Author Archives: ghotchkiss

We’re Jet Setters, But Where’s the Paparazzi?

First published April 27, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

April has been a tough month. At last count, I’ve been in nine different cities (not including my home), a ski resort, on four different airlines for a total of two dozen flights and connections, in eight different hotels, at six different shows, and have also packed in assorted client and organizational meetings. I’ve been spending more time with search marketers than my family, and that can’t be a good thing. As lovely as Anne Kennedy, Greg Jarboe, Kevin Lee and Dana Todd are, I’m pretty sure we’re not related in any way. And I actually had to nix at least two shows from the agenda. It could have been worse!

My perception of reality is getting a little skewed. When you do too many industry shows in a row, you get a distorted sense of your own importance. In SEM circles, I’m fairly well-known. People tend to come up to me in the halls after a presentation and introduce themselves. Many are readers of this column. So, in my own, insignificant way, I guess I’m somewhat famous in search circles. But a rude awakening comes when you actually step out in the real world. The average ticket agent for American Airlines doesn’t really care that I helped define Google’s Golden Triangle or have spoken to standing-room-only audiences at SES in New York. It doesn’t get me a first class-upgrade. Those accomplishments also hold little weight with my wife, just in case you were wondering. The line “Do you know who I am?” usually lands with a decidedly flat thud whenever I try it.

The division between the search world and the real world has led me to postulate on the life of the average search marketer. We seem to be always jetting to some search hotspot (it’s not as exciting as it sounds; one hotspot happens to be Chicago in December). Our lives are lived on laptops and PDAs. We have all the trappings of a high-powered celebrity lifestyle, without the celebrity or the accompanying discretionary income.

If you’re part of the “circuit,” there are no shortage of speaking opportunities. There are search sessions everywhere, including a brand-new crop springing up to join the venerable stalwarts such as Search Engine Strategies, Ad:Tech and Webmaster World’s PubCon. Increasingly, there are cross-country “road shows” as well as demand for search-savvy speakers at other vertical industry shows. One could probably make a full-time job out of speaking, if one chose to. Just in case you’re interested in this job, the busy seasons are the spring and fall.

In part, this reflects search’s current status, caught somewhere between big business and cottage industry. The proliferation of speaking opportunities reflects the growing interest in search, and the demand for speakers is indicative of the relatively small number of thought leaders in the industry who are used to speaking in front of crowds. The ones who have proven themselves tend to find themselves a hot commodity. And for the most part, we do it for free, often covering our own travel costs, in return for raising our profile and hopefully attracting new business to our respective companies. We go from city to city, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, promoting the gospel of search for all who care to listen.

From the outside, it looks to be an enviable position. In fact, some grumble that we in SEM’s elite “inner circle” unfairly use our connections to grab all the plum promotional opportunities. I understand, because I was once on the outside, looking at how to get in. I used to stalk Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at the shows, trying to figure out how to grab a spot on a session panel.

I can certainly share what worked for me. Come up with something different to talk about. For us, it was search user research, and we’ve invested thousands of dollars and man hours in different studies to give us the content we speak about at the shows. Be original, because it’s tough to be a thought leader when you’re just echoing other people’s thoughts.

But a word of warning: be careful what you wish for. Sure, the life of a search marketer may appear to be fast-paced and glamorous, but underneath it all, we’re really just the same as you, very humble and ordinary, and really, really sleep-deprived.

Of course, I’m probably just tired and grumpy. Did I mention that it’s been a tough month?

Why Search May Not Fragment

First published April 20, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

On April 5, fellow Search Insider Max Kalehoff wrote about the likelihood of search continuing to be dominated by three players. Max, very convincingly, argued that our search activity could fragment over a number of properties, some of them vertical engines that offer more functionality, some of them alternative online properties, like social networking sites.

As search becomes an increasing important online staple, I believe the question of where all that activity will take place also takes on increased importance. For that reason, I’d like to play devil’s advocate (in this case, the devil being the established search players, Google, Yahoo and MSN) and offer some reasons why we might continue to consolidate our search activity on these familiar partners.

Creatures of Habit

Generally speaking, our paths are well worn online. We tend to frequent the sites we know, only seeking out new sites when our familiar ones don’t offer what we’re looking for. This is true of most humans.

I’ve written before that online is going through a social evolution, as the early adopters who pioneered the virtual landscape are increasingly being joined by the pragmatic main market. This makes the fact that we tend to frequent sites we know and trust even truer. While viral growth still happens at an amazing pace online, it’s the early adopters, or, in this case, the online mavens, who tend to fuel the viral growth.

And rapid growth is a relative term that we tend to regard disproportionately. If you’re reading this column, my guess is you’re an early adopter. In our social circles, almost everyone we interact with is an early adopter. It’s why we’re in the industry we’re in. So we tend to blow up the importance of the viral growth of new emerging sites. Chances are, everybody you know is aware of Youtube.com, Myspace.com or Technorati.com. But everybody you or I know is an uber-savvy online geek, at least, compared to my mother. Ma’s never heard of Youtube.com. To her, Googling something is still a task to be approached with caution.

For search properties to gain the critical mass needed to safely cross the chasm, they have to attract mainstream users. Otherwise, they’ll become stranded on the leading edge, there to wither and die.

Deep Pockets

Here’s another advantage of the mainstream players. While promising new technologies can gain some significant venture capital cash, it’s a drop in the bucket compared to the billions available to MSN, Google or Yahoo. So, the big three can wait to see which search or online technologies shows the promise of cracking the mainstream market, offering some compelling reasons to use them, and they can swoop in and snap them up.

All things considered, if a Google, Yahoo or MSN can offer equivalent functionality to some hot-as-a-pistol start-up, it’s just easier to stick to one place, rather than hop around the cyber neighborhood. There were image search engines, news search engines and shopping search engines around before the big three started integrating that functionality, but now that they have it, we’re starting to keep our searching under one banner. There is one important thing to note here though; the big three have to at least offer comparable functionality. It doesn’t have to be better, but it has to be just as good. We are not very tolerant of bad user experiences.

Integration

Finally, and I’ve said this over and over again, search is heading for a ubiquitous, transparent future. We will soon see search functionality integrated seamlessly into our applications and operating systems, toiling away on our behalf in the background. In order to make this integration happen, you have to have your foot in either the OS or app world. Microsoft has this in spades, Google is quickly assembling a portfolio of apps and signing up partnerships with potential platform providers, and Yahoo is working the social networking and entertainment integration angle. All of these publishers know what it’s going to take to win the big search war, and they’re already staking their territory. My guess? It would almost be impossible for an emerging player to gain enough ground to challenge their positions.

For the reasons above, I believe that our search activity will continue to consolidate with the big three. The one dark horse I include is Ask.com, which has the potential to gain some significant market share with its new interface. I love underdogs as much as the next guy, but in this case, I think they’re a little late to the dance.

 

Branding, Search and the Definition of Engagement

First published April 13, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Currently, the Advertising Research Foundation has an initiative called MI4. Its task is to create a cross-channel measurement of advertising effectiveness that can foster more accountability and facilitate multichannel marketing measurement. They have decided on the concept of engagement. It is a noble endeavor, and one that is much needed in our new, highly fragmented marketing world. But I fear there may be a fundamental chasm that one metric will be unable to bridge.

Joe Plummer, ARF’s Chief Research Officer, offered the group’s first draft of a working definition, “Engagement is turning on a prospect to a brand idea enhanced by the surrounding context.”

The Two Sides of Engagement

The problem, from a search perspective, is that there are two very different forms of engagement seen with consumers, and brand plays a very different role in each.

In most marketing, brand engagement is essential. You have to form a relationship between a brand and the latent or expressed needs and desires that lie with the consumer. Engagement is essential, because you have to form an emotional bond that can rise to the surface and express itself as top-of-mind awareness when consumers are ready to actively consider their options. In this instance, engagement is emotional, intuitive and often subconscious. It is this level of engagement that I think ARF is trying to define by somehow quantifying this emotional bond, referred to in market speak as being “turned on.”

But there is another type of engagement: engagement with the actual act of purchasing. Here, the consumer is engaged with a product, but not necessarily a particular brand. This is the typical point when a consumer will interact with a search engine. And with ARF’s working definition of engagement, I don’t think search will do particularly well in a multichannel comparison.

Branding and Search

One of the issues with search has been its value as a brand-building channel. The prevailing wisdom is that search is not a particularly effective brand-building marketing medium. I believe this to be true, but it’s because we’re trying to apply the first definition of engagement, the idea of engaging with a brand, not a product.

Consider a typical brand engagement measurement. If I did a brand lift study with a typical page of search results, where I showed a consumer the page, some results with brand messaging included, and determined if brand lift occurred, the results would probably be less than stellar. First of all, the act of searching is done with the left brain. It is a rational, logical interaction, not an emotional one. That’s why text-based advertising does well, and graphic or rich media doesn’t. We’re intellectually engaged in a task, and we’re looking for information that will help us succeed in accomplishing that task. We’re not looking to be influenced by an emotionally charged message. In fact, we block anything that smacks of overt commercialism or looks like advertising out of our consideration. We “thin slice” it out of the way. We are not emotionally connected. We are not looking to be “turned on.” We are evaluating our alternatives with a rational view.

When a consumer is interacting with a search engine, the time for brand engagement is already long past. That job had better be done already. Here is how branding does work in search.

Engagement with Buying, Not Branding

When I use a search engine for consumer research, I’m thinking in terms of the specific thing I’m looking for, not a specific brand. Generally, when I start, I will not use a branded search term. I am building a consideration set. Yes, I likely have brands I have an affinity for, but I won’t explicitly include them in my query. I’m looking for the search engine to provide me some alternatives to consider. Typically, searchers will look at four to five results before making their selection. These are usually the top sponsored, and the top two or three organic, results. This represents the prime and very limited “shelf space” of the search results page. If a brand appears that the consumer has an existing affinity for, the chances are good that the site will capture a click-through. If the brand doesn’t appear, the company has likely lost the opportunity to connect with a consumer that will soon be ready to buy.

Search: The Consummation of a Consumer Relationship

So, for brand marketers, the question is not, “does search actively engage the consumer in my brand messaging” but rather, “am I prepared not to have my brand present when my target consumer is looking to buy (or at least, research to buy)?” To me, it’s as elemental as not stocking the store shelf with your product. The consumer is not looking at building a relationship with a brand, he’s looking to consummate that relationship. Wouldn’t you want to be around for that rather important event?

So, to go back to ARF’s working definition of engagement, I don’t think it works for search. That definition of engagement is about building a relationship with the brand for “some day,” implanting a brand message for the time when the prospect turns into a shopper. When the shopper turns to search, that brand message is already planted. But if the brand isn’t present on the search results page “store shelf,” the message will be forgotten as the consumer clicks on the link of the next alternative.

I applaud ARF’s effort to define one all-encompassing metric, but when you have real people interacting with products and messaging in two very different ways, I’m not sure engagement, at least the way it’s currently defined, will be able to bridge the gap and do the job.

Google is Now Smarter than Daddy

First published April 6, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It was a sad day in the Hotchkiss household. While doing her homework, my  12-year-old daughter, Alanna, had a question. Until now, she always asked me, her father. This time, she went straight to Google.  The 10-year-old, Lauren, is already heading in the same direction. I’m sensing the old days may never return.

Being in a somewhat philosophical mood (I have the time, now that I don’t have to answer questions about pH balances and what a litmus test is) I pondered the implications of this. If there’s a box that always has the right answers, what does this mean for our society? How will having instant access to the absolute authority on everything impact us?

Will the Web kill our research attention span?

If you’re of my generation, researching something in school meant heading for the library, discovering that another classmate already had the volume of World Book you were looking for, then digging into the alternatives. Remember the periodical index? You would look up topics in there, to see which magazines had published articles. It always seemed that the best articles were in Scientific American. When I was lucky enough to actually find the issue I was looking for, I would try to decipher an article that was way above my head, looking for my answers. Perseverance was a key factor here, as it was no minor task to follow the threads from article to article, wade through the verbiage and gradually piece together the information I was looking for.

Most times, I never found exactly what I was looking for. I would assemble a construct of related information, and would usually make inferences based on this that would find their way into my various reports. Of course, you would have to cite your sources for that teacher that everyone despised; the one with no life outside the classroom, who would actually take the time to check those sources out and try to trip you up.

But during this arduous process, I learned some lessons that have served me well. I discovered the sheer joy of acquiring knowledge, even if it wasn’t directly related to my quest at the time. I gained the detective skills needed for the research required when the answers weren’t easily at hand. And I probably improved my reading skills by at least one or two grade levels.

Bite-sized wisdom

Today, in the era of keyword search, answers are given out in bite sized-dollops. They quickly rise to the top from their hiding places, burrowed deep within the dense text on an academic Web site, ferreted out by the probing eye of the search engine. Within seconds, my daughter can find exactly what she’s looking for, conveniently highlighted for her.

In doing a number of usability tests, it’s becoming clear that we don’t assimilate information online the same way we do on a written page. We scan for clusters of words, and avoid large blocks of text. The Web page is not the place for studious reading, but rather a quick search-and-destroy mission, getting in, getting what you’re looking for from a heading, a bulleted list or a caption, and getting out again.

I’ve looked over the shoulder of my daughters as they do their homework (they hate it as much as you might guess) and they go straight for the obvious on a Web site. I look at all the other wonderful paths of discovery that lay just one click away, and ask them why they don’t follow them. Their answer? “But this was what I was looking for!” Are we making it all too easy?

Wisdom without the social interaction

For thousands of years, people have passed along wisdom to people. Whether it’s formal education, apprenticeships or parenting, the transference of knowledge has always taken place in a social and personal context. Knowledge was colored and tempered by personal experience and insight. Also, this process helped build our social skills, engendered respect for elders and helped provide a relevant framework with which to apply to newly acquired expertise. We were taught, we were shown, we were inspired and we were nurtured. Today, we’re just informed.

Much as I love Web search, there’s nothing very social about the process. There’s no one to help you apply what you learn. There’s no one to lend the additional insight of their own experience. Answers obtained through a search engine are detached, impersonal, and sometimes, just plain wrong. Are we trading something tremendously valuable for the ease and immediacy of getting our answers online?

Instant answers without the context of “expertise”

As hard as it was to get answers in the pre-Internet days, there was something to be said for the slow steeping in of knowledge. As we poured through encyclopedias and magazines, textbooks and reports, looking for the answers that were hidden just out of sight, we unknowingly gathered a broader expertise on the topics we were researching. This came out of necessity. Finding the answers meant you had to dig through the information surrounding them. You followed paths that were sometimes red herrings, and sometimes wonderful journeys of exploration. The lack of shortcuts made the longer trek necessary, and often, worthwhile. Today, many years later, I still marvel at the basic and simple beauty of Bernoulli’s Principle, what Gregor Mendel did in his pea patch, and the mysteries that lie locked in DNA. I didn’t have the advantage of an animated multimedia presentation, but somehow, 30 years later, the knowledge has stuck. The answers weren’t easy, but they were satisfying.

I hope my daughters have a chance to experience this, too.

Disney Disses Search – But Misses the Mark

First published March 30, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Fresh from the floors of OMMA in Hollywood…

I was sitting in on the Monday morning keynote address from Albert Cheng, who is ABC’s newly minted executive vice president of digital media. Albert said all the things you would expect him to, including platitudes about embracing new technology, seeing the tremendous promise of digital, and vowing to provide viewers with high quality content, wherever they are, whenever they want to watch, and on whatever they want to watch it on. It went all pretty much according to the script, but halfway through, he made a comment that showed a brief glimpse of raw emotion. Ah… my ears perked up!

First of all, other than in Cheng’s introduction, he barely mentioned ABC. It was the Disney banner that Cheng unfurled and praised for its long-standing dedication to quality content. And he reminded us that this same quality content is not cheap to produce, then proceeded to take a swipe at the search engines. He took exception to the engines seeking to monetize that content through aggregation and disintermediation, echoing a sentiment common with almost all creators of content (see my earlier article, “Is Search a Leech on the Internet?”). But rather than just leave it there, Cheng went on to say that advertising presented by search engines can never hope to be as effective as advertising presented on video.

Whoa there, Albert!

I think you missed a point roughly the size of Walt Disney World. Search advertising doesn’t have to assault the senses or make us feel all warm and fuzzy to get our attention, because it already has that attention: we requested the messages through the act of search.

Cheng slipped back into safe boilerplate corporate speak about how the “halo effect” of advertising presented together with entertainment creates a much stronger response with consumers. He used the placement of Sears appliances and home furnishings in the popular show “Extreme Makeover: Home Edition” as the example.

There was a major disconnect here that was a little troubling, coming from a vice president of one of the largest media corporations in the world. Cheng was trying to draw a comparison between two wildly different advertising channels, and the attempt to contrast effectiveness was naïve at best.

Later That Same Day…

I was moderating a panel on video search. We speculated for 45 minutes on where video is going, and debated how advertising could be incorporated into digital video. At the end, I wrapped up by saying that search has been one of the very few unqualified successful online advertising channels. It remains to be seen how other marketing messages evolve themselves to engage consumer attention. Video remains squarely in this category. And the reason is simple: search gets one basic concept better than any other channel. Consumer control is hardwired into search. Search has become the embodiment of that control, the mechanism through which we request pretty much anything online. You can have all the quality content you want online, but unless a consumer requests it, typically through a search engine of some kind, you have no audience.

Maybe Albert Was Having A Bad Day…

I don’t blame ABC and Disney for feeling threatened. Every executive at a major traditional media corporation is feeling his empire crumbling beneath his feet. The world has shifted 180 degrees, and power has consolidated itself in the hands of consumers. Yes, Disney has invested billions in creating the machine that can churn out entertainment. But the distribution channels for that content have changed irrevocably. We, the consumers, have millions of options, we have control, and search will be the gate through which we allow that content to flow. That puts search in the driver’s seat.

Search has the tremendous advantage of an audience that’s highly interested in its advertising message. The consumer has requested information, and all the search ad has to do is promise to deliver on the consumer’s intent. In this case, simple text messages perform tremendously well. In fact, the introduction of any other type of advertising, including rich media or graphics, breaks the search paradigm and will likely be ignored. Remember search banner ads?

Now, mind you, getting a consumer’s attention with a search ad is harder than it sounds. Probably no one knows better than I how fleeting the search user’s attention is. But the advertisers’ odds for success are exponentially better than if they’re trying to attract the attention of consumers who are not thinking about a product and have no intention of doing so in the near future.

As long as consumer control is exercised through the act of searching, it will provide the single best opportunity to connect with a highly motivated consumer. There is still much work to be done in how that advertising is presented, as we explore the potential of search marketing, but with 40 percent-plus of online ad budgets swinging to search, I think the channel has pretty much proven itself.

Don’t Get Me Wrong…

I do agree with Mr. Cheng in one respect. I think there’s tremendous potential for online video as an ad delivery vehicle. I wrote as much in last week’s column. And I certainly agree that a halo effect is powerful in brand messaging. But to try to draw comparisons between this very distinct marketing approach and search is like trying to say that the airplane is a more effective means of transportation than the car. Two different applications, two very different beasts.

You should know that, Albert. After all, didn’t Disney once have its own search engine? Oh, that’s right. You couldn’t make a “Go” of it.

Video and the Online Paradigm

First published March 23, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Online interactions are generally ruled by the left brain, the logical side of our intellect. We interact in what is primarily a text-based presentation. We read, rather than feel. We assimilate words, rather than absorb sights and sounds. Any moves to bring the emotions of the right brain to the Web have been feeble at best. Generally, we interact with most Web sites the same way we did in 1996. We read text, we click on links, we glance at the occasional graphic. For the most part, our right brain is idling.

Next week’s OMMA show in Hollywood will be looking forward to the day when our emotions will rule how we interact online (among other things). It marks an oncoming convergence that is far more important than the combining of digital media and the Internet. What will be explored and debated in the meeting rooms of the HiltonUniversalCity is a medium that engages both the right brain and left brain, in equal measure, at the same time.

Video Search: The Tip of the Iceberg

Next week, I’ll be moderating a session on Video Search at OMMA Hollywood. In assembling the panel, my initial inclination was to bring the latest in video search optimization techniques to the audience, highlighting the tactics that could put you on top of the video search engines. But there was a deeper question here, and one that I wanted to explore.

I’ve written before about interactive video authoring. MSN is working on the technology, and they’ll be talking about it on the panel. After my column ran, other companies such as Vimation (also joining us), Videoclix and Click TV let me know about the work they’ve been doing in the field.

Defining Online Engagement

The whole question of how our brains engage when we act online fascinates me. How do our emotions kick in to frame the context inside of which we’ll interact with a site? How is that initial emotional evaluation (see the 50 Millisecond Judgment) impact our further, more logical interactions with the site, as we begin reading the content and assimilating it? Right now, it appears that in less time than the blink of an eye, the right brain renders an opinion of a site based on its aesthetic appeal, and that opinion is either reinforced by the content, or continues to be at odds with it, as the left brain digests that content.

This is the way we currently interact. One of the questions we’re struggling with in online marketing is defining engagement. My belief is that the most powerful medium for engagement is the one that most fully engages the senses. I believe we’re more fully engaged when our emotions rule us, when the right brain is in control. For my money, there is no more powerful medium than a truly superb movie, seen at a theater. For that reason, it’s appropriate that we’ll be wrestling with this question in Hollywood, the home of movies, in a venue a stone’s throw from Universal Studios.

This is not to say that words aren’t powerful. Novels can move us to tears. Words can find a connection through our intellect, allowing us to render tremendously engaging concepts, made all the more real because we visualize them internally. But the engagement is more subtle, and happens over time. A novel can’t assault our senses the same way a movie can, because the creators of the movie have hardwired the imagery and emotion directly to our senses, rendering the story for us (I leave aside the question of which is the more fulfilling experience). Also, we don’t read online the way we do a novel. We scan, we pick up snippets of information, and we don’t allow ourselves to be immersed in the act of reading. We are multitasking, and there are just too many other stimuli fighting for our attention.

Emotional…and Interactive!

As broadband moves real video online, we suddenly have a platform that engages our emotions in a way that scanning text online can’t. We create emotional connections to the content, the same way we do with movies or television. But what’s really exciting is that now we can make that content interactive. We can click to access more information, or to guide ourselves through a story. Linear narrative can now give way to hyperlinked multiple story threads. Advertising messages can be delivered with the full impact of a visual, emotional medium, then transition seamlessly to a logical information request. Now, we are engaging both our intellect and our emotions at the same time. That could change everything about the way we interact online. And, as always, search will be the connection to that experience. Hope to see you at the session!

The Bold and the Beta: Two Approaches to Search Innovation

First published March 16, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

As search innovation rolls out to the user, the beta release has been a tried and true way of testing the waters. Currently, there are dozens of different flavors of search in beta, including a significant portion of Google usability. Beta releases were originally a quality assurance exercise, allowing real users to identify bugs in a new product.

Today, the advantage of beta in search is that it’s a relatively low-risk way to test the appeal of new search functionality and interfaces with real users. Beta release is to technology as a test market is to advertising. A beta interface can be thrown up without impacting the main site, which continues to produce the bread and butter revenue. The hope is, of course, that word of the beta will spread virally through the Internet, and the developer finds its beta release turn into the next big thing online. You pretest with users, find you have a home run, and when the time is right, you throw the switch, incorporating some or all of the new technology into your mainstream product.

The beginning of Google was a classic study in how a beta release can introduce a hot new upstart. Google was in beta forever, and had attracted a significant chunk of the search market before it ever was officially released. Use of Google spread virally like wildfire through the academic and journalist communities, eventually cracking the mainstream as the word spread. The beta campaign worked like a charm, and by the time Google was mainstream, it had so much momentum it never looked back.

Since then, every search player has thrown new technology up as a beta, to see what sticks, and hopefully, takes off to become the next flavor of Google. Notable beta candidates currently are Google’s Froogle (another perennial beta release) and Video Search, Microsoft’s Windows Live Search and Yahoo’s Mindset. Each hopes that it will be the next big thing. Given the stakes that are up for grabs in search, I’m not sure beta release is the best way to get the next big win. Here are some reasons why:

Beta Users Are Early Adopters

The beta user is not your typical animal. They tend to be more risk tolerant  and patient with bugs, and are the early adopters. This audience works well if your beta release objectives are bug tracking, but not so well if you’re trying to gauge a potential market buster.

Search is now mainstream; it’s crossed the chasm. The classic Google success story took place when search was still in the domain of the early adopter. Today, to gain market share, you have to introduce technology that appeals to everyone. I tend to be an early adopter. My wife is a classic online pragmatist. I’ll fool around with new technology, and I think some of the stuff in beta is pretty cool. But it’s not my loyalty you have to win, it’s my wife’s, and she doesn’t even know Google Labs exists, let alone is willing to take the brainchild of a Google engineer for a test drive. If you’re using beta users to pretest market potential, you’re probably getting the wrong feedback.

The Competition Can Peek Under Your Kimono

Search is a hot space now. In the original days of Google, search had the advantage of not being under the microscope, so a beta release of a new engine had a chance to build up some user momentum before it was attacked and reverse engineered by the competition. In Google’s case, not only was it not reverse engineered, but Page and Brin couldn’t even sell the technology to the competition. The same is not true today. Literally weeks or days are all it seems to take before the competition jumps on a new development and introduces its own version. As an example, Windows Live Search has its own version of Google Earth satellite imagery built into the interface.

When you’re penetrating a mainstream market, every day you can hold an advantage over the competition is significant. The longer something remains in beta before it becomes a significant advantage to your main user base, the longer your competition has to even the playing field.

There’s Too Much Beta And Too Little Innovation

A beta product will only become a blockbuster if it significantly ups the ante in terms of just plain coolness or usability. Today, everything gets thrown in beta, and, in many cases, there’s just not enough motivation to cause even early adopters to give it a second look. We’re being inundated with new beta releases and I personally can’t keep up. The chance of one of these spinning enough momentum to gain market share is infinitesimal at best. There’s very little that’s really buzz-worthy right now. The last thing I saw that was pretty cool in new search interfaces was Yahoo’s Mindset, but that’s generated virtually no attention even in the search biz. After taking Windows Live Search for a test drive, I found it reasonably buzz-worthy as well, but time will tell if it will gain much attention in its beta release.

It’s Time For Boldness, Not Beta

This might not be the time to play it safe in the search biz. It’s time for locked doors and midnight brainstorming, huge leaps forward and blow-your-socks-off functionality. It’s time for monumental, not incremental, improvements. Spoon feeding us innovation through never-ending beta releases might not be the way to go. The irony is that now, when there’s significant dollars at stake and risk is greatest, the only way to win might be to take that risk head-on and gamble big.

Enough Talk about Search Bubbles!

First published March 9, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Geoff Ramsey from eMarketer is a smart guy. At Search Engine Strategies in New York last week, Geoff said that search marketing is only at 10 percent of its potential size. I’m not sure how Geoff quantified the 10 percent figure, but when it comes to the fact that we’re only scratching the surface of search, I agree wholeheartedly.

There was also a lot of press last week about Google’s share price eroding because its CFO, George Reyes, said he expected slowing growth in the next quarter. So what’s the deal? Is search growing, or isn’t it?

My Breakfast With The Analysts

While in New York for SES, I had breakfast with a number of financial analysts. They wanted me to quote a hard number to try to quantify the growth of search spending quarter over quarter. They wanted the exact impact of click fraud. They were hungry, and it wasn’t for the scrambled eggs and bacon. They wanted numbers to plug into a spreadsheet and try to predict a growth trend for Google. They wanted to eliminate ambiguity, put form to the nebulous and try to quantify a social phenomenon. My panel partner, New York Times / About.com‘s Marshall Simmonds, and I tried to give them what they were looking for, but I couldn’t help but think we were on opposite sides of a communication chasm. We weren’t looking at the industry through the same lens.

Here’s the problem. I tend to be a big-picture, long-term thinker. In that context, I see nothing but blue sky for search. It can’t help but grow exponentially. Meanwhile, the analysts are focused on the next three months and what the next earning report is going to look like. Is there a gremlin lurking out there that will jinx Google’s profitability next month?

I understand the short-term focus. I know it’s vitally important to investors. I am somewhat familiar with how the market works. But I’m just not sure how you micro- measure something that’s perhaps the most significant sociological event in our lifetime. And no, I don’t think I’m overstating the case.

This Isn’t A Bubble, It’s A Tidal Wave!

I’ve said this before, and I’m saying it again. Search is the key to online interaction. It is the connector between intent and content online. And online will soon become the only line. It will be the umbilical cord through which we interact with everything beyond our immediate physical world.

We have no idea how much our lives will change in the next two decades. It will be the most rapid assimilation of sociological change in history. Everything that forms our current reality will be reengineered and reinvented from the ground up. This includes our definitions of community, social relationships, family, communication, our work, our leisure and our very concept of self. The physical and the virtual will merge, and the simple act of searching will become the synapse that connects us to the World 2.0.

That’s a big concept, one that’s hard to constrain with talk of quarterly earnings, bid prices remaining flat and the potential danger of click fraud. These are all valid concerns, but to me, it’s a bit like forecasting the demise of the automobile in 1902 because poor roads caused frequent flat tires and there were no gas stations. Perhaps that dampened sales of automobiles in the short term, but the fact remained that a fundamental wave of change was underway, and any restricting obstacles were eventually swept away by the sheer force of that change. The same is true of search.

Consumer Control

Here’s just one concept that has been irrevocably altered forever. The individual is now in control. We can connect instantaneously with other individuals, and ground swells of societal change can happen literally overnight. We no longer mindlessly accept what is given to us, we take what we want. And search is the mechanism we use to find what it is we want. It used to be that vast power constructs were required to form the pipelines required to get goods, services or entertainment to us. The Internet has made those power constructs unnecessary. The infrastructure now exists for any company to connect to any consumer. But, and this is a fundamental concept, the consumer now chooses to connect with the company, not the company with the consumer. The agenda lies totally in the hands of the individual, and that agenda usually includes search, in any of its various forms.

Defining Online Interaction

The biggest issue facing search now is not flattening bid prices or click fraud, it’s in quantifying the value of search in the context of complex online interactions. At Search Engine Strategies I had the privilege of being on a panel with Greg Stirling from the Kelsey Group, Alan Rimm-Kaufman of the Rimm-Kaufman Group and Diane Rinaldo from Yahoo. In the Q&A after the session, Greg and I both stated that we suspect online interactions are much more convoluted and messy than we might think. We don’t navigate online in a considered way. We click quickly, make split-second decisions and use the “back” button extensively. Somewhere in this soup of online interaction, we work our way through our own buying funnel, but this could happen in one distinct session, or it could happen as fragments of several sessions spread out over months.

In there somewhere are our interactions with search. And when I say search, I use the term in its broadest context, not a clearly defined interaction with Google, Yahoo or MSN. Search for me is any user-initiated request for information, so it could be internal site search, vertical search or general search. To me, it’s the concept of search as the user-controlled online connection that holds the promise, not any individual property. I’m sure Google, Yahoo and MSN are all smart enough to realize the potential and are all working on ways to capture as big a share of this fundamental activity as possible.

To try to extricate the search activity and tie quantifiable value to each touch point from this tangled mess of online interactions becomes tremendously challenging. That’s why most search marketers only measure the end, the click that leads to the final transaction. It’s easy, but it’s not capturing the value of search along the way. And if, as I suspect, search is a essential element in online navigation, then the value is significant.

So I return to Geoff Ramsay and his prediction that we’ve only so far seen 10 percent of the potential of search. Absolutely! It’s like standing with your feet in a puddle while you watch a tsunami coming your way. It’s not a question of if you’re going to get wet, but rather, when.

Ask.com – The Dark Horse in Search?

First published March 2, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Barry Diller likes long shots. He’s built a career betting on the long shot. Climbing from the mail room of the William Morris agency to network exec was business as usual for Diller. Taking ABC from a perpetual also-ran to challenge the dominance of CBS and NBC was not out of the realm of the doable. And Diller’s Fox is the once impossible fourth network. So don’t be too quick to bet against him.

 

Today, Diller is stacking his chips for a run at the lucrative search market, and he’s betting that history can repeat itself. Fresh from killing off his venerable butler, Jeeves, Diller showcased the new Ask.com at the New York Search Engine Strategies show.

In a keynote conversation with Danny Sullivan that opened the show, Diller made it clear that he’s in this for the long haul. Diller knows it will take time and significant improvements in the user experience to wrest market share from the Google juggernaut. And Ask.com just might have the goods to add another underdog win to Diller’s already impressive CV.

Good Core Functionality

Behind the Ask interface lies some pretty impressive technology. The Teoma back end that Ask purchased in 2001 is arguably every bit as good as Google’s vaunted relevancy algorithms, and many industry insiders argue that their core concept of expert communities or hubs is actually a step ahead of Google’s link-based approach.

But good relevancy is just the price you have to pay to play in this game. It should be a given. Relevancy algorithms won the game once (for Google) but the playing field has evened. The next step is an improved user experience, and it’s here where Ask has a couple of significant advantages that might give it a shot at taking on Google, Yahoo and MSN.

Deeply Vertical

The search engines are moving to deeper vertical experiences. They are trying to interpret intent based on the search query, and delivering a richer set of results in the appropriate category. So, if the search engine knows your query is local in nature (because of the inclusion of a city or zip code) it will try to deliver local search results, complete with addresses and maps showing the location. It’s a closer match to what your intent is, which is to locate a local business. The goal of the search engine is to get you closer to the information you want, and minimize the number of clicks you have to take to get there.

Diller’s IAC includes some well established vertical properties, including CitySearch, Hotels.com and Match.com. It makes tremendous sense to use Ask as the portal into these vertical experiences. Already, the new Ask features CitySearch ratings on many local results. Diller indicated that increased verticalization is likely in the future, but it has to be integrated in a way that makes sense, “We have an enormous amount of vertical data, but we’re never going to give a bad user experience.”

Betting Big when You Have Nothing to Lose

Perhaps Ask’s biggest advantage is the fact that it has nothing to lose. The company’s market share sits at about 2.5 percent (according to Nielsen NetRatings), so it can afford to fine-tune an interface.

Google is no longer the brash newcomer in the search biz. When you have 50 percent-plus market share and your entire revenue channel is dependent on maintaining that share, you have to step very carefully. This is not usually the corporate climate that fosters discontinuous innovation. And discontinuous innovation is the only thing that’s going to unseat the leaders in the search space. As Diller said in his keynote address, “We’re not looking for Ask to be another search engine, we’re looking for it to be an alternative to the other engines.”

Ask has already introduced some interesting new features to the search experience. Their “Narrow” and “Expand Your Search” suggestions usually prove helpful. The new Ask also features an editable tool palette on the home page that immediately adds new and deep functionality, such as local, maps, shopping, dictionary and encyclopedia, images, news and weather. Desktop search has also been incorporated. When I attempted to take some of the features for a test drive, the results were mixed. I was told a number of times that the volume of searches being done prevented Ask from delivering local results.

Search and Tools Don’t Mix

When the tools worked, they did seem to deliver pretty good results and some impressive new functionality. Perhaps moving this to the home page will encourage more people to try them. But based on our observations of search user behavior, few of us want to take one second longer than necessary to fine-tune our searches. This has been shown by the anemic percentage of users that have historically taken advantage of existing advanced search features. With Ask, to launch a local search, you have to hit the tab, which introduces another search box where you add the city or zip. Sound’s pretty simple right? But users are notoriously lazy when it comes to search. Add one more click, just one, and you seem to eliminate the majority of the audience. Ask’s features are simple and intuitive, but time will tell whether users embrace the additional functionality.

I think Ask is heading in the right direction, but the first version of Ask shows tweaks to the accepted search paradigm, not the shake-up that’s required for the big win. Perhaps Diller and his search team have more surprises up their sleeve.

Barry Gets The Last Word

Diller also shared more philosophical moments in his conversation with Danny Sullivan. “I’ve spent my whole life telling stories in the narrative,” he said. “I’m fascinated by the interactivity of online, by what’s possible in a screen. I’m still curious about the potential of this radical revolution.” He also took the opportunity to take some shots at his main rival, Google. “The whole idea of ‘don’t be evil’ is a little pretentious. I don’t believe the vast majority of corporations are out there setting up evil empires.”

One thing that was interesting to note on the floors of SES was the continuing shift in attitude towards Google. Resentment towards its domination of search is growing and becoming more vocal. We want more competition in the search space, and many attendees would like to see Google’s gargantuan corporate ego get knocked down a few notches. It seems that MSN is stumbling in its efforts to get the job done, so perhaps it’s time for the guy who’s always placed his money on the long shot.

Is Search a Leech on the Internet?

First published February 23, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Search is rapidly turning from the darling of the Internet to a demon. The latest attack, brought about by search’s phenomenal financial success, is that search is sucking all the value out of millions of Web sites by scraping content in bite-sized pieces and doling it out to searchers, at the same time monetizing traffic that’s being driven by content created by the site owners, not the search engine.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen ran a post on his site a few weeks back taking the engines to task for fostering dependency on search traffic, while at the same time enjoying the impact of ever-escalating bid prices. A few analysts have also started to intimate that perhaps it’s time for marketers, especially those in direct response, to look beyond search, as click prices move the cost per acquisition beyond what’s reasonable.


Usability: Too Much of a Good Thing?

In a somewhat ironic twist, Nielsen illustrates how improved usability can be a big factor in driving up bid prices. When a new online search market emerges, bid prices usually settle out based on the relative conversion performance of the main bid contenders. Based on their current conversion and closing rates, the smarter search marketers determine what they can afford to pay per lead. But let’s say that one of the contenders suddenly makes its site a better conversion vehicle, doubling their capture and close rate. Suddenly, that marketer can bid twice as much and still end up with the same per unit ROI. It becomes more aggressive in bidding, and eventually, its competitors wake up, figure out what happened and launch their own improvement cycles. Bid prices escalate as marketers optimize every aspect of their campaign, and the search engines double their revenue by doing nothing. In this scenario, not only are engines leeches on the content of the Internet, they’re also sucking the blood out of the entire search marketing industry. The better we get, the more money they make.

Now, before we round up the lynch mob for the engines, there are a few things that have to be said on their behalf. In cases like what was described above, search acts as the initial matchmaker between a site and a prospect. True, if it’s a one-time transaction, search can skim off a substantial portion of the value realized from sale, but if it’s a situation where lifetime value is a multiple of the first sale, the returns from that search lead will far outweigh the one-time cost. Nielsen also acknowledges that traffic generated from organic referrals doesn’t add anything to the search engine coffers. While he dismisses this traffic source in one brief mention, I think it should be realized that search engines have continued to provide this service, devoting a substantial portion of their page real estate to organic listings. 3 out of every 4 users are still clicking on these listings.


Search: Providing Quick Answers

Another concern expressed by Nielsen, which has also been vocalized, very loudly, by the World Association of Newspapers (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d0e8cf3e-928d-11da-977b-0000779e2340.html) is that many users use search as an answer engine. They need a quick answer to a question (i.e., what movie had Brad Pitt’s first starring role?) and often they don’t have to go any further than the search results page to find it. The answer is often contained in the snippet of text that comes from the listed site. If you did the search above, you’d find that the site tiscali.co.uk has the answer (“Dark Side of the Sun,” by the way). The content came from that site, answered your question and you’re merrily on the way, arguing about who played the corpse in “The Big Chill.” But that’s far from the experience the owners of tiscali.co.uk wanted. They pay for their site by selling advertising. On the page that snippet came from are three separate ads. You didn’t see any of them, but you did see the ads the engine chose to show you.

Is this a grey area? Absolutely. But the organizations that are investing in the production of that content that the engines so nonchalantly pilfer are getting tired of contributing to Google’s ever increasing bank accounts. While publishers (including book publishers) acknowledge that the search engines are necessary for connecting users with their content, they don’t want those same users stopping at the search results page, having found what they were looking for. Gavin O’Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers, summed it up, “We need search engines, and they do help consumers navigate an increasingly complicated medium, but they’re building (their business) on the back of kleptomania.”


The New Golden Rule of Online

While I understand the frustration, I think it’s time for a reality check. The fact is, it’s the new User Rule for online: Those that have the users, make the rules.

Search works. Users know that. With that come some positives, and some negatives. The way I see it, search brings much more to these content sites than it takes away, so it’s not a parasitic relationship. Would these sites be happier if the search engines didn’t index their content at all? If so, that’s doable with a simple robots.txt file. If not, quit your whining and get used to it!