Visual Relevance and Ask's Preview Function - by MarketSmart Interactive's Casie Gillette
I'd like to introduce to you the newest voice on Search Engine Lowdown - Casie Gillette.

Visual Relevance: the Affect of Ask’s Preview Tool on Click Throughs

She shared her interest in studying the effects of Ask's Preview Function (binoculars) on users as they interacted with SERPs. She surveyed 50 people; I worked with her in preparing her findings for your consumption.

Please note that this is - because of its limitations - an anecdotal study and is intended as a conversation starter rather than hard data for making business decisions.

It's certainly pertinant however, in this age of Snap's experiments with site previews in SERPs and the constant shifting and SERPs experimentation that goes on.

my highlights from Casie's work:
>>the "visual relevance" concept emerged as we spoke (how the appearance of a site prior to click through affects a user's perceptions of that site's relevance to a given query).
>>the 8th placed site in her Ask SERPs set was the #1 most-liked in preview
>>across the 50 people surveyed, likes and dislikes were consistent
>>usability matters even more in search marketing when users have the ability to preview websites in the SERPs

Without further ado, here's Casie's Visual Relevance: the Affect of Ask’s Preview Tool on Click Throughs.

The hardcore search marketers among my dear readers are likely to see a functional correlation between Ask's binoculars and the user data that we strongly speculate is a factor in Google's determination of relevance.

One is likely to ask why *show* users the site when you can just decrease the ranking of sites that cause pogo-sticking back into the SERPs.

Further, if Google is likely to continue relying on user data to adjust relevance they are not likely to adopt a preview function and therefore, why make usability a core factor in search marketing?

To these people I submit two arguments:

1) Ask makes highly-deliberate, hyper-tested changes - at least this is the impression CEO Jim Lanzone has given me in past conversations. Therefore it's my belief that previews *work*. Otherwise they would not have rolled out.

And an independent survey showed that Binoculars Reduce Clicks Required to Find Best Results by 50-70%

This to me (along with Snap) is enough reason to begin making site usability a core *search marketing* offering. We have at MarketSmart Interactive of course :)

2) Google watches Ask closely (and why not? Ask is now the leader in *pure play* search). Though it's not strictly confirmed, it's my belief that Google hired the Orion algorithm creator in the interest of investigating clustering/conceptual zoom functionality similar to Ask's.

I guess we could be having a conversation about how search marketing fits into a more holistic interactive marketing program too :)

At any rate, please enjoy Visual Relevance: the Affect of Ask’s Preview Tool on Click Throughs and welcome Casie to Search Engine Lowdown with Durden-esque abandon ;)

Also - I've the worst feeling that we've butchered the usage of effect vs. affect. Grammarians please speak up :)
Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive | permalink | +marktd |