Archive for July, 2010

Google’s Search Market Share Fallen Behind in Asia? Not Exactly

July 30th, 2010

Don’t call it a comeback, but Google might actually be gaining a lot of ground in the Asian market very soon. Yes, the make up of search engine usage in the Far East (the focus of Reform’s International Search Review series so far) – where only a few months ago Google left China, Yahoo! dominated in Japan and few people in Korea even used Google at any point – has changed drastically.

Yahoo! Japan has about a 57% share of the market there, while Google’s share is just over 35%; Microsoft has a share of about 3%. Yahoo! and Bing are merging results elsewhere, but Yahoo! Japan, being to some extent independently owned (unlike in other markets, the Yahoo! Japan branch is actually majority owned by Softbank) has opted to go with Google instead of Bing for its results on both the SEO and PPC side. Microsoft quickly protested, citing that Google will suddenly have close to a 95% share of the 3rd largest search market after the US & China, thus monopolising it in a similar way to Microsoft’s dominance in the PC market over the years.

As for China, Google is back to work in the market that they shocked many people by threatening to leave earlier this year. Only a couple months ago, Baidu was pulling away with a clear lead in one of the fastest growing markets (and potentially largest) in the world.

But earlier this month, Google managed to work out a deal where operations in China could resume through 2012, and the google.cn domain no longer redirected to Hong Kong. But the relationship has been short lived, as while http://www.google.cn/ is back, trying a query as of July 30th takes you to Hong Kong once more. So, the comeback is still a work in progress there. In fact, you can take a quick look at day to day status via http://www.google.com/prc/report.html#hl=en

Google has also cut ties with two of the twenty five “authorized advertising agents” in China, which account for most of the paid search spend within China.

Moving over to Korea, where Google’s market share is even lower (under 5%), they’ve worked on a new strategy – going away from search and moving towards mobile and even TV. Working on partnerships with local companies, Google has shown progress in the mobile market there (which rivals such as Naver were late to enter) and are working with companies such as LG and Samsung on integrating search with other forms of media, such as TV, where Samsung is potentially working on launching a Google TV that would run on Google’s Android Operating System.

Still, contrary to what some people felt a few months ago, Google hasn’t given up on Asia yet, and the search market in countries like China, Japan and Korea is still ready for new competition. Find out more about these markets and more via our market research pieces:

Search Marketing in China

Search Marketing in Korea

Search Marketing in Russia

Search Marketing in India – Coming Soon.

Blog post by Niall Madden, SEO Director of Reform

The integration of search with other marketing channels

July 16th, 2010

Integrating search with other marketing channels has been a hot topic for many years now.

We’ve seen paid & natural reporting interfaces developed by technology providers, studies that correlate uplifts in performance in PPC with TV activity, and path to conversion analysis which shows that ATL activity also generates interest in generic search terms, not just brand. These are all significant steps forward and very useful for making investment decisions, but are based on budget justification, rather than guiding us in creating a more coherent and user-focused strategy.

So what can we do to align our marketing strategies, so that we are presenting the consumer with a consistent message that provides them with exactly what they’re looking for? The answer is to think about it from the consumer’s perspective.

In search, the results page acts as a point of confluence: it is the meeting point for the efforts of many marketing channels. A searcher could have been influenced to search by PR, a television or radio ad, a mail drop, an email, word of mouth, or any other form of marketing. It is therefore crucial for a search marketer to understand some key things about this results page:

  1. What results pages are searchers viewing (i.e. what search terms are they using)?
  2. What type of content are they looking for?
  3. What options are they currently presented with?
  4. What is the best way to get this content ranking?

This isn’t a reactive process, though. By the time a piece or PR has generated a spike in search volume the opportunity will be lost. The key to success in integration is therefore proactive communication; ensuring that the search team are aware of the ATL strategy and are anticipating search volume and optimising for it with the right kind of content before the event.

It’s not just about being there, it’s about being there with the content that the user will be most responsive to to make sure that you have what the user is searching for. This requires bringing together multiple stakeholders and possibly drawing on multiple budget lines.

With marketers from different channels often being very different in terms of personality and skill sets,  it’s not always an easy win. But in terms of efficiency and capitalising on the full investment that you are making in your marketing budget it is absolutely crucial. Search is also particularly cruel in that not only is there an opportunity cost of not pro-actively aligning your strategies , you will be feeding traffic to competitors who are ranking on those pages already!

Blog post by Graham Everitt, Search Consultant at Reform

Who searches for who?

July 9th, 2010

In a world dominated by social media and the Facebook generation, brands are – naturally enough – focused on making sure they are in front of people.  Search techniques are sophisticated and complex.  Billions in revenue has flowed into Google.

Behind all this activity, however, lies a huge shift in how we use media.  Profound in its consequences, the shift from the broadcast age of ‘the big shout’ to the digitally enabled, always-on narrowcast ‘big conversation’ is with us.  Even a cursory consideration of what is going down points to huge changes in the way any brand needs to reach out to customers and encourage their purchasing behaviour.

Much search activity is driven by ‘big shout’ thinking: testosterone-fuelled, high energy masculine ‘make them buy this’ thinking.  But if we accept that we live in a world of a ‘big conversation’ where power is flowing to the savvy, demanding consumer then we must be ready to earn respect through how we behave as much as how we succeed in getting in front of people.  We must tell the story of our brand with passion and honesty.  We must allow our customers to participate, and listen to them with skill, attention and deep understanding.

As any author will tell you, good stories demand an innate, even intimate understanding of the audience.  Then the story can be told with passion and intrigue.  The audience can participate, question and feel that they are receiving special attention – that they are party to a little magic.  Brands have to learn this skill.  Rather than so much emphasis on the ‘shout’ perhaps we will see more time, energy and resource devoted to the ‘listen’ part of the conversation.  Who is saying what, to whom, and are they being listened to?  Who is influential, and who is merely shouting into a bucket?  Search can be used to answer these questions, too.

Might we see the telescope of traditional search being turned around?  Isn’t it about time the skills of effective search are harnessed by brands to listen to and interpret what is being said about them?  And wouldn’t that put a premium on intelligent search practitioners?

Blog post by Mary Keane-Dawson, non-Executive Director of Reform

The SEO community starts to test social media search optimisation strategies

July 2nd, 2010

When we think of search we think of external search i.e. search engines like Google that act as windows onto the web. From these windows we can find and access news, videos, social media forums, maps – as well as a wealth of branded content and information about businesses, products & services.

But of course people search elsewhere on the web. After email communication search is the primary web behaviour. And there is another kind of search engine: internal or enterprise search. In the US in March of 2010 Facebook’s internal search engine, for example, saw its usage soar by 48% to total 2.7% of all US searches carried out on the Web in that month. OK, so compared to Google’s 64% share of the US search market that might not seem to impressive. Still, that’s a whole lotta searching going on – and mostly for people’s names.

As brands and businesses start to saturate social media properties like Facebook, SEOs are already trying to fathom what the ranking factors are, so that they can lend their services to help brands become more visible in social media search. This article by Marty Weintraub entitled “Facebook SEO Ranking Factors, 2010 Study Results” suggests that criteria such as the Facebook Suggest Box, inserting generic keywords into name fields, population of the Interests field, encouraging as many Fans and “Likes”, might become the focus of SEO test strategies.

However, as Weintraub points out it’s early days in terms of cracking the social media search algorithms. But that won’t stop the more innovative and curious SEOs from having a go!

Blog post by Amanda Davie, Managing Director of Reform