Lawrence Gee | Marketing, Internet, Creativity, Strategy

Social Search Results

I came across this post in Danny Sullivan post in Search Engine Land today.  It points out that Yahoo! is testing out Del.icio.us (Social bookmarking site) data being integrated into search engine results.  Basically for search results it will list how many people have bookmarked the site and the tags associated with it. 

The posting points out that Yahoo! will not factor in Del.icio.us data into it’s page rank calculations (as of now).  You have to imagine that if people believe that pages are more valuable a la bookmarking then one could argue that it should be factored in to page rank.  It’ll be interesting to see how much more integration there might be with Del.icio.us or other bookmarking sites in the future.  Google already has a “note this” link which can bookmark specific results into your own notebook.  I can imagine Yahoo! allowing the ability to bookmark directly to Del.icio.us, the ability add tags to page results, or the ability to select specific results to share with other people. 

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New Criteria for Google Search Results?

I was doing a random search on Google yesterday and noticed something funny.  At the top of the search results were results with time stamps!  I did some searching after that and found out that it is something that Google has been working on to give the most relevant, up-to-date results. 

This is the first time I noticed or came across time stamps and it made me think about the implications this could have for SEO purposes.

1. Are more highly updated webpages really more relevant for user searches?  I’m inclined to say no but I think it might make sense to have a separate section of the search results that is time related.
2. Would news sites and blogs that often have the most refreshed content be even more valuable? Depending on the impact of timeliness on Google’s search formula, these sites would obviously become more valuable. 
3. Google can’t crawl every webpage every minute to find the most current content so how could you ensure your site is part of Google’s spidering more often? I think the goal for Google still remains the same.  If you are relevant for search results, this issue will go away.  But of course, there will be people who find ways to manipulate the system in order to get ahead on page rankings.

Very interesting stuff…

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Yahoo! Search Marketing Has No Business Sense

For paid search campaigns (those ads on the top of your search engine results), a company would bid on keywords so that their ad would appear for those search results.  Active companies bid on multiple keywords and various concatenations of keywords.  Usually their portfolio of keywords they are bidding on are in the tens of thousands. 

Keyword portfolios are managed through paid search advertising arms of the various search engines, with the big 3 as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN.  In order to bid on keywords, one can either manually enter in each word and group them by campaigns or ad groups.  If you had a small search campaign with few words, it would be easy to do this online.  But, what if you had to create a campaign of 10,000 words?  Would this be feasible doing it one by one?  Of course not.  Google has an easy to use downloaded application where you can cut and paste keywords in bulk.  MSN is more personalized where you can email a spreadsheet to your account rep to upload.  Yahoo!, on the other hand, has a bulk import feature but it is not active for all customers.

Pause for a second and consider this.  Why in the world would Yahoo! disable this functionality for some customers?  They have a minimum monthly spend requirement before turning this feature on.  This to me makes absolutely no business sense whatsoever.  Yahoo! wants its advertisers to bid on as many keywords as possible.  The reason?  If you click on an ad, then the advertiser must pay Yahoo! for that click.  You would assume that Yahoo! would want its customers to be able to bid on as many keywords as possible and have as many ads out there as possible to get clicked on.

However if you are starting a new campaign from stratch, there is no way to meet the minimum monthly spend requirement to enable the bulk import feature.  So instead of having the ability to try and spend more on advertising, you are limited from the beginning.  I even called customer service to ask about the policy and was told there was nothing they could do about it.  I asked if I could pay a fee to have it activated.  Again, the answer was no.  The customer service rep admitted that she’s heard this time and time again from people calling in on the absurdity of it all. 

Yahoo! needs to stand back and examine its business practices.  While Yahoo! is a technology and content provider, they need to step into its advertisers shoes and realize who is paying the bills.  Google understands this and makes it extremely easy.  Any guesses to who has the majority of online ad revenue?

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Google as a CRM

Did you know that when you sign up for a Google service or account, their personalized search option is automatically turned on?  What is does is it keeps a history of your search queries in order better tailor future search results.  Their goal is to give you exactly what you want when you search for it.

If you step back a second, what Google really is becoming is one big online CRM (customer relationship managment software).  You, the customer, want to find out information.  Google’s product (its search results) is providing you with that information.  By keeping tabs on search history, Google is acting as a good sales rep who enters in all of his/her notes, correspondence, and sales about its clients.  By storing all this information, Google now has data to make better informed decisions and also enables them to create a product which truly meets the needs of its customers.  This data helps them manage their customers’ wants and the relationships it has with its customers.

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About Me

Originally hailing from Long Island, I currently reside in Los Angeles, California.  I am an experienced marketer with a diverse professional background.  I have a BS in Business Management and Marketing from Cornell University and currently I am finishing up my MBA at USC Marshall School of Business. 

Prior to business school, I started off my marketing career in consumer products as a Field Marketer for Newell Rubbermaid, managing in-store relationships and merchandising for products such as Rubbermaid, Levolor, and Sharpie. 

I have always been fascinated by technology and the Internet.  In fact, several college internships were spent dealing with web design rather than Marketing.  It was only fitting that after Newell Rubbermaid, I spent four years at an online educational software startup called Aplia.  As Marketing Manager, I helped grow Aplia from a beta product to having over 450,000 students and 500 institutions use the software.  My role required me to develop integrated marketing campaigns, plan sales demos and events at higher education conferences, dive headfirst into CRM and database management, deal with shoe-string budgets, and build up word of mouth marketing.

At USC Marshall , I’ve had the opportunity to explore my personal development, continue lifelong education, and realign my career goals.  In 2006, I investigated the world of Brand Management and was selected to attend the prestigious Procter & Gamble Summer Marketing MBA Camp as well as the Johnson & Johnson Brand Mini Camp.

While traditional CPG was interesting, my explorations made me realize that I enjoy working in smaller more technology focused environments.  This Summer and Fall, I interned at LAMPS PLUS, an Internet Retailer Top 500 Retail Web Site, where my focus was on Internet Marketing and Strategy.  I was able to learn from top Internet Marketers and was heavily involved in developing and maintaining paid search campaigns, evaluating and managing vendor realtionships, and offered strategic recommendations for usability, design, and marketing.

Currently, I am exploring potential opportunities for my post-MBA career and also working on several pet projects dealing primarily with affiliate marketing, search engine optimization, and search engine marketing.  The purpose of this blog is to offer an outlet to collect my thoughts on marketing, strategy, and technology.

On the personal side, I am getting married in July 2007.  There’s much planning to be done and my marketing experience is being put to good use. In my free time, I am an avid sports fan (Yankees, Knicks, Dodgers, Lakers) and enjoy outdoor activities such as running, hiking, and triathlons.

Thanks for stopping by and checking out my blog.  Please feel free to comment on any postings or drop me a note at larry@lawrencegee.com.

–Larry

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