Guys from Search Engine watch put together some predictions for 2012. Would be cool, if they all turned up to be a realtity, wouldnt it? However we do believe that we are going in that direction, at least for points 4 and 5, and that’s what we’ve been seeing across various verticals and industries.
Predictions are popping up everywhere as the New Year begins. Instead of producing another list of things that are likely to happen, here are the five things I’d like to see happen in 2012 but in reality probably won’t.
Bing Takes 15% Search Market Share From Google
It’s not the first time I’ve found myself writing that competition spurs on innovation. While Google might be innovating without a strong search competitor in the west, increased competition can only be a good thing – and helps keep large companies honest.
Which brings me to one way Bing might achieve this, in my idealized version of 2012.
Bing and Facebook Crack Social-Assisted Search
Word of mouth is still the most effective form of marketing, with search engines often ranking as the second most effective. So taking the word of mouth nature of social and using this to influence search results sounds like a perfect marriage, but nobody has made it work, with scale, internationally – yet.
If Bing and Facebook could crack this, they might just have a competitive advantage over Google, which will be focused on growing their user base on Google+ and lack much of the data Facebook have. Microsoft invested in Facebook and powers its web search, after all.
Yahoo is Reinvigorated With a New Strategy
Poor Yahoo. Left behind in search by Google, lacking a CEO, and the subject of constant speculation, the company is a long way from the Internet pioneer it once was. A reinvigorated Yahoo would be great to see; they still have many great services they’ve built or acquired.
Clients Appreciate That Specialists Deliver Better Campaigns – and Are Worth Paying For
Recessionary pressure and the power of procurement departments has meant some clients have consolidated activity under one all-service agency – even if that agency isn’t strong in digital areas like search, ad exchanges or conversion optimization.
These brands are getting a “cheap” deal overall but are often missing a vital point – as Honda CMO Steve Center has said, “If you grind the margin out of your agency you will get a marginal agency.”
This especially applies when a digital department is charged out with a low fee to protect an all-service deal; that department’s P&L might not be funded to hire the best digital people (or simply enough people). Specialist agencies know these accounts well – they’re the ones you onboard and have to rebuild from scratch, or achieve amazing results for quickly – because there was so much low hanging fruit left by the other agency.
CMOs and CEOs Finally “Get Digital”
Many digital marketers will tell you how frustrating they find senior executive attitudes to funding digital. They’re happy to spend millions on TV ads, but ask them to agree to fund a landing page optimization tool and they recoil – even though the latter will bring concrete sales improvements.
Offline and branding are vital parts of the marketing mix – but the appropriation of budgets between channels is often out-dated. Twenty-five percent of time spent in media was on the Internet in 2010 in the U.S., but only 19 percent of budgets were spent on the channel; mobile saw 8 percent of time with only 0.5 percent of budgets. Print, by comparison, received 27 percent of budgets but only 8 percent of time.
There’s still a long way to go before the top execs at many brands truly “get” digital and budgets are more fairly apportioned.
Do you have a wish list of digital in 2012? Leave a comment below.
Digital marketers can be forgiven for occasionally jumping on bandwagons seemingly loaded with gold given the hype surrounding some launches.
Twitter, however, is one of the few hugely lauded startups to come out of Silicon Valley about which brands have been ultra-cautious. Its rapid growth and influence point to a perfect place to advertise, but brands have looked on it with some degree of fear.
For every story in the press that has said it’s the new place to find news (the Hudson River emergency landing, Michael Jackson’s death) and that it’s a true influencer (Egypt’s uprising, super-injuctions), there’s another saying it’s an unruly playground where you can be attacked by anyone and everyone within seconds.
The fact there isn’t a clear ad model hasn’t helped. But things are changing. In the past month we’ve seen Twitter step up its UK operations, appointing Tony Wang to head the growing team and attract local advertisers. In the past week we’ve also seen tweaks to its search engine that bring up image and video results. Sound familiar? It’s the clearest move yet that Twitter sees itself as a search engine.
So brands should too. This is no longer a place solely based around 140 characters. It’s a multimedia platform where you can share any form of content. Content owners should be working with their agencies on seeding and distribution strategies.
Given that Google, Bing and Yahoo are increasing their integration with Twitter (and Facebook), popular content on the site is influencing a brand’s position on the biggest search engines to a much greater extent than ever before. It’s easily forgotten, for example, that paid-for tweets are shown in Google results – the only example of third-party ads appearing on the world’s largest search engine.
The problem of who curates this remains – the brand itself, PRs, search specialists, media agencies or, most likely, a blend of them all – but it’s a good problem to have.
What’s clear is that a Twitter search strategy is no longer advised but essential.
Hello guys. Google has revealed their performance stats for the first time. Discover the impressive results achieved by the Google Display Network and YouTube. Interesting stats and case studies:
Business owners can invite Google photographers into their establishments to take high-quality images of their businesses. Users can view the photos and learn more by visiting the Place pages of those restaurants, hotels, and more. Please visit http://maps.google.com/businessphotos to apply or learn more.
Coming off a phenomenal year, Facebook is close to narrowing the gap with Google when it comes to public sentiment, but is not quite there yet, according to research from YouGov’s BrandIndex.
The company, which polls 5,000 people per day online, found that Facebook currently has a “Buzz Score” of 31.3 vs. 39 for Google. Those figures are based on averaging positive scores (+100) with negative ones (-100). In other words, if you polled three people and two had a positive view of Google and the third didn’t, the buzz score would be calculated by dividing 200 by three to get a score of 66.7.
The final numbers only tell part of the story, though. Google started the year with a 45.1 Buzz Score, so 39 is down by 6.1 points. Facebook, meanwhile, only edged up slightly for all of 2010, but the brand’s Buzz Score see-sawed throughout the year. Privacy concerns over the summer sent Facebook’s score into the single digits, while the opening of the movie The Social Network in October prompted another drop. Since then, though, Facebook’s Buzz Score has been steadily climbing.
“You are talking about more recognition than ever, booming business, talk of IPO, Time magazine cover, etc. that has helped them,” says Drew Kerr, a rep for BrandIndex.
We’re still digesting the bombshell announcement that Google co-founder Larry Page is replacing Eric Schmidt as CEO. The change, effective April 4, will take Larry Page to the top while Eric Schmidt will take on the role of executive chairman. At the same time, co-founder Sergey Brin will be stepping down as president of technology and assuming the simple title of co-founder.
What does this mean for Google as a company? What is going to change and how is it going to operate?
Under the current system, Eric Schmidt, Larry Page and Sergey Brin run the multibillion dollar company as a triumvirate, having equal say on all key decisions. There have been a lot of advantages to this system, as Google’s rapid ascension has proven, but Schmidt says that it has also slowed down decision-making and made it difficult to figure out who’s accountable for decisions at the top.
Today’s changes are designed to fix all of that. During today’s earnings call, Schmidt told analysts and press that he will be focusing on external affairs, primarily partnerships, business relationships, government outreach and customer relations. He will be the one who heads to Washington to explain Google to the Justice Department and forge new relationships with technology and media’s biggest organizations. He will also probably be the leader on acquisition negotiations.
Larry Page, on the other hand, will focus on internal affairs, especially “product development and technology strategy.” He will be the man who focuses on the nuts-and-bolts of the organization, making sure employees are happy while pushing the ball forward on Google’s overarching initiatives and products.
Finally, Sergey Brin’s new role as co-founder is to lead the company’s “strategic projects.” He will be in charge of Google’s new and experimental technologies, so we expect him to be in the trenches with engineering teams designing and developing its key projects in local, social and other high-value areas.
Throughout the call, Schmidt made it clear that the trio will be sticking together and that they are “best friends” as well as longtime business colleagues. However, the buck now stops with Larry Page. He will make the final decisions and call the shots. So now, when Google has a breakthrough quarter or has a major product flop, everyone will know who to praise or blame.
Make no mistake: This is Larry Page’s company now.
Google is preparing to launch Google Offers, the search giant’s Groupon competitor, Mashable has learned. One of our sources has sent us a confidential fact sheet straight from the Googleplex about the company’s new group buying service. “Google Offers is a new product to help potential customers and clientele find great deals in their area through a daily email,” the fact sheet says.
Google Offers looks and operates much like Groupon or LivingSocial. Users receive an e-mail with a local deal of the day. They then have the opportunity to buy that deal within a specific time limit (we assume 24 hours). Once enough people have made the purchase, the Google Offer is triggered and users get that all-too-familiar $10 for $20 deal for that Indian restaurant they’ve never tried.
From what we can tell, Google Offers will be powered by Google Checkout. It also includes Facebook, Twitter, Google Reader, Google Buzz and e-mail sharing options.
Google is actively reaching out to businesses now to get them on board with Offers. It even apparently has a writing team in place to craft the write-up for offers.
The search giant clearly isn’t giving this market up without a fight, though. With its vast reach, huge resources and brand recognition, it could prove to be a powerful player in the space. We’re going to be watching these developments closely. We’ve reached out to Google for comment.
Below, we’ve embedded the entire fact sheet Google is sending to local businesses:
Update: Google has responded to our inquiry and sent us the following statement:
“Google is communicating with small businesses to enlist their support and participation in a test of a pre-paid offers/vouchers program. This initiative is part of an ongoing effort at Google to make new products, such as the recent Offer Ads beta, that connect businesses with customers in new ways. We do not have more details to share at this time, but will keep you posted.”
Google essentially confirms Google Offers is real. It looks like Google Offers is in the testing phases, though.
Update 2: We’ve also learned that Google will pay out 80% of a business’ revenue share three days after its deal runs. Google will hold the remaining 20% for 60 days to cover refunds before sending the rest.
Google has become a snake that too readily consumes its own keyword tail. Identify some words that show up in profitable searches — from appliances, to mesothelioma suits, to kayak lessons — churn out content cheaply and regularly, and you’re done. On the web, no-one knows you’re a content-grinder.
The result, however, is awful. Pages and pages of Google results that are just, for practical purposes, advertisements in the loose guise of articles, original or re-purposed. It hearkens back to the dark days of 1999, before Google arrived, when search had become largely useless, with results completely overwhelmed by spam and info-clutter.
The lead up to the Christmas and New Year holidays required researching a number of consumer goods to buy, which of course meant using Google to search for them and ratings reviews thereof. But this year it really hit home just how badly Google’s systems have been spammed, as typically anything on Page 1 of the search results was some form of SEO spam – most typically a site that doesn’t actually sell you anything, just points to other sites (often doing the same thing) while slipping you some Ads (no doubt sold as “relevant”).
…
Google is like a monoculture, and thus parasites have a major impact once they have adapted to it – especially if Google has “lost the war”. If search was more heterogenous, spamsites would find it more costly to scam every site. That is a very interesting argument against the level of Google market dominance.
Throughout my investigation I had nagging doubts that we were seeing serious cracks in the algorithmic search foundations of the house that Google built. But I was afraid to write an article about it for fear I’d be claimed an incompetent kook. I wasn’t comfortable sharing that opinion widely, because we might be doing something obviously wrong. Which we tend to do frequently and often. Gravity can’t be wrong. We’re just clumsy … right?
I can’t help noticing that we’re not the only site to have serious problems with Google search results in the last few months. In fact, the drum beat of deteriorating Google search quality has been practically deafening of late.
From there, Jeff links to several more examples, including the ones I mentioned above. As Alan alludes to in his post, the threat here is that Google has become a monoculture, a threat I’ve written about many times.
Now, is all this anecdotal evidence reliable? Perhaps not. What is worth noting now is that, half a decade after so many people began unquestioningly modifying their sites to serve Google’s needs better, there may start to be enough critical mass for the pendulum to swing back to earlier days, when Google modified its workings to suit the web’s existing behaviors.
I have been talking to a few people about what can possibly make Groupon worth so much, since it is a bit hard to conceive – this article I think does a good job of explaining possible reasons why:
What makes Groupon special is not its much talked about tipping point where a deal does not happen unless a certain number of people sign up.
Due to Groupon’s broad traction, virtually every single one of its deals gets sufficient signup to convert. Groupon was the first company to use the tried-and-proven sales technique of the yellow pages and Valpak to target local advertisers – direct, door-to-door salespeople who sign up local services and retailers. Groupon has quickly built a direct salesforce that has signed up local businesses across the country.
While detractors of the Groupon model point out that the net of a Groupon campaign often results in a loss to the local business, they are not considering that all advertising at the outset is typically a loss to a local business. A local TV ad, local newspaper ad, or Valpak coupon also costs money that could be considered a loss and typically does not produce immediate positive cash-flow relative to the ad investment. The value of a Groupon promotion produces cash over time with new repeat customers and should be viewed as a customer acquisition cost, which typically must be amortized over time. In addition, Groupon is also launching a service with 10% discounts that is much more in line with typical couponing systems.
Earlier this week, the New York Times spotlighted how a merchant with bad reviews nonetheless was ranked well in Google. Today, Google has announced that changes to its ranking system are in place to prevent such things from happening again.
Collecting Reviews But Dodging If They’re Used
Google aggregates reviews about merchants from across the web, as well as through its own Google Checkout system. With Google Product Search, merchants have an overall reviews page — the screenshot to the right is an example of this.
It seems likely that Google is now using these reviews as part of its ranking algorithm, though it never explicitly says this:
In the last few days we developed an algorithmic solution which detects the merchant from the Times article along with hundreds of other merchants that, in our opinion, provide a extremely poor user experience. The algorithm we incorporated into our search rankings represents an initial solution to this issue, and Google users are now getting a better experience as a result.
When I asked if reviews were being used, I was told:
As we mentioned in the blog post, we cannot reveal the details of our solution—the underlying signals, data sources, and how we combined them to improve our rankings—beyond what we’ve already said.
But Reviews Probably Are Used
I think these are being used. As you’ll see further below, Google talks about how it is NOT using reviews as something it will display in its results, because that alone wouldn’t be enough to “demote” sites. What would? Using the reviews as part of the ranking algorithm.
Also further below, Google talks about how it’s NOT using sentiment analysis to determine if links to pages indicate something good or bad about a merchant.
That leaves Google with few options to tell if a merchant has a good or bad reputation — and yet, it says it has a mechanism now in place to determine if a poor user experience is happening. I think this means tapping into reviews that it already collects.
That doesn’t mean reviews necessarily override all other ranking signals but rather that they are yet another factor among many to be considered.
It sure would be nice if Google would just confirm it, of course.
Sentiment Analysis Not Done
The post also explains that some things that were suggested as solution to the bad merchant problem, such as sentiment analysis, are technologies it has but doesn’t use, as they wouldn’t be deemed as helpful.
In particular, Google explained how some links from review sites were “nofollowed” and thus not providing link credit, while in other cases, links from news sites like the New York Times or Bloomberg to the merchant had little positive or negative sentiment to detect.
Reviews Not Being Displayed Alongside Listings
Google also talks about the idea that in the future, reviews about merchants might be displayed next to their listings, in the way that’s currently done for local businesses:
Yet another option is to expose user reviews and ratings for various merchants alongside their results. Though still on the table, this would not demote poor quality merchants in our results and could still lead users to their websites.
Google’s “Gold Standard” Search Results Take Big Hit In New York Times Story covers the New York Times story and examines in particular how merchant reviews were known to Google but apparently not part of the ranking algorithm, as well as how they might be displayed to warn users about merchants with poor records.
Postscript: I’ve now had a chance to check on the merchant, Decor My Eyes, that was spotlighted in the New York Times article. For one of the key terms discussed, it’s gone: christian audigier glasses doesn’t have Decor My Eyes in the first page of results.
However, chanel 5117 sunglasses does still bring the merchant up, in fact, right at the top of the page after the ads:
I then drilled down into some further specific searches, such as:
chanel 5117 sunglasses
Cazal 932 Sunglasses
Chanel 3142B Eyeglasses
Gucci Eyeglasses – Discount Designer Sunglasses
Hugo Boss 11062 Eyeglasses
Versace 2051 Sunglasses
Guess GU 6439 Sunglasses
alexander mcqueen 4039 sunglasses
club monaco 6517 sunglasses
club monaco 6517
None of these brought the merchant up. I’m not sure if it was ranking for these before the change or not. Typically, when I looked at these types of specific searches in the past, I would find the site. I do know it has matching pages on all these topics which are not showing in the first page at Google now. So, the change seems pretty effective.
Postscript 2: In the comments below, you can see the point raised that Google never actually says it is using merchant reviews. I’ve updated this story to reflect that.
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