Archive by Author

Aug26

Gord Hotchkiss

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Wired for Information: A Brain Built to Google

In my last Search Insider, I took you on a neurological tour that gave us a glimpse into how our brains are built to read. Today, let’s dig deeper into how our brains guide us through an online hunt for information.
Brain Scans and Searching
First, a recap. In Nicholas Carr’s Book, The Shallows, What the Internet is doing to Our Brains, I focused on one passage – and one concept – in particular. It’s likely that our brains have built a short cut for reading. The normal translation from a printed word to a concept usually requires multiple mental steps. But [...]

Aug19

Gord Hotchkiss

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How Our Brains are Wired to Read

How do we read? How do we take the arbitrary, human-made code that is the written word and translate into thoughts and images that mean something to our brain, an organ that had it’s basic wiring designed thousands of generations before the appearance of the first written word? What is going on in your skull right now as your eyes scan the black squiggly lines that make up this column?
The Reading Short Cut
I’m currently reading Nicholas Carr’s “The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains”, a follow up to Carr’s article in The Atlantic, “Is Google Making Us [...]

Aug12

Gord Hotchkiss

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Thoughts from a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey

Funny, how our brains make us hang on to things that make little sense in the new scheme of things. But, for as plastic as the brain is, there are worn grooves that cannot be denied. We are creatures of habit and those habits comfort us – make us feel in control of our environment. Even when there is no ration for our recurring behaviors, habits keep things plowing along, giving us a sense of equilibrium.
Every time I cross the Atlantic, where history is the natural state of things, I gain a new appreciation for this clash of the new [...]

Aug09

Gord Hotchkiss

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White Salmon and Black Swans

The conversation started innocently enough – we were entertaining out of town guests at a winery and restaurant overlooking Lake Okanagan. And, as often happens when people visit B.C., they ordered salmon.
“You know, I heard that not all salmon are pink. There are actually white salmon.”
“Really, I’ve never heard of that.”
“Well, let’s see if there really are white salmon.”
So, we turned to the arbitrator of all such things – Google. If it can be found on the web, apparently it exists. Which is an interesting behavior in itself, and a point I’ll come back to in a minute. But first, [...]

Aug09

Gord Hotchkiss

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Search May Not be Sexy Anymore, But It Pays the Bills

Is it just me, or is search getting boring? It’s been months since we’ve had a good, ruckus raising tidbit to get our teeth into. The Bing-Yahoo integration? That’s the best you can do? Yawn.
Is it me…
I suspect that it is, in part anyway, me. To be honest, I haven’t been much of a “Search Insider” lately. In the past few months, precious little of my time has been spent pondering the industry. I’m way behind on industry news and haven’t attended a search conference or event for a few months. My days have been full with the busy-ness of [...]

Aug04

Gord Hotchkiss

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The Jill Hotchkiss Inflection Point

Technology has reached a critical point in the adoption curve. My wife, who is imminently practical and intolerant of anything that smacks of gadgetry, is becoming intrigued by my iPhone. I can’t overstate the importance of this in terms of watershed moments. Steve Jobs, if you can get my wife to buy into your vision, you have crossed the chasm.
There’s something important to note here in attitudes towards technology that we digerati, gathered together on the leading edge of the bell curve, often forget. Technology only becomes important to most people when it lets them do something they care [...]

Jul15

Gord Hotchkiss

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Who Needs the Real World?

Yes, the Hotchkisses (not sure what the plural of Hotchkiss is…Hotchki?) are planning another vacation. We’re heading over to the UK, where we’ll be spending a few weeks in a speck of a village called St. Arvan’s in Wales.
The Delight’s in the Details
I love planning vacations. In this last instance, I realized I spend more hours planning than I spend vacationing. Part of this is through necessity. We’re doing a home exchange, so it’s a little more involved than just booking a hotel. It’s a “self-serve” vacation – you need to know things like where is the nearest grocery [...]

Jul09

Gord Hotchkiss

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SEO: the road to strategy

I’m burnt – toasted, roasted and completely fried. I’ve just spent the last two days in stakeholder meetings with a client. In those two days I’ve met with representatives from every department imaginable – from channel sales to governance, from corporate relations to Analytics, from corporate marketing to website design, from social media to IT. In total, a dozen meetings with almost twice that many people. I’ve got about twenty pages of notes I have to sift through.
Why?
I’ll give you the same answer I gave before each meeting, in what officially became known as the “preamble”:
“You might be wondering why [...]

Jul06

Gord Hotchkiss

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More Ways B2B Search Marketing Differs from B2C

Last week, I looked at ways that B2B search marketing is different than search campaigns aimed at consumers. I looked at how risk avoidance was an overriding concern. Also, a B2B purchase is almost always an item on someone’s to do list, so they have little patience for being “immersed” in experiences or heading down navigational dead ends on a website. Today, I’ll look at two other ways that B2B buying behaviors differ from those in the consumer marketplace:
Unfamiliar Territory
In the consumer world, billions of branding dollars are spent to create a sense of familiarity not just with a product [...]

Jun24

Gord Hotchkiss

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How B2B Search Marketing Differs From B2C

As I write this, I’m at the B2B Search Strategy Summit in San Francisco. Mary O’Brien, the summit organizer, told me that many potential attendees — and yes, even some panelists — questioned where B2B search marketing was really all that different from B2C. Shouldn’t the same basic practices apply?
I answer that question the same way I answer all questions about marketing: Let’s look at it through the eyes of the buyer. And when we do that, we find some significant differences as we step from the consumer side to the business side.
It’s All About Risk
When we make decisions [...]

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