Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category
Thoughts on Google Instant
We’ve been getting a lot of questions today about our thoughts around the launch of Google Instant and what this ultimately means for search. Overall, I think this was a positive change because it makes search more accessible to a wider audience and in my opinion, it’s a killer feature. I see a few big effects of Google’s new feature.
First, predicative queries should allow users to get to a more varied set of information than they otherwise would have. Why? Because Google now makes it easier to construct longer, more specific queries. When a user starts typing in what they are looking for, google will not only predict what that is, but will also provide the user with other alternatives. For example, typing in “San Francisco “ provides a user with some suggestions of what to search for. The user can easily filter through that and then combine them with other suggestions to really explore the results of what they are looking for.
The second effect is the auto refreshing of results. This really allows the user to explore the results of a query and then easily refine them. This can be done right from the search box without having to wait for a full page refresh. This makes refining queries and exploring results much quicker and easier.
The overall effect of these major features will be to put more of an emphasis on long tail queries. We’ve done some research in the past on query length and I expect a trend to form placing more volume on longer, more specific queries. Obviously, we’ll be monitoring this to see if it comes true.
SEO Implications
From a pure SEO standpoint, I don’t think this really shifts anything in the overall strategy. There are already people calling this the end of SEO and other non-sensical claims. I don’t want to re-iterate counter arguments to this, especially since Danny Sullivan has already done so in a very eloquent fashion. In short, it’s not and likely it’s probably a good thing for SEO.
What are your thoughts on Google Instant? Have you started doing anything different because of it? Leave us some comments below and let the discussion continue.
The most underused tool in the marketing toolbox – Linking?
Sometimes I don’t understand things - including the inner workings of marketing professionals. Yet I’ve tried to tackle this challenge and have been building and selling marketing applications for marketing folk for decades. I know that working complex web analytics products can be daunting. Marketing automation even more so. How does one create and allocate lead scoring and attribution? What is the LTV of a customer?
But linking? Gosh, don’t we all know the value of inbound links? Don’t we know how search engines work, for God’s sake? Well, apparently no. This knowledge is not as universal as one would think (Hope! Assume!).
A few months ago we released Linker which, in short, is a dating site for sharing and creating links. A Match.com for SEO link building. The good news? We’ve had thousands of people start to take advantage of the service. The bad news? Only five percent of them have ANY links on their site! This data floored me.
So we took matters into our own hands and today released our findings as well as made our link building tool FREE . We understand that linking takes time, which could explain the incredible low rate, but with our Linker product it should be much easier. At least that’s our hope. So, world, let’s get found. Let’s use the product and link away. I would be happy to hear from any of you!
Poll Results - Top Link-Building Expert: Eric Ward
Continuing on yesterday’s PPC Experts results list, I’m continuing to use the opportunity that Connected Marketing Week presents to post some of the results to the lists I created around top experts in the various online marketing disciplines.
I’ll probably repeat myself in all the poll results, but the lists have been a pleasure to publish, as people are constantly asking for recommendations around who to turn to for advice within different areas of online marketing. This format allowed me to share my recommendations, in a format that allows everyone else to weigh in and share their insights too. Over 3000 individuals participated in this series of polls. Thank-you to all!
Today, I’m publishing the list of top experts you turn to most for link-building advice. As you can see from the original list, this was a really strong group. Every single one of them is incredibly knowledgeable, and worth being on anyone’s reading list.
Your top 5 favorites were:
1) Eric Ward
2) Wiep
3) Debra Mastaler
4) Dave Davies
and a tie for fifth;
5) Rand Fishkin
5) Ralph Tegtmeier - Fantomaster / “Fantomeister”
The graphic, for all of you to see the distribution:
Poll results - Top PPC Expert - David Szetela
I thought it would be interesting to use Connected Marketing Week to post some of the results to the lists I created around top experts in the various online marketing disciplines.
As I’ve written before, the lists have been a pleasure to publish, as people are constantly asking for recommendations around who to turn to for advice within different areas of online marketing. This format allowed me to share my recommendations, in a format that allows everyone else to weigh in and share their insights too. Over 3000 individuals participated in this series of polls. Thank-you to all!
The first set of results I thought I would share was from the list of PPC Experts. The PPC Expert you feel most comfortable turning to for PPC advice is David Szetela, who received 14.6% support!
1) David Szetela
2) Andrew Goodman
3) Joanna Lord
4) Brad Geddes
5) Marc Poirier
In fact, the top 5 vote getters received 50% of the total support, as shown in this graph:
Congratulations to all! If you missed the list - view it here.
Thanks to everyone for participating - @rzwicky Richard Zwicky
Enquisite Reporting Suite Update
(Nov 2009) We are pleased to announce the November update to the Enquisite Performance Suite. This release includes three new enhancements:
- Bounce Rate, Time on Site, and Page View metrics within Enquisite Optimizer
- Transferring Segment Data from Optimizer to Enquisite Campaign
- A 50% speed increase in the core Longtail reporting interface.
Our Enquisite Optimizer product has been enhanced to allow you to see the bounce rate, time on site, and page view metrics for your site as well as any segment of search referral traffic that you create within Optimizer. This has been an outstanding request from publishers and etailers alike.
This screenshot reflects ~10 days worth of data from a web site with ~150k search referrals per day. The segment displayed is showing Google organic search traffic only, where the visitors were searching from within the U.S., and which zip codes they were located in when they visited the business. The map shows the State by State breakdowns (WA is proportionally too high), and the Time on Site / Bounce Rate / PageViews calculation shows us the site average, and the average for just this segment. The system took 5 seconds to calculate the entire dataset, most of which was the time it took me to set the parameters!
This feature was created to provide you with the ability to determine the relevancy and perceived value of the pages on your site. It can help you determine the factors that may compel users who arrive at your site to immediately leave as well as the pages that may entice them to continue to browse. Not only will this help you better structure your site and pages, but it will allow you to understand which pages to focus on in order to best shape the incoming traffic.
Finally, the addition of time on site, page view and bounce rate calculated against both paid or organic search referral segments makes it possible for any search marketer to isolate and identify high value opportunities and optimize campaigns accordingly.
Our Longtail reports is the core of Enquisite Optimizer. We’ve made some code improvements which halve load times, and with a new Database optimization we’re implementing, we expect to reduce load times even more significantly. For all but the largest sites, Optimizer was already blazingly fast for a real-time analysis and insight engine. Now, it’s even faster for everyone!
Finally, we’ve started the process of integrating the segmentation functionality in Optimizer into our Campaign product. This will make it even easier than before to build and manage your search marketing campaigns.
We’ve got a lot more improvements coming in the next few months, and thank-you all for your continued support, suggestions and feedback.