Google has been taking market share from Yahoo!, the second most popular search engine according to Nielsen NetRatings (PDF format), so Yahoo! has fired their first salvo at Google. This week, Yahoo! introduced a new search utility, called the Search Assistant, to help guide visitors through a search (see image below). In essence, the Search Assistant is a drop-down menu that appears below the search bar on the Yahoo! home page whenever a user types in search terms (aka search query). The purpose of this utility is to improve the search results by either:

• Adding words to the search query. This functionality narrows the search results into a more targeted set.

• Suggesting alternate search terms. This functionality shifts the search results to related terms that may be lesser known, yet more relevant to the search query.

This tool could potentially have a significant impact on the search engine world. Why?

1. The Search Assistant will increase searches to well targeted sites. Most search queries are composed of only two to three terms. By adding terms to the existing query, the results will shift to sites that match more terms and are more focused.

2. The Search Assistant will improve the quality of search results. Since search engines are often used as the starting point to conduct online research on a specific topic, users may not be aware of industry-related terms. By introducing the user to related terms, the utility improves the quality of the results.

3. The Search Assistant will “level” the search engine marketing field. Webmasters are often focused on improving results for terms that receive significant traffic. By displaying results for lesser known terms, the search engine traffic will “shift” to lesser known sites, and in turn it will force webmasters of sites that have more generic terms to also optimize for more targeted terms.

4. The Search Assistant will eventually attract more visitors. Google beat out Yahoo! because of their clean search results page AND more relevant search results. Since search results pages virtually follow the same design, the improved search results will renew interest in Yahoo!.

Conclusion

According to internal tests, Yahoo! has discovered that 61% of users were more successful in their search when they used the Search Assistant. While that’s impressive by any measure, Yahoo! still lags in developing a competitive search engine spider (or, program that the search engine sends to collect information about each website). Google has one of the best spiders around, so if Yahoo! wants to regain market share it will have to focus their developers on that effort next.

I watched the movie ‘Click’ last night. Not so much because I was wanting to see it but, rather, because there wasn’t much else on.  I found it surprisingly relevant to my line of work and was inspired to write this post.  If you haven’t seen it, the premise is this: a stressed out Architect (Adam Sandler) is trying to get ahead at his firm by working hard for his smarmy boss (David Hasselhoff).  He gets frustrated one night due to the stress of balancing work and family.  He then flips out because he can’t find his TV remote so he sets out to buy a universal model. 

The only store open is a Bed, Bath and Beyond where, during his search for said remote controller, he comes across a door marked Beyond (I found this funny in and of itself – never thought about what the ‘beyond’ was).  Behind this door is Morty (Christopher Walken) – the resident ‘scientist’ of the ‘Beyond’ department.  He shows Mike (Adam) this new ‘universal remote’ and Mike soon discovers that the remote can control everything … EVERY thing.  He can turn down the volume of the dog, pause his kids, fast-forward his wife nagging at him.  He soon gets caught up in fast forwarding through all of the hassles of life so he can get his work done and get promoted.

AH, but this isn’t what I wanted to talk about.  After a while, the remote starts to ‘learn’ Mike’s preferences and reacts automatically to life’s situations.  Every time his wife starts yelling – fast forward.  Every time he goes to get ready for work – fast forward.  He can’t stop it.  It’s the way the remote is programmed.  So, Mike’s remote was supposedly programmed to be ‘smart’ … to learn his preferences and react automatically thus making his life easier.  But what happens is that his life becomes a huge mess.  He changes his mind about wanting to fast-forward through things, but the remote can’t unlearn. 

This so-called ‘personalization’ or artificial intelligence has been around in various forms for quite some time.  There was talk in the 70s about AI.  When the internet boomed personalization and customization were the rage.  Now Microsoft is coming out with a search engine feature  that will try to ascertain what you MEAN when you search the internet by comparing it with items on your desk top.  All of this makes the assumption that computers can predict your future behavior by examining your past behavior. 

While this theory holds true in many aspects of life, I don’t find that it does in ‘searching’ behavior.  At any given time, I may change my mind or focus or may be searching for something I may never search for again.  I may have documents on my computer from work that have nothing to do with personal searches.  I balk at the thought of someone – something – trying to second guess what my intentions are.  It’s like the former coworker of mine who insisted to me that we could tell what our users wanted by looking at what they did via our web logs. 

Examining past behavior only tells us what people did, not what they want to do.  I simply don’t understand the constant push to try to get computers to do something that, quite frankly, a lot of humans can’t even do.  Why should we expect a computer to know what we’re thinking and what we’re going to do?  Why would we WANT them to?  I certainly don’t.  Disagree?  Just watch ‘Minority Report’.

How many times have you searched the internet today? Ok .. now how many times have you helped out a charity today?

Well, if you use GoodSearch, those numbers should be the same. I have been a strict Google user for many years now, but today might be the day I change search engines. Powered by Yahoo!, GoodSearch allows you to enter the name of a charity each time you search. GoodSearch will then donate fifty percent of all ad revenue from that search to your chosen charity.

Granted, it only works out to about a penny per search, but it does add up over time. GoodSearch even lets you see how much it has added up to. Check out the Amount Raised page and it will show you how much your charity has received each month, each year and since the inception of the site. For example, they have donated $1,506.14 to my charity of choice, the Susan G. Komen foundation.

Not bad for a search engine.

Seen Ice Rocket yet? Yeah, its yet another search engine. It’s hard to turn around these days without running into a new search engine. I posted a while back about the newly designed Ask.com which I think is actually a great spin on search. Interestingly, I haven’t used it much since then. For some reason Google has some kind of hold on me that I can’t shake. It’s like that old group of friends from back in the day that you just can’t get away from, even though you know they’re no good and you should move on with your life but instead you set them up in your pad in Virginia so they can run illegal dog-fighting rings and then you’re not allowed to show up at training camp because you’re being indicted and…

Focus, Jeff, focus…ok, back on track. I’m not advocating that Ice Rocket is the new place you need to start your search (I haven’t really used it more than a few times so far), but they have started to make me realize how easy it is to take almost anything online and tie it into social networking/Web 2.0/etc. Check this out, when I search for “spunlogic” in their blog category, I get the following:

Notice the tabs they have which I’ve shown in their drop-down state. The first one I show is the “Subscribe” tab which allows you to create an RSS feed based on that search. Amazingly simple but who else is doing that? I quickly added this search to my Google homepage which looks like this:

Now I’ll be able to see the latest mentions of Spunlogic in blogs without having to go and run a new search. The second tab I highlighted is the “Share” tab, which allows me to share this search with other people. I added it to my Facebook page (which by the way, feel free to add me as a friend in Facebook), and it looks like this:

Now people that visit my Facebook page can see the same search results.
There are two points here that I think are important. First, the Web 2.0 phenomenon can seem very confusing to marketers but if you really think about it, there are very simple ways to take advantage of these things. Don’t over complicate it, just give people the ability to consume/share your content in the ways they are comfortable.

Which leads me to my second point - please stop trying to create your own social networks! People don’t want or need yet another place to create a profile and invest in another place to keep up with their friends and contacts. Instead, go where the user is. Allow them to add your content to the places they are already familiar with.

Has SEM arrived? Well, search engine marketing, absolutely.

What I’m referring to here is what Accenture - in the elegant codex of consultant speak - is calling Social Ecosystem Marketing. Basically, applying Gladwellian effect principals to advocates and peer groups, and amplifying your message to the most active and influential segment authorities. A blend of eCRM and oCRM (organic).

While I enthusiastically agree with moving from a mass, single segment approach to marketing in advocacy layers, especially for consumer package and household technology goods, what concerned me was a recent article in Adweek attempting – poorly – to demonstrate the power of this methodology (oh, and the impressively convoluted designation: Social Ecosystem Marketing – these people slay me).

The article cites a program Sprint and Unilever coauthored to target moms and, seemingly, their extended network of peers. Users were asked to log in and write shorts scripts about their days, with the crowd pleasing-est to be recorded by a cast that includes Leah Remini.

However, the piece cites as success 3,000 entries and 50,000 votes. So this is what constitutes the validation of Social Ecosystem Marketing? The story goes on to report that the program, “by definition” hit extroverted mothers who would invariably talk about Suave (the brand in play) to their girlfriends. But, in no way does the piece dig deeper into how the marketers know that the participants were extroverts, or if they extended the message at all to their net promoter sphere. Less an ecosystem, more like a bowl full of guppies.

Hilariously, the article goes on to tout the program as a way to gather consumer insights and ethnographic data through what users submitted. A new research paradigm: from declared behavior, to observed behavior, to self selected fictional  manners. Excellent.

Finally, about the name (if it sounds sorta like social science, it must be social science - but let’s play along): Two things an ecosystem relies on for sustainability are biodiversity – the more diverse a population, the more the system can absorb negative or high impact events; and stochastic phenomenon (basically, chance happenings). We hope that our marketing efforts don’t rely on chance, and marketing to Moms more likely means you’re hitting a far less diverse pocket of population than more (have you ever been to the local Outback Steaks during margarita night?).

Maybe I’m nitpicking. But if I think about the cost of just hiring Leah Remini for this program, forgetting everything else, don’t you think it would have been more cost effective to send 1 bottle of Suave to 5,000 local PTA presidents along with a packet of coupons for peer distribution?

Sampling…great. What’s elegant about that?

Leave it to Barry Diller (is it me or does he look like the grandfather on Everybody Loves Raymond?) to finally create a new way to search online and possibly compete with the almighty Google.  Ask.com’s new search engine has come up with what they call their “Ask 3D” engine - named for what they call the three dimensions of search: Expression, Results and Content.

Believe it or not, search is still one of the most underdeveloped areas in online and represents an enormous opportunity for improvement.  It’s true that Google helped to improve search engine results when Sergey and Larry cried “there must be a better way!” back in 1998, but even their new search engine was limited in that they focused on what was the current paradigm of online searching.  They made the results a little more relevant and certainly sped up the process of delivering the results.  But they did very little to help in understanding the direction of someone’s search.

Here’s an example of how Ask.com is breaking out of the norm of search engine results and delivering something different and IMO better than what we get today.  If someone searches for “golf” on Google they get the following type of results:

• Link to golf.com
• Link to PGA.com
• Link to PGATour.com
• Link to Wikipedia’s definition of golf
• Link to GolfChannel.com

Likely I didn’t search “golf” to find a link to one of those sites.  I was most likely trying to answer a question, such as “Who won the LPGA championship this past weekend” or “What are some funny golf jokes I can tell on the course this weekend” or “What are some golf courses near my house that I can try” or “How can I feel with one swing that I’m ready to go head-to-head with Tiger and with the next swing feel like I might be better off trying to play with my left hand because it can’t get any worse”.  If we can agree that people aren’t searching for links, but rather are searching to answer a question, then we can start to see the difference in what Ask.com is now producing.  Here is a sample of what you get from Ask.com when you search for “golf“:

• A “Narrow Your Search” column on the left with suggestions such as:
• Golf Tips
• Golf Courses
• Golf Jokes
• In the middle search area, the first result is “Latest Golf Headlines”, underneath which is essentially the same list of results to sites that Google listed
• On the right hand side you have Images, Shopping options and a definition for golf straight from Wikipedia

Overall this is a MUCH better experience than what you get from Google.  Did it take an extra 5 nanoseconds to come up? Sure, probably did.  Did I notice that?  No, though I’m only on my second cup of coffee so give me a few more hours and who knows.  But what Ask.com is attempting to do is answer my question, which is a huge shift in what the other engines do.

I guess you could say that Ask.com is finally living up to its name.  And since Google (which is actually googol) means the number one followed by 100 zeros, I guess they’re living up to their name too.

I just finished reading The Google Story, which I recommend to anyone interested in learning the history of this amazing success story (and for those of you that know where my office is, you’re more than welcome to borrow my copy).

At the end of the book the authors provide some very cool Google search tips and I thought I’d share a few of them:

• Phone book - type a person’s name or address in the search box and Google will deliver phone and address listings. Or if you only have a phone number, type that in to the search box and you’ll (usually) get the person’s information that it belongs to
• Calculator - type in a math problem and sure enough, you’ll get the answer
• Dictionary - type in “define” followed by any English word and you’ll get the definition
• Book learnings - go to print.google.com and you’ll be able to search actual books that Google has scanned and indexed
• The new stuff - to keep up with all the cool stuff Google is doing, check out their Google Labs page

And my personal favorite, Google has a text message service that is very impressive. Get any number of things (such as directions, airport delays, movie times, etc) by texting to 46645 (or GOOGL on most phones). Check the link above to find out all the possibilities with this one.

So, in the bizarreness that is celebrity endorsements, Kevin Federline, (aka K-Fed, Fed-Ex, aka white-trash baby daddy and bad rapper) has his own search engine.  You heard that correctly.  So, on this beautiful Wednesday, let me encourage you to explore the web via: http://searchwithkevin.prodege.com/ where you have a chance of winning a prize from him such as a copy of his new album or an invite to his birthday party.  Wow.  I’m speechless. Thanks?

If you aren’t enticed by Kevin’s generous offer, perhaps you’d like to benefit someone else while you search.  There are several search engines that donate to selected charities every time you search.  EveryClick and Click4theCause are good bets for your magnanimous searches…  Microsoft gives wads of their money pile to AIDS Charity ninemillion.org every time you search via Click4theCause.  EveryClick (and other sites like it) give a portion of their revenue each month to a selected charity. 

My question: Are these charity sites any good at searching?  I’m curious to hear your feedback.

Thanks to Dumb Terminal Live! for the idea.  http://blogs.pcworld.co.nz/pcworld/dumb-terminal/2007/03/nine_million.html 

Being a marketer does have its benefits sometimes. There are so many industries that seem to be stuck in the past when it comes to driving new sales. What do giant inflatable gorillas, brightly colored balloons and dancing clowns with signs have in common? They are all old attempts to drive sales locally.

Now I know that not all car dealers, real-estate agents and clowns know the power of local search, much less the simplicity behind AdWords. But imagine if those balloons and inflatable gorillas could be strategically positioned all around their competitor’s lots and listings.  Local targeted ad buys have been a great way for many businesses to target regional buyers searching for product and services at very low costs. For $0.04, less the cost of any balloon, a highly targeted ad can yield great results.

Let’s look into an example of a campaign that I am currently running for my beautiful, fabulous, well-priced (obviously still trying to sell it) townhome. With a very competitive real-estate marketplace and many new condo and townhome communities going up, it seems almost necessary to shorten the sales time with other non-traditional mediums.

My current locally targeted AdWords campaign gets about 150 clicks per week and over 8,000 impressions (people that might have saw the balloons). At an average cost per click (CPC) of only $0.20, it is worth every penny to have them view my property without having to schedule a showing with my agent.

My keyword strategy is a simple one… be found when people are searching for new homes, researching new developments, finding lenders, finding tax information and even researching local neighborhoods. The costs and impressions greatly range, but considering the sale price and the value of a click, it was worth the couple extra minutes of setup.

So next time you are looking to drive more traffic, don’t just think a PPC campaign is only for big budgets. You will be surprised what $4 a day can get you and you might even save a few animals from those pesky balloons.

Helpful Links

Google AdWords - Learning Center

A Darn Nice Townhome For Sale

Google recently launched a new testing site, SearchMash. It’s an interesting concept for multiple reasons but mostly because it is a live user experience test for their flagship product. The quote from Google about SearchMash goes something like this, “The goal of SearchMash is to test innovative user interfaces in order to continually improve the overall search experience for our users.” It’s a great idea to field test something like this in a live environment and get data on the fly, I wish there were more companies doing it this way. It will be great when they start to integrate the findings into the actual Google search. I like what I see so far in things like bringing images to the same search results page, a separated call out for Wikipedia entries, and collapsable boxes. If they went one step further and made the boxes customizable like on the personalized Google Homepage (ability to “resize” and reorder) then this would be my default search engine.

The linking option menu is a nice touch as well, I especially like the “More from this site option” where it narrows the search to one particular site. They were also clever in adding a simple survey, “were these results useful to you?” in the right hand column. I think they should integrate AdSense next and see what users do.