Search Sense

As an agency with its roots in search, we are very aware of the capabilities of the major engines across all aspects of search but also their growing offerings in display. In fact, we have tremendous success by buying on a CPC basis through Google for our clients, especially in North America.

There is an ongoing discussion within the industry and within our agency as to the direction media buying will take.

On one hand, the growth of Google et al in this sector is likely to increase CPC and even CPA traffic, something that will happen exponentially with the acquisition of DoubleClick and the launch of Google Ad Manager.

However, from another perspective, ‘good’ publishers are in a position of strength and can choose the way in which they sell the first 60-80% of their inventory. What they do with the remaining 20-40% is up to them, but we don’t necessarily want to focus on buying this remnant inventory anyway.

Last week though a major publisher took a big step in one of these directions; ESPN.com has announced it is cancelling its arrangements with its media house and also the ad networks it does business with. Instead they are moving more to a direct model selling what is likely to be more premium custom packages.

Google et al will continue to grow in this sector, but if publishers like this decide not to fuel the ad networks growth then we won’t be seeing an entire CPC marketplace anytime soon.

And it makes sense for publishers to do this. They own the product and if ad networks continue to grow they will hold too much of the power and could lower the overall effective CPM rate that a publisher can achieve.

Garett Rogers of ZDNet has discovered a new Google interface likely designed for mobile. As most mobile studies reveal the reluctance of users to enter long search queries, generally limiting to just one or two words, the new interface provides a logical way forward. At least for location based queries where it is easier to disambiguate and provide a navigational structure for discovering local information.

You can have a play with the interface here http://www.google.com/m/lcb

And here’s a sequence I tried out earlier starting with a search for ‘Brighton’

I’ve been reading a very interesting interview with Douglas Merrill, Google’s CTO, for those not familiar with the name. His goal is the same as mine - world domination - not really, I kid - it’s simply to give Google workers the technology they need and keep them safe. That’s what I try to do for iCrossing workers and hopefully without falling into the draconian “protection trap” that so many coporations end up in.

Like Google we have a very tech savvy group of employees at iCrossing which means everyone enjoys much more freedom than most organisations, but I’m thinking why can’t we take it further. Why not the complete freedom to do anything? Focus totally on choice - and let you guys choose from a bunch of different computers, different operating systems, different phones, different tools and support all of them (Jim don’t have a heart attack). It’s not cost-efficient, but on the other hand, wouldn’t productivity soar? OK, we don’t have the benefit of the cash filled pockets of Google and would have the odd financial constraint, but surely we could explore some unauthordox approaches.

Perhaps we could try the Google model of support. Massively more self-service from network hubs and ”tech stops” - take your laptop to a drop-in area in the office for instant ideas, instant solutions, instant kickings - a personal, informal drop in help desk - where solutions are handed out there and then and also get blogged about instantly which the iCrossing community is expected to refer to and self-serve.

Most CTOs would throw a wobbly at the security risks, but if you beef up perimeter protection, build security into the infrastructure as a feature, look for unusual journeys across the enterprise and look to the community to police it can work. Malcolm and I were talking about network audits - tedious, dull, time-consuming, authoritarian - the “unorthordox” alternative is to randomly stream what people are surfing, saying, doing onto community plasmas. Then the whole community can say “Hey, who’s surfing porn and putting my work at risk?” – it is also a pretty cool pictorial snapshot of the day.

Un “author” doxy is decentralised, agile IT, that’s why Scott, Shuo, and David are deeply embedded in business units and not locked away in a glass tower.

Un “author” doxy is looking at how IT supports an internal, enterprise relationship economy that will ebb and flow and change direction. Brand marketers don’t control brands – people do, IT doesn’t control organisations – we do. I intend to do a lot more thinking about the unusual, the unorthodox and I’d love to hear you views.

Where once the only indication of search volume on a particular keyterm was a little green bar with 6 positions; 0 for hardly any search volume, 1 for a bit more search volume and 5 for freakin’ loads of search volume; the Google Adwords Keyword Tool now gives an indication of search volume on 0 to 100 scale. That’s a granularity increase of almost 16 times for the numerically obsessed!

According to Readwriteweb this may be the start of the mighty Google allowing much more access to its vast array of data-banks (highly anonomised, of course).

Perhaps I should be fearing my job? A good proportion of what I do is taking the tiny spotlights into the void that is the internet, compiling them, normalising them with data that I know is accurate and then visualising that in a way that reveals insight - data-mashing if you like. If really granular, accurate information is readily available; perhaps there won’t be a place for my team and I at ICrossing UK?

I actually don’t think this true. In fact, I think it’s exciting and a great source of opportunity. If we can take really good information from different digital marketing functions and help to give consumers what they want, when they want it then we, our clients, and most importantly, the user will benefit. Search informs website build which informs social media strategy which informs display advertising and vice versa and ad finitum….

Take a look at Swivel to see how interesting and useful insight can come out of making the data openly accessible.

Google’s latest innovations in the way it displays search results in its natural listings has huge implications for user experience and the way we create websites.

‘Sitelinks’ emerged late last year. They are the links that appear under the number 1 search listing that enable you to click directly on a main navigational link that resides on the destination site - think of them as shortcuts. OK, so this helps us get from A-B better and extends the brand’s success at capturing search real estate - effectively pushing other sites lower down the results page.

This example for Woolworths illustrates the natural search navigation at work:

A good overview of Sitelinks can be found on the Google Webmastercentral blog here.

More recently Google has started presenting a ’secondary search’ box within the natural results. This allows people to search all pages that Google has from a site without leaving the search engine. Which means that the much of the huge usability investment you may have made can be by-passed in a click…

The implications are more clear than ever. Search friendly site design means taking into account the whole user journey, from search through to action. This extends the idea of usability from optimising e.g. a shopping cart process into the way people navigate through brand networks.

Now x this by every device and interface Google will interact with people in 3 years time. Wow.

Once we accept that we have lost control of the ‘home page’, and that every page on our site can now reside somewhere else before the click,we can start to put search at the heart of our creative planning. not an original idea, but one that I will keep repeating until someone tells me I am insane, and then I will not believe them.