Why Is Ask Really Hiding Their Ads Referrer Data
I reported at the Search Engine Roundtable that Ask Sponsored Listings has changed how they handle sending referrer data to webmasters. From now on, they are basically not sharing the page of origin with the webmaster.
Why? Ask said they have moved to a new system named PureLeads. What is Pureleads? The FAQ [...]
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Chomp: An Apps Search Engine Or “Yelp For The App Store”
Chomp could be described as a search engine for iPhone apps (and eventually other apps stores). It’s a two-month old iPhone app and more recently a website, which resembles Twitter, whose objective is to enable people to more easily discover and review iPhone apps.
The proliferation of 160,000 iPhone apps has created the well-documented problem of [...]
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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?
A Practical Guide To Information Architecture Changes
A change in information architecture (IA) can make or break your in-house seo program . A successful IA makeover can open up a window to previously unimagined search engine domination, or it can see years of hard seo work evaporate in the fluttering of a URL. Despite the complexity of IA changes, by following some [...]
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Collecta Launches Mobile Version Of Real-Time Search Engine
Collecta has just announced the launch of a mobile version of its real-time search engine. The mobile site is available at m.collecta.com.
Like it main site, Collecta mobile includes real-time news, photos, and status updates from more than 10 million content sources — from Twitter to Flickr and CNN and blogs. The mobile site is available [...]
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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?
Search Engine Land Representing In Israel at SphinnCon
Yesterday two of your Search Engine Land writers were in Jerusalem, Israel. Vanessa and I were holding a SphinnCon event, basically a small Search Marketing Expo event, for the Israeli SEM community.
The event was given a home by the Jerusalem College of Technology for 6 hours while 30+ speakers from both in Israel and [...]
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Google’s Norvig: PageRank Is Overhyped
Speaking today at SMX West in Santa Clara, Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig, said that PageRank is overhyped and probably needs a new name.
His comments came during the morning keynote session in a conversation with Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman.
After being asked about search technologies that he thinks are over-hyped, Norvig [...]
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Liveblog: SMX West 2010 Keynote – An Insider’s Look At Google Research
It’s day two of SMX West 2010 in a rainy Santa Clara, California, and we’ll be liveblogging today’s keynote session. Search Engine Land’s Danny Sullivan and Chris Sherman will be chatting on the big stage with Peter Norvig, Google’s Director of Research. We’re expecting some sneak peeks at future Google products and technology, so come [...]
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Need To Learn Search Marketing? Come To SMX Boot Camp!
One of the most important things to me as part of the SMX search marketing conferences that Search Engine Land runs is educating newcomers to the basics of search marketing. That’s why we run a special SMX Boot Camp track. That’s also why we created a special low-cost ticket for those who just want to [...]
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