Category Archives: Digital Marketing

The Elusive Click Fraud Issue: Google’s Side of the Story

First published December 14, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There are few issues in search marketing more thorny and convoluted than click fraud. It’s the elusive problem, the industry scourge that seems to defy definition. Everyone wants to know the extent of click fraud, but to date, there seems to be no credible numbers to attach to the problem. A recent BusinessWeek “investigation” called it the “dark underground” of the Internet, “a dizzying collection of scams and deceptions that inflate advertising bills for thousands of companies of all sizes.” The article pegged the occurrence of click fraud at “10% to 15% of ad clicks… representing roughly $1 billion in annual billings.” Unfortunately, the reporter used some questionable sources and math to come up with this number.

Even experienced search marketers can sometimes jump to wrong conclusions. Noted search marketer Andy Beal thought he had a scoop earlier this week when he did a little rough calculation on a presentation made by Google click fraud point person Shuman Ghosemajumder and pegged the actual occurrence of click fraud at 2% on Google. There was actually a little miscommunication between Beal and Ghosemajumder (since corrected on Andy’s blog). I chatted with Ghosemajumder this week and here’s Google’s side of the story, largely ignored by the mainstream press.

Where Do These Numbers Come From?

BusinessWeek‘s article said “most academics and consultants who study online advertising” agree with the 10% to 15% number. Yet there has been no independent study done with reliable methodology to accurately scope the size of the issue. The study most often cited is a particularly damning one done by Outsell in May of 2006. In the study, 407 companies were asked what percentage of their search buy they believed to be fraudulent. They then averaged the responses and extrapolated it across the industry. Many of these advertisers weren’t even tracking ROI, definitely a prerequisite for accurate identification of actual fraudulent behavior. As Ghosemajumder pointed out, “it’s like asking a random group of people what they estimate the average salary in the U.S. to be, when they have no numbers to judge it on, and they don’t even know what their own salary is.” Yet, this is the number that seems to be accepted as fact by reporters determined to blow the issue into cover story status.

What’s Fraud, and What’s Attempted Fraud?

One fact that seems to be easily overlooked is what actually qualifies as click fraud. Fraud is only perpetrated when damage is done–in this case, if money passes hands. If no money changes hands, it’s attempted fraud. Yet this simple distinction seems to be overlooked by many “investigators” into the question of click fraud. Everything tends to be included in the same bucket, usually accompanied by a whopping percentage designed to scare the hell out of online advertisers.

The 2% number quoted on marketingpilgrim.com came from Andy Beal, not from Google. It was computed by looking at the relative size of some graphics on a slide deck that was prepared to show Google’s click fraud filtering systems.

Google has coined the term “invalid clicks” to refer to all those that advertisers are not charged for. This category also includes more benign examples, such as multiple clicks on the same ad that can happen when a visitor “pogo sticks,” or clicks on an ad, hits the back button, and then clicks through on the ad again. Ghosemajumder does confirm that the number of invalid clicks represents a “single digit” percentage of all clicks across the network,

The “vast majority” of these clicks are proactively filtered out by Google in real time before any money passes hands, he says. It’s as if the clicks didn’t happen. The advertisers don’t pay, and the publisher where the click originated doesn’t get paid. The invalid clicks that slip through the real time filter then go for offline analysis, primarily focused on the AdSense network. Advertisers here are affected, but get refunds from Google without their having to take any action. In this case, Google does have a procedure for going back to the sites where the clicks originated. If anyone is out of pocket for these clicks, it’s Google, not the advertiser.

Now we get to the 2% number. It refers to the clicks that make it through the proactive filters that the advertiser has to bring to Google’s attention. The official word from Google is that this number is a “negligible percentage” of the total number of invalid clicks. My sense is that it’s probably much less than 2%. Remember, this isn’t a negligible percentage of all clicks, but a negligible percentage of “invalid” clicks, which in turn is less than 10% of all the clicks happening on Google.

The Impact in Dollars and Cents

So, let’s talk about actual fraud, where the advertiser is the one out of pocket. Let’s assume there is an advertiser with a $100,000-per- month budget. Let’s further assume that the clicks this advertiser receives are representative of the total Google network.

Using the assumed 9% number as the number of invalid clicks, this means about $9000 of the budget falls into this category. From this, the “vast majority” are filtered out in real time, so there is no impact to the advertiser. A smaller percentage is refunded to the client without its having to take any action. Finally, there’s the percentage that slips through the proactive filters. Even if we go with 2%, that would make the amount that would impact the advertiser $180. If you’re doing your math, that’s 0.18% of the total monthly spend, a far cry from 10% to 15%.

But It’s Not that Simple

These are the estimates from Google, which has invested heavily in fighting click fraud. The same diligence in policing click fraud is probably not present in all advertising networks. Click fraud is definitely more prevalent in some sectors and on some networks than others. Finally, everyone acknowledges that we don’t know what we don’t know. If click fraud goes undetected through Google’s filters and the advertiser never challenges it, it won’t be identified. Google uses the ROI and conversion data that some of its advertisers share with it as an overall indicator of click fraud activity throughout its network. Its executives feel confident that there’s very little slipping through all of these cracks.

Yes, this is Google’s side of the story, but as the mainstream press seems to be more interested in focusing on a couple of egregious cases rather than providing a realistic picture of the issue across the entire network, I think it’s important to pass it along. In the absence of real numbers for the short term, shouldn’t you at least balance the numbers being touted by the press with those coming from the people fighting click fraud on a daily basis?

Search Gets Passionate in Vegas

First published November 16, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’m a huge fan of passion. Curb the urge to snigger. When I say passion, I refer to it in the ideological way, not the sensual one (although I’m pretty fond of that as well). I believe passion trumps everything else: intelligence, education, money, social connections. Look at times when people have really moved the world in a meaningful way, and you’ll always find passion.

3 Degrees of Passion

In the past week, passion has manifested itself to me in three very different ways.

First of all, I sat for two hours while former President Bill Clinton talked about his Foundation, his view of the world as an interdependent global village and the unsustainable inequities between North America and everywhere else that must be addressed. The presentation was smooth and friendly, but the passion was palpable. This was a man on a mission. Clinton’s got some burning issues on his agenda, and I have to believe he’s going to move the world and make them happen.

This morning, I was at Webmaster World’s PubCon in Las Vegas and Guy Kawasaki took the stage. Kawasaki has passion. In fact, it was the subject of one of his 10 takeaways: “Make Meaning. Do something that matters. Be passionate.”

Later in the day, I met with a product manager in charge of a new search platform. He was supposed to give me a feature run-through, and I was supposed to give user feedback. Try as we did to stick to that agenda, we kept getting sidetracked talking about how search is changing everything. We became more animated as we talked. Passion snuck in and kept hijacking the conversation. We ran about an hour over what we had scheduled.

Search: Passion to Spare

That’s what I love about search, especially where it sits today. It breeds passion. It demands passion. It grabs you by the throat and makes you realize that it could change everything. I suspect there was a time when Wired ex-editor John Battelle didn’t let search keep him up at night. But at some point, he looked at what was happening, and more importantly, what could happen and said, “Damn, [if you know John, I suspect this wasn’t the exact word he used], this is changing the world!” He became passionate about search. That’s probably why he’s also here, in Vegas with a bunch of Web-heads, as one of the keynotes.

When you walk down the halls of a show like this, people are talking about search. We’re ravenous about this topic. That’s why there are back-to-back events filling the calendar from January to December. Just this week, I wanted to be at the Search Insider Summit, but unfortunately it coincided with PubCon and I had a previous commitment.

Talk to the people at Google, or Yahoo. They know they’re the cusp of the future. They know the import of what they do. They’re fired with passion. Why didn’t I include Microsoft? To me, the passion for search isn’t seared into the corporate DNA at Microsoft to the same extent it is at its rivals. They’ve said the right things about search. I’ve met a lot of people at Microsoft who get search, and many of them are passionate. But at the other two major engines, the passion for search is pervasive. At Microsoft, it still feels more like a corporate initiative.

Late to the Party? Look for Passion

When you look at the people who make this industry tick, they are absolutely infatuated with search. It borders on obsession. It’s not to make a buck, because believe me, there are easier ways. We’ve been slogging it out in the trenches for years, going from show to show, spreading the gospel, educating clients and bit by bit, building best practices and pushing the industry forward. There are not a lot of rich search marketers, but there are bushels of passionate ones.

So, for those of you waking up to search, here’s a tip. If you’re an agency or a large organization that wants to build search capabilities, look for passion. Don’t just look for someone competent, look for someone who can become passionate about search. Because that’s what it will take. Here’s why.

Search is just beginning. The rules are constantly going to change. What you do today is not what you’re going to do tomorrow. This is not a 9-to-5 job. The only way you can keep up with the pace of change that’s inevitable is to live, eat and breathe search. You have to be constantly looking at the horizon to see what’s coming–not just because you have to, but because you can’t imagine doing anything else. As search continues to define itself, it will be the passionate people who do it. As I sit here in Vegas, that’s probably the safest bet in town.

Rules for Making B2B Search Marketing More Successful, Part 2

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

Last week, I presented the first five rules for making B2B search more successful. To recap, here they are:
1. Know who’s the buyer and who’s the influencer
2. Realize what the intent of the researcher is
3. Understand complex buying cycles and the possible touch points with search
4. Be prepared to build relationships with search leads
5. Don’t ask for too much too soon.

This week, I wrap up with the last five rules:

6. Understand the Complexity of the Keyword Universe. B2B marketplaces provide a significant challenge in determining the keywords used to find a product or service. These are often complex, non-commoditized solutions. In many cases, they’re new technology. This means that a common vocabulary hasn’t evolved around them. When you’re selling shoes, you know that everyone calls them shoes. But when you’re selling software that enables real time inventory tracking and just in time product delivery, the name tag you pin on that isn’t as easy.

First of all, there’s often a difference between what the vendor might call the product and what the potential customer might call it. And when it comes to intercepting search traffic, the customer is ALWAYS right. I don’t care what your internal rules are for referring to your product. I don’t care how you position yourself against the competitors and what your unique competitive advantage is, even if your marketing team has cleverly baked it right into your product name. It really doesn’t matter–if no one is searching for it. First match the vocabulary of your customer, and then worry about differentiating yourself.

The second challenge is that if you have a new solution, potential customers might not even know they’re looking for it. Often you have to position yourself at the pain point, or that of a more commonly known solution, and then try to divert them to your site. Just remember, the closer you can align to the customer’s thinking in your search listing messaging, the more successful you’ll be in capturing the click.

7. Know the roles of general and vertical search portals. The more complex the solution, the more likely it is that your potential customers will be researching their options online. This means that two distinct types of search portals will come into play. Early in the process, everyone will turn to his favorite search engine. And from past research, we know that the overwhelming winner in the B2B category is Google.

But complex purchases mean that prospects will want to check features and compare their alternatives. They’ll also want to see how others feel about your product and service. They’ll be looking for functionality and a depth of information that a general search property just can’t provide, and that is when they’ll go vertical.

The next step in the research process is to find the sites that list the alternatives and provide the opportunity to compare them head to head. And if you’re looking to intercept them, you should really be in both places.

To identify these all-important vertical properties, you can do three things. First of all, once you identify the right key phrases, do searches for them on the major engines, particularly Google. See which vertical reference sites come to the top of the listings. These are the ones your potential customers will be clicking through to. Secondly, ask your existing customers how they found you, and what sites they tend to refer to. Thirdly, use a service like Hitwise or comScore’s qSearch to find out what the heavily trafficked sites in your vertical are. Identify the most likely places to intercept your prospects.

 

 

8. Realize that education is a necessary evil. Much as we’d like the prospect to buy immediately, it just isn’t that likely in a complex buying situation. They’re going to be spending a lot of time researching and educating themselves on the ins and outs of your product and on what you can provide as a vendor. If you accept this as a given, then you can start tailoring your search campaign to facilitate it.

Remember that the intent of search visitors will usually be education, not purchase. Make sure you’re giving them this option. Make the education path a rich relationship development pipeline, not an obstacle path that has to be navigated. Encourage further education opportunities through your landing pages.

But–and this is vitally important–don’t offer so many possible paths that the visitor gives up and abandons the site. Use effective branching and messaging to allow users to get to what they’re looking for without having to interpret a lot of corporate doublespeak and marketing jargon.

9. Be prepared to lose control. This one is a tough one for the sales department. Accept the fact that you’re not at the wheel, your prospect is. The fact that this is a complex sale, the fact that they’re looking for more information, and the fact that they’re going to be spending a long time in making their decision all indicate they’ll be setting their own pace and contacting you when they’re ready.

Embrace and facilitate this. Understand where a search-generated lead will be entering your pipeline. Know what they’ll be looking for. Be comfortable letting them guide the relationship and give them every opportunity to build that relationship. This is much more like farming than hunting. Plant the seeds, nurture them and let nature take its course. If you try to force the prospect’s hand, you could push them right into the arms of your competitors.

10. Understand the buying process of your prospect, but don’t surrender to it. The bigger and more complex the sale, the more cumbersome the buying process. The better you understand this process, the more likely you will be to make the process work in your favor.

If what you sell typically goes to RFP, help facilitate the process, but stack the odds in your favor. Help the prospect define the core set of criteria, ensuring that your unique competitive advantage is on the list. If they’re coming to you after they already have their preferred vendor, redefine the pain in a way that puts you at an advantage. This means maintaining a tricky balance between being helpful and not being too obvious in pushing your sales message. The best way to maintain this balance is to step through the paths you’re presenting to your prospects in their mindset. Be mindful of the process they’re going through, and see if you’re presenting a path that’s helpful and believable.

Using search as a B2B lead-gen channel provides some unique challenges, but it can be very powerful. These are purchases that require a significant amount of online research. We know that’s a perfect fit for search, but just be prepared to be patient for the payoff.

10 Rules for Making B2B Search Marketing More Successful

First published October 5, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The business-to-business marketplace is infinitely more complex, and therefore, more challenging, than most of the business-to-consumer verticals. This reality extends into search marketing as well. Take the fact that B2B usually means complex sales (especially when it involves search as a potential lead generation channel) and then layer on the realities that for sales that are driven by organizations rather than individuals, one sale can involve multiple roles, including stakeholders with different needs–and most B2B sales can take months, or even years. It can be a daunting task, which is why there are not many search marketing providers that have hung their shingles in the B2B marketplace.

We’ve learned firsthand some of the realities of marketing in the B2B arena through research and working with clients. In the interest of making the path a little less bloody, I’ll share the Top 10 things we’ve learned. This week, I’ll focus on the top five hints:

1. Know who’s the buyer and who’s the influencer. The biggest challenge with B2B transactions is that you’re not talking to one buyer. Research (Matbuy, 1981) has shown that there are as many as six different roles–including the user, initiator, influencer, gatekeeper, decider and buyer–in most B2B purchase decisions. To make matters worse, these roles may not be filled by a single person, but a group of individuals, or, heaven forbid, a committee (tangential comment: how do you calculate the average IQ of a committee? Take the lowest IQ in the group and divide it by the number of people in the committee!) To complicate matters, each committee member has different levels of influence, takes part at different times, and has different perspectives and needs.

Usually, the buyer and decider are pretty far removed in the organization from the user, and the larger the organization, the bigger the gap. That means that the people making contact with the vendor have at least 3 degrees of separation (user:initiator:influencer:gatekeeper:decider) from the person who will actually be using the product or service. In search, it becomes vital to know who the person is who will be using the search engine.

2. Realize what the intent of the researcher is. In our original study into the use of search in B2B buying decisions, we found that those most apt to use a search engine are the influencers, followed by the initiator, the user and then the decider. An actual buyer is very unlikely to turn to a search engine. Search is most often used to research the purchase alternatives, set the criteria and possibly dig up facts on potential vendors. The sweet spot is the person who’s assigned the task of researching and short-listing the potential alternatives. Remember, they’re going to be looking for column A, B and C vendors to give the selection committee the alternatives they need to match their buying process. This means that even if there is a pre-existing vendor relationship, this diligent individual will be using a search engine to dig up “column fodder,” another name for those other candidates that can be used to grind the preferred vendor (the column fodder tag is courtesy Michael Bosworth, Solution Selling). More about how to combat this next week.

 

The important point here is to realize the intent of the person most likely to be using a search engine. It’s not to make vendor contact. Remember, the actual decision of which vendor the organization will be going with will rest with someone else. It’s the influencer’s job to gather the data, compile it and pass it on. That’s their intent, and it’s the path you have to provide them when they land on your site.

3. Understand complex buying cycles and the possible touch points with search. Complex buying cycles that are common in B2B means there’s a lot of back and forth between a prospect and a vendor, with multiple touch points as the cycle progresses. That has a host of implications for the vendor, but there are some that are specific to search. We already talked about the likelihood of the influencer/designated researcher turning to a search engine. But there are other touch points where search could be used.

At the user level, when awareness of the need first dawns, there might be use of a search engine to see if a solution exists. If this is the case, the terminology might be significantly different than the common industry terms (more about this next week). Another place search might be used is at the decision level, where the decider is double checking on details on a particular criteria–i.e. terms of service agreements, other clients, payment terms, etc. These searchers will be very specific and navigational in nature.

4. Be prepared to build relationships with search leads. In the case of a complex B2B sale, a lead generated through a search referral is just the beginning. The ideal scenario is to qualify the lead as quickly as possible and transition it seamlessly into a rich relationship development pipeline. Depending on the nature of the sale, it might be appropriate to get it in the hands of a customer representative for follow-up, or you might want to continue to build the lead through less resource-intensive means (i.e. targeted e-mail follow-ups and communication), and nurture it before the initial point of contact. Whatever your follow-up process, make sure it matches the needs and goals of individual prospects.

5. Don’t ask for too much too soon. One of the biggest mistakes made by marketers is to push for too much information too soon. Remember the nature of those that will be coming to your site to research. They’re browsing online because they’re not ready to initiate contact with a vendor. In many cases, they haven’t even assembled their short list, so they are still several steps away from wanting to talk to a sales rep, even if they were the right person (which they usually aren’t).

Don’t force them to pick up the phone to learn more about your solution, and don’t force them to fill out a 25-field form. Give them the path of least resistance to accomplish their objective, which is to gather information to help them qualify their buying decision in a clear and easily transferable format. As tempting as it is to capture the lead and turn your sales people loose, in most cases if you jump too soon you’ll be spinning your wheels with the wrong contact and possibly scaring them off.

Coming next week, rules 6 through 10:
6. Understand the complexity of the keyword universe;
7. Know the roles of general and vertical search portals;
8. Realize that education is a necessary evil;
9. Be prepared to lose control; and
10. Understand the buying process of your prospect, but don’t surrender to it.

A Place for Pay-Per-Call

First published September 27, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

People who buy radiators online are unique. For one thing, they don’t really research their purchases beforehand. When your radiator blows up, you know you need a new one–fast! Secondly, when you’re shopping for a new radiator, it’s not a click and buy type of item. You pretty much need to talk to someone who knows their stuff, because every single make and model of car may have two or three radiators that could fit. As John Thys, president of Radiator.com says, it’s a different market. And for this market, pay-per-call is just the right thing.

“Every lead for us ends in a phone call,” says Thys. “It’s always what we’re driving towards. We need to speak to our customers. So pay-per-call is by far our most cost-effective channel. The quality of these leads is way ahead of pay-per-click.”

Pay-per-call is an alternative channel that’s growing rapidly. The Kelsey Group estimates this market will more than double for the next five years, with revenues topping 3.7 billion by 2010. That makes it a revenue producing opportunity which more and more online publishers are beginning to pay attention to.

Ingenio really pioneered the idea of the search-based pay-per-call market, and I had a chance to chat with CMO Marc Barach. “We seamlessly bridge the Internet and the telephone,” Barach says. “And for a lot of businesses, that’s a perfect match.” The pairing of old and new communication technologies does open four distinct opportunities for both Ingenio and advertisers.

Four places for pay-per-call:

First of all, businesses that don’t have a Web site. Pay-per-call allows them to tap into search as a source of lead generation, yet field the lead in an effective way (conversion rates in some categories are eight times what are typical for pay-per-click ads). And for Ingenio and its competitors, that’s a vast market. InfoUSA and the Kelsey Group estimate there’s about 350,000 Web-based businesses, with another 4 million businesses with so called “brochure-ware” sites. That leaves almost 10 million businesses with no Web site at all, many of them local businesses.

The second opportunity takes advantage of the nature of longer buying cycle. At certain points in that buying cycle, consumers appreciate different options in contacting vendors. Early in a high-consideration purchase, consumers prefer to remain anonymous and quietly kick tires on Web sites. But at some point, they may search online with the intention of finding a way to contact a vendor, and in that case, a pay-per-call ad provides them with exactly the right message at the right time.

The third opportunity is moving lead generation off the desktop to a phone near you. Pay-per-call adapts nicely to 411 directory assistance platforms and mobile use. Other potential expansion markets include podcasts, radio and TV.

The fourth opportunity is the one that Thys at Radiator.com is taking advantage of. There are certain items or services that are needed suddenly, without advance warning. And by their nature, they require interactive contact with a knowledgeable service representative. This is prime yellow page territory, but increasingly, the bulkiness and geographic limitations of the printed directory are being supplanted by online versions. While Radiator.com acts like the local radiator wholesaler, it does business around the country. Pay-per-call is the perfect match.

Calling all search engines!

While Thys still does pay-per-click because of the sheer volume of leads it produces, he also loves the effectiveness of pay-per-call. “There’s no comparison. Pay-per-call’s conversions and quality of lead blow pay-per-click away. If I could get pay-per-call leads from where I’m getting pay-per-click ones, I’d be in a much better place,” he says.

And that’s the current challenge for Ingenio. As Thys says, “It’s all about the networks.” You need to get these compelling calls to action in front of a critical mass of motivated consumers. Currently, Ingenio’s distribution network includes online yellow page directories and AOL. The AOL deal was a major turning point for pay-per-call, especially since AOL carved off the prime real estate of the search results page for Ingenio, right at the top of the listings. But Barach has his sites set on expanding that network substantially over the near future. He won’t be alone. Google is quietly testing pay-per-call as well, and it would make tremendous sense to incorporate it in its local listings.

Pay-per-call has its feet firmly set in both the new and old worlds of marketing, and that makes it very appealing for a large number of consumers and marketers. For consumers, it gives them a quick way to connect with a vendor and start an old-fashioned dialogue. And for marketers and sales professionals, it gives them a sense of control. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard the comment from a traditional salesperson: “I just want them (the consumer) to call me. Once I get them on the phone, I can sell them.” The balance of power on pay-per-click ads is far too much on the side of the consumer to make these sales professionals feel comfortable. With pay-per-call, the ball’s back in their court.

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.

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.

The SEM Hierarchy of the E-mail Inbox

First published September 14, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Into each social structure, a little stratification must fall. As our society takes a decidedly virtual turn, I’m finding that my Outlook inbox is the latest place where a class structure is taking shape.

Of course, you have the standard spam vs. non-spam sorting, but this doesn’t really count. That happens pretty much transparently in the background, and every day or so I wade through the muck in my deleted spam folder just to make sure a vital piece of communication didn’t get waylaid. For instance, today an e-mail from my lawyer went there. On second thought, perhaps the filter knew better than I what should be deleted.

No, it’s the e-mail that survives the cut that is subject to endless classification and sorting, as I haplessly try to wrap my priorities around an ever-expanding inbox. At first, I thought the six different flags supplied by Outlook would do the trick, but I quickly realized my complicated world needs much more than six classifications.

So in an attempt to ease the daily burden of countless search marketers, I offer the following suggestions for an SEM Custom Rules plug that would automatically take the following actions in Outlook’s inbox.

The “Anything from Google” Rule

It doesn’t really matter what comes in with an “@google.com” on the back end, you’d better open it right away. These go on the top of the list. If it’s from Matt Cutts or Tim Armstrong, perhaps a siren and flashing red light to draw further attention. I don’t get e-mails from Eric, Sergey or Larry, and I suspect the same is true for most SEMs, but if I ever did, I would like a heavenly ray of light to shine gently on me as a choir of angels sing the “Hallelujah Chorus.”

The MSN Beta Invitation Rule

This could dramatically reduce the manual sorting required by automatically signing up for beta test groups for MSN’s new adCenter products, including the Targeting by Presence of Facial Hair Platform, the Visitors You Wish You Got Report feature and the Integrated adCenter/Xbox 360 Console, which drops you into a virtual 3-D world where you can walk up to leads that didn’t convert and slap them for being stupid.

The “Hey, I Got a Speaking Gig” Rule

This would (until recently anyway) include e-mails from Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman and Brett Tabke, indicating which panel you’d be speaking on at the next big show. These e-mails have to be referred to quickly so you have time to book hotels and flights, and then start e-mailing to see who else will be at the show, who was going to what after- hours function, if you could catch a ride with them, who else was on your panel, and when is the deadline for getting the presentation done (no, not the official deadline–the “real” deadline).

The “Why the Hell Did I Sign Up for This?” Rule

The average search marketer signs up for approximately 6,428,943 newsletters, 194,597 Google news alerts, 963,693 forum post notifications–and that doesn’t include RSS subscriptions. This is all done in the hopes of gaining some vital piece of information that would give them the leg-up on the competition, who are of course all subscribing to the same things. This rule would scan everything for the 1 in 159,975 chance that there’s a useful tidbit in there somewhere. The one exception is the Search Insider–naturally.

The SEMPO Board Communication Rule

Admittedly for a very small market, this would be nonetheless essential for those who serve on SEMPO’s board. It would be able to detect the difference between the 9,543 e-mails a day you get just because you were part of the e-mail alias, a 12-page-long cc list, and the messages requesting you to get off your butt and do something.

The “Rocket to the Top of the Search Engines” Rule

Although these e-mails are technically spam, I like to read them every so often and feel smug about how superior and morally pure I am, and how far my company has come since the days when everyone tried this marketing tactic.

The “Arrange a Meeting/Teleconference” Rule

Why don’t we just accept the fact that it takes 3.6 months and 112 e-mails back and forth to arrange any type of call or meeting, so we should just automate the process? That way we can still feel good that we’re trying to facilitate the phantom meeting by generating reams of e-mails and invitations, while saving us some time. In the end, it will automatically revert to the original time and date proposed, as it turned out that it was really the best for everyone, anyway.

The “Loved Your Column” Rule

Okay, seriously, these e-mails, when they come in (and yes, I have got a few), are the highlight of my day, and they’re the first I respond to. Of course, don’t take this as a hint or anything.

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!