search marketing blog: ambergreen

Following the poor Microsoft share prices seen last week, Erik Selberg, one of the brains behind the Live.com team has let rip with an insider’s view of the problems Live faces if it’s to challenge rivals Google and Yahoo for their search market share.

Take a look at the Search Engine Watch blog to find out what Selberg has to say, it’s not optimistic stuff and somewhat reminiscent of the Yahoo! ‘peanut butter’ memo from last week. 

While Google snaps up companies left right and centre and constantly innovates online, it has taken a strange move with Google Answers. From the start of next year the site will no longer accept questions, although it will stay open to allow users to search old Q&As from it’s archive.

With the recent success Yahoo! has had with Yahoo! Answers, this seems like a strange move, albeit one which opens up Google’s time and manpower to concentrate on other areas of the ever expanding business. Google Answers was never one of the most successful areas of the business, and at four years old, it would have been a hit before now if it ever had a chance. But traffic figures had been low and with free services competing against it, charging users for the service was always going to be difficult.

Yahoo! Answers continues to rack up the traffic, and the buzz at the site hasn’t really dropped since its launch, making Google’s poor Answers interface and service look old and tired. Yahoo! is obviously pleased with its product and integration of its Answers into Answers.com and integration of results into search results show that the company is looking at this product in the long term. With quality questions on the front page such as “Are people honking their car horns less frequently now?” and “Anyone unhappy about their embalming tutor and why?” to read, I know that Yahoo! Answers is going to keep me hooked for some time to come. Let’s see what, or if, Google have up their sleeve to counteract this type of random genius.

Following months of speculation, Google finally seems to be just about ready to kick off audio ads, although the log-in pages are a little flaky at the moment.

Back in July, Eric Schmidt, Google CEO discussed audio ads, saying: “We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc Console and management tools into our advertising network.” Behind schedule it may be, but it seems that a Google Audio Ads beta version will be available by the end of the year.

Created following the acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting in January for $1bn (£580m), Google Audio Ads allows advertisers to connect directly to radio stations through an automated ad platform, making it easy to track campaigns.

Expanding its role in online advertising into the offline world probably isn’t going to be a smooth ride, so it makes sense that Google have spent time trying to perfect the product, but with the company hiring large numbers of radio ad sales people, it seems as though Google Audio Ads won’t be long in coming.

Digital Micro-Markets has posted some images that explain how Google Audio Ads will work, bridging the gap between advertisers and consumers, how ads will be delivered to radio and what reach the ads will have.

While the beta product will only be available in the US at the moment, Google will rolled out across other territories should it prove to be successful. The launch could also be beefed up as Clear Channel, the US’ biggest radio station operator which controls around 20% of the market, is debating a possible sale of the company. Rumours are rife, but at the moment Google remains tight lipped.

AOL is to trial a revolutionary new mobile application designed to make the process of capturing and sharing images online a whole lot simpler.

Created by Juice Wireless, the JuiceCaster servicettp://www.juicecaster.com/juicecaster/ enables users to easily upload photos, view user generated images and videos, as well as create videos and connect with friends online. A viewer can search for and stream user-generated videos and images directly to a mobile phone.

AOL Europe’s Mike Moore, head of monetisation services, praised the new service saying: “JuiceCaster is exactly the type of application our users want — an easy-to-use social networking service that connects mobile phones to the web. This is a leading product delivering open, post-anywhere, mobile picture and video blogging.”

The free service gives users the JuiceCaster application and the associated mobile to web publishing tool known as MediaBox, a simple Flash plug in which the user adds to their online locations, enabling images to be automatically distributed each time they are taken. AOL is already the top referrer to online video sites in the UK, being 39% more responsible for a click through to a video site (11%) than it is to anywhere else (7.9%), and JuiceCaster could be a great way for AOL to push themselves as the social media ISP.

JuiceCaster works on most camera-enabled mobile phones and while uploading their content, users can quickly provide relevant information such as title, keywords, location, topic and community.

With more and more photos being uploaded to the web every day in countless social media locations every day, AOL may have a great product on their hands here, and one which appeal to a young market. Already very popular in the US, JuiceCaster has received huge amounts of financial backing and has secured deals with sites such as College Tonight, a social network that helps college students stay in touch.

AOL plans to launch the application in early 2007.

According to US research, podcasts have failed to generate the amount of interest that was anticipated with only 12% of internet users having downloaded a podcast.

Although download figures have risen from the 7% seen in February, the research by the Pew Internet and American Life Project found that only 1% of those surveyed would download a podcast on an average day, a figure which hasn’t changed since the February stats were published.

The Guardian’s UK figures released in October showed that around 3 million users have downloaded a podcast, with a further 11 million people planning to do so in the future.  Paid for downloads were unpopular though, which might explain the lack of take up in relation to anticipated demand.

Podcast Alley, the podcast directory, shows that the range of downloads available has grown enormously, listing almost 27,000 podcasts this month compared to a paltry 1,000 that were available in November 2004. 

According to new research carried out by the BBC and ICM Research, the rise of online video is impacting on traditional TV viewing figures, with 43% of British people watching video on their mobiles or online at least once a week, cutting the amount of time they spend watching TV.

The survey of 2,070 people found that 75% of the respondents watch more TV online and on mobile devices than they did a year ago, and although only 9% do so regularly, they admitted that they spent less time watching TV as a result.

It hasn’t been a good year for TV, with online ad revenue impacting heavily on traditional media sales. Channel 4 recently issued a warning that it is likely to be overtaken in ad revenue by Google this year. Channel 4 has entered negotiations with Google to discuss the possibilities of making its programming content available online, but as internet spend continues to rise while TV ad spend falls, the threat of online seems set to cause TV bosses concern for the foreseeable future.

The success of sites such as YouTube has helped the online video market grow, and experts predict that the online video advertising market in the US will be worth around $410 million this year, with this figure predicted to rise to $3 billion by 2010.

While most of those surveyed who regularly watched video online were aged 16 to 24, use across all age groups was noted, including in the 65+ category. 10% said that they didn’t watch online video at the moment but intended to do so in the next 12 months, which could drive an even greater need for TV to make a concerted effort to move online as the internet threatens not only ad revenue, but also viewing figures.

It seems that viewing is at the start of a revolution, and one which should be taken seriously, and as mobile operators pull out the stops to get customers using mobile internet services, it looks like 2007 might be the year when it all starts to happen.

Matt Cutts has posted some notes from a panel he did at Pubcon in Las Vegas last week which make really interesting reading. Looking at some SEO issues faced by real sites, Matt explained some of the common issues and talked about mistakes that webmasters should avoid.

With the site review panel consisting of Matt, Danny Sullivan and Tim Mayer to name a few, it was always going to be value for money. There’s not much in the way of things we didn’t already know, multiple domains, reciprocal linking, URL naming conventions and sitemap usage, but it’s worth a read as always.

It may seem obvious, but there has always been a little confusion when it comes to the use of meta tag information, with some quarters saying that the meta description tag is important, while others say not. It is a well accepted theory that the meta keywords tag is not important, but in a Google Groups post Vanessa Fox, Product Manager at Google Webmaster Central Blog said that using the meta description tag is beneficial;

In response to an indexing query, Vanessa told the poster;

“For most queries, the generated snippet is based on where the query terms are found on the page, and in those cases, your results are fine. But for some more generic queries, where a logical snippet isn’t found in the text, the generated snippet seems to be coming from the first bits of text from the page - in this case, boilerplate navigation that is the same for every page.”

Not exactly earth shattering news but it’s always good to hear this type of info straight from the horse’s mouth (no offence intended to Vanessa!).

Research into the top 28 online retailers in the UK has found room for improvement according to Marketing Assistance and Blast Radius.

Looking at the online experience from first visits to refunds, the report found that differences in the way retailers and consumers think was damaging customer experience, leaving much room for improvement.

Lee Feldman, Chief Creative Officer at Blast Radius said that the problems were due to customers and retailers holding differing ideas of what is important;

“The study results show that investment by online retailers tends to focus on what they care about most, securing the sale. This attention is at odds with what the customers focus on, what happens after they have made a purchase.”

“This ’service disconnect’ is critical and reveals a short sighted view of the customer based on immediate revenue collection where real value is gained from long–term relationships.”

Looking at the top retailers, Marketing Assistance found that delivery, returns and branding were all major issues for customers, with the company’s mystery shoppers often failing to receive purchases, or have them delivered at the right time. Returns policies were found to be inadequate, or impossible to find and in one case a customer was charged £30 by Apple to return an unwanted product. Hardly the stuff of good customer satisfaction.

Feldman called the results “worrying”, saying that UK retailers had to try harder.

It’s clear that while many problems exist, there are opportunities available for companies who actively listen to consumers and deliver what they want. Instead of focusing on the conversion, online shopping sites clearly need to take customer experience a lot more seriously, and that can only benefit both parties.

Some of the information contained in the report could be very useful when it comes to ensuring that clients are considering the full spectrum of an online shopping experience – for example some complained regarded the packaging in which purchases were delivered and did not enhance the shopping experience. Lack of integration between online and offline channels also drew criticism, in some cases highlighting the difference in return policies for high street and online purchases.

The top 10 online retailers named by the report are:

1. Amazon UK
2. Dell EMEA
3. Apple Computer UK
4. Next
5. Comet
6. Tesco/ QVC UK
7. Currys/ Littlewoods
8. ASOS
9. John Lewis
10. Hewlett–Packard/ Marks and Spencer

Download a copy of the UK’s Best Online Shopping Experiences 2006 report here.

There have been rumbling of late that Google may be intending to add a blog search tool to the front page of a normal Google web search.   Having recently added blog searches to Google News and Google Alerts, it seems entirely reasonable that this is their next move. Unfortunately it seems that will it has been spotted a few times, no-one really had an definitive proof, until Andy Boyd, a web designer and blogger captured a screenshot of it which you can see here.

This news means that clients should have opportunity to gain even more real estate on the page if they manage to get good positions in the natural rankings, PPC and blog results.  If ever there was a time to keep ranting on to clients about the necessity of this, it’s now. 

Keep your eyes peeled and let us know if you spot blog results appearing in a search.