Spark Con to Harness and Highlight RTP's Indy Geeks and Business Freaks
I was geeking out in Durham, NC with Ben Wills a couple weekends ago and saw a Spark Con flier at the Bean Trader.
The logo of burning person caught my attention first, and then I read the coverage area: Arts, Indy Business, Technology, Inclusivity.
I signed up the next day - it was only $40 for two days and it looks to be a great chance to meet some great local brains.
One interesting result of Spark Con will be a book that provides advice and guidance for local businesses and organizations based on conference workshops.
I'll be posting at SEL about what transpires and I may do a little video. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Increase Blog Traffic by Escaping Your Industry's Echo Chamber Jeremy Swiller IMd me a link to Fishkin's 21 Tactics to Increase Blog Traffic this morning, which we both agreed was a fantastic collection of advice.
These 2 points resontated with me:
from 7 If you're launching a new blog, you need to show people in your space that you can offer something unique, different and valuable - not just the same story from your point of view.
from 12 Spend the time and effort to research, document and deliver and you're virtually guaranteed link-worthy content that will attract new visitors and subscribers.
I also appreciated Chris Pirillo's 10 Ways to Eliminate the Echo Chamber for it's refreshing thinking for bloggers who may have gotten wrapped too tightly in their media space. Like me.
Some quotes that resonated for me:
from 1: "I save my favorite tech friends for “dessert” - catching up with their feeds at the end of the week. Doing this has largely kept me from commenting on commenter’s comments on commenting comments commenting on commenters."
from 5: "when everybody’s talking and nobody’s listening, what are we really accomplishing?"
from 10: "The day for blogging about blogging, and podcasting about podcasting, is long gone."
Danny Sullivan has been my unwitting mentor since I began covering the search space in 2003. Thanks for being a pioneer and a strong thinker Danny and I look forward to your next project.
Ask Offers Non-Alphanumeric Search :P Ask's first iteration of non-alphanumeric search is cute. You can type emoticons into the Ask search bar and get back definitions.
Notable in their post today though is the line, "we plan on doing more with non-alphanumeric searching in the future."
This gets me thinking in the search operator direction, and the development of an easier "short hand" for new types of searches at Ask.
Then again maybe they're just going to add new emoticons :P Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Jim Hedger Joins SiteProNews as Senior Editor
I had the pleasure of working with Jim Hedger back in my days at WebProNews - he regularly answered reader questions and submitted thorough and insightful SEO articles.
I received news today that he joined SiteProNews as its Senior Editor.
Yahoo Real Estate: it's Creeping into Organic + APIs Improve its Functionality
Yahoo revised its real estate page with map and local APIs and gave its web search a real estate short cut:
websearch: "you can now find up-to-date local mortgage rate information directly within web search" Yahoo real estate: "home valuation shortcut and local real estate search shortcut for ‘[city] real estate’ queries (ex: ‘san Francisco real estate’)." Yahoo Local and Map APIs: users can read reviews of schools and figure out drive times to potential residences
To give you a feel for the importance of this move read Greg Sterling: "Depending on whom you consult, Yahoo! Real Estate falls somewhere in the top ten most visited online real estate properties."
Greg Sterling also notes that: "In my quick and unscientific review of [7 real estate] sites I found the new Yahoo! site to be one of the best user experiences (Trulia was the other but didn’t have as many features.)."
I'm not super familiar with the online real estate marketing space, but this looks like a pretty big deal to me in terms of a layering of appropriate technologies that will make the residence-finding process much easier. This realtor real estate company marketer who follows online real estate in his blog thinks so too: Yahoo Real Estate Delivers A Better Search Experience. (his company has a deal with Yahoo though...)
It's interesting to note the creep of Yahoo Real Estate results into Yahoo's main SERPs. It echoes the Google Base creep and, like Base, will be canabalizing paid search and organic result click throughs.
Unlike most of the Base advances I've seen though Y! Real Estate is a strong, well integrated and mostly-separate-from-SERPs tool.
Real Estate marketers - if you're not already in Yahoo, get there now! This improvement will drive its usage enormously. They provide users with residences for rent as well as purchase.
I'd been under his sway for years though, without realizing it. Linden developed Amazon's recommendation engine, which analyzes past purchases, user viewing behavior and makes suggestions based on purchases by others who have profiles similar to mine.
I also asked him for an interview - I realized it was time for me to learn more about Findory, Linden's personalized news recommendation service that enables users to cut through the hundreds of thousands of news and information items to the ones that will be most immediately and personally useful.
As a result of this interview I will be testing out Findory's feed reader (I already imported my feeds as favorites - I could also choose to import the public bloglines of others!) as well as Findory's alpha web search offering.
In this interview I sought to better understand Findory and the merits of personalized recommendations, as well as to grasp something of the monumental task of being a one-person startup.
I hope you find this glimpse into the mind of a relevance pioneer useful and interesting in your work - and I suggest you familiarize yourself with Linden's brand of relevance. His and Watson's I think are strong examples of what relevance will be in the future.
(...and thanks to Ben Wills for suggesting that I steal Kawasaki's interview layout format. I will also be working at understanding Kawasaki's incisive questions so that I can shorten my interviews a bit :P)
Getting Started: 1) Question: how have you applied your studies at the Stanford Business School to your work at Findory?
Answer: There have been some direct applications of the coursework from entrepreneurship, accounting, and business law classes, but most of the value of Stanford Business School comes from hearing of the experiences of others and the breadth of the knowledge shared.
The influence of that can be somewhat subtle. I am more able to attack business problems that before may have seemed daunting, I am more confident when networking or negotiating. I have the advice of many on which to lean. It was an enjoyable and useful experience.
2) Question: where is Findory now in your overall vision for it? what stage would you say you're at now?
Answer: Findory is doing well. It now has products in personalized news, weblogs, video, podcasts, web search, and advertising.
Findory is a reasonably popular website as well. It has over 5M page views and 100k unique visitors per month. The site is generating a modest amount of revenue from its targeted, personalized advertising.
The vision for Findory remains the same as it was on the day it started, to help people find the information they need.
Search works when people know what they want and can specify search terms. When people do not know what they want or cannot specify a search, relevant information needs to be brought to them.
Personalization technology can learn individual interests, generate targeted recommendations, and surface useful information that might otherwise be lost. Personalization can help people get the information they need.
3) Question: how would you characterize Findory's growth at this point? who do you see as competitors and why? Findory + Bloglines would be very useful to me; do you see partnerships as a way to continue growth?
Answer: After growing at about 100% per quarter for the first two years, Findory's growth has slowed recently. I believe the primary reason for this slowing is lack of resources for targeting a broad, mainstream audience with new marketing and new features .
Findory's primary competitors are the search giants. Google, in particular, has early features that recommend news stories (in Google News) based on individual search history and a personalized web search that shows different search results to different people. MSN also has an experimental product that recommends news stories.
There are many other sites that might be substitutes for Findory. For example, My Yahoo, Live.com, and Netvibes are customizable home pages. Bloglines and other feed readers are also configurable and customizable. The primary difference is that Findory learns and adapts from behavior. No configuration is necessary. Just read articles, and Findory changes and personalizes to your interests. This is important for mainstream audiences that do not have the tolerance for twiddling and configuring of the geek crowd.
If you would like a combination of Findory and Bloglines, you might try Findory's feed reader. It is known as Findory Favorites and is available at http://findory.com/s/
You can list all your favorite RSS feeds (or load an OPML file) and then get recommendations of interesting stories selected from your favorite feeds. Quite unusual.
4) Question: do you still have plans to do overall websearch? can you map out this process for me?
Answer: Findory recently launched a new version of its personalized web search. It is currently in alpha testing.
Findory personalized web search reorders your web search results based on your search history, clickthrough history, and the behavior of other web searchers. Early analyses showed a modest but useful lift in the quality of the top search results.
More information on the personalized web search and the improvements in search quality can be found in a weblog post: New personalized web search at Findory
5) Question: how many employees now?
Answer: Just one, me. Findory is a tiny, self-funded startup.
Digging into the Findory collaborative filtering engine: 6) Question: how would you describe or characterize the mathematics of recommendation? do you factor in length of page views or how long it takes to click back?
Answer: Findory recommends interesting articles based on what you read and what others have read.
It is a little like social networking sites, the sites where you list all your friends and then share information between the network of friends.
Unlike social networking sites, everything is done implicitly and anonymously. Rather than list your friends, other like-minded readers of Findory are found for you. Rather than explicitly share, interesting things others have found are quietly and anonymously shared behind the scenes.
All the hard work is done by humans. Findory readers find all the good articles. Findory only helps readers share what they have found easily and with no effort.
Technically, the algorithms used fall into the class of social filtering algorithms, though it often can be tricky work to get those types of techniques to scale to large data.
7) Question: Do you see the potential with Findory usage for an echo chamber, personalized insulation effect, where users end up missing important and relevant news? Will people end up reading what they WANT to read rather than what they NEED to read?
Answer: Findory works hard not to pigeonhole readers. It does not seek to show a reader only what they want to see. Findory helps readers discover a wide range of sources and articles that otherwise might have been missed.
Amusingly, of the very few complaints Findory gets, the most common are from people complaining about seeing articles from a viewpoint with which they disagree. The issue here is that Findory does not pigeonhole people, but some readers want to be pigeonholed. Opinion articles are not selected based on a particular view, with the result that people are exposed to viewpoints they might otherwise prefer to ignore.
By the way, it is interesting to compare Findory with traditional, more static front pages. Let's take Yahoo News as an example. Yahoo News shows the same front page to everyone. There are 100k+ articles available, but everyone sees the same thin slice of 20-30 articles. All the depth of information is lost.
Personalization offers a way to show different front pages to different people. Findory plucks the interesting bits and pieces out of a sea of information. Everyone sees a different slice of the news. Readers see new sources, are exposed to new viewpoints, and discover articles they otherwise would have missed.
8) Question: Is news really the best place for recommendations then? What other types of data do you base news selections on for individual users?
Answer: Readers need help finding interesting news. There are thousands of news sources, hundreds of thousands of news articles, and millions of weblogs out there. It is impossible for readers to sort out the good from the bad on their own. People need tools that make it easy to surface what is relevant to them and help them discover information they would otherwise miss.
The personalization and recommendations on Findory are mostly based on clickstream, but there is some analysis of content as well.
9) Question: what other valuable data about what I'm interested in (besides more of the same data) could you provide me? are there ways to spin this info outside of recommendations such as a graph that shows how long I spend looking at types of news on your site? That would hold up a mirror for me regarding my attention data...
Answer: Findory is not doing much of this, but I really like some of what Google is doing here. In particular, the Google Search History Trends at http://www.google.com/searchhistory/trends is useful and clever.
10) Question: what if I hooked findory up to my email account? or what if you tapped into my attention data in some way? I'd love to lift this recommendation piece out of just news and apply it across all the information I interact with daily, even desktop data. what are your thoughts here?
Answer: The goal of Findory is to help with all information overload. Findory eventually will personalize every information stream in your life, including news, search, advertising, events, e-mails, video, and music.
11) Question: what about white papers or Google Scholar articles and such? Could you envision a Findory that's customized to academics? Have you ever considered making a more targeted Findory for specific demographics?
Answer: We have had various requests to license Findory technology to build personalized news sites for narrower categories. As a tiny startup, Findory does not have the bandwidth to pursue these, but it is an interesting possibility for the future.
12) Question: Can you make Findory read my bloglines and then make suggestions from that, creating a sort of techmeme + new recommendations based on what I already read? This could also give Findory a better sense of how to structure the information you provide; for example I don't need a sports section...
Answer: Findory Favorites (http://findory.com/s/) can read in your OPML from Bloglines, but it does not use the articles you have read on Bloglines
I agree that adding some of Findory's personalization and recommendation technology to Bloglines or other feed readers would be fantastic, especially for people who are feeling overwhelmed with the effort of trying to manually skim and filter hundreds of feeds every day.
13) Question: What about books from Amazon or other types of products? the news I'm interested in could be connected to what entertainment or products I like, right? Are you leaving product recommendations up to advertisers?
Answer: Product recommendations are too close to my previous life at Amazon. Though it is a lot of fun, I doubt I would pursue that.
Personalization has been successfully applied to e-commerce by Amazon and others. Findory is trying to go a step further. Findory seeks to personalize information. Findory will help people find the information they need by learning from what people read and recommending interesting other articles.
14) Question: as a user can I rename any of the sections? they seem so broad, and over time I think a new categorization framework will emerge for every user. Yes, no?
Answer: The categories on Findory are purposely broad. They are intended to supplement search, allowing people to narrow their focus a bit when they want to browse. The personalization should focus the page on the most interesting articles and topics.
Other startups are focusing on narrow categories, including fine-grained classification in Topix.net and the tagging in Technorati. Generally, I think narrow categories require too much work from readers to use and, when used for customizable pages, can cause pigeonholing, so narrowing the categories has not been an area of focus for Findory.
15) Question: video recommendations - what data is most useful to making video recommendations? is this harder without user votes on your site?
Answer: The video recommendations use clickstream data, the information about what Findory readers have watched. Yes, recommendations on Findory for video will continue to improve as more people watch videos using Findory.
16) Question: how have you been able to leverage Findory's recommendation algorithm for advertisers?
Answer: Just as Findory's personalization engine matches content to interested audiences, our personalized advertising matches advertisements to interested people.
The current version uses Google AdSense as the provider of the ads but targets the ads using Findory data. Unlike normal AdSense ads, the advertising is not only targeted to the content of the page, but also to the individual behavior of each reader.
Advertising is a form of content. It is useful when it is relevant. When it is not relevant, it is annoying. Too often, advertising on websites is poorly targeted and irrelevant. Findory wants to make advertising relevant and useful.
17) Question: what are your thoughts about licensing your recommendation engine?
Answer: There have been several inquiries, but supporting licensing would be distracting for the company.
The problem in front of Findory is already Google-sized. Personalizing information -- news, search, and advertising -- is already a multi-billion dollar business. Findory has its work cut out for it with its current mission.
18) Question: you focus on anonymous personalization - why?
Answer: Because we can. And I think it is a good example for others too.
Findory does not require registration or login. Readers who come to Findory can just start reading. The more they read, the more Findory targets to their interests. It just works.
Login and registration are optional. If you do not login, you are just a random number to us. We have no idea who you are and no way to tie your browsing back to you.
Even if you do login, the registration requires just an arbitrary login and password (e.g. "donald.duck"); still no personal information is requested.
Mandatory registration is an unnecessary and unpleasant barrier for readers. Readers just want to get the information they need. We want to help them.
19) Question: Amazon (along with eBay) was a pioneer in leveraging user generated media - book reviews; why have you left this out of Findory?
Answer: Findory does not show the full content of articles -- readers clickthrough to read the full article -- so it would be awkward to show forums or comments next to each article. Moreover, other sites, like Yahoo News, are already pursuing this, making it unattractive for Findory to pursue.
It might be interesting here to talk about the general business relationship Findory has with content providers and its readers. Findory shows excerpts of the content from other sources. It is essentially an ad for that content. Readers benefit from discovering useful information. Content-providers benefit from getting traffic, not just any traffic, but the valuable "traffic of intent", as John Battelle calls it. Findory benefits from connecting advertisers with interested Findory readers. It is good for everyone.
20) Question: how would you describe your crawler? is it built any differently in that it stocks an index for a recommendation engine vs. a search engine?
The crawler itself is pretty straightforward. It is custom, but it is a standard multi-threaded crawler.
21) Question: talk about the findory index - does it grow based on findory usage? how do you decide to add new sources to the index? do you allow suggestions by users? what if I want more information about trout fishing? if I search for trout fishing will you start to find sources for me?
Answer: Findory manually examines news and weblog sources before including them in our crawl. At some point, we will switch to an automated process based on usage data.
A huge percentage of weblogs out there are not of interest to a general audience, either spam, junk, or useless. For one example, Technorati claimed there were 19.6M weblogs in October 2005, around the same time the most popular feed reader, Bloglines, said only 37k weblogs had at least 20 readers on Bloglines. Very few weblogs appear to be useful and relevant to a general audience.
Findory's crawl currently includes a few thousand sources and hundreds of thousands of articles. We constantly are adding new sources to expand our crawl.
General 22) Question: what projects are you most excited about - outside of Findory - in online personalization? I mean projects by the big players or new start ups?
Answer: I like what Google is doing. Of the search giants, only Google seems to be aggressively pursuing personalization. They already have personalized web search and recommendations in Google News. I suspect they are also quietly pursuing personalization of advertising.
23) Question: what do you miss about Amazon?
Answer: Mostly, I miss the resources I had while I was there. No doubt about it, startups are hard and lonely. At a tiny startup, you have to do everything yourself, scrounge for every machine, and fight for every bit of attention from press and consumers. At Amazon, I had powerful computing servers, played with massive data sets, could bounce ideas off talented software engineers, and could rely on system administrators, database administrators, and PR and legal teams. It was nice to have a strong team supporting and helping me.
24) Question: what has had the steepest learning curve for you in running your own startup?
Answer: I would say the hardest thing is that what I decide to work on every day is a bet on the life of the company. I have to be very careful in picking my battles and knowing where to focus my attention.
25) Question: at the library this weekend I was confounded and astounded by the lack of user/borrower data to help me make decisions on step parenting books. do you know of any projects in the public space focused on tapping into usage data to help libraries and their patrons learn from others about the books that are the strongest offerings to a given thought space?
Answer: No, but that is an interesting idea! You should mention it to Gary Price. I am sure he would love to chat about it.
Follow Up Questions: 1) Question: How many people are using the Findory API? 2) Question: Can you provide urls of interesting and clever usages that you've seen? 3) Question: How many Findory inline users do you have?
Answer: Findory's API, RSS feeds, and Findory Inline get a substantial amount of traffic, millions of hits per month. Of these, my favorite is the Findory Inline and RSS feeds that let bloggers see articles on other blogs related what they write about.
Some good examples of using Findory Inline are on my weblog at http://glinden.blogspot.com. You can see that Findory content -- weblog articles related to what I write about on Geeking with Greg, news stories about Google, and a snippet of the personalized headlines that I see when I visit Findory -- are placed directly on my weblog, blended nicely with the style of my weblog, and shared with readers of my weblog. Fun stuff.
4) Question: To me this is approaching a Eurekster-type service where I put customized Findory search and news on my site. Is such a Findory service likely in the near term?
Answer: It's a good idea. That could be implemented using the Findory API, though I admit it would require a bit of effort to do it. Perhaps I will expand Findory Inline to offer this feature.
By the way, if you want this feature, you might also check out Google SiteSearch.
It's a cute service that is part of AdSense and does some of what you want.
5) Question: Explain why, given that there's only you on this project, creating a general audience service instead of a niche audience service is the best direction. If you had to pick a niche what would it be?
Answer:Oh, a niche is no fun at all. I like my projects to be big, hairy, and audacious. I like working on things that could benefit tens of millions of people. A niche is no fun at all.
6) Question: You say in response to question 3 "Just read articles, and Findory changes and personalizes to your interests. This is important for mainstream audiences that do not have the tolerance for twiddling and configuring of the geek crowd." However, mainstream audiences are now flocking to services like MySpace, which require a great deal of configuring and twiddling, though of the less geeky sort obviously. What incentives does MySpace provide for "twiddlers?" Would/could these incentives make sense in Findory?
Answer: I think sites like MySpace and Facebook owe much of their success to being used for dating. Sex is a powerful motivator. It will get people to do work.
Sites like My Yahoo have had a lot less success with getting people to configure and twiddle. The vast majority of people who use My Yahoo do no configuration at all; they use the default page. All those people, the mainstream who are uninterested in spending time configuring My Yahoo, would benefit from implicit personalization like Findory's. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
August 29, 2006
Creating Branded Keywords and Driving Their Search Demand Through Buzz
Congratulations to MarketSmart Interactive's Jeremy Swiller for getting published in MarketingProfs!
Should you read this article? The opening paragraph should give you some idea of who he wrote it for:
If you're marketing in a highly competitive keyword space or are providing products and services that have little or no name recognition, you should consider creating branded keywords and using buzz to drive search demand for them.
I'm honored to work with someone whose SEM thought is this progressive. Nice work Jeremy!
Yahoo Blog Search Down for "Retooling;" New Reader Coming?
Matt Cutts noted that Yahoo's blog search is gone.
Lee Odden commented in Cutts' post that Greg Jarboe contacted Yahoo, and said: "“Brian Nelson, a Yahoo spokesperson, called me back to say the Blogs beta had been “temporarily taken offline to retool the offering.”"
"Chances are that given the early success of MyYahoo Feeds and other Yahoo blog oriented offerings which hit the market earlier than most of their competition, Yahoo has not done very much since to launch an all emcompassing blog reader (such as Google Reader) & search offering, which should be integrated into the overall Yahoo experience (in a similar way that Ask.com has with Bloglines).
Steve Rubel adds that he is seeing a new Yahoo referral source in his server logs, reader.yrank.feeds.yahoo.com."
Google Awarded Shopping "Recommendations" Patent Filed in 2001
Bill Slawski, writing in SEWatch, describes his latest Google patent find as: "a way to use past search history and user behavior to rerank search results and provide ecommerce based recommendations."
This first sentence from the abstract sums up the patent too:
"A search and recommendation system employs the preferences and profiles of individual users and groups within a community of users, as well as information derived from categorically organized content pointers, to augment electronic commerce related searches, re-rank search results, and provide recommendations for commerce related objects based on an initial subject-matter query and an interaction history of a user."
So it sounds like something along the lines of if Amazon looked at your behavior and the behavior of your community and used that to make recommendations.
Like the Editorial Opinion Parameter patent, this one was filed well before the current "community" craze online. What's up with all these old patents coming through?
This particular patent makes a great deal of sense in light of Google Checkout...
Is this normal? Can you unfile and then refile for patents? Why did it take so long?
Index Updates at Google, Yahoo and MSN
I asked Chris Sessoms, one of MarketSmart Interactive's Technical Analysts, to begin writing regularly about the major index and optimization happenings at the search engines.
Here's Chris:
The major occurrence I noticed was that the top three search engines all had some form of an update occurring to close out the week and the month.
Google underwent a minuscule update to their back links at a couple of their data centers, Yahoo underwent an algorithmic update, and MSN began an update that was then rolled back.
It would seem that the possibility of removing Pluto's planetary status has caused an unbalanced shift in our solar system and an inconsequential but stressful week for the SEO/SEM industry.
The Search Engines are not out there to ruin anyone's business, but new sites are added everyday and with increasing indexes maintenance should be expected.
Google Ads on eBay's Non-US Pages + Click to Call on Skype
Swiller just shot me a news story that warped my mind - Google has exclusive rights to sell advertising on eBay's non-US pages.
Further, it appears that eBay Skype and Google Click-to-Call may be working together to drive more commerce on eBay, and it was not clear from the story Swiller sent if this was for outside the US or not.
To be sure, this deal sheds better light on eBay's relationship with Yahoo, which I wrote about here: Yahoo + eBay Tie the Knot!
Now I'm realizing it wasn't so much tying the knot as moving in together to see how things work out ;)
I also find this deal interesting in light of Google Checkout.
Anti-Geekery League Arrests Another in MarketSmart Geekery Investigation
Stephen Ward, an analyst at MarketSmart Interacive, was detained by the Anti-Geekery League on Friday for questioning in response to reports of involvement in geekery. According to an AGL spokesman, Ward was overheard discussing tabletop roleplaying with known geek JP Sherman.
Shortly after his apprehension, Ward confessed. "JP was just inviting me to a one-shot Call of Cthulu game. I don't see what the big deal is. I mean, I play Dungeons & Dragons every Sunday anyway." Ward was thereafter arrested and charged with illegal possession of a Crown Royal dice bag, operating a d20 without a permit, and dragonslaying in the first degree.
Ongoing investigation in the case has revealed a startling development. Anonymous sources have reportedly attested that Ward is, in fact, a Dungeon Master. These kingpins of geekery not only participate in the tabletop RPG underground, but are in fact suppliers who lure unsuspecting victims to such geeky pastimes.
The AGL will be holding a press conference later today concerning Ward's arraignment. Sources from within the AGL have stated that a search of Ward's home made the charges against him likely to stick. Some of the evidence collected included D&D paraphernalia, World of Warcraft material, and several live-action roleplaying costumes. It is expected that additional charges will be filed against Ward once the evidence is fully examined. Ward's lawyers could not be reached for comment.
SEL's second-weekly Geek Trivia Challenge: "According to D&D 3.5 core rules, what weapon should you use when fighting a cornugon?"
The AGL is pleased to report the success of it's efforts to eliminate geekery, because no one was able to correctly answer last week's Geek Trivia Challenge. The first person to post the answer to this week's challenge will be sacked. The AGL will then apologize for the fault in sacking and those responsible for sacking the person who was sacked will be sacked. Then the winner will receive a free tshirt. Stephen Ward
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Checkout: US Retailer Recommendations + Review Roundup
I wrote to Brian Smith recently to (finally) learn more about Google Checkout - I needed help working through through the ecommerce ecosystem ramifications so that I could better make recommendations for MSI's US clients and prospects.
After reading through these write ups along with more recent reports I suggest that you wait and watch. Keep it in strong consideration, however, and if you have the resources try it out at small scale.
What do you think of Google Checkout so far? Please comment your thoughts and reactions at the bottom of this post. And check out more conversation here: Google Checkout - Exaggerated Claims
Here are the key quotes from these and others that helped me fill out my recommendation.
For AdWords Retailers: If you're a retailer who uses AdWords Google Checkout puts a shopping cart in your ad that will show searchers that they can buy directly from you.
This closes the Google loop, making them a 360 degree marketing and sales machine.
Before you get that shopping cart up in your AdWords though retailers, consider the power Google has in this closed loop...
Potential Dangers - Google Ownership of Client Relationship: In Google Checkout - The GDS of eCommerce Brian Smith brings up some key issues that cooled off my initial whole-hearted enthusiasm for Google Checkout.
A commenter in this thread crystalizes the very real dangers of Google Checkout, especially in this early stage of roll out:
Another issue sellers should be aware, and one Google must be extremely cautious about, is the potential for Google to solely “decide” that a seller acted fraudulently on a transaction using Google Checkout. Google is on the record saying if they find such fraudulent activity, they can (and seem to indicate they will) ban the seller from ever using Adwords. Thus, along with giving up significant customer control with Google Checkout, there is a potential that a seller could get banned from ever using Google Adwords — which could be the kiss of death for a seller.
Further, there's some name brand hesitations and beta hiccups: "there are a growing number of consumer complaints about delays in how long Checkout takes to process orders."
In Google miscalculates with Google Checkout Donna Bogatin runs through a laundry list of issues Google Checkout's seen since it launched, including the strain on Google's eBay relationship and merchant reluctance due to Google client ownership.
...and here's one strongly negative review from a frustrated buyer - Google Checkout Flunks.
But... the Benefits: RTP's own Scott Wingo of ChannelAdvisor speaks on the 3 benefits of Google Checkout in From the field: ChannelAdvisor on Checkout Those are, "1. The competitive 2% and $0.20/transaction processing fees. 2. The free transaction processing credit... 3. The Google Checkout badge..."
Google itself, as paraphrased by Smith, suggests that participation will help retailers "1) get better clickthrough rates on Google AdWords 2) increase conversion rate 3) process sales for free (for every $1 you spend on AdWords, you can process $10 in sales for free)."
I'd definitely put it in the sinker category for now, until Google irons out its kinks in the system.
If you're a brave retailer or already involved, I thank you for helping Google learn what it takes to make a great cash register. I think it will be great - give it a few months - and it has cash-register distribution potential like the web has never seen.
One note - if you see many of your AdWords competitors using it I would take Checkout in higher consideration. Too, if you have the time, give it a spin on a small scale.
PostBubble, by the way, floated Checkout.
To fill out your understanding of Google Checkout, here's some ecosystem perspective...
For Major Online Retailers: "While some may be reluctant to “turn over” the customer relationship to Google, in the end, I think they will try and stick with anything that will result in better conversions." -Li
That's Li at the time Google Checkout launched. Smith quotes Safa here on the 21st: "Last week we spoke with more than 30 online retailers at the 15th Annual eTail Conference in Philadelphia. 81% of the online retailers indicated that they probably will not implement Google Checkout primarily due to the concern about ceding customer ownership to Google."
For Comparison Shopping Engines: "The comparison engines will not be able to show the Google Checkout shopping cart icon in their listings (unless some special deal is struck). This means that to effectively compete with the merchants who are displaying the icon, the shopping comparison engines will have to increase their maximum CPC bid, driving up costs." -Smith
For eBay: "Will some eBay sellers defect and start using Google Checkout instead? Not if they want to remain fully integrated with eBay AND also offer non-credit card options (which Google Checkout currently does not offer)." -Li
Google's Angle: "I believe that it’s actually positioned to solve a perplexing and core problem at Google – how to drive more search ad revenues, especially in the retail sector where search spending is plateauing for top keywords."
You asked what ZiXXo thinks about this: • It validates and draws attention to the market for online local coupons. I assume that the heads of Yahoo, MSN, AOL, IAC, News Corp., etc. are asking what their strategy is for local online coupons. Instead of sitting idly by and watching Google move into online coupons they can partner with us to build a highly syndicated network for online coupons.
• It puts the fear of God into Valpak’s print competitors: ADVO, MoneyMailer, Valassis, News Corp., etc. who will need a solution to respond to Google’s coupons.
• At this point Google’s self-service coupons are extremely simplistic. Our solution is equally simple but much more sophisticated.
• We provide a solution for coupon management as well, including pausing coupons.
• Google’s coupons are pretty well hidden inside the mapping currently. It appears that Google’s strategy is to monetize them by getting local businesses to buy AdWords, which seems convoluted.
• ZiXXo is now in position to partner with both online and offline businesses in order to build a one-stop-shop for online coupons with broad syndication and, through our API, integration right into the content.
• I suspect that Valpak, and other coupon printers, will now need to move very quickly to counter Google, who plans to eat their lunch, with their own self-service and syndication.
In Getting Paranoid About Google’s Move Into Coupons, Peter Krasilovsky writes "Ultimately, I like what online-to-print classified vendor Ad2Ad CEO Jay Schauer says: “Google is just the one to execute this properly. (Its) Dynamic Coupon Management could eventually be tied into ERP and inventory systems as means of increasing flow of slow-moving inventory on the fly….”"
Wow! Now that's vision.
Krasilovsky also points out the reaction in the newspaper space: "Jeff Jarvis goes so far as to say “this is a stake in the heart of local newspapers,” whose only hope has been to go hyperlocal via targeted promotions."
His post has lots of great links for those interested in digging into the coupon space.
In comments on that post MerchantCircle CEO Ben Smith (interviewed here) noted that his merchants have seen coupon results in maps for some time:
"As a number of people have noted, Google has been picking up reviews and coupons as content onto their local maps for a few months now. It was actually pointed out to us by a few bloggers that our merchant coupons were showing up on Google Local searches on the Maps.
Our merchants certainly love when their coupons get picked up this way by Google and other properties. This is why we have made it so easy with the RSS feeds. Based on the current numbers, we see the 20K unique coupon number that ValPak has provided to Google in the near future for MerchantCircle. We also have openly discussed our support of being able to syndicate these as many places as possible including Zixxo as that business develops."
I like to see that kind of Zixxo support by MerchantCircle.
So... marketers. What would an online coupon marketing service look like? Are there marketing agencies that offer coupons as a sort of a standalone service? Anyone had success for clients with a coupon campaign? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
"The data show a net gain (combined online + print) of 200 million lookups/references in 2005. And they appear to show that print usage — as the industry has emphatically repeated for the past couple years — is basically holding, while online yellow pages are growing."
Peter Krasilovsky notes in IYPs Adding Info by Neighborhood that "Verizon SuperPages and YellowPages.com have signed with UrbanMapping.com to license technology that will enable them to show listings by neighborhood name. The IYPs currently only show geo-information by city name or zip code."
Now... if the IYPs get more social networky and link that neighborhood data up with hyper-local news coverage via Gatehouse Media we could see a new media emerge, sort of a MySpace/Merchant Circle + ReadExpress.
A Picture of Search: AOL's White Paper Raises Search Marketing Questions
I hadn't realized, until reading AOL search data paper, that AOL published a white paper along with privacy-trampling user data (presumably what they used for their paper).
A Picture of Search investigates search usage patterns and makes extensive use of graphs and charts to illustrate its findings.
Some AOL search findings really stood out to me:
28% of all queries are reformulations of a previous query. In such cases, the average query is reformulated 2.6 times.
Questions: Are you optimizing key pages... or paid search campaigns... along the query reformulation cycle?
Is this cycle similar in any way to the "buy cycle?"
If you start with a searcher's TASK in mind, how would that change how you optimize specific pages? (Read more about task-based relevance.)
What are common query reformulation strategies (in addition to those mentioned in the white paper)?
What percentage of search share is actually reformulation queries?
An estimated 12% to 28% of queries include a local aspect. ...the 12% estimate is drawn from prior work [16], while the 28% estimate is based upon an AOL internal study.
Questions: What are these local searches? Are they basically yellow pages searches?
To reframe based on previous questions - do local tasks differ at all from whole-web tasks?
Are there different query reformulation strategies emerging for local searches?
Of an estimated 50 million web domains, less than 1% account for half of all user clicks via search results (6.1).
Questions: What other sites besides MySpace, YouTube and Google?
Your Job Now: Read A Picture of Search - it's pretty accessible. Write a post, comment, or email me about what stands out to you - I'm curious what people find there. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Before I weigh in I want to quote Bill: "Keep in mind that the processes described in this patent may never be used, or that they could be implemented in different ways than described here."
An Artifact or New Direction? Another important note: the patent was filed on December 13, 2000. From that perspective, plus knowing Google's preferance for elegant engineering solutions to relevance, I'm thinking that this is more of an artifact than it is a strong indicator of a new direction for Google.
To me the most curious item is that this patent includes an "editorial opinion parameter" by which, from my reading of Slawski and the patent itself, a team of human editors determine whether specific sources are "favored" or "un-favored."
My suspicion is that Google only intended these editors to operate in specific verticals, but its very filing, and in 2000 at that, shows a human-reliance side of Google that's quite uncharacteristic.
Other Reads on the Patent: Rand, in Favored vs. Non-Favored Sources, points out that "This is also one of the rare times I've seen a patent application from a search engine refer to a "site" or "source" as a whole rather than individual pages."
I'm not sure what this indicates, but speculate that it's easier for editors to think in terms of whole sites rather than individual pages.
In follow up comments on Rand's post Slawski notes that "I've looked at a few industries in enough depth to consider the possibility that something like this was in place before ever seeing this patent, but thought that another algorithm, like a "reranking based upon local interconnectivity" might be partially responsible."
Changes Coming in Google News? In Steve Bryant's New Google Patent Hints at Direction of Social Search he notes that "What's most interesting to me about this patent, though, is that Krishna Bharat, inventor of Google News, is listed as one of the inventors. Google said recently that it was making some changes to Google News."
I think he's off in his title - I don't believe this patent has anything to do with social search unless the editors the patent refers to represents any Google user, which I don't think they do.
In all, an interesting patent. It will be fun to see the theories that emerge because of it.
SEM Football Challenge: join the fray
Ev Roc cck: http://www.marketingshift.com/2006/8/search-engine-football-challenge.cfm gfrenchwbs: yo yo yo evs Ev Roc cck: sup buddy gfrenchwbs: what's this Ev Roc cck: nothign big, just calling you out! P:-) gfrenchwbs: ha! gfrenchwbs: I will get my butt kicked - I don't know anything about football gfrenchwbs: I mean - I don't even know the positions Ev Roc cck: haha gfrenchwbs: I'll play though :-) Ev Roc cck: nice! gfrenchwbs: how much is it? gfrenchwbs: ... Ev Roc cck: free gfrenchwbs: I'm in then Ev Roc cck: blog bragging rights :-) gfrenchwbs: psh. I'll get the rights to a beating gfrenchwbs: but whatever Ev Roc cck: haha gfrenchwbs: sounds fun gfrenchwbs: also it would be cool if there was a little tag I could put on my blog that would show my current standings? Ev Roc cck: hmm thats not bad, ill tell the fleaflicker peeps
SalesForce Eats a Golden Child, Purchases Enterprise Search App Kieden for CRM + SEM
In Salesforce.com unveils Google marketing tool Michael Paige reports that "Salesforce obtained the technology for the service, called Salesforce for Google AdWords, by acquiring Kieden Corp., a tiny startup that quietly developed it using Salesforce's AppExchange platform. Terms of the acquisition weren't disclosed."
I was excited at the time because they sought to tie search marketing directly into the sales cycle. It's an obvious move, and brilliant. Congrats to the Kieden team.
I remember asking Kraig Swensrud, founder of Keiden why SalesForce didn't just buy the companies that use APPExchange. I remember him saying something along the lines of it would mess with the ecosystem too much.
I guess time will tell now if this is a strong move for SalesForce or not - my concern would be that ultimately the quality of their AppExchange builders could go down if they're all building so that they can sell themselves to SalesForce rather than creating a sustainable business.
Either way this is an important case study for the AppExchange model.
The MSN + FaceBook is a 3 year deal, compared to the 3 years, nine months of Google + MySpace and MSN is, according to the NYTimes, "the exclusive seller and provider of banner advertising and sponsored links for Facebook."
A couple of interesting notes from the article:
A slight zinger by MSN: Mr. Berkowitz said the deal was “not comparable to the MySpace deal because we focused on the right economics for both parties.’’
They made that deal FAST! Facebook and Microsoft executives said they began their talks late last week. Owen Van Natta, chief operating officer at Facebook, said: “We’ve had a number of conversations with folks about a number of different partnerships.’’
And some slight concern: As an SEM I have to note that selling "sponsored links" is usually in the domain of, well, link sellers. So will MSN search now be discounting the value of links from FaceBook?
I guess there's a precedent for MSN selling links on their sites?
Also, link spammers, what has been your experience with link spamming MySpace? Is there link value passing out? I know that MySpace blogposts are showing up in results, especially in Technorati. I'm just curious - gosh! Quit thumping your white hat bible over there ;)
AJAX GUI for AdWords
Google made available the APIlitAx v1.0.1, an open source AJAX GUI for AdWords.
My guess is that this is API is targeted towards agencies like MSI who have the desire to tweak their interfaces for customized data points. Or something. I'll ask Doug Wilson, our Director of Paid Search.
Yahoo's Raghu Ramakrishnan on Data Mining and Social Search
Yahoo interviewed Dr. Raghu Ramakrishnan, their new VP of something and a Yahoo! research fellow who left Wisconson-Madison to join the team.
To some extent it sounds like he couldn't do the research necessary to fulfill his interests at the university: "At Yahoo! Research, you can take an idea and build around it, hang your shingle on the web, and get people to come try it out, all the while studying the underlying principles rigorously and addressing the challenges of building dynamic, scalable online systems ... this is not easy to do at a university."
He's a little vague on the specifics of data mining + social search: "A social ecosystem is growing on the web, so we need to build the apps that facilitate it; managing the information and relationships is a central challenge. Where does data mining come in? Learning from shared activity is a key to effective social search. Equally important, data mining research can suggest ways to detect and prevent breaches of privacy - trust is central to online communities."
And it will be six months before we see his fingerprints on things: "My main goal in the first six months is to get a clue as to what is going on at Yahoo!" http://www.ysearchblog.com/archives/000349.html
He articulates the social search concept quite well: "At the end of the day, people should do what they enjoy, what they need to get done, and the applications (including search) should simply become more effective, thanks to our ability to analyze shared information and use it to help them connect to what they are looking for. The key insight behind social search is therefore to amplify the human element of information sharing by using it to enhance algorithmic search, and vice-versa."
I would like to start an interview dialogue with the Yahoo social search crew. What do you say? 919-433-3139. selowdown@gmail.com. Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
Google Base Data API Paves Way for Map Monetization
The Google Base blog announced the Google Base Data API yesterday.
From a business perspective (if I'm understanding this correctly) it looks like a great opportunity for folks who want to mash up their own Base items with Google maps to help lead local customers to their real estate/yard sales/electronics items/cars/hot date.
I can see lots of yarn, but still can't quite tell if there's going to be a one-stop Google local marketing console (think MerchantCircle + Google...) or if local advertisers will always have to knit their own solutions together. Which will make mom and pop adoption excruciatingly slow.
He also linked to Interview with a link spammer from the Register, an interview from over a year and a half ago that offers insight into the link spamming business.
I have no idea how to set up link spam operations as described in the posts above, and at MSI we don't seek malicious tech exploits to drive client success. I posted these links to balance out my build links with great content post. And ok - spamming still fascinates me :P Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
"...comScore also observed a similar seasonal decline for Google during the same period last year. Fewer work days, more vacations, and reliance on academia could all contribute to Google’s core user group showing lower online activity and conducting fewer searches during this time period. Bottom line – Google could be more impacted by seasonality than other engines." (strong tags by SEL)
ComScore recently announced they'd seen a decline in Google's search share to which Sullivan responded by digging into their methodologies.
It's a long post. I extracted this bit to sum it up for you:
Crisis for Google? Way, way too early to be saying stuff like that. As I said, I want to see several months of trending data from a particular player before I start issuing panic calls. For all I know, next month comScore will quietly reissue these figures that shows Google doing better.
Update: Bill Tancer at HitWise commented on Sullivan's post and added some of his own data to the mix in Google's Weekly Search Numbers. He notes:
"In fact the numbers do indicate a slight decline in market share of executed searches for the first three weeks of August. However, I agree with Danny's caveat to wait for longer term trends before jumping to conclusions. While 60% may represent a saturation point for Google, it also may be a seasonal fluctuation."
Notice what I did with keywords. I carefully chose keywords for the title and the url (note that I used “change” in the url and “changing” in the title).
The categories on my post (”How to” and “Linux”) give me a subtle way to mention Linux again, and include a couple extra ways that someone might do a search–lots of user type “how to (do what they want to do).”
I thought about the words that a user would type in when looking for an answer to their question, and tried to include those words in the article. I also tried to think of a few word variations and included them where they made sense (file vs. files, bash and bashrc, Firefox and Mozilla, etc.).
I’m targetting a long-tail concept where someone will be typing several words, so I’m probably in a space where on-page keywords are enough to rank pretty well. I don’t need anchor-text for “linux default printer” or similar phrases; in the on-page space, I’d recommend thinking more about words and variants (the “long-tail”) and thinking less about keyword density or repeating phrases."
The Article Marketing concept and its relevance to branding and search marketing captured my attention several months back in:
Aaron Wall expanded on a line from Cutts' post, in Hard Answers Are Easy Links. In it he notes: "If it is hard to find the answer to a question then * it is probably easy to be one of the best answers * those who stumble across your answer will appreciate your effort, relevancy, and knowledge"
On ThreadWatch Walls noted, "Cutts recently talked down keyword density in a post that had SEO in it so many times that it crashed Firefox when I tried highlighting the term."
Also on ThreadWatch an excellent historic roundup of linkbait articles: From the Filthy Linking Rich to the Art of Link Bait. Though I must say the endlessly referential linkbait conversation's getting a bit echoey... Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
August 19, 2006
Google Base Reporting Expands
If you're a Google Base seller/data distributor you'll be happy to know that Base now enables you to track the following:
- impressions (as part of search results) - clicks - page views
For marketers who are concerned about Google Base infringing upon their organic placements it might be a good idea now to start feeding the great Google beast at one of its other mouths and see how your organics do vs. your Base vs. your AdWords.
This is one of those no-doi kinds of moves. Kind of like... when the heck will Google Analytics and the AdWords console join in matrimony? Garrett French - MarketSmart Interactive
| permalink | +marktd |
August 18, 2006
Anti-Geekery League Outraged by JP Sherman's "Imperial Recruitment" Photo
I had to fight my way through throngs of protesters from the RTP Anti-Geekery League to get inside the MarketSmart Interactive offices this morning.
All because of a simple photo my colleague JP Sherman posted to Flikr, entitled "Imperial Recruitment." In this photo JP is shown smiling, holding his son Grason up between two Imperial Strom Troopers.
When reached for comment Sherman said, "I've always identified with the Rebel Aliance.
However, with my son looking at joining the ranks of the Empire I felt compelled to be a supportive dad and give him the oportunities that planets like Coruscant can offer. Opportunities that just aren't available on Yavin IV."
Based on the signs they're waving outside our offices, I surmise that the AGL's concerned that this early exposure to such high levels of geekery may lead to video games, table top RPGs, and replica collecting.
