Hey, why don’t we just call the Google Search Wiki the Death of Seodanapalus

Personally, I’d be fine with the Death of SEO, as expressed in Marketing Pilgrim -

Google’s SearchWiki Is Here To Stay: Is This The Death of SEO?

Yeah, I’m so sick of Search Conferences that try to take the same gruel and, over and over again, repeat the “dogma“, the usual link stuff, content stuff, reputation stuff.

According to a report from Danny Sullivan it looks like Google’s much talked about SearchWiki is here to stay. Most of the clammer about this new Google feature is focused around a user’s inability to turn it off. While there are several browser plugins available to hide the SearchWiki functions, for most users the SearchWiki is now a permanent part of the Google search experience.

Google’s SearchWiki is a new feature that allows for users to organize search results and make comments. The reorganized results only show up for the user that made the changes, but the comments are made public.

While it seems that most are concerned about turning the SearchWiki off, few have highlighted the effects that this new feature will have on SEO.

At first when I read about SearchWiki I thought that this was the end of SEO. How am I supposed to implement the perfect strategy to manipulate SERPs when all users have to do is click arrows? But now, I think its anything but that.

Now that users are given the ability to reorganize search results it means that listings on the first page are much more valuable. Here’s why: after a user has selected a handful of listings that they send to the top of their SERP, they have effectively locked out the rest of the listings.

Also, the user’s selected listings are saved based on URL, meaning that if another search query is run where the same URL comes up, then the listing/URL is automatically at the top.

Meanwhile, Google is there, listening to whatever anyone is saying and then telling you to forget about 99% of it and just focus on content.

Well, at least, Google came up with a meaningful alternative in the Search Wiki - and it was just what the Doctor ordered.  I lost confidence in Google for a while - but with the Search Wiki - I gained it back.

I had a few thoughts flowing into my mind this week  - it had a lot to do with things going on in the background of my life, and of my experiences lately with an organization I belong to.

Here’s my thought - for what it’s worth - more, so I can write it down before I completely forget it.

I’ve noticed a lot of corporate work is not really about getting anything, in particular done - actually, it’s more about justifying one’s position; positioning.

One of the things I’ve noticed about myself, I really don’t like that kind of circumstance - the one that’s all about positioning - but not about really doing anything, much.

Now, in a way, I’m thinking that Social Media doesn’t seem to be on the top of anyone’s marketing list, lately, even though there’s been some pretty good case studies that say it’s effective, if done properly.

I don’t know - we’ll know  Social Media will become important in organizations when there will be people who will justify their existance by it (ha, ha, ha - haven’t heard anyone yet, being able to do that).

I was pretty excited by Google’s Search Wiki, launched the other day, and now a Google Experiment - as it might be the way to gradually make Social Media, the Wisdom of the Crowd, Collective feedback, as something that will drive organizations to start seeing ROI here - but as a Google Experiment - I’m not sure if the Google Search Wiki will get enough content to make it all that valuable - but then again - if even 1% of all Google Searchers have the Google Search Wiki Experiment enabled, maybe that’ll be enough.

By the way -here’s the posts I’ve written lately about the Google Search Wiki - Personalization and Google Search plus I’m liking the Google Search Wiki though some others, don’t and Google Search Wiki becomes one of Google’s Experiments

I read Is YouTube the Next Google? in Read/WriteWeb tonight (the title is somewhat misleading as YouTube is owned by Google so it’s not really the next Google, it is Google - but YouTube’s search is much different than Google’s textual search) and the post reminded me that, at times, I searched YouTube and was surprised how many of my typical search queries had user generated videos that existed and were tagged for that phrase or a related phase.

Earlier this year I had a client that ran an OCD clinic in London and wanted to create videos for Google Video Ads, and found several OCD videos in YouTube.   It worked for travel too - even in some details of places - perhaps even unfamilar hotels in a foriegn city that I might book a room in (if such were available); but it never went beyound that.

However, it appears that younger searches are using video search via services like YouTube almost as a replacement for Textual Search that Google normally provides.

True, Google has put Universal Search in place that includes videos and images into the mix, but at the end of the day what might emerge is textual search will eventually be replaced by visual and voice search (the new Google iPhone Voice Search was just released today in the iTunes store - though I can’t seem to find it yet and download it).

According to Read/WriteWeb

“….. he mentioned that his son accesses the web through YouTube. At first, I didn’t get it and thought Ian was making a joke. But then I realized he was not. Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other site; his entire web experience was confined to YouTube videos. It was rather puzzling.”

Since I have access to Comscore Media Metrix, I figured, if it’s really true that younger people are replacing textual search with video search, then the demographics profile of YouTube.com of October  07 compared to October 08 ought to show some marked differences - and they did!

October 2007  YouTube.com Demographics

Then I did the same thing for YouTube Demographics October 2008

Usage of YouTube by pre-adolescents 9-14 jumped by roughly 500% over that last year - kids between 2 and 11 years jumped up even more!

Now, you have to wonder - are kids of 2 years old using YouTube? I don’t know, but, somehow, ComScore thinks they are.   Hey, maybe we should call them “eKids” or “eToddlers”, and they probably aren’t as likely to use textual search as video search, or image search.

Also, notice the % Reach has gone up quite a bit, as well.  For example, % Reach is calculated as the the # of Unique Vistors (000) / Total Internet Audience for a Category - Comscore takes care of the Categorization and maintaining all of that is part of the hefty pricetag.

But ……. if YouTube is getting more youngsters searching on it - shouldn’t Google Textual Search get less, or at least, grow less fast, relative to Youtube?

Google Search Demographics - Comscore - October 2007

Again, I ran the same report for October 2008 and ….

And sure enough, there’s not nearly as much growth - for kids 9-14 there were 8,019,000 Uniques in October 2007 and 11,707,000 in 2008, an increase of 45% vs. the 497% growth of the use of YouTube for  the same age group.

Now, I didn’t look if there was differences in usage based on gender, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced that younger people, the future - is in video search and not so much textual search.

If that’s true, it has profound implications, as Search continues to evolve.

Further on in the Read/Write Web post Is YouTube the Next Google?

” … Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better.”

All I can say is ha, ha, ha …  so as more content is generated and placed online, search results for Video will get richer and richer and that can only mean textual searches days are numbered (but we don’t know the number yet).

In the RWW post it’s mentioned the main reason for textual search is hyperlinks work better - but that’s gradually being replaced by hyperlinking images

“…The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it’s just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text.

I agree, not everything is meant to be turned into video or audio content - and honestly, I bet if we took brain scans of searches using textual vs. voice search (ie: Google’s new iPhone Search applicaton with Audio Search) we’d find different centers of the brain being used in a textual search vs. an audio search - and we might as well extend that to video and image search as well.

And if we do that - we’ll see the queries themselves will differ in subtle ways, between what we’d write and what we’d say, when entering the same query to a Search Engine.

Is it far fetched to say the newer generation is evolving past textual search …. ?  I don’t think it’s that much of a strech.

That’s going to be interesting … I mean …. this …. Google Is Taking Questions (Spoken, via iPhone); whatever you want to say about Google … they keep innovating Search - they just pushing the boundaries.  The other day they released data showing how Google Uses Searches to Track Flu’s Spread and just yesterday Google Exploring Old Rome Without Air (or Time) Travel.

I haven’t seen the iPhone application yet, it’s going to be available today.   It’s hard to say how much I’ll use it - but the fact they pulled something like Google Is Taking Questions on the iPhone is fantastic - beyond the scope of what anyone else could do.   Even the Google Earth for iPhone application is a stunning interface.   From The New York Times:

Users of the free application, which Apple is expected to make available as soon as Friday through its iTunes store, can place the phone to their ear and ask virtually any question, like “Where’s the nearest Starbucks?” or “How tall is Mount Everest?” The sound is converted to a digital file and sent to Google’s servers, which try to determine the words spoken and pass them along to the Google search engine.

The search results, which may be displayed in just seconds on a fast wireless network, will at times include local information, taking advantage of iPhone features that let it determine its location.

The ability to recognize just about any phrase from any person has long been the supreme goal of artificial intelligence researchers looking for ways to make man-machine interactions more natural. Systems that can do this have recently started making their way into commercial products.

And there’s been other innovations that I haven’t checked out yet, not so much from Google, but what Microsoft is doing where Microsoft Beats Yahoo and Google to Social Inbox 2.0

Thursday, Microsoft announced a complex new version of the Web sites and PC software that use the Windows Live brand. Over the next two months, the company will introduce dozens of upgraded features involving its e-mail, instant message, calendar, blogging and other services. It will also add some entirely new functions, including group collaboration and photo sharing.

A lot of the effort has gone into weaving the functions of social networks throughout many of these services. For example, the service has a “what’s new” feed, modeled after the Facebook news feed, that can publish short comments by users as well as links to when they take certain actions, like publish new photos. The feed will be displayed on the instant message client and on new profile pages for users. And after you send an e-mail to people who use the new feed, you will see their most recent updates.

Microsoft is also reaching out to draw in information from other sites.

I guess, what I’m saying is that Search is getting interesting again - no so much for the act of searching - but how one can search and also receive information - a lot of innovation happening - it’s almost like that innovation is coming in waves.

I’m also attending DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource - Gary Angel, Mark Ruzomberka, David Harrod and here’s my notes and insights on it - coming to you from my iPhone, while live blogging - but first, here’s the marketing notes:

A06 Wednesday, 1:05 - 1:55
DIY SEM: Your Agency May Not Be the Best Resource

Gary Angel, Semphonic
Mark Ruzomberka, Traffic.com
David Harrod, Traffic.com

Tracking the ROI on thousands of keywords seems overwhelming and managing them against business goals feels overwhelming. But outsourcing the task to an agency might not be your best move. Traffic.Com manages a significant ($1M annualized) search engine marketing program that is one of the primary drivers of traffic to their site. Facing competition from Google in their core business, Based on the optimization opportunities revealed by a Semphonic audit, Traffic opted to bring their program in-house and run it themselves. Mark Ruzomberka of Traffic.Com and Gary Angel of Semphonic will describe the process of an agency process review, outline the key decision-factors in bringing a PPC program in-house, and discuss Traffic.Com’s experience managing the program. You’ll get a better understanding of how to audit your existing SEM program, how to identify the optimization strategies that make sense for your business, and some of the benefits and barriers to managing your own SEM program.

By the way, as I noted in my earlier post a few days back, that Jim Sterne has made it really hard for me by putting an excellent session on Voice of the Customer Panel - John Fernandez, Lance Jones, Mark Brooks to be at the same time … but look, I can’t be in two places at one time - and sometimes, you just need to pick and choose what to focus on.

Here’s my notes and insights now:

Excellent session which pointed to a few conclusions:

1. It makes sense to take a paid search program, if only for being able to react much quickly and take advantage if buzz events.

2. Larger agencies maybe optimized for certain types of activities, they may not suit many businesses that operate with a hybrid model, or atypical business cycle (for example, if your business depends on natural disasters happening) you might be happy when events happen that are most people’s misery.

3. Certain optimizations are not worth doing, even if they are possible to do.

Right about that!  Paid Search Analytics aren’t cheap, and I’ve looked at what’s involved in merging Paid and Organic Search Analytics - a lot of work, not very scalable and processor intensive, along with time intensive.    At the end of the process, you’d want an actionable list of keywords that you can cut spend on, or increase spend on - along with new keywords to bring into the campaign and one’s to just drop.

I got to think about that based on at new Study: Huge Potential SEM Spend Untapped by Jupiter Research and Marin Software; I expect Marin Software to want to prove that Paid Search Analytics is something you should do, because that’s what they specialize in.  Still - what if they’re right?

They are right - but I suspect this in not a decision any one would “lightly make” to invest in a Paid Analytics solution - and hopefully, one that integrates Organic in the mix.  Here’s more from the Jupiter/Marin study:

“..The study, called “Large-scale Paid Search: Challenges and Opportunities,” surveyed 103 agencies and advertisers spending at least $50,000 per month in paid search:

• 53 percent of respondents were spending between $50,000 –$250,000 per month
• 30 percent spent between $250,000 –$1 million
• 17 percent spent over $1 million per month on search marketing

The survey, are “still” being managed with Excel:

I’ve come up with a methodology  - but it’s just difficult, not easy to scale, and at the end of the day, untested.   Without getting into the specifics - your friends would beL

• Google Webmaster Tools (each domain would need to be verified
• Ranking Manager 6
• Your Paid Search Data, either in house produced or the spreadsheets from the agency

The extra 22% left on the table that is not being spent - it’s mostly due a lack of awareness - but I think, leaving out Organic is leaving even more on the table, and I haven’t seen anyone except Covario having a solution that attempts to balance paid and organic.

Yes, we all know there’s a lot of Paid Ad Cannibalization of Organic Search results - but how much, down to the keyword level?    We’ll see.

Anyway, one additional thing one could do - and this is not tied to the Jupiter Marin study - is use Compete’s Search Analytics to figure out how much each competitor’s traffic is based on Paid Spend.    I did that with Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com, Indeed.com, Craigslist.org, Dice.com, just to get an idea in the Job Search sector, how much of each site’s traffic is from Paid Search Traffic

Monster.com

I’m reading Click, by Bill Tancer, since last week, when I saw him last, at SMX East.

It’s not a hard book to read and Bill makes a convincing point that telephone surveys are getting harder to do and more unreliable - a platform, such as Hitwise, makes up for gaps such as this by promoting the use of web search data.

And, on page 94, Bill Tancer succeeds in making a strong case for purchasing Hitwise, in order to explore cross channel synergy, such as the case with A&E networks.

What don’t I like about Clicked? Well, to me,while subjects change from chapter to chapter, the basic content is very similar. However, I’m willing to accept some repetition in order to get really good information, which the book provides.

Clicked, by Bill Tancer, worth buying and reading.

One thing I want to add - Bill Tancer writes Click to make Hitwise the star, but really, Hitwise is nothing without a insightful web analyst to use it.   I read the Hitwise blog frequently, less so lately, than before, I found that most blog posts were much the same, same story, different subject - with Hitwise data as the star.

I think Bill Tancer should play down Hitwise, and play up his own insights more - though the book is wonderful opportunity to market Hitwise, it’s his insights that make the book work for me, Hitwise is just the tool for it.

Want to get this video up of the New York Tech Meetup I attended tonight at the IAC Building

My thoughts about SMX East starts 6 minutes into the online video, above.  For one thing, the advertisers were much the same as what I’ve seen at all the other search shows I’ve attended, so I can’t really get excited over the floor, because there wasn’t much to note.   On the other hand, the session I went to on Search and The US Presidential Election at SMX East that Sara Holoubek put together was absolutely fantastic and probably never would have happened at a SES Show.

On the other hand, doing a panel about a topical subject, such as the US Presidential Election, and the interest in the election, is hard to do on a regular basis, from show to show.  Still, I think, in  a lot of cases, content could be better than it has been.

Overall, I’d give SMX East more points than Search Engine Strategies in terms of quality of panels, it truly is a better experience.

And the Tech Meetup was great - plus I got to see the US Presidential Debate between Barack Obama and John McCain, on a gigantic screen - who can ask for more than that?

I’ll be at SMX East in Manhattan late on Monday and all of Tuesday; if any of my readers are also attending, please say hello (I’m reachable by Twitter - @webmetricsguru).   I thought I’d throw in some Organic and Paid Search Research I’m doing - I blurred the details to protect the innocent.

For one thing, I was surprised, looking at the Paid Data, that advertising per click was cheaper in the first 2 or 3 positions in Search and got progressively more expensive (maybe that’s due to buying impressions in bulk, especially at the top):

Meanwhile, I hunted around and found some information on average Click Through Rate by Search Position in Search Results; this information is as accurate as it can be, under the circumstances  - here’s a chart of that information, below:

Yet, while the majority of all the action happens on the first or second Search Result (SERP), the 4th, 11th and 17th Position in Organic (Natural) Search had a golden lining but wasn’t being optimized as well as it could be.

As far as the customers were concerned, after position 4 in the Search Results, it was all “long tail” traffic takes time and effort to seed and control.

Interestingly enough, there’s usually a lot of low hanging fruit to any campaign, and this one has been no exception -

While being sensitive to situations where paid spend (an ad) is clicked on when a perfectly good search result was also in the first page, I detected some interesting mismatches (see below):

One of the things that occurred to me is that while Paid Search is fairly well optimized in terms of spend, it’s hardly ever balanced against Organic Search results with an eye on reducing spend - cases where an organic result is perfectly good and providing coverage but where there’s also a paid ad for the same site - sometimes the paid ad “cannibalizes” traffic that would have just as easily clicked on the Organic search result.

In order to optimize Paid Spend against Organic Search Traffic - I’ve found 2 tools that are particularly useful - Ranking Manager 6.0 and Google WebMasterTools Search Query Logs.

The interesting thing about Google’s service is, when your site is verified, able to show you the average position of any key phrase that drove traffic to your site, including those you never knew to search for.   Google WebMasterTool also shows the average position in Google when a specific url was clicked on based on the keyword traffic.

My basic philosophy for optimizing paid / organic traffic is to determine the rankings of all the keywords you care about, using Ranking Manager 6.0 and merging that with your paid data, determining which keywords you have organic results for in the first page of results and cutting spend down by a certain percentage; in my model, I did not reduce paid search spend past the first page of results though I consede, my charts, above, suggest one could and, perhaps, should consider optimizing paid spend right up to position 30- but that’s a lot of work.

Anyway, I tried to find a chart showing how Social Media ranks in Search Results, particlarly Google, but the best I could find was this post in SearchEngineLand -

Leveraging Social Media Sites To Increase Search Visibility

Don’t think Danny Sullivan is saying anything that different than what I’ve been saying for some time about Google - The Google Hive Mind - does that mean Google sees the world in a multifacted matrix, like a bug?

Certainly it’s a new term and Danny Sullivan has come up with a summary of Google’s Hive Mind activities over the last 10 years.

‘…. when Google views products in isolation, it seems to justify to itself that it makes sense to do them. “Look at this new bed of flowers — we should go here, it makes complete sense!” But it fails to understand that the move into that new flower bed makes the hive even more threatening to others. That more and more flower beds now have Google going into them, making others wonder if they’re next.”

I almost feel, that in reading this detailed product evolution and acquisition strategy, I’m reading more about Empire Building (like Napoleon’s First French Empire e and the justifications that go along with it); but, maybe the story of Google could be put in terms more like  A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum, which just happened to end up producing the world’s smartest company, via The Google Hive Mind.

“…Search is where Google started, and even though the mission was back then was (and officially still is) to “organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful,” no one at Google was really putting many of today’s non-search services into a blueprint for success. Many of these products emerged from Google’s own internal needs, opportunistic purchases, ideas that curious Googlers with “20% time” suggested and sudden departures into areas not envisioned at first but which made sense as Google evolved.”

According to Sullivan, Blogger and Gmail fit in with Google, as a search engine, even less than AdSense did:

“….If it was a stretch to say AdSense was part of search, Blogger was even a bigger stretch. Google acquired Blogger a month before AdSense was rolled out, in February 2003. At best, Google could argue that Blogger allowed it to provide tools for publishers to use — which in turn meant information it could help organize.”

“…With Gmail, the hive grew into yet another new area, without that move really having been mapped out in advance. It was a natural evolution of letting people develop things that made sense.

Then Google got involved with offline ads, radio ads, in game advertising, satelight ads, newspaper ads, cable TV ads, etc:

“…Suddenly, Google’s dabbling in offline ads. It also offers radio ads and TV ads through other deals and acquisitions that have been made. This fits with the “Ad” mission of the tagline. But it also has caused print, radio and TV publishers — along with agencies that serve them — to worry if this is part of Google’s plan to take over key offline areas and dominate as it has online.”

“…Or when dMarc approached them, was it yet another case of Google looking in isolation at the purchase and thinking “ads, make sense — we’ll figure out the exact details on how it fits later.” I suspect the latter.”

Google Checkout, Knol and Chrome are further expansions, based on the Hive Mind, according to Sulllivan”.

But here’s what I think, on Google’s 10th Birthday, that Government intervention is unlikely anytime soon, even though Google has repeatedly invited it.   Why?

The Government has it’s hands full with an economy that is contracting rapidly, where we are moving, perhaps the world is moving, into a deep, deep recession.

The last thing any Government wants to do, now, is attack Google, believe it or not.   That’s not to say that Google and other search engines, but mainly Google, ought to be regulated - it should be, at least, aspects of what Google does ought to be regulated - but as far as having Government crackdown on Google for being monopolistic which it’s Hive Mind Strategy, it’s probably not going to happen anytime soon.

On thing that Google does provide - and I wrote about it yesterday, is Leverage (see Search Engine Leverage); Google, if you want to view it that way, could be like “AIG” the firm that was bailed out on Wall Street last week.

Actually, I figured out what Google’s real mission was earlier this year - their mission has nothing to do with search, not any longer; Google’s real mission - to re-organize, retool and dominate any business process, any market, that Google feels it can make a valuable contribution.

Google has become so interlinked with Web 2.0 and the Internet Economy, the Economy of the 21st Century,  that it is the Wall Street of the Internet, if I might term it that way - all the information of the world, and much of it’s money, runs though it.

Google can’t be allowed to slow down much, or suffer too mcy, because it’s one of the main engines of internet growth and economy for all of us - Google is the single most powerful engine of prosperity that now exists - countless businesses have built, for better or worse, businesses around Google Search, around Google Advertising.

And let’s not forget that Google has, in a few short years, accomplished what no government could, to create an almost complete record of what everyone is doing online - Google is far closer than anyone else in archiving a 360 view of most of it’s users with Search History, Web History and it’s DoubleClick acquisition.

Sure, if Google were reigned in than something else would take it’s place, but the disruption would be as  devastating as the events leading up to the $700 Billion Bailout is proving to be, and Google’s role has been as an enabler that made it much easier for many SMB’s to succeed - which also enabled a lot more taxes to be generated - and more money that got leveraged around in the world economy.

Now, it can be argued, and Danny Sullivan has masterfully made the case in The Google Hive Mind that Google didn’t really plan all the acquisitions and moves it made over the last 10 years, many of the moves Google made came out of a strategy that let product groups within Google determine what made sense for the company, as a whole.

And while Google’s “Hive” sorta stumbled to the top of the Internet food chain, almost without a plan, almost by accident, in a “fuzzy” way - that is so typical of “Web 2.0″ is is also the most paradoxical of all Web 2.0 companies.  Why?

Here’s why …. the “transparency” that is the hallmark of Web 2.0, of Social Media, of the way companies are being to operate, in a way, doesn’t apply to Google.   While they promote “transparency” for others, Google, itself, is often opaque in it’s intentions and actions - that is it’s paradox.

I know Google did pick up on one of my earlier objections about Search Engines, and, via Google Webmaster Tools, allow webmasters to download detailed search and impression stats for their Google Verified Websites - in this they followed the letter of the law, but not it’s spirit, for they did nothing much to make any sense of the data for the individual site owners - you could download Gigabytes of detailed query logs for your site - but the data is raw - you’d need a large database and programming effort to effectively use the data - and who’s got that?  (hint: Google).

So…, while fragmenting the landscape for services might be in the consumers immediate interest … I don’t think Google really has to worry that much about a Government crackdown, anytime soon - our Government is too occupied now trying to avoid a Depression to  worry much about how and if to police Google - and the next administration, hopefully run by Barack Obama, will, most likely be Google  Friendly.

As much as I and others criticize and even fear Google (I’m still pissed at them for the Google Penalty they have  yet to lift), Google is neccessary and vital as an engine of growth for us all, and must be allowed to continue, for better or worse, on it’s course (until something better comes along).

Yeah, Google is a habit, alright, and one we can’t really do with out, or shake.