Category Archives: Behavior & Psychology

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.

What Happens When the Whole World becomes Searchable?

My Search Insider column today was big picture stuff, looking at how search can connect us to a digitized world.

Here’s an excerpt:

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.

Catch the rest of the column at MediaPost.

The column drew some interesting responses, both on the Search Insider blog and emailed to me.

Martin Edic truly thought globally

In the spirit of creating a ‘brain melter’, imagine the extension of search created by GPS and satellite imaging. Suppose I want to create a search engine devoted to global climate change. If I can access these sources I could literally do a planetary search that included both digital data a geographoc, geological, weather and other environmental data all viewable as imagery, maps, text, etc.

David Gust took exception to my plaudits for Pandora: I initially thought Pandora was great, but eventually it became monotonous. A descriptor genome for the music is great, but it doesn’t decipher the music consumption genome in me.

My point is that indexing means little without context. Context is about behavior and that is where the true focus must be placed to truly unlock value of “Indexing the World”

Derick Harris,w ho obviously has a lot of time on his hands, took me to task for my “pointless” vision of an Orwellian future

I do wish that these marketing rhetoricians of search, such as Mr. Hotchkiss, would “think first” about what they are asking, in terms of “big questions” — instead of wasting our time with patently pointless essays that amount to self-serving indulgences posing as questions that really amount to a whole world Googleized into an information hell.

…Ouch! Sorry Derick, I obviously hit a sore spot.

And in the spirit of wired “Big Brother”, Warren Peace (come on..that can’t be your real name. But if it is, kudos to your parents!) shared his vision of a database schema for a “global object database” or GOD for short…

whereby every kind of digital data could be stored, indexed and cross-referenced, and rated for accuracy (couldn’t find funding for it, though). One issue is that many things are analog, not digital, and digitizing them means losing important information. An image of a person and a list of their interests is NOT the person, just an avatar. Do we really need an avatar of every living thing?

Perhaps that’s what the real “God” is – an analog, searchable object database that details absolute accuracy.

Talk about your brain melters!

Google and the Future of Video

The talks that Google and Apple are currently in about video will likely start defining the future of video entertainment as we know it. And it’s just one more example of “push” going to “pull”.

The news story is about iTV, the new device that bridges the gap between the TV and the PC, letting you viewed video from your hard drive on your TV. It’s the continuation of convergence that I’ve been talking about for some time now.

But what is interesting about this to me is not so much the hardware as the extension of searchability to online entertainment. It’s just a matter of time before the walls come down between something like YouTube and the world of broadcast TV. They’re already crumbling rapidly. And setting your viewing preferences based on searchability opens up a whole new world. I’ve had just a taste of it through Microsoft’s Media Center and I like it. You can search up to two weeks of programming by keyword, looking for a particular topic, director or actor.

Now, let’s extend this the next logical step. Let’s open up the rapidly exploding world of video. All the movies, all the tv shows, all the documentaries ever made, as well as the crushing wave of consumer generated video content, all as searchable as the web thanks to Google. You in the mood for a show about 9/11 conspiracy theories? A quick search and you’re watching Loose Change. Plus, Google suggests other shows you might be interested on based on your topic. It’s just a matter of time before somebody does for video what Pandora is doing for music, allowing you to explore the world of video entertainment based on similarities to what you already like.

Social tagging opens up more possibilities, allowing you to tap into the most popular choices of the various online communities you belong to. The buzz effect takes over (as we see currently on YouTube) and suddenly watching online video becomes a communal experience.

It’s a revolution in video distribution, and the seeds are being sown currently in the chat that Steve Jobs and Eric Schmidt are likely having as we speak.

Google Dropping Sponsored from the Golden Triangle?

Whoa..this is a bold move!

Just saw a thread on Webmaster World that indicates Google is testing removing top sponsored ads after a number of searches where a user doesn’t click on anything. Tried it myself and sure enough, after 4 or 5 refreshes, top ads were gone.

After refreshing on the same query, the ads disappeared for that query, and any modifications of the query, but still showed for a totally different query. After I went through the same process with the new query, all my top ads disappeared.

If Google sticks with this, it demonstrates a huge dedication to the user experience. Our research has shown how valuable this real estate is from a monetization perspective, but Google’s feeling (and rightly so) is that if you’re skipping past it anyway, the probability of a click on these ads is minimal. Why impair the user experience but taking up prime real estate with something that the user is just filtering out anyway.

I did some more testing with some different patterns to see where the sponsored filter seems to be tripped. If you do a number of different searches without clicking on sponsored listings, it doesn’t seem to kick in. It’s only if you do a lot of return visits to the same set of search results without hitting a sponsored link. But once the ads are gone, they’re gone for every query from then on til you clear your cookies.

Ironically, my only hesitation with this is from the user experience perspective. My feeling is the thresholds might be set too low. Intent plays a huge part in how we interact with search listings, and this can vary greatly from search to search. It’s also very difficult to determine from the nature of the query. So, if I’m in a fact finding mode, even if I’m using what appear to be very commercial terms, and I skip over ads on 4 or 5 subsequent returns to a page, that doesn’t necessarily mean I don’t want ads on any search. One anomalous search could filter out top sponsored results for days, weeks and even months and the user would never know what happened. There is no indication on the page that Google is applying any type of filter. There is no way to turn them back on. For 99.9% of web users, they’d never know what happened.

Now, it’s not all ads, but only the top ones that disappear. But the fact is, the difference between visibility and performance of ads in the two locations is so significant, that moving the top ads over to the side is almost like removing the ads from the page. Almost everyone starts scanning at the top of the page.

Google’s intentions are noble here, but they’re actually removing control from the user. I’m a big champion of organic results, so I can’t believe I’m saying this, but Google might be too hasty in stripping out top sponsored ads. In two different eye tracking tests, we found that it was clicks on these top sponsored links that actually offered the highest success rates for users. I’ll be watching with great interest to see how the test progresses.

Tales of Pogo Sticks, Bouncy SERPs and Sticky Pages

First published September 7, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Much of what little strategy exists in search marketing is aimed towards the first click from a results page (also called a SERP). The position, the messaging and the landing page experience all assume that we’ve captured that all-important first click. But what about the subsequent clicks? In the search business, this is called pogo sticking, the bouncing back and forth from the search page, and clicking on a number of sites in sequence in an effort to find what we’re looking for.

Desperately Seeking Pogo Stats

We know pogo sticking exists, but when I tried to quantify how common it was, I quickly ran into a lot of closed doors. I tried all the major engines and was told that they don’t divulge that type of information, even in aggregate form. I also tried the monitoring services (comScore, Nielsen, Hitwise) but again came up empty.

So, failing anything more quantitative, we had to turn to our own limited data set. The stats below come from the combination of eye-tracking sessions, where we’ve been able to look for pogo sticking. I’m not sure how accurate it is, but it’s the best we’ve got, so I present it with a whackload of caveats.

We saw pogo sticking occur in 49 percent of the sessions we looked at. We suspect the occurrence of this type of behavior would be even higher in real-world settings. So at least one out of every two searches results in a return visit to the results page. In our sessions, 21.5 percent of them results in two clicks from the SERP, 10.4 percent in three clicks, 4.9 percent in four clicks, and 5.5 percent in five clicks. The remainder (6.8 percent) clicked six times or more.

Google has the fewest pogo sticking sessions, with only 36.4 percent of them resulting in a round trip to the SERP. MSN had the highest percentage, with 59.4 percent. Even if you question the numbers (and you have every right to do so) I believe it’s a pretty safe bet that pogo sticking is a pretty common occurrence.

The Power of the Pogo

Why is this important? Because a return visit looks significantly different than the first visit. And if it happens at least half the time, it’s a factor we’d do well to consider as we lay down our search strategies.

I strongly recommend that all search strategies take into consideration the mind-set of your target customer, within the context of what else appears on the page. This exercise can help you forecast the receptiveness of your target to your position on the page, the messaging you present, and the landing page experience you provide.

Let’s walk through a typical scenario. Our target customer searches for “hybrid SUV’s.” Because we’ve done our market segmentation homework, we know our target is early in the buying cycle, and is looking for alternatives for fuel-efficient SUVs, building a consideration set.

Eye-tracking studies have shown there’s relatively little variance in the scanning activity with most searchers at the beginning. They tend to start at the top and work their way down, with a strong bias toward the No. 1 organic spot. Therefore, in this scenario, we have to look at how enticing these top listings are. In walking through this on a search engine, GM and Lexus had purchased the top sponsored spots, where the majority of searchers start their scanning. The first organic spot belongs to the site hybridcars.com, a comparison of available hybrid SUVs. Given our target and his intent, it’s very likely that this site will capture the majority of first clicks from the page.

Beyond the First Click

If we’re playing in this real estate, we have to look beyond the first click to what might happen on the second and subsequent clicks. Scan patterns spread around more evenly on the page on return visits, without the very strong upper-left bias that tends to create the so-called “Golden Triangle” (so-called because we called it that). People tend to fixate on where the last listing clicked, and then can head out in multiple directions from there, either continuing down the listings, skipping up to take another look at the top sponsored, or even a quick glance across to the side sponsored ads. Whereever they choose, their interactions will now be colored by what happened in that first click.

Our strategy now has to account for the influence of that likely first click. We have to know how it will alter or reinforce the intent of our user. We also need to know how sticky the landing page behind that first click is. Is it the type of page that will hold him, and possibly send him off in another direction, or is it a quick bounce back to the SERP because it isn’t well aligned to our target’s intent? Does it reinforce our brand, or our competitor’s? What appears above the fold, and what appears below the fold? Again, we know from eye- tracking studies that this is the critical divide of the page in terms of scanning activity.

When one realizes the impact of pogo sticking, it suddenly means that our search strategy doesn’t play out in a vacuum. It’s intimately dependent on what else appears on the results page, and the most likely paths our target will take from that page. It increases the complexity of our strategy exponentially. The only way to successfully navigate it is to have a clear view of the intent of our target. Sure, it makes search marketing more difficult, but it also makes it infinitely more interesting!