I got here, at the Jarvis Center on the west side of mid Manhattan, around 5 PM tonight, just in time to take a quick look at the exhibition hall and the early evening keynote with Bill Tancer.

Bill Tancer’s new book, CLICK, is worth checking out.

Bill Tancer is using Hitwise search query data, almost as a lens, to turn it back on ourselves, to find out insights that don’t normally show up in market research studies. Examples might be Gas Prices orvour real fears, segmentation.

Cognitive dissonance - are we really catching what goes on online?

I guess the full Hitwise database allows you to test out ideas on what motivated an audience in a different way then ComScore or anything you can now get from Google.

I have wanted to have the HitWise data to play with for some time, but I have never worked in a place where HitWise was purchased (and HitWise is pretty expensive).

There is an Art behind the Arbitrage and it can be used for financial predictions, like unemployment percent before the department of Labor announced it.

Can we predict the outcome of the US Presidential Election beforehand?

Diffusion of Innovation and how products diffuse in our society. How fast does a bussiness innovate? Which segments are the early adopters?

Early Adopters visit Tattoo sites, video directory web sites, there is so much video out there that semantic search might not be capturing all the information out there.

Ilovedata.com and the Science of Data in Time Magazine.

I will buy a copy of CLICK today, get it signed by Bill Tancer now, more to get ideas on how to use data I can get my hands on.

The problem is the data you can get out of Google Trends, Compete.com, and other sources that are available to me are “noisy” and lack resolution.

Compete.com launched their new Search Analytics product and my original post - which I've now amended, was harsh and critical - but I didn't have the whole story (nor was it communicated till a week later)

However, here's story I've received today - and as I'll now have access to the entire toolset , I can evaluate it - and I'll write about it in a couple of days; meanwhile, this is the information I've been given by Compete - which I'll evaluate:

While the front end of Compete Pro doesn’t look like much of a change, it represents a MASSIVE reworking of our backend, specifically in member management. I won’t bore you with details, but the fact that you ended up with no credits was actually a result of your inclusion in a list of folks slated to get enhanced access, and a miscommunication on how this was going to get done. Having found out about the hiccup this morning, I’m currently in the process of getting this in place (though your access is currently available).

Couple points I want to address on your post:

Compete Taking away everyone’s credits: With the move to a subscription model, credits had to be converted into Pro access. We did this conversion based on the number of credits each member had at the time of launch, and gave substantially more value away than people purchased. As a matter of fact, even non-paying members with at least 1 credit were given a free month of Compete Pro. For paying members, we typically gave around 10X the value of their credits.

Minimal announcements: Because of the timing of our launch, and the fact that we are rolling out additional tools very soon after launch, we decided to hold off on aggressive promotion until later on in July. However, starting in May, we were informing our members about the transition, and let all of our paying members what the transition meant for them well before launch.

Pricing: Compete Pro is about 10% of where we plan on going by years end. Instead of ramping up pricing as we add more features, we will be adding increasing functionality at every plan level throughout the year. I’m sure that you’re view of our pricing will be dramatically different by the end of the year, as we will be adding more metrics, and stronger data than competitors changing 10x our prices. Just a few of the things slated for inclusion in the coming months:

• Paid/natural search breakouts
• Referral/destination sources (i.e how are people getting to a site, and where are they going when the leave)
• Robust ranked lists (such as search related lists, rankings by category, sub-domain inclusions)
• Sub-domain data

One of the better Compete.com posts on it's new Search Analytics offering came out today on Who Clicked Britney? by  Andrew Pearlman that has this chart (see below)…I don't think I've ever seen a chart that detailed about why people are searching for someone:

It's kinda strange, or maybe it shouldn't be, that not that many people care about Britney Spears' music anymore, at least, not based on their search behavior:

"..That is a lot of searchers about just one person, and - this may seem shocking - not many people were looking for her music. The term ‘Britney Spears Lyrics’ is the 19th most searched term and the word ‘music’ doesn’t show up until about the 208th. In fact out of the top 50 Britney Spears related search terms, only 8 are G-rated (2 of which are misspellings), 4 include ‘VMA,’ 4 are about her shaved head, 3 include Paris Hilton and the rest are… well, dirty. And that’s just the top 50. "

Before anything else, Britney Spears was known as a singer - it looks/sounds like her singing career is pretty much over - and that's based on Search Behavior - what people say they're interested in based on what they search for.

Search Market Share query volume for Microsoft Live jumped 67% in June 07 (over May 07) and is 48% greater than last year, according to Compete.com -June Search Market Share: Big Surprise from MSN. 

I don't think this news is a big deal yet and here's why:

First, using other sources of Search Market Share information like Comscore, there's a history of Microsoft seeming to gain and then suddenly losing Search Market Share. In fact comScore used to be one of the main places you'd go, using qSearch, to find out about Search Market Share (but now Compete.com provides much of the same type of data, often better and more frequently). 

Somehow, Microsoft gaining on Google sounds familiar… in fact, in 2005 AdWeek reported almost the identical headline that Compete gives today: MSN Gains Market Share.

"…NEW YORK Microsoft's MSN has begun to pick up search market share from industry leader Google, according to an Internet measurement firm.

Nielsen/NetRatings reported that MSN attracted more searchers in February. The New York research firm said MSN's search market share jumped from 12.8 percent in January to 14.2 percent last month. "

And then a month or so later, Microsoft search share went back down again, according to MarketingVox:

"..Despite the work it's put into the search market, Microsoft has actually lost market share last month, reports ZDNet.

Search market share for Microsoft dropped to just nine percent in April, down from 10.1 percent in March. Google saw its market share rise from 53.7 to 55.2 percent. Yahoo remained stable, rising only slightly to 21.9 percent from 21.8."

Compete's Steve Willis says "Google finally has a competitor join it in the (until now) exclusive, positive-year-over-year-growth club. MSN/Live increased their query volume by 67% from May, and 48% from a year ago. Search volume was up all across the board in June and took most everyone else in the same direction".

It looks like MSN/Live took a big chunk of it's Search Share gain from Google, according to the chart above.

But if ….

"..A good portion of the additional Live searches are coming from the Live Search Club, where you can apparently play games for points which you can redeem for fine Microsoft products."

…then the gain, if real, is probably not sustainable.

I'm looking at Compete's new Search Analytics platform that just launched for beta testing and it looks pretty darn good!  I can't talk about the details yet though - but overall - you can get keyword referral, site referral or compare 2 sites and get information that's as good as or better than what Hitwise puts out.

I don't think the new platform will be free when it launches - but it seems to me the functionality to run just the reports you need will be present and is built into the platform.

There's still a lot of work they need to do - beta testing stuff - but I'm smiling and I think they are too!

I'm going to be participating in Compete.com's new Search Analytics Beta Platform which was just announced today.

You can use Compete Search Analytics to Discover new keywords to bid on, find gaps in competitor's search strategies, invest in terms driving the most engaged visitors and track performance against competitors and peers.

I would think this solution involves inserting a Javascript tag on a site that's going to be monitored, and if so, that would be different than what Compete.com does for the rest of it's Web Analytics, which does not require tagging.

But I'll know more soon, as I get the details from Compete.com

I posted a couple of Compete.com Videos on Biggreenblog including an interview of David Cancel, who runs Compete, by Robert Scoble. Have been in communication with David Cancel for several months on metrics, so I'm glad to finally see a online video interview of Cancel.

Here's the Videos in case anyone would like to take a look - I noticed them on Scoble's blog and they're sharable.

COMPETE.COM DEMO

INTERVIEW OF DAVID CANCEL - COMPETE.COM

Kinda busy with conferences lately and I missed this interview with David Cancel by Manoj at Web Analytics World.  I've been in communication with various people at Compete.com over the last 4 or 5 months on various issues.

I had hoped to meet with Compete at SES this week, but I did not notice anyone from Compete being present.  Well, maybe next time.  Read the article by Manoj though, a lot of good info on Compete.com, some that I know about, but not all of it.

I got advanced notice yesterday afternoon that Compete was releasing new enhancements related to Attention Metrics - I was not able to write about it yesterday (their request) and today I was too busy till now to post.

I think the interface has gotten a lot better - take a look:

You can now Embed charts (very Viral…good idea!) - I compared my blog to Webanalyticsbook and webanalyticsdemystified - the numbers have to be way off to be way off though…..but we already know that - I had at least 3.5 times as many unique "people" come to my site in March 2007 as Compete shows.  For Visits, Compete shows about 1/3 of my actual visits.  But if the same bias apply to other sites I'm comparing against, it doesn't matter that much if the numbers are off.

There was not enough information for Engagement Metrics (Attention Daily) but it does seem as if Webanalyticsdemystified is more engaging than my or Sebastian's blog.

On the other hand, I'm in a neck to neck race with Eric on how many pages (posts) people read (I guess on my site - people read faster)!

A lot of good stuff in this update - too bad the Engagement parts don't work on smaller sites like ours.   Even when I compared Apple, Dell, HP and IBM, thinking I'd get something - I got nothing.

But it's a good improvement for Compete.com's interface nonetheless - I'm hoping to meet Compete next week at SES, and maybe we can go over further improvements they have in the pipeline.

Because it's Saint Patrick's Day … Simon Schanche over at Compete.com shares some of Compete's traffic analysis of search behavior on Saint Patrick's Day over the last 4 years.

Most of Compete's charts end up making out that traffic is increasing …. and yes, the Green Bars (notice…they are Green) are going up.

I can argue that people are using the internet more and more .. plus 70 million people are on the Internet this year than last according to a recent ComScore study …  I'd be surprised more if the bars in the chart above did not go up.