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Archive for February, 2008
February 28th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
What will it take to beat the Google Habit? There’s billions of dollars that hang on the answer to that question. My last two columns looked at the nature of habits and how they can lead to an advantage for incumbents by “locking in” customers or users.
Before we look at some possible answers, it’s important to understand how and why previous attempts at breaking habits have fallen short in an area where far more academic work has been done: health care ( Verplanken & Wood, 2006).
Educational campaigns have proven to have little effect on changing habitual behavior. In fact, studies have shown that these campaigns can actually trigger an increase in the unwanted behaviors! Oops, that wasn’t supposed to happen.
The frustration of physicians who are battling unhealthy lifestyle choices in their patients was perfectly summed up in an address given by John McKinley to the American Heart Association over 30 years ago:
Start Swimming Upstream
“You know,” he said, “sometimes it feels like this. There I am standing by the shore of a swiftly flowing river, and I hear the cry of a drowning man. So I jump into the river, put my arms around him, pull him to shore and apply artificial respiration. Just when he begins to breathe, there is another cry for help. So I jump into the river, reach him, pull him to shore, apply artificial respiration, and then just as he begins to breathe, another cry
for help. So back in the river again, reaching, pulling, applying, breathing and then another yell. Again and again, without end, goes the sequence. You know, I am so busy jumping in, pulling them to shore, applying artificial respiration, that I have no time
to see who the hell is upstream pushing them all in.”
This has led to a reexamination of the “downstream” method of altering behavior; trying to rationally convince people to change their behavior after it’s already become a habit, for example, with education campaigns. The fundamental problem here is you’re trying to apply a rational solution to an irrational problem. We don’t think about habits, we just do them. That’s the very definition of a habit.
The Strength and Cost of Habits
There are two other components in habitual behavior that have to be understood, the strength of habit and the cost of executing the habit. Both factor in how hard the habit will be to change. Strength of habits is how closely they’re tied to our personal beliefs, good or bad. If we stop at Starbucks every day because we absolutely love everything about Starbucks, that’s going to be a very hard habit to break. Smoking ups the ante actual physical addiction.
Also, how much does it cost us to continue the habit? It I have to go 4 blocks out of my way to go to Starbucks that has a personal cost to me. If it’s right on my way to work, that’s different.
Habitual Use of Search
So, let’s wrap this week’s column up with a summary of what we’ve learned about habits and apply it to search:
- You typically can’t change habits by a rational appeal after a habit is formed. This explains the failure of every television campaign for search engines looking to grow market share.
- The strength of habit is a big factor in how likely the habit is to stay in place. So, if you’re looking to steal users from Google by breaking their Google habit, you’re going to be looking to the ones that use Google because it’s handy, not the ones that have 6 Google t-shirts hanging in their closet.
- And finally, you’re going to have to look for a way to catch a user before the use Google by intercepting them upstream. The reason Yahoo has been able to maintain it’s market share over the past few years has a lot more to do with the scope of their presence and the fact that they can put a Yahoo search box in front of more people before they can get to Google than it has to do with the quality of the search experience. And that’s also why Microsoft’s share has eroded as more and more default home pages are being switched from MSN.
Next week, in the series that may never end (talk about habit forming), we look at how challengers to the Google search crown can hope to break the habit. Hint: all the clues point in one direction: upstream!
February 21st, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
In last week’s Search Insider, I introduced the idea of habits, and why they can be hard things to break. This week, I want to explore how search engines can be habit forming as well.
Cognitive Lock In
Habits form and stay formed because there is usually a cost associated with discontinuing the habit. In a commercial interaction, this is referred to as the “cost of switching”. These are the lock in mechanisms that companies hope will keep you from walking across the street to their competitors. In theory, the cost of switching on the internet should be negligible, creating a frictionless, “perfect” market. There’s no financial penalty. The internet erases geographic boundaries. And this should be especially true in search. After all, other search engines are only a click away. But researchers ( Johnson, Bellman and Lohse, 2003, Brynjolfsson and Smith, 2000) actually found the opposite to be true. It seemed that customer stickiness can actually be greater online. So, if it’s so easy to switch, why aren’t more people doing it?
It appears, based on research ( Zauberman, 2003), that there’s another cost of switching, the cost of learning new interfaces. This has been called “cognitive lock-in”. As you become comfortable navigating through a site, the cognitive cost of learning new interfaces tends to build your loyalty and keep you “locked in” to the site. This happens in the real world as well, and could explain my wife’s seemingly irrational loyalty to the bad grocery store I described last week. She knows where everything is. She knows where to park. And she knows who to argue with when products don’t meet her standards (as well as how to get her point across..it’s an Italian thing). It may not be great, but it’s familiar!
Will Differentiation Increase the Power of Lock In?
A recent study ( Murray and Haubl, 2007) found that cognitive lock-in comes from habits of use as well as habitual choice. Both are relevant in the search space, but let’s put habitual choice aside for a moment. Habits of use form when we become familiar with using a product, the actual mechanics of how it fits us in realizing our goals. We know how to use Google, for example, and how to refine it to get the results we’re looking for. We know which links take us where, which tabs to hit and even through we never use it, the “Feeling Lucky?” button reminds us we’re on Google. When Google tried to remove it, based on lack of usage, there was a huge user backlash.
This sense of familiarity meant that until recently, all search engines looked the same. The same ten blue links, the same treatment of sponsored ads, the same basic layout. But in a recent set of interviews with all the major engine’s design and usability teams, it was made clear that we can expect more differentiation amongst the engines. Ask’s departure was just the first step in this.
It’s not just a Tool, it’s a Badge
But it’s not just the utility of an engine that increases lock-in. There’s also habitual choice. This comes from our lock-in to a brand. We always drink Coke, we always drive a Honda, we always fly Southwest, we always search on Google. Yes, even something as utilitarian as a search engine engenders brand allegiance. We identify with brands because they help define us as individuals. And this has happened to varying extents in the search space.
There Will Never be Another Google in Search
So, you might say, if Google became a habit, what’s to stop another engine from also becoming a habit? Well, first of all, it won’t be nearly as easy for a new player as it was for Google. Think back to when you first used Google. No one engine had established itself as the user’s choice, creating the “lock-in” effect. I used to hop back and forth between 4 or 5 engines, depending on my objective and the closest engine at hand. I’d perhaps start at Infoseek or AltaVista, and if I didn’t get a great result (which was pretty much always true) I’d try Excite or HotBot. Then, finally, in desperation, I’d sort through the hierarchal jungle that was Yahoo! No engine had become a habit.
Google’s genius was in providing pretty good results for a wide variety of searchers. Suddenly, I didn’t have to hop from engine to engine, because 9 out of 10 times Google provided better results. By the time the rest of the engines had closed the gap, I was already locked in. Now, arguably, other engines provide better results for certain types of searches. But Google is habitual. It’s going to be an uphill battle for the competition. In fact, Google is such a habit; its name has even replaced the word “search”. We now “Google” it.
So, where does that leave the competition? I have some ideas, but they’ll have to wait til next week.
February 21st, 2008 by Jody Nimetz
Local search continues to be a hot topic for many site owners. As you know there are a ton of options when it comes to local search. Not only do you have the major search engines offering local search products including:
You also have other properties such as:
Of course I could go on and on as there are numerous other local search resources available. So what can you do to get your site listed in these resources so that you appear in the natural listings of local search and so that when a user searches for "plumbers in Detroit" your site is found? Well organically speaking you have limited control over determining your placement in the local search results. In fact we have contacted Yahoo to find out more about organic strategies for being listed in the "organic results" in Yahoo. There response was, "..there is no real way to control your presence in the Yahoo Local results…" Enter GEO-targeting through paid placement. (that’s another post for another time…)
However here are a few basic tips that you’ll need to follow to at least be found in the local search results:
- Have A Physical Address - Guess what? Local search is designed for small to medium businesses that have one (or possibly more) physical locations. You need to have a physical address for your store, branch or office.
- Communicate Your Address on Your Website - you need to illustrate to the search engines and more importantly, your users as to where your business can be found. A great place to start is your Contact Us page. At the very minimum ensure that your have an updated, full address listing on your Contact Us page for your store, branch or office. If you have multiple locations, list them here as well. If you have a large number of branches, you may want to create a series of pages with your various branch information.
- Create Local / GEO Targeted Content on Your Site - ah yes another supporting reason why "Content is King". Things such as articles or state-wide statistics can be a great way to provide information to your various geographic targets. Feature testimonials about how someone in Boise used your product or service and was happy with the results. " Locally focused content" can also act as great link bait and improve the authority of your site in a specific geographic locale.
- Obtain Links from Other Sites Within the Same GEO Area - For relevancy purposes, try to obtain links to your local pages or local copy from sites that are in the same area. Try to obtain relevant links from local colleges or universities, local directories, local Chamber of Commerce sites etc.
- Check Your Listings - Chances are you may already be listed in some of the various local search properties. Perform a search for your company name and see what comes up. If a listing does come up, log in or set up an account to edit the listing. Try to include your site URL, a detailed description of your business (incorporate your main keywords where possible.), an image of your store/office location, hours of operation and any other pertinent information that users will find useful. If the local engine has various categories, ensure that your business is found in the most relevant categories.
While local search may not be effective for all businesses, you will want to make sure that your business has some sort of presence in the local search engines. Start with the basics, let the search engines know where your business can be found. Provide an attractive listing for users and map out a local search strategy that works for you.
February 18th, 2008 by Manoj Jasra
WordPress is an excellent blog platform which provides complete customization which is both user and search engine friendly. Below are some of the tips, tricks and plug-ins that I use when I setup WordPress blogs:
Custom Meta/Title Tags
There are numerous WordPress Meta Tag plug-ins but I like to use this one offered by G-loaded. This Meta Tag plug-in adds Meta Tags to the Front Page, Single Posts, Static Pages and Archived pages. It is compatible for the following versions: v1.5.2 - v2.3.2. For title tags I use the following code so that the title for the home page uses the blog’s description and individual pages get the title of the post gets puts at the start of the title. The title can be updated in a file called header.php.
Feeds
By default, WordPress truncates content within a feed. I personally feel that offering full content within Feeds is actually more beneficial because it allows users to get a complete concept for a given post. Additionally I have noticed a higher number of subscribers when I switched from a partial feed to a complete feed. Using a plug-in such as CompleteRSS is a great way to offer full feeds.
With CompleteRSS you can say goodbye to invalid RSS and partial entries — your feeds show your entire article no matter what, bringing you the traffic you deserve, and no longer use the very-much abused ‘content:encoded’ tags that cause many feed readers such a headache.
If you’re using FeedBurner in WordPress you should probably also use FeedBurner FeedSmith: This plugin will detect all ways to access your feed (e.g. http://www.yoursite.com/feed/ or http://www.yoursite.com/wp-rss2.php, etc.), and redirect them to your FeedBurner feed so you can track every possible subscriber. It will forward for your main posts feed, and optionally your main comments feed as well.
Custom Site Search
Site search is usually a feature that’s turned on by default but if it’s not make sure you add it. Site search allows for users to visit more pages during their stay on your site. WordPress also allows for custom search pages so that you can give visitors a richer experience on your blog. For custom search page options check out:
HTML Tables
I am not sure what the deal is with HTML in WordPress (or Blogger for that matter) but they constantly mess up. There have been numerous occasions where I tried to copy and paste an HTML table from a different blog into one my blogs and ended up losing the table formatting completely. My suggestion is to find some sort of FCK Editor Plugin to replace the default editor OR to use the "copy from word" option located in the default editor. It looks like this:  Original Post: Web Analytics World
February 14th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
My wife Jill was the victim of another drive-by “why-ing”, and I, of course, was the perpetrator.
There’s a small specialty grocery store where we live that Jill visits every week or two. And almost every time, she complains about the experience. Outdated stock is repackaged. Food is rancid. The staff is surly. But she keeps buying there. After listening to another long winded vent, I dared to go where no man should go. I asked her “why”.
There were a number of reasons that she gave. It’s on the way on her daily route. Parking is convenient. Prices are low. But the biggest reason was one she didn’t express, because she didn’t know it. It had become a habit. And habits are tough things to break.
Why We Have Habits
Like almost everything else, habits are a way we cope with the world. They’re cognitive short cuts so we can save our brains for more appropriate work. And most times, they work pretty well. When things work the same way the majority of times, we don’t have to think about them every single time. We relegate them to habits. It’s why we have such difficult times with door knobs, even when we’re given instructions (“push” or “pull” – and thanks to SI reader Peter Simmons for the example). Our brain is in short cut mode, so it’s not taking the time to read signs. Based on the shape of the door handle, the presence or absence of push plates, whether we’re entering or exiting and other cues, the brain makes a decision to push or pull without really consulting our conscious mind. We won’t even see the sign (which would engage our consciousness) unless we don’t get the result we expect.
Habits are grooves worn in the brain, and they tend to be relatively durable because of that. The rule of thumb seems to be about 3 weeks. So, if you moved a light switch from the right side of the door to the left side, it would take about 21 days before your brain stopped telling your right hand to turn on the switch.
The Hand is quicker than the Brain
Here’s the important part of that circuit (the one in the brain, not the one that turns on the light). The loop between the brain and the right hand is an unconscious one. It’s made of synapses firing on autopilot. At a conscious level you know the switch is on the left side, but the conscious loop is slower than the unconscious one. It’s the laziness of the brain at work. If we don’t have to think about everything, why should we? So your right hand is already patting the wall looking for the switch before your rational, thinking brain catches up and says, “It’s on the other side, idiot”. This has to happen a couple dozen times before the new groove in your brain is established and you can go back to not thinking about turning on the light switch.
Why Incumbents usually win
Now, in my typical, roundabout way, I am getting to why this is important in search. If we think about habits, it starts to become clear about why Google has such a huge market share advantage. I’d like to introduce another idea called the “incumbency effect” When it refers to politics, the incumbency effect means that once you win an election, you have a greater chance of winning subsequent elections for the same office. This is due to several factors that give you the edge in the eyes of voters: familiarity, experience in the role, access to funding and the ability to call in favors racked up during the previous term. All things being equal, incumbents are tough to beat.
But in other arenas outside politics, the incumbency effect can also be driven by the fact that habits are formed. It’s not just the rational reasons why an incumbent can be tough to dethrone; it’s also the irrational ones. The incumbent has worn a groove in our brain. And to knock off an incumbent, with all these things in their favor, you can’t just be a slightly better alternative. You have to be significantly more attractive. Either the incumbent has to screw up badly, or you have to offer a dramatic improvement over them.
As per usual, my weekly allotment of words has ran out before my idea, so I’ll pick this up next week, when we look at the incumbency effect and a parallel concept, cognitive lock in, and how they’re playing out in the world of search.
February 11th, 2008 by Manoj Jasra
The Online Marketing Blog recently ran a poll asking readers which SEO tactic they plan on using most in 2008 and the winner with 25% of the vote was Blogging. This doesn’t surprise me because blogging is an excellent way to manage PR, offer technical support as well as interact with users. In 2008 Blogging will be about refining your content and applying strategies to help distinguish your blog from the thousands in your vertical. Below are 6 great tips from the past to help with your blogging strategy in 2008.
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URL vs. Title: The URL of your post doesn’t have to be the exact same as the title of your post. Creating a custom URL allows you to insert additional keywords which can benefit your post from a search engine perspective. Some blogging platforms such as WordPress allow you to define a custom URL for a post (also known as the post slug) whereas platforms such as Blogger construct the URL by taking the post’s title word for word (it also applies a character limit for the URL). For platforms that don’t allow custom naming I recommend creating a keyword rich title initially and then after posting, changing it to something enticing to draw in readers.
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Interlinking of Top Posts / Hot Topics: As a blogger you will occasionally write a post which will considerably outperform your other posts OR you will blog about a hot topic in your industry which you hope will perform well in the search engines. For both cases, a good idea is to hard code keyword rich links to these posts on your blog’s side bar or in your footer so that they receive added attention from search crawlers and readers.
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Re-Ignite Past Posts: Staying on the topic of hot posts, it is often a good idea to keep the momentum rolling on popular topics by updating their content or adding 2nd and 3rd parts to the original post. What has worked well for me in the past is to create a 3 or 4 part series on a popular topic and then combine all the posts into a PDF which readers can download.
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Yahoo/Google Finance: When writing about publicly traded companies it is a good idea to mention the company’s full name or even their stock symbol. Many times these types of posts get aggregated into a given company’s news section of their Google/Finance page which leads to more readers coming back to your blog.
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The Importance of Variety: Offering posts which vary in length, topics, format (lists vs. news vs. opinion vs. interviews), or content type (images vs. video. vs text) can prolong the life of your readers. Mixing up your posts will keep your readers coming back rather than being bored by the same old content day after day.
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Relationships with Companies/Bloggers: It is important to have relationships with companies or their PR firms because they will potentially release information to you before it goes to the public giving you an edge on your competition. Additionally, companies can offer you access to software/services during test periods before it is officially released. Relationships with other bloggers is key because they can help you spread the word on your most potent posts as well add value to your blog by guest blogging from time to time.
February 7th, 2008 by Gord Hotchkiss
Now that there seems to be some sort of union in Yahoo’s future, blessed or otherwise, I felt the urge to pass along some advice to whoever the happy couple might be. For, in all this talk about the impending nuptials , the clear objective is to survive and compete in the business of attracting the attention of prospects online.
I offer this advice on behalf of users, because frankly, I think that’s the only perspective you should be interested in. I’ll explain why.
Why Search is Essential
First of all, there’s a lot of talk about how a Microsoft – Yahoo deal would give you the biggest chunk of the online ad network space, and this is true. But I hasten to add: don’t forget search. Google has stumbled in rolling out another significant revenue channel that holds up against their search business, yet they’ve still dominated. That’s because the importance of search has been understated up to this point. Here’s why search matters.
Search is the thin edge of a wedge that is marking a fundamental change in advertising. And it’s fundamental because it’s initiated by the prospect. The importance of that sometimes gets missed by marketers, who start looking at search as just another weapon in their arsenal.
Search is important because of expressed intent. That puts it in a whole different league than all other advertising, online or off. Behavioral targeting is effective, but it’s still intrusive and interruptive. We ask for search results. That’s a different level of engagement, a different balance of control and a different mindset on the part of the prospect. It’s the first place that balance shifted from the marketer to the customer, but it won’t be the last. Search is forging the way, but customers will demand that level of control and relevance to intent in more commercial communication from corporations. So, for all the talk about ad serving networks, it’s vital that the new duo gets search right. All the truly effective revenue channels will lead from search and the new principle of prospect initiation, including the vast untapped mobile and local markets. You can’t afford to screw it up.
Users come first, Advertisers will follow
Secondly, all you should be focused on is one thing, and that’s meeting the expressed need of the user. Don’t talk to me about balanced ecosystems or serving the needs of both users and advertisers. While as an advertiser I appreciate the consideration, as a user I call it hogwash.
Search cannot serve two masters. One has to prevail. And it should always, always, always be the user. Users are the prospective customers, and without them, the equation doesn’t work. Get users and the advertisers will follow. And those advertisers will play by the rules laid out by the users because they have no choice. Google gets it (probably due to the philosophical bent of Google and an inherent suspicion of advertising) and you’ll have to get it too to compete. So those ads better be highly relevant and in the user’s interest if they appear. If they’re not, don’t show them.
If you pay attention to nothing else, please pay attention to this one point. It’s vital to your success.
Church and State: Antiquated Concept?
The final piece of advice is not to be so set on holding on the divide between Church and State on the search results page. This is one hold over from the offline world that may be due for rethinking
The concept of the Church/State divide came from the fact that advertisers will always push their advantage. That’s one reason why you can’t have a balanced ecosystem. Advertisers have always had a much louder voice that gets heard more often. So in traditional channels, the only answer was to divide up the page (or other real estate). Advertisers had free reign over some sections, but they had to keep their hands off others. Consequently, we’ve learned to largely ignore the real estate given over to advertisers. The success of this Church/State division has been questionable in the past, but it’s a relic of journalistic thinking that somehow became entrenched in the world of search.
But if you pay scrupulous attention to my first two pieces of advice, you don’t have to worry about Church/State. The fact is that in search we have expressed our desire for relevant information, and if that information is commercial in nature, and it matches our intent, than we’re open to it. At Enquiro, we’ve looked at interactions with search advertising in minute detail, and while people will self report an aversion to advertising in general, in the midst of a task, relevance trumps all. If an ad is the closest match, it will succeed.
This opens the door to mash up editorial functionality with commercial messaging in a richer way. As search becomes better at determining intent and delivering richer results, the opportunity exists to seamlessly integrate commercial messaging with other information in a user-centric way. But user trust is paramount. Let the user set the rules of what’s acceptable.
So, whatever happens, this is the advice I would give. There’ll be a lot on your mind in trying to navigate the new union, so I’ve kept it simple. You can thank me later.
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