Search Engine Strategies 2006 New York Archives

Here is a list of all the sessions we covered during the SES NYC 06 - Quadruple Coverage this week.

+ Keynote: Barry Diller, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, IAC/InterActiveCorp (Other coverage from ClickZ and CNN)
+ Vertical Creep Into Regular Search Results
+ Searchonomics: Serious & Fun Stats
+ Contextual Ads
+ Multichannel Metrics
+ Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior
+ Blogs, CGM, and Buzz
+ The Search Landscape
+ Podcast Search
+ Rich Media and Video Ads
+ Winning a Bid War
+ Searcher Behavior Research Update
+ Search Head Or Search Tail? Getting The Mix Right
+ Ads Beyond Search
+ BtoB Tactics
+ Pundits On Search
+ Reputation Monitoring & Management
+ Search Algorithm Research and Patents
+ Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues
+ Search Ad Buyers Forum aka Search Marketing Style Council
+ Blog & Feed Search SEO - Blog Optimization Strategies You Need To Know
+ Practical Copyright & Trademark Guidance for Webmasters and SEMs
+ Duplicate Content Issues
+ Who's Watching Whom: Search & Privacy
+ Advanced Search Term Research Tools
+ Meet The Blog & Feed Search Engines
+ Retailer SEM Tactics
+ My SEM Toolbox
+ Ad Agencies & Search
+ SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging
+ Buying and Selling Links
+ Branding & Search
+ In House Forum
+ Search Engine Q&A on Links
+ Search Advertising: Now & Future
+ Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan
+ Local Search Marketing Tactics
+ Organic Listings Forum
+ Measuring Success Overview
+ Earning From Search & Contextual Ads
+ Meet The Crawlers
+ SEO Overkill
+ Search and Phone Calls

Want more SES NY 2006 news? Technorati has blog reports here: sesny2006. See shared photos on Flickr here: sesny2006. See bookmarked pages on del.icio.us here: sesny2006. See saved pages on Yahoo My Web 2.0 here: sesny2006. Find live coverage and discussion at the Search Engine Watch Forums here: SEM Events.

One of the hotter topics of the day is reserved for the very last session of SES NYC. As search advertising costs on a CPC basis have gone up, so have the costs per acquisition, especially in some industries. Could Cost Per Call be the next “best value” in search advertising?

Came in late…Danny Sullivan moderating.
Missed Dave Roth from Carat’s presentation. He was finishing up with a comment about how important it is to measure calls from search-related leads.

Brian Waldman from Merchant Wharehouse. Has been working with ClickPath since they started, trying to ensure they measure inbound calls from search efforts. “How call tracking works on merchantwarehouse.com." They value people getting to the site because they are many ways they can convert. They don’t use their phone number in their PPC creative, but instead allocate a particular 800 number to each person that comes through from search. This number tracks their particular search term, which is great for their sales people.

Is measuring calls important? Many companies shy away from search because there is no onsite “conversion event.” Even on ecommerce sites, a call to an order center is highly desirable for high end products. Of all purchasing research done online, only 35% of orders occur there. With Pay per click, you are already paying for the traffic, why not know the true value. We all know that conversion is king, what if your company could now credit 50-100% more conversions from search? 73% of their paid search activity results in a phone call. Imagine not knowing where all these conversions came from? If they were not measuring this, they would be looking at a break even ROI, thus search would not provide adequate results. Impact of measuring calls: with calls: ROI 425%, without measuring them, their ROI was 113%. The use ClickPath for this and really like it. It records every call that comes in, which allows for call reviews, measures offline conversion tracking, allows for call routing and disposition, and gives a method to review fraud. The ability to allocate an 8000 through anything is very important. Call routing is big because it allows a different search to lead to a different sales section. For example, if some one searches ofr a brand name, they can lead to the page they want, as well as leading the 800 number assigned to them directly to a sales rep. With call disposition, it allows for a simple “press a button” option for the sales rep to report the results of the call. The fraud review feature is great…uses the referring URL to determine of it’s for real.

Is call tracking for you? Gives a high value to inbound calls, helps you measure your ROI more efficiently, allows for recording calls and evaluating your sales team.

Christer Ljungdahl from National Instruments. Will speak about the value of inbound calls. They really want to convert traffic to phone calls. They sell direct, which is good because they have engineers that understand. 35% of all their web traffic comes form search, and 50% of their inbound calls originate from the web. They publish and track phone numbers that are dynamic. They are country context sensitive, topic specific, and site section context specific. They can publish any number based on a multitude of parameters. First, make sure that a visitor has a good chance of finding your contact us page. They assign a greater value to people that look though the site more than just the home page, indicating more interest. Remember that phone calls don’t always come through during the visit. They use a printer friendly option with local contact information based on user. If some don’t call, email or print the contact form, find out why. They use the “call me” option also, and customers like the option. When they click on that choice and submit, within 2 seconds, the phone will ring, and the agent has a popup screen with all knowledge about the customer already harvested. If not business hours, they ask for less information and tell them they will be called during business hours. They even use the phone number on the “call me” page, in case they want to call. They try to get as much info as possible without “turning the customer off.”

Measuring the conversion flow is very easy with the analytics available today. This allows for changes like moving calls-to-action, etc. How to lose business? If you aren’t publishing your number. Takeways: make it easy for people to contact you, use different phone numbers. Understand why people chose not to call you. If you can’t get a call now, try to get one letter. Phone calls can reduce your online orders, so if this is your main goal you have to decide. It will drive your overall revenue. They saw a tripling of conversion rates when they became more aggressive in publishing the phone number.

Q&A speakers include Ted Carpenter, who has the ClickPath product, and Mark Barach from Ingenio, which has a pay per call product.

Ted: a small pool of phone numbers is allocated to various behavior patterns. You can use a number that stays active for an hour, a day, a week, etc. The longer a number stays active, the more numbers you will use. As an example, if you have a 10,000 keyword campaign, you’ll be using about 100 numbers.

“How much does it cost?” ClickPath is anywhere from 500 to 1500 dollars a month. There is a licensing fee and then a per minute charge. The calls are routed through their (ClickPath’s) switching network, and then they bill directly. Some companies that have a lot of calls spend upwards of $10,000/month.

What about privacy issues? Has there been research about the security of phone call data? They mentioned earlier that calls are sometimes recorded to help find keywords. What is being done to work the PR spin? Ted: their network doesn’t use VOIP, but instead a safer method. You get the name/address/phone number of who is calling, usually. As long as your privacy policy states that you will not resell the data, you will be fine. Danny says it is fair to say if you are going into any click-to-call situation, you should be very aware of the platform you are using and possibly note it on your site (ie: your call will be recorded to mine keywords-laughs)

What if someone calls repeatedly? Ingenio delivers customers, not phone calls. Any time the caller calls again from the same phone is an non-billed event (typically within a 30 day period). David says that their reports detail all calls, billed or not. Brian adds that they have their sales reps give their extension, and ask people to call back on that.

Woohoo all done…see you at SES San Jose!

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

I think I covered this session at least twice. So let's see if there is anything new or not. One new thing I see is that Jennifer Laycock is the moderator for this session. Seems like they are a bit late to start, projector issues or something, maybe its a sound issue because I know Matt Bailey does this thing with screen reading tools that shows off how funny spam sites sound with a screen reader.

Michael Murray from Fathom SEO
I'll leave his introduction out of this coverage, since I disagree with it.

- SEO is not a shopping spree
- Yes, you need the traffic but try to pace yourself
- Even sound practices may fail if they are rushed into and overdone

- Domain Stuffing
-- Short domains are easy to read
-- Multiple hyphens or forced capitalization looks like spam

- Managing too many keywords at once
-- Prioritize
-- What are your profit margins
-- Give main keywords enough attention

- Folder and Page Name Excess
-- Yes, keywords can influence rankings
-- Make sure they match content

- Taming the Title Tag
-- Long titles are useless
-- Multiple keuwords that create lengthly titles cant all rank well

- Meta Descriptions
-- Avoid long descriptions
-- Portion appears in the search results
-- Laundry list of keywords may not match content

- Over the top meta keyword tags
-- Hard to avoid this traditional step
-- Some engines downplay this tag

- META Bonanza
-- Skip misc meta tag options
-- They do little for search engines

- Overdone Visible Text
-- Massive keyword repetition in a small space may annoy Web site users.

- Heading Tag Misuse
-- Don't overstuff
-- Avoid OVeruse
-- Complement design

- Visible Text in Unusual Places
-- Looks like an amateur put the site together
-- Text placed above the entire page

- Site Maps
-- Site maps are essential
-- Don't pursue too many keywords
-- Avoid major copy clusters

- Visible Links Blitz
-- Yes, links in content are useful
-- Too many may be viewed as spam

- Anchor Text Gone Wild
-- Too many search terms in the same hyperlink dilute the impact of a favored keyword or phrase

- Renegade Programmers
-- Know what your programmers are doing

- Link Title Attribute Mess
-- Prime example of overkill
-- You can do these things, but should you?
-- No consistent opinion about their value

- ALT Tag Overflow
-- Easy to do but use restraint
-- Only a marginal factor in rankings

- Links - Too many Too Fast
-- Be careful what link you get
-- Favor slow, steady growth
-- Relevancy is the key

- Hidden Text
-- Avoid all forms of hidden text
-- Make font colors and sizes match design
-- Excessive keywords offer no value

- Micro Sites
-- Search engines hate duplicate content
-- Add good content to your main content

- No Frames Tag - No End in Sight
-- The no frames tag space is ideal for citing browser limitations
-- Include a robust summary of the site and links to specific pages

Matt Bailey from SiteLogicMarketing.com (new company?)
- Rand heckles Matt after he puts up a Jacob Nielson slide.
How do users scan?
- Headlines
- Meaningful Sub Headings
- Bulleted lists
- Headers
- Content Arrangement: Inverted Pyramid style
- Half the word count, double the retention

- He gets into his screen reader slides, see chicago, last session
- Then the mobile device...
- This as was Fathom SEO's presentation, is basically the same...so please see past coverage
- Sorry about that

Heather Lloyd Martin of SuccessWorks
Why SEO Overkill is Bad for Conversion
- Troublesome title stuffing
- Kooky copy to get clicks (just to get clicks)
- Linkarama Losers (same slide as Chicago)
- Conversion Confusion (hard to find buy button, too much info)
- Baby, don't stuff keyphrases
- Clean up your stuffing
- Bad, Bad, Misspellings

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Session description:

"Representatives from major crawler-based search engines cover how to submit and feed them content, with plenty of Q&A time to cover issues related to ranking well and being indexed."

Moderated by Danny Sullivan and speakers include: Matt Cutts from Google, Kashual Kurapati from Ask Jeeves, a representative from Yahoo! (Tim Mayer was not present) and Ramez Naam from MSN Search

Audience Question: This is for Google and Yahoo: My site has over 500,000 products. What is the difference in the number of pages crawled and the number of mentions? For Yahoo we only have 500 results. Why is there a difference?

Yahoo: Use the Site Explorer tool. If Site Explorer only shows 500 pages, then there is an issue.
Google: Every search engine crawls in a different way. Mentions vs indexed. There are instances where we know about the url, but we did not crawl it. Your site may not have enough PageRank for us to do a deep crawl.
Yahoo: The site explorer offers an option to provide a RSS feed of your site's urls.

Audience Question: Disney search marketing manager. What are the search engine capabuilitie at crawling Flash. What are the pitfalls

MSN: FLash is difficult, so it will have an effect on the findability of your site.
Yahoo: Flash is in the pipe, you should see some innovations coming soon.
Google: We used to parse swf files, but Flash and Ajax can be problematic. THey break functions of your browser. My recommendation is to provide a text version of your site along with the Flash version.
Yahoo: Cloaking was mentioned in a previous panel as a method of getting around all-Flash sites. Don't.
Danny: A Flash page is like handing out a blank business card. Shows example of a jazz singer's site (he saw last night) that uses Flash with text.

Audience Question: Do you only crawl links found on pages or does your algorithm use queries from the toolbar?
MSN: It may.
Google: If you're trying to use the toolbar to get indexed, you should spend your time doing something else. Other ways to get into Google without inbound links: Site submit and Google Sitemap.
Audience member: I don't want certain pages indexed.
Panel: Add a robots.txt file excluding those pages and also put a password on that area.
Google: Gives example of how Alexa toolbar has been spoofed and used to spam Matt's "related sites" info on the Alexa listing for his blog.
Yahoo/Google: How many people would be concerned if anonymous toolbar data was used by search engines?
Most of the audience raise their hands.

Danny: Brings up Flash issue and points to a thread on Search Engine Watch forum.

Audience Question: Is there any truth that search engines ignore robots.txt?
MSN: No, we comply.

Audience Question: Asks about submitting to MSN. Is the RSS feed url submission for MSN and Yahoo only for new content?
MSN: You can submit multiple URLs to MSN and that is not seen as a spam activitiy. MSN also now supports URL submissions using an RSS feed.
Yahoo: If urls are repeated in different RSS feeds they will just be revisited.

Audience Question: We use dynamic urls to control page behaviors and run into problems where the same product is indexed under different urls with different parameters. Do you have any tips on what we can do to avoid this?
Yahoo: Search engines are getting better at indexing dynamic content but must be careful of spider traps. Suggestion would be to use the URL submission tools available such as Google Sitemaps or Yahoo and MSN URL submissions using RSS feed.
MSN: You can use robots.txt to block everything but the cannonical version of your page urls.

Danny asking search engines to get on the same page with robots.txt.
Google: The only thing we don't support is crawl delay. Many webmasters that used that parameter incorrectly.
Yahoo: We try hard to adhere to the standard.
Google: Google Sitemaps offers a robots.txt feedback tool.
Danny: That's a great tool and I wish all the engines would do the same.

Audience Question: How does the rate at which pages get updated that are linking to you affect your site getting crawled?
MSN: Refresh rate of pages pointing to you doesn't factor. What matters is the freshness of your own site.
Yahoo: Inbound links are more imporant for discovery.
Google: The rate change of source pages is very much a secondary consideration.
MSN: Regarding links: Links that look natural, that provide value are the ones we use. Also instead of buying links, think about creating unique content that provides value and people will link to it naturally.

Audience Question: We have a competitor that builds duplicate copies of his ecommerce site and the crawlers don't seem to be able to see this. We're thinking of doing the same thing if the crawlers aren't going to do anything about it.
Yahoo: The algorithms are continuously being imroved and in some cases we need to look at situations individually.
Google: Agrees, feel free to provide a specific example. Fill out a spam report and give an example. We do the best we can. but we need feedback.
Ask: We try to take care of these situations when we discover them.

Audience Question: How does server response time affect crawling?
MSN: A slow response time can be perceived as a down web site. It may cause us to crawl you more slowly.
Yahoo: We'll typically revisit the site after a few days.

Danny: Is MSN going to do anything like Site Explorer?
MSN: We're very interested in improving what we can offer webmasters and will be developing tools of that nature.
Yahoo: We are adding new features to Site Explorer.
Ask: As we ramp up with processes and resources to deal with the queue that builds up.

Audience Question: Some major news publications will list a url but not create a hyperlink to a site. Do you use that information into account?
Ask: We do assign credit for newly found sites. If there is already a link to the site, additional links to the same site are not considered. The URL as text is not treated as a link.
Yahoo: At this point we do not treat a text url as a link.
Google: That delves into the secret sauce. Think of coverage in major publications as a traffic source but not as a way of getting link popularity.
Yahoo: Y!Q creates links automatically to popular resources.

Google: Matt shows his Google Sitemap data using then new version of sitemaps. For some reason Matt's blog is #2 for a phrase like free porn on Google local. Shows a variety of information on his blog.

Yahoo: Points out answers.yahoo.com and is looking for feedback.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Rebecca Lieb is moderating this session.

Jennifer Slegg from JenSense.com is up first.

Cute slides, at the top it has the typical blue border, with "Ads by Jenstar" underlined at the top.

Competitive Landscape in Contextual Advertising
- Google AdSense
- YPN
- Kanoodle
- IndustryBrands
- MSN ContextAds

Google AdSense vs. YPN
Similarities:
- Both have large pools of advertisers
- Offer similar ad formats and advertising in RSS feeds
- Real time stats and identical stats
- Neither will tell you the revenue share
- Cannot run either program on the same page at the same time
- Similar terms and policies
Differences:
- AdSense accepts all International publishers, YPN does not while its in Beta
- Google offers image ads, CPM ads, ad links, search and referrals, whereas YPN only offers traditional ad units and rss ads
- You are going to get better paying ads from YPN
- AdSense allows multiple ad units with little duplication in ads, YPN has more duplication
- PSAs at Google, RONs at YPN
- AdSense RSS feeds is full, but YPN is open

- Kanoodle Brightads
-- 35 cents per click
-- Net 30
-- Many verticals
-- Real time stats
- Quigo AdSonar
- IndustryBrains
- MSN ContentAds
-- Very little known this time, rumored start data in 2006
-- Likely to be US only when it first starts

- Finding the best monetization for your site
-- Seemingly identical programs can perform quite differently
-- Don't assume what you currently use - or what you see used on a competitor's site is the best option for you
-- Different sites may find competitive programs offer the best monetization for each
-- Revisit your options every six-months, or when a new player arrives
- Tools
-- AdSense Tracker
-- Ad Rotating Script
-- Custom Channels
-- URL Channels
-- AdSense Preview Tool
-- The only way to get specific earnings data from either is through your control panel.
-- Third Party Tools
--- Google Analytics hack for tracking AdSense & YPN
--- Know what specific ads are being clicked, what page they are located on and what IP clicked
--- Get CTR color data on a title, description, URL, etc.
--- Download CSV data

- Rotating Ads
-- PHPAdsNew is a tool of choice
--- Allows rotating on a 50/50 basis or whatever rotation is required to test
--- Allows geotargeting for YPN traffic

- A/B Testing
-- Select the programs to test
-- Set up channels
-- Install PHPAdsNew and rotate
-- Let it run for a few days
-- Then begin analyzing data three days in with at least one weeks data, preferably two.
Then...
-- Analyze data
--- CTR
--- eCPM
--- Bottom line earnings
-- Determine the best program for the page
-- Be sure to analyze trends in specific times and you can code the pages to show different ads at different times

Dae Mellencamp from About.com

How Does About.com Make Money?
- Display ads
- E-commerce
- Contextual Search
-- They constantly change things to test these ads and change things

Challenges and opportunities in contextual search
- 50% of about.com revenue
- Allows you to monetize niche content
- Requires the right placements and a great deal of maintenance
- Vendors have not yet cracked the code for targeting the individual
- Local advertising is still underdeveloped

Will Johnson from Yahoo! Publisher Network

- He puts up his ecosystem slide with users -> publishers -> advertisers -> developers and back.

Yahoo Offers Broad Set of Capabilities
- Build and Maintain Site (buy domain and hosting, analytics)
- Build Content (access product info, yahoo maps, etc.)
- Acquire Traffic (rss (my yahoo, podcast beta), sponsor searched)
- Earn Revenue (Contextual Ads and Ads in RSS Feeds)

Contextual Ads: Growth Ahead
- Strong targeting capabilities lead to better advertiser conversions
- Industry standard editorial guidelines plus sensitivity/competitive filters protect publishers and advertisers
- Greater control (for advertisers and publishers)
- Growth Opportunities (RSS, Multimedia)
- Analysts expect contextual ad spending to grow to more than 10% of total paid search by 2007

Extending Our Publisher Network
- They have strategic partnerships
-- Editorial and dynamic matching
-- Custom implementations
--- Leveraging user profiles, content and geo data
--- Ad Formats
- Self Service Platform
-- US beta

Considerations
- Competitive Revenue and consistency in earnings
- Black Box vs. Control
- Business Partnership
- Account Management

Targeting Ads to Your Site
- Which ads will perform best on an automobile blog? or travel blog? or a music blog?
-- Ad targeting feature that enables you to select a category of ads to serve up based on category or subcategory
-- He shows an example of a big brother community site and it serving up education related ads

Roadmap and Next Steps
- Relevance: Improvements to targeting
-- New Algorithms
-- Testing
- Self-Serve Platform
-- Continue to build out info
-- Search box
-- Direct Deposit
-- Launch in Global Markets

Shuman Ghosemajunder from Google AdSense

- Internet ecosystem slide (publisher <-> user <-> advertiser <-> publisher)
- How does Google help you meet your objects?
- He skipped some slides
- Contextual Target and Site Targeting are two sites of targeting (the two work together)
- Onsite Advertiser Sign Up allows you to place an "advertise on this site" link
- Link Units
- AdSense for Search
- AdSense Referrals (FYI - they extended the period from 90 days to 180 days today)
- Custom Reports
- Section Targeting (look at specific content on a page to target on that content)
- Seasonal Ad Formats (you know for christmas, etc.)
- Google Analytics (not sure why he is demoing this here)

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Session description:

"How do you know if you've been successful with search engines? You can check your "rank" at search engines for particular keywords, analyze log files to see the actual terms people used to reach your web site or make the ultimate jump and "close the loop" by measuring sales conversions and return-on-investment (ROI). This panel explores ways to measure success and what statistics you should really care about. Last part of session offers Q&A with measuring tool vendors."

First up is Laura Theme of Bizresearch who reviewed various tools including ranking spider analysis and NetTracker, ClickTracks, WebTrends. Presented issues dealing with 301 redirects, keyword targeting, etc.

Strongly recommends getting training on analytics. Reviews Google Analytics features and issues dealing with language in the agreement that says Google can issue a press release naming you as a user and that Google Analytics is your preferred analytics provider.

Web analytics providers:

• Omniture


• CoreMetrics


• WebTrends


• Hitbox


• NetTracker


• Google Analytics


• ClickTracks

Organic vs paid and return on ad spend are big considerations as well as ease of use, hosted versus log file analysis software, detailed robot analysis, ability to analyze aggregate data and user sessions, customer latency methodology, customer support and training, adaptability to interface changes, data ownership and use and cost.

It makes a difference which keyword phrase is being given credit for the conversion. Example, a customer might first hear of a brand from an initial search using a general phrase, and then actually convert on a subsequent search that is more specific.

Analytics will allow you to influence what your clients think though enhancements to your web site and through competitive analysis.

Possible web analytics features of the future:

• Free, lower cost


• Set business rules for organic and ad campaigns


• Alerts emailed to multiple managers, site owner


• Easier to manage multiple accounts


• Integration with business software like CRM

Keep in mind:

• No tracking tool will do everything


• Make sure your tracking tool is accurately collecting the data


• Great SEM/SEOs may not be good web metrics analysts and vice versa

Next up is Bryan Eisenberg. The probvlem is that web analytics is just a tool You have to plan for measurement. Not tool is useful unless you are prepared to take action on it.

Plugs WAA. webanalyticsassociation.org

Customers are ignoring "push" marketing. Internet is "where it's at" because it's a pull medium. Users pull themselves to your message.

Disparities exist between what advertisers will pay for other media and for online media compared to where consumers are spending most of their time.

PPC costs are increasing, conversion rates are disappointing. People are still making money, but they're also still leaving a lot of money on the table. There is still a significant opportunity to improve conversions and online marketing effectiveness.

Conversion as a measure of success. Consumers are not acting the same way. It is more important to understand what the customer wants.

Ways to measure conversion rates:
1. Overall conversion rate
2. Conversion rate over time
3. Scenariop conversion rates (linear and non-linear)

The phrases users enter in search engines shows their intent. Gives example of phrases that are increasingly specific as an illustration of where the customer is in their buying process. The more specific, the closer they are to making a purchase.

Good Scent. Gives example where banner ad creative is similar to landing page, which drills down to a category page. All are similar but not exactly the same.

Bad Scent - irrelevant ad creative and landing pages.

Broad phrases should bring the user to an informational page. A specific phrase should bring them to a specific product with the opportunity to take action.

Users typically ignore top and side navigation. They focus on the main content area.

Shows multiple examples of large companies advertising on common phrases that bring users to irrelevant pages. A lot of money is being spent this way but they're still making money. But they are also not realizing a significant amount of revenue opportunity.

Six sigma perspective on lost sales - "Anything that results in a lower level of customer satisfaction or a lost customer is a defect in the sales process." 2% is an average conversion rate. What about the other 98%?

Now comes the panel portion of the sesions which includes vendors from various web analytics packages.

Audience Question: Give some strengths and weaknesses of your software

Chris Knoch, Omniture - Offers the ability to configure weight to the keywords.

Jay McCarthy, WebSideStory - offers a suite of products, in-site search, content management which distinguishes WebSideStory from other vendors.

Brett Crosby, Google Analytics - Available in 16 languages, tightly integrated with Google AdWords, we're free. Working on ease of implementation and providing data.

Barry Parshall, WebTrends - First party cookie tracking for improved accuracy in tracking, both hosted and server side applications. WebTrends can be overwhelming sometimes, particularly on the administration side.

John Marshall, ClickTracks - Less reports is an advantage, need to do a better job at graphing results.

Danny asks vendors to provide price points. Prices range from a few thousands to much more. Don't solely look at "free" as your decision point. Google still offers a software version &895 to $5000. WebTrends is $35 for hosted to $5000 and more for the enterprise version. ClickTracks starts at $49/mo and software is $495 to several thousand.

Danny brings up the free issue of GOogle Analytics and notes that when that happened, how the other analytics vendors sent out press releases justifying their existence. Danny agrees that free should not be the sole decision point. Some companies cannot afford a tool, so free might be their only option. However, for more sophisticated needs, a paid web analytics solution should be a consideration.

Audience Question: Is a long time spent on my site (publisher) a good thing or a bad thing
Bryan: It depends on the scenario. Are they looking for support or are they ready to engage?
Brett: Look at repeat visitors
John: Thank you for bringing up time on site as an important metric. ROI is a blunt instrument metric. Look at average time on site broken out by keyword to better understand the visitor's intent and their interaction with your site.
Bryan: There's a difference between average and typical. As in the difference between "mean", "median" and "mode".

Audience Question: MTV.com is having challenges communicating metrics of success to senior management that are not "online savvy". In the middle of a search engine optimization effort and wants to know of ways besides before/after or increased saerch engien referrals.
Laura: It depends on ewhat you're trying to achive. Gives example of increasing newsletter sign ups.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Nice set of panelists aboard with Detlev with the job of ensuring these guys do not go out of line. Those on the panel include Mike Grehan, Bruce Clay, Todd Friesen and David Naylor. Good luck Detlev. :)

Q: Can you explain what pagerank really means, how it is measured, should you look at the toolbar?
A: Mike first snored and then he said it is a great marketing tool. PageRank is keyword independent. Now we have too many pages, mostly dynamically created, mostly not linked, on a global basis, pagerank counts as poooo.
Detlev said PageRank is first three-month old data, so it misses the time stamp. Also the PR meter measures not what the secret sauce of the keyword rankings (basically what Mike said about keyword independent). Those are two reasons you should not care too much about it.
Mike said PR is the most complex matrix. The place where PR comes in, is when its a tie break.
Todd said if you must have the toolbar installed, and if you have a 0 or gray bar, and your traffic dropped off then you need to worry.
David said you can have a PR1 rank above a PR6.
Bruce adds to David's statement.

Q: If you are based in the UK and you have a .com site that you want to rank well in the US. Does it help to host in the US.
A: Mike said .com sites in US does better ranking in US Google.
David agrees, and especially MSN Search. Host in the US if your market place is in the US.

Q: What about registration location for rankings?
A: David said that doesn't really become an issue. Just be careful as to the DNS settings of that registrar (many registrars can host your DNS).

Q: Language also that important?
A: Yes, you need to make sure to use American English to rank well in the US.

Q: Domain names...
A: David said he feels all but the .com, .net, .co.uk. .org etc. will be worth a lot less (i.e. .info). So get a .com.

Q: Completely brand new site, starting from the beginning. What can you do to get them into the organic rankings?
A: Mike said at the end of the day, you do not launch a Web site, your in a business, you need to check the competitors. You need to compete, its not as simple as putting up a Web site. You need to do all the marketing.
Detlev talks about original content and people wanting to link to it.
Mike adds that now that search engines have end user data, they can use that data. The final test is the end user, how often they come to your pages.
(My two cents, did you look at your Google Search History page, they know your site sites, top click throughs, etc. - hmmmmmm).
Bruce said when all the sites are spamming in an industry, that becomes natural for those keywords.
Todd said if you are willing to target "debt consolidation" then don't do it for a client, join an affiliate program - you can make a lot more money.

Q: Can you list other SEO myths
A: Mike told Yahoo, don't tell me your algorithm, just tell me what not do it. I don't want to waste my time with meta tags. Tell us what not to do, but not specifically what to do.
They all discuss that different things work for different keywords.
David said that when they get a new client, they take top 30 ranking sites and build a map on those sites. Then they clone those top 30 sites and add a bit more.
Detlev steps in to hold David back and said some companies got in trouble for copying other site's clients. So Dave rolls his eyes. :) Then Detlev goes ahead and gets into white hat talk. Stop checking your rankings each day. Look at revenue and not rankings.
Mike said with personalization coming on board, the whole notion of being number one for a keyword or phrase will disappear.
Bruce said they look at something completely different. You look at the behavior of the searcher, coffee drinker searching on java versus programmer coding java. (hmm what about a programmer who drinks coffee, kidding). You need to use words that relate to the style of the keywords around the words.

Q: How do the engines get the snippets for your SERPs?
A: Todd said every engine does it differently. Some mix it around. Some use your keywords, some use meta tags, some use dmoz / yahoo, and some mix all three.
Detlev gives the Heather Llyod Martin tip, see other sessions, because it doesn't work every time. The search engines look for matching keywords on the page and try to use the snippet around the first usage of your keyword.

Q: Is it worth doing mod_rewrites to make your URLs SE Friendly?
A: David said "hell yea".

Q: Google is being to suck, do you agree?
A: Everyone on the panel said, yes! David added, as soon as the stock price began to drop, the results dropped.
Mike said the problem Google always had was a huge user base, but a small subscriber base, unlike Yahoo or MSN.
David explains about big daddy update and how structural it is. Because of how Google is handling 301s today is the reason why the Google index stinks.
Ok, this is too funny, Mike and David are threatening each other about the Sandbox. Dave has a banana and Mike has a wooden stick. The rest I will leave to your imagination.

Dave said that Ask has a problem that it is not as scalable as Google. Dave said he as a single person can make Ask incredibly slow.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Pictured (left to right): Lee Odden, Ben Pfeiffer, Barry Schwartz, and Chris Boggs

Just a picture to introduce you to the great guys from Search Engine Roundtable who provide excellent live coverage from New York City here at the SES 2006 show. These guys are experts in the field of search marketing and volunteer their time freely to provide the latest trends and information in search marketing from each of the sessions. If you see them at the show be sure to say hello.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Justin Sanger from LocalLaunch is up first and he tells the audience how lucky we are to have such good panelists here. He is right these people do know there stuff. Often times local search is grouped in to broad spectrums, and we shouldn’t do that. He says he will share some perspective in the space. He next puts up a huge jumbled list of many different topics in local search. He says that one day local search will have a place in each session at this conference, but for now its too fragmented.

Local search is not a new audience and there are number of people here he says that have been doing local search for sometime. Search engines are infatuated with user intent such as “really” understanding what the searcher wants. 20% of all search has a local intent. To progress search there much be segment ~ splinter and adapt (Yahoo Local and Google Local). He says that local requires different algorithms into order to display local results. Such things are proximity, addresses, and so on are required to make it work. He says a lot of these qualities of local search have caused the search engines and other companies to map the world with vans (Amazon), planes (MSN), and satellites (Google).

Our progress in local search has painted many into a corner. Somewhere between innovation and advertisers opportunity. How does one get a local business to understand and participate in the new world of pure local search? How do the new Local Search providers monetize local search answers? He says people don’t want ads on there mobile phones. Search engines are in a corner as Yahoo and Google are having a hard time figuring out how to monetize there pages. I will add you can take a look at Google Local for Mobile Phones for an example. There are currently no ads in this free type of service. How will they monetize it? Justin says the Yellowpages and so on are competing with Yahoo and Google local search properties.

So who are the local internet advertisers? Typically small and medium sized enterprises with over 10 million SME’s in the US. SME’s spend 22 billion on local advertising annually. 46% of their advertising budgets on Yellowpages / 70% are service based. Only spend about 5-6K on average per year. They are very busy and confused about how to take advantage of this opportunity. Where do I start and how do I begin?

He next lists the various properties out there. There is quite a few from the pure local search providers, yellowpages, mapping, traditional local search marketing, social networking, classified and shopping sites. He says that if there is a release of mapping technology, there are 10 released at the same time, its crazy, ridiculous, and interesting space. You can do a ton of things with mapping, from finding you hotel, buying your rental car, and so on. More and more of this will go on and the search engines will try to find ways to capitalize on this continually through each stage of the mapping use. Yahoo is finding ways to get in the buying path.

When we look at users and advertising, eyeballs are critical. There are trends in local that keep going up and up making it a very interesting space. He says there is a new consumer being born, they use the internet these days and they go to the internet to find things. The market opportunity is tremendous. The global online local search marketing is set to grow from the 3.4 billion in 2005 to nearly 13 billion by 2010.

So who is mobilizing in the space? Google and Yahoo are doing a poor job of selling to small business. The statistics show that search advertising is not cutting it. What is required here is a consolidator. Self-provisioning of local search advertising is way ahead of its time. SME local search sales is actually a big man’s game. Controlling margins and dealing with SME’s is difficult and costly. A lot of this is Yellowpages and newspapers backyard, and they will use local foot soldiers. Many however are running scared because they believe they might loose there traditional products. The enablers in the space are those that provide agnostic local search marketing platform and fulfillment teams. He company is one of them.

What is being sold in local search? There is a lot of bundles being sold which leverage publisher assets with other distributed ads, pay per clicks, call tracking, IVP’s/directories, pay per call, web sites, fixed-placement buys, business profile solutions, data distributions, Local SEO.

In his opinion the aggregators will hold the key to Local Search contact. Local search business content will come from rich content byword standard contact information. There is content that is not easily obtained by crawling the unstructured web. Looking for “Food” for pure unstructured local search. Content for qualitative, comparative, and buying decisions is needed.

Great presentation and session. Justin is one of my favorite speakers at SES, pure good information and clear speaking.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

This session always is an interesting one, since the audience decides the content of the session based on questions asked of SES organizer Danny Sullivan. Danny introduces himself and welcomes everyone to the session. Lets people know that there is no agenda, and any topic is good.

Q: Do you feel that the engines in the last session (Future of Search) were avoiding clear answers?
It’s hard…I thought some were great answers. Barry Diller runs IAC, so he can get away with saying stuff. Part of things are that they are trying to stay on the same side of things. He doubts they’ll say “click fraud is terrible…we’re going down!” Did people enjoy it? (not many hands) Want to see more fireworks? (lots of hands) He feels that that type of session worked best with the Search Marketers in Chicago, since they can say what they want. He used to do keynotes in 2003, and got away from them for a little, and now wnet to the roundtable thing. Perhaps he will do a combo of SE executives and marketers and see what happens.

Q: What effect is search going to have on traditional ad agencies? Hard to say since he isn’t an expert on traditional ad agencies. He would love to have some time to get around and speak w/traditional ad agencies. They, to him, have traditionally been more about the message but not the actual purchase. Since SEM’s can measure everything, it is more accepted that this type of advertising will deliver better metrics. He has thought about SES being less solely focused on search…he has had direct response marketers….always felt that SEM’s had a unique feeling that someone somewhere is searching. Maybe SEM’s are becoming metric marketers and the traditional ad agencies are realizing people want this, this will change. I think there are more opportunities than ever before for the traditional agencies to say “we need to be with you.”

Q: He also had a feeling in other sessions that some reps were not answering questions fully. Asked a question about cannibalizing markets…makes a suggestion that there should be a professional gadfly on each panel in order to ask whether the question was answered or not or to call out BS when the question is skirted. He used to put “gadflys” on panels that were SEM’s to “call BS” when needed. Sometimes people simply, no matter what a SEM says, wants an “official response.” For example, the click fraud session has a mix. Maybe he should talk to the moderators about this…Dana Todd speaks up and suggests electric shock prods…(laughs) If vendors are being “salesy,” it should be reported in the evaluation forms. If he finds that the SE’s aren’t being forthcoming enough, he’ll cease those sessions, based on feedback sheets.

Suggestion: Too many good sessions at the same time. Wants to have videos available from other sessions. In some cases, he cannot give the slides…like Google who considers slides to be confidential. The session PowerPoint’s that are available are listed in the handbook too. Was thinking about getting rid of the booklets and giving content in each session (crowd doesn’t want this). Everyone wants audio files, when the room is polled. (c’mon Danny I am waiting for you to mention the SER blog here) Would you prefer a CD Rom? Mostly no’s. Someone asks if the slides could be made available beforehand…Danny says he may work that out. Someone else suggests that if Google doesn’t want to make their slides available, then they can’t speak. Danny asks about if people would rather have Matt Cutts not speak since his PR dept makes slides unavailable. Guess how many said yes to that…

Suggestion: setup a Linkedin group and see if people could network prior to the sessions. Danny suggest SEW forums, which always has threads prior to a show.

Q: Client side in SEM…this seems to be an industry made up of small organizations. The SEMPO outlook for 2006 seems to say many people are going in house? Danny feels that an increasing number of people do in-house. Now they are working with an in-house track, panels, etc… About half the people in the room claim to be completely in house. As for the smaller companies…Danny spoke to a gentleman at lunch that has a budget of 5-10K. He won’t be going to iProspect…but he won’t probably get the same results.

Q: We have a group of industry leaders to build a SE in the Real Estate vertical, what should we be looking for? First nobody notices you…then you’ll say you’re the Google of real estate, which makes me want to puke (laughs). Seriously, you should look for people that are blogging about this area, commenting on real estate search since the early stages. They will be especially important because they can give some great advice…this is what he would recommend.

Q: How come it’s called Search Engine Strategies instead of Search and Online Marketing Strategies? Because. Asks how many people want it to be the suggestion…no hands rise. Poor Aussie…

Q: Fairly new to whole search thing…has a basic understanding….speaking strictly from a SEO standpoint….if he brings someone from ranking #50,099 to #24, then what is the point? True…you have to be on the top two pages. Mentions that SEMPO.org has some good info about how far into the results people usually search.

Q: Works for an agency in NY that has to use Flash….what is the industry doing to make flash readable? There are work-arounds. Use it sparingly, try not to place it on every page, etc…He compares it to producing a TV ad that is completely silent, and then trying to use it on the radio. (nice analogy) Asks for others to shout out a solution. A shout comes from one end of the room “CLOAK IT!” (laughs) funny some of the models on seoangels.com happen to be right were the shout came from.

Actually podcasting some sessions from this week, by the way (probably on webmasterradio.fm)

Q: Where do you see the industry going in the next 2-3 years? He feels 5 different players will be strong…doesn’t know if one will drop off. (G, Y, MSN, Ask, and AOL) Those five are there, whether one will drop to 1% region, is uncertain, but he could see that happening. Will continue to be complicated, will be harder because us as SEM’s will be confronted by other advertising we are not familiar with. Thinks things will still be more expensive doesn’t feel that the real value of search has been reached yet. Feels that maybe some money will be taken from TV, and that the other forms of media will have to adjust to this. Will continue to see Matt Cutts and “the Cuttlets” (lots of laughs)…says that shows true “obsession with web search.” When we have a session on local, no one really mobs the local person, yet this is growing…verticals are crucial. He feels that search will be flipped, and that you’ll get local results without using the local button.

Q: If relevancy rules, who is putting in the man hours? Ask has very good technology…if I had been Bill Gates I would have bought them. Having said that…cannot discount MSN since they will go at it the Microsoft way. Easier to say that Google is doing so many things that he sometimes feels they aren’t doing enough on search. Hard because they all change so quickly. It’s a horse race that is too close to tell at this point. Plus, it’s not that he feels that any of them are going away even if they have “a bad season.”

Q: Do you foresee in the near future that one of the major SE’s might go too far and lose trust…polluted and diluted? He has noticed the G ads a lot more, but the SE’s have learned that this doesn’t work. Ask used to present 10 sponsored results, Lycos was the same way. They have learned that this isn’t the right thing to do.

Q: What is the focus of the SES world tour, and what percentage of US speakers will be featured? Most shows feature an umber of native speakers. There are some great speakers in each of the countries. German conference is done “auf Deutsch.” Japanese show is more vendor-driven with a lower cost and just a few sessions. Some have asked about having more country specific sessions here, but those haven’t worked well. Latino show will be good…they wanted to name it that instead of the Miami show. Sweden and France will be good too.

That’s all…

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

This session always is an interesting one, since the audience decides the content of the session based on questions asked of SES organizer Danny Sullivan. Danny introduces himself and welcomes everyone to the session. Lets people know that there is no agenda, and any topic is good.

Q: Do you feel that the engines in the last session (Future of Search) were avoiding clear answers?
It’s hard…I thought some were great answers. Barry Diller runs IAC, so he can get away with saying stuff. Part of things are that they are trying to stay on the same side of things. He doubts they’ll say “click fraud is terrible…we’re going down!” Did people enjoy it? (not many hands) Want to see more fireworks? (lots of hands) He feels that that type of session worked best with the Search Marketers in Chicago, since they can say what they want. He used to do keynotes in 2003, and got away from them for a little, and now wnet to the roundtable thing. Perhaps he will do a combo of SE executives and marketers and see what happens.

Q: What effect is search going to have on traditional ad agencies? Hard to say since he isn’t an expert on traditional ad agencies. He would love to have some time to get around and speak w/traditional ad agencies. They, to him, have traditionally been more about the message but not the actual purchase. Since SEM’s can measure everything, it is more accepted that this type of advertising will deliver better metrics. He has thought about SES being less solely focused on search…he has had direct response marketers….always felt that SEM’s had a unique feeling that someone somewhere is searching. Maybe SEM’s are becoming metric marketers and the traditional ad agencies are realizing people want this, this will change. I think there are more opportunities than ever before for the traditional agencies to say “we need to be with you.”

Q: He also had a feeling in other sessions that some reps were not answering questions fully. Asked a question about cannibalizing markets…makes a suggestion that there should be a professional gadfly on each panel in order to ask whether the question was answered or not or to call out BS when the question is skirted. He used to put “gadflys” on panels that were SEM’s to “call BS” when needed. Sometimes people simply, no matter what a SEM says, wants an “official response.” For example, the click fraud session has a mix. Maybe he should talk to the moderators about this…Dana Todd speaks up and suggests electric shock prods…(laughs) If vendors are being “salesy,” it should be reported in the evaluation forms. If he finds that the SE’s aren’t being forthcoming enough, he’ll cease those sessions, based on feedback sheets.

Suggestion: Too many good sessions at the same time. Wants to have videos available from other sessions. In some cases, he cannot give the slides…like Google who considers slides to be confidential. The session PowerPoint’s that are available are listed in the handbook too. Was thinking about getting rid of the booklets and giving content in each session (crowd doesn’t want this). Everyone wants audio files, when the room is polled. (c’mon Danny I am waiting for you to mention the SER blog here) Would you prefer a CD Rom? Mostly no’s. Someone asks if the slides could be made available beforehand…Danny says he may work that out. Someone else suggests that if Google doesn’t want to make their slides available, then they can’t speak. Danny asks about if people would rather have Matt Cutts not speak since his PR dept makes slides unavailable. Guess how many said yes to that…

Suggestion: setup a Linkedin group and see if people could network prior to the sessions. Danny suggest SEW forums, which always has threads prior to a show.

Q: Client side in SEM…this seems to be an industry made up of small organizations. The SEMPO outlook for 2006 seems to say many people are going in house? Danny feels that an increasing number of people do in-house. Now they are working with an in-house track, panels, etc… About half the people in the room claim to be completely in house. As for the smaller companies…Danny spoke to a gentleman at lunch that has a budget of 5-10K. He won’t be going to iProspect…but he won’t probably get the same results.

Q: We have a group of industry leaders to build a SE in the Real Estate vertical, what should we be looking for? First nobody notices you…then you’ll say you’re the Google of real estate, which makes me want to puke (laughs). Seriously, you should look for people that are blogging about this area, commenting on real estate search since the early stages. They will be especially important because they can give some great advice…this is what he would recommend.

Q: How come it’s called Search Engine Strategies instead of Search and Online Marketing Strategies? Because. Asks how many people want it to be the suggestion…no hands rise. Poor Aussie…

Q: Fairly new to whole search thing…has a basic understanding….speaking strictly from a SEO standpoint….if he brings someone from ranking #50,099 to #24, then what is the point? True…you have to be on the top two pages. Mentions that SEMPO.org has some good info about how far into the results people usually search.

Q: Works for an agency in NY that has to use Flash….what is the industry doing to make flash readable? There are work-arounds. Use it sparingly, try not to place it on every page, etc…He compares it to producing a TV ad that is completely silent, and then trying to use it on the radio. (nice analogy) Asks for others to shout out a solution. A shout comes from one end of the room “CLOAK IT!” (laughs) funny some of the models on seoangels.com happen to be right were the shout came from.

Actually podcasting some sessions from this week, by the way (probably on webmasterradio.fm)

Q: Where do you see the industry going in the next 2-3 years? He feels 5 different players will be strong…doesn’t know if one will drop off. (G, Y, MSN, Ask, and AOL) Those five are there, whether one will drop to 1% region, is uncertain, but he could see that happening. Will continue to be complicated, will be harder because us as SEM’s will be confronted by other advertising we are not familiar with. Thinks things will still be more expensive doesn’t feel that the real value of search has been reached yet. Feels that maybe some money will be taken from TV, and that the other forms of media will have to adjust to this. Will continue to see Matt Cutts and “the Cuttlets” (lots of laughs)…says that shows true “obsession with web search.” When we have a session on local, no one really mobs the local person, yet this is growing…verticals are crucial. He feels that search will be flipped, and that you’ll get local results without using the local button.

Q: If relevancy rules, who is putting in the man hours? Ask has very good technology…if I had been Bill Gates I would have bought them. Having said that…cannot discount MSN since they will go at it the Microsoft way. Easier to say that Google is doing so many things that he sometimes feels they aren’t doing enough on search. Hard because they all change so quickly. It’s a horse race that is too close to tell at this point. Plus, it’s not that he feels that any of them are going away even if they have “a bad season.”

Q: Do you foresee in the near future that one of the major SE’s might go too far and lose trust…polluted and diluted? He has noticed the G ads a lot more, but the SE’s have learned that this doesn’t work. Ask used to present 10 sponsored results, Lycos was the same way. They have learned that this isn’t the right thing to do.

Q: What is the focus of the SES world tour, and what percentage of US speakers will be featured? Most shows feature an umber of native speakers. There are some great speakers in each of the countries. German conference is done “auf Deutsch.” Japanese show is more vendor-driven with a lower cost and just a few sessions. Some have asked about having more country specific sessions here, but those haven’t worked well. Latino show will be good…they wanted to name it that instead of the Miami show. Sweden and France will be good too.

That’s all…

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

What's the state of search advertising now and where's it going, especially as search leaps out of the browser and into places like our TVs, phones and music players? This session with search engine executives explores the topic.
Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor, SearchEngineWatch.com
Speakers:
Tim Armstrong, Vice President, Advertising Sales, Google Inc.
Tim Cadogan, VP of Search, Yahoo! Search Marketing
Gerry Campbell, VP & GM Search & Navigation, America Online, Inc.
David Jakubowski, General Manager, MSN Search
James Speer, VP Marketing and Products, IAC Advertising Solutions, Ask Jeeves

Danny: There have been stories that we may be hitting a price ceiling, where we cant spend more. Growth is slowing... What do you think?

Ask: There is significant delta for prices. There are now 4 options to go with. On the query volume side, there is potential for it to lapse. Huge opportunity to deliver ads to content.
Yahoo: We see a lot of opportunity to growth, many not online and many online not utilizing search yet. Even larger companies, they are helping them connect the dots of offline and online (I think he said that). Within the core marketplace there is still significant growth by category, such as entertainment, so there are marketplaces with room to growth.
AOL: The magic of SEM is that we are all tapping into consumer intent. If you look at the natural progress, there has been amazing revolution to tap into that intent. We need to look into new models to tap into consumer intent.
MSN: Understanding more about how conversions are happening, demanding better tools to make the conversion happen. That will take off exponentially. It is our responsibility to drives those initiatives.
Google: He mentioned growth as a percentage may slow, but in actual numbers it will grow significantly.

Danny: Will we see changes towards CPM models in the future?

Yahoo: Different people different companies value things in different ways. in the future, they hope to normalize this value. So they want to provide the data to enable people to back out of one model and into a different model.
MSN: Didn't get it
Let me note that the Yahoo PR team, sitting one row behind is giggling at both Google and MSN's responses.
Ask: Ultimately the advertiser is looking for flexibility. They want a complete palate of options at their disposal. At what point in time is there a single medium to make these creatives.
AOL: How do you price for video delivery, or picking up a phone. There is a lot of upside to bringing richness to the experience. As we grow to have more and more understanding on how consumers behave, that is where media companies have more opportunities to expand that into other mediums. 99% of ad dollars is spent offline, so see what is coming?
Google: said he just agrees

Danny: People like the cost per click method. Contextual ads isn't search directly, now you see radio, etc. How do you see it falling out.

Google: The information that comes from the digital media are transferable to other areas. You can apply the concepts to other medias. You have to think about contextual when it first started. As a specific industry, the scalability is tremendous for advertisers to use all of their assets. There are clear areas of value.
MSN: Yea, there we are just scratching the abilities of these areas. Voice recognition technology, not sure what he meant by that...
Yahoo: The beauty of intent and then tracking it. They have a large performance and brand marketing business. And they are merging the two closer. there is tremendous potential in all of this.
Ask: Notion of getting into video and audio. There is a lot of potential in what will come in the very near future.
Yahoo: Social media is going to be big, but he thinks this will create opps and challenges in how ads are delivered.

Danny: How does your services change the traditional ad agencies?

MSN: The more complex it gets, the more the agency becomes more critical.
Yahoo: Look at how the conference changed. You had SEOs only and now you have tons of huge companies here. This is very important to the industry and we have programs, Yahoo Ambassador Program.
AOL: We are in the middle of a transformation from simple search to data driven metrics. It is critical as an industry to think about advertising FOR users and not TO users. Verticals are critical...
Yahoo: Maybe it makes sense to integrate video or audio into the SERPs at one point. It depends on the search intent.
Google: We look at our role as tools and data. The agencies can use that information...
Ask: yada
AOL: Text is easy to create, but to tap into user intent, they need to figure out how to be much more interactive and functional. There has to be some concept of high volume creation.

Errr, so much fluff talk, am I nuts or is it all fluff?

Danny: Click fraud issues.... Is it a big issue, etc.?

Yahoo: It is an issue. Since GoTo it was the first thing they worried about. The first area of technology they built was how do they identify click fraud and weed it out. Since day one it has been looked into and identified. They (1) they look at all clicks and (2) and patent technology that looks at the type of clicks. We take it very seriously. It is about trust and trust adds value. We do think we have a pretty good approach and the clicks we charge for are earned.
Google: agrees. The auction itself transfers back to the customer's ROI. We take this issue very seriously. In general, there is a public perception and then there are the things we do behind the scenes to manage them. Those things we do, over meet those perceptions. Google has instant cancellations feature.

Danny: Search ads and marketing mix. Super Bowl ads... Are we going to see a flip side, where we want to drive people to search?

Yahoo: We kind of see that now. You see bi-directional efforts. For example, they had their first annual search light award. And this was won by Honda. We are seeing a lot more of that.
AOL: Navigational queries. We know people come back to search. It is habit. it is convenient. 50% of queries are probably already known by users, so 50% of searches at AOL are somewhat navigational.
MSN:

Errrrrrrrrrr, im going to stop soon. I am sorry.

Danny: Biggest challenge in upcoming year and most successful at in past year:

Google: Our success is in being staying very focused on user needs. The success comes from ads and our tests. The biggest challenge, there will be a fundamental shift, we are starting to close that gab of % of ad spend. There is a scalability challenge in getting that money shifted.
AOL: Success; AOL has had a revitalization of its brand. Growing very quickly on the Web, AIM, Netscape, etc. Search is a huge driver in that. The challenge is, we are riding one horse right now, and we need to think more broadly in the coming year.
Yahoo: Find, Use, Share and Expand (the yahoo slogan). So with success, this year they built several key technology (answers, myweb) and bought others like flickr. They have the biggest collection of social media technology. That will lead into the future of ads. The challenge is pretty specific, pay for performance, executing will be a challenge.
MSN: The biggest challenge was the head start the other guys had on them. Success is in innovation (version 3.0 of adcenter) and they have tried to listen to the consumer (advertiser).
Ask: It is about execution, they have a fraction of the resources. But yet they have a nice market share. They launched Ask PPC. IAC acquisition provides them with a host of opportunities and challenges.

Ok I am done. skipping it...

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Detlev Johnson – Position Technologies. This is a question and answer format session, and four search engines are represented on the panel. Aaron D’Souza from Google, Kashual Kurapati from Ask.com (formerly Ask Jeeves), Rajat Mukherje from Yahoo, and Ramez Naam from MSN Search.

Kashual starts with a short presentation from Ask.com. The general basis of Ask’s method results in the greater the number of links, and the higher quality of the links pointing to a page, the more “authority” it has on the web. Ask was previously Teoma, they use “subject specific popularity.” 1. Search the web and index info. 2. Break the index into communities. 3. Collect and calculate local subject specific information and bestows “hub” and “authority” status on particular sites. 4. Once query comes in, the results are ordered from more to less relevant, applying all pertinent global and local information found.

“More links is better” isn’t always the case. If you gather “spammy” links, you may not get much benefit from them. If you are going to purchase links, be careful. It’s like buying recommendations…how can the search engines be sure to trust these recommendations? Be cautious of: reciprocal links and purchase links. Avoid: link farms, cloaking pages, invisible ort hidden links that try to trick the crawler. Generally they advise that you should become an expert on your subject. If you focus on your business and content, the rest will follow. They use the subject specific method to develop “ExpertRank,” one of their algos.

Next up is Ramez Naam from MSN.
“Why do links matter?” 1. They are how SE’s discover pages. 2. Links can help figure out the popularity of pages. 3. The links are good descriptions of the pages (the text within the links themselves help). The basic principles of link building, according to MSN: 1. Build links that real users will click on. Don’t use 3 point font on white background, etc. Think about what links are natural. 2. Build/create good content, and links will come organically. These links will matter most.

Five specific tips for good links: 1. Make them descriptive (don’t use “click here”). 2. Put the links in the main part of the page. Links “hidden” will get less clicks, so they will be considered less valuable by the SE. 3. Keep URL’s short and readable. Crawlers may have problems. 4. Beware sessions ID’s and query parameters. Ie: different URL’s for every unique visitor can make it difficult for the spider. 5. Point to the pages that you actually want to have show up in the search results. Avoid all links going to home page.

Think twice before doing the following: 1. Paid links. These are usually created to fool the SE’s, and they’ll figure it out. 2. Link exchange pages…not user friendly. 3. Link farms, usually a easy to find “bad link.” 4. Don’t use blog and forum SPAM. Remember: you may fool us for a little while, but a technique that works today could get you into hot water tomorrow as the SE’s improve their ability to detect “bad links.”

Rajat from Yahoo is next. He says “my real name is Tim Mayer.” Then after the laughs he says that Tim is busy with work and a baby boy and apologizes that he couldn’t be here. Just wants to mention that hubs and authorities and using links to rank results was actually invented by John Kleinberg when with IBM (CLEVER), and not any search engine. Since that point, the SE’s have incorporated this and other factors in helping to rank pages. In the case of buying links, he says that you need to remember that authoritative links are more important. Speaks briefly about Site Explorer, a Yahoo product that helps you identify a variety of things, including backlinks (in-links) indexed by Yahoo. This interface is meant for webmasters and publishers, and offers many features. Encourages those in attendance to play with this tool and give feedback. Then shows a bunch of links in order to contact Yahoo, including ysearchblog.com, and the one to check ona site: help.yahoo.com/search/sitereview. Also help.yahoo.com/search/reportspam to report spam, and to send feedback (not support): use ystfeedback@yahoo.com.

Aaron from Google is last, and he says instead of making a formal presentation, he just says “what they said.” (laughs)

Q&A

Q: Part of the rank is allegedly determined by the text near a link as well as within the actual link. Is this the case, and would a site with a certain focus have an advantage since it may have a linguistic consistency that is better than another site? Ramez says that the consistent use of particular words in linking to you will help in your rankings (huh? I thought we needed to vary inbound anchor text…) Detlev ads that CNN has a site that speaks about a large variety of topics, but a link from them is considered good. (for some reason I feel that maybe the other reps may have been asked not to comment too specifically on this excellent question)

Q: “We have millions of pages of content that we feel is valuable. We exposed it in a directory structure to make it easier to find... Wants to know how many links to place on each page, or to go many levels deep with fewer links? Rajat: there are time constraints that limit the number of pages/links that will be deemed relevant and actually crawled or return-crawled. Kashual…what is better for the users? Agrees with Rajat that there is a limited time to crawl a site, so who knows how much will be crawled and not crawled. Aaron ads that it is difficult to determine what pages the webmasters really want indexed. They (G) will use more tools like sitemaps to help webmasters actually specify what pages should be indexed (coming soon).

Q: What about rich media content that can’t be HTML or text, like art sites, etc…? Rajat: Yahoo has provided ways/feeds to get content indexed, once having gone through an editorial context. Kashual: Ask now supports Flash, and they are trying to catch up and get the info indexed. Aaron says it is still difficult due to arbitrary binary formats that differ greatly. There is more easy-to index content such as PodCasts and other “tagged” information. Evolving standards for rich media content are always being developed. Rajat says that the specific audio and video search type engines are making things easier. Aaron ads that you should make sure content is visible to software for disabilities that “reads” pictures. Detlev echoes that without any sort of tags, it is difficult. Providing the means for people with out plugins to get the content will also help the SE’s. Rajat says that enterprise search vendors have focused on these problems more.

Q: If I have a keyword ranking before others, will that help once competitors start using those keywords? Aaron: you would hope that if you used it first, most of the anchor text with that term will be helping you to be the “authority.” When you do misuse any given signal, at the end of the day, “fairly stupid” computers are analyzing the info and will eventually diminish the value of links, since they may not necessarily be a reliable method of determining relevancy any more. Kashaul ads that sometimes “the loudest may drown you out.”

Q: Internal linking structure, using “home” on the top navigation may not be useful.. Can you use something in the footer that is more descriptive? Second question…what about reciprocal links and they seem to still work even though he has heard many bad things. Rajat: in general, we treat internal links different from external links, but that they can still look for some “gaming” going on with internal links. Ramez: if you have 3 or 4 partners, for example, that you usually do business with and have lots of “deep links” to various page, this will be fine. But if you have a reciprocal links page that includes all kinds of off-topic links, it won’t help. If they are just there to accrue more links, there will probably not be a long term value to them. Kashual uses the SEM community as an example…they are used to the various links to SEO’s and SEM’s, but if suddenly “gambling” links appear, there is obviously a problem. Aaron again using SEW as an example…you would imagine that SEW has the majority of its links coming from non-reciprocal sources. In this case a few reciprocals won’t “hurt.” Essentially, you shouldn’t use too many. Rajat ads that in general there are innocuous users and egregious users. Only egregious users will see a negative effect.

Q: How does algo detect difference between a good hub and a spam farm? Kashual: a good hub also gets linked-to from relevant pages and links out to relevant pages. However, if in a “bad neighborhood,” you will get problems by association. Aaron says think about a “rats nest of links” like Wikipedia, which is valuable but very different from a link farm, which IS just a rat’s nest. Regardless of the status of a hub or not, the content of the page is important as well. Ramez reminds that they cannot divulge exact information, but remember that the system is getting better, so as it does more methods to fool the system are caught and dealt with.

Q: Everyone says don’t buy links, but even Yahoo sells “express inclusion” into its directory. What determines which are legitimate? Also, can you give a percentage of how important link building is on a whole compared to content development, for example? (some jokes on the panel about 5.3%, 27.9% etc…laughs) Detlev says it’s important to remember that this emphasis is a moving target, so what is right today might not be right tomorrow. Rajat says the good news for Yahoo is that they send project managers that don’t know the answers to the percentage questions to the conference on purpose (laughs). The point about the directory: getting into the directory doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get in the results. We can in some sense trust some directories more because of the approval process. Aaron: he has heard the question of paid links= advertising or not? They are equivalent…but who is the target? A paid link targets SE’s and an ad targets users, which is the big difference. Ramez: the answer on how important links are depends on the query. If you search a brand, chances are the one with more links is the actual brand. However, a long tail search might return a result with just a few links.

Q: Is there a limitation to how many outbound links should be on a site? Ramez…if a page has thousands of outbound links, we know that users may not be able to see many of them. Others did not comment on this…:(

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Session description:

"No PowerPoint presentations here! Instead, we've got a panel of in house search marketers ready to take questions and provide answers about how they do things to get SEM done internally. We'll go to the audience for answers and discussion, as well."

This session provides insights from top in-house search marketers moderated by Michael Sack of Inceptor. Panelists include:

• Jessica Bowman - Enterprise Rent a Car. Focuses on SEO for 7 different sites.
• Josh Green - Time Warner Cable and Road Runner. Manages SEO and SEM. 90% of their search marketing is outsourced.
• Bill Hunt - Global Strategies, helps big companies create search marketing programs.
• Mike Moran - IBM.com works with technology, user experience and design. Mike and Bill wrote "Search Engine Marketing Inc."
• Sean Smith - Citigroup and CitiCards.com. Manages organic and PPC.
• Marshall Simmonds - NY Times, Aboujt.com, Boston Globe, International News Herald

Poll of the audience: How many handle search marketing in house. How many have 3 or less people?
Most audience members want to keep search marketing in-house. Most have less than 3 people on-staff.

Audience Question: I am at SES to evaluate search marketing consultant. Looking for advice.
Masrshall: First, you should be educated. Every department should have the experience of training on SEO. There should be an audit process for SEO and from a usability standpoint and also tracking. Plan to spend $150k, although that could vary depending on the size and type of site.
Mike: A misconception many companies have is that they can outsource search marketing 100%. The most important thing is for the SEO consultant provides training.
Jessica: Do everything you can on your own. Then have someone (SEO consultant) do an audit. $6k - $20k.

Moderator: What kind of "sniff" test can you run to see if a consultant is what they say they are.
Mike: A faker will promise results. The only way they can do that is by using a trick.
Josh: We tried doing everything ourselves and we found a culture fit is very important. A key thing to keep in mind is how a vendor will be able to fit within your company culture.

Audience Question: Uses an outside firm now. What processes should we try to handle inside?
Bill: With IBM and others, we made sure to identify core competencies. Have the consultant do an audit. Then from the audit list you can identify each item in the audit that is a core competency. Have the consultant do things that are not part of your core competencies. Also, the company should do the keyword research. You know your business better than the vendor.
Sean: The company should set the strategy, you know your product better than anyone.

Audience Question: Publisher looking for tips on workflow management. What are some prioritization tips and how do you manage it?
Marshall: If you have a content management systems, get control of your templates. Embed your brand in title tags, make sure the site is crawlable.
Mike: Some companies can take a bottoms up approach and optimize templates. Or you go can top down and optimize for content that will pull the best results.
Bill: Make sure you consider the inclusion of your site. Next go after templates. Take it one piece at a time.
Sean: Think long term. Focus on what's profitable. Doing so will allow greater budgets, support, etc.

Poll of Audience: How many people use templates?
About half.

Audience Question: Beyond major search engines, what other vertical and regional engines should you pay attention to. Are there issues with any particular region?
Mike: We delegate decisions on the regional level to the people in the region. The same for keywords. For gloabl/regional and industry areas we get everyone to agree on metrics and goals.
Josh: We've had good luck with Yellow pages and things that tie us into a physical presence. We've had good luck with contextual options.
Bill: IF you have a global website, make their life easy. Have them use a local keyword tool to create the keyword glossary. Take you search campaign and break it into two parts: language specific and language independent.
Jessica: If you writing in English and having it translated into a regional language, make sure you sit down with the translator and explain SEO and why you would use phrases redundantly. Otherwise, their translation can lose your keywords.

Audience Poll:
How many have an international site or are planning going into an international market? About 45%

Audience Question: How do you get the different departments to do what we want them to do?
Mike: You have to communicate to each department in the way that they will respond to. Different departments are motiviated by different things. This concept is discussed in the "Search Marketing Inc" book.
Sean: Talk to department heads and find out what their goals are. Then communicate your search marketing work in a way that ties into reaching their goals.
Jessica: We created a marketing plan and an internal pr campaign.
Josh: Be sure to thank the staff that is helping you and give them thank you tokens of appreciation.
Sean: When you thank them, be sure to email them and cc their boss.

Audience Question: We're a global company that does all content generation in-house. Do you find it better to go with a pay per click vendor that does all markets or a different PPC vendor in each market?
Bill: It's not a good idea to have one agency do everything, but it's also not managable to have 18 different agencies. If you work most bid management tools don't work with Asian and Russian language, so work with the search engines directly. Make sure if you hire a company that it's not Google writing the creative. It should be someone that knows the market. The fewer agencies involved, the quicker the reporting and more accurate.
Sean: There is no one vendor that can take care of everything. However, you will have to accept some risk and make the best decision you can.
Mike: If you're going to do it wrong, do it wrong quickly. Then keep refining until it's right. Over time you will see predictable and trustworthy trends.

Audience Question:: We work in a recently merged organization. Do you have any tips about how to deal with creating a common set of processes?
Mike: Identify the processes currently in place, then add to that. Make the processes as a standard that must be complied with.
Josh: Our marketing organization was tied into some other pieces and we send out overviews about what we're doing in search. Present it as a goal and focus on reaching it.
Jessica: Maintain visibility and top of mind with stakeholders so that they want to work with you and help.

Audience Question: Works with economic development and consulting firm that helps manaufacturers do internet marketing. Their own web site is not search engine friendly. The CMS was developed by an outside vendor. The CMS is problematic and the vendor has ties high up in the organization. How to approach the situation.
Josh: It's a tricky political; situation. Rather than say the CMS system was poorly developed, focus on the numbers. Here are some statistics on our site, room for improvement and here are some suggestions on how to make it right. If the developer takes credit, it doesn't matter, you just want it to work.
Sean: Focus on the positive and give recommendations. Ask for help in taking the CMS to the next level.
Jessica: Nobody likes to hear their baby is ugly. Keep that in mind when giving feedback to the developer.

Audience Question: How important is it for a SEO firm to be local?
Marshall: A distributed workforce is a reality you have to deal with. For training, it should be in-person.
Mike: You need to look at your own company's culture. Do they ever outsource outside the local area? You can compromise on some things, but working with someone remotely is better than not at all.
Josh: It depends on the cluture. Our agency is half way accross the country. One thing about being in New York, if you hire a firm outside the area you might find yourself paying less.
Jessica: We had training provided virtually and it worked out fine. Could it have been better? Maybe, but it did the job.

Audience Question: What should be the ratio of organic to pay per click?
Sean: I'm tempted to say start with organic, but it's going to be easier to sell your business on PPC (convince others in your company).
Jessica: If you're doing it all in house, keep in mind that you'll be managing PPC at the same time as organic optimization. PPC can get you initial results fairly quickly.
Mike: It may make sense to do both at certain levels. We've found that the clickthrough when you have high rankings on both organic and PPC can be up to three times more.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Danny Sullivan is the moderator for this brand spanking new panel. As we wait for him to arrive, we have the panelists Cam Balzer, Rand Fishki, Jonathan Mendez, Jessica Koster and Ron Belanger (Yahoo Search Marketing for Q&A). No music is playing, which is the norm during a wait period. Now we hear the panelist chatter on the speakers and Danny tell them what the big red flashing light means.

Rand Fishkin from SEOmoz is up first.

Goals of Branding
- Improve visibility
- Create Associations
- Position
- Build Buzz

Branding Supporting Search
- Visible brands achieve top rankings
- Branding must reach the online marketplace

Search Supporting Branding
- Visibility in Search Builds Recognition
- Messages in Search Can Be Tailored and Easily Refined

Push Marketing
- Driving Visitors to the SERPs
- Website mentioned in ads, press releases, etc.

Leveraging Visibility to Push Online Content
- Offering promotions, discounts on the Web
- Website content gets instant credibility/visbility

Great Content Achieves Instant Visibility
- Links flow naturally to well known brand news
- Controversy, Opinions, Link-bait

Leveraging a built in audience
- Blogging, email newsletters, feeds to exploit
- Getting feedback and participation

Top Search Positions = High Visibility
- Target both the long tail and majors to maximize
- Broaden content to target an entire niche

Exploit High Rankings for brands
- Maintain a solid look and feel
- Use catch titles snippets, and domain names
- Appeal to searchers' needs

Crafting a Sites Message
- What should a site say vs. an ad/marketing campaign?
- Using a real voice

Case Study of Himself (featured in Newsweek)

- Branding supports search and brands push content to an audience
- Search supports branding, search promotes visibility via listings in SERPs
- Application of either requires proper targeting, leverage strengths in each area to improve performance in the other.

Jessica Koster from Danskin
- They sell girly clothing for dance and yoga since 1882 :)

Brand Importance at Danskin
-- 124 years developing the excellence and nostalgia of the brand
-- Web site as home base and authority of our products
-- Approx, 30% of orders come from brand terms

Definition of a Brand
- look it up at wikipedia

Basic Concept
- Search as a temperature for the brand
-- Helps determine internal priorities such as how and where you sell your product
-- Shows how other marketing is resonating

Defining Goals and Strategies
- Preventing the I on Google and I see X... factor
- Who can bid/rank for your terms?
-- Retailers
-- Affiliates
-- Competitors
- How do customers find you?
-- Danceskin or Danceskins
- Partner with Legal
- PPC tools can help

Brand Perception versus Reality
- Perception - what marketers/CEOs think is different
-

Search Customer Satisfaction
- Research conducted 07/05 - 01/06
- Key Differences
-- Less satisfied with product browsing and navigation
-- More like to purchase in 30 days
-- Less loyal to Danskin

Email Campaign Effect
- Reviewed 48 hour period around house list email campaign drops versus average days:
--Click volume increase 25%
-- Average order increased by $5 or so
-- Conversion increased 43%
-- Return on Spend improved by $1

The Ultimate Goal
- Customer expectations need to be in line with internal priorities

30% off NYSES through 3/15 at Danskin

Jonathan Mendez from DigitalGrit
- Why branding is search is unique
-- 54% of teen "fashionistas" learn about brands from search
-- Search = Action then Reaction
--- Search is not passive
--- Every searcher has a goal
--- Align brand message with search

- Kairos is the greek god of search merketing
-- Son of Zeus
-- One of Aristotle's Three Pillars of Rhetoric
-- Mode of Persuasion

- Pathway Analysis of Searcher Goals
-- He shows a chart to bucket every goal possible when someone sits down and does a query.
-- Cool slide

Case Study
- Sony Vaio Notebook
-- Consistent Creative Messaging Across Channels
-- Same landing page slows us to run comparative analysis
-- The landing page was a product overview page, no heavy promotion, very information, no calls to action to purchase
- Goals and Metrics
-- Increase awareness
-- Create Buzz about product
- Media Buys
-- WSJ, CNN< CNET, MSN
-- Keyword buys
-- Messaging across channels, both banners and search ads
- Results
-- Spend 83% in Media, 17% in search
-- Impressions; Media 86%, Search 14%
-- Clicks; Media 46% and Search 54%
-- Orders; Media 12%, Search 88%
-- CPO Media: 35%x CPO (cost per media) for Search

What Did We Learn?
- Brand message in search can resonate unlike any other medium
- Missed opportunity - what better way to create buzz than selling your product
- Improve business results by putting more branding dollars into search

What about the cross over impact of brand?
- Consistent creative messaging across channels
- Same landing pages for all channels
- Media buy similar
- Keywords - all product model specific (dscr1)

Shows the Creatives
- Search and Banners

Shows Landing Page

How Did online media buy effect search?
- The impact on search doubled the number of searches
- Click rate remained consistent

What does this all mean?
- Paid search has a real and necessary place in all forms of branding ans buzz marketing
- The impact of brand marketing in channel and outside channel are measurable in search
- Ensure you have proper budget allocation for incriminate in increases in search

Cam Balzer from Performics
- Consumers are rapidly becoming "search enabled"
-- Search is closing on email as the most frequently used online activity (he gave some figures)
- Marketers can reach these consumers via search throughout the consideration process
-- Numerous studies have shown that consumers use search to build category, brand and product awareness
-- Successful campaigns with multiple national branded advertisers have shown Performics that increasing visibility on category keywords
--- Generates significant number of high impact impressions
--- Increases brand awareness
--- Creates follow-on branded searches

Cast Study
- Question: Cost benefit of increasing brand visibility on high volume category keywords?
- Test
-- Test in 4 products cats with a 5th cat as a control group
-- 10 - 20 high volume generic keywords in each test cat
-- Bid strategy maintain rankings >1.5
-- BRand positioning copy was developed
-- Landing pages were picked to meet consumers at a broad awareness stage of engagement
- Metrics
-- Keyword and campaign ROAS
-- Sales products in each cat coming from brand keywords
- Execution
-- Test keywords drove 40%.......

Results
- Direct ROAS on cat keywords was just less then 1:1 but
-- Total search sales increased by 84% YoY (year over year)
-- Brand keywords sales increased by 100% YoY\
-- Overall program ROAS was well within goals
- Sales of products in each cat originating from brand keywords increased dramatically in all cats except the control
-- Control category D increased 34%
-- Average increase for other categories of 103% with one category up 200%

Generic visibility increases brand conversion rate
- Test
-- Periodic testing of high volume generic keywords for a branded specialty apparel retailer
- Results
-- Correlation between non-brand impressions and brand term conversion rate
-- 10,000 bon brand impressions increases brand conversion rate slightly

Increased Brand Affinity Through Generic Visibility
- Search enabled consumers associated brands more strongly with a category after seeing search ads on generic keywords
-- Multiple tests with a multi-channel mass retailer have shown this
- Test: hold top position for word kitchenaid for 4 weeks leading into peak holiday shopping days
- Execution generated 500k impressions and 17k clicks (3.5% CTR)
- Results: Second strongest increase .... missed it

Tactics for testing Brand Building through Search
- Max likelihood of success by running campaigns during each keyword's specific seasonal peaks
- Flight your campaigns with seasonal promos and ads in other channels
- Leverage a full range of metrics
-- eCPM
-- Offline sales
-- Overall lift in sales
-- Natural search impact also

Broadening Perception of the Value of Search
- Look at: latent activity online and offline and directly tracked online sales

Wow - that was a ton of information, I think my keyboard almost caught on fire from typing incredibly fast on that last presentation.

Ron Belanger from YSM said a quick comment. They are trying to converge the banner ad people and search as people. They change the banner ad name from brand ads to display ads. As you buy more display ads, you see an increased in search demand. This is how Yahoo can create more search inventory. Also through TV, radio and print - they can create more search demand. They are making tools to allow advertisers to increase search demand for their branded keywords and keywords.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Patrick Gavin is up first and is going to talk about more on the buying part of links. He mentions that when looking at links to buy, you should always consider the traffic that can come from those links. He mentions Alexa as a general indicator about the traffic a site can get. However the Alexa numbers can get skewed at times depending on who is using the toolbar to look at your website. In the end however your logs are going to reveal the most information about what type of traffic you got from the links. He discusses the difference from single page v. site wide links. Single links are harder to track, but other people like to obtain site wide links. He recommends staying with single links from website. Link popularity he mentions is better indicator than Page Rank which is more of a general indicator of the links from a site. He recommends to stay away from straight PageRank buys and find other factors you can use to buy links. He puts up an example of an oversold link section which has too many links and most are not on topic. You want to find sites that have a higher quality of editorial standards than those that links tons of links on the page. The less amount links on the page the better chance you will receive some of that targeted traffic. Patrick also recommends to check if the site will allow links to spidered by a search engine and to do that look at the cache to see what Google has spidered.

He puts up some tips. Number one is to do keyword searches in your industry and contact other sites and offer to advertise on the site. You can often find good informational resources that are not direct competitors, and offer them cash. They like cash. His second tip is to cull referral logs. Be sure to do an evaluation on the sites in the logs you are getting links from. Look at the return that a link can give you. He next mentions a TouchGraph chart, and says it can provide some cool visual representations of the network around you.

Eric Ward is up second in the session and he starts talking about various places you might not have thought about to obtain links from. He says there are networks that cull sites for links and combine them together. He mentions BlogAds, where you buy links in bulk not a single links. These links are not necessarily for ranking, but for traffic. Do a search for “blog ad networks”. This type of advertising is coming and its getting bigger. He also mentions you can build links from newsletters. Its not about pagerank or search rank its about reaching that audience. iVillage.com is an example of a site that has 44 newsletter you can advertise in. He also mentions ezines that can also be benefical to advertiser in. Ezinehub is one site and ezine locator is also good. Search engines say they look for reasons to trust a link or site. Editorial type links are a good start for this. Visit Eric’s website for a full list of good places to check out (http://www.ericward.com).

Thomas Bindl from Quisma is up third. He starts by asking if PageRank is real and explains that some sites can display fake pagerank and to be sure to watch out for that. Look at the cache of the website and see if anything look suspicious. He next goes into redirects and seeing what type of websites use redirects for links. His next suggestion is to look at meta robots tags as well as robots.txt and see if the websites are the search engines to spider there links. He also says to watch out for comment tags as the html code can be commented out. Iframe links are also bad news. He next mentions some hard fakes. Be sure to watch out for sites with no cache version, if a site: check return unsuccessful results, meta-tags are different in the cache, and the cache is different.

Greg Boser is up next and is talking with presentation. He mentions his historical purchasing of links back when the game was “wild wild west” style. Greg mentions that things have changed since then and the search engines have a better ability to filter out links and differentiate between the different type of links.

Debra Mastaler from Alliance Link is up last. She says there are a good amount of opportunity out there. She mentions to be careful of buying links from page that use words like “sponsored links” and so on the page. Know your demographics too, if you think you target market is in the mid-20’s, these types of people have completely different types of sites than older folks. There is nothing wrong with ads if you do it smart. She says its advertising and it’s been done a long time.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Rebecca Lieb is moderating this session.

Jeff Watts from National Instruments
- Introduction to Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia
-- He explains it, and shows screen shots (most of our readers probably know what it is if not go to http://en.wikipedia.org/)
-- He explains the self-regulating style of the wiki
-- I have covered his nice presentation at SES Chicago 2005
-- Nearly every document is editable
-- You can create a new document
-- Registration/authentication is not required
-- Articles should be written from a Neutral Point of View
-- Content is licensed under the GNU FDL: Other people can modify, redistribute your content
- Example: The "LabVIEW" page on ni.com
-- Why use Wikipedia; feedback, neutral trusted source, traffic from wikis and more
-- The case study is the same from Chicago, so ill link to it, save my fingers for later.
- He has the top to ranks for labview in yahoo and the third result is the labview wiki entry
- What have we learned?
-- Focus on the information and the community reputation
-- Avoid link building and removing accurate information
-- Respect the community rules and especially the NPOV (neutral point of view)
-- Benefits include traffic and a quality 3rd party unbiased overview
- Where can you go from here? How do I apply this to me?
-- Big Brands can be added
-- Famous people can be added
-- Associations with either of the above
-- Knowledge on a particular subject
-- Add or edit the appropriate pages on the wiki
-- Help the community, not just yourself

Nick Wilson from Performancing
- What is tagging? They are labels, it is all about labeling content with a user's own language. The way that tags have power above and beyond label is when you get into the whole social aspect of it. Social bookmarking, del.icio.us is a popular one, and there are rankings for del.icio.us, its the community tagging power.
- Why should you care about tagging? Everyone wants to be a star in terms of their own content. By tagging your own content and using the tagging community to help you, you can have your content get its 15 minutes of fame. As marketers, it helps you get your links out there. People will pick up your content from del.icio.us, myweb, digg and so on. People use these sites to find content to link to. Links mean traffic and ranking.
- We are concentrating on del.icio.us for this presentation, because its the big one
-- What should you be labeling your content as... you can not be tagging "rubbish." You need to believe that your content is good enough for others to tag it. If you do abuse a system like that you become a "stinker" and he shows a picture of Pew from the old time cartoons.
-- There are things you can do to push the system of tagging in your favor a little
--- enable people to tag you easily (add links to tag you, automatic links to tag you at del.icio.us)
--- tag your own content, use the right anchor text, the more people that tag you will follow your anchor text, which is important because once it moves past del.icio.us, people will use the same anchor text, a domino effect

Andy Hagans from Text Link Ads
- It is all about money with him, so tagging for money is his presentation
- Its much harder to get tagged well for commercial content, as opposed to non-profit free content
- Methodology
(1) Create quality link bait (bookmark worthy content)
- Most sites are commodities and boring, so how do I make buzz content?
-- funny lists
-- encyclopedic resources
-- unique tools
-- anything that is bookmark worthy, link bait wise
(2) Get it in front of the right people (but do not spam those people)
-- Make a list of bloggers who would be legitimately interested in your link bait
-- Send them each a short, to the point, non pressuring email
-- Include some piece of info to let them know them know the email is personalized
(3) Give it a bump on del.iciu.us (but only once)
-- Tag the link bait once to put it on the radar
-- Do not setup multiple accounts to tag it many times (taggers are very savvy and if you spam them, you will get caught)
-- Why del.icio.us? It is the key tagging site
(4) Rinse and repeat (i.e. do it over and over again, it doesn't work every time, so keep trying)
-- Most link bait flops, this is normal
-- Commit to doing it regularly

- Theorectical Example
-- BoringMortgageBroker.com wants to utilize tagging to gain some buzz, links and traffic
-- How can they succeed in such a competitive industry
(1) Article named "Didn't pay your mortgage? dont worry - why banks are so afraid to foreclose", a JS driven amortization calculator tool, and a collection of JS Driven mortgage calculator tools
(2) Search Google for "mortgage blog" and "personal finance blog" and write a personalized email to a dozen or so bloggers
(3) Tag it once in del.icio.us
(4) So what happened?
-- the link bait falls flat
-- This is normal, don't get discouraged
-- Put out the link bait on a regular schedule

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Session description:

"As search continues to get hot, are ad agencies missing out on one of the most important online advertising venues going? Some ad agencies are now acquiring SEM firms to enlarge their portfolio of services. Others continue to outsource. Some may still not tap into search at all. This session explores what agencies may need to consider as the search space grows and how to ensure they aren't falling behind."

The session is moderated by Chris Sherman, executive editor of Search Engine Watch.

First up is Rohit Bhargava from Ogilvy Public Relations.

7 rules for smart agencies:
- Identify owners - then train and support them
- Create your own method
- Focus on client industies you know
- Prove the value, sell the category
- Get experienced direct mail copywriters
- Find the right SEM software
- Forget the low flying clients

Trends and the Future of Search
Keep up to date on the industry - conferences, blogs

Key trends to track:
- Role of experts are adding a filter to search
- Mindset searches move beyond keywords
- Search goes local, small and offline
- Automation and mega advertisers
- Advertising

Next up is Rob Griffin from Media Contacts.

"Keep it simple stupid"
Search is complex, there are a lot of variables incluiding landing pages, keywords, copy, price, etc. AS search becomes more complex, it is important to remember that there are some basic marketing fundamentals to keep in mind. Lots of firms sell technology, but technology does not replace people skills.

Don't forget SEO, it's an important part of SEM.

Remember to start with the basics. A lot of companies find it easy to just throw money at search. Remember your goals. Don't just chase your competition.

Search marketing is a balance of art and science.
Art - writing creative and compelling ad copy. If you agency has copywriters and creative people, be sure to tap into that.
Science - makes it easy to create rules and it's trackable.

It's also important to have people dedicated to search. You can paralyze yourself if you don't structure the campaign correctly. Good campaign structure is logical.

Managing PPC
Bid management is just one small part. Don't forget you need smart people. Tools are great, but you still need someone to drive it. Also remember that every rule has an exception. Technology can't handle that so there is always a need for people to make adjustments.

People and technology make search marketing within an agency work. Leverage technology to set rules and track results and use people to interpret results and make recommendations.

Next up is Alan Osetek from Isobar which owns Carat Fusion and iProspect.

For agencies considering adding search marketing to their mix, Alan discusses considerations for a SEM service development strategy and the factors to consider.

Look at organic, ppc and paid inclusion as separate offerings.

- First look at the current size of your agency. Based on resources you can decide whether to offer something like SEO, you might decide to outsource that component to a pure play SEO agency.
- Consider your exit strategy.
- Growth rate. Will search add to your growth in line with objectives?
- Brand perception is important. If you clients don't see you as a search shop, it can take a while to develop that. If search is not ofen requested in RFPs you receive, then it may not make sense to take search on as an offering.
- Does search fit within the culture of your organization?
- Who are your client contacts? Consider how much business can you get from your current clients.

Isobar decided to have two search marketing agencies (Carat Fusion and iProspect). Why? It allows them to work with multiple clients in the same industry, spread between the two agencies. Client preferences vary. Some clients want an integrated agency, and some want a pure play expert.

Last up is David Roth from Carat Fusion.

Integrating search in the ad agency - how search fits in with agencies and how sometimes they don't.

Different approaches advertising agencies take on search marketing
- some don't do it all
- outsource
- build into their offering

Who doesn't do search? Offline, traditional and creative agencies. Even some online agencies. (Shows image of dinosaurs).

Outsourcing SEM is pretty common since they don't specialize in search and resources are already thin.

Models:
1. Preferred vendor
2. White label

In a media buy model, the agency dictates what the SEM is to implement.
In a SEM model, the agency gives the SEM agency the access to perform search.

Benefits: Short time to market and initial cost savings.
COns: Budeting, integration, communication, multiple partners.

3. Integrate

To build a practice, start with one person. This is a practice in the same way as Media, Creative, Web Development and Account Services.

If you have a national practice, you need a national search marketing practice and have people in different locations like you do with media people.

Strengths of this model is a better product and integration with the overall agency. Also better support for other online and traditional media. Better communication and more accurate budgeting.

Challenges include time to implement and the initial cost.

Best practices:

- Offer paid search, organic and affiliate marketing
- Status with the search engines. This is pretty much based on your ad spend. More budget, more perks.
- Take advantage of training from vendors
- Employ knowledge transfer within your organization
- Standardization of deliverables
- Decide on a preferred platform or
- Competitive clients - will your SEM group offer services to your agencies competitors?

Audience: What are the clients saying about adding search?
Panel: Clients are all over the board. Some want it as part of an integrated campain. Some want a specialist.

Audience: If a client wants a specialist, how do you handle integrated reporting?
Panel: It's a manual process. Some agencies have developed tools for cross agency reporting, but it's an area that will see more development.

Audience: What are agencies doing with mobile search?
Panel: Mobile has had the promise of being the next big thing, but it just hasn't happened in the U.s. That is not the case in Europe and Asia where mobile is hot. Some agencies have European clients spending 10-15% of their budget on mobile search.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Jim Boykin was up first to discuss some of the news he is fond of and the tools his company has built. He goes over the Cool SEO Tool, and various data that is offered with use of this tool. Jim makes a good point to find synonyms in Google he says to use the search ‘-marketing ~marketing” and it will return words that Google considers similar. Good for finding alternative keywords he says. He next puts up and goes over Aaron Wall’s tools. He is describing a linking relational map, on who links to who and so on. The next tool he uses is called http://www.dead-links.com to find broken links. You start by typing in an a url and it will spider each of your webpages looking for errors in your internal and external links. He recommends using this tool especially for older sites. Jim ends saying he recommend using the Digitalpoint ranking tool to track historical rankings.

Bill Hartzer was up second, and he starts with some funny example about his tie. He asks which side of his tie with unravel fastest. The result, it’s a tie. Bill goes over his company and next into tools that he uses. He puts up a list such as Optilink. He says he has used Optilink for a number of years. It will return for your incoming and outgoing links including pagerank. Bill goes over the various uses of Optilink. The next tool he goes over is Clicktracks. I high recommend this tool as well. Great for visual analysis reporting of what visitors are doing. It reveals why visitors do what they do and goes beyond simple web analytics. Bill talks about Link Harvestor, another tool from Aaron Wall. CombineWords.com is another good tool, which helps combine various keywords into many different combinations. URLTrends is another tool that works well giving a ton of data.

Bruce Clay is up third and explains he is going to talk about using search engines as tools. He says we spend as much time using the search engine as anything else. The best ranking check is to actually go and check it manually. He says they don’t even use their tools to run ranking monitors on a daily basis. Bruce next talks about Mindset from Yahoo and thinks it’s a really excellent tool. Mindset is the tool offered from Yahoo that allows you to use a slider from left (shopping) to right (research). The tool is helpful for finding out how the search engine considers your website, is it a research or shopping site. He says its great to discovering what the competition is all about and how the search engine sees your site. He recommends using information words on specific research pages and be careful to use the right words. Bruce next talks about using Google to do searches with quotes such as “searchnenginewatch.com” which will give you the full population of pages out there. He also recommends using “intitle:” searches as it will give you sites which include the specific word in the title.

Todd Malicot is up next and says he is a toolholic. He favorite type of tools are those called information bootstrapper tools such as domain/server level, competitive, keyword, backlink, off-page, header & page-level, including spidering and indexability.

Domain/Server Level Information
http://www.whois.sc
http://www.ip-report.com
http://www.netcraft.com
http://addons.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?id=59 – tell if a particular site is doing user agent cloaking.
http://extensionroom.mozdev.org (use a proxy switcher)
http://www.openproxies.com (get free proxies)
http://www.copernic.com

Backlinks
http://www.linkharvestor.com
http://www.webuildpages.com/neat-o/

Keyword Information
http://www.kwmap.net
http://labs.google.com/sets
http://www.gorank.com/seotools/

Header/Page Level Information
http://www.webrankinfo.com/english/tools/server-header.php

Spidering / Indexability
Xenu Broken Link Checker
http://www.grittechologies.com
http://www.auditmypc.com/free-sitemap-generator.asp

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Alan Dick is moderating the retailer sem tactics, from Vintage Tub and Bath.

Shane Wagg from Rugman.com
- He is an organic guy since Alta Vista...
- He does both PPC and SEO based on Revenue
- He says a search engine is a search engine is a search engine
- Optimize basically the same way for each, but learn and customize
- Keep it as simple as possible when optimizing
- Search engine optimize web pages not web sites
- Both the long and short keyword phrases play a role in his daily job
- He discusses the difference between rug and large wool rugs and the level of search volume and the level of conversions
- Looks like he ranks number two for rugs in Yahoo! Search
- They secure two positions in shopping.com because of the Web site and ebay optimization
- Ensure your paid placement budget is at optimal level and budgets
- They noticed a higher number of click throughs during the day, but not at night, so they shifted their budget by five hours, they doubled the click throughs on key phrases and increased efficiencies by 29%, which made it easier to increase budget and a bid management system
- Day parting has significant ramifications, specifically with pat per call
- This guy did not hide any numbers from the audience, i see his total cost in AdWords between jan 1 and feb 19, 2006 was $21,621.34. I have conversion metrics in front of me, but I'll spare him. I mean his email and customer ID is at the top of the page, this is a security risk...
- He focuses now on clearance, store, discount, sale and shopping with main keywords like, rug. Example, rug clearance and they only do this organically, because it is too expensive for them in PPC.
- Understand the pre, actual and post seasonality across search terms.
- SESNY10 is the discount code within 30 days to give a 10% discount (i may use that, I need a rug or two for my new apartment)

David Wauters from BareNecessities.com (too close to comfort for me, I have worked with two of his competitors in the past)
- They sell underwear online, mostly women underwear
- Worked for this company for about two years
(1) Highlight your store promotions
- Do a search for maindenform bras and you will see a promotion in the AdWords with 20% off. No one else shows that they sell it for 20% off
- Support media mentions, they were lucky to mention a couple of styles Oprah mentioned, so they used Oprah in the ad
- Support seasonality in your business; "bra for wedding" they come up in the PPC listings for Wedding Lingerie
- Supporting site promotions; "bras" in Google, they are number one in PPC and they show free shipping on orders over $75 in the description.
- It is important to use a landing page that supports the value proposition
(2) Partner with your buyers to find the right products to sell online
- You can be their product research consultant, finding new trends
- He shows slides of keyword selector tools with # of searches, nothing crazy
- His point is looking for trends in these keyword tools (but didnt mention about the lag of these tools)
- Partner with your buyers to reorganize your online store to support demand (example is nursing bras)
- Help partners understand your paid search sales; it is easy, can show why sales may have slipped, and helps manage online store real estate properly
(3) Life after the selling season
- Just because Halloween was Oct. 31st, it doesn't mean the holiday season is over
- He showed a slide on search data on valentines gifts and valentines day gift, you see that half the demand was about the week after
- Life after department store seasons; he shows search volume on swim wear

- SESOFFER save 20% at BareNecessities.com

Brian Mark at ToolBarn.com
- Tail Terms; common phrases will have many competitors, long doesn't mean tail, it can be short also, its all a matter of search frequency, and convert better
- Ad Copy; what makes a value proposition? free stuff, he shows two ads and how placing Free in the top line, the CTR increased by 20% (but it seems like he also added DKI in the ad)
- Selection and a unique solution; he showed a 65% increase in sales by adding available for APO addresses (selling Gatorade Powder Mix, they are going to the troops) clicks were less but sales way up
- Addressing a Need, noticed a 61% CTR and CPC dropped 66% by changing the ad to a more english spoken ad copy
- Alternate organic engines
-- Become.com, has more importance on quantity of info and quality of links
-- Yahoo! Shopping organic
- Duplicate Content
-- Copy and Paste product specifications and features from manufacturers
-- Scraper sites
-- Mirror sites
-- Older pages
-- Competitors
-- Splogs
-- Web designers
-- Under construction sites
-- eBay
--- eBay is the king of thieves (the sellers), the people who sell copy and paste directly from their site. They email the seller directly and the response comes after the auction if ever.
--- They are using mod_rewrite and referrer data to change the data so people can automatically scrap, they have completely automated this (my thoughts...he thinks this is new stuff, but people have been doing this for years), but it is cool that he showed examples of his competitors getting screwed, showing a water stamped product image with the toolbarn.com stamp and the price about 100% the price as should be sold
-- Toolbarn.com profits from duplicate content

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Detlev Johnson of Position Tech moderates this session that gives attendees a chance to hear from representatives who operate major blog and feed (RSS/Atom) search engines and about how they operate. Speakers include: Adam Hertz of Technorati, Mark Fletcher of Bloglines/Ask Jeeves, Chris Redlitz of Feedster, Chris Tolles Topix.net and Jeremy Zawodny of Yahoo! and Vinod Marur from Google.

Walked in on the Technorati Demo being presented by Adam Hertz. Unfortunately, I did not catch Mark Fletcher of Bloglines. Perhaps he'll do a short interview with me later?

Adam Hertz showed new tools available at Technorati.

Filter by authority - Search for a common phrase, many results appear. Use the slider to sort by relevancy. Seems like a minimum of 200 inbounds are necessary to be "relevant".

Blog Finder - Tag based blog directory. Launched a few months ago. Blogs are broken down into categories. Allows you to search only the blogs in the blog finder database.

Favorites - Experiment in social search. When you look at someone's favorites, you see the most recent posts only from that person's favorites. You can also limit your search to that list of blogs. Personalizes the search experience and allows you to share interests. Coming soon, the ability to create and name sets.

Next up is Chris Tolles. Topix is not a blog searh engine, but they feed most blog search engines with data.

Blogs and feeds - the incremental web.

Incremental web - chronologically ordered, RSS feeds, discover relevance from freshness.

Why you should care about RSS?
- Topix used to get 5% of taffic from RSS, now 25% is from RSS.
- 27,000 new and blog sources
- 360,000 topics updated every 10 minutes.

Why includes blogs? Topix looked at the top million blogs. Blogs cover things other news properties don't. It's better to have "more" information.

People have an expectation of interaction. Topix started forums generating 4,000 new posts a day. People want to talk back to the news.

Is it real?
- Yahoo and Google investing in news/blogs
- Startups, inform.com, digg, newsvine

What are the challenges?
- Sorting through new voices - many services, not easy to fake relevance
- Create a system of participation - interaction is expected

Next up is Chris Redlitz of Feedster that specializes in feed search, not blog search. 18 months ago, Feedster indexed 865,000 feeds. Shows RocketBoom video talking about the new Feedster design and Feedster blog. Feedster should be at 30 million feeds in the next few months.

Now What?
Improved relevancy, fast indexing, content qualification and archival search.

Will be launching a new version of top blogs (Feedster 500) which will be using an algorithmic type of methodology in the next few months. Incidentally, both Search Engine Roundtable and Online Marketing Blog made the Feedster 500 lists last year.

Working hard to improve quality and reduce spam.
Filtering incoming spam, Reassess index, spam detection

Publisher Benefit of Feeds.
Increase distribution, reduce dependence on email, targeted audience.

Feedster Japan is launching soon as well as other international versions.

Next up is Vinod Marur from Google to present on Google Blog Search. Google launched blog search in September last year with similar experiences as other blog search engines in rate of growth. Google is finding that some blogs are topical, some are time based, some are social platforms. Recency alone is not the best measure of ranking blog posts.

Next up is Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo.

In 1997 all the buzz was about eyeballs. That didn't last. What is the new potential for "eyeballs" and revenue? It's less about eyeballs and more about attention. Some of the changes are as a result of technology. Increasingly, people who used to visit many web sites are now subscribing to content using RSS feeds. A feed reader is an attention focusing tool.

The growth of RSS use is an indication of the growth of the web.

Definition of Attention: "Concentration of the mental powers upon an object or close careful observing or listening." Not much like traditional "surfing" and randomly finding content.

Another definition: "Your suggestion (message) has come to our attention." Isn't that what you want as a marketer?

Yahoo blog search is different than Technorati and Feedster. Yahoo decided that when people search Yahoo News, that would be the best place to incorporate blog results.

Meme Tracking on del.icio.us, memeorandum, TailRank, Digg, Reddit, etc. This is a new phenomena.

My Yahoo offers RSS support and feed search.

What to do? Check out the Publisher's Guide to RSS
Also:
http://rss.yahoo.com
http://publisher.yahoo.com

Audience: How to monetize a blog
Jeremy - You can add an advertisement to the feed. There's also a school of thought that considers the RSS feed an ad for the content on the blog.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb – ClickZ

Christine Churchill - KeyRelevance
“How many people thin k that keyword research is the most exciting/sexy part of search marketing? (laughs) KW selection criteria: relevant to site. Keyword popularity. Stage in buying process (user intent). Competition. Feedback.

Will go more into detail about stages in the buying process, as well as some tool demos. Buying process…where are they? Problem recognition---information search---select alternatives—evaluation of alternatives---purchase decisions. (source: Phil Coulter’s book) Three types of behavior: 1. navigational search. (ie type in AA.com.) 2. Informational type searches—research…how to do something, or what kind of products available. 3. transactional--- the more interactive type…purchase, subscription, making a donation, etc…

Getting inside the mind of the searcher. Research vs. purchase. For example: “car reviews” vs. “low mileage ford mustang” vs. “fast auto financing.” Stage in buying process…what types of words to use when. Personal demographics such as age/gender, and using proper words. Psychological (FUD- Fear, uncertainty, and Doubt). To compete, you need to know just how competitive the word is. You need to evaluate how active the competitors are. Are they doing PPC? How much are the bids? How optimized are the sites? What’s their linkage situation? Anchor text check. If you choose a keyword that you see a bunch of .edu’s and .gov’s in the results pages, then you may chose a different one.

Shows a very long list of keyword research tools, including, WordTracker, Google, Yahoo, Nichebot, SEO Research labs reports, Keyword intelligence, etc and others. Starts with an example of the Overture tool. Starts with a very general keyword, such as camera, which brings up a list w./count. The neat thing is you can click on each result and find further keywords that are more focused. Keyword Discovery: a pretty easy to use tool. Trellian data showed 343,694 results for the term “Camera.” Also has the ability to do a breakdown by time of year. The SEOBook suggestion tool, an open source tool, which takes all the free tools out there and compiles the results.

Next…WordTracker…she calls this one “the granddaddy.” She doesn’t used the KEI analysis, but this is a decent tool as well. Nichebot gives a top level view of some of the factors regarding the top sites for that keyword. (***looks very cool). She thinks the Google traffic estimator is OK, but not completely accurate. Also speaks about the new kw tool available within the AdWords/AdSense login area. Also talk about Trellian’s competitor intelligence tools. Keyword intelligence by Hitwise uses some neat data about competitors too. AdGooroo competitive intelligence tool also provides solid data. Keyword Analyzer from KeyRelevance.

In summary…when selecting keywords, use multiple considerations including relevancy, competition, and user intent based on buyer’s cycle. Understand the “why behind the search and you can better target how to respond. Test keywords and make adjustments.,

Lori Weiman – Keyword Max
Her presentation will be focused on the paid side: diff methods to use to grow paid listings. Mining your referring URLs: organic and paid. Word Building with excel. Keyword research tools best features. Case study.

Mining your referring URLs, or the URL found in log files that show where it came from. When mining for these referrers, you should use a conversion tracking tool that will log them. Get a reporting tool that displays the conversion rate broken down by keyword. Try to get (for paid referral) the actual keyword AND the URL. Look at how to pull information out of organic listings. “Mine your P’s and Q’s.” shows a referral URL Google and MSN: look for a “q” and Yahoo look for a “p” in the string, which directly precedes the keyword used.

Mining URLs: look in log files, then find referrers that convert, then mine referring URL’s for the search query by using P’s and Q’s above. Mining paid search: Run analytics, find converting keywords, then find referring URL’s. This will help you find longer tail keywords.

How to use Excel to create long lists. Describes the process of “concatenating.” This is a system (which I use and love, btw) that combines columns in excel in order to help you grow your keyword list. (funny thing…there was a bunch of technical difficulties, and even my laptop froze up during the last part of her presentation – must be the spirit of Doug Heil at work here) From memory, Lori ended up with a nice short case study about a “Photo Marketing” firm, which is the term used in their industry, and the problems they had when they bid on that term. Ends up that they were very low in converting, mostly due to searches for “marketing photos” and “photos of marketing” (which she was surprised there was such a thing.

John Haney – Beyond ROI
Concentrates more on the theory than the tools in his presentation. “Not all keywords are created equal.” When dealing with discovery, study your site carefully (remember that you may think differently about your product than those searching for it), know your competition, and remember that existing keyword popularity tools are simply to be used as guides. Study your log files, visit your referring URLs (mine those pages for possible keywords), and look for patterns that aren’t obvious. Remember that current events can sometime skew results.

Discovery is really a “best guess.” Log tail works. The more keywords you have, the likelihood of your being found increases. If you use a short tail word only, you are missing out on many relevant clicks. Remember that a search is juts a fragment of a person’s complete thought. When building longer tail, remember that anyone can discover keywords…it is up to you how far you will take it, and many others will simply get tired looking for more. Recommends “embracing the path less traveled.” Using analytics: It is time to get down to the science. Ask others what they think your site is about. The technology you rely on should be smart enough to help identify patterns. Everything ideally should feed together- tracking analysis, and research should feed on each other.

The “Dragon Tail” is a spike caused by a current event or an annual happening, or some less obvious ones like an election year or the search behavior after a hurricane, for example. The re will be peaks and valleys in the tail…for example more searches for automotive type things on “race day.” Hot market items come and go…so be ready. For example, when the Steelers won the Superbowl, many related searches happened. He repeats: keyword research never stops. He thinks you should find at least one keyword a day to add or remove, or you “are taking too long of a lunch.”

Shaun Ryan – SLI Systems
Wants to talk briefly about internal site search. Finds that what people type into their own internal search boxes are often what they type into when searching in SE’s. Used the example of mining the data from Hollywood.com to find popular words. Not only should you be finding out what people are searching for, but also what they are clicking on at your site. Shows a great example of what is discovered when analyzing the entire realm of possibilities for a particular product. You can then categorize the keywords based on what they are clicking on, as well. You can also examine the seasonality of search term by analyzing your search box queries.

How to get the data? Instead of manually examining logs, use a developer to write a script. Of course search and analytics tools will also get you this info. Small case study about someone who tried this, and quickly got thousands of keyword possibilities. To repeat: mine your own search box queries and you will find some great keywords.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb – ClickZ

Christine Churchill - KeyRelevance
“How many people thin k that keyword research is the most exciting/sexy part of search marketing? (laughs) KW selection criteria: relevant to site. Keyword popularity. Stage in buying process (user intent). Competition. Feedback.

Will go more into detail about stages in the buying process, as well as some tool demos. Buying process…where are they? Problem recognition---information search---select alternatives—evaluation of alternatives---purchase decisions. (source: Phil Coulter’s book) Three types of behavior: 1. navigational search. (ie type in AA.com.) 2. Informational type searches—research…how to do something, or what kind of products available. 3. transactional--- the more interactive type…purchase, subscription, making a donation, etc…

Getting inside the mind of the searcher. Research vs. purchase. For example: “car reviews” vs. “low mileage ford mustang” vs. “fast auto financing.” Stage in buying process…what types of words to use when. Personal demographics such as age/gender, and using proper words. Psychological (FUD- Fear, uncertainty, and Doubt). To compete, you need to know just how competitive the word is. You need to evaluate how active the competitors are. Are they doing PPC? How much are the bids? How optimized are the sites? What’s their linkage situation? Anchor text check. If you choose a keyword that you see a bunch of .edu’s and .gov’s in the results pages, then you may chose a different one.

Shows a very long list of keyword research tools, including, WordTracker, Google, Yahoo, Nichebot, SEO Research labs reports, Keyword intelligence, etc and others. Starts with an example of the Overture tool. Starts with a very general keyword, such as camera, which brings up a list w./count. The neat thing is you can click on each result and find further keywords that are more focused. Keyword Discovery: a pretty easy to use tool. Trellian data showed 343,694 results for the term “Camera.” Also has the ability to do a breakdown by time of year. The SEOBook suggestion tool, an open source tool, which takes all the free tools out there and compiles the results.

Next…WordTracker…she calls this one “the granddaddy.” She doesn’t used the KEI analysis, but this is a decent tool as well. Nichebot gives a top level view of some of the factors regarding the top sites for that keyword. (***looks very cool). She thinks the Google traffic estimator is OK, but not completely accurate. Also speaks about the new kw tool available within the AdWords/AdSense login area. Also talk about Trellian’s competitor intelligence tools. Keyword intelligence by Hitwise uses some neat data about competitors too. AdGooroo competitive intelligence tool also provides solid data. Keyword Analyzer from KeyRelevance.

In summary…when selecting keywords, use multiple considerations including relevancy, competition, and user intent based on buyer’s cycle. Understand the “why behind the search and you can better target how to respond. Test keywords and make adjustments.,

Lori Weiman – Keyword Max
Her presentation will be focused on the paid side: diff methods to use to grow paid listings. Mining your referring URLs: organic and paid. Word Building with excel. Keyword research tools best features. Case study.

Mining your referring URLs, or the URL found in log files that show where it came from. When mining for these referrers, you should use a conversion tracking tool that will log them. Get a reporting tool that displays the conversion rate broken down by keyword. Try to get (for paid referral) the actual keyword AND the URL. Look at how to pull information out of organic listings. “Mine your P’s and Q’s.” shows a referral URL Google and MSN: look for a “q” and Yahoo look for a “p” in the string, which directly precedes the keyword used.

Mining URLs: look in log files, then find referrers that convert, then mine referring URL’s for the search query by using P’s and Q’s above. Mining paid search: Run analytics, find converting keywords, then find referring URL’s. This will help you find longer tail keywords.

How to use Excel to create long lists. Describes the process of “concatenating.” This is a system (which I use and love, btw) that combines columns in excel in order to help you grow your keyword list. (funny thing…there was a bunch of technical difficulties, and even my laptop froze up during the last part of her presentation – must be the spirit of Doug Heil at work here) From memory, Lori ended up with a nice short case study about a “Photo Marketing” firm, which is the term used in their industry, and the problems they had when they bid on that term. Ends up that they were very low in converting, mostly due to searches for “marketing photos” and “photos of marketing” (which she was surprised there was such a thing.

John Haney – Beyond ROI
Concentrates more on the theory than the tools in his presentation. “Not all keywords are created equal.” When dealing with discovery, study your site carefully (remember that you may think differently about your product than those searching for it), know your competition, and remember that existing keyword popularity tools are simply to be used as guides. Study your log files, visit your referring URLs (mine those pages for possible keywords), and look for patterns that aren’t obvious. Remember that current events can sometime skew results.

Discovery is really a “best guess.” Log tail works. The more keywords you have, the likelihood of your being found increases. If you use a short tail word only, you are missing out on many relevant clicks. Remember that a search is juts a fragment of a person’s complete thought. When building longer tail, remember that anyone can discover keywords…it is up to you how far you will take it, and many others will simply get tired looking for more. Recommends “embracing the path less traveled.” Using analytics: It is time to get down to the science. Ask others what they think your site is about. The technology you rely on should be smart enough to help identify patterns. Everything ideally should feed together- tracking analysis, and research should feed on each other.

The “Dragon Tail” is a spike caused by a current event or an annual happening, or some less obvious ones like an election year or the search behavior after a hurricane, for example. The re will be peaks and valleys in the tail…for example more searches for automotive type things on “race day.” Hot market items come and go…so be ready. For example, when the Steelers won the Superbowl, many related searches happened. He repeats: keyword research never stops. He thinks you should find at least one keyword a day to add or remove, or you “are taking too long of a lunch.”

Shaun Ryan – SLI Systems
Wants to talk briefly about internal site search. Finds that what people type into their own internal search boxes are often what they type into when searching in SE’s. Used the example of mining the data from Hollywood.com to find popular words. Not only should you be finding out what people are searching for, but also what they are clicking on at your site. Shows a great example of what is discovered when analyzing the entire realm of possibilities for a particular product. You can then categorize the keywords based on what they are clicking on, as well. You can also examine the seasonality of search term by analyzing your search box queries.

How to get the data? Instead of manually examining logs, use a developer to write a script. Of course search and analytics tools will also get you this info. Small case study about someone who tried this, and quickly got thousands of keyword possibilities. To repeat: mine your own search box queries and you will find some great keywords.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Jeffrey Rohrs mods. Danny Sullivan, Tim Wu from Columbia, Sherwin Wiy from EPIC and Ramez Naam from MSN are the panelists.

Danny rambles on some search history and privacy in 3 minutes to introduce himself.

Sherwin discusses EPIC, which was founded to protect digital media. (1) What search history is crossed reference with and (2) the each of acquiring info from the engines on the Web.

Ramez is here to answer questions about what search engines store and to listen and learn.

Tim is a bit late and he will join us shortly.

Danny added a kudos to Ramez for coming since the other main engines all said no.

Where does the right to privacy stem from?
- Constitutional
- Statutory
- Practical

Sherwin expands... You are trying to prevent unreasonable search and seizure by the government. In the case of Google by DOJ, that was made in a civil case and the rights do not apply there. The EU has taken a sector by sector approach, video privacy protection law, but there is not a lot of law on the civil side for data protection but on the criminal side there is law. He then goes through some john versus doe cases.

What happens when we search?
- Information gathered on the searcher? Ramez said when a user issues a search, they know query search, scope of search (web, images), IP address, if you have searched before with that computer (cookie on computer) and that is the bulk of the data. The life span of the cookie is "fairly long." Danny adds that Google's cookie lasts until 2038, the likelihood is that your computer will not be around for more then 2 years, so your cookie will likely expire within two years. Sherwin commented on the IP address, that most often you use your computer back to your home or office and then you can track it back to the isp and then all it takes is a court order to get that data from them. Danny adds they can get all of your information, historically. Jeffrey asks, what is the common run of the mills where this data is getting asked for? Sherwin said often when someone posts negative comments on a forum and companies try to track the forum users with this and this is a major issue. Ramez said for MSN, this DOJ request is the first time they have ever been asked for user data. All that was asked for was a list of query terms over a period of time and some search result pages and it was not personally identifiable, no cookies, no ip and no time of day info sent over. Danny adds that most of the time, in a criminal case, a court will seize a computer and look at search data on a that computer - which is slightly different.

Tim just showed up and he is providing an intro to himself. He teaches law at Columbia law school. He worked at router industry. His interest in search privacy is the economic importance, it is usually framed as the issue of a civil liberties issue. For example, looking for new jobs or diseases they might have.

What happens when we personalize, personalized search...
- Considerations include; convenience, consolidation, content targeting and storage.

Ramez said the key thing here is the settings, what you track, stocks, news sources. (1) On your machine, in your cookie, you store this info and (2) you can login and server side we store this information.

Danny said now we can show people my search history and top searches, top sites. Now they have my profile. Yahoo has a similar thing where they can track you and serve ads later (Yahoo Fusion) also AlmondNet does this (I covered this session yesterday - "Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior"). You really do have a search profile that is identified as you, as much as you share with them about you.

Ramez said there is a concept of a value exchange. They want the convenience of the content. Look at Amazon, and they do a lot with your information. He is not talking about A9, but Amazon itself. Jeffery went to amazon and all these weird books on "play" music came up, which was hilarious.

Sherwin said you cant have a true exchange of value unless you have two informed parties. People must be educated on what they are giving up. You must know what info is being kept, how long and how private is that information. There will almost always be an out for legal disclosure.

What happens when we toolbar search, software on my PC.
Tim responds one interesting thing that the law becomes associated with this is European law. All these things are ways to collect data. What is interesting is that European has the most strictest laws on this. Often search companies may think the US law is settled but when they take it to Europe can cause legal issues for a company. The EU said the proportion of what you give versus what you get is out of match.

Sherwin adds that with Google Desktop across computer systems, that gets you to the 3rd party issues, where your data is stored somewhere else. You do not get much protections.

What happens when we do desktop search?
- Exposure of all files/data
- Saarch across computers
- Data indexed and held by the desktop search provider

Ramez said that if the user opted in to give MSN additional data, then they will send up additional data as to what pages searchers for. This is opt in only. MSN is trying to make privacy agreements easier to understand. Goals of MSN is complete transparency, making it easier for non techie people to understand, and providing the nitty gritty of what they are storing.

Danny adds that everything on your computer is at one point at Google. So that is a concern. But its Google, so many more people may use it. So its more of an issue. This does not happen automatically, you have to download the program, install it and so on.

Tim said its an increasingly problem. As much as you trust the US government, you have to worry about other governments on how to "control their citizens." Chinese gov't cares a lot about free speech. US about pornography issues.

Danny adds that people can be searching on private data, i.e. search for a disease on a person's name. But it was not personally identifiable. But they asked for so much information, a month's worth of search data. How you going to store all that data? It open the specter that they want to do data mining, but in this case they don't want to. But the fear down the line they might want to. That freaks people out. Aside from the govt issue is the corporate issues.

What happens when we map? (satellites, Google Earth, etc.)
- National security
- Professional security
- Personal Security
- Public Policy

Ramez doesn't have the detailed answers to the questions.

Jeff said there are black holes in Google Maps and who controls that? Does Google do that or does govt do it or can the end user do that. A9.com shows you "block view" and you can see individual people and faces, this is a major issue. World Privacy Forums worked with them to create an opt out for this.

Ramez just announced a street view feature with no opt out, but expect it soon. :)

Danny said this information was out there before Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask made it popular. With NASA, etc.

Is Anonymity Possible Online?
- Privacy Options
-- Education
-- Vigilance
-- Third Party Software
-- Legislation
-- Litigation
-- Go off the grid (aka unplug from the matrix)
- Advocacy Group
-- EPIC
-- EFF
-- Others

Danny added why did you make this software without adding password protection? At first it indexed encrypted Excel files, now it does not.

Tim is getting very abstract, since he is in academia, which is kinda cool, but I'm not typing his remarks now.

Sherwin stressed the option of going back. Once you disclose the information, can you take that back at a later day? If you don't have information to give away, then you won't have these issues, so shred the data.

Danny is talking now as "a common sense expert" and as he talks Tim Wu is shaking his head with disappointment and is ready to argue with Danny. Tim has yet to speak. But now Tim is nodding in approval, but Danny is on a different slightly topic. Danny wants to see the ability for people to say, hey, press this button to delete your search history.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Watch and organizer of the conference. Moved into large room…filling up nicely. Introduces topic and first speaker.

Anne Kennedy – Beyond Ink. “Double Trouble - How to avoid duplicate content Penalties.” What it is, why it is a problem, how to spot it, and how to fix it. Will also focus on “:inadvertent” duplicate content.

What is dupe content: Multiple URL’s with same content…identical homepages w/same content. Why is it a problem? Because “they” say so. Recommends looking at the webmaster guidelines at G, Open Directory, and Yahoo. The real reason that this is a problem uis that you wind up confusing the SE robots.

Mirror sites: 1 website, 2 domains. Shows example of rsdfoundation.org. Somebody in the academic CPU center decided that “since SE’s like .edu domains,” they should put the content live on the University of Florida site. Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs. Links to multiple root domains from other sites, with inbound links pointing to different domains for the same site. Describes the real domain and “canonical” domain of a client of hers causing the whole site to not be listed.

Confusing the bot: dynamic URL’s. As robots find dynamic content, the site may be returning a different URL with the same content…this is also a problem. Use “repeat the search with omitted results included” feature to see this happening with some websites. Recommends using robtots.txt exclusion and 301 redirect. 301 redirects: “your hero” Server side redirects to a single canonical domain. Test the page to make sure it works, ensure you use 301’s instead of 3o02. Find code for this at beyongink.,com/301redirect. You can also contact Google and use the “reinclusion request” in the subject line to get help.

Shari Thurow – Grandtastic Designs
Will speak about the way some SE’s filter out dupe content. Some ways include but not limited to : content properties, linkage properties. Content evolution, etc…see below.
Content properties: SE looks for unique content by removing “boilerplates” such as navigation areas, etc. and analyzing the “good stuff.”

Dupe content filters: linkage properties. Looking at inbound and outbound links to determine if it is dupe content spam? The way that they can determine it isn’t is by seeing that the linkage properties is different for each site. Content evalution: in general 65% of websites will not change info on a daily basis. .8% of web content will change compeletelty on a weekly basis, such as a news site. Host name resolution.. Domain anem, IP address, and a host name are 3 different things. Used example of the host name origin.bmw.com. talks about one method of attempting to spam that is able to be caught because they all resolve to the same host name. Lastly: Shingle comparison: Every document has unique fingerprint. They break this down into a set of word patterns to determine if the content is duplicate. Recommends reading anything by Andre Broder (sp?) about Shingles. With sample site, each word set on a page is similar with 3 pages with unique URLs that have the same word sets on each page. This is not dupe content spam, though. (sorry missed the reason for this)

If you are sharing content across a network/multiple publications is to use the robots exclusion protocol on dupe pages from the “main page.” PDF’s are another type of duplicate content. Use the robots txt file to exclude on of them. Some dupe content is considered spam because the SE’s only allow 2 pages per site per SERP. Thus additional content will end up in the supplemental results. If you know your network is going to deliver dupe content, don’t let the SE’s decide what will be presented in the SERPs – instead, use 301’s and robots.txt.

Jake Baille – True Local
“Dr. Phil on Duplicate Content.” Why does it happen? Top 6 dupe content mistakes: circular navigation. Print-friendly pages. Inconsistent linking. Product only pages. Transparent serving. Bad cloaking.

Circular navigation: cause multiple paths though a website. Fix: define in a consistent way method of addressing a page of content. Ie: brand to category to content or brand to content to category, etc. This is irrespective of navigation path. If you are bread crumbing, track paths through cookies.

Print friendly pages: all print friendly pages are diff designed with the same content. Fix: block se’s from print friendly pages

Link not working for you any more: calling directory index pages by different paths such as /directory, /directory/, and /directory/index.asp. fix: make sure you ref pages consistently. To avoid probs with external links, pick a canonical form and 301 redirect all others to the chosen version. Takes six months to “get back” from this.

Product pages with nothing differentiating them form other pages: bad, bad, bad…add new content.

Not good to be transparent: badly impleemted rewrite code, DNS errors with multiple domains. Poorly implemented cloaking/session ID remnoval code. Fixes: domains should be redirected to the main site, not DNS aliased. Picka canonical form to access content and saty with it. Has seen many “incomple” mod rewrites, that allow for the contued reference of the old page.

If the suit doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. Poorly implemented cloaking scripts serve the same doorway page over and over again. Fixes: Don’t use cloaking scripts you didn’t write. Make sure your cloaking script is retuning separate content for each URL being cloaked. (Lots of laughs during this part between him and Matt Cutts) The same content should never be accessible from different URL’s…ever!

Rajat Mukherjee – Yahoo. Informal remarks. Glad to be here. A few comments: in general, try not to make same content available through multiple URL’s. He says SE’s are not vindictive folks, matt does snoop around and take pictures every one in a while (laughs). Rather than looking for ways to demote content, we are trying to find the right content to promote. Whenever possible, try to avoid it. You may want to create a new version of a site…be extra certain that robots don’t crawl both versions. Remember that independent of the size of the index, there will always be capacity constraints.

Matt Cutts – Google Not prepared, but informal remarks. High order nits: what do people worry about? He often finds that honest webmasters worry about dupe content when they don’t need to. G tries to always return the “best” version of a page. Some people are less conscious. The person claimed he was having problems with dupe content and not appearing in both G and Y. Turns out he had 2500 domains. A lot of people ask about articles split into parts and then printable versions. Do not worry about G penalizing for this. Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a.fr, for example, don’t worry about dupe content in this case. General rule of thumb: think of SE’s as a sort of a hyperactive 4 year old kid that is smart in some ways and not so in others: use KISS rule and keep it simple. Pick a preferred host and stick with it…such as domain.com or www.domain.com.

Make sure you are consistent in your linking, because this will cause problems for robots. Use absolute links since they don’t usually get re-written by scarpers. Speaking of…make sure you have a copyright notice at the bottom of each page. Thinks you should use this a a blogger too. They have been trying to produce better ways to figure these kinds of things, and some of this “picking the right host” framework is in the new Bid Daddy center. Also recommend using the sitemaps tool to help diagnose and debug content. Sitempas has a tool where you can take robots.txt “out for a test drive.” How would the Googlebot really respond to this? Will tell you specific things that will be disallowed.

Q&A

First Danny…going back to feeding content. How \can you ensure your page will be the original page and thus the displayed one. Rajat: we are trying hard to determine what the original page is, by using shingling techniques and other techniques to determine if the content is altered. Matt: has heard more people are concerned about this. Asks how many have had content stolen: lot of hands. 3 methods of copying someone else’s content: 1. Steal from search engine (copying directly from results). 2. Outright webpage copy stolen. Usually the lifetime of that is relatively long. 3rd type is RSS scraping…this is more difficult, since it can copied so quickly. This is difficult to catch because it can happen so much quicker than scarping from a webpage might happen. If it is always you that is getting ripped off, he says, that is actually point in your favor. They can try to see who wrote stuff historically…how much you have been copied from, and how much of people’s stuff you copy.

Someone asks about having a hundred directory types of sites, and using the same instructions for adding content, will this trigger duplicate content? Make sure that there is “real content” on each site. He would recommend using one domain to host the directions. Say “we are part of this network so go here for instructions.” Matt adds that diversity is very useful.

Using a hidden DIV…what is the policy on hidden links and JavaScript? Matt: in general hidden links are a bad thing. The content should be of use to a visitor, and thus so should the link be visible. Re: JavaScript use also can be misused to try and cheat, so be careful. SE’s are getting smarter about JS, a lot of times simple heuristics can do the work. Rajat adds: make sure that you know that intent is clear, and finishes with “so cloaking is bad.” (Lots of laughs) Jake ads that if you have an Ajax application that each gets different content, serve a cloaked page to the SE’;s and the Ajax to the users. Hide the Ajax interface from the SE’s, and keep the content on the page (styling it out if needed). Matt says “NO…we will care, and it can get you banned if you are cloaking. He recommends if you have a weird site menu and “all sorts of Ajax,” use the sitemap to serve the content!

Didn’t really get the whole question, but Matt answers “there is nothing wrong with creating a template, but if you aren’t adding useful content it’s going to end up in the ghetto/bad neighborhood with lots of other ‘useless’ sites.” Rajat makes what he says is a philosophical content: SE’s are still in infancy, and while certain limitations re: Ajax etc may exist today, the SE’s will be improving here.

If I have five paragraphs on a page, and two are available on other sites, is this dupe? Rule of thumb: ask someone who has no association with you to look at he two pages and say what they feel. Kind of like the “grandma test.” Someone says would you have your grandma look at your herbal Viagra site?” (laughs…this is from a comment made earlier about herbal Viagra) If lots of content is copied, then it looks more like a less value site.

As great as this session is…catch the next conference and you’ll get the rest of the Q&A.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Danny Sullivan – Search Engine Watch and organizer of the conference. Moved into large room…filling up nicely. Introduces topic and first speaker.

Anne Kennedy – Beyond Ink. “Double Trouble - How to avoid duplicate content Penalties.” What it is, why it is a problem, how to spot it, and how to fix it. Will also focus on “:inadvertent” duplicate content.

What is dupe content: Multiple URL’s with same content…identical homepages w/same content. Why is it a problem? Because “they” say so. Recommends looking at the webmaster guidelines at G, Open Directory, and Yahoo. The real reason that this is a problem uis that you wind up confusing the SE robots.

Mirror sites: 1 website, 2 domains. Shows example of rsdfoundation.org. Somebody in the academic CPU center decided that “since SE’s like .edu domains,” they should put the content live on the University of Florida site. Confusing the Bot: 2 URLs. Links to multiple root domains from other sites, with inbound links pointing to different domains for the same site. Describes the real domain and “canonical” domain of a client of hers causing the whole site to not be listed.

Confusing the bot: dynamic URL’s. As robots find dynamic content, the site may be returning a different URL with the same content…this is also a problem. Use “repeat the search with omitted results included” feature to see this happening with some websites. Recommends using robtots.txt exclusion and 301 redirect. 301 redirects: “your hero” Server side redirects to a single canonical domain. Test the page to make sure it works, ensure you use 301’s instead of 3o02. Find code for this at beyongink.,com/301redirect. You can also contact Google and use the “reinclusion request” in the subject line to get help.

Shari Thurow – Grandtastic Designs
Will speak about the way some SE’s filter out dupe content. Some ways include but not limited to : content properties, linkage properties. Content evolution, etc…see below.
Content properties: SE looks for unique content by removing “boilerplates” such as navigation areas, etc. and analyzing the “good stuff.”

Dupe content filters: linkage properties. Looking at inbound and outbound links to determine if it is dupe content spam? The way that they can determine it isn’t is by seeing that the linkage properties is different for each site. Content evalution: in general 65% of websites will not change info on a daily basis. .8% of web content will change compeletelty on a weekly basis, such as a news site. Host name resolution.. Domain anem, IP address, and a host name are 3 different things. Used example of the host name origin.bmw.com. talks about one method of attempting to spam that is able to be caught because they all resolve to the same host name. Lastly: Shingle comparison: Every document has unique fingerprint. They break this down into a set of word patterns to determine if the content is duplicate. Recommends reading anything by Andre Broder (sp?) about Shingles. With sample site, each word set on a page is similar with 3 pages with unique URLs that have the same word sets on each page. This is not dupe content spam, though. (sorry missed the reason for this)

If you are sharing content across a network/multiple publications is to use the robots exclusion protocol on dupe pages from the “main page.” PDF’s are another type of duplicate content. Use the robots txt file to exclude on of them. Some dupe content is considered spam because the SE’s only allow 2 pages per site per SERP. Thus additional content will end up in the supplemental results. If you know your network is going to deliver dupe content, don’t let the SE’s decide what will be presented in the SERPs – instead, use 301’s and robots.txt.

Jake Baille – True Local
“Dr. Phil on Duplicate Content.” Why does it happen? Top 6 dupe content mistakes: circular navigation. Print-friendly pages. Inconsistent linking. Product only pages. Transparent serving. Bad cloaking.

Circular navigation: cause multiple paths though a website. Fix: define in a consistent way method of addressing a page of content. Ie: brand to category to content or brand to content to category, etc. This is irrespective of navigation path. If you are bread crumbing, track paths through cookies.

Print friendly pages: all print friendly pages are diff designed with the same content. Fix: block se’s from print friendly pages

Link not working for you any more: calling directory index pages by different paths such as /directory, /directory/, and /directory/index.asp. fix: make sure you ref pages consistently. To avoid probs with external links, pick a canonical form and 301 redirect all others to the chosen version. Takes six months to “get back” from this.

Product pages with nothing differentiating them form other pages: bad, bad, bad…add new content.

Not good to be transparent: badly impleemted rewrite code, DNS errors with multiple domains. Poorly implemented cloaking/session ID remnoval code. Fixes: domains should be redirected to the main site, not DNS aliased. Picka canonical form to access content and saty with it. Has seen many “incomple” mod rewrites, that allow for the contued reference of the old page.

If the suit doesn’t fit, don’t wear it. Poorly implemented cloaking scripts serve the same doorway page over and over again. Fixes: Don’t use cloaking scripts you didn’t write. Make sure your cloaking script is retuning separate content for each URL being cloaked. (Lots of laughs during this part between him and Matt Cutts) The same content should never be accessible from different URL’s…ever!

Rajat Mukherjee – Yahoo. Informal remarks. Glad to be here. A few comments: in general, try not to make same content available through multiple URL’s. He says SE’s are not vindictive folks, matt does snoop around and take pictures every one in a while (laughs). Rather than looking for ways to demote content, we are trying to find the right content to promote. Whenever possible, try to avoid it. You may want to create a new version of a site…be extra certain that robots don’t crawl both versions. Remember that independent of the size of the index, there will always be capacity constraints.

Matt Cutts – Google Not prepared, but informal remarks. High order nits: what do people worry about? He often finds that honest webmasters worry about dupe content when they don’t need to. G tries to always return the “best” version of a page. Some people are less conscious. The person claimed he was having problems with dupe content and not appearing in both G and Y. Turns out he had 2500 domains. A lot of people ask about articles split into parts and then printable versions. Do not worry about G penalizing for this. Different top level domains: if you own a .com and a.fr, for example, don’t worry about dupe content in this case. General rule of thumb: think of SE’s as a sort of a hyperactive 4 year old kid that is smart in some ways and not so in others: use KISS rule and keep it simple. Pick a preferred host and stick with it…such as domain.com or www.domain.com.

Make sure you are consistent in your linking, because this will cause problems for robots. Use absolute links since they don’t usually get re-written by scarpers. Speaking of…make sure you have a copyright notice at the bottom of each page. Thinks you should use this a a blogger too. They have been trying to produce better ways to figure these kinds of things, and some of this “picking the right host” framework is in the new Bid Daddy center. Also recommend using the sitemaps tool to help diagnose and debug content. Sitempas has a tool where you can take robots.txt “out for a test drive.” How would the Googlebot really respond to this? Will tell you specific things that will be disallowed.

Q&A

First Danny…going back to feeding content. How \can you ensure your page will be the original page and thus the displayed one. Rajat: we are trying hard to determine what the original page is, by using shingling techniques and other techniques to determine if the content is altered. Matt: has heard more people are concerned about this. Asks how many have had content stolen: lot of hands. 3 methods of copying someone else’s content: 1. Steal from search engine (copying directly from results). 2. Outright webpage copy stolen. Usually the lifetime of that is relatively long. 3rd type is RSS scraping…this is more difficult, since it can copied so quickly. This is difficult to catch because it can happen so much quicker than scarping from a webpage might happen. If it is always you that is getting ripped off, he says, that is actually point in your favor. They can try to see who wrote stuff historically…how much you have been copied from, and how much of people’s stuff you copy.

Someone asks about having a hundred directory types of sites, and using the same instructions for adding content, will this trigger duplicate content? Make sure that there is “real content” on each site. He would recommend using one domain to host the directions. Say “we are part of this network so go here for instructions.” Matt adds that diversity is very useful.

Using a hidden DIV…what is the policy on hidden links and JavaScript? Matt: in general hidden links are a bad thing. The content should be of use to a visitor, and thus so should the link be visible. Re: JavaScript use also can be misused to try and cheat, so be careful. SE’s are getting smarter about JS, a lot of times simple heuristics can do the work. Rajat adds: make sure that you know that intent is clear, and finishes with “so cloaking is bad.” (Lots of laughs) Jake ads that if you have an Ajax application that each gets different content, serve a cloaked page to the SE’;s and the Ajax to the users. Hide the Ajax interface from the SE’s, and keep the content on the page (styling it out if needed). Matt says “NO…we will care, and it can get you banned if you are cloaking. He recommends if you have a weird site menu and “all sorts of Ajax,” use the sitemap to serve the content!

Didn’t really get the whole question, but Matt answers “there is nothing wrong with creating a template, but if you aren’t adding useful content it’s going to end up in the ghetto/bad neighborhood with lots of other ‘useless’ sites.” Rajat makes what he says is a philosophical content: SE’s are still in infancy, and while certain limitations re: Ajax etc may exist today, the SE’s will be improving here.

If I have five paragraphs on a page, and two are available on other sites, is this dupe? Rule of thumb: ask someone who has no association with you to look at he two pages and say what they feel. Kind of like the “grandma test.” Someone says would you have your grandma look at your herbal Viagra site?” (laughs…this is from a comment made earlier about herbal Viagra) If lots of content is copied, then it looks more like a less value site.

As great as this session is…catch the next conference and you’ll get the rest of the Q&A.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

They moved this session from the big room upstairs the the small room. Duplicate Content session is the one to be at, and I am not there, but the rest of the conference is. I am glad Ben will be covering it.

Jeffery Rohrs moderator, David Adler, Peter Raymond and Deborah Wilcox are the speakers.

David Adler has his own practice, he focuses on working with smaller SEMs, Web design firms and so on, getting them through basic contracts and IP issues. He has been doing this for about 8 years now, and taught a class on it at Columbia.

Deborah Wilcox, Partner of Baker & Hostetler LLP. She focuses on trademark and copyright areas of law. She is always surprised of how things develop in the SEM world and the law is so far behind.

Peter Raymond, Partner at Reed Smith. He specialized in IP, copyright, trademark, and he is a litigator. There is not black and white line in what you can and cannot do.

Jeffery adds that the law is very slow. The legal process requires letters being sent back and forth, but can get as far as litigation.

Situation #1: Trademarks and PPC Ads
- Competitors (and others) using your trademark as the keyword trigger for their PPC ads
- Competitors and others using your TM in their PPC copy
- He uses the pontiac ad example, with mazda advertising on the TM of pontiac

Peter said comparative ads is legal as long as the claims are truthful. The bigger issue is of trademark infringement. And this can be construed as a TM issue.

- Deborah said that Yahoo! in the past always allowed comparative advertising, but last week they announced you can no longer buy the TM name for comparative advertising. Google's policy said it will sell the keyword to anyone for comparative reasons. In the case of pontiac, they are using the TM pontiac in the title of the Google ad and that is against Google's policy. So pontiac can call Google and have them change the title.

Situation #2: RSS & Scraping
- Situation
-- Splogs or other unauthorized sites use RSS and or scraping the copy to generate the page content that can be monetized via contextual ad networks
-- He shows an example of a splog with Google AdSense ads
- Questions
-- How do you discover this type of unauthorized use?
-- Is this actionable?
-- http://fightsplog.blogpsot.com/

David said this is about fair use. There is no fine line with this. You must look at every specific case, how much is used, where it is used, is it being used for a commercial purpose and so on. From a preventative standpoint, they draft a comprehensive terms of use that is in a sense a contract. You can also password protect your content (hmmm). The technology is advancing much more quickly then the law. the argument is that these people are getting the data out there quicker, broader and so on (people laughed).

Jeffery shows an example and asks David if its actionable. I am not going to get into the details but most of it is common sense (no need to go to court right away).

Debra said you get a little bonus if you register your work within 3 months. Copyright certification is $30 or so, and its a two page form, its very easy.

How should a blogger do this? David said, File copyright registrations as often as possible. Debra said its often not possible so focus on your most important content.

Situation #3: PR Modification
- Situation
-- Online PR distribution
-- 3rd Party site strips your PR links in favor off InelliTXT ad links to competitor sites
- Questions
-- Is there actionable copyright infringement?
-- What course(s) of action can you take?
-- Who do you approach first - the PR network, the 3rd party site or the IntelliTEXT owner (Vibrant Media)

Great session but its all mostly Q&A and Q&A bores me, sorry for short coverage on this.

Situation #4: Site Content
- Situation
-- Well-ranking elder law site
-- Competitor copies page content verbatim
- Questions
-- How do you discover this type of copying?
-- What's your first course of action?
-- Would the DMCA offer some assistance?

David: The first thing you do is print off the copies of the Web site. Gather evidence and worry about what would be excluded at trial, at trail. Because the web page can be changed instantly. Under the DMCA there is a notice and take down provision, it exempts Web hosts from contributory infringement for hosting the content. There are some formalities involved and if you follow them, it should be easy. But you do not need a lawyer to do this often.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Amanda Walington starts the session with a question about how many bloggers are in the room right now. A good majority raises their hands. She starts with the Book of Blog Truths (or untruths). The truths are a blog must be a simple web page that has frequent updates, each having its own URL. Not necessarily, she says. The updates, posts, are arranged in reverse chronological order. Not everyone does that. It can allow reader to commend and join a conversation with the writer and other readers. Not always the case. Her point is that those truths of what we used to think blogs were are no longer hold to true.

She next moves to RSS Myths. RSS is just for promoting blogs. No. Another myth is that RSS really hasn’t caught on quite yet. Nope, not that either. RSS does not really need SEO-type optimization. HTML can be very easy. Amanda next goes into looking a simple RSS feed and details all the various parts such as header, channel data, and then the items in the feed. Blogs are extending and changing the tasks and role of the search marketer to include: Brand and reputation monitoring and management. Content strategy and development. Link development and so on.

Blog Optimization

Start by optimizing the blog itself. Build and use a keyword list when writing posts. Don’t use graphics where plain HTML will work. Use keywords whenever possible to identify resources and blogroll. Write powerful keyword-rich, worthwhile copy often. Give every post a theme – stay on message. Don't start throwing everything including the kitchen sink in the post. Make multiple posts to extend your message. Pay attention to titles and make them keyword rich. Use keywords in anchor text with links. If your post links to a valuable resource such as a publication, link the citation because chances are it’s an authority on the topic. See mentions Search Engine Roundtable. :-)

Next socialize your blog. Inbound links are valuable so garner them. Cross link your website and blog. Notify other bloggers about your blog via comments and email. Join the conversation by writing posts that reference other blogs. Become a link hub, an authority site, by making your blog a real resource. You can also ramp up your traffic. Submit your feeds, either by hand or using tools like RSS submit. Make sure pinking is turned on. Claim your feed at Technorati and subscribe to your own feeds. Use My Yahoo and My MSN accounts to submit to these search engines. Track which engines you are listed in.

Make subscription easy. Use chiclets (or chicklets) such as images so people can subscribe to your blog. Also include bookmarking sites such as del.icio.us.

Optimize your RSS feed. Use keyword ins the feed title, less than 100 characters. Write your description as if for a directory, less than 500 characters. Use full paths on links and unique urls for each item. Each feed should have a keyword theme. Include images for branding. What are some ways that your can get your RSS beyond the blog. Well, you can use it for affiliate commissions, syndicating your content on other sites. New product announcements, security alerts, product uses tops, and so on. Amanda next goes into a lot of questions to ask about feed implementation. Measuring the results of your feeds is also a good idea. Stats can come from many sources and it's going to get easier over time to do a lot of this.

Sessions stops for a second, there is a whiny high pitched sound in the background, someone lets them know up front. Been several interruptions this session. Moving on....

Stephan Spencer is up next and he starts by going into the various types of blog search. His suggestions is that your don’t need to optimize for each engine. He says that full text is important, and not summaries. By default try to keep 20 or more items (not just 10) posts per feed. Make your brand name is in the item title. Be sure to have a compelling description.

Optimizing your blog, his take. Be sure to redo your internal hierarchical linking structure. Tag clouds and tag pages (ultimatetagwarrior plug-in) can be useful. Related posts as also good. List top 10 pots and the next and previous listing. He goes on to talk about tag clouds and so on. You can take many different approaches to listing your tag cloud in different locations. Sometimes these tag clouds can be beneficial on all pages, or just keeping it on the homepage.

Stephan recommends that when optimizing your blog, be sure to add the blog name at the end of the title, not at the beginning. The tag name should do in the title on a tag page. Customize with additional keywords for display only on your home page. The urls can be rewrite to contain keywords, hyphens not underscores. 301 redirects from yourblog.com to www.yourblog.com. Also be sure to make the posts title a link to the permalink page. Use Neat-O-Tool from webuildpages to look for opportunities. Couple other things, be sure to use emphasis tags with posts such as bolds and emphasis. Check.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

This session covers what's new in the world of paid listings and other search advertising programs with moderation duties handled by Dana Todd of SiteLab. Dana and the panel give this session a "fashion" theme since it was fashion week recently here in New York, hence the photo above. Speakers include: Misty Locke of Range Online Media, Brian Mark of Toolbarn.com, Michael Sack of Inceptor and Joshua Stylman of Reprise Media.

This session is very different in that it is a forum, with no PowerPoint presentations. Dana Todd starts out with "news" including, click prices are up, Ask is sexier, Looksmart says they're better, MSN draggin out launch, pay per call is getting some attention and no more trademark ads on Yahoo.

A SEMPO survey reported that only 33% of respondents were happy with their SEM agencies for PPC, down from 62% last year. 25% were unhappy and 42% report mixed results.

What's keeping Dana up at night?
- Erosion of the search bubble, margins and SEM workforce
- 2nd tier engines are losing the trust battle
- Where is vertical search going?
- Small businesses are underserved. Their budgets are too low for most agencies to be able to justify taking on.
- A very large % of companies reported in the SEMPO survey want to take SEM in-house. Are SEM's better off being absorbed into agencies, companies?
- Are SEM firms going to become the service bureau's of the future?

Dana now walks the audience.

What kind of ratings would you give search engines for their input?

Misty: Room for a lot of improvement. Overall, rates them a 6.
Brian - a 6 is generous. We're not seeing a lot of service as an end buyer. No rep, no service.
Dana - is no rep better than a bad rep?
Michael - who's creating the strategy? Laments search engine ad reps, wet behind the ears, mis-advising clients. Gives an example involving Google. -1
Josh - Agrees that some "fresh off the boat" people at search engines are advising clients. Yahoo seems genuinely interested in SEMs buying their product. MSN is making an effort towards better customer service, their service "has been outstanding".
Misty - AOL is actually making an effort. What is the "next level" of service we need?
Michael - You should be getting your research from 3rd pary entities, not from search engines that have an interest in competitors bidding on the same terms.

Dana - What about the technical availability. Horror stories about systems being down, little lead time for system maintenance. Asks panel:
Misty - How many of you use APIs as a way to upload mass updates. Yahoo has done well to communicate technical issues. Google gets negative points. They are still in the habit of making changes and not telling anyone. "Oops it didn't work". MSN gets five stars.
Josh - Agree on Yahoo/Google communication. That said, Google's system is a more stable platform.
Misty - When APIs go down, has anyone noticed that you can't update your bids for 3-4 days?

Audience: You mention Ask's API. The question about ASk is distribution. That's a difficult call because some ads will go out to tier one partners some to tier two. Ideally we would segment.
Josh - Wonders wheather Ask will go the route of Google and allow advertisers to build their own ad network and cherry pick sites. "Ask is the RC cola of search."

Audience: Can you address the fee structure for clients?
Misty: It varies, but flexible. It needs to be enough to cover of the assigned ad team. Usually % of media. Hybrid of % and flat fee. Hybrid of $, flat fee and CPA.
Josh - We're a public service, we do this for the love of the craft - audience laughs.

Dana - We're in the communication industry. Are the search engines good communicators?
Black box - when you're bidding in the Google system you don't get 100% disclosure of all data related to that ad and how the ad is served and when.
Michael - When I think of paid search advertising, I think of it in terms of a calculated risk. When Google doesn't communicate how they are going to rank or serve your ads, you leave the realm of calculated risk and move into just risk.
Josh - Google has made some controls available - separating contextual from search. It's the auction process that's the issue. The fact is, no one knows how Google works. It's a matter of time before Yahoo implementing it's own complex marketplace.
Misty - Describes how when you upload terms to Yahoo, behind the scences, Yahoo relates some of your phrases behind the scenes to other phrases. Example: "travel" to "budget travel". For other media, you "know" where your ads are going to be placed. With search, you do not have those kinds of controls. Scores search engines negative 25.
Michael - Being able to test all the intermediary variables that affect conversion is part of good marketing. Doing so is part of the value that SEM agencies bring to clients. Scores search engines a zero.
Brian - Describes how he cannot control the ad placement is frustrating, particularly with Google.

Audience - I find it hard to believe that the companies and agencies don't tell the search engines about their disatisfaction and issues with "black box" ad serving.
Misty - They do have advisory boards and councils. They are also running a business. There have been improvements.

Audience - I sit on one of those boards so this is good to know.
Michael - Can you imaging what would happen to have a sit-in and pause your ad campaigns? They might listen when that happens.

Audience - I'm one of those advertisers that wants to bring SEM in-house. If your compaign cannot be executed according to the strategy, why would I outsource?
Dana - MarketingSherpa did a study on agencies vs in-house. Agencies do it better because it's all they do. The other part is maximizing the campaing, the linguistic part of it. Those are not typically the skills of an in-house marketer.
Josh - A lot of that heavy lifting happens through technology. Agenciesy can focus on analysis and getting strategic value out of the data. In house marketers do not always have access to that technology and do not get to spend the time on the strategy.

Audience - It seems last quarter Google's revenues were up over 100% and therefore your revenues are up over 100%, yet there is some disatisfaction in what you're saying.
Josh - I don't think this is a concern about revenue slowdown. Our businesses are growing as fast as any sector. You're sensing frustration of the changing nature of the industy. Understand, PPC used to be about 5% of pages and now with contextual it's about 100%. Soon print and radio will come into the mix.
Misty - Service has to set you apart. The fact that over 50% are not happy with SEMs, there's confustion about hwo you can trust.

Money Makeover - How do you think the search engines are doing handling your money, the advertisers' money?
Who do you think is the best money manager?
Panel- MSN

Click Fraud
SEMPO just released info that the number of advertisers concerned with click fraud has increased substantially.
Michael - Surveys audience 20-40% citing click fraud
Josh - Yahoo and Goolgle do a tremendous job at detecting click fraud. We've seen an amazing response to detection and getting credited. Tier twos are not as responsive. Marketers need to account for a pecentage of their ad spend to click fraud.
Michael - I have a friend that owns a sweatshop that has employees click on his clients' competitors ads. Search engines should get together as a consortium and share data anonymously and find the fraud.

Is it Google, Yahoo or MSN?
Showed screen shots of anonymous search results pages - they seem very similar.

Dana - Is anything creative happening?
Michael - MSN AdCenter people are saying AdCenter is "just like Google". It is exactly like Google. Where's the creativity?
Josh - Brings up trends towards offline integration such as dMarc and Google print.
Misty - Looking forward to enhancements such as display of the ads.

Audience: What about second tier search engines. Enhance, MIVA? Are they worth considering?
Michael - There's a reason you don't hear talk about tier 2 engines.
Josh - You can get value from tier 2 engines but be careful.
Michael - Shopping search engines are a different category than tier 2 engines like Kanoodle, Miva, etc.
Misty - Second tier engine campaigns are up/down up/down.
Josh - To use the financial metapor, tier two engines are the "over the counter" stocks.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The moderator begins by introducing the people on the panel. It is a wide group of people that expertly represent those that are doing something about or with paid search and click fraud issues. He also talks about the things that have gone on since the last time they conducted this session. There is a lawsuit that is going on against Google (CLRB Hanson Industries vs. Google). The S&P have downgraded Google in part due to click fraud issues. There is rumblings of click fraud on the “SEC radar” and is looking into click fraud. The firms Fair Issac & Alchemist Media announce “most rigourous study ever of click fraud”. Greg from WebGuerilla clickbots his clients in the name of science. Click Forensics launches the Click Fraud Network.

They go into various types of click fraud. The type of fraud for Financial Gain such as contextual ad affiliates clicking for dollars. The competitive advantage such as clicks to drain competitors PPC advertising budget. Revenge is also a type of click fraud. Blackmail or exploitation of a network is possible and finally Anarchy is a type of click fraud. Any type of malicious activity under click fraud should be under consideration. One of the speakers mentions that sometimes the search engines get it wrong that there are cases where real clicks are counted as fraudulent. Greg Boser next goes into competitive sabotage and the example of Mesothelioma on area that has been exposed to random sabotage. He says the clickbots are running rampant in Google’s domain parking system. I wonder if the same thing is happening with Yahoo? He goes onto explain an example of someone going to a domain by typing in url, doing a search, and then click on an advertisers ad 200 times, and the search engine giving credit for those clicks as real.

So is there too much paranoia with click fraud? Not necessarily some of the speakers say. It’s a big threat to Google’s business model and it’s a serious issue. However it can be difficult to look at a lot of data and Yahoo mentions they want to partner with firms to compare data. In the last 2-3 years there has been a big rise into the click fraud sanitation industry, there are more options and more companies offering click detection techniques.

There are several click fraud detection methods.

• Manual clicks (from individuals or “armies”) – this is not an efficient method however as its easier to catch as dozens of IP’s are needed and lots of people.


• Fake or masked IP (core of using proxies)


• Non-successive clicks


• Destroyed referrers


• Click bots

They next go into talking about proxies. Greg mentions that the highest risk click fraud is those potential malicious people that use a system of spyware in combination with a clickbot. The spyware or virus installs and infects thousands of machines and then uses a clickbot to click on ads all day. The person who got infected has no idea what is going on. He said its very difficult to track, and is not sure what the search engines will do about it.

There are some tactics that search engines are using into combat click fraud. They are:

• Dedicated fraud departments


• Click filters


• Pattern recognition software


• ROI analysis


• Human intervention


• Review of advertiser documentation

Yahoo mentions that they evaluate clicks along 20 to 50 data points. Some of the data points include: IP address, user session information, user cookie information, looking at the network an IP belongs, user’s browser information, search term requested, time of click, rank of the advertisers listing, bid of the advertisiers listing, time of the search, time of the click. Both Yahoo and Googe do offer advertisers a process by which they can submit questionable clicks for review and verification. I will insert here that I have used these systems and they are very disappointing. It can be rather painful in order to get refunded for potential click fraud as various processes in order to contact Google/Yahoo are inane and tedious. One of the best ways to avoid the long process of trying to get money refunded for click fraud is to establish an effective click fraud detection tool from the start. Some of the search engine reps go into refunds that happen automatically for click fraud that can occur. I have discuess with some clients that even though they may get refunds, they don’t seem logically enough, a $20 dollar refund for a $60K a month spend is less than satisfactory. However there are many that do get probably funded and the search engines are becoming better on working with advertisers.

There are some ways that advertisers can track and document click fraud on there on. Some of those methods include:

• Referring IP address


• Successive clicks


• Click volume variance


• Odd traffic referrers


• Geography of clicks


• Seasonality


• Bills


• Credit notices

One of the speakers mentions a change to the terms of service Google did last Q2 in 2004. That before they said “Google states we detect most invalid clicks” to “Our goal is to detect most invalid clicks”. What!? She says that is rather broad, and they could be trying to cure world hunger for all they knew. There was criticism thrown at Google for this aspect, and if they would be more forthcoming then they probably wouldn’t be facing litigation and criticism. The Google rep responds with rebuttal to that. He says he does not know what the FAQ said that year, but that their network of advertisers has expanded a lot and the various policies of their advertisers are different.

Some possible solutions for combating click fraud:

• Greater Data Disclosure such as network/advertiser sharing, PPC network provided tools, and great advertiser control over contextual distribution.


• Industry Intermediary such as independent, cross-ppc networls


• Cost Per Acquistion (CPA) models

Greg next goes into to talk about some litigation issues and some of the stuff I mentioned below with low refunds for click fraud. He said he mentions a case where a lawyer from here in New York spent 2 million dollars and got a total of $325 refund. He says that is very insulting and unacceptable.

The Google rep counters to the argument that the reason for litigation against the search engines is that they have not been more forthcoming and gave disclosure. He disagrees with the responses from the other speakers. Yahoo counters that they have been tracking click fraud since the turn of the century. He is pretty fired up and defensive in his position.

The session was very good, and a lot of discussion going on. Some heated replies and overall you could feel some of the frustration of regular advertisers and search marketing firms in dealing with click fraud. The search reps seems to be rather defensive as well insistent that adsense returns good ROI and so on. This session was more about click fraud then auditing paid listings.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Detlev Johnson – Position Technologies. Very small room for this topic…full already 5 minutes before the start. (added- when I left the session a little early, there were literally 50 people standing outside the room by the door in order to hear this topic) Welcome everybody, we are going to introduce the idea of what an algorithm is. Basically, it uses a computer to rank sites in an order of some “pseudo-relevancy.”

Rand Fishkin – SEOMoz.org

“Understanding Search Engine Algorithms Requires Serious Research.” This is an advanced track session, so he hopes people have a basic understanding. Why study search algos? Where to find research? What has the SEO community learned from algo analsyis?

Why study search algos? To gain an understanding of how SE’s work. Potential clients, managers, and your staff and team will thank you. A strong understanding eases identification of keywords difficulty (how hard is it to optimize). Where is research published? (see: seomoz.org/blogdetails.php?ID=850) Some places: Patents/apps. University research, books, IR and SEO blogs, conferences and sites- use the IR sites if you want to talk about the “super complicated issues.”

What have we learned from algo analysis? Google’s classic algo: PageRank. A map of the web can be constructed, etc… After PR, JohnKleinberg at IBM used “HITS” algo…what do links say about a site, hubs and authorities, addition of “CLEVER” allows for further research. (note: please search for both of these to find out more about them) More recent integrations of algo analysis include TrustRank. SE’s want to be able to put trust into certain sites and take away from others. They don’t want paid links to influence. Feels that Reciprocal links, “spam islands” and other FFA link “schemes” may be targeted. Guest book & blog comment links may not always be the best sources for relevance. Tells a story about an interview he had, and then the writer of the article spoke to Matt Cutts about the site that Ran mentioned that was buying links for the site from Harvard Crimson, which was (emphasize “was) a good .edu site to buy links from. Suddenly the ranks dropped. (my thought: d’oh! That must be why Jim Boykin says to never tell Matt Cutts your URL’s)

Google applied for patent: “Information Retrieval based on Historical Data.” Identifies areas that can be targeted including links, site registration data, user data (clicks, time on site, ectc…). The source and speed of links gains may be a “flag.”

The future: social and personalized search. Refining & addition of info sources. Greater individual attention to links and sites. Improved detection of “manipulable” areas. What do experts think is most important: seomox.org/articles/search-ranking-factors.php lists these in order of their importance.

Bill Slawski – Seo by the Sea, Inc.
Talks about “vertical creep into search results session from yesterday and the question from the audience about “how did they get there?” (the vertical listings) The answer is obviously algos. Goals: learning how search works. Build sites that rank well. Find good questions. Understand limitations of SE’s. Anticipate the future of search.

Things to use when researching: Primary sources: SE guidelines, patents and patent apps, papers form SE employees, official and unofficial blog posts (googleresearch.blogspot.com, for example). Secondary sources: academic papers, trusted commentators. Other sources: forums, articles, newsletters, experimentation.

Evaluating trustworthiness: From Stanford Pervasive Technologies Laboratory. There is a bunch of good guidelines on their site regarding how to make your site look “credible.” For example: place your address on a site, and do not place it within an image. When evaluating a patent, ask: what problem does it claim to address? Who are authors? Cites to other sources? Related solutions? Other search engine approaches? (are they even doing anything in regards to the stated problem?) Opportunities to experiment? Need to ask these when looking at patent apps…he grins and says: “does G release a patent app simply because they want Y and MSN to spend resources on trying to emulate?” (laughs)

One recent patent app discussed assigning geographic locations to pages. US Patent app 20050182770. This patent app discusses the ability to favor websites from specific locations instead of directories that list the sites. Would this be something the SE’s want? Of course they do…they want relevancy immediately useful to the SE user instead of having to take steps through a directory. The writers of this patent app are two brothers from Australia that work at Google in DC. They have also released some other patent apps…many dealing with Google Maps. Their former company, Where 2 Technologies, was acquired by Google.

Quick note to SE’s: “Denzell Washington” and “Kentucky Fried Chicken” ARE NOT geographic locations. (laughs)

Jon Glick – Become.com
Introduced by Detlev as having been with AltaVista through lots of changes, and now has helped to start become.com. Algos: what is the stuff that will actually impact rankings? Some are done to confuse competitors or to make them do unneeded research (as Bill said.) Remember that they do not have to use all the features that are mentioned in a patent, and conversely they don’t have to place everything that they will use in the patent. So you need to ask what will be used, and what wont?

“New” ranking tools possibly being/going to be used: CTR (click-through-rate) being used as an organic ranking factor. None of the SE’s could use this because it would be really easy to spam. The first uses of CTR by the SE’s will more likely be used for demotion only.

Time spent on a site? This is used to flag sites where users hit the back button almost immediately. The site may be 404, the site is clearly off topic. Boosting ranking for final destination sites? Actually SE’s “prefer” (ask Jon for a better explanation on this) sites that do cause an eventual visit back to the SE results. For example Brittany Spears searches usually cause the visitor to go to a site, check out some pictures (or song lyrics if you are me – in case my wife is reading this), and usually go back to the listings to see another site?

SE’s do keep a history of sites, so updated content is good. Tricks of changing the timestamp, etc…just to get a quicker re-crawl: this won’t work. Duplicate detection technologies used to find meaningful changes to a site.

Most SE’s limit how quickly a site can gain connectivity (sandboxing, link aging topics) A sudden jump in links can draw scrutiny from the SPAM cops…if they are legit, you’ll be OK.

“Tagging” unlikely to be used: easy to keyword stuff. Inound anchor text offers the same benefits with a better source validation. None of the major SE’s use the META keywords tags anymore. However, tagging is still very useful for multimedia rankings (video search and podcast search, for example.)

Evaluation of out-links: SE’s are starting to look at outlinks. G and Y use it for spam detections. Couple of notes: ad units don’t count. Some SE’s may increase rank slightly if you link to authoritative sites. Be careful who you trade links with.

Use of personal data: Information sources for SE’s include: user registration, search history, Yahoo groups and the like can indicate interests, etc. However…what can they do with all this data? How can it be applied to an algo? Also…multiple users of the same machine may cause problems. There is serious concern about both privacy and perception. Zip codes/IP may be used to improve local results, as Bill and Rand mentioned. This is called “entity extraction” process. So once again, make sure you place your address in the footer.

Q&A
Re: local search…does adding info beef up local and in turn remove some nationwide results? Jon says not really, it will mostly just boost your local ranks probably. You can also get results by placing your phone number on the page (not just the “800” number) in order for the SE’s to be able to geo-identify you.

If you have many reciprocal or paid links that are “fair,” should you be worried? Rand: almost feels that you should stay away from active link building. Do active PR, do active marketing, do promote, but DON’T go pay for links, go to directories, unless you are “out of new site penalty period.” Jon: make sure the links you get have good targeted kw anchor text (hey guys how about leaving something for us in “Linking Strategies tomorrow? :p) Detlev adds: it’s all about context.

Ways to test? A good idea is to use a throw-away domain if you are really worried, since SE’s will usually only give one warning before banning. Detlev ads that you should read the site content out loud and make sure it makes sense. Don’t ruin your brand with a message that is horrid just due to SEO.

An attendee worried about transferring hosting of a site with great UK rankings to a US host? The speakers seem to all agree this won’t be a problem, because when they see the site they will notice the content has remained the same. The fact that IP has changed will probably not hurt you. If you switch the registration of the site, you may lose some UK rankings.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Rebecca Lieb from ClickZ is the moderator.

Rob Key from Converseon is up first.

Search impact on brand repuation:
- 92% of journalists use search engines to research stories
- missed other points...

- How you are being defined is often in the hands of 3rd parties
- He shows a search on splenda (which reminds me I covered this session before)
- High Rankings Does Not Necessarily Equal Greater Credibility
- There is about 16,000 "detractor sites" that are anti product or services information.
- He shows several examples of searches on brand names with "detractor sites" in the SERPs.
- The Reputation Conversation; you have "enterprise generated content", "mainstream media" and "Consumer generated content"
- EGM, MSM, Social Media, Blogs, Reputation Aggregators, Constituencies
- He shows an example of a "reputation attack" in action. Where four of the top 10 results were negative listings
- So they changed their name but then a blog blogged it and it didn't help. :)
- A brand is an "experience that creates an impression"
- Brand and product reputation is clearly a discussion that creates a perception

So what do you do?
- Litigation
- They recommend Search Engine Reputation Management
- You need to understand your most aggressive detractors are and who can help you.
- Then you should create a "SERP Visibility Map" bucket the top 10 listings in buckets of good and bad
- Then you need to map the conversation (competitors/detractors, early adopters/envangelists, and the core).
- Develop a Five Point Strategy from Findings
-- Minimize detractors
-- Engage via optimized EGC
-- Mobilize programs to generate CGM
-- Continue to mind the conversation

- Manage your shelf space; dont think about optimizing your site, but optimizing your communication
- Become a content company; be authentic, take points of view on important industry events, lead the conversation, consider podcasts and videos, and so on.
- Help inspire positive consumer generated media (like Apple)
- He then shows the pontiac search

Robert Garner from Agency.com
- Why should you be concerned?
-- Search engine shenanigans (content theft, typo abuse)
-- There is a bounty on your brand terms (engines and affiliate programs provide this incentive)

SEO Techniques:
- Content Theft
- Site Scraping
- Typo Jacking

Resolution:
- File a spam report with the engines
- Contact the site owner and ask to remove content
- Review options with a legal consultation

- Cast Study - Federal Trademark Infringement Case

Domain Registrations
- Domain aggregators; some have stockpiled 100,000s of domains
- Aggregators partner with search engines
- Engines run search network ads on domain networks
- Engines and domain aggregators split text ad fee revenues
- Some estimate Yahoo brings in 15% of its YSM income from domain based search ads
- Trademark issues with this, since many advertisers are unknowingly placed on competitors trademarks
- Relevancy issues; some publishers have control of which ads appear on landing pages and they don't always choose the most appropriate ads

Best Defense:
- Research all variations of your brand terms
- Compare terms against .com domain names in whois
- Acquire domain names, register them if not taken, buy from registrant, catch a drop (snapnames), cease and desist, arbitration (uniform dispute resolution policy)

Nan Dawkins from Red Boots Consulting who will be focusing on blogs.
- Blogs are huge
- 30% of all internet users are visiting blogs
- 77% think blogs are good way to get info
- 33% of journalists say they use blogs to uncover breaking news

Blogs and CGM
- 44% of internet users create content but blogs are 14% of that pie, forums are 83%
- If they aren't the biggest source, then why worry about it?
- Blogs are highly visible across multiple search scandals
- Blogs dominate the SERPs on "brand + [negative keywords]"
- Blogs are the voice of long term consistent voices
- Blogs can develop a following very quickly
- Bloggers create CGM across multiple channels
- Journalists follow blogs
-- 51% said they use blogs regularly
-- The main stream media is using blogger terms
- Step 1: Listen and Monitor what bloggers are saying about you
-- There are tools to help you with this, discussed in a different session "Blogs, CGM and Buzz" yesterday
-- Monitoring what is visible in search engines
--- Bloggers can gain influence quickly
--- Pay attention to comments
--- Spam can skew results
- Step 2: Engage
-- 50% of bloggers write about companies once per week
-- Only 21% report regular contact from companies
-- Only 2% say they dont want contact
-- Personalized emails work best
-- Develop a trust based relationship with bloggers
-- Enage bloggers for feedback (my personal thoughts - Yahoo is great with this, from personal experience)

Andy Beal from Fortune Interactive
- He said he had a horrible experience with American Airlines flying to JFK and in about a month, search on it. people laughed...
- Blog Tracking Tips:
-- Feedster.com
-- Technorati.com
-- IceRocket.com
-- Google.com/blogsearch
-- BlogPulse.com
-- RSS Readers (newsgator, bloglines and pluck), create customized RSS searches in these readers
- What to Track
-- Company names
-- Employee names
-- Names use by your competitors (all variations, key executives and product/service names)
-- Monitor RTSS of industry related sites and news feeds
- News and Web alerts
-- Google Alerts and Yahoo Alerts
-- Same deal as RSS but via email
-- Watch for competition's press releases
-- Look for plagiarized content (Google news shows you also web pages and not just news)
- Tracking the Un-trackable
-- Copernic has a tool
-- aignes.com and watchthatpage.com
-- He shows screen captures
- Where to use this?
-- Every page of your competitors site or important pages
-- BBB
-- Alexa
-- Forums
-- RipOffReport.com
-- Any industry news site that doesn't have email alerts or RSS
- Laying Forum Foundation
-- Identify the most pipular forums for your industry forumfind.com and boardtracker.com
-- Task someone to join and participate in forums, its best to do this now then later on
-- Consider sponsoring most influential forums and with blogs
-- Build alliances and partnerships with the most vocal members in the forums (mods, most posts, reputation levels, etc.)
- Responding to Criticism
-- Monitor your RSS feeds and email alerts hourly and act asap
-- Identify the author of the blog, owner of the forum, editor of the site, use whois, or read the profile of the author
-- Read author's pervious work
-- Understand the threat level (how well respected, audience reach, etc.)
- Tactics for Blogs
-- If a entry is factually incorrect, send the blogger evidence, ask for removal or retraction of the entry, offer to keep them informed of future news, and only if no action by blog author add a comment
-- If true but negative, send your side of the story and add a comment to the post and try your best to take it offline
- Will it Accomplish Anything?
-- 94% will remove, editor add information
- Tactics for Forums
-- Investigate facts internally before deciding action
-- Offer to resolve any complaints personally
-- Be honest
-- Take conversation offline
-- Rally friends and peers online
- Balancing Negative CGM

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Danny Sullivan is the moderator on this panel, and looking by the list of speakers, this one should be funny - high expectations guys. So 6 minutes late, we begin... (danny???) He said we need to stop persecuting people with "man bags." He said we have a strict no blogging policy here, everyone laughed. We have Zia Daniell Wigder from Jupiter Research is our analysts panel person. Now the bloggers; Robert Scoble from Microsoft, Jeremy Zawodny from Yahoo, John Battelle was suppose to be here but he couldn't make it so Matt Cutts came on in his place from Google, and finally David Vise who wrote the Google Story.

The topic is completely open and you can ask anything you like. I personally will try to write as fast as possible. No questions about how do I rank well for XYZ. Here we go...

Q: What will be the impact of search and search market share, when Microsoft introduces a new browser with search embedded in the browser.
A: Scoble said he put Google back in his toolbar. He added that Windows Vista embedded search in the whole process. IE7 enables you to add other search engines.
David Vise said he is actually Bill Gates, he looks like him, for real (its crazy). People come over to him and he asks them how their system is operating.... He said he will answer as Bill Gates, the answer is, "we are going to do everything in our power to destroy Google. That means everything, consistent with DOJ, our relationship with the EU. Search will be embedded not only in the next version of what you see, but in everything you do. We are not giving away free dishes like banks do, but we are really out to destroy Google. Immediately after this session, we will destroy Matt Cutts after this session.
Matt Cutts said that he noticed in IE7 and there was information on how to add most search engines outside of Google to the search bar.
Jeremy said they are completely behind the Microsoft plan to destroy Google.
Danny said search has been built into Microsoft for years and despite that Google and Yahoo still succeed.

Q: What are your future predictions of vertical search engines and its impact on major search engines.
A: David Vise said think of the major search engines as the main TV networks and vertical engines as the cable stations. Because we are in such an early period, there will be tremendous growth in both.
Jeremy said a vertical engine requires a special need, and I don't use it often. But if I am looking for a car or house, I will use a vertical search engine. I may you a search engine to locate a vertical search engine. He said he doesn't believe that the verticals will take from the major engines.
Zia said she has seen the numbers increase for both well.
Matt said he thinks it fantastic having these verticals. If you are a major search engine it is a lot easier to write a vertical search. For example, he wrote a porn filter and for fun he changed it to a "code search engine" because the filter applied right across.
Scoble said that he points out Technorati and how that engine is a successful search test. It may be the best blog search engine out there, he said.

Q: How is Google making money on these print ads and pay per call and radio?
A: Matt Cutts said AdSense rose out of a search quality thing they did. Once they have done algorithms and products, they are able to apply them to other areas. So from Web search, to content, to print, to pay per call to radio. They are looking for new ways to expand that.
Scoble said there is a company that is experimenting with buying phone numbers to track these pay per calls and offline ads.
David Vise, Google has Madison Ave very worried. Because they are serving up print ads as an experiment, they bought deMarc (radio), to make it easy for small companies to run print and radio ads, something they have never done before. People like to talk about old media and new media, and how the money is moving from old to new. Google is enabling the channeling of these funds to traditional media.

Q: Rand said he started using delicious as a search engine to figure out what is the hottest thing on the net. Do you guys do that? Will the engines use that?
A: Jeremy said that search ranking is not a democracy, you need to have the skills to build a web page. Tagging services lowers that barrier. Jeremy looks at tags or digg to find hot topics. This is an other time of real time search.
Q: Will it ever be a tab?
A: Jeremy said he doesn't like tabs. He doesn't decide what becomes a tab at Yahoo. Is this ready for the mainstream? No, not yet. But it is incredibly useful.
Matt agrees, how ready is tagging for mainstream? Google allows bookmarks with tags, but he isn't sure how it will play out. He is just considered about spam.

Q: Where is this whole industry going, where should marketers be focusing on?
A: Scoble, local and mapping.
Matt said "buzz", authentic blogs and that what attracts links.
Zia said social search will come sooner then wireless search.
David answered as bill gates, really Microsoft will dominate everything with search and destroy Google and if you want to know when search will go, "where do you want to go today?" He picked up a hat with the Google logo and it will be a nice antique.
Jeremy said he doesn't know how he can follow that speech. Local search and maps, yes. He discusses GPS and how cool it is. He also brought up Yahoo! Answers. Every day people are becoming more involved in content.
David Vise as David Vise said the Teoma search technology that underlines the Ask search engine is very good. Barry Diller said yesterday that they are doing away with the butler, and turning it into Ask.com because they didn't want to make a place where people just asked questions. Now do you want a name Ask.com for a place where you don't want people to ask questions? He said, you will see the butler come back (he is kidding I think). Forget everything you heard yesterday. They will spend a lot of money on Ask.com and it will be like the new coke advertising campaign. You will see jeeves come back, like the traditional coke.
Matt said the butler is big brother and made a motion of taking pictures (See ask jeeves blog for matt spying on Ask).
Danny said you will notice a entourage around Matt as he leaves the room because people are so into ranking well in Google. But there are other ways to get into Google (vertical search, local, maps, news, etc.)

Q: What percentage is spam and how bad is spam compared to email spam?
A: Scoble said I get very little spam and my email is out there. He said he does not like getting email, he prefers RSS. There are approaches that are coming along to fight this.
Matt's Google take on what to expect on spam. Google will be targeting lots of other countries and languages. The big watch word is international Web spam. They always come up with new ways. English is getting better and is pretty good now. Other languages will get better in next several months. Google is open to new ways to look into scalable ways to improve this with algorithms, but if there are other ways to fight spam, they are into that as well (such as personalized search remove result).

Q: Relevant links versus a non relevant link...
A: Matt said scoring links is interesting, they have several ways to do interpret relevant links and non.
Scoble said same with MSN and Yahoo.
Jeremy said that everyone wants search to be relevant but the searchers are doing little to help make them relevant (just look at how people search, short words and there are lots of ways to interpret the answer).
Jeremy added that MyWeb is a good step towards this.
Danny shows off myweb and google remove result and then shows off Google Search History. He put how top sites and seroundtable.com is number 10 on his "top sites" list. Nice Danny.

Q: There was skepticism about Video Search...
A: Matt is a skeptic about having Video search because any time I want to watch a video it didn't work and its only now when its really working now. And it feels like there is more there, then it used to be.
Jeremy, video is interesting because there are technical issues in the background when trying to improve it. Consumption will be radically different with video then it is with normal Web search and he is not sure how, just yet. A site like Flickr couldn't of been predicted earlier. When is video search going to hit the living room?
David said unlike Matt he has better things to do then watch four hours of personal video online. This whole conversation is in the wrong place. He feels video search will dominate in a totally different way. It will be people who want to download people who want to download and watch movies and Tv. There will be a pay per view model. Digital Right Management is being worked on now, to gain access to the video content they really want to see.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The B2B Tactics session explores the unique marketing needs for business to business marketers moderated by Detlet Johnson of Position Technologies.

First up is Chris from ClearGauge. Who asks, what's different about BtoB? Business to business online marketing is a more considered purchase than consumer marketing.

Differences from consumer marketing:

- Goals of BtoB marketing is to start or develop relationships.
- The emphasis is on different search engines. Focus on major search and business and vertical specific engines.
- Keywords - buying cycle and role based.
- Message -
- Landing pages - The difference in messaging and desired outcomes should be reflected in landing pages.
- Next "date" - Don't rush it. With BtoB you don't "kiss on the first date".
- Tracking ROI - Define measurable goals.

Internet is the first user driven medium. Traditionally, marketers pushed their information out. Search is a pull medium.

Often times you have to filter BtoB prospects from similar consumer or unrelated phrases.

Chris provides a range of PPC considerations for BtoB but I cannot see them and he's speaking very quickly.

Tip for blogging conference sessons: Sit in front of the screen where the Powerpoint slides are displayed. Do not sit on the other side of the podium! I know this, but came in late.

Key pillars of paid search.
1. Find: Keyword research. Find phrases based on the position in the buying cycle and also take into account purchasers and influencers.
2. Engage: Relevance of message to keyword is important as well as landing page relevancy.

Described considerations for effective A/B testing with Google.

Best practice for web site content and site architecture.

Web analytics and measurement are important to ensure you measure what matters.

Lead generation funnels according the type of campaign.

Takeaways:
- Focus on the buying cycle
- Remember it's about prospects not products
- Make sure you measure business objectives

Next up is Paul Slack of WebDex.

BtoB Sales Cylce
- Uncovering the need
Prospects research possible options to create a short list of vendors and from that make a selection.

Search Engine Buying Funnel - sweet spot for btob marketers is during the consideration phase.

Targeting your AUdience

Influencers.
Example: Had client write white paper on a certain topic. That very specific ranked well and sent visitors to a lead generation process and had a 16% conversion rate.

Developing an Internet marketing strategy - The challenge is that it's not ecommerce, it's getting influencers to opt-in to your buying process.

It's important to define goals and objectives, target audience, conversion activities, budget, measurement and tracking. Provides an example for defining cost per lead, cost per acquisition and the break even.

Remember: Begin with the end in mind.

Chris Grady from Merak is the last one up. Merak evolved from a single mail server product from a bedroom office to an total communications solution with customers world-widel. The marketing success was a result of search engine marketing.

Grady presents some guidelines from the perspective of an in-house marketer.

1. Turn hurdles into opportunities

Sales cycle

- Id a need
seek solutions
comopoile a lsiot
negotiate price
purchase

Merak Hurdle - late to market
Advantage - SEM enabled them to passively take away customers from competition for about 2 years

2. Identify engines and keywords used by potential btob customers

Review content generated by and used by target audience. Also created a custom keyword analysis tool.
Keyword reference guide. Analyze keyword performance data and put it into a reference guide. Distribute that guide to content developers.

3. Keyword targeting successes. From mining data, found that their largest clients found them from very long search queries.

4. Monitor what activies lead to buying. It appears the more interaction between prospects and Merak, the higher the conversion rate.

Going back in time, he would hire a search engine marketing firm. Can't afford it? You can't afford not to. You need to find a firm that is transparent to how they provide the service.

Q: We sell products to both consumers and busineses. Example: DSL. Advise on how to approach that?

A: Paul Slack. Implement a decision process at the landing page to filter the user to consumer/business info.

A: Chris from ClearGuage: Analyze web metrics to see what kinds of language business users tend to use and bid on those phrases.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb, ClickZ Network. Smaller room…almost full. This session has 4 marketers from major agencies that will present case studies of campaigns related to search, but that search is by no means the whole or central component of the campaigns.

Tessa Weggert - Enlighten

“Blogs, viral marketing, and their effect on search.” Starts by talking about different types of popular blogs. Corporate Blogs: IE: GM’s “Fastlane,” Boing’s “Randy’s Journal.” Products blogs: Stoneyfield Farms, KongisKing.net. Product Blog Tours: Castrol’s blog gives the opportunity to Castrol users to ask abut particular product usage. Blog Book tours: “Readerville.”
Corporate blogs: Best known for establishing a dialogue between corporations and their consumers. Improves corporate image. Product Blogs: increase product awareness. Boost product and brand affinity. Product blog tours: initiate dialogue between companies and consumers. Book tours: allows interaction between writers and readers. Blog influences on search marketing: frequent updates and relevant content can help to boost rankings, and can result in ongoing search presence due to be updated often.

Stenyfield Farms Blog has frequent content updates, which lead to multiple search listings and the proximity effect. Many times Google will list company blogs very highly for brand related searches. This can help to lead to greater brand affinity and eventually sales.

Viral marketing: Key principles to success: 1. offer free service with some sort of value to Internet users. 2. Create unique applications or variation on popular themes. 3. Incorporate humor, if consistent with brand. 4. Remain timely, tap into existing cultural dialogues. Make it easy to spread around. Potential benefits: Increased awareness of a company. Showcase services and creativity, etc. Like blogs, viral marketing helps build links. Quotes Jennifer Laycock in saying that “the best way to build links is to stop requesting them and start earning them.” Gave a quick case study on how Enlightnen used a holiday card on a subdomain, which resulted in 50,000 unique visitors to card landing page from 12/7 to 12/31. They got coverage in Detroit Free Press, Ann Arbor News, and others news sources. They estimate it was a 5-7 times ROI (not sure what she meant by this). Resulted in over ten “serious” business leads. Was indexed within days on 16 SE’s…primarily they feel due to link popularity. Corporate site page views were up 300%. Corporate traffic showed high propensity towards highest value site pages.

Hollis Thomases – Web Ad.vantage

Where search starts, where advertising ends, and how it gets gray. The old days: no text ads in search, only display ads. GoTo which became Overture and was bought out by Yahoo, and of course Google, bought search advertising into mainstream. Can you use popular keywords effectively in display advertising? The answer Web Ad.vatange found was yes, the use of the keyword within an image ad led to greater Click-through rates.

Internet Yellow Pages including Verizon superpages.com do offer options with displays, combining a graphic with an image and other pertinent information. Also uses click-to-call button, which allows people to capitalize on searchers without even having a website. What can you do that are not search but support search? Re-targeting launched by PPC. Advertising.com’s “Lead Back” allows for them to be served additional ads in the future (tracked by cookies) via purchased display ads on other websites. Behavioral – use keywords to trigger behavioral targeting. Nice affinity audiences can be identified when you analyze long-tail terms that are very popular, and then use them within display ads on relevant sites. (showed an example of the term “Mustang check” being popular, and then the display ad purchased on a car-enthusiast website). RSS advertising- automatically through Yahoo or Google contextual versions, but keywords can be bought though networks like Pheedo, Feedster, Yahoo RSS ads. Have seen very high CTR from display ads served in this manner.

Hybrid search/non-search. “Inoventiv” (that is correct spelling) provides a “search & Display ads” system that allows for real time search within the display ads. Integration, consideration & Best practices suggestions: 1. Character restriction in search not equal to additional space allowed within sponsor pages. Lead time for new keywords: in search, this can take time. You can hedge IMP-based ad spend to test responses to offers in search before display. Offer exclusive special offers for non-search. Lastly: don’t be afraid to use search to test what works and carry that over to display/banner search campaigns.

Can display ads impact search? For branding, display impressions have to be very high and visible.

Jinenne Sutherland – Organic, Inc.
Goes though a short history of the use of the Internet. Talks about how people share information. Her notebook is filled with little asterisks that say “check this out.” This leads to bookmarking sites, more visits, etc. Use other Peoples’ Picks found by word of mouth, blogs, email, and vertical directories. This kind of sharing is “creating a new ‘bottoms-up’ or organic approach to navigating the Internet.” How do social epidemics get created, and how do I harness that as an advertiser?

This means hard work for advertisers. Campaign complexity has increased exponentially as we seek to exploit the organic nature of the Internet. Try to align yourself with ways that people share this information.. use original content, viral distribution, RSS, Comprehensive search, time-based promotions, blogs, etc.

Case study: “Meet the Mudds” created to help launch the Jeep Commander. The fictional family is made up of active, well adjusted people that they want to promote the Jeep brand lifestyle. They integrated the following into this campaign: Stared with a “buzz phase” using Webisodes about the Mudds, a virtual geo-caching scavenger hunt, comprehensive search, Online ads, a character blog, viral and DTV distribution, online “fake PR” with interviews of the Mudds, etc…They launched a series of videos that showed the adventures of the Mudds, so people could follow their adventures, pick up clues online or through their cell phone (based on a partnership with Cingular). Some of the results: press in the Wall Street Journal. Great success with signups and people interacting with this. Found that when they did a search for “the Mudds,” good sites had picked up the idea and sent links to the Mudds site, including the popular craveonline.com.

Mark Stephens – AvenueA/Razorfish
“Online Media Interaction Analysis” What is the relationship between Search and Web Media? Are marketers missing something by optimizing each campaign separately instead of together? What are alternatives to managing each media within its own silos. Finding the “Sweet spot” of Custom Attribution by analyzing customer experience management and other factors. Using 3rd party ad serving to support this (sorry was going too fast so I missed this slide). Shows numbers showing media overlap (once again too fast to blog, but very interesting. I asked him after the session to please forward this info and I will update when I get it).

Branded vs. unbranded search conversion lift. The impact of web media was greater for unbranded conversions than for branded search conversions. Then speaks about “the Optimization trap,” based on incorrectly attributed conversions…very important to connect the two and make them work together. What about “conversion attribution?” Most ROI versions only look at the last click, but what other media may have influenced this conversions? Not a one-size-fits-all scenario, each particular client needs their own algorithm.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Misty Locke mods this one up.

Kevin Lee from Did-It.com is the first of two speakers on this session, he starts. Capturing the tail, there are millions of searches every day that are unique. These tail keywords and phrases are highly valuable because searches know what they want exactly, searchers notice the ads that the marketers have written just for them. Millions of unique searches per day, some searches occur once per month or less. Each marketer's graph looks different. The power curve is somewhat asymptotic but flattens out to one unique search per time period measured. He shows a quick example of a long tail search distribution. Campaign goals and objectives should line up with the profile of the searcher. Positive actions vary throughout the buying cycle. Searches at the head have ambiguous desires and needs for several reasons. In addition to the types searches deriving the search inventory at the head, the head contains, link driven traffic from directories, link driven traffic from within the portal, and link driven traffic from syndication patters. Aggressively pursue the tail of the search distribution when the intent of the different tail searches differs widely from each other and the tail searches repeat sufficiently often to justify the unique listing creative, landing pages and bids. Since tail keywords often convert well and customized creative listings capture searcher attention; ROI is high, bids often don't have to be as high. When you have keywords out in the tail, the impression counts are low. You set bids by conversion rates tend to be good, so go in aggressively to start, given the low impression rate and typical CTRs, you may not see significant individual clicks, so consider clustering keywords to get data faster. Google and MSN seem to do all the work when it comes to capturing the tail with broad match, but its not the most efficient way to do this (cost is higher, and quality score is lower). In addition to continuous keyword research, your existing campaign can deliver more tail keywords. Run some Google, MSN or Yahoo in broad/advanced match and watch the inbound keywords with analytics, campaign management software and raw log files. Google DKI (dynamic keyword insertion) comes in handy for long tail keywords. If the search query is too long, the DKI will use the "default creative." Yahoo's standard match always trumps advanced match regardless of bid, that means you need to predict searches as far out in the tail as practical, traffic the listings for those keywords and use advanced match to capture the tail (Yahoo does not have the DKI). Because the traffic at the head represents a huge volume opp but may be early buy cycle, so you may have to treat the head differently. You may want to segment the head in other ways (geo, day part, day of week). This is where technology and analytics become critical.Multitude of simultaneous choices of what to bid and where to focus. Competitive reactions, keyword volumes differ, keyword volatility differs, conversion rate and roi. When do you "kill" a bad tail keyword? Changing the bid or killing off a keyword that has good traffic volume is easy, you need stats to make these decisions. CLuster analysis can help you predict conversion rate. Bidding strategies can also make use of clusters. Stemming relationships within phrases and common landing pages. Targeting the tail and segmenting the head with other targeting parameters allow you to reduce waste, target the best customers, increase profit, improve your messages and offers, be more aggressive when it matters.

Harrison Magun from Avenue A Razorfish

"Taming Your Bid Monkey"

What is the probability of being a twin? 5% (fake numbers). What is the likelihood that the incidence of twins is actually 5%? He brings up a distribution curve, the probability is only 20.5%.

How big a sample do we need to be 90% sure that the incidence is between 4.5% and 5.5%? 5,044 people.

How do we use this data for keywords?

How many clicks do I need?
Conversion Rate :: Clicks Needed
1% :: 25,000
2% :: 14,000
3% :: 9,000
4% :: 7,000
5% :: 5,000
10% :: 2,500

Say you have 400 clicks, conversion rate is 2% (you dont know that yet) and you act after 400 clicks, you have a 60% chance your made the wrong decision.

So how do we act on this data?
- Don't waste your time on insignificant data
- Sedate screaming lunatics (those that yell at you that you have 0 conversion on a hundred clicks)
- Create accurate tests
- Spread the tests out over time
- Understand the factors that are impacting your conversion rates

How can you use these stats?
- Excel
- Your own categorization
- Bid management algorithms and tool sets can save a lot of time but be careful
- Add this knowledge into four levers of search
-- Bid strategy
-- Keyword creation
-- Creatives and landing pages
-- Business Intelligence

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

I have been looking forward to this session today. I covered the first session on this research last year here at New York SES which was met with great enthusiasm. It will be interesting is see how things have changed and what new information they have to share with us. The room is rather packed and it’s as cold enough in here for penguins to start a colony. Gord Hotchkiss opens up serving as both speaker and moderator. He describes the history of the session and that we are interested in how users interact with a search engine.

Greg Sterling from The Kelsey Group is up first. He says that he thinks, writes, and conduct research about how consumers and users interest with search engines. It is critcal in maximizing the value and effectiveness of SEO/SEM and of broader parts. There has been rise of internet use in daily life. The rise of users that consider the internet as crucial and important has risen. As of last year, the internet produced 51% of all new hires in 2005, while print newspaper classifieds were the source o only 5% of the new hires. Online influences purchase decisions of 79% of world be car buyers are internet users. So the internet is not paired with search. Though email still the number 1 daily online activity, search closing in (77%email, 63% search). Broadband is the single factor for the rise of the internet. Its is allowing people to spend more time online. He says there is data available that AOL had the best conversion rate at B2C e-commerce sites of the four major portals/search engines. The vexing topix of search engine loyalty is interesting and there is some conflicting data. Forrester says only 40% of online users say they are loyal to one of the four major search engines, 49% say they use more than one.

He goes on to say internet now has an 84% local reach among online users. 43% of search engine users are seeking a local merchant to buy something offline. 20% of search traffic has local intent. However there are many searches that do not have geographic modifier and a search engines does not know this. Some of the “non-trivial” challenges for SEM included understanding consumer intent, integrating search into broader marketing mix that includes traditional media, and tracking performance of search when used as a branding vehicle.

Alan Rimm-Kaufman is up next and is going to go over click-streams. He explains of how we start from generic ideas to specific things in a click-stream. He next goes over click values and costs and what the market values. Often times marketers describe things by looking at a funnel: awareness, interest, desire, and action. A more generic search phrases indicate a searcher is higher up in the conversion funnel. Generic phrases lay the groundwork for more specific searches. Thus even if the economics of more general phrases don’t meet an advertisers ROI target, general phrases play an essential role in a search portfolio.

Gord Hotchkiss was up last and my laptop battery ran out before I could get the full coverage of his session. So here is the information I remembered and notes I scribed.

Gord gave a good presentation covering how they redid the research they did last year except included MSN and Yahoo this time in the eye tracking study. What they found was that eye movements in the MSN and Yahoo search pages scanned further down the page. They had a harder time of focusing on one central area and had to read further. He said they concluded that Google was the more relevant search engine. It was the search engine, not the user that was influencing the differing scanning behavior. The most interesting conclusion he made was that the results of both MSN and Yahoo are perceived as less relevant than Google. The perception of both search results had an impact on the behavior and eye movements of the participant. Interestingly if you compare Google and MSN for example the results are both relatively relevant so for a search for “Chicago hotels”. Additionally, Gord also pointed out that Google used bolding and highlighting of text of the search phrase on the search result page. He said that doing this effectively made it easier for the user to scan the page. When they pointed out to MSN that they were not doing this, they quickly made the change.

He went on to talk about 3 theories they have been working on.

• Semantic Mapping


• Thin Slicing


• Information Scent

Semantic mapping is an interesting way that users create list of keywords in order to filter the large of amount of date they are presented with. Basically if you are searching for digital cameras you have some ideas in your head about what you are looking for. You can not ultimately scan and consider all the words out there. So you must make it easier and define a set amount. Gord mentioned that you will use the words you have stored up in your head and filter those through other documents and identify the ones that contains the most keywords.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Chris Sherman, Search Engine Watch

Intro: SEM’s have the perception that they are in control of their own destiny, but reality shows that the others who are competing for your terms actually will guide your strategy. The focus of the session is how to approach bidding strategically. Larger room…nearly full.

Krisopher Jones – pepperjamSEARCH.com

Effective bid strategy is essential in the SEM marketplace. Developing an automated approach to diffusing bid wars is essential. The most effective way to combat bid wars is to use automated ROI-based bid management software. Bid war tactics are ROI-based bidding, “bid jamming,” “bid surfing” and “bid shadowing.” Keep in mind that Google and Yahoo provide subtle differences.

ROI-based bidding: This strategic approach allows for systematic update of bids based on a specified ROI objective. While this isn’t used to compete with any specific competitor, this works very well because it focuses on ROI. Bid Jamming: repeated bidding one cent below competitor in order to force them to pay highest max bid. Is this fair? Answer is yes, because top competitors will do this to you. Shows an example of a bid one penny below the #1 advertisers, being the “bid jammer.” Advertiser #1 is thus being “jammed.” Recommends that you use this effectively in conjunction with ROI-based objective. Use only for a highly desired set of keywords. Use bid jamming to diffuse a situation by bidding third right below another bid jammer.

Bid surfing: when you strategically choose positions based on “gaps” in the bids. The “bid surfing” tactic is essentially a way to get the best value for your clicks, avoiding two or maybe three competitors involved in a bid war. Recos: an effective way to maintain top placement at a discount. Also good to use for highly competitive words.

Bid shadowing: when you choose and maintain a bid position above or below a competitor. Recos: use bid shadowing to reduce expensive trial and error typically associated with launching new and untested kws. If you are a small or medium size advertiser, the shadowing technique allows you to follow their leads and hopefully enjoy some of the successes they are.

As the SEM climate becomes more competitive, a search analytics-guided campaign will help you to be more sophisticated. The sophisticated and the aggressive advertiser will survive and thrive. If you are the victim of bid wars, the way to improve is by being more sophisticated and aggressive.

Martin Fleischmann – MostChoice.com

“Know what winning is worth” or “to thine own self be true.” What is a bid war? Just increased competition on a particularly popular terms that you could “get hurt on.” Describes how mostchoice.com manages bid spend manually. They regard bid management as their core competence. They have some proprietary tools, and have not adopted any tools available on the market today, even after testing.

War or no, you can never fly blind. You control: Bidding and creatives. Cyclical variables: Time of day effects and day & seasonal effects. You need to understand these. These combined drive your rank order, and what your conversion rates are. You need to solve all these based on cost per lead and lead volumes, based on revenue per yield (yield) by product, and the capacity/volumes needed to perform optimally. You cannot control competitor tactics and styles, but you need to understand how to react to that. Another uncontrollable issue is fraud, specifically affiliate fraud. They instantly let the portals know about this, but sometimes slow in reacting. Know your metrics in real time.

Tools: great for stable situations, but need to be diligently overseen in order to add intuitive skills and fast reaction time. You cannot win a dogfight on autopilot. Some bid management tool promises versus realities: Promise: tools manage all vs. reality: doesn’t. Promise: Tool reacts non-emotionally vs. reality not proactive or intuitive. Promise: Watches bids often vs, reality: doesn’t react fast enough. Promise: makes good decisions vs. reality: doesn’t.

Prioritize your attention by spend/term. High searches plus high clicks equals easiest possibility for fraud. Know your basic search algebra CPA, profit, etc. Know your variables, and know your competitors. Do they have a huge budget to burn? Are they trying to scare you?

Possible situations: 1. Competitor jumps way over everyone, gets aggressive. Possible tactics toe-to-toe, “penny them”(bid jamming), or push them up further then stay right underneath them. A lot of times if people see that you are watching, they will quickly chose not to fight. 2. Main competitor starts rising: preemptive strike, or cooperate then go up later. 3. Entrance of new competitors: push strongly, engage in a war of attrition, or let others fight the battle. People start to drop fast: look out for affiliate fraud.

Golden rules: think long term. Don’t click on competitors, don’t encourage affiliate fraud, your competitor could end up being a partner later. Understanding leads to respect, which can in turn lead to “coop-etition” instead of competition.

Anthony Muller – Zensem.com

Will share a case study. “the Art of Bid War.” WD Music – m28 year veteran in guitar parts industry. Zensem uses a rev share partnership deal with them. Launched in May 2005 with PPC campaign budget of $2000. They decided to start by doing competitive research. Categorize them and find their strengths and weaknesses. 2 categories: heavy competitors, and smaller competitors. Heavy were bidding on majority of terms. Listed strengths and weakness and found that they had the ability to “bury them” due to budgets. They found that their keyword lists were possibly a weakness because it was such a huge list and hard to manage. Then they looked at their own strengths and weaknesses, and found that the company was flexible, but “an army of one,” incapable of affording tracking. Once they got data to study, they found some areas to take an aggressive stance in the battle. They decided to target high margin terms and dominate them using bid jamming and bid domination.

Battle tips: used their automation against them, use their kw list against them, made sure getting a return, think about long term (winning the war not just the battle), protecting themselves from getting jammed. This helped the bid prices creep down, competitor ads going down midday/late day, competitors completely stopping bidding on some terms.

Stephen Anderson – Rock Coast Media

Two case studies: Money Management Intl. (MMI) and Eastern Mountain Sports (EMS). Most importantly: have to know your goals going into the campaigns. Have to look at your site’s usability/conversion pathway. Know your competition, you may or may not be in a position where you can bid against them.

MMI: “Wrestling Gorillas.” They found when they entered into the space that the advertisers were bidding way above the market on particular terms, often times in “big round numbers” which indicates to him “laziness.” Background: clear and aggressive CPA and volume objectives. They knew that a very small portion of the kws were going to drive the success of the campaign. Unfortunately, the gorillas were there too. War strategy: Customized landing pages for each kw group. Also implemented automated bid strategy to “reign in gorillas.” Frequently updated bid schedule- focus on high-converting times of day. Manually reviewed placements.

Strategy tip: be very careful with Yahoo. They have a thing called “budget smoothing,” which removes listings randomly during certain times of day or moves them into different positions from what is shows within administrative. Results: within 2 weeks, volume increase by 20% and CPA’s dropped, and some gorillas were completely gone.

MMS: “Ready for the Holidays.” All of a sudden the whole bid landscape was turned over due to the arrival of the holidays. New holiday bid strategy included: adjusted ROAS goals, and they sacrifice a little efficiency for volume. Low volume/high efficiency tactics still employed also and spotchecked often. Switched between bid jamming and not bid jamming – again spot checking often. Results: revenues doubled from week 2 to week 5. There was a slight efficiency sacrifice, but it made up for it in volume. Once holidays ended, many of the competitors were gone. Some of them may have left due to bid jamming, which is sometimes “satisfying.”

When all else fails: go for the heart. They had a competitor that called their client and gave them a sob story, which caused the client to call him and ask him to adjust strategy and be “nicer.” (Yechhh…)

Q&A: will increased use of bid management software cause for an increase or decrease in overall pricing? A number of factors involved in that…not just bidding, but also the ability of the site to convert. As sites improve, this will also affect bid management. The one who gets better returns “wins” and can pay more. Chris Sherman ads that so many people are focused on analytics and conversion, but people are entering the game that only want a brand impact, and thus may not care about ROI or ROAS. Must be aware of people getting into the game that are changing the rules regarding bidding, since they essentially just want the number one spot to help reinforce their brands.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Rich media and video are rapidly becoming de facto components for online campaigns of all types. In this session, agency experts will examine and illustrate with case studies what kind of campaigns benefit most from using video; how best to integrate video with other campaign elements; and discuss the creative, production, ad-serving and media challenges inherent to interactive video campaigns.

This session was moderated by Pamela Parker of ClickZ News and moderated by Maria Mandel of Digital Innovation, OgilvyOne, Scott Meyer of About/New York Times, Ian Schafer of Deep Focus and Dorian Sweet of Tribal DDB San Francisco. Since this session deals with video and multimedia ads, it's interesting to blog compared to other sessons about various optimization tactics.

First up is Maria Mandel who says adding audio and video to online ads, it increases effectiveness by 2.5%.

Case study: Ameritrade.
- Client thought they could put their TV commercial online. Shows ad.
- Next they tested an ad that was just for online. Shows another ad. Video created for online was 3 times more popular and generated more conversions.

How to be more engaging?
- Showed example of a scenario based video for Miller Light.
- Showed IBM Ad during US Open showing an ad using multiple technologies to engage the visitor including: podcast, RSS, video. This ad was very successful in terms of metrics: impressions, engagement, podcast downloads, etc.

Case Study: Seeding the Youth Environment
Created an unbranded campaign that promoted "Miles Thirst" to create buzz.
Created fake fan sites and ran PPC ads for popular culture items to attaract visitors. Also used online video and other interactive formats.

Next was Dorian Sweet who talked about creating viral or "remarkable" campaigns that generate buzz.

What's new? Technology is creating the ability to do more things. There's not a lot that's new other than the fact that just about anyone with the right tools can create online media.

Change is going to occur as information becomes more and more of a shared experience.

Rich content formats:
Function generated - referral, affiliate
Brand generated - coroporate
User generated - considered consumer, hommade marketing

Examples:

User Generated - Star Wars Kid. Showed original video of a kid doing some light saber moves with a broom handle. Then showed another with addtional visual and audio creative added by someone else to illustrate how consumers are repurposing their own media to make it better.

Brand Generated - iPod. Showed a basic iPod short video ad. Then showed the George Masters hommeade iPod video that was so viral a few years ago. Brands are not the sole proprietors of the message. Consumers are creating their own versions of brand created media.

Showed example where Miller Light copied a video created by a consumer as creative for one of their commercials.

As technology gets better and better, production values will go up. That's the direction this kind of media is going.

Next up is Ian Schafer. What is necessary to engage consumers? Remember the rules of engagement.

1. Urgency - Example, CNN Pipeline. Allows consumers to create their own news
2. Utility - Example, Google and all the services that Google offers.
3. Practicality - Example, Flickr and all the different ways to use it.
4. Originality - Example, myspace has done that by allowing users to experss themselves.
5. Curiosity - Example, YouTube video sharing portal.
6. Technology and Innovation - Example, MotherLoad on Comedy Central.

Rules of Empowerment
1. Interacive - let views play with the content. Enable the media with the tools that make it easy to share or become viral.
2. Faciloitation
3. Incentivization
4. Ownership - Example, Wedding Crashers trailer that allows you to upload your photos.

Rich media and video does a great job at engaging and empowering audiences.

Rich media and video work best when information is brought directly to the consumer. When the ad is created for the medium itself and not re-purposed, it's more effective. These types of ads are also more effective when used as part of an integrated campaign.

Shows Sopranos and Google Maps mashup just launched today. http://www.hbo.com/sopranos/ Allows users to view videos based on map locations of events from the show.

Showed "Best Super Bowl Commercials" run on AOL. Within 72 hours, 4 million views.

Showed Date Movie video ad that brings visitor to your myspace profile. Then it reacts to you the real profile being displayed with humorous jabs.

Last up is Scott Meyer. Online video advertising is still in the early days. The good news is that blue chip advertisers are leading the charge.

Challenges are similar to what happened in the early days of internet advertising. Production is still expensive. Expectations are high and rich media advertising vendors are still a fragmented market.

Inventory is in short suply and not easy to manage. Video ad networks are still developing.
Standards have yet to take shape.

About.com uses multimedia to increase engagement and distribution as well as advertising revenue. In the future About.com is recruiting more video experts and credible brand name experts. ALso partnering with advertisers and with brand name third party providers. Leverage user generated video content. Shows example of an user created video about accupunture.

Time ran short and there was one question that I missed.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Detlev Johnson is moderating this session. He describes how big podcasting will be...

Amanda Watlington from Searching for Profit is up first.
- Podcasting is not really new, it is sound, portable, rss and tools to manage it.
- Podcasting is not just about "time shifted radio". The podcast must be focused on the listener's interest (narrow casts).
- Getting started
-- Start by listening
-- Experiment and Evaluate Podcasting
- Podcasts are "bandwidth bandits" so be cautious
- Optimizing Your Podcast
-- Step 1: Optimize ID3 Tags (sound): Music files now have tags. ID3 include 39 pre defined frames including copyright, content type, dates, content info, size and so on. She shows how to do this in a program named "Audacity."
-- Step 2: Optimize Web Page; give your podcast a good title, use a separate page for the podshow with links to it, have a separate landing pages for each new episode of your podshow, provide subscription information on every page, provide information on the shows schedule to attract subscribers, include a player for those who want to listen online, optimize SEO "scrub and rub" every page.
-- Step 3: Optimize the Feeds; create and validate feeds. You can have someone manage your feeds, like feedburner and they will handle the compatibility issues. Or you have create multiple feeds per aggregator, which is complex (I personally use Feedburner).
Tuning the feed for iTunes, iTunes feed is XML based on RSS 2.0 but has additional tags. itunes categories, itunes explicit, summary, author, keywords, owner, name, email, image and block. mRSS is XML based on RSS 2.0 but has additional tags that allow for more info about the media in the feed. Yahoo uses this feed format, it supports use of keywords.
-- Step 4: Submissions of Feeds; Track and monitor your podcast submissions.

What's Next?
- Measuring and Monetization

Ethan Fassett from Yahoo! Search Audio.
- Yahoo! Podcast Beta, launched end of last year.
- Yahoo felt they can improve on the deficiencies of the other podcast engines
- Yahoo has a strong community base, can provide rich data to media files, with tagging and so on.
- Community Matters; tagging; ratings, title, description, details and so on.
- Podcast search are still evolving as a technology.
- There is a disjunct between the jukebox software and online directories. Yahoo built in features to help by enabling people to subscribe to their jukebox.
- Roughly 50% are listening to this on their own computers.
- Publisher Tips
-- Create and show notes, be specific
-- Spell Check
-- Create & use album art, we support iTunes tags and mRSS
-- Make sure your ID3 tags match the episode information
-- Use a duration
-- RSS date format can be tricky
- Product is still in beta, but they want to broaden the audience. They want more content, more consumption and personalization through "my media", publishers with new tools will bring new publishers, devices such as phones, tvs, psp, video and vidcasts, mixed media and mixcasts and monetization.

Daron Babin from WebmasterRadio.FM
- He gives the who is WebmasterRadio.FM
- Brings up the Barry Diller keynote live and podcasted keynote on WebmasterRadio.FM from this morning
- He then talks about how his broadband grows exponentially
- He recommends customizing ports for better tracking
- File tagging; he used his SEO knowledge to optimize his feeds
- It looks like he is building his own podcast search engine, but I am not 100% sure. Anyway...
- Optimizing your feed is very very important
- Detlev listens to podcasts on PSP, TiVo and so on, pretty cool
- Reviews and comments are important
- He shows the optimization he does on his site, live.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

(note:Updated 3/8/06-CB)

Moderated by Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro. Welcome to “an interesting look at what is happening in the search landscape.” 3 people from 3 different companies who’s job it is to analyze what people do online. Large room, about 75% full. (ended up full)

James Lamberti - comScore Networks

A few key themes and observations that comScore saw in 2005. Will focus on 3 key things: 1. Market growth continues, but showing signs of slowing down, saturation. 2. Continued lead of Google, and why. 3. Continued evaluation of the Internet as an ad platform. SEM is moving beyond its direct marketing roots.

Overall size of the market Q4 of 2006 vs. a year ago: queries grew by 8%. Seeing stability in overall US volume: 5.4 billion queries = about 40 searches per month. New/infrequent users are driving the growth. In an average month, an additional 10 million searchers are using the internet. Year over year growth for the category is slowing to just 5% growth in overall search activity in Dec 2005. Google is outperforming the market.

Broadband, however, is increasing rapidly. Jan 06: 63% in-home broadband penetration. 171 Million Americans using Internet. 20 days/month, total of 26 hours and viewed 2600 pages. Users grew by 5% and pages by 16% vs. a year ago. Over 85% of users conducted at least one search. 27% of time spent on communication sites. Increase in broadband usage is affecting content more than search. Broadband users are less reliant on portals (AOL, etc…), which is indicative of their greater sophistication. Rich medias all with greater reach as well as online banking, health, etc...

86% of search market is general web or local in nature. Vertical search is growing, but remains a fraction of the overall market. This suggests product development is far ahead of the average consumer.

Tracking the complex search market: 1. What metrics are you looking at: queries, result pages, clicks/referral? What is the population? US only? Worldwide? What are local shares in Canada and Europe . What location? Search ad networks? Of all web searches out there, about 12% are originating from toolbar.

Google continues to increase share, now 40% of US market. Increased penetration at Google is a key driver. Google’s reach increase appears to be driving share gains. G’s recent lead in the local space has allowed them to emerge as the market leader in the more recent months. Click rates have a positive multiplier effect on Google’s market performance. Both G and Yahoo are expanding ad coverage to increase search ad inventory. Both improved coverage in 2005 by over 15%: now just over 55% of SERPs have ads on them.

Sponsored vs. algorithmic clicks: AOL (24%) Paid clicks(!!!), and Google (13%), Yahoo (11%) MSN (8%) (these numbers are now accurate) (note however that the MSN paid search click percentage has dropped drastically since their old “look,” which almost “forced” users to click on the paid ads- according to James when I spoke with him briefly before the session).

Discusses the role of search in the buying cycle. Saw that only about 20% of conversion activity on a search platform occurred in the first session. More than one third of search influenced transactions occurred during weeks 5-8. ***Press release from comScore with key findings will be released later this week (not yet). Looked at 12 gift categories and linked buying behavior from online to offline.

Bill Tancer - Hitwise

According to Gord, he has promised a “bold prediction.” He introduces himself… his “loves” in this order: his wife, then “data”, then “search.” Check out blog: weblogs.hitwise.com. His numbers also support that G continues to grow, at a rate of 9.6% increase in market share of visits since June 2005. Yahoo and MSN lost market share at 11.5% and 15% respectively. (***note these market shares were based on overall Internet usage, with G at 3.67%, Y at 1.41%, and MSN at 1.15%) The top 3 search engines account for 74% of all visits to SE’s and directories (over 1600 sites within that category).

Another stat tracked: executed searches: G 63.1%, Y 25.2% MSN 5.1%, Ask 3.9%, others: 2.8%. (***Yahoo and MSN shares of market each decreased by 20%) Still feels that it is not “game over” for the others. Search usage is ubiquitous across all demographic groups. Slight diff among SE’s: Y users more likely to be under 35 years old. MSN users more likely to be over 35. Google users have slightly higher income.

Another stat he likes to track: clickstream data. Where people came from and where they went to afterwards. Likes to combine this with categorization such as shopping/classifieds, entertainment, business and finance, education, news and media, travel. Search engines are driving a large amount of traffic to shopping/classified: G 11.9% (up 28% since Dec 2004) Yahoo: 12.9%, MSN 12.2%. G (7.9%) and Y (6.7%) were both high in sending to Education sites compared to MSN (4.3%). MSN outshone the others with a 8.8% referal to Business & Finance.

Combined market share of “big three” portals’ search properties near 20% of all Internet visits. When examining market share of top 10 properties of G, MSN, and Y, we see a different story than G’s usual domination. Market share of visits to Yahoo properties over twice the size of MSN and Google properties. Yahoo total properties visits: 10.7%, MSN: 4.9% and Google: 3.9% How quickly can this be affected? As discussed/discovered in a conversation between Bill and Danny Sullivan: Nov 17, 2005, Google placed a “search on Google Books” link…overnight they became the 4th largest book property. Bill then shows a case study of “YouTube” video search property. They did a clip on “Saturday Night Live,” and very quickly surpassed G and Y video search in the period of a couple of weeks. Reminds him how volatile the space is, and that data must be closely looked-at.

Bold prediction: what is the most significant threat? Where is it coming from? He thinks that Ask is someone that has to be watched, but his “bold prediction” is that MySpace is the real property to watch closely. 1000% recent growth in market share of visits for the combined top 10 MySpace properties has yielded an astounding 5.25% of market share for all their properties! Larger than G and Y noted above.

Ken Cassar - Nielsen/NetRatings

“The State of Search Through a Worm’s Eye.” Starting to see clouds on the horizon, re: popularity of search. Wants to try and shed some light on search market but focusing on particular advertising vertical. Cornerstone of their market research offering is called the “MegaPanel.” A “surveyable” panel; allows for capture of all clickstream data as well as conversion incidences.

People are searching more, as noted above, from 30+ searches per person in 2005 to over 42 in 2006. Online activity made up of following: Communication: 41%, Content: 36%, Commerce 19%, Search 5%.

***Non-search referrals account for nearly twice as many referrals as search engines. 76% direct visits. 15% non-search referrals. Only 9% from search referrals. However, they have found that non-search referrals and search referrals account for equal dollars. Travel searches are heavily concentrated among the leading search terms. 47% use “top 100” search terms, and 53% use the remainder of all other search terms. Also, top 100 search terms heavily populated by URL searches. Again, just focused on travel vertical: Google search referrals 40%, Y 30%, MSN 12%, AOL 9%, other 9%.

Anyway you slice it, G is the dominant search engine. The impact of search is overstated by measures of reach and frequency, but understated by measures of time. Display advertising inventory is still relevant, even in commerce categories where brand impact is perceived as less important than direct marketing impact. While Y and G are best able to deliver reach, they are not always the most efficient sources of transaction info.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Dave Balter from BuzzAgent is up first and he is here to talk about what people are doing and why. He starts with some definitions. He puts up a picture of Paris Hilton, as a good viral marketing example. Using consumers to pass along marketing materials. He says
that people are interesting sometimes in just entertainment, not the product. He next explains about Oprah and giving out the G6. What ended up happening was that car under perform about 30% then it was supposed to. The best thing about the car "was the sunroof" as one owner indication. He wagers a bet that all people have been had by a shrill marketer before. Example was Erickson, hired actors to watch around and get people to use their camera phones.

2/3 of the US economy is influenced by word of mouth. He says they spent a good deal of time looking at word of mouth marketing. He puts up some very complicated charts. The audience eyes rolled back, he says he will not bore us with more charts. There are 4 steps to
engage word of mouth. 1. Enlist Volunteers - you don't pay people. 2. You provide experiences - they have to let them have there own opinion. 3. Educate them. They need help letting them know about. 4. Communication is extremely important - engaging with the customer, letting them know you appreciate them.

A little bit about word of mouth. Traditional media has changed, and all these things are good at generating awareness but we are so skeptical we want credibility to begin with. What are people going to do with my media once they get it. Who are they going to tell?
40% of word of mouth interaction includes communicatio0n about another media form. So which media forms are prevalent? 16% is TV. 8 is radio, and so on. He asks how much word of mouth occurs online or offline? 80% of word of mouth occurs offline. Interesting. Measuring word of mouth. Old models are out-dated and will not work. For example more people watch one tv station than another. That model doesn't work any more as you need to see it by rings. You have to ask whether someone will notice or tell others about the advertising. Person 1 tells, person 2, and so on. The message will eventually get spread 18 times. He says they look at it however as a G2 measurement, 10,000 = 540,000 interactions.

Next he discusses workd of mouth negativity. He discuses a home cafe machine, where 3000 volunteers got the cafe machine. 60 lit on fire as soon as they plugged them in. Big problem for P&G the company who made them. Negativity results from injustice on behalf of the brand. He says they also looked at people who wake up as quiet advocates. Either those that are negative or those that stand by the brand. People will come out in order to bash the product or support it. People who spread word of mouth: influentials, mavens, trendsetters, alphas, bees. Sometimes he said they look at different groups, such as the hip trendsetter, super loyal people (who don't
want to share the brand), the mavens (specialized people who share opinion, but one small word of mouth potential), light loyals (the people who drove all the returns, and those that only go to the restaurants once a quarter). The light loyals where the people, the everyday people that make the returns back the restaurants. He ends saying. You cannot control your customers.

Pete Blackshaw is up second, and he is from Nielsen BuzzMetrics. Nielsen BuzzMetrics helps marketers promote and protect their brands through the measurement of analysis of online word of mouth - also known as Consumer-Generated Media (CGM). Some of his key questions are: How do consumers/customers feel about my brand.....right now? Howe many are talking and who's being impacted (reach)? What issues are being discussed? Which issues are coming around the corner? Who's talking and where and are they influential? Can I influence, control, or manage world of mouth? He says think of consumer generated media, just as that, media. Its is a diverse and fast-growing body of online content. It is very rapid expanding into multi-media formats. Studies increasingly show that consumers trust the recommendations of other consumers before marketers. A lot of purchase power is dictated by that. A couple points and take-aways. Speakers find seekers. Your brand equity is the sum total of your search results. He explains online content is having the most impact is finding other people who are receptive of it. CGM is providing more venues for users to archive their opinions. Blogs index at a much faster rate, and it is
why they are having much more impact. He gives the example of Iams dog food user groups protesting the dog food.

CGM as a keyword discovery tool for paid search. See how consumers are really interacting around/with your product and brand and use that language or those terms as the basis of campaign. This also might help create segmented campaigns. Latter also creates the opp to buy cheap search inventory that no one else is bidding on. Defensive branding such as buying SEM to counter negative CGM here where paid search truly is a branding medium. Additionally viral sandbagging means tackling negative CGM w/ paid search.

Jim Nail is up last and says he will take a different look at Consumer Generated Content. He says CGM can give you an x-ray insight into consumers and has amazing potential for consumer insight that you can mine. He starts and talks about Teflon and how its under siege right now. Teflon is a 2 billion dollar brand. Teflon is the worlds most slippery substance. Its is in food ware, food packaging, fabrics, carpeting, and industrial equipment. They have been in a 3 year tangle with the EPA. PFOA's in Telfon as a potential carcinogen. Some of the headlines includes "Substance in Teflon may cause cancer". He displays a history of Teflon's problem such as PFOA's in blood of babies. There is a lot of conversation going on. Then the news dropped out of the media, and then it was back again in December. EPA then recommended that PFOA as a "likely carcinogen". So what did DuPont do? They separated Teflon from PFOA. PFOA is only used in processing and said only if the pan gets as hot as 660F then the Teflon substance breaks down.

Good session overall, every speaker had some great points and information to add.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Detlev Johnson moderating this sessions, gives the brief introduction on what this session is all about. FYI - I covered this session in SES Chicago, look it up for things I may have missed here.

Jed Nahum from MSN Search on adCenter. Fall 2005, live in France & Singapore, US pilot began. Feb 2006, second use pilot phase, new UI, today ramp starts with 70% increase, March 6th is the open sign up for self-service at noon EST. Early summer 2006, US launch.

US pilot stats; 3,500 advertisers and 40%+ searches to adCenter, will to increase 100%.

Audience Intelligence Drives ROI
- Learn about your customers
-- Demographics on people search for Chad Hedrick and Sasha Cohen. Chad, mostly female. Sasha, mostly male. Disturbingly, people looking at Sasha are older people and Chad, younger people. Chad's searchers are slightly richer and a lot more people are searching on shasa versus chad.
- Connect via Rich Targeting
-- You can connect via demographics, geographic, and day of week and time of day.
Value of Targeting:
500 clicks of 40 orders with a conversion rate of 8%. Average ticket is $90, revs = $3,600, ROAS is 400%, Cost is $900 and bid/click is $1.80. But Men 280 clicks 20 orders and Women 220 clicks and 20 orders, the ROADS is about 100 points different.
- Refine your campaign - yada yada

Where does the data come from? Registered users, passported users, and 3rd party data.

Roy Shkedi from AlmondNet.
- 40% of internet ad dollars are spent on search engines where people spend less than 5% of their online time.
- On the Majority of the sites where people spend the other 95% of their online time - the ad supported content is sold for very low CPMs.
- After people search (post search), AlmondNet presents people with additional paid search as on the sites where they previously search on.
- So you search at Google for example, and then they go to a site on a different site a day later, they see an ad for their search at Google in a banner ad at the top of a site they are visiting.
- Web users benefit from relevant ads while their privacy is maintained
- Paid search providers benefit
- Profile providers earn an incremental new revenue stream
- Publishers' sites received a higher return on their ad space
- Click originating from behaviorally targeted ads convert 5 to 10 times better than clicks from non-targeted ads.
- The ads are targeted based on a recent demonstration of purchase intent versus what a person happened to read.

Kevin Lee from Did-It.com
- Better targeting brings us closer to the holy grail of advertising.
- The key is the power segment:
- MSN allows you to do age, gender, geographic and by day and time of day.
- One way to target based on behavior is though the control you have over listings allowing you to use day parting and day of week.
- Which behaviors correlate with increased profit?
- The engines are also targeting text and geo ads behaviorally based on prior search behavior, prior click, content preferences.
- Better conversion from click to lead/sale is when to target demographically.
- There could be a higher immediate value
- Higher lifetime value of a customer based on demographics, etc.
- Offer responsiveness, does one segment respond to a different offer?
- Geographic segmentation may be the most powerful method of segmentation yo have; clicks are worth different amounts, customers have different profit profiles, prospects respond to different messages.
- When you combine these, then you got power.
- He shows off MSN screen captures
- Use keyword data to learn what media to buy

Danielle Leitch from MoreVisibility.

- Do you know your customer base? gender, geography, lifestyle/income, age.
- Us your customer base very niche or leaning towards a particular subset group within the categories above?
- Why not in search?
-- DRTV Spots
-- Banner/Media Ads
-- Email List Rentals
- PPC Evolution
-- Keywords, Bid Prices, ad Copy
-- Bid management by ROI by keyword
-- Demographic
-- Behavioral
-- Better variety of channels/engines
-- Local Search
-- Day parting flexibility
-- Contextual Ads
-- Advanced analytics

- Research is just getting better, incredible enhancements can be made to your keyword analysis and selection process using this data.
- Shows some MSN adCenter slides
- Make bid boost decisions based on this data
- Aid in keyword research selection
- Start using it to identify areas of campaign expansion or optimization
- The trends that become apparent through the demographic or behavioral data now available will be eye opening.
- It will not all make sense or be 100% accurate.

Dana Todd from SiteLab.

- Data comes from users who have "agreed" to give up data about themselves, just like wool comes from cute little fluffy animals.
- Quick overview of the product
-- Yahoo Fusion Marketing is the broad name for any of their integrated ad products on the Yahoo site/network
-- Targets consumers with specific affinities & interests derived from online behavior
-- Much like AlmondNet but Yahoo has been doing it for a while.
- Impulse targeting ads are shown within 48 hours after search
- She then gives some cast studies (I believe I have these cast studies in my past coverage, Ill try to link to it).

- Chicago SES 2005 Coverage of this session here.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Moderated by Rebecca Lieb, ClickZ Network. Smaller room, very full. Welcomes everyone. Decided to try something new this year…wanted to dedicate a few sessions in Day 1 to look at search in a broader advertising context. Interested in feedback. One speaker (Eric) is in a cab coming from JFK.

Neil Mason – ClickZ. Multichannel Metrics – or Metrics Mayhem? “A way of thinking about measuring ebusiness performance." Helps businesses understand analytics strategy. The challenge: how to drive business from echannels, since this isn’t a data poor environment, however a data rich environment. There sometimes seems like too much going on…huge amounts of data coming in at all times, including ad-serving data, customer data, transaction data…etc… Also collecting performance data in a variety of forms. No wonder that someone on the receiving end of all of this may feel like they are “rabbits in the headlights.” Wants to outline thoughts about how to deal with this: how to think about how you are going to measure your business.

So, what to do? Have a strategy: determine what is important. Secondly, have a plan: how are you going to measure the things you want to measure. It’s about “counting the things that count.” “A journey to avoid metrics mayhem. A simple process to determine where you are now and where you need to go in order to drive increasing value to online business. Starts off with performance tracking metrics. Need: clarity of goals, definition of KPI’s and key metrics, and development of key reports and deliverables. A challenge is to not be too tech-driven by these things, which can blur what you are trying to do. Use an analyst that knows what they need to do. Performance tracking is about having faith in the numbers, and then moving forward to analysis and optimization. Everyone has a wheel: you start somewhere, do something, measure response, and then do analysis/make decisions. Another level is user centricity…very much around being customer centric instead of site-centric. It is about optimizing customer opportunities

It is clear to Neil when looking at conversion rates: you need to have a holistic approach: Use four major areas: 1. Have a strong grip on what is happening with your site. 2. Understand the site’s performance. 3. Profile your users and use market intelligence. 4. Understand your position in the marketplace. Use benchmarking surveys…user profiling answers the question of “telling you why, not what.” About understanding the “who behind the who.” What do they actually think about what they see? Lastly: how is site performing in terms of technical excellence. Does the site do what it is supposed to do, is the user experience good?

Case study background: working with UK high street retailer with well established presence online. Naturally experiencing significant growth, but they began to realize they needed a better strategic understanding of what was successful/unsuccessful. They recognized that analytics data could only take them so far in understanding the efficiency of their site. By taking it further, they recognized that there were different audience segments doing different things trying to buy different products. Are they actually coming to buy? Are they just doing research? What are the combinations of different products and categories they may be looking at? By deploying a wide range of tools and methodologies, they could better understand what they call the customer journey. Once they understand relative behavior, design relative types of usability test in order to dig deeper. In this example, 80% of customers are female, so they want site to appeal more to female. ClickZ said, well that’s interesting: 50% of traffic is actually male. So while 80% of customers were women, since 50% of traffic was male, maybe they were missing something. Second question was why do they visit the site? For a specific product? To look for a new outfit? Many different end goals, and in order to understand this, they used a process of an entry and exit survey. Find out the visitors’ intentions at the beginning, and if they achieved what they wanted to achieve. They found that only one third of people that came with the intention to buy actually ended up buying something. They continued the research to look for common patterns in order to determine what was happening. They identified 9 different “core journeys.” All of them had different % of visits, length of visits, numbers of categories visited, # of products viewed, conversion ratios, and a general demographic profile. By identifying the “mode” people were in, they could better predict the outcome of the visit. They found the most important group was the group of ladies coming in on “Journey #2,” which he describes as an “inspire me” mode. Thus they determined they the site needed to beef-up the “inspiration” factor. How to appeal to “less engaged” customers? This ranges a number of challenges, essentially based around data integrations. How to go about compiling “messy” data? All the different formats, levels of granularity, etc…

“Hard integration” – combining data with different formats, granularity, and periodicity…the tech challenges with this are high. “Soft integration” - a holistic approach to measuring channel performance, with a different skill set of challenges. Final thought: AC Nielsen quote” the price of light is less than the cost of darkness?’ So can you afford to not spend the time and money on analytics and a wide variety of analysis and testing?

Rebecca asks Eric to discuss the diff between a personae scenario and a journey scenario like he just described. Eric: journeys are about segments and modes, and then can be linked to persona descriptive data. Personae plus behavior = journey.

Jason Burby – From zaaz.com and also ClickZ

Their focus is on data analytics. Will speak about different examples of Multichannel measurement.. What are the behaviors they are trying to drive? There is now greater focus on analytics. Usually people are bogged-down by data since there is so much. Source Marketing Sherpa 2006: 61% of US Marketers want better analytics software for their clients. 56% want paid search and mgmt tools. 51% want A/B landing page comparison tests. 50% want integrated web analytics with search and emails.. In short: marketers are increasing their investment in analysis and optimization of campaigns based on such data.

They look at 3 types of core behavior data: 1. Attitudinal data. 2. Behavioral data. 3. Competitve data (from Hitwise, ComScore, and Nielsen, for example). Found that when these 3 combined, they can tell a great story. Case: they were tasked with improving conversions of a large telephone site. Analytics told them that there was an issue with conversions, found the top two best converting competition sites. They did the above process and used attitudinal data, behavioral data, and competitor data. They found that the best performing page in the industry was the Nextel page, but ironically when Nextel was recently bought-out, they “killed it.” (laughs) They create a KPI scorecard specific to the particular site to measure organization, website, site section, web/team/agency and individual performance in relation to their business goals. Then they shared the scorecard throughout the organization.

They do not want to look solely at the number of leads, but follow the leads throughout the buying cycle. They can then try to measure offline converting online, online converting offline, etc… So for example if they have someone who fills out a mortgage application online, this isn’t really a conversion because the bank hasn’t made the loan yet. They must measure on an overall performance by counting the total number of apps versus actually loans closed. Back to scorecards: asks how many people use individual scorecards to track site…a few hands raised. Important to hold people accountable when evaluating site. Discussed some software briefly used for each are: behavioral: Omniture, Webtrends etc. Optimization: Offermatica, etc. Competitive: Hitwise, etc. Attitudinal (missed it…he said the slide would be online as he went on to the next slide, as if laughing at us trying to blog this :p) Keep your “Ize’s” on the prize: 1. Identify opportunities. 2. Monetize them 3. Prioritize them, realize them. Determine the actual value of an inquiry, and optimize campaigns to capitalize on the more valuable ones. This system measures future conversion rates and allows to set goals based on past performance, recommended.

Once opportunity is optimized, time to prioritize. Examples include tuning landing page, improving onsite help, etc… Measure the “potential lift through optimization” with differently structured “opportunities.” Now they know there are a number of different tactics that may lead to success: a couple based on optimizing for revenue, one based on business lead-generation. They prioritize them then based on. Case study: Large travel brand was struggling to gather and compare al data from different channels and portals. They built a tool to be able to overlay data from Omniture, Google, tracking systems, etc…this allowed them to better see the big picture.

Avoid common issues with analyzing metrics: 1. Lack of process or methodology: 2. Not establishing proper KPI’s. 3. Data overload. 4. Failure to identify and prioritize opportunities. 5. Failure to monetize the impact of changes. 6. Limited access to data. 7. Lack of data integration. 8. Individual and group goals not tied to KPI’s. 9. Starting too big: Too often, people bite off more than they can chew recommend starting small 10. Overly data driven: Do not fall into the trap that simply measuring the data will answer your questions. Interpretation and testing are very important. 11. Lack of commitment and executive support. Jason suggests reading his article from last year at ClickZ that discusses ways to integrate data. ClickZ is working on a white paper regarding measuring attitudinal data that you can get from him by asking.

Q&A: Rebecca asks what she prefaces as a rather “confrontational question.” What about people that have smaller businesses than can’t afford to hire a large company like yours? Jason: Starting small. Identify one opportunity at a time, and begin slowly to measure what people are doing at the site. Neil agrees, it is “about counting th things that count.” What is the first thing that needs to be done to improve business, and then what do I need to measure that.?

Neil mentions that when you are dealing with analytics, you should remember that it is “garbage in, garbage out.”

Eric Peterson – Visual Sciences. Gets in very late from airport, but made it. Will speak about KPIs: key performance indicators. What can decision makers use in order to effectively run the business. Important to “translate” web data into KPIs. KPIs are not owned by IT, but owned by the “business folks.” Things such as conversion rates etc…you only need to understand your business in order to understand the data. Reminder: HITS stands for How Idiots Tracks Statistics. Make sure you are not just looking at hits, but more important, actual KPIs. Use worksheets to list KPIs, and how they are performing in one time frame versus another. Need to put these into context versus where you were yesterday, last week, or last year. The essence of good KPIs: 1. Definition – summarize relationships among meaningfully compared data. 2. Expectation – establish targets for improvement. Presentation – highlight changes (literally) for easy identifications. Action – Direct additional study and ID areas of the website that need work. Core of good KPIs – they always drive action. KPI’s should be presented in the following quantity: only 3-4 for senior executives, 6-8 for next level down, 10-15 for analysts, etc…Sample: Senior strategist: given only 2 main KPIs including average email response time and Percentage low and high satisfaction customers. Think about KPIs hierarchically, and use simple enough data to drive action.

Good KPIs are clearly defined, easy to determine expectations, clearly presented changes in data. Discusses a sample KPI worksheet with metrics such as: Order conversion rate. Buyer conversion rate. Average order value. Avg revenue per visit. Avg cost per conversion. Etc…. a great KPI for customer support that isn’t often measured is “average time before customer support issue is addressed.” Check out webanalyticsdemystified.com for more about their thoughts.

This is part of the Search Engine Roundtable Blog coverage of the New York Search Engine Strategies Conference and Expo 2006. For other SES topics covered, please visit the Roundtable SES NYC 2006 category archives.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

As part of the SES Advertising Track, this session covers the considerations for running your PPC ads in a contextual environment. Andrew Goodman moderates and presents. Other speakers include: Brady Byrd of NewGate Internet and Peter Hershberg of Reprise Media.

Andrew Goodman starts out with a description of contextual ads and a poll: How many are running contextual ads and makes up over 20% of spend. Over 30? About 10-20% of the audience raised their hands.

First up is Peter Hershberg of Reprise Media. He starts by explaining what contextual advertising is. Shows contextual ad exmaples from the New York Times.

Benefits of contextual advertising:

Search engines benefit as contextual ads have been a significant revenue generator. Contextual ads allow search engines to monetize 85% of pages on the internet.

Publishers benefit from a new revenue stream, accessing thousands of advertisers they may have not otherwise had access to.

Advertisers benefit from the additional sources of traffic.

Search engines serve as a point of contact to a huge universe of advertising opportunities. Contextual started in 2003 and are dominated by Google. With the "monopoly" over the contextual advertising market, Google made few changes until 2005 when Yahoo launched the Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN). Major revisions in Google's program followed shortly. Was it a cooincidence?

Changes in the Google program include the ability to place separate bids per ad group, being able to track separate ads at the AdGroup level, being able to choose sites to run your ads on and being able to pay a CPM and build your own network.

Contextual advertising still has a ways to go. Gives example of CNN where ads are displayed from Yahoo (YPN) where some are relevant, some are not. Shows another example where all YPN ads are irrrelevant. Explains this will happen as Yahoo develops the number of advertisers in their program.

Competitors in the space include Amazon that is beta-testing a contextual ad network and affiliates. Also MSN ContentAds with a planned beta launch sometime in 2006. It will be interesting to see what MSN rolls out.

There's been progress, but there's a lot more opportunity with contextual advertising. Contextual is an opportunity to expand beyond search. You can now go online with Google and bid on print ads. Google's acquisition of dMark will enable advertisers the opportunity to bid on ads via radio.

Advertisers would do well to understand the market and where it's going for a competitive advantage.

What's next? Distribution through additional media, targeting enabling better results for advertisers and a better user experience for users. Also specialisation, where search marketers today may become the advertising agencies of the future.

Next up is Andrew Goodman who did a short presentation covering the contextual ad landscape. Only a small number of advertisers are tracking contextual well enough to understand how well it's performing for them.

Gives example of a client that was not tracking well and putting a lot of energy into regular PPC ads, but most of their conversions were coming from contextual ads. Shows another example of how Flickr tested using tags to display contextual ads.

Another area place where contextual ads appear are with direct navigation and parked domains. Growth in direct navigation revenue averages at $170 per domain and is a significant market.

Shows example of client case study where contextual ads were a better match for going after long tail keywords.

Yet another case study showed what not to do. Client ran short term campaigns and not ongoing. No tracking and the content ad bids were the same as search. Much too high. Lesson was to separate content bidding from search bidding.

CPM model: Site targeting with Google. Has been more of a challenge than anticipated.

Content targeting is successful in very specific situations, but not all. It's obvious that it takes some testing and consideration to learn the ins and outs of contextual advertising.

Next up is Brad Berg of NewGate Internet who presents on optimization techniques for Google AdSense. They've found that non-retail does better than retail with contextual ads. He explains that a puchase is more of a commitment for the user than filling out a lead form or downloading something.

Overviews how AdSense works.

Be sure to separate content and search campaigns. Basics of campaign creation. Google AdWords offers more tools to make this easier. When you separate campaigns, don't make them duplicates of each other. It's important to focus on themes and bundle the keyword concepts together in to smaller ad groups. The keywords and the ad creative work together to create the theme.

It's imporant to track content campaigns uniquely. Give a unique tracking url for each keyword in the AdGroup. Use a default and unique url for each AdGroup.

With Google AdWords, use "Fast Track" to create tags for all your URLs and it will enable you to learn more about the traffic you get including: search/content clicks, which creative was used and which website generated the click. You would then need to create an application to extract the additional information for use in campaign analysis.

On Google AdWords reporting, AdGroup reports do not report on content clickthroughs by individual keywords. AdSense does send clickthroughs to specific URLs via the destination URL you can assign to a keyword. The URL report does not report sending traffic to specific URLs, but to the campaign default URL.

Use the matching options in AdWords with your contextual campaigns as you would with search. Also consider using unique creative for your content campaigns. Avoid using dynamic keyword inclusion for content creative.

Barry Chu from Yahoo and Emily White from Google answered questions from the audience.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Chris Sherman is moderating this session. This panel talks about the business of search, the trends and so on.

Geoff Ramsey from eMarketer.

Five Consumer Marketing Trends that are Turning the World Upside Down:
(1) Consumer skepticism and resistance to advertising
(2) Increasingly the consumer is in control
(3) Media fragmentation is out of control
(4) The pressure is on to sacrifice..

Consumer trust i ads has plunged 41% over the past three years. Only 10% of consumers say they trust ads today.

Projection for Ad Spending
- 28% growth
- $12.3 billion in 2005 (4.6% of total marketing)
- 72% of senior marketing execs plan to increase spend online
- Marketer's opinions regarding the effectiveness of media for providing measure ROI (61% internet).
- US Paid search ads spending in 2005 $5 billion, and in 2009 $10.1 billion.
- US Paid Search growth rate, 2005 31%, 2009 15%.
- Branded Ads $21.4 billion in 2010 and paid search $33.6 billion in 2010.

Consumer Viewpoint:
- 55% growth rate from 04 to 05
- Not much growth in Internet users but a 5% growth in search use.
- Expected use of info sources for buying a new car, according to consumers (61% use the internet).
- Top 5 search engine attributes considered important or very important
-- relevance 90.6%

Marketer Viewpoint - Why do search?
- Delivers the specific relevant info consumers are looking for.
- Metrics tracked are increased traffic, conversion rates and then click through rates.
- E-commerce conversion rates by traffic acquisition source
-- direct (4.23%)
-- search engines (2.3%)
- Reasons search advertisers are using SEM, top reason is branding.
- Enquiro; 70% of searchers are "willing" to click on sponsored links
-- The older you are the more likely you are to click on sponsored links
- SEM spending by tactic
-- paid placement 83%
-- organic 11%
-- but organic is clicked on more, and has a higher conversion rate
-- SEO provides a higher ROI then PPC
- Paid placement continues to get more expensive
- Impact of search must be measured over time and across sales channels.
- Share of total time spent online is 4.2% in search
- 25% said click fraud is not a significant concern, 39% said it is a significant moderate problem, 35% we haven't even tracked it and 2% never heard of it.
- Who's on top among the search engines?
-- Share of total online searches in the US
--- Google saw rise
--- MSN dropped
- Google share of US paid search revenue pie is 59%, and 57% of global market.
- Google is on top according to advertisers, in terms of effectiveness.

Search and Beyond:
- Google (email, im, blog, video search, branding ads, desktop search, phone service, and brokering for print ads.) Soon to come radio and TV?
- Google Beyond today ((1) GOOPEC - oil prices, bidding for barrels (2) Missile Defense, Search and Destroy (3) Google Body Searches at Airport (highly personalized relationship with everyone)).
- The more people I try to reach with my ads, the less relevant I will be to the individual. Run of site is max reach, less relevant - contextual is more relevant and wide reach and then behavioral is even more relevant but less wide and then we have search which is the most relevant.
- Behavioral targeting reached almost $934 million (7%) in 2005.
- Its targeting people not Web pages
- Local Search $162 million in 2005 and $3,380 million in 2010.
- Pay Per Call is going to be huge as well.

Future of Search
- Richer
- Mobile
- Smarter
- Vertically Focused

He shows an example of become.com's dhtml search help. You see the search broken by research versus buying.

Bill Tancer from HitWise.

Visit the blog at weblogs.hitwise.com...

- Hitwise captures over 5MM of top search terms driving the traffic to all sites
- Navigational and brand search terms continue to dominate the top of the list
- MySpace is the hot search query, capturing five of the top 20 terms
- Top search terms are a great proxy for brand equity as well as what is top of mind.
- Seasonality: He discusses the term "prom dresses" and it shows what happens offline is not always a good way to predict what happens online.
- Charts by industry category can reveal changes in user intent
- In this case of prom dresses, queries peak in January to Lifestyle - fashion and peak in March to the shopping & classifieds - dept store category.

Search Versus Visits:
- Search terms when charted alongside visits to sites or categories can highlight the difference between consumer interest versus marketing generated interest.
- In this case, consumer's interest in "diets" decreased when compared to last year, while visits to dieting sites increased (likely a result of online marketing initiatives).

Word Pairs:
Negative Word Pairs:
- Searches for "online poker" show negative correlation with queries for "sports book"
- Pattern represents zero-sum nature of online betting
- As major sports seasons gear up searches for "Sportsbook" increase
- Since online gamblers often have a limited amount of money to gamble online

Boots vs. Sandals:
- This example demos the seasonal switch between sandals and boots as represented by query volume on both terms
- Search term analysis reveals that ambiguity in search queries is partly responsible for sharp increase in "sandals" query in January (which is a resort name).

Economics:
Gas Prices:
- Search term data can provide insight into consumer sentiment well in advance of current leading indicators
- In this chart, we see that when gas prices reached $2, it caused a brief spike in searches for hybrids

Real Estate Bubble
- Some economic events are driven by consumer sentiment, a prime example is the potential for a real estate bubble.
- In this case, a dramatic spike in searches on "real estate bubble" occurred in the summer of 2005.
- Analysis of the term revealed that most searches terminated at news sites.
- He actually bought and sold his house based on this data. :)

Brand:
- Google Pontiac Ad
- Chart shows visits to pontiac.com compared to search for "pontiac"
- Notice that while both web sites and search term received a nice spike in Spring 2005 (apprentice), searches for "pontiac" increases while the Pontiac web site remains virtually flat
- Did Mazda benefit from the pontiac ad? Pontiac.com received 66.8% of the traffic from the term, and the second most visited site (3.4% of traffic) for the pontiac search term was Mazda.
- Candice Michelle (Go Daddy commercial) received the highest spike in searches for 2005, Going into 2006 super bowl, go daddy realized a residual lift from 2005, while candice decreased substantially in 2006, the search term "go daddy" realized a substantial gain.
- Dancing with the Stars; he charted which star was the most popular in terms of searches online, so he can predict that she will win but then you need to think about who searches on "stacy keibler", and its the wrestlers...who most likely wont be voted on the show.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

The moderator opens by asking how many new people are here at SES. About half the room raises there hand that this is their first time. Vertical creep began a long time ago, with Altavista and Ask with hints on news items. That was then, and now its way more sophisticated, and the ability to match results with a search is much better. News is a good example of vertical creep in the natural news results, it’s a natural progression into the search results as people want to see that. Images and video is an up and coming vertical creep item. The moderator mentions the one box results in Google, or the top box at the top of results that can list a number of different items.

Greg Jarboe from SEO-PR is up first. He starts by asking how many people are doing PPC advertising? He also asks about how many are doing SEO, News search, Image Search, shopping and local search.

So what is vertical creep and why should marketers care about it? Its been called invisible tabs, Google Onebox results, Yahoo shortcuts, AOL snapshots, and Ask Jeeves Smart Search. Even if users don’t choose to do a vertical search, there’s a good chance that vertical listings will appear at the top of regular search engine results. So for example do, a search for “ Danica Patrick” and image results creep to top of web results. He says Google understands that if you are searching for Danica, that you might be interesting in information from her, but you might also want to see pictures of her. He gives the point that the pictures of Danica’s helmet have a Shell logo. Great branding opportunity for Shell, might be unexpected, but the brand is transfer along with her image. 62% use SEM to increase brand awareness> Celebrity endorsement are a way to enhance your brand awareness. Greg mentions to consider reputation management, and do searches for some of your employees and see what you find.

His next example is a search for digital cameras. He says that if you are searching for digital camera you might be interesting in buying or looking for information. Froogle examples is a good example of a vertical results. 60% of marketers use SEM to sell products services or content directly online (according to Sempo). Even if users don’t do a shopping search, you can still sell them products. Also if you search for new york hotels and you will find that local results will pop up at the top. Google displays phone numbers, and they anticipate your next action, which is to place a call. 58% of marketers use SEM to generate leads that they close via another channel.

Two years ago some of the most popular terms where Bush and Kerry. Kerry optimized for the term “Senator” and Bush optimized for “President”. The people that optimized the news results, took up much of the results. For example if you search for Hilary Clinton, you get many results, does she know what is in the results? The people that right about “Hilary Clinton” know search, those that write about “Senator Clinton” don’t. As “Hilary Clinton” is the more popular search phrase.

Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro is up next. He is going to be talking about vertical creep, but look at it from a user perspective. He is going to discuss his eye tracking studies and what is going on there. Many of the places vertical results appear is prime real estate. He said he found that real estate on a search page is not enough. What they saw when they compared sites or search results pages where one box results appeared and those that don’t. What they see in Google is very tight scanning activity when there isn’t any vertical creep in the results. With vertical results on there, the scanning activity extends further down the page, there is more time spent. Usually when we go to a search page, we want to do something, we want to find something. We ask ourselves is it a good or bad choice to click on a particular link. People don’t read search results, we scan them. We do them very quickly. 6.5 seconds is all it takes to make a choice on a search result page. In that 6.5 seconds we scan 4-6 results. How quickly do we perceive which results are more important to us. The challenge for marketers is anticipating the user and what they might want. The search will help tell a lot about the intent. However how we precieve the intent on the search results is important. What ever jumps off the page to match our intent will be of interest.

Gord gives an example of MSN. He says they have problems with relevancy in vertical creep. If you are searching for “new york pizza”, you don’t want news! You are looking for a place to eat, and the user will eventually skip over the verticals. According to their study for “digital cameras”, Yahoo has performed best because they give 5 options of various brands. Google offers the most information, but takes longer to scan. MSN again shows news results. Another example is a search for “Dick Cheney”. The word “shooting” might jump off the page at you. Back to the pizza example, he says that that “stars” or rating points really help to jump off the page and get attention. They seem to work. Gord next goes into how visual attractors work with into results. Products need details. Activity is determined by relevancy to intent and “information scent”.

Bob Carilli from Argus Interactive is up next. He starts off with some questions. He is going to go over a case study, its background, what is happening, and so on. The case study is on a real estate training company. I am very familiar with this and ironically know the company he is presenting on. Small world. The users were on the site for approx. 30 minutes. The average sale was $150, and the PPC spend each month was about $60-70K a month. They did search engine optimization and went out and contacted other online marketers.

What was happening was that vertical creep was happening. They saw Froogle Products result in Google come and go. Many of the products listed in Froogle where poorly optimized page/sites. There was irrelevant listings additionally in Froogle. How they responded was they set-up a Froogle Data Feed and launch with many primary products. The predominant product was for California real estate license. The results were first position in the vertical results. He mentions that anything can happen. They achieved a first position ranking in Froogle and definite edge against the competition. He recommends that you need to keep an open mind and be aware of vertical opportunities. Try news things and analyze results. Be sure to pay attention to trends and note changes in search results.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Danny welcomes everyone and then lists down all of Barry Diller's hundred credentials.

Danny: The official launch of Ask.com happened today. Why make that change and why not a more radical change?
Barry: said, I always loved Ask. It is a fine word for a search engine. Barry said he looks like Jeeves... He said it was a nice emotional touch to Ask. But he thought Jeeves demoted something that would disallow Ask from becoming the search engine it could be. He said it is a good brand, but people will get over it as they use Ask.

Danny: Your famous for creating the fourth major network of TV. Now you are trying it with the search engine industry. How do you do that?
Barry: First you need to try it. Does Ask do what a search engine have to do? Is it differentiated? When building Fox, they built an "alternative network" and they want to build an alternative search engine. If you look at how Ask presents and delivers the information, that is the differentiation. What matters is not the market share, right now, it is about serving relevant ads. Before Ask couldn't compete - with all the ads on it, but now Ask can.

Danny: He brings up MSN giving away presents to search. Barry does it with iWon...
Barry: You need to think about the long run. Google doesn't spend a nickel on marketing. Barry said we will not leave it by word of mouth. Ask is coming in after the category has been popularized. So they need to do every single thing they can think of to market Ask. But the bottom line is the differentiated features. Ask is concentrating on everyday search, whereas others are working on different products. People are going to say, yes I will use it or not.

Danny: How do you categorize your competition? Do you look at Google and who they attract, Yahoo and MSN...
Barry: The biggest issue with Ask is its own legacy. For example, Ask a question and you get a response. The first thing Ask needs to confront, is to tackle that problem, to let people know what Ask does now. He describes how Google is often used as a verb and that is very big brand competition. We will compete directly and indirectly but right now we are saying "we are ready to compete." When Yahoo brought on the "other companies" they did billboards and so - but they didn't say, look at us and here we are.

Danny: Brings up the mission statements of Google and Yahoo. Does Ask need a catchy mission statement?
Barry: "Be Evil", everyone laughed. There are very few companies that act in an evil way, like an evil emperor. Google is now in a real business. Now people are not going to like everything about Google. When you are in business, its hard not to be evil by everyone. Ask does not need a slogan, and we don't need a slogan. Use Tools - Feel Human is the Ask line but its not the claim line for the company.

Danny: There has been a lot of focus on China issues. What is going to happen in the future. Censorship?
Barry: We do have an R&D office in China. He feels that this whole press thing is being "over media-ated". When you operate a business in China, you need to function on the basis of how you must, and follow their laws. "Can I stomach operating in a country..." It is not an important topic, unless you are perfectly OK with operating there. Politics, not business.

Danny: US Government asking search engines for data, but they didn't ask Ask. If they did, how would you respond?
Barry: Ask would have resisted. They hold enormous amount of data on people's information at IAC. You have to be a guardian of information. Who is going to trust you? He always felt not placing an order online because of being worried about credit card fraud...people give credit cards to gas stations, etc...

Danny: You have so many sites with IAC. Does ShoeBuy.com get to be number one?
Barry: IAC has an enormous amount of vertical data that they spent a huge amount of info. We will give them the information when its useful but never if its not relevant. But they won't rank ShoeBuy.com number one, simply because they own it.

Danny:
Barry: Entering this world, and the essence of it, it is not passive, it is truly interactive. It is not only a different vocabulary, it is an other language for me to learn. Barry said, he will never be a technologist. He is often confused about talk. He understands enough to identify what is an idea. He got lucky that he had this revelation to him, about what is possible within a screen. He was so curious about it that he jumped into it. He never lost his curiosity.

Danny: Did you have an other WOW with Ask?
Barry: He thought (1) you could compete, could they take out the expedia's of the world? As long as you have a brand, brand will survive. and then he thought (2) is there an opportunity? And they said, yea, we can build a search engine and we can compete. They looked around to what to buy and Ask was the best.

Danny: New brand and can you show it to us.
Barry: Introduced Jim Lanzone to show it off.

Little technical glitch but we are now live.

Jim: They had the rebrand, no more Jeeves. Objectives: (1) Treat this as a way to show all the technology they have built and (2) make it easily accessible. On the right hand side they have the "toolbox" and you see the various tools to show how different ways to search. When they find out they can use a dictionary directly from a search engine, they love it and come back. He then performs an image search. You can also click and drag these items in the "toolbox" up and down. You can change the defaults to the homepage. You can open and close the toolbox. They launched encyclopedia search and desktop search for the Web (web based desktop search), so now you can search both ways, via desktop application or via Web browser. They also launched their new maps product, similar to other maps products with AJAX. They went deep on directions and building an itinerary. Drag and drop the destinations pins. They are using arial views, instead of satellite. They also have a walking map, not only driving directions. You can hit a play button to see you simulate the drive. Of course, Ask still has the Smart Answers, the zoom on the right side of the page, binoculars, etc. The best part is to bring all these tools to the front and this brings these tools as a "Speed Dial."

Barry Diller: I feel this competition is great. Ask is serious, IAC put up a lot of capital. They back supported the issues at Ask. They said, they don't expect great earnings from Ask that soon. They are investing in technology as it just starts out to begin. We are serious about it.

Danny: You spoke before about more government regulation. Do you feel we have enough voices in search?
Barry: Obviously, no.

Danny: How do you deal with search on a day to day basis?
Barry: Habit is a tough thing to change. Smoothing into Ask. Search will evolve, its not over night. Ask has a product that is part of that. If the idea is good, the world allows it to come into the DNA of the world. It feels more natural then hammering a nail into it. Those things break themselves down.

Danny: Convergence of search, mobile search, etc. You were not at CES. How do you see it going???
Barry: Search will be everywhere. It doesn't matter what the screen is. It is all going to converge in one way. The amount of rich media that is able to viewed. The issue is not distribution. All of those things will happen when the consumer products enable them.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

Just a quick update that next week our forum coverage will be slow to non-existant, in order to provide you with the most comprehensive and fastest coverage of the SES NYC 2006 Conference. You can view our Quadruple Coverage Schedule to know what to expect when.

SES NYC Tag: sesny2006

SES NYC is definately the one Search Engine Strategies event to be at if you had to be at any conference this year. I usually enjoy it thoroughly, and there is an amazing amount of talented people and highly useful information presented each time. Plus, all the cool people will be there as well.

There is a thread on SEOchat, where one of the members is trying to get his boss to front the money so he can attend. His boss doesn't think its a good idea, come up with the lame excuse: "My bosses say you never learn anything from these conferences anyways". *Cough*

Lame, lame. As any regular conference goer will know there are some amazing oppourtunities and learning experiences in search marketing for your business but also some good networking and entertainment each day. Plus if you don't like networking, you can always go see a broadway show or ride to the top of a very tall building.

In order to help some of you out that "need" to convince you boss to go to Search Engine Strategies NYC or beyond. Here are some top 10 benefits for going:

• 1. Top-level Search Engine Marketing Knowledge & Updates from Industry Leaders


• 2. Great Begineer to Advanced Sessions for 4 days (lots of choices and topics available)


• 3. Cool conference swag in the exhibit hall


• 4. Networking after hours


• 5. You will come back with a ton of ideas (impress your boss)


• 6. Strengthen your resolve to do well in SEO
• 
  
• 7. The Google Sandbox will not scare you after SES


• 8. Meet Matt Cutts and Annoy Him


• 9. Put a Name to the Face (meet your favorites forum friends & enemies)


• 10. Search Engine Parties!!!!

There are a hundred other reasons you might want to go to SES and what you can benefit from it. Those are just a start.

Continued discussion at SEOchat & Search Engine Watch

Some of you may noticed that I have posted the SES NYC NYC 06 - Quadruple Coverage break down. Yea, you heard me right. We will have four different people covering this conference as the same time. We had triple coverage at SES Chicago 05 and SES San Jose 05, so this quadruple coverage outdoes that.

So who will be conducting the coverage? We got Ben Pfeiffer our Associate Editor at the Roundtable, who owns Rank Smart, we also have Chris Boggs of G3 Group, and myself. The new star to be covering these events with us is a well-known fellow blogger named Lee Odden from Online Marketing Blog.

How great are these guys for helping me out with the coverage and providing to all of us for free!

Of course this is not a substitute for going to the event. There is a lot more you can learn from being in the audience, asking the questions, taking notes and participating in the after hours events. So get your pass by clicking here.

Feedback, please comment here or go to the primary Search Engine Watch forum thread here or as a secondary thread you can go to our forums.

Search Engine Roundtable SES NYC 2006 Quadruple Coverage

Monday - February 27, 2006

Times 9:00 - 9:45am 10:15am - 11:45am 1:00pm - 2:15pm 2:45pm - 4:00pm 4:30pm - 5:45pm

Barry Schwartz Ben Pfeiffer Chris Boggs Lee Odden Keynote Not Applicable Searchonomics: Serious & Fun Stats Vertical Creep Into Regular Search Results Multichannel Metrics Contextual Ads Targeting Search Ads By Demographics & Behavior Blogs, CGM and Buzz Search Landscape Break Podcast Search Searcher Behavior Research Update Winning A Bid War Rich Media and Video Ads Search Head Or Search Tail? Getting The Mix Right * Wildcard (Probably be in Search Head and Tail) Ads Beyond Search B2B Tactics

Tuesday - February 28, 2006

Times 9:00 - 10:15am 11:15am - 12:30pm 2:00pm - 3:15pm 4:00pm - 5:30pm

Barry Schwartz Ben Pfeiffer Chris Boggs Lee Odden Pundits On Search * Wildcard (Pundits on Search) Break Break Reputation Monitoring & Management Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues Search Algorithm Research & Patents Break Practical Copyright & Trademark Guidance for Webmasters and SEMs Blog & Feed Search SEO Duplicate Content Issues Search Ad Buyers Forum Who's Watching Whom: Search & Privacy * Wildcard Advanced Search Term Research Tools Meet The Blog & Feed Search Engines

Wednesday - March 1, 2006

Times 9:00 - 10:15am 11:00am - 12:30pm 2:00pm - 3:15pm 4:00pm - 5:30pm 5:30pm - 6:30pm

Barry Schwartz Ben Pfeiffer Chris Boggs Lee Odden Retailer SEM Tactics My SEM Toolbox Speaking Ad Agencies & Search SEM Via Communities, Wikipedia & Tagging Buying & Selling Links Break Break Branding & Search Pimp My Site! Search Engine Q&A On Links In House Forum Search Advertising: Now & Future Break Break Break Not Applicable Evening Forum With Danny Sullivan Not Applicable

Thursday - March 2, 2006

Times 9:00 - 10:15am 10:45am - 12:00pm 12:30pm - 1:45pm

Barry Schwartz Ben Pfeiffer Chris Boggs Lee Odden Organic Listings Forum Local Search Marketing Tactics Getting On Top In Paid Search Measuring Success Overview Earning From Search & Contextual Ads Link Building Clinic Local Search Ads Meet The Crawlers SEO Overkill Site Clinic Search & Phone Calls Break

Joseph Morin is compiling his traditional party list for this years 2006, NYC SES event. The party list is at Search Engine Watch Forums and is constantly being updated. Ask Jeeves will be throwing a party Monday night but I wonder if William Hung will be there like last year.