Category Archives: SEM

Google Pulls Back the Curtain on Quality Score – a Little

At the last few shows I’ve attended, an interesting theme emerged. Up to now, reverse engineering an algorithm was exclusively a preoccupation on the organic side. SEO’s would try to out wit and out guess Yahoo and Google’s black box. But with the introduction of quality score, that game suddenly moved to the sponsored side of the strategy table. Because the factors that went into the quality score weren’t disclosed, particularly by Google, it was a game of test and guess by advertisers. A lot of show attendees were expressing frustration that there wasn’t more transparency. Google has apparently heard the call, and yesterday issued a clarification.

Google’s advice?

  • Link to the page on your site that provides the most useful and accurate information about the product or service in your ad.
  • Ensure that your landing page is relevant to your keywords and your ad text.
  • Distinguish sponsored links from the rest of your site content.
  • Try to provide information without requiring users to register. Or, provide a preview of what users will get by registering.
  • In general, build pages that provide substantial and useful information to the end-user. If your ad does link to a page consisting of mostly ads or general search results (such as a directory or catalog page), provide additional information beyond what the user may have seen in your ad or on the page prior to clicking on your ad.
  • You should have unique content (should not be similar or nearly identical in appearance to another site). For more information, see our affiliate guidelines.

While a step forward, there’s still a lot hidden under the hood of this algorithm. Anytime you put algorithms in charge, it opens the door to reverse engineering, and you can bet the SEM community is going to launch a barrage of tests to try to determine the nuances that determine the quality of a landing page in the eyes of the quality score algorithm.

What this does do, however, is increase the complexity of the quality score substantially. There are now three seperate components, including user click through, ad quality and landing page quality. Each addition exponentially increases the complexity of the algorithm, making it a lot tougher to game. It harkens back to the original introduction of the Google PageRank algorithm, which went beyond on-the-page factors to introduce the whole concept of authority within the structure of the Web.

How important is the quality score? It’s vital. Moving up the ranks on the sponsored side is at least as important as on the algorithmic side, and if you can make the leap from the right rail to the top sponsored ads, you can expect a 3 to 10X increase in visibility and click throughs.

Our recent eye tracking study showed just how important relevancy is in these top spots. And Google has always been very aware of that importance. They have an obsession about providing relevancy above the fold, especially in the Golden Triangle, that is not matched by any of the other engines. I actually had a chance to chat with Marissa Mayer about this. The interview will be part of the Eye Tracking study (currently available, by the way, and you’ll get a free final version with Marissa’s interview when it’s available) but I’ll be including some tidbits in this blog as well.

Interview with Shuman Ghosemajumder about Click Fraud

Had a chance to chat with Shuman Ghosemajumder regarding click fraud. Shuman is Google’s point person on the click fraud issue. This follows up on the post Andy Beal made on MarketingPilgrim earlier this week. Most of what we chatted about was in my Search Insider column this week. However, not all of it made it into the column, as there is a cut off which I routinely ignore (thanks to MediaPost editor Phyllis Fine for keeping me in line).

Here’s some tidbits that didn’t make it into the column:

First of all, I wanted to take the media to task for crying the sky is falling around this issue. I know that’s what journalists do, but the portrayal of the click fraud issue has been very one sided to this point. That’s why I wrote the column. I think it’s important we get balancing viewpoints. In the absence of numbers universally regarded as accurate, one has to poll the extremes and guess that the true answer lies somewhere in the middle. Up to this point, all we’ve heard are the negative estimates, and these are based on some studies with methodolgy that’s questionable at best (i.e. the Outsell study)

Secondly, I believe it’s unfair that everyone seems to be taking aim at Google, and to a lesser extent, Yahoo on this issue. I know they’re easy targets, because the targets are so damned big, but when the real numbers finally do come out, I’d bet my 89 Mazda 626 (the car that just won’t die!) that it’s the 2nd and 3rd tier networks that are the hotbeds of click fraud.

I dealt with it briefly in the column, but one of the main sources of misrepresentation seems to be this question of what click fraud is. For me, the definition is pretty simple, fraudulent clicks that leave the advertiser financially impacted. But when it comes to most of the media portrayals, there are a number of clicks that get lumped together under the label “click fraud”, the majority of which don’t meet this definition. And Google’s point of contention with reports of click fraud that come from the media and various 3rd party fraud detection tools comes from this aggregation of questionable numbers. There’s no distinction made between actual fraud, the clicks that cost the advertiser, and attempted fraud, the ones that got caught. And often more benign clicks, i.e. multiple legitimate clicks coming from the same IP address, get mistakenly labelled as click fraud.

Another positive move by Google was the inclusion of invalid clicks in the advertiser’s reporting dashboard. Every move that Google makes towards greater transparency is a very positive one. And the best know Google evangelist for communication, Matt Cutts, indicated so on a blog post. By the way, Shuman also has a blog, where he goes into greater depth on this issue.

I can only imagine how frustrating this must be for Shuman and the Google Click Fraud team. They sit and listen to numbers be bandied about in the 15% plus range, knowing from first hand experience that the real number is likely much much lower (in the column, using assumptions that are probably on the high side, the actual amount of click fraud that an advertiser would have to challenge Google on is less than 0.18%). Yet, their tongues are tied, both by Google’s legal and corporate communications department.

Why is the media targeting click fraud and trying to scare the hell out of advertisers? In no other industry I can think of are reporters more prone to mix and match numbers without regard for accuracy. They do it, and get away with it, because there are no independent and reliable numbers to look at.

There are a number of reasons. Google is in the vanguard of disruptive change agents that are shaking the very ground of marketing. It’s somewhat defensive to look for an Achilles heel, and right now, click fraud seems to fit the bill. Google in particular is boldly stating they want to change everything. That scares people.

Part of it is that there is still a lot of people that would love to see Google be knocked down a few pegs. Much as we rever success, wildly successful companies or individuals generate jealousy and suspicion. Our society gets a nasty little thrill when the mighty fall.

But perhaps the biggest reason is the very strength of search and online marketing: it’s accountability. Nothing else is as measurable. So when something appears to be eating away at the cost effectiveness, we tend to go all forensic on it and analyze the hell out of it. Could you imagine the mainsteam press making a big deal out of a .18% hole in the accountability in television advertising, or radio, or print? Even a 10 to 15% hole? Of course not, because much bigger holes than that are accepted every day as being inherent in the channel. But search and online ad networks are apparently fair game.

Is click fraud happening? Absolutely. And if you switch the lens a bit, there are some sophisticated click fraud operations that are making a killing. In a response to my column, Chris Nielsen had this excellent observation:

The problem is not overt clicking on ads, competitors clicking on ads, or double-clicking on ads. The problem is with large-scale concerted efforts that are massive enough to to have enough variety of IP address, user agents, etc. and pose as “valid” user click activity.

Of course this activity varies some with the bid price of the clicks, but it’s really the old idea of stealing a penny from a million people. If anyone notices, who’s really going to care? The problem is that in some areas, there are hundreds or thousands of people stealing pennys, and it is noticible and it is a problem. The only real indication is the lack of bona fide conversions, and that’s hard to say for sure if it’s fraud or real factors with the marketing or web site.

But it comes down to which lens you look through. Do you look at those looking to profit from click fraud, some of them doing it very well? Or do you look at the scope of the problem over the big picture? The problem I have with the BusinessWeek report is that the reporting is trying to do both at the same time, and you can’t get a clear picture by doing so.

I just wanted to wrap up this post by mentioning some other initiatives on this front that Google is pursuing which didn’t make it into the original column. Obviously they’re working on proprietary techniques to filter out click fraud, but they’re also trying to attack the problem on an industry wide basis as well. They’re working with the IAB Click Measurement working group, in which SEMPO is also involved. And they’re calling for stringent and scientific independent auditing standards, so when we throw around terms like click fraud, we’re all dealing with a common reference framework. By the way, I also asked Shuman about impression fraud. We didn’t go into a lot of depth on the issue, but they feel they’re equally on top of that as well.

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?

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.

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.

Do You Know the Way to San Jose?

First published August 3, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

At the end of this week, thousands of search marketers will begin their pilgrimage to the west, to the mecca of search that is San Jose. It’s time for what has emerged as the premier search gathering, the West Coast version of Search Engine Strategies.

This show always marks a bit of an annual milestone for me. It was two years ago that I became a regular columnist for “Search Insider,” and I also try to shoehorn the sessions I present into our annual family camping vacation, precariously balancing on the cusp of the many professional and social demands that surround SES San Jose and keeping a wife and two daughters from throwing my laptop down the nearest camp toilet. I usually drive in from the campground in Santa Cruz, sunburned, smelling of wood smoke and carrying my “good” clothes, borrow a hotel room and shower from one of my colleagues who chose to forego the “back the nature” route in favor of room service, and try to make myself presentable. For the most part, this tactic has been successful for me.

I’ll be thinking of you

This is the first time in five years that I’m actually missing the show. This year, the family prevails and I’ll be vacationing with them through France and Italy (sans camping, avec hotels). My work tasks have been restricted to writing this column (next week, the Continental European version!) and making the odd, long, overdue blog post. But as SES ramp-up week gets into full swing, I’m getting more than the occasional twinge of regret as I turn down invite after invite. This year promises to be a packed show. Oh well, I hear sipping wine in the south of France can ease those twinges.

I’ll actually be there in spirit, if not in the flesh. I helped Danny Sullivan put together the research update panel, which kicks off the show Monday morning. This session has emerged to become one of the most popular, and my partner Bill Barnes will be there as well. Greg Sterling is filling in at the moderator’s helm, so you can be assured of some pithy comments. I almost wish I were there.

A search snapshot

This show in particular acts as a microcosm of how far search has come. It takes place in the backyard of the engines, and Yahoo, Google and Microsoft will be there in full force. The legendary Google Dance will give attendees a chance to rub elbows with various ultra-bright engineers in their natural habitat. Yahoo will throw some kind of bash, and there will be at least a dozen other formal networking events of various sizes, (including the SEMPO membership get-together on Monday night) sprinkled throughout the four days of the show. And that’s after the sessions; some 75 of them squeezed into five tracks over four days, covering every imaginable aspect of search. At an average of 4 presentations per panel, that’s 300 different speakers, cramming your head full of valuable information. That’s a lot of search, no matter how you slice it. Pity the poor search newbie who is looking at this as his introduction to the channel.

No show gets deeper or more intimately into search. Danny Sullivan, Chris Sherman, Karen Deweese and a virtual legion of presenters who all put their unique spin on the show, have made this the must-see event and turned SES into a tremendously successful franchise. The West Coast show is book-ended by a no less successful East Coast version in New York, and it has been repeated at locations around the world. It’s a long way for Danny, an ex-journalist who thought he might do an impromptu study on these things called search engines, a minor but rather interesting development in the online world, circa 1996. Searchenginewatch.com was born (I’m sure I was one of the earliest subscribers) and the rest is history.

You’ve come a long way

Danny must shake his head in wonder sometimes. Nobody has been a more consistent observer of the search world, and he’s been privileged to have extraordinary access to the key industry players. He’s sat in the front row as the industry struggled, emerged and launched into hyper-growth.

Danny Sullivan is still the first person analysts and journalists turn to for insight and commentary. During the show, he flies at a frenetic pace, fueled by Coke and donuts. Meanwhile, the implacable Chris Sherman acts as ying to Sullivan’s yang, ably stewarding the international shows (a note of irony that Danny, who lives in England, coordinates the North American shows, while Chris, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, does the international shows). And somehow, they manage to pull it all together for each show, seeing each eclipse last year’s attendance numbers. I attended my first SES in Boston in 2000. I started presenting almost three years ago now. It’s been tremendously exciting to see them continue to grow bigger and better with each iteration.

Well done, Chris and Danny. Again, I almost wish I could be there to tell you in person. But by the time you read this, I’ll be somewhere in the south of France, and that has its own consolations. But I’m sure our paths will cross before long. Chicago, perhaps?

 

The Rule of Three in Search

First published July 20, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Once again, I find myself up to my earlobes in eye-tracking data. I have no one to blame, as I got myself into this mess when I made the well-intentioned but poorly thought out promise to have the first draft of a study done by the time I head out on vacation at the end of the month.

In wading through the sessions (about 420 of them) sometimes new insights rise to the top–and sometimes my eyeballs just roll back in my head as my hands jerk spasmodically on my keyboard and drool runs down my cheek. Luckily, this week it was the former.

In this study, we are looking at interactions with Google, compared to MSN and Yahoo. Recently, one finding in particular seemed to be screaming out to be noticed. Being a compassionate sort of researcher, I listened.

When we looked at interactions with the top sponsored ads, there was a notable difference between MSN, Yahoo and Google. On MSN and Google, the percentage of clicks happening on these top ads seemed to be in line with previous studies done both by us and by others. But the amount of activity on the Yahoo ads seemed to be substantially higher. We started out by looking at first fixations, or the first place people looked on the page, even for a split second. Here, the engines were all in the same ball park, with 83.7 percent of first fixations in top sponsored ads for Yahoo, compared to 86.7 percent for MSN and 80.6 percent for Google.

Then, we looked at where the first activity on listing happened; where on the page did people start actually scanning listings? Google held a good percentage of eyeballs, keeping 12.4 percent of the users, while MSN had a significant defection issue, losing 36.6 percent of the people who first fixated in the top sponsored ads. But Yahoo lost the fewest, with only 5.5 percent choosing to look elsewhere. And finally, Google had 25.8 percent click-throughs on these ads, and MSN had 16.7 percent (yes, this is low, but MSN was dealing with a number of issues at the time of the study). Yahoo led the pack with a 30.2 percent click-through rate. In fact, for the first time ever in our research, a sponsored link (the number one top sponsored) out-pulled the No. 1 organic link, at click-through rates of 25.6 percent vs. 14 percent. This was a complete reversal of the click-through ratios we saw on the other two engines.

For whatever reason, Yahoo’s top sponsored ads seemed to be locking searchers into their part of the results page to a much greater extent than Google and MSN.

Why? What the heck was going on? Better ads? Not really. If anything, Google’s ads seemed a touch more relevant.

Location, Location, Location

Part of it was real estate. Another interesting comparison we did was to look at the percentages of screen real estate devoted to various sections of the page. Yahoo has gone out of its way to make the top sponsored ads the dominant feature on a results page at 1024 by 768 screen resolution. At this size, the ads take up 23 percent of the real estate, compared to approximately 16 percent for Google and Yahoo. This pushes organic listings on Yahoo perilously close to the fold.

And there, as I stared at the screen shots of fully loaded (maximum ads and vertical results showing) Google, MSN and Yahoo results at standard resolution, a possible answer revealed itself. On Google, three top sponsored ads, three OneBox results, and three visible organic listings. On MSN, the same three:three:three presentation. But on Yahoo, there were four top sponsored ads, three vertical results, and just one and a half organic listings were visible.

The Rule of Three

Hmmm, three, three and three. There was something there, niggling in the back of my mind. Quickly, I did a search for the “Rule of Three” and sure enough, there it was. We humans tend to think in triplets. Three is a good number to wrap our mind around, and we see it in all kinds of instances. We tend to remember points best when given in groups of three, we scan visual elements best when they come in threes, and we like to have three options to consider. Think how often three comes up in our society: three little pigs, three strikes, three doors on “Let’s Make a Deal,” three competitive quotes. It’s a triordered world out there.

So is it coincidence that search results tend to be presented to us, neatly ordered in groups of three? I think not. It strikes me that this engrained human behavior would probably translate to the search engine results page as well.

The Ruler-breaker

MSN and Google tend to adhere to the rule of three in their layouts (depending on whether or not Google serves three top sponsored ads). Our choices are conveniently presented in neat trios, with logical divides between each.

Yahoo breaks the rule by tipping the balance in favor of the top sponsored ads. First, it provides four results, not three. Does this mean we need to spend a little more time up in these results, trying to fit one extra one into our limited memory slots? That appears to be the case, with people spending an average of 4.6 seconds in the Yahoo top sponsored results in our study, compared to 2.4 seconds for Google and 1.73 seconds for MSN.

Second, it only gives us one visible organic listing to consider. It breaks our natural desire to have three alternatives, thereby reducing the Promise of Interest for the organic listings. In effect, on the screen of results most people would see on Yahoo, we only have one alternative, the top sponsored ads.

An earth-shaking discovery? Perhaps not. But cut me some slack. I’ve been looking at eye-tracking data daily for three months now, spending about three hours each day looking at interactions with the three engines. I think it’s time I took the three other members of my family on a three-week vacation, during which we’ll be visiting three countries. Wait a minute! Do I sense a pattern developing?

Branded Terms in Search Results: Pre-Mapping in Action

First published July 6, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Two separate occurrences in the last little while have lent credence to a behavioral occurrence we’ve seen in many of our studies.

First, I was sitting in on a meeting where an agency (not ours) was reporting on the performance of its sponsored search campaigns and was ecstatic with the performance of its branded term phrases, which were outperforming every other keyword bucket both in terms of click-throughs and conversions. While giddy with delight, company executives were at a bit of a loss to explain why.

On a similar track, a search marketing firm has recently released some results that looked at cannibalization of search campaigns when you are buying terms where you also hold top organic position. Again, they found this is most likely to happen when you’re buying branded terms.

While neither of these examples should be surprising to a seasoned search marketer, we’re all interested to know the reasons behind this interplay between organic and sponsored, particularly on branded terms. The answer, as it so often does, lies in looking more closely at what the search user is doing.

Pre-Mapping: A Theory

After looking at thousands of search sessions in detail, one thing is becoming clear. Searchers are incredibly adept at focusing in on just the portion of the results page that interests them. The time required to relocate to the prime real estate is literally a fraction of a second. Yet that real estate isn’t always the same spot. It varies depending on query and intent. It also varies by user, but even the same users will navigate the real estate of the listings in very different ways, depending on what they’re looking for.

Pre-Mapping supposes that we’ve interacted with search results pages enough to know the sections of real estate we typically deal with. We know where the top sponsored ads are and what they are. We know about where the top organic listings start. And in our minds, we already have a good idea of the type of site we’re looking for and approximately where we expect it to appear. Before the page ever loads, we’ve already mapped out the sections that would appear to hold the greatest promise to deliver on our intent. As the page loads, we do a split-second scan to get our bearings (orient in the top left corner, see how many top ads there are, see where organic starts) and then we go to the part of the map we’ve predetermined to be our best starting point.

Theory in Practice

Let’s run through a few examples. Imagine you’re looking for the possible side effects of a medication. The types of sites you would be looking for would be authoritative information sites, either the official site for the medication, a recognized health portal or possibly a government information site. In this case, you may be leaning more towards objective sites, rather than the pharmaceutical company’s own site. After launching the search (the name of the drug) you’ll quickly filter out, or thin slice, any commercially oriented sites. In this type of interaction, you’ve determined through pre-mapping that your area of greatest promise is not likely to be in the sponsored ads. You also expect the official site to rank No. 1 organically, so your area of greatest promise is probably in the No. 2 to 5 organic rankings, where you expect the types of sites you’re looking for to sit. In a split second, you’ve narrowed the real estate where you’ll start your active scanning to about 10 percent of the total real estate.

Now, let’s say you’re looking to renew your auto insurance. You’ve already checked out a few quotes online, but before you commit to any, you want to see how your current carrier compares. You’ve also pre-mapped the page in this case. Here, you expect your company to be bidding for the term ( “Brand Name auto insurance”) and because it’s a commercially oriented query, you assume that the sponsored listing would take you to a page where you could get a quote. Your area of greatest promise is the top sponsored ads. Again, you do your orientation scan to find your bearings in the upper left, but in this case, you would start right at the top sponsored link and work your way down the page until you find a link to the carrier in question that offers the promise of giving you a quote.

Theory Applied

Considering these two examples of user behavior, you can easily see what was happening in the two anecdotes I cited at the beginning of this piece. Brand terms will convert like gangbusters in the top sponsored location, because when a brand term is used, it’s very likely that the user has pre-mapped and is expecting to find that site in those top sponsored spots.

Similarly, you will find significant cannibalization because when users have pre-mapped, they start at the top and work down. They’ll hit the sponsored result before they hit any organic result that might appear. They’re looking for the quickest route, and in this case, the sponsored listing is giving it to them.

The likelihood to pre-map, and what this means for interaction for the page, lies in that deep dark place where all the answers to search engine success lie, the mind of your target prospect. Spend some time exploring it.

Search and the C-Level Ceiling

First published June 15, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

What is the No. 1 thing that keeps the sales teams at Yahoo, Google and MSN up at night? It’s not click fraud, it’s not capping of bid prices, and it’s not counting their stock options. This is another “C” word. I call it the C-Level Ceiling.

No Keys to the Executive Washroom for SEM

In corporate America, there’s a vast distance between the front line and the top management in most Fortune 500s. The C Level sees rolled-up dashboards, while front-line practitioners are up to their earlobes in masses of detail. Both bring their own kind of blindness. At the C Level, aggregation of metrics means senior management might not see the small emerging factors that could make a big difference if applied more broadly. And practitioners get swept away in minutiae, sometimes not getting the luxury of seeing their contributions as part of the bigger picture. Somewhere between these two extremes, search is caught in the land of the “trial” budget.

Search just hasn’t broken into the spotlight at the top of the corporate ladder. Senior execs don’t get search, they don’t want to get search and they certainly don’t want to move significant budget to search. As you move down the corporate ladder, the love affair with search gets more ardent. At the front-line practitioner level, it’s a full-blown romantic obsession, because the front line sees in gritty detail how well search can perform. But as you move away from the front line, the search story gets lost in a maze of numbers, being rolled up into one category after another, until it all but disappears at the highest level of reporting.

Search is a blip in the total marketing picture, a rounding error in most budget allocations. Despite the best efforts of the big search engines, the industry has been unsuccessful in getting the C Level to buy into search. So why is that?

I’m Too Sexy for This Channel

First, even if you don’t “get” something, you can still be interested in it. Everybody at the C level loves to get involved in the new corporate TV ads, because that’s sexy. If you’re launching a sponsorship of a NASCAR race, or the Olympics, or the World Cup, or a Rolling Stones Concert Tour, that’s sexy (with room for differing opinions on the sexiness of the Rolling Stones). If you’re doing product placement on “Survivor” or “American Idol,” that’s sexy. Search just isn’t sexy. Never was and never will be. The CEO or CMO is just not going to give up a weekend yacht trip to approve the latest search ads.

So, the first thing against search is there’s no sex appeal to draw in corporate execs, whether or not they “get” it (and most times, they don’t).

Use Me, But Please Respect Me

It’s estimated that there are about 630,000 C-Level executives in the U.S. If you asked them where the most effective place to reach them with an advertising message would be, they would tell you the Wall Street Journal print edition. And, according to a new study by Ipsos, there’s some validity in that. The Journal reaches 46 percent of the market. This is the place C Levels turn to get detailed information and opinion. They respect the Journal.

But an even more effective intersection would be search. The most dominant medium these executives use to stay in touch is the Internet. 55 percent use it at work, and 34 percent use it at home. Now, unless C Levels use the Internet in a totally different way than every other human, that means they’ll be using search a lot. So the very same executives that continue to allocate huge budgets to TV and print, and teeny tiny budgets to search, use search, a lot! Way more than they watch TV. Why is that?

The Generation Gap

A generation gap exists between the C Level and the front-line practitioners, and the executives at the top just haven’t accepted the fact that the world has changed right under their very feet. At the C level, despite tons of evidence that confirms the world is turning online, they’re still stuck very much in an offline world when it comes to budget allocation. And it’s not that they aren’t aware of the quantum shift in our society. It’s a comfort level issue. They know customers are wired, but they’re not exactly sure how online marketing works. The rules are still being written. At least with television or print, there’s the comfort of knowing they’ve been doing it for years. There are budget line items that are rubber- stamped each year, media buyers and agencies that are more than happy to take the money, and media outlets that are hanging on tenaciously to the budgets. For executives allowing the status quo to continue, the question they reassure themselves with is, “How could the world change so radically that the things we’ve done for the past 3 decades could be no longer valid?”

We saw an example of this recently. A travel company that targets young adults (18 – 30) continues to spend millions each year to produce huge, glossy brochures. At the practitioner level, this company has initiated research that shows that the vast majority of their target market does their research online. Yet the entire online budget is a tiny fraction of the print budget for the brochures that nobody reads anymore. Everyone who works on the front lines of this company knows they are seriously out of step with their market, but no one has been able to convince executives to cut the budget on print and swing it into online. The word hasn’t been able to get past the C-Level ceiling.

Search Delegated down the Ladder

With the meager budgets going to search, we can count on the responsibility for these campaigns being passed far down the line. Executives spend their time looking at the things that have the greatest impact financially on the company. If search is 2 percent of the entire advertising budget, but television accounts for 45 percent, the CMO is going to be spending a lot more time with television. That just stands to reason. So the future of search lies lost in the middle management layer, cut off from the budget allocations that can make a real difference.

Hammering the Message Home

So, what will shake up the status quo? Well, the shift has already begun. Calls for more accountability in advertising are great news for search. Someday in the not-too-distant future, the CMO, looking at the detailed report on the search campaign, will scratch his head and ask the fateful question, “Why can’t we get these kind of metrics for all our channels?” And there, in that one sentence, the battle will be won. It won’t be a quick win, but it will be tremendously satisfying.