Brokerblogger

The Holy Grail Of Trust

What does online Trust have to do with online Relevance?  Well, to some degree, the more trust we have of the relevance of the search engine results listings, the more likely users will be inclined to use a certain search engine.  Trust has to be earned in many ways though, with Open, Honest, Upfront, and Good (O'HUG) communication that withstands the test of time. 

Consumer Reports WebWatch's latest press release on their upcoming conference entitled "Trust or Consequence: The Web's Reputation at Risk" says "The survey of 1,500 U.S. adult Internet users over 18 looks at consumer attitudes towards Web site trustworthiness and consumer understanding of privacy, security, transparency and the separation of editorial content from advertising."  The U.S. Newswire header reads "Consumers Trust Web Sites Less Than Ever, Consumer Reports Webwatch Finds".  Is Consumer Reports WebWatch a victim of what Henry David Thoreau once said: "We are always paid for our suspicion by finding what we suspect?"

Relevancy & Trust Are "Holy Grails" Of Online Search

Recently, I have put forth three communications regarding my suggestion to help motivate the search engines to take up Danny Sullivan's challenge to publicly and formally try to come up with ways of measuring relevancy on web search, local search and other vertical search.

My suggestion goes something like this:  "Even though Yahoo and Google do well on the 'Search Engine Relevancy Challenge' by Rusty Brick, I'm curious about what the search marketing community and the search engines would think of many search marketing people on many different forums being given the challenge (broken down by category/topic) of trying to come up with ways of measuring relevancy. Danny Sullivan's recent article has a great challenge for search engines, but why not start out challenging many people who work with keywords and relevancy every day? After that, then the search engines could 'Establish a research center, a consortium or something and a methodology that all will agree upon.' as Danny suggests. Getting all forum participants to agree on results would not need to happen, and it would surly get media attention on the more lofty goals of search engines."

Barry Schwartz (AKA Rusty Brick) posted this on relevancy back on 1/5/05.  His "Search Engine Relevancy Challenge" currently shows these results.  While Yahoo is leading today, things can always change.  But, I'm sure even Rusty Brick would like to see the search engines take up Danny's challenge as then the research center that would initially set up and keep improving the standards for measuring relevancy would be heavily funded by all the participating search engines.

Is The Search Engine User & Consumer Really King?

In this age of information, I believe in what ethical, "user preference" driven search engines can do to improve everybody's life.  Google has been my #1 favorite search engine for quite some time.  So I am not condemning them in this post, but I would like to convict them in a positive way about their recent decision to go to three sponsored links for "highly commercial query" search results on the top of the SERP.

Back on 4/26/04, Gary Ruskin of Ralph Nader's Commercial Alert wrote an article entitled "A 'Death Spiral of Disrespect'; If the Consumer is Really King, Why Do Marketers Keep Bombarding Him?"  He mostly referred to the off line advertising industry when he said "Polls show rising resentment of the industry and its aggressive tactics. According to a new Yankelovich Partners poll, 65% of Americans say they are ''constantly bombarded with too much'' advertising; 61% think the quantity of advertising and marketing they are exposed to ''is out of control''; 60% report that their view of advertising is ''much more negative than just a few years ago.''

Search Marketing "Personalization" News

I must admit that this post will be hard for me to keep to 10 (or 300) words or less.

Today, ClickZ had an article entitled "Consumers Want Personalization -- and Privacy".  It sure sounds like those "fickle consumers" want their "cake and eat it".  In it Doug Feick of ChoiceStream said "Consumers are clearly expressing an interest in a personalized experience. Those same consumers are expressing significant fear about the security of their personal information should they exchange it for a more personalized online experience."  He explained it away by saying "In the last year, there has been so much coverage about the potential compromise to personal data; we believe the results largely reflect that the survey took place amid coverage of these security breaches." 

Update: Logo/Trademark Infringement

Since I believe that consumers have a right to have upfront disclosure on whether they are clicking on an ad from GEICO itself or not, here is a great update on the GEICO vs. Google litigation from RustyBrick at Search Engine Roundtable.

It appears that Google lost part of the US case due to possible "buyer confusion" if certain parameters in the advertising are present.

Blogging News At Search Engine Strategies Conference (San Jose)

This is my first post since 8/6/05.  Things got hectic just before I left, but from now on, I will post that I am going on a combination vacation-business trip in keeping with my O'HUG (open, honest, upfront, and good) Communication Philosophy.  Since I haven't started promoting this blog yet, I'm hoping it is a mute point for now. 

I left for the SES San Jose Conference on 8/7/05.  I went to many blogging related sessions and learned a few tips like trying to keep my posts to 300 or so words or less according to Amanda Watlington (Blogs and Feeds).  But, Greg Jarboe of SEO-PR's NEWS BLOG was a speaker at a couple of the sessions on blogs, also, who made an interesting comment.  He believed that if everybody was doing short posts on blogs, maybe you should try longer than 300 word blog posts if you had valuable content that justified it.  It is nice to see that he practices what he preaches in his own blog.  His theory was related to the stock market as he tries to sell when others say buy, and buys when others say sell.

Search Engines & Patriotism

If only all the parents of all the school age American kids could realize the importance of the Internet Revolution that has been going on, but is taking off at a faster rate right now, in my opinion.  They would get out of their comfort zones, and do whatever it takes to learn more about computers, the internet, and search engine usage.  Then they could encourage and share in the learning experience with their children.

Yesterday, a five year old Chinese search engine had its IPO, and this article from the San Francisco Business times said "Baidu launched its shares at $27 and saw them rise more than fourfold, closing its first day of Nasdaq trading at $122.54. That 354 percent increase represented the biggest first-day increase of a new stock since the heyday of the dot-com boom more than five years ago."  The two founders attended SUNY Buffalo and Texas A&M respectively.  This article in Wired News on 7/31/05 says "China's communist government promotes internet use for business and education."  Baidu.com is now the sixth most widely used search engine in the world, mainly due to 100 million Chinese users, out of a possible, future 1 billion, are using it. 

SEO-SEM's Emerging Growth Revolution

On 11/22/04 Jacob Nielsen published "Undoing the Industrial Revolution" in which he said:  "In the physical world, you win by being big, with economies of scale in manufacturing, worldwide distribution, and branding."  But, "In the virtual world, you win by being good: Automation reduces the benefits of scale, the Internet equalizes distribution, and reputation follows from quality rather than incessantly repeated slogans."  I like his point on "Reputation replaces image as the way to build a company, product, or brand position." since I have seen too many SEO's and SEM's write articles with the obvious intent of posturing for a better image than their competition.  Now, in all fairness, there is a fine line, in some cases, between an author's honest intent of buyer education, and one of self-serving or condescending competitiveness. 

Logo/Trademark Infringement

During the Consumer Reports WebWatch conference in Berkeley, Ca. on 6/9/05, that I attended, Mara Hannula (Senior Director of E-commerce Marketing, Marriott Hotels) was a guest speaker who mentioned her company's plight over trademark infringement by resellers of Marriott's hotel room reservations through PPC ads.  These resellers buy the term "Marriott" , for example, and show up for an online search in the Sponsored Link section for Marriott Hotels.   

I'm not picking on Google, but, just to give an example of this legal debate between online advertisers and the search engines, here is an article from 3/31/05 entitled Google Takes Hit in U.S. Trademark Case .  This case is going to trial, and could greatly affect Google's advertising revenue in the future as "American Blind asked that Google be permanently barred from selling keywords."  A good overview of the entire trademark infringement issue is in an article today by P.J. Fusco entitled How SEMs Can Help Protect Brands Online.