This morning, my plan was to do a column about the wrap up of SES in San Jose last week and talking more about some of the new research we presented. And for those that urged me to share my ideas about personalization, I was going to tell you about a new white paper we've just made available on our site. But I'm going to push that to the back burner until next week. This week, I'd like to share a story about a remarkable lady. 

At 10 this morning, my wife called me and asked me to come home to look after our kids while she went to stay with her grandmother in the last few hours of her life. So I'm writing this from home, knowing that just a few miles away, there's a hospital room filled with far more visitors than it could possibly hold, all holding hands and praying for a woman who has lived an exceptional life in so many ways. My wife is Italian, her family is large (a typical family gathering numbers more than 60) and for many years, including the 20 years I've known this family, Yolanda has quietly sat at the head of it. She doesn't talk often, and very little of it in English, but there's never been any doubt about who the boss is. Yolanda has a spine of steel, with a stubborn side that has made itself apparent in some rather amusing ways in the last few months. She is everybody's Italian Nona, and she is loved dearly by many many people. 

Yolanda came from Calabria, which would be the top of the arch of Italy's foot, across the strait from Sicily. Her home was a small stone house high on the side of a hill a few miles from the Mediterranean. I had the opportunity to see it last summer when we visited. The entire home was smaller the most people's garage's here. Life was never easy for Yolanda. First in Italy, and then here in Canada, she built a life for herself, her husband and eventually 6 children through back breaking work and sheer iron will. After immigrating to Canada, my wife's grandfather passed away, shortly after the youngest child was born, leaving Yolanda to raise a large family in a largely unfamiliar country where she didn't really speak the language. Today, all 6 children are successful, many have their own businesses and at various times, they have all asked Yolanda to come and live with them. She refused, preferring to live on her own in a small house on a small street that will forever be known as Nona's house. Today, the house is empty (Yolanda was moved to a nursing home as her health started to fail) but the memories that live in it are rich and abundant. 

I've always said that the measure of a person is the size of the footprint they leave as they depart this earth. How many people have they touched, how many memories have they forged, and how many hearts will ache with the departure. Yolanda's small, black, no nonsense leather shoes will leave a gargantuan footprint. There will be many tears shed in our homes over the next few weeks. 

But what is remarkable to me is how the world has changed from Yolanda's vantage point. The home she was born in in 1924 had not changed much in the past few centuries. There was no electricity, transportation was by foot and communication was solely through conversation, as olives were picked, grapes were crushed or bread was made. From that, she lived to see her children (6 of them), grandchildren (16 of them) and great grand children (13, including one born just last week) all communicate with relatives around the world, including those back in Calabria, through the internet.  

This Yolanda won't come up for any Google searches. She didn't have a webpage, or even an email address. She never went online. But I think somehow, she understood the importance of connections, especially between family. Although she never had the chance to return home to Calabria, I believe she would be happy to know that the generations that have followed her are reconnecting with family there, thanks to technology she never tried to understand. In some ways, the wired world today is a little like Aiello, the tiny little speck of a village she grew up in. We're closer, we communicate quickly and informally while we work and we are part of a large extended family. We have built our own communities online, and they are just as vibrant and immediate as the few homes that made up Aiello. Somehow, I felt it was important to let Yolanda leave a very small trace of herself online, because although she never used it, the Internet was part of the world she lived in. 

Yolanda is a remarkable lady, who lived a long life in a remarkable world..a world that first grew too large for her to ever return home, and then shrunk dramatically, but unfortunately a little too late for her to take advantage of. When I look at the world through her eyes, I can't help but wonder what it will look like when I'm her age. I just hope I can leave half the footprint she did on it.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, August 30, 2007  

On the floors of the San Jose Convention Center at Search Engine Strategies, I’ve heard a lot of buzz about many different things. I’ve been involved in a number of discussions about everything from click fraud to personalization to how long the wait would be for a bus to the Google Dance. But it was a conversation I had tonight at dinner that had me reflecting as I was looking for a column topic for this week. 

I’ve written before about how I like many of things that Ask is doing. This week, unprompted by me, at least 5 different people have told me over the last two days how much they like Ask’s new interface. Tonight at dinner, that’s how one of these conversation kicked off. But soon (and this also was a recurring theme) it veered in the direction of “I really like Ask, but what’s up with their TV ads?”

Search + TV Advertising: a Dismal Track Record

First of all, I really don’t think TV advertising is the answer for any search engine. Let me recount some of those that have invested heavily in TV in the past: Infoseek (via Disney and ABC), Snap (via NBC), Altavista and Microsoft. Hmmm, what’s the common factor here? Sinking market share, perhaps? I won’t argue the merits (or lack of same) of Ask’s decision to use television, because I think there’s a much more important factor here; their interface. And in that regard, I applaud their strategy.

I’ve often been asked what Microsoft should do to bolster market share. My advice has always been: be bold with your interface. Take risks. Differentiate yourself. Well, sorry Microsoft, you’re too late. Ask has already done it. And my guess is you may soon find yourself in last place in a 4 horse race.  

But back to my dinner conversation. After we finished sniggering at Ask’s TV ads, I said, “You know, this is just how Google got to be number one.” No, not by running TV ads with Kato Kaelin or Chicks with Sword. I meant getting people talking about their search experience. Google grew to be a search giant by word of mouth. They differentiated themselves in the world of search by significantly upping the user experience. They got people talking, and more importantly, got people using them, even when Google was just a beta student project sitting on some borrowed servers at Stanford. 

Remarkable Search Experiences 

Now, Ask is generating the same kind of buzz. It’s getting people talking. It’s greasing the wheels of the WOM machine. It’s noteworthy. It’s remarkable, in the truest sense of the word. The bold moves of the 3D interface will do more for market share than dancing chicks with swords ever will (although, I have to admit, that also is getting people talking). 

Jim Lanzone is a smart guy. Barry Diller is a double threat: a smart, rich guy . And kudos to Michael Ferguson and his usability team. They’ve come a long ways from Jeeves, and every step I’ve seen so far has been one in the right direction (TV ad strategies aside). As Lanzone once said to me when I asked him how they were going to conquer Google: “We don't want to climb Everest right now. We're not planning on knocking out Google. Our goal is to take our 20 million users, who are currently using us twice a month, and bump that up to four times a month. That doubles our market share,”   

Now, even with these realistic goals, this is not cakewalk. For Ask to overtake Live would require a tripling of their market share, according to the latest numbers from comScore. But I’m hearing a lot more buzz about Ask than about Live, and I’m hearing it in the right circles, the people who know good search when they see it. We’ll see if that buzz successfully crosses the chasm. 

Interface Innovation 

But there’s more than just market share at stake here. Ask has also boldly moved into the role of the innovator. They’ve pushed the envelope and introduced a different look to the search experience. They’ve broken the linear paradigm. True, they had less to lose, but it still took guts. I was chatting with Jakob Nielsen not that long ago and he had reservations about the ability of Ask to pull this off. He said “It’s a huge dominant user behavior to scan a linear list and so this attempt to put other things on the side, to tamper with the true layout, the true design of the page, to move from it being just a list, it’s going to be difficult.” Shortly after that conversation, we actually put it to the test for one particular task. We gave one group a query to do on Google, with its blended linear list, and one group the same query on Ask, with its 3D interface. Average on-the-page duration for the two groups was within one second of each other. Our panelists adjusted very well to Ask’s interface. Of course, that was just one interaction, but my gut tells me that breaking the paradigm might not be as difficult as Jakob imagines. It will all depend on providing strong information scent and relevance in the key areas of the page.  

For search marketers, there’s another important point to consider. Our interactions with the page, the top-to-bottom linear F shaped scan that produced the Golden Triangle, could soon be changing. The page will be much richer visually, and segmented both vertically and horizontally. It’s a brand new piece of real estate, to be navigated in a different way.  

And now, my final point. If I prove to be correct and Ask does move into 3^rd place, it won’t be TV ad dollars that does it. It will be because they focused on the user and gave them something remarkable. And if you want to know how quickly and how far the word can spread, look up Reed’s Law sometime. In fact, why not try Ask? 

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, August 23, 2007

I was in Seattle for the SMX show somebody asked me if we were planning on doing eye tracking studies on personalized search results.  I replied that I would love to do it, but I just wasn't sure how.  To accurately track interactions with a personalized page of results, you have to be able to have access to your participant for a significant period of time and track their click stream data. That raises some rather ugly privacy concerns.  The other problem is that Google's current implementation of personalization is so watered down, it really doesn't have much impact on the user experience.  What would be really interesting to do is to see what a user interaction might look like with personalized results the way they'll be in two to three years.

Planting a Research Seed… 

With that seed planted, I came back to from Seattle and the first thing I did it sat down with our research team and started to explore how we might pull this off.  We realized early on that we wouldn’t be able to do the kind of study where we bring in participants from our regular panel and track interactions with a real search engine.  To come up with a really interesting study, we were going to have to fudge it on the methodology a bit. This was not going to be a study with bulletproof methodology. So we opted for interesting instead.  We decided that it would be fascinating to speculate on what the search results page might look like in 2010, with a more personalized, richer experience that brings many types of results onto the same page.  How would the eye navigate a search results page that included more than just text-based web results?  How would we interact with images and video, maps and audio files, all interwoven on the same results page?  How would advertising standout from the organic results? Would the Golden Triangle still exist? Would we still scan the results in an F-shaped pattern? 

All these were questions that were at the top of our minds.  So, starting in late June, we started to put the study together.  Because we couldn't use our traditional panel (because of privacy issues involved in getting a truly personalized experience) we had to reach out to our circle of family and friends.  What we wanted to do was track interactions with the search results page as it might progress over the next three years.  We came up with three different flavors of search results: the universal results we’re saying today on Google, a slightly more aggressive presentation of universal and personalized search that we might see in a year or two, and then a much more personalized, varied presentation of results in a portal like format that might represent the search results page in three years time.  We were able to interview some of our favorite experts in the world of search usability and behavior to get a glimpse of what search might look like in the year 2010.  They included Jakob Nielsen, Marissa Mayer, Larry Cornett, Justin Osmer, Greg Sterling, Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman. 

Heat Mapalooza

I've just spent the last week going over hundreds of heat maps slices to try to get a white paper together to release for SES San Jose.  By the way, for regular readers of this column, you'll remember that when I came back from Seattle, I was somewhat taken aback by the lack of interest in what personalization might mean for the search marketer.  For the 20 or so of you that posted comments indicating that you are definitely interested in how personalization will impact search marketing and would like to hear my thoughts, you'll be happy to know that we’re adding a section to this white paper on just that subject.  If you happen to be in San Jose for the show, look for me or other Enquiro people and we’ll make sure we get it to you.  If you're not in San Jose, it should be available in mid-September. I’ll run the highlights in a Search Insider column at that time. 

The End of the Golden Triangle? 

Without spoiling the results of the study, here are a few tidbits I can share.  Even in Google's present linear format, the minute you start introducing images into the results, you break down the scan patterns that results in the Golden Triangle.  We saw significant variations in initial orientation points on the page, which led to a much different interaction and scanning pattern.  We tend to fixate on images and if these images appear in the top of page real estate, they create different entry points for the eye.  Our entry point has traditionally been in the far upper left, but now we may orient on an image that's in the second or third result and then move to further scanning from this point. 

In the sessions where we saw the scanning activity move down the page and start from an in-line graphic, we saw a different level of interaction with the sponsored results. Scanning is pulled down the page and away from the top of page, Golden triangle real estate.  One of the really interesting things to consider is that the interface of the search results page is in more flux now than it has been in any time in the past decade.  Engines are increasingly looking at presentation of results as a key differentiating factor in the search engine war.  Ask really pushed this approach with their introduction of 3-D Search.  The search results page we see now has largely defined itself, based on Google’s success, across all the major search properties and has remained relatively static over the past few years.  All that is about to change.  As we search for a richer and more relevant search experience, the elements of the page will be in constant flux.  One of the challenges will be in making sure that as personalization takes hold, the relevance of the organic results and the relevance of the sponsored results stay in sync.  This is constantly a point hammered home by Marissa Mayer in several interviews with her.  While Google is choosing the organic side to rollout their personalization technology, they have to ensure that the relevancy of the sponsored results doesn't begin to drop, relative to personalized organic results.  There will be a delicate juggling act needed to ensure that the user experience and the effectiveness of advertising don't sway too far from the ideal point of balance. 

I can tell you that the heat maps I seen so far are the most interesting ones I seen since we first identified the Golden triangle. There are significant implications here for both the user and the advertiser as we continue to experiment with a better search experience.  If you do happen to be at SES San Jose try to catch the results at the Search Behavior Research Update Panel. Otherwise, I'll give you a heads-up when it's available in this column in a few weeks time.  

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, August 16, 2007  

Website usability is all about user engagement.  It's about interception points and understanding your users.  For years now webmasters and site owners have been using metrics such as path analysis to track user interaction on their sites.  So what happens when you determine that user engagement on your website needs improvement?  How can you improve website usability on your website?

There are some fundamentals that webmasters and site owners need to consider when looking to improve their website usability.  First (and probably the most important) is to always keep it simple.  Those who have a design background don't always follow this rule and it shows when you look at a number of poorly designed websites out there.  With website usability, simple is better.  Simplicity is and always will be a better way to entice better user engagement than say complex, dynamic sites.  When it comes to having more features and bells and whistles on your site, vs. keeping the site simple, I am in complete agreement with Jakob Nielsen, lean towards simplicity.

Seven Simple Steps to Improve Website Usability

1. Understand the current level of engagement - you may want to consider conducting some eye tracking studies to see how users currently interact with your site.  Why do they click on one link vs. another?  Are they even noticing your conversion triggers?  Why are they ignoring an image vs. reading the text copy on the page.  Eye tracking can be a tremendous tool in understanding the user's behavior on your website.

2. Provide informative, relevant and quality content - to improve user engagement, be sure to feature content on your site that users cannot find anywhere else.  Try to display the content in the language of your user.  Using corporate jargon and marketing buzzwords is not necessarily what your users are looking for.
3. Simplify your site navigation - make the site easy for people to use.  There is nothing worse than a homepage that is so busy that the user doesn't know where to begin.  How do you expect them to find what they are looking for if you are bombarding them with images, flash, advertising, lengthily paragraphs and a whack of features that do not speak to the user?  Again simplicity is the key.  If you have to show users how to use your site, chances are you have a problem with website usability.
4. Offer a unique experience - try offering content found no where else on the Web.  Speak to the user by using their language.  Offering a unique experience and changing the perception of the user so that they feel satisfied with a "unique" experience can go a long way in generating repeat visits.  At bare minimum offer a unique experience over that of your competition.
5. Provide clear value on the homepage - don't confuse the user as to the value of your site as it relates to your product or service offering.  Understand the needs of your user and communicate the value that your product/service provides to address the user's needs.  The value proposition needs to be clearly conveyed on your homepage.
6. Personalize your website - offer widgets or other tools that help increase user engagement.  Keep the user wanting to come back to update their personalized features by providing new "add-ons" on a regular basis.  Think of a painter that goes into a hardware store to buy paint.  If the staff that serves the painter can provide a personalized experience, the painter will be more likely to come back and not only purchase more paint but purchase their paint brushes, cleaners, and additional paint supplies from them again.
7. Give the user something to come back (to your site) for - With the success George Lucas had with the release of Star Wars, fans flocked to see the next release of Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi and later the three Prequel episodes. While webmasters can only dream of such success, there is something to be said for releasing updated content, new blog posts, new podcasts. Controlling supply and demand for your content can be a great way to improve return visits and use of your site.

Website usability should be part of a continuous improvement process that involves mapping out the intent of your users.  Gathering data from your users about what they’re doing today will help you understand what they’ll need tomorrow.  Ensuring that your website addresses the needs of your user can determine how successful you will be today and how successful you can be tomorrow.

• Local IP Exclusion: Have you blocked local IP addresses as well as your vendors' so that their activity doesn't get included within your results? If your site receives tens of millions of page views monthly this won't have a huge impact, however for websites that receive only 1,000-10,000 page views, this will skew the data.
• Sub Domains: Not all analytics solutions automatically track activity on a sub domain of a website, so make sure you either have activated the sub domain in the code or in the analytics admin area. Here's how you do it in Google Analytics:
  

  _uacct = "ACCOUNT NUMBER HERE"; _udn = "DOMAIN HERE"; urchinTracker();

• Email/Download Links: Contact forms and newsletter email registrations aren't the only way to measure the number of leads and conversions. Don't forget to apply appropriate tracking for links to emails and downloadable collateral. Here's an example of how to track a link in Omniture's SiteCatalyst:
  

  a onclick="s_linkType='o'; s_linkTrackVars='s_events'; s_linkTrackEvents='event#'; s_linkName='Contact us email@domain.com'; s_events='event#'; s_lnk=s_co(this); s_gs(reportsuite);" href="mailto:email@domain.com" mce_href="mailto:email@domain.com">email@domain.com /a

• Development vs. Production: During the publish from the development to the production environment make sure you're referencing the correct attributes and files on the production server.
• Paid Search: Analytics providers often don't automatically attribute Paid keyword referrals to PPC unless there is an admin setting turned on or the referring URLs have appropriate parameters appended to them. Forgetting to setup Paid Search tracking can result in the inflation of natural/organic search referrals.
• Tagging Error Pages: Error pages are part of your site as well and a great way to determine if there are any navigational issues throughout the website, so make sure they're tagged.
• Internal search: Want to know what users are looking for on your website? Without being able to identify the internal search queries, this task becomes increasingly difficult. EpikOne has a useful post on how to track internal search queries using Google Analytics.
• QA and Testing: This should be an obvious one not to forget but after a long implementation, QA and Testing often don't get integrated into the implementation plan.

There you have it, 8 items to permanently add to your checklist for a proper web analytics implementation.

Download the Checklist - PDF!

Original Post: Web Analytics World

There has been speculation lately over the direction of the Yahoo Directory. What exaactly is the Yahoo! Directory you ask? The Yahoo! Directory is a human-created and maintained library of web sites organized into categories and subcategories. Previously we posted about the potential end of the Yahoo Directory, yet this is not likely to happen soon as Yahoo reaps a large amount of revenue from the annual directory submissions. So if the Yahoo Directory is not going away, just how important is the Yahoo Directory in 2007?

Fact: The Yahoo Directory is still one of the oldest and most important directories on the Web.
Fact: There is an annual fee associated per listing per category in the Yahoo Directory.
Fact: A link from the Yahoo Directory is simply just another link from another site.

While these are all important facts, how do you determine if being listed in the Yahoo Directory is important for your site and for your business? From an SEO point of view, being listed in the Yahoo Directory is not the thing that is going to push your site over the edge in terms of search engine rankings. In fact, submitting to the Yahoo Directory may not even be necessary. Check your referral stats? Does Yahoo drive a lot of referrals to your site? The question becomes is there any value in being listed in the Yahoo Directory? Let's look at some of the advantages.

Advantages of Being Listed in the Yahoo Directory

• It may be beneficial to submit to the directory if Yahoo Slurp is having a difficult time crawling your site.

• If you are launching s new site, being listed in the Yahoo Directory can be used to develop new site presence.
• While they will probably deny it, being listed in the Yahoo Directory may have an impact on your organic listings in Yahoo. Even if it is a small impact, being listed in the Yahoo Directory may indirectly affect your organic listings in Yahoo!
• Having a listing in the Yahoo Directory is a quality inbound link to your site. Depending on the category or page that you get listed in this could be a very effective addition to your external link inventory.

There is value in having a well optimized Yahoo Directory listing. For your "SEO-buck", $299 US per year is not that bad, but keep in mind that it is $299 US that you could be spending elsewhere. Whether a Yahoo Directory listing is of benefit depends on your site and on your site users. Does the average person who is looking for your product or service use the Yahoo Directory to find their information? If the answer is no, then you might not want to shell out the money to be listed in the directory.

Being listed in the Yahoo Directory is not important as it once was. There is however, still some benefit to being listed in the directory. The value of being listed in the Yahoo Directory may in fact be in the eye of the beholder as the value will differ with each and every site.

Considering submitting to the Yahoo Directory? Follow these steps.

How to Submit to the Yahoo Directory

As taken from Yahoo:

In order to add your web site to the Yahoo! Directory, you must first suggest it to Yahoo!'s team of editors, who visit and evaluate every site added to the Directory. To suggest your site for evaluation by an editor, please follow the process outlined below.

Step 1: Check to see if your site is already in the Yahoo! Directory.

Step 2: Find the appropriate category in the Yahoo! Directory.
We ask that you suggest your site from the most relevant Directory category page.

Non-English Sites:
Please refer to the list of Non-English Yahoo! Directories.)

Step 3: Suggest your site from the link on the Directory category page most relevant to your site.

The Yahoo! Directory is made up of categories. To do a Yahoo! search to find the best category for your site:

• From the front page, search on a term relevant to your site.
• From the web search results page, select the Directory tab under the search box. This will confine your search to sites listed in the Yahoo! Directory.
• Under the search bar you will see a list of "RELATED DIRECTORY CATEGORIES" and relevant sites from the Directory will be listed under "TOP 20 DIRECTORY RESULTS". You can review the list of Directory categories related to your search term and you can see various categories listed under the description of each site listed in Directory Results.
• When you click on a category, you will go to that page in the Directory. You will see a "Suggest a Site" link located to the right of the search box on the Directory page.

Note: If you try to click on "Suggest a Site" from a broad or top-level category, such as Education, Regional, or Entertainment, instead of browsing down to a more specific sub-category, you'll be told that your suggestion is too broad. So make sure you search for and find the most specific category that describes the subject matter of your site.

Additional Yahoo Directory Resources
Yahoo Directory Basics
More Thoughts on the Yahoo Directory
Yahoo Directory Submit
Yahoo Directory Home

Original Post on SEO-Space. 

Google is mastering the art of the low-key announcement.  Increasingly they're rolling out changes have the potential to be fundamentally earthshaking with little or no fanfare and, to this point, they seem to be successful in minimizing the pickup.  Take last week's announcement for example. Susan Wojcicki, Vice President, Product Management, quietly announced at a press briefing that Google is offering more targeting functionality on their search ads. Now of course, as Google's moves more towards personalization I've been saying that the introduction of ad targeting, specifically behavioral targeting, has been inevitable.  In various interviews with Google representatives including Nick Fox and Marissa Mayer, Google has consistently said that whatever factors for determining relevancy on the organic listings will eventually also be brought into play on the sponsored listings.  The goal for Google is to ensure that all the results, organic and sponsored, are highly relevant to the user.

Whispers of World Domination

What's notable about this development is not so much the additional functionality that's been introduced, but the way it was introduced.  There seems to be a consistent pattern emerging with these announcements, where the language is very carefully determined and the releases are made with minimal fanfare. My belief is that it's part of an overall strategy to minimize the pushback to the incremental introduction of higher levels of personalization and behavioral targeting.

First of all, let's look at what exactly does increase functionality means.  At this point, targeting is only determined by groups of searches done in the same time.  So, for example, if you first search for "Paris France" and then the search for "Hotel specials" Google will likely show you sponsored results specific to Paris, even though you didn't specify Paris in your second query.  While this move is logical smart, and therefore it will be gladly accepted by advertisers, it's fairly benign for the user.  You can there's nothing particularly sinister about putting together a couple of searches, especially if they're done one right after the other. Fellow Search Insider Mark Simon talked more about the development in Monday's column.

Search Spin Doctors

So if this offers a potentially differentiating value for Google and their ads, why did they introduce it so quietly?  The announcement was quietly slipped under the door of a few industry publications like ClickZ and Search Engine Land and there was the small piece on Reuters. There was virtually no pick up. Even advertisers weren't given a heads up that Google was rolling out this functionality. Google further proved their mastery of the understated release by somehow convincing Reuter reporter Eric Auchard to lead the story with the title "Google wary of behavioral targeting and online ads". I'm still not sure how they managed this particular piece of sleight-of-hand.  

Also telling is how Google's back gets up if the words behavioral targeting are even used in context with these new developments. As Mark astutely points out, even though Google is adamantly saying this isn't behavioral targeting, it of course is.  Google can play around with semantics all they want but this is very definitely behavioral targeting. Google, in multiple interviews with me and others have gone out of their way to explain how their approach has nothing to do with profiles and segmentation.  The language used by Nick Fox and Susan Wojcicki have made it very clear that this is all about the context of the task you're engaged in right now, nothing is retained or remembered to build a profile. They're doing everything they can to distance themselves from the world of "traditional behavioral targeting" practiced by Tacoda and Revenue Science.

So why the soft sell?  And why the pushback on behavioral targeting? I believe it's all part of carefully measured strategy that will incrementally roll personalization into everything that Google does, including the serving of ads.  On that Mark Simon and I definitely agree (perhaps I'm "in my Gord" on this one). But the move towards personalization is a long slow tango with the user.  Actually, it's more like the Bolero.  Everything is heading in that one direction but the intensity will definitely pick up as we move along. 

Moving Towards Win/Win for Both Advertisers and Users

I had a chance to chat with Larry Cornett from Yahoo last week about search user interfaces. We talked about the fact that user acceptance of personalization will be a moving target.  As the wins for the user increase as functionality is rolled out, the resistance to surrendering personal information lessens. I believe Google is acutely aware of this quid pro quo factor and is carefully playing their personalization cards one at a time so as not to spook the user.  There's just too much at risk for Google, especially on the search results page, if users begin to lose trust in the ads. And, as I've mentioned before, that first time you know you've been behaviorally targeted, it can be jarring. It takes awhile for the user to get used to the efficiency of behavioral targeting. We're not quick to forget that advertisers have been screaming at us with irrelevant and bogus sales pitches for the better part of a century now. It scares the hell out of us to think that advertisers might have access to personal information that would allow them not only to scream at us, but also know our name, where we live and what websites we look at when we have 5 minutes to goof off.

But I believe the stand that Google currently taking around the use of personal information as a signal for serving ads is a temporary one.  It's a line drawn in the sand, and as user sensitivity around targeting and personalization begins to drop, as it inevitably will, Google will be a little less reluctant to use the words behavioral targeting.  If you look at the big picture and the pieces of the network that Google is beginning to assemble, it's very difficult to see any other path than personal targeting in the future. But don't expect any big earthshaking announcements from Google about it in the near future.

 Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, August 9, 2007

• Acquisition costs are rising and conversion rates are decreasing
• The power switch from Push to Pull Marketing
• The change from mass marketing to personalized marketing

There are so many factors to consider when behaviorally targeting users - so which ones should you consider? The factors and metrics are completely site specific, however below are a few factors that you should consider when developing profiles for your various visitor segments:

• Referring Sites
• Referring Keywords
• Internal Search Queries
• Pages Viewed (type/category of content)
• Preferred method of communication: Email vs. Phone vs. Webinar
• Purchase Patterns based on seasonality
• Demographics: Age, Sex, Education, House Hold Income, Marital Status
• Recency
• Frequency
• Products added to cart
• Time Zone
• Time of Day on website
• Offline Influencers: TV/Radio/Magazines

Here is an excellent example of how you can leverage on-site behavioral targeting for your website, let me paint a little picture for you: Your organization operates a travel website where you can research/book cruises, hotels, and trips to various tropical locations.  Besides textual content, users can watch videos, subscribe to your newsletter and get the daily weather report via podcasts. 

Now Imagine being able to offer customized web experiences to all of your users.  For instance, you know that 'Jonathan Bowers' spends a lot of time on cruises to Hawaii, he often does his research in late November, he uses your site search tool for finding out more information about pricing, his preferred method of communication is by email and from his online profile you know he is married, has 2 kids, makes 200K/year and lives in Portland Oregon.  As soon as Jonathan signs into his profile in November you show him family cruise deals to Hawaii and business class flights from Portland.  You offer Jonathan a personalized experience and now is more likely to book a vacation using your website.

The scenario above is an optimal situation however personalized experiences can still be offered based on the content visitors view, content which they neglect, products they add to their shopping carts, and seasonality.  Web Analytics plays a big role in behavioral targeting because it allows you to cookie your visitors so you can track their trends/patterns on your website.

Resources for Behavioral/On Site Targeting:

- Omniture TouchClarity
- WebTrends Marketing Lab 2
- BlueLithium - Anil Batra: Behavioral Targeting 101
- Kefta
- Clickz: Target Behavior on the Site Level
- Avinash Kaushik: The Promise & Challenge of Behavior Targeting (& Two Prerequisites)
- Offermatica

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is and continues to be a tough sell for many B2B marketers and marketing departments in general. One of the main reasons for this is that there are a number of organizational and cultural challenges with regards to SEO. The most difficult challenge that online marketers face with SEO is the management and organization of people. In fact in an excellent Webinar from Search Marketing Now with Chris Sherman senior editor of Search Engine Land, Chris stated that "…the biggest challenge with SEO for big business is the managing and orchestrating of people…" From education of staff to getting the buy-in from management, SEO for B2B marketers in 2007 is faced with a number of organizational challenges.

So what are some of these organizational challenges faced by B2B marketers?

• Obtaining Buy-in from Management - this is a tough one. Especially in the B2B arena where management has taken its time to realize the value of SEO. Many of the other challenges mentioned below are a direct result of not having management's buy-in on SEO. Management, and rightly so, tend to look at the bottom line first. So when it comes to getting buy-in from management on SEO there is an education process that needs to take place. Matching up SEO ROI numbers is not an easy task. In fact some might even say that it is impossible. As a result online marketers need to illustrate value in other ways. For example point out the fact that a competitor is ranking well for a specific term while your company is no where to be found in the organic search results. Communicate the effect this has on traffic to your site and relate this to missed lead generation opportunities.
• Getting Budget for SEO - many business to business (B2B) companies still insist on putting the majority of their marketing budget into traditional marketing channels such as print, and TV, when a number of studies have shown that the return of SEO is unmatched by these traditional marketing mediums.
• Education about the Importance of SEO - as B2B marketers, SEO education of your marketing team can be difficult; additionally the education of the sales team, your IT team, your management team and C-Suite executives presents a whole other level of organizational challenge with regards to SEO.
• The Complexity Issue - as Chris mentioned in his presentation "Managing SEO for Big Sites, Big Brands", there are a number of complexities that affect SEO. These complexities include issues such as applying SEO to multiple products, multiple brands and multiple audiences with many teams from within the organization's hierarchy. The size of your organization can have a direct impact on the complexity of your SEO endeavor. I can attest to this having experienced this with a number of my own clients in the past.
• Providing Concrete ROI Numbers for SEO - there are too many factors that affect SEO that allow a specific ROI number to be associated with SEO. This metric is affected by factors such as the industry that you are in, the ever-changing search engine results, and identification of improper key performance indicators.
• Outsourcing vs. In-House SEO - determining whether to do SEO yourself or to bring in a third party presents a number of organizational and cultural challenges. With outsourcing there may be issues with security of having an outsider work on your website(s). Having strictly in-house SEO may mean more education for your team which quite often is difficult to find additional budget for.

SEO in 2007 means dealing with a number of organizational challenges. Overcoming these challenges will help your organization's online presence and in turn will have a positive impact on lead generation for your business. Improving the lead generation process and the number of qualified leads that you receive online is something that both your marketing team and your management teams will surely appreciate. In the end, an effective SEO campaign can be so rewarding that it in fact pays for itself and then some… I have seen this on numerous occasions with our clients. SEO in 2007 is a tough sell, but it doesn't have to be. The key is education and understanding of SEO and how it needs to be an active part of your marketing mix.

Original post:  SEO in 2007: SEO-Space

Mark Granovetter wrote a ground breaking study in 1973 called the "The Strength of Weak Ties". It later became one of the foundations for Gladwell's "The Tipping Point". I ran across Granovetter's work and a later follow up study by Jonathon Frenzen and Kent Nakamoto (Frenzen, Nakamoto: Structure, Cooperation and the Flow of Market Information, The Journal of Consumer Research, December 1993) that further explored the fascinating world of word of mouth and how it spreads through networks. When we move this into an online paradigm, it has some thought provoking implications.

No Network is an Island

First, let's cover Granovetter's work. In an oversimplified version, it states that social networks are not uniformly dense in their make up. There are very densely linked nodes. These are families, circles of best friends, immediate co-workers and other very close relationships. These clusters, or islands, are then loosely linked by more fragile ties that span the clusters. They include formal acquaintances, lapsed or dormant friendships, more distant relationships and other "arm's length" connections. These are Granovetter's "weak ties". For a viral spreading of information, we can assume that word will spread quickly within the tightly linked clusters, the "strong ties", but for it spread widely, it has to be passed through the "weak ties". Otherwise, it will never spread outside a cluster, thus the importance of these "weak ties" in the structure of the social network.

But there is another factor, and that is the cooperation of those "weak ties". Are they motivated to pass on the information? In the words of Frenzen and Nakamoto: "Instead
of an array of islands interconnected by a network of fixed bridges, the islands are interconnected by a web of "drawbridges" that are metaphorically raised and lowered by transmitters depending on the moral hazards imposed by the information transmitted by word of mouth."

The Principles of "Passing it On"

In Frenzen and Nakamoto's study, they introduced two variables: value of information and moral hazard. In this case, they used the framework of an exclusive sale. The value of information varied with the size of discount on the prices. And the moral hazard was the scarcity of inventory available at this discounted price. So in the low value/low moral hazard version, it was a smaller discount (20%) and there was plenty of inventory available. There was no danger that close friends and family would "lose out" by sharing this information with a wider circle. In the high value/high moral hazard version, the discount was high (50-70%) and the number of items available at this price was very limited. A scarcity mentality was imposed. They also varied the structure of the network by assigning different "tie strengths" to the linkages within the group.

The results were striking. In the low moral hazard scenario, where there was maximal cooperation to pass along information, everyone in a 100 member social network, composed of 5 loosely linked clusters, received the information in a maximum of 7 time periods (the actual period used was not stated), even with a varying  link strength of the network. In fact, in the strongest structure, everyone knew by the third time period.  But in the high moral hazard situation, transfer of information was much slower and less effective. In the strongest structure, it took 8 time periods for 100% spreading of the information. And in the weakest structure, even after 15 time periods, still only 66% of the group had received the information.

WOM Moved Online

So, what does this have to do with search? Simply this. The weak ties are now moving online. If we have great news or a great product story to share, we can now share this information on line. We can blog about it, post a comment or leave a review. But we're most likely to do this when there's low moral hazard. We pass information where there's no "scarcity mentality". So we'll happily post about a great travel destination, a restaurant or a piece of software because by doing so, we're not running the risk of losing out ourselves. We're much less likely to blog about that exceptional deal on men's suits at 70% off, where they only have 6 left. That information is reserved for our closest friends. It only gets passed along through our strong ties.

There's another factor at play here that was beyond the scope of Frenzen and Nakamoto's study. We are motivated to pass on information online when it's remarkable. Product or brand experiences have to earn the right to be passed on. As online mavens, we're motivated by being "first to know" and by passing on value. Therefore, we carefully consider the trustworthiness of the information and it's authenticity before we decide to share it. After all, we're staking our reputation on it. Although these online posts become Granovetter's "weak ties" online (because we usually don't have strong personal relations with all the readers of our various online "footprints") they only happen when the nature of the information bears passing along.

If we're depending on the spread of word of mouth for our marketing, we have to start with some basic understanding of how the dynamics of the network works. All too often, we assume that everyone is like our best friend, eager to spread the word about our product or service. In the wired world, this would include leaving footprints online, through blog posts, comments and reviews. There, future customers can connect with them through search. But a successful viral campaign is largely dependent on those weak ties being motivated to pass along the information. It needs to be remarkable in some compelling way (i.e. Godin's Purple Cow), it has to eliminate a scarcity mentality, it has to feel authentic and, to appeal to the mavens, it has to have the feel of news.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, August 2, 2007