Starting From Search

I Now Call Google to the Witness Stand

In Florida, there is an interesting legal case unfolding. The defendant is accused of purveying obscene material from a web site, but the definition of obscenity is based on community standards. As a way to poke holes in this, the defense wants to show that "the community" is actually a lot less moral than they say they are.

How are they going to show this? By using search traffic data from Google. Essentially, the defense is going to try to point out that people will claim to be more moral than they actually are, but in the privacy of our own homes (based on what types of searches people typically perform at their computers) morality is more ambiguous. After all, based on this chart at Google Trends, it appears that Florida’s appetite for porn has increased steadily since 2004.

But search data is not that easy to parse because the search traffic does not get to the underlying intent of the searcher. Just because someone does a search on porn, does that mean that person was actually looking for pictures? We can guess, but we'll never know for sure.

Slate.com has the full story on the case, and the role of the internet in the definition of "community."

I Have Two Words for You

And evidently, so does everyone else. According to this article on Clickz, citing research compiled by OneStat, most searchers use two keywords when conducting a search.

Internet users who type two words for on a search engine query account for 31.9 percent of searches worldwide. Three-word phrases are used for 27 percent of searches. A single word accounts for 15.2 percent of queries, and four words are used for 14.8 percent of searches.

Importantly, it also points out that the vast majority of searches aren't single word searches. An important fact to consider if you are trying to optimize pages for a single word.

Q: What Activity does 95% of the Online Population do?

A: Search.

From a press release from comScore

RESTON, VA, October 10, 2007 – comScore, Inc.  (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released the first comprehensive study of worldwide search activity, based on data from its qSearch 2.0 service. comScore qSearch 2.0 offers the first panoramic worldwide view of online search activity, providing granular, in-depth analysis of the search universe reported from the top 50 worldwide Internet properties where search activity is observed. The study found that more than 750 million people age 15 and older – or 95 percent of the worldwide Internet audience – conducted 61 billion searches worldwide in August, an average of more than 80 searches per searcher.

Another question: If 95% of the online population is averaging 80 searches per month, where should you move your marketing dollars?

Search Engine Rankings, March 2007

comScore Networks has just released their search engine rankings for March 2007. They measured 7.3 billion searches in the US, a 14% increase from March 2006.

Break down by market share:

Google: 48.7%
Yahoo: 27.5%
MSN: 10.9%
Ask: 5.2%

All engines increased their share by some degree, expect Yahoo which fell 0.6%.

Google Announces Q4 2006 Revenue

Today, Google announced their revenue from Q4 2006, and the numbers are impressive. The numbers mirror the market share growth repeatedly reported by HitWise.

Highlights:

• Google reported revenues of $3.21 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2006, an increase of 67% compared to the fourth quarter of 2005 and an increase of 19% compared to the third quarter of 2006.
• Google-owned sites generated 62% of total revenues
• Google's partner sites generated 37% of the revenue
• Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and our AdSense partners, increased approximately 61% over the fourth quarter of 2005 and approximately 22%

Search and Open Brands

During iCitizen, Resource President Kelly Mooney provided a glimpse into Open Branding – an innovative concept about how brands can embrace and benefit from the user-generated content model the Web has become.

Beginning to open a brand does not always mean investing in a tactic that feels fringe. It can be a challenge to convince a brand to invest in a viral video where ROI can be hard to determine. Many brands are also still trying to figure out if and how YouTube and Flickr should be part of their marketing strategies. But search is now a proven marketing initiative with easily trackable ROI and it’s a very effective first step to opening a brand.

Search has grown into the first step of every Web experience, becoming the filter by which people manage their Web experiences. According to comScore, Almost 60% of Web users use a search engine every day. Consumers have become accustomed to finding and making brand introductions in search engines.

A recent Nielsen BuzzMetrics study demonstrated that more than 25 percent of search results on Google for the world's 20 largest brands are links to consumer generated content. Search marketing and open branding go hand-in-hand.

At the end of September 2006, I launched an SEM campaign for MI Homes on the Google and Yahoo networks. The main purpose of this was to increase exposure to their brand in 13 different markets. With an industry average SEM click-through-rate of 1%, the MI Homes campaign experienced double that under the guidance of my search team.

Creating this accessibility benefited their brand, not just from increased conversions, but for the ever important mind share. A 2004 Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and Nielsen/NetRatings study found that there is an effective brand lift from SEM campaigns. Consumers responded, as was evident by the high click through rate.

comScore: Yahoo Up, Google Down

After 11-months of ever-increasing market share, Google’s run has finally slowed, according to comScore.

While still holding a commanding 43.7% of all web searches, it is down 1% from this period last year. Both Yahoo enjoyed a slight increase for the second consecutive month.

Of course, these numbers will all change once Google finishes search integration with MySpace.

It's Not Always What You Typed...

...but why you typed it.

A snip from Scoble's rant:

When I search on “Office Furniture” why is the first thing I see stores? I don’t wanna see freaking corporate info. I wanna know what HUMANS like to use in their offices.

What Scoble just learned is that the difficulty from the search engine side is not matching keywords, but in trying to figure out the intention of the searcher. "Office furniture," while a logical term, is also quite general, thus making it harder to assume what the intent of the search might be. Each engine has an element of mind reading to do.

For example, a search on "red wine" could give a range of results. The engine has to try to determine if you are looking to buy wine, want to learn about wine making, or matching types of wine to food choice. It is the intent behind the search that leads searchers to be satisfied or unsatisfied with the results returned.

This is the reason why 53% of all searchers use up to three separate engines. We keep searching until we get the "right" results.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Search Grows by 630 Million Searches in a Single Month

Just when the marketing industry was wowed by reports of increased search usage, newer statistics indicate the growth is continuing.

According to Nielson//Netratings, their were 5.7 billion online searches in January in the top 60 search engines, making it the most active search month ever recorded.

That is a whopping 630 million more searches than the month before!

While a slight post-holiday decline may have been expected, the reach of search marketing is stronger than ever.

While this is great news for the industry itself, it is a bit of a dark cloud for MSN Search. Despite this incredible growth, only Google and Yahoo! experienced increased market share. While each grew one point, MSN Search’s share declined by two points.

I guess buying searchers must not be working for them.

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.

Search as Part of your Shopping Cart

Holiday and comparison shopping go hand-in-hand. Who doesn’t want a good deal when you’re buying a small mountain of gifts for family and friends? New data suggest that shopping and search engines now go hand-in-hand as well.

Hitwise found that 11.1% of all December shopping related visits started at Google. Yahoo! added in another 4%.

More than one of every ten holiday purchases online started at a search engine!

Search engines are becoming a natural part of the buying funnel and they make a perfect gateway when comparison shopping. Typing in more specific product names net a large return of sellers. A few clicks and a shopper can quickly see who is offering better pricing.

Look at your site stats? Where are people entering your site? It is not uncommon for well optimized, highly product driven sites to have two-thirds of site visitors enter on a product page – not your home page.

Google just became part of your shopping cart.

Keywords Offer Glimpse into American Psyche

I do a lot of keyword research for clients. It's really the cornerstone of a good search strategy. Sometimes I find that it offers an interesting insight into the psyche of searchers.

This week I completed a keyword research for someone in the fashion industry. I found it interesting to learn how many people search – every single day – on how to become a fashion model for that company. Evidently there are many people out there that think they look as good as the commercials.

Often, URLs themselves are highly searched terms. "Yahoo.com" and "Ebay.com" often show up high on keywords lists. This points out the overall technical knowledge of the average searcher. Despite knowing the exact web address, many users do not type it in the address bar, but rather typed it into a search field at a search engine which was likely their homepage.

Which brings us to Yahoo's list of most popular search terms of 2005. (Here are the top terms of 2004, for comparison.)

The top overall searches are lead by Britney Spears, followed by 50 Cent, Cartoon Network, Mariah Carey, Green Day, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Eminem, Ciara, and Lindsay Lohan.

Clearly pop culture holds our attention.

Keyword Prices Dropping?

Previously I mentioned the price of keywords going up. Today, Fathom Online says the average keyword price is going down.

Which is it?

The Fathom research measure eight categories: automotive; consumer retail; consumer services; travel/hospitality; finance/investing; finance/mortgage; broadband; and wireless.

Their report indicates dropping keyword prices. For example, their research shows that pricing for consumer retail has dropped 29%, while the price for finance/investing has gone up 6%. Obviously averaging those changes would result in a keyword price drop.

But does this encompass all keywords? No. Reading to the end of the report, it states:

Fathom states that the pricing fluctuations should be viewed in the context of the eight categories reported, and not as a proxy for the entire search industry.

In other words, the data sample is not large enough to indicate an overall trend in keyword pricing, despite all the catchy headlines sprinkled about the various marketing journals and blogs.

So, are keyword prices going up or down? Both. It depends on the industry you operate in.

Search #2 Online Activity

A few weeks ago while giving a search marketing presentation, I informed the group that search was the third most popular online activity – behind only email and random surfing.

An attendee asked if I thought search would continue to become more popular over time. My prediction was that by the end of 2006, search would be second only to email in terms of popularity.

I was right and wrong.

I was right on the increasing popularity of search. Pew Internet & American Life Project is reporting that search is now second only to email in terms of online use.

But I didn't think search would reach that level by the end of this year. Search is growing a rate that surprises even us experts.

What Search Engines can Learn from Supermarkets

In a poll released in early May by Harris Interactive, consumers rated which industries they felt were doing a good (or bad) job of serving their consumers.

Supermarkets ranked number one in terms of consumer satisfaction with 92% of respondents saying supermarkets were doing a good job, as opposed to 8% who didn’t. Computer hardware companies were second with an 84% favorable to 10% unfavorable ratio.

Search engines held a respectable 7th place with 79% favorable and 11% unfavorable. (Not surprisingly, Tobacco and Oil companies came in last with two out of every three people saying they did a poor job.)

What can a search engine learn from a supermarket? Categorization.

When you walk into a grocery store you are presented many aisles – items divided in categories. Like foodstuffs are put together with signs in each aisle telling customers what is there. The end of each aisle has other items that could be related or just sale items. In search terms, I think of those as the pay-per-click listings. Easy to skip if you want, but sometimes very helpful.

Search engines have failed to grasp this concept. Most engines present information in a single, long list that spans many pages. That would be the equivalent of a grocery store having a single, long aisle. Shoppers would find that tedious and unhelpful, yet search engines have stuck to that very motif for years.

Search professionals fight for the first 10 spots for any keyword search. Statistics show that most searchers don’t view results on the second page. That makes sense, if you think about it. People are looking at what is up front, even if it is not particular relevant.

If I was a producer, I would want my products at the very front of the aisle because I know that the things up front would tend to be noticed more, even if they weren’t relevant to what the customer really wanted.

Look at this research by Thorsten Joachims, et al., at Cornell University [Link to PDF] and perfectly summed up by Jakob Nielson. After typing in a search query, a majority of searchers clicked the very first link returned even if it was not relevant.

This is why categorization becomes important.

Teoma beat everyone with this concept with their Results, Refine, and Resources method of listing results. While I would argue the results of the refine and resources are not always helpful, they have the right idea. They are trying to find ways to present relevant information to their users in a way that is also quick to browse – just like the signs hanging in the supermarket aisle.

Zoom with Jeeves
In late May, Ask Jeeves introduced Zoom, which they describe as the "next-generation related-search tool that gives users suggestions to narrow or expand their searches." They also claim it is the only search technology that clusters the web into topical communities in real-time.

It displays three sets of related results on the right side of the page next to the search listings. The first set lets you "Zoom in" or narrow your search, the next set lets you "Zoom out" by offering listings that are wider but still conceptually related, while the third and least useful of the sets offers names of people that are related to the original search.

I have also had mixed results with Ask Jeeves' Zoom tool. But I applaud the effort and hope it blossoms and becomes more wide spread. Hopefully over time, they will spend as much time refining their categorization tools as they spend on their ranking algorithms. Then search engines will be more useful than supermarkets.

Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats

What are your site stats really telling you?

Web stats packages such as Webtrends and Urchin can tell site owners how visitors are interacting with a site. It’s certainly a valuable tool overall, but more and more I see webmasters and marketing directors looking at site stats for insights into search marketing. In one case, the insight they are seeking is a misguided one.

Top Keyword Referrer
Site stat packages offer a listing of the top ten keyword referrers. It's not uncommon for a site owner to tell me that they know what keywords are working – they have the top keyword referrers from their site stats. But this is not the list you may think it is.

This will tell you what keywords you are ranking well for now, but it doesn't tell you what keywords you actually need to rank well for to fully utilize your potential. And if any more than 4 or 5 of those keywords are variations of your company name, your search optimization is failing you.

Only quality keyword research can uncover which keywords and keyword phrases are being used in your market space, and thusly, which keywords need to be optimized for on a site.

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This post is part of a multi-series column called, Searching for Truth, designed to shed light on the latest trends, myths and misconceptions in search marketing. Links to other columns in this series:

February 22, 2006 - Searching for Truth: Placing Keywords in a Page URL
September 19, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Mining Site Stats
August 4, 2005 - Searching for Truth: Site Resubmissions

Holiday Cheer in August

As I have noted previously noted, now is the time to start thinking about the holiday season in regards to the search channel. Yes, it’s still sunny out and you may be thinking more about getting your kids back to school, or lamenting about Halloween being just around the corner, but it is indeed the time think about the winter holidays and your search rankings. Here’s why:

Organic Search
Higher listings take longer to build but are worth it. Significantly more searchers click on organic listings over paid listings – by a margin of upwards of 10-to-1. It can take weeks for keyword and other SEO changes on your site to resonate as higher rankings in engines. Start working on those organic rankings now to be sure you have a good foundation in November.

Pay-Per-Click
You have a bit more time with pay-per-click since banners can be added and removed fairly quickly. But measuring your ROI on your banner campaign and to get comfortable running an effective budget takes a bit more time. Starting now (or soon) gives you time to refine your pay-per-click campaign so that it is delivering the most effective results by the time all the holiday searchers come online.

With over 90% of the online population using search engines to get around the web, the amount of traffic search engines can bring to a site is a major factor in online holiday success.

Widen the Point of View

Previously, I addressed the lack of search loyalty. (See previous post: Lack of Search Loyalty.) Evidence has always suggested that searchers use more than one engine as they try to find the information they want.

This has always been a key reason why I tell clients to not to optimize their sites with only one engine in mind.

New research from Harris Interactive further supports this. Only 13% of Google users say they use Google exclusively. The other 87% are using other engines! Searchers that prefer other engines are even less loyal. Only 10% of MSN Search users say they use MSN exclusively.

Despite this, so many assume they only need to pay attention to their Google search rankings. This evidence points out the value of a wider point of view.

Lack of Search Loyalty

New research by Nielsen/NetRatings points out that among searchers, there seems to be little brand loyalty. 56% of those that used Google for a search also performed that same search in another engine. The other top search engines followed a similar trend which points out that only a minority of their users are loyal only to them. (Around 70% of Yahoo! and MSN used another engine.)

While this new research is receiving a lot of attention this week, this search behavior has been common knowledge to search experts for a few years.

What does this mean for you?
First, when building a new site submit it many different engines, even industry specific ones. While Google still maintains market share, searchers will often propagate to other engines in search of results.

Next, don’t attempt to optimize your site to only a specific engine. I have been asked on many occasions, “how can I rank better for (insert any keyword) on Google?” I try to explain that type of thinking is limiting in scope and can actually keep your site from exposure to a wealth of other potential customers.

This also affects your pay-per-click campaign. While it is natural to want to gravitate your money for ads toward the market leading Google, more than half of Google users use other engines. Exposing them to your ads via the Overture or AskJeeves can increase overall conversions and recognition for your brand and products.