Category Archives: Behavior & Psychology

Most Shoppers Don’t “Shop Around,” at least Physically

A new study from the Grizzard Performance Group found that US Shoppers don’t have time to “shop around”, with 62% not bothering to compare prices at even two stores. However, they’re very open to saving money, right up to the time of purchase. It’s just that they don’t have the time.

This ties in with my previous post about real time inventory and e-shopping, currently being tested by a a few online services at malls and major chain stores. When we can quickly and conveniently check prices at a number of stores in our area through our handheld devices, trust me, shopping will change forever. And then, a whole new dimension of direct response marketing comes into play. Last minute pushes of discounts at the point of purchase, delivered through your mobile device. As the study by Grizzard indicates, consumers are very open to saving money on a comparable product, even if it wasn’t previously in your consideration set. So consider this. The shopping engine knows what you’re looking for, knows where you are, and knows what comparable products are in stock in the same store. The advertiser can purchase the right to push a message to you right at the point of purchase, offering you 15% off their product, or even offering an automated “match and beat” deal, where it automatically matches the price of whatever you’re buying, and takes a further 10% off. A store around the corner could do the same thing, making it worth your while to check out at least one more store. All these things could easily be handled by algorithms and pre-set pricing thresholds.

And what if we take the Priceline approach? You’re ready to buy, but before you do, you send an offer to stores in your area with what you’re willing to pay for a particular product. The store in question can then decide whether to accept your offer or not. It would be true consumer control. And the really ironic thing? It’s a whole bunch of sophisticated technology, but it brings us right back to old fashioned haggling over the price. Isn’t it fascinating that the more sophisticated the technology, the closer we get to how we used to shop a century ago?

A Day in the Life

First published January 4, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The U.S. Census Bureau has just released its new statistical abstract. According to the study, here’s how the average adult or teen will spend his or her time in 2007:

  • 65 days in front of the TV;
  • 41 days listening to the radio;
  • A little over a week on the Internet;
  • A week reading a daily newspaper; and
  • Another week listening to recorded music.

I have just one question: Who the hell are these people? Nobody I know.

The Census Bureau was unavailable for comment on the findings, so I have to make some assumptions. I’m assuming that the Internet time includes any work-related activity. So I tallied up my time on the Internet, actively using it, and found I averaged about 4 hours a day. Granted, I’m not a normal user (in oh-so-many ways) but bear with me. That means I spend almost 2 months on the Internet in a year.

Okay, I represent an extreme, and I realize that. So how about my wife, Jill? She is above average in nearly every regard, but when it comes to Internet use, is probably a closer approximation of your garden-variety user. Jill spends about an hour-and-a-half online a day. That puts her at just over 3 weeks of surfing in a year. My kids? About two-and-a-half hours a day, the majority of that chatting with umpteen zillion friends simultaneously on Messenger and butchering the English language I love, but I digress. That’s about five-and-a-half weeks in a year.

Perhaps the whole Hotchkiss family is abnormal when it comes to using the Net. Who are the least Net-savvy people I know? My Mom and Dad. Even they spend a half hour a day online, which puts even them slightly higher than the U.S. average.

Let’s attack the question in a different way. Let’s put together a day in the life of this mythical average American. According to the statistical abstract, here’s how his or her day is spent:

4.27 hours watching TV

2.7 hours listening to the radio

And roughly a half hour each surfing the Net, reading a newspaper and listening to music

Let’s assume that this person gets an average of 7.5 hours sleep and spends another 1.5 hours eating. That leaves fewer than 7 hours a day to do everything else, including being gainfully employed (unless their job is actually watching TV). Into that basket would fall things like reading a book, going for a walk with your family, hitting the gym, cleaning up the house, going on a vacation and talking with friends. Something seems askew here.

So I’m left with two possibilities. Either I have a warped view of the world because everyone I know represents the extreme end of the spectrum, or the U.S. Census Bureau has its facts wrong. If it’s the former, that means there are people, somewhere, that are really dragging down our collective average by remaining comatose in front of the TV for the better part of a day. I knew they existed, I just didn’t know there were so many of them. And it can’t really be the second possibility, can it? I mean, when’s the last time you remember the government getting its facts wrong?

 

US Statistical Abstract: Time Well Spent?

The U.S. Census Bureau just released their new Statistical Abstact for 2007. In it, they predict the amount of time adults and teens will spend consuming media in various forms:

  • 65 days in front of the TV
  • 41 days listening to radio
  • A little over a week on the Internet in 2007
  • Adults will spend about a week reading a daily newspaper
  • Teens and adults will spend another week listening to recorded music
  • Consumer spending for media is forecasted to be $936.75 per person

What was interesting about this was noticing the gap that still exists between TV and Radio consumption and time spent on the Internet. To me, it’s indicative of the nature of engagement, at least for now.

According to these stats, we will spend 10X the amount of time in front of a television than we will spend in front of a computer cruising the Internet. The media release didn’t elaborate on the nature of time spent on the Internet. Does this mean work time as well?

Given these numbers, one can understand why the lion’s share of ad budgets still go to television, and I expect that TV sales execs will gleefully quote these given every possible opportunity. But consider the following:

  • The consumption of entertainment content online is in it’s infancy. Strike that, it’s actually embroyonic. If YouTube is the barometer of where we’re at, we have an immense way to go. All the hype about online video is still largely centered around viral growth amongst very early adopters who are watching amateur videos less than 3 minutes in length. It’s not the actual current  impact of online video that’s creating buzz, it’s the paradigm shifting that we have to do when we consider the democratization of content creation, the searchability of the digital format and the interactive possibilities that come with the online distribution channel.  All these things speak to a totally new experience. We’re just not there yet.
  • Think about the difference in your engagement level when you’re interacting with the Internet, as opposed to passively watching TV or listening to the radio. Think about how you respond to advertising messaging, especially when it’s relevant to the task you’re pursuing. The influence of this difference in engagement on consumers hasn’t been quantified yet, but at a gut level, we know it should be significant, probably a quantum leap in effectiveness. Actually, the numbers drive this home. In the research that’s been done on the impact of various channels on consumers, the Internet consistently ranks near the top, usually right after word of mouth, and much higher than television. And it has this impact with one tenth of the exposure time.
  • We need time to change our habits. Television watching has been ingrained in our daily routine for decades. Radio for a bit longer. Newspapers for centuries. The Internet is just celebrating its first decade as a widely accessible channel, and high speed access is less than 5 years old. Given that, the one week number is actually quite remarkable.

I’m sure these numbers will be quoted often, and spun in drastically different directions, depending on who’s doing the spinning. At first glance, my thought was “only one week?”. But as I thought about it, the numbers just emphasized the vast potential of online. What will be fascinating is to revisit this in a year’s time and see how these numbers change. In Internet terms, 12 months is an eternity.

A Sign of Things to Come: eShopping at a Store near You

A small article in the Wall Street Journal (a subscription is needed to read the whole article) is a precursor of a big shake up to come. It’s something I’ve been predicting for sometime now, and while it will take awhile to gain traction, it will turn local retail upside down.

Three malls in California and one in Arizona have agreed to allow shoppers to check prices on actual inventory through text messages from their cell phones with a service called NearbyNow. According to their site, NearbyNow plans to add another 17 malls throughout the US to their network by April. Another service called Slifter is focusing on national chains like Best Buy, CompUSA and Foot Locker.

Here’s why this is revolutionary and why you’ll be hearing more.

  • For shopping, this represents discontinuous innovation. It’s a big win for the user, allowing them to shop smarter than ever before. Consumer demand will drive adoption of this new approach.
  • For retailers, this is scary as hell. By allowing their inventory to be captured realtime, they’re agreeing to be compared side by side with everyone else, including online retailers with no physical overhead to drive up prices. It completely levels the playing field.
  • As a number of technologies improve and converge, this will become substantially more useful and powerful. Mobile computing, GPS and search functionality will make this a must have for consumers.
  • It completely fuses the online and offline worlds, making the transition seamless.

This is one of those ideas you just know will take off, but there’s going to be some significant hurdles to overcome. These services are only as good as their success at signing up merchants. The more stores in the network, the more successful. If only a few are included, consumers will always wonder if there’s a better deal that isn’t part of the service, defeating the purpose. And a number of retailers will resist this trend til the bitter end. Ultimately, it will be consumer insistence that will force the laggards to join.

Another challenge will be the user interface. Right now, both services run on cell phones, meaning you have to deal with an awkward keypad and stripped down display. But this problem will rectify itself with advances in mobile technology.

In the world of shopping, this changes everything.

No Real Surprises in the Latest iCrossing Study

iCrossing released the results of a new study conducted by Harris Interactive just before the holidays. The study looked at the role of online in the CPG market. A media release outlines the key findings, including:

  • Consumers look for CPG’s online, with 39% of US adults confirming they’ve conducted a search for CPG’s.
  • Women do this more than man. Footwear and apparel lead the categories searched for.
  • Online CPG searches often result in offline sales. Much of this activity is looking for sales or special offers at traditional bricks and mortar retail locations.
  • Activity is spread pretty evenly over search engines, retailer websites and manufacturer’s sites. Shopping engines and consumer information sites have substantially less traffic.

There are a few notable take aways here that speak to the future use of online. Most CPG’s have been slow to move to online as a marketing channel. The more commoditized the product, the less the online research activity, or so traditional marketing wisdom has told us. Certainly, CPG’s have been very slow to enter the search arena, yet the iCrossing study tells us that there is a significant portion of the consumer population are turning online to research these every day purchases.

To be honest, I think the study is probably underreporting the frequency of this. At Enquiro, we’re steering away from self reported survey based vehicles as a sole vehicle to look at search behavior, because we find that people have trouble recalling how often they use search and what they use it for. It’s become second nature for us to turn to online, and that in turn usually means search. So in a survey like the iCrossing one, memory lapses usually mean overly conservative numbers.

Another notable trend that would influence the findings are the increasing spread of high speed internet access. The likelihood of this CPG online activity happening is directly related to how handy a computer with an internet connection is. The more ubiquitous access is, the more we’ll do a quick look up on everything. About the only purchases I make now that I don’t do some form of online research about are groceries. And as local search becomes more robust, that will probably change too.

I’ve been predicting another surge of advertising dollars migrating into search over the next year or two. As we understand more how universal online research truly is, and how a lot of major advertisers are completely missing this very important touchpoint, more budget will find it’s way into search. While there are no real surprises in the iCrossing study, it’s good that major advertisers are continually reminded that they’re missing a rather large boat.

Year End Lists and the Stories They Tell

I was just putting a Search Insider column in the can for next week (it will run next Thursday) about the year end lists that are coming out of the various search engines and it brought up a few observations, together with a story that hit my desk about Google capturing 63% of searches.

First of all, the top ten lists. Here are the reported lists from each of the engines

Google Yahoo Microsoft
  1. Bebo
  2. Myspace
  3. World Cup
  4. Metacafe
  5. Radioblog
  6. Wikipedia
  7. Video
  8. Rebelde
  9. Mininova
  10. Wiki
  1. Britney Spears
  2. WWE
  3. Shakira
  4. Jessica Simpson
  5. Paris Hilton
  6. American Idol
  7. Beyonce Knowles
  8. Chris Brown
  9. Pamela Anderson
  10. Lindsay Lohan
  1. Ronaldinho
  2. Shakira
  3. Paris Hilton
  4. Britney Spears
  5. Harry Potter
  6. Eminem
  7. Pamela Anderson
  8. Hilary Duff
  9. Rebelde
  10. Angelina Jolie

First of all, I say reported because these aren’t actually the real top searches. Danny Sullivan had a good post pointing out the inconsistencies. These are filtered, sanitized and in Google’s case, apparently manipulated. The same could be true for the others, but unfortunately, they haven’t provided a tool like Google Trends that we can use to trip them up.

Be that as it may, it’s the comparison between them that holds the story that I touched on in the column, but would like to explore in greater depth.

Look at Google’s list. It’s obvious that people are using Google to interact with the web. They’re using it like a tool, to get to where they’re going. This becomes more apparent when we add the real top searches, the navigational queries that were filtered from the list.

googletrendsnav

People use Google to get to Yahoo, MSN..and even Google (okay, I’m still trying to figure that one out).

Look at Yahoo and Microsoft’s list. It’s the online equivalent of the trash tabloid section of the local magazine rack. These aren’t essential searches, these are fluff. It’s the searching you would do if you had time to kill. It’s the searching you would do if you had nothing better to do. It’s the searching you would do if you weren’t using Google for something useful.

I’m sure part of this comes from Yahoo and Microsoft’s portal roots. It speaks to a different philosophy towards search. Google aims to be the Web’s Swiss Army knife. It appears that Yahoo and Microsoft aspire to be the Entertainment Tonight of the Internet. When it comes to the Internet, Google is infrastructure, Yahoo and Microsoft are superstructure.

And that’s a fundamental issue for Yahoo and Microsoft. To win, or even hold their own in search, they have to offer tool-like utility. They have to live, breath and eat usability. They have to beat Google at Google’s own game. It’s not an easy task, and it’s getting harder every day. The latest numbers from Hitwise show they’re losing ground, not gaining it. According to the just released report, Google has a 62.79% share of searches for the 4 week period ending Dec. 16, compared to 21.9% for Yahoo and 9.28% for Microsoft. The number has been consistently trending up for Google, and trending down for the competition.

One last thing. Yahoo can say they focus on usability, but take a tour of the interface they put on their top 10. This would be enough to make Jakob Nielsen go postal. It’s one of the most irritating interfaces I’ve run into in a long time. It’s completely in Flash, launches with an irritating video clip, and makes you hunt around for the plain HTML version. I just know somewhere in Sunnyvale, there’s a team patting each other on the back for putting this thing together.

Stepping into the Did It/Web Guerrilla/Searchengineland Fray

I came in this morning, and what did I find? Another tempest stirring up in the blogosphere! Danny Sullivan, Kevin Lee and Greg Boyser have all waded in, so what the hell, I’ll dive in too.

First, a little history. Did It President David Pasternack started the whole deal sometime ago when he took a swipe at SEO, calling for it’s imminent death. I’m not going to elaborate, but for those of you interested, here are links to the original article, and a follow up article.

Now, Kevin Lee from Did It has written a ClickZ column, adding some clarity, but also predicting organic results being pushed below the fold because sponsored ads are more relevant. I’m going to set aside for a moment the SEO spamming question that Kevin raises. Greg and Danny do a pretty passionate job of defending SEO.

I’d like to speak from another perspective, the search user. There are a couple things that should be considered here.

First of all, contrary to Kevin’s point, just paying for an ad doesn’t make it relevant. That’s because the vast majority of marketers don’t consider the intent of the search user. They assume that everyone is ready to buy right now. That assumption is at least 85% wrong. Go ahead, do a search for any popular consumer product. I’ll bet the ads you see are talking about lowest prices, free shipping, guarantees and other hot button items that are aimed at a purchaser. But study after study shows that search engines are used primarily for product research, not purchase. The problem is that marketers have a very biased set of metrics they use to measure return. They measure ROI based on purchase, so when they test, these types of ads tend to pull the numbers they’re looking for. But the metrics aren’t capturing the full story. The 85% of users that are researching are basically ignored. No value is assigned to them. Until PPC marketers figure this out, they’re not doing the user any favors.

Our research shows that a very interesting interaction takes place with the researcher versus the purchaser in that Golden Triangle real estate. Both users look at the top sponsored ads when they appear. They both look at the organic listings. Frankly, there’s not a lot of difference between the scan patterns. But it’s where they click that makes the difference. When they’re ready to buy, based on a recent eye tracking study, about 45% click on top sponsored, and about 55% clicked on the top 1 or 2 organic links. Almost a 50/50 split, FOR THOSE THAT ARE READY TO PURCHASE. But when we look at the other 85%, the ones doing research, EVERYONE OF THEM clicked on the organic link. And in the test, the same site appeared in both spots, so relevancy of the destination was equal. As long as users want organic links, organic optimization continues to be important.

Look, David Pasternack can ring the funeral bell for organic all he wants, but the fact is, it’s not his call. It’s the user’s. Yahoo has actually done exactly what he and Kevin are predicting. They’ve moved organic down the page, jamming more sponsored on the top. Based on Did It’s comments, this should be good for the user, right? It should be more relevant, pushing the “spam” down below the fold. Wrong. Google kicked Yahoo’s ass in user experience in our latest study by every metric we looked at. And they’re definitely winning in the big picture, including stock prices. The difference. About 14% of Yahoo’s screen real estate (at 1024 by 768 pixels) was reserved for top organic. 33% of Google’s real estate went for top organic. You want more proof? Ask, back in the Ask Jeeves days, pushed organic totally off the page, doing exactly what Kevin and David call for and filling the top with sponsored. Take a look at Ask now. Organic is back above the fold. Spend some time talking to Ask usability lead Michael Ferguson about how the absence of organic worked out for them.

And it’s not that sponsored links provide a bad experience. Our study proves Kevin somewhat right. Top sponsored links, for commercial queries, delivered the highest success rates. But those were in highly structured and commercially oriented scenarios. That doesn’t represent all searches. It’s not that we avoid sponsored links, but we do want a choice and we want relevance, ALIGNED TO OUR CURRENT INTENT. Google has recognized that to a much greater extent than their competitors, and they’re eating their lunch.

There’s a reason why 70% of users choose organic. We’ve done a number of studies over the past 3 years, and that number has remained fairly constant.  It can’t be because those results are filled with spam. I actually just chatted with Marissa Mayer at Google, and she continually emphasized the importance of organic on the page. It’s a cardinal rule there that at least one organic result will always appear at 800 by 600. It’s mandated by Larry and Sergey. And that’s because they know it’s important to the user. We want alternatives. And we will be the judge of relevancy. That’s why Google has stringent click through measures on their top sponsored ads. If they don’t get clicked, they don’t show. The top of the Golden Triangle is reserved for the most relevant results, period, and in more than 50% of the cases, those are organic (either through OneBox or traditional organic).

So we in this industry can debate sponsored versus organic. We can make predictions. We can post in blogs til the cows (or frogs) come home. But it’s not our call. It’s not even the engine’s call. It’s the user’s.

The Coming Storm: Search and Consumer Privacy

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

Earlier this week, in OnlineSpin, Seana Mulcahy wrote about two new complaints filed by consumer groups with the Federal Trade Commission. The shadowy subjects of tracking online behavior, analytics and targeting are outlined in the complaints.

Earlier this year, in an interview, I predicted a showdown between search engines and consumers around privacy issues. I suspect these two complaints could be the harbinger of the coming storm.

The Natural Convergence of Search and Behavioral Targeting

It makes all kinds of sense for the worlds of search and behavioral targeting to overlap, and the conjunction of those two worlds is a very powerful place indeed for the marketer. Behavioral targeting allows you to track and target potential customers based on their click stream. You can identify promising click streams based on sites visited and behavior on those sites. The odds of picking the right person at the right time to receive your message go up substantially.

Now let’s look at search. At some point in the buying cycle, which is mirrored by the click stream, almost all consumers will turn to a search engine to look for more information. This is a rather momentous point. At the earliest occurrence, it often indicates when the consumer switches from awareness to consideration. It’s when they become actively engaged in the act of purchasing, which puts them in a whole new mindset. From that point forward, they could turn back to the search engine at different times to assist them in the purchase. The key is that consumers who are using a search engine are very receptive to information about the product or service, because they’ve requested that information. Push turns to pull.

 

The Challenge with Search

The problem with search right now is knowing where the consumer is–at which touch pointIs it early in the cycle, near the beginning of the consideration phase, when consumers are compiling candidates for their consideration set? Is it somewhere in the middle, when they’ve assembled their set and are comparing features or looking for reviews? Is it when they’re ready to purchase? It’s almost impossible to tell from the query, because as past comScore studies have shown, there is often not a search funnel. The same query could be used at each point in the cycle.

Given this inability to disambiguate intent from the query, most marketers aim for the sure bet. They go for the purchase, because it’s much easier to track conversions and ROI. Do a search right now on any engine for “digital cameras” and look at the sponsored ads that appear. I guarantee they’ll be aimed at someone ready to purchase. Is this the query you would use if you had done your research and were ready to purchase one specific model? Would you even buy online? Probably not. But it is the query you would use if you were starting to consider your options.

You’re not alone. The marketers on the results page are missing over 80% of potential buyers by focusing on the less than 5% who are ready to buy now. It’s just not a good match-up for the advertiser or the consumer.

Enter BT

Now, if you were able to combine behavioral targeting with that all- important search touch point, you could serve a research-based ad if you knew at what stage in the buying cycle the consumer was, based on his online visits. You could take the guesswork of matching the message to the person. And finally, we could start to pull away from the pure direct response tactics that restrict the effectiveness of search. It’s tremendously powerful.

This is not something in the far-distant future. The mechanisms are already in place for search engines to track your online behavior. Tool bars, mini apps, personal search history. All of these can and do track where you’ve been. Everybody is being tracked to some degree.

But as Seana pointed out in her column, most of us are blissfully unaware of it. That’s because it’s been relatively benign to this point. In return for a handy tool bar that offers increased convenience, the ability to index your desktop and other added functionality, we just click the accept button without really reading what we’re accepting. Up to now, there hasn’t seemed to be any consequences. But in the background, the engines are quietly collecting terabytes of click-stream data. And the time is coming when that data will be put to use.

Privacy Storm Front

At first, it will be subtle and a little unsettling. The search ads we’ll be seeing will be targeted much more precisely. They will seem to speak just to us. It will be like the advertiser is reading our mind. We’ll be thrilled at first, but eventually, we’ll read an article somewhere that will explain the uncanny ability of the advertiser to give us just the right message. It’s because they’ve been watching us, tracking what we do online. And it won’t just be on search, it will be throughout the search engine’s advertising networks.

“Hmmm” you’ll say to yourself, “I’m not sure I’m okay with that.”

More and more consumer groups will launch protests. Politicians will sense opportunity and jump on their soapboxes. There will be a very vocal minority that will rail against this “Big Brotherism.” There will also be a group of advertisers that will continue to step way beyond the acceptable, using targeting to subvert the user experience, rather than enhance it, hijacking the user and taking them to places they never intended. This will add fuel to the fire. And because they’re the most visible target, the search engines will bear the brunt of the attack.

In the end, we’ll realize there’s much more pro than con here. Effective targeting will generally add to our experience, not take away from it. We’ll toy with trying to use a third-party privacy filter, but in the end, most of us won’t be willing to give up the additional functionality in return for maintaining an illusion of anonymity online. Much of the usefulness of Web 2.0 (I know, I hate the term too, but at least it’s commonly understood) will be dependent on capturing personal and click-stream data. We’ll give in, and the storm will gradually fade away on the horizon.

At least, that’s my prediction.

Thou Shalt Not Google (unless it’s on Google)

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

goo-gle: Function: transitive verb: to use the Google search engine to obtain information about (as a person) on the World Wide Web
–Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.
Of all the things that Google’s lawyers have in their basket, apparently stamping out inappropriate use of “Google” as a verb is right on top of the stack. It apparently irks them no end.Now, I can really sympathize here. It’s a little known fact that my last name has actually suffered the same fate as Google. In Japan, of all places, Hotchkiss has become the generic name for the office stapler. Each time a worker lost in the maze of cubicles at Mitsui and Co. says, “Pass me the Hotchkiss” I die a little inside. I kid you not! Check out Wikipedia.Mind your Ps and GooglesNow, according to a post on Google’s official blog, it’s not the fact that we Google on Google that causes the Google legal department to have hissy fits. It’s if we try Googling on Yahoo and MSN. It can’t be done. Not all tissue papers are Kleenex, not all copy machines are Xeroxes. To quote the post:

You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

Hmmm..people are using the word “Google” to refer to Google’s competitors, and it’s Google that’s upset? Unless I’m missing something here, shouldn’t it be Yahoo and MSN that should be miffed?

I Google, therefore I am…

The inclusion of Google in the English lexicon is “faintly unsettling,” according to the folks at Google. They fear that Google will lose its identity as a trademark once it slips into common usage. They explain:

A trademark is a word, name, symbol or device that identifies a particular company’s products or services. Google is a trademark identifying Google Inc. and our search technology and services. While we’re pleased that so many people think of us when they think of searching the web, let’s face it, we do have a brand to protect, so we’d like to make clear that you should please only use “Google” when you’re actually referring to Google Inc. and our services.

Now, I know that Google has way too much money, and they have a team of very bright 12-year-old lawyers (or at least, they look 12) trying to reinvent the law. But in this case, I would suggest slipping down to the Google cafeteria for a double decaf low fat cappuccino and relaxing. There are better windmills to tilt at than this one.

Once again, who’s in control?

The irony here is that the very entity that has probably done more than any other to put control in the hands of the consumer is now fretting because consumers are exercising that control. We associate search with Google. We endorse the brand by using it as a verb. It’s just this critical mass that makes Google such a formidable competitor in the highly promising search market. Frankly, it’s not the fact that their brands became generic terms that hurt many of the companies that Google uses as examples. It’s because the companies became complacent and let the competition catch up, losing the distinction that their brand once afforded them. The consumers didn’t take the brand away from the company, the company surrendered the brand to the competition.

In the corporate culture that says “don’t be evil,” apparently improper use of “Googling” is now defined as evil. Just to make it clear, Merriam-Webster defines evil as “morally reprehensible.”.  Perhaps someday “google” will also mean “to spend one’s time unproductively fighting frivolous legal battles.” At this point, it’s a toss-up with “disney.”

A final word to Google’s legal team: As you’re putting together those multi-page lawsuits, go ahead and feel free to use the Hotchkiss. I don’t mind.

What Happens when the Whole World Becomes Searchable?

First published September 21, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There are a few items that crossed the threshold of my inbox recently that led me to speculate about search in the grand scheme of things.

First of all, fellow Search Insider David Berkowitz talked about online data storage, and how it could introduce reams of new content into online depositories, there to be connected to by consumers through search.

Secondly, Apple and Google are in talks about iTV, Apple’s new set-top box that allows you to view downloaded video on your TV, at the same time making it searchable.

Welcome to e-World

The fact is, the whole world is becoming digitized and indexable. It’s not a new trend, it’s been making inroads for the last two and a half decades, but there seems to be a tipping point of convergence that’s rapidly approaching. National and international news is almost fully digitized, and local news is following in the same footsteps. There are now digital editions of most periodicals. And Google is doing its level best to digitize every book ever written. So the print world is well on the way.

The Genetics of Music

For electronic media, music is largely in the digital domain, and the searchability of it is rapidly improving. The biggest bottleneck is in trying to categorize and rationalize what is largely a subjective experience. I either like music or I don’t. How do you make that searchable? Well, interestingly, Pandora’s Music Genome Project is trying to do just that. Since 2000, it has analyzed hundreds of thousands of songs based on over 400 attributes or “genes” (hence the Genome moniker) which include melody, harmony, rhythm, instrumentation, singing styles, lyrics and arrangements, to name just a few. It’s a large-scale attempt to make music searchable by something other than genre, artist or title, which is far too limiting for most of us. The Pandora interface, in its attempt to be intuitive, doesn’t allow for power searching, but it’s still a quantum leap forward in allowing us to help define our likes and dislikes in the musical universe.

What You See is What You Search

If you take this same approach to video entertainment, there is a much more complex, and therefore richer, content depository to mine. Think of the universe of movies, TV shows and documentaries that exists, each loaded with dialogue, topicality, visuals and styles. As complex as music can be, video explodes the content to be categorized and analyzed in a dozen different directions. It provides a huge indexing challenge, but therein lies the promise and profitability. And it appears to be a challenge that Google is ready to take on. Of course, we haven’t even touched on aspects like consumer-generated video content (the YouTubes of the world, which seems to be the latest overladen bandwagon) and social tagging.

We’ve Only Just Begun…

But that’s the globally visible world, the tip of an immensely large iceberg. There is very little in our physical world now that isn’t digitized somewhere. There is a virtual mirror for almost every physical presence. Store inventories exist in the digital domain, and have for some time. Aggregating those inventories and making them searchable turns the entire world into your personal shopping mall. We leave GPS trails as we move from point A to B. Our vehicles churn out detailed performance summaries via the onboard computer as we do so. Mobile computing makes the very stuff of our personal lives; our thoughts, our activities, our appointments, our contacts, all digital and indexable. At work and at school, we all produce content on a daily basis. My daughters are content producers each time they do homework, and increasingly, that work is in bits and bytes.

As the barriers disappear between our hard drive and the Net (the subject of David’s column) all this content theoretically can enter the public domain and be searchable. Increasingly, the question we ask ourselves is “where do I draw the line between my private and my online world?” File sharing becomes a substantially bigger deal.

Brain Melting Questions

Fellow blogger Mitch Joel calls these kind of questions “brain melters.” I like that. It captures the mind-numbing aspects of this stuff. Our electronic footprint is now bigger, and in some ways more real, than our physical one. There is this vast binary universe out there, terabyte after terabyte of data that grows each and every second, capturing the essence of who we are and what we do. And the sole door to that world, the channel we all must pass through to gain entry, is search. In the act of searching, we connect to that universe.

Cast the search question in that light. Realize that we have yet to scratch the vast potential of this fundamental glue that holds the Internet together and bonds us to it. Imagine owning the solitary access point to everything!

Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are jockeying for position to do just that. It should excite the hell out of their respective shareholders, but it should scare the hell out of us. Do we really want this much power in the hands of so few?

These are big questions, and I’d love to get your viewpoint. Leave your thoughts on the Search Insider blog, or drop me an email at gord@enquiro.com.