Category Archives: Rants

Every so often I have to blow off steam. These are the results

We’re Jet Setters, But Where’s the Paparazzi?

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

April has been a tough month. At last count, I’ve been in nine different cities (not including my home), a ski resort, on four different airlines for a total of two dozen flights and connections, in eight different hotels, at six different shows, and have also packed in assorted client and organizational meetings. I’ve been spending more time with search marketers than my family, and that can’t be a good thing. As lovely as Anne Kennedy, Greg Jarboe, Kevin Lee and Dana Todd are, I’m pretty sure we’re not related in any way. And I actually had to nix at least two shows from the agenda. It could have been worse!

My perception of reality is getting a little skewed. When you do too many industry shows in a row, you get a distorted sense of your own importance. In SEM circles, I’m fairly well-known. People tend to come up to me in the halls after a presentation and introduce themselves. Many are readers of this column. So, in my own, insignificant way, I guess I’m somewhat famous in search circles. But a rude awakening comes when you actually step out in the real world. The average ticket agent for American Airlines doesn’t really care that I helped define Google’s Golden Triangle or have spoken to standing-room-only audiences at SES in New York. It doesn’t get me a first class-upgrade. Those accomplishments also hold little weight with my wife, just in case you were wondering. The line “Do you know who I am?” usually lands with a decidedly flat thud whenever I try it.

The division between the search world and the real world has led me to postulate on the life of the average search marketer. We seem to be always jetting to some search hotspot (it’s not as exciting as it sounds; one hotspot happens to be Chicago in December). Our lives are lived on laptops and PDAs. We have all the trappings of a high-powered celebrity lifestyle, without the celebrity or the accompanying discretionary income.

If you’re part of the “circuit,” there are no shortage of speaking opportunities. There are search sessions everywhere, including a brand-new crop springing up to join the venerable stalwarts such as Search Engine Strategies, Ad:Tech and Webmaster World’s PubCon. Increasingly, there are cross-country “road shows” as well as demand for search-savvy speakers at other vertical industry shows. One could probably make a full-time job out of speaking, if one chose to. Just in case you’re interested in this job, the busy seasons are the spring and fall.

In part, this reflects search’s current status, caught somewhere between big business and cottage industry. The proliferation of speaking opportunities reflects the growing interest in search, and the demand for speakers is indicative of the relatively small number of thought leaders in the industry who are used to speaking in front of crowds. The ones who have proven themselves tend to find themselves a hot commodity. And for the most part, we do it for free, often covering our own travel costs, in return for raising our profile and hopefully attracting new business to our respective companies. We go from city to city, bleary-eyed and jet-lagged, promoting the gospel of search for all who care to listen.

From the outside, it looks to be an enviable position. In fact, some grumble that we in SEM’s elite “inner circle” unfairly use our connections to grab all the plum promotional opportunities. I understand, because I was once on the outside, looking at how to get in. I used to stalk Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman at the shows, trying to figure out how to grab a spot on a session panel.

I can certainly share what worked for me. Come up with something different to talk about. For us, it was search user research, and we’ve invested thousands of dollars and man hours in different studies to give us the content we speak about at the shows. Be original, because it’s tough to be a thought leader when you’re just echoing other people’s thoughts.

But a word of warning: be careful what you wish for. Sure, the life of a search marketer may appear to be fast-paced and glamorous, but underneath it all, we’re really just the same as you, very humble and ordinary, and really, really sleep-deprived.

Of course, I’m probably just tired and grumpy. Did I mention that it’s been a tough month?

Is Search a Leech on the Internet?

First published February 23, 2006 in Mediapost’s Search Insider

Search is rapidly turning from the darling of the Internet to a demon. The latest attack, brought about by search’s phenomenal financial success, is that search is sucking all the value out of millions of Web sites by scraping content in bite-sized pieces and doling it out to searchers, at the same time monetizing traffic that’s being driven by content created by the site owners, not the search engine.

Usability guru Jakob Nielsen ran a post on his site a few weeks back taking the engines to task for fostering dependency on search traffic, while at the same time enjoying the impact of ever-escalating bid prices. A few analysts have also started to intimate that perhaps it’s time for marketers, especially those in direct response, to look beyond search, as click prices move the cost per acquisition beyond what’s reasonable.


Usability: Too Much of a Good Thing?

In a somewhat ironic twist, Nielsen illustrates how improved usability can be a big factor in driving up bid prices. When a new online search market emerges, bid prices usually settle out based on the relative conversion performance of the main bid contenders. Based on their current conversion and closing rates, the smarter search marketers determine what they can afford to pay per lead. But let’s say that one of the contenders suddenly makes its site a better conversion vehicle, doubling their capture and close rate. Suddenly, that marketer can bid twice as much and still end up with the same per unit ROI. It becomes more aggressive in bidding, and eventually, its competitors wake up, figure out what happened and launch their own improvement cycles. Bid prices escalate as marketers optimize every aspect of their campaign, and the search engines double their revenue by doing nothing. In this scenario, not only are engines leeches on the content of the Internet, they’re also sucking the blood out of the entire search marketing industry. The better we get, the more money they make.

Now, before we round up the lynch mob for the engines, there are a few things that have to be said on their behalf. In cases like what was described above, search acts as the initial matchmaker between a site and a prospect. True, if it’s a one-time transaction, search can skim off a substantial portion of the value realized from sale, but if it’s a situation where lifetime value is a multiple of the first sale, the returns from that search lead will far outweigh the one-time cost. Nielsen also acknowledges that traffic generated from organic referrals doesn’t add anything to the search engine coffers. While he dismisses this traffic source in one brief mention, I think it should be realized that search engines have continued to provide this service, devoting a substantial portion of their page real estate to organic listings. 3 out of every 4 users are still clicking on these listings.


Search: Providing Quick Answers

Another concern expressed by Nielsen, which has also been vocalized, very loudly, by the World Association of Newspapers (http://news.ft.com/cms/s/d0e8cf3e-928d-11da-977b-0000779e2340.html) is that many users use search as an answer engine. They need a quick answer to a question (i.e., what movie had Brad Pitt’s first starring role?) and often they don’t have to go any further than the search results page to find it. The answer is often contained in the snippet of text that comes from the listed site. If you did the search above, you’d find that the site tiscali.co.uk has the answer (“Dark Side of the Sun,” by the way). The content came from that site, answered your question and you’re merrily on the way, arguing about who played the corpse in “The Big Chill.” But that’s far from the experience the owners of tiscali.co.uk wanted. They pay for their site by selling advertising. On the page that snippet came from are three separate ads. You didn’t see any of them, but you did see the ads the engine chose to show you.

Is this a grey area? Absolutely. But the organizations that are investing in the production of that content that the engines so nonchalantly pilfer are getting tired of contributing to Google’s ever increasing bank accounts. While publishers (including book publishers) acknowledge that the search engines are necessary for connecting users with their content, they don’t want those same users stopping at the search results page, having found what they were looking for. Gavin O’Reilly, president of the World Association of Newspapers, summed it up, “We need search engines, and they do help consumers navigate an increasingly complicated medium, but they’re building (their business) on the back of kleptomania.”


The New Golden Rule of Online

While I understand the frustration, I think it’s time for a reality check. The fact is, it’s the new User Rule for online: Those that have the users, make the rules.

Search works. Users know that. With that come some positives, and some negatives. The way I see it, search brings much more to these content sites than it takes away, so it’s not a parasitic relationship. Would these sites be happier if the search engines didn’t index their content at all? If so, that’s doable with a simple robots.txt file. If not, quit your whining and get used to it!

Of Serendipity and Search Engines

First published in Mediapost’s Search Insider on Dec 13, 2004

I love the word serendipity. It’s like an entire poem in one word. Just saying it out loud makes you feel… well… serendipitous.

So, this week, with the holidays approaching, I was in a serendipitous mood and started noodling (another favorite word) with my Google toolbar. “Hmm” I said to myself, “I wonder how Google ranks on Google for the words “search engine.” Google’s whole promise is to bring the best to the top, right? So which search engine is Google giving its all-powerful vote of confidence?

Well, no one, as it turns out. SearchEngineWatch.com, Jupiter’s portal for search marketing and optimization, grabs the coveted top spot. So, surely, Google must be second. Nope, that would be Lycos. Now, as far as I can remember, Lycos is dying a long and lingering death, but according to Google, they’re No. 1. Well, actually No. 2, behind the site that isn’t a search engine.

In fact, Google ranks itself fifth, behind Dogpile and AltaVista. Can it be? Does Google have a secret inferiority complex? Is the cockiness of every Google employee I’ve ever met just a front for a shuddering mass of vulnerability? I dig further.

What if I refine my search? Let’s try “smartest search engine”. Oops, no search engine I recognize makes it to the top 10.

Okay, how about “best search engine”? Again, there aren’t too many familiar names in the top 10, although Dogpile does manage to sneak in at No. 8.

I’m getting desperate now, and serendipity is hanging by a thread, in mortal danger of giving way to unhealthy obsession. I type in “Larry and Sergei’s search engine,” figuring it’s time to get really specific. The strategy is lost on Google, which again serves up a list of unfamiliar sites, with the exception of Go.com in the No. 10 spot. Well, at least the first two letters are right.

One last stab in the dark: “Search engine with recent IPO that’s aiming for world domination.” Nada.

Maybe I’m using the wrong engine. I switch to Yahoo! And sure enough, there’s no identity crisis here. Yahoo! proudly ranks itself No. 1 for “search engine” and in a concession to the competition, throws the No. 2 spot to Google. Apparently, Yahoo! thinks more of Google than Google thinks of itself.

Let’s take Microsoft’s new algorithm for a spin. Again, MSN thinks a lot of SearchEngineWatch and gives them the top spot. And guess who gets No. 2? Google. Looking down the page, I see Search.com, AltaVista, Dogpile, Lycos, Northern Light (are they still around?), Webcrawler, and… no MSN. Didn’t even break the top 10. Well, maybe they haven’t gotten around to spidering themselves yet.

It’s time to Ask Jeeves. First, I had to scroll down past a zillion sponsored ads that pushed the real results off the page. And when I finally got to the results, they did a pretty good job of nailing the top engines. Like Yahoo!, Jeeves doesn’t mind blowing his own horn. Ask Jeeves is No. 1, Teoma (owned by Jeeves) is second, AltaVista third, Lycos fourth, AlltheWeb fifth, and Google comes in a distant sixth. Webcrawler, Dogpile, Yahoo!, and Excite round out the top 10.

All relevant, and all search engines, although the one-two finish of Ask.com properties smacks of a little judicious human intervention. Seems that Jeeves might know his stuff, even if he is a little egocentric. Google thinks Lycos is a search engine powerhouse, so how does Lycos feel about itself?

Well, Lycos apparently has no idea what a search engine actually is, because the only two search engines to break the top 10 are Overture and AOL. HotJobs is No. 1 and an eBay page for Thomas the Tank Engine is firmly embedded in the No. 3 spot. At least the HotJobs link might come in handy for the engineers currently working on the Lycos search algorithms.

There seems to be a building ground swell for AltaVista. Could this be a dark horse? I went to Yahoo!-owned AltaVista and found out that once again, the portal SearchEngineWatch takes the top spot. Is it coincidence that a portal for search engine optimization consistently takes the top spot, beating the engines at their own game? It’s deliciously ironic, if you ask me.

The irony continues with the fact that Google takes the No. 2 spot on the competitor’s engine, with hometown favorite AltaVista in No. 4, Yahoo in No. 5 and Dogpile in No. 6.

Survey Says…

And so, in a serendipitous, non-scientific poll, using GordRank, a sophisticated algorithm of my own invention, here are the top search engines, as ranked by the search engines themselves

1. Google (ranked higher by almost all the competitors than Google ranked themselves)
2. AltaVista
3. Yahoo!
4. Dogpile (yes, Dogpile)
5. Lycos
6. Teoma
7. All the Web
8. Webcrawler
9. Hotbot
10. Metacrawler

There are a couple of points that have to be said. Perhaps Larry and Sergei could hire a search optimization firm to help them rank better on Google. I know they have the money and it seems to be a challenge for them.

And despite Bill Gate’s bravado and bank account, no one seems to know that Microsoft has a search engine. Not even MSN!

Til next year, Happy Holidays!