I'm Going to Google Tomorrow - SNEEZE

Tomorrow I'm going to the Googleplex for an all day training at something they call "Conversion University." As far as I can tell, conversion university is basically a full-day sales pitch on why my company should use Google Analytics, with a few usability and product betas thrown in the add some excitement.

I actually do think it will be valuable. My company currently does not use Google Analytics but we're intrigued by the price (free). If the value it provides is 75% of our current provider, I'm inclined to save tens of thousands of dollars annually and go with Google Analytics.

Of course, the ever-present danger with Google Analytics is that Google has yet more of my company's information. Combine Google Analytics (sales data), Conversion Tracker (more sales data), Checkout (sales and customer data), Google Base (product data), AdWords (marketing data), Gmail (email data) and even Google Desktop (my computer's data!) and Google could learn a lot about me and my business if they wanted to.

Right now that doesn't bother me too much, but at some point in the future when Google decides to migrate from a search engine to an actual merchant, I may be regretting the day that I saved tens of thousands of dollars and gave Google the keys to my business data.

This is a difficult dance for any online marketer to make these days - it's dumb to stick your head in the sand and avoid all the innovation that Google pumps out (most of which is free to use). But it also feels like I'm on a street corner in some bad part of town and a pusher is offering me my first hit for free. The pusher knows the value of that first loss-leader.

Those of you who don't religiously read this blog (shame on you) may be wondering why there is a "Sneeze" reference in the title. A few months back, I coined the concept of a "Google Sneezes" post, which is basically any blog post that either parrots a really lame Google press release or is some form of bragging about interaction with a Google employee.

A search on blogsearch.google.com, for example, reveals more than 200 posts that reference "visiting Googleplex." In many cases, it's a bit nauseating to hear the writers coo over their close encounters with Google luminaries. A recent poster wrote: "We arrived at Google around 1pm and had our car valet-parked (a great new feature at the 'plex). Matt Cutts, Brian White, Aaron D'Souza and several other folks from the search quality team treated us to a fantastic lunch (including flawlessly cooked duck breast) and a tour of the many wonders of the Googleplex."

It's sad that lunch with a smart engineer is newsworthy (and this post comes from a very well-subscribed blog). Perhaps an interview with some SEO secrets or a philosophical discussion of the ethics of quality score would be OK, but any post that simply brags about a visit to Googleplex is a Google Sneeze, plain and simple.

So I of course recognize that it might seem that I'm criticizing bloggers who brag about their Google interactions as a way for me to brag about my own upcoming Google interaction. To set the record straight, I will simply say that there is really nothing to brag about with respect to my visit. I'm not getting any access to an inner-sanctum, nor am I meeting with anyone above a product manager, nor does Google care who I am or what I have to say (nor do they care about the bloggers who think that they care about them, but that is another story altogether).

Believe me, if I was to brag about a trip to Googleplex, you'd know it.

Adteractive: A Marxist and Existentialist Viewpoint

I was pleased to see that my post on ex-Adteractive employees going on to bigger and better things has gotten a lot of reaction. Most (if not all) of it seems to be coming from anonymous "ex-Teractives" perhaps still recovering from their days in the online lead generation business. Among the interesting comments I received:

"It is not that ADT hired exceptional people, nor is it that exceptional people gravitated there. This merely shows that ADT sat on, and did not properly exploit, the true potential of the resources in the market. These people got fed up with ADT, and saw how amazingly easy Internet advertisement is, and were tired of being personally exploited."

"Hilarious. If you ever worked with Diego and Josh closely, you'd understand why they will never be able to scale Adteractive again."

"Most of these guys owe a lot to the spirit that was in Adt -that of focus and entrepreneurship in the early days. None of these guys can put a candle up to Peterson and Diego ... unfortunately where Adt is today is on account of certain inappropriate management tools imported from larger companies that have nipped innovation in the bud. Second, Peterson has been more relaxed and hence much more dangerous if he decides to come back in full vigor. Like one very well known luminary in the industry told me some time ago - " We are not worried about Adteractive at all. They are not competition, as long as they are being run by current management. We will be scared shitless if Peterson and Diego enter the fray in that same vigor the early days." Having said that, he looked around at his desk and touched wood."

"Leaving Adteractive and finding a fulfilling job is the greatest thing I ever did- I am shocked that they paid me as much as they did to surf the Internet all day... the food and drinks were solid as well! I am going surfing... "

What I find interesting about most of these posts is that they revolve around the relationship between the owners (Josh Peterson and Diego Canoso) and the employees. Depending upon the viewpoint, there is a sense that either Adteractive did not fulfill it's obligation to its employees, or vice versa.

For example, the first poster says that many people left Adteractive because "they were tired of being personally exploited."A further poster counters that "most of these guys owe a lot to the spirit that was in Adt -that of focus and entrepreneurship in the early days." And the most recent comment suggests that some workers were exploiting Adteractive: "I am shocked that they paid me as much as they did to surf the Internet all day."

Karl Marx noted that it is inherent to the nature of capitalism that workers are exploited, or as he put it, alienated from their labor. Thus, if you produce $10,000 of value for your company and you are only paid $5000 in return, you have been 'alienated' from $5000 of your work-product.

Of course, the capitalist would argue that the difference between the worker's output and the worker's pay reflect the risk made by the company. Thus, while it is true that the owners' of a company may not have literally earned the $5000 they made from their worker's effort, they did enable the entire transaction to take place, and stood to lose their own investment if the enterprise failed.

In the 21st century Internet start-up world, the 'dialectic' between the Marxist exploitation of workers and capitalist risk-return ratio is much different than it was in the 19th century, when Karl Marx observed the horrific conditions of the factories of England.

Indeed, Internet workers are paid very well, and insulted when the free food and drink run low, expect stock options that could make them millionaires, and know that another job can be had in an instant. It's a far cry from 1860s England when you were thankful to have any job and your family prayed every day that you didn't get sucked into a vat of molten steel at work.

At the same time, the value today's workers provide to their companies is much higher and less commoditzed that the worker of the Industrial Revolution. There's no doubt that there were (and are) employees at Adteractive who single-handedly generated tens of millions of dollars of revenue for the company. Had these employees gone out and replicated the Adteractive business model, they may very well have retained these revenues for themselves.

It strikes me that there is great parity between worker and employee in the Internet economy at the moment. It is actually a rather existential moment where both employees and employers are truly "condemned to freedom." To quote Wikipedia paraphrasing Sartre (how's that for a post-modern moment): "The individual consciousness is responsible for all the choices it makes, regardless of the consequences. Condemned to be free because man's actions and choices are his and his alone, he is condemned to be responsible for his free choices."

Internet workers are presented with many, many options to choose from. Choosing the wrong option can cost you millions of dollars and likely cause a lot of second-guessing. No doubt employees who went to Adteractive expecting an IPO windfall may be regretting their decision not to join Google, YouTube, or any of the other start-ups that have since made their employees rich.

Similarly, employers who fail to maintain employee expectations - be it of wealth, work environment, or learning - risk mass migration of their human capital. And without human capital, no alienation from labor and therefore profits are possible. You can argue about why so many quality employees left Adteractive, but I think that few would disagree that these departures had a negative impact on the company.

Successful Internet companies cannot follow the 19th century industrialist tradition of alienating commoditized workers. Instead, Internet companies must both alienate and be alienated themselves. They must provide financial and life-style incentives that convince workers that their labor is better alienated at Company A than Company B. It is a delicate dance for both sides to perform.

The Subtle Connection Between Ironing Clothes and Snow Skiing

I got a new iron recently. It's from a company called Rowenta and I think it cost about $40. Inside the box was a product registration card. It was 24 questions long. I'm not sure I could even think of 24 questions about an iron, so it caught my eye.

A few of the iron product registration questions include:

• Do you plan to buy/lease a new vehicle in the next 12 months?
• Are you a member of a frequent flyer program?
• Do you own a CD-ROM drive?
• Do you regularly participate in snow skiing? buying prerecorded videos? fashion clothing? watching sports on TV?

Don't get me wrong, I am all about collecting demographic information about customers. But the connection between leasing a new car and buying an iron is a little far-fetched, no? I know that banks sometimes give out new toasters for signing up for a new account, but I doubt the local Ford dealer is going to bring people onto the lot by offering a free iron.

Then I noticed - at the very end of the document and in 4 point type, the disclaimer. I've bolded the relevant parts:

"Thanks for taking the time to fill out this questionnaire. Your answers will be used for market research studies and reports. They will also allow you to receive important mailings and special offers from a number of fine companies whose products and services relate directly to the specific interests, hobbies, and other information indicated above. Through this selective program, you will be able to obtain more information about activities in which you are involved and less about those which you are not. Please check here if, for some reason, you would prefer not to participate in this opportunity. Failure to return this card will not diminish your warranty rights."

So, in other words, based on the information I provide, I'll get a lot of junk mail for the categories I checked, and even some junk mail (but less of it, phew!) for the categories I didn't check.

I love the line "if, for some reason, you would prefer not to participate in this opportunity." That's great marketing - if you are an idiot and you want to pass this by, click here.

And then the closer - the entire card is totally worthless! The warranty is valid whether I mail the card in or not.

I wonder how many people actually fill out this card thinking that it is somehow required to protect their $40 iron investment? And how much does Rowenta make selling their customers' demographics? Is the revenue factored into the selling price of the iron?

My suggestion to Rowenta: create an iron that permanently steams brand messaging onto clothes - now that will really drive some extra bucks!

Should Google Be Feeling More Lucky?

I bet that 99.9% of the people reading this blog a) use Google at least five times a day and b) haven't used the "I'm Feeling Lucky" button for at least a year.

And yet, that button still takes up a lot of space on Google's homepage. I know for a fact that Google does a lot of usability testing on their homepage, so I'm going to assume that there are still denizens of users who find this button to be a differentiating feature for Google.

But I suspect that this button remains on the page despite whether users really like it or not. Why? Well, two reasons. First, "I'm Feeling Lucky" still gives people a warm-fuzzy feeling about Google. It's the sort of non-corporate approach that endeared Google to the masses in the first place. Take away "I'm Feeling Lucky" and I am sure that many critics would declare this the final transition from happy-go-lucky start-up to full-blown corporation.

Second, the raison d'etre of "I'm Feeling Lucky" was the idea that Google could take you to directly what you wanted without searching at all. Take the button away and Google has conceded defeat - we actually can't get you to where you want to go with one click.

Of course, it's not really in Google's financial interest to do so. Consider what would happen to Google's revenue if users started to use "I'm Feeling Lucky" more than the regular search results. All of those AdWords clicks that occur when a user browses SERPs would be gone.

Idealist that I am, I still believe that the concept behind "I'm Feeling Lucky" will ultimately be achieved, most likely through a combination of personalization and collaborative filtering. As search engines (or social media engines) learn more and more about specific users, is there really a need to display 10 results on a page (much less a message that states that the search
engine found more than a million results relevant to the user query)?

Not really, in my opinion. As I wrote way back in February 2006, someday I'd expect search engines to "know" so much about you that "I'm Feeling Lucky" would be just the beginning. For example, I wrote about a hypothetical search experiences in which:

When you type in "los angeles travel", it takes you directly to the Web site with the best travel deals for you to Los Angeles. Heck, depending on the information you have provided or the system has gleaned from you, it might even know the dates of your travel, your departure location, your preferred method of traveling, frequent flyer numbers, travel companions, credit card information, and whether you need a car, hotel, a kennel for your dog, and some new luggage. All you need to do is review the price of your trip, click submit and voila you're off to LA!

For the foreseeable future, it seems like "I'm Feeling Lucky" will remain a (mostly ignored) part of Google users' everyday experience. The time will come, however, when - whether through Google or another technology - users start to realize that being lucky is a lot easier than searching through reams of results. No more SERPS? That will be an interesting day for us all.

Is There Such a Thing as Quality Traffic from a Second Tier Search Engine?

My rule of thumb in buying paid search ads is to buy ads on Google, YSM, MSN, and Ask and avoid everything else. I know that somewhere out there there are diamonds in the rough, but I also know that I would have to pour through a lot of junk (which would cost me a lot of money) to find any gems. As a result, it's generally not worth my while.

Do you agree? Well, now it's your choice to have your voice heard! You have two ways to respond:

1. Check out the survey on the right frame of this page (it's a little hard to see I admit). Vote for your favorite second tier search engine and tell all your friends to do the same.

2. Just respond to this post with a comment about good or bad 2nd tier search engines.

Did Google Create Search, or Did Search Create Google?

This afternoon Yahoo released their quarterly earnings. The results were disappointing: "a dip in quarterly profit, weighed down by weak display advertising, and a weaker-than-expected forecast through the end of 2007." Yahoo's market cap is now hovering around $35 billion.

That may sound like a lot of money, but consider this: the founders of Google could personally buy Yahoo at this point. That right - Larry and Sergey could become a two-man leveraged buyout team and own 100% of Yahoo. Google's market cap, by the way, is currently $172 billion - five times that of Yahoo - and rising.

The dichotomy between Yahoo's ongoing decline and Google's ongoing ascent got me to thinking about just how exactly Google made it to the top. Had you asked me this question a few years ago, I would have explained that Google was just in the right place at the right time. Yahoo was focused on building their portal and biz dev deals, Microsoft was worried about their next OS release, and Google launched a very useful search engine at a time when consumers were ready for a better search. Combine that with almost 100% euphorically positive buzz and Google's success was all but assured.

Today, however, I no longer buy into that argument. The fact is, Yahoo and Microsoft didn't 'drop the ball' - there was no ball to drop. When Google was launched, search engines had been certifiably proven as failed business models. Just ask employees (or worse, investors) of Lycos, Excite, Ask, InfoSpace, Magellan, About, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, eTour, or any of the dozens of other search engines that either went out of business or got acquired for pennies.

So there was no reason for Yahoo or anyone else to be worried when some Stanford geeks launched yet another search engine. For that matter, you really can't blame Yahoo for allowing Google to power their search results. Again, search was just a feature - the real money was in creating cool content and applications.

Google simply made search cool - and valuable - again. Google was so fascinatingly strange (an "I'm feeling lucky" button?) and simplistic that consumers were mesmerized. Moreover, Google actually respected consumers - instead of pop-ups, banners, interstitials, paid inclusion, and extra fees for product usage (read: Yahoo Mail) - Google limited their pages to just a few text ads and everything to consumers was free.

Google created the perfect app - more useful, cool, and free - with a perfect business model (non-obtrusive, highly relevant advertising). It's not surprising that consumers ate it up.

Had Google never existed, would search engines be important today? Absolutely. But not to the degree that they are now. In other words, I suspect that the absence of Google would have had no meaningfully positive impact on Yahoo's stock price. Google created it's own market share rather than taking away market share from Yahoo.

As Google moves into a myriad of other areas (wireless, VOIP, word processing, video, offline advertising, payment processing, etc), it's quite possible that Google will have the same impact on these industries as it did on search - creating new markets that others had long ago abandoned.

The prominence of search engines in today's Internet is the result of Google, not the other way around.

Does Mobile Matter?

Driving through the heart of Silicon Valley today, I noticed a Yahoo billboard proudly proclaiming market leadership in Mobile Search. To me, this claim is a Pyrrhic victory at best, and embarrassingly desperate at worst. It's kind of like hearing a coach tell a reporter "we lost six games by less than three points. If we had won those, we would be in the playoffs."

But as I kept driving, a tried to give Yahoo the benefit of the doubt. Indeed, many prognosticators have been hailing mobile as a virtual Internet killer, and as new devices like Apple's iPhone start to make it relatively easy to use the Web on your mobile phone, maybe being the leader in mobile really is worth something after all?

Then again, in 2000, Yahoo could have easily put up a billboard proclaiming search dominance, and all of its once great rivals - Excite, AltaVista, Lycos - couldn't protest the claim. As we now know, however, dominance in any Internet category is fleeting and Yahoo is now in a heated battle for second place in online search.

The problem with Yahoo's claim of mobile dominance at the moment is - frankly - no one cares. Google, MSN, eBay, etc - they all have mobile strategies but none of them have really decided to throw their hat in the ring. So Yahoo being the #1 mobile player is sort of like being the best ice skater in Alabama.

No doubt, there will come a time when mobile does matter. Maybe the iPhone will usher in that era, or maybe we are still a few years a way. When that time does come, however, you can be sure that Yahoo's rivals will come up with solid strategies to grab marketshare. If, after the full-scale launch and integration of "GMobile", Yahoo is still king, then I would agree that they have something to bray about.

Which brings up one final point - exactly when will mobile matter? I remember working at a dot com in 2000 (apartment rentals) and our VCs told us that we had to create a mobile strategy, since it was only a matter of months before consumers would be finding and renting apartments via their mobile phones. Similarly, I actually interviewed in Yahoo's mobile search department way back in 2003, and I was told that mobile was a core initiative of Yahoo at that time.

And I consider myself pretty much a nerd when it comes to trying out new technology, and the most that I've done with my phone is email, very basic Web browsing, and a few text messages. The idea that my phone will soon become my preferred portal for accessing the Internet still seems futuristic to me. Let's not even begin to talk about how my Parents' generation feels about this -they are still figuring out the Internet!

Believe me, I would love to see Yahoo be a smashing success - in mobile or otherwise. I bought YHOO shares about two years ago and I will gleefully take any good news coming out of Sunnyvale. And as a search marketer, I think it is good for the entire industry to have healthy competition against Google - no one likes putting all their eggs in one basket.

The fact, however, that Yahoo is #1 in mobile and that they need to flaunt this on expensive billboard space does not give me warm fuzzies inside. Here's hoping that Yahoo can find something more meaningful to brag about in the near future.

Responding to Your Comments: Human Emotions, Comparison Engines

Do B2B Buyers Have Basic Human Emotions?

Regarding my post on the four basic human emotions to sell anything, EricaAdapt wrote "Do you think that there are similar messaging principles in B2B marketing? IMO the end-purchaser is often a company, so the more "consumery" motivations like greed and vanity may not apply.

Erica, at the end of the day, the person doing the B2B buying is still a human (unless, perhaps, some clever company has hired androids to do their procurement?) So I could still make an argument for using each of the four emotions I mentioned (fear, greed, vanity, exclusivity) in a B2B ad.

To prove my point, I've made up four examples around a B2B purchase about which I know absolutely nothing - database software:

Fear
If the Fortune 500 Use
Our Database, Shouldn't You?

Greed
Get a Free 3 Hour Analysis of
Your Database Needs Now.

Exclusivity
Learn About the Only 3rd Party
Database Used by the CIA!

Vanity
Having the Fastest Database in Town
Isn't Just Cool, It's Good Business.

Do you believe me now?


Supreme Court and Comparison Shopping Engines

Two good comments on my post about how a recent Supreme Court ruling could negatively impact comparison shopping engines.

First, an anonymous reader wrote "This ruling will embolden manufacturers to kill Internet retailers. The only hope for Internet retailers is to partner with new market entrants or far-sighted manufacturers who will support them. Internet retailers, in many industries, have a bad name because brick and mortar retailers put pressure on the manufacturers not to deal with them. This pressure is hard to prove in court, so Internet retailers will be negatively impacted by this ruling."

And Blowski, perhaps somewhat contradictorily, wrote "In a globalised world, if manufacturers enforce price in one market, people will just buy from the next cheapest market. Hence, this ruling might produce legislation explicitly banning MAP policies, but is most likely to just be ignored by retailers and manufacturers alike, since they both benefit from the current arrangement, except in a few cases."

My response to both comments is "it depends." I think the key issue is the degree to which manufacturers enjoy monopoly or near-monopoly status for the product they sell. For example, if Apple Computers decided to strictly impose minimum prices on manufacturers, or even exclude Internet retailers from selling iMacs online, it's difficult to envision a substitute product that could replace the iMac.

True, you could buy another computer, but Mac aficionados don't just want any computer, they want a Mac, along with all the various accessories that come with it. So if a manufacturer or set of manufacturers are truly the only sellers of their product, any court ruling that enables them to strictly control price or distribution could in fact have a negative impact on retailers, and by association, comparison shopping engines.

For many markets, however, Blowski is right, attempts to 'control' the market can be easily circumvented by consumers. For example, the outrageous prices the music industry foisted upon consumers for years created demand for an alternative market - namely free illegal downloads - from which the music 'price fixers' have never fully recovered.

Finally, to the point about whether the increased strength of manufacturers will end up hurting Internet retailers. I think this will again be a category-specific case. In general, I don't think there is an overall animus against online retailers. Perhaps seven or eight years ago there was, but today most manufacturers understand that online retail is a rapidly growing section that they ignore at their own peril.

As such, some manufacturers would no doubt like to impose a little bit more order unto their online retailers, but I suspect that most are doing everything they can to attract as many (quality) online retailers that they can.


Comparison Engines and Bad Business

Finally, in my post on how many comparison shopping engines are doing a poor job of serving the needs of their customers, an anonymous reader wrote: "Thank God you wrote this article. It is about time someone is talking about this. I manage the CSE relationships at a major online / offline retailer. My CSEs rarely deliver a worthwhile return. We frequently lose money listing our products on these sites. They are the most time consuming relationships to manage and account managers are rarely helpful coming up with solutions or being flexible to the situation."

I'm glad to see that I am not alone in thinking that the tools and business practices of some of the CSEs need some, well, retooling. I've had a few people suggest that I go one step further and actually name the two CSEs that with which I've had particularly bad experiences. If I thought that it would wake them from their slumber, I'd be inclined to do so, but based on my interactions with them over the past many months, I think - as Horace Grant of the Chicago Bulls once said - the chances are slim and none, and Slim just walked out the door.

Thanks to everyone for the comments. It's nice to know that my posts don't disappear into the great cyberspace void . . .

Spam Poetry - Volume II: Get a Heat

Only today there are bonus and big game.

Don't miss your chance.

It is only once in a life.

You'll be near to your dream.

You'll be richer.

Come to us and get a heat, an enjoyment and Jackpot.

We receive players from all world and they entrust to us.

Five Ways to Get Your Company Acquired by Google

Back in 1999, the mantra for start-ups was "pre-IPO." Today, it could well be "pre-Google acquisition." The days of starting a company and going public nine months later are over, but the same cannot be said for getting acquired by Google. YouTube and FeedBurner are two recent examples of young companies with little to no revenue getting plucked by Google for big bucks.

In the event that you are thinking about starting the next big Google acquisition, here's a few hints on how to make it happen:

1. Create a competitive advantage through technology. Google loves to "solve problems pragmatically" so if your company uses cool technology to separate you from your competitors, Google will like you.

Examples: Keyhole (Google Earth), JotSpot (Web-based applications), Peakstream (parallel processing), and dozens of other technologies I am too dumb to comprehend.

2. Automate a previously un-automated marketing channel. Google loves bringing the automated auction model to non-search marketing channels. Find a previously offline channel, or a highly inefficient channel, that could use a 21st century shot-in-the-arm and build technology to level the playing field.

Examples: dMarc Communication (radio advertising), DoubleClick (banner advertising), Applied Semantics (content networks and domain parks). Future predictions: SpotRunner (TV ads), AdKnowledge (email).

3. Generate a lot of eyeballs ripe for monetization. OK, so we are still sort of in the 1990s apparently. Google needs new page views for its advertising. Create a really sticky site that will guarantee Google millions of impressions a day (preferably with a good demographic group like 18-35 year olds), and Google may help you buy your dream house in Atherton.

Examples: YouTube (video), Pyra (blogging), Baidu (Chinese portal, investment), AOL (portal, investment), Dodgeball (social networking).

4. Create technology that can add value to AdWords. Anything that can put AdWords ahead of its competitors is pure gold to Google. A lot of the acquisitions already mentioned have implicit value to AdWords, but since they aren't directly correlated, I included them elsewhere.

Examples: Sprinks (user interface for keyword advertising), Urchin (Web analytics), AdScape (in-game advertising), Feedburner (RSS feeds).

5. Be wanted by Microsoft. A little interest from Google's arch-nemesis will always help add a few dollars to your price tag. Note: if you can't attract interest from Microsoft, at least try to copy some of their technology.

Examples: YouTube (Microsoft acquisition attempt), AOL (Microsoft acquisition attempt), DoubleClick (Microsoft acquisition attempt), Upstartle (Microsoft Word), Writely (Microsoft Excel).

So there you have it - five fool-proof ways to make billions being acquired by Google. Just don't forget about me when you make it big time.

Four Basic Emotions to Sell Anything

Back in the early 1980s, my parents decided to try to get into mail order. Specifically, I believe they decided to sell a pumpkin pie recipe by advertising it in magazines. To make sure they had the marketing down right, they purchased a book about mail order advertising.

Sadly, the pumpkin pie empire they envisioned never materialized, but when I saw the book gathering dust on my Father's bookcase, I had to check it out and see if I could glean any nuggets that would be applicable to online marketing today.

I reasoned that even if the medium had changed, basic human needs have not. And, indeed, it turns out that there are a lot of lessons from 1982 that are still quite useful for a 2007 search engine marketer.

Perhaps most valuable was the author's claim that there are four basic emotions that motivate consumers to buy: greed, vanity, exclusivity, and fear. Keep in mind, these emotions apply to direct marketing mediums - like search engine marketing or mail order; there are other emotions that probably work better when you are considering mass medium branding campaigns (for example, sex).

But think about any product you might want to sell through AdWords or Yahoo Search Marketing and I bet that you could use one or more of the above emotions to increase your click-through rate and conversion rate.

For example, let's take Mom's Special Pumpkin Pie recipe as a case study. Here's four different ads that use the four basic emotions to get people clicking away.

Greed
Pumpkin Pie Recipes on Sale
Award-winning pumpkin pie book.
75% off retail today only!

Vanity
Make Your Neighbors Jealous
Secret pumpkin pie recipe will
cause envy on your block!

Exclusivity
Limited-Edition Pumpkin Pie Recipe
Only 1000 copies remain! Order now
before supplies run out.

Fear
Don't Risk Ruining Thanksgiving
Make sure your perfect dinner ends
with the perfect pumpkin pie!

I've actually tried creating ads with these emotions in mind and it does work. Obviously, not every emotion can be matched to every product. But when search engine result pages often seem to have the same ad 10 times in a row, a little emotional manipulation can make all the difference.

Spam Poetry - Volume I: My Dog is Alive

New Blogation Feature!

I get some great SPAM in my inbox at work, and I feel like some of it should be shared with the world. Thus, I'll be occassionally posting some of the highlights. Here's one I got today.


Hello my friend!

I am ready to kill myself and eat my dog, if medicine prices here are bad.

Look, the site and call me 1-800 if its wrong..

My dog and I are still alive :)

Six Search Technologies You Should Know About

The days of the one-size-fits-all search algorithm are over. As impressed as we all were with Google's PageRank algorithm back in 2001, the results you'd get from that algorithm today would be laughable in comparison to the results we have come to expect from search engines.

Why? Well, in part because SEOs have gamed the original algorithm to death at this point, but mostly because search technology has gotten so much better since then.

Here, then, are six search technologies that will (or are) reshaping the search landscape.

1. Collaborative Filtering. Loyal readers may wonder why I don't just change the title of this blog to "Collaborative Filtering Thoughts" since I mention this technology about once a post. Collaborative filtering is technology that matches your interests to people similar to you, best expressed in Amazon's "People who bought this book also bought . . ." Many Web 2.0 applications are based on this principle, such as StumbleUpon, del.icio.us, and Flixster. I'm very bullish on collaborative filtering, simply because I believe that the "wisdom of crowds" can be far more effective than even the best algorithm for many types of searches (product reviews, restaurant recommendations, someday perhaps even dating!).

Examples of Collaborative Filtering: Collarity, Launchcast, Flickster, Amazon.com.

2. Personalization. As the name implies, personalization uses data a search engine has about you to serve more relevant results in the future. For example, if I continually do searches for "lake trout" and "fly fishing", a personalization engine will likely conclude that my search for "laker" is not for a basketball team, but rather for a fish. Personalization has the potential to be very powerful, but it also comes with a price - privacy concerns. Ultimately, this technology will only work if consumers really trust a search engine to protect and honor their personal data.

Examples of Personalization: Google Personalization.

3. Semantic Search. Semantic search identifies similarities in words and phrases. Thus, if I searched for "telephone", the search results might show me results that contained sites about "cell phones." In the paid search world, this might mean that you buy the word "mortgage" on broad match, but end up getting matched with terms like "refinance" and "home equity" because the search engine considers these words to be semantically related to one another.

Examples of Semantic Search: Hakia, Yahoo "also try" results.

4. Clustering. Clustering, or clustered search, tries to categorize words or phrases into a taxonomy (or groups) of related themes. I might type in "auction" and a clustering engine would show me categories like "Online Auctions" and "Fine Art Auctions" and beneath each category I would find sub-categories like "eBay", "Ubid" and "Sotherby's." Clustering is a great way to provide additional navigation options to users who might feel overwhelmed by the raw search results.

Examples of Clustering: Clusty, eBay search results.

5. Local Search. Local search can be described in two ways - either it's interactive maps like Google Maps, or it's geotargeting based on the IP address or user registration information. For example, as a registered user of Yahoo, Yahoo knows that I live in the Bay Area (I gave this info to them when I signed up, and I was actually honest). As a result, I get a lot of ads for local events, car dealers, and Bay Area real estate brokers. But even if I didn't register, Yahoo could still have a good idea of my location by looking at my IP address, or by cookie-ing my searches.

Examples of Local Search: Google Local, Krillion.

6. Human-Edited Search Engines. As funny as it may sound, humans are making a comeback (here's hoping I don't see the top of the Statue of Liberty on my next beach walk . . .). As the number of Web sites multiple, it becomes harder and harder for anyone to filter out the all the noise and get to the good stuff. So rather than do the hard work yourself, why not farm out the effort to someone else? That's the theory behind search newcomers like ChaCha, Mahalo, and really Wikipedia when you think about it.

Examples of Human-Edited Search Engines: ChaCha, Mahalo.

Phew, that's a lot of different search options. Ultimately, I'm still throwing my hat in the ring with collaborative filtering, but you can bet that each of the technologies above - as well as many that have yet to be developed - will play a role in the future of search!

Four Ways Technology is Killing Movie Stars

While waiting in line this 4th of July to purchase tickets to Michael Moore's new movie Sicko, I noticed that the big hit (at least in Daly City) was Transformers - a movie who's biggest stars are computer-generated images (CGI) of 1980s toys. Ratatouille was also in high demand as well, the latest Disney/Pixar animation movie.

Pretty amazing that stars of the top movies over the 4th - the ultimate time to release a blockbuster - aren't the stars, but rather the technology.

This fact is but one reason to conclude that the days of multi-million dollar movie stars like Tom Cruise and Demi Moore are numbered. As I see it, there are four trends that spell doom for mega-stars in the future.

1. Advances in Animation. Animated movies are no longer for kids. The clever writing and amazing graphics make Pixar films (and wannabe Pixar films, like Shrek) huge fan favorites. And sure, these movies do employ movie stars for the voice-work, but frankly celebrity voices aren't the draw anymore; rather, its the creativity and amazing special effects that draw audiences. By the way, eight of the top 50 movie openings of all time are animated features - and all of those were released in the last seven years. Strike one.

2. Movie Attendance Down, Internet Attendance Up. Since 2002, annual movie attendance in the US has declined by about 200 million tickets. In approximately the same time period, Internet usage has increased 121%, to the point that today about 91% of all Americans have Internet access. The younger generation has lots of online diversions - Facebook, Second Life, World of Warcraft - that are as interesting and much cheaper than a night out at the movies. Strike two.

3. Increases in Broadband Speed Enable Online Downloads, Illegal or Otherwise. There was a time when only the music industry needed to worry about online downloads killing their business. That time has passed. As more and more American households upgrade to broadband Internet service and faster, more powerful computers, online movie downloads are becoming increasingly popular.

And that's not good news for the movie industry. A recent study revealed that the number of illegally downloaded movies outnumbered legally downloaded movies five to one. The study suggested that six million households had illegally downloaded a video within a one month period.

As the music industry has discovered, you can prosecute illegal downloaders all you want, but that won't make the problem go away. And even if you do introduce programs like iTunes, the price you can charge for your goods is far less than the olden days of selling through WalMart and electronics stores.

Translation: the secondary market of DVDs and movie rentals is in trouble, and this spells big trouble for the movie industry, which relies heavily on these outlets for revenue. And of course, what's bad for the movie industry is bad for the movie star. Strike three.

4. Digital Cameras Make Low Budget Easy. In many respects, it's cheaper to make a great movie today than it is to make a great video game. The average PlayStation 2 video game costs over $8 million to make, yet independent films like Saw, Napoleon Dynamite, or the embarrassingly bad Blair Witch Project, can often be made for a few hundred thousand dollars.

Digital cameras, computer editing software, even screenwriting software, have all made it possibly to create high-quality films at a fraction of the cost. These films are often a great deal for movie studios as well, as they can sit back and wait until a film gets rave reviews at the Sundance Festival before having to invest a penny of their own money.

Compare that to the millions of dollars wasted on 'blockbusters' like WaterWorld or War of the Worlds and it makes good business sense to find as many independent films as you can to fill your release schedule.

Once again, these independent films rarely have huge star-power. Instead, they have stories that are often too edgy for the studios to make, with no-name stars, no-name directors, but an outstanding end-result.

Strike four for major actors.

Animation, declining movie attendance, increased Internet usage, illegal downloads, and cheaper and better independent films. Tom and Katie, don't buy that summer home yet.