By Gareth Owen

Google is going to change the way it displays search results in order to ‘answer questions’ rather than provide a list of sites that might contain the answers. That’s good, hopefully it will enhance user experience etc. – I personally use Wolfram Alpha when I want an actual answer to a question, rather than a list of sites, so I can completely see how this would be useful. HOWEVER, I had a think about what exactly Google has in its arsenal to ‘answer’ my questions and this was just the start of the interesting list of URLs they could use to answer keyword queries I might use: [Read more →]

By John Barham

EU bailouts. Stagnating political action. UK unemployment at a 17 year high. 2012 is not looking good for those recently out of university who want to grab themselves a rung on the job ladder. However there is a growing industry in the UK that is screaming out for educated, talented individuals who are looking to start their careers. Digital marketing is huge, yet I can’t imagine it appearing on the radar of many non-marketing graduates. There is an industry right under your nose every time you use the internet to search or visit social sites. PPC (Pay per Click) is just one of the many disciplines that sits under the umbrella of digital marketing and, like the other channels, it continues to grow in the UK and other markets.

[Read more →]

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, 27th January 2012

After a year’s delay, Microsoft adCenter will start to power the PPC results on Yahoo UK in Q2 of 2012. Discussion of its potential for success aside, here are some useful links and an action plan for preparing UK campaigns.

[Read more →]

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, January 6th 2012

Predictions are popping up everywhere as the New Year begins. Instead of producing another list of things that are likely to happen, here are the five things I’d like to see happen in 2012 but in reality probably won’t.

[Read more →]

Leon Wong, Paid Search Strategist, Steak

We know what you’re thinking: How can I spend more time on social networks?  Surely that question was buzzing around the Googleplex this year, as the internet monolith prepped for its fourth foray into social networking. The result was something – regardless of Google+ success – that will forever up the bar in social networking tools (a la Circles, Hangouts and Sparks) – and more importantly, monetize social data.

With more than 10 million users in its first two weeks, and  more than 20 million in its first three, Google+ may accumulate over 3 percent of Facebook’s 750 million users in its first month by the end of July. Sure, one month is a blip when testing massive roll outs like a social network, but it’s a sign that – after many tries – Google may finally have its star in social.

As search marketers, we often need to figure out consumer’s intentions (don’t ask us about the guy on the corner though).  Now we’re taking our lens to Google’s to determine its intentions with its social arm, its implications on the public – and of course, on search.

Here to shed light on Google+ is Steak’s paid search strategist Leon Wong. With three years of search marketing experience with Fortune 500 clients, Wong shares his thoughts after touring what could reinvent online sharing, if not social networking altogether.

Google...plus you.

What’s in a Name?

As confusing as Google Plus sounds, the idea is quite simple. The search giant’s latest effort to integrate social media with search may be the next big thing – or perhaps, a revisit. Google Buzz, the predecessor of Google Plus, launched in February only to halt over complaints of security concerns and information leaks.  Since then, the buzz around Google’s social media was crickets – until now.

The new and improved social media integration will attempt to dazzle you with a bunch of features, such as the Circles, Instant Upload, Hangout, Huddle and Sparks.  At launch date, this buzz made me want to play in the sandbox with the rest of the exclusive invitees. Now, that elusive “invite” is more common than Lindsay Lohan mug shots.  Google+ is stretching its legs.

Let’s face it: Google has hundreds of millions of users, the vast majority of whom trust the company. Some may believe if they can’t find something on Google, it probably doesn’t exist.  It’s a wonder, though, how the search king with over $30 billion in annual revenue and 28,000 employees worldwide found itself chasing the coattails of Facebook.

But here we are. Google knows that it must fill the void of marrying people with data: something that if they don’t fill, someone else will — and win the Web, admitted Google insiders.

People love Gmail; they love YouTube; they love search. And now with Circles, Google has fixed something that Facebook unwittingly failed to do. Instead of mashing all your contacts into a single feed, you can now organize your contacts into a hierarchy.  It allows you to “follow” people, not necessarily request them (like Twitter meets the anti-Facebook), so anyone can be in your circles — family, friends, coworkers, hobby groups, even celebrities. You can create a circle of those you don’t know, but want to follow.

The buzz is there, the ‘wow’ factor is there. But the next big question is why now?

Google Plus Features: Circles, Hangouts, Instant Upload, Sparks, Huddle

Data=Dollars

Up till now Google has been an algorithmic company. But they have come to realize – after many failures – that consumer behavior is inherently irrational and can not be anticipated through pure metrics.  At its core this is a data play in that Google wants to understand consumers’ behavior in the here and now, but it also may answer how to monetize social.

If Google can marry its massive search data with its equally massive display data alongside topics that you and your friends like – nicely self-organized by interest – Google can learn your interests based on what your friends have (or want to have), and start presenting hyper- targeted ads against that.

For example, Google knows that I have searched for fly fishing equipment, have viewed fly fishing videos on YouTube, and clicked on display ads related to fly fishing.  That’s the old Google.

The new Google now knows that I have a group of friends that I “circled” as Fly Fishing Buddies.  They saw a “spark” related to fly fishing, and they can now mine my posts about fly fishing.  They can now serve me relevant ads across the web (through their display network and beyond) that are related to fly fishing, providing me specific brands that my friends already purchased, or specific locations where I’ve expressed a desire to fish, etc.

Google has the advertising inventory that Facebook doesn’t have.  Google also has years’ worth of prior search and display data that the recent Facebook-Microsoft Bing alliance doesn’t have.  If Google can convince people that aggregating all this data is not a privacy problem, it could deliver something special.  This is search targeting + contextual targeting + audience targeting + social network targeting.  Viola, instant monetization of social!

Show Them the (Ad) Money

Google+ Sparks, a personal-interest stream feature

Well, I’m sure all the advertisers are curious as to how Google+ will impact search, particularly paid search. While taking the tour, I couldn’t help but notice the Sparks feature. Initially, I thought it was a place for people to meet. However after a few clicks through, I soon realized that it’s actually a search bar, which allows you to look up items of your interest. Google’s algorithm will automatically sort and group articles that it predicts your likes into a drop down menu, and allow you to bookmark your interests.

Having the ability to create a personal space where you could indulge at leisure is very attractive. The bottom line is if there is a place to implement sponsored ads, I will not be surprised to see a few banner or text ads around that area.

The ad value is amplified when you start sharing your articles and bookmarked searches with a specific person, circle, group of circles or the general public that you might find the articles intriguing as well.  Though I can hear the news organizations grumbling already…

More Toys

What about Hangouts, Instant Upload or Huddle?  If these features look familiar, they should: they’re derived from other platforms or social media sites like Facebook. Hangouts will let you virtually hangout with up to 10 contacts via Skype-like video chat, while Instant Upload allows you to upload pictures from your mobile phone “instantly” (duh!). Huddle is just simply a group chat with your friends (well, hello again, AOL chat rooms!).

All of this translates into one goal: to gather social behavior data. By building an integrated platform for you to manage your friends and interactions, Google can now collect information about you and how people interact with you. This type of data can only be harvested from an integrated social media platform – thus Google Plus!

World Domination?

Google+ Circles, a group contact organizer

So the development of Google Plus is not just another one of Google’s plans to take over the world, but rather to own another piece of real estate in the social media space. Creating another channel to collect data and serve relevant ads to a particular group or individual is more logical and the right path for it start breathing down Facebook’s neck, especially considering the cozy partnership Facebook has with Bing. (See Steak’s opinion on the Facebook-Bing partnership, 5/17/11)

After all, paid search is still Google’s bread and butter. It helps the search giant make more than $33 billion dollars in revenue per year. Features such as Circles, Hangout, and Sparks are just few examples of how Google plans to garner user data in this space. Whether Google is trying to steal the social media crown or just simply create a new channel to collect information, I know my Steak comrades and I will be dissecting its every move.  I sure am glad I found that dang invite.

Mark Schwartz, Managing Director, Steak

Yesterday’s announcement that Bing is incorporating Facebook data into its results queries represents the latest salvo in the ongoing search wars.  This time, the firepower has powerful repercussions.

So, last night Bing announced the next stage of tapping into Facebook data – this time bringing Facebook friends’ recommendations into the Bing SERPs.  You can read a great summary at Mashable, but here’s the gist: Bing will now include Facebook friends’ recommendations into the search results.  Microsoft is calling this the “Friend Effect” – an effort to add the value of your trusted network into the social search experience.

A user will see this in the following ways:

• “Liked” Result Presentation – search results will incorporate your “Liked” stories and items of yours and your friends on Facebook.
• Personalized Result Pages – buried SERP results may now move up based on your or your friends’ Facebook preferences.
• Social Messages Integration – relevant posts from brands you “liked” on Facebook will show in search results.
• Expanded Facebook Profile Search –Facebook profiles will show directly in Bing’s search results.
• Shared Shopping Lists – now share your favorite items, travel and deals with friends directly from the Bing result pages into Facebook.

A video from Bing about its new Facebook integration (1:36):

The implication of this is significant.  Facebook represents a database that Google can never get a hold of – and it’s a very powerful signal set.  Accessing the thought and opinions of a user’s most trusted network will likely have a high degree of influence in how that user interacts with Bing’s results, leading to even more data collection and further enhancements.  Furthermore, Bing can also now use that aggregated information to inform advertisers and agencies on consumer behaviors – and perhaps even use it to inform bid pricing on the AdCenter side.

As much as Google continues to innovate in the social graph, including the recent +1 launch, they can never hope to compile the same sort of feature-rich, trusted network that is represented by Facebook’s 600 million worldwide users.  On Facebook, users happily share brand preferences, travel plans, personal data and so much more.  Now all that data will inform and define your Bing search results.

One rich question remains:  Even if Microsoft creates a richer and more personalized experience, will people move away from Google’s search and start using Bing?  If even a small percentage of users make the switch, it represents millions of dollars in ad inventory.  And that’s what Microsoft is betting heavily on.

Your move, Google.

As a follow up to all of the noise generated in the SEO industry by the frank admissions of both Google and Bing that Social Media elements are part of their ‘relevance factors’ for search, SEOMoz have started a worthwhile mini-trial. Namely, taking 2 very similar pages and tweeting the hell out of one of them while building links to the other and see which one ranks better for the target keyword.

As it is much easier for people to tweet the link than add it to a website, Steak are lending a hand in the form of this short blog post, with the required link as follows:

Help end Hunger in Sierra Leone and meet the life you change.

Obviously this is the website of a very worthy cause on top of everything else and we await the results of the test with baited breath!

Thanks to some great investigative journalism, and a degree of open-ness from the two major search engines, we now have a degree of confirmation that social media links and mentions are indeed part of the ranking algorithms. This post appeared on Search Engine Land yesterday and confirms what many in the industry have been saying, publicly or privately for some time now.

Much of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone in SEO, the engines are always looking to refine their algorithms to serve better results based on what people expect to see when they search for particular keywords. Where better to look for that data then in the social media arena?

What this means for clients depends, to a degree on what their existing social media footprint looks like. No one should be advocating building hundreds of fake social media profiles and spamming everyone to death, the message from Google is as always leaning towards quality over quantity. So it would be more beneficial to get mentioned by one person with 750,000 followers than to get thousands of mentions from people with 0.

At Steak we don’t see Social media and SEO as mutually exclusive in terms of outreach, building relationships with key influencers and CRM policy in general. Using Social Media to build search authority means that it is more crucial than ever to ensure that campaigns are engaging innovative open and organic.

We have all seen the PR disasters from the likes of Nestle on their Facebook profile, and Google’s message is that far from  increasing your ranking due to getting lots of coverage, the negativity of that coverage will act to reduce ranking value rather than improve it.

What this means for clients is that alongside all of the KPI metrics that an SEO agency should monitor and take steps to improve, the following metrics should be added:

-      number of posts made

-      number of SM mentions (probably categorized into Twitter/Facebook etc)

-      number of direct responses (positive v negative)

-      number of links

That’s arguably not an exhaustive list, tools like Radian 6 may throw up other potential ranking factors that could be monitored. The key as always in SEO is to keep on top of what people are doing on the web and always consider how the information they share could be useful indicators of quality, how you might impact it for the better on behalf of your clients (or how they could impact on it themselves) and test your SEO theories whenever you get the chance.

By Duncan Parry, Search Engine Watch, July 30, 2010

The Yahoo-Bing search alliance is gathering momentum. Watching this coverage from the U.K., where Google has close to 90 percent market share, I can’t help asking: will the deal succeed for both parties — and what does success look like?

Focusing on the Numbers

For Yahoo, the obvious win is cost saving — no longer employing staff or maintaining systems to process billions of searches a year and monetize them. We’ve already seen several waves of layoffs from Yahoo, including search staff.

For Bing, revenue is the win. More searches to monetize means more paid search revenue (although Yahoo will receive payments from Microsoft). Alongside this, they will no doubt hope to attract new advertisers from Yahoo’s bank of accounts, raising competition between advertisers, and therefore bid prices — further adding to their bottom line.

This is the virtuous circle any paid search division wants to fuel — more advertisers, increased keyword coverage resulting in an increased average number of advertisers per keyword, increased bid completion, and a higher average revenue per click.

This is the circle that both Overture and Espotting worked hard to fuel at the start of last decade when paid search was in its pre-AdWords infancy. Working at Espotting, I experienced how keyword coverage and bid competition were major concerns — and when the company lost Yahoo Europe as a distribution partner, I saw the circle slowing, coverage shrinking, and CPCs falling. Bids that once reached a high point of £15 (“serviced offices”) fell beyond the £3 mark as volume, quality and CPCs fell.

Which brings us to the risks…

The Risks for Yahoo

The risks for Yahoo are around revenue, market share, and brand differentiation. If the average revenue per click Yahoo receives under the deal is significantly lower than from Panama, they will suffer financially. However, the operating expenses they save may outweigh this loss. Overall, they will be in a better position.

Aside from CPCs, the long-term risk for Yahoo stretches beyond search into their wider business.

Yahoo has stated they intend to continue differentiating themselves via their search interface. Fine in theory, but there’s real risk here.

Doing this without a large search team of the ability to reach inside the machine is difficult. If consumers learn over time that Yahoo is effectively Bing, and decide there’s no reason for them to stick with Yahoo, will they go directly to Bing?

Inertia often rules our behavior as consumers, but with Bing running advertising campaigns and offering cash-back schemes to attract consumers, the lack of a unique search experience on Yahoo may be enough to push some consumers to go straight to source and get cash back on their purchases into the bargain. The word “frenemy” springs to mind.

Any lack of search market share could impact their wider business. Content is undoubtedly part of Yahoo’s core strategy — even more some with their acquisition of Associated Content — and one of the main ways visitors get to this content is via search.

So any decline in the flow of traffic from Yahoo search into their own properties will hurt their revenues from display advertising — and undermine the data gathering that is at the core of the behavioral advertising, ad exchanges, and other initiatives that in turn are crucial to Yahoo’s non-search advertising revenues.

Yahoo search traffic isn’t their only source of traffic and data. They receive traffic from the other engines and other areas of their properties, and they gather data from display ads across many other sites as part of their wider network (just like Microsoft does across its network).

Yahoo will have to innovate to ensure they can offer search retargeting for their display clients. Right now, Microsoft and especially Google are innovating in this area.

So for Yahoo, the risk is a decline of overall market share — and revenues beyond search alone.

The Risks for Bing

The obvious risk: the numbers don’t add up, and the revenues from the Yahoo deal are less than the costs of the partnership to Bing, even if they have increased their market share. This could vary significantly by country; in some, Bing-powered Yahoo may prove profitable; in others, average CPCs may make the deal less attractive versus costs.

The other risk is less obvious and more damaging for Bing’s ambitions. What if Yahoo’s users don’t like Bing search results?

If Yahoo’s audience perceives a decline in the quality of results, they may shift to Google — hurting both Yahoo and Bing in the process. However, Microsoft is investing a lot of money, time, and — crucially — talent into their search division, so this seems, on the surface, unlikely.

So, Will it Succeed?

I believe it will be a success — in terms of revenue, and in terms of market share (Google won’t be seriously challenged anytime soon, though).

The real story will be what Yahoo does next, and how the frenemy relationship works out while they compete in the display and mobile spaces — and Google builds their display armory around AdWords and DoubleClick.

Bing announced on their blog (http://mashable.com/bing-local-twitter-trends/) today they have created maps with Mashable that show which topics are trending on Twitter in locations around the world.

Whilst much of the content on Twitter is the digital industry talking to itself – especially in the UK – this is one interesting example of search engines using social data.

I believe we’ll see more social data used to enhance the quality and relevancy of search results and news sites; it sends a signal of what is of interest to the public that the engines and savvy publishers will be keen to plug into their algorithms.

For example: if a political candidate is receiving a lot of mentions in social media by people located in the south east of England, and somebody in that region goes to Google news, news stories about that candidate could be boosted up the page.

This could be extend into search, too – pushing sites up the listings based on social data for the searchers region.

Duncan Parry, Co-founder and Head of Paid Search