Mike Grehan goes through the Stages Search has gone through till today.

First stage - more you have keywords in your doc, higher you rank (pre 1998). This is what we say about ourself.

Second stage - Hubs and Authority - it’s more what others say (links). Google perfected this, it’s the quality of links (from inside your community).

Up to now, main signols were on page and links.

Third Stage - informational, navigational, transational searches (Andre Broder, who I met in 2005 at IBM Research).

Around 2005 Google realized Link data ranking was not such a good idea and new signals need to be looked for.

Mike Grehan now says if you not now the first result, you may not be found. Universal Search is hugely popular but as it turns out most are below the fold.

Look at the top 10 results for Bed and Breakfast in New York.

Cognitive Search - query chains where you refining the query in the same session. After a while people Google does predictive analysis.

Universal Search has changed the psychology of search.

Digital Asset Optimization - what media assets can I optimize for?

What signols does Google has?

Trditionial SEO will dissipear and in it’s place are new signols

1. Social Media, but more importantly the Google Toolbar ( your navigational habits and dwell time are being looked at from Google).

Search engines can only ever have fraction of the web). But it’s the conversation going on between individuals that is now of interest.

Crawling the web will be less important.

2. Search Engines doing content deals with social networks and message boards, etc.

3. Replacing the HTTP protocol; as content becomes more fragmented, complex and rich media, browser based protocols are no longer sufficent.

New Book by Mike Grehan - new signols for Search Engines out next spring and a new paper out next week.

Search and the US President election - Wow! A lot of search and political campaign strategists are on the panel.

Motivations in getting involved in search and politics are varied but unlike other business it never shuts off and your in it to win.

There is no budget and there is a lag in knowledge in running campaigns for search and current spending is only 40-60 million in this election, and that is a drop in the bucket of all spend.

Also, the lady from Yahoo said there hasn’t been many or any studies on campaign effectiveness and paid search. But you need to communicate directly with the campaign manager and to a lesser effect, the canditates, need to understand the utility of paid search marketing and political campaigns.

Long Tail approach (misspell Sarah Palin’s name in every way possible).

Duh! Candidates don’t seem to understand geo-targeting and micro-targeting! They understand TV and Radio and media markets, but seldom do they yet understand the precision avaiable.

McCain’s campaign is very active in gel-targeting and Eric Frenchman, who runs McCain’s online search advertising, said so.

What I don’t hear is micro targeting on the actual DISTRICT level, or anything with RSS feeds.

Interestingly, just as I wrote this, a question came up about bundling to the District level, did come up and Google and Yahoo, while they allow custom maps of Geo-Targeting, don’t actually facilitate that level of targeting.

And nothing about RSS feeds and Twitter integration on the local district level. It’s amazing to me how much of modern technology is not being utilized.

Amazing how campaigns use speeches of Biden (in the case of McCain) to a negative landing page on the candidate.

Also, Google and Yahoo haven’t yet offered geo-targeting on District Level but….. They are not, as yet willing to set up that specific a level if targeting yet, but are studying doing so in the future.

For some candidates, easing fund online is easier than others, and some times they can’t spend it all, so managing expectations is necessary.

Online Persuasion.

Do you need to be a true believer in the candidate and party ideology to work for a campaign as a search strategist for them.

However, now, there are many online digital strategists are on both sides.

Social Media and Search with political campaigns. Blog or not? Tracy Russo says no, not enough worth while content. I disagree. And Obama had people who were hired to write to the blogs, etc.

However, the community forming around a blog often continues after a campaign is over, win or lose, and, honestly, not fostering and nuturing that is foolish, I believe.

The idea that there is not much worthwhile to say is lunacy.

Twitter? Again, not as used as much as you’d think, by candidates. Amazing how much is being left, on the table, so to speak.

But, then again, I’m more of a visionary than anyone on the panel, or, for that matter, in the room, judging from the questions from the audience.

Facebook, what works? Buying admin rights for a group, Dan Steele, from Comedy Central.

Interestingly, the question of what kind of participation exists on November 5th, after the election, came up. It seems to me a new “channel” is being created via online media, Paid Search, FaceBook, Twitter, and targeted Blogs, along.

Justine Lam, worked for Ron Paul, and talked about all if that, and how it took a life of it’s own.

What tools used for monitoring Online Buzz?

Google Trends, Google Alerts, but many of the online tools are not useful, yet, to campaign strategists, yet.

Yahoo, Diane Rinalado, says Yahoo Buzz was sited as being better than Google Trends, and HotTrends, but not as highly used.

I brought up a few observations that I voiced including:

1. Increase links shown for embedded videos in Yahoo to include the long tail.

2. Data collected for Buzz Tools need to be refreshed hourly, not days or months later, as Goigle Trends and Yahoo Buzz often are.

Media Buys, as Eric Frenchman said, need to be decided in a few hours. You can see the gap.

Which campaign is doing better online?

Don Steele, Comedy Central, says he’s surprised media companies aren’t better at this yet.

Excellent Panel.

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.

I thought Tamar’s post at Techipedia on The Great Social Media Traffic Debate: Niche or General Networks? was pretty good and Tamar Weinberg, when I meet her here in NYC, always strikes me as pretty smart and connected woman - she’s aware of pretty much everything that’s happening in the Tech World, in Social Media and in the Search World.  I don’t think of her so much as an Analyst, yet her Traffic Debate piece was good reading - even if it confirms what we already know.

In fact, if you read her post and then download the Military/Buzzlogic presentation we presented last week (see Social Media Analysis Presentations from Search Engine Strategies San Jose) (see below) ….

sessanjose08_social-media-analysis_tparsons When I brought Military.com and Buzzlogic together I wasn’t really sure what the outcome would be - wisely, Breanna Wigle, living in the Bay Area, was able to meet directly with Buzzlogic, and to her credit, come up with a 5K insertion order to test the concept of Social Media here.  I feel we broke new ground - really new ground - and I give Breanna Wigle a lot of credit for being able to even get Military.com to take a chance.

… you’ll see that Social Media traffic is not only a superior way to get new visitors to a site - but … Social Media traffic, I found, acts in a more directed way than Search Traffic - (darn! I just uttered blasphemy in the Search World).

Yes, depending on the context - Social Media Traffic from Niche Social Networks - traffic from Social Media will typically be more directed and focused than Search Traffic, and paradoxically, often have a lower pages per visit and higher bounce rate while having a higher “engagement” level and more of a “trust” factor.

You may ask me how that can be?

Easy - you know those TinyURLs in a Twitter feed?  How about a Facebook link or a FriendFeed link?  How long do you think a visit to your site from one of those sources is going to last? Not long, because they are looking directly at the content they want - they don’t have to search for it - they found it!

I wrote a post / review on Ranking Manager 6.0 over at The Analytics Guru that I hope you'll read -

Ranking Manager 6.0 Review from Website Management Tools

There really aren't too many choices for good Search Engine Ranking software and I've been using Ranking Manager 1.0 for quite a while - and found it much better than Web Position Gold and perhaps easier to work with than Agent Web Ranking.

Now, Ranking Manager 6.0 runs as a fully Relational Database that you can run custom SQL Queries on - it's also got full Unicode Support - a big deal now that more and more business is international - and therefore, search engine listings need to be monitored in a Geo-centric and multi-language environment - and Ranking Manager 6.0 is, I believe, the best software for that kind of report.

Don't take my word for it - read my review and then try out Ranking Manager 6.0  using a fully functional 14 day trial - and see for your self.

I also want to thank Michael Lange (who owns Website Management Tools and wrote Ranking Manager 1.0 and 6.0) for providing such great support for the original Ranking Manager (1.0) and this product (Ranking Manager 6.0) for whom I supplied some of the ideas (but he ran with them).

I'm very happy with Ranking Manager 6.0 now that I'm running it and seeing what it can do. 

Did you ever get the feeling that you left money of the table because you needed to spend money to make more money - but you didn't know how much to spend or how much you'd miss out if you didn't spend it?

I read a post today in Andrew Goodman's blog - Traffick - titled Relative Complexities of Paid and Organic Search, and Implications for Marketing Effectiveness were Andrew says Paid Search traffic returns superior ROI to the same about of Organic Search Traffic ROI.

I agree that  Paid Search superior to Organic for ROI - Traffik and believe Paid Search is 4 times more effective, visitor to visitor, than Organic Search Traffic - at least, given the stats below.

In fact, it's entirely conceivable that a calculation can be made that would tell you if pays to spend money advertising and by how much - after all, in the site below, if they did nothing, no paid at all, it would take them an average of 54 visitors to get one Newsletter sign up.  On the other hand, when they run a Paid Search Campaign, one out of every 13 visitors from Paid Search Campaigns signs up for the Newsletter.

Ok, you don't spend the money and you get some sign-ups (saved money) but by not spending it - you left more money on the table that you could have made - so it's possible to calculate at what point a site starts to get meaningfully ahead.

I'm not a math wiz, but I see the need for a program like that - based on a site's analytics (perhaps it already exists, I bet it does and I just haven't come across it) but if it doesn't exist, someone should go and write that application.

But the application should not be a fill in spreadsheet - rather, I'd like to see it based on a site's actual analytics - you'd almost have to have that or else you'd just be plugging in numbers to an online form and not really know for sure if you should spend more or not.

Ideally - I see such a calculation in Google AdWords Account Management and Microsoft AdCenter's account management - but it could also be part of Bid Management tools, providing the actual conversion and visitor data, from Organic, Paid and Other Sources are captured. 

I put a lot of thought into Paid Search superior to Organic for ROI - Traffik, hopefully a good read for you. 

Really tired tonight - really, really tired - it's been a long day in snowy Boxbourgh, Mass, where I'm staying till Thursday -learning Visual Sciences and meeting with my team at Monster.com.

Found out earlier tonight that I was written up in SearchEngineWatch.com about my presentation last night at Aspen - here's a link to the presentation - Download SEOSEMWebAnalytics.ppt (1070.5K)  and here's the blog post that mentions me.

However, I wrote in more detail about the writeup in a post on TheAnalyticsGuru.com titled  Written up in SearchEngineWatch.com.

I'm going to be speaking about Search Analytics at the SEO Meetup that happening next Monday - read about it on the HitTail Blog

NYC SEO Meetup

Hi everyone, please stop by Aspen Lounge if you're in the New York City area this Monday, February 11th. There will be a short talk from our own Mike Levin, Kevin Heisler (executive editor of Search Engine Watch), and Marshall Sponder (analytics specialist at Monster.com). Doors open at 5:30 and the formalities begin at 6:00. It should prove to be a great chance to network with other search marketing professionals and bloggers as we already have over 30 people who have RSVP'd for the event.

Details are available on Meetup.com!

 

I have been saying this for a while - 5 Reasons Why Rankings Are A Poor Measure Of Success and there's nothing new in Jill Whalen's post but it's interesting that rankings, more and more, mean less - because it's almost impossible to figure out what's going to change next month, or next year.

Besides, Search Engines come up with new ways to enforce penalties all the time - and what was good last year, last month, yesterday, all of a sudden can get you in the dog house.

On the other hand, if you play it totally safe, you'll often not be doing much SEO or be ranking highly in Search Results, except by accident - and then, figuring out why your ranking well, when you didn't plan to - could be more work than it's worth.

Which is exactly what Google wants - to frustrate us, so we'll give up trying to optimize and "manipulate" content.

I'm chuckling that Microsoft actually went ahead and did exactly what I asked them to do ..two years ago..with the adCenter Add-in for Excel 2007 which allows an AdCenter user to do extensive keyword research and prediction of demand/pricing within Excel.

When I first started using AdCenter, a few years back, I found it useful for many ideas I was experimenting with - but I found myself having to do way too much work to pull the data out of AdCenter and put it into a spreadsheet form.

I first heard about the adCenter add-in for Excel early last month (Microsoft AdCenter adds Keywork Analysis Excel Spreadsheet plugin)  and just about all the work I did in the posts listed below, took me much longer because I didn't have the Excel Plug-in:

Here's the instructions (Direct from Microsoft) along with the chance to sign up for a Webinar on January 23rd, 2008:

Download the adCenter Add-in^Beta today to start researching keywords to help reach the right audience—and capture and convert the right customer.

 

Ready to get started?

Follow three simple steps to get the adCenter Add-in^Beta tool—and begin optimizing your campaigns today.

	1. Download a free Microsoft Office Professional with Excel 2007 60-day trial. adCenter Add-inBeta is only compatible with Microsoft Excel 2007. Already have Excel 2007? Jump ahead to step 2.

	2. Download the adCenter Add-inBeta.(64 MB, ZIP) Note: Transfer times may vary depending on connection type.

	3. Register for the webinar. Join our adCenter experts on January 23, 2008 to get the most out of this new tool and stay on top of your game.

adCenter Add-in ^Beta Support and Feedback

Check out what people are saying about the new adCenter Add-in^Beta in the adCenter Add-in forum. Learn tips, troubleshoot, and share your feedback.

 

Learn more about the adCenter Add-in tool:

Download the product guide. (515 KB, PDF)
Download the features list. (1 MB, PDF)
Download the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs). (1.1 MB, PDF)
Download the installation guide. (884 KB, PDF)