Search Sense

Before I begin I have a confession - I am a Google fan through-and-through. It’s natural results have become the benchmark of the search industry. The results are relevant, it’s intuitive and quick to use and I can’t find a better alternative. But I am also a fan of Wikipedia and Knol worries me.

It’s a no-brainer right? Let’s monetise, sorry ‘organise’, the world’s information.

Since the phenomenal success of the most effective new advertising system for a century, Google Adwords, search engines have been monetising every bit of real estate they can lay their hands on. Yahoo! decided that it’s ‘natural’ results could be bought by advertisers using it’s ‘feed’ system, and everyone tried placing CPC adverts in a variety of locations. Natural results in Google, however, have been left largely untouched and advert-free.

Hmm, well Google does place news, images and videos (via youtube) within the search results - all of which have differing degrees of Adwords penetration. Late last week our friends at Mountain View added a new way of getting into their own search results via Knol. Details as yet are thin on the ground, but we know that select authors are being invited to write articles within their area of expertise ‘to find a way to help people share their knowledge‘… Sounds like a more ivory tower like version of Wikipedia to me.. But with Adwords, and close to the top of the natural results guaranteed?

The guys are Techcrunch are debating this under the heading ‘Google knol a step too far?’ It’s worth a look.

Personally I think that Google will make Knol earn it’s place in natural results fairly but at a cost to commercially orientated websites, many of which have been forced to invest more into the Adwords campaigns over the past few years as a result of algorithm tweaks…

The process of organising the world’s information just got a bit more lucrative, I think.

Nilhan Jayasinghe, Spannerworks’ Head of Search and Natural Search Strategists Jonathan Stewart, Alex Asigno and Addam Hassan are currently at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose, California. Here’s their thoughts on the conference so far…

The big thing that everyone is talking about this year is blended search – the incorporation of multimedia content within natural search results. Google call it Universal Search, Ask call it Ask 3d – whatever you want to call it, it’s making waves in terms of how search marketers need to react to vertical search. As can be attested by the number of people attending the multimedia seminars on podcast, image and video optimisation, and the standing room only in many of these talks, it seems everyone is eagerly rising to the challenge.

Some excellent examples are being played out in front of our eyes at the conference – the most notable being the search engine results for “hurricane dean”. On Monday, Greg Jarboe of SEO PR presented on Google Universal, and showed current search results for this query. He commented on the fact that at that point, the only extra content to be embedded within the natural search results were news articles, but that as the week progressed, we should expect to see more multimedia content appearing for that search result as people uploaded images and videos. Lo and behold, by Tuesday morning, images were showing up alongside news results within the search results:

This just goes to show the speed at which Google are seeking content from their vertical offerings to help keep their natural search results relevant and fresh.

This being the States, and with an impending presidential election looming, many presenters were using the examples of presidential candidates to highlight the importance of reputation management that blended search has now thrust upon search marketers. Googling Republican candidate Mitt Romney returns the following images befitting of a potential president, embedded within the natural search results:

However, try googling Democrat candidate Hillary Clinton, and it’s a different story:

Is this Google showing their political allegiance, or perhaps the Republicans actively trying to discredit Clinton – maybe she just doesn’t photograph well – either way, this highlights the importance of managing the first page of results for your name and/or brand.

Writing that has been optimised for search engines can sometimes make for poor copy, but write like Churchill and you should please both human and machine readers… (more…)