Author Archives: ghotchkiss

If I Had $4 Billion: Part Two

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

If you were Google, you had access to $4 billion in cash, and you were taking on Microsoft on their home turf, what would you do?

That was the question I posed to you two weeks ago. Thanks to the many who replied. After sorting through the self-serving e-mails from various CEO’s suggesting that Google should buy their companies, there were some very interesting strategies put forth. Let’s see if they’re listening in Mountain View.

First of all, many of you zeroed in on the operating system as the core of Google’s strategy. Jim Barkow offers up GoOSe..the Google OS: “At the core to their (Google’s) search platform is a very quick file system that was first developed when they couldn’t find one in the market (Linux, MS, etc.) that was fast enough. Interesting that after a long promise, Microsoft supposedly abandoned their plans to ‘upgrade’ their file system for Longhorn and Vista.”

Ironically, on the same day the original column ran, Brooke Dixon pointed me to a post on Gizmodo showing a screen shot of a bare bones Google OS based on GNU/Linux. It would come in three versions: corporate, embedded, and portable. It would allow users to boot and use a stripped-down OS that does what Google does best–manage files.

LionVision joined the chorus with Glinux (or Googlix), offered for a pretty compelling price point. “So Google could GIVE AWAY FOR FREE an OS as well-groomed and clean as apple OSX with all the new cutting edge apps integrated at the OS level. IM and VOIP and Email and Search working from the very roots.”

The Kelsey Group’s own VSG (Very Smart Guy), Greg Sterling, pointed me to a post by Robert Young titled “Google, the Ultimate Deflator” that follows the same reasoning–making the Microsoft OS superfluous by migrating users to an integrated set of Web apps.

Hmmm…an Internet appliance that relies on the computing horsepower of a Web server to do the heavy lifting?

That sounds familiar.

As many pointed out, several have been down this path before, including Oracle’s Larry Ellison and Sun Microsystems. In fact, if memory serves, Microsoft has also been down the road, and put several million into Web appliances and Web-based application service provider technology. Perhaps with broadband proliferation, the idea’s time has finally come.

If this is the case, expect to see some of that $4 billion spent acquiring technology that could create a suite of online apps that would form the foundation of Google’s total solution. Simon Collins suggested likely targets could be contact minders like Plaxo or Linked In, then possibly extending to online data storage, giving users the alternative of a virtual desktop.

Both Nikos Pharmakidis and Andre Morgantetti suggested that Google should take the logical next step down this road and bundle a stripped-down OS and a computer and sell it at a rock bottom price. It’s the cell phone approach to market control. Give away the hardware and make your margins on monthly service fees.

The problem with Google going head to head with Microsoft for the OS is that you’re attacking the Giant right where he lives, so expect a long and heated battle. Others have tried for many years now–and at last count, Apple and Linux combined have managed to capture less than 10 percent of the OS market share. If I was Google and this was my strategy, I wouldn’t be thrilled with my odds. It’s also heavily dependent on users adopting a new way of doing things, so there’s a king-sized chasm to cross.

By the way, speaking of Apple, a few thought Steve Jobs, Larry Page, and Sergei Brin would make an interesting threesome. John Nesbit offered this bold prediction: “Google uses their cash to buy Apple–they are culturally similar in their approach to problems–and then with the new Intel chips that run the Apple OS due out next year they launch a new OS called ‘GO’–Google Operating System”.”

Other readers suggested that rather than attacking Microsoft where they’re dominant, you hit where they’re not the 800-pound gorilla. For example, mobile computing. Shaun Abrahamson says: “Mobile is probably one area where Uncle Bill is not dominant and this might be the place to take the fight, for the next gen of much more dependent users who have devices with them all the time.”

John Reilly sees Google’s battleground shaping up in super MP3 players. “Think of it this way. If you’re an iPod user, wouldn’t adding wireless search, social networking, and other communication functionality be spectacular?

And for Google (and its advertisers), what better way to bring ads and awareness to an already engaged audience?”

Toren Ajk agrees: “We have just begun to tap into the power of devices such as cell phones, MP3 players, game consoles, Tivos, etc. These are no longer business-originated activities (the area Microsoft has chosen to dominate). Entertainment is the primary function of these devices, be it active communication or passive absorption. This is a fundamental shift which makes access the key choke point. These devices don’t need to run through Windows in order to deliver their value, entertainment, to the end user.”

And, as Toren points out, if access is the new choke point, then other recent Google acquisitions may hold the key to their strategy. Pete Neumann warns: “What should be keeping us all awake at night is the fact that Google is buying up the secondary choke points–the onramps to the Internet: dark fiber, wireless networks, broadband over powerline (ConCurrent).”

Roy Moskowitz envisions a low-cost wireless broadband service, bundled with a Google-branded browser. “$1.00 a day and $10 a month for the privilege of being served ads on the Google browser when we connect sounds about right for the service. In contrast, T-mobile charges Starbucks customers $10 for an hour that must be used the same day.”

A few mentioned Google’s interest in NeoMedia as a clue. Their Paperclick technology uses handheld devices to link the world around you to the online world. Capture a barcode or quickly enter a word you see on a product box, billboard, or in-store display, and you’re suddenly linked to a Web site where you can purchase, register, get a rebate or watch a product demonstration.

Jim Barkow, who has friends deeply embedded in Google’s Mountain View brain trust, offers this advice: “Google has an army of the most talented, dedicated, and focused engineers around–and have spent the last few years making sure it was that way. Without a doubt, what they’ve launched so far is not the real goods of what they’ve been working on for the past two years.”

When it’s all said and done, perhaps Terry Weakly should have the last word. “Cash it in and go home…to a really nice home! Let someone else slug it out with Microsloth.”

I’m sure you’d have some takers in the Googleplex Terry, but getting the approval of Google shareholders might be an issue.

If I Had $4 Billion: Part One

First published September 1, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Get your ringside seats. The fight is about to begin. The flurry of announcements coming out of Google and Yahoo! recently show their preparations for the onslaught of MSN Search. And one of the most interesting was Google’s announcement of another issue of 14.6 million shares, to give them an estimated $4 billion cash injection.

First, let’s look at the recent Google announcements. Google Talk, the new IM application, is in beta now, which probably explains the current lack of advertising; don’t expect an ad-free zone for long. A few days before the IM report, Google announced the new version of their desktop search appliance with new features, such as RSS integration and self-updating navigation. To top it off, The New York Times ran an article claiming Google is taking Microsoft’s position as Silicon Valley’s favorite villain. According to the article, Google’s huge roster of engineering talent can do almost anything it puts its mind to, basically freezing start-ups in their tracks.

Look closely at the progression and a trend occurs: Get online users to spend more time on Google real estate.

Yahoo! has taken a different approach. The recently inked deal with Verizon pushes Yahoo! into the broadband biz. Again, it’s another attempt to stake a claim with a user base by introducing a more defensible touch point than search is currently.

The problem with search is the ease of switching. Going from Google to Yahoo! or MSN is a quick click. There are no barriers to exit. Google is painfully aware of that fact. When it comes to claiming online real estate, Google is in a vulnerable position.

Yahoo! has had a head start in creating a more complete user experience, as its roots are in the portal space. Ironically, it’s the same thing that almost killed them as a search property a few years ago. At that time, Google’s no-frills approach and clean interface captured the lion’s share of search traffic. Now, as our relationship with search evolves, Yahoo!’s more holistic approach might be a key factor in survival.

Rockefeller’s Choke-Point Strategy

John Rockefeller was the master of identifying and controlling the choke points of an industry. These are the points that allow absolute control over access to a market. With Rockefeller, it was the distribution of the oil that drove all industry. Today, the choke point is access to the desktop. And guess who’s sitting right on top of it? Mr. Gates. In fact, he has a double hold on us. The reason Microsoft destroyed Netscape in the browser war was to control a choke point. Now, as long as Window’s dominates as the operating system (OS) we use, Microsoft controls the ultimate choke point. Nothing can get to us through our computer unless it passes through the OS first.

Currently, Google is building a war chest. They know as long as they’re not in control of the choke point, they’re incredibly vulnerable. The recent activity shows Google desperately trying to add layer upon layer of touch points with its user base. Chat through Google. Network socially through Google. E-mail through Google. Search the desktop through Google. Unfortunately, each layer is built on the Microsoft OS. It’s like building your fort on enemy territory. At some point, the landlord may just kick you out. And I’m not sure $4 billion is enough to change that.

Ready to Rumble?

Google is beginning to build its defenses. Yahoo! is betting on maintaining access through its broadband subscribers. Meanwhile, Microsoft is still lumbering to the starting line.

Back to my original speculation. If you were Google, you had access to $4 billion in cash, and you were taking on Microsoft on their home turf, what would you do? E-mail me at gord@outofmygord.com and let me know. I’ll put it together into the Search Engine War Book in the next column.

Deep Thoughts from the Googleplex

First published August 18, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It was one year ago that I wrote my first Search Insider column. I remember that by the fact that I wrote about the San Jose Search Engine Strategies Show and now here I am, back in San Jose, going for my semi-regular search marketing total body immersion. Thank goodness this only happens occasionally. It can do strange things to one’s perspective to spend four days with thousands of people who live, breathe, and eat search. Compare this to my other life, where my wife is still not exactly sure what I do for a living.

For those of us privileged to live on the inside of this industry, we gain a glimpse into a fantastic and highly illogical world. It’s a world where empires can grow from mere ideas overnight and where vast territories can disappear just as quickly. Intellectual capital is the currency here, and it can be redeemed only through the acceptance of the masses. The winners in our world are the ones that pull the gem of an idea, nurture it into life, and find it picked up by the world. It’s like throwing little bits of our soul at the public, and hoping one of them sticks.

Case in point: Google. While here in San Jose, I had the opportunity to visit the new Googleplex in Mountain View. I walked through the immense complex (on the morning after the Google Dance, so I was still bleary-eyed) and joined my host for a hot breakfast in Google’s gourmet cafeteria, one of many places to grab a meal. I was surrounded by impossibly young, blue jean- and t-shirt-clad Googlites (Googlians?) that were all searching for the next big idea that will resonate with the public. They bellied up to the counter for a custom-made omelet or fruit smoothie, and then gathered around tables to start discussing the future, built in their terms. As my host said, this was the kingdom of the engineers, and Google is still very much an engineer-driven company.

In our world, this is as close to Camelot as it gets. Our society has switched paradigms. Many of us no longer look to our governments or spiritual organizations to make the world a better place. We’ve put our faith in the raw power of ideas. And if we happen to make a few billion in the process, so be it. Empires like Google no longer need assembly lines or oil wells, smelting plants, or factories to grow and prosper. All you need is people with bright ideas.

It was a telling note that my host told me that the new Google campus was in fact the old Silicon Graphics headquarters. As technology passes on, a new king has come to occupy the castle. The old guard has passed the torch to the new. He acknowledged the irony and said, “Hopefully we’ll be able to stay here awhile.” Meanwhile, the engineers downed their omelets and smoothies, blissfully unaware of the fact that, more often than not, history is doomed to repeat itself.

As I took in the sheer immensity of the complex, with all its high-tech touches and iconic lava lamps, I couldn’t help but think that all this came from one single idea. And it’s not even that defensible an idea. The Google Empire has been built from a clever thought, a shard of the souls of Mr. Page and Mr. Brin that has lodged in our collective bosoms. By making “Googling” a verb, they have built an enormous company. And they’ve done it in seven years. Yet no one seems aware of how ephemeral this all is. The phrase “Castle in the sky” couldn’t help but come to mind.

I felt torn between the father in me and the self-acknowledged tech geek. Part of me loves the idea of a world built on sheer intellectual horsepower. I am excited by the constantly shifting challenges and the persistent question: “What’s the next big idea? Who could be the next Google?” As I often say, working in this industry is like dancing on quicksand. But the dad in me says: “Be careful. This could all come crashing down tomorrow.”

Murthy vs. the Goliaths: The Power of Search at Work

First published August 9th in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In the good old days, online was the place where David could beat Goliath. It was the forum where success was decided not just by market cap or the size of your advertising budget, but by nimble strategies and just plain chutzpah. It was the place where the little guy could triumph and slam one in the face of the corporate behemoths. But those days are over, right?

Not quite, at least not in the legal field.

As part of a client project, I was using Hitwise to determine who the category leader was in law firms. Who was grabbing the biggest slice of the potential 100 million visitor-per-month pie? After sorting through record search sites like Intelius, people finders like US Search and directory sites like Lawyers.com, I started looking for those huge firms that you would expect to find on top. Here are the usual suspects:

Baker & McKenzie: 3,246 attorneys, 69 offices around the world
Jones Day: 1,822 Attorneys, 29 offices around the world
Skadden: 1,822 Attorneys, 22 offices around the world
Latham & Watkins: 1,627 Attorneys, 22 offices around the world

(The information on the firms comes from the Internet Legal Research Group and the firm’s own sites.)

And the winner was….

The Law Office of Sheela Murthy.

Who?

Murthy.com is the official online home for a small immigration law firm based in Owings Mill, Md. There are just nine attorneys in an office that’s probably smaller than the executive washroom at Baker and McKenzie. Yet, Ms. Murthy is kicking the big guys around the online block. And we’re not talking a slight edge in traffic. According to Hitwise’s market share report, Murthy.com captures 10 times the market share of these four huge firms combined.

I must admit, I was a little skeptical at first. So, I tried some quick checks on Alexa. Sure enough, the small firm from Owings Mill was decimating the big guys when it came to generating Internet traffic.

Frankly, I’m at a bit of a loss to explain this. The only explanation must be that the big guys don’t really care. This is surprising, considering that well over a million people searched for some kind of lawyer on the Yahoo! network in May. And that’s just on Yahoo! Google’s numbers would easily double this. That’s a minimum of 5 million potential clients up for grab every month, and the four largest firms in the United States haven’t even optimized their title tags. You guessed it. Just the name of the firm shows in every case!

As search marketers, we often assume that the whole world knows about the power of search. Sometimes, it takes a blatant example like this to make us realize that a large part of the world is still waking up to the new reality of online marketing. And, as long as the giants are sleeping, there’s still the opportunity for the Sheela Murthy’s of the world to eat their lunch.

Come on, admit it: Aren’t you going to be just a little bit sorry when those days are gone?

The Separation of Church and State in Search

First published August 3, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The people at the major search engines like to talk a lot about the separation of church and state. They use the historical reference to explain the unbreachable divide between their organic listings and the sponsored ones, and the departments that govern each. It represents some ethical buffer zone between the two sides of search.

The History of Church and State

The reference goes back to Thomas Jefferson and the U.S. constitution. It began when “a wall of separation between church and state” was entrenched in the first amendment to the constitution by restricting Congress from passing laws respecting the establishment or prohibiting the free exercise of religion.

In looking at search’s use of the term, a more relevant comparison is the adoption of the term by the newspaper and journalism industry, where it described the division between the editorial and the advertising departments. The idea was that budgets spent on advertising shouldn’t have any influence over the journalistic integrity of the reporters. They should be free to pursue the story without fear of the impact it might have on advertising revenues. Good in theory, but of course, theory often breaks down in the real world.

Church and State Online

Church versus state is often a fiercely guarded concept by the keepers of the editorial content. They cite it often, and usually passionately. Search (especially Google) is no exception. The term is mentioned often when the thorny issue of organic optimization is raised. I heard Google co-founder Larry Page quoted once as saying, “If it’s good for search engine optimization, it’s bad for the user.” The whole church versus state dilemma is at the root of search’s bipolar relationship with search marketing practitioners. They love our money, but hate the fact that we want our clients to appear in the prime section of the search results page, the top three or four organic listings.

As in most things, I find this is all a matter of perspective. Search engines have their perspective, as do advertisers and the agencies that represent them in search. For a different view, let’s look at it from the user’s perspective.

Do Users Separate Sponsored and Algorithmic Search?

When we turn to a newspaper, we can do so with a number of intentions. We can be looking for news, sports scores, the latest weather, how our stock did, or perhaps we just want to do the crossword puzzle. When we find a story that catches our interest, we spend some time on that page and may see an ad that happens to be adjacent to the story. Chances are the relevancy of the advertising message to the news story we were reading is minimal. It’s more a matter of positioning and happenstance than anything. If I’m Charles Schwab and I consistently buy an ad on the stock report page, that’s about as far as my contextual targeting will go.

But what if I could tell when someone was going to the paper to look for the latest share price on one particular stock, and I placed my ad, highly targeted to that stock, right next to the stock price? Is this maintaining the idealistic standard of separating church and state? According to ConsumerReports, Ralph Nader, and many others, the answer is a resounding no!

When we do a search, we’re looking for relevant results. The search engines use the same criteria to serve both organic and sponsored results: keyword relevancy. And the results are presented on the same piece of real estate, the search engine results page. In fact, as we confirmed in our eye-tracking study, the search engines are happy to use our natural scanning behavior to ensure that sponsored ads are placed in the most prominent section of the page. Other than a small label identifying the results as being paid, there is little to distinguish the two results.

Maybe Some SEO Is Good, Mr. Page…

It seems to me that the search engines want to have their cake and eat it too. When it suits them, they’re more than happy to blur the lines between algorithmic content and paid content, using the same rules and real estate to present both. But as soon as a marketer tries to use this “hot zone” created by the engines themselves to effectively market, the search engines cry foul.

I am fully aware that there is a thriving industry that tries to constantly beat the algorithms. I, as a user, am frustrated with the pollution of results by affiliates and other aggressive marketers who use spam tactics to push garbage sites up the ranks. As a user, I want the search engines to do anything they can to clean up black-hat spam.

But the fact is, there are organic optimizers that are doing the search engines a huge favor. We have several clients that are recognized leaders in their industry. They have thousands of pages of useful content that searchers should be able to find. But, for various reasons, they aren’t in that “Golden Triangle” for the right terms. It may be that no one has tried to find out what the right terms are, or it could be a missing title tag, or site architecture that confuses the spiders, or one of a hundred other technical reasons. We’re helping Google, Yahoo!, and MSN do their jobs more effectively. Yet, as soon as I sit down at a table with a representative from an engine and the conversation turns to organic optimization, it turns awkward and within a minute I’m guaranteed to hear the words “separation of church and state.”

The fact is, despite the intentions of Thomas Jefferson, church has never been successfully separated completely from state. The real world lives somewhere in between.

Confessions of an Eye Tracking Junkie

Originally published July 21, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

You know how fires, the ocean, and computer progress bars are mesmerizing? You can sit for hours, watching the constant motion. Next thing you know, you wake up from the reverie and realize that everybody has abandoned you, assuming you’ve passed into a catatonic state.

After looking at hundreds of eye tracking sessions for our most recent whitepaper, I can add eye tracking results to the list. For someone as obsessed with search user behavior as I am, this was a pure jolt of addiction-inducing visual stimuli. Why did they look there? Why didn’t they click? Are they going to scroll down? Wait for it… wait for it… ahh… they did!

It may not be hang gliding or rock climbing, but for me, this is life on the edge. I know, my wife thinks I’m pathetic too.

48 X 2 X 5 = Search Geek Nirvana.

We had 48 people, with 2 eyes each (Greek mythological creatures weren’t included in this particular sample), work their way through 5 separate scenarios using Google. I apologize to the MSN’s, Yahoo!’s, and other engines of the world, but we had to reduce scope somewhere. Your turn’s coming.

Needless to say, we had a lot of sessions to look at. And not once did it get boring. It was fascinating to watch how people navigated a search page.

A lot of detail came out of the study. The whitepaper sits at about 106 pages. But I can share a few of the interesting ones with you.

Google’s Prime Real Estate: The Golden Triangle By now, most people reading this column have probably heard about Google’s Golden Triangle. It represents the region of the most intense scanning and clicking activity. It starts in the upper left corner in the top sponsored ads and extends down to the top four or five organic results. It ends at the bottom of the results visible without scrolling. The Golden Triangle is seen by 80 to 100 percent of the visitors to the page. By contrast, listings below the fold and the side sponsored ads are seen by only 10 to 50 percent of visitors.

Going Sponsored? Stay on Top Top sponsored ads outperformed side sponsored ads in every category. They enjoyed twice the visibility (80 to 100 percent of participants who saw top sponsored versus 10 to 50 percent who saw side sponsored) and click throughs (almost 12 percent versus 5 percent of all clicks) of the side sponsored ads. And people found what they were looking for. In terms of stated satisfaction with the results found after clicking through to a site, the top sponsored ads performed better than any of the listings on the page.

More on Those Eye Catching Top Ads Few of us go to a search engine looking for paid results. But the fact is, they catch a lot of eyes on our way to the organic results. The more that appear on top of those top organic results, the greater the chance that we’ll be spending at least a few seconds looking there. When both sponsored ads and OneBox results (the news, shopping, or local results that appear above the top organic ads in Google) showed up, 70 percent looked at the top sponsored ads first. In some cases, it was just a split second glance (called a fixation point in the study) and then the person quickly moved down to the organic listings before they started to read the listings. This happened in about 12 percent of the cases. But the fact remains, 58 percent of the participants stuck around in these top listings and spent a few seconds scanning them. So, in many cases, this represents your first chance to intercept a prospect.

Anatomy of a Scan Pattern Across all sessions we analyzed in the study, about 30 percent of searchers started scanning in the top sponsored ads, 15 percent in OneBox results, and 50 percent in top organic results. Remember, top sponsored ads and OneBox results don’t appear for every search. It seems that everyone’s intention is to move down to the organic results, but about 14 percent of the time (on first visits to a search results page) searchers click on either a top sponsored link or OneBox results before they get there.

Search Decisions in the Blink of an Eye We don’t spend a lot of time on a search results page. Participants spent an average of about 6.5 seconds on the results page. In that time, they scanned just under four listings before they clicked on one. In most cases, we scan listings rather than read them, and if we do read, it’s usually only the title.

Me, Myself, and Eye For anyone remotely interested in how people move their way through a search page, eye tracking provides some fascinating and compelling insights. You have a record of every eye movement and split-second stop. In many cases, the participant themselves would be surprised to see the places their eyes stopped on the way to the eventual click through. It provides an unequaled visual record of a search page interaction. But be warned, side effects may include the inability to communicate with co-workers and spouses, a glassy haze over your eyes, increased pulse rates when examining aggregate heat maps, and missed wedding anniversaries. So please, proceed with caution.

Hello, my name is Gord, and I love looking at eye-tracking results.

Is There a Free Lunch in Search?

Originally published July 7, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’m pretty sure Yahoo! owes me a free lunch. Perhaps even a dinner. Their new Mindset beta looks suspiciously like a prediction I made two years ago. I thought it would take them three years to get it out. But Yahoo! managed to beat the prediction by a year.

Fearless Predictions… In an article entitled “Search: 2006,” written almost two years ago I made some predictions about what the search game would look like in three years. One of them was the introduction of a new feature by Yahoo!:

“Another innovative new feature is Yahoo!’s Smart Search technology. Extensive user surveys have found that searcher’s feelings about sponsored links changes dramatically, depending on the type of search they’re launching. Generally speaking, the further away they are from a buying decision, the less they like anything that looks like sponsored search results. Yahoo!’s new Smart Search uses the characteristics of each individual search and the searcher’s past history to dynamically build search results based on a user’s predefined preferences. If the search is a less commercial research type request, there will be few (or no) sponsored results showing. If a searcher is looking for the best airfare from St. Louis to New York, Smart Search launches a heavily commercialized search page, complete with instant links through Yahoo! shopping for one-click purchases.

Smart Search marks a continuing attempt by the search industry to keep the user base happy while not jeopardizing the search vendor’s ability to monetize their search traffic. Obviously, Yahoo! would prefer to offer commercialized results for every search to maximize their advertising revenue, but Smart Search is Yahoo!’s response to increasing customer demands to be in control of the level of commercialization on their search portals. To date, no other search portal has put this much control in the user’s hands, and everyone is watching Yahoo!’s experiment to see how successful it is.”

A Striking Resemblance… Now, back to today. Yahoo!’s new Mindset Beta allows the user to adjust a slide rule and tweak the amount of commercialism in their search results. Actually, they go one better than what I suggested. I envisioned being able to adjust the number of sponsored ads that appear. The Yahoo! Beta actually changes the commercialism of the organic search results.

This is an interesting concept. I’ve been climbing on soapbox after soapbox for almost two years now, saying how search is likely to be used during the consideration or research phase, when we’re gathering information, not the actual purchase phase. We may not want results aimed towards generating a purchase.

Now, just as I predicted, Yahoo! is experimenting with putting the control in the user’s hands. At this point, your sponsored ads don’t change. I’m not sure what Yahoo!’s plans are for this in the future.

Tailor Made Search Results In playing with Mindset, I found the interface pretty cool. You slide the selector, and your results update before your eyes. Not everything in their index is included in this beta, but there’s enough to give you a definite feel for the potential. For example, I did a search for Seattle. If you slide the bar all the way to “research” you get sites like Seattle University, Wikipedia’s article on Seattle, the University of Washington, and the official site for the Port of Seattle. If you slide the bar all the way to “shopping” you get Seattle theatre sites, restaurant guides, and for some reason, a Seattle Web cam site. Not sure what that has to do with “shopping,” but it is a beta.

So, a feature that puts the commercialism of the results in the hands of the searcher? It didn’t end up being exactly what I predicted two years ago, but I figure it’s close enough for a free lunch. I’ve got a call in to Jerry Yang. I’ll let you know if I collect.

Search Will Get You the Lead, But the Rest is Up to You

First published June 23, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Let me tell you a story. In my company, we recently decided that we would invest in bringing a new service in-house. The cost to do so, with required hardware and software, will be about $34,000 U.S. Having more than a passing interest in this particular expenditure, I did some preliminary consumer research. In the textbook case of how we all say search works, I turned to a search engine. I did my search and ended up clicking on a sponsored link because it seemed to be the most relevant one.

So far, a text-book example of search marketing at work, right? Here’s where it starts to go off the rails.

Is Anybody Home? I clicked the site and while it was a little skimpy on product information, it got me sufficiently interested to want more. One thing I needed was pricing, because the site didn’t offer any details on cost.

So, we filled out the form on the site requesting more information. In fact, we clicked the little box saying we wanted to be contacted by a sales rep. Two days later, we still hadn’t heard anything. So we e-mailed the sales contact and 24 hours later, still nothing. This was a European company, with a North American sales office. I called the North American 800-number and left a slightly brusque message. Two days later, nada. I finally called the European head office, on my dime, at 7 in the morning because of the 9-hour time difference, and got someone who spent a few minutes on the phone with me. Unfortunately, they didn’t have much of the information I was looking for. I was told I had to call the North American contact. I explained that I tried this and got no response from my voicemail message. Without the faintest hint of an apology, the person told me, in a tone that indicated that I should know better, the North American sales rep, Ken, was currently in Thailand. Of course he wouldn’t be returning my call. I asked when I might expect a return call. “Oh, in about a week or so. I’ll get Ken to give you a call.”

That was three weeks ago. Guess what? No Ken, no return call, no contact. No sale. I guess they don’t really need the money, not if Ken can keep jetting off to Thailand for weeks at a time.

Ken’s Not Alone… I wish I could tell you that this is an isolated incident, a ripple in the smooth seas of online commerce. But according to a recent study by BenchmarkPortal, 51 percent of North American small- and medium-size businesses (SMBs) studied ignore e-mails from potential customers. The study evaluated 147 SMBs in a number of sectors. It was a follow up to a similar study done with enterprise-level organizations. In that study, 41 percent of the e-mails were ignored.

So, about half of the e-mails from hot prospects were outright ignored. But it doesn’t end there. Of the responses that were received from SMBs, 70 percent took longer than 24 hours (61 percent for enterprise-level organizations). And 79 percent responded with inaccurate or incomplete information (83 percent for enterprise companies).

So let me get this straight. If I’m really interested in a product, there’s only a 50/50 chance I’ll get any answer at all. If I do, there’s a two in three chance I’ll be waiting several days. And when I do get it, it will only give me the information I’m looking for one out of five times. Add it up and my odds of getting a prompt, accurate response are about one in 10.

Why don’t you just hit your prospects over the head with a baseball bat? It will be less painful and over a lot quicker.

Consumers Anonymous In our first research on potential customers using search, we identified something called the Anonymity Threshold. It means potential customers who are researching online won’t volunteer information that would allow contact until they’re serious about buying. They browse anonymously until that time, gathering information and weighing their options. This is why it’s important to give them the information they need to make their buying decision.

Remember the lack of pricing information on the site I used as my first example? The only reason I bothered to initiate contact was that this company has unique technology. They don’t really have a competitor in their niche, and we like their product. I was an extremely motivated consumer. If there were more comparable competition that offered more information on their site, I might never have contacted them.

So, if someone is reaching out to you, they’re motivated. Their money is sitting on the table. They want to buy. You don’t want to give them any more time than necessary to find someone else to buy from. A response should be received in an hour. At the absolute maximum, don’t let these leads go longer than 24 hours. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to get the lead. Don’t throw them away.

 

 

Blink, Thin Slicing and the Art of Search

First published June 9, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

In Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, he examines how we make decisions in a split second, and how these intuitive decisions are often more valid than ones we labor over for months.

While Gladwell’s book examines how intuitive decisions are made in a number of situations, it’s fascinating to apply his insights to how we search.

After asking thousands of people to think about they search (through all our research, we’re probably closing in on 3000 now), only one thing has been consistent in our findings. People don’t really know. In some cases, we think we know–but our interactions happen so quickly with the search results page and at such a subconscious level that we’re often at a loss to explain how we chose the results we did. The fact is, the minute we ask people to slow down and start examining their search interaction, that interaction changes and we don’t get a true picture.

When we interact online, we make decisions in split seconds. The rapid-fire assimilation of information and clicking on navigation options is aided by the fact that we can navigate the Web with relatively little risk. If we follow a false lead and end up on a site that doesn’t offer what we’re looking for, the back button is one click away. If only life came with a back button. Wouldn’t it be nice to back out of our mistakes in real life as easily as we can online?

As we navigate, we click merrily along, in a headlong rush to get to our online destination. Only when we perceive that there is increased risk to ourselves–which could present itself as committing some of our personal information, making a purchase, or downloading a file–do we stop and deliberate.

In searching, none of the above risk threats are there. As long as we’re on our favorite search engine, we can’t commit to anything that can’t be corrected with a couple of clicks on the back button.

In our study, we found that people spend an average of 6.4 seconds on a search results page before clicking on a link, and in that time scan an average of 3.9 results. In these few seconds, we assimilate an average of 140 words. Included in those words are between 35 to 60 factors and details we have to consider to make a decision. Yet we take just a few seconds to do this. This is what Mr. Gladwell calls Thin Slicing.

Thin Slicing is the ability to take huge amounts of information and focus in on just what’s important. Then we take these few key pieces of information and make our decision on a subconscious, intuitive level. We don’t know how we made the decision, and if we stop to examine it, we can’t explain the steps we went through. But the decision was made, and in a surprising number of instances, it proves to be the right one. In fact, by trying to take a more logical approach, we often paralyze our decision-making ability.

For the majority of us, the decisions we make while we are on a search results page are an example of thin slicing. Both through cognitive assimilation (actively reading titles and descriptions) and by finding matches to our semantic maps–the group of words that make up the concept we’re search for–through what we see in the listings with our peripheral vision, most of us make decisions on what to click on in seconds.

There are a few deliberate searchers out there who take the time to actively read each title and description before making their decision, but they are few and far between.

What’s the application for search marketing? Understand that placement of keyphrases and words that can catch attention are vital in this split-second environment. This is why position is important. With decisions made in seconds, not a lot of screen real estate is scanned. And every decision is made by weighing the factors in those few listings that were scanned.

So don’t create your search marketing strategies in a vacuum. Explore the competitive environment defined by the search listings for your prime keyphrases. See who else you share the space with, where they’re positioned relative to you, and how you can compete with them for grabbing the attention of your prospective customer. Remember, you can gain them or lose them in the blink of an eye!

Redefining Search Optimization

First published May 26, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

We search marketers use the word optimize a lot. We use it to talk about increasing our positions in the organic listings, or maximizing our bidding strategies, or fine-tuning our landing pages. Rarely, though, do we use it to talk about boosting a site’s overall user experience. And by turning a blind eye to the site side experience, we could be denying our clients a strategy that could provide the biggest lift of all.

An Eye Opening Experience We’re just wrapping up a usability study for a client who targets 18- to 35-year-olds. These are the most Web savvy people on the planet. In talking to a number of them and watching how they interacted with the site, some things became painfully obvious. First of all, a good portion of screen real estate was devoted to a flash banner that was repeated on every page. Above this banner were some vital navigation links. There were also some interactive features and conversion calls to action, primarily graphical in nature, incorporated into this banner.

Here’s what happened: Within a few seconds of entering the site, most users decided the flash banner was advertising and ignored it. In doing so, they ignored any navigation options that appeared in the top third of every page on the site. In fact, this aversion extended to pretty much anything that appeared to be graphical and interactive throughout their entire site session. The client spent the majority of their Web design budget in creating a series of interactive tools, some very useful, that usually appeared in these ignored areas of the page. But almost all the participants in the study went straight past these to the plain text and pictures portion of the site. Unfortunately, the client didn’t put the most attractive conversion triggers in this section. They were up above in the no-eyeball zone.

The Economic Argument Let’s say you have a sponsored search budget of about $100,000 per month. This generally produces about $250,000 in new business as measured by your success metrics. So, for every dollar you spend, you get a $2.50 return, or a 150 percent net gain.

Now, you could extensively manage your keyword baskets, use advanced bidding strategies, and aggressively reduce your PPC costs by 20 percent, dropping your budget from $100,000 to $80,000. For most companies, this type of ongoing management requires many hours of extra work each month. Let’s say it takes 10 extra hours a week for a person to which you pay $48,000 per year. To realize the $20,000 gain each month, your cost in additional resources is $1,000 (roughly 25 percent of your manager’s time), giving you a net gain of $19,000 monthly. Not a bad return on investment, right? At the end of 12 months, you’re up $228,000.

But let’s say you instead concentrate on improving conversion rates by tweaking the user experience. You undertake a one-time conversion improvement project at a cost of $30,000. By implementing the changes, you boost your conversion rates by the same 20 percent. This bumps the business realized monthly to $300,000. Your budget remains the same, so now every dollar you spend gets you a $3.00 return, or a 200 percent net gain.

The extra business adds up to $600,000 at the end of 12 months. Your one-time cost was $30,000, leaving you up $570,000 for the year, more than twice the return realized from aggressively managing the PPC expenses. Further, optimization will improve conversion rates from all traffic sources, not just your search traffic. And the cost is one time, not on going, although I would certainly recommend optimizing your conversion mechanisms on a periodical basis.

It’s a Matter of Perspective All too often, search marketers mechanically do what it is we do, without tying it to the client’s objectives. Case in point: We were recently talking to a prospect with a very large site that they sell advertising on. The client’s objective is to increase page views so they have more advertising inventory to sell. This site happens to have great brand loyalty, but there are some navigation issues to deal with.

In talking to the client, they mentioned that one of our competitors said that they were going to optimize the title tags and meta data on every one of the many thousands of pages on the site and asked if we were prepared to do the same. I replied that we could, but why? Wouldn’t it be better to optimize the pages with the best potential for traffic gains, and then take the remaining time to find ways to boost their average visitor session from 10 page views to 12 or 13? We calculated that even with a tremendously successful meta tag optimization campaign, they may realize a total traffic gain of a few percent points, while extending the visitor sessions would give a 20 to 30 percent boost in that vital page view inventory.

Sometimes, you have to step back a little to get the full picture. Step back, search marketers, step back.