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March 7, 2007 by Jonah Stein 2 Comments

Google Plus: A Sign Of The Future of Search

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Have you noticed the plus sign within some Google SERP that started showing up next to invitations to map an address or get a stock quote a month ago?

Pundits are quick to conclude that this is a portal feature and that Google.com is compromizing their search-only philosophy to become a “portalized non-portal.” (RC Jordan) They accept the obvious explanation that Google is embedding portal content in SERPs to improve stickiness and deprive competitors of traffic while extending the Google brand.

It is easy to dismiss these UI changes as a strategy for Google to gain market share for services that are not performing well. Leveraging a dominant platform to gain market share for another product or service isn’t new or particularly exciting—even if it can be very effective. Despite Google’s successes in search and online advertising, many of their other properties are not performing well. Google Finance, for example, didn’t make the top ten according the Center For Media Research’s January 2007 data. Hitwise data from May 2006 shows Google Maps a distant third to Mapquest and Yahoo.

PlusBox is not intended to be a competitive sledgehammer, although it may serve that purpose. Google has successfully resisted the siren call of manipulating organic search in favor of its own properties and those of its partners for eight years. Search for photo editing software and Picasa doesn’t make the top 10 for organic SERP.

PlusBox is more important than bolstering finance or maps; it offers a glimpse into the future of search. Search engines have dramatically improved over the last decade, but some of the improvement in relevancy is driven by how we search. Users don’t tell the engines what we are looking for; we enter queries for key words that we have learned will help the engine differentiate what we want from other sites.

Plus box joins Onebox and Sitelink as the first steps to go beyond the user query terms and provide real relevancy. Using complex algorithms to create a statistical approximation of artificial intelligence that incrementally improves results — discovering what we are actually looking for and providing it within the SERP

A search a few weeks back for Children of Men illustrates the distinction. Google (and Ask) correctly determined the search was for a movie. The OneBox result in Google contained an invitation to get show times near me in Berkeley by entering a zip code. Ask offered reviews, show times and a link to the official site within their version of OneBox (along with an interesting assortment of suggestions in their “Narrow Your Search”). Yahoo and MSN showed a Yahoo News story followed by the official site for the movie.

Enriching SERPs with results that predict intent can be accomplished with a statistical analysis of user behavior. Google acknowledged that they monitor user click response to UI experiments. Melissa Mayer, Google VP, Search Products & User Experience, in a recent interview in Search Engine Land, describes the process, “We hold them (OneBox results) to a very high click through rate expectation and if they don’t meet that click through rate, the OneBox gets turned off on that particular query. We have an automated system that looks at click through rates per OneBox presentation per query. “

How hard is it to imagine that Google is leveraging this understanding to predict user intent and provide what we really want instead of the page that matches the search term we enter?

Filed Under: Google, Punditry, Random Thoughts

March 6, 2007 by Jonah Stein Leave a Comment

Customer Service Irony

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Trackback, http://www.measurement.com/Online_Marketing/Berkeley-Toyota-Sucks

Filed Under: Random Thoughts, RANT

November 7, 2006 by Jonah Stein Leave a Comment

Surgical Strike

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The ROIGuy has been absent for a couple of weeks while recovering from Oral Surgery. Having the nerves of my teeth exposed to the continual irritation of every breath and every bite has resulted in a dental dam of the creative process.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

October 11, 2006 by Jonah Stein Leave a Comment

YouTube—Google Brilliant Deal—Terrible Consequences

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Buying YouTube for $1.65 Billion is a brilliant move to block out Yahoo, NewsCorp, Ask and MSN. Google may have overpaid or they may not have, but they now own the traffic that could have gone to a competitor.

The $900 million MySpace–Google search deal announced in May established the valuation and made acquisition of YouTube inevitable. The MySpace deal was a huge win for NewsCorp and set a very high price tag for acquiring Social Media sites that are leading their segment. Rumors about Yahoo talking to FaceBook about a $1 billion sales have been floating for months; the rumors suddenly include Google and prices as high as 2.3 billion.

While the headlines invoke demons of 1999, the real danger here is not the potentially inflated values of a few sites that lead their space; the real issue is the terrible consequences for other social media sites. The search advertising revenue model and skyrocketing valuations distort the focus of Social Media sites and turns them into giant affiliate sites for search advertising.

For competing sites with shallower pockets and smaller market share, the need to generate revenue will inevitably compromise the user experience. CPC advertising revenue is a great model—for a search engine. When a community site depends on driving search queries for revenue, it takes the emphasis away from the user’s reason for coming to the site. The site sacrifices whatever makes it unique in favor of a generic user experience.

Social Networking and User Generated Content sites need to develop their own revenue streams based on the characteristics that synthesize their communities. They need to identify specific markets for which they understand user affinity and then figure out how to monetize delivery of relevant content that enhances the user experience. For example, if a site encourages users to list their favorite type of music or musical artists, they could partner with labels, artists or music promoters in each city to sell tickets to the show. Even better, they could negotiate for access to presale tickets and/or a special section in the arena for their members and let users create a buzz around the event.

The inflated valuations caused by this deal may be even more devastating in the long run. Slapping a $1 billion price tag on an immature site with a tons of users puts a lot of pressure on management to cash in. A site that was organically evolving through the interaction with users and slowly approaching profitability is suddenly an entity on the auction block. If the site is sold, it creates an all consuming demand to generate revenue. In the end, these objectives are accomplished (or not) to the detriment of the users who synthesized these communities.

Long before anyone coined the terms “Social Networking” or “User Generated Content,” one of the first (and still the best*) community sites was www.Craigslist.org. The site was founded by Craig Newmark, an unusual person with an almost unheard of lack of desire to cash in.

Craig has stated on many occasions that the site is nothing without the user community. His title is Founder, Chairman, Customer Service Representative. Craigslist operates as a not for profit entity that has grown organically, with a limited revenue model, a sparse user interface and a fanatically loyal user base who police the site. They have about 20 employees and resist the siren song of growing revenue through advertising, affiliate programs, co-marketing, etc. Ebay bought a minority stake a few years ago but has lived by the agreement they made with the founder to be hands off and not demand a cash return. If Craigslist suddenly sold for the $10-20 billion it would be worth on the open market, the site would have to start generating a few billion dollars a year and fundamentally change the community that created it.

*Full disclosure requires me to state that I have used Craigslist for the last nine years. I met my wife through Craigslist, found a few house mates, a job, and bought things including a hot tub, a pool table, furniture, and Giants tickets. I dream that some day one of my posts will be voted to the “best-of-craigslist” archives.

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

October 7, 2006 by Jonah Stein Leave a Comment

Kevin Rose’s 10 Reasons Apple, Microsoft and Walmart Cause Global Warming

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BlackHatSEO had a great piece today about Spamming Digg and how to get to the top.

He included suggestions like putting together a top 10 list, mentioning Kevin Rose and Apple, demonizing Microsoft and Walmart, bashing Bush, talking about Firefox or Global Warming.

The article is really funny and it’s hard to decide if it is parody or advice, but he proved it worked by getting more digs than anyone else this week. He got so much traffic, it took down his server!

Filed Under: Random Thoughts

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