Eye-tracking Proves Real-Time Search Not Useful
OneUpWeb recently released the results of an eye-tracking study on Google’s new real-time results integrated into SERPs—and it looks like the search giant might have just wasted $15M (the estimated cost of Google’s deal with Twitter).
The study segmented web users into two groups: consumers and information foragers. It took consumers 7.09 seconds to look at the real-time results, even though they’re listed just below the news results and before the organic results. In fact, they scrolled below the fold to view the image results before they fixated on the real-time area, the eleventh area they focused on.
Information foragers took slightly longer to turn to the real-time results: 7.39 seconds. It was the thirteen area their eyes focused on—but the first 12 areas were all just above the real-time results in the news results. (The search task here was to research a selected current news item using the search engine of choice—for 89% of all participants, that was Google.) (Side note: I’m not sure why the times in the above graph are so much higher than the numbers OneUpWeb also provided that I used in these paragraphs.)
The second search task was segmented by group—the consumers were to look for a product they were considering to buy for themselves or for someone else as a gift. Information foragers were to again look for information on a current news topic. Interestingly, in this second set, consumers were five seconds faster than information foragers to focus on real-time results.
Meanwhile, 20% of consumers and 30% of information foragers actually clicked on real-time results, as opposed to 69% of consumers and 60% of information foragers that clicked on the top 5 results excluding real-time.
I’ve long argued that real-time results will only be helpful for a very small, select set of data—and for that set, most people would know to go to Twitter or Facebook in the first place anyway. I’m not the only one. The Guardian’s Charles Arthur points to several others who feel the same way, most notably Nick Carr, who sardonically chronicles the efforts to organize the web’s information around 140-character ephemera.
And yet Google insists that this information is useful and must be foisted upon the user. Aruther quotes Marissa Mayer last summer:
We think the real-time search is incredibly important, and the real-time data that’s coming online can be super-useful in terms of finding out whether – something like, is this conference today any good? Is it warmer in San Francisco than it is in Silicon Valley? You can actually look at tweets and see those types of patterns emerge, so there’s a lot of useful information about real-time interactions that we think ultimately will really affect search.
Apparently users don’t quite agree yet.
What do you think? Are real-time results useful?
Bing Hopes 3-Month UK Ad Campaign Can Wipe Away 10 Years of Sucking Wind
I don’t remember what Microsoft’s search engine share was, when I left the UK in the summer of 2000, but I’m pretty sure it was a lot better than the current anemic 3%.
According to the Guardian, Microsoft would love for Bing to recapture those glory days and is willing to spend the rest of its natural life next 3 months trying to claw it back.
The three-month campaign, which includes three TV ads created by the agency JWT, starts on Wednesday and uses the strapline "Bing and decide". The ads aim to show that Bing simplifies the "information overload" that accompanies the results of many searches.
The TV campaign will run solidly for a month and then in two-week bursts until mid-June. It will be backed by a digital campaign across Microsoft’s network and on media including social networking websites.
Three whole months, huh? Way to lay it all on the line Microsoft. You lose market share over a 10-15 year period and expect to win it all back by reaching consumers while they’re watching Coronation Street?
Of course, I know that Bing’s ad campaign won’t run for just 3 months–just this particular push–but consider this: Google achieved 90% share in the UK via word-of-mouth. Bing has been available to UK users–albeit in beta–since June. If they felt that Bing was truly revolutionizing search, they would have pushed the needle already. Right?
Eye Tracking Study: Users Largely Blind To Real-Time Results In Search
Online marketing firm OneUpWeb recently conducted an eye-tracking study about the impact of integrating real-time data into search results. The study involved 44 people divided into two groups: “consumers” and “information foragers.” The difference between the groups involved the tasks they were given:
The first group was told to search for a product they might buy, [...]
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Display Makes Searchers Buy Faster
Eyeblaster released a study yesterday showing that “display ads stimulate search by increasing the speed at which people searching enter the purchase funnel,” reports MediaPost. The study examined over 1300 search and display campaigns over a 15 month period.
They found that early one in five people who convert after using search had seen at least one display ad before searching. Eyeblaster concluded that display advertising increases the reach of campaigns, pushing more consumers to search. Those consumers then move through the purchasing funnel faster.
And this wasn’t just in a single industry: Eyeblaster looked at more than 200 advertisers in over 20 verticals. 72% of conversions resulted from display advertising, while 23% of the conversions were a direct result of the search channel and 5% were the result of display ads that were followed by a search.
Eyeblaster Principal Analyst Ariel Geifman says that display can thus be used to enhance search and reach a greater audience. “Since search is down the funnel, you need more prospects in the intent-to-purchase phase,” he says. He also notes that display scales more easily than search.
Display may help because search campaigns only show ads to people who’ve shown interest in that subject. Type “digital camera” into a search engine and you’ll get digital camera ads. But if you’re browsing the Internet, the random sites you come across won’t know you’re in the market for a digital camera. Display advertising is usually less targeted by intent, but reaches a greater audience across all target demographics.
On the other hand, as MediaPost says:
Search works on the lower parts of the funnel by targeting prospective customers in the consideration stage or in the intent-to-purchase stage and pushes them to complete their purchase. Display works on all stages of the funnel, bringing prospective customers into the funnel by generating awareness for the products or the services.
What do you think? Does display+search help people buy faster?
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5 Landing Page Tips To Boost Your Conversion Rate
Given the consumerism mentality that is so pervasive in society today, people regularly throw good money after bad, chasing more of what they already have. But this behavior isn’t limited to consumers. Time and again, I see B2B marketers doing the very same thing.
The situation
B2B marketers work hard to target the right keywords, create compelling [...]
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In Amazon We Trust While Toyota Is A TBD
Some more Monday morning research for you to consider while getting back into work mode. A report from Millward Brown takes a look at the top trusted brands in the US based on trust and recommendation. These factors are combined into what the researchers call “TrustR” which is a new metric for understanding and strengthening the bond between consumers and brands. In this day and age where trust is more elusive than ever since it appears that saying whatever needs to be said to get out of any situation is more than OK, we will need some measurement of a brand’s trust level.
So who are the big winners according to Millward Brown?
This number was arrived at by using the following formula
TrustR is calculated by looking at consumer responses to the questions “how trustworthy is this brand?” and “would you recommend this brand?” The scores are indexed and combined to reach a TrustR score. The average score is 100, and anything over 105 is considered “good.”
Now, as you can see I have highlighted what I will call the “Toyota factor”. This data was collected before the recall shenanigans of Toyota (who apparently saved some nice coin by holding off any admission of issues) so this says two things. 1) Toyota was definitely a trusted brand before the recall and 2) It’s a safe bet that v2 of this study will be out in short order to see just what Toyota did to their TrustR (sounds painful doesn’t it?).
So what is your opinion of Toyota now that the full story is coming to bear? Would you expect their position in this chart to change after the recall incident? What have they done to the trust in their brand? Will people trust them more (which I have heard from some folks) or will there be suspicion because of the news of their history of delay tactics with regard to safety issues? What will their TrustR score be now?
There’s No Right Way To Blog
Until very recently, research company Forrester had been one of the poster-children of people wishing to show how companies have grown their business on the back of a deep understanding of social media.
Its analysts, including Groundswell author Charlene Li, not only produced research on how businesses and consumers were using social media, but also used [...]
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2010: The Year Of Small Business Resurgence & (Finally!) Mobile Advertising
No one needs a new survey, study or pundit to tell them how important mobile devices have become to consumers. Just look down the street where everyone from teens to corner-office suits appears sidetracked by communication on the go—texting, talking, thumbs jumping across tiny keyboards in a hurried attempt to reply-all.
This is the audience of [...]
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Social Network Traffic to Retail Grows
We’ve seen the trend for a long time: social networks are sending more and more downstream traffic to retail sites. Hitwise has the numbers from December—and the downstream traffic from social networks is up 37%.
The change doesn’t look super significant, I know, but it’s the biggest percentage increase for any category. Fewer people are starting at retailers’ sites or through permission email, so search engines and social media are more important than ever.
So is it more because users are recommending deals to their friends, or is it because of retailers’ presence on social networks? Likely both. Hitwise found that many users were actively seeking info on popular retailers.
As an example, we ran a custom analysis of internal searches on Facebook to look for retail brands during the holiday season. . . . During the holidays over 2% of the traffic to Facebook (the 2nd ranked website in the US) visited a website in the Retail 500 immediately after. Retailers like Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, and Bath & Body Works (and others) all appeared within the internal searches taking place on Facebook signifying that consumers were actively seeking their content and offerings.
The first week of December, that rate topped 3%. With 175M daily visitors, even 3% is nothing to sneeze at.
What do you think? Is this proof that even big brands should be on social media? Or should they focus their efforts elsewhere?
42% of Americans Have Googled Themselves; None Have Gone Blind
A new study commissioned by Microsoft is about, of all things, googling yourself. I guess that if someone had used the phrase “binging yourself” there may be laws about that in many states but the irony of this is not lost on me. At any rate, the study shows that there aren’t as many people keeping an eye on what their personal online reputation looks like. Consider the people who are googling other people as a part of their job (ie. human resources types) this could be something that comes back to bite you.
Search Engine Land gives us some of the background
The numbers come from a December survey commissioned by Microsoft on the subject of online reputations. The survey polled about 2,500 consumers and recruiting personnel in the US, UK, Germany and France, and was just released to coincide with today’s International Data Privacy Day.
The chart below says that 42% of the people in the US have googled themselves or looked up their online information using a search engine.
If you would like to get the study it can be found on the Microsoft site.
Either people in Germany and France are more online reputation monitoring savvy or more paranoid but they seem to get the concept more so than the US and the UK.
So what are the pitfalls of not googling yourself on a regular basis (please keep the wisecracks to a minimum)? Ask an HR professional. If you are in the US they are paying very close attention to what is online about you and it can have dire consequences for job hunters.
While those of us in the US may not be Googling ourselves, the Human Resources industry is picking up the slack. According to the survey, 79 percent of US hiring personnel say they review online information about job applicants, and 70 percent admit to rejecting candidates based on what they’ve found. Those numbers drop dramatically for each of the other countries surveyed, with France the most different: Only 23% of recruiters there review online information, and only 14% have rejected candidates.
In addition to search engines which the study showed is the most popular way for HR types to learn about you the are also paying attention to social networking sites, photo and video sharing sites and professional / business networking sites.
One thing to note for you folks who suffer from having a common name that it seems like millions of others do. If you think that you can hide behind the fact that there are a lot of people with the same name all anyone needs to do is add a small qualifier to see just who you really are. I looked at just “Frank Reed” v “Frank Reed internet” and the results are quite different as they are much more directed at me. Any savvy HR searcher is not going to just look at your name and feel like they have done their due diligence.
It’s pretty simple; be careful with what you put ANYWHERE online. We hear that a lot but everyday the reports of ‘stupid human tricks online’ grow. Remember that according to some of the more influential people in this space like Google’s Eric Schmidt and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg privacy is not something to be expected anymore. If you are not monitoring this yourself it’s your fault if you get caught not Google’s.
