Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

Googling For The Future

Today Google announced that it was enhancing it’s search results with more options to pare down your results. The options are definitely quite interesting. You can now…

• …filter results by videos, forum-mentions, and reviews.
• …filter  results by recency.
• …show more text and pictures along with their normal search listings.
• …see related searches more easily through text links and their “Wonder Wheel”.
• …and filter results by a timeline of news.

Phew! A lot changes for the dominant search player. It seems like they are trying to get ahead of the search game before real time searches (like Twitter) and natural-language searches (Wolfram Alpha) become more popular? Perhaps their recency filter might eventually incorporate real-time conversation like Twitter or Facebook’s feed or their Wonder Wheel will help people find what they are looking for faster.

One thing is for certain is that web developers might have to think in different ways in order to get as many eyeballs still on their site. If you can filter by results that have been indexed or changed within the past 24 hours, will your first result first page search result still always be number one? Will you need to manage your forum mentions more closely in order to protect your brand now that its conveniently packaged with the touch of a link?

Would love to hear your thoughts on how this might impact the future of natural search listings and how you might design things differently going forward.

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Thoughts on Cyber Monday and the Rest of the Holiday Season

Cyber Monday, albeit with conflicting statistics, seems to have outperformed 2007.  comScore has stated that sales were 15% better. Nielson claims that shopping sites within its retail index saw 10% increased traffic from last year. It did say that top 500 retail sites were down 1% of traffic though. Among the winners seems to have been Amazon, which saw a 21% year over year growth in traffic, and according to Hitwise had 10.77% off all US traffic on Cyber Monday.

So is the 2008 Holiday retail sales doomed as predicted or has Cyber Monday shown a silver lining? I don’t envision death to retail but then again I also don’t see a Holiday season of anything better than flat growth. According to comScore, the Holiday Shopping is down by 2% overall including Cyber Monday.  As consumers become more Internet savvy, I’m really not surprised that overall internet traffic has picked up.  But I think most of this traffic growth is due to media’s influence of reporting huge deals by struggling retailers and consumers willingness to scour for deals and coupons.

Most of the deals this Holiday season seem to be 20% or 25% off with free shipping for Internet retailers. There seems to be a proliferation of these deals that are being remarketed as something new every week.  Not a bad option for those new 2009 clothing lines, sporting goods, or small electronics.  However, if you are in the market for anything larger, like the flat screen TV that I’m waiting for, I would be holding tight and waiting for the January clearance.

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Call to Action - SEMPO State-of-the-SEM Market Survey

It’s time to give back to SEM community.  I just did and it takes about 15 minutes.

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) has launched its fifth annual State-of-the-SEM Market Survey. Whether or not you are an experienced Internet Professional or just getting started in the industry, it’s a survey that you should do to benefit the community.  You even get the results of the survey sent to you once it’s completed.  That means more stats and figures to pour over.  If you are in SEM, you like that sort of thing.

As a bonus, SEMPO is offering two prizes that will be picked randomly - a free pass to any one of the 2009 SES conferences and an iPod Touch.

I have an iPhone but I guess an iPod Touch would be a welcome addition…

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I’m Back…

Well it’s sure been a long hiatus since my last blog post - a lot of things have happened.

In May, I completed my MBA education at USC Marshall School of Business, having graduated with Beta Gamma Sigma honors.

In July, I married my girlfriend of five years and got to honeymoon in Belize.  I also started my current job as Internet Marketing Manager at LAMPS PLUS.

In August & September, I got accustomed to post-MBA and newly-married life.   I’ve learned that the flexibility of school hours really is something special.  I’ve also learned that being flexible in marriage is also special.

In  October & November, most weekends were busy with attending other weddings and weekend trips (Joshua Tree, San Francisco, New York). All fun but time-consuming.

Now, that I’ve gotten settled back into the swing of things restarting my blog postings was on the top of my list.  Now with this posting, I can officially cross that task off my list.

Stay tuned for more commentary and thoughts on Marketing, the Internet, and more.

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Gatorade Tiger Commercial Update

Following up on my posting of a Creative Brief for Gatorade Tiger, this is what Gatorade did for its first commercial.  I’m not a big fan of the sci-fi slant and slight hokeyness of the commercial.  I think Gatorade would have been better served focusing on the winning aspects of Tiger much like the “Be Like Mike” Nike campaigns of the early 1990s.

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