User Behavior Articles by SEO Speedwagon

May 21, 2008

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update

This is from much earlier in this fleeting year, admittedly, but with most focusing on the average words per search query increase angle of the story, I wanted to make sure and dig out a fine morsel from the very mouth of Google that may have been lost had I not:

14% of Google clicks come from paid search and 86% of clicks are organic.

True in court it may only qualify as hearsay, having come from the Google mouth of Avinash Kaushik to the ear of beu blog before finally being transcribed into print; yet, as you may remember from my earlier quest for a documented source behind that most mythical of numbers in all of SEM, the percentage of overall searchers clicking on an organic, rather than paid, search result, hearsay here surely now trumps unattributed there.

And the alleged statement is said to have come from Google's Analytics Evangelist, folks, so I think we are getting closer...

The Ineluctable Organic Moment Gets a Big, Big Update
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February 20, 2008

When Ecommerce Sites Become Destination Sites

Remember the days when "surfing the Web" was all the rage? Normally today people have a set of "trusted sites" they visit often, with occasional forays into unknown territory. While the headlines remind us about Facebook's popularity, a number of retail sites are building strong communities of their own. Perceptions are changing. Is Netflix.com a place to sign up for DVD deliveries, or is it a place to get movie reviews written by people who like what I like? Is Zappos.com a place to buy shoes, or a fun site, where even if you don't care much about shoes, you want to read their wild and crazy blogs? And even though I have never ordered anything from this site, I have to say that I'm fascinated with the neat things you can do on the Republic of Tea's site. Try getting your fortune from Madame Oolong here.

So have these sites failed if, after I've visited their communities and tried their cool tools, I don't end up buying anything? Not at all. Word of mouth is still a very powerful thing. According to the Word of Mouth Marketing Association, people have a natural desire to share their experiences with friends and family. They may choose to do that offline; like how I'm going to tell my friend to go check out that funny guy in the pink gorilla suit over on the Zappos blog. So maybe I won't buy shoes from Zappos, but my friend might. And we both get to contemplate why a guy would want to ride in a golf cart in a pink gorilla suit anyway...

When Ecommerce Sites Become Destination Sites
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February 18, 2008

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments

A study by comScore and Media Contacts was conducted to understand the consumption habits and mindsets of Internet video users as they relate to online video, TV, and advertising plus content across both media. The findings were very interesting in that the top 20% of viewers averaged 841 minutes of online viewing per month, moderate viewers (next 30%) spent 77 minutes, and the bottom 50% spent just 6 minutes a month conducting the same activities online.

The heaviest users spent most of their time online visiting niche video sites that catered to individual topics with less general videos being displayed.

Moderate viewers sent most of their time visiting specific video content on broadcast TV sites, including WorldNow (ABC), CBS TV Local, ABC Daytime, Scripps TV, and CMT, rather than frequenting more general video-sharing sites.

The study found that light online video viewers are actually heavier TV consumers, with 46 percent of this group indicating they watch more than 13 hours of TV per week. In comparison, 39 percent of moderate video viewers and 30 percent of heavy video viewers watched the same amount of TV.

Although there is a great deal of variance between the types of videos, content, and media sources being accessed online it is imperative to gain a better understanding of what consumers are actively watching to better meet their needs from a marketing perspective. This type of research will lay the foundation for how search marketing companies target online video consumers from a strategy standpoint.

comScore and Media Contacts Study Depicts Variances Among Online Video Viewer Segments
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February 06, 2008

Create Great Email Newsletters with these Free Templates

Have you ever been caught in a pinch where you needed to update a customer's HTML email template and just can't get the right look and feel? As a veteran of the email marketing wars I have spent more hours than I would care to mention tinkering with and cobbling together templates to create email newsletters that 1) Function well in the majority of email clients, and 2) Offer layouts conducive to getting users to click through. As savvy email marketers, we know we have to create compelling offers and persuasive calls to action. All that hard work is for nought, however, if the newsletter layout is not user friendly. Then there's the ultimate challenge...What happens if your template won't work in a recipient's email client? If that happens they'll never even see your marketing message.

Thankfully there are a few good resources available such as Campaign Monitor's 30 Free Email Templates. This template collection not only includes a variety of content layouts but the templates have been tested in all major email clients. These templates even work in Outlook 2007, which can cause some rendering problems through its use of Microsoft Word's HTML rendering engine. A little tinkering and you can add customer brand-specific colors and other tweaks to customize these sample templates.

If you're going to be doing some heavy newsletter template tweaking, you may find yourself in the market for a good text editor. I've found over the years that people get pretty attached to their text editors. I remember one company I worked for practically insisted that employees use one particular editor. Over the years I've tried so many editors but keep coming back to Arachnophilia 4.0 (scroll down the page for download links). The newer versions of Arachnophilia are built to be platform agnostic, so if you're not running a Windows machine, you might want to use a newer build. The Build 5310 version I use is quite old - from 2001! I heartily recommend it to Windows users for its nice array of command and macro functions without a lot of fluff to slow you down.

Create Great Email Newsletters with these Free Templates
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January 16, 2008

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?

One of my favorite clients of all time, with us now going on 8 years and powered mightily by the rare, dual client-side SEO strengths of search understanding and inter-departmental implementation influence, recently noticed the same thing Mark Jackson saw in Google's most recent round of Universal Search peekaboo:

Notice the incredibly disappearing PPC Ads? My immediate explication was that surely this must be to prove, in a small test sample, that someone's bad idea from above would be a disaster, indeed.

Mark, though, has made me think again:

Google may succeed in encouraging companies to bid more ferociously for the top two positions. If universal search leads to more searches because it's fun, this could be a win for Google (higher revenues) and users (better experience).

Sometimes it's hard for us to imagine that there is a finite set of clicks on any given day. The business model in a closed set like this, then, must discover what to do to increase the value of the average click within the set on a given day. Mark's point about less ads likelier driving up value per is on target, I believe, but thanks to him getting me to think again I think the test layout in question has less to do about increasing searches "because it's fun" and much ado about that map, an image mind you, kissing the PPC ads at the right corner of the screen and making your eye immediately jump there to focus.

Take a look yourself and see where your eye is drawn, and then check out what eye tracking heat maps are telling us about how pictures affect focus on a search page.

Less Sponsored Ads = More PPC Revenue? Que Pasa, Google?
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November 28, 2007

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas

Who'd have thought a mere 2.5 years from first post we'd be blogging to beat the band?:

Here's the link for proof this isn't a photoshop job, let's just hope the jump in visits doesn't cause them to wonder what is going on.

I for one am having a T-Shirt made of this, anyone else interested?

SEO Speedwagon Killing In Vegas
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November 06, 2007

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling

As you probably recall, Google rolled out an enhanced version of Sitelinks in mid-October. I thought it would be interesting to monitor the early results and see how effective the new links are.

Following is a typical example of Sitelinks. Google now shows up to eight links instead of the maximum of four that it showed only a month ago. When I refer to traffic later in the post, these Sitelink numbers are the links/URLs I'll be talking about:

The point of this post is to show you what happened (if anything) to the traffic that had traditionally funneled to either the main link or to the four Sitelinks. I plotted traffic to each of the nine links through October to see what would happen. the following charts reflect these filtered criteria:

• The query term was a single word
• The referrer was Google (organic)
• The entry page was the exact URL of the link being discussed

In addition, here are some important caveats:

• These charts are NOT all the same scale; I can't give actual visit numbers, but I will give the percent of all clicks received. The "main" link, as well as Sitelinks 1-3, pull in some serious numbers. While the traffic spikes in Sitelinks 5-8 will look pretty large, they shouldn't be construed as having the same traffic numbers. More on that as I discuss each link.
• Don't necessarily infer any proposed correlation between drop in traffic to one link and rise in traffic to another. These things are controlled by many, many more factors than the mere existence of new Sitelinks.
• The Sitelinks change was announced around 10/18, but it took a while to roll it out to all DCs. I didn't see it for any searches until at least the 25th. Keep a gradual rollout in mind when you look at the charts for links 5-8.

Okay, here we go. Following are descriptions of each link followed by a graph of the traffic to that link for October.

URL/Sitelink 0: The "main" link -- represented by "Company Name and Stuff" in the shot above. A slight drop overall, but it appeared to happen across the month, not necessarily at the same time as the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 67.6% :

URL/Sitelink 1: The first true "Sitelink" link. A slight decline throughout the month, but again, not necessarily correlating to the Sitelinks rollout. Total traffic: 25.2% :

URL/Sitelink 2: Like the previous two links, it declined slightly. It looks a little more aligned with the rollout, but not completely. Total traffic: 5.1% :

URL/Sitelink 3:This link actually showed modest gains, starting about the time of the rollout. Total traffic: 1.6% :

URL/Sitelink 4:In early October, this link was already coming down from an offline push that peaked in late September. But the Sitelinks rollout didn't seem to help it, as it shows additional decline after the rollout period. One additional thing about this link: It's not what you'd traditionally think of when you type "keyword," so I attribute a lot of its clicks to curious onlookers who didn't expect to see it there. The other side of that sword is that now, the query shows four new, shiny links in the other column that will continue to drain clicks away from this guy. Total traffic: .22% :

URL/Sitelink 5:Okay, the first of the new links. From out of nowhere, it starts getting traffic on 10/17. But not that much. Total traffic: .12% :

URL/Sitelink 6:Like Sitelink 5, this one really jumped when the rollout started. It had just a few clicks before the rollout for this query, because this URL also ranks for "keyword" on its own somewhere beyond Page 2. Total traffic: .07% :

URL/Sitelink 7:In addition to its new location as Sitelink 7, this URL also lives above the fold on Page 2 for the same query. Since the Sitelinks rollout, it's on a pace to roughly triple its former traffic (for this keyword only, of course). Total traffic: .06% :

URL/Sitelink 8:This link came from nowhere, but it didn't do much. Part of it might have to do with being in the eighth spot, but more likely it's because I believe this particular link doesn't interest people who are searching for "keyword." Total traffic: .02% :

Required disclaimers. This click distribution across the nine links (main link plus eight Sitelinks) is highly variable and will change depending on what Google picks for your Sitelinks, how well the links match the query itself (and the intent of the searcher), etc.

The interesting thing for me here is not that Sitelinks 5-8 are getting clicks. That's not newsworthy. But from a behavioral perspective, it's interesting to watch how users react to links they might not have expected to see associated with their query.

One final note: These eight links are the ones that Google auto-generated. We'll be doing more posts about the ability to subtly affect the Sitelinks choices in the future.

Google Sitelinks Expansion: Early Results in Traffic Funneling
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November 01, 2007

Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?

Search Quote of the Day from He of the Great Name:

Search is utilitarian. Search is constantly accused of not being sexy. That drives me nuts. The irony is that in pigeonholing search as being boring and utilitarian, all these brilliant advertising minds are missing the biggest idea of all: search works because it’s the customer driving the process, not the advertiser.

I'm with you, Gord. In our industry, conversions are sexy.

Search: Too Sexy for Advertising?
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October 01, 2007

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles

Frank and Maureen and Thomas, oh my!

The chipped cement still has yet to be cleaned up fully from the wall being torn down at that historical error known as TimesSelect, and already we are seeing NY Times columnists able to commune with readers freely at point of search, at least at the Frank and Maureen level:


As internet titan Alan Meckler noted in his posting of the Times e-mail to subscribers, search results like these were the driving force:

Since we launched TimesSelect, the Web has evolved into an increasingly open environment. Readers find more news in a greater number of places and interact with it in more meaningful ways. This decision enhances the free flow of New York Times reporting and analysis around the world. It will enable everyone, everywhere to read our news and opinion - as well as to share it, link to it and comment on it.

Sharing it, linking to it, and commenting on it are the currency of being able to find it in search, and that might be important to a newspaper if, as the latest surveys indicate, 91% of adults use a search engine to find information and 72% get news therefrom.

Ya think?

LATE UPDATE: We just noticed that similar to 1989, another Eastern Block Web Site is about to topple...

Google Search Results Already Finding Columnist Articles
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September 18, 2007

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989

We knew it was coming and we tried to bake a cake for Maureen Dowd more than a Month ago, yet we are still surprised at how search-friendly they are being in their explanation today:

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYTimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to get access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

If you have any doubt that this is the SEO equivalent of 1989 scroll a bit further down the page for this money quote:

The Wall Street Journal, published by Dow Jones & Company, is the only major newspaper in the country to charge for access to most of its Web site, which it began doing in 1996. The Journal has nearly one million paying online readers, generating about $65 million in revenue.

Dow Jones and the company that is about to take it over, the News Corporation, are discussing whether to continue that practice, according to people briefed on those talks. Rupert Murdoch, the News Corporation chairman, has talked of the possibility of making access to The Journal free online.

Mr. Murdoch, tear down that wall!

Search Tearing Down Walls Like It's 1989
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September 17, 2007

PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA

Via Chris Zaharias via MediaPost via Piper Jaffray, we get this stark contrast:

Search advertising has proven to be fertile ground for customer acquisition. A recent study by Piper Jaffray & Co. entitled, “The New eCommerce Decade: The Age of Micro Targeting,” indicated that the average CPA for search was $8.50, considerably lower than the CPA for the Yellow Pages ($20), online display ads ($50) and direct mail ($70).

Could you imagine how low the Organic CPA would have been in comparison, had they found a way to incorporate that into the study?

PPC vs. Yellow Pages vs. Direct Mail CPA
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August 21, 2007

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II

Article or Press Release?:

It's always seemed strange to look for information on a brand, and to see it appear both in the organic search results and at or near the top of the paid listings. Why spend money on a brand term that's going to deliver a top five organic result for the same query anyway?

If this sounds eerily similar to what many Wagon Riders thought yesterday was a lede of questionable intelligence, then your parotid attention may have kept you from swallowing full gulp. For those caught in the act of mastication, though, it's good to know that the above meme is being pushed by Atlas, owned by Microsoft, neither of which are owned or own or like Google, beneficiary of the great majority of the branded ad spend currently under PR assault.

Here at The Wagon we get the same strange feeling the Talking Point pushes in the quote above when we fix our eyes on a graph like the below:

With search behavior like that, why in the world would you want your brand to appear more than once, let alone a single time, in the same screen space above the fold? Good advice from the originator of democracy of screen space.

Microsoft Talking Points Parroted: Day II
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August 20, 2007

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks

We sure did have fun with this Quote of the Month while taking The Wagon for a spin this morning. From the magazine that takes itself so seriously it demands all caps, ADWEEK, we are treated to this breathless lede:

New research by Microsoft suggests a big chunk of search ad spending is wasted because advertisers pay top dollar for high ad placements clicked by consumers who are en route to their sites anyway. Listings tied to such "branded" keywords, typically a company's name or products, eat up about half of search budgets, Atlas estimates.

Wasted, indeed. Heard while The Wagon pulled up to fill itself up with coffee:

It's like saying Applebee's doesn't need specific signage or identifiable markings on its building to show out-of-towners where it is, because people are going to go there for dinner anyway. That is exactly how stupid this is.

Isn't this also an argument against any brand advertising of any kind?

New SEM Industry Term Coined: Disposable Clicks
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February 23, 2007

Thoughts On Current Search Behavior Study

One of my favorite classes in college was Consumer Behavior so I guess that explains my fascination with search behavior. I thought I’d comment on a recent search behavior study conducted by De Vos & Jansen Market Research.

De Vos & Jansen compared the search behavior of two groups of people: Buyers and Information Seekers. From the two groups of 25, their study concludes that the viewing habits of buyers and info seekers are different.

No shock there.

However, one interesting thing about the study is their conclusion that those searchers with the intent to buy viewed more search results and focused more on familiar brand names. More interesting is that while 98% of searchers reviewed natural search results, only 31% of those in the study viewed the sponsored (paid search) listings.

That 31% is probably a generous number, but with a sample size of just 50, I wasn’t surprised that much by it. Other search behavior studies have put this number in the 10-20% range.

The search behavior takeaway here is not rocket science.

If all your Search Engine Marketing eggs (dollars) are in the Paid Search basket (Adwords/YSM), you are missing out on a large percentage of your overall target audience.

Can your business afford to do that?

Thoughts On Current Search Behavior Study
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January 27, 2007

Taking an Ad-Targeting Lesson from Seinfeld

One of Jerry Seinfeld's older, better standup routines involved a laundry detergent ad - specifically, its ability to remove blood stains easily.

Jerry went on to suggest that if your clothing routinely requires the removal of blood stains, maybe picking the right detergent isn't your biggest concern.

A couple days ago, I was searching for a list of top Google subdomains, and on a simple search for [google], I saw this Adwords ad on the page:

Here's a full shot of the results page in a new window.

Now this is probably a glitch, and I've been able to reproduce it only a few times, so I really don't want to go into the technical aspects of why or how it happened.

Instead, I am intrigued by the possibility that it's intentional, and that the folks at Compare.com have come to the brilliant conclusion that maybe - just maybe - if you're a person typing the word "google" into a Google search box, you might have problems stemming beyond computers, including but not limited to management of personal finances. I think it's a pretty safe bet.

Taking an Ad-Targeting Lesson from Seinfeld
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December 18, 2006

Google Gobbles Up The Globe

We've noticed the Google juggernaut gobbling up more and more international marketshare from our SEO perch here over the years, especially with many of our clients wanting to know what engines matter most as we move across the globe results-wise. Still, this blurb from The International Herald Tribune is quite staggering:

For Europe as a whole, as in much of the world, Google leads in Internet search. Of all those who visited search and navigation sites in Europe this October, 86 percent went to Google at least once, compared with 30 percent for Microsoft's search sites and 21 percent for Yahoo, according to comScore, an online market research firm.

Using this as a plank from which to dive into explaining how the sea is ripe for European competition against the Big G, though, I have to find fault with the article's assumed assessment throughout that the results are basically the same across countries. We have noticed quite the opposite, with a local bias quite evident.

To take a look at this phenomenon yourself, try your favorite search phrase at the .com version of Google and then, in your address bar, change the domain extension to the the country extension of your choice, like http://www.google.jp, and then give that same phrase a spin.

Google Gobbles Up The Globe
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October 30, 2006

ISBN-13 and SEO for Publishers

Just a note to those who still publish on paper (and that's a lot of you): Even though ISBN-13 doesn't officially go into effect until January 1, it's not too early to start integrating your second set of book numbers into your site's copy, page titles, and internal & external linking strategy.

ISBN searches typically don't make up your bread and butter, but put together, it's a nice long set of crumbs - especially if you're one of the first ones to get indexed with the new data.

ISBN-13 and SEO for Publishers
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October 25, 2006

A Cure For The Summer Time Traffic Blues

“Well I'm gonna raise a fuss
And I'm gonna raise a holler
About workin' all summer
Just tryin' to earn a dollar�?
Eddie Cochran, “Summertime Blues�?

There ain’t no cure for the Summertime blues?

One of the clients I work with has some seasonality to their business and traffic to their web site either levels out or dips during the summer months. This summer was not any different, traffic-wise. Their search traffic numbers in the Spring months averaged 482,000 visits per month while their Summer average was 410,000 monthly visitors.

That doesn’t sound like it’s on the road to cure anything right?

A deeper trek into their analytics, though, raises the eyebrows. Their conversion rate during the higher traffic Spring months from visitors coming to their site from search engines was .825% which calculates out to approximately $13,918 in online sales per month. Their conversion rate during the “Summertime blues�? months was 1.23% which is 45% higher than the Spring and calculates out to $17,538 in monthly online revenue.

Nothing like an increase in revenue to melt those blues away. But still, the higher revenue isn’t the real cure nor is the higher conversion rate.

The cure is in the answer to the question: Why is their conversion rate 45% higher?

The Cure

I have a fever, and the only prescription is a higher quality web site visitor.

I love best practices SEO.

Higher quality visitors are a direct byproduct of improved search positions for SEO-targeted keywords and phrases.

It’s no surprise to also see that this client had a Summertime increase of over 200 positions at Google for their optimized phrases.

A Cure For The Summer Time Traffic Blues
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August 29, 2006

Keywords In URLs - Not Just For Search Engines

Is it just me, or are you also paying more attention to the URL listed in search engine result pages?

Let's say you're searching for a new memory stick for your child's PSP. The top two results at Yahoo have equally compelling listings, however, the URLs displayed are:

www.seospeedwagon.com/psp_memory_stick.htm

and

www.seospeedwagon.com/store/Other_W0QQsacatZ21189QQsocmdZListingItemList

Which might you be more persuaded to click on?

Boy, that first one may be just what I'm looking for eh?

Apparently the first site refers to a PSP memory stick as "psp_memory_stick" whlie the second site calls it a "Other_W0QQsacatZ21189QQsocmdZListingItemList".

I think this is a good example of how URLs displayed in search engine results pages are becoming more and more valuable as CONTENT that may affect the clickability of the entire listing.

But what about you? How are the search engines displaying your URLs? How about the URLs of your competitors? Do they qualify as keyword-relevant or as keyword-jibberish?

I'm a firm believer in keyword-enhanced, logical URL structure because:

A. There is some (no one knows exactly how much) benefit in search engine performance when keywords are included in the names of your domain and/or pages.

B. From a usability (and common sense) aspect, a URL that displays my searched keyword or similar tells me a click will likely lead me where I want to go.

Keywords In URLs - Not Just For Search Engines
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August 22, 2006

When User Behavior Strays from Query Volume

It's important but often overlooked: User behavior is rarely as steady and predictable as keyword research might lead us to believe. Eye-tracking studies, statistics about SERP clicks ("the first result gets X% of all clicks"), etc. are helpful if you understand that they're aggregates and not absolutes.

If you rank in the top slot for two phrases, and one of them is three times more searched-for than the other, you might assume that, all things being equal, the more popular term will deliver three times the traffic.

That's rarely the case, especially when those two queries straddle the border between branded and non-branded.

Following are some examples that we've noticed in multiple industries, for multiple clients. The companies and queries are fictitious; it's the types of queries, however, that matter - [product type] vs. [brand + product type]. The raw numbers - queries per day and monthly traffic - are irrelevant. Instead, it's the ratios we're watching.

Note that in the first example, [conflators] is searched for about 4.5x as often as [merrick conflators] (despite the fact that in the conflator world, Merrick is tops). At Google, Merrick ranks #1 for both terms. Yet [merrick conflators] delivers about twice the traffic of [conflators]:

In our second example, Simonaire is well known in the flot scram industry, but probably not as well known as Merrick is in the conflator biz. Still, Simonaire ranks #1 for both [simonaire flot scrams] as well as [flot scrams]. The non-branded term has about 30 times the query volume, but again, delivers only about half the traffic of the branded term.

Note: The query volume figures were pulled from Keyword Discovery. Wordtracker data varies slightly but is similar.

The conclusions of this non-scientific study aren't so easily drawn, but here are some observations and speculations:

• The point of this analysis is not to dissuade brands from going after single-word product queries. They should, however, realize that the percentage of clicks they receive from a top slot might not be what they expect.
• These results imply that people searching for [conflators] are not very far along the information cycle yet and might actually want to avoid a specific brand at this stage in their research, opting instead for a comparison site, wiki-style information site, consumer-focused FAQ site, etc.
• It's tempting to tweak titles, descriptions, and content to try to appear more cross-brand informational and capture more of the [conflators] traffic. But I don't recommend doing it at the expense of your branded traffic, because click for click, I believe a branded click is more valuable than a non-branded click.
• The traffic from the product-only searches sticks around 50-60% of the duration of the branded visitors, and they view about 75% as many pages in a visit. So we're gaining mind share a few at a time, and we certainly don't mind that their first look at the industry comes from our clients.

When User Behavior Strays from Query Volume
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July 31, 2006

Proximity Uber Alles: Relevancy Not Very Relevant

This is a hoot:

The idea is to encourage visitors to start their searches for additional articles on newspapers' own sites, rather than go to Google News or another news aggregator, said Julian Steinberg, Inform's vice president of operations. "If you give your users all the functionality and content that your users want online, then your users will keep coming back day in and day out," he said.

Julian, we hardly knew ye. Yet online history is littered with the tattered pages of business plans stipulating relevance to be less important than proximity, so there is a long line of tradition for you to stand in and, hopefully, some free drinks remain at the bar from the bubble era to tide you over as you await your on-site search revolution.

Relevance? Fie! We'll worry about relevance after users start searching within our site.

Old media can be so quaint it's almost kind of cute...

Proximity Uber Alles: Relevancy Not Very Relevant
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July 25, 2006

Conversions and Query Length

At Search Engine Watch yesterday, Barry Schwartz noted that OneStat posted a study showing the breakdown of query length for July 2006. For search marketers, this is great user behavior intelligence that can benefit both organic and PPC campaigns.

I decided to do a very unscientific mutation of the report. I overlaid conversion data from a campaign I'm working on against the OneStat query-length data, just to see what would happen:

(source of pink data: OneStat. source of blue data: Intrapromote.)

If you remember much about calculus, you know that if the two lines overlap exactly, that doesn't mean that two-word phrases, for instance, convert better than three-word phrases. Instead, if the two lines overlap exactly, it means that all query lengths convert at relatively equal rates. For example, if 35% of all queries and conversions come from two-word queries, and if 15% of all queries and conversions come from four-word queries, then two-word and four-word queries convert at the same rate.

Therefore, the noteworthy locations on the graph are where the two lines diverge most dramatically. In my example, one- and two-word phrases convert at higher rates than their respective query volume rates.

Practically speaking, what does this mean to a search campaign?

In my case, it's an indicator that two-word phrases are a revenue-rich target because they have both the raw search numbers and the conversion rate to pay off. Single-word terms have great conversion rates but far fewer raw searches.

Note that this is extremely unscientific. It pits worldwide query string length data against conversion data in a specific vertical. So I certainly need to crunch more numbers. But it gives some good hints about where to look to increase traffic and conversions.

Conversions and Query Length
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July 12, 2006

Vertical Search vs. Big Search: Drawing Battle Lines

It's late; let's lay it on the table:

In the near future, who can offer the user more - the always-innovating "big" engines, or a slew of vertically focused niche engines?

• Slack Barshinger and SearchChannel say verticals[*] (PDF - registration req'd):

  While Yahoo!, Google and the like will continue to dominate the scene and - in aggregate - comprise the bulk of the online consumer's share of mind and media consumption, a myriad of vertical search engines are emerging to address the particular informational and research needs of niche audiences and professions.

• Search Insider (Aaron Goldman @ Media Post) says the Big Engines:

  Clearly, until search results can be better customized on the general engines, many searchers will prefer (and find value in) going to an engine or directory tailored specifically to their needs. But think about how far the Big 4 [**] have come in just the past couple years in terms of personalization and tools for refining search queries. The time is not long before the general engines will be able to deliver results as relevant as today’s vertical engines–if not more, when overlaid with past browsing behavior, social networking, tagging, etc.

• Alan Meckler, while not saddling up for this particular battle, has said enough in the past to make me think he'd pick the verticals.
• This is only a guess, but I think the big engines would say "the big engines."

Personally, I'll go with verticals. First, Internet history is littered with the pink slips of people who argued against Alan Meckler. Second, if they're in the game for the long term, people will find the vertical engines and stick with them. The GYM will always win in raw numbers of the great unwashed, but don't underestimate the drawing (read: earning) power of a tightly focused audience of enthusiasts and advertisers.

Goldman argues, rightly, that users will consider it a pain to hop from vertical engine to vertical engine to get into the specific data silo they're looking for. But user fickleness is a sword that cuts both ways. Is the user any more likely to delve into the "big" engine's personalization settings? Might that not entail getting (gasp) an account with the engine? Maybe we should ask the .5% of the internet population who knows what Froogle or Y!Q is, or maybe the 3% who know how to use any engine's advanced search features. Google can attribute much of its success to its visual simplicity and having avoided the temptation of cluttering up ("portalizing," if you will) its prime real estate. Requiring the user to dig past that to opt in and configure personalized searching would be robbing Peter to pay Paul.

[*] I suppose you should keep in mind that SearchChannel is a developer of niche search engines, which might account for some of their exuberance. Still, the report is worth downloading, if for no other reason than the nice directory of vertical engines that makes up the back 60% of the report.
[**] In case you're curious, #4 in this instance is Ask.com.

Vertical Search vs. Big Search: Drawing Battle Lines
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July 11, 2006

Are you B2C or B2B? Are you sure?

Wendy Davis at MediaPost shared some interesting numbers earlier today (pulled from a JupiterResearch report) about how small businesses use the web for online shopping.

According to the report,

Sixty-two percent of those that make online purchases said familiarity with the vendor is among the most influential considerations; 46 percent said the same for online research and 39 percent said that advice of friends and business associates plays a major role. (Respondents were asked to choose up to three factors that influence online shopping.) E-mails and coupons were influential for just 21 percent of small businesses’ online purchases.

In the quote above, I've emphasized the key factors that drive employees to select an online vendor:

• Familiarity with the vendor. How strong is your web presence? Does your name consistently appear for searches within your niche?
• Online research. Do you own your online reputation?
• Advice of friends and business associates. What's your track record for keeping customers happy, and giving potential customers a reason to come back when they're more motivated (i.e., further along the purchase track?)

One of the report's major findings was that "almost eight in 10 small businesses, 79 percent, shop online regularly, compared to 65 percent of online consumers."

The end result is a blurring of the lines between B2B and B2C. In other words, while you can be pretty sure that an order of 8000 boxes of thumb tacks are a "business" purchase, there's also a pretty good chance that when Mark in Memphis orders a microwave oven, he might need it for the company break room. And maybe Mark's company is growing, so he might need an espresso machine soon.

What does this have to do with Search?

• Do your page descriptions and web copy (and thus, your search results) discuss corporate relationships? Corporate accounts? Bulk discounts? Despite the type of business you're in, are you friendly to both the big "B" and the big "C"?
• Does your PPC dayparting (changing bid strategy based on time of day) make (perhaps faulty) assumptions about who's coming to your site at 2 pm?

Search results mean very little if the user clicks over and doesn't find what she's looking for - either specific products, or even a subtle vibe. Ensuring that your site appeals to people when they're both on and off the clock, despite what you think you know about your vertical, is never a dumb move.

Are you B2C or B2B? Are you sure?
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June 26, 2006

This John Battelle Guy is Pretty Smart...

Those of us who have been in Search Marketing long enough to frequent the thoughts of the best minds therein will seldom find occasion to question the premise of my title today. If you have need for Batelle bona fides, though, this quick little bio should do the trick for you.

I am quite honored, then, to have the opportunity to piggyback on a fine thought of his and add a layer of my own understanding to the mix. John had this nugget of wisdom to add to the recent study generating much buzz about the preferential treatment visitors give ads that blend into the site rather than shout out from it:

It's interesting that the ads which are "native" to a site - in other words, that are driven by text, as much of web still is, and that follow a site's design approach, do best. It reminds me of ads in Wired in the middle years - advertisers started to adapt Wired's unique visual grammar, and the whole publication felt like one ongoing conversation. I've argued for the past few years that advertising needs to not interrupt, but rather be part of a site's dialog. This research seems to confirm that concept.

This is the most brilliant to date explanation of a finding that would seem counterintuitive to most marketers. After all, mustn’t we shout to get attention? But Batelle’s use of ongoing conversation and dialog shout to me the Web 2.0 connection as ultimate explanation. If the current revolution is led by user generated content, should it be a surprise that said users would be most interested in ads that seemingly were a part of the great and growing conversation they visited the site to take part in to begin with?

2.0 assumes a dialog. Shouting with a single mouth is so 1.0…

This John Battelle Guy is Pretty Smart...
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May 01, 2006

Repeated Searches as Social Bookmark Application

Trying to understand user behavior on the Web is a little like trying to track an electron using Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. You can measure with reasonable certainty a user's state of mind - or his/her location on your site - but never both simultaneously.

I've become quite a fan of Google Analytics since it launched last fall, and several clients have come to us with GA already installed but not quite knowing how to maximize it. And frankly, I think truly maximizing it is a challenge for analytics veterans.

I've become particularly interested in tracking conversion data overlaid with other data, such as referring source, number of page views in the converting visit, and whether the visitor was new to the site or a returning visitor. Lately, I've been especially interested in why such a large percent of returning visitors still arrive by search engine. Typically, once I've found a site that I know I'll return to, I mark it somehow - whether through my own Firefox bookmarks, a social bookmarking service like del.icio.us, or, if it's truly the creme de la creme, its own button on my Bookmarks toolbar.

But if statistics (and my siblings) taught me anything, it's that I'm "not like the other kids." In a recent conference call, I was trying to give a client the URL of my favorite header checker tool, when Tom told the client, "just do what I do - search for [rex swain tool]." And the client immediately got it.

I've written before about being mystified by people who search for distinct URLs at a search engine. Right below that, on the growing list of things that mystify me, I've officially logged another entry: people who find sites again and again by performing the same search at the same engine.

This implies some real faith on their part - that each time they search for something, the result they remember is going to come up on top. And in an industry for which constant change is a requirement, I'm shocked at the permanence people expect from engines. Next on my list of things to find out: whether people expectation of permanence is the same for branded and unbranded queries.

Repeated Searches as Social Bookmark Application
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