Cam Balzer's Web-Cite

Whrrl - mobile + social + search

I don't think I've seen this particular straight in buzz-word rummy yet: mobile + social + search...

Overview from USATODAY: Give it a Whrrl: Service blends Net, friends' advice.

100MM and counting!

DART Search, the technology incubated by Performics and now integrated into the DART Suite of products from DoubleClick, just passed the 100MM keyword mark. That's right. 100MM keywords have been trafficked to major search engines for thousands of advertisers through this platform.

Those who've been around the industry know that even though search has always been a technology-enabled marketing vehicle, for much of the last 10 years, the primary technology was Microsoft Excel! No more.

A corollary to Wanamaker

Search marketing is one of the most accountable advertising mediums ever created. Advertisers pay only for clicks from users who are explicitly looking for specific products, services or information. Those clicks can all be tracked to the exact keyword that the user entered. And the users can be tracked to conversion. Seems like a closed loop, right?

Wrong. Eighty to ninety percent of the conversions, in some verticals, that are generated by search cannot be tracked. They happen offline, where the user goes after researching online or looking up a store address. Or they happen after a tracking cookie expires or is cleared by the user.

So, yes: search addresses Wanamaker's axiom: "Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don't know which half." But it introduces another vexing challenge for search marketers, and thus my Corollary to Wanamaker's First Law of Advertising Accountability:

I know half the value I'm driving from advertising (even in search) is untracked, there's just no easy way to track it!

Some additional thoughts on this topic as they pertain to local and mobile advertising, in my presentation from SMX Local in Denver. (Christine's reference to Wanamaker in her presentation triggered this thought for me. Thanks Christine!)

Mortgage shake-out may benefit search channel?

Looks like search marketing may weather the mortgage marketing storm (that even The Onion has noticed). From Google's Advertising Week press day:

While Kaplan conceded that Google is watching the current economic trends closely, the restriction in mortgage issuance by lenders such as Countrywide could actually result in more consumer searches because mortgages will be harder to find.

At the same time, banks are seeking more depositors to fund their loans, which may result in additional marketing spending to attract big deposits. (Financial Category Holds Steady At Google, MediaPost Publications - 09/21/2007)

Beware SEMs: even record labels are coming up with clever search marketing strategy

SEMs be warned: your core competency has been mainstreamed. A record label executive just devised and executed an incredibly clever search strategy... on YouTube, not top of mind as a search engine for many search marketers:

Once the album was completed late last year, [Marié] Digby and her label began looking for ways to gain visibility. "I was coming out of nowhere," Ms. Digby says. "I wanted to find a way to get some exposure."

That's when the idea of posting simple videos of cover songs came up. "No one's going to be searching for Marié Digby, because no one knows who she is," Mr. Bunt, the Hollywood Records senior vice president, reasoned. So she posted covers of hits by Nelly Furtado and Maroon 5, among others, so that users searching for those artists' songs would stumble on hers instead. Her version of Rihanna's "Umbrella" proved a nearly instant hit. (Download This: YouTube Phenom Has a Big Secret - WSJ.com subscription required)

Here are the YouTube search results for "Umbrella".

UPDATE: her youtube page has quite a healthy--are at least energetic--dialogue going on about her authenticity.

Ask getting traction with new unified search interface?

Gord thinks Ask is starting to get traction with their "unified search" interface. He has data from Enquiro's ongoing eye-tracking studies that users are accepting of the new interface  (or at least that it doesn't negatively impact the time they spend on the page). And he's hearing buzz at SES that search insiders really like it.

Strong momentum for Ask's new interface could accelerate the transmogrification of the typical linear text-based search experience. Kosmix has a nice thing going on that front. Google's playing with interesting stuff in SearchMash. Anyone know of others?

So just buy half the clicks?

Need to track this study down because it seems from the coverage to be a bit wanting. Like much interactive agency-driven search research, Atlas approaches search from a banner-buyers perspective:

Atlas studied 30 search ad campaigns reaching 120,000 users on Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft. It found that nearly half of clicks on ads came from people who had already visited the advertiser's Web site. (AdWeek: Are Search Ads a Waste of Money?)

So, the other half haven't already visited the site. Even if you attribute no value to a repeat visitor via search, I bet the effective CPM on the clicks of first time visitors still looks better than the average banner campaign.

And how many marketers attribute no value to a repeat visitor. Does this sentence sound right? "It found that nearly half the visits to the mall came from people who had already visited the advertiser's store". Or, "half the recipients of the catalog had already ordered from the advertiser's catalog."

Heath's Question: Top trends in search

My colleague Heath Row just asked for my top of mind 3-5 important trends in search, or that vicinity. For the record, they are (in no particular order):

• Gradual emergence of search 2.0 in the mainstream engines: "unified search" (my name for the trend) from Google and Ask, personalized search, etc. Collectively they will create pretty big changes in the search experience over the next 12-24mo that could impact marketers significantly
• Overall the rapid iteration of features/functionality from the engines and the industry's ability to keep up, from tech integration, execution, integration and  best practices POVs
• The continual 'emergingness' of local and mobile. One of these days, they'll be huge, but it's been kind of like watching the bad guy who gets steamrolled in slow motion in Austin Powers...
• Extensions of search: content targeting > site targeting >... and now audio, print, behavioral. Are agencies going to have to choose between being "SEMs" or "Google agencies"?
• Long slow progression to integrating search and display... Not just reporting but planning and managing. Synching these up at each stage is at least as hard as just getting the data lined up in one place.
• Not exactly search but the big question for me right now: pay per click was an evolutionary leap forward in marketing that grew out of the primordial stew of search. In web 1.0, the primary activity was trying to find things. That made search the nexus: everyone goes through there to get almost anywhere. And that provided the foundation for keyword targeting and the scale/speed for a dynamic pricing/performance model to emerge. Question is, will another evolutionary leap happen out of the new nexus of social networks? Now that hundreds of millions of pple go through there for many kinds of personal connections, what new ad form will emerge? Display, sponsorships, ppc, etc will certainly play a role there, but is there a "pay per node" or "pay per person" or another engagement driven model lurking out there that will change the game again?

Squidoo's Google traffic & the risks of viral success

Squidoo's cautionary tale continues to unfold. Many blogs are reporting major declines in its traffic after running a-foul of Google's ranking algorithms. Here's some data. Driving 65% of its traffic at the beginning of July 2007, Google now accounts for only 35%, according to Hitwise. Impact on Squidoo's overall traffic has also been huge, with a 50% drop in July.

These data continue to highlight the challenge posed to social media / web 2.0 sites by search optimization: the same things that make a site like Squidoo so valuable for sharing information also make it irresistible for natural search optimizers, whether well intentioned or not. Viral success is a double-edged sword, as the word itself should remind us: unchecked, they kill the host.

Percentage of Squidoo's traffic coming from Google.com

Squidoo's overall traffic trends (as a % of all visits to all internet sites)

Keywords Squared - kw list building tool

Way back in 2003, I went looking for a tool to concatenate individual keywords into search term phrases, when building out big lists for testing. I couldn't find anything so I had one built. Here it is: Keywords Squared. Tool allows you to:

• input list of keywords and mix and match those to create phrases. For instance, input "car, truck, new, used, illinois, chicago" and you can easily concatenate these into all the likely combinations: "new car chicago, used truck illinois, used truck, etc etc"
• or, start with a list of phrases, break them down into individual words and then rebuild into new phrases

If you have questions comments or tips, please post to the comments.

(note that some of the links are to the old v of this blog. haven't completely cleaned it up but the basic tool is still functional)