Earlier this month, Google unveiled a very subtle change to its logo (no more shadows behind those colored letters) and a comprehensive change to its search results page.  In the world of SEO and website visibility, landing in the top 10 results of Google has long been considered the highest prize because searchers’ curiosity and clicking tends to drop off the cliff after the first page. Google’s move away from its trademark Spartan search results page in favor of a Bing-like interface that includes a left-hand navigation menu could have big consequences not only for the way people use Google, but also for SEO strategies. As an article in BusinessWeek chronicled, this was not a decision that Google took lightly and judging by chatter on blogs and forums, the verdict of users isn’t out yet.

Using the left-hand menu, searchers now have the possibility to sift through categories of search results. Of course, the option to limit results has been known for a long time with popular features such as Google Images and Google News. With the left-hand menu, Google is not introducing any new services; it’s just showcasing the search  possibilities.  The “Updates” link, for example, takes people to Twitter streams mentioning their search queries, while the “Discussions” link takes searchers to forums. Another feature on the menu is the possibility to limit results to a certain time, which includes anything from “Latest” to a custom range. Interestingly, the menu changes according to the search entered, so that the menu for the search “flatiron district” begins with “Maps” and a search for “flatiron building” begins with “Images.”

The question for SEO professionals is whether the changes to Google’s interface will result in changes in search behavior and habits.  Google did not introduce the left-side menu for aesthetic reasons (even if it is more colorful than Bing’s).  This is about providing users with the possibility to retrieve more precise results, and yes, showing off Google’s toolkit.  The days when websites could content themselves with landing in the top 10 search results may be numbered. Going forward, it will be more important for marketers to think about specific search channels (images, videos, blogs, real-time, etc.) and how to improve search rankings within each of them.

 Gizmodo.com

This morning, Gizmodo, the popular technology blog owned by Gawker Media, noted that “a certain post is setting our servers on fire." That post revealed to the world—or, at least, to tech-savvy Gizmodo readers with Twitter accounts—the look and features of the next-generation iPhone, rumored to be released this summer.  So, how did Gizmodo manage to get a hold of Apple’s next big thing and show it off before Steve Jobs? Simple: a drunk Apple Software Engineer left it at a bar in Redwood City, California. The lucky guy who found the 4G phone, which was disguised as a 3G, then brought it home from the bar, played around with it, and realized that it was different.

How is it different? Well, I won’t talk about its features here because, by now, you can find those details anywhere. What’s interesting about this story is how it came to light and spread—especially behind the back of a company notoriously careful about guarding its secrets. Gizmodo reportedly paid $5,000 for the phone. (That’s it?) Now, Apple’s senior vice president and general counsel, Bruce Sewell, has written a letter to Gizmodo formally requesting that they give it back. A New York Times headline this morning underlines Apple’s position, “For Apple, Lost iPhone Is a Big Deal.”

Or is it? What better way to build buzz around the next iPhone—or in this case, capitalize on latent buzz—than to share the ultimate ‘I forgot my phone at the bar’ story? Meanwhile, Gizmodo handles Apple’s initial marketing by revealing all of the phone’s details, complete with video and photos. Even the New York Times can’t resist mentioning the 4G features. Then, it’s just a matter of time before we repost the story (myself included). This is social media marketing at its finest: letting others market your product for you. Maybe, that Software Engineer—who reportedly still has a job at Apple, by the way—really forgot the phone. In a way, it doesn’t really matter. After this, we should all be able to appreciate a good story and the power of marketing without marketers.

This Tuesday, I had the good fortune to attend the opening day of the annual Search Engine Strategies conference right here in New York City. The conference brings together thousands of search engine optimization professionals for presentations by leading players and companies in SEO, including representatives from Google, Yahoo!, and Bing.

Rather than limit this post to a specific panel, and there were many interesting ones, I’ll share three key insights that I gathered throughout the course of the day:

• Search is social: for a conference entitled Search Engine Strategies, there was surprisingly—or unsurprisingly—a lot of talk about social media and Twitter. More and more, people are turning to those whom they trust for relevant information (from peers to complete strangers), rather than algorithms. This applies to many different types of searches, from restaurant recommendations to breaking news on the street.
  
  Google and Bing’s decisions to purchase access to Twitter streams shows that the big players have grasped the rising demand to keep up with right now by going to where the content and media is being shared.  From an SEO perspective, the trend toward social search has the most implications for link-building. In order to increase inbound links to your site and increase page rank, your content must be engaging and current enough for people to want to share it within their networks.

• SEO tools can't do everything: after each presentation, audience members invariably asked the experts to divulge their tools of the trade—preferably free tools. While the holy grail of SEO tools does not exist (or, at least not as a free product), I noted some useful suggestions, including Compete for data on competitor websites, FeedBurner to manage RSS feeds, and Google’s Search-based Keyword Tool. Another great suggestion was to use Twitter as a keyword discovery tool by searching keywords to gauge their popularity and who's using them.
  
  The best answer to the tools question, though, came from the "Deep Dive Analytics" presentation, where panelists agreed that 20 percent of money should be spent on tools, and 80 percent on the people who use the tools. There are many useful and expensive analytics tools out there, but ultimately, only people can bring the data from what to why.

• Think globally, create locally: Americans may flock to Google when they search, but the Chinese use Baidu, a search engine that commands over 60 percent of the search market in a country with the most internet users worldwide (and that’s before Google’s recent decision to pull out of China). In South Korea, an overwhelming majority of searchers use Naver, while in the Czech Republic, Seznam is still preferred over Google. If you are trying to launch an SEO campaign outside of the United States, it is crucial to know what’s popular there, not only in terms of search engines, local blogs and social media, but also in terms of language.
  
  As Hoerst Joepen of the German-based SEO company Searchmetrics reminded us, “language issues are language specific.” If you are doing keyword discovery for a foreign website, you need the input of native speakers of that language to judge the currency and connotation of different terms. This even applies across the English-speaking world, where regions and peculiarities in vocabulary affect the terms that people use.

It’s always fun to speculate about what's next. So, I’ll conclude with two search questions that went unanswered at SES: is it possible to develop an attribution model that truly understands the conversion process from beginning to end? And, who will dominate mobile search?

 

For online marketers, a key challenge is trying to understand how customers arrive at the point of conversion. Did a display ad eventually lead to a search? Was it chatter on a social media site that initially engaged the customer’s interest? Was it a combination of channels over time? These questions are not always easy or even possible to answer, but acknowledging that campaign channels do not exist in isolation is an important first step. A recent report by Eyeblaster Research argues that measuring the return on search campaigns and display ads needs to be approached holistically: “While search harvests prospective customers that are already in the purchase funnel, it reaches a limited number of people. Display increases reach by soliciting as many customers as possible and moving them into the funnel."

A holistic view of search and display, as well as other channels, would require that the analytical tools used for measuring ROI move beyond the traditional focus on immediate clicks and into the realm of brand awareness. For example, in terms of awareness, targeted display ads could have a considerable advantage over search channels, not only because images stimulate a different type of association and memory, but also because users do not search for display ads; they stumble upon them. Contrast that with search, which typically involves users with preconceived notions of what they want, from the very specific such as brand names to the more general such as types of products and services. Teaming the two, we can see how there would be opportunities to catch previously unintentional customers alongside the intentional through search.

This does not mean that display ads are better than search or other channels when it comes to conversions (that depends on many factors, including your budget allocation and your customers). It simply means that awareness could lead to searching, even if the search occurs weeks or months later. In a 2009 report by the Atlas Institute, “The Long Road to Conversion: The Digital Purchase Funnel”, the authors argued convincingly that “the advertising metrics and models developed for online marketers largely ignore the question of when media exposure occurs.” Sometimes, it takes time.

So, are there any reliable ways to measure a converter’s interaction with your cross-channel ad efforts over a longer period of time? We’re getting there. The field of vendors is still pretty slim, but Emily Riley of Forrester Research has identified some that are clearly leading the pack: ClearSaleing, Visual IQ, and Atlas, to name a few. As the push to understand online customers from start to finish moves forward, we can expect more sophisticated analytical tools, a shift away from click-driven metrics, and of course, more discussion about online privacy.

Last Monday night, Mike Mitchell, a 27-year-old freelance artist living in Los Angeles, tweeted a link to a poster he created in support of Conan O’Brien. The poster—which has become the official face of “I’m with COCO,” the quasi-official campaign in support of Conan O’Brien against NBC’s decision to restore Jay Leno to the nightly 11:35 slot—bears more than a passing resemblance to Shepard Fairey’s iconic image of Barack Obama.

I recently spoke with Mitchell about the viral image that he created. “I woke up the next day and it was crazy,” Mitchell said, “I was getting contacted by all of these media outlets and being flooded.” In a matter of days, countless people, including Conan’s staff, started using the image as their avatars. Mitchell doesn’t know how it spread so fast.

As it turns out, the “I’m with COCO” image was promptly picked up by another Conan supporter who created the “I’m with COCO” fan page on Facebook. (Mitchell was then added as an admin.) The “I’m with COCO” page—which facetiously, albeit plausibly, describes itself as a “Religious Organization”—has garnered over 250,000 supporters in the past week, far outpacing anything in the Leno camp. If you were to hit “Refresh” on your browser any night last week, you’d likely see the number of COCO fans increasing by 20-30 in a matter of seconds. Over on Twitter, the web’s other bellwether of now, data compiled by Trendrr and featured in Advertising Age showed that chatter and sentiment on the site leaned heavily in favor of Conan from January 9th to January 16th.

That Conan would appear to be more popular on social media sites is not surprising given that these sites are more popular with young people and Leno’s audience tends to be older. What is surprising, if not perplexing, is that NBC has chosen the older demographic over the one traditionally favored by advertisers. (That’s still how television networks are supposed to make money, right?) Fox, which employed Conan O’Brien as a writer for “The Simpsons” and may be courting him again, must be toasting right now to the NBC debacle.

History repeats itself, sort of. Back in 1992, NBC’s decision to tap Jay Leno, and not David Letterman, to fill Johnny Carson’s coveted chair reminds us that the network is no stranger to “Tonight Show” drama. The difference between then and now, however, is that the audience is not a faceless Nielsen rating: it’s connected, vocal, and in typical web fashion, very opinionated.

The online campaign for Conan will not reverse the decision of NBC executives. Still, moving forward, it will probably cause the big networks to think more carefully about how their audiences might respond—especially when that audience is armed with social media—before making big decisions. I asked Mike Mitchell what he saw as the goal of the “I’m with COCO” movement, which has moved from the internet to staging ‘rallies’ in various cities, and he offered a humble response, “I’d like NBC to look at it and maybe think that they’ve made a mistake.”