Category Archives: Online Trends

The Personalized Results are Coming, The Personalized Results are Coming!

Okay, sometimes the temptation to say I told you so is overwhelming. Danny has a nice long post in Searchengineland about Google’s changes to Personalized Search, making it more of a default and less of an option for millions of users. Danny details it more than I intend to, so please check it out.

As Danny says, he’s been talking about personalization for years, but up to now, it never materialized. After interviews with head user experience people at all three engines, I felt the time was right for personalized search to roll out (check The Future of SEO in a Personalized Search Interface and The SEO Debate Continues). And it appears my sense of timing was bang on. Much as I’d like to claim to be prescient, it’s really just common sense. You could see all the engines inching towards it. Now, Google has just upped the ante a little.

There are two major implications to this: what it means for search marketers, especially organic optimizers, and what it means to users. I’ll deal with each in turn.

What it Means for Search Marketers

The “Is SEO Dead? Rocket Science? A Scam?” Debate has been winding it’s weary way through several blogs in the past few weeks. My take was that SEO is, and will continue to be, vitally important as long as organic search results continue to be important to the user. Based on what I’m seeing, that continues to be very much the case. But, organic optimization now has a completely new rule set, which will irritate the hell out of many organic optimizers. The disgruntlement is already beginning to show. Michael Gray, better known as Graywolf, was the first to post a comment on Danny’s story:

Just because I ordered my coke with extra ice last time doesn’t mean I want it that way this time. I hate personalized SERP’s, I despise it even more that they don’t tell me they are personalized, and I loathe not being able to turn it off. I also have extreme antipathy for not being able to keep my search history on and not be part of personalized search.

Let me have it the way I want, not the way you think I do. I don’t want SERP’s that work like Microsoft programs that try to anticipate what I want to do, because more often than not it’s wrong. Bring back truth, purity, and clarity to the SERP’s.

Graywolf is complaining as a user, but I can’t help thinking that the more significant pain he’s feeling is as an organic optimizer who’s world suddenly just became a lot more complicated. “Truth, purity and clarity to the SERP’s”? In whose eyes? Come on. Personalization is being implemented because it enhances the user experience. It doesn’t take a “Rocket Scientist” (sorry, couldn’t resist) to see that one set of search results is not the best way to serve millions of users.

As Danny said, there’s now an explosion of new fronts for the organic optimizer to consider. Right now, Google is only injecting a few personalized results into the search page, but expect that threshold to gradually creep up as Google gains confidence in the targeting of the results to the person. The days of the universal results page are numbered. Which means that the days of the reverse engineering approach to SEO are equally numbered. I’m sure people will try to figure out ways to spam personalized search, but as I’ve said before, reverse engineering requires a fixed constant to test against. Up to now, the results page and the other sites that appeared on it represented that fixed constant. That’s gone now.

So where does that leave SEO? Well, it’s certainly not dead, but it has dramatically changed. You can’t optimize against a results set, but you can optimize against a user. Let’s use an analogy that’s often been used before to describe SEO. Think of it as Public Relations on the Web. If you launch a PR campaign, you don’t target a particular position on the front page of the NY Times, you target a type of audience. You plan your release distribution and messaging accordingly. And you give reporters what you think will catch their attention. Most of all, you have to wrap your campaign around something that’s genuinely interesting. Then, you hope for the best.

Now, SEO becomes the same thing. You don’t target the first page of results on Google for a particular term. You target an end user. You wrap your site messaging in terms that resonate with that user. You write in their language, you give them a reason to seek you out, and you sure as hell don’t disappoint them when they click through to your site. You do all this, and you remove all the technical barriers between your content and the indexes you need to be in. Then, you hope for the best.

The problem with SEO has always been that it’s been treated like some magical voodoo that can be applied after the fact, like some “secret sauce”. And yes, that was what the infamous Dave Pasternack has been trying to say. He just went several steps too far. The fact is, with universal search results, you could actually do this. Thousands of affiliates have made millions of dollars doing it. Link spamming, cloaking, doorway sites..the fact is, up to now, this bag of tricks has worked. It’s gotten harder, but it’s worked. Site owners looked to SEO to help them hi jack traffic that wasn’t rightfully theirs. They hadn’t done the heavy lifting to create a site that justified a place in the top rankings, and they tried to take an easy short cut.

But now, organic optimization means that you have to do the heavy lifting. It has to be integrated into the entire online presence. What Marshall Simmonds has done with About.com and the NY Times is a perfect example of the new definition of SEO. Get to the front lines, to the people who are churning out the content, and teach them about what search engines are looking for. Make sure SEO best practices are baked right into the overall process flow. Work with the IT team to create a platform that entices the spider to crawl deeper. Work with the marketing team to crawl inside the head of your target audience and figure out the who, the when and the why. Don’t worry so much about the where, because you can’t really control that any more. It’s a tough paradigm to break. We’ve been struggling with our clients for the past year or so. They’re still fixated on “being number one” for a particular term. We’ve been trying to ease them into the new reality, but it’s not easy.

I guarantee this will create an identity crisis for the SEO industry. As recently as a few months ago I was moderating a panel that was talking about analytics, and in the Q&A someone asked the panel, who had a few very well known SEM’s on it, about what they used for ranking reporting. The names of various options were thrown out and people started scribbling them down. I saw this and thought I had to comment.

“You know, the whole concept of ranking is quickly becoming irrelevant”

Nobody lifted their head, they were still busy writing down tool names. Maybe they hadn’t heard.

“As search engines move to personalized results, there will be no such thing as ranking. It will all be relative to the user.”

That should get their attention. Nope, nothing.

One of the search marketers said, “Yes, but knowing how they rank is still important to people.”

Huh? Am I speaking a different language here? I shook my head and gave up.

So, does this mean SEO is dead? Absolutely not. It becomes more vital than ever. Here are a few things that remain to be true. Preliminary results from the new SEMPO survey say SEO continues to be the number one tactic in search marketing. Yes, people want to bring it in house, but they recognize it’s importance.

Why do they think it’s important? Because it kicks ass in ROI. Here are the results from another recent study by Ad:Tech and MarketingSherpa, asking advertisers about the return they get from various marketing channels.

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The biggest jump from year to year? SEO. Now, let’s look at where marketers plan to spend more money in the next year.

080570

SEO, from flatlined last year to looking to spend 25% more this year. So SEO definitely isn’t dead. But it is moving to a new home. Here’s some early results from the SEMPO State of the Market Study (by the way, final results should be available next week. Look for them):

SEMPO2a

It’s true that most companies would far rather bring SEO in house, if they could. And when we consider the new definition of SEO, it probably makes sense for SEO to be integrated into the internal work flow. But the problem is that there’s not a lot of SEO expertise out there. If SEO was so easy, why don’t more companies do it, or do it well? Contrary to Pasternack’s argument, it’s not a “set and forget” type of tactic. It requires a champion, buy in and diligence.

I think the future is bright for SEO as a skill set, but we’re talking a modified set of skills. I talked about this in a recent SearchInsider column and a follow up online debate with Andrew Goodman. My view of the future for the really good SEO’s out there fall into three categories:

Get a (Really Good) Job

As companies bring this in house, there will be a firestorm of demand for skilled SEO Directors, but ideally as employees, not consultants.

Broaden Your View

Become an expert in how consumers navigate online and help your customers with the big picture, including the new reality of SEO.

Adapt and Survive

Find a new online niche where your search honed skills give you an advantage.

User’s View

Okay, this is already a much longer post than I intended, so I should probably talk about personalized search from the user’s perspective now.

Personalized search is a big win for the user. Don’t judge by the first few tentative steps Google is taking. Personalization is a much bigger deal than that. Google is easing us in so the experience isn’t too jarring. By the end of 2007, all 3 of the major engine’s results pages will look significantly different than they do today. Personalization will be like a breached dam. Right now we’re seeing the first few trickles, but there will be a wave of much deeper personalization options over the next several months. Search will become your personalized assistant, tailored to your tastes. As you search more, your results will draw more and more away from the universal default and closer and closer to your unique intent. Immediately after your query, you’ll be dropped into a much richer search experience. Disambiguation will become much more accurate, and you’ll find that you will pretty much always find just what you’re looking for right at the top of your page, without having to dig deeper. Here’s how I see it playing out at each of the big three:

Google

Google has a religious devotion to relevance, and as they gain confidence with personalized search and their ability to disambiguate, this will manifest itself with a laser focus on relevance above the fold. They will continue to maintain a good balance of organic results, but these results will not just be the current web search results. They could be local, image, news or a mix of each. And ads. Yes, you won’t escape ads, but Google will be the most judicious in what they show. Expect more stringent quality scoring, down to the landing page level and a high degree of relevancy in the ads that do show. Google will be the most concerned of the three in disambiguating intent.

Yahoo

Yahoo will put their own spin on personalization by wrapping in Social Search. They will continue to leverage their community, as they currently do in Yahoo! Answers so when you’re logged into Yahoo, you’ll be plugged into their community and that will impact the search results you see. Relevancy will be determined more by what the community finds interesting than what you find interesting, although it will be a mix between the two. Yahoo will target two types of searches, serendipitous search, where you’re looking to discover new sites, and what I call “frustrated” search, where your own efforts to unearth the data online have come up empty and you want the help of the community. When it comes to monetization, Yahoo will be the most aggressive, pushing more ads above the fold into Golden Triangle real estate. These ads will trail Google’s in terms of relevance

Microsoft

Microsoft will use their targeting capabilities and probably tie in some behavioral targeting to personalize their search results. Also expect personalization in the Microsoft product to be integrated at a deeper, more ubiquitous level, into apps and OS. This probably won’t happen in 07, but it will be a long term goal. When it comes to ad presentation, Microsoft will fall somewhere between Google and Yahoo in both the number and relevance of the ads being presented. The heaviest investment will be in building out the platform to manage and model the ad program, rather than in policing the quality of the ads themselves.

It promises to be a very interesting year in the Search Marketing biz!

SEM’s Seven Year Itch: Part Three

First published January 25, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

The 2004 acquisition of SEM firm iProspect by the advertising network Isobar marked a turning point in the search marketing industry. Various reports pegged the total value of the deal at about 50 million dollars, including potential earn-outs. IProspect founder Fredrick Marckini stood to be a very wealthy man.

The iProspect deal wasn’t the first or last acquisition to happen. But the valuation of the deal (together with an earlier Performics/DoubleClick deal) set a new high-water mark for the expectations of the owners of other search shops. Suddenly, it looked like there was a very lucrative exit possible. After years of struggling in the search space, we found that we might just be holding the winning lottery ticket. Up to this point, there was a bit of a taboo about talking of acquisition in SEM circles. We all routinely professed our love for search and how we just couldn’t see ourselves doing anything else. But, hey, a $50 million dollar check can change your thinking somewhat. Suddenly, the SEM community indulged in a little daydreaming and started frequenting the Jaguar Web site and checking out property prices in the Hamptons.

But the flood of acquisitions that was predicted never happened. It was more of a trickle, and when we were privy to details about valuations, they were significantly under the iProspect deal. There are a number of reasons for that (perhaps the topic of a future column). But the fact is, while the owners of search shops have had their appetites whetted, the window for highly profitable acquisitions may have passed by. Here’s why.

Tactically, We’re Awesome

Search marketers are brilliant tacticians, whether they work on the paid or organic side. It’s what we excel at. The biggest show in the SEM industry, ironically titled Search Engine Strategies, is really three or four days jammed packed with tactics, not strategies. We myopically focus on page position, always shooting higher. It’s all about rank. It’s all about being No.1.

What we’re not particularly good at is stepping back and looking at the big picture — the hows and whys of search, and, most importantly, the whos. While this is true across the search space, it’s most apparent with the organic optimizers. Virtually no one in the SEO world has given a hoot about messaging, user experience or intent. It’s all about crawling your way to the top spot. In the last year, I’ve seen a few SEOs starting to change their thinking, but the vast majority is still obsessed with blowing holes in the ranking algorithms.

Rank Becomes Irrelevant

However, we’re rapidly approaching the day when being No. 1 ceases to have any meaning. That’s a view that is tied to the concept of a universal results page. A user searching for “bass” in Seattle sees pretty much the same results page as someone searching in Salisbury or Saskatoon. In this context, rank not only has meaning, it’s the magic bullet.

Currently, the engines are rolling out personalization of results in a number of flavors. Soon geo-targeting, demographics and personal histories will be bigger determiners of the results, and the order you see them in, than the skill of a search optimizer. An aspiring musician in Seattle searching for “bass” may see the biggest selection of bass guitars in the Pacific Northwest in the No. 1 spot.  An angler in Saskatoon will probably see the top bass fishing spots in Western Canada. And the person using their laptop and wireless connection to search for “bass” in a Salisbury pub could well see the official site for Bass Pale Ale.

A New Rulebook

On the organic side, this dramatically changes the rules of search. The hyper-developed technical skill set of SEOs suddenly needs to be rounded out with a deep understanding of the target user. The optimization tactics we felt were going to guarantee us an early retirement, while still valuable, will take a back seat to the ability to segment and understand our target prospects. More important, we have to understand the online paths they’re likely to take, and help our clients intercept them with effective messaging and successful interactive experiences. These are the skills that will be in high demand in the future. There will always be a place for a talented organic optimizer, but it will be as a rather well-paid employee, not a multi-million-dollar acquisition.

Where do these new skills exist? Well, they’re more evident on the sponsored side, as new platform enhancements have allowed the best paid search practitioners to start to segment demographically and geographically. It’s forcing us to do our homework on who our prospects are. And unfortunately, our potential acquirers, the large agencies, believe they have deep bench strength when it comes to segmenting and profiling prospects, certainly deeper than the average SEM shop. I still don’t believe they’re done a particularly good job of porting traditional market research skills to the new consumer-empowered online reality, but I suspect I’d have a hard time convincing them of that.

You know who’s really honing these skills? The behavioral targeting practitioners. Search marketer should start paying a lot more attention to what’s happening in the BT camps.

A Chronic Itch

So where does that leave the average SEM agency? Is a profitable exit still an option as our seven-year itch demands to be scratched? If your valuation depends largely on tactics that gain higher rankings and concentrates on the “where” (on both the organic and sponsored side) rather than the “who” and “why,” your window has passed. But if you’re up for the change and not only embrace the inevitable reality of personalized and integrated search but pioneer the understanding of it, a new market will emerge. That’s the good news.

The bad news is that there’s a lot more hard work and learning that has to happen to position yourself in that market, and this time we’re not the front-runners. The truly passionate will persevere and adapt. The rest will find themselves with some pretty good job opportunities — but the summer house in the Hamptons and the Jag XKR convertible will be long shots.

Seth Godin’s Web 4.0 and the iPhone

Just as I’m doing one post about Seth’s log, he’s in the middle of making another post. Here it’s about Web 4.0 (yeah, he’s skipping a version or two). But in reading how Seth envisions the Web 4.0, it struck me how close it is to a vision I’ve had for some time (in fact, some of his examples sound eerily close to ones I’ve used in articles and presentations).

Seth’s quote:

“I’m booked on a flight from Toledo to Seattle. It’s cancelled. My phone knows that I’m on the flight, knows that it’s cancelled and knows what flights I should consider instead. It uses semantic data but it also has permission to interrupt me and tell me about it. Much more important, it knows what my colleagues are doing in response to this event and tells me. ‘Follow me’ gets a lot easier.

Google watches what I search. It watches what other people like me search. Every day, it shows me things I ought to be searching for that I’m not. And it introduces me to people who are searching for what I’m searching for.”

For those interested, here’s are a couple versions of my vision:

All Roads Lead Online: What Happens When Our Entertainment Choices Converge with Online and Become Interactive.

Tales of Mobile Woe: Looking for True Usability in a Handheld Device

It’s interesting and overwhelming to ponder. I think the next 5 years will prove to be cataclysmic. It’s all about making the Web more useful. It’s about making it ubiquitous and weaving it into our daily lives. And that’s where the introduction of revolutionary new handheld devices will shake things up dramatically. Apple’s iPhone could mark the beginning of a whole new phase of handheld functionality. As Cory Treffiletti points out in his column this week, Mobile Marketing is getting a lot more interesting with the promise of this functionality. On the flip side, Steve Smith reminds us that the mobile interfaces of most properties have a painfully long way to go.

ChaCha and the Search Tango

There’s a new crop of search interfaces coming out, many spin offs from the big engines themselves, and I’ll be trying to take a look at them from the user’s perspective. Today I took ChaCha for a spin. Here’s some background (and hype) from their About page

“ChaCha stands out as different and better in a landscape cluttered with common search engines because it uses the World’s most powerful technology – The human brain.

ChaCha’s goal is to provide a better search experience by combining results that are hand-picked by our knowledgeable human guides with the best computer-generated search results. In those cases where you can’t find what you need with our instant results, ChaCha will connect you with a live human guide who will find the information for you through an instant messaging-style search session.

Scott Jones and Brad Bostic, two dynamic entrepreneurs who were not satisfied with millions of irrelevant search results provided by first generation search engines, believed a better experience could be created by tapping into human intelligence. Since starting ChaCha, they have been hard at work with the ChaCha team to create:

  • A smart search engine that “learns” by tapping into human intelligence so its results are always improving
  • A place to find exactly what you’re looking for instantly
  • Help from people who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for when instant results don’t have the answer “

Fellow Enquiro blogger Marina Garrison tried out Cha Cha and shared her thoughts. Here are mine. Unfortunately, there’s no good news here for the Cha Cha team.

“A Better Search Experience”

I started out by looking for hotels in Kauai. I used the default, automated search. At the same time, I did a search on Google for the same query. My intent was to compare my options, so I was looking for a link that would show me a number of properties. Google did pretty well, with both official and unofficial accommodation guides rounding out the top algorithmic results returned in the customary fraction of a second. Definitely something here I would click on.

Cha Cha’s automated results were far less satisfying.

  chachaorigsm

First, there was a sponsored link at the top, but no advertiser. That’s okay, it’s a beta, so I didn’t really expect one. But all the other results have a “sponsored by” line at the bottom. I’m confused. Are they sponsored links or not? Confusion is not good in a user experience. The results were mostly for individual properties, not very descriptive, and the same site showed twice in the top 4 results. The only guide I saw was well down on the top 10, and it wasn’t an official guide. The results weren’t really matched to my intent. Strike Two.  Once again, what was it that Cha Cha was offering?

“ChaCha’s goal is to provide a better search experience by combining results that are hand-picked by our knowledgeable human guides with the best computer-generated search results.”

Oh..right. Okay, maybe I’ll try the “knowledgeable human guide” because after all, “it uses the World’s most powerful technology – The human brain”

I hit the search with guide button

The interface changed and opened up a pane on the left. There was a pause of at least 10 seconds while I waited to connect with a guide. In 10 seconds on Google, I’d have clicked off the page by now, but I’ll be patient. Finally I’m connected to DelaineL, who greeted me with a “Good Afternoon”. This despite I did this at 10 am local time. Hmmm..mental note for Scott and Brad, our “dynamic entrepreneuers”…you’ll have to work out that time change thing.

Now, I wasn’t sure what to do. Do they just pick up from the last query I did? There were no instructions I could see. I waited. Finally DelaineL sent me a “Hi!”. I guess I have to reenter my query in the message box. We’re approaching a minute now. I told Delaine (not sure whether this is a male or female Delaine) I was looking to compare hotels in Kauai. I wanted to be fair, giving my human guide a chance to give me the types of results I was looking for.

“Find exactly what you’re looking for instantly “

I was expecting a page of 10 results to pop right up. Instead, after many more seconds, I got one.

chacha1sm

And it was for the same site that showed up twice in the top 4 organic results. This was the best that the “world’s most powerful technology” can do?  Also, the page they sent me was actually a landing page built for a Google Adwords campaign. Not really what I was looking for. So, was this the only result I was going to get? I asked my guide. I was told the second result was loading. When it came up, it was an Expedia search results page, along with an apology for the delay and the assurance that Delaine was looking for the most relevant results. The response sounded suspiciously canned though.

chacha2sm

I guess that’s what took the time, the guide went to Expedia and launched the search for me. I guess that’s good.

“People who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for “

Okay, I’m sure Delaine is an excellent person, kind to kids and animals, and is probably an expert in many areas, but what makes him/her an expert on Kauai? How does Delaine know what I was searching for? Does ChaCha have a room full of people monitoring my initial search activity, and when I click on the guide button, a red light starts flashing and an announcement rings out at Cha Cha Headquarters, “Attention, we need a Kauai Expert on seach 1045..Stat!!” ? I somehow doubt it. Lets put the “knowledgeable” line down to more marketing spin.

Also, do we really want a human somewhere knowing what we’re searching for? I don’t think so. Most of us prefer to search anonymously, or at least what we think is anonymously (ignorance is bliss in this case, until we’re rudely awoken by a AOL debacle). I suppose if someone were really stuck, they would try their luck with a search guide, but based on my experience, it wouldn’t be something I would ever do again.

By this point, I had spent a good 2 or 3 minutes doing something that would take a few seconds on Google, and I didn’t get results any better than I would have received there. Sorry ChaCha, but you hit a sour note with me.

And now I go on my user experience diatribe. There’s obviously a lot of infrastructure behind Cha Cha. I have no idea how many human guides they have but to make this scalable (they say thousands), but it appears that they’re paid by the search. This is not a cheap start up. But this will undoubtedly fail. It offers no compelling reason to use it. It’s far inferior to other options that have established themselves with users. A little bit of research should have shown this. I’ve talked to a few people who have used it. None of them will ever use it again. I’m sure the people at ChaCha will say they had tremendous response from their initial tests. BS. If thats the response they got, they weren’t doing the tests correctly. This will be a waste of a lot of people’s time and some significant investment on somebody’s (apparently Jeff Bezos) part. And it could have been avoided with proper usability testing. There’s a lot wrong with ChaCha, and not much right. The interface is junky and clunky. It’s like a flashback to the dot com bubble.

If you’re going to Cha Cha, try not to step on your partner’s toes. I’m still limping.

Postscript

After the post, I ran across Rob Garner’s SearchInsider column from yesterday (obviously have to clean out my folders more often) on his experience with ChaCha. While not ideal, it seems Rob is more optimistic than I am:

“I would bet that they find a niche in the market with a loyal user base, and that we may see more innovation from them to come in the form of user interface, and/or behavioral research. “

I guess one thing ChaCha has going for it is the ability to get live user feedback, real time. I hope they listen.

SEM’s Seven Year Itch, Part Two

First published January 18, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s another controversy stirring in the SEM blogosphere, and this one is revolving around the very future of organic optimization, the yin to the paid yang of search. While this debate rears its head with predictable regularity every few years, there’s a different flavor to this one. This time, rather than an inter-industry turf war, it’s the search user that will ultimately decide the fate of SEO. And that opens up part two of SEM’s seven-year itch: what life will be like on the agency side.

A (Very) Quick History of SEM

First, a little back story. The search marketing industry has gone through one significant evolution since it began in 1996. Back then, it was a grassroots movement that started on the back of the popular search engines. More than a few have called that relationship parasitic. We worked to game the algorithmic results of Infoseek, Altavista, Lycos and Excite. We did it because there was no choice. At the time, the only way we could buy results page real estate was with terribly ineffective banners. Everybody knew that it was only the results that people looked at, and they were generating huge amounts of traffic. The higher the position, the more traffic we could expect. The organic optimization side of search has actually changed very little in the past decade. The techniques have become more sophisticated, on both sides, but it’s still all about driving listings higher for selected key phrases.

In 1998, the first reinvention of search marketing took place. Bill Gross introduced paid search through Goto, later Overture, and now Yahoo. Google followed suit in 2000. Suddenly, a whole new dimension opened up. Many moved to the paid side of search. Some remained resolutely on the organic side. And, over time, many search shops embraced both.

The introduction of paid search has been the most significant change in our industry. It has largely propelled search to where it is today. From the agency side, it demanded a whole new skill set, as we pioneered the fundamentals of bid management and, more recently, market segmentation, conversion tracking and robust testing. But one thing remained the same. Fundamentally, whether paid or free, it was still all about gaining the best real estate on the search results page.

Our Day will Come (We Hope)

Whatever side of the search marketing street we hung our shingle on, many things remained in common. We started small. We remained dedicated to search. We worked our butts off. We loved what we did. And very few of us got rich. But, we consoled ourselves, we’re part of the fastest-growing sector in marketing, and there’s got to be a payoff. We know search. Everybody searches. That’s got to be worth something. Now, many years later, we’re beginning to wonder.

The paths SEM shops chose to take have diverged over the past seven or eight years. Some have remained small, largely built around one or two skilled practitioners. Some have pursued growth and built scalable infrastructures, often fueled by eager venture capital investment trying to grab a piece of the search tidal wave. In the later case, positioning themselves for an acquisition was a common exit strategy. In a few cases this has worked, the iProspect/Isobar deal being the most notable example. In some, the inevitable stress, change of culture and diversion of focus ended up knocking the legs out from under the company. At one point, Websourced was one of the largest SEM firms in the industry. A few weeks ago, it effectively closed its doors, being absorbed into its parent, MarketSmart Interactive.

Pondering Our Future

Whatever path we chose, we’re all coming to the same crossroads. We’ve put in a lot of sweat equity, often at the expense of huge portions of our non-search lives. Unlike the early employees of the search engines (see last week’s column), we don’t have any stock options sitting in a drawer somewhere–or even the security of a regular paycheck. We’ve invested everything we have, both personally and financially, in nurturing our individual companies along, hoping that at some point, in some way, we could cash in that asset to finance the next phase of our lives, whatever that might be. Up to now, the ride has been so fun that we weren’t too concerned about getting off. But soon, we may have no choice.

The fact is, search marketing is on the cusp of reinventing itself again, and if the introduction of paid search in 1998 split the industry in half, this new incarnation will fragment it in a million pieces.

Next week, I’ll continue by exploring the next reinvention of search–and where that leaves SEM agencies.

Privacy Vs a Better Online Experience

A couple months ago I wrote a column about a potential showdown between privacy advocates and Web 2.0 supporters. I identified a crisis point being reached as behavioral targeting became more common and began influencing our search results. Of course, a large part of the functionality touted in Web 2.0 plans depends on the surrender of a certain degree of privacy.

My prediction was that it would case a temporary fuss, which would be picked up by some, but that for the vast majority of us, we would put aside our concerns when we realized the benefits of a better online experience:

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

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

Indeed, it seems that while the danger is certainly in the minds of privacy advocates and some legislators, most consumers don’t really care, despite the occassional horror story like the recent AOL debacle. Privacy Advocate Mike Valentine posted this comment after the column ran:

“I’ve been predicting the same approaching privacy storm for about 5 years now. After each breach of data in hack attacks, after ChoicePoint sold data to bad guys posing as customers (hmmm), after VA laptops are lost exposing veterans to identity theft, after AOL exposed private users search queries, and on and on and on. The storms never come, the public doesn’t care, the media reports the hacks, breaches, thefts, criminal activity and identity thefts and moves on because consumers simply don’t care until identity theft or public embarassment happens to them.”

Now, a new study from Choicestream seems to indicate I was on the right track. The number of respondents willing to share some information in return for a better experience rose fairly dramatically, from 46% last year to 57% this year.

graph1privacy

The number willing to let a website track their clicks and purchases in return for personalized content climbed from 32% to 43%.

graph2privacy

What’s interesting about this is that these numbers returned to the levels seen in the 2004 survey. 2005 definitely saw a heightened awareness to privacy issues that seems to be abating somewhat. But although consumers seem to be willing to trade off privacy, they do so grudgingly and with some concern. 63% of them are still worried about the security of their personal data.

I believe it’s a combination of convenience and blissful ignorance that’s keeping the privacy storm clouds from coming to a head. The reality is, like most things, we won’t impact the smooth sailing of our day-to-day lives unless we get burned. And then, we’ll be looking for someone to blame.

SEM’s Seven Year Itch, Part One

First published January 11, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

There’s been a lot of speculation lately about the future of Matt Cutts. A few of Cutts’ posts and a recent interview have dropped the odd hint that the world of Google and the world of Mr. Cutts may not always be one and the same. While this is certainly noteworthy on many levels, it’s only one symptom of a much bigger issue, and one that will change the search landscape dramatically.

The fact is, those of us in the search space who have been doing it for a while (in my case, dabbling for 11 years, dedicated for eight now) are getting tired. We’re becoming burnt-out. As exciting as the ride has been since 2000, we’re beginning to realize that there is a life beyond search, or at least, the seat that we’re currently sitting in. There are a number of individual issues emerging that signal a significant change coming, and the time is now. We are succumbing to our own version of the 7-Year Itch.

A Case of Google-itis

First, let’s look at what will be happening with the engines themselves:

Google was recently recognized by Fortune as the best place in America to work. Tales of perks beyond the imagination of most poor working stiffs emerged from the Mountain View Shangri-La. Those of us who have visited the Google campus knew about a lot of these, but you could hear the rest of America’s jaw drop. Oh my God, they said collectively, what a place to work!

Well, yes… and no. The things that make Google great also make it a meat grinder. When you sign your life over at Google, you’re entering yourself in a sprint without a defined finish line, against thousands of other people determined and capable of getting there first. That’s okay when you’re young (as everyone at Google is), but at some point, life edges in on the dream. People get married, people have babies, parents age and require care. Somehow, a $500 subsidy for take-out food or on-site dry cleaning can’t make the realities of that life go away. There’s no rule saying you have to work zillions of hours at Google, but when everyone else is doing it, especially the two founders, are you the one that’s going to slow down? Either you keep racing, or you drop out. There’s little middle ground here.

And My Option is…?

Combine that with the fact that most of Google’s old guard are sitting on stock options that make them multimillionaires. Matt’s a wonderful guy and I’d like to count him as one of the friends I’ve made in the industry, but it’s got to be tough to motivate yourself everyday to put in the hours it takes to be Matt Cutts when there’s the substantial carrot of a very early and very lush retirement constantly hanging just above your head.

Matt’s not alone. That’s why one-third of the first 300 employees are no longer with Google. A story in the Houston Chronicle relates how 16 Google insiders cashed in more that $3.7 billion in stock last year (half of this coming from Larry and Sergey themselves), filling California’s tax coffers. And there’s more to come. By 2008, the state is counting on a cumulative $1 billion in state income tax from the sale of Google stock as the early guard cashes in. That represents 1% of the state’s entire annual general fund budget.

Changing of the Guard

Somehow, staying in the race becomes less compelling when the alternative is so damned attractive. It’s a testament to Google’s culture that more haven’t taken Door Number Two yet. But as the old guard moves on, that culture is shifting. Again, this is not unique to Google. Startups everywhere go through this, but few have been as successful or watched as closely as Google. A San Francisco Chronicle article looked at the shift of Google from a highly democratic family to a more conservative bureaucracy: “The feeling of ownership among employees, a natural when a company has 100 workers, was nearly impossible to maintain after the workforce grew into the thousands.”

Google’s not alone in this. Just a few weeks ago, I wrote about Tim Converse’s departure from Yahoo. Yahoo has seen several move on, some voluntarily, some not, due to a series of reorgs. Yahoo is a perfect case study of the tempestuous nature of the Web. Once sitting on the top of the search heap, Yahoo has felt a series of very painful bumps on the way down. It is now reinventing itself so it can turn around its market-share slide. Yahoo is a curious mix of old guard and new saviors, as its culture becomes redefined, for different but no less effective reasons than Google.

And finally, there’s Microsoft, unique amongst the three. Being late into the search game might actually benefit the monolithic giant here. Most of the recently assembled search team still feels the motivation that comes from the promise of a new endeavor. Microsoft is in the unaccustomed position of being the startup, the new kid on the block. Their legs are still fresh.

Today, I looked at the effect of the 7-Year Itch on the engines, but the impact is also affecting hundreds of search marketing companies. Stay tuned for next week!

The SEO Debate Continues

My earlier post about the future of SEO caught Jason Lee Miller’s attention over at Webpronews. So far, Jason is one of the few to grasp the Richter Scale implications of this shift in the SEM landscape. Danny Sullivan saw the danger signs some time ago. I traded a few emails with Danny on this and his response was:

“I did a lot of writing about personalized search about two years ago sounding the same alarm. Then it never really happened, the personal results that is. They’ll come, of course.”

Meanwhile, Kevin Lee continues to poke away at the SEM-SEO controversy that his partner David Pasternack started. There are those suggesting that this is an elaborate link baiting scheme on Kevin’s part. While his speculating on the future of SEO is certainly generating lots of controversy, and hence, links out there in the blogosphere, the cynics are missing the point that all those links are pointing to Kevin’s Clickz column, not his corporate online properties. No, I suspect Kevin’s motivation in this case is his self professed tendency to be a intellectual shit disturber. He likes to stir up polarized discussion, because if you know Kevin, there’s nothing he likes better than a good debate.

As you know from the previous post, I have a slightly different take (and I use the word slightly deliberately, I happen to agree with a lot of what Kevin said in his last column) on the debate than does Kevin. His point is that SEO can be brought in-house because for a lot of websites, you just have to do the basics right and they’ll get a huge lift. Couple this with the desire, expressed in the latest SEMPO survey, of a lot of companies to handle all this SEO in-house because there’s a lack of a recognized and trusted leader in the SEO Marketplace and it’s not that hard to see Kevin’s point. To be fair, Kevin also pointed out that a lot of companies want to bring their paid search in-house as well.

But here’s the thing. SEO is going to get a lot harder, not easier. And that increasing difficulty is going to be in area that today’s crop of SEO’s have next to no experience in: knowing the end user. And that get’s back to Jason’s story in Webpronews. He states:

“While focus on keywords has been the law of the searchland, SEO professionals will have to more diligently and acutely focus on the end user – every unique end user – mulling scenarios, personalities, and motivations, which makes SEO more akin to traditional marketing, where a firm grasp of psychological concepts is as necessary as the technical acuity of keyword targeting.”

Exactly, but in that paragraph lies a world of adjustment, and I’m not sure most SEO’s are up to the challenge.

Here are some things to think about:

As results become more personalized, the work ranking ceases to have meaning. Just a few months ago the question of ranking reporting came up in an analytics session I was participating in. This has been part of SEO since the beginning and has been an ongoing sore spot between the engines and the SEO community. I mentioned that ranking reporting might soon become irrelevant, expecting it to generate a bit of controversy (in that, I do share Kevin’s delight in stirring the pot sometimes). To my surprise, nobody picked up on it. Fellow SEO’s on the panel even failed to take the bait. I felt like screaming “The whole world is about to change as you know it!” but I chose instead to go to the exhibit hall for the free drink. It was the end of the day and I was tired.

SEO’s are all about controlled experimentation. We live to tally up suspected algorithmic factors and test, tweak and twiddle. We reverse engineer the algorithms. Say what you want, that’s basically what SEO is. It’s all about tactical maneuvering. I’ve been bemoaning the lack of strategic thinking, based on what users are actually doing, for years now, but the industry hasn’t changed much. To reverse engineer, you need a control to test against. You need at least one fixed target. Up to now, the universal page of results was that fixed target. How do you reverse engineer when you have nothing to set your bearings against?

As Jason so rightly points out, this new world of SEO is much more about marketing than it is a technical skill set. It’s about knowing your user intimately and where they tend to hang out, given a specific intent. It’s about staking out the most traveled intersections and gaining some presence there. It’s about knowing how they’ll use the new version of search to navigate the online landscape. And it’s about accepting, once and for all, that you really can’t control your presence on the search results page, however it appears.

And it’s here where Kevin’s view and mine coincide. In a lot of cases, it will be about doing the fundamentals right. If you have a site that has an established presence, then this is often enough. Make sure you connect the spider with the content. Make sure the content and your target customer share the same vocabulary. Make sure you’re not throwing any road blocks between your site and the search index. Do that, and accept the fact that your control pretty much ends there. That’s not to downplay the importance of this knowledge. I agree with Danny Sullivan that SEO skills are not nearly as common as David Pasternack seems to indicate. But I believe the days of the SEO hacker/hired gun are numbered. Personalized search may be what finally kills black hat SEO.

With that, organic optimization returns to its roots, and what the word organic should have meant in the first place. It’s about working with the client to help them understand how consumers use online to research and to help them turn their organization into an organic content factory. Help them use online to provide multiple and useful touchpoints for the potential consumer. Extend your presence into the well travelled online intersections. Establish best practices for SEO, and let the rest take care of itself. As Kevin rightly points out in his column:

“Alternatively, one could simply focus on producing great content and take whatever links occur naturally (the way Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page intended in the original PageRank system).”

It’s here where SEO’s have their biggest challenge. Can they transition from a technical experimenter to a trusted guide to online traffic patterns? I have my doubts. I have seen little evidence of this in the past. SEM’s tend to be further ahead in this regard, because of the targeting opportunities that the back end platforms provide. Ironically, this is where interactive and traditional agencies could regain a foothold, but in the later case at least, they’re still struggling with the whole concept of an empowered online consumer, and until this paradigm shifts for them, they have a huge blind spot when it comes to online strategy.

SEO’s have to reinvent themselves, and soon. Some of the skills will be transferrable, but many new ones have to be acquired, and these are not usually skills that are found in the same place. I expect a shakeout, and soon. A lot of SEO’s have been doing this for a long time, and they’re getting a little tired. Reinventing themselves is probably the last thing they want to do. Cashing out was probably more in their anticipated plans.

So, how soon is this going to happen. Let’s get back to Danny’s point. Personalization is nothing new, but I think 2007 is the year where it will make a noticeable difference. There are a couple of indicators of that:

Google is already experimenting with Geo-targeting results based on IP identification. Those of you in the States probably haven’t noticed, because the online world is very US-centric, but those of us who live on the outside are already dealing with the effects. In Canada, there is a significant difference in results seen in the main Google index depending on whether the query is coming from the US or Canada. It’s a constant bain of our existence, being based in Canada but working primarily with US clients. So even in North America right now, there is no such thing as a universal set of Google results.

Personalized search that users opt in for is finally gaining significant traction. All the 3 engines offer this, and often the fact that you’re signed in is completely missed by the user. As adoption of other functionality offered by the engines increases, the odds of being signed in when you launch a search rises dramatically. And for the engines, search history is enough additional information to make them confident in presenting personalized results. It gives them another reference point in addition to the original query. The difficulty in disambiguating intent for a query was the sole reason results weren’t personalized up to now.

What does the future hold for SEO? Well, as long as users continue to want organic results (and I think personalization will make this more true, not less) there is a need to gain presence there. But the rules of the game are being rewritten. For those willing to retrench, there’s a golden opportunity to redefine marketing as we know it. But it requires looking at a big picture, and, more importantly, using a customer-centric lens to look at that picture. It means changing our approach dramatically. It means drawing back from some highly specialized skills that some have developed, and taking a more balanced approach. Personally, I’m very excited about the possibilities. A little tired, a little burnt out, but up for the challenge. But perhaps that’s because I saw it coming.

Will Wiki Whack Matt Cutts?

Danny Sullivan has an interesting post in Searchengineland about the virtual rumblings over at Wikipedia about removing Matt Cutts because he’s not notable. Say what?

You know, community is a wonderful thing, but there are community dynamics at play, no matter whether the community is based in the virtual world or the real one. There tend to be what I would call conscientious blockheads, strongly opinionated people with a lot of time on their hands that tend to have an undue influence on most forums and wiki’s, or, in traditional terms, volunteer organizations. It’s a bit of a love hate relationship, because they are, after all, volunteers and often are the sole reason that the organizations and volunteer initiatives can continue to survive. But they tend to bend the collective view to their own strongly held personal perspective. And often, they exert their own need for control and recognition in this relative vacuum. Think PTA’s, think the executive of service organizations, think strata councils, think churches. I’ll bet you’ve all already thought of a person just like I’m describing, right?

Well, this type of person, armed with an Internet connection, has now found a new home, and this is true wherever online communities are gathering. Wikipedia would be a case in point. I think any rational person who has a modicom of expertise in the search space would know that Matt Cutts is probably one of the 10 most notable people in search, for a number of reasons that Danny Sullivan outlines (and I think Danny is shortchanging his own notability, but that’s another post).

The beauty of online communities are that there is a certain degree of transparency. We can all participate, if we choose. And us voicing our (hopefully) informed opinion is enough to hold the conscientious blockheads in check. Danny is doing exactly what we should all do, voicing his opinion and filling the vacuum.

The Future of SEO in a Personalized Search Interface

This is a debate that seems to have legs. A few posts back, I came to the defense of SEO from the user’s perspective.

In catching up with a few articles and chatting with a few key people in the industry, I’ve got another perspective that I’d like to share.

First of all, Joe Laratro in last Friday’s SearchInsider debunked Three SEO Myths, one of which was “Natural Search is Dead”. In it, Joe correctly stated:

“Natural search engine optimization is still thriving. It is more difficult today than it was five or six years ago, but the core of search results are still free. Natural Search Engine Optimization being dead is a popular myth because of the standardization of methodology that is now used. Each of the major search engines has released guidelines for Webmasters that detail the dos and don’ts of Web site optimization. Since more of the online world is aware of successful optimization techniques, they do not work as well. In other words, there is more competition from knowledgeable optimizers armed with the same toolsets.”

Back to this in a minute. Also, in sorting through some old articles set aside, I ran across this one from Todd Friesen about Learning the New Rules of Search. It touched on the same topic, looking at what might happen when SEO’s no longer have access to the intelligence tools they use on their competitors, through some type of authentication requirement.

“A move like this, which would block our ability to do competitive research at that level, would be a setback, if not a crushing blow, to SEO as we know it. That got me thinking. Where would that leave all of us search engine optimizers? What research avenues would be left?”

Finally, in the last few weeks, I have talked to representatives from the usability teams at Google, Yahoo and Microsoft. I asked each what was the major challenge for search. The answer varied slightly, but it all went to providing better results, aligned to individual intent. (By the way, I’m currently working on a series of articles from these interviews..more about this to come later)

So, to go back to the orginal reason for the post. What is the future of SEO? Both Joe and Todd are looking at this assuming the current paradigm of one query, one page of 10 organic results holds. In fact, the entire SEO industry is hanging on this paradigm. Right now, link baiting/building, optimization, competitive intelligence and all the rest are aimed at securing a top spot in the organic results. But what happens when there no longer is a “top spot” because every result is personalized, based on your geographic origin, your past search history, your behavior or preferences you’ve shared with the engines. That’s where search is going, through a number of different initiatives, and if less transparency with access to tools would deal a “crushing blow to SEO” imagine what that would do.

Now, that doesn’t make organic any less important to the user. In fact, the increase in personal relevancy will make it more important than ever. So I still stand by my original thought that organic results, of some kind, will always be part of the results set presented. But from a tactical perspective, the disappearance of universal search results throws a King Kong sized monkey wrench in the SEO works. In Canada, we’re already dealing with this as Google experiments with re-ordering organic search results based on Geo-targeting of user IP’s. The same is true in the UK and other markets.

But how do you tactically deliver SEO services in this new environment? The word ranking ceases to have meaning. There will always be a hierarchy in the results, but it will be different for each person. The control of measuring progress by positions achieved will come to a crashing halt and with it, the SEO industry as we know it. If you thought SEO was a black box before, wait til you try it under these new rules.