Starting From Search

Versus Starts Aggressive Tour de France Ad Campaign

"Screw the dopers, politics and critics."

That's the first line of Versus's new ad campaign to get attention back on the Tour de France. A slate of TV ads coincide with the launch of a new site called, Take Back The Tour.

"Join the Movement" is a great call-to-action. The link takes you into the site, where everything has a tone of defiance. A link in the top right asks, "How will you take back the tour" giving fans the chance to express their ideas and even to vent a little.

In a time when every sport seems to be dogged by allegations of juiced athletes, this is exactly tone Versus should be taking. It makes them appear to be as frustrated as we, the sports fans, are. It gives the appearance that they are fighting for the soul of the sport. Other sports outlets, such as Major League Baseball, are getting caught up in PR-speak and weak responses. They should take a page from the Versus play book and fight back. Show the fans you believe in your sport.

A Keyword may be Cheap, but Damaging Your Brand is Expensive

A few days ago my friend sent me an IM asking me if I knew where he could buy a bag of salt for his driveway. Here in the mid-west, Old Man Winter isn't quite done with us yet. Being a search fanatic, I quickly consulted Google by typing in "Snow Salt."

I found these two pay-per-click ads:

What exactly, are they trying to sell me? It’s certainly not snow salt.

Whenever a pay-per-click ads messaging does not match consumer expectation, it creates a disconnect that can damage a brand's reputation. As a consumer, it starts to feel like a brand is trying to trick me into a click.

Maybe "snow salt" was a very cheap keyword to bid on. But damaging a brand's reputation is very expensive.

The Big Four Not so Big?

Slate.com has a good read today: The Not-So-Fantastic Four: Why Yahoo!, eBay, Amazon, and AOL are Tanking.

The main issue of the article seems to be about the inability for four companies to diversify. I think there is more to it than that. After all, when it comes to failed attempts to diversify, Google has its share of challenges. Yet their stock price is sky high.

I think, simply, all the "new media" companies of the 90s (such as the big four listed in Slate), now have the same look & feel as all the "old media" companies we have known forever. We are no longer smitten with things that are "cool," but want things that are useful.

Doesn't It Mean Paid Search is 85% Effective?

Lots of hubbub this week over some recent statistics on click fraud released by Outsell Inc., and reported in the San Francisco Chronicle.

"In today's report, advertisers say that 14.6 percent of all clicks are bogus. Moreover, three-quarters of advertisers said they had been victims at least once."

Playing devils advocate: if 15% of the clicks are bogus, then doesn't that mean the other 85% are effective? Any campaign in any marketing channel that can show an 85% effective rate is a smart investment to make. Besides, the 15% statistic is only interesting if it was 11% last year—in other words, trending upwards, which there is no evidence that it is.

Search Engine Watch digs deeper into the report, questioning some of the methodology.

Obviously click fraud need to be addressed (and it is by Google, Yahoo and many others). But don't fall for calls to end search marketing budgets. Nothing has been shown to match the efficient reach of search—paid or organic.

Technorati Tags: search, click fraud

Google Checkout Launches: Why It Won't Matter

Today, Google Checkout opens for business. Google describes it as a, "a checkout process that makes online shopping faster, more convenient and more secure for Google users."

The last part of that sentence is the most important: "...for Google users." To be a merchant, a business has to also be an adwords advertiser.

If Microsoft did this now*, everyone would call it over-reaching. But Google has plenty of media love right now. Case in point: two weeks ago, Google released an online spreadsheet. It lacked any real features (read: it was crap). But the press gave it plenty of favorable ink.

John Battelle, who wrote "The Search", said this may be a breaking point for Google -- few may trust Google this much to also be their wallet. I agree with him.

With Checkout, Google does have something going for it—more methods of secure buying are needed on the internet. But making merchants also have to be a part of adwords system will be a little too much, especially since there are already great, secure transaction tunnels that do not carry this sort of overhead.

This will be the Star Wars: Episode One of the payment world -- lots of hype, little impact.

* Microsoft did give it a whirl with a product called MSN Wallet. It was shut down in March 2003.

Technorati Tags: google, checkbook, adwords

Keyword Prices Dropping?

MediaPost reports on a DoubleClick report that average keyword prices dropped in Q1. This headline appears every year.

It's a combination of more keyword competition during holiday season and a the higher return advertisers experience during the holiday season, giving them more room to increase bid prices as needed.

Marketing ramps up during hot shopping periods and cools down during other times. With the Valentines' Day/Mother's Day/Father's Day trifecta past, now may be the time to find some keyword bargains.

Technorati Tags: holiday, shopping, keywords,

Keyword Placement in Headlines and Body Copy

Over the past few weeks I have been transitioning into my new job at Resource Interactive. Resource enjoys such clients as Kohler, HP, Restoration Hardware, Express, Reebok, Wendy's, Victoria's Secret, and more.

I’ll be doing all things search marketing for them, and I’m looking forward to the new challenges and opportunities it will bring.

As I’m nestling in to my new Herman Miller chair, I have been wowed by the people who work here. Resource has really invested in its hiring and taken care to find uber-smart marketers with complementing skill sets and expertise.

A few days ago I met with Bob Hale, a usability expert here. I was interested in how our roles overlap—how design changes for search purposes could potentially influence a site’s usability. He said some really interesting things regarding how (and why) people interact with web sites.

He told me that unconsciously people start making a decision about a page based on the first three words they read. They may read further than that, but by word three they have begun to make a decision about if the page will provide them what they are looking for. This has been backed up with eye-tracking tests.

I married this up to what I know: essentially, people use search terms that either define the problem or define what they think is the answer.

For example, if someone searches for the term “flat panel TV”, they have identified the problem – they want to learn more about that type of television. If they search for “Sony flat panel TV”, they have already identified part of the solution they expect.

It makes sense that a searcher would want to see the keyword, or a related keyword, right when they hit a page.

So, where are your keywords? Are they up front, at the point people are making a decision about the page? Testing keyword placement can make a large impact on your conversion rates.

Technorati Tags: keywords, resource interactive, usability, search

Drive-Thru Windows and Losing Branded Traffic

Last week I stopped by my local Wendy’s for a number 6. The drive-thru line was long and the wait seemed to be taking longer than normal. Random cars in front and behind me began pulling out of the line and leaving.

For those working inside Wendy’s it must have seemed like a busy day—endless cars in line and fries flying off the shelf. But what they didn’t realize was exactly how much business they were losing. And this business they were losing was from people who were in line, ready to buy, but drove away because the wait was longer than normal.

Just as I was thinking of how to turn this into an entry about the customers you don’t know you’re losing because of poor rankings, HitWise released some very interesting data.

Fifteen percent of people who search for a brand name end up going to competitor’s site because they rank higher in search engines, Hitwise learned.

Fifteen percent! I’ve seen people applaud six percent conversion rates for campaigns. Now we learn that many brands might be losing 15% of their customer—people who were looking directly for them—because their competitors rank higher in search results.

That is the direct equivalent of a customer driving out of your brand’s drive-thru line. Investigate having a competitive audit done, to see who you may be losing traffic to and what you can do about it.

Technorati Tags: search, branding, seo

Goodbye Yellow Book, Hello Search

Rhetorical question: When you need to find the phone number of the pizza shop down the street, what do you do? Grab the phone book, or hit a search engine? Personally, I pop open my laptop before I even decide what toppings I want. In fact, that is what a majority of searchers do.

According to new data released by Kelsey Research, 54% of search engine users have completely substituted a search engine for a phonebook.

With local search being the fastest growing area in search marketing, I’m not at all surprised by this stat. In fact, I tried to remember the last time I used a phone book and I drew a blank.

Are you still relying on your local yellow book to find new customers? They're not looking for you there. Even if you are just a small stationary store.

Technorati Tags: search, local search, yellow pages

Vacation Post 2

Another quick vacation post before I wander up into the Rocky Mountains for some kid-friendly hiking.

Google extends market share for ninth straight month, as reported by CNET. Anyone actually surprised?

Steve Wozniak's memoir will be out soon. I would not expect this Steve to sling any mud at the other Steve, but I did notice that he is complementary of the search industry, saying "Google and Yahoo! are very innovative."

Bill Wise on why he thinks MSN Search will move up. I think he has some valid points, but the major issue facing MSN Search is not technology, but branding. Google is a hot, exciting brand -- Microsoft is the polar opposite.

Google Announces Google Co-Op

Today Google announced the release of Google Co-Op, a beta project that is intended to allow uses to tag sites in their areas of expertise.

From the press release:

Google Co-op beta is a community where users can contribute their knowledge and expertise to improve Google search for everyone. Organizations, businesses, or individuals can label web pages relevant to their areas of expertise or create specialized links to which users can subscribe.

This would be interesting if it didn’t sound just like Squidoo. I wonder if Seth Godin is going to chime in on this soon?

Google has struggled to create anything resembling a community product. Orkut never grew into anything significant (except, curiously, in Brazil – 72% of Orkut users are Brazilian), and Google Talk can’t boast the numbers of Yahoo IM or AIM.

It’ll be interesting to see if this product soars or stumbles, and if/how people use it to build links to their own sites in an effort to boost their own rankings.

Technorati Tags: google, co-op, coop, google co-op, squidoo, seth godin

Yahoo! to Release Redesigned Advertising Interface in Q3

This morning Yahoo! announced that it will release the much anticipated redesign of their advertising console in Q3 of this year.

The changes will include a more intuitive control panel, with a user-tested navigation. It is also aimed at helping advertisers to easily understand campaign results.

Also expected is better targeting for local search, so pay-per-click ads can be focused on more specific areas.

Ads will be activated in 30 minutes or less, instead of the occasional 3-day long wait that some advertisers currently experience.

There will be better forecasting to help advertisers get a better idea of what their campaigns may really cost. This is a welcome change since I have seen estimates prove to be highly inaccurate. Yahoo did not say how they will make it more accurate, but I will be eager to see how this works in practice.

Goal-based campaign optimization will also be added as a feature. Click price can be automatically adjusted based on cost-per-acquisition.

Yahoo will also be implementing what they call the Visible Quality Index. With this, ads will be scored based on quality, bid price and other variables. This score will be visible to advertisers, and will eventually determine how pay-per-click ads are ranked. Advertisers will not be able to buy the top spot solely on bid price anymore.

All these changes are welcome additions to Yahoo’s search marketing tools. After seeing another Yahoo product -- the email beta -- they appear to have really figured out how to provide powerful, yet simple tools.

Would You Pay to Skip Ads?

I have been running Gmail and Yahoo Mail side-by-side for the last month. I have found them both to be great email solutions, each offering great benefits. I’m curious to see who steals the more innovative features from the other first.

Both services advertise as part of the offering, but Yahoo lets you buy your way out of seeing ads. For $20 a year, you get several enhanced mail features plus a completely ad-free environment.

I started to wonder if users would be willing to buy themselves out of ad networks in other areas – mainly on search.

Both companies make an enormous amount of money serving pay-per-click ads as part of their search results. But would users be willing to pay to not see them?

A majority of users click on an organic link, not a paid one. But the paid links are clearly useful to many people, based on the growing profits of Google and Yahoo.

Maybe the question can be taken to a larger realm. Advertisements are finding their way into nearly every channel – including video games.

Would you be willing to pay to not see them?

Yahoo! Reports First Quarter 2006 Financial Results

Yesterday, Yahoo released their Q1 2006 financial results during an investor conference call.

Yahoo's CEO, Terry Semel, reported revenues were $1.58 billion for the first quarter of 2006 — a 34 percent increase compared to the same period of 2005. It also represents the 12^th straight quarter of record revenue for Yahoo!.

There was also some other interesting tidbits released during the pesentation:

• 1 out of every 2 internet users in the world is using a Yahoo service every month – this includes Yahoo email, IM, search, flicker and other properties in the Yahoo! network.
• The Yahoo! Mail beta was extended to 6 more countries.
• Flicker continues to grow, experiencing the 100 millionth uploaded photo in March.
• Yahoo! will roll out a new advertising management application, to further efforts to aid advertisers in ad creation. I welcome this as great news, and parts of the current tool set are a bit tedious. The phased rollout is going to take place by country.
• Pay-per-click banners will soon include some sort of relevance as a ranking method, not just bid price. Google already uses a similar method for ranking pay-per-click ads.

Highest Trafficked Sites on the Web are Search Engines

Not so long ago, Amazon and eBay were the top trafficked sites on the Web. They would alternate at the top spot, as the web's head honcho.

Authors wanted their books listed on Amazon, and individuals and companies selling nearly anything under the sun wanted to be listed on eBay. (And they still do, they are great resources.)

According to Alexa’s traffic rankings, Amazon and eBay have been displaced by (surprise!) search engines. Yahoo, Google and MSN hold the top three spots in global traffic and US traffic.

A few years ago, companies (and individuals) wanted to list their products on Amazon and eBay because that is where the eyeballs of the world were.

Where do you want your products listed today?

Technorati Tags: google, msn, ecommerce, seo, search, yahoo

Yahoo’s Terrible Claria Deal

Yahoo! Japan has just inked a deal with Claria to distribute its software application called PersonalWeb. This application will gather anonymous user behavior to refine content and display targeted ads. [ClickZ has more information on the agreement.]

Claria was formerly the purveyor of GAIN – a notorious pop-up inducing adware program. Having dealt with GAIN in the past, I have seen firsthand how difficult it was to remove from a computer.

Occasionally, I visit my local Barnes & Noble’s to do some browsing. With more books than bookshelves, I still can’t stop myself from going up and down the aisles and buying a few titles that catch my eye.

But just by entering a Barnes & Noble, I would not expect to provide information about where I was just before that, what I was looking for, what other bookstores I visit or titles I have purchased. No one would enter a brick & mortar store if that were the case.

Yet online, this happens all the time. With the simple act of visiting a site, a site owner with a decent analytics program can see if that customer came from a search engine, what word they typed in, what city you are in, and any number of other things.

Claria’s new tool will gather this information across the web, providing a plethora of information about an individuals surfing habits. This potentially exposes all kinds of data, such other sites users have been to and what they were looking at when they were there. Claria says this data is “anonymous,” but in the online world, that only means they will not associate your name with your profile. But they want to know as many other things so they can target ads directly to you. That hardly sounds “anonymous” to me.

This is a terrible partnership for Yahoo! Japan, especially during a time when the Department of Justice is issuing subpoenas to search engines for user data. The web population at large is just now becoming aware of what types of information are tracked, how that information is made available and how it is used.

Yahoo Japan is partially owned by Softbank, an investor in Claria, which is probably the main reason why Yahoo! Japan became part of the deal. But it also provides a large, tech-savvy web audience to test the application before we see it in the US.

Search engines need to help the general web population understand what data they store and who they will share it with. Adding Claria to the mix muddies the water for Yahoo!.

Accoona: What's in a Name?

A few weeks ago, I posted about Accoona and its potential to stand out.

In a related entry, the Strategic Name Development blog has a great entry about search engine names, and specifically, Accoona. You can read the post here: Brand Naming: Accoona Means No Worries

I found this insight to be particularly interesting:

I found that search engines launched in the 90’s were much more descriptively named (WebCrawler, Infoseek, and AlltheWeb), since the technology was so new. Recently, however, search engine branding is getting more creative, using coined names such as Kosmix, FinQoo, Quaero, and Accoona.

If you get a chance, check out the full article.

Is your Search Marketing a Honda or a Porsche?

Every few weeks, new statistics on relative market share are released for each of the major engines. To no one’s surprise, Google continues to lead the pack by a fair margin.

What do these market share numbers have to do with your search marketing?

Nothing.

Google’s lead continues to increase, percentage-point-by-percentage point, such that when I talk to people about Search, they typically want to hear only about Google. I take this as my cue to try and educate people that a healthy search strategy should encompass search engines as a whole and not focus solely on a single player, no matter how dominant that player may be.

Obviously you want to spend your marketing budget where you can attract the most eyeballs, but focusing on only the top few engines can be folly.

Think of it in these terms. The Honda Accord is one of the best selling cars in America. Porsche, on the other hand, has a 1% market share. But the people who like Porsches would never consider themselves (or the brand they hold dear) to be irrelevant.

Internet users who frequent Ask.com (or LookSmart, or Lycos, or or or…), likewise, do not consider themselves to be irrelevant. They are trying to do the same thing that die-hard Google users are trying to do–find you!

TV Ads Losing Ground to Search Marketing

A new poll by Forrester Research discovered that advertisers are planning on moving ad dollars toward the web and away from TV ads, citing a decline in their effectiveness. Sixty-eight percent of those polled singled out search as a place of growing interest to replace TV ad spending.

The collision between these two channels was bound to happen. Marketers will use the most effective means to spread their brand and products. With 56% of the web population using search at least once a day, search is king.

But there are other reasons why search marketing provides great results. Consider the following:

Search marketing is an active participant in the process.
With the possible exception of the Super Bowl, people do not watch TV because they want to see commercials. TV ads interrupt the action you were participating in – watching the latest episode of Lost, for example. Search marketing, on the other hand, participates in a user’s action. A user goes to a search engine to find information and products. If you can provide it to them at that moment, the user will see that as part of the process itself, not an interruption to it.

Searchers qualify themselves.
Advertisers buy TV spots based on statistics of the type of people likely to be watching a specific show or during particular time slots. Those statistics are usually based on age, sex, and income level. But those statistics do not indicate if that segment is actually interested in buying any particular product at any particular time. Searchers provide this information upfront based on what terms they use in queries. And based on those queries, one can determine where that customer is in the buying cycle. Having your information available at that moment is extremely effective.

Less guesswork for budgeting.
TV spots are paid for upfront, even if half of the audience is getting a snack or running to the restroom when that commercial is on. In terms of a pay-per-click campaign, you only pay when someone clicks on your banner – an indication that they are interested in you!

Search effectiveness is easy to track.
How many people actually watched your TV spot? How many of those that watched it then converted in some manner? One can only estimate that effectiveness. But with search marketing such rates are easy to track, from the number of ad impressions, to how many people clicked. From there, one can even determine how much profit a search campaign is generating to a company.

While TV spots and other forms of advertising will always have their place in marketing, search marketing is an extremely effective way to target customers. As such, any well-rounded marketing strategy should include an active search component.

eMarketer’s Misinformed "Shadowy World of Search Marketing"

Each day, I receive The eMarketer Daily. Today they turned their sights on search marketing.

As part of a report they are selling, the lead article says, "Search Marketing: What’s the Problem? While the media spotlight shines brightly on Google, a new eMarketer report delves into the shadowy world of search marketing to uncover problems that may lie ahead for the industry."

One question: when did search marketing become "shadowy"? Organized crime is shadowy. Espionage is shadowy. Search marketing is, well, marketing – a legitimate way to inform customers and potential customers about products.

For some reason, the search marketing arena has been tagged with this moniker in the popular media this year.

Consider junk bond traders only want fast cash, yet no one regards the investment community as a whole as shadowy. Search marketing has a few similar characters, but no where near enough to justify a tarnished image on the industry as a whole.

I have written about the role of search marketing and its place in the greater realm of marketing as a whole, including the perception some hold about/against search marketing:

SEOs: Evil Magicians or Benevolent Interpreters?
In this article, I discussed the original and appropriate intent of a search marketer.

SEO Shady? Hardly.
I posted this in response to a Newsweek article about search marketing. Referring to us as “shady,” Newsweek must have had us confused with Enron.

Search marketing is still a young industry. As a result we will experience some growing pains. But a greater portion of this growth is general education, which eMarketer (and Newsweek) clearly still need to gain.

Search Driving In-Store Traffic

Recent research by iProspect and JupiterResearch discovered that almost two-thirds of Web users take advantage of general search engines to research products. But what was really telling about this research is that it showed almost half of all Web users then follow their online product research with a purchase – at a brick-and-mortar store.

I touched on this notion several months ago in an entry about local search [article link: Local Search], and honestly, it’s not surprising to me to see this notion re-established in newer research findings.

I have always believed that search marketing is a channel of marketing that should fit it in with a whole, complete marketing strategy.

With any channel, the goal is often a conversion that takes place outside that channel. When an ad is placed on a billboard, the hope is not to drive traffic to the billboard but to build in-store traffic or maybe generate a phone call.

The expectation for search should be no different. While it should drive traffic to your site, it can also effectively drive traffic to your brick-and-mortar stores.

Just as your corporate brochure should have a similar look & feel as your annual report, shouldn’t look distinctively different from your web site, and should have the same tone as your radio spot, your search marketing should not be considered to be separate from any part of your customer communication.

How Good Intentions can Ruin Search Rankings

As a consultant, I am sometimes asked about specific optimization techniques that could cause damage to overall search rankings, or, worse, a complete delisting. Usually, these questions are from well-meaning webmasters or marketing directors just trying to honestly increase site rankings.

For example, a few weeks ago a developer asked me if he could include a headline that was in a graphic elsewhere on the page. But his idea was to match the font color to the background color, which is called, in SEO lingo, hidden text.

I refer to this as “accidental black hat.” In the search optimization industry, we reference two general types of optimization – white hat and black hat optimization. White hat optimization is the honest attempt to make a site search engine friendly in order that search engines can properly rank a site so searchers can find the content offered for the appropriate keywords.

Black hat optimization refers to those who purposely manipulate the techniques to artificially enhance site rankings, even for keywords that are not appropriate to the searchers' needs. Penalties for black hat optimization vary for each engine, but it can be a loss of rankings up to a complete ban.

Accidental black hat, then, would be those who employ a tactic in a complete well meaning fashion, yet do not realize they run a risk, sometimes greatly so, of a penalty or ban from a search engine. They make changes in their search strategy with good intentions, but end up inadvertently committing one of the “sins of search” that ultimately put their site at risk.

I try to advise clients on this topic as delicately as I can. It is often a case of having a little bit of search knowledge and trying to deploy it without knowing all the complexities. Something akin to the saying, "knowing enough to be dangerous."

If you are implementing optimization on your site, it is a great idea to have a search consultant help make sure you are getting the most of your strategy – and make sure you are not accidentally putting your site in jeopardy of an engine penalty.

Google’s Mixed Messages

Google is known for having a spartan home page. It reinforces their mission that they are all about search. But slowly, that is changing.

This morning I noticed they are pushing the Google Desktop by adding a not-so-subtle advertisement for it at the bottom of the results page.

[Click image for pop up with more detail]

Instead of giving Google Desktop such prominent placement, it would serve Google better to address the many privacy concerns about this product that are shared by many. Addressing those issues openly would do more to increase downloads of this free product.

A few months ago, Google had a similar advertisement on the home page for the Google toolbar.

With more and more of Google’s products are being spotlighted in similar fashion on various pages, it makes me wonder if their “don’t be evil” pragmatism is beginning to clash with nuts-and-bolts capitalism.

Over the coming months as Google continues to adjust to a life of profit projections, we’ll see if their message is still about search or more about advertising.

Search Engine Use Increasing Exponentially. Are You Taking Advantage?

Last week Nielsen//NetRatings announced the search market has grown 55% in the last year.

The Kelsey Group is predicting local search will increase 30.5% over the next four years.

Today, Nielsen//NetRatings reported that Google and Yahoo sponsored link impressions have increased 16% in the last six months. In January alone, Google and Yahoo served almost 65 billion sponsored links!

Yet with all this rabid growth in the search channel, many companies are still not investing in this method of reaching customers, new or old. Likewise, there are also plenty of interactive agencies that fail to implement anything other than the simplest of search techniques for their clients.

The marketing "sweet spot" is reaching someone with your message when they want to buy products in your niche. That is exactly what search marketing does on a daily basis – presenting results (messages) to potential customers (searchers) right at the time they are looking for the information.

Search marketing has long past its tipping point. It is here and it is going to stay. It won’t be long before more people are going to experience your brand and products through a search engine results page than a TV commercial. Why not reach them at the moment they are looking for what you offer? If you are working with an interactive agency, ask them if they can deliver competent optimization as part of the project.

I will give a tip of the hat to the Ford Motor Company, though. They recently reported they have sold more than 250,000 vehicles through FordDirect internet referrals. The oldest car maker in the world is using a new channel of marketing to sell an old technology (cars) to an audience that is growing more reliant on search.

Pontiac, on the other hand, got it all wrong.