The Alchemy of Search

Ok, so now that Danny has made the announcement, I admit that Reese Sullivan and I have a bit of a romance going… Rand and I, on the other hand, well, what happens at Skywalker… gets lost in Berkeley…

-Jessie

About Matt Cutts

A personal interview of Google’s Matt Cutts from PubCon 2007 in Las Vegas. Instead of the usual shadow boxing — asking tricky SEO questions hoping Matt will slip up and offer some clues about the Google Secret Sauce — we decide to ask question he never hears and learn about Matt Cutts as a human being.

How does he feel about the annual NCAA conflict: Red State v. Blue State?

What it’s like to be the official taste tester for Ham versus Spam in the Google index?

Hanging with the enemy, does Spam become personal?

Wonder what life’s like after the Google IPO?

What motivates him to get out of bed every day?

Take 11 minutes and get personal with your favorite Google Spokes Model.

Two studies tracking this race conclude that search marketing is lapping the alternatives.

Despite all the hype about display advertising and the block buster ad network deals of 2007, search continues to be the high performance engine that is driving online marketing spend. According to GroupM, search will make up 65-70% of the measured online advertising in 2008, up from 50% in 2005. For the mathematically challenged, that means search has gone from about even to 2 times the display spend. It also means most of the revenue growth has been from search. Nothing But Net, a new study by JPMorgan, meanwhile, puts the global search spend in 2008 at $30.5 billion.*

GroupM goes on to note that online advertising in Sweden is expected to exceed spending on any other channel, with the UK and Denmark likely to follow suit by 2009. Given that search is only getting about 10% of the dollars going to television in the U.S., we have a long way to go to catch up with our friends in Europe (and perhaps European companies need to wake up to the superior ROI of investing in SEO instead of relying on paid search)

Another interesting note from the study is that the 2008 U.S. election cycle is expected to contribute $2 Billion in local and national television advertising. No data is available at the moment, but it seems unlikely that search is getting 10% of that pie and it is clear at the moment that few of the campaigns are spending anything for SEO.

*We rarely call out a company’s SEO issues by name, but JPMorgan needs a lot of help. We wanted to link directly to the report, since we believe in citing source material whenever possible. Despite the fact that this study has been widely quoted, it is impossible to find any links to the study on JPMorgan.com. In fact, searching for study by name, JPMorgan + Nothing But Net, “JPMorgan “Nothing But Net” failed to find a press release, abstract or the study in the top 10. We went on to search for “site:jpmorgan.com nothing but net” and still couldn’t find the source.

JPMorgan Executives, if your listening, call us.

Thanks to a great guy and marketing genius by the name of Joe Morin, I had the pleasure joining a number of conference attendees for an evening with The Blue Man Group, who some consider the best show in Las Vegas.

For the intellectually inclined, the show offers social commentary delivered through symbolism about the disconnected individual in the age of the internet and commentary on consumerism and junk food. The message is subtle and you have to ponder these things slowly over a bottle of wine. Fortunately, you don’t need to spend any time thinking about academic deconstruction to enjoy the show.

This is theater Las Vegas style…Raw, flashy, high voltage entertainment with all the refinement of a blue martini. The power and enjoyment of the show comes from cymbals (and drums, keyboards, guitars and bass) - not symbolism- combining a dozen or so physical comedy sketches and primal drumming with great visual effects, clownmanship and high energy performances by the the Blue Men.

The only caveat I offer is that this show is not for those inclined to headaches! Loud music, banging percussion and flashing lights are a great time in my book, but to some it would be the perfect description of a migraine!

If your a fan of fine dining, I should also mention the excellent gourmet cuisine available at the Venetian Hotel. They have 12 gourmet restaurants, including offerings from Chefs Tom Moloney, Mario Batali, David Burke and Thomas Keller.

We are. It’s a summer thing. It’s an SEO thing. It’s a SEARCH thing. Ain’t it grand?

Much love to Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz for the kind words after our oh-so-sunny lunch in San Francisco. We dined at Zazie, the best brunch restaurant in San Francisco. It’s one of the rare ones with a sunny, earthy, very French patio.

We also just had WordCamp here in SF, more on that soon…

What is happening right now? O’Reilly’s SciFoo (Science Foo Camp) is about to kick off at the Googleplex in Mountain View. After attending my first Foo Camp back in June, I was blown away by the brilliance and inspiration all around me… and found each night in my tent (nestled in the O’Reilly apple orchard) filled with so much intrigue that I found it difficult to sleep.

More more more will come - we promise.

Imagine for a moment that we live in the hypothetical world where the search engines allow you to control your own privacy. Imagine we live in a world you are allowed to access search engines using SSL. A world where the search engines allowed you to prevent third party intermediaries from intercepting the content of our thoughts with the same minimum diligence used to protect our credit card numbers during an online transaction.

In such a Utopian society, search engines would go the next step and not log your search request if you accessed through their sites through that secure connection (unless they were already subject to a government SEARCH WARRANT to spy on you). Of course, to protect themselves and their advertisers against click fraud and address other legitimate concerns, the engines could still associate data for paid links that you clicked, for example, without saving the actual query or the organic clicks.

These steps are not the complete solution, but they are a small start to swinging the pendulum in the other direction.

Privacy International issued a “study” over the weekend which analyzed the privacy risks, policies and culture of leading websites and singled out Google as the worst offender. Many people have already weighed in on this issue, notably Danny Sulivan with Maybe It’s Privacy International’s Report That Sucks and Matt Cutts with Privacy International Loses All Credibility. Today, Google responded to the EU working group on privacy. These posts generated hundreds of comments, including a couple by yours truly.

The issues surrounding privacy are both emotional and complicated. It is hard to imagine any scenario in the digital age that will put the genie back in the bottle Every purchase you make on a credit card is reported, recorded, parsed and resold by companies like http://www.acxiom.com/ as consumer profiles. Every opinion you ever post on a forum, blog or MySpace page is permanently cached somewhere. Every search, email, text message and IM has been entered in your permanent record.

Despite these facts, search is more personal and intimate than a purchase or a rant on a blog. Search reflects our innermost thoughts, dreams and fears and contains content as well as context. Search contains thoughts we would never put in an email or send in a message to our closest friends. While it is easy to associate our concerns about search privacy with the search engines and thus launch a highly public tirade at Google (or Yahoo, MSN and Ask), the problem of privacy and search goes well beyond the engines. As Matt Cutts and others have pointed out, the greatest threat to an individual’s privacy may be their ISP.

So, here is our modest proposal for the first step to the privacy issue:
We call upon all of the search engines to default to (or at least ALLOW) encryption for searchers via SSL to prevent third parties from intercepting our searches. A quick check showed that none of the major engines allow users to access their pages via https: Ask and MSN return a 404 and Google and Yahoo redirect to http.

Default to search in the secure mode (https) so at least the content of our query is protected from all of the intermediate players and the full responsibility for protecting them is on the engines. It isn’t a solution, but it is a good first step!

Lee Odden from Top Rank Blog called us out today on not updating our WordPress About page and categorizing all of our post. Nothing like having an old friend rat you out to mom remind you of the need to clean up your room pay attention to details.

Lee, I hope you’re happy.

According to the following draft press release that is supposed to go out tomorrow, Microsoft will announce that it has reached an agreement to acquire Digg, Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

REDMOND, Wash. – April 2nd, 2007 – Microsoft Corporation (Nasdaq: MSFT) announced it has reached an agreement to acquire Digg, Inc. for an undisclosed sum.

The deal has been in the works for several weeks, according to Microsoft spokesman Mario Nette, who noted that, “Digg is a pioneer in crowd sourcing, the Web 2.0 way of discovering what is important to a new generation of technology-friendly consumers. The Digg community is our natural consumer base and this acquisition is a great opportunity to connect with them. Digg users are passionate about Microsoft products and we are anxious to engage them through this new channel.”

Stories posted on Digg are submitted by community members, who currently number over 1 million accounts. After a user submits a story, other members read the submission and “Digg” what they like best. If a story receives enough votes, it is promoted to the front page for millions of visitors to see.

The acquisition of Digg is a significant advance in Microsoft’s promise to improve Live Search as well as an important step towards developing social media platforms.

“This deal is not about buying our way into the hearts of a million Digg members; it brings together two important players in the battle to improve the relevance of online content,” said Pierre Calzino, Director of User Feedback at Live Search. “Web users waste too much time searching for what’s important. Microsoft has been involved with this problem for years and Digg has clearly become a factor to be reckoned with.”

“The natural synergies between the two companies are really exciting. Digg has created a user validation model for determining the significance of online content - a system that is almost impossible to manipulate. Combining Digg’s crowd-sourcing methodology and validation infrastructure with Live Search’s leading technology will allow us to remove the last vestiges of SPAM from our search results.”

“Improving Live Search is just the beginning,” Calzino continued. “We see enormous opportunities for electronic voting. Digg’s online voting platform inspires confidence. Add Microsoft’s track record for building secure systems and you can envision the voting system of the 21st Century. No one will have to wonder if the vote could be hacked or stolen. This deal represents the future platform of our Democracy.”

Digg founder Kevin Rose could not be reached for comment, but according to spokesman Morceau De Bouche, Rose was delighted with the deal. “Microsoft has an enormous tradition of excellence in engineering and we are all excited about the prospect of learning from them. They have set the standards for technology innovation very high and we know we will benefit from their ability to develop innovative applications on-time and on-budget.”

The acquisition of Digg technologies and brand will help Microsoft maximize shareholder value. “We’ve had our eye on Digg for some time,” said Lavage Green, Environmental Communications Director for Spuhn Associates, “Kevin and his team have created a compelling success story by providing a forum for discussing important social issues such as climate change, the impact of globalization and the Xbox versus the Wii without ever doing anything about it. They have effectively created a committee of millions; everyone can agonize over the problem and feel good about being globally aware without being inconvenienced by committing to any quantifiable action. This shows the depth of thinking and skill they will bring to Microsoft. The addition of Digg’s street credibility and perceived expertise to their existing talent will provide the ability to continue not addressing fundamental global issues for another decade - without fear of repercussions.”

Financial terms of the deal have not yet been released, but company sources indicate that the purchase price is somewhere between .1% and .01% of the total market capitalization for Microsoft as of 5/1/2007.

Founded in 1975, Microsoft (Nasdaq “MSFT”) is the worldwide leader in software, services and solutions that help people and businesses realize their full potential.

Microsoft and Windows are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Microsoft Corp. in the United States and/or other countries.

The names of actual companies and products mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners.

By now we hope you’ve heard of Enquiro’s Eye Tracking Report and have been inspired as much as we have by the results. Interestingly, in this month’s issue of Business 2.0, a related study aimed towards gauging the effectiveness of TV ads by measuring the saccadic motion of an ad viewer’s eyes, uses a technology that we think could potentially be put to similarly good use on web-based content:

“The system, called eMotion, uses a PC-connected camera to measure the saccadic motion of viewers’ eyes—the subtle eyeball vibrations that increase when we see something of interest. PreTesting follows up with an interview to determine how much the viewers remember. Then a proprietary algorithm gives ad execs instant feedback on how well the spot worked.”

“Viewers should be engaged but not so visually stimulated for the full 30 seconds that they don’t take in any verbal information. ‘This could be revolutionary,’ he says. ‘Advertisers will finally be able to understand which ads are working.’ Weinblatt’s favorite example, from his beta-testing, was an ad for Dr. Scholl’s massaging gel insoles. It featured a leggy model emerging from a swimming pool, which sent the eyes of his male subjects vibrating. When the model turned out to be wearing high-heel shoes, his female subjects got excited. Then the ad cut to nothing but text and voice-over, letting the information sink in.”

As far as integrating such technology within the web environment, it could potentially fill the gap between “where the eyes go” and “what the mind thinks” when they go there. So when extending eye tracking beyond just identifying hotspots to examining actual levels of interest in the areas that the eyes are focusing on, we get even one step deeper into the mind of the visitor. And for video content, flash tutorials, or multimedia ads, the implications are very exciting.

According to the article, such testing is available for $2000 per TV ad - and with production budgets averaging $381,000 per 30 minute national TV slots, it is quite a small price to pay for effectiveness measurement in the context of television advertising. Obviously, for web applications, a web-specific algorithm would need to be developed (if one hasn’t been already), and a lower price point would make it a bit more feasible for the web industry. Look out heat maps, here come thought maps…