Author Archives: ghotchkiss

Pssst, Try My Search Engine and I’ll Give You a Turkey!

First published February 17, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The twains have met. Back in the dark recesses of my past, I used to toil in the radio biz as a copywriter. I had thought I left that industry far behind when I started working in the search marketing game. But, zounds, suddenly the search player’s strategy is starting to sound like it was devised by Herb Tarlek (for those of you under 40, Google “WKRP in Cincinnati.”).

Search’s Turkey Bomb?

In radio, you could know instantly when you were in a ratings period by the frenetic one- upmanship of radio stations giving away trips, prizes, cash (or dropping turkeys out of a helicopter at a mall–a memorable episode of “WKRP”) in the hopes of luring listeners for those all important few weeks when the ratings were being tallied. The logic of simply offering programming that people might actually want to listen to seemed to be lost in a flurry of promotional bribery. It always struck me as a tainted sort of lunacy.

Now, here I am in the pristine world of search, where we’re above that sort of thing. Well, we were, until this week.

Both Yahoo! and MSN appear to be willing to bribe users to use their search engines. Apparently Google’s ever rising market share has pushed them to the point of desperation. With MSN’s Search and Win (http://www.msnsearchandwin.com/), a search on selected keywords could win you a gift certificate, MP3 player, digital cameras or rather substantial donation to your favorite charity. Yahoo has also polled some of its e-mail users to see if a bribe could bring them into the Yahoo search fold.

The Smell of Desperation

To me, this seems like outright capitulation to the acknowledged dominance of Google in search. Ironically, Google is currently being punished by shareholders for being a one- trick pony–but the fact is, this pony has legs. More and more people are searching, and Google is being used by most of them. Yahoo and MSN’s share has been consistently sliding, and in MSN’s case, is dangerously close to being classified as a second-tier player, while Google is pulling in about half of all Web searches.

The desperation shown by Yahoo and MSN represents their admission of the importance of search in the new online ecosystem. I recently mentioned to someone that MSN has already conceded the first round of the search game to Google. MSN has deep enough pockets that lost search advertising revenue isn’t a critical concern. While search revenue is of much more concern to Yahoo, I suspect its principals have also realized that they can’t beat Google head to head on search as it currently sits. But MSN and Yahoo are looking beyond round one to what search will become. Increasingly, search will become more integrated, personalized and verticalized. It will extend beyond the desktop and will be the primary online connector. And it’s in this evolution of search where the stakes get incredibly high. Neither MSN nor Yahoo want to concede that territory to Google, so the concept of critical mass becomes a key factor.

Critical Mass for the Tornado

As the next round of search begins and as the search experience is redefined, there has to be a large enough user base to ensure rapid adoption of new developments. We’re in the middle of Geoffrey Moore’s market adoption tornado (as described in his book Inside the Tornado : Marketing Strategies from Silicon Valley’s Cutting Edge), and delays of even a month or two can be fatal in deciding who the emerging gorilla will be. MSN and Yahoo need to build a user base that’s at least in the same neighborhood as Google. The odds of winning it all are dramatically lower if you’re beginning with a single-digit market share, no matter how great your product is. For proof, just look at the long struggle of Apple to gain dominance with its Mac line.

While I can’t fault Yahoo’s and MSN’s wisdom in recognizing they can’t continue to let their market share slide, I do question this particular strategy. Iwon.com has been trying to bribe search users with giveaways for years now, and their current market share is a paltry one half of one percent (according to recent Nielsen numbers). MSN has stated that this is just a way to get users trying MSN search. Presumably, they’ll be so impressed that they’ll keep coming back. I remain unconvinced, for reasons that I stated in last week’s column, The Search Experience has a De Facto Standard (for Now). My recommendation for Yahoo! and MSN? Work on the user interface. Tweak the relevancy of your results. Give people a reason to give up Google that’s more compelling than a chance at a Baby Gap gift certificate. I don’t think you’re there yet, and until you are, bribing might win you a pair of eyeballs for a search or two, but it won’t win the hearts and minds of new users.

Search has a De Facto Standard – For Now

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

We’ve recently done a lot of testing on how people interact with search results, both on the general engines we all use, and vertical search engines in a few industries. We discovered a number of things, but one finding in particular surprised us. The user interaction with search results has been defined. A standard has been established. And until a discontinuous improvement in the search interface comes along, we will expect all search to be the same.

Google: The User’s Definition of Search

Google’s interface has become the de facto standard for search. Even now, all three of the major properties have very similar search results layouts, with only slight variations to distinguish them. It’s in those variations, the nuances of design and layout, where the differences in the user experience can be found. Everything is measured against Google, and at this point, Google’s interface defines the ideal search experience.

Information Scent in Search

First, let me weave together a few theories to give some background to how we retrieve and interpret information on a search results page. First of all, information scent. Almost every interaction we have with a Web site is to find some type of information. We have intent, we have a goal, and when we interact with a site, we want to get closer to that goal. This is especially true on a search engine. Here, our quest for that information is intensified.

Information scent says that most cues on a Web page have an inherent information scent about what could lie behind the cue. Every hyperlink or navigation option offers some “residue” of what we will find when we click on it. We assess all the cues on a page, and typically go to where this scent is the strongest.

On a search engine, we have been conditioned to believe that this scent will be strongest in the top organic listings. We naturally move towards these. The top sponsored ads happen to be in the path between where we typically orient ourselves (upper left corner) and where we want to go to pick up the information scent. Because of their position, they have a good chance of catching our attention. This behavior creates the Golden Triangle we identified in our first eye tracking study.

So, is position enough? No, we do want to verify this by confirming the scent on the individual listings. And here is an important point to remember. On the average, we take about six seconds to scan listings before we choose one on a search results page, and in that time, we scan four or five results (this is based on our previous research). But it takes about six or seven seconds just to read one listing. So we’re not reading them. We’re scanning them, and this is a crucial difference. In scanning them, we’re looking for patterns of words that seem to offer scent. This is the semantic mapping I talked about in a previous Search Insider (I’d Love to Search but Words Get in the Way). We’re spending no more than a second (or less than a second) to pick up whether there’s a pattern of words that offer the information residue we find most closely matches our intent. It’s a split-second decision.

Hit Bolding

So, how do we pick up these patterns? Here’s where Google has created one of its de facto standards. The first place we look is the title of the first listing (toward the left side), and we expect to see our search query bolded. This immediately reinforces that we’re on the right “scent.” From there, we quickly scan to pick up other words. The more hit bolding there is, the stronger the subliminal confirmation that this result offers strong scent.

Google does the best job of query hit bolding. Their use of fonts, the size, and the relative strength of the bolding quickly reinforces a relevant pattern. MSN, in contrast, doesn’t do any hit bolding on the title. Don’t be surprised if you see this change in the near future, as MSN draws closer to the Google standard.

Page Balance

Google also has a slightly different page balance. There tends to be more white space separating organic listings from the sponsored right side rail. The page looks a little less crowded and more usable at a glance. And as I mentioned in last week’s column(The 50-Millisecond Judgment), this split second judgment will affect our entire interaction on the page.

White space aids in the assimilation of word patterns. It causes them to stand out a little more. Have someone run the same query on the top three engines, then show you the three results for a split second each. Which page tends to offer the greatest chance of success? For the majority of us, I’m guessing that’s Google.

Another point on page balance. As I’ve said, our destination is typically the top organic listings. The biggest difference between Yahoo and Google is in how far down the page those organic results are pushed. They are significantly lower on Yahoo. Again, this runs against the standard of what we expect.

Implications for Enterprise Search

Finally, a quick word on enterprise search. For vertical engines and other sites in which search results play a major role, take the emerging standard defined by Google to heart. Understand that when people interact with your search results, they’re expecting a Google-like experience. The further you take them from that, the less ideal the user experience will be.

Google has done a lot right (and a few things wrong) but perhaps the smartest move it’s ever made is to pay meticulous attention to the search user experience. Whether the company designed an ideal interface by intention, or whether we’ve just been conditioned to accept it as the ideal interface, it works for us.

 

The 50 Millisecond Judgement

Originally published February 2, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Fifty milliseconds is not a long time. It’s about one frame of video, or half as long as the blink of a human eye. And that tiny little slice of time is all it takes for a visitor to a Web site to decide how appealing that site is.

Dr. Gitte Lindgaard and her team undertook a fascinating study at Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada. Their goal: to determine just how long it takes to make a reliable judgment of the visual appeal of a Web site. They found that we can accurately judge visual appeal in just 50 milliseconds, or one twentieth of a second! The study was published in Behaviour and Information Technology, March – April 2006.

In three different studies, the Carleton team flashed home pages of Web sites, specifically chosen to provide a spectrum of visual appeal, at participants for varying lengths of time and then asked the participants to rate the pages from 1 (very unappealing) to 100 (very appealing). In the first two studies, the duration of exposure was 500 milliseconds, or half a second. In the third study, participants were randomly shown the pages for either 500 milliseconds, or 50 milliseconds. The ratings were then correlated and analyzed to determine the reliability of the rankings. Dr. Lindgaard’s team found that reliable assessments of visual appeal can be made even with a 50 millisecond exposure.

Beyond this finding, however, there were a number of topics touched on in the paper that site designers should take to heart. While these topics weren’t included in the scope of the study, the paper cites numerous studies that have tried to explore the nebulous area of visual attraction and how we determine it.

Blink Revisited

For anyone who’s read Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, you know that researchers are discovering that humans make decisions in two very distinct ways. On a visceral level, it seems that a decision-making mechanism is hardwired right into our physiology. Our bodies seem to reach conclusions long before our brain catches up. To quote Dr. Lindgaard’s paper, “More recent neurophysiological evidence supports the contention that emotional responses can indeed occur pre-attentively, before the organism has had a chance cognitively to analyze or evaluate the incoming stimulus or stimuli. A small bundle of neurons has been identified that lead directly from the thalamus to the amygdala across a single synapse, allowing the amygdala to receive direct inputs from the sensory organs and initiate a response before the stimuli have been interpreted by the neocortex.”

After this very brief response, we begin to rationalize our response by logically evaluating the stimuli. The two-phase decision-making mechanism typically works together to help us reach our conclusions. Gladwell’s contention is that the first response, the “blink” response, is often the right one.

First Impressions Do Count

So, how important is that first, split-second decision in online interactions? Because of something called a “halo effect,” it can be vital. If we have a positive emotional response in those first few milliseconds, our logical mind will kick in and try to rationalize that response. We will look for positive reasons why it was the right decision, and we will tend to ignore negative factors. If the first impression is not good, the opposite occurs. We look for reasons not to like something, and tend to discount any positives we might find. We want to prove our first impression right.

Translated to an online experience, we make an immediate, intuitive decision whether we like a site or not, without reading one word of content. From that moment on, our entire interaction with that site is colored by that first impression.

Is Beauty in the Eye of the Beholder?

How do you judge what is appealing or what is not? It’s a thorny issue, as Dr. Lindgaard acknowledges in the paper. It’s been said that we all have different concepts of what’s beautiful or appealing. However, there was remarkable consistency across all three studies with the sites that were found appealing, and the ones that weren’t. In fact, it was found that in groups of as small as 5 people drawn randomly from the larger group, consensus emerged on the winners and the losers. So while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, it appears that we pretty much see eye to eye when it comes to Web sites.

One reason might be in the factors we use to judge appeal on a Web site. We are not looking at it as a pure object of aesthetic beauty. A Web site should be usable, so we are also making an assessment of how appealing a site would be to use. We’re looking for a site to be clean, pleasant and symmetrical. We’re looking for proper use of screen real estate and balance. Previous research by Dr. Marc Hassenzahl suggests that we may use two methods of evaluation, which he refers to as beauty (the pure aesthetic appeal) and goodness (the more practical factors, including usability).

One thing that wasn’t covered in the study was seeing how sites rank when user intent is added to the mix. The participants in the study had no particular goal in mind. They weren’t looking for anything. I would love to see what happens when we introduce intent and participants are judging sites not just on appeal, but on the promise of delivering on their intent.

A Qualitative Research Primer

For anyone who’s interested in qualitative research, this study offers some valuable tidbits on testing methodologies. It’s an interesting challenge to gather results on something as raw and intuitive as a first impression. The minute you start to analyze the response, you distance yourself from that first visceral reaction. Does the very act of rating a site kick in the rational mechanism and bias the original response? As in most studies, Dr. Lindgaard acknowledges that there are many more questions to be answered here. In a brief chat I had with her, she expressed her eagerness to continue down this path, “This is just the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “There’s so much more here!”

Back To Those 50 Milliseconds

What does this have to do with search marketing? Well, everything. Through the utilization of search engines, you will hopefully be driving thousands of new visitors to your site. That’s thousands of first impressions, formed in less than the blink of an eye. Search marketing is useless if it doesn’t deliver a positive onsite experience. Our obsession with position and click-through is meaningless if all our efforts (and all budgets) are blown apart by those first 50 milliseconds.

It is my intense belief that the key to success lies in better understanding what happens when those synapses fire and those first impressions are formed. It’s not just an understanding of the mechanics of the Web that will create a successful search marketer. It also helps to peer into the awesome machinery of the human mind.

The Real Cost of SEO: It’s Not Budget, It’s Believers!

First published January 26, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Not too long ago, I was moderating a panel of search marketing experts who were comparing the merits of sponsored search and organic search optimization. We were unanimous in our support of organic optimization; none of us could think of an individual case where the cost- effectiveness of organic didn’t far exceed every other marketing channel our clients had tried. From the audience came the question, “If organic optimization is so effective, why isn’t it a more common strategy?”

Great question. Unfortunately, the answer isn’t an easy one.


Requirement One: Corporate Understanding

The problem with organic optimization is that it can’t be owned by any one department in a larger organization. While a sponsored campaign can be launched by a single department–or by an individual, for that matter–with no impact on any other department, organic optimization needs buy-in throughout an organization. This is why we generally see the best optimization on sites where C-level executives are close to the front lines, believers in optimization, and can give a single go-ahead that will open the required doors for organic optimization to happen. The bigger the organization, the more unlikely it is that this will happen.

Usually, the need for organic optimization is recognized by someone in the marketing department. Here’s the typical scenario: marketing has been convinced to try sponsored search. They’re generally happy with the results, but then they read an article or attend a conference where someone (and I happen to be a prime culprit) tells them that 70 percent of the clicks actually happen in the organic results. “Wait a minute,” they say. “I’m spending $4.28 a click and I could get more traffic with a free listing?” They immediately run to the nearest computer and see how they rank for the terms they’re currently buying. Nothing on the first page, or the second, or the third. Ah, there they are! Number 48 for their term–stuck in no-man’s land.


Requirement Two: A Friendly IT Department

In the next step, the marketing guy usually visits the IT department, which has technical ownership of the company Web site, and begins with the question, “How come we don’t rank on the search engines? What’s wrong with our site?”

You want to create a sworn IT enemy for life? This is the way to do it. And if this doesn’t work, follow up with the comment, “If you guys can’t do it, we’ll have to find someone who can.” This is generally where my company comes in, right in the middle of a vicious turf war between marketing and IT.


Requirement Three: No Sacred Cows

Now, the SEO experts (that would be us) start saying that the Flash on the front page has to go. Suddenly, marketing is not so sure. “We love that Flash, and it cost us a lot of money!”

It gets worse. The entire navigation structure of the site has to change, we need a lot more content, we’re going to want to create separate topic areas for our main offerings, we have to reconfigure our CMS, and we have to strip out all the Javascript we have on every page and reference it as an external .js file. Suddenly, marketing is second-guessing us, IT is up in arms, legal is having a fit because none of the additional content required has been vetted, and the C-level executives are wondering what the hell hit them.


Requirement Four: Champions with Perseverance and Thick Skins

At this point, our marketing champion, who got the whole ball rolling, is on everybody’s most- wanted list, and not in a good way. Everybody’s thinking, “You know, on second thought, maybe it would just be easier to stick to our sponsored search campaign.”

There is a cost to doing SEO. It’s not the budget required, which is minimal relative to other marketing initiatives. It’s the time and patience required on the part of one person to get the buy-in that’s needed to make SEO happen. That’s a price that many companies have been unwilling to pay up to now.


The Payoff

Let me give you some reasons why it’s worth it:

  • What’s good for a search engine is good for humans. The changes that make your site easier to index are almost always changes your visitors will appreciate as well. More content, less unnecessary Flash, standard navigation options and cleaner code will bring you in line with long-standing usability guidelines.
  • Organic traffic is not dependent on budget. This traffic base goes on, day after day, whether you’re topping up your AdWords account or not.
  • Organic optimization gets less painful as time goes on. Once you make the commitment, the painful part can be over relatively soon, but you’ll be reaping the benefits for years to come.
  • You’ll reach a whole new market segment. People tend to look at organic listings when they’re in the research phase, higher in the buying funnel. This gives you the chance to intercept consumers earlier and build a relationship that can last a long time.
    Ode to an Ex-Client

    I’d like to close off with a painful real-world example to prove my point. We had the CEO of a company bring us on to help with organic optimization. But rather than pave the way for success, he threw us to the lions and quickly exited the scene. We identified the issues keeping the company from higher visibility on the search engines, outlined our recommendations, and handed them over to the IT team for implementation.

    And there our suggestions sat, and sat, and sat. Meanwhile, the IT team pursued its own agenda, spinning its wheels on minutiae while ignoring the fundamental issues that had already been identified. Our frustration level rose, as did the CEO’s, who was wondering why there was no improvement. Guess who the internal IT team pointed the finger at? Eventually, we parted ways with the client. We couldn’t win, and the client was getting no value from recommendations that no one would follow.

    Wee usually monitor activity for a period of time following the termination of a contract. Eventually, this client did get around to doing one or two of the things we recommended. These were relatively easy fixes, but the results were dramatic: a 448 percent increase in visibility in the organic listings. Of course, at this point, no one remembers who made the original recommendation. All they’ll remember is that they only saw improvement after they got rid of their SEO company.

Lights, Camera, Point and Click!

First published January 19, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In a flurry of announcements out of Redmond this week, there was one that struck a chord with me, because it is very similar to a development I forecast in an article entitled “All Roads Lead Online” about a year ago.

Product placement gone wild.

Microsoft will be making online video more interactive by creating the ability to click on a product in the video and receive advertising for whatever you clicked on. It’s like product placement on steroids. See a cool stereo, the car you just have to have, or a particularly yummy dinner in a chic restaurant–and you just pause, click, and immediately get more information. Cool, hey? And that’s just the first stage.

Imagine a little more functionality. Rather than just being served an ad, what would happen if a smart little Web app in the background did a little online research for you? What if it combs for product reviews and consumer ratings, then shops for the best price, determines availability and shipping information, and keeps all this information in a convenient file for your browsing pleasure when the show is done?

The virtual tourist.

Here’s another scenario.You’re watching a movie that features some gorgeous locations in France and Italy. As you watch the movie, you hit a flag button on your MediaCenter remote every time you see an interesting villa, an intriguing town, a vintage bottle of wine or that little bistro that seems so romantic. By the end of the movie, you have a complete travel itinerary planned, complete with the lowest fares available from your home, hotel availability, restaurant reservations and even menu suggestions. A couple more clicks and you’re booked.

Search: the connector between intent and content.

Whenever someone questions the longevity of search, this is one of the scenarios I trot out for them. Search is the engine that underlies all this functionality. It is the bridge that connects intent and content. This core functionality is what will drive almost all online connections in the future. And those connections will be controlled by whoever wins the search war. Suddenly, all the buzz around search starts to make sense.

Imagine what this will do to the world of product placement. It will be a feeding frenzy the likes of which have never been seen before. Suddenly, every video can be one long, multilayered commercial. And as frightening as that sounds, remember that you’re in control. You choose the advertising you want to be served. Advertising isn’t an intrusion when you’re asking for it.

Custom-tailored marketing.

Let’s further envision MSN’s demographic targeting layered on top of this. Now, different segmented targets can be fed different advertising messages. A 55-year-old male lawyer in Portland can see a completely different message than a 24-year-old female teacher in Armonk. A unique user experience can be wrapped and delivered to each.

There’s one last piece of the puzzle that really brings this home: personalization. The more the owner of this connection knows about you, your likes, your interests and your schedule, the more helpful it can be. As it aggregates information, it can be tailored specifically for you.

The announcement of interactive video by Microsoft is just the tip of an immensely large iceberg. As our entertainment choices converge online and become searchable through the same technology that powers Google, Yahoo and MSN, online becomes the gatekeeper for the vast majority of advertising that will be delivered to us. And search has the key to the gate.

How Gender Affects Search: Part Two

First published January 12, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week, I talked about studies, done both by the PEW Internet group and Enquiro, that explored the differences between how men and women interact online. A number of differences had been observed in general with how both sexes use the Internet, but I wrapped up by saying that while this was also true in search, the differences seem to be much more subtle.

First, let’s explore one of the biggest variations in how men and women use the Internet. Please understand I’m talking averages and generalities here. Yes, there are women and men who are exceptions to what I’m about to say. I’m aware of the fact, and endlessly grateful for it.

The task-obsessed male.

The PEW study found that while men look at the Internet as a resource and tool to accomplish a task, women use it as a communication channel. Men appreciate the Internet’s ability to help them get the job at hand done. They like the do-it-yourself nature of the Internet, they love new toys, and they’re more apt to adopt and experiment with new technologies. When a man is online, he has a clear goal in sight and is looking for the shortest possible path to get there. While men will experiment forever to get some new piece of software or hardware working, they have the attention span of a gnat when it comes to looking for information online. For everyone who has a Flash intro on their site, here’s my hedged bet. Look at your abandonment numbers when the Flash file is loading, and I’m betting 60 percent-plus of those are men.

The multitasking female.

Women are social creatures. They also multitask better, and are more comfortable browsing. Women will be more patient with non-obvious navigation options. They’re more apt to explore the nooks and crannies of a site to see what they can find. And they look at the Internet as a way to reach out to a larger global community, and to connect with geographically distant friends and family.

Right brain vs. left brain in search.

This offers our first clue why the gender split is not so apparent on search. Search is a task-oriented activity. You got there to get closer to your online objective. For that reason, search is more left-brain (words and numbers) than right-brain (emotions and intuition), a more masculine endeavor than a feminine one. That’s why men were much heavier users of search engines than women in the earlier days of the Internet. Women are catching up, but the balance has been on the male side since day one. And when women do use search, they are forced to adopt a more masculine approach to it.

This right-brain, left-brain theory of mine extends to the actual search interface as well.

I believe one of the reasons we don’t see more gender variation in search result interaction is because the format forces everyone, whether man or woman, to use the left brain to assimilate the information. There are no emotional stimuli, no pictures, not even much in the way of colors. Everything is presented as text. The right brain has been rendered basically useless in this exercise. This has the impact of leveling the playing field between the sexes in interacting with search results.

This is not true throughout the interaction, however. When searchers start clicking through to sites, the typical left-brain and right-brain tendencies take over again, and the nature of interaction again splits along gender lines more noticeably.

We shape what we see in search.

My fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz added his own thoughts after last week’s column. David proposes that it’s the interactive nature of search that eliminates some of the gender variations in how we interact with the results. With most Web sites, the same material is presented to everyone when they arrive, and it’s up to the individual how he or she interacts with it. The content is the same, the design is the same, the navigation options are the same. This allows an open opportunity for men and women to react differently.

But with search, you don’t see results until you take an action, namely the launching of a search. Then, the results are tailored to the query that has just been launched. And it’s this increased level of engagement that may take men and women down a more similar path. We have already dictated the content of the page, to some extent, so there is less opportunity for men and women to react differently to the resulting page. In David’s words, “The search engine becomes the ineffable partner, the one who’s always responding to you on target, based on how you initiated the conversation”.

So those are a few ideas of why Venus and Mars are much more closely aligned in search than in other online destinations. I may be totally off-base, but what else is new? I’m a guy!

How Gender Affects Search: Part One

First published January 4, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

A recent PEW Internet study exploring how men and women use the Internet points out some interesting differences between the sexes. This caught my attention because in every study we’ve done, we’ve tried to break out results by gender and explored the different usage patterns. It’s been fascinating to see how millions of years of conditioning and the differences in our respective genetic wiring have impacted our use of a new technology. The PEW study echoed a lot of what we had seen. What I’d like to do over the next two columns is explore this further. Today, I’ll present some of the more interesting findings from the PEW study and ours, and next week I’ll provide my thoughts on why we may be seeing what we’re seeing.

Comfort Levels:

The PEW study found that men are slightly more intense Internet users than women, and seem to be more engaged when on line. Men are more likely to go online on a daily basis and tend to do so a little more frequently. Men are also a little more likely to have a high-speed connection at home.

When we add age breakdowns to the mix, an interesting anomaly occurs, with older men (65 and over) more likely to be online than older women, but younger women (18 – 29) more likely to be online than younger men.

What They Do Online:

Men and women have very distinct reasons for going online. Men tend to retrieve information, such as weather, news, sports scores, and financial information. They also download software, listen to music (or download it), research products, look for jobs, find out how to repair something, or educate themselves on a topic.

For women, the Internet is first and foremost a communication vehicle, with e-mail a prime reason for usage. Women also look for health, medical and religious information, and support for health or personal problems.

Some gender stereotypes never die. Women are still more likely to look for maps and directions online than men. Once a guy, always a guy!

The Sexes and Search:

It used to be that there was a distinct male bias towards search usage. That is rapidly disappearing, but is still apparent. In earlier studies (done in 2003 and 2004) PEW found that 35 percent of men and 25 percent of women were likely to use a search engine on a typical day. In 2005, usage on both sides of the gender divide soared, but men still edged out women, by 43 percent to 39 percent.

In our research, we found that men were more likely to use Google, which dominated as the engine of choice. For women, although Google was still the number-one choice, it was closely followed by MSN and Yahoo.

We also found that men were more likely to use advanced search queries. They also tended to spend a little less time actively reading listings, and made their decisions to click faster. Women tended to be a little more deliberate in their search sessions. Men scanned more of the search results page, but women spent more time with the page.

We found that women were more influenced by what they read in the listing, when men seemed to be a little more conditioned to trust the first organic listings. This usually translated into slightly higher click-throughs on the sponsored results for women.

Perhaps the most interesting thing we found, despite the differences noted above, was this: when men and women interacted with almost every type of site online, there were distinct differences in how they assimilated information, navigated sites and responded to visual cues. When we looked at how they interacted with a search results page, the differences, while present, were much more subtle.

Why?

Hang onto that question, and I’ll hazard a guess next week.

We Are What We Search? Hopefully Not!

First published December 29, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

To judge from the various most-popular-search lists that are showing up as the year draws to a close, the average search user is a pubescent male, with an IQ that hovers in the low 90’s, and who spends an unhealthy amount of time in his room. I have said, on several occasions, that our search patterns are a reflection of our society. If that’s true, our society’s intellect is about as deep as the ring left by a Starbucks coffee cup.

When I saw the first list come in my e-mail, I don’t know why I was surprised. After all, Pamela Anderson holds the record as the most searched-for term for the past decade, and Britney Spears and Paris Hilton are breathing down her neck. But come on; are we really as shallow as our searches seem to indicate?

Lycos has just released its list for the past year. The top 10 terms for 2005 are:
Paris Hilton
Pamela Anderson
Britney Spears
Poker
Dragonball
Jennifer Lopez
WWE
Pokemon
Playstation
Hurricane Katrina

There we have it, the greatest depository of information every assembled, instantly accessible to all who seek knowledge and enlightenment, and Paris Hilton is the best we can do? And Hurricane Katrina, the worst natural disaster in U.S. history, (although arguably, Paris, Pam and Britney all qualify in this category) barely made the list?

Maybe it’s just Lycos users that are scrapping the bottom of the online barrel. So I checked out Google’s Zeitgeist and Yahoo! Buzz.

Yahoo!’s Buzz is at least a little more balanced on gender. The top 10?
Britney Spears
50 Cent
Cartoon Network
Mariah Carey
Green Day
Jessica Simpson
Paris Hilton
Eminem
Ciara
Lindsay Lohan

Still not a fertile recruitment bed for MENSA, I’m guessing.

Google doesn’t publish the overall top 10, instead breaking them up into categories and top gainers. Perhaps this is their way of defending their users’ intellectual reputation. But if the top news searches are any indication, there are very few Google users following in Edward R. Murrow’s footsteps. Topping the list was Janet Jackson, with such compelling news stories as xbox 360, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Michael Jackson and yes, the omnipresent Ms. Spears also making the list.

And Newton Minnow called commercial television a vast wasteland!

But wait a minute. Yahoo! Buzz lets you see what other cultures are searching for. How does the U.S. stack up against the world?

You’ll be happy to know the French are just as boorish, with the regular suspects, Britney, Jennifer Lopez and Paris (the scantily clad debutante, not the city) showing up on their list. Toss in Jessica Alba for good measure. The Germans show a disturbing dichotomy in their search habits, with half of the terms showing Teutonic practicality and the other half being just plain kinky. On one hand you have “trip planner,” “weather” and “cheap flights,” and on the other you have “erotica” and “partner swapping.” Interestingly, the Germans don’t seem as star-struck as the rest of the world. The only celebrity to make the list was Sarah Connor, a German pop star.

How about my fellow Canadians? Well, I wish I could report differently, but our national stereotype seems rooted in fact. For seven months out of 12, we’re searching for Hockey.

The Google AOL Deal: Commentary from the Cheap Seats

First published December 21, 2005 from Mediapost’s Search Insider

 

‘m from Canada, and up here, we examine every hockey trade in minute detail. We look at who got what for whom, how the trade adds or detracts from the respective team’s talent pools, and who came out the winner. So, the recent AOL-Google deal caught my attention. Why does Google want AOL? What’s the strategy? Where’s the win?

AOL: Hanging On.

From AOL’s perspective, the deal makes tons of sense. AOL is an anachronism in a fast-changing world. It’s a dial-up service that’s trying to carve out a niche in the new broadband landscape. It’s been struggling to survive as an online portal, with its once mighty subscriber base dwindling by 33 percent (we’ll come back to this subscriber base in a minute). Time Warner has pretty much hung AOL out to dry, reducing it to running TV ads saying you should continue to use AOL because it will protect you from online viruses. Come again? If that’s your most compelling differentiation strategy, alignment with the current online Golden Child can’t be a bad thing.

With the deal come a couple of strategic promises to AOL. First of all, it gets a guaranteed position in Google’s sponsored search ads. Rumor has it that the last right-side sponsored position on page one is now AOL’s. Anyone who’s looked at our eye tracking report on Google knows that this is hardly prime real estate. In this spot, you can expect to be seen by about 10 percent of the visitors to the page, and capture less than 1 percent of the click-throughs.

But, this deal does mark a departure from Google’s existing model, where there are no guaranteed spots and position is determined by a combination of click-through and the price the advertiser is willing to spend. Even though the placement on the page is hardly ideal, AOL’s guaranteed slot now means someone gets bumped to page two of the search results, which means an immediate 80 percent to 85 percent reduction in the number of people who will visit that page. This is not the democratic advertising model that Google originally envisioned.

Church/State revisited.

Another rumor had Google apparently offering advice to AOL on how to get its content pages to rank better in the organic results. Again, this appears to call into doubt Google’s constant fallback position on the church/state divide, where the organic results will never be subject to any commercial influence.

My sense is that this line is getting more and more difficult for Google to define, and this trend can only continue. I’m not so sure this is a bad thing. If you read my previous column on Matt Cutts, the Google engineer that heads up the spam squad, you know that Google has been reaching out to the Webmaster community more and more. The once-locked doors appear to be opening, even if it’s just a crack. Based on my company’s experience, if you can present Google with a case where the indexing of a site isn’t going as expected, it is usually responsive in offering some advice. To me, this form of technical troubleshooting is a win/win. Google gains some insight that could help to improve the entire index, and you can find out why the hell your site isn’t being indexed properly by Google.

What is less clear is when Google passes on “optimization” advice, which is what the AOL deal appears to promise. Here, the church/state line is pretty much obliterated by the tap dance that Google is performing on top of it. And it becomes a question of whom Google is offering this advice to. Is it everyone? Is it the biggest advertisers? Is it only companies that they own a piece of? If this is indeed part of the deal, expect a lot of blog and forum fodder on this topic.

What’s in the deal for Google?

First of all, Google locks up AOL’s sponsored search business for another five years, effectively locking out Microsoft. When this currently accounts for approximately 11 percent of Google’s gross revenue, that could be reason enough. Also, financial analysts expect an imminent transfer of ownership with AOL, which could trigger a quick liquidity event for Google, minimizing its long-term risk.

But I believe the strategic value of the deal lies in AOL’s user base. True, it’s smaller than it used to be, dropping from a one-time high of over 32 million down to a current level closer to 20 million, but it’s still the largest base available anywhere. Comcast is the next closest at around 8 million (based on ISP Planet numbers). And AOL’s base is 20 million people that the company knows something about.

One of Google’s challenges has been in getting users of its tools to surrender profile information that could be used to better target advertising messages. MSN is already offering targeted search advertising, which means Google is desperate to even the playing field. Microsoft has the advantage of having years of profile information accumulated through users signing up for Hotmail or Messenger accounts. Google had to catch up, and quickly. This one deal may have helped the company do that. The one question mark is that AOL’s user base is notorious for their lack of online sophistication, being relatively new to the Internet. Does this user base come with a demographic profile that will appeal to Google advertisers?

On the face of it, the AOL deal appears to be another smart move on Google’s part. For a relatively small investment, the company seems to gain all the strategic advantages it was looking for. Google captures a large block of users with some existing profile information, it locks up an important revenue stream, and it gains access to a very important portal property without jeopardizing its current wildly successful search site. As they say up north: good trade, eh?

What Happens on the Road, Stays in the Blog

First published December 15, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Heaven help anyone trying to lead an illicit double life on the convention circuit. Blogging and camera phones have turned us into a society of voyeurs. This is especially true in the search marketing industry. We are all content producers who publish our thoughts. During one conversation at a recent after-hours reception, we began keeping score–and realized that everyone in the conversation either had a blog or wrote a regular online column. Many did both.

It becomes even more amusing when you have one conversation over dinner at a show with a few friends, and within the next few days, all of you have posted online comments about the conversation, each from your own perspective. To find the truth, you have to triangulate the comments and discover that the substance of the conversation lies somewhere between the extremes.

This is a dynamic altering of how we communicate. The degrees of separation that divide our global community become short-circuited online. In one example, I wrote a column a few weeks ago about a conversation I had with Greg Jarboe about white hats and black hats. The event that sparked the conversation was a dinner he had with a black hat in Stockholm. A few days later, Greg was approached by someone in a coffee shop in his hometown about the column he wrote about black hat SEO. He had no idea what she was talking about, until he tracked it back to my column. Also, Danny Sullivan, in his blog, actually had me having dinner with the black hat, even though I was several thousand miles away from Stockholm at the time. Since that time, Greg has gone on to write about the same event in his blog. That one conversation has sparked at least a dozen blog posts and columns, all with slightly different takes on the actual event.

Somewhere in this observation lies something profound about the Internet. It changes the way we live. We now exist with one foot in the real world and one foot in the virtual. We are individuals, but we are also the sum of a million different parts that float around in the online world, and it’s usually search that connects those parts. We become the composite of other’s online comments about us. Our Google Doppelganger becomes a part of us, and vice versa.

Flori, my father-in-law, is an old-world Italian carpenter. To him, Gord Hotchkiss is the person who married his daughter, fathered his grandchildren, and who does something vaguely unexplainable with computers. We get along wonderfully, but our conversations center on our shared experiences: family camping trips, what my daughters are doing, homemade Italian wine, and why I’m out of town so much. Once, when I was on the road, he asked my wife why I have to speak at these shows. In an effort to explain, she Googled me. Up came about 16,000 entries, in almost every language, from every corner of the world. There was the online persona of “Gord Hotchkiss.” It was a side of me my father-in-law never knew existed. I was deeply embedded in a network of communication, and in part, that network defined me.

I find it (mostly) exhilarating when I meet new people at a conference and they’re already familiar with me because of my online presence. I tend to share a lot about my personal side, because it’s such an integral part of me. As one person said, upon meeting me for the first time, “I feel like I know your wife and kids, because you write about them.” So, my online persona extends to include my family. Through me, they’re developing a virtual presence. At this point, they’re not coming up when they Google themselves, but I assure them it’s only a matter of time.

I’m not sure we’ve really explored the consequences of this shift, but I know it’s earth-shaking in its importance. We are all now producers of content. We can all reach global audiences. We are judged by our thoughts, our observations and our intellectual mettle. We leave a footprint online. Search is the connector that introduces us to our audience.

Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press created a quantum change in the society of the 1500s. But there was still a physicality to printing. It consumed resources. It took time. Because of these physical restrictions, publishing evolved into big business, with its own controls and checks and balances. Distribution of one’s views did not come easily. Just ask any author who dreamed of getting on the best-seller list. Today, a blog post can take a few moments and no money. In a few hours, it can be picked up on a search engine. If it happens to rank well for a popular keyphrase, especially one that’s of immediate topical interest, it could attract thousands of readers in a few days.

It’s a sobering thought. Most of us feel in control of our own lives. We can be the person we wish to be. And the people who form opinions of us we usually deal with face to face. But online, people form opinions of you without ever meeting you. Our online personas rush beyond the bounds of our physical world. We hand control over our online persona to people that have no idea who we really are. They blog about us and expand our footstep, adding to the sum definition of who we are, without really knowing us.

In the old days, you could be your own person. Today, you belong to a global community. Anyone could be watching, anytime. And you thought Wisteria Lane was a tough place to keep a secret!