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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This Blog Post Will Live In The Internet Forever

Society is in a transition stage when it comes to information.  Technology has enhanced not only the speed in which people access information but also the breadth of it.  This leads to less anonymity and cases like one that I came across about a Ryerson University freshman who is fighting 147 charges of academic misconduct because he was helping run a chemistry study group on Facebook. I’m not saying that the student wasn’t in the wrong here but he shouldn’t be at risk for expulsion either.  Comparing answers, discussing problems, and helping other students out is a part of academia and whether it was done in person or online shouldn’t matter.  In the end, it’s student education and the learning process that should be the focal point here.   

As part of the learning process, everyone, especially younger generations, needs to understand that anything that is posted on the web is probably able to be found with enough searching.  Again, it goes back to the breadth of information and speed to which you can access it.  There are many tools like Wink.com which can search social networks, blogs, websites, and more and give you back results based on search criteria such as last name, location, school, interests, etc. 

Students are not the only ones who are naive about the drunken photos they post on their social networks.  Last July, Whole Foods CEO John Mackey was discovered to have anonymously posted negative forum posts against his company’s competitor, Wild Oats Markets from 1999 to 2006. With so much data being stored and tracked, you can find out almost anything these days. 

Society needs to be more sensitive to these issues and should be conscious about what they do online.  I understand that my blog, my social networking profiles, pictures that I and other people post, etc. are all potentially accessible by anyone.  But, I’m also quite vigilant in monitoring what is out there and accessing the risk when I put content out there myself.

That being said, I’m sure that I’m in the minority of those who strongly considers how they interact with the Internet.  There are new rules of conduct that are taking shape in this digital world today and it’ll take time for the adjustments to take place.  I believe that society should be more forgiving towards conflicts that arise and issues like the one at Ryerson University. 

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A Look at Facebook Apps

I’m on Facebook much like many of my peers and former colleagues.  It offers all the benefits of a social network - the ability to post pictures, comment on each other’s profiles, and see who knows who.  It attracts plenty of traffic due to the interactive nature of the content.  As a marketer, I am instantly interested in it due to its captive audience, high level of interaction, frequency of user visits, and ability to potentially target specific segments. 

One element I don’t truly understand is if Facebook Applications or Widgets really hold any value for marketers.  For Fortune 500 companies, I see some obvious benefits including branding, increased touch points, and creating deeper interaction with consumers.  However, the challenge is creating applications that fit with your brand and are interesting enough for people to want to add the application.  A good example of this is TripAdvisor’s “Cities I’ve Visited” Application.  It fits well with the branding of TripAdvisor.com (that being offering travel advice, reviews, and forums) and it is interesting enough that people would add the application (always interesting to see where people have traveled to).  However the application has a bit under 54,000 daily active users as of today, which is only 1% of the Facebook population.

Most popular applications are not done by Fortune 500 companies but rather by small start-ups or individuals.  Some popular ones include SuperWall, Flixster, Slide, Scrabulous to name a few.  I can see a couple of potential revenue streams that many are utilizing today - online advertising (banner and text ads) and affiliate referral commissions.  I’ve also seen merchandise being sold based off application characters like (Fluff)Friends and can see the potential for using an application as a lead generation tool to other games/programs/services a developer might sell outside of Facebook. 

In my opinion, the problem with these applications are the stickiness and loyalty of its user base.  I feel that popular applications one month quickly fizzle out to the next application the next month.  It’s almost like what’s the current flavor of the month?  Amongst my friends alone, I’ve seen mass interest jump from Scrabulous to (Fluff )Friends to Who Has The Biggest Brain? over the past 2-3 months alone.  Looking at applications from the business side, I question how much money should be invested in creating these applications.  There’s definitely alot of buzz surrounding applications and widgets but I’m not totally convinced that the buzz is actionable.

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