How many relatives, co-workers, friends?
How many presents to buy, wrap and send?
Overwhelmed by my tally I began my plight
“How on earth does Santa do it?” I wondered this night.

The store shelves near bare, the pickings were slim
Had I waited too long? Was the outlook now grim?
Back to my home, I flew with resolve
                          Booted up my computer to search, find, and solve.

On Google! On Yahoo! MSN, Bing and Ask!
Find “Last Minute Christmas Deals”, now this is your task!
To the top of the page, to the top of the list
What deals would I find too good to resist?

Digital camera for dad, video games for bro
Coffee maker for mom, a new phone for the beau.
Holiday gift baskets, sent pre-arranged
Desk toys for the Secret Santa Exchange.

No waiting in lines. No fighting the crowds.
“My shopping is done!” I shouted out loud
No wrapping, no packing, no decorating the loot!
Great deals were found, free shipping to boot!

Warm and snug by the fire, sipping my wine
Reflecting on my good fortune, finding gifts so divine
My to do list is done, I’ve nothing left to do
but tweet my good wishes, and share a Facebook photo or two.

For all those like me, who have not yet started
Fulfilling  Christmas wish-lists for their hopeful hearted
Avoid the rush and madness of the Christmas kind
I wish you happy searching and to all a good find!

How many relatives, co-workers, friends?
How many presents to buy, wrap and send?
Overwhelmed by my tally I began my plight
“How on earth does Santa do it?” I wondered this night.

The store shelves near bare, the pickings were slim
Had I waited too long? Was the outlook now grim?
Back to my home, I flew with resolve
                          Booted up my computer to search, find, and solve.

On Google! On Yahoo! MSN, Bing and Ask!
Find “Last Minute Christmas Deals”, now this is your task!
To the top of the page, to the top of the list
What deals would I find too good to resist?

Digital camera for dad, video games for bro
Coffee maker for mom, a new phone for the beau.
Holiday gift baskets, sent pre-arranged
Desk toys for the Secret Santa Exchange.

No waiting in lines. No fighting the crowds.
“My shopping is done!” I shouted out loud
No wrapping, no packing, no decorating the loot!
Great deals were found, free shipping to boot!

Warm and snug by the fire, sipping my wine
Reflecting on my good fortune, finding gifts so divine
My to do list is done, I’ve nothing left to do
but tweet my good wishes, and share a Facebook photo or two.

For all those like me, who have not yet started
Fulfilling  Christmas wish-lists for their hopeful hearted
Avoid the rush and madness of the Christmas kind
I wish you happy searching and to all a good find!

I know from the title alone that people are scratching their heads and wondering how the heck I could apply the title of “David” to a behemoth of a company like Microsoft.  I can because Microsoft last week announced a civil suit that they have filed against three individuals that they accuse of participating in click fraud on the MSN ad platform.  Microsoft is the “David” because Click Fraud (now turned into an entity by this post) is huge in the search industry, and though we deal with it, sweep it under the rug, pretend it is not there, etc. it is the “Goliath”.  The civil suit that Microsoft filed is less than one million dollars (as you read, know that I am touching my pinky finger to the corner of my mouth and looking evil), but will reap much, much more.  The PR alone, when we are all evangelizing about Bing, is enough to keep the momentum going for Microsoft.

I, for one, am glad someone with weight has stepped up to do something about this, even if in the end, they receive benefit for it.  Google hasn’t publicly been a champion of going after click fraud, other than giving credit back to campaigns where fraudulent activity seems to be present.  They have even taken a some-what staunch stance and have splintered off from the third party click fraud companies (I can’t say I blame them, since these companies have a monetary reason to accuse Google and everyone else of click fraud), and decreed that they are fighting the battle of click fraud and doing a good job.  The difference between MSFT and Google is that MSFT has taken it to the streets by suing the fraudsters.   In all of this over the years, Yahoo! has been more silent than a poor person at a Christie’s auction, and because of this I am not sure exactly where they stand on click fraud, other than against it. The one thing that I believe MSFT could do a better job at is rallying people and letting the public know what they are doing.  I have not seen that many articles written about it yet.  It isn’t even on the Microsoft homepage.

I would like to see more engines stand up and take the initiative to at least publicly make a stance with their actions, not words.  I admit that I believe the actions of MSFT will not curb or even put a dent in click fraud, but it is a step in the right direction, plus a huge win for MSFT in the public’s eye, and that is who MSFT needs on their side right now in this search engine battle that they have committed to.  On a side note, read about the technology and process that they went through to identify these fraudsters (OK alleged fraudsters right now).  It is fascinating and kind of DEA like.

*Thanks to ecanadonow.com for the image

Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” More recently, rapper Eminem asked if you had one shot, one moment to seize everything you wanted, would you capture it or let it slip away?

A recent meeting I had with Yahoo brought both of these quotes to mind. A Yahoo product rep told our group that the average search session lasts 15 minutes. That includes the back and forth between clicks and all queries in a given session. A week later, I polled a room of savvy client-side marketers on this issue, and the responses I got ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. It wasn’t until guesses were exhausted that someone finally came onto the exceedingly high time expenditure.

This led me to ask the question: If you were willing to spend 15 minutes searching for something, is the current model of back and forth and refinement the best bet for the future? My personal sense is no, but then, the question becomes: What is?

Let’s begin by exploring what search today does well — immediacy — and what it does reasonably well: organization based on relevancy. Clearly that is an oversimplification, but these are at or near the top of the list. Of all that the search experience provides, encyclopedic knowledge and its organization by any set of guidelines is a massive shift in how the general public finds and is exposed to information. The fact someone can go from zero to being conversant on any topic with the help of Google should not be understated in the value equation. People expect Google to find them the best deals, the most insightful data, and generally create order in their otherwise chaotic world of searching for answers.

But it’s the setting of order — and on whose terms — that may cause a seismic shift in what types of platforms will deliver the intersection of content and intent. Today, the single largest arbiter of relevance is Google, period. This is a company that had moved forward with open as its mantra in social and mobile, and remains completely closed in another area: its search engine. Given this is the secret sauce that makes Google what it is, this is understandable. But it presents challenges for a society becoming more intelligent about the Internet and the social nature of the Web. Last month I discussed GoogleWiki, which begins to alter, in a very small way, the open nature of Google rankings, but this is a far cry from where a personalized search results page could get to very quickly.

It’s Not What You Know, it’s Who You Know
Today, connected communities of users on LinkedIn are able to post and respond to questions from their network on anything. At the same time, tweets back and forth are proliferating on the Net regarding anything of immediate relevancy to a given user of Twitter. The questions become, who will organize these conversations — and does that spur the next generation of search offerings? My hunch is that the network of many will eventually play a significant role in the relevancy of results. Clearly the limitation today of both LinkedIn and Twitter is that both are largely dependant on who you know. Your expertise extends as far as your social graph. And while these connections can eventually reach larger numbers, you are bound in part to sharing and receiving relevant insights from those you know.

For example, take two of the most connected search marketers I know, David Berkowitz and Kevin Lee. Kevin has asked hundreds of questions on LinkedIn and is in its elite 500+ connections status, with 78 pages of connections. David has 32 pages worth of connections. Both of these men are using LinkedIn to its fullest — and yet their network is likely no more than 5,000 total people. Clearly the scale of an individual’s network is not sufficient in broader context to provide the depth that a Google.com could provide. However, it is a certainty that if the topic was advertising, and more specifically, search or emerging media, that the network of connections would be more than capable to answer a given question within 15 minutes.

I’d Gladly Pay You Tuesday For a Hamburger Today
The trouble with LinkedIn today is that what it offers as a relevant engine can not function in real-time. To ask and then get answers requires more than 15 minutes in a row. If you were willing to ask the question, come back on Tuesday and review for greatest relevancy and act, then this model would be acceptable. Twitter can potentially be a better immediacy vehicle through its mobile application, but even that is limited by scale. What potentially changes all of this is the networks’ ability to scan questions and answers and make them accessible to you, in addition to the more latent responses of your own connection set. This functionality exists today in LinkedIn with relevancy sorting based on degrees of separation, but as this is not the original intent of the network its volume level is not a critical scale.

Same Musicians, New Band
In the search space we have Google and Yahoo, with Microsoft trying to work its way into a legitimate position. If you read the trades you know employees hop from one company to the other with some frequency. What began with Sheryl Sandberg’s high profile shift to Facebook was a movement of leaders out of pure search plays into more emerging social sites. If you’ve noticed my LinkedIn fixation in this column, it’s because of several very recent and very important additions. Last week, Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, who helped launch the Google mobile business, joined the company. On Dec. 17, TechCrunch reported that former Yahoo Network chief Jeff Weiner had agreed to join as president while founder Reid Hoffman was taking back over the role of CEO.

So we have the original visionary behind LinkedIn bringing in one of the key players in Google’s mobile space, and in Jeff Weiner, the guy who in all my dealings with Yahoo was able to more clearly communicate the Yahoo 360 social vision better than anyone else.

So a connected community, already dabbling in search for relevant insights, is bringing in skills from the Top 2 search engines with emphasis on mobile and scale along with social communities. This band of leaders may not play the same music, but while Madonna suggested it only takes four minutes to save the world, these guys may redefine what can be done in 15 minutes to searching.

Andy Warhol once said, “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for fifteen minutes.” More recently, rapper Eminem asked if you had one shot, one moment to seize everything you wanted, would you capture it or let it slip away?

A recent meeting I had with Yahoo brought both of these quotes to mind. A Yahoo product rep told our group that the average search session lasts 15 minutes. That includes the back and forth between clicks and all queries in a given session. A week later, I polled a room of savvy client-side marketers on this issue, and the responses I got ranged from 15 seconds to 3 minutes. It wasn’t until guesses were exhausted that someone finally came onto the exceedingly high time expenditure.

This led me to ask the question: If you were willing to spend 15 minutes searching for something, is the current model of back and forth and refinement the best bet for the future? My personal sense is no, but then, the question becomes: What is?

Let’s begin by exploring what search today does well — immediacy — and what it does reasonably well: organization based on relevancy. Clearly that is an oversimplification, but these are at or near the top of the list. Of all that the search experience provides, encyclopedic knowledge and its organization by any set of guidelines is a massive shift in how the general public finds and is exposed to information. The fact someone can go from zero to being conversant on any topic with the help of Google should not be understated in the value equation. People expect Google to find them the best deals, the most insightful data, and generally create order in their otherwise chaotic world of searching for answers.

But it’s the setting of order — and on whose terms — that may cause a seismic shift in what types of platforms will deliver the intersection of content and intent. Today, the single largest arbiter of relevance is Google, period. This is a company that had moved forward with open as its mantra in social and mobile, and remains completely closed in another area: its search engine. Given this is the secret sauce that makes Google what it is, this is understandable. But it presents challenges for a society becoming more intelligent about the Internet and the social nature of the Web. Last month I discussed GoogleWiki, which begins to alter, in a very small way, the open nature of Google rankings, but this is a far cry from where a personalized search results page could get to very quickly.

It’s Not What You Know, it’s Who You Know
Today, connected communities of users on LinkedIn are able to post and respond to questions from their network on anything. At the same time, tweets back and forth are proliferating on the Net regarding anything of immediate relevancy to a given user of Twitter. The questions become, who will organize these conversations — and does that spur the next generation of search offerings? My hunch is that the network of many will eventually play a significant role in the relevancy of results. Clearly the limitation today of both LinkedIn and Twitter is that both are largely dependant on who you know. Your expertise extends as far as your social graph. And while these connections can eventually reach larger numbers, you are bound in part to sharing and receiving relevant insights from those you know.

For example, take two of the most connected search marketers I know, David Berkowitz and Kevin Lee. Kevin has asked hundreds of questions on LinkedIn and is in its elite 500+ connections status, with 78 pages of connections. David has 32 pages worth of connections. Both of these men are using LinkedIn to its fullest — and yet their network is likely no more than 5,000 total people. Clearly the scale of an individual’s network is not sufficient in broader context to provide the depth that a Google.com could provide. However, it is a certainty that if the topic was advertising, and more specifically, search or emerging media, that the network of connections would be more than capable to answer a given question within 15 minutes.

I’d Gladly Pay You Tuesday For a Hamburger Today
The trouble with LinkedIn today is that what it offers as a relevant engine can not function in real-time. To ask and then get answers requires more than 15 minutes in a row. If you were willing to ask the question, come back on Tuesday and review for greatest relevancy and act, then this model would be acceptable. Twitter can potentially be a better immediacy vehicle through its mobile application, but even that is limited by scale. What potentially changes all of this is the networks’ ability to scan questions and answers and make them accessible to you, in addition to the more latent responses of your own connection set. This functionality exists today in LinkedIn with relevancy sorting based on degrees of separation, but as this is not the original intent of the network its volume level is not a critical scale.

Same Musicians, New Band
In the search space we have Google and Yahoo, with Microsoft trying to work its way into a legitimate position. If you read the trades you know employees hop from one company to the other with some frequency. What began with Sheryl Sandberg’s high profile shift to Facebook was a movement of leaders out of pure search plays into more emerging social sites. If you’ve noticed my LinkedIn fixation in this column, it’s because of several very recent and very important additions. Last week, Dipchand “Deep” Nishar, who helped launch the Google mobile business, joined the company. On Dec. 17, TechCrunch reported that former Yahoo Network chief Jeff Weiner had agreed to join as president while founder Reid Hoffman was taking back over the role of CEO.

So we have the original visionary behind LinkedIn bringing in one of the key players in Google’s mobile space, and in Jeff Weiner, the guy who in all my dealings with Yahoo was able to more clearly communicate the Yahoo 360 social vision better than anyone else.

So a connected community, already dabbling in search for relevant insights, is bringing in skills from the Top 2 search engines with emphasis on mobile and scale along with social communities. This band of leaders may not play the same music, but while Madonna suggested it only takes four minutes to save the world, these guys may redefine what can be done in 15 minutes to searching.

I started with Google and MSN and the keyword phrase “on this day 2030.” The results were natural on both engines displaying content from “Earth day 2030” and an interesting article from “Forum for the Future” with regards to climate change:

“It’s New Year’s Day, 2030. Hungover, you stumble across to the fridge and yank it open. You grab the purple nutrition bar you’ve been saving, slump down on the sofa and call up the movie channel. Just a couple of minutes viewing proves it’s another propaganda film, featuring the valiant efforts of the ‘global volunteers’ in Antarctica who are helping to run the refugee settlements. But viewing is interrupted quickly by your Monitor, which announces that you left the fridge door open and are wasting too much energy. The broadcast is closed down and you’re docked several credits for the climate violation.”

Yahoo displayed a listing from Zappos shoes on the Hip 2030 toddler/youth lace up boots! That was confusing – would I even know a toddler to purchase lace-up boots in the year 2030?

Back to Google to search images, maps, news and shopping “on this day 2030.”   A “green” theme was quickly emerging – price of oil and how to find the Worldwatch Institute on Google Maps.

Google Shopping provided the opportunity for consumerism with a book named: 2030: A Day in the Life of Tomorrow’s Kids.

“Global events and new technology change how we live from moment to moment. So, what will our world be like in twenty years? Come take a look as futurists Amy Zuckerman and James Daly examine what a kid’s daily life might be like in the year 2030. Inspired and informed by trends and scientific and technological research, “2030″ is not only a peek at some cool future gadgets (talking dog collars, cars that drive themselves), but also a thoughtful examination of how our lives might be impacted as we adjust to environmental change.”

Why are there not more advertisers paying for future marketing opportunities? If content is being written and researched with regards to 22 years from now, surely I am not the only surfer searching on the future? I might just add that book to my shopping cart today and get prepared for tomorrow…

We know this has been a volatile year for the top four search engines.  Google, while still mighty, has seen some backlash for some of their recent enhancement choices.  While we love Ask and want them to succeed, it seems that their current company model doesn’t support the technological changes they need to make in order to gain a nice chunk of market share.  The stability and sureness of Yahoo as a whole is, simply put, not there.  All the while MSN’s been plugging away to make their user and advertiser experience better.

If you’ve been in the search space for the last 3 ½ years, you can probably remember the entrance of MSN into the ranks.  Everyone was excited, but it didn’t take long for that excitement to change to irritation.  Many of us felt adCenter was launched before Microsoft was ready to support it and back it up with the technology it needed to be successful.  For example:

• The interface was cumbersome to use
• There were many simple tasks a search manager wasn’t able to do because the system wasn’t intuitive
• The adCenter service reps were unknowledgeable and over booked on accounts
• It was impossible to get one on the phone when you had a problem or needed a campaign uploaded, but it was even more impossible to then speak to someone who could actually help

Over the past year and some change, we’ve seen some smart moves on MSN’s part.  They have:

• Continued to make interface and functionality upgrades to adCenter
• Re-structured their service model and added a good number of reliable reps to ensure agencies and advertisers have the help and coverage they need to be successful
• Provided pro-active account deep dives and recommendations
• Purchased Atlas
• Partnered with Facebook
• Created the Excel Ad-In keyword tool
• Created an account management desktop tool so making updates to campaigns  are a breeze
• Added and improved their quality-partner content networks

And so the list goes on.

Most clients I’ve dealt with see their greatest search ROI from adCenter.  The only reason they don’t put more money towards MSN Search is because the volume they need to spend the budget is not there.  To begin solving this problem, MSN has started a public push to gain more searchers on Live.com and MSN.com.  It’s already started this year with the introduction to Live Cashback and GetSearchPerks.com.

The service is better, the technology is better, and the user base and awareness are growing.  Microsoft has what it takes to really give adCenter and Live.com the push they need to succeed.  I’m excited to see that butterfly take off in 2009!

Image is official trademark of MSN Live

PR: wait… I: wait… L: wait… LD: wait… I: wait… wait… C: wait… SD: wait…

“Sally, I think you have the gist of what I do in that there are two main areas, but they are called Paid & Organic SEM.  Please let me explain.  On the Paid side of things, we are talking about ‘Paid Search Engine Marketing’ or marketing to the ‘Paid’ or ‘Sponsored’ listings.   When you do a search from, say your laptop or mobile device, using Google, Yahoo, MSN, or even Facebook, the paid or sponsored listings are usually located at the top and to the right of the Organic listings.  A marketer can expect to market to roughly 20-30% of the search engine results when they employ Paid SEM.  When you said PPC, or pay per click, this is a type of ad that is utilized in Paid Search Engine Marketing.  Paid Inclusion is another.”

Sally’s eyes haven’t glazed over yet, so I continue.

“As for Organic SEM, what you called SEO, this involves marketing to the Organic search results of the major search engines.  Organic results form the body of the search results page on the left-hand side of the engines.  SEO, as you mentioned, stands for Search Engine Optimizing.  This is one of the tactics used in Organic SEM.  Sometimes the SEO tactic is called On-Page or On-Site Optimization.  This is where you focus on optimizing the pages of a site so that search engine spiders can easily crawl through your site, know what your pages are about, and serve it up in the Organic search results.  Another tactic employed in Organic SEM is Off-Page or Off-Site Optimization. This is where you improve the authority of a web site by utilizing different ways of garnering links from other web sites to your own site.  The search engines look at links as if they are votes for your site; the more high quality links you have, the more votes your site has and generally speaking, the higher up in the index your page will appear in the Organic listings in the engines.”

Sally gives me a satisfying “oh, I get it” and I feel that my job here is done, other than to finish my delicious glass of red wine, a tasty Beringer Founders’ Estate.

In my opinion, when we encounter the ‘Slurry Sally’s’, clients, or colleagues who use terms like SEO and PPC, we should be correcting them.  In the case of PPC, they are calling a whole branch of Search Engine Marketing by one of the ad types used.  When they call Organic SEM, SEO, they are calling the other main branch of SEM by one of the tactics employed.  To me, this seems to be downright inaccurate.  Besides the terms Paid & Organic SEM being more accurate in terms of the activities that we undertake for our clients, they also carry an air of legitimacy and sophistication that befits the fantastic things we do for our clients in these branches of marketing.

I put out a call to SEM’ers everywhere; please help me to clean up the nomenclature of our profession so that we can move forward with our clients, with an accurate portrayal of what we do.  Let’s help ourselves bring clarity and legitimacy to our exciting, new and growing profession called SEM, before the poorly named parts become our entrenched monikers.

A very specific example that I have of this is one of my clients saw a 100% increase in their CPC for their brand term in MSN over just one week. We probed MSN to see what the possible reasons could be for this huge increase in one week – their answer was “could be competition.” My first problem with this answer is the could part. Don’t they have a better understanding than could? My second issue with this answer is the competition part. I went online and checked who the competition was, and to my surprise, there was none. I hit the refresh button; again, no competition.

The above is just one example of the increase of CPCs in MSN without a solid explanation. I have seen through another one of my clients our branded CPC has increased from the $1.00 range well into the $3.00 range in a very short period of time, without any obvious changes in the SERP environment.

Yahoo! is not immune to this problem either. They actually had started to show large increases in CPCs about 3 or 4 months ago with no explanation. I have my own explanation – Jerry needs to hit quarterly expectations… I know I said it, it is out there.

Google has increased the CPCs the best so far, and I am not going to go into detail about their Real Time Quality Score. Please read Erika Moersch’s “Google’s Real Time Quality Score Changes Your Query Results” post for more on how this changes the current landscape. I have noticed CPCs go up for a majority of my clients all for the benefit of user experience.

Now when I stated that there is a CPC conspiracy happening, I say it half-jokingly. I am not completely sure that I believe it, but without a tangible explanation for these dramatic CPC increases, I have no option but to entertain the notion. We as an industry need to have a better understanding, and I put this onus on the engines, on what is effecting the CPC fluctuations. We all are or will have to answer the client when they ask why are my CPCs fluctuating so drastically. Right now I don’t believe I have a strong belief in why this is happening and the engines up to this point have not given me a tangible answer. I know from experience that there are many factors that change the CPCs, but none of them seem to be in play of late.

I would be very interested in what your thoughts and experiences are, and hopefully this opens a can of worms. The truth is out there…

(Image credit: Artist: Chris Madden. Thanks to http://flinchbot.files.wordpress.com/2008/04/conspiracy-theory.gif for the image.)

What does this mean for search marketers? Well, it means that by just buying into Google AdWords your ads will most likely get coverage on Google, Yahoo! and Ask.com. These search properties combined cover an estimated 85-90% of all U.S. search traffic, leaving MSN somewhere between 10-15% (depending on which data you look at). The real distinction with Ask.com and Yahoo! was that each provided unique value (usually lesser costs-per-clicks) than Google. With multiple engines now using Google ads, the majority of those savings may be lost. And without those savings, why not make life easier and just deal with one engine in the future? It will lower the time associated with collecting data from multiple engines, it will help to quickly organize data as information will all be in the same format, and it will simplify the billing process as you will only have to deal with one vendor. Sounds like a good time-saving idea to me.

We could argue that MSN Live Search does not provide the traffic volumes that Google or Yahoo! can, but what I have found with many of my clients that track engagement metrics after the click is that MSN Live Search usually produces some of the least-expensive, most-engaged traffic I get from any engine.

So, does MSN matter because it is a good search engine, because it is unique in some way or because it brings more relevant results? Maybe, maybe not. But the bigger picture about why MSN Live Search matters is because it represents the last truly independent competitor in search to the ever expanding Google Empire.