Generic search keywords have higher conversion rate

Comments on a study that links search keyword ads to final purchase. Interesting finding that most purchases followed searches using generic search terms and not branded keywords - this will only push up the value of certain key generic terms.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing

Comparing Yahoo! and Google's approach to presenting news.

Google's Initial Share Price Set at $85

So Google is finally through with its auction process and has set the initial share price at $85, lower than its initial expectaion range of $108 to $120. This ends weeks of speculation about what price the Google shares will debut at and begins new speculation as to which direction it will head on the first day of trading. Despite the fact that Google had to lower the initial share price, its still quite impressive that they went ahead with a largely untested mode of IPO and have still managed to set an initial market cap that is higher than that of as established an Internet play as Amazon and equals that of General Motors!

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Google IPO at What Price?

There has been tremendous buzz recently about the Google IPO. The initial euphoria over a possible return to the go-go days of dotcom IPO mania later tempered and recently degenerated into blatant negativitiy.

Over at CBS marketwatch 70% of nearly 6000 readers voted in a poll that they wouldn't touch the auction. Some feel that this negative wave is just the handiwork of those that want to get the stock at a low price so they can make a killing later.

Anyway, the IPO bidding is imminent and we will all know the results in a week or two. An S&P analyst has recommended that individual investors bid at $110.

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Yahoo! Search - Competing with Google (Contd.)

Following up on my previous post of how Yahoo! plans to leverage user information to compete with Google on Search, some more info in this interview with Yahoo! representatives.

One of the things mentioned in the interview was that Ken Norton felt that the search offerings will differentiate in the next phase of search engines. While current implementations at Google, Yahoo! and the new MSN search seem to be similar, the distinctions will come up in due time with the research in each of these companies driven by their individual visions - Google wants to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible," Yahoo!'s calling its search "the engine of possibility," (elsewhere they have also implied that they want their search to be more task-oriented, this fits in with the reference to "understanding the user's intent" in the interview), what is Microsoft's mission?

Review of Yahoo! Local Search
Haven't had time to look it up myself, but looks like SEwatch likes it.

The Uncanny Valley

Interesting article on "the paradoxical point at which a simulation of life becomes so good it's bad," with regard to the world of games.

Microsoft's Progress on Search

Following up their acquisition of LookOut, Microsoft demonstrated its desktop/e-mail search technology.  I wonder if the demo incorporated technology from the LookOut acquisition or if MS already had related technology in house. 

I also received a promotional e-mail in my Hotmail Inbox yesterday to try out their new MSN Search.  One change seems to be that you can now select the sources (web, news, movies, stocks, etc.) you want to search in a pulldown next to the search box.  This pulldown should disappear soon (shall report on this a few months down) - its additional clicks between the user and the SERP - never a good thing. 

MS also seems to have made some progress with their internal research efforts on creating their own algorithmic search.  MSN right now uses Inktomi search results (earlier used to use results from Looksmart) and keyword advertisement from Overture - both Yahoo! properties. 

MS' move to develop its own algorithmic search is similar to Yahoo!'s moves last year when they aggressively developed/acquired (Overture, Inktomi, Altavista, ...) to build their own search technology after having used Google to deliver search results until 2003.  Here is an article about MSN's recent search efforts and its impact on Google and Yahoo!

U.S. Online Giants in India

Lately, there have been several moves by global e-commerce leaders establishing operations in India.  EBay purchased Baazee, Google has set up R&D operations in Bangalore, I know that Amazon is trying to setup an engineering center and Yahoo! continues to expand its software development and business operations in India.

The reason for setting up engineering centers here is quite obvious -

1. Cost (salaries are roughly 1/4th of their US equivalents)
2. Easier access to talent (relative to hyper competitive silicon valley where there are hundreds of hot companies going after the same set of super talented engineers).

Google though has claimed that cost is not a consideration (http://news.zdnet.co.uk/business/management/0,39020654,39118548,00.htm).  I find that tough to believe since, being based in Bangalore, I know that techies from here would love to work in the Mountain View center surrounded by the likes of Peter Norvig and Krishna Bharat - very few would have problems in moving, especially since the bay area is so conducive for Indians (lots of Indians, Indian food, movies, etc.).  Anyway, Google states otherwise, probably for PR reasons - given the outsourcing backlash and the scrutiny that H-1B visa applications are receiving these days.

But why are e-commerce giants setting up shop here in India which has just about four million net connections?  Wharton presents an analysis on "Overseas Forays of U.S. Online Giants".  Its safe to say that they are all doing it with an eye on the future.

Questions is -> is it worth it at these fast growing companies for precious management bandwidth to be wasted on miniscule markets while they could always acquire to enter in the future?

Advertising's Role in Brand Building

Two articles in short succession - 1) Mark Hurst's "Good Experience" post and 2) this Jeff Bezos interview , both point to how customer experience is the best brand building effort a company can make.

Google is another excellent example of a company that has been frugal with advertising but prodigal with the customer experience thing.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing

Google Personalized - a long way to go?
Google Search: culo review

I was searching for "Culo review" to find out more about this hip-hop song by Pitbull called "Culo", the SERP has a lot of results that are not relevant to my info needs so I decided to test Google personalized. So my profile on Google personalized is skewed towards music. Funny thing is while the regular Google search shows a relevant music review site with user reviews of the song as result no. 1, Google personalized with the "Personalize" scale set at "Max" shows the relevant result at No. 10! What's happening with personalization? Anyway, with the search modified to "Culo pitbull review", both the regular and the personalized site show relevant results.

I would expect a personalized search to be able to make a best guess as to what I am looking for. Google works fine when I add the additional context of "Pitbull" - but that's the missing part of the puzzle that Personalization should be able to fill. That is, be able to guess what keywords/context I may have missed, based on my preferences/previous searches, and use that to prioritze my results.

Demand for paid search advertising outpaces growth in supply

This new report (PDF) from Nielsen/Netratings states that "growth in demand for paid search advertising outpaces growth in supply". Well, only 40 to 45 percent of the Internet searches in the United States are currently linked to an ad by the search engines. The remaining 55 to 60 percent searches also provide ample opportunities for advertisers to exploit.

This only means that Advertisers and Search Engines need to make more efforts and use better tools and mechanisms to make use of existing inventory.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing

 
iPod's loud because Steve Jobs is deaf? - Wired News: Inside Look at Birth of the IPod

How can Yahoo! beat Google at Search?

The key weapon - User Information  (gathered explicitly and implicitly as the user surfs Yahoo!'s large content network).  From the horse's mouth as per this NYTimes article, “Yahoo's two main advantages over Google - its vast array of original content and a database with information about its 133 million registered users. Knowing where searchers live and what their interests are, Yahoo believes, will let it present results that are more relevant and advertising that is more focused.”

The New Yahoo! Search is .... Good!

The new Yahoo! search is quite impressive. There doesn't seem to be much difference between Google and Yahoo in terms of the quality of results. In addition -

1. Yahoo! provides good content from inside their network (look at the "Inside Yahoo!" section for this search on "NBA")

2. They provide nice descriptions of the sites from their directories. Google's provides the lines that match the search query - this is more helpful when one is looking for something specific - say "Kobe finals performance", etc. Actually, when I try this search on Yahoo!, I find that Yahoo! also provides the text that matches the query in the description. Yahoo! is probably figuring out when to provide descriptions from its directory and when to provide the lines matching the search query in its site description on the SERP. Good job in any case.

3. Yahoo! also makes suggestions on modifying the search query. This is similar to the Gigabits on Gigablast, and the "Refine" feature of Teoma. I don't use this much, but I coudl imagine it being helpful when you are searching for something you don't know much about (so I tried "cooking" to get the following suggestions from yahoo! - cooking recipes, cooking school, cooking classes, cooking light ... nice)

4. The search speed matches Google's.

Yahoo!'s investments in search company acquisitions (Overture -Altavista - Alltheweb, Inktomi) and internal R&D efforts seem to be paying off.

Exposing click fraud | CNET News.com

An emerging problem for all associated with keyword based advertising. While there may be several approaches to detecting click fraud when the Website owner is paying for it to be done (click patterns, following the cash trail, etc.), how do you track rogue competitors tainting your ad campaign? Unless punishment for wrong-doing on the Internet is swift, consistent and meets or exceeds the real-world equivalents such behavior will only increase exponentially - since its so much easier to do than real-world fraud.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing

A nice update on the Lookout acquisition -

Relax, Everything Is Deeply Intertwingled: Lookout, Software!  Interesting note on Searching as a programmable platform at the end of the post.   
 
I think of search as the outer layer of the Web as a platform.  On a related note, here is an interesting post about using Google as the query layer on the WWW.  The idea is to have a GQL,  GQL = Google Query Language, where you would use Google as the query language to get answers from the WWW just as you would SQL to get answers from a DB. 

So I've decided to buy a gaming console and am contemplating between the XBox and the PS2. I have played on both - played the PS2 at the Sony Metreon in San Francisco and the XBox at the Changi airport in Singapore (Marketing folks - note how free stuff is not really free). XBox had a fantastic gaming experience with some great graphics and fantastic music. PS 2 had great games. Now, I am trying to make a decision on which to buy but as usual, the surfeit of information online is making my decision a tough one.  I visited the Amazon electronics page for a start - funny thing was, when I searched for Play Station 2 and clicked on the result  - the main page for the PS 2 did not have a buy/add to cart button! Wonder what was going on .... anyway, the reviews there seemed to be heavily loaded against the PS2.  I didn't feel I was getting a balanced view.  Did some more searching and finally abandoned my online efforts and decided to just ask some guys who have purchased such consoles for some information.
 
This is why I believe that some form of social networking sites will eventually succeed - I would love to just fire away my questions to somebody in my network that knew about consoles, maybe even offline, with the online networks just helping me in finding that expert somebody. Will be interesting to see how web search evolves to include ideas of expertise location into social networks.  Online Communities is one way of finding the interested people but I would like a "Search" that would get me people that have actively expressed interest in the subject (say by posting a message or replying to a post on a message board) and are in some way linked to me.  I couldn't find anything like that on Orkut, does friendster have anything like this? 

Okay, coming back to consoles, I have a computer at home, so why should I buy a console I asked myself and others. Three big reasons -

1. To make your home PC a gaming PC you need to really understand computer hardware and be able to make (and keep making) the appropriate upgrades and hardware additions. With your game console, you just plug and play.
2. You need to sit in front of the comp, probably on a hard-backed work-style chair in your bedroom, to play a PC game. Does not compare to the charm of sitting on your couch, nawab style, and playing the game on a large screen flat TV in your living room.
3. Cost. Consoles cost from $ 150, not too expensive considering that it will cost an equivalent amount to juice up your comp to match the console gameplay but much more effort.
 

Post Bill G's famous "Google kicked our butt" statement, MS seems to be in a hurry to make up - Microsoft Scoops Up Search Company. Will be interesting to see how this will pan out, will MS still try to integrate search into their upcoming OS release?

"I know that 50% of my advertising is wasted. I just don't know which half," retail guru John Wanamaker said in 1886. If he were alive today, and was selling on the Internet, then he would know exactly which 50% of his advertising was performing - in fact, he would have had enough data to ensure that his ad spend was never wasted.

Search engine based advertising has brought about a profound change in the way marketers reach out to their audience. Marketing was all about determining the right demographic and finding the appropriate vehicle to reach out to them. Hence cosmetics were advertised during the "Oprah Show" and beer during the "Man Show." Keyword based search engine marketing turns the tables and brings the buyer to the seller - irrespective of demographic.

An additional dimension in the online world is the ability to understand the behavioral characteristics of the user based on her searching and browsing behavior and incorporate that into focused and targeted advertising, one-on-one. Here is a primer on the two important new ways of online advertising - contextual and behavioral advertising - Behavioral & Contextual Targeting: A Primer.

Technorati Tags: Search Engine Marketing

A look at AdSense/AdWords

Google created a new kind of online advertising by focusing on pure text ads and eschewing the online rage of the times - banner ads, flash-based animations, pop-ups, etc. Web users loved these ads since they were unobtrusive and let them focus on, well, the web page. However, banner ads have recently found favor and according to a recent report on <> they enjoy a much better VTR (view through rate - link) than text based ads.

I marketing parlance, a user has to go through an entire spectrum of states in his mind before he actually makes the purchase. This is sometimes called the AIDA spectrum - Awareness, Interest, Desire, Action. Google's ads are focused on the last A - "Action" - correpsonding to the O " in the SFO (Search - Find - Obtain) spectrum.

A survey last year revealed that users spent 4% of their time online while online ads accounted only for 1.5 % of all ad expenditure. Why the disparity? One reason could be that traditional marketers are still to find the comfort level with online advertising, they burned their fingers during the dot com days. Another could be that the business world is obsessed with the "O" or the "A" (depending on whether you are the click and mortar or brick and mortar types) parts only. They haven't found a mechanism to push through the other parts of the agenda - building awareness, fostering interest, and igniting desire, which form a large part of the advertising in traditional media.