Every iMedia Brand Summit I attend I use the 'One Minute Meet Up' speed-networking sessions as an excuse to run a social media poll with a series of influential brand marketers.

Last year at the excellent Coronado Bay event I polled the brands on their personal social media usage and the importance of SM for their business. This year I focused on internal processes for policy and listening, and of course I couldn't miss a Superbowl related question.

Survey questions were asked to 24 senior marketers from brands including Coca-Cola, Zappos, Western Union, Kasier Permanente, Kraft, Taco Bell and Olive Garden. The same questions were asked to all marketers:

1) Does your organization have a social media policy?

2) Does your brand undertake formal listening to the online conversation?

2 - i) (if yes): What department/business unit is responsible for this listening?

3) 'Thumbs' up or 'Thumbs Down' for the Google Superbowl ad?

• Question 1 Results - Does your organization have a social media policy?

Interesting to see that the savvy iMedia marketers have generally already put a formal policy into place. This flies in the face of the recent Manpower study showing only 29% of brands have social media policies, this is not surprising given the savvy brands attracted to iMedia. Interestingly, Zappos - a poster child for excellent social media engagement, was one of the few brands to say 'no' to a formal policy... though social media is deeply ingrained in their customer focused culture.

• Question 2 Results - Does your brand undertake formal listening to the online conversation?

As a leading provider of Conversation Mining it's great to see that brands are clearly starting to understand that the 'ostrich approach' of sticking your head in the sand and not listening to the online conversation is no longer an option. Across the board brands are listening... but I'm sure the approaches and effectiveness of each brands efforts differs widely.

• Question 2, i Results - What department/business unit is responsible for this listening?

A wide variety of answers here as brands struggle to define who best 'owns' social media and listening within their organization. Interesting to see the different approaches in action here - in future I'd like to see some case studies of different brand approaches to organizing for smart listening.

• Question 3 Results – ‘Thumbs’ up or ‘Thumbs Down’ for the Google Superbowl ad?

Widespread approval for the Google Superbowl ad, and it was certainly the most discussed ad on the floor of the conference this week. Personally however, I must side with the minority that gave it the thumbs down. My feeling is that Google (and Facebook and others) will soon be fighting a push back from society on privacy, and the Google ad really came across to me as downright 'creepy' (and also quickly parodied).

How do these results line up with your organization or your assumptions about brand approaches to social media? This post is cross-posted from the Converseon blog.

 

Filed under: Social Media

 

With so many people coming up with fancy acronyms for social media methodologies, I figured it was time to write about where I see social’s major areas of focus in a few circles and call it a day.

From my side of the table, I’m seeing clients needing to understand these three areas to effectively map a social strategy that works for their brand: social, distributed, and integrated.

Social

This is the circle most people think of first when considering social media: people talking with brands and other people in social networks. Think Twitter or Facebook groups, forums. Places where you need to be fairly active in listening and participating to do any kind of work facilitating or leading a segment of that community.

Social is also the most deceptive. Brands are eager to jump in because it feels easy. It’s just about telling someone to open an account and do some tweets, right? But if that person or people can’t carry the brand strategy through the lenses of casual, persistent social interaction and maintain ambient awareness while they do the rest of their work — all while being empowered to keep people happy and route requests to the right people, the dollars and brand equity start sinking fast.

That’s why it is so important to spend the the time upfront creating a brand / participation framework and choosing the right people to operate it.

Distributed

Content distribution and curation is where the action seems to be right now for brands testing out the space, and it’s a great way to start wrapping top-down corporate hierarchies around the notion of the mobile Web. Rapid publishing platforms (you know them best as blogs), and distributing content to what I would call semi-social sites like YouTube, delicious or slideshare.

These are great places to start as any truly social effort will fail without a combination of good people and good content that is easily sharable. Brands need to budget for both, and start understanding not only what it takes to make the jump from marketer to publisher, but what platforms and what content their audience is most interested in. It’s a context economy, and smart brands are already realizing it.

Note: Please do not engage in any social or distributed platform before having a solid strategic foundation for interaction design and search. There’s no point in having a Twitter strategy for a possible pool of 20-some million registered users when just about everyone in the world starts some decision-making process at a Google search box. You’ll also find that most tools for social media right now are extensions of SEO tools / methods, so having a keyword-based framework is a good start.

Integrated

Integration between the enterprise, the audience, and social networks is where every brand needs to be directing the rudder. In agencies right now it’s as much about demystifying working with APIs as it is developing models that bring social networks back through traditional brand properties using social experience design.

In brands, integration needs to start with communication tools that work with social networks to bring back worthwhile intelligence, flatten the hierarchical communications structure and deliver answers from the back of the house to the audience as needed.

What do you think? You should add a comment below or continue the conversation on Twitter @mleis.

 

Filed under: Social Media

 

Like other loyal Gmail users, I was intrigued when a curious little icon appeared in the service's left-hand column yesterday. I knew it was coming, but here is was: Gmail's answer to Facebook.

Google Buzz is no half-baked scheme -- Google lives up to its track record there. The Buzz auto-follow function eliminates the need to track down your friends as you do on Facebook, and the photo- and video-sharing functionalities are rich, automated experiences. The service wisely integrates with Picasa, Google Reader, and Twitter, and the platform is already mobile, with location-based posting capabilities rolling out right along with the rest of it.

Nice work, Google. So -- why don't I care?

The fact of the matter is, I'm exhausted. I'm already overwhelmed trying to keep up with the constant stream of activity on Facebook. Once my friends and colleagues started assuming that everyone was constantly checking their Facebook accounts, they ceased broadcasting invites and life updates via email or, heaven forbid, phone calls. Thus, Facebook became a duty, not a time-wasting pleasure. So when that Google Buzz icon appeared in my Gmail, the first thought running through my head wasn't, "Oh, neat-o!" It was, "Arrrrgh. Another social network to keep up with. And with this one, I don't even have a choice. I'm already a member."

I'm curious to hear from the rest of you, though: What's your initial take on Buzz? Will it find a place in our day-to-day lives and, thus, eventually become another playground for marketers as well?

To hear more about which platforms are winning (and which platforms are losing) in the social marketing arena, attend the iMedia Breakthrough Summit, March 21-24. Request your invite today.

Our generation loves their toys -- and as the first generation that could make electronics go beep, we have seen our devices get smaller, thinner, lighter, brighter, flashier, and most with more buttons than the average consumer knows what to do with. But more than the physical transformations, it’s the inner beauty of our electronics we really love.

The code running through our electronics even made it to the big screen (the Matrix anybody?) but our passion for this code is directly related to the cool things we can do with it. I’ve heard programmers wax rhapsodic about the beauty of a program while maintaining complete ignorance about the most well known artistic masterpieces. However, let’s not lie to ourselves, it’s people like this that make all of our lives better.

When these people had the idea of mobile search, it just seemed like another obscure option similar to the pseudo craze that was Ubuntu (don’t know what that is – point made). Sure it would be popular, among certain people in some unforeseen future, but what did it have to do with me? However, when the prophetic demigod otherwise known as Google started making serious investments in mobile search, opinions changed.

What was once unreasonable due to poor infrastructure, ugly phones, and slow search speed has been revamped, and the new model is looking pretty sexy. Mobile search has been rewired, with smartphones created specifically to make it easier (e.g. Google’s Nexus One).

Also thanks to our Google gods, we now have the option of one-touch search with “Near Me Now”.  How, you might ask, does this nifty feature work? Why simply by taking your geographical information and displaying the options near you. And of course the best way to take advantage of mobile search is by using Local Targeting in PPC campaigns offered by none other than… good ol' Google of course. What’d you think I was going to say, Yahoo?
For years, while mobile search was put on the back burner, Google was quietly yet heavily investing in mobile search, ensuring their infrastructure, browsers, and mobile indexing would be up to the task of serving the eventual market 4 billion cell phone users offers (view presentation full of fun facts). Now, with the optimal mobile search machine (Nexus One), Google is unleashing the full power of their internet domination to make 2010 THE year of mobile search.   

I don't know about you, but when Google speaks, I listen.

 

In a world of continuous, always-on media consumption and endless media hype, most marketers think they know what consumers like, what consumers use most and how often consumers are engaged with different media channels. Yet every-so-often new data challenges our assumptions.

That’s case with L.E.K. Consulting’s 2009 Media Consumption Survey, an online survey of 2000+ households, conducted in December 2009, that addressed media use in 28 media types. This study sought to identify changes in media consumption habits, find opportunities in new media and cast light on how the recession has affected media consumption. The data and the implications weren’t what I expected and made me think.

Here’s quick summary:

Channels Cross-Pollinate. Thirty-eight percent of consumers said they’d pay an extra fee to get content from cable channels on their computers or on their smart phones. This data validates the “content is king” notion and supports the business strategies driving Yahoo, Google and others. It also implies that marketers should orchestrate and integrate campaigns across channels and that video-to-go will soon become a common expectation which will dramatically increase demand for portable bandwidth.

Radio isn’t Dead It’s Gone Online. One third of respondents listen to Internet radio services for 5.8 hours each week; a third more than listen to satellite radio. Interestingly 83 percent still listen to traditional radio for an average of 8.1 hours each week. Neither TV, cable nor the Web killed the radio star which is a testament to its portability and targeted content offerings. Fifty-two percent of survey respondents listen to the radio and listening to music is second only to TV, ahead of the Internet, in terms of time allocated to media. Americans craft individual soundtracks to their lives and use music as a mood elevator.

E-Readers Are Heavy New Media Users. Not only do E-Reader owners drive the market for books but they consume significantly more new media than iPod owners and the general public. It’s probably not much of a stretch for educated literate readers to invest more disposable time and discretionary income using emerging media. E-Readers are four times more likely to see movies online, play more Web-based games and listen to more Internet radio than iPod Users, Facebook fanatics or the general public. Think of E-Readers as the vanguard of the digital proletariat.

50+ is the New Black. Don’t forget or ignore the power of the Boomers who still wield great numbers, great enthusiasm for new or revolutionary ideas and great wealth even as they age. The 50-64 year old age group uses new media almost twenty percent more than 25-39 year olds. Boomers do the most e-mail, play the most online games and pace every other age group in doing online tasks.

Everyone Multi-tasks. It’s no longer just teenagers who text and play online games with opponents in China while watching TV. One-third of consumers responding to the survey, watch TV and go online simultaneously. Nineteen percent listen to the radio while surfing the Web and eleven percent talk on the phone. Look for smart marketers to design campaigns to leverage and capitalize on this behavior in real time.

TV is Still Our Mass Medium. Online TV is just starting and in spite of the growth of DVRs and time shifting, TV represents the biggest gross audiences and the most time spent with media. The margin is big – 38 hours per week for TV versus 7.6 hours online. TV is still the place to launch new ideas and revitalize brands.

 

Clients are asking “What are we doing about Twitter?” in a tone and manner that implies they are somehow missing out on the silver bullet that will make their numbers, grow their business, generate press and reward them with social media bragging rights. The reality is that Twitter is simply a point of access to a large and growing audience. It’s an empty channel where marketers bear the burden of creating brand awareness, preference and interaction.

 

To help clients understand what is possible and reasonable, consider these six points as a Twitter sanity check.

You determine reach. You must create followers or fans either by messaging existing customers or prospects or by featuring your account in other forms of communication. Your audience is only as big as you make it. It’s not like other media ( think radio, TV or online networks) where you gain instant access to millions of users. And while you can pick up a few extra followers or readers by using the #hashtag convention for specific topics or events, your audience is only as big as you make it. If you have 40 followers – holler out the window. You’ll get more attention. If you have a 100,000 followers you’ve got a market segment.  But being on Twitter per se does NOT guarantee an audience.

There is no automatic media multiplier. The vast majority of tweets draw no comments, prompt no re-tweets and die of loneliness. Don’t expect your 140 characters to go viral unless they resonate with either your followers or those following the topic of your tweet. Each message you send should try to grow or engage the audience.

 

Direct marketing rules apply. The majority of tweets are FYIs. Most tweets do not include a call to action. If you want to prompt or stimulate behavior or activity you must target carefully, have a compelling offer and explicitly provide a response mechanism. Even then expect a 1% response rate. You can goose results by using popular personalities or making a whopping offer. But don’t expect Twitter, on its own, to sell out a concert, empty a warehouse or fill up a pipeline with leads.

 

Dell sold computers by making deep discount offers. Whole Foods promotes weekly specials and Starbucks gives stuff away on Twitter. All provoke significant response. Don’t expect routine news, an opinion or access to data to pull as hard.

 

There’s no pitch whammy. Loads of journalists tweet and monitor Twitter. But there is no evidence that they are more accessible or more open to PR pitches on Twitter than in any other media or channel. On Twitter, they won’t call you names and can’t hang up on you. But remember unsolicited direct messages on Twitter are considered SPAM and broad scale pitches on Twitter, or anywhere else, are generally ineffective.

 

Twitter is a giant ear monitoring the conversation. If you can’t access the kind of data-collection and data-mining tools used by the NSA, Twitter is the poor man’s intelligence gathering instrument. By tweeting and following individuals and brands and monitoring conversations around specific topics you can get a feel for what’s going on, what issues are hot and where you or your brand stands. It’s a great way to get a directional snapshot of a marketplace but remember it is not directly representative because 80+ percent of Twitter users never tweet and never respond.

 

Twitter Aids SEO. Twitter is a semantic platform optimized for search and generating monstrous traffic. Linking your sites to Twitter should give you added search authority and should yield a bump in traffic to your other sites since the search engines highly rate Twitter. Linking to it borrows a cup of this SEO goodness.

 

Twitter’s growth and evolution is interesting. It’s not a silver bullet for marketing. It has distinct value but that value is far from all encompassing. It’s affordable but there’s no automatic pay off or pay back.

Yield Software has launched a new FREE product called SEO Analyzer. To use the tool, simply go directly to YieldSoftware.com and look for SEO Analyzer. Type in the URL you wish to analyze and your email, then click Submit.

First impression? SEO Analyzer tool works fast. Many free tools are slow and you can practically write a thesis while it loads. But this one is super-fast.

SEO Analyzer is also easy to understand. Do you remember getting started in SEO and you had to learn all about HTML tags, links (inbound/outbound/internal etc), domain age, etc? SEO Analyzer is clear as day. A clear day. Sunny skies. No clouds.

Some of the recommendations are subject to debate. Long discussions and arguments have taken place in the SEO community over things like using hyphens to separate words in URLs. If you're new to SEO, welcome to the confusing world of best practices.

SEO Analyzer also serves up suggestions that are good for usability, even though they don't directly involve rankings, per se. For example, meta descriptions, at least in Google's case, do not directly affect rankings. But they are included in the search results and could persuade a searcher to click on a link.

While SEO Analyzer is a helpful product, Yield Software offers a more robust solution if you want to get really in-depth with your SEO. The solution is called Natural Search Optimizer. It's part of Yield's premium search marketing suite, but Yield is now offering Natural Search Optimizer as its own stand-alone product. Pricing starts at $49 per month per domain.

"Yield Software's new stand-alone version of our Natural Search Optimizer works daily to track and tune web pages to drive more qualified traffic to company websites, products and services," said Matt Malden, founder and CEO of Yield Software.

With the new offering comes new features. Upgrades include inbound link tracking, traffic monitoring and page rank trend analysis for keywords across the Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The upgrades are included in both the stand-alone version and for the module included with the Yield Software suite.

You can star an email in GMail. And you can star an item in Google Reader. Now, starring has come to Google News.

To use the feature, simply click on the star next to a news item.

When you want to look at all of your starred items, look for the link in the left sidebar:

A page will load with all of your starred items:

 

With the iPad announcement mercifully behind us, we’ve moved past the iThink speculation. On to the “iHave to have one” stage?

For weeks, the Apple hype machine hummed like only it can. By far the biggest surprise from today’s event is the pricing - basic iPad models will cost $499, $599 and $699, depending on the storage size. 3G models will cost more — $629, $729 and $829, depending on the amount of memory.

And that’s before you factor in data plans which will range from $15 to $30 a month.

Among the smart moves by Apple is the consumer’s ability to take downloaded iPhone apps onto the iPad. Larger real estate, more razzle and dazzle. More bang for the buck.

While Apple is after synergy, it also is after developing a whole new way to enjoy books, media, games, and more. They sure aren’t hiding that fact.

"In order to really create a new category of devices, those devices are going to have to be far better at doing some key tasks," Apple’s Steve Jobs said. "We think we've got the goods. We think we've done it.

“The iPad is so much more intimate than a laptop and it’s so much more capable than a smartphone with its gorgeous screen. It’s phenomenal to hold the Internet in your hands.”

The New York Times pointed out some of the deficiencies.

“The device lacks a camera, the ability to make phone calls and does not work with the ubiquitous Flash software that runs many Web sites,” the Times said soon after the announcement.

All true and all downers.

Apple wisely will continue to stoke the hype fires until the product reaches stores in March. Unlike Google with the Nexus One, on day one of sales, consumers will be able to do their hands-on examination and decide for themselves.

For me, the jury is out. As I’ve mentioned on this blog, the best part of the iPhone for me is having the true Internet in your hand. Whether I need another device to do that is what iWonder.

Sohu reported its Q4 2009 earnings this morning and the news is good for the Chinese Internet portal. (Sohu is basically China's Yahoo!) Revenues came in at $135.8 million and were up 12% compared to Q4 2008.

Specifically, brand advertising revenues were up 2%, coming in at $45.9 million. While Sohu tried to paint the picture as being on target with their guidance, Wall Street wasn't thrilled with the numbers. Stocks were down 0.7% at the time of this post. Perhaps their disappointment is due to the fact that Sohu previously has posted huge numbers, including a 600% jump in profit back in the summer of 2008.

Wall Street also may be skittish on Chinese Internet companies as Google's recent ultimatum has raised serious questions on censorship and Internet security issues as it relates to the Chinese government.

Still, Sohu is hoping for great things in 2010. With the Winter Olympics and the World Cup both being held this year, they're hoping for big ad numbers to come in. After all, that aforementioned 600% came the summer of the 2008 Olympics.

Last year, I posted an item to the Search Engine Watch blog entitled, "It's 'Horses for Courses' at SES London 2009." I said business professionals may want to bring a team to Search Engine Strategies London - because there will be three concurrent conference tracks and no business professional will be able to attend all of the sessions.

But, upon reflection, I should have said it's "courses for horses," because each of the three tracks of the leading search marketing conference in Europe is designed for a different member of your team.

There are tracks for those going to Search Engine Strategies for the first time. And there are other tracks for those going to SES London for the Nth time. There are even tracks for those in the public relations industry who should go to Search Engine Strategies to learn about social media, real-time SEO, Twitter and YouTube.

In other words, there are different courses for different horses in your company's stable.

And, yes, SES still offers special group discounts. In you want more information, check the rates and registation details.

You might also want to come early and stay late. There's Online Marketing Summit Day at SES London on Monday, 15 February. And there's SES Search Engine Marketing (SEM/SEO) Training of Friday, 19 February.

In between, there's an number of special events, including an SES London Meet and Greet, theatre presentations, sponsored sessions, "Black Hat/White Hat Unconferenced," and an SES London 2010 LondonSEO Party.

By the way, I'm not touting the event because the UK economy has just exited recession and you need to get ready for the recovery. No, you need to attend Search Engine Strategies in good times as well, because you need to keep up-to-date on trends and issues.

Oh, and I'm not touting the event because it needs more attendees. Christian Georgeou, Marketing Manager at Incisive Media, says, "I'm happy to report that currently registration is up over last year more than 10% for SES London now less than a month out form the show."

No, I'm urging you to get your horses on those courses because Google had a strong fourth quarter, with 17% year over year revenue growth. Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year. And according to Business Week, Apple reportedly is in talks with Microsoft to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone's Safari Web browser.

So, don't expect the pace of change in the search industry to slow down anytime soon. If fact, it's much more likely to speed up.

Ensuring that SES London 2010 reflects the latest changes is no small task. At SES Chicago 2009, I interviewed Mike Grehan, the VP and Global Content Director for Search Engine Watch, ClickZ, and Search Engine Strategies.

Grehan reflected on past SES shows, the evolution of SES, and the upcoming conferences in 2010, including SES London. He discussed the advent of real-time search and warned search marketers to be aware that the industry is constantly changing and evolving. He discussed the power panels and state of the industry panels that are being brought back for London.

SES London and New York 2010 preview with Mike Grehan, VP, Global Content Director, Incisive

I should disclose that Search Engine Strategies is a client of my agency. But trust me on the pace of change.

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Google Analytics is now available in six additional languages. They are: Bulgarian, Catalan, Greek, Lithuanian, Slovak and Vietnamese. The total number of languages available in Google Analytics is now 31.

If you wish to switch languages in Google Analytics, simply look for the language menu in the top right corner of the login page.

In honor of yesterday's International Data Privacy Day, Google published its five privacy principles. They are:

1. Use information to provide our users with valuable products and services. Search history informs personalized search, but users can opt-out.
2. Develop products that reflect strong privacy standards and practices. For example, you can chat on Google Talk "off the record" so the conversation isn't saved.
3. Make the collection of personal information transparent. Last year, the Google Dashboard was launched to show you what info Google is collecting on you.
4. Give users meaningful choices to protect their privacy. You can report privacy issues related to Street View. Google often blurs faces, for example.
5. Be a responsible steward of the information we hold. Google doesn't sell data to other companies.

 

Whether you're snowed in or enjoying sunny weather this weekend, take some time to read up on these Google updates:

Google Custom Search has made some changes to the hosted home page.

Google Analytics has made annotations available for all accounts.

Google Maps now offers personalized suggestions.

Google Image search for mobile has added Popular Image browsing.

The Google Research team blogged about building cluster applications.

Google Books updated their Home Page and Library.

If you have an AdWords campaign set up to reach searchers using Google's mobile search, you've got a new feature to enhance your efforts. Google is enabling click-to-call phone numbers in the ads that appear on mobile web browsers.

Smartphones allow users to click on phone numbers and a call is automatically generated. If a smartphone user is searching for a local pizza place on their mobile device, then they can now simply click on the phone number and order up their favorite pie.

Google's mobile click-to-call ads are generated based on location. So if your company is a chain, an ad will be served up with the closest location to a user - and will contain the appropriate phone number.

In order to add click-to-call in mobile AdWords ads, simply set up location extensions and add your business phone number. Then make sure your campaign is set up to appear on mobile devices with full Internet browsers.

Last year, Google unveiled its Social Search and launched into Labs. The idea is that you would see blog posts and other content from your social network in your search results.

Now, the feature is being rolled out to everyone as a new beta feature of Google.com. As part of the release, Google has also integrated social search into their Image search. You'll see pictures from photo sharing sites such as Flickr and Picasa.

The images will appear under their own special heading. You'll also notice links to "My social circle" and "My social content." Click on either of these links to discover your social network as Google defines it.

To truly experience social search, you'll want to create a Google profile, where you can list your various social networks. This helps Google find your network and connect them to you in their new social efforts.

The search community is doing well on the Google Analytics IQ test. A little too well. It's apparently so easy, that Google is raising the score required to be classified as Google Analytics qualified.

Previously set at a generous 75%, the new passing score is now set at 80%. This does *not* apply retroactively. If you previously passed at a score between 75-80, your qualification remains intact. But you will be required to score 80%+ on your renewal.

So cram just a little bit more next time you take the Google Analytics IQ test!

As you may recall, last summer Apple rejected Google's iPhone application submission for their Voice product. They did the same with the Google Latitude app, but Google got around that with a web app.

Now, Google Voice is getting the same treatment with a brand spankin' new web app. The app was developed for HTML5 compatible devices - which includes the iPhone as well as Palm's platform.

The calls are still placed through the iPhone's native dialer, but a local Google number is called first. This allows Google to keep the costs low. Google Voice is free with the exception of International calls which they offer at a super low price.

 

Brand republic reported earlier this week that Ask Jeeves is launching a nationwide UK TV ad campaign to support their strategy of rebranding the website as a Question & Answers site. They have also launched an app for the butler character so that users can customise his outfit with over 100k different clothing combinations.

This follows a series of market positioning strategies of the Ask.co.uk search engine over the last few years. Ask Jeeves was arguably the first to launch blended search results that contain pictures and videos in the listings but such innovation was quickly eclipsed by Google's 'universal' algorithm. And last year the butler character returned to the UK search engine's home page as marketing surveys showed that brand recognition of Ask Jeeves increased by a whopping 83%.

Personally i find Ask Jeeves propensity for above the line rebranding to be confusing. What do you think?

Rather than focussing on being a Q & A engine and thus targeting certain query types I think Ask should take a definitive position on whether it is a search engine for adults or kids. Rather than expensive TV ads it should focus on partnerships with sites that fit a certain demographic niche.

It's no secret that Google had a strong fourth quarter to end 2009. Their earnings last week showed it and we've already seen it in a report from Efficient Frontier.

Taking a look at two more quarterly reports, from Adgooroo and SearchIgnite, we see more of the same. Google continues its dominance in search advertising.

Adgooroo

SearchIgnite

Despite Bing's steady gains in search query share since launch, they don't seem to be capturing the hearts of advertisers. From speaking with advertisers, the problem seems to be AdCenter, which is frustrating on many levels for those with bucks to spend.

Additionally, the dip in ads for Yahoo! should be concerning for Microsoft as it will seek to begin implementing the search deal with the Sunnyvale company this year.

There is a silver lining for Bing and Yahoo! when they collaborate. Advertisers do tend to love the ROI they see on Bing. They just need to get share and search ad tech in place to make advertisers happy.

The nature of news is that it is constantly developing. For example, we first heard about the Haiti earthquake. Then we learned how its rating on the Richter scale. Eventually, we understood the utter devastation it has caused - and continues to cause - in the Caribbean nation.

Many times reporters update individual stories as they learn new information. As such, it presents a challenge for indexing. Google is addressing the challenge by recrawling news articles to index the changes to an existing story. Many of the updates to an article occur within the first day of publishing. Because of this, Google has set the recrawling to occur frequently during that time frame.

In related Google news, Reader is now allowing users to track changes to websites and pages that don't have RSS feeds. Simply plug in the URL to the "Add a Subscription" option and Google will create a custom feed for that page.

Incidentally, you can plug in the individual URLs of news articles that you wish to keep track of in Google Reader. You'll get a notification of changes if they occur.

 

You all know the Red Shirt phenomenon yes?   If you don’t, not to worry, I’ll wait here while you go earn some geek cred.  Okay, yes, it’s from Star Trek – starting with the original series and a tradition continued into many of the other television shows and movies.

It basically starts with Kirk, Spock and McCoy agreeing to beam down to a planet's surface to investigate some anomaly.  To accompany them, they enlist an ensign, a security detail or some engineering officer. Whatever their “department”, they are inevitably wearing a red shirt.   There’s a wikipedia article on this. And, of course you can’t miss the Family Guy treatment of it.

 

What does this have to do with marketing?

We all know there are fundamental changes going on in marketing.  From our shift in digital tactics to the focus on engagement and conversational marketing, myriad measurement techniques and the introduction of content marketing – we’ve got a lot on our plates.

But I was visiting a client last week, and while we were waiting for the meeting to begin, she began furiously typing into her Blackberry. “Politics”, she apologized as she looked up briefly from the screen. "Gotta make nice with the CFO".

Even with this new paradigm of marketing, we still have to attend departmental meetings, interact with the other members of our landing party – and of course cooperate with them to get marketing projects completed.    So, the next time you walk into the conference room and everyone is settling in and trying to figure out why GoToMeeting/Webex isn’t exactly working, look around at your peers from the other departments.  Chances are there’s Finance, Technology/IT, Operations/R&D and of course – you.

 

So, who’s wearing the Red Shirt?

I just finished blogging a four part series on what your CEO needs to know about your marketing plans.  But, among your peers, what are the best practices for making sure that Marketing doesn’t get vaporized before the second act starts.

 

Interacting with Finance

In a study conducted last year, when asked if CMO’s should have a larger budget, 60% of CFO’s said “no”.  And, you just know there was that tone when they said too right?   In fact, only 22% said they shouldhave more money.   And, if you look, there are hundreds of  articles about how marketing needs to carefully work with Finance – to gain their confidence. Three years ago only 10% had confidence that marketing provided any ROI at all - and certainly that number hasn't changed much in the last 24 months.

In fact, Adweek had an article last Spring called CFO’s Aren’t Big Fans of Marketing.   I know I've personally heard that phrase from a few marketers at mid-sized organizations.   But, imagine for one moment, walking into the CEO’s office and saying – “you know, we in marketing aren’t a big fan of Finance”.  As Dr. Phil might say “how’d that work out for ya?”

This is, no doubt, one of the biggest reasons that measurability has become so important – and why analytics has become one of the most misused pieces of the marketing toolbox.

But making sure your relationship with finance is secure is one of the keys to not becoming a Red Shirt.  As your marketing strategies shift this year, and become more social, content and engagement focused – the tendency will be for these tactics to drift into a more squishy (that’s a technical term) ROI.  But these experiments are no less important than the hard, numbers-based ROI Search Engine Marketing that you're also doing.  So make sure that these engagement processes all have some goal-oriented, bottom-line focus.  This includes developing that dashboard that shows how social/engagement/content marketing costs are not only producing more leads, but also driving down sales costs.  And, don’t be shy about educating finance on the finer details of brand value and engagement.  There are real, hard numbers to be derived there.

 

Interacting with IT/Technology

Okay, let’s just face it – IT/Technology is Spock in this metaphor and Spock tends to view those of us in marketing as failing to understand the true complexity of how technology works.  And, they have true disdain for our unrealistic expectations of what can be accomplished given the relative budget, capabilities and skill sets of the existing staff.  As Spock often said “Nowhere am I so desperately needed as among a shipload of illogical humans”.  Replace "humans" with "marketers" and you've got the classic IT/Technology guy.

Most of this can be attributed to the fact that marketing and IT/Technology are typically rewarded on different financial metrics. Marketers are usually measured on revenue generation and the IT organization on cost. Marketing wants to blow the budget on the first class flight to Europe, and IT says it's just as functional in the baggage compartment. You still get there, right?

The relationship between marketing and IT improves dramatically when you're on the same team.  One tip is that if you can manage to align staff with IT/Technology and dedicate technology focused people to marketing and reward them as you would the marketing team - it can do more than just give you an advocate.  It can provide you the leverage to do things that are "outside the box", or more creative than you might otherwise be able to do.  If you can't afford another headcount - perhaps you can just change reporting structures a bit so that there's an IT/Technology person with a dotted line to marketing.

And, remember marketers, IT is typically structured as a support organization -- so saddling them with implementing a new piece of technology that they do not understand is not only unfair -- it is destined to fail. Before you begin any marketing tech project, clearly define the role (and desire) of the IT organization's ability to integrate -- and support -- the new solution. This includes both the technology aspects and the strategic aspects. For example, how will IT help optimize your new content management solution for search engine optimization? This is where your dedicated IT Resource can also fit in nicely. A new technology vendor should supplement and complement the IT team-- not threaten them.

And, maybe you can consider mixing up the metrics a little bit – that will help build the bridge between you, IT/Technology and Finance.    We've changed the success metrics for marketing at least nine times in the last two years right? So, why haven't IT's success metrics changed for the last 10 years? Their job is at least as demanding as ours, so let's get them invested in the success, not just the efficiency, of the organization. Getting IT involved in the revenue generating part of success will not only win you some converts, but might just surprise you with their willingness to "try some new cool things."

 

Interacting with Customer Service & R&D

I lump these last two together – because the keys to not ending up on the business end of their phasers are so similar.

Similar to the relationship with CFO’s, studies show that R&D and Services people complain that marketing provides poor data while being insistent about new features or new services that they can’t even back up with that data.  Further, marketers complain that R&D and/or Services are slow, can’t service customers well and can’t provide a good client reference.  Basically, according to marketers - if things go well, R&D and Customer Service get the credit – and if things are going poorly, Marketing can’t sell it.

Working with these folks is a balancing act – and it might just be the toughest job for the marketer. Depending on your business, these people can be highly technical, highly creative or a bit of both.   But, the key is that if you can start to work with them and solicit their opinion – and get them invested in your ideas – then you can engage much more fully.  Remember, it was Mr. Scott who said “Captains are like children.  They want everything now and they want it their way.  The secret is to give them only what they need.  Not what they want”.

The key to getting what you want from R&D and Services is setting joint expectations about products, services AND marketing together from the customer’s eyes.  This is a point of view you can all center on.

And, balance the thinking.  Don’t take too much control – lest you make the engineers feel like your inhibiting their creativity.  But don’t give up too much control – lest you be saddled with a product or service that’s incredibly efficient, and impossible to sell.   It’s a balance – and let the customer be the driving factor.

Get those folks out of their cubes and in front of a customer.  Let them hear first hand from the advertising agency, the PR Folks – get them blogging, tweeting and invested in the new social media process.  Get them invested in being the expert content marketing P.O.V. of the organization.   Let them walk a mile in your shoes and understand what it’s like.

 

Beam Me Up Scotty!

Of course the key in any business is the shared passion, direction and risk for moving forward and succeeding.   That’s what we’re all after.

In short – Captain Kirk said it best (watch it in pure classic Shatner) in one of my all time favorite episodes – Return To Tomorrow.  He said: “Dr. McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger potential…  But I must point out.. the possibility… the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great.  Risk… Risk is our business.  That’s what this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her….”

In today's market, we can't just be noisier - we really do need to be different.  We need to engage the entire team to participate in the marketing process.  Get them involved in all aspects of the risks, the content and the engagement.   We need to.. ahem...  boldly go where no one has gone before.

Rich snippets allow webmasters to include structured data that search engines can include in their search results. Google is introducing a new format for rich snippets: events.

The events markup is based on the hCalendar microformat. Here's how it would look in the search results:

Google founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin have filed plans with the SEC to sell five million shares of Google stock each over the next five years. The sale will bring the pair's ownership of Google down to 48%, slightly less than majority control.

Not to worry as CEO Eric Schmidt still owns 10%, keeping the trio well in charge of the goings on at the Mountain View-based company.

Google has a dual-class stock structure. Execs get 10 votes per share of Class B stock, but when they are sold, they become Class A stock with just one vote per share.

Currently, Page and Brin own a combined 57.7 million shares of GOOG.

via New York Times

Google is updating its search results to provide fact-based answers directly in the results. The feature is called Answer Highlighting and it bolds facts in the text description area of a result.

For example, if you're curious as to how tall the Empire State building is and query "empire state building height," you used to get a direct link to that info in Wikipedia's text description. Now, the fact is directly included in the Wikipedia listing.

See before and after shots below:

Before:

After:

Answer Highlighting is based on the Google Squared effort, which is designed to organize information into spreadsheets based on information structures that appear to be factual.

Images via Google

comScore has just released a study on growth in the global search market in 2009. The study revealed that the U.S. remains the largest search market worldwide, while Google Sites retains a commanding position in the global search market.

More than 131 billion searches were conducted worldwide in December 2009, a 46-percent increase in the past year. This number represents more than 4 billion searches per day, 175 million per hour, and 29 million per minute.

The U.S. represented the largest search market in the world with 22.7 billion searches, or approximately 17 percent of searches conducted globally. China ranked second with 13.3 billion searches, followed by Japan with 9.2 billion and the U.K. with 6.2 billion.

Google sites ranked as the top search property worldwide with 87.8 billion searches in December, or 66.8 percent of the global search market. Google sites achieved a 58-percent increase in search query volume over the past year. comScore didn't report what percentage of worldwide searches were conducted on Google and YouTube separately, just Google sites in combination. But according to comScore qSearch, YouTube accounted for close to 28 percent of the expanded search queries conducted in the U.S. on Google sites in November 2009.

Yahoo! sites ranked second globally with 9.4 billion searches (up 13 percent), followed by Chinese search engine Baidu with 8.5 billion searches (up 7 percent). Microsoft sites saw the greatest gains among the top five properties, growing 70 percent to 4.1 billion searches, on the strength of its successful introduction of new search engine Bing.

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Google has released its earnings for the fourth quarter of 2009 and the news is positive. Revenue for the Mountain View, CA -based company was up 17% compared to the fourth quarter of 2009, coming in at $6.67 billion.

"Given that the global economy is still in the early days of recovery, this was an extraordinary end to the year," said Eric Schmidt, CEO of Google. "Our performance in 2009 underscored the strength of our management team, the resilience of our business model and the pace of innovation within our product and engineering teams, which continued unabated throughout the downturn."

Here's what contributed to Google's success in Q4 2009:

• Aggregate paid clicks were up 13% year-over-year and up 9% from the third quarter of 2009.
• Average Cost-Per-Click was up 5% year-over-year and 2% quarter-over-quarter.
• Traffic Acquisition Costs (TAC) increased to $1.72 billion in Q4 2009 compared with $1.48 billion last year. TAC as a percentage of revenues held steady at 27%.
• The majority of TAC is paid to AdSense partners. In the fourth quarter, $1.47 billion of the $1.48 billion of TAC was paid to AdSense partners.

Google's net income profit was $1.97 billion compared to $382 million last year. Adjusted net income was $2.19 billion compared to $1.62 billion last year.

"As we enter 2010, we remain hugely optimistic about the internet and are continuing to invest heavily in technological innovation for the benefit not only of our users and customers, but also the wider web," said Schmidt.

Let's hope Google's numbers reflect a larger trend towards a healthy economic recovery.

Chinese search engine Baidu was down for a bit last week, and they're blaming it on blocked access due to hackers. Users were instead sent to a site where the group "Iranian Cyber Army" was claiming responsibility. Despite the name, there's no evidence the group has actual ties based in Iran.

Now, Baidu is suing U.S.-based domain name registry, Register.com in the matter. Register.com, of course, says the suit has no merit.

The timing is curious. The suit comes a week after Google threatened to pull out of China if it could not serve up uncensored search results. They also said the GMail accounts of human rights activists were being hacked, and implied that the hacks were conducted by the Chinese government.

Now, we have a Chinese search engine accusing a U.S. company of negligence that lead to hacking. Additionally, Baidu has lost two key executives in past weeks - their CTO and their COO.

Maybe something fishy is going on. Maybe it's completely coincidental. The China v U.S. wars are heating up and I'm not sure anyone comes out a winner.

I was moderating a keynote discussion session at SES Berlin in November of last year. I talked to Lars Lehne, Country Director for Google, Germany and Stefan Weitz, Director of Search at Microsoft. The conversation centered around user intent and how both companies were trying to understand more about user queries. Obviously, understanding the difference between navigational, informational and transactional queries means that more relevant and specific results can be returned.

So, I asked the question: "Do you see a time when, understanding that the user has a shopping type query, you would show only commercial results" (as in paid-for advertising). And both pondered for a second or two and then agreed on, most likely.

Google is forever testing and every now and again we get to see something that makes you go - wow- never seen that before. Certainly that's what happened to me last night. I'm in the (slow and arduous) process of furnishing a new apartment. So, I did a search for "night stands" (that would be bedside table in the UK).

The page was littered with paid results, a small amount of organic results and some shopping results mixed in (even the paid ads to the right had images in them, you'll note).

Look again even more closely and you'll see that, the top three paid results all have a +plus box in them. Clicking on the first one sends the few visible organic results plummeting with a series of product images. But, of course, when you hit the second plus box, it's goodbye completely to any visibility of organic listings. For the first time in my experience, I was looking at a page full of paid ads and not a single organic listing to be seen.

And then, I had to hit the third +plus box, at which point the organic listings do a type of Jules Verne and start heading towards the center of the earth!

But here's the thing... I wasn't disappointed at all to see only paid listings. I was sitting with a credit card ready to buy (I have no time to actually visit stores so I do everything online) and the selection/choices were just what I was looking for.

Is it such a bad thing to serve up only paid results for a transactional type query or only organic listings for an informational query do you think?

If search ads for mobile search on full internet browsers is part of your overall search campaign, you'll be glad to know that Google AdWords is providing additional targeting for those ads.

Now, you can target via device and carrier. Just want to target iPhone users? There's a target for that. Right now, it looks like you can only target Android, iPhone/iPod Touch, and Palm Web/OS devices.

For carriers, you can target various telcos in the U.S. and Canada. In the U.S., you can target Verizon, Spring, Nextel, T-mobile, AT&T, Metro PCS and Cricket. In Canada, you can target Rogers, Telus, and Bell Canada.

If you're advertising a mobile application, your ad will only appear on devices that can download those apps. Additionally, the link in the ad will allow users to download directly. Just add your app name to the end of either itunes.apple.com or market.android.com and it will automatically feature anchor text directing users to download the app.

The Google Boulder office has been working hard on developing models of venues for the upcoming Winter Olympics in Vancouver this February. Now, you get to see the fruits of their labor.

Previously, only 8 out of the 9 venues were released. Now, those 8 have been updated with high resolution imagery, plus the ninth venue, bobsledding, has been added to the mix.

You can view them via the "3D Buildings" layer in Google Earth or by visiting the collection in the online 3D Warehouse.

Back on January 12, 2010, Avinash Kaushik, co-founder of Market Motive Inc. and best-selling author of Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, was the featured presenter on an SES Webcast about Analytics 2010 - Driving the data!

Now, I did happen to mention in a blog post about the event that Kaushik would be giving out six free copies of his newest book, "Web Analytics 2.0," to the participants who ask the most compelling questions during the webcast. So, maybe I'm partially to blame for what happened next.

His webcast was a big success. And in terms of Key Performance Indicators (KPI), his questions-per-attendee was off the chart!

But there were more questions than he had time to answer in the one-hour webcast.

Fortunately, he has taken the time and effort to tackle a small selection of the 80 questions the he could not answer in the wide ranging webinar. You'll find them on his blog, Occam's Razor, in a post entitled, "Dear Avinash: Search / SEO Metrics & Analytics Questions + Answers."

And his detailed answers are accompanied by illustrations, charts, and screen shots. So, dig in -- and dig deep.

Oh, and that's just a small sample of what you'll hear during his morning keynote at SES London 2010 as well as one of the keynotes at SES New York 2010.

This is also why I've advised industry veterans: Don't sleep in. Yes, yes, it's traditional to drink all night and sleep through the morning keynotes. But you won't want to miss Kaushik's morning keynote, "Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently."

If you want the KPI for hearing his keynote, then I suggest "actionable-insights-per-words-spoken." Based on his track record, Kaushik's keynotes will be off the chart.

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Outsell has released data showing the continuing demise of print newspapers in favor of digital technology. They surveyed 2,787 US news consumers to get an idea of their preferences on receiving news.

57% go to digital sources, which is up from 33% just a few years ago. Online news aggregators are popular among news users, coming in at 31% compared to newspaper sites at 8%.

Apparently, the fondness for news aggregators stems from a desire to quickly devour news. 44% of visitors to Google News simply scan the headlines.

And if newspapers think they're going to build a successful online business model through paid content, they may want to reconsider.

Only 10% said they'd be willing to pay for news. Meanwhile, 75% said they'd switch to a different source for local news if their current source started charging.

When it comes to teaching machines how to understand human languages, one of the key ingredients is synonyms. Yet what is easy for humans to understand is difficult for machines to grasp.

Search engines are making progress, and Google feels they've made enough progress to make a significant adjustment to their results. Synonyms are now bolded in some search results, just like the keywords from the search phrase are.

Google says this will only happen when their algorithms determine its "useful and important to bold." It's as vague as it sounds.

On the Official Google blog, they gave the example of the search phrase "pictures developed in coffee." In that instance, the word "photos" would also be bolded in the search results, because photos are an obvious synonym of "pictures."

But conduct a search for "earthquake pictures," "cat pictures," or "family pictures" and you're not going to see "photo" highlighted.

Another example Google provided was "himalayan kitten breeder." In this case, the word "cat" is bolded. However, take away the "himalayan" and the word "cat" is not bolded for the search for just "kitten breeder."

Still, Google has weaved into the algorithm a certain intelligence to know what truly determines a synonym. For example, the term "motion picture" should not and does not have the word "photo" bolded in the results, which is good since the phrase is really about film and movies and not about still photos.

This appears to be a very early stage effort by Google to chase the importance of synonyms in the search results. SEO copywriters would be diligent to consider the possibility of expansion of synonyms should Google like how their new feature plays out among searchers.

Yes, those are pigs you see flying through the air. According to Business Week, Apple and Microsoft - yes, Microsoft - are in talks to make Bing the default search engine on the iPhone.

Right now, Apple gives Google the default privilege - but Google's mobile operating system Android is giving the iPhone competition with the Droid and Nexus One.

Apple doesn't want Google having data on the iPhone that they get through their close-yet-fading relationship.

Microsoft in the mobile space is less of a threat. Also, since Bing has truly upped its mojo in the maps space - Apple would be providing iPhone users with a much better mapping service if Bing Maps were the native mapping app. (Pssst. That app can't be removed, by the way.)

For its part, Microsoft would get a huge boost in its desire to gain serious ground in the search game. Mobile is growing like crazy, thanks mostly to the iPhone.

For now, this is a big win-win for both Apple and Microsoft. In the long-term, Apple would still be smart to get invested in search independent of Google or Microsoft (can't say this enough!). I can't imagine they really want Microsoft close to their darling device for too long.

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Google's Webmaster Central blog announced a test for webmasters to see how good their knowledge of how Google interacts with their websites.

The quiz will be available until January 27.

This is a great quiz, not only for seeing how good your knowledge is, but as a way to see what happens over at Google when things happen on your website. What to do when moving a site or changing servers, what to do with multiple domains and many other essential areas of much needed information.

Take it and see how you do, but also make sure you get the full list of correct answers when they publish it because it will be the "how to" or reference guide for many things people need to know about maintaining a website for best SEO results.

The questions are multiple choose and I will be putting them up over at the forum so we can work them all out before the answers are given.

Every January, journalists, bloggers and other industry folk take to their respective blogs and publications to predict what may happen in the New Year. Search is no exception to such speculation.

We compiled a list of five predictions for search in 2010 and asked experts to weigh in on whether they think those predictions will play out.

1. John Battelle - Google will make a corporate decision to become seen as a software brand rather than as "just a search engine."

Pat Duncan, Associate Partner in Rosetta's Consumer Products & Retail vertical

In terms of corporate culture, it makes sense for Google to identify itself as a software company to help ensure focus and a proper product roadmap. However, it diminishes Google's role as the Internet's largest advertising network, and I wouldn't count out Google from continuing to dabble in areas where they see opportunities. Take Nexus One, for example, where Google has gotten into the retail business by selling the phone direct to consumers. It will take some time before we know if this works, but it could end up being a game changer in retail.

 

Rich Kahn, CEO of eZanga

I don't think it's necessary for Google to officially rebrand itself as a software company. Many companies that have changed their concept have usually been met with resistance. Ask.com is an example of this, when Ask catered to answering questions, they were very popular amoung women, which is a great demographic to support. As they continued to change their focus away from what made them popular, they started to lose their loyal audience and that, in the end, has only hurt them.

People use Google for certain reseaons, and those reasons are why their popularity is so high...changing that could very well affect their popularity. However, they should continue to grown and offer new products, but should not change their primary focus.

Those that ignore the past are doomed to repeat it.

 

Richard Sim, VP Product Management & Marketing, Anchor Intelligence

I agree that Google will increasingly identify itself as a software brand, and more specifically, a software-as-a-service brand. Software, as we've traditionally come to know it, comes in a shrink-wrapped box with regular software updates. Software as a service is delivered via the cloud and enables unfettered collaboration from virtually anywhere in the world. As Google's various products continue to penetrate the enterprise (Google Apps), the home office (Google Docs, Gmail, Chrome), and academia (Google Edu), its brand will inevitably become associated with software delivered via the cloud.

Furthermore, aligning its corporate brand with software as opposed to say, indexing data, works towards Google's advantage in the public eye. Today, Google openly states its mission is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." As its products become more ubiquitous and concerns about privacy grow, the company will likely downplay its goal of data organization and instead draw attention to delivering seamless and elegant end user experiences.

2. Ron Shuttleworth at Seeking Alpha, Vertical search will finally take off in 2010: local search enabled by GPS on mobile devices will capture the imagination of consumers during 2010.

 

Payam Zamani, Founder, Chairman & CEO of Reply.com

There's no doubt that local search is a major need, both for consumers and for marketers trying to engage customers around offline purchases in local markets. The leading search engine advertising platforms have failed in providing adequate solutions for hyper local businesses, such as car dealers, real estate agents, home and car repair services, physicians, etc. I expect to see continued innovation in this area in 2010.

 

Ben Saren, Co-Founder and CEO of CitySquares

No question that vertical search is up and coming. As consumers have been trained to search and find just about anything they're looking for, local search is still a huge opportunity and has a long way to go. As a result, vertical search is where it's at - it's a long tail opportunity. Looking for babysitters in Des Moines Iowa? There should be a site for that. Looking for garbage pick up schedules in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, there should be a site for that. The problem is that the local newspapers used to provide much of this information to local people, but as local papers have gone under or simply don't have the reporters anymore, there's been a void left behind and this is where vertical search comes in. Necessity is the mother of invention, and people need to find this kind of information online. I'm seeing more and more of these vertical and niche sites sprout up every day, and am on the advisory board of two such companies. It's just awesome to see the innovation and the creativity. 2010 will undoubtedly reveal more of this need and more of these solutions.

 

Kara Nortman, Senior Vice President, Publishing, Citysearch

Mobile is the future of local search. And, as the local search market continues to innovate and consumers become increasingly more reliant on mobile devices for everything from to work to play, the mobile device will become even more instrumental to our business. As a company, we are heavily investing across all devices and mobile search functionality including GPS, heatmap analysis and the like, to give customers a superior local experience. In addition to building and powering our own Citysearch app, we power some of the most talked about social city guide apps, like Urbanspoon, Loopt and Where, to offer users a customizable experience. The bottom line is that when it comes to any vertical search market, you've got to remember that to truly capture consumers you have to play where they play, serve up the content they want - the way they want it, and provide tools that enable people to easily explore, choose and share from the palms of their hands.

 

Dinesh Moorjani, Vice President, Mobile for IAC

Smartphones will become the defacto access point for urgent content ingestion and search, overtaking stationary computing among higher-discretional spend consumer segments, attracting advertisers. With only 24 hrs in a day and digital media device proliferation cannibalizing idle and leisure time (think e-readers, gaming platforms, Netflix devices, etc.), smartphones are increasingly incorporating functionality that previously existed on multiple, distinct devices. A growing segment of mobile users find their smartphone to be more convenient, personal, and accessible than stationary computing or laptops. The result will be a tectonic shift in companies rapidly investing in consumer behavior analytics, performance tracking, and improvements in the signal to noise ratio among competitive services on small screens. This will be most profound when mobile advertising shifts targeting strategies from one-to-many to one-to-one in a scalable way, based on passive information about the user (location, propensity to engage, etc.). Although share of wallet and retail purchases will continue to be dominated by the full online experience, users will certainly gain comfort consuming in a mobile economy if price points, the user experience, and security continue to improve.

 

Peter Berger, CEO of Suite101.com

It's important not to conflate - as I think Shuttleworth does - mobile technology and local search, however much the two overlap. Google's very recent move to allow business owners to verify and post updates to Place Pages, for example, are as much aimed at dethroning Yelp as providing value to mobile users.

I would argue that vertical search has not only already "taken off," but has been an integral part of the search engine landscape for years - and indeed has experienced its biggest success through integration into global engines in the form of universal search. But that may simply be a point of nomenclature.

Mobile search is absolutely poised to be a bigger player in search, as evidenced by a number of search initiatives already rolled out by Google in the first weeks of this year. Development and adoption of search products related to GPS-enabled devices will continue to grow rapidly, if not at the furious pace predicted by some analysts. And reports of the imminent death of PC-based based browser queries are greatly exaggerated.

3. Kim-Mai Cutler at Venture Beat - Twitter will launch its own social version of AdWords -- And contrary to what chief operating officer Dick Costolo said earlier this year, we're not sure everyone is going to love it.

 

Craig Greenfield, Vice President of Search and Performance Media for Performics

Advertising on Twitter will be even more relevant if advertisers are able choose to target ads not merely based on keywords within tweets, but also based on certain criteria. This criteria could include the tweet's sentiment (positive or negative to a brand), location, a user's number of followers, overall attitude of the user (generally happy, anxious, etc.), the user's tweet volume, and eventually the profile of the user based on their past tweets. Balancing relevancy with volume will be key to effective Twitter advertising.

 

Pat Duncan, Associate Partner in Rosetta's Consumer Products & Retail vertical

With their own version of AdWords, Twitter could certainly put a different twist on 'social shopping'. Imagine your friend tweeting about an offer they just found while shopping on the Internet, and the tweet showing up with a link directly to the offer. Additionally, sites like GroupOn could benefit with instant access to the group offer. This opens up a whole new avenue for retailers trying to reach interested buyers.

 

David Berkowitz, Senior Director of Emerging Media & Innovation at digital marketing agency 360i

If Twitter launches its own version of AdWords, it could lead to an all out user rebellion depending on how it's rolled out and communicated to users. If ads are attached to specific tweets, tweeters might demand compensation in exchange for the display of advertising. There would then be two camps - those who accept the cash and those who don't, and those who don't would be doing so mostly because of the moral high ground of not wanting to be outright shills. One of Twitter's many challenges is to find a broad enough advertising model that doesn't compromise the current organic conversation occurring to the benefit of all its users, including marketers.

4. Chris O'Brien at Mercury News - Google gets hit with an antitrust suit.

 

Ben Saren, Co-Founder and CEO of CitySquares

I can't help but think that Google is heading where Microsoft once was - in too many places and making for unfair competition. While they may be cooperating with open standards and the open web, Google has become a massive, unstoppable machine that is making it very difficult for anyone to compete with them on any level. As it seems now, Google is everywhere - online and offline. Be it word processing and spreadsheets, SaaS, email, mobile, desktop platforms, mobile platforms, search (of all types), and on and on, they're going too far too fast and making it difficult for anyone to compete or innovate. They're setting the rules in too many places (China, anyone?) and as a result, government(s) are going to step in. In my not-so-humble opinion, they must step in. I'm oversimplifying this quite a bit, but I know I'm not the only one thinking this way. I fear Google now, more than I like and respect Google as I once did.

 

Rich Kahn, CEO of eZanga

Antitrust issues always pop up for large companies, I guess it is just the nature of the beast. It's a sign that your company has reached an elite level. There are rules that all of us must abide by, so as long as they follow those rules, then it will just be a formality, almost a right of passage.

5. Alex Chitu at Google Operating System blog, Google's search engine will group related results.

 

Alex Cohen, Senior Marketing Manager at ClickEquations.

Google already groups related results: we see images, news items, real time results and video links bunched together in some SERPs. I think a more important trend to watch is the increase of AdWords "attacking" organic search, as I mentioned in this blog post. Google is starting to diversify its paid ad formats, which includes grouping new kinds of results together, most notably Product Listing Ads. Product queries are frequent and I predict this will be rolled out across all advertisers and appear in more SERPs.

 

Tom Demers, Director of Marketing, WordStream

I think this is a huge opportunity for search engines. Google and co. are just starting to apply a landing page philosophy to their SERPs. Really the engine's desired action is as many clicks as they can get, with as much of the distribution going to AdWords (or the other engines' platform) inventory as they can while maintaining loyalty. The interesting thing for Google has always been that satisfied searchers on organic listings are good for business (more likely to return, more likely to trust the sponsored stuff). But for a long time they weren't creating "paths" for their visitors: whether you entered in something informational, transactional, or you were after a comparison of multiple products you got effectively the same experience. Keyword segmentation and developing conversion paths are certainly great processes to map to search intent (just ask successful SEMs).

I think clustering results (something like what clusty does) on informational queries could be really powerful. It would allow the engines to create "conversion paths" and would let searchers walk themselves a step closer to the best result set for them.

 

What do you think of these 5 predictions for search in 2010? Weigh in with your opinion in the comments section below.

Tomorrow, Efficient Frontier releases their quarterly search report and we've got a sneak peek at the numbers.

Let's dive in:

Search Spend

Google's share rose to 74.5%, up from 73.9% in Q3 2009. Yahoo! lost 0.5% share, while Bing lost 0.2%.

Broken down by sector:

• Retail: Up 17% YOY
• Travel: Down 20% YOY, driven by weak CPC
• Finance: Up 2% YOY
• Auto: Up 2% YOY

Google dominates Retail with 82.7% spend, but is not as powerful in Finance, with *just* 60.1% spend. Yahoo! is stronger in Finance at 35.2%. Bing's strengths are Travel and Autos at 6.8% and 6.5% share respectively. In fact, Bing's growth in the Travel sector was a whopping 80% over last year.

Clicks

Overall, the click-through-rate (CTR) was down 40% since Q4 2008. This is likely due to comparison shopping features being added to most of the search engines.

With the decline of the CTR, share becomes even more important.

• Google's share rose to 74.4%, reversing a downward trend since Bing's launch.
• Yahoo! lost 3.4% share since Q3, coming in at 21%.
• Bing held steady, declining just 0.1% to 4.6% share.

However, click volume was a different story. Google's click volume grew by 38% and Bing grew by 7%. Yahoo!'s click volume dropped.

Impressions

Impressions for retail queries increased by a whopping 90% over Q4 2008. Remember, more info is being included in the search results, so that explains the dichotomy between impressions and CTR.

Sales

Average transaction size was down 5% over last year, but up 5% over the last quarter. Ratio of orders per impression was down 30%, but keep in mind those in-SERP shopping features.

Projections

After analyzing the data, Efficient Frontiers offered the following predictions for the new year:

• SEM spend will grow 15-20% in 2010.
• Market competition should recover, spurring volume expansion with CPC.
• Ad exchange development will continue to align with search
• Bing is expected to grow 30% in 2010, giving them a 6-7% share of paid clicks.

Last week, I offered 10 tips for marketers who are going to Search Engine Strategies for the first time. This week, I'll talk to industry veterans who are going to SES London or SES New York for the Nth time.

So, the first timers can skip this post.

"Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain."

"These are not the droids you are looking for."

"Nothing to see here. Move along."

Now that only the SES alumni are left, let me share some inside information about an event that is changing as rapidly as our industry:

1. Don't look back. Have you seen the conference agenda for SES London 2010? More than three-quarters of the sessions weren't there a year ago! And don't look at the conference agenda for SES New York 2010. Eighty-five percent of the sessions are new! So, don't skip this year's event or first-time SES attendees might learn something that you don't know. Or, as Satchel Paige, the American baseball player, once said, "Don't look back. Something might be gaining on you."

2. Don't skip OMS. SES London 2010 now starts on Monday, Feb. 15, with OMS Day, which kicks off with a morning keynote by Aaron Kahlow, Chairman and Founder of the Online Marketing Summit. He'll answer the question, "Is Social Media the Future of Search?" The following week, Online Marketing Summit 2010 will be held in San Diego from Feb. 22-25. It features SES San Diego on Thursday, Feb. 25. And at SES New York 2010, there's an OMS track on Wednesday, March 24. Yes, Search Engine Strategies is collaborating with the Online Marketing Summit. Get it? Got it? Good.

3. Don't sleep in. Yes, yes, industry veterans once drank all night and slept through the morning keynotes. But you need to hear Avinash Kaushik's morning keynote, "Be Awesome: Ideas for Approaching Search Analytics Differently." At SES London and SES New York, he'll share specific ideas that you can execute to find the audiences you crave online and use data to ensure that you are getting highest possible ROI. He'll also talk about keyword trees, attribution analysis, monetizing the long tail, and micro conversions. Can you afford to sleep in and miss that? I don't think so.

4. Don't oversleep. You'll also want to hear the other morning keynotes by Bryan Eisenberg and Jim Sterne at SES London 2010, as well as David Meerman Scott at SES New York 2010. Eisenberg will reveal "21 Secrets of Top Converting Websites." Stern will tackle "Social Media Metrics." And Scott will tell you to think like publishers and create compelling online content in the form of YouTube videos, online news releases, blogs, podcasts, and online media to reach your buyers directly. Leave a wake up call. You won't want to oversleep and miss these keynotes, either.

5. Don't get me started. When you see Mike Grehan, the VP and Global Content Director of Incisive Media, don't ask about his shoehorn. "Strangely enough, 'Sticky' the shoehorn has had to be retired," he says wistfully. "We did a little party for him, you know, and he's now in a resting home in Massachusetts, actually enjoying himself." If you want to chat up Grehan, then ask him about his new book on search marketing.

6. Don't miss the keynote panels. They're back, but they're not called "Orion panels" anymore. And check out the State of the U.K. Industry Discussion Panel at SES London 2010. Yes, yes, Grehan is a co-moderator. But so is Helen Alexander, the Chairman of Incisive Media, President of the CBI, and senior advisor to Bain Capital. Grehan says, "Helen has the most fabulous resume ever." She was chief executive of The Economist Group for 11 years until she stepped down in June 2008. She was awarded a CBE for services to publishing in 2004. You'll want a seat in the front row for this keynote panel.

7. Avoid taking up too much space. Run, don't walk, to the Search on the Edge track nearest you. While the first-time SES attendees are attending sessions in the Search Fundamentals track, you'll want to learn about real-time search and managing a global SEO campaign. If you're not living on the edge, you're taking up too much space.

8. Avoid the breadline. If you're going to SES London or SES New York for the Nth time, then you'll also want to go to the sessions in the Geek Speak track. While the first timers are attending some of the clinics, you'll want to attend sessons on "Duplicate Content & Multiple Site Issues" and "Automating Twitter." As Aladdin sings, "Gotta keep one jump ahead of the breadline."

9. Don't even think of parking here. Back in the late 1980s and early '90s, you could keep up with the PC industry by attending one conference a year: Comdex. But those days are gone -- along with the show. These days, you need to attend at least four conferences a year just to keep up with the rapid changes and new developments in the search engine industry. So, don't even think of parking here.

10. Never walk alone. At SES Chicago 2009, Jeff Sponseller and Dominic Golembiewski of Miller Weldmaster discussed another way to keep up-to-date on trends and issues: Take advantage of the special group discounts. First two conference registrants pay full price, the third person from the same organization, registering at the same time qualifies for 50% off their registration fee (of equal value).

SES Chicago 2009 testimonials by Jeff Sponseller and Dominic Golembiewski of Miller Weldmaster

I should disclose that Search Engine Strategies is a client of my agency. But trust me on the shoehorn.

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hakia's new site, NoBrandSearch.com, is an attempt at offering up a blind "taste test" of search results. The idea is that users should be surprised that their choice isn't Google all the time. Likely, hakia is hoping that its own search engine is chosen most of the time.

Each time you search, two sets of results are provided. They're chosen from four search engines: Google, Yahoo!, Bing and hakia.

However, the results only included the ten organic links you're used to seeing. It does NOT include Instant Answers or one box features that search engines are increasingly including.

Take, for example, a search for US tennis star, Andy Roddick. The Australian Open has just begun, so let's do a NoBrandSearch for his name. (Click on any of the images below for a larger image.)

As you can see, the results feature your basic fare - the official site, Wikipedia, etc. Click to vote for either set of results and you find out that these results are from Yahoo! and Bing.

But here's what you really get if you go to Yahoo! and Bing:

The same scenario plays out over many types of searches, including travel information and movies.

hakia's NoBrandSearch.com is good at showing two things:

• Search is not just 10 blue links anymore
• Those 10 organic links are pretty much the same across all search engines, just shuffled up a bit.

Even when you go and see the added features such as movie times and sports scores, you realize that most of the search engines provide the same results. The big question remains: Why do users overwhelmingly choose Google?

For about a year now, I've been saying that Apple should get in the search game. Now business analysts are beginning to agree and experts are pondering the possibility.

Per Business Week

Some analysts believe the Apple-Google battle is likely to get much rougher in the months ahead. Ovum's Yarmis thinks Apple may soon decide to dump Google as the default search engine on its devices, primarily to cut Google off from mobile data that could be used to improve its advertising and Android technology. Jobs might cut a deal with--gasp!--Microsoft to make Bing Apple's engine of choice, or even launch its own search engine, Yarmis says. "I fully expect [Apple] to do something in search," he adds. "If there's all these advertising dollars to be won, why would it want Google on its iPhones?"

Whatever happens, it's clear that Apple and Google are headed for more conflict. Android is a threat to an iPhone business that has quickly come to represent more than 30% of Apple's sales. Meanwhile, nearly all the growth in search is expected to come from mobile devices, which Piper Jaffray predicts will account for 23.5% of all searches in 2016, up from less than 5% today. That sets the stage for a new main event in the tech sector. "This rivalry is going to accelerate innovation," says Andreas Bechtolsheim, a co-founder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in Google. "Apple goes pretty fast, but having someone chasing you always makes you go faster. This is going to be good for consumers."

 

While their best option a year ago would have been to buy Yahoo!'s search, that's obviously off the table now. Buying Ask.com is an interesting idea, but they'll clearly need more.

The biggest asset Apple has going for it is the "cult of Mac" that will automatically switch to an Apple search engine, should they launch one. No need to ponder the psychology of search engine familiarity and how hard it is to switch. But the cult following will be disgusted if Apple licenses search from Microsoft.

Apple has the best chance of truly altering the landscape of search in the near future. If search and software continue to converge, expect them to enter the game. I'm not sure they would put anything out this year, but they could make a few key acquisitions that would hint in that direction.

And if the journey of developing their much-anticipated Tablet is any indication, expect a denial of interest in search to be the first indication.

via Battelle

Over at MIT's Technology Review, they have the goods on how Google ranks tweets. Ok, like your regular old organic results, they didn't learn the secret sauce. But they did get some good info on how you can optimize your Twitter account so your Tweets have a better chance of appearing in real-time search results.

Reputation is key. Who follows you determines reputation. If your followers have a lot of followers, that gives more authority to your tweets.

"You earn reputation, and then you give reputation. If lots of people follow you, and then you follow someone--then even though this [new person] does not have lots of followers," his tweet is deemed valuable because his followers are themselves followed widely, [Google Fellow] Amit Singhal says. It is "definitely, definitely" more than a popularity contest, he adds.

"One user following another in social media is analogous to one page linking to another on the Web. Both are a form of recommendation," Singhal says. "As high-quality pages link to another page on the Web, the quality of the linked-to page goes up. Likewise, in social media, as established users follow another user, the quality of the followed user goes up as well."

But Singhal also told Technology Review it's not a popularity contest. They also have to weed out the noise. Hashtags make that task difficult. And sorting through trending topics when so many people are Tweeting is a challenge, too.

Singhal pointed out that Twitter the only source of real-time information for Google. Sources such as blogs and news are also relevant and being weaved into the real-time search experience.

Takeaways:

1. Cultivate your following on Twitter.
2. Don't overdo the hashtag.
3. Be comprehensive in your real-time efforts. Don't just focus on Twitter.

Typing on a mobile phone is a pain in the you know what no matter what device you're using, so query suggestion features on search engines come in handy. Now, Google is making its Search Suggestions on mobile devices even easier.

The feature now serves up query suggestions based on your location. The update is only available for iPhone and Android devices at the time. You might need to refresh Google.com on your device in order to see the updated suggestions.

Let's take a look, comparing the desktop search suggestions to the mobile suggestions.

First up the desktop:

Now, mobile search suggestions:

After three months at AOL, Shashi Seth jumped ship to join Yahoo! He's been named Vice President of Yahoo! Search Products. Basically, Seth went from AOL, which is powered by Google to Yahoo!, which will soon be powered by Bing.

Meanwhile, Sue James has been elected to Yahoo!'s Board of Directors. James has spent a huge chunk of her career at E&Y. She joined the company in 1975, became a partner in 1987, and retired in June 2006. Then, she consulted with E&Y until December 2009. James is a CPA and as part of her work with E&Y, participated in the audit work for major corporations such as Intel Corporation, Sun Microsystems, Amazon.com, Autodesk (Bartz connection!) and HP.

James also serves on the Board of Directors for Applied Materials, Inc., Coherent, Inc. and Tri-Valley Animal Rescue.

After meeting with President Obama at the White House today, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer appeared on CNBC. When asked about China, Ballmer asserted that they will continue to offer Bing according to Chinese law.

However, Ballmer did talk about issues that need to be addressed in China - such as the enforcement of intellectual property laws. It seemed pretty obvious that he does want to see progress in China. He just doesn't feel boycotting the country is the way to accomplish it.

Ballmer also responded to reports that Internet Explorer was also exploited by the hackers that attacked GMail. He said that Microsoft would work to fix any vulnerabilities his investigators uncover.

The White House has thrown its support behind Google in its quest to provide uncensored search in China.

"We support Google's action in a decision to no longer censure searches that happen using the Google platform," said White House press secretary Robert Gibbs in his daily briefing.

This is not a new position for the administration, which has always supported an open internet. President Obama made this clear at a town hall when he traveled to Shanghai.

"The President has, strong beliefs about the universal rights of men and women throughout the globe. Those don't -- those aren't carved out for certain countries. That's why the President answered the way he did in a town hall in Shanghai about the importance of that freedom," said Gibbs.

via Mashable

Google News is like kudzu, which is known as "the vine that ate the South" because of its out-of-control growth in the Southeastern United States. Although I'm from New England, friends like Stacy Williams of Prominent Placement, which is headquartered in Atlanta, tell me that kudzu is called the "mile-a-minute vine" in her neighborhood.

According to the Nielsen Company, there were 15,895,000 unique visitors to Google News U.S. in November 2009, and 4,817,000 to Google News France, 3,082,000 to Google News U.K., 2,727,000 to Google News Germany, 2,424,000 to Google News Spain, and 2,328,000 to Google News Italy that month.

According to comScore, there were 99,761,000 unique visitors to Google News worldwide in November 2009, and 21,216,000 to Google News U.S., 8,020,000 to Google News France, 5,567,000 to Google News U.K., 4,481,000 to Google News Canada, 4,461,000 to Google News Germany, 3,066,000 to Google News Spain, and 2,981,000 to Google News Italy.

Although they used different sample sizes and research methodologies, both market research firms report that the audience for Google News is huge.

According to Google News, "We have more than 40 regional editions of Google News in many different languages." But when I count the full list of available editions, I find 71.

Well, 71 is "more than 40." But you get the feeling that even the folks at Google News can't keep up with its kudzu-like growth.

If you check Newsknife, you'll see that the folks there are working overtime to keep up, as well. On January 2, 2010, Newsknife reported, "During 2009, we sighted 2501 sites there for the first time, bringing our total to 11,742 sites." That's a long, long way from the 4,000 news sources that Google News started with in September 2002.

We've reported on the advent of YouTube News, Google Fast Flip, and Living Stories at Google News.

Well, Fast Flip is now available on the Google News homepage. And five dozen publishers, including include Tribune Co. newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the Chicago Tribune, McClatchy Company newspapers such as the Miami Herald and the Kansas City Star, the Huffington Post, Popular Science, Reuters, Public Radio International, POLITICO and U.S. News & World Report are included.

So, what does all this mean to marketers?

Like any rapidly changing field, the spread of Google News and its recent mutations represent an opportunity or a threat to marketers. If you want to know just how big an opportunity or threat it is, then ask your PR people, "What are you doing differently today than you were in September 2002 when Google News was launched?"

If they have a good answer, then ask, "What are you doing differently today than you were in May 2007 when Google launched universal search?"

And if they have a good answer, then ask, "What are you doing differently today than you were in June 2009 when Google News and YouTube teamed up to help news publishers build a bigger audience for their video content?"

I had to face similar questions last week as the special guest of Sam Whitmore's Media Survey (SWMS). Whitmore knows all about press release optimization and universal search. He wanted to know if there was any "new news" to share with his subscribers, who are tech PR pros.

No I can't share my entire presentation, because you need to be a SWMS subscriber to see and hear that. But Whitmore, who was a colleague of mine at Ziff-Davis back in the 1990s, did agree to provide the last eight minutes of our editorial teleconference for free to Search Engine Watch Blog readers.

So, check it out for yourself. And if you think your PR people should know about this stuff, then email them a link to this post. Or, write about it in your own CMO blog. Or check out the chicklets below and Stumble It, Add to del.icio.us, or Tweet it on Twitter.

But make sure your PR people get the message. The times they are a-changin' -- and public relations need to change at the same rapid pace as Google News.

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Next week, Yahoo! plans to release two updates to their Sponsored Search program.

First up, the Network Distribution feature will allow advertisers to run ads on Yahoo! search pages, partner sites or both. Advertisers will also be allowed to set different bids for Yahoo! and partner sites.

Secondly, Yahoo! is adding the ability to import campaign data from your Google AdWords account.

If you want to see how these new features will work, Yahoo!'s prepared a video, which is embedded below: