Google: old algorithms not fit for purpose – now it’s social and structure
Just read two thoughtful articles by Peter Yared, Google already knows its search sucks (and is working to fix it) and
These articles look at deeper issues that Google integrating Google+ into search results, but Google+ is. perhaps a wake up call to what’s happening.
Batelle says, “…search is supposed to be about showing the best results to consumers based on objective (or at least defensible and understandable) parameters, parameters unrelated to the search engine itself.”
But as Yared points out, Google has always been a bit social “if it helps, you can think of PageRank as a kind of paleo-social search–just one that moves way too slowly for the modern Web”. Search results are also increasingly gamed and commercialised – via paid search, content and link farms and organisations’ investment in search engine optimisation.
So Google has been increasingly refocusing its results, reducing the value of signals from PageRank and links and pushing ‘regular’ results down and, often, below the fold.
(Credit: Peter Yared/CNET)
With predictive search – suggesting or pushing users to certain queries, and a greater prominence to answers, Google has the opportunity to reduce the long tail and monetise the search results page further. For organisations seeking to maintain their visibility in Google, there will need to be a move away from ‘traditional’ search engine optimisation. They will need to publish structured data that can seed ‘answers’ and publish content that encourages engagement in social media by potential audiences and, of course, engage themselves.
Cloud analytics from Amazon?
Interesting piece in the New York TimesWill Amazon Offer Analytics as a Service?
- Meryl Schenker for The New York Times.
Amazon.com, through its Web services business, stores vast amounts of data for companies worldwide. Does it want to start analyzing it too?
Specialists in data science say the company has become increasingly interested in the business models of firms that make and sell pattern-finding algorithms for extremely large data sets. They theorize that Amazon wants to move beyond its cloud services businesses — which rents data storage and raw computing power — and add to these offerings analysis software that can be rented, and possibly modified, to suit a company’s needs.
“Amazon has the expertise and the computing power to do something like this,” says Kyle McNabb, a vice president at research firm Forrester. “They could rent an analytics engine to people on a quarterly basis, possibly offer to match your data to other large data sets and find something useful.”
A spokesman for Amazon had no comment on its plans, which he termed “rumor and speculation.”
It would not be difficult for Amazon to offer such a service, since many of the company’s major products are already on Amazon Web Services, and other legacy applications are being moved there. That means that data management tools like Map Reduce (currently a feature in Amazon Web Services), payment security and fraud detection software, and Amazon’s product recommendation engine could all be in the system.
While prices are dropping for the predictive and analytic software offered by the likes of SAS and EMC, the products are generally considered somewhat expensive. Amazon could remove the higher-value proprietary features from its software and sell a cheap simplified version, in the way Google created its Google Analytics Web site service in order to increase the attractiveness of its advertising-based business.
“They are particularly interested in fraud detection and product recommendation, which are proven valuable things,” says the chief executive of an analytics software company who requested anonymity because of his ongoing business discussions with Amazon. “They’re very interested in how they can grow this.”
Amazon Web Services has so far concentrated mostly on offering the raw materials of storage and computing to engineering teams, the so-called “back end” of computing. A move to typically higher-value “front end” products for people in areas like finance or marketing is likely, both for Amazon and others in the cloud computing business. Amazon has already gone from selling books to offering services whereby authors can publish their works directly on e-readers, operating Web sites for other companies, and purchased outfits like the Zappos shoe retailer to sell a broader array of goods.
Given the large amounts of data, and the few people qualified to make sense of it, “someone will offer this as a service, maybe a lot of companies” said Mr. McNabb of Forrester. “Oracle has the assets to do it, but I’m not sure they are interested. I.B.M. has the assets, and Apple could if they wanted to, with their understanding of customer behavior. Amazon is a very good candidate to make it work.”
Content Strategy
Getting the right content to the right user at the right time.
Point of View By Kevin P. Nichols, Director and Global Practice Lead for Content Strategy, SapientNitro
Cookies, metrics, search and citizen-facing websites
Nick Breeze and I talking with Alex Henry and Helen Olsen at an ITU webinar.
“Why, where and when do citizens bail out of online transactions? How does this impact digital by default aspirations? And how can you help citizens overcome the blocks? Join ITU live and experts from the new Government Digital Service (GDS) to talk cookies, metrics and search for public sector websites.”
Despite the title, we didn’t talk about cookies much.
ENGAGE 2011
Attended the first afternoon of webtrends ENGAGE 2100 EMEA conference at Westminster Bridge Plaza hotel. Attended sessions in bold.
Agenda
“At Webtrends Engage London 2011, we will explore today’s digital universe and how it revolves around your knowledge and expertise. Throughout this two-day conference we will highlight the latest digital marketing trends, bring you thought-provoking speakers while also exploring how to seize the abundance of digital business opportunities.”
Breakout session Day One:
ACQUISITION
14:00 – 14:30 – Acquisition search strategy
14:40 – 15:10 – Forming a high performance social media strategy
15:20 – 15:50 – Multi channel attribution reporting in Webtrends
16:00 – 16:30 – Mobility: Acquire, engage & retain
16:40 – 17:10 – The mission to improve Facebook Ad management
17:20 – 17:50 – Facebook customer acquisition
CONVERSION
14:00 – 14:30 – Analytics 10: Overview
14:40 – 15:10 – Setting the right optimisation strategy
15:20 – 15:50 – How to achieve incremental revenue from MVT with modest website visitor numbers
16:00 – 16:30 – How brands leverage the excel dashboard engine, an e-dynamics add-on for webtrends, to manage and drive conversion
16:40 – 17:10 – Down to earth location marketing
17:20 – 17:50 – Optimisation quiz
RETENTION
14:00 – 14:30 – Panel: Interesting lessons from site testing
14:40 – 15:10 – How Europe’s largest retailers are making money using dynamic conversations with millions of individual customers
15:20 – 15:50 – Integrating web behavioral data with email and CRM
16:00 – 16:30 – Ads to fans: The best kept secret in the universe
16:40 – 17:10 – Analytics 10: Directions
17:20 – 17:50 – Microsoft Sharepoint for customer experience management
TECHNICAL
14:00 – 14:30 – Extracting data from Webtrends – DX 3.0
14:40 – 15:10 – Optimisation, targeting, OPET, JavaScript tricks
15:20 – 15:50 – State of mobile measurement
16:00 – 16:30 – Security and privacy
16:40 – 17:10 – Analytics 10: Deep dive, Tips & tricks
17:20 – 17:50 – Mobile apps/Site analytics
Infographic: The Authority Building Machine
Great infographic from Vertical Measures about building site authority.
“These tactics fall into three major categories; link building, social media marketing and content marketing.
The Authority Building Machine also warns against using black hat practices that could land a website in search engine jail, a place that is not easy to escape. So stay on track and have fun!”
BBC search
Just reread Matthew McDonnell’s blogs about BBC search:
- BBC launches Enhanced Search (Jan 2010)
- New BBC Site Search (Dec 2010)
- Serve scoped results from the domain user is in first
- Get away from just a list to categories of results
- Easy access to results from other/all domains
- Ensure related content is never hidden
Skills of content strategists
Richard Ingram’s survey of content strategists’ skills. http://www.richardingram.co.uk/
Jump
Today I attended Jump - “online and offline marketing, all joined up” at Old Billingsgate. It was a surprisingly useful event, organised in four channels – Lead, Analyse, Optimise and Engage.
I attended:
Data is the new oil. So how do you refine it?
Overload. Is there too much data to make sense of it? Which data should you be measuring, and how much resource / budget should you be allocating to mining the knowledge?
Metrics. What are the most valuable metrics to multichannel businesses? Which KPIs are really worth focusing on? How can online data inform offline strategies and operations (and vice versa)?
Timescales. Are you stepping back to see the big picture? Are you obsessing about “a single currency” for measurement? To what degree is faith and judgement more – or less – important than informed opinion based on the numbers that really matter? How do you judge risk?
Embedding digital CRM in the business: Marketing vs. IT
In this session the speakers will take you through two perspectives, IT and Marketing, on how digital CRM was launched and embedded into BBC Worldwide culture. How do you get marketing and IT working towards the same goal? And how do you convince the rest of the organisation to join the journey?
Managing conversations across online and offline
InSites Consulting, who are pioneering new forms of online market research, and are past winners of an Econsultancy Innovation Award, will be talking for the first time about the results of a fascinating piece of research they are conducting over the Summer 2011.
They are running a large scale study in four major markets in order gain a good understanding of:
1. How branded conversations differ between offline and online
2. What activates brand conversations per product category (topic, driver, sentiment)
3. The impact of the context (location, presence of others) on conversations
This study will help companies to gain knowledge on how to manage conversations, both offline and online. The research methodology combines social media netnography and mobile research to report branded conversations at any time and location.
Intuition – Beyond Experience
If you ask people to come with examples of brands that deliver outstanding customer experiences then first direct is almost always cited. So we really wanted to hear from them not only about they how manage to consistently deliver such outstanding joined up experiences but their vision for the future of engaging with customers.
Indeed, Stewart is going to be talking about ‘beyond experience’ and what he sees as the next level in creating multi-channel customer experiences.
Highlights for me:
- Offline and online attribution
- Tech and marketing working together for CRM
Eye tracking search results pages
Peter Myers describes using Mirametrix’s Eye Tracker system to check the hot spots (most viewed bits of) Google results pages for five formats – two varieties of local results, video searches, product images and expanded search links.
Three take-aways:
- Mirametrix’s portable system seems to offer a flexible, reasonably affordable solution that could allow organisations to do their own eye-tracking.
- As Peter says, “As Google moves away from 10 plain listings for more and more searches, it is definitely having an impact on search users.” For SEO practitioners, it is important to be aware of all the opportunities to appear in results - images, video, news; and to be aware of your competitors. ”Ranking #1 might not be pulling the weight it used to if your competitors down the page have more visually interesting results.”
- The tests suggest that the in-page Local/Places results can have a big effect, even when located in the middle of the page. “In these limited cases, they seemed to pull attention away from the top organic spots. If your query has a local flavor, you need to be aware of how your Google Places page is competing.”
