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Posts Tagged ‘Search’

Search engines are amazing but also suck

October 12th, 2011 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media, Technology

The other day Kate said: The Internet is Amazing.

It is amazing – bloody amazing. Its very hard to remember what life was like before the Internet. The amount of information and the things you can do on the Internet is mind-blowing. Search engines are amazing too – simply by virtue of the fact that they can scan all of that information in a very very short amount of time.

Search engines are a big part of the Internet.

I think that search engines have achieved an incredible feat. They are both incredibly incredible and yet more or less completely useless. The problem is that the search begins when you get a search engine involved, they are what the say they are – a powerful engine for searching i.e. not find engines.

Social search is supposed to be the answer to this problem. This is where you consult your networks for answers and recommendations. Rather than chucking keywords into Google or Bing, you put out a tweet, or go to a forum or post a question on your Facebook. Nice idea in theory but one that falls down unless your network of friends and their brains are equally distributed across the required range of topics and experiences (which is unlikely).

The other challenge is that its not very easy – unless you’re someone like Mike Arrington, Lady Gaga or Russell Crowe – to actually get people to respond. In my experience the people that respond in social networks are tight connections (thanks guys). It’s rare that a distant connection responds with an answer or piece of advice via a social network – even though you know they have answers and opinions. Its good when they do.

It’s different in the real world. People will generally give you an answer if you ask them a direct question. Its rare that you get a mute blank stare as a response to a question or request for advice although it has happened to me once or twice in France (I drove off).

This is probably why 80% of word of mouth still takes place offline.

What is the solution to this problem – I can’t foresee a future where I ask a question on Twitter and I receive 300,000 results in 0.24 seconds and neither would I want this.

I could probably do something with (a very) Advanced Search in Google but I am not convinced it would work that well. Natural language processing isn’t the answer either as the real problem is the amount of dud, repetitive information on the Internet.

I’d like a search engine that trawled a limited number of trusted quality sources. I would have to chose them, though I would be open to recommendations and lists (it would be dangerous to leave the selection process to any third party). I should have complete control over my sources and should be able to add any that I please. Could someone create this? Have they already?

Also, has any noticed that Google News is broken?

Tags: bing, Google, Search, social, suck, WOM, Yahoo!

Mobile internet and the changing search experience

May 28th, 2011 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Search, Technology

We all expected mobile to change search and now we’re beginning to see this come to fruition. Via the seer Robert Scoble I recently learnt about two new and quite similar approaches to mobile search.

One is built into Microsoft’s l latest version of Windows Mobile, which is called Mango and the other – Do@ – is an app that will be available on multiple mobile platforms.

Both take a similar approach in that they produce results as opposed to links. Someone has already gone to the trouble if defining the best results for you.

At a macro level, google is presented with some significant challenges with its traditional approach to search, results are heavily polluted and the Google search engine leaves a lot of work with the searcher, hence the company’s foray into social search. The other problem is that the traditional approach to search simply doesn’t lend itself to the mobile experience.

Check out these videos to learn more, that’s assuming you’ve learnt anything up to now!

Windows Mango

Do@

Tags: Google, Microsoft, mobile, Search

New Report: ‘Public Relations 2011: Issues, Insights, Ideas’

March 12th, 2011 by Daniel Young | 1 Comment | Filed in Public Relations, Social media

Last week chums Craig Pearce and Guy Downes and potential chum Noel Pennington released a report entitled, ‘Public Relations 2011: Issues Insight Ideas’. This 30+ page PR resource features contributions and commentary from a variety of communications, digital and marketing industry luminaries and me.

You can click on the cover page to get stuck in.

Tags: 2011, csr, digital, Influence, PR, reputation, Search, socialmedia, trends, trust

Thoughts on Google Instant

September 13th, 2010 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Search, Technology

Google launched an updated search offering last week called Google Instant.

Search results appear in real-time with Google Instant, the user no longer needs to click the ‘Search’ button or press enter. Results are personalised based on search histories (if you’re signed in to a Google account).

Search results appear and are revised as search terms are entered letter by letter.

Some quick thoughts from me on what this means:

Google Instant will improve search literacy – users will become adept at creating long strings of keywords.
The top Google ranking positions become even more crucial for website owners. The aim for website owners has always been to rank on the first page of the Google search results. Top ten was acceptable pre-Google Instant. I reckon its all about the top five results now, as this is all most users will see as they modify their search terms.
Companies with generic terms in their brand names may suffer as a result of Google Instant as they stand more chance of losing users along the way. The generic keyword (i.e. relating to your industry or category) will expose the user to a whole raft of competitors.
Organisations need to review and improve their Search Listing (the copy that appears under each Search Results) as this may be the bait that catches the searchers eye resulting in the click you want.
For advertisers, hmm…. I am not sure what this means but I don’t think its very good. It may be good for Google because it will generate more impressions but I think it means a reduced dwell time for ads overall, which I would assume is likely to drive down CTRs.
Google Instant will deliver a better mobile experience, where users are typically hunting for something very specific and are less inclined to scroll – click – scroll – click. It will work better with speech input. This is important because mobile apps are circumventing search in some respects. There is a need to improve the mobile experience.

Google Instant is coming to all Google properties in time. The company is claiming that Instant will save time.

Tags: Google, instant, listings, marketing, results, Search, seo

Facebook Must Change Search Engine in Order to Rival Google in Search and Discovery

February 20th, 2010 by Daniel Young | 4 Comments | Filed in Search, Social media

Recent data from Compete and comScore shows that Facebook has passed Google to become the top source of traffic to major portals. The announcement and the resulting discussion prompted this post by Facebook, which includes the following section:

According to comScore, Google still has nearly two-thirds of the U.S. search market, but dropped a fraction of a percent from 65.7% in Dec 2009 to 65.4% in Jan 2010 [source: Information Week]. While Google is still the leader in the search space, and Facebook only accounted for just under 400 million searches in January, that is a gain of 13% over December. If this trend continues, Google may have ample reason to fear Facebook.

The Compete data shows that Facebook is the second most popular site in the US with 134m unique visiter in January 2010, ahead of Yahoo! and just behind Google.

Facebook is in the ascendancy but the company must make changes to its own Search engine if it is to become a genuine rival to Google, the vastly dominant player in the space.

Facebook, like other social networks, represents opportunity for brands because of the simple fact that this is where a lot of the action is taking place online, as demonstrated by slews and rising traffic. Switched on brands are already tapping into the Facebook community. But Facebook Search serves marketers poorly today as a place of discovery. Check out my search results for ‘mobile handset’:

Not particularly useful. Three users groups with 210 members between them.

No sign of the brand sponsored pages where Facebook Users can learn about new products, participate in competitions and promotions, chat with other users and potential customers, communicate directly with the company and link through to relevant pages on the Web.

The Sony Ericsson WorldPage has more than 445,ooo Fans (Sony Ericsson is a client) but the way that Facebook Search works prevents this page, which is clearly relevant to the search term, from appearing.

This is an issue for Facebook.

We see the same issue if we run a search for ’sneakers’:

The retailer Sole Provider Sneakers comes out on top here, simply by virtue of having the search term embedded in its company name (also the name of the Page). Yet Sole Provider Sneakers sells a lot of Nike trainers and a search for ‘Nike’ would not have produced their Page in its results.

Facebook has to play a delicate balancing act here. Ultimately, user activity, personal profiles, user content, sharing and discussion are the currency of social networks such as Facebook. The company needs to avoid giving users the impression that they are being marketed to via the network, failure to do this could well become its undoing.

One way around this could be for Facebook to adopt a model similar to Google’s Universal Search, which would allow users to chose and filter the types of results that are presented to them via Facebook Search. This could be built into the privacy settings that Facebook has been so keen to promote recently.

Interestingly, Google listed Facebook as a formal competitor for the first time in a recent 10K filing, as reported by SearchEngineLand:

Our business is characterized by rapid change and converging, as well as new and disruptive, technologies. We face formidable competition in every aspect of our business, particularly from companies that seek to connect people with information on the web and provide them with relevant advertising. We face competition from:

Traditional search engines, such as Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation’s Bing.
Vertical search engines and e-commerce sites, such as WebMD (for health queries), Kayak (travel queries), Monster.com (job queries), and Amazon.com and eBay (commerce). We compete with these sites because they, like us, are trying to attract users to their web sites to search for product or service information, and some users will navigate directly to those sites rather than go through Google.
Social networks, such as Facebook, Yelp, or Twitter. Some users are relying more on social networks for product or service referrals, rather than seeking information through traditional search engines. (my emphasis)

Some subtle and simple changes to Facebook Search would accelerate the trend towards Facebook and other social networks as a primary channel for Search.

The challenge for marketers will (continue to be) to resist the tempation to sell via social networks and to engage with social networking users in a way that adds value, build relationships, earns trust and facilitates creativity and connectivity. Facebook will have to manage the sensitivities of its users delicately but if managed well Facebook could become a natural home to Search, delivering value to users and marketers alike.

Tags: Discovery, facebook, Fans, Google, keywords, Pages, Search, Yahoo!

Microsoft takes the bait, enters discussions with News Corp

November 23rd, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Media, Search

It was pretty obvious that Rupert Murdoch’s recent announcement that News Corp would prevent its content being indexed by Google was an appeal to other search engines to step up to the plate. I have half expected other publishers to make their own ‘anti-Google indexing’ announcements but it seems that they are keeping quiet for the time being to see what eventuates.

The FT reported today that News Corp and Microsoft are in ‘discussions’. Microsoft is determined or desperate to catch up with Google in search, the latter being streets ahead. Microsoft has made it clear that it will invest heavily to achieve its goals.

Could Microsoft turn the tide in search through exclusive partnerships with publishers?

Update: Some interesting perspectives on today’s developments…

Tom Foremski at SiliconValleyWatcher: Is Murdoch Setting Up a Bidding War for News Corp. Index?

Danny Sullivan at Search Engine Land: Why an Exclusive WSJ Deal Wouldn’t Help Bing

Tags: bing, Google, Microsoft, Murdoch, news, newscorp, Print, Publishing, Search, Yahoo!

Ten reasons why Public Relations should play the central role in Social Media

September 26th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Social media

The ongoing debate about who ‘owns social media’ continues apace. Here is my pitch for the PR industry, which I believe has a very strong claim.

Ultimately, all of the back and forth is irrelevant. The sector (or individuals) that gets closest to owning social media will be the one that delivers the most value over time.

Here are my thoughts…

PR’s heritage isn’t selling. It seeks to influence and build relationships. This makes it more suited and better equipped to initiate, engage and hold a conversation.
PR is expert in content creation. They can’t be blamed for trying to get involved with social media but what expertise do media buying agencies have in content creation? Content creation is a central component of marketing and specifically social media.
The advertising industry is focused on promotions, launches and campaigns. I heard an advertising executive at a conference last year talk about their ability to ‘turn on’ and ‘turn off’ the community that they had successfully built for an FMCG client. This is a great illustration of the point. This attitude shows a high degree of arrogance and a low degree of empathy. The community would quickly see through this kind of approach to managing relationships. The advertising industry isn’t set up culturally or operationally (including its fee structure) to maintain an ongoing or continuous dialogue.
The PR industry is subtle. The sector gets a lot of flack for spinning but subtlety is at the core of spin. Digital media requires subtlety, including the ability to understand context and respond accordingly.
The PR industry is close to the business leaders. The C-suite calls on PR in a crisis and is reliant on PR when the organisation’s reputation is threatened. PR has a central role to play in educating the C-suite about the benefits of social media and is a trusted advisor on reputation management, unlike other marketing disciplines.
The PR industry is something of a sole operator when compared with the other marketing disciplines. Communication often functions as a stand-alone department along side Marketing but is part of the mix. One of the key challenges for the social media strategists is that they are on the outside, they may have deep expertise in their field but few things operate in a vacuum and its clear that social media is most effective when integrated with offline marketing efforts.
Strategy is at the heart of good PR. It could be argued that PR has a been a little slow to come to the (socialmedia) party. There are lots of reasons for this. PR’s approach is always circumspect, it has to add value when your dealing with corporate reputations otherwise its not worth doing. I think this will play out well for the PR industry in the long term.
The culture of the PR industry is to allow others to create content. i.e. journalists. The industry has been built on this fundamental characteristic. The key message is designed to assert as much control as possible over the process of content creation. The approach changes in the context of social media but I think this is one of the strongest arguments in PRs favour. PR has never had control of the message when it comes to the end result.
Search. I think the PR industry has a long way to go in this space but that content is fundamental to search strategy – see point 2. Search seeks to ‘game a system’. The tool of the gaming is content, which has to be of the highest quality.
Most (all?) organisations need to adapt culturally to engage their customers in authentic conversations. I genuinely believe that the businesses that most effectively listen to customers and is able to incorporate their insights into product development and services will be the most successful. This requires an organisational change and is not something that a snazzy social media program can deliver. This, for me, is PRs biggest opportunity as the function that advises and implements change management strategies. PR has a great opportunity to take the lead in making this change happen – the outbound social media campaigns will become the natural output and realisation of this cultural and organisational change in business.

As ever, keen to hear your thoughts and disagreements. Here is a good analysis of the debate from the AdAge.

Tags: Advertising, Advice, campaigns, marketing, PR, Public Relations, Search, socialmedia

Tools for understanding keyword usage and improving site rankings

August 15th, 2009 by Daniel Young | No Comments | Filed in Search

It’s a glorious morning here in Sydney and I am going to crank out a quick post before I go out for the day.

Lots of discussion this week about Google Caffeine and the impact that it will have on search results. There is a useful post by Matt Cutts, a Google software engineer.

Back links are one part of the search equation. Keywords are another.

Here are a few tools for assessing keyword density and usage. They can help you analyse your competitors (i.e. the people that rank higher than you) and inform your own keyword strategy. Thanks to @jimboot for some of these tips – Jim puts out a series of very useful search videos, which can be found on YouTube.

Here goes:

To understand what the most often used keywords within a specific website use TagCrowd. This can help you identify the words that are ranking for a competitive site.
For a different angle on keyword density use Keyword Counter. You can run an analysis of an entire website.
For identifying related keywords use the Google Wonder wheel, which can be found in the left hand options column on any Google search results page. The Wonder wheel link can be found under ‘Standard View’. It creates a clickable spider diagram of keywords related to your original search term.
To check comparative results in the hottest search engines go to Bing vs. Google. Pre-Caffeine results.
The Google sandbox for running test searches against the new Caffeine code.

There are a plethora of tools for analysing and optimising keywords, we use Keyword Discovery and have trialled Market Samurai.

Tags: analysis, bing, density, Google, keywords, Search, seo, trends

Google makes changes to search with Caffeine – how will it impact you?

August 11th, 2009 by Daniel Young | 5 Comments | Filed in Search, Technology

Google announced changes to its search algorithm yesterday. The changes will impact the way that your blog or website ranks.

The updates – named Caffeine – are described by Google as “a next-generation architecture for Google’s web search“.

Thanks to my old colleague Ged Carroll and his RT for Stephen Waddington to this econsultancy.com article via Twitter.

Google describes the changes as “the first step in a process that will let us push the envelope on size, indexing speed, accuracy, comprehensiveness and other dimensions.”

Google has opened up a web developer preview to collect feedback: www2.sandbox.google.com/

Google is inviting feedback: Engineers will be reading the feedback, but we won’t have the cycles to send replies.

I ran a few searches against my name (daniel young) and found that:

My Facebook profile result goes from 5 in old Google to 2 with Caffeine
My FriendFeed profiles goes from 29 in old Google to 8 with Caffeine
My Twitter profile goes from 18 in old Google to 14 with Caffeine
This blog goes from 7 in old Google to 24 with Caffeine

Caffeine seems to be:

Favouring the sites that are updated more frequently
or, favouring social networks over other content
or, both of the above – since they are inter-related

The jump in FriendFeed could be attributed to the Facebook acquisition and the increased importance on real-time properties is most likely a counter strategy to the launch of Bing and Facebook’s real-time search capabilities.

Take a look at the results in Caffeine when we use the search term ‘pr agency’:

Top result is the same in Caffeine and old Google – Punch PR
GlobalCom PR replaces Yetis 10 at number 3 in Caffeine. Yetis 10 drops to rank 51! Down 48 places.
Edelman drops out of the top ten with Caffeine
VitisPR, Brands2Life, Berkeley PR enter the top ten with Caffeine
At the expense of Edelman, About PR.net (directory) and The Publicity Agency

My sites are fairly inconsequential but changes to the way that Google produces search results could result in lost business opportunities for organisations that have invested heavily in the Web or are reliant upon it.

The secrecy surrounding the Google algorithm is legendary but it seems odd that Google is asking the user community to tell it about the impact that the change is having on search results.

Does Google not have an obligation or duty to let organisations and individuals know what impact the changes will have on their web properties?

The changes aren’t objective – Google is making subjective decisions about the value of different types of content, sites, activity, formats and so on. These subjective judgements take on particular significance in the context of Google’s extraordinary market position – in excess of 90 per cent market share here in Australia.

This goes to the nub of an issue, which was explored in some detail at today’s AIMIA event in Sydney: ‘Advertiser’s Rights and Consumer Privacy‘.

The event focused on deceptive advertising techniques and unethical practice online.

Unfortunately for Google , it bears the brunt of much of the criticism due in part to its market dominance but also due to its lack of transparency.

The whole value chain came under scrutiny this morning – search engines (Yahoo!, Ask), aggregators, mobile carriers, social networks and digital advertising networks.

Speakers argued that there is a significant lack of accountability in the sector, which is characterised by very complex networks and inter-relationships.

Take two examples cited in today’s event, which featured Ben Edelman – an assistant professor at Harvard Business School:

1. Deceptive advertising tactics are widespread to the point of ubiquity within paid search. Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act provides immunity from liability for providers and users of an “interactive computer service” who publish information provided by others:

No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider.

This means that online publishers are not responsible for the content they publish, no matter how misleading or deceptive it may be – resulting in many instances of dishonest and misleading search marketing tactics.

Search engines are, as a result, failing to take proactive action to clear out these deceptive practices.

2. Google and its partners inflate conversions to claim credit for traffic that advertisers would otherwise have received for free. Edelman outlines four examples of this here.

I don’t believe that Google is an evil enterprise but I am convinced that it has excessive market power and that this is not in the long term interests of our digital economy or the broader community. Perhaps it gets a hard time as a result of its market dominance but leaders in every field have a duty of care and obligation to do the right thing.

Google is pervasive yet untouchable. Mr. Edelman provided an example of this when he highlighted a laughable and ironic complaints and claims process for Adwords.

The following is taken from Google Adwords Terms and Conditions for Australian customers:

10 Miscellaneous. The Agreement must be construed as if both parties jointly wrote it, governed by California law except for its conflicts of laws principles and adjudicated in Santa Clara County, California. The Agreement constitutes the entire agreement between the parties with respect to the subject matter hereof, and supersedes and replaces any other applicable agreements, terms and conditions applicable to the subject matter hereof. Any conflicting or additional terms contained in additional documents (e.g. reference to a purchase order number) or oral discussions are void. Each party shall not disclose the terms or conditions of these Terms to any third party, except to its professional advisors under a strict duty of confidentiality or as necessary to comply with a government law, rule or regulation. Customer may grant approvals, permissions, extensions and consents by email, but any modifications by Customer to the Agreement must be made in a writing executed by both parties. Any notices to Google must be sent to Google Ireland Limited, AdWords Program, 1st & 2nd Floor, Gordon House, Barrow Street, Dublin 4, Ireland, with a copy to Legal Department, via confirmed facsimile, with a copy sent via first class or air mail or overnight courier, and are deemed given upon receipt. Notice to Customer may be effected by sending email to the email address specified in Customer’s account, or by posting a message to Customer’s account interface, and is deemed received when sent (for email) or no more than 15 days after having been posted (for messages in Customer’s account interface).

In short, please send an email to the Google engineers if you want to provide feedback on Caffeine, the new search algorithm (but don’t expect a reply), and submit notices regarding modifications to Adwords agreements by snail mail to their office in Dublin, Ireland.

Tags: Advertising, Caffeine, Edelman, Google, marketing, Search, Yahoo!