Ever wondered how contextual relevancy affects your bottom line in your online marketing campaigns?  Of course you have, in fact many if not all online marketers have wondered this at some point.  With one of our latest research projects (in sponsorship with Google (GOOG), we took 100 subjects, all of which were high-level B2B purchasers and segmented them into four testing cells. 

From here, each participant read one of two articles and was exposed to a contextaully relevant or non-relevant graphic ad.  Enquiro then asked participants a series of questions to gauge brand, messaging and advertising recall and effectiveness.

To see what happened, download the whitepaper on Displaying Advertising - Does Contextual Relevancy Make a Difference?

Here is a sample of some of the findings:

So to answer the question, do contextually relevant B2B ads provide a bigger lift to your bottom line?  Our findings suggest that Contextually Relevant B2B Ads can lift purchasing intent 40% higher than their B2C counterparts.

For the many of you who responded to last week’s column about Nona Yolanda, I just want to take a few seconds to let you know that she passed away the evening of September 3, having fought for 5 days more than doctors gave her. She was in the presence of her family right until the end.  We printed off your comments and well wishes and posted them on the hospital door. It was somewhat surprising but very gratifying for my wife’s family to know that Nona’s story touched hearts around the world. Thank you. – G.H.

The world of the search results page is changing quickly, which means that new rules for user behavior are going to have to be applied. This week, I’d like to look at some results from a recent eye tracking study we did about how we interact with search when graphic elements start to appear on the page. We also tested for the inclusion of personalized results. There’s a lot of ground to cover, so I’ll start off with Universal Search this week, and cover off personalization and the future of search next week.

Warning: Graphic Depictions Ahead

You can’t get much more basic than the search results page we’ve all grown to know in the past decade. The 10 blue organic links and, more recently, the top and side sponsored ads have defined the interface. It’s been all text, ordered in a linear top to bottom format. The only sliver of real estate that saw any variation was the vertical results, sandwiched between top sponsored and top organic. So it was little wonder that we saw a consistent scan pattern emerge, which we labeled the Golden Triangle. It was created by an F shaped scan pattern, where we scanned down the left hand side, looking for information scent, and then scanned across when we found it.

But that design paradigm is in the middle of change. The first and most significant of these will be the inclusion of different types of results on the same page, blended into the main results set. Google’s label is Universal Search, Ask’s is 3D Search and Yahoo’s is Omni Search. Whatever you choose to call it, it defines a whole new ball game for the user.

Starting at the Top…

In the classic pattern, users began at the top left corner because there was no real reason not to. We saw the page, our eyes swung up to the top left and then we started our F shaped scans from there. Therefore, our interactions with the page where very top heavy. The variable in this was the relevance of the top sponsored ads. If the engine maintained relevance by only showing top sponsored when they were highly relevant (i.e. Google) to the query, we scanned them. If the engine bowed to the pressures of monetization and showed the ads even when they might not be highly relevant to the query (we saw more examples of this on Yahoo and Microsoft) users tended to move down quickly and the Golden Triangle stretched much further down the page. It was a mild form of search banner blindness. The one thing that remained consistent was the upper left starting point.

But things change, at least for now, when you start mixing results into the equation. If the number 2 or 3 organic return is a blended one, with a thumbnail graphic, we assume the different presentation must mean the result is unique in some way. The graphic proves to be a power attractor for the eye, especially if it’s a relevant graphic. Its information scent that can be immediately “grokked” (to use Jakob Nielsen’s parlance) and this often drew the eye quickly down, making this the new entry point for scanning. This reduces the top to bottom bias (or totally eliminates it) making the blended result the first one scanned. Also, we saw a much more deliberate scanning of this listing.

Give Me an F, Give me an E…

Another common behavior we identified is the creation of a consideration set, by choosing 3 or 4 listings to scan before either choosing the most relevant one or selecting another consideration set. In the pre-blended results set, this consideration set was usually the top 3 or 4 results. But in blended results, it’s usually the image result being the first result scanned, and then the results immediately above and below it. Rather than a “F” shaped scan, this changes the pattern to an “E” shaped scan, with the middle arm of the “E” focused on the graphic result.

The implications are interesting to consider. The engines and marketers have come to accept the top to bottom behavior as one of the few dominant behavioral characteristics and it has given us a foundation to build our positioning strategy on. But if the inclusion of a graphic result suddenly moves the scanning starting point, we have to consider our best user interception opportunities on a case-by-case basis.

Next week, I’ll look at further findings. In the meantime, the full 60 page white paper is available on the Enquiro site.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, September 6, 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  

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

For the first time in a long time I've been consistently frustrated with the result that Google's been returning for several of my searches.  It's not that Google's getting worse, it's that the nature of my searches have changed significantly.  My searches are getting fuzzier as I'm stepping into territory I don't know very well.  Google is not functioning terribly well as my "discovery" engine.

Aaron's Ambient Findability

Aaron Goldman wrote an absolutely fascinating column last week about ambient findability, based on Peter Morville's book.  I'll definitely be taking Aaron's advice and ordering my copy from Amazon soon.  The interesting thing was that I read Aaron's column shortly after I did an interview with Jakob Nielsen where he expressed similar cynicism about the practicality of search personalization.  To sum up, both instances pointed to the fact that doing personalization is very difficult to do right.  It's probably impossible to do perfectly.  But then again, personalization shouldn't be perfect because humans aren't.  There will always be the human element of variability and unpredictability.

Google's Limits as a Discovery Engine

As much as the topic of ambient findability fascinates me (I explored the territory myself in a previous SearchInsider) I won't steal Aaron's thunder because I know he's doing a follow-up column this week.  I'll take a more mundane path and talk about my increasing level of frustration with Google.

As I mentioned in last week's column, I'm currently doing research for a book.  Right now, what I'm doing research on is the nitty-gritty of why and how we make purchase decisions.  By the way, Aaron suggested an interesting book so I'll do the same.  Please do yourself a favor and pick up a copy of Clotaire Rapaille's book The Culture Code.  This is one of the most fascinating marketing books I've read in some time.  Rapaille talks about the challenge of doing traditional market research in trying to uncover people's attitudes towards brands or other aspects of our culture, like food, healthcare and even the American presidency.  The problem is that in most traditional market research vehicles (focus groups & surveys) we're stuck with what people say.  It's almost impossible to uncover what people really feel.  What people say comes directly from their cerebral cortex, the logical and rational part of their brain.  But what they feel comes from the limbic and reptilian part of the brain, the dark, shadowy corners of our personas. The minute you ask them a question, no matter what the format, you immediately get the cortex in gear. This got me thinking about neural marketing and the actual mechanisms in our mind that click over when we make the decision to buy or not.

Rapaille's book simply served to whet my appetite.  I voraciously started looking for more of the same but books, research or articles that explore the primal reasons why we buy seem to be few and far between (hint: if you know of some please pass them along in the SearchInsider blog so we can all share). I turned to Google and tried a number of queries to try to dig up academic research or websites on a subject matter.  I was definitely venturing into new territory and while Google usually acts as a reliable guide, it was leaving me stranded high and dry in these particular quests.

Personalization is an Idea, not an Algorithm

So, let's get back to personalization.  Would personalization, in the form (Kamvar's algorithm) that is currently being envisioned and rolled out by Google, help me in this matter?  Probably not.  The signals (search and web history) would be too few to help me zero in on the content I'm looking for.  It wouldn't really improve Google's utility as a 'discovery" engine.  It would run into the same road blocks that Aaron and others consistently point out.

But here's the thing.  Google is making a huge bet on personalization.  But personalization is not the only thing Google is working on. Personalization simply acts as a hub. MIT's Technology Review recently did an interview with Peter Norvig, Google's Director of Research. Norvig is, quite literally, a rocket scientist (he was head of computational sciences at NASA in a previous life) who is taking Google's research in some interesting new directions. Speech recognition and machine translation are two notable areas. Speech recognition can overcome some major input obstacles not only on the desktop, but, more notably, on mobile devices and on a convergent home screen that fully integrates our online world and entertainment options. And machine translation can enable a number of automated systems that can power further online functionality. Both are very much aligned with Google's engineering view of the universe, where introducing people into the equation just introduces friction in an otherwise perfect world.

But the really telling part of the interview came when the conversation turned to search. Norvig talks about the current imbalance of search, where there is an avalanche of data available, but the only gate to that data are the few words the searcher chooses the share with the search engine. We're trying to paint personalization into a corner based on Google's current implementation of it. And that's absolutely the wrong thing to do. Personalization is not a currently implemented algorithm, or even some future version of the same algorithm. It's is an area of development that will encompass many new technologies, some of which are under development right now in some corner of Google's labs. Personalization, in its simplest form, is simply knowing more about you as an individual and using that knowledge to better connect you to content and functionality on the web. There are many paths you can take to that same end goal. Sep Kamvar's algorithm is just one of them. By the way, Norvig's particular area of expertise is artificial intelligence. Let's for an moment stop talking about personalization and start talking instead about what the inclusion of true artificial intelligence could do for the search experience. But artificial intelligence requires signals, and personalization is a good bet to provide those signals. It doesn't have to get it perfect every time, it just has to make it better.

Just as a last point, Marissa Mayer said in an interview that Google's current forays into personalization serve no other purpose than to give Kamvar some data to play with to improve his algorithms. We've all quickly jumped on personalization (and yes, I'm probably the most guilty of this) as the new direction of search, but many of us (and I believe my guilt ends here) are making the assumption that personalization means a form of what we're seeing today. It doesn't. Not by a long shot. And, at the end of the day, what we're looking for is a jump ahead in matching our needs with what the web has to offer. To win, Google doesn't have to do it perfectly. It just has to do it better than everyone else.

Originally published in Mediapost's Search Insider, July 19, 2007

I let Chris Sherman convince me that if I had to choose one overseas show this year, it should be SES China in Xiamen. Part of me is thanking Chris, and part of me is cursing the hell out of him. To be fair to Chris, he warned me that this is a cultural shock of significant magnitude. He was right.

I'll leave the personal observations for my blog. One of the reasons I came was that I knew this was the most important online market in the world, and I had to dip my toe in for myself. For that, I do have to thank Chris. A few weeks ago I was in Florida for the Search Insider Summit and made a note of some advice Esther Dyson passed in the keynote presentation to the ersatz "Bill Gates" (played by David Vise). "Make sure your kids learn Mandarin". Xie Xie (thank you) Esther. You're absolutely right.

Big, But Just Beginning

Let me give you some sense of the magnitude of this market. Right now, the Chinese internet market is the second largest in the world, and it's only a whisker behind the US, with 150 million users (the US has 154 million). But the US has 68% penetration. That 150 million represents about 10% of the Chinese market. At full saturation, the Chinese market will be almost 7 times as large as the US.

But don't make the mistake of projecting the US experience onto the emerging Chinese Market. Chinese culture is vastly different from the US one, and their online community will bear little resemblance to ours. For one thing, much of the Chinese online experience will likely happen through mobile devices. While internet penetration is only 10%, cell phone penetration is significantly higher, at 33%. The mobile market is much more mature here. For another, the Sino mind just clicks at a different speed than ours.

Hot and Noisy Online

One of my favorite phrases I've learned while here was renao, which loosely translates into "hot and noisy". It was explained to me by Deborah Fallows from the PEW Internet Group, an U.S. ex-pat living in Shanghai for two years with her husband, author and journalist Jim Fallows. It sums up so much of what I've seen here. The Chinese like to be bombarded by visual stimuli. They operate at a frenetic pace, juggling several things at one, each loudly demanding attention. Some look at this as a lack of maturity in the Asian market. Chinese web sites are seen to be garish through western eyes and we think this is because the designers aren't very sophisticated yet. Perhaps it's just the designers catering to their audience, who like it "hot and noisy".

Savoring Information

The other difference is how western cultures treat information, compared to the Chinese. In the west, information is in no short supply, and for the most part, we inherently trust the source of that information. We believe most things we read online to be true. Our biggest challenge is to wade through the mountain of information available to us and to eliminate the irrelevant. The Chinese treasure information, yet have a healthy skepticism as to its veracity. While the west is ruthless in our filtering of information, particularly on a search page, the Chinese are more apt to gather and consider, taking time to digest and choose. They often have multiple windows open at the same time, both as a way to keep busy with the slower load times typical in China, and also because they like their desktop "hot and noisy".

Keeping an Eye on the Market

One of the reasons I was here was to share preliminary findings from an eye tracking study we did with Chinese users on the two main Chinese search properties, Baidu and Google.cn. This difference in user behavior became very apparent in the study. In North America, the average interaction with a search results page, from launch to first click, is generally less than 10 seconds. In the Chinese study, we saw averages of 30 seconds on Google and up to a minute on Baidu. While North American scan activity is condensed in the Golden Triangle, in China, it's spread around the page. It's fascinating to watch an individual session. The eye zips around the page, picking up information in an apparently haphazard manner. Baidu has been taken to task for the opaque nature of its listings, where you can pay for placement. The results are also much more prone to affiliate spam (on both engines, but particularly Baidu) than we see in North America. But the Chinese don't mind. Baidu has captured 62% of the search market here, compared to 20% for Google. After all, lack of trust in information is nothing new to the Chinese. Why should it be any different on a search engine? By the way, release of the study is slated for mid-June.

Everyone I've talked to here agrees. This is a market ready to explode. Innovation is happening organically and at an incredibly rapid pace. The development cycle to turn out new functionality on Chinese sites is 30 to 50% as long as their North American based rivals. As somebody told me, "in China, you point, shoot and then aim. Deliberation will kill you here." This is a lesson Google is learning the hard way. In chatting with Chris, the level of sophistication has raised immensely from the last show they did here, in 2006. The Chinese internet market is like a Beijing taxi, there may be no logic to its route, but it's sure getting to wherever it's going in a hurry!