A new eye-tracking and click-tracking study from Mediative (formerly known as Enquiro) shows the value of having the top spot in Google’s local results, but also suggests that social content and signals can boost rankings further down the page. Early last month, Mediative did eye tracking on 12 participants and online click tracking on another […]
Searcher Behavior In A Multiplatform World Presentations from SMX West, March 2011 Understanding searcher behavior is one of the central pillars of effective search marketing. And more than ever, it’s important to not just understand what people are searching for, but how they are searching — using a computer, television, mobile device — because this […]
Canada’s Yellow Pages Group has acquired the well-known search marketing agency Enquiro and folded it into a new entity known as Mediative. As explained in today’s announcement, Mediative will provide digital marketing services for national agencies and advertisers in Canada. YPG has also acquired two other Canadian advertising/marketing companies, Ad Splash Media and UPTREND Media. […]
I recently did an opening keynote down in Silicon Valley and before my audience got well into their first cup of coffee, I started ranting at them. Now, being Canadian, my rants are rather mild and non- threatening (although I apparently scared a lot of Aussies at SMX in Sydney) but consider it a kinder, […]
In one week I’ll be heading off to Europe with my family for a long vacation. During the vacation, we’ll be driving over much of France and Northern Italy, as well as parts of Switzerland, so naturally, I’m beginning to think about how we’ll navigate from destination to destination. Being top of mind, I thought […]
We are emotional creatures. In fact, we are the most emotional creatures on the planet. Emotions are what cause us to act. The very word emotion means “to move” in Latin. Emotions move us to action. They cause us to avoid danger and pursue pleasure. They propel us to genetic propagation and steer us from […]
Since the advent of “blended” or “universal search” last year across the major engines, there’s been ongoing discussion and speculation about its impact on user behavior and search marketing. Gord Hotchkiss last year wrote extensively about how blended search (on Google) has in fact shifted the user focus from the so-called “golden triangle” at the […]
I’ve said a number of times that the holy grail of search is to disambiguate intent. A two or three word query, given the complexity of the English language, is just not enough to confidently provide results that will always be relevant and useful. But up to now, it’s been all we’ve had. Today, however, […]
A few columns ago I talked about user behavior on the results page and compared it to a shopping mall. In recent eye tracking studies, we’ve seen that several factors can create barriers or “walls” in this mall that can keep traffic from ever finding your listing.
We’ve just finalized the third keynote panel for SMX West, and it’s going to be a fascinating session. Gord Hotchkiss and I will be talking about the future of search with Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone, Brad Goldberg, Microsoft’s General Manager, Search Business Group, and Google’s Director of Research, Peter Norvig. This ‘Generation Next’ keynote discussion […]
Some time ago, I did a blog post called the “Other Long Tail of Search“. When Chris Anderson’s book came out, several smart search marketers realized that the long tail phenomenon applied to our industry as well. If you look at the keywords that drive traffic to your site and plot them according to traffic […]
In 2005, The Advertising Research Foundation (ARF), through their MI4 Initiative, decided to embark on the Quixotic quest of defining engagement. The impetus was finding a more appropriate and applicable metric that could stretch across the rapidly expanding number of channels that were exploding through digital delivery. So, the good folks at ARF assembled a […]
Today, we welcome another guest author to Just Behave. This week, we’re pleased to welcome Sep Kamvar, the lead software engineer of personalization at Google. In the first of two parts, Sep looks at how the introduction of iGoogle and gadgets have created a new ecosystem of push content and how Google tackles the problem […]
Google’s Universal Search was definitely a buzz generator at Search Engine Strategies in San Jose. Universal was tagged as probably the most significant development in search this year, and its effects are just starting to be felt throughout the industry, by both searchers and search marketers alike. It’s particularly timely that this week’s guest columnist […]
A few weeks back, we looked at how the major engines, Google, Yahoo and Microsoft, handled shopping search. This week we look at four of the dedicated shopping search portals: BizRate.com, Shopping.com, Shopzilla.com, NexTag.com, and a relative newcomer to the space, Become.com. Each of these properties matched up quite well in terms of user experience […]
Many companies have yet to get involved with search marketing. At Search Engine Strategies New York, panelists on the “Putting Search into the Marketing Mix” offered compelling reasons for including search as a fundamental component of a marketing strategy. The panel was moderated by Gord Hotchkiss, President & CEO of Enquiro, with speakers Curtis Dueck, […]
For the past three weeks we’ve let members of usability teams from Google, Yahoo and Microsoft talk about a user experiences on their respective sites. Today, I’d like to point out what was interesting in each of these three interviews. In talking to each of them, I couldn’t help but notice the pervasiveness of the […]
I love that people can comment at Search Engine Land directly within stories. I not only want comments — I want people to contribute links as well. I thought it would be useful to talk more about this, plus get feedback from readers on how we can improve the commenting system going forward.