MarketingSherpa Blog

Google rocked the search world last week by introducing a new feature that automatically predicts and displays search results as users type their queries.

Google Instant met with a swarm of speculation, including predictions that it would kill SEO, change SEO, and not change SEO.

All commentary is speculation at this point. Google Instant’s impact on search marketing will not likely be clear for another 30 to 60 days. The change will likely affect some marketers more than others, depending on search’s role in your marketing.

The folks at search agency and software provider Covario sent me a seven-page brief on the topic they wrote for their clients. Three highlights from their analysis and predictions:

1. Top organic positions are more important than ever

As users type search queries using the new feature, a drop-down “suggestion box” appears, pushing down paid and organic search results, and pushing some organic results below the fold.

Results pages with three or four ads in the top position sometimes only list one organic link above the fold (see image). The links pushed below the fold will likely experience a drop in traffic.

2. More ‘broad matching’ in PPC

Since users see results as they type, marketers will migrate toward strategies that use broad matching on the first keywords of popular multi-keyword queries.

In the short term, CPCs will increase and advertisers will have to budget more toward Google to drive similar volume, according Covario’s brief.

3. Not all searches are “Instant”

Google’s new feature is designed to work in the following browsers:
o Internet Explorer v8
o Safari for Mac v5
o Firefox v3
o Chrome v5, v6

Users running other browsers will perform traditional Google searches. Filtering your website analytics to track visitors by browser will help your team better understand how Google Instant changes your visitors’ behavior.

Please note: Covario’s brief emphasized that its analysis is strictly speculation. Only time and rigorous testing can determine what impact Google’s latest feature will have on your marketing and the marketing community as a whole.

Google is rocking the boat in the blogosphere with its latest announcement: Google Wave. I had a chance today to check out the video of a developer’s preview of the tool. It’s long — about 80 minutes — but it’s very clear and jam-packed with feature demos.

At first glance, Wave looks like an email and instant messaging hybrid built for the browser — but that’s just the beginning. Users can take their conversations and embed them into blogs and other websites with ease — and the conversations can be added to at the blog or the users’ account page. Users have a centralized place where they can add to conversations that are happening all over the web, “which will make flame wars so much more effective,” quips Lars Rasmussen, Software Engineer Manager, Google, and co-founder of the Wave team, in the video.

The tool has many other features, including:
– Drag and drop photo functionality
– Drag and drop friends into conversations
– Reply to specific portions of conversations
– Watch replays of how conversations developed (useful for those coming late to a discussion)
– Real-time conversation capability — to the point where you can watch your friends’ every keystroke
-And there’s more

Also interesting is a comment during the presentation’s introduction by Vic Gundotra, VP of Engineering, Google, that those watching the demo will surely forget that they were watching a browser client — not downloaded software. And in my case, he was right. I was blown away when I realized that the tool is hosted elsewhere — like Gmail. The only capability that requires a download is the photo functionality, which requires downloading Google Gears.

On top of all this, Google Wave will be open sourced — allowing any developer to create new uses and features — which is huge. The feature set will likely explode after launch.

Ah, yes — launch. Did I forget to mention that this is not yet available to the public? If you’re interested, Google will notify you when Wave is ready to go live sometime later this year — as my colleague Sean Donahue noted last week.

The potential for businesses — and communication in the Web in general — is large. Businesses can have an easy, free way to communicate and collaborate on projects. And it will be much easier for the public to socialize and interact online — which might give a very large booster shot to Web 2.0 in its infancy. This is certainly worth keeping an eye on — and it’s Google — you know that ads will eventually be squeezed in somewhere.

Google Audio Ads — a service that sells broadcast radio advertising over the Web — will end on May 31.  We covered how marketers were using the AdWords-based system for airing ads across the country at a low cost. I thought it was an interesting service that illustrated the breadth of Google’s advertising ambitions.

The marketers we talked to for the article thought the service was much cheaper and easier than buying ads direct from radio stations. Read more…

Google is a growing giant. Some stats from comScore’s 2008 Digital Year in Review (a free report if you surrender some info):

– Nearly 85 million searches were conducted on Google sites in 2008

– Google sites captured 63.5% of the searches among the top five engines in December 2008

– Google captured about 90% of the overall growth in search volume last year. Read more…

When a budget gets cut, experimental marketing dollars are often the first to go. Management cannot afford to dabble in unproven strategies. They want to focus on predictable, reliable tactics.

What a bore, right? You’ve been reading about social networks and viral marketing all year–and now you can’t get the budget to test them. Fear not, help is here.

Read more…

I love hearing about Google’s early days and its meteoric rise. When National Public Radio’s “Fresh Air” segment ran an interview with New York Times columnist Randall Stross, author of Planet Google, I was all ears.

Much of the interview was old news for search marketers, but I heard some good tidbits:

Read more…

Online marketing has changed a lot in the last seven years. But by how much? Google gives us a little insight today by opening up its index from 2001 in honor of its 10th birthday.

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When talking to search marketers, I often hear grumbling about Google’s commanding influence in the search world, and its increasingly mysterious internal workings. I was reminded this week of just how powerful and inscrutable Google has become when I saw AdGooroo’s second quarter Search Engine Advertiser Update.

Read more…

Online video producer Jim Kukral, of JFK Services, has some interesting thoughts on YouTube and Google Universal Search.

Search competition is not as strong in YouTube as in Google, Jim says. For example, searching “refinance mortgage” in YouTube returns 964 results. Searching in Google returns 11.6 million results. Some other examples:

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Google’s hegemony over the worldwide search market is undeniable. Consider the recent report from comScore that estimated Google’s share of the European search market at 79.2%.  I think “dominant” is an apt description.

But the more interesting data point from this report is who came in third for European searches: Yandex, the Russian search portal. It bested Yahoo! and MSN to crack the top three, based on its strong pull in Russia and Eastern Europe, where English is less widely spoken than in other parts of Europe.

Read more…