Archive for January, 2007
Air Canada Lunacy
I just read Rick Segal’s post about Air Canada and setting expectations. I’m frustrated with Air Canada right now. Here’s the situation. I’ll be in NYC next Thursday and Friday, and I need to be in London on the following Monday. My options are:
1) Fly home Friday night, get in at 11:00 p.m., and fly out Sunday morning. Jet lag here I come!
2) Fly to London, spend a nice weekend as a tourist, enjoy the sites. Downside: London is expensive.
3) Fly to Zurich, visit my family, get a cheap ticket to London, save expenses, and be in great shape to present at SES London.
Should be easy, right? Air Canada doesn’t make it easy. $980.00 CAD to fly from NYC to London, and back to Victoria. $2500.00 to Zurich. $1152 to Rome, via Zurich!
That’s right. If I fly to Rome, with the plane landing in Zurich, and me changing planes there it costs me $1400 extra. No, apparently, I can’t just get off in Zurich, if I do, I void my return flight! Something is wrong with Air Canada’s pricing.
Here’s part 2. My associate is flying from Nanaimo to London, return. Book it via Vancouver $2452. Book Vancouver to London return $842.00. Book a return ticket Nanaimo - Vancouver, $80.00, all on Air Canada. So book one ticket, pay $2452. Book it as two separate tickets, and pay $920.00. Tough decision.
Personalization and the Death of Rank Checking
Andrew Goodman posted a note on the Traffick blog about search personalization and the death of rank checkers.
Personalization is search result modification. If you have turned on personalization in Google: Google becomes like a friendlier filing cabinet, (Thanks to Jim Hedger for this analogy). Personalization helps Google remember where you’ve been, what you’ve looked for, and which results you’ve clicked.
Many people use search engines like filing cabinets. They repetitively search for the same items, and expect to find the same results. Rather than bookmarking their favorites, they use the search engines to remember where they found them. Personalization helps them remember which pages they’ve already visited, and on what date they last visited it.
An interesting side effect is a trap I’ve seen countless people fall into. Turn personalization on, and if you use the “Google filing cabinet” approach, eventually the pages you repetitively select will float to the top of the results. Voila: Your site about dogs really can rank #1 for seo news! In other words, your results become skewed.
More pertinent to the whole discussion of why rank checking is dead is the application of localization algorithms to results across most possible search queries. A query for “seo service” run in NYC will return different results for the same query in San Jose. Websites whose businesses are located physically closer to the searcher are favored over more distant ones. So, as a search marketer, if you are located in Seattle and your client is in Los Angeles, your rank checking tools will be irrelevant. The results you see in Seattle are likely to be skewed / relevant to your location. Here’s an easy way to test (and show clients) the differences; if you have a wireless device (Treo, Blackberry, “Q”, Nokia e61/62 etc…) use it, and your desktop simultaneously.
Google “Real Estate” on your desktop, and at the same time, on your wireless device. When I try it, I get 5 results out of 10 different. If you use an old fashioned rank checker, your results won’t show you that. Frustration with bad / useless information is why we started Enquisite - to provide accurate, relevant, and meaningful business intelligence to anyone in search marketing - SEO’s, SEM’s, website operators, Internet Marketers, or simply website owners just trying to get a simple answer to a simple question: How are my clients finding me? It’s turned into a lot more since then, but the original search engine position reporting tool remains.
From the Fortune Interactive Article:
This is the process of SEO competitive intelligence and doing it properly will require, at a bare minimum, extensive data collection, quantitative analysis, qualitative analysis and multivariate analysis. There will always be an element of art to SEO but now much more science is required than before.
I couldn’t agree more. This shouldn’t be news to anyone. Solid SEO’s who know what they are doing use business intelligence tools to help them succeed. They don’t launch darts at dartboards, hoping to get it right, and adjusting if they don’t. They plan and execute with well considered strategies that deliver long term results.
Enquisite started off as a passive rank reporting system. That’s the system I discussed with Andrew over pizza in 2005. Don’t bother using a rank checker. Use Enquisite, and accurately understand how your customers are finding your website.
UI Interface Updates
Alright…. we worked for a long time getting all the crucial information in to the reports. We’re still going to add more, constantly, but now, we’re going to spend some time focusing on the Interfaces. I need your help. Please send me your requests! Here’s what we’ve got as a broad outline so far.
1) It should be intuitive; like iTunes. Allow users to create “playlists” which are their own custom reports. Offer some defaults which are reports most users want.
2) Use Flex, or something like it.
What do you want to see? Email me, please.
Explosive Retardant Packages
So I was flying out of San Francisco on Tuesday. Late as usual. I go through security, and a supervisor gets called to inspect my bag. He pulls out my toothpaste and deodorant, and says “I’m sorry, you can’t bring these through like this.” Nothing antagonistic, or negative, just a statement of facts. My response: “Oh, I’m sorry, I always have them, and it was never a problem before, what do you want me to do with them?” Very nicely he says, “Well, we can dispose of them, or you can put them in a transparent, resealable explosive retardant package; they sell them at the store over there, and I’ll give you a pass so you don’t need to line up to wait to go through security again.” As I had spare time (5 minutes before boarding), I thank the fellow, take my things, and wander over to the store.
Once in the store, I ask to purchase the explosive retardant package. The lady says “$0.32, please”, reaches down and pulls out a Ziploc sandwich bag!
Ziploc bags. Never leave home without one!
Enquisite Update
A minor update today, but one lots of users have asked for. Password management, and Lost Password recovery.
You’ll see the change as you go to log into your reports.
You’ll also see a new option in your reporting interface: Client Options - here you can not only update your password, but your address, email, phone, etc…
We also made a database update for the search engine comparison tool; for users with more than 2.0M search referrals, this update will make a big speed difference. We have a few more speed updates coming.
Now that this is out of the way, we’ll continue with building master account logins (for those of you running multiple accounts and wanting one login), and other features which will allow white label / private label versions of Enquisite.
We’ve also been asked for an “organization report” tab.
We’ll let you know.
Search Engine Market Shares - December
As promised, I’m posting the search engine breakdowns for December. Additionally, I’m posting breakdowns for intervals within the month.
Please note - we’re only reporting the search engine referral market shares.
|
Engine Yahoo MSN Google Images AOL Ask MSN Live Comcast Google News My Web Search Dogpile Netscape BellSouth MyWay Froogle Earthlink Yahoo Images Altavista |
December 76.101% 7.786% 4.228% 2.925% 1.598% 0.790% 0.602% 0.546% 0.505% 0.423% 0.333% 0.282% 0.277% 0.248% 0.239% 0.220% 0.209% 0.197% |
November 78.2139% 5.9433% 3.9670% 2.8089% 1.8245% 1.0584% 0.7158% 0.5042% 0.3825% 0.3333% 0.3012% 0.2824% 0.2711% 0.2524% 0.2301% 0.2155% 0.1727% 0.1690% |
Now for the interesting part - I decided to break it down into 5 day segments.
|
December Yahoo MSN Google Images AOL Ask MSN Live Comcast Google News My Web Search Dogpile Netscape BellSouth MyWay Froogle Earthlink Yahoo Images Altavista |
1-5 78.433% 6.828% 3.653% 2.712% 1.802% 0.732% 0.413% 0.498% 0.505% 0.395% 0.297% 0.285% 0.250% 0.230% 0.138% 0.220% 0.153% 0.193% |
6-10 77.234% 7.849% 3.897% 2.577% 1.670% 0.765% 0.454% 0.478% 0.415% 0.389% 0.307% 0.279% 0.269% 0.228% 0.206% 0.225% 0.153% 0.194% |
11-15 77.914% 7.199% 4.052% 2.474% 1.419% 0.771% 0.433% 0.722% 0.576% 0.372% 0.317% 0.239% 0.211% 0.210% 0.207% 0.183% 0.171% 0.179% |
16-20 75.821% 7.512% 4.299% 2.986% 1.649% 0.881% 0.564% 0.493% 0.464% 0.442% 0.320% 0.281% 0.250% 0.267% 0.302% 0.238% 0.250% 0.192% |
21-25 74.736% 8.104% 4.307% 3.260% 1.687% 0.700% 0.675% 0.507% 0.558% 0.468% 0.311% 0.313% 0.276% 0.285% 0.258% 0.262% 0.335% 0.219% |
26-31 69.630% 10.009% 5.679% 4.112% 1.349% 0.909% 1.327% 0.532% 0.538% 0.537% 0.405% 0.291% 0.243% 0.314% 0.405% 0.244% 0.300% 0.222% |
My thoughts as I look at the data?
- Google’s usage drops markedly when people are not at work
- MSN / MSN live is growing steadily
- ASK & AOL dropped - I’m surprised Ask dropped at all
- A heck of a lot of people shop online at the last minute - look at Froogle’s blip
- and of course… people still use Altavista!
We’ve noticed before that there is a drop in Google’s usage vis-a-vis certain Holidays. This one was not as marked as one other in particular I can remember. It will be interesting to monitor the trend during year as the holiday’s occur.
Next month, in honor of SES London, I’ll try and post some UK numbers.
I look forward to your comments. I suspect that breaking down the month in 5 day segments is too much for many people - hopefully it’s interesting for some.