Archive for August, 2009

Aug27

Gord Hotchkiss

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The New Speed of Information

This summer, we had fires in the town I live in. From the back deck of my house, I could see the smoke and, as darkness descended, the flames that were threatening the homes in the hills above Kelowna. I had friends and co-workers that lived in the neighborhoods that were being evacuated, so I wanted to know what was happening as soon as possible.
I was sitting on the back deck, watching the progress of the fire through binoculars and monitoring Twitter on my laptop. My wife was inside the house, listening on the radio and watching on TV. [...]

Aug21

Rich Deakin

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Concerning Eye Tracking

I’ve been doing a heck of a lot of industry research recently and I came upon some vehement rants about the quality and value (or perceived lack thereof)  in the use of eye tracking.  Some of that is along technical/insight lines, but there’s plenty of talk about eye tracking not being “worth the extra cost”.
Here at Enquiro we operate a little differently. Eye tracking is an ingrained part of our Usability studies, and we’ve built a strong reputation on our ability to get the best out of eye tracking technology. We don’t use eye tracking as a $30k upsell to lab based [...]

Aug20

Rich Deakin

1

News Flash – People Tweet about Pointless Babble

A rush of emails flew around the office this morning about Emarketer’s post claiming 40% of Tweets are babble. Not just babble but “pointless babble”.  At the time I wondered what babble with a point might look like. But let’s get past that mindblock.
I find it really interesting. The “pointless babble” is just random stuff that people shout out in the course of their daily life. An SEO expert might provide heaps of useful insight, flagging up useful links and helping their Twitter community with stucks and problems. Yet they may also shout out that their cat was just sick [...]

Aug20

Gord Hotchkiss

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Summer Stories: How I’ve Spent My Summer Vacations

Robin Williams’ movie RV may not have gathered much critical acclaim, but one scene at least hit a comedic home run with me. Williams has to get a presentation back to the home office during a camping trip with his family. After his laptop goes AWOL, he uses his Blackberry to retype the presentation and then tries to get a signal strong enough to let him email the presentation to his boss. He scales the top of his rented motor home, holding his Blackberry heavenward trying to get a signal. This is an episode directly out of my life. I [...]

Aug19

Jody Nimetz

1

Google Caffeine and Blended Search

Internet speed is fast and online users such as the millions of digital natives out there are requiring Internet speed to find he information they are looking for, to communicate with their online peers and to simply examine everything that is important to them in cyber space. Google realizes this and as a result knows that they cannot simply return their traditional SERP.

Aug14

Gord Hotchkiss

1

Summer Stories: How I Became a Researcher

About 6 years ago, I had one of those life-changing moments that set me on a new path. I’ve always been curious. I’ve always had questions, and up to that point in my life, I was usually able to find an answer, with enough perseverance. But in 2003, I had a question that no one seemed able to answer. It didn’t seem to be an especially difficult question, and I knew someone had the answer. They just weren’t sharing it.
The Unanswerable Question
The question was this: what percentage of searchers click on the organic results and what percentage click on [...]

Aug12

Andrew Spoeth

2

12 Questions B2B Marketers are Asking (or Should be Asking)

- blogging from SES San Jose, 2009 -
At a conference like SES, you’ll find search agencies, representatives from the search engines, consultants, bloggers, … and marketers. The marketers will fall into dozens of categories, by industry, company size, etc., and B2C and/or B2B. I’ve spent a great deal of time with B2B marketers over the last couple of years at trade shows like this one, as well as in sales calls, webinars and client meetings. These are some of the questions you will hear them asking in San Jose. They will come up in sessions, in the coffee line-ups, [...]

Aug09

Andrew Spoeth

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The Survival Guide for SES San Jose (top 10 things to do before going)

As I write this, thousands of us search marketing folks around the globe are packing our bags and getting ready to swoop into San Jose, California for the largest search engine strategies conference of the year, known by the industry simply as SES San Jose. Our company has been a part of these conferences for some time, but each show is a mixture of old and new. And for many of you who may be attending SES San Jose for the first time, here is something you may just want to bookmark and read during some downtime in [...]

Aug06

Gord Hotchkiss

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Summer Stories: How I Almost Got Busted by the St. Louis FBI

This week, the latest in my “fireside chats” (courtesy Aaron Goldman) about past SEM memories.
In the early days of our search marketing business, our collection of SEO clients ran the gamut from slightly off white to shades of gray approaching black. Yes, back in the day we too did some stuff that wasn’t smiled upon by the anti-spam gods of the search universe. Of course, it was (and still is) sometimes difficult to determine where the line between white and black could be found.
Desperately Seeking Sublets
One of the more interesting groups we dealt with was a network of apartment locating [...]