Category Archives: Personal

A collection of personal thoughts and stories

Telltale Signs of a Chasm Crossing from NY

It was an incredibly packed week (and hotel) at SES NY. As you’ve probably noticed, I didn’t get a chance to do any blog posts while I was there. But the good news I had a chance to sort through my inbox and set aside some post worthy tidbits that I’ll try to catch up with in the next week, so I’ll try to make up for lost time.

One of the things I chatted with a few friends about was a strong undercurrent of change in the industry. On the last day of the show I had lunch with Greg Jarboe and followed that up with a Guiness or two in the lounge with Chris Sherman and Matt Bailey. Besides the obvious (Google’s purchase of DoubleClick, IPG’s purchase of Reprise and the recent purchase of Global Strategies by WPP) there’s just a feeling of transition to a new stage for the SEM biz. Jarboe referred to it as the “gentrification” of the business (Greg is so erudite!).

After, in a quick chat with Shari Thurow (yes, we ironed out the wrinkles of our spat) and Anne Kennedy, Anne nailed it for me. We’re crossing the chasm. Isn’t it funny. I’ve written at least one column saying this was the case and did a series for MediaPost indicating we were in for sea level change, but I had to be reminded about it.

Perhaps it was the validation of being surrounded by a bunch of other SEMs. For most of the time, I’m somewhat isolated from the SEM community here in Kelowna. From this vantage point, I speculated that we were ready to cross the chasm but I had the comfort of being somewhat removed from the day to day machinations of the industry. But last week, I was in the thick of it and in the flurry of activity, I was wondering what was going on. It took Anne to point out to me that it was just what I had postulated on a few months earlier. Talk about not being able to see the forest for the trees!

There are a few symptomatic indicators that seem to indicate a chasm crossing is ready to happen:

The mainstream is adopting search, but they’re not sure where it should live. More and more companies are testing the search waters, but they’re hesitant to partner with an outside firm. Their answer, at least in the short term, is to build an in-house team to handle the campaigns. I’m getting this from all sides.

The major agency holding companies have all acquired search expertise. In order to try to stem the in-house tide, the IPG’s, WPP’s and Omnicoms of the world have all gone shopping for SEM expertise.

Awareness of search has moved up the C Level. For the first time, SEMPO’s Market Survey found that the executive team is not only aware of search, but keenly interested in it. This has been an ongoing frustration in the past for search marketers.

With all of the above happening, it’s going to be an interesting time in the search biz. Ironically, just as we’re waiting for the 800 pound gorilla to be crowned, another interesting observation I made last week was for the established search players to be rushing towards the next big thing. Google is stumbling over itself to rush past search, moving a lot of its focus to display, video and every other channel under the sun. I’m not so sure it’s wise to turn the spotlight from search. My gut feeling is it’s finally search’s time to shine.

Anyway, more posts to come this week..finally!

Guy Kawasaki in Kelowna

I had the pleasure of seeing Guy Kawasaki speak in my hometown of Kelowna last week.

Guy2

Photo courtesy of Manoj Jasra

The presentation was one I had seen him give in Vegas at PubCon last fall but the repetition did nothing to reduce the enjoyability of the presentation.  Guy is one of the most engaging speakers I’ve ever had the privilege of seeing.  I was hoping to be able to get to know him a little bit better but unfortunately, he had a pinched nerve from a hockey injury and was unable to sit at our table for dinner.  He was obviously suffering but managed to pull it together and deliver a great presentation.  We had actually bought tickets for a number of our team at Enquiro because we knew it would be inspirational for them. None were disappointed and both Manoj and Jody actually did blog posts the same night of the presentation  when they got home. Considering the  event didn’t  wrap up till 10:30, that shows dedication and passion!If you’re not aware, Guy is a huge hockey fan and he definitely played to the crowd with a number of hockey references.  Guy said he doesn’t often get the chance to use hockey stories but when in Canada, he takes full advantage.  He mentioned that he was actually considering canceling the speaking gig, given the pain that he was in with his injury, but he asked himself,  “What would Mark Messier do?” and then sucked it up and made the trip.  I’m glad he did.  If you ever get the chance to see Guy speak, I would highly recommend going.  I would also recommend becoming a regular reader of his blog, one of the most popular blogs on the web.

The Art of Contradiction

First published March 28, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

From “The Argument Clinic,” Monty Python

Michael Palin: An argument isn’t just contradiction.
John Cleese: It can be.
Michael Palin: No it can’t. An argument is a connected series of statements intended to establish a proposition.
John Cleese: No it isn’t.
Michael Palin: Yes it is! It’s not just contradiction.
John Cleese: Look, if I argue with you, I must take up a contrary position.
Michael Palin: Yes, but that’s not just saying ‘No it isn’t.’
John Cleese: Yes it is!
Michael Palin: No it isn’t!
John Cleese: Yes it is!
Michael Palin: Argument is an intellectual process. Contradiction is just the automatic gainsaying of any statement the other person makes.
(short pause)
John Cleese: No it isn’t.

I think the world of SEO has spun into a prolonged Monty Python sketch. The flavor of the month seems to be manufactured debate designed to take up polar opposite positions on any given topic. There’s nothing like a little dustup online to get the creative juices going and generate a lot of blog activity, and, if the topic of that debate strikes enough nerves, a corresponding bushel of new links. It seems like no matter what someone says, someone else in the blogosphere automatically takes the contradictory viewpoint, sometimes not so much because he or she disagrees — but just because they want to post a comment on their blog and generate some links.

You Say “Potato,” I Say “Patattah”

There’s nothing new with online debate, but in the past it tended be fueled by real passion. Today I suspect that we’re all scanning the online landscape, looking for a viewpoint that we can be diametrically opposed to, just for the sake of generating some dialogue and some link bait.

And, just so we can be crystal-clear about this at the outset, when it comes to the above practice, I’m guilty as charged. In the past couple of months I’ve engaged in at least three or four of these debates in my own blog. Some I truly felt passionate about and some were simply me jumping on the other side of the question for the sheer purpose of having a little fun and perhaps generating a comment or two. Perhaps the low point of this particular form of online content generation reached its lowest point when both I and fellow SearchInsider David Berkowitz decided to open up the debate in this column on no less worthy a topic then Kevin Federline (just kidding, David, I know this wasn’t just a heartless exercise for you. I’m sure you’re very passionate about K-Fed.).

Dispassionate Debate

But I have to wonder how effective we can be in arguing if we don’t truly believe in the viewpoint that we’re arguing for. Dispassionate debate is supposed to be something we learn at school. We get randomly assigned one side of an argument, and it’s our job to effectively argue that viewpoint whether we believe it or not. The advantage of dispassionate debate is that you tend not to shoot your mouth off too fast. You take the time to do some research, learn the facts, and construct a logical argument without your face turning red, your heartbeat racing and your blood pressure rising through the roof. I’m the first to admit that when someone strikes a chord with me, I tend to take it a little more personally than I should — a situation I’m currently finding myself in with one of my blog debates.

Get The Juices Going!

But the debate that really get the juices going are those things we truly believe in. Just look at how passionate an entire industry got when the very validity of SEO was questioned. Take a browse through some of the hottest threads in either Webmaster World or Threadwatch and see how vitriolic comments can get when the raw nerves are exposed.

Passionate ideological debate is a good thing. It’s what built our society and it’s what’s driven the evolution of our civilization. If we can keep the focus of the debate on the validity of the ideas and not the person making the argument, then debate is a very good thing. It’s healthy, it lets the air in, it exposes ideas and allows us to ruminate on them. And if it happens on an online forum and it happens to help reinforce the structure of the Web by generating new links, then so be it. Again, it’s just one more way to where the Web takes the things we’ve always tended to do and elevates them to a new level.

In one particular debate I was told I should not take it so personally. After 45 years of living with myself, I realize I’m just not wired that way. I do tend to take things personally — and that’s usually what prompts me to post comments, whether they’re in a column like this or on my personal blog. And I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Yes, it might ruffle some feathers from time to time. But it’s a sign of passion — and one thing I truly love about this industry is the passion that always bubbles just below the surface. I love the fact that we’re quick to jump to the defense of ideas we hold dear. I love the fact that we’re a very eloquent group and we can make our points so well. In a column that came out last week, Bill McCloskey cried about the lack of passion in the e-mail industry. As Bill points out, I’ve never seen that to be true in search. We’re ready to argue anything, even if we don’t really hold our position to be true deep, deep in our heart.

After all, there’s no such thing as bad press — and perhaps there’s no such thing as bad link bait.

The Great K-Fed Debate

federlinesearchMy SearchInsider column last week took exception with K-Fed launching his own search engine. Actually, I take exception with the entire concept of K-Fed that but that’s another point. In today’s SearchInsider, David Berkowitz retorts, rebukes and refutes my negativity around all things Federline, saying that the K-Fed engine shows that search is ubiquitous, search is evolving and search shouldn’t be always all business, no fun. Ultimately he says let the market decide whether a Kevin Federline engine is a good idea or not. Hard to refute that point.

Anyway, knowing David, he had a lot of fun writing the column and I certainly had fun writing the original column. The thing that amazes me is that in the past week, 40% of the total ink (or whatever the virtual variation of ink is) on SearchInsider has been devoted to the topic of Kevin Federline. Perhaps someday soon you’ll be able to pick up your local copy of SearchInsider at the grocery checkout and we’ll have great juicy articles about Britney’s rehab and the latest alien that professes to be Elvis, living in Minot, North Dakota.

One last point though David. You quoted me as saying that I would rather wear Fiberglas underwear than use the Kevin Federline search engine. That’s not actually true, I would rather wear Fiberglas underwear than attend K-Fed’s birthday party. And you asked where the phrase comes from. For the life of me I can’t remember where I first heard it, but I’m pretty sure it’s not a Canadian thing. I tried to look it up and couldn’t find any references so what the hell, let’s say that I originated the saying.

K-Fed Up with Celebrity Skinned Search

First published March 22, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

I’ve got a question for you: Would you want to do anything with Kevin Federline? Personally, the more Federline-free my world is, the better. But apparently other people don’t see it that way. You may have noticed earlier this week that K-Fed is actually launching his own search engine. Well, to be more accurate, he’s slapping his face on an existing back end, so to speak. I won’t go into the details of the K-Fed engine, except to say that it’s powered by Yahoo and it’s offered by Prodege.com.

Par-Tee with Britney’s Ex!

Apparently, making this your primary search engine could open the door to a chance to win tickets to Kevin’s private birthday party (I would rather wear fiberglass underwear), T-shirts and other paraphernalia all related to the somewhat questionable K-Fed brand. Apparently, an invite to K-Fed’s birthday party is “a once in a lifetime opportunity.” This has the ring of truth, as I might consider killing myself if I actually won.

This got me thinking. If we’re in the era of consumer-generated media, are we also in the area of consumer-generated celebrities? Does the increasing fragmentation of our society through an explosion of online channels means that even marginal celebs like Kevin Federline get their own small sliver of fame? If we have enough Kevin Federline fans somewhere and the Web has empowered them to have a voice unlike anything they may have been able to have before, is there a place for a Kevin Federline search engine? And, if so, does the future hold the promise of a profusion of celebrity skinned search sites?

Google Dresses Up Your Home Page

Ironically, Google also made an announcement this week releasing six themes for their personalized homepage. In this case, Google went out of its way to make sure that the themes are not commercial in any way. In Google’s words, these themes are all about “art and personality.” The new Google themes are clever, in that they are location-sensitive and have some cool little twists designed to “delight” users. For example, some of the scenes are outdoors, and the sun rises and sets in sync with where you happen to be located. With a Google theme installed, you may never have to look out your window again. But in a conversation with Google folks, they made a point of saying that they’re hesitant to open up an API to Google themes, for fear that it would cause a rush of commercialized skins, which could encroach on the user experience.

Blatant Commercialism is Skin Deep

Commercially oriented skins are nothing new, of course. Movies have released custom skins for MP3 players and other online apps that bury functionality under a sea of advertising spin. There are hundreds and thousands of desktop themes, wallpaper and screen savers with a commercial bent. But up to this point, search has been relatively “spin-free,” save of course for the advertising on the actual results page. But at least I don’t have to look at Kevin Federline when I’m searching for the symptoms of gout or trying to find an update patch for my latest Windows problems.

Just Give Me My Results, Dammit!

Based on a few new entries in the search space, it suddenly seems like we need personality mixed in with our search functionality. Search innovator K-Fed is not the only one pointing us in this direction. Microsoft has been playing around with Ms. Dewey (again an unfortunate choice of words), with the assumption that an undeniably attractive but distinctively bitchy female guide standing in front of a Blade Runner-esque streetscape will somehow make our search experience more complete. Perhaps Ms. Dewey could be K-Fed’s rebound after his split with Britney. Or perhaps both of them should have a cup of tea with Jeeves and see how being a search mascot worked out for him.

My feeling is that we want search to be a pristine experience. We’d like it to be minimalist, and we want to start from a neutral palette. We are so focused on intent and the task at hand when we interact with search that anything that gets in the way is simply a distraction. It adds nothing to the user experience. Search is very utilitarian task. We get in, find what we’re looking for and get out. However, with the lion’s share of the search market tied up in the hands of so few players, perhaps any tactic is worth a try to see if they can wrest even a small sliver of those searches away from the Googles and Yahoos of the world.

Where Are They Now?

By the way, the other celebrities that have their own search engines with Prodege.com? Meatloaf, Andrew Dice Clay, and Wynonna Judd. So the progressive degrees of “washed up” seems to be: having your own reality show, appearing on “Dancing with the Stars,” then having your own search engine. Now, I ask you, if Paris doesn’t have her face (or other assorted body parts) plastered on a search engine somewhere, how hot can this trend really be?

Improving the Odds of Connecting with Your Target Market

Kim Krause Berg had a interesting additional thought to my post about eye tracking. Her question, “What happens when your target market gets up on the wrong side of the bed?”.

This got me to thinking about the validity of market research and understanding more about your target customer. Kim’s point, which she makes quite clearly, is that people are people and all the research in the world won’t be able to tell you if your target customers having a bad day, or for that matter, an extraordinarily good day, when they are interacting with your site. How much of a role does emotion play with predicted behavior?

In marketing and user centered design circles, we often talk about our targeted users and customers. Companies with money to blow will run studies on who their target consumers are, or run focus groups on what people love and hate about their products. The human factors industry studies human-computer behavior. Usability companies try to understand what ticks off end users. Conversions experts look for all the reasons behind failed sales. Search engine marketers dig deep for keywords used by the perfect end user who knows exactly what they’re looking for.

Once all this data is gathered, white papers are written, case studies are published and articles are run that inform us about what our site visitors and product users want, what they like, how they make choices and why. We may think we’re very cool and savvy to have found the holy grail of ROI.

What if your product, service, internet application or website is humming along, primed for the perfect targeted end user and that person is suddenly different?

Perhaps they are emotionally upset. PMS. Menopausal. Facing surgery. Sleepless parents. Overworked wage earners. Out of work. On medication. Depressed. Drunk. Suffers a sudden loss of eyesight or use of their hands. There are a zillion reasons why someone has an “off” day, is feeling emotionally or mentally out of whack or drastically changes in some way. This can last for a day, or longer.

Either way, what they are dealing with, at the moment they are accessing your website, service, product or application, may have an impact on how successful they are at completing a task.

Marketing is a game of percentages. It’s all about increasing your odds of hitting that perfect combination: putting the right message in front of the right person at the right time. Will you get it right 100% of the time? Of course not. But then again, if you can improve your odds of success from 50% to 60 or 70% you’ve just scored a huge marketing coup.

When you reduce marketing to one to one communication, you’re completely dependent on the receptiveness of your intended target. Unless you’re in front of the person when you communicate with them, there’s no way for you to pick up their mood or emotion. You can’t alter your message accordingly to the signals that you’re picking up. But the interesting thing is, as variable as people are on an individual basis, if you put enough of them together they start reacting in predictable patterns. While it might be impossible to predict the success of your message on an individual basis, the greater the size of the group, the more confident you are in predicting what the aggregate patterns will look like. And that’s where understanding more about your target market can dramatically improve your odds. If Kim is in my target market, I might not know what her mood might be on any given day. If I have 10,000 Kim’s in my target market, I can be fairly sure that on any given day a certain percentage of them will be in a good mood, a certain percentage will be in a bad mood, and a certain percentage will be relatively ambivalent. I don’t have to be precise on a one-to-one level, because the law of averages works in my favor. I’ll get more right than wrong. What is important, however, is that you have a good understanding of what all those Kim’s generally like, what motivates them, and what their intent is when they interact with my brand.

There’s a lot of talk about personas as a tool to help you understand your target market better. One of the reasons people hesitate to use personas is that it feels odd, when your target market could be made up of thousands or millions of individuals, to build a conceptual framework represents just one individual. Again, it seems like you’re oversimplifying the collective needs and wants of your segment. But the power of a persona is the way it forces you to shift your paradigm, the way it forces you to look at things from a customer’s point of view and interact with your brand through their eyes, not yours. It’s this fundamental shift in thinking that has to happen to be able to effectively close communication. Once you build your persona framework, you can start dropping in the individual pieces of research intelligence you might have on your target market. It helps to create a profile, complete with a much greater understanding of what motivates that target, relative to your offering. It’s very difficult start a conversation with someone when you have no idea who you’re talking to.

The whole point of communication is to effectively connect and transfer information back and forth. The greater the understanding, the greater the odds of making that connection. Ideally, we should all be able to sit in front of each individual we’re communicating with and be able to read their body language, be able to pick up their signals, be able to interpret their moods and emotions. This being impossible (my track record with my wife is pretty abysmal and I live with her every day) the next best thing is to understand more about the group as a whole and what motivates them, and then to be able to craft your messaging in a way that resonates with them. Again, it’s all about improving your odds for success. If Kim gets up on the wrong side of the bed today, I might totally blow my chances of getting the right message to her, simply because she’s not in the mood to receive it. But for every one I get wrong, there will be several more that I get right.

Shari Thurow Talking Smack about Eye Tracking

You know, if I didn’t know better I’d say that Shari Thurow had issues with me and eye tracking. I ran across a column a couple of weeks ago where she was talking about the niches that SEO’s are carving out for themselves and she mentioned eye tracking specifically. In fact she devoted a whole section to eye tracking. Now, it’s pretty hard not to take it personally when Enquiro is the only search marketing company I know that does extensive eye tracking. We’re the only ones I’m aware of that have eye tracking equipment in-house. So when Shari singles out eye tracking and warns about using the results in isolation…

That brings me to my favorite group of SEO specialists: search usability professionals. As much as I read and admire their research, they, too, often don’t focus on the big picture.

…I’m not sure who else she might be talking about.

I’ve been meaning to post on this for awhile but I just didn’t get around to it. I’m on the road today and feeling a little cranky so what the heck. It’s time to respond in kind. First, here’s Shari’s take on on eye tracking and SEO.

Eye-tracking data is always fascinating to observe on a wide variety of Web pages, including SERPs (define). As a Web developer, I love eye-tracking data to let me know how well I’m drawing visitors’ attention to the appropriate calls to action for each page type.

Nonetheless, eye-tracking data can be deceiving. Most search marketers understand the SERP’s prime viewing area, which is in the shape of an “F.” Organic or natural search results are viewed far more often than search engine ads are, and (as expected) top, above-the-fold results are viewed more often than the lower, below-the-fold results. Viewing a top listing in a SERP isn’t the same as clicking that link and taking the Web site owner’s desired call to action.

Remember, usability testing isn’t the same as focus groups and eye tracking. Focus groups measure peoples’ opinions about a product or service. Eye-tracking data provide information about where people focus their visual attention. Usability testing is task-oriented. It measures whether participants complete a desired task. If the desired task isn’t completed, the tests often reveal the many roadblocks to task completion.

Eye-tracking tests used in conjunction with usability tests and Web analytics analysis can reveal a plethora of accurate information about search behavior. But eye-tracking tests used in isolation yield limited information, just as Web analytics and Web positioning data yield limited (and often erroneous) information.

Okay Shari, you didn’t mention me or Enquiro by name but again, who else would you be talking about?

Actually, Shari and I agree more than we disagree here. I agree that no single data source or research or testing approach provides all the answers, including eye tracking. However, eye tracking data adds an extraordinarily rich layer of data to common usability testing. When Shari says eye tracking is not the same as usability testing, she’s only half right. As Shari points out, eye tracking combines very well with usability testing but in many cases, can be overkill. Usability testing is task oriented. There’s no reason why eye tracking studies can’t be task oriented as well (most of ours are). The eye tracking equipment we use is very unobtrusive. It virtually like interacting with any computer in a usability lab. In usability testing you put someone in front of the computer with the task and asked them to complete the task. Typically you record the entire interaction with software such as TechSmith’s Morae. After you can replay the session and watch where the cursor goes. Eye tracking can capture all that, plus capture where the eyes went. It’s like taking a two dimensional test and suddenly making it three-dimensional. Everything you do in usability can also be done with eye tracking.

The fact is, the understanding we currently have of interaction with the search results would be impossible to know without eye tracking. I’d like to think that a lot of our current understanding of interaction with search results comes from the extensive eye tracking testing we’ve done on the search results page. The facts that Shari says are common knowledge among search marketers comes, in large part, from our work with eye tracking. And we’re not the only ones. Cornell and Microsoft have done their own eye tracking studies, as has Jakob Nielsen, and findings have been remarkably similar. I’ve actually talked to the groups responsible for these other eye tracking tests and we’ve all learned from each other.

When Enquiro produced our studies we took a deep dive into the data that we collected. I think we did an excellent job at not presenting just the top level findings but really tried to create an understanding of what the interaction with the search results page looks like. Over the course of the last two years I’ve talked to Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. I’ve shared the findings of our research and learned a little bit more about the findings of their own internal research. I think, on the whole, we know a lot more about how people interact with search than we did two years ago, thanks in large part to eye tracking technology. The big picture Shari keeps alluding to has broadened and been colored much more extensively thanks to those studies. And Enquiro has tried to share that information as much as possible. I don’t know of anyone else in the search marketing world who’s done more to help marketers understand how people interact with search. When we released our first study, Shari wrote a previous column that basically said, “Duh, who didn’t know this before?” Well, based on my discussions with hundreds, actually, thousands of people, almost everyone, save for a few usability people at each of the main engines.

There are some dangers with eye tracking. Perhaps the biggest danger is that heat maps are so compelling visually. People tend not to go any further. The Golden Triangle image has been displayed hundreds, if not thousands of times, since we first released it. It’s one aggregate snapshot of search activity. And perhaps this is what Shari’s referring to. If so, I agree with her completely. This one snapshot can be deceiving. You need to do a really deep dive into the data to understand all the variations that can take place. But it’s not the methodology of eye tracking that’s at fault here. It’s people’s unwillingness to roll up their sleeves and weed through the amount of data that comes with eye tracking, preferring instead to stop at those colorful heat maps and not go any further. Conclusions on limited data can be dangerous, no matter the methodology behind them. I actually said the same for an eye tracking study Microsoft did that had a few people drawing overly simplified conclusions. The same is true for usability testing, focus groups, quantitative analysis, you name it. I really don’t believe Enquiro is guilty of doing this. That’s why we released reports that are a couple hundred pages in length, trying to do justice to the data we collected.

Look, eye tracking is a tool, a very powerful one. And I don’t think there’s any other tool I’ve run across that can provide more insight into search experience, when it’s used with a well designed study. Personally, if you want to learn more about how people interact with engines, I don’t think there’s any better place to start than our reports. And it’s not just me saying so. I’ve heard as much from hundreds of people who have bought them, including representatives at every major search engine (they all have corporate licenses, as well as a few companies you might have heard of, IBM, HP, Xerox..to name a few). I know the results pages you see at each of the major engines look the way they do in part because of our studies.

Shari says we don’t focus on the big picture. Shari, you should know that you can’t see the big picture until you fill in the individual pieces of the puzzle. That’s what we’ve been trying to do. I only wish more people out there followed our example.

Post Mortem on Ten and Half Months of Posts

Well, my interview with Matt Cutts certainly seems to be causing ripples in the SEO world. At this point, it’s well on its way to becoming the most read blog posts I’ve ever made. The fact is, I have to thank Matt for my two highest traffic days ever. The first came when I launched my blog and Matt “Matt-dotted” it. That has been the record up until now, when my interview with Matt drove more daily visits and page views on Monday.

In a more analytical bent, it was interesting to see how the traffic ramped up. On Friday, when the interview was posted, the majority of traffic was coming from the predictable sources. There was a link from Search engine land and Search Engine Watch and Web Pro News also picked up the post and ran it in a couple of stories. This drove the majority of the traffic over the weekend. But as time went on (through Monday and today), the long tail kicked in and links to the post showed up in a number of blogs and forums, both here and overseas. While my referral base broadened out dramatically, the traffic kept rolling. Obviously, the long tail phenomenon occurs everywhere. In the last 24 hours, it’s been these widely dispersed links that have driven the majority of the traffic.

It’s also interesting to note the contrast in the pickup between Matt’s interview and the previous interview with Marissa Mayer. While Marissa’s interview actually contained more hard data on how personalization works on Google, Matt speculated on what personalization might do for the future of SEO. That was obviously a hot button and generated a number of pickups. Something about putting the name Matt Cutts and the letters SEO in the same title almost guarantees that you’re going to capture attention in this industry.

I always find it fascinating to see which blog posts pickup steam and which once seem to linger forever with hardly anyone reading them. In many cases, the posts I’m most proud of are the ones that seem to limp along, capturing a handful of page views every so often. Anything that touches on controversy seems to strike a chord.

Looking back at my blog records, my most read posts to date are:

Usability and Asinine Comments from the Bay

Controversy stirred up at a Jakob Nielsen Usability Summit in San Francisco where I discussed brand experience online and the use of graphics on websites

Relevancy Rules in Top Sponsored

A sneak preview of our eye tracking study that showed how importance relevance in those top sponsored ads were for attracting attention and clicks

The Matt Cutts Interview

Matt talks about personalization and its impact on Seo

The Personalized Results are Coming, The Personalized Results are Coming

My follow-up post when Google made its announcement early in February that was pushing more people toward signing up for personalized results

The Marissa Mayer Interview

Chatting with Marissa about personalization and its impact on user experience

For interest sake, I also looked back at my main referrer sources. Google by the bigger referrer source, driving about 14% of my traffic, with Matt’s blog second (a testament to it’s popularity, considering he’s only linked to my blog a couple of times) at 12.5%. After that it’s MediaPost, Search engine Land and Search Engine Guide.

For those of us always looking to build buzz on our blogs, it’s helpful to take a look back to see what our hits and misses were. For myself, I want to keep a balance between getting the posts out that I think are important, whether or not they attract a ton of links, and obviously giving my readers what they want. It looks like more sneak previews of our internal research and more interviews with the people that are shaping the search experience at Yahoo, Google and Microsoft are where I have to look in the future.

Webpronews Video: Who Said What?

I happened to be browsing through Webpronews on the weekend and saw one of their new video news updates. The clips are well produced, professional looking and even have their own attractive newscaster, Nicole Eggers. One I happened to pick, however, left a little to be desired on the accuracy front. As you’re probably aware, I just did a series of interviews with the top usability people at each of the three engines for Search Engine Land and a couple weeks ago I did a recap talking about the differences I saw between each of their philosophical approaches. The blurb on the video appeared to be on the same topic so I decided to give it a watch. If it, Webpronews indicated that search expert Danny Sullivan had talked to each of the three usability people at the engines and had come to the following conclusions:

  • That relevancy was almost a religion for Google
  • Yahoo had a heightened sensitivity to the needs of their advertising community
  • Microsoft was still finding their competitive niche

Huh? That’s exactly what my recap said. They even pulled a few quotes from it and attributed them to Danny. I quickly e-mailed Danny to see if we were doing some kind of weird Cyrano de Bergerac thing but Danny was apparently as out of the loop on this as I was. Anyway a quick e-mail to Webpronews seems to have got it straightened out. They’ve pulled the clip and apparently they’re redoing it.

Not that I mind being mistaken for Danny, but I just hate to be putting words in his mouth. By the way, does anyone else feel like they’re being scolded by Nicole? Again, not that I mind.

I Have Seen the Future (Thanks to Regular Coffee)

First published February 22, 2007 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Why do epiphanies always happen in the middle of the night? Why can’t they be more conveniently scheduled during regular business hours, say between 10 and 11 in the morning or right after afternoon break at around 3: 30? But no, they usually occur somewhere between 2 and 4 in the morning. The fact that I was in a semiconscious state for this particular epiphany has everything to do with the fact that we ran out of decaf at the office yesterday, and I figured I could squeeze in just one cup of regular coffee without serious side effects. I was wrong.

Intel’s New Super Chip

This particular epiphany was catalyzed by a short news story about the new research processor chip that Intel is working on. It promises to be a performance breakthrough of breathtaking proportions and while it’s destined for supercomputers, the trickle-down effect to our everyday computing requirements is inevitable. Moore’s Law just keeps rolling along.

So, I asked myself, sometime between 2:45 and 2:49 a.m., with processing power set to take another leap forward, where would this new technology change our lives the most? The answer: mobile computing.

More Horsepower for Mobile

Some time ago I wrote a column about my frustrations with the limitations of mobile computing as it currently sits. But if you can pack enough horsepower into your average mobile device to facilitate things like speech recognition and more robust support for virtual displays, the mobile computing experience becomes much less frustrating. And when that happens, our entire interaction with the Web changes with it.

Right now the majority of our access probably happens in two places: at work or at home. Mobile access is generally limited to checking e-mails right now, and even that is a truncated experience where we’re scanning subject lines to see if there’s any fires we have to put out.

Godin’s Web4

Another thread that went into the weaving of this epiphany was a post I read on Seth Godin’s blog about a month ago, a post he called Web4. In it, Seth talked about the Web as our personal assistant that helps shuffle our schedule, introduces us to new interests and businesses, and generally makes our lives better in a number of helpful ways. For the Web4 that Godin envisions to happen, our computers have to know where we are, always be connected to the Internet, have a quick and easy way for us to communicate with it, and generally fit our lifestyle much better than the current boxes on our desks, whether they be at home or at work.

Living in the Wireless “Clouds”

Here’s another thread. Microsoft’s Live suite has one purpose: to put the functionality of Microsoft apps at your fingertips no matter where you are, no matter what your connection to online is. It “unhooks” you from the desktop and lets you move around and live your life with wireless freedom.

Computing and online access have to fit us, not the other way around. There are times during the day when we tend to stick in one spot for a while. When that happens, it makes sense for us to have a static access point and computing platform with some of the advantages that a little more elbow room could offer. Two places that come to mind immediately: our workplace, and when we sit down at home to be entertained. The rest of the time our computer should move with us.

The Home Box

At home our computers could become the oft-predicted convergent box that provides our entertainment options, but does more than that. It plugs into our home-based activities and keeps them organized for us. It becomes a communications center, our security system, an energy usage monitor, a recipe book and shopping, but most important, it’s our primary link to all our information and entertainment alternatives, allowing us to interact with those alternatives in ways never previously possible.

The Work Box

If we tend to stay in one place at work, it also makes sense to have a static access point to our corporate networks and the Internet. But the minute we get up from our seat, a mobile device would become the access point and computing platform of choice. All the data and functionality that defines us, the things we want at our fingertips, have to travel with us. When you get home you quickly plug it into your home system and the required information would be quickly transferred and the necessary updates would be done. When you get to work, you plug it in to your corporate network and again the required work-related information would be seamlessly transferred. The rest of the time, this little engineering marvel that knows where you are, what you like and what you have to do today would become your primary connection to the wired world.

Search as the Common Thread

When you look at this always-on, always-wired lifestyle, one can only imagine the dramatic uptick that would happen in all types of search activity. Once again, search becomes the common thread that runs through all that. It’s what allows us at home to search through all our entertainment options and find precisely what we would like to watch or listen to right now. At work, it’s what allows us to sift through the mountain of corporate data that resides either on our internal network or on vast online data repositories to find the file we need right now. And when we’re out there, interacting with the real world, it’s our trusted shortcut to the relevant content on the Web.

I happen to think this vision of the future is pretty darn cool. Unfortunately I’m already pushing the editorial boundaries of this column. There still seems to be a fair amount of regular coffee coursing through my veins, so check out my blog for some additional posts on the topic.