Search Sense

Dax Hamman has been wondering recently who makes the perfect client. He was posed the question by a room of “smart people who were prepared to engage in debate about what [he was] saying rather than just sit and listen”, which got him thinking.

Dax described his ideal client as one who shares the same core values, because when this happens, it “allows us to have some fun and experiment with new ideas”.

Nilhan Jayasinghe has been talking about ad-supported videos, after the recent move by Google to extend their AdSense model to YouTube. He says that the move:

“Could mean content providers get a chance to monetize their content. Publishers get to make their sites more interesting and provide a better user experience. And Google finally get a [chance] to make money from YouTube.”

But he also wonders whether this could be a nightmare for brand and reputation managers, giving as an example the video of Louis Ogborn being strip searched at a McDonald’s in Kentucky, which currently ranks highly on a YouTube search for “McDonald’s”.

Simon Handby’s been blogging about the difficulty with using the internet to find quality news, with so many millions of sources out there. He says that “the big sites have proper editorial processes and policies” making them more trustworthy, but poses the question:

“How [can you] judge the objectivity and accuracy of a blogger you’ve happened upon through a search engine?”

Simon is particularly annoyed by Google News’ apparent failure to help us sift through unhelpful sources, throwing up results for more questionable sites alongside genuine news sources. However, a commenter asks:

“Is getting a skewed news agenda from Google really any worse than getting it from, say, the London freesheets?”

Meanwhile, over at Open, Antony Mayfield has convinced himself that he needs an iPod Touch to listen to The Archers, the latest BBC Radio programme to be made available as a podcast.

In gaps between lusting after Apple products, Antony Mayfield has been blogging this week about the new Radiohead album, the price of which will be decided by its purchasers. He’s also been discussing the merits of Creative Commons (CC) attribution licensing, which has been in the news after the New York Times reported that an advertising agency had used a photograph published under CC in a hurtful way.

Antony concludes that in spite of the benefits:

“There can be a downside to Creative Commons and one we should maybe think about carefully when putting the licence to one’s own content.”

Meanwhile, Nilhan Jayasinghe has been talking about the possibility that BT Broadband customers will get free public WiFi, and wondering what the implications will be for mobile carriers. He’s also been discussing a recent eye-tracking study, which examines where we look first on a page of Google search results. The introduction of images to search results pages seems to have an influence on our eye movements, and Nilhan summarises the study’s findings:

“While the first reaction is to head to the top left corner of the results, seeing the image, people are moving very quickly to the image, checking the copy next to the image first and then making the choice from the listings above and below the image.”

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for our eyes to get used to the new images on Google, and whether we return to old habits of reading the highest search results first.

There’s a lot of dissatisfaction over at Dax Hamman’s blog. He’s been getting quite worked up about an apparent renaissance of pop-up and pop-under advertising on websites, vowing not to return to Moneysupermarket until they get rid of annoying adverts. He’s also talked in detail about the ‘dissatisfaction index’ in email marketing, which is calculated based upon the numbers of people unsubscribing from email newsletters.

Finally, journalists Charlie Peverett and Simon Handby have started blogging about their ‘adventures in online journalism’ at hackbash, including an interesting entry about whether we write in, on, or at, our blogs.