Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Search Supercharges Ad Platforms but What’s In It for the User?

Seems like all the innovation lately with the search engines has been in rolling out sophisticated ad targeting platforms. Yahoo’s the latest to blow their horn about their own back end (and I realize that paints an ugly picture).

I’m a search marketer, and I love the advances that are being made in being able to target geographically, demographically and behaviorally, but I can’t help but think, “Who are we targeting?”. While the engines try to woo advertisers with better tools, what good is it doing if their market share is dwindling because they’re not giving the user a reason to use the engine?

I have not seen a significant improvement to the every day search user experience from any of the big 3 in years. One may argue that if you take advantage of search history or other enhancements that have debuted in beta, it offers more value to the searcher. But that does nothing for the vast majority of searches that happen every day on Google, Yahoo and MSN. Nobody has upped the ante. Ask is the only engine I’ve seen that made some significant changes on the interface (more about that later today).

As a search marketer, it’s all about market share. It takes time to target and strategically plan a campaign, and while the new platforms offer some impressive capabilities, they also add time required to manage them. Am I going to use that time to target 11% of the search market, 23%  or 50%? It just makes sense to use your time where it gets you the biggest return.

A word of advice. Worry about getting the users first, then worry about the tools to target them.

Putting Every Book Ever Published One Click Away

is Sherman had an interesting post in Searchenginewatch about a Wired article on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft’s goal to make every book ever written digital and searchable. While they’ve been working on it awhile, there’s still an immense amount of information to digitize. Chris also talks about the ephemeral nature of the web and wonders if the search indexes could help reconstruct seemingly lost web pages by retrieving crawled versions from their cache.

Almost since the beginning of recorded history, man has dreamed about collecting all the world’s knowledge in one place. Perhaps the closest we ever came was the Library of Alexandria. That was over 2000 years ago. It’s estimated that the Library held over 500,000 scrolls. Today, Google is scanning about 1,000,000 books a year, and that only represents 5% of all the books in print. Obviously, the task is larger than ever, but we may also be closer to realizing it than ever before!

Will Search Become a Duopoly!

Turning the heat up on the Microsoft-Google showdown is causing speculation that smaller players may get squeezed out. The timing is interesting, because I had a great chat with new Ask CEO Jim Lanzone last week. I’ll be posting more about it later this week, but Ask is taking a very down to earth, pragmatic and focused approach to the upcoming search war, and one that resonates with me. Don’t count these guys out yet!

Yahoo’s Keyword Selector Tool Broken?

Quick question. Is anybody else getting really strange results out of the Keyword Selector Tool at Yahoo? I just did a search for Los Angeles, and apparently all people are searching for are cars. These were the results I got:

Searches done in April 2006
Count Search Term
 350883  toyota los angeles
 333459  honda los angeles
 280591  bmw los angeles
 279022  chevrolet los angeles
 238133  ford los angeles
 226776  mercedes benz los angeles
 181748  nissan los angeles

Either everyone in Los Angeles is buying a new car, which could be, or the inventory tool needs a complete engine rebuild. Just wondering if anyone can shed a little light on this.

Did a quick check on Google based on keyword popularity and here’s what this tool gave me as the top variations:

los angeles, los angeles hotels, los angeles ca, los angeles california

That seems to make more sense

Quintura, Staking the Future on Semantic Mapping

First published May 11, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I pity the poor new entry in the search engine space. How do you possibly stake out new territory in the hottest online space there is? How do you avoid being swept away in the tidal wave of momentum that is going to the industry leaders, Google, Yahoo and MSN? How do you attract enough users to gain a critical mass? Well, you have to offer something different.

A new desktop search tool, Quintura, is betting that a new user interface based on the concept of semantic mapping is just the ticket it needs to win the search lottery. And if semantic mapping sounds familiar, it should. I’ve been talking about semantic mapping for almost two years now. It’s a powerful concept in understanding how people search and something we identified in our previous research. But when it comes to building a new user interface around it, I’m not sure Quintura’s implementation will be taken up by the search masses.

A Semantic Map Primer

First of all, if you haven’t heard me speak about the concept previously, let me introduce you to the theory of semantic mapping.

Whenever we use a search engine, we have a concept in mind. The concept is usually fairly complex, consisting of a lot of pre-existing relationships we have made mentally. I’ll stick to the example I usually use to illustrate the concept. Let’s assume we’re beginning our research for an upcoming digital camera purchase. In this case, our concept will likely include connections with brands we’re familiar with (Nikon, Kodak, Canon, Olympus, etc), features (zoom, number of megapixels, autofocus) and our intent (finding consumer reviews, reading testimonials, finding side-by-side feature comparisons). These connections can be expressed by the words that define them. Together, all the words that define our concept make up our semantic map. It could consist of dozens or even hundreds of words.

But when we go to a search engine, we distill the concept down to the broadest possible phrase, both out of a desire to be inclusive in our search, and out of a reluctance to expend too much effort in constructing our search (which is a diplomatic way of saying we’re lazy). So we search for “digital camera.”  When the results are presented to us, that original concept and its accompanying semantic map is still in place. It plays a vital role in how we react to the listings. We scan listings, and if we happen to find appearances of the words in our map, that listing registers as being a better match to our intent.

Quintura’s Take on Semantic Maps

When I first heard about Quintura, it was like somebody had built a search tool around the Powerpoint slide I’ve been using for the last year and a half to illustrate the concept. Just like that slide, the query used sits in the middle of an actual word map, surrounded by related words that further define the concept. In Quintura, as you click on words that define the concept, they get added to your query, causing the words in your map to update and restrict the focus of your search, allowing you to quickly and graphically structure very specific queries. The theory is that clicking through a semantic map will allow you to spend less time sifting through irrelevant results.

In theory, this should be a huge step forward in the user experience. But, feeling somewhat traitorous to the concept I helped pioneer, I’m not sure it’s the answer for the next big search interface. Here’s the problem…

When All’s Said and Done, We’re Still Lazy…

You’ve been able to structure advanced search queries for ages. But through it all, less than 5 percent of all searches have taken advantage of these capabilities. Quintura’s take is just another way to build the query. The real time updating is cool, and may help refine the search when you’re not exactly sure of the query you should be using, but I’m not sure this is enough. I think it will make Quintura an interesting footnote in the search “also ran” category.

There are reasons why we search the way we do, and not being able to think of the words is generally not one of them. We know the words–in fact, we know too many of them. They reside just under the conscious layer, making themselves known when there’s a match in the result we’re looking for. But this is hardly an articulated process. It happens in split seconds, through subconscious connections. It’s almost transparent to us, as we hardly notice it’s happening. It’s one of those things that when you hear it explained, you say, “Yeah, that makes sense. I’m sure I do that,” but you didn’t know you did it.

My theory? If it takes longer than one second and more than one click to refine your search, you’ve excluded 95 percent-plus of your potential market. Quintura’s approach, although undeniably cool, fails on both counts. I still believe semantic mapping is vitally important, but I think search engines have to get better at creating those maps transparently, through disambiguating our intent by getting to know us better. I believe it’s unrealistic for a search engine to expect the user to go to the trouble of building the map for them.

So what about the other 5 percent? The power users, or the searchers who don’t know what they’re looking for and need the prompting of related words? Again, it comes back to critical mass. This might be a welcome addition to Google’s advanced features, but it can’t attract enough attention as a stand-alone to survive. Then again, perhaps catching Google’s attention isn’t such a bad play.

Sorry, Quintura. I feel like I’m disowning one of my children, but unless you’re looking at being gobbled up by one of the big three, I don’t see this as the winning ticket in the great search lottery.

Day of Reckoning Coming for Big Brands; or, to Hell and Back on United

I’ll start with a caveat: I’m PO’d. I spent a night from hell on Tuesday trying to get to Toronto from Chicago. But I hope in the midst of my spouting I get a valid point across.

First, the story of why I’m PO’d. I was flying United on what was supposed to be a one hour hop from Chicago to Toronto. By the way, United asked over $500 for this hop.

I start off by grabbing a sandwich at a little express counter by the gate from a place called Reggio’s To Go. A basic ham and cheese cost me about 8 bucks. This is an airport, so I’m not expecting great things from the 8 dollar sandwich, but even with those low expectations set, I was surprised by how abysmal the sandwich actually was. I had to check twice to make sure it was the sandwich I was eating and not the packaging. It tasted like it had been sitting in the display case since the early Bronze Age. I happened to glance at the sign for Reggio’s, which is obviously a franchise. The brand message is “Fresh and Ready to Go”. “Ready to go” in the garbage seems to be what they meant.

We’re on board by 6:15, the scheduled departure time. The plane is packed, leg room is negligible, and to make matters worse, the person sitting to my immediate right is just coming back from Japan. There’s no room left in overhead, so she tries to jam a roller suitcase, a backpack and a large shopping bag under the seat. None of the 3 fit, so she piles them on the floor between her legs, hoping no one will notice. Nobody does..or at least, nobody mentions anything. This makes the already scarce leg room even more restricted. By this point, I’m resigned to a miserable one hour trip, but then again, it’s an airline, so I didn’t really expect anything more.

The plane is unbelievably hot, but no worries, we should be in the air soon, and hopefully the plane will cool down. We wait, and wait, and wait. After what seems like a century, the pilot comes on and let’s us know they’re having a problem with the fuel gauge. They’re going to try to fix it to know how much fuel we actually have, and then we’ll be on our way. I think it was about this point I passed out from sheer heat exhaustion. After another 20 minutes or so, I woke up, my neck screaming in agony, my legs dead from the waist down, and sweat starting to drip from my forehead. The fuel gauge is still not working, and there’s no progress in sight. After another 30 minutes, it appears that the fuel gauge is thwarting the best efforts of United’s top maintenance crew, so they at least let us off the pressure cooker, 90 minutes past departure time and no closer to Toronto. Somebody insightfully wonders aloud about what they used for a fuel gauge on the flight in?

We get to the gate and are told to stay close for updates. The passengers with connections try to get rebooked. They’re understandably upset. But United’s gate agents seem to think the best approach is to meet rudeness with rudeness. The agents are short tempered and surly, snapping at passengers who have the nerve to see if they can somehow get to Toronto before the clock strikes midnight. “Is your luggage checked? Yes? Sorry then, I can’t do anything for you. Go sit down.” I swear to God, that’s the exact quote I heard.

After another hour and a half at the gate, the recalcitrant fuel gauge gives in and we get back on the plane. We finally get in the air by 10, almost 4 hours after the scheduled departure time. The pilot came on to thank us for our patience and assures us we have 3 of United’s finest flight attendants looking after us. There’s nothing wrong with them, but there’s nothing very right either. There was absolutely no attempt to make it up to us. No gesture of apology. If these are United’s finest, the hiring standards must be pretty low.

As we touch down in Toronto, the pilot comes on again and thanks us for flying the friendly skies. Friendly skies? Frat house initiations are less painful than what I just went through!

And here’s my point. Brand messaging has to be more that a cool line for your ads. It should be a promise. It should drive every aspect of the company. It should embody the unique value you offer. I had the chance to share the keynote spotlight at a recent show with David Neeleman, CEO of JetBlue. David quipped at the beginning that when they started JetBlue, their goal was to raise the bar of the airline industry. Quickly they realized that within the industry, the bar was set so low that you could crawl over it. They soon had to look outside the industry to find examples of best practices that meant something.

The brand relationship should be built at every customer touchpoint. I had a number of touchpoints with the United brand on Tuesday, and the sum total left me feeling like I’d been mugged. If United really believes they offer a friendlier experience, then every employee should embody that attitude. None of the ones I met yesterday seemed to have been let in on the secret. The attitudes ranged from indifferent to downright surly.

United has probably spent billions getting their brand message out through advertising. But do you think they could spring a few hundred bucks to treat us all to a drink, or even a free cookie when it really mattered? Brand is built on the front lines, face to face with a customer. It’s delivering when the chips are down. It’s taking responsibility for a positive customer experience, and doing what it takes to fix it when it’s not. United abdicated this responsibility, so their brand message became nothing more than a brand lie. It’s worthless to me. In fact, it’s worse than that, because United just dug a hole for themselves with me that they may never get out of. I will avoid United like the plague from this point forward.

The same is true, to a lesser extent, with Reggio’s and the world’s worst sandwich (somewhat ironic, because I had one of my best sandwiches in Chicago the day before). If their slogan is to be any more than another brand lie, then they have to deliver edible food. The brand has to mean something. How do they expect it to mean something to the consumer when the company itself doesn’t believe the brand message?

Up to now, companies could get away with this. You could screw over the consumer and their circle of influence was limited. Sure, they’d complain, but as long as you kept bumping millions into slick TV ads painting idyllic pictures of brand nirvana, you could keep the ruse going. It was the “sucker born every minute” approach to advertising. But those days are coming to an end. Now, when I call bullshit on a brand message, I have an expanded reach through the internet. Some call it consumer generated media. I call it Bitching 2.0.

There’s a new ecosystem developing online. Marketing theorists have long known of mavens. Mavens are a key component in social epidemics, as Malcolm Gladwell pointed out in the Tipping Point. Traditionally, they’re the ones that have been entrusted to keep brands honest. They are the uber-consumers that the rest of us look for guidance to. They tell us what’s good, and what’s not. Traditionally, they needed social connectors to spread the word.

But what happens when you give a maven a blog? Suddenly, connectors are built into the infrastructure of the web. I would argue that the new mavens are the ones with the most read blogs. They’re thoughtful, they’re well informed, and many of us have them pegged in our feed readers. Suddenly, the scope of their influence expands exponentially. As an example, my blog is only a few weeks old, but most of my posts are read by hundreds of people. If I get a link in another blog, the viral impact starts to take over. My rant against a bogus brand message could reach thousands. And there were at least a hundred other passengers on that United flight, just as PO’d as me, any of which could be a blogging maven. The web puts the spread of word of mouth on a dramatically expanded scale, on a compressed timeline. Also, it makes word of mouth, traditionally a fleeting thing, into a permanent fixture online. This blog post will live in perpetuity on the web, searchable by any search engine. Suddenly, the big brands can’t take the reach of a single consumer for granted.

To me, this shift of power to the consumer is one of the most exciting aspects of the web, and it’s long overdue. Now, we have the power to force corporations to keep their brand promise, or perish.

And to the staff of United Flight 1110, let me pass this along. The definition of “friendly” is:

  1. Of, relating to, or befitting a friend
  2. Favorably disposed; not antagonistic
  3. Warm; comforting.

Please pass it along to every United staff member you know.

Ooops! It Really is a Small World After All

The Traffic Power guys are really too much. I had told you about the complaint that came my way from them. Seems these guys are also implying to prospective customers they have an “in” at Google because of a friendship with certain head engineers. Which engineers you ask? Well, the name Matt Cutts seems to be bandied about.

Hmmm..I know Matt. Wonder if he knows certain SEO’s are using his name in this manner? I just happened to have an email from a Traffic Power rep forwarded to me from a client that hinted at this special relationship. And I may have accidentally forwarded this to Matt. Ooops.

Matt’s words, “Extremely uncool”. Yeah..I’d echo that one. Come on, our industry has enough challenges without this. If an SEO tells you he’s friends with Matt Cutts, or any other person at any of the search engines, that’s one thing. It’s a small biz and we’re all pretty friendly. But if anyone hints that the keys to the church are for sale, based on a personal relationship with Matt or anyone esle, don’t believe them. Matt’s helped us out on occassion in understanding how Google indexes a site, just like he’s helped thousands of webmasters. That’s his job. But when it comes to influencing search results, there’s a church/state divide that just won’t be breached. Nuff said.

Notes from Chicago

My session is over at ACCM and the crowd was pretty search savvy. The show is the Annual Catalog Conference and the search sessions were slipped in before the main show started. Also, the search track was relegated to a room that was pretty much in the back alley of the McCormick Center. Seems like search is still having difficulty gaining respect. You’d find it hard to believe based on the profile at this show that this one channel is driving the majority of online spending of the attendees. Still, great to see some old friends, including Detlev Johnson, Matt Bailley, Bill Hunt and Mike Moran, the incredibly perky Heather Lloyd-Martin and the ever thoughtful Amanda Watlington. Kevin Lee also kept us on the edge of our seats right to the last minute as he got held up at the airport. Kevin is obviously still adjusting to “Dad Time”, where it seems you’re perpetually late for everything. Still, Kevin’s got a great reason to be late.

By the way, if you’re in Chicago, try out Potbelly Sandwich Works on State. Slipped in for a quick Italian sub yesterday and it was awesome.

Quintura: Semantic Mapping in Action

I’m beginning to feel like the walls have ears. Just after saying that Ask.com seemed like they were listening to us when we were out preaching usability in search, I happened to see a post for Quintura on John Battelle’s blog today. In it, John talked about creating a “complex query using a map of related words.”

My God, that sounds just like the semantic mapping theory I’ve been droning on about at industry shows for the last year and a half! I had to check this out.

Sure enough, Quintura builds an actual semantic map of related terms graphically for you that tries to better define your concept. As you click on words you add them to your main concept, refining it and the map further updates itself, narrowing the focus on what you were looking for.

I’m going to dig into this more when I have some time and will probably make it the subject for this weeks Search Insider, but it’s an interesting twist. For me, the red flag is that Quintura seems to break the Golden Rule of search usability, if it takes more than a click and a second, it’s too much work for us. But that all depends on if they’re aiming to be a niche or mainstream player. 3 to 4% of the search market is willing to spend the time to refine the query, but for the rest of us, there just isn’t a big enough payoff to justify the time.

Tivo Now in the Search Game

This just in: Tivo is going to let viewers search for the advertising content they’re interested in!

Brilliant! Imagine, letting consumers chose to look for product information when they’re actually interested in it. I think this has far reaching implications. Imagine if we could do something similar with websites..some sort of thing where we could search through all the content on the web so if there was a product we were interested in, we could find the right site. We could call it a…search engine!

But seriously, there is one quote from the story that reinforces everything I’ve been saying about search:

Users will be able to search through ad and product information spots ranging in length from 1 to 60 minutes from five different ad categories like finance, travel, and lifestyle.

See the word “search”? That’s the key. Consumer control absolutely requires search. Whether video search is done through Tivo or a search engine (and search engines will win this battle) the act of searching is the important thing. It’s that simple, fundamental concept that will power the entire future of marketing. It’s the connection that makes everything else possible.

Another interesting tidbit was the major brands jumping on this “brand”wagon. It was probably an easy sell, unlike search branding has been. But then, search isn’t nearly as sexy as being able to tap into a new generation of ad zappers.