiling, and it’s horrendously abused in the traditional agency world to justify expensive sponsorships that are more about boondoggles and perks for agency execs than it is about effectively reaching target consumers. But to me, the biggest thing missing in Search is the who and the why. We know where and we guess at what, based on a series of tests.

Here’s how it usually works. We test for best position. We come up with messaging and test for effectiveness, often based on a set of metrics that are end of funnel targeted, because that’s the best we can do right now. There’s testing, testing and more testing.  Andrew makes this point as well:

(Testing is) certainly something search marketers are uniquely skilled to do. In paid search, we learned “direct marketing analysis on steroids,” not from any book, but from the ground up. Now we’re busy writing the book.

This brings us to a point that came up during our panel at the recent Microsoft Summit. One member of the audience equated search to direct marketing. This is a common comparison, but it points to the very reason most SEM’s are too myopically focused. Here’s one definition I found for direct marketing:

Direct marketing is a type of advertising campaign that seeks to elicit an action (such as an order, a visit to a store or Web site, or a request for further information) from a selected group of consumers in response to a communication from the marketer.

From a marketer’s perspective, this pretty much sums up search. It’s what we all want people to do through search. But, and here’s the thing, it’s often not what the user wants to do. The point at which search is used and the point at which the consumer is ready to take the action could be seperated by days, weeks or even months. Here’s another symptom of our short sightedness. When we measure actions, we show a strong bias towards the purchase end of the funnel. Most marketers either don’t or can’t measure promising activity earlier in the funnel. It’s often not our fault, because the leap from measuring end of funnel activity to full funnel activity is huge, and largely impossible. It requires a sophistication of reporting that’s beyond the ability of any single platform. So we tend to focus on what we can measure. And this leads to an increase in short sightedness.

What we need is the who and why. We need to look at presentation of our messaging through the eyes of the target. We need to understand intent, and deliver on it. That dramatically reduces testing cycles. When you learn to do that, your strategy defines itself. Contrary to Andrew’s point…

Customer profiling? I think it’s useful, but let’s not get too cute.
(By the way, I think Andrew’s Canadianism is showing here. Most Search Marketers I know would call it BS)

…knowing your customer isn’t cute, it’s critical. Up to know, search has been able to effectively deliver leads without this understanding. That’s a testament to the power of search as a channel. But those days are rapidly ending. My point is this view is now essential to reach customers in a more personalized search reality, or if it’s not essential now, it will be very very soon. And knowing your customer means research, profiling and creating paradigm shifting frameworks, such as personas. And I don’t mean in the way traditionally abused by agencies, but in highly effective ways pioneered by product designers and employed by Future Now, who Andrew refers to.

A few totally awesome data analysts in these firms – and a handful of independent analysts – are doing exactly the right things, while most everyone else in the agency infrastructure is not empowered to act on the power of the data (or put less politely, they’re just pretending). Agency culture is still dominated by the power of “creative,” and subjective judgments of “spots.”

Okay, here’s one point in where Andrew and I are in complete agreement. Agencies don’t get it, and although some bright individuals within the agency structure do, they’re hamstrung and stiffled by crushing inertia and old thinking. Andrew seems to think I implied agencies wouldn’t buy because they knew how to do it. That wasn’t my point. It was agencies won’t buy because they think they know how to do it. And the distinction is important. In fact, somewhere on my desktop is a half finished blog post where I looked at why this happens, but I shelved it because I thought it might be too “impolite”. Maybe it’s time I dug it up and finished it. But in the meantime, everything that Andrew points out as being wrong in the agency space I agree with totally.

From the ashes of all of this rises search. Which, though highly tactical, is a great training ground for strategic minds like Joe Morin, who is now CEO of StoryBids, a startup that offers an auction system for product placement.

Again, in trying to point out a difference in opinion, Andrew actually helps reinforce a point I was making. Joe is a good friend and a great example of the handful of survivors who are evolving into the new reality. I mentioned that the challenge for SEOs in particular (which was Joe’s background, along with being a private investigator) was in being willing to draw back from their current view and skill set and to reinvent themselves to find a niche in the rapidly evolving online ecosystem. Joe is a master of this and acts as a great example for the industry. Andrew also mentioned he has some skin in a new game, and as one of the smarter people in search, he’ll evolve quite nicely as well. And I think in the word “evolve” we come to the crux of this. Perhaps the best way is to sum up with the following comparisons

Traditional Agencies = Dinosaurs
SEMs/SEOs Unwilling to Change = Mastadons
SEMs/SEOs Embracing Change = Primates

New Behavioral Column on Search Engine Land

After months of negotiation (okay, maybe days) the first Just Behave column runs on Search Engine Land. When Danny Sullivan first mentioned he wanted the new site to explore user behavior and usability issues, I sent him an email saying “Hey, I would love to do that!” Today it kicks off in grand fashion with an exclusive interview with Google’s Marissa Mayer. Next week, we talk to Larry Cornett at Yahoo! and the following week, Justin Osmer at Microsoft, all about the user experience on their search engines. I’ll also be continuing my regular Thursday slot on SearchInsider and try to keep up the blogging pace. So far, so good.

Speaking of Mr. Sullivan, I actually got to see him at several notches below his typical level of hyperactivity at shows when we both participated on a panel at Microsoft’s AdChamps Summit in Seattle. Also shared the panel with Todd Friesen. The Microsoft people did a bang up job. I’m under NDA so I can’t spill the beans on much, but their vision of the future of advertising is pretty cool. As the stuff rolls out, I’m sure we’ll be getting you the details when we’re able. If you want the “official” version of what Microsoft is publicly previewing, check out Kevin Newcomb’s article over at Searchenginewatch.

SEM’s Seven Year Itch: Part Three

First published January 25, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The 2004 acquisition of SEM firm iProspect by the advertising network Isobar marked a turning point in the search marketing industry. Various reports pegged the total value of the deal at about 50 million dollars, including potential earn-outs. IProspect founder Fredrick Marckini stood to be a very wealthy man.

The iProspect deal wasn’t the first or last acquisition to happen. But the valuation of the deal (together with an earlier Performics/DoubleClick deal) set a new high-water mark for the expectations of the owners of other search shops. Suddenly, it looked like there was a very lucrative exit possible. After years of struggling in the search space, we found that we might just be holding the winning lottery ticket. Up to this point, there was a bit of a taboo about talking of acquisition in SEM circles. We all routinely professed our love for search and how we just couldn’t see ourselves doing anything else. But, hey, a $50 million dollar check can change your thinking somewhat. Suddenly, the SEM community indulged in a little daydreaming and started frequenting the Jaguar Web site and checking out property prices in the Hamptons.

But the flood of acquisitions that was predicted never happened. It was more of a trickle, and when we were privy to details about valuations, they were significantly under the iProspect deal. There are a number of reasons for that (perhaps the topic of a future column). But the fact is, while the owners of search shops have had their appetites whetted, the window for highly profitable acquisitions may have passed by. Here’s why.

Tactically, We’re Awesome

Search marketers are brilliant tacticians, whether they work on the paid or organic side. It’s what we excel at. The biggest show in the SEM industry, ironically titled Search Engine Strategies, is really three or four days jammed packed with tactics, not strategies. We myopically focus on page position, always shooting higher. It’s all about rank. It’s all about being No.1.

What we’re not particularly good at is stepping back and looking at the big picture — the hows and whys of search, and, most importantly, the whos. While this is true across the search space, it’s most apparent with the organic optimizers. Virtually no one in the SEO world has given a hoot about messaging, user experience or intent. It’s all about crawling your way to the top spot. In the last year, I’ve seen a few SEOs starting to change their thinking, but the vast majority is still obsessed with blowing holes in the ranking algorithms.

Rank Becomes Irrelevant

However, we’re rapidly approaching the day when being No. 1 ceases to have any meaning. That’s a view that is tied to the concept of a universal results page. A user searching for “bass” in Seattle sees pretty much the same results page as someone searching in Salisbury or Saskatoon. In this context, rank not only has meaning, it’s the magic bullet.

Currently, the engines are rolling out personalization of results in a number of flavors. Soon geo-targeting, demographics and personal histories will be bigger determiners of the results, and the order you see them in, than the skill of a search optimizer. An aspiring musician in Seattle searching for “bass” may see the biggest selection of bass guitars in the Pacific Northwest in the No. 1 spot.  An angler in Saskatoon will probably see the top bass fishing spots in Western Canada. And the person using their laptop and wireless connection to search for “bass” in a Salisbury pub could well see the official site for Bass Pale Ale.

A New Rulebook

On the organic side, this dramatically changes the rules of search. The hyper-developed technical skill set of SEOs suddenly needs to be rounded out with a deep understanding of the target user. The optimization tactics we felt were going to guarantee us an early retirement, while still valuable, will take a back seat to the ability to segment and understand our target prospects. More important, we have to understand the online paths they’re likely to take, and help our clients intercept them with effective messaging and successful interactive experiences. These are the skills that will be in high demand in the future. There will always be a place for a talented organic optimizer, but it will be as a rather well-paid employee, not a multi-million-dollar acquisition.

Where do these new skills exist? Well, they’re more evident on the sponsored side, as new platform enhancements have allowed the best paid search practitioners to start to segment demographically and geographically. It’s forcing us to do our homework on who our prospects are. And unfortunately, our potential acquirers, the large agencies, believe they have deep bench strength when it comes to segmenting and profiling prospects, certainly deeper than the average SEM shop. I still don’t believe they’re done a particularly good job of porting traditional market research skills to the new consumer-empowered online reality, but I suspect I’d have a hard time convincing them of that.

You know who’s really honing these skills? The behavioral targeting practitioners. Search marketer should start paying a lot more attention to what’s happening in the BT camps.

A Chronic Itch

So where does that leave the average SEM agency? Is a profitable exit still an option as our seven-year itch demands to be scratched? If your valuation depends largely on tactics that gain higher rankings and concentrates on the “where” (on both the organic and sponsored side) rather than the “who” and “why,” your window has passed. But if you’re up for the change and not only embrace the inevitable reality of personalized and integrated search but pioneer the understanding of it, a new market will emerge. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there’s a lot more hard work and learning that has to happen to position yourself in that market, and this time we’re not the front-runners. The truly passionate will persevere and adapt. The rest will find themselves with some pretty good job opportunities — but the summer house in the Hamptons and the Jag XKR convertible will be long shots.

Pasternack’s at it Again

David Pasternack of Did-It is decidedly unrepentant in his campaign against SEO. He’s at it again in a Q&A on DM News. At this point, it’s beyond intellectual debate and seems to be all about generating a storm of activity, with himself at the center. As Danny Sullivan said  “It’s all getting pretty tired”. David continues to insist that you would be a fool not to bring SEO in-house, as anybody can do it, but apparently with paid search (Did-It’s business model) the opposite is true, as only a fool would try to manage their paid search in house.

You know, I was one of the ones that did see some logic (albeit a little convoluted) in David’s original column, and Kevin Lee’s subsequent columns to try to further clarify. There are two sides (or more) to every argument and I usually try the view from both sides before commenting. But I have to say Pasternack is going beyond the reasonable here. The fact is, with many of our clients, it’s organic search they seek consulting help with and it’s paid search that they keep in house. I frankly don’t see a big difference in the level of sophistication required in both channels. In fact, I would say there are more dimensions, and more potential traps, on the organic side. Here are some other reasons why you’re most definitely not a fool if you’re looking for a partner on the SEO side:

SEO Touches Everything

Sometime ago, I wrote a column about why an effective SEO campaign is so difficult to launch within an organization. The biggest reason is that an effective SEO campaign touches many aspects of the business. It’s embedded in content, which generally involves at least marketing and often includes legal, management, product groups and virtually every aspect of the business. And buy in of the IT department is absolutely essential. SEO doesn’t live it one place. To be effective it has to overarch everything. A partner can help make that happen. Talk to many in-house SEO practitioners and they’ll tell you one of their biggest challenges was selling SEO internally. It’s one of the most common immediate pains we solve when we partner with a company.

Nobody is Helping You With SEO

Right now I’m at a Summit hosted at Microsoft aimed at helping people use AdCenter more effectively. Microsoft is most decidedly not telling us how to rank higher on Live Search’s algorithmic results. Neither is Google or Yahoo! Other than the rather thin Webmaster Guidelines (according to Pasternack, all you need to know), there’s very little effort on the part of the search engines to help you understand algorithmic ranking. Why should they? They don’t make money from it. So you have to cobble your information together from various forums and blogs. There’s no official answer source for algorithmic problems. That’s why Search Engine Strategies attendance continues to grow. It’s also why SEMPO is introducing a organic optimization training program.

Nobody is Investing in Making SEO Easier

According to Pasternack, Did-It has “killer technology”. They do have a proprietary bid management tool, and it’s okay, as are many others. I’m not sure I’d call it “killer technology”, as that implies that it kills the competition. That’s just not true. Maestro is just another flavor of  bid management, with some cool features, and some noticeable gaps when you compare it to some of their competitors. But the fact is, there’s a market for building tools to help manage PPC campaigns. Driving this are the engines themselves, who are dedicated to taking the pain out of managing paid search, and are likely the ones who will be introducing “killer technology”, as there’s a strong economic win in it for them and they have substantially more resources than a company like Did-It. The engines are not dedicated in the same way to making SEO easier. The landscape is too messy and the division between white and black is too vague. It’s more open than it used to be, with the efforts of a few individuals (i.e. Matt Cutts, Jeremy Zawodny, Tim Mayer) and the odd tool (i.e. Google’s Webmaster Tools) but it’s nowhere near the scale of development on the paid side, and it never will be.

The Damage Can Be Long Lasting

If you screw up on a PPC campaign, it can be turned off while you figure out what went wrong. It can cost some lost budget, but that’s about it. Screw up on your SEO and it can take months, or even years, to fix the damage. And every day, you’re missing out on traffic that you’ll never get back. It’s all about risk, and there’s substantially more risk on the SEO side. Ask anyone who inadvertently got their URL banned.

SEO is More Difficult to Manage and Control

Paid search keeps you in control. You can measure campaign performance, adjust bids, turn off individual keyphrases or entire campaigns and introduce robust testing frameworks. While this increases the complexity of campaign management, it does leave you in control. With organic optimization, you have to throw your best guess against the algorithm and hope for the best. You surrender control the minute your site is spidered.

The Returns Can Blow PPC Away

Frankly, you’ve be a fool not to fully leverage the potential of organic, because if you do it right, your returns will blow anything you’re getting from the paid side out of the water. There’s a lot at stake, and the returns can continue for a long time, whereas the best managed paid campaign’s benefits end the minute you turn off the tap on the funds. Why wouldn’t you want to make sure you’re exploring every opportunity available to gain better organic visibility?

More of Pasternack’s Wisdom

In the interview, Pasternack made a number of observations that I wanted to deal with individually:

Everybody’s not angry: only a small percentage of readers with an inferiority complex who happen to call themselves SEO experts

Apparently, Pasternack’s brush only paints in black and white, which probably simplifies his world greatly. His one sided comments rubbed a lot of people the wrong way, myself included. I’d argue whether I’m an SEO expert, and I don’t believe I have an inferiority complex. I do travel in those circles however and talk to a wide number of people and generally find that we’re developing a similar attitude to Mr. Pasternack’s credibility in the industry.

I wonder what percentage of Danny’s (Sullivan) show attendees are there to find the “magic SEO elixir.” I would guess a very high percentage. I suppose we all have to cater to our audience.

I happened to be sitting next to Danny as he first read the above quote. “Harrump” would be the diplomatic term for the response. The fact is, SES attendees are not looking for the magic SEO elixir. They’re looking for answers because there’s precious few places they can find them. They’re generally not going to get them through the engines, at least through the official channels. Organic optimization can be complicated, depending on the challenges present. Ironically, many of the attendees are the very same in-house tacticians that Pasternack says should be more than adequate to optimize the site. In many cases, they’re lost and desperately looking for guidance. If SEO is so simple, where is there such a demand for answers? There’s a reason why attendence continues to grow at shows like SES and PubCon. There’s a reason why SEO oriented sites are amongst the most highly trafficked sites on the web (according to Alexa), including Matt Cutts Blog (#1256), Searchenginewatch (#811), Searchengineland (#3963 and growing) and Webmasterworld (#226). People are looking for answers to complicated questions. Not rocket science perhaps, but not a lead pipe cinch either. By the way, Did-It and their Frog Blog are not quite at the same level (#63,244) as these sites that deal with the supposedly artificial “mystique” around SEO.

I would do a Google search for the term “search engine optimization” and run away from any company which can’t even get themselves into the top five organic results. Doctor, heal thyself! And don’t believe for a second that these firms are not trying to get themselves to this coveted position. If they did, they’d win every sale. Maybe I would even hire them.

Okay, let’s apply Pasternack’s logic to himself. Do a search for paid search management in Google and see if Did-It has presence. Here, I’ll save you the trouble:

googlesponsoredsearch

Hmm, don’t see Did-It there. Should we assume that Did-It isn’t very good at what they do? Is it because the return isn’t worth the investment? It could be a number of reasons. And unlike Pasternack, I would hate to make assumptions about their lack of presence because I don’t have all the facts. Carrying this further, let’s look at some of the top SEO agencies, according to Advertising Age’s recent survey in their Search Fact Pack. Of the top 20, none of them are currently ranking in the top 5 for “search engine optimization”. Does that mean you should run from them? No, there’s probably other reasons for it.

Obviously, there is no such thing as the final word in an internet based debate. But a word of advice to Dave Pasternack here. At some point stirring the pot turns into flogging a dead horse.

Yahoo Rolls Out Relevancy Rankings on Paid Search

The rumblings have been in the works for sometime, but Yahoo has set Feb 5 as D-Day for the roll out of their new quality and relevancy scoring on paid search ads. No longer will bid price be the sole determining factor that determines position, bringing Yahoo! closer to Google’s model.

In a release that just hit my inbox, Yahoo says:

“With the new ranking model, all Yahoo! search marketing ads in the U.S. will be ranked by quality in addition to keyword bid price. As a result, Yahoo! will be able to provide a more relevant search experience to users, more valuable customer leads to advertisers, and additional opportunities to its distribution partners.

“Yahoo! is very excited to introduce our new, more quality-focused ranking model because it has the power to significantly enhance the experience we deliver to our users and unlock the full potential of Yahoo!’s search marketing network,” said Terry Semel, chief executive officer, Yahoo! Inc. “With this important piece in place our new search marketing system will allow Yahoo! to more effectively connect people with the businesses, products, services and information they are passionate about.”

Sure, it’s marketspeak, but what do you expect from a media release? Posts about the roll out should be going live soon on the YSM blog, but as of this posting, they weren’t live yet. There’ll probably be something on the Yodel blog as well, but again, nothing yet.

A number of people will post on what this means for execution of marketing strategies. I’d like to comment about the user experience and what this means. Here are some findings about interactions with top sponsored based on our most recent eye tracking study:

Yahoo devotes more screen real estate to top sponsored ads than either Google or MSN. This often marginalizes the presence of organic listings above the fold at typical resolutions. While Google and MSN often shows 2 or 3 organic results at 1024 X 768, often Yahoo only manages to squeeze one result in.

People tend to scan 3 or 4 results at a time, and they almost always start at the top, including these top sponsored ads. They also like to include one organic result in this initial scan set. Yahoo’s regular presentation of 4 top sponsored results breaks the user’s desire to have an organic alternative in their scan set.

Yahoo’s emphasis on top sponsored ads did mean they captured the highest click throughs of any of the 3 engines on top sponsored ads, FOR FIRST VISITS ONLY. On repeat visits, these click through rates dropped dramatically on Yahoo!, but Google managed to hold their rates steady.

Yahoo had the highest occurrence of pogo sticking (returning to the results page after clicking through to a site) and a number of these were after a click on a top sponsored ad. This indicated that many searchers didn’t find what they were looking for, and purposely avoided top sponsored ads on the repeat visits.

All of these findings indicate that Yahoo’s announcement will be good news for users. These top sponsored ads are a key monetization strategy for Yahoo, and if they can improve performance by increasing relevancy, it will mean less pogo sticking and keeping users from avoiding these listings on repeat visits. And good news for users will translate into better results for advertisers.

Of course the cynical side of me asks, “what took you so long?” I think the time is right for Yahoo to leapfrog Google, not keep playing catch up.

Top Spot or Not in Google?

Brandt Dainow at Think Metrics shared the results of his campaign performance with Google Adwords and came up with the following conclusions:

    • There is no relationship between the position of an advertisement in the Google Ad listings and the chance of that ad being clicked on.
    • Bidding more per visitor in order to get a higher position will not get you more visitors.
    • The number one position in the listings is not the best position.
    • No ad position is any better than any other.
    • The factor which has the most bearing on your chance of being clicked on is the text in your ad, not the ad’s position.

These conclusions were arrived at after analyzing the Google ads he ran this year. He says,

“while position in the listings used to be important, it is not anymore. People are more discriminating in their use of Google Ads than they used to be; they have learned to read the ads rather than just click the first one they see”

This runs directly counter to all the research we’ve done, and also that done by others, including Atlas one point. So I decided it was worth a deeper dive.
First, some facts about the analysis. It was done on ads he ran in October and November of last year, for the Christmas season. He acknowledges that this isn’t a definitive analysis, but the results are surprising enough that he encourages everyone to test their own campaigns.
In the following chart, he tracks the click through per position.

Dainow
Brandt expected to see a chart that started high on the left, and tapered down as it moved to the right. But there seemed to be little correlation between position and click through. This runs counter to our eye tracking, which showed a strong correlation, primarily on first page visits. Top sponsored ads on Google received 2 to 3 times the click throughs.

enquirorank

Further, Atlas OnePoint did some analysis from their data set, and similarly found a fairly high correlation between position and click through on Google and Overture/Yahoo.

atlasrank

So why the difference?

Well, here are a couple thoughts right off the bat. Dainow’s data is exclusively for his campaigns. We don’t see click through rates for the other listings, both paid and non-paid, on the page, so we can’t see how his ads stack up against others on the page. Also, it may be that for the campaigns in question, Brandt’s creative is more relevant than the other ads that show. He makes the point that creative is more important than position. I don’t necessarily agree completely. The two work together. The odds of being seen are substantially higher in the top spots, and your creative doesn’t work if it isn’t seen. The discriminating searcher that Dainow sees emerging who takes the time to read all the ads isn’t the searcher we see in eye tracking tests. That searcher quickly scans 3 to 4 listings, usually top sponsored and the top 1 or 2 organic listings and then makes their choice. This is not only true of our study, but the recent Microsoft one that just came out. Although Dainow’s charts over time certainly seem to show that position is less important, there could be a number of other factors contributing to this.

I will agree with Brandt though that if seen, relevant and compelling copy does make a huge difference in the click through rate of the ad. And for consumer researchers in particular, I still see search advertiser’s cranking out copy that’s not aligned to intent. But all the evidence I’ve seen points to much higher visibility, and hence, click throughs, in the top sponsored spots.

When looking at analysis like Brandt Dainow is presenting, you have to be aware of all the variables. In this case, I’d really like to know the following:

  • What were the keywords that made up the campaigns
  • What was the creative that was running for his clients
  • What was the creative the competition was running
  • What were the overall click throughs for the page

In doing the analysis, you really need to control for these variables before you can make valid conclusions. Some are ones we can know, others, like the overall click throughs, only the engines would know.

But Dainow is quick to point that his findings show the need for individual testing on a campaign by campaign basis. And in that, we’re in complete agreement. Our eye tracking tests and other research shows general patterns over common searches, and the patterns have been surprisingly consistent from study to study. It probably gives us as good idea as any what typical searcher behavior might be. But as I’ve said before, there is no such thing as typical behavior. Look at enough searches and an average, aggregate pattern emerges, but each search is different. It depends on searcher intent, it depends on the results and what shows on the page, it depends on the engines,  it depends on what searchers find on the other side of the click. All these things can dramatically affect a scan pattern. So while you might look to our studies or others as a starting point, we continually encourage you to use our findings to set up your own testing frameworks. Don’t take anything for granted. But that’s a message that often doesn’t get through. And my concern is that advertisers looking for a magic bullet will read Dainow’s conclusions highlighted at the top of this post and swallow them whole, without bothering to digest them. And there’s still far too many question marks about this analysis for anyone to do that. I’ve contacted Dainow to set up a chat so I can find out more. Hopefully we can shed more light on this question.

Seth Godin’s Web 4.0 and the iPhone

Just as I’m doing one post about Seth’s log, he’s in the middle of making another post. Here it’s about Web 4.0 (yeah, he’s skipping a version or two). But in reading how Seth envisions the Web 4.0, it struck me how close it is to a vision I’ve had for some time (in fact, some of his examples sound eerily close to ones I’ve used in articles and presentations).

Seth’s quote:

“I’m booked on a flight from Toledo to Seattle. It’s cancelled. My phone knows that I’m on the flight, knows that it’s cancelled and knows what flights I should consider instead. It uses semantic data but it also has permission to interrupt me and tell me about it. Much more important, it knows what my colleagues are doing in response to this event and tells me. ‘Follow me’ gets a lot easier.

Google watches what I search. It watches what other people like me search. Every day, it shows me things I ought to be searching for that I’m not. And it introduces me to people who are searching for what I’m searching for.”

For those interested, here’s are a couple versions of my vision:

All Roads Lead Online: What Happens When Our Entertainment Choices Converge with Online and Become Interactive.

Tales of Mobile Woe: Looking for True Usability in a Handheld Device

It’s interesting and overwhelming to ponder. I think the next 5 years will prove to be cataclysmic. It’s all about making the Web more useful. It’s about making it ubiquitous and weaving it into our daily lives. And that’s where the introduction of revolutionary new handheld devices will shake things up dramatically. Apple’s iPhone could mark the beginning of a whole new phase of handheld functionality. As Cory Treffiletti points out in his column this week, Mobile Marketing is getting a lot more interesting with the promise of this functionality. On the flip side, Steve Smith reminds us that the mobile interfaces of most properties have a painfully long way to go.