03 Jun 09 Why I’m almost Searching with Twitter

Over the past couple of years, a number of companies have launched human edited search engines (Mahalo, Wikia, Google SearchWiki to name but 3), and all of them have pretty much fallen flat on their shiny web 2.0 bottoms.  No real surprise there…

There is no denying that Human Edited Search is important.  By getting the results of the algorithm reviewed by real people, the quality should improve - and although Google don’t explicitly say that their results are massively influenced by the interaction of users, they collect plenty of information including relative CTR by position, bounce rate, and even engagement mapping / conversion tracking where sites have a Google Analytics implementation.

The problem with these various attempts at user edited search results is trust.  How can I trust an editor at Mahalo, or one of the mysterious and anonymous Wikia contributors to provide me with the results I want?  The simple asnwer is I can’t.  I have no idea what their agenda is, or whether their tastes are in any way in line with mine.  I simply don’t know them.

This brings me on to Twitter.  I follow people on twitter who I share interests with, whether those interests are work related (#seo), entertainment related (@jimmycarr), as well as family and friends.  These are people who I rely on to keep me up to date with things that are important to me in some way.  When I asked a question about Family Guy people responded and told me that it would be “this fall”.  They even provided me with links to pages about it, and one helpful chap gave me a link to a torrent file so I could download it - I haven’t.  This all happened in the space of around two minutes - not quite as quick as Google I’ll admit, but pretty good nonetheless.

This is all pretty cool, my twitter “friends” to give me information relatively quickly, and accurately, but the most important factor is that I can trust the information I get.  I wasn’t spammed with irrelevant websites as I would be in some search engines I could mention and I got what I was looking for.

Of course, the key word here is relatively quickly.  In a world where instant access to information is essential, relatively quick simply isn’t good enough.  Sure for now, I’m using Twitter to search because it works for me, but this won’t do for most people.

What I really need is some kind of better search.twitter.com that brings in the best of Wolfram Alpha - the ability to slice information from millions of users up into useful categorised chunks so that instead of just asking my limited number of followers for recommendations, I can instead outsource my questions to the 19 million or so Twitterers and take advantage of all the information that they have provided.

Tags: crowdsourcing, search, twitter

28 May 09 Wave goodbye to Bing

So Microsoft are finally ready to unleash the new generation search engine, Bing, which they have done without actually letting anyone use it. Genius.

BTW guys, your revolutionary new interface looks exactly like Hakia, which is also a next generation of search and a Google Killer.

What’s interesting about the Bing launch, is that just minutes after MS formally announced Bing, Google responded with some nebulous stuff about a revolutionary new productivity/communications tool called Wave.  

This seems a bit petty to me, as through Google are putting a stake in the ground, and telling MS that if they start intruding on their core product, then Google will respond with a similar invasion.

One of my colleagues, Luke Regan said recently that the only way Bing (or Kumo as we knew it then) would get traction in the market place is if Microsoft created an advertising message that followed the pattern of iPhone, concentrating on how the UI was so good that it made everything easier.  Luke put that in a much more elegant way.

I wonder what the $100 million that they’re going to spend marketing Bing will buy them.

If Google have been scared by Bing, and to be honest, their recent spate of new mini launches like Wonder Wheel and the larger number of search refinement tools they offer that look a lot like a Googlized version of Bing indicate that MS may have touched a nerve in Mountain View, the next couple of months could be very interesting.

21 May 09 Google Suggest: Now with added revenue stream

If there is one thing that you’ve got to admire about Google, its their ability to find ways of making money out of literally everything.  They are literally experts in taking any possible tool or service and plastering it wiath adverts.  Blogs, Search Results, Email, Every spam site on the planet, and now they’ve found a way of monetising their Google Suggest tool.

Which means that at last, the only place in the Google empire that isn’t an advertising hoarding - the Google Home Page - is now just that.  They no longer even need to push a user through to the results of their search before offering them the unique opportunity to click on a subtle advert and make them a couple of quid.

Now, I’ve no problem with google making money, and to be honest, I could see this being a bit of a winner even though I can’t see many people using it.  Google Suggest is intended to make it easier to refine your query in line with what other people are looking for, and its a pretty cool little add on that can give you a good idea of what you might want to look for, but it is also a bit flaky.

The engine that powers Suggest appears to use advanced stemming coupled with search volume metrics to generate a list of options that you might be looking for that is refined on the fly as you type more into the box.  This is all fine and dandy, but what is painfully obvious is that the initial targeting of any advert served will be pretty poor - imagine you are looking for “Cheap trousers” - presumably you are a man of very little taste.

The first thing you type is “Cheap”, for which Google has the following suggestions:

• cheap flights
• cheap tickets
• cheap hotels
• cheap airfares
• cheap cruises
• cheap textbooks
• cheap prom dresses
• cheap car rental
• cheap books
• cheap furniture

And you can pretty much guarantee that the advert will be for “cheap flights”. When you add the t of trousers to the search box, the list changes to

• cheap tickets
• cheap textbooks
• cheap tyres
• cheap trick
• cheap tvs
• cheap tickets to India
• cheap t shirts
• cheap train tickets
• cheap tyres for sale
• cheap treadmills

When presumably the advert served will be for “tickets”

The problem is that you’ve got to get a long way into typing “cheap trousers” before you get a listing that includes “cheap trousers”, which means that you are fairly unlikely to give up and suddenly click on the advert.

Gut feeling about this is that the CTR on these adverts is going to be shockingly low, but I guess that doesn’t really matter, beccause with 80% of the search market, which equates to billions of searches each day, even a fraction of a percent of people clicking on the ads will probably result in a significant jump in revenue for the big G - after all, they will have done extensive monitoring of how people interact with the Suggest function.

The only losers here are likely to be the people who rank top of the natural search results through their SEO campaign, and even they will only be likely to drop a couple of clicks a month even for the highest volume terms that they target.

Overall impact on marketers: Negligible

Overall impact on search traffic: Negligible

Overall impact on Google Revenue: Negligible

However, I would still expect a disproportionate rise in the GOOG share price off the back of this, because with Google, even a small percentage increase in their revenue is vast in terms of the actual cash sums it represents.

Tags: Google, seo

18 May 09 Compare the Results

Well done to the guys at VCCP for putting together the Compare the Meerkat viral campaign.  Its good to see a big brand who are willing to take the plunge into a fairly daring campaign with no guaranteed return on investment in the middle of a recession.  So, full marks for implementation, and full marks for content, however the integration of the Meerkat activity into the main search campaigns has been pretty woeful - and it provides a fairly intersting case study into being a victim of your own success.

Patrick Altoft at Blog Storm has already picked up on part of the story here, the fact that Compare the Market haven’t been clever enough to bid on their own story via PPC, which means that their competitors were nicking a shed load of traffic from CTM on the term “Compare the Meerkat” - they’ve started to bid on this today however, so at least they’re making a start at putting things right, however GoCompare have been there for weeks as the only advertiser:

as I said above though, this campaign has not just been a bit of a fail due to the lack of PPC activity to protect traffic, its also been a victim of its own success, and that is partly due to Google adding Suggest to the .co.uk search page on April 1st.

Essentially, Google Suggest appears to add results to its list based on a freshness algorithm combined with the popularity of terms in the number of searches that they attract.  I’ve done a bit of research into this, and the volume of searches that the ten terms Google offers follows the following profile:

Here, the number one and number 4 results get the most searches - this may be due to the number 4 result being a popular alternative subject.  The upshot is though that Google are providing insight into the ongoing popularity of a particular term and promoting it to users.  When you start typing compare into the search box on the Google home page, you get the following:

So successful has the campaign been that the Meerkat is now the top suggestion offered by Google, which indicates that it is getting more search volume and therefore interest than the brand that spawned it.  Of course, CTM will have got a shed load of natural links from the campaign, and it has undoubtedly pushed them up the Google Rankings for their key term “car insurance”, but it is also hurting them in a way because the main Compare the Market website does not rank in the top 10 results for the “compare the Meerkat” term.

To my mind, this is a hideous missed opportunity, and one that CTM should sort out immediately.  I’d recommend them at least putting some Meerkat related content on their website so that they can get a page into the top 10 for the term, because the way I see it, at the moment they aren’t taking fulll advantage of what is available to them.

Overall, its a lesson in integration - integration of social media into a holistic search strategy, and integration of a particular campaign into the overall brand activity that is being carried out.  There is no point in pushing out the most daring viral campaign in the world and getting huge success from it if you don’t fully exploit the results that you have achieved…

Simples

Tags: compare the Meerkat, Link Bait, seo, Social Media

14 May 09 And after all, you’re my Wonder Wheel…

You could never accuse Google of being innovators.  but what you can applaud them for is the ability of their engineers to develop existing ideas and bring them to the masses.  Like Apple, they seem to have a great way of taking something that is already there and making it more user friendly and appealing.  From the time when the original Google.com search engine launched and did away with every trick that existing search companies utilised to keep you on the page, they have been dedicated to bringing users and content closer together.

The latest shiny toy that Google have “invented” is the fantastically named Wonder Wheel for those who haven’t seen it yet, you access it via the new “show options” link at the top of the search results, and it looks like this:

Essentially, its a nice Ajax implementation that fits in with the standard Google design aesthetic of less is more, and allows users to explore concepts related to their original search.  It is almost the same as the interface that Quintura uses - although rather than producing a tag cloud, Google produces a nice little spider chart.  FYI, since about 3 people have ever visited Quintura, it looks like this:

What I like about this is that while it keeps people on the search engine for longer, it makes it much more straightforward to refine the search. and even encourages people to look into different areas - after all, how many times have you been to Wikipedia to check a quick “fact” before finding yourself diverted into a vortex of articles about everything related to the main subject before emerging blinking a week later, none the wiser about what you were originally looking for.

The impact that I see coming from Wonderwall wonder wheel is a better quality of user coming through to the website.  My theory behind this is that if a user has refined their search, they are more likely to be satisfied with the results that they get, and less likely to bounce out.  So, the question is, how do you check if a user has visited from search results refined via Wonder Wheel?

Like this:

Any visitor to the website who has used wonder wheel to refine their search will come complete with a referrer string that includes tbs=ww:[somenumber]&, which means that you can compare the bounce rates that they have.

The only problem with testing this at the moment is that very few people outside the hallowed halls of SEO & Online Marketing are aware of the function, and since it is very new, it is pretty hard to get a decent sample.  Having said that, I’ll be keeping an eye on the traffic to a couple of websites with high numbers of natural search visitors so that I can copmpare the bounce rate for visitors who used Wonder Wheel, and those who did not.

I’ll post back with the results in a couple of weeks

Tags: Google, search engine optimisation, seo

13 May 09 A long time coming

Aside from a few experimental posts on this blog over the past 12 months that were written with the intention of testing some theories about what does well in Digg and what doesn’t, I’ve not been doing a great deal of “proper” blogging - I tend to do my updates and rants via Twitter these days.

Thing is though, 140 characters might be enough to make a snarky comment or share a link or two, but it isn’t really enough to say anything profound about a subject.  It also means that I’ve missed out on making comments on the SEO industry, which is what I’m more interested in.

Just look at what I haven’t* blogged about recently…

Google Vince Update

Increased focus on promoting bigger brands in the Google SERPS to “protect” customers

April 1st Updates

Increased number of universal search inclusions, mini links, introduction of Google Suggest in the UK, and of course the localised IP based search results.

Launch of Wolfram Alpha

and of course the subsequent back in the bunkers move

Google Squared

Which is much the same as Wolfram Alpha

Kumo Search from Microsoft

Don’t need to say much about this at the moment

Reintroduction of Jeeves

to perennial drain circler Ask (face it guys, its time to give up)

Yahoo closing GeoCities

That’s a huge chunk of naturally given editorially safe links to established websites deleted

and more…

That was all I could think of in the space of five minutes.

*not strictly true, as I’ve commented on most of these things via the company blog, and also via Twitter

So, in an industry that is changing so quickly, there is always plenty to talk about, so from now on, I will.

Tags: seo

11 Dec 08 Letters of Complaint - Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice

One from the archive, but still raises a smile when I read it…

Concerned about the amount of sea water in “Ocean Spray” Cranberry drinks, we got in touch for clarification…
____________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: madeup@email.com
To: craninfobureau@fieldmcnallyleathes.co.uk
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2003 11:15 AM
Subject: Cranberry juice
Sir,

I am considering whether or not to purchase a bottle of your advertised Ocean Spray Cranberry and Blackcurrant Drink from a local shop. I am perhaps a little cautious in trying new things, but I would like to clear up a few minor points before I rush out and spend my money.

Firstly, I would like to know what particular ocean spray is used in the manufacture of your drink, I am quite sensitive to high levels of sodium in my diet.  Also, I wish to make sure, that the spindrift used is hygienically treated to remove normal seawater contaminants.  Please confirm that it comes from a European Blue Flag certified source.

Secondly, your product claims to use American Cranberries, am I to assume that these are of the highest standard; and better than a British equivalent?

Third, and finally, on the bottle I examined in the supermarket, other products mentioned were “Cranberry Classic”, and “Cranberry and Raspberry”.  In light of the above, I wish to know whether you produce any products made solely with British fruit, perhaps a refreshing Loganberry and redcurrant Spritz?

My Best regards

A Madeupname (Mr)
____________________________________

Their First response was not what we expected…
____________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: kerry@******.co.uk
To: madeup@email.com
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 8:58 AM
Subject: RE: Cranberry juice

Ju

He sounds like he could be a tricky customer!!!!. One for you, Can you help?

Kerry
____________________________________

So we sent it back…
____________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: madeup@email.com
To: kerry@******.co.uk
Sent: Monday, April 14, 2003 9:26 AM
Subject: RE: Cranberry juice
Dear Kerry,

Somehow I do not think that you meant to send this e-mail to me.

Regards

Mr Madeupname
____________________________________

And a couple of days later they gave us an answer…
____________________________________

—–Original Message—–
From: Judy B*****s [mailto:judy@******.co.uk]
Sent: 17 April 2003 14:35
To: madeup@email.com
Subject: Cranberry Juice
Dear Mr Madeupname

Thank you for your recent e-mail.  Please rest assured that Ocean Spray Cranberry Juice Drinks is produced to the highest standards and all rigorous regulations laid down by legislation are adhered to.

Ocean Spray is made under license by a reputable major drinks manufacturer whose expertise and status make them one of the leading manufacturers of juice and juice drinks in the UK.  They supply the majority of branded and unbranded products into UK retailers.

If you would like to send your address we will send you some further information and a free coupon for one of Ocean Spray’s Juice Drinks.

Best wishes

Judy B*****s

Judy B*****s
Account Director
Field McNally Leathes Ltd.
Field House
8 High Street
Hurstpierpoint
West Sussex
BN6 9TY
Tel: 01273 834716
Fax: 01273 834306
Website: www.******.co.uk
E-mail: judy@******.co.uk
____________________________________

So we said thanks and offered them some help…
____________________________________

—–Original Message—–
From: madeup@email.com
Sent: 19 April 2003 08:58
To: ‘Judy b*****s’
Subject: RE: Cranberry Juice
Dear Judy

Many thanks for your response to my enquiry.

When I received your e-mail, I rushed out, and bought the bottle of Cranberry and Blackcurrant juice I had promised myself.  I was a little surprised that the drink had not been made from “Ocean Spray”, but I was delighted with the flavour and will most certainly be trying out the other flavours advertised with your money off voucher.

I was interested to read that your company also produces drinks under other labels.  As you may remember from my original E-mail, I am a devotee of the loganberry and the redcurrant, and think that the marriage of the unique flavours of these most English of fruits would make a delightful addition to your range.

Please could you let me know whether this product is manufactured at the moment, and if not, when it will be.  I currently make this drink myself from a recipe I inherited from my beloved Aunt Jessica (decd) and as a tribute to her, I would be delighted to share this family secret with you.

Kindest regards

A Madeupname (Mr)
____________________________________

and they continued to play along…
____________________________________

—– Original Message —–
From: judy@******.co.uk
To: madeup@email.com
Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2003 8:10 AM
Subject: RE: Cranberry Juice
Dear James

Thanks for getting back to us and I hope that you had a good Easter. At the moment Ocean Spray do not produce a redcurrant or loganberry blend of juice or juice drinks but should we hear of any launch plans we will let you know.  Meanwhile you may be interested in trying Ocean Spray’s latest flavour - Cranberry & Mango - to the Light range.

Would be very interested in seeing your Aunt’s recipe!

Thanks

Judy
____________________________________

I never sent Judy the recipe for my Loganberry and Redcurrant spritz - some family secrets are best kept!
____________________________________

Tags: comedy, complaints, cranberry juice

09 Dec 08 9 Scary Santas

Every year, children all over the world go to bed on Christmas Eve dreaming of presents in the morning.  If they were getting a visit from one of these guys, there is no way they’d be getting any sleep.

Angry Claus

Left in the corner of the toyshop when January comes around, this Santa exudes sinister aggression.  With a sideways glance, you get the impression that he could flip out at any moment.

Sharpened Claus

Look out behind you mom…

Smokin’ Claus

Here’s the Santa who put the evil in evil weed!

Sinister Claus

Santa: “Want to sit on my knee little boy?”

Child: “Waaaaaaaaaaaaaah”

Vagrant Claus

A classic example of leaving the decorations up too long.  This Santa looks like he’d swap your presents for booze…

Santa Sprawls

… and this Santa looks like he already did

Santa Scares

There is just something very wrong about this one.  I wouldn’t like it on my tree!

Santa-bal Lecter

Sleep well children.

Evil Santa

The look in his eyes, the smile, the terrible thoughts that his kindly face hides.

Tags: Christmas, funny, santa claus, scary

08 Dec 08 The 7 Most Exclusive Clubs in the World

The idea of being in an exclusive club is appealing to everybody. But what are the chances of you getting in any of these clubs?

Ejection Tie Club
Membership = 5,607

The ejection tie club is a global club, open to fast jet pilots who have survived ejecting in a Martin Baker ejection seat.

Out of 7,195 recorded ejections, there are only 5,607 members. Probably because the other 1,588 are dead. If you are one of the lucky ones that survived ejecting at speed, and want a tie to show off in the pub, apply here.

Shuttlecock Club
Membership = 1300

The Shuttlecock club is a club for people who didn’t die when they bailed on the Cresta Run. Competitive riders go down the Cresta Run on a tray at speeds of close to 80mph.

Unsurprisingly, this results in carnage, including high speed accidental amputations and a number of deaths. Anyone who manages to survive crashing off at the lethal Shuttlecock corner gets membership of the Shuttlecock club, and probably some counselling. They also get a free go down the run once they’re back on their feet. There are some wince inducing videos of people earning their membership here

Masters of wine
Membership = 277

Like dark lords of the grape, this tiny group of drinkers are true masters of wine. Just 277 people around the world have gained the requisite amount of knowledge needed to join the club - although anyone is eligible provided they can complete the course.

If your liver is up to the challenge, you can apply to be member 278 here.

Order of the Garter
Membership = 26
You know that you’re getting into the upper echelons of exclusivity when you need an invitation from the queen (and the death of a member of the aristocracy) to get in. Membership of the Order of the Garter is limited to the British sovereign, the Price of Wales and another 24 members.

If you’re not on the list already, the chances are that you’re not going to get into this one’ although you can probably increase your chances by getting elected to parliament and then becoming prime minister. Otherwise, you’ll probably need to rely on reincarnation into the royal family. Either way, it’s not going to be easy!

Climbers that have climbed all 14 8000m+ mountains.
Membership = 14

So far, only 14 people can genuinely claim to have climbed all 14 of the 8000m+ mountains. It takes a while to complete this - the fastest was Carlos Carsolio who took 10 years, and is also the youngest member of this uber-exclusive club of adventurers. For added difficulty, you could emulate Alberto Inurrategui who did it without bottled oxygen.

Brilliantly, you don’t actually need any proof of actually completing the feat to join the club, although according to Adventure Stats

“The Explorer is believed to be telling the truth. It is considered a point of honor which most explorers hold higher than the success of the expedition.”

People who have walked on the moon
Membership = 12
Only 12 people have ever achieved this since Neil Armstrong in 1969, and no one has managed it in the last 36 years - although this could change in the next few years, with both the Americans and the Chinese planning a return to the moon before 2020.

There is even a subgroup for those lucky enough to have driven on the moon. This has just 6 members. The official lunar land speed record is a fairly pedestrian 8mph, though unfortunately, the holder’s name is not recorded. Should you want to join this group, and you don’t find yourself on the NASA waiting list, you could always fund your own attempt. It’s reckoned that a successful lunar mission could be staged for around $100 billion. Not cheap!

Marianas Trench Explorers
Membership = 2
There are plenty of people who are the only one to have done something, but their exploits don’t really count as a club - the meetings at the pub would be like a gathering of survivors of the Crimean war.
The title of most exclusive club in the world must surely go to the group of divers who have managed to reach the deepest point in the Earth’s oceans, the bottom of the Marianas Trench.

There are two members, Don Walsh and Jacques Piccard who sank dived the almost 11KM to the bottom in the Bathyscaphe Trieste in 1960. They saw some mud, a shrimp, and what may have been a flounder.
There are no plans to repeat this feat. Ever.

Tags: climbing, clubs, exclusive, explorers

22 Apr 08 Google Allow Competitive Brand Bidding

Sorry for the old story, but WTF, I can’t believe this one at all, Google are now going to allow other people to bid on my trademark protected brand.

icture the scene in boardrooms up and down the country where the owners of some of the most respected businesses have spent years of hard work and millions of pounds to build up a world class brand they have investing in quality throughout their operations to boost conversion rates, and develop a prestigious brand that has core values, and ensures a high conversion rate from potential customers.

Then Google shift the goal posts, and after years of recognising the value of brands and protecting them, they stop all this, and allow anyone including lazy affiliate marketers to perform the lowest value campaign possible and piggy back on a brand, while forcing the original brand owner to pay more for every click through to their website.

While Google claim that this change will not affect businesses to a great extent - after all, if I want Nike, I’ll buy Nike, even if there is an Adidas advert appearing in Google - it will.

Take British Airways as an example, they have spent years developing their brand, and people searching for it will more than likely be looking to book a flight.  This means that all the travel companies in the world can bid on the term BA, which is a trademark, and get a customer that is statistically likely to convert. All the investment in the brand that encourages a customer to choose a product from that brand is subverted by the affiliates and agents who simply pay 3p or whatever to get a customer.

Now to a certain extent, I can understand where Google is coming from, after all, this is the age of the Internet, the age where everyone is a publisher and there are a million shops with a market of one, and to these small businesses, brand is not important.  The temporary nature of the web means that there is no need for some companies to build long term relationships with their clients, and no value to them in having a brand.

Google could so easily have been one of these companies, and to a certain extent they are, I use them for email and to search for things, they are also the basis of my career, but if Live Search started offering better results, or HotMail was opened up so I could integrate it into more things, then I would switch.  I have no loyalty to Google, like they have no loyalty to the advertisers like BA who spend literally millions with them each year.  Its a sad state of affairs, but for me, the thing that takes the p!ss most about this somewhat casual attitude to the value of other brands is that Google have recently been super protective of their own brand - claiming that no-one should use the Brand name Google as a verb, as in to Google for something.

There is always a danger in double standards.