Last week I was able to catch up with Jeffrey Pruitt, EVP, Corporate Partnerships at iCrossing, to discuss his thoughts on search marketing trends and paradigm shifts in 2008. We also discussed some useful sessions people should check out while attending Search Engine Strategies in New York. Here’s how our conversation went:

[Manoj]: Can you give me a brief overview of the trends you think the search marketing industry will see this year?

[Jeffrey Pruitt]:

1) Convergence of Search and Display
As advertising becomes more and more digitized, we will see a changed landscape over the next few years. Non-Premium inventory (not on first page) served from contextual like products:
 

• Site-Targeting
• Content Ads
• Display type ads
• Video Ads
• Display retargeting
   

• Video Uploading: the process of publishing videos to video search engines on a per vide basis (most popular)
• RSS media: Require submission of content via xml
• Video Crawler: actively crawl the web for video content

Agencies can further monetize their offerings by utilizing video optimization as a formal service line which includes optimization, creative build, tracking and reporting.

Publishers are innovating video ads through engaging, rich media experiences that do not turn off customers. Interactive Ads on Yahoo or In Video Ads served within the creative content of videos on Google (Adsense) are going to become frequently used advertising formats.

Publishers are innovating video ads through engaging, rich media experiences that do not turn off customers. Interactive Ads on Yahoo or In Video Ads served within the creative content of videos on Google (Adsense) are going to become frequently used advertising formats.

[Manoj]: How will marketers have to adjust their budgets to compensate for the upcoming changes?

[Jeffrey Pruitt]:Some of the budgets will be pulled from traditional sources. More and more you will see advertisers relying on performance marketing, especially if there is an economic down turn. Understanding these trends will help drive this change.

[Manoj]: How important is it to understand all the online touch-points of your visitors?

[Jeffrey Pruitt]: Very important. Everything on line starts with research of your customers and what journey’s they have both off line and on-line. Search sits at the center of digital and the insight that can be gained from Search and then utilized across the marketing mix is endless.

[Manoj]: What are some sessions as at SES New York that you recommend attendees should check out?

[Jeffrey Pruitt]:
MONDAY

• Redefining the Customer
• Video Made the SMB Star

TUESDAY

• Microsoft Search Tips and tricks for delivering great results and campaigns with Live Search
• Earning Money From Contextual Ads

WEDNESDAY

• Big Brand Search Strategies: Build Connections and Fuel Online Promotions
• Searcher Behavior Research Update
• Ad Exchanges Are Changing Everything

• The SEMPO Survey: 2007 State of the Market
• Video Search Optimization

 Original Post: Web Analytics World

It's that time of year when anybody and everybody with an opinion start making predictions for the upcoming year.  In order to make a prediction, you usually need to refer to some existing baseline or current event.  So as we wind down 2007 we reflect on what happend in search in 2007.  If you would like a recap, over at SEO-Space, I posted about some of the top search stories of 2007.  While, I'm not big on making predictions, it's always fun to reflect on what has happened and see what others are predicting will happen in 2008.

2007: The Year Search Got Personal

This past year saw search engines trying to get personal with their search results.  Whether it's through an iGoogle page or your own "My Stuff" page over at ASK, users were able to determine (somewhat) which results were presented to them.  ASK even went so far to offer users the ability to opt out of having their search history removed with their ASK Eraser feature. 

One of the most innovative moves by the search engines collectively was the transformation of the search results page.  It began with Google displaying Universal search results to include images, video, news stories, books, blog post and the like within their main search results.  From there ASK rolled out their ASK 3-D interface with a multi-panel search results page (my personal favorite) that offers a great user experience.  The other engines were a little slower out of the gate, but are now also incoporating the use of "blended search results".  All steps to get more personal with their users.  2007 was the year that search got personal.  For users who want to give up a little of their anonimity they received a richer search experience.

So what's in store for search in 2008?  Lee Odden over at Top Rank Online Marketing actually has a poll going on, on what will be the big stories in search marketing in 2008.  Some of the choices include:

• Death of Universal Search - (uh no, I highly doubt it)
• Mobile Search Explodes - this one's a gimme
• Social Media Marketing Explodes - not sure about this one.  Social media marketing tends to be over-rated in my opinion…. that is it doesn't work for everyone.
• Search Engine Consolidation - this is an interestig thought
• "Real" Solutions to Click Fraud - is click fraud truly that large of an issue?  This can be debated.
• Death of SEO as we know it - many are predicting and calling for this.  The one thing about SEO and online marketing is that change is inevitable.  SEO will undergo a major transformation, the fact is it already has.

You can see the entire list by visting Lee's blog.  As mentioned, I'm not big on making predictions, here are some things that I would like to see in 2008:

• ASK gaining a couple of percentage points in search market share - the team over at ASK has been working pretty hard to improve the user experience.  They have a really great product.  While it still needs a little work in terms of working to improve relevancy, the experience on an ASK results page is unlike no other search engine. 
• Somewhat accurate search volume numbers from a search engine - think that this will never happen?  Well Microsoft just happens to be gearing up with a very cool keyword tool (Keyword Service Platform) that will change how Webmasters, Ad agencies and site owners manage their keyword baskets.  I was lucky enough to be a part of a demo from Microsoft yesterday.  I must say that this tool was impressive unlike anything out there right now.  I personally have been waiting for such as tool.  Having somewhat accurate search volume numbers can help us improve our client's sites to ensure that when a user completes a query in a search engine, the most relevant result(s) shows up.  We're not looking to manipulate search engine results, we're looking to improve the results.  We've done our part now it's up to the search engines.
• PubCon becoming the Main Search Engine Conference - from what I have heard this may have already happened.  There seems to be some disappointment with Search Engine Strategies and the Search Marketing Expo conferences.  However, based on a number of reports from Pubcon 2007 suggest that the December event was the best search related conference of the year.  I'd like to see PubCon improve further and offer a better pricepoint so that more marketers and site owners could attend.
• Social Media Marketing to Mature - As mentioned earlier, I think that social media marketing is over-rated.  It simply doesn't work for everyone unless you are simply using it to crate a buzz about your business or brand.  As a lead gen tool I'm not so sure… at least not yet until we see more consistent success stories.  (and yes I know that it has worked well for some, but it depends on what your goals are.  If anyone can provide me with a bunch of successful case studies on social media marketing maybe I'll change my view on this, but for now there is too much hype around social media marketing.)
• Search Engines working together more often - I would like to see the search engines work together on consistent protocol to improve the user experience.  Let's take for example directory or Wikipedia listings.  I have an issue when I perform a query in Google or Yahoo or any other engine and Wikipedia listing show up at the top or near the top of the results.  Is there no way (other than opting in to a personalized page) that the engines can get together and determine a consistent way of dealing with Wikipedia listings?  Or how about reporting on external links to one's site?  Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo Site Explorer do an ok job, but what about more consistency?  And what about video, why should I have to submit a video to 5 or 10 video aggregator sites?
• A new search player to emerge - how cool would it be to see a new player in the search engine world emerge in 2008?  Can Google dominate forever?  (I'm specifically referring to the North American market here.)  Will we ever see another Google again when it comes to search?
• An affordable iPhone or gPhone (I know, no gPhone we have Android) that is made available here in Canada.  Mobile marketing will be big in 2008, no question.

So while I'm not sure about what's in store for search in 2008, I know what I'd like to see in '08.  What about you?  Where do you see search going in 2008?

Original Post: Facebook Ads: Will They Work for You? from SEO-Space 

Earlier this week Facebook unveiled their new Facebook Ads platform. According to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook Ads are essentially an ad platform for businesses to connect with users and target advertising to the exact audiences they want. In the past we have discussed the business benefits of Facebook, this new ad platform takes it to a whole new level. They key to this ad platform? The users are in control. They decide if they will endorse or "evangelize" a brand and as a result their friends or family will be exposed the brand. As illustrated in a great post over at Advertising Age entitled Facebook's Big Ad Plan, there are really two parts to Facebook Ads:

1. The first part involves user-initiated recommendations of a brand: When people visit a business' Facebook page, they can choose to share their engagement with the brand (by becoming a "fan" or writing on the brand's "wall"). What this does is establish trust. If your friends or family recommend a brand, chances are you will add that brand to "one of the rungs on the ladder" for your consideration set.

2. The second part is the actual paid-advertising. Facebook will permit advertisers to attach an ad message to those user notifications. To do so, marketers make a Facebook ad buy targeting users by any number of traits users volunteer on their profiles, such as age, political leanings or interests and activities.

I think that Zuckerberg is bang on with the notion that a Pull strategy is going to be the way of the future in terms of advertising. So will Facebook Ads work for you? Well that depends on if you are willing to accept the fact that traditional push strategies are a thing of the past. The consumer is in control. This goes against what traditional marketing managers have done in the past. It's always been a push strategy. Push the brand to the potential consumer, push the product to the potentil consumer… it has become so bad that consumers tend to ignore much of the advertising that is presented to them. Thing of television ads. How many of you turn the channel when an ad comes on? How many run to the kitchen to grab a snack? How many people actually tune in and focus on the ad? Even in the online space, our research has shown that certain users still ignore sponsored listings in favor of organic listings. Others simply ignore sposnored ads because they treat them as unwanted advertising.

As taken from the official Press Release from Facebook Ads,

Today, Facebook Ads launched with three parts: a way for businesses to build pages on Facebook to connect with their audiences; an ad system that facilitates the spread of brand messages virally through Facebook Social Ads™; and an interface to gather insights into people’s activity on Facebook that marketers care about.

Here's what Facebook ads can do for you:

• Advanced targeting allowing you to target your audience by age, gender, location, or interests.
• Trusted referrals as you can attach friend-to-friend interaction about your business to your ads.
• Content integration allowing the most relevant content to come to the surface.
• Reach the right audience - Instead of creating an advertisement and hoping that it reaches the right customers, you can create a Facebook Social Ad and target it precisely to the audience you choose.
• Top of Mind Awareness - Facebook Social Ads allow your businesses to become part of people's daily conversations.
• Simplicity - Creating a Social Ad for Facebook is quick and easy. Simply write a creative, tell Facebook who you want seeing your ad, and decide where you want to drive traffic.

But What About Reputation Management?

Opening up advertising to the social masses can be a dangereous thing. You see it keeps business owner's honest. If your product/service is not what users expect it to be, you can bet that you are going to hear about it from users in social media outlets such as Facebook. We've all heard stories of dissatisfied customers who have gone on to blog about a negative experience with a product or brand. The end result that sales of that product plummet leaving the brand to do damage control. Point being is that if you want consumers to promote your brand or your product, you had better make sure that your product satisfies their needs. While the goal with Facebook ads is to promote your brand in a positive light, the social network can also be used to communicate negative experiences with your brand or product. Is that a risk that many companies want to take?

Let's not forget that in order for this to work, users need to share their purchase behavior with their friends and family. Not everybody is willing to do this. Will Facebook Ads work for you? Well Facebook Ads will work for any advertiser providing you put faith in the social masses to endorse your product and brand.

Related Resources

The Facebook Years: Everything You Need to Know About Facebook
Facebook Ads
Facebook Social Ads
Facebook Beacon

MarketingSherpa today released the fourth annual edition of its Search Marketing Benchmark Guide, http://www.sherpastore.com/Search-Marketing-Benchmark-2008.html

The guide reveals the latest findings of MarketingSherpa's extensive survey in June and July 2007 of 2,475 marketers who conduct or supervise search marketing for their own companies.

Among the highlights found in the 273-page guide:

• The search marketing industry is still expanding rapidly - as much as 31% in the United States and 39% globally for 2007. This year-over-year growth will slow in time. Still, search budgets are increasing by double-digit percentages for many marketers, although we're hearing feedback that many of those increases are in anticipation of rising prices, not a desire to extend their search engine marketing (SEM) reach.
• The allure to bring SEM in-house is growing stronger for many marketers, although the number of organizations getting outside help actually increased over the past 12 months. However, it's becoming more common to use outsourced assistance as part, not all, of the overall SEM effort.
• More emphasis on natural search has put pressure on many marketers to improve their own sites, while smaller companies are feeling the pinch in paid search/keyword price inflation. Click fraud is still a concern, but marketers don't seem as worried about it this year. That's probably more a function of media attention (or the lack thereof compared to last year) rather than any real change in the phenomenon itself.

I was also able to get some first hand insight from the Director of Research at MarketingSherpa, Stefan Tornquist. Listen to our conversation below:

Aaron, Aaron, Aaron. Could I possibly leave you as a lone voice out in the wilderness, prophesizing about personalized search? Of course not.Last week, fellow SearchInsider Aaron Goldman pointed out some loopholes in personalized search nirvana. It's hard to find fault with his points. They're all very real flaws in making personalization a credible evolution in search relevancy. Also, somewhere along the line, it appears that I've become the cheerleader for personalized search. I do admit I'm somewhat bullish on it, but I think I should clarify why I think personalization is important.It's Time to Break Search's ParadigmSearch has hit the ceiling, at least in its current embodiment. We've pushed the paradigm as far as it will go. Search's nose is smashed up against the window. (I should stop writing these columns late in the evening, after a 15 hour day!). Search needs to go somewhere, and after looking at the alternatives, I believe personalization is the most probable path.

All the improvements in search over the past decade have largely been in the background. The interface you and I use has hardly changed since I first used Infoseek and AlltheWeb back in 1995. Sure, the algorithms have been tweaked, but they've all been improvements down the same path, and that path is at a dead end. For search to evolve, it needs to move beyond a pure query initiated, algorithmic driven exercise. Even universal search, which is the biggest change we've seen to the results page in the past few years, is really still a tweak on the existing paradigm. It's just mixing the bag of results, powered by the same algorithm.

So, when we look at where search can go, there are precious few alternatives. They all aim at the Holy Grail, disambiguating intent. We can look at human powered search. The idea behind this is that real, live human beings can deliver greater relevancy than an algorithm ever could. Here tread Jason Calacanis (Mahalo) and Jimbo Wales (Wikia), and South Korea's Naver.com.  Then we have the very close cousin (and in some cases, a stand in) social search. If we somehow tag results, or implicitly give our vote, even through a click through, will others who share our interests find the same results more relevant? Finally, we have personalization.

Don't Expect Perfection Anytime Soon

Each approach has potential flaws. Any time you break a paradigm, iterative failure is almost a given. Nobody is going to get it perfect out of the gate. Getting to the next evolution of search will involve trial and error. That's why I think it's particularly brave of Google, given their current market leading position, to be moving aggressively down the personalization path. They're eating their own lunch. It's an inevitable move, but one that it takes guts to make. And don't judge the potential of personalization based on what you're seeing today. It would be akin to trying to determine the eventual impact of the automobile based on your impression of the first horseless carriage that lurched through town. There's a reason it's in beta.

Aaron worries about the search "ruts" that may evolve with personalization. If we tend to go down the same paths again and again, what happens when we want to explore new territory? Will personalization have formed a groove so deep we can't crawl out of it?

Another one is Aaron's concern about multiple profiles on the same machine within a household. Or for that matter, multiple profiles with the same person. I search differently at work than I do at home. How will a search engine reconcile this search schizophrenia?

Of course, we haven't even touched on the biggest challenge facing personalization: the privacy issue. Personalization is powered by mountains of sensitive data. The potential push back on this is the biggest red flag that personalization has to contend with.

Making the Leap

But no matter which path search chooses to follow, there will be monumental challenges to address. That's the whole crux of innovation. If it was easy, everyone would do it. But search has no option. For it to evolve into its next stage, which is to take its rightful place as the fundamental glue that connects us all to the highly functional, highly personal semantic web, search needs to break the current paradigm. And that's why I'm bullish on personalization. As Matt Cutts said to me once (about a totally different topic), if I had a dozen eggs, I'd be putting 11 of them in this particular basket. Sure, personalization has some big hurdles to jump. So do the alternatives. And I think the potential wins for personalization are far bigger. I have the suspicion that if personalization works as well as I think it can, we'll look back 5 years from now with bemusement at the concerns we had in 2007 around the issue.  

That's the problem when you come to the end of a development path and fundamental change, rather than incremental change, is required. It's very difficult to see what lies ahead.

(originally Published in Mediapost's Search Insider, July 5, 2007)

I should have known as soon as I saw the speaker roster. Matt Cutts, Tim Mayer, Danny Sullivan, Michael Gray and myself on the same panel. Guess who got the lion's share of attention in the Q&A and after session scrum? Michael and I might as well have checked out early and hit the Google Dance before the crowds.The title of the panel at the inaugural SMX in Seattle was Search Personalization: Fear or Fear Not. As Danny often does, he set the panel up to generate a little debate: Michael Gray vs Google, Yahoo vs Google. I was like Switzerland, in neutral territory. Danny did get his conflict, with Michael taking a few shots at Google and Tim Mayer throwing down the gauntlet about the lack of transparency on Google's personalized search results.

Guess What? SEO's are not your Average Search User!

To be honest, I was a little taken aback that the audience didn't jump all over how personalization was going to change SEO. Most of the questions from the crowd centered on how you opt out of personalized search and why personalization wasn't good for them. I have some issues with that, which of course I'll share in this column:

- First, this crowd was trying to argue from a user's point of view. Okay, they're SEO's (this was the organic track) and most of them have been using search since Lycos was a little baby spider. Just how typical do you think these users are?

- Secondly, I question their motives. Do they hate personalization as a user, or as an organic optimizer? My guess is the later, but it just doesn't seem to be very noble to joust with Google because they're making your job harder. Far better to cry foul as a user than as a PO'd organic optimizer. Like somebody said to me after, do you really think Marissa Mayer is losing sleep because the Google user experience for SEO's isn't all they want it to be?

- This was a perfect opportunity to start planning for the new world of SEO, post personalization. There's a ton of value we can add, as smart, pro-active practitioners, but I didn't see anyone take the opportunity to delve into this. Perhaps the really smart ones were keeping their mouths shut, content to let their competitors bitch about the inevitable while they plotted their take over.

- I found everyone fixated on the current threshold of personalization on the page, taking comfort in the fact that it's only impacting a small number of searches. I reminded them that this threshold is a totally arbitrary one set by Google, and could (and will) change at any time.

- Everyone taking a siloed view of personalization, looking at the organic results in isolation. It's almost like they're assessing the amount of damage control required. I'm not sure they realize the import of personalization. This is a rule changer, a paradigm shifter. This is the new generation of search functionality. It changes the game dramatically. Whatever happens on the organic side will roll over to the sponsored side. It will drive universal search. It will drive everything.

- Finally, this is not just happening on Google. Microsoft's recent comments made it very clear they're thinking long and hard about personalization. Tim Mayer cautioned me not to make the mistaken assumption that just because Google was first out with personalization, they're the only ones working on it. In fact, Matt was quite delighted when he found an article in the Times Online where Yahoo VP Tapan Bhat confessed at the Next Web conference in Amsterdam that Personalization was the future of the Web, including search. You can define personalization in a number of different ways, but however you do it, it dramatically changes our online experience.

So, I leave you with this. I went into the SMX session with four fundamental changes I see emerging from personalization that SEO's and SEM's have to think about, right now. No one asked me for the slide deck after the session. There was not one question about strategies for leveraging personalization. Everyone was more interested in grilling Matt on why the opt-out link disappeared from the results page. Although I'm tempted to join the smart and silent search marketers, I think I'll make one last attempt to share this with the SEM/SEO community. Perhaps in a white paper, perhaps a future column. But I'm only going to do it if you're serious about pushing the envelope into this new opportunity. Drop me an email (gord@enquiro.com) and let me know. Otherwise, I'll just shut up and nod my head while you bitch about the fact that it's too hard to opt out of personalized search. You'll excuse me if I don't answer; you see, my mind is on something else.

Being as most of the Search Insiders are in Bonita Springs this week, chances are that you'll be hearing a lot of what’s happening down here in the Florida Everglades (other than the brush fires which appear to have us surrounded). Aaron Goldman shared his Buzz-o-meter with us on Tuesday, where he measures the words that seem to be dropped with the greatest frequency. It appears that my opening remarks set a tone that has been picked up in a number of sessions, and two words breaking into the top 10 are Connection and Community. He added a third C: Content.

Search Engines Go Under the Hood

To me, they sum up a transition that’s happening in search. Expect the activity of searching on a search engine to gradually disappear, to be replaced with the functionality of search as an underpinning to the workings of many things on the web. Search will become the engine that drives the semantic web, which Esther Dyson talked about in her keynote. She’s looking for search to move beyond "search and fetch" to her ideal, "deliver, act and transact". Search will be the connector between what we want and what best matches our want out there on the web. And rather than a singular task (i.e. go look for this query) it will become a self guided series of tasks, with intelligent agents in between to set search on its new direction. An entire trip, include flight reservations, hotel bookings, ground transportation, notifications of friends in the area and restaurant reservations could all be handled by intelligent web agents, powered by search. And as came up in a panel discussion with the Search Insiders, when the presentation of commercial messaging appears in this context, it’s not advertising, it's a helpful recommendation.

The piece that drives this is personalization, and that's why Google’s moves are potentially so important. They take us much closer to the semantic web that Dyson envisions. This is the first C:

Connections.Redefining Community

The other C speaks to the very transformation of our society: Community. The way we relate to each other is being totally rewired by the internet. By sheer physical necessity, communities have previously been defined by geography. We shared a common space, which enable communication, which created community. But today, the internet has made physical distance irrelevant. Our communities are now defined by commonly held ideas or interests. Communities form around ideas, and search connects us to those communities. Every time we do online research for a product or service, we step into a community. In the course of a day, we can belong to several different communities. They are constantly shifting, as people move in and out of them, depending on the longevity of the engagement with the idea that forms the community.

Content Trails

And a third C, content, is the trail that the other members of that community leave behind
through their conversations. These are the telltale signs that someone has already gone this way, and left a permanent record of their engagement with the community. Every Wikipedia
entry is part of a community, as are many MySpace pages, blog posts and other virtual
outposts. Search is the thread that loops them together at the user’s initiative. In fact, the algorithm of the engine is the de facto definer of community with each given search. The
engine goes out, defines the landscape of community, and connects you with the citizens of
that community and the content trails they leave behind.

It's a fascinating world, which is being born as we speak. It's a sociological experiment of vast magnitude in the making, and, I don’t think we know what the repercussions will be. Whatever they are, it’s too late to turn back now. Technology moves fast, but people move slowly, and not in one mass. Small degrees of technological change can create seismic shifts in the sociological landscape. And we’re subjecting ourselves to a degree of technological change unparalleled in history. Who knows what we've unleashed? 

Original Post can be found on SEO-Space.

Is it just me or do I keep hearing a number of SEOs complain about the idea of personalized search? The question is why? You cannot change the inevitable from happening. Think of it this way: anything that improves the search experience for the user improves the SEO industry. As search engine marketers, if you are not considering the user experience then you are in the wrong line of business. While most people do not like change, SEOs seem to take that statement to a whole new level (which is strange to me) because the one thing that is constant in our industry is change. Each and everytime one of the major search engines update their alogorithms search engine optimizers roll their eyes and begin to panic. Remember anything that improves the search experience for the user improves the SEO industry. Personalized search results will improve the user experience.

So What is Personalization?

So just what is personalization? Here are some common definitions for personalization

• Tailoring specifically to an individual
• Using personal information
• Customizing something to provide an element of uniqueness
• A process whereby small lots of individualized parts or products are produced
• The act of tailoring products or services to the customer's specifications

Site Personalization - A feature of a website that allows visitors to select the kinds of content they want displayed when they visit a website usually through cookies or a login of some sort.

Personalized search is the process by which the search engines tailor results from previous search behavior and adjust present and future search results based on “behavioral” preferences. Google is the first search engine to introduce personalized results on a large scale. According to Wikipedia, "…Weighing a number of factors including but not limited to user history, bookmarks, community behaviour and site click-through rate and stickiness, Google is providing results that are specific to what they believe you are searching for."

Marketers have been incorporating the use of personalization on websites for years now. Using the process of tailoring pages to individual users' characteristics, behaviours or preferences. This personalization is commonly used to enhance customer service, leads and e-commerce sales. The "personalized web page" is tailored to specifically target each individual consumer.

Components of Personalization

The premise behind personalization include:

• the use of cookies
• filtering - where a filter is applied to information from different sites and sources to select relevant data that may apply to the specific online experience of a customer or specific group of customers
• User profiling/behavorial targeting - using data collected from a number of different sites, which can result in the creation a personalized Web page before the user has been formally
• Data analysis - tools used to predict likely future interactions (think semantic mapping

So why are many SEOs afraid of personalized search? The fact is because it is unlike anything that we have seen in the past. Can you imagine a unique Search Engine Results Page (SERP) for each and every one of us? It makes it tough for search engine optimizers to use traditional tactics to position their clients webpages within index of the search engines. Relevancy is relevancy. If you provide relevant and somewhat unique content on your website, you are going to be found in the search results whether personalized or not.

My advice to B2B marketers is not to fear the personalization of search, but to welcome it. While personalization depends on the gathering and use of personal user information, privacy issues are a major concern. No question that is an issue, but the fact is that personalization of search is a great benefit to the user. Personalization is a means of meeting the customer's needs more effectively and efficiently, which will make interactions faster and easier and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits.

Personalization is sometimes referred to as one-to-one marketing and for good reason. It creates a relationship between you and your prospect and you and your customer. In an era where marketing is being driven by the consumer this is a good thing.

Previous Posts on Personalization of Search:

• ASK X – Prelude to Personalized Search?
• Search Engine Marketing Gets Personal
• Gord Hotchkiss on Personalized Search
• The Personalized Results are Coming, The Personalized Results are Coming!
• Personalized Search Brouhaha
• ASK X Leading the Way with User Experience
• Matt Cutts Interview on Personalization and the Future of SEO

The SEMPO Institute has recently launched an advanced version of their Search Engine Optimization course and earlier this week I caught up with SEMPO Institute Dean, Terry Plank, to discuss his thoughts on the latest course.  The courses offered by SEMPO will help both companies (who are looking for highly trained SEM professionals) and individuals (looking to get into search marketing).

Advanced Search Engine Optimization (SEO), is a 5 module, 15 lesson course designed to teach the 'how to' of Search Engine Optimization.

Here is the audio and the list of questions I posed to Terry Plank:

• Can you talk a little bit about the success of the Fundamentals of Search Marketing?
• Who is the the target market for the advanced SEO Classes?
• What are the major changes from the Fundamentals of Search Marketing?
• What can a student in the advanced course expect to get out of the class? Are the ready for a full time search marketing position?
• Do you have any thoughts of creating anymore category specific tracks, ie: Web Analytics, Social Media, etc…?
• In what areas can the SEMPO Institute improve?

I was fortunate enough to be asked to MC the SearchInsider Summit in Bonita Springs, Florida on May 6.  As the MC, I get to open each day with a few pithy comments and hopefully insightful observations about the emerging trends and notable events in the search engine space.  As faithful readers of this column, let me give you the inside track on at least one of the names I'll drop regularly. In fact, take a moment to go find yourself a pen to jot this name down, because it will become vitally important to you in the next year or two…

Sep Kamvar

Who, you ask?  As I was writing this I took a quick scan of the regular search marketing columns, including this one, to see how much ink Sep has received in the past week.  It's a great injustice that when Kevin Federline launches his own search engine we all rush (and I use first-person plural intentionally, I know I wrote about it too) to add our insightful commentary to the buzz is surrounded this relative nonevent.  But when perhaps the most important announcement to be made in the search space in years happened last Thursday, it passed with nary a whisper.  A quick search on Google News showed that the only blogging about this announcement, other than Google's official post, was a couple of blogs I did on my own site that got picked up in a few other places.  Danny Sullivan also wrote a fairly lengthy post on the announcement. But other than that, not a ripple on the normally turbulent waters of the Internet.

Meet Sep Kamvar

Sep Kamvar could become one of the most important people at Google very quickly.  In fact, his name could become as well known as Larry and Sergey.  Last Thursday, Google announced that they were adding Web History to their search personalization algorithm.  Sep is the guy behind the algorithm.  I've been blogging and writing about personalization for the last few months, telling everyone that they have to pay attention to this.  But other than a handful of people that I’ve spoken to recently, I don't think that most search marketers or users get how important this potentially is, not just for search but for online marketing in general.  The lack of pick up on Google’s announcement is evidence of this. Three weeks ago I wrote a column called Google's Gargantuan Footprint.  A key piece of that puzzle was Google's ability to move towards behavioral targeting.  At that time, I speculated on how that might happen, and I mentioned the Google Toolbar and it's PageRank feature as one of the key elements.  Less than two weeks later I got an e-mail from one of my favorite PR people at Google, Katie Watson, letting me know that Marissa Mayer wanted to chat with me about their plans for personalization.  Sep Kamvar would be joining her on the call.  I juggled my schedule so I could make that call, because I knew it was going to be important.  I was not disappointed.

History is Being Written

Google is now offering an opt-in option for users to include Web History (all the sites you've visited) as a data set that will power their search personalization.  If one lets themselves think into the near future, the implications of this are vast on several different levels. Being able to roll Web History into Search History and monitoring a user's click stream to help refine search results is a huge step towards disambiguation that will substantially alter our individual search experience.  The question for the user is; are they willing to make the trade-off necessary by providing all this click stream data to Google, with their consent?  The fact is, if you have PageRank enabled on your toolbar, this information is being sent to Google anyway.  But now with Google's move towards opting into Web History, they increase the level of transparency into what information they're gathering and how they will be using that information to refine your search experience.

But it's not the personalization of search results that makes this a sea change.  It's the ability for Google to close the loop around one individual based on their online behavior and use that to offer multiple advertising opportunities across their network.  For the interactive marketer, this represents targeting nirvana.  And if one considers Google's recent acquisition of DoubleClick, combined with their contextual network and the ever spreading web of touch points that Google now controls, my speculation about the gargantuan footprint that Google was leaving on the online landscape move several steps closer to reality.

I simply can not speak enough how important this is to every search user and every search marketer out there.  At the user level, there will probably be very little in the way of noticeable change for the immediate future.  Google's move was simply to give Sep and his team a nice clean opt in database that they can play with to improve the personalization algorithm.  But as Sep and his team begin to refine personalization, expect it to be aggressively rolled into multiple aspects of your Google experience.  It's the engine that will power the future of Google for the foreseeable future.  It will eventually surpass the PageRank algorithm in importance, giving Google the ability to match content to very specific and unique user intent on the fly. 

And for that reason, Sep Kamvar is a name to pay attention to.