Archive for June, 2010

Is it an art or is it a science?

June 25th, 2010

Albert –László Barabási is probably not well known in the world of search and that is not necessarily surprising as he is a physicist living in Boston, USA. But he is a physicist with a difference, who employs detailed scientific modelling to help understand social behavioural patterns.

In his research he maps the daily movements of millions of mobile phone users over many months. His latest study of a random 50,000 person subset has concluded that 93% of human mobility patterns are predictable. If he is right, and there is no reason to believe otherwise, that is a big number – in fact that is a huge number.

At this point he seems to be most excited about the prospect for using his ‘data burst’ analytics to model the spread of viruses or road traffic engineering. From a marketers point of view these individual and collective physical travel habits will be of interest, but people’s virtual travel habits are likely to prove even more interesting.

With Google and Facebook representing the most travelled sites online, the brands that can best analyse the ‘data bursts’ of search and social media activity will be best able to ensure that their products and services lie in wait as each consumer makes the next click with their mouse.

But better still, a little bit of reverse engineering will actually inform brands as to the moves that their competitors are most likely to make. This is where the art of pursuing means reversion or trend acceptance will force the data analysts to take a back seat as the business tacticians plot their course.

Blog post by James Kilpatrick, non-Executive Director of Reform

Search Engine Marketing in Korea – International Search Review Issue 3

June 18th, 2010

Reform continues on its world tour with issue number three of the “International Search Review.” After the first two issues covered China and Russia, this one looks at a search market that many western marketers struggle to decipher. Download a copy of the full “Korea Search Review” issue here.

South Korea (like China and Russia) is another one of the top ten markets in the world when it comes to internet population and is a market that adapted broadband faster than most western markets – to the point where viewing TV via the internet is far from a new thing. TV might also be the last chance for Google to crack this market, as rumours circulate about Samsung and Google partnering on a TV and mobile internet service – and “mobile search” usage being something that Naver may be a step behind on.

Still, Naver and Daum are the main search engines in South Korea, and SEO in this market is much less of a consideration for marketers here. For one, SEO is not nearly as important – taking up only a small portion of a search engine’s results. At the same time, it’s not nearly as advanced either, as engines like Naver opt to fill the results with links to their own sites, along with various different types of PPC and paid placements listings. Users are content with this, showing a brand loyalty that reflects in browser usage too (Internet Explorer has a 98% share in this market), thus making the chance of changing user preference even slimmer.

Yahoo!/Overture Search Marketing provides the only real opportunity for western marketers to partake in PPC here (though local sites are still given some priority), while SEO has little to do with tags, content and link strength, but more to do with saturation such as via social media and user generated content.

South Korea is also a big market when it comes to online communities, such as gaming and social networks. Over 90% of South Koreans in their twenties have accounts in CyWorld (the biggest social network in Korea), while Facebook and MySpace have failed to crack the market at all. CyWorld has also become a place where companies effectively promote products, including via endorsements that fans can integrate with.

Download a copy of the full “South Korea Search Review” issue here

Key findings in the document include:

- Search engine usage: Naver 77%, Daum 11%, Yahoo 5%, Google 2% (source: Nielsen, Jan 2010)

- 37.5 million internet users (source: Internet World Stats)

- 95% broadband penetration (source: Arstechnica, 2009)

- South Korea’s two main search engines Naver and Daum have inspired a lot of recent western search engine innovation, such as Yahoo! Answers and Google Universal Search, though both engines serve search results that are predominantly paid links and their own sites.

- South Korean search users demonstrate a different attitude to those in the west; users in South Korea anticipate that their search engine knows what they are looking for, and will find it for them, where as western searchers are more ‘DIY’ and use search engines as tools to find something for themselves.

- Commercial or paid-for search coverage is prevalent in this market. Natural search plays little or no role in this market.

Reform also works with sites that are looking for a global SEO strategy in markets such as Korea. The England 2018 Bid website at www.england2018bid.com recently expanded content across various markets, including Korea.

Search result in Daum

As a result, we are now a featured result in natural search there (result in Daum search shown above) and the England 2018 site appears for Korean language variations of “world cup”, making it the second most common language for search traffic on the site in June 2010 so far (after English).

To get more details on this and everything else, download a copy of the full issue – and let us know any comments/feedback. Contact us, and we’ll get the next issue out to you before anyone else gets it.

Update – Latest news shows that Daum is closing the gap on Naver, with various sources cited at http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/tech/2010/07/133_69058.html

Also, at the end of June, Google launched Korean voice search – http://googleresearch.blogspot.com/2010/06/google-launches-korean-voice-search.html

While the reviews on how well Google voice search works on your mobile (don’t try using it anywhere loud for instance, such as outdoors) have been mixed, moves like this at least help to give Google some channel that they have a slight advantage on (Google Korea is pushing mobile co-branding as a way to get in this market), so it is something to keep an eye on.

Blog post by Niall Madden, Director at Reform

Google’s “Search Funnels” reporting represent a massive step on in data visibility

June 3rd, 2010

Google recently rolled out a beta of a conversion funnel reporting system that allows AdWords users using Google Conversion Tracking pixels to track conversions to see beyond the last click. This allows us to improve our understanding of what the consumer journey within search looks like. We can see the average time lag between the last click and conversion, the number of clicks on our ads before someone converts, the ads and keywords that they are interacting with first, and the different keywords and ads they’re interacting with all the way to the last click.

This is pretty exciting. Previously, we could only get this level of understanding by implementing a costly consultancy project with floodlight tags, using DoubleClicks Click Path Analysis product or similar, or by engaging a search technology that includes path to conversion analysis as part of their pricing. OK, so Google’s Search Funnels tool only works for Google and not with Bing and Yahoo, and it doesn’t yet seem to be reporting on content network activity, but considering it’s free it’s a pretty big step on.

The implications for search advertisers, especially the smaller businesses who have previously run CPA focused activity within strict profitability targets, are signficiant. Being able to see which keywords don’t cost in on a CPA metric, but fuel cost efficient conversions on other keywords has huge implications for the volume of conversions you are able to drive, and will completely alter the way that we analyse success. We will now be able to analyse what each search term is contributing to the campaign as a whole, wheras before we could only see part of the story.

Looking at the data in some of our client accounts, we’re already seeing some interesting things. Some of the “keyword click paths” (this shows all of the keywords that a searcher has interacted with before converting) contain repeat searches for the same search term, up to 5 or 6 times before conversion. This clearly highlights the importance of an always on strategy, as if you’re not there for the last search your consumer will most likely end up somewhere else! Another example of something strange is that we’re frequently seeing some paths to conversion that start with a brand search, then converts on a generic search. This could be where above the line advertising is driving searches, and then people are then shopping around for a better offer and returning to the site on a generic term once they’ve done so. This highlights the importance of not only making sure you have full brand visibility when investing in other channels, but ensuring you have the required visiblity on generic terms.

We’re very excited about the potential to dramatically improve investment models using this data, and will be keeping our ears to the ground on what other practitioners are doing with the data. Not only are we excited about the potential it has for improving search performance, but it signals a step forward in the sharing of the rich data that search engines hold with marketeers. Data is the driver of insight and as such innovation – so the more steps search engines take in sharing this data with us, the more and more we’ll be able to do for clients.

Blog post by Graham Everitt, Search Consultant at Reform