The Digital Lookout

The volume of searches being performed on particular topics can tell you a lot about the world. From seasonality of markets, the latest trendy gadget to who is going to win an election (or at least who is making the headlines!).

In this example which can see the harsh reality of the infamous credit crunch taking hold through the use of Google trends.   Earlier in 2008 term credit crunch as the US sub-prime market fell to pieces and the UK promptly followed suit. The term credit crunch became increasingly popular but now as the affects of it are beginning to really take hold the depressing sight from Google trends shows that searches for redundancy are on the rise in Q4 as businesses feel the pinch.

Don’t be surprised if the next high flying search term in Q1 2009 is recession, a depressing tale told through search volumes!

Whilst we in the search marketing business consider the UK market as one of the most advanced in terms of search engine marketing and search engine strategy a recent report by hosting company fasthosts claims that British consumers still don’t understand how search works.

According to the report 1 in 4 Britons were unaware that website owners were able to make changes to their website which would influence their position in the natural results and 22% believed that the natural SEO results were influenced by how much a company was paying to appear.

On the PPC front 1 in 3 respondents claimed to ignore sponsored links completely due to their commercial nature believing them to be “less worthy” and “less useful” than the natural search listings.

As a search engine marketing professional it is shocking to read the understanding of search in the UK is so poor but it does raise the question of what this means to the future of search engine marketing as consumers become more knowledgeable about search engine marketing. 33% of the respondents claimed to avoid PPC listings as they were less useful, but I would argue that they are less useful because the user does not understand them. I am fully aware of how PPC works but I still use sponsored listings when it suits my need. If my search is due to end in a purchase I am far more likely to use paid search listings as I know they will direct me to the most useful page and also contain details of any special offers available to me. However if my search is based around finding information I am more inclined to use the natural results as they will be less commercial.

As I also understand how natural search results work I am also more considered in how I view them. Rather than clicking blindly on the top results I take some time to read the results, check the URL and the listing content to decide which one is going to be the most useful. I am not going to rely on the search engine to decide which the best website is for me, I will make up my own mind thank you. I may even perform a second search before even clicking a link!

The results of this report suggest that consumer interaction with search engines could be changing over the next few years and companies engaging in search marketing are going to have to understand what this means to them. Is CTR going to drop on paid listings as users understand them more? Is position 1 in the search results going to mean less as people become more selective with what they click? Only time will tell.

According to Search Engine Watch the Yahoo buyout of AOL may be back on with the Yahoo board approving talks with Time Warner.  The buyout/merger saga has been going on for an age now with many seeing it as the only way to get a true competitor to Google.  Is it finally going to happen? (previous post here)

Having been in search for quite a while, I remember when Miva, or e-spotting as it was at the time.  Was actually a valid addition to a paid search campaign.  Taking up 20-40% of click budget for some campaigns and a viable traffic stream so long as you could filter out the fraudulent clicks.

Right now, approximately 0% of click budget in general would go through a PPC campaign managed by me and it would take something pretty special to convince me to do otherwise.  They tried to rescue it as the slide began, with offerings such as pay per call and their precision network of verticalised search, but to no avail.

Today they have announced they are launching a new online advertising platform but I am starting to think they should just give up the ghost and shut up shop.  They surely cant be profitable in the UK, although I hear they don’t have many staff left!  And there is no way they have the funds, the standing or the money to realistically compete with the likes of Google, Microsoft and Yahoo.  Their only hope is that they come up with something so innovative and mind blowing, that no-one else can copy, that it completely revolutionises the market.  Pretty unlikely if you ask me.  Is it time for Miva to give up the ghost and shut up shop?

In their latest add campaign Orange use a serious of individuals speaking about the people who have influenced their lives and made them what they are.  Using the phrase “i am” followed by the individual and how they influenced them.  I actually like the adverts but that is not the point of the post.  On top of the television ads they are also running radio spots which, in the final line, urges users to search “i am” on Google.  So I did just that, I went to my Google homepage and I searched on the phrase “i am”, half expecting to see the whole mobile phone industry lining up their PPC ads.  But low and behold, they weren’t there? All that was there was two Orange listings (the main site and the i am microsite) and a sleeping bag seller, lippiselkbag, who have cleverly engineered the i am message into their creative (nice product, check it out!).

Surely somebody associated with tmobile, vodafone or O2 should have picked up on this keyword seeding and have slotted the keyword into their PPC campaign?  All it would have taken is a bit of creative thinking to get the phrase into their creative and you never know, they may have got some business out of it.  yet another example of big businesses (or their agencies) failing to innovate in paid search.