Author Archives: ghotchkiss

A Whiter Shade of Black

First published November 10, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Last week I was chatting with my friend Greg Jarboe. For those of you who don’t know Greg, he’s the guru of cranking up Web visibility through effective optimization of press releases and leveraging news search. But the pearl of wisdom that I picked up from Greg this time was an offhand comment that said volumes about our industry.

Stockholm Confidential.

Greg had just gotten back from a search conference in Sweden. At said conference, there tends to be a handful of black-hat SEOs that hold court after the show shuts down, showing off their spam de jour. For those of us who primarily live on the white side of the fence (and I say primarily because one is never sure exactly where that fence is) it’s always a guilty pleasure cornering one of these dark magicians. They’re brash, confident and masterful in their manipulation of algorithmic loopholes left by Google, Yahoo and MSN. Using every tactic in their arsenal, they manipulate sites up the rankings and make fistfuls of money in the process. I once asked a black hat if he had any ethical twinges. He replied, “The odd time, but my kids are going to a great college.”

This trip, Greg managed to take a black hat to dinner. And in between the courses, a confession came out that stopped Greg in his tracks. “Black hat stuff is getting too hard. I’m actually thinking about turning legit.” What? Is this capitulation? Is Courtney Love taking up a nun’s habit? What would cause a confirmed black hatter to turn his back on the incredibly lucrative dark side of SEO and step into the light? As much as the army of engineers at Google and Yahoo would like to say it’s their constant refinement of their algorithms, I think there’s another force at work here. Online is just growing up.

Frontier Mentality.

Up to now, online has been the Wild West. The sheriff hadn’t come to town yet. Black hats could get mediocre sites to the top of the rankings because the vast majority of legit sites had no clue about search engine optimization. Reams of content were hidden in content management systems, locked off from the search engines by impenetrable dynamic urls. Ill-conceived site architectures meant redirects off the home page to destinations buried four and five levels deep. The essential title tag wasn’t even optimized. This is more common than you think. I’ve participated in a number of search workshops where some of the best-known brands in the world had their sites examined. It’s rare to see a keyword show up in the title tag.

But, slowly, things are changing. Brands are clueing into the importance of algorithmic search. Spider friendliness is usually a requirement in evaluations of new CMS solutions or site redesigns. And when you take a site that has thousand of pages of content, with rich internal linking structures and scads of legitimate, authoritative incoming links, it will jump to the top of the search results. It’s inevitable. Those are the sites MSN, Yahoo and Google want at the top of their results. Those are the sites we want to see at the top of the results. It’s the online universe working as it should.

The Settling of Main Street.

Today, these huge brands are turning to white-hat search practitioners to help unlock the full potential of their sites. At this point, it’s still a trickle, but it’s improving every day. And every time a big brand grabs a spot in that “Golden Triangle” at the top of the search results, a black-hat-manipulated site is moved a little further down the ladder. It doesn’t matter what tricks a black hatter has up its sleeve, you can’t beat the sheer bulk of these killer sites, as long as they’re properly optimized.

So, as the online geography becomes more civilized through the influx of legitimate business, black hats are forced to move off Main Street into the back alleys. There’s less territory for them to operate in. And now, they’re competing for position against other black hats who are as ruthless as they are, rather than against naïve site owners who have never heard of a meta tag or Pagerank. It gets harder to make a buck.

I’m not discounting the effort that the search engines have made to clean up spam. Google’s Florida Update was probably the single biggest blow to black hat optimization and affiliate spam. But, at the end of the day, spam’s being eliminated because better sites are being optimized effectively, allowing them to naturally claim their rightful territory in the search listings. And it’s the legitimate SEO industry that’s making that happen.

Isn’t it ironic? As the Web grows up, it appears that many of us in the SEO industry might actually turn out to be the sheriff.

Google, Search and a Brave New World

First published October 27, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

As I write this, I have literally just closed the cover on John Battelle’s new book, “The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture.” Reading it was a unique experience for me. It was addictive, like literary crack. I devoured it in huge gulps. I can’t recall the last time I read a book in such a short time.

Look, They’re Writing About Us!

For the last 10 years, the part of my life not devoted to my wife and kids has been consumed with search. So reading the book was like reading a family history. I knew many of the people quoted. I had lived through the history recounted. I even found a quote from myself in the book.

I’ve never met John Battelle, but as I read, it was like he had crawled into my brain, picked up things I’ve been thinking about for years, then rendered them whole with much more skill and eloquence than I could ever possibly manage.

“The Search” is unlike any previous volume written on search. There have been several “how-to” books that have explored the mechanics of search, both from a user’s and marketer’s perspective. But Battelle for the first time explores search as a business and social phenomenon. Not only that, he muses that it might be THE social phenomenon, with world-shattering implications. For anyone who has grown up in search, it’s like seeing your high school sweetheart become a world-famous centerfold. “See, I told you she was hot. No one believed me!” It’s public confirmation of everything we’ve been trying to tell people for a decade.

Battelle has somehow managed to get access to the people who literally invented the industry. He has obviously immersed himself in the world of search, but has brought a 50,000-foot view that allows him to explore a much larger picture from a slightly different perspective. He looks at what search may evolve to become. As the founder of Wired and The Industry Standard, Battelle has the journalistic chops to dig out the good stuff and get it right, but he maintains a wide-eyed wonder at the sheer enormity of the social implications.

A Peek inside Google’s Kimono

What emerges is a fascinating glimpse into search as an emerging phenomenon, and a particularly astute look inside the relatively private world of Google. As regular readers of this column know, I’ve devoted more than a few words to this perplexing company.

I remember telling someone at a conference once that Google alternatively strikes me as pure genius, and as the proverbial room of monkeys randomly striking at typewriters. The truth, according to Battelle, is that Google is both. The monkeys are the genius. And the hope is that in the process they’ll reinvent everything.

Google, formed in the petri dish of hypergrowth unlike anything ever seen before, is either heading for the world’s largest comeuppance, or it may just change the world. Although Battelle is remarkably even-handed in his portrayal, there’s no doubt that he’s rooting for Sergey Brin and Larry Page, Google’s founders.

Google is advancing on a thousand different fronts at once. With their acknowledged brilliance, arrogance and determination, Brin and Page have built a company that worships at the altar of technology. The high priests are legions of engineers, all given explicit instructions to invent something cool. There is little in the way of top-down strategy. Page is quoted as saying that he’s not a big believer in strategy. Rather, the Google Brin and Page envision is a support system for rampant entrepreneurialism, with grassroots innovation ultimately driving the direction of the company. The multi-million dollar Founders’ Award attaches heavy bonuses to this activity, giving employees a reason to stay in the corporate nest, rather than founding their own companies and ultimately hoping to be acquired again by Google.

But a paradox lies at the heart of Google. For all its encouragement of grassroots innovation, the company is also portrayed in the book as a serfdom, with Brin and Page as the iron-fisted and mercurial overlords prone to micromanaging. There is one particularly vivid scene where CEO Eric Schmidt finds Brin shaking at his desk, suffering through a bad back, meticulously poring over 500-plus applications for internal development projects, to see which will get his stamp of approval.

Despite the name, “The Search” is not just another search book. It’s a probing look at the crux of what makes the Internet such a powerful force for change. It explores the fabric of our society, and makes us realize that fabric could be ripped apart by forces already unleashed by technology. I’m not sure it will be as compelling a read for those outside the industry. Like most things to do with search, there will likely be more who say “Huh?” than “Wow!”

I Speak Search

First published October 13, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’m not sure if this is being done in some university somewhere, but I would love to know if our use of search engines is changing how we communicate.

The search query is a form of communication that is deceptive in its simplicity. We are becoming adept at paring down complex concepts into a few well-chosen words, with no unnecessary filler. Even if we do throw in a few “the”s and “what”s, the search engine conveniently strips them from our query.

For example, I wanted to know what time zone Atlanta is in today. I went to Google and typed, “What is the local time in Atlanta?” Google truncated my query to “local time Atlanta.” Of the seven words I typed, four were unnecessary.

Which leads me to think, how many unnecessary words do we use every day as we communicate? If I cut this column down to the bare minimum of words required to convey the concept, it would probably drop from about 800 words to 200 or so. How much of our lives do we spend jamming extraneous words into our conversations and e-mails?

Who’s the advanced searcher?

The common view is that we’re pretty unsophisticated in the way we use search. Less than 5 percent of all searches use advanced search techniques, and by advanced, I mean something as simple as using query operators like “and,” “all” or “not.” I’m betting that the vast majority of Google users have never clicked on that little “Advanced Search” link that sits next to the search box. Sometimes, I think we search marketers are the only ones who ever use these features to mine Google’s index for competitive intelligence regarding back links and pages indexed. But I’m beginning to believe the common view is misguided. I think we’re getting quite sophisticated; we have learned how to make a few words go a long way. Don’t mistake short queries for a lack of sophistication. Generally, a short query matches our intent at the time. We want a broad, inclusive focus. When we’re ready to narrow the parameters, we add the words necessary. We understand that search is an iterative process.

Men (and women) of few words.

One of my favorite examples of on-the-mark ripostes was between two literary adversaries, William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Their exchange went like this: Faulkner said of Hemingway: “He has never been known to use a word that might send a reader to the dictionary.”

And Hemingway’s response: “Poor Faulkner. Does he really think big emotions come from big words? He thinks I don’t know the ten-dollar words. I know them all right. But there are older and simpler and better words, and those are the ones I use.” Perhaps search engines are turning us into the Hemingways of the online generation. We cut out the fat, distilling concepts into the fewest words possible. We are learning the language of the search query. And although it’s not perfect, and can be frustrating at times, most of the time it works very well, thank you.

Consider the plight of Ask Jeeves. This engine made much of its ability to interpret queries written in plain English. In other words (lots of other words), queries that didn’t have the fat removed. The idea was that we would be more comfortable interacting with an engine with personality, which spoke the same language we do. Ask Jeeves’ current share of the search market? Less than 2 percent (according to Hitwise). While the Ask Jeeves model might have been attractive to new Internet users, we tend to pick up “SearchSpeak” pretty quickly. It’s not difficult. After a couple of queries, we learn how many words it takes to bring back the results we’re looking for, most of the time. Soon, we leave full sentences behind and cut back to just the essential words to frame our search intent.

So, if I’m right, what will our communications look like in a few short years? Will we have discarded the majority of the language, communicating in pared-down, task-oriented phrases? Will using search lead us into a new linguistic shorthand? A manifestation of this trend is now being seen in e-mails and instant messaging. In some cases, we’re even discarding words completely and going with acronyms. You don’t laugh uproariously anymore, you LOL, and if it’s really funny, you ROTFLMAOPMP.

Global SearchSpeak.

Going further, will a truncated version of English become the new international language? Will SearchSpeak pick up where Esperanto left off? Finally, you can have revenge on your grade school grammar teacher and toss away adverbs, adjectives, modifiers and participles to your heart’s content. All we’ll be left with is a handful of tried-and-true nouns and the odd verb. Anybody should be able to become fluent in SearchSpeak in a few months. Then, you can travel the globe, communicating in short, to-the-point phrases: “London pub, near Buckingham Palace” or “Paris hotel NOT rude staff.” While the discarding of the majority of the English language may be a frightening thought, it’s not really that big a leap. This is pretty much the way we all communicated with our parents when we were between the ages of 13 and 18: “Goin’ out…Nowhere…Nothing.Later.”

 

The Extreme Makeover of Integrated Search Planning

First published September 28, 2005 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

It’s bordering dangerously close to jargon. As you scan a topic list at a conference, it doesn’t really grab you by the throat and drag you into the session room. I wanted to call my session something like “Search: the Shortcut Between You and Your Customer,” or “Search, the Vital Online Intersection.” In the end, we compromised on “Integrated Search Planning: How Organic, Sponsored and Paid can Optimize All Media Spends.” Not really lyrical, but it works.

It’s a shame that Integrated Search Planning doesn’t sound sexier, because when you spend some time thinking about it, it’s a concept that can sneak up and smack you in the side of the head. This is an idea that’s immensely powerful.

Living Online. We spend more and more of our lives online. The Internet is beginning to challenge TV for its share of our time and our attention. Add the fact that you’re actively engaged when you’re online, as opposed to passively absorbing programming and advertising, and the Internet’s role as an influencer becomes tremendously important. So, for any given set of consumers, we can assume that online is a vital factor.

Now consider the fact that our time online is being integrated more and more into our other activities. If we see something on TV that interests us, chances are very good that further research will be done online. The same is true for magazines, newspapers or other media. Increasingly, the Internet is being unlocked from the desktop box in the den, and emerging into our prime living space. At home, our Media Center PC is right next to the TV, given a spot of honor in the room where we spend 80 percent of our time. I’m also the proud owner of a new Pocket PC, and after I recovered from the shock of my first usage bill and learned to use remote Internet connectivity sparingly, I found myself intrigued by this notion of being online, anywhere, anytime.

In a few more years, the integration will be complete. The line between our real world and our online world will have disappeared. The world’s largest depository of information will be ours to have, whenever the mood strikes us.

Connecting the Dots with Search. Now comes search. There are billions of dots out there on the online landscape. Search is the quickest way to connect them. It’s our transporter, getting us from here to almost anywhere instantly. No, it’s not foolproof. Yes, it can be frustrating, but nothing is better. We don’t like typing in urls. We don’t want to figure out where we put the backslash, the hyphen or the tilde. We just pick a few words, jam them into a search tool bar and happily click away. We use search to navigate online. The fact that 97% of us use one of three engines, and close to 60% of us use just one, makes it even easier. The search market is highly consolidated. It’s like the glory days of TV advertising, when there were just 3 networks and cable hadn’t started fragmenting the market.

So, if you’re looking for the online intersection where you’re most likely to intercept a prospective customer, it’s search. I know you’ve heard that before, but really spend a couple of minutes thinking about it.

No matter what activity, what interest, what intention your target customers have, chances are very good that they’re going to use a search engine today. It’s like owning a billboard on the busiest intersection in the world.

So, let’s get back to the riveting topic of integrated search planning. The rest of your marketing has one purpose: generate engaged interest. If it’s successful, where does your prospect turn? Odds are very good that it will be a search engine. While they’re there, you have about six-and-a-half seconds to catch their interest. If you’re successful, you can then direct them to your site, where you have the opportunity to turn them into a lifetime customer.

Let me give you an example. Some years ago, we pitched an idea to a large company. A big part of their marketing push was a major sponsorship of NASCAR racing. Every year, they poured millions into their sponsored team. To support this online, they had a separate section of their site that was devoted to the team, including up-to-date standings, race stats and other information. Unfortunately, for various reasons, the site had no search engine visibility.

At the time, sponsored search was in its infancy. So the company could have owned the entire NASCAR bucket of keywords for a few thousand dollars a month. With a little site optimization, they could have also gained the prime organic space on the major engines. They could have owned all online search traffic interested in NASCAR for less than 0.4% of their sponsorship budget, driving prospects to a heavily branded site, building loyalty and putting their prospective customers one click away from product information. Unfortunately, the company didn’t get it; the executives passed on our proposal. My only hope is that somewhere, someone is still kicking himself for this decision.

How could you not integrate search into the rest of your media planning and creative strategy? Isn’t this a no-brainer? Apparently not, because only a small fraction of companies are doing Integrated Search Planning right now. Maybe we do have to come up with a sexier title for it.

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.