Marketing Pilgrim Published: “Cup of Joe: The Search Engine Killer Is Playing Games And Winning!” plus 2 more

Cup of Joe: The Search Engine Killer Is Playing Games And Winning!
Advertising Your Product: Is All Buzz, Good Buzz?
Bing Beats Google for Succesful Searches

Cup of Joe: The Search Engine Killer Is Playing Games And Winning!

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 09:05 PM PST

Search engines have historically been the best way to find information on the internet. But what if we didn’t need search engines anymore? What if, all we had to do was verbally tell the computer what we needed and it gave us the best response? All without visiting a web page, navigating through ads or waiting for our browsers to load.

Well, computer scientists at IBM have almost made the above scenario a reality. With their new natural language processing (NLP) super computer named “Watson”, they are breaking new ground that could potentially create a radical shift in information retrieval (IR).

Now, many of you already know that I am fascinated with NLP. In fact one of the first web applications I ever created is highly dependent on NLP. I really think NLP could play a very significant role in the future of IR.

But, it’s important to state that we are a long way away from seeing the type of NLP for public use that is needed to have a successful product. Google already admits that it is using some form of NLP for sentiment analysis, but most are skeptical of how much they use it, and how strong of a ranking factor it is.

So, you might be asking yourself, why the heck is Joe talking about all this?

I think it is extremely important that we as marketers continue to look forward at how information is exchanged. A few years ago if you would have asked most online marketers if the popularity of content on Facebook was important to SEO, most would have laughed you out the room; now it is a reality.

So, my question to you is, if a NLP based information retrieval system one day takes the place of search engines, how will that change the way that marketers promote content online? Instead of SEO, will we then optimize information? And, if so, how?

Advertising Your Product: Is All Buzz, Good Buzz?

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 01:44 PM PST

If you were going to make a Super Bowl commercial on behalf of the United States of America, how would you do it? That’s the question Harper’s Magazine asked a group of ad execs and it got me thinking about the right way and the wrong ways to advertise any product.

For example. Super Bowl commercials tend to be funny and over the top, but is that anyway to sell patriotism? An ad that pits Victoria’s Secret models against Obama in a cherry pie eating contest will certainly garner attention and it’s pretty likely that everyone will still be talking about it a day later. But is buzz all you need to call a commercial a success? What if the reason people are talking is because they were offended by the ad. Certainly there would be a large segment of the population who felt it was inappropriate. Does it matter? Is bad buzz as welcome as good buzz?

Look at those Allstate insurance ads that poke fun at how Mayhem can ruin your life. Car accidents are no laughing matter and yet these commercials are getting a lot of attention and are probably causing an uptick in sales.

Which brings me back to the Super Bowl. Doritos recently pulled down an entry from their Doritos Crash the Super Bowl ad contest page because it was offensive. The ad showed a priest so desperate to get more money in the collection plate, he offers Doritos instead of a wafer for communion. Pepsi removed the video after they received complaints not because they themselves, thought using religious parody to sell snacks was a bad move.

The question here is not where do you draw the line, but is there a line? With so little time to get your point across, is it worth offending a few customers in order to get the bigger buzz? What do you think?

And if you want to know how the agencies said they’d advertise America, check out this month’s issue of Harper’s which hits the stands next week.

Thanks to AdAge for the head’s up.

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Bing Beats Google for Succesful Searches

Posted: 14 Jan 2011 11:06 AM PST

Experian Hitwise has just released their December report which shows that Google overwhelmingly accounts for most of the searches conducted on the web in the US. 69.97% to be exact with the nearest competitor, Bing, coming in at only 25.77%.

But while Google is still the chosen search engine of the masses, it’s not the most accurate. According to Experian’s numbers, 81% of the searches on Bing and Yahoo! Search resulted in a trip to a web address. Google only showed a 65% success rate.

Now this is interesting. My purely unscientific explanation for this discrepancy is the way people use Google versus Bing. Bing is a simple, one-shot search engine. I put in what I want, I get a response. It’s the lowest common denominator. Google offers more opportunities right upfront to refine the search by time, type of result, even result locations. Because of this, I’d bet many people take a second or third try at finding exactly what they want before they start clicking through.

Because of the options, I don’t think Google is less accurate, as long as you put in the right parameters to start with. I also think that Google is like a game. Ever just waste time typing in things to see what you get? There are even a variety of Google based guessing games you can play like Gwigle,which shows you results with the keywords removed and you have to figure out the word that was searched.

No matter which engine we prefer, the way we search for things is definitely changing. Experian’s report noted that two-word searches accounted for 24% of all queries with a rise in shorter queries and a 4% decrease in those over five words. This is likely due to the factors like Google’s Instant Results feature which returns fairly accurate results as you’re typing. Sorry Ask.com, but does anyone actually type fully phrased questions into search engines anymore? Apparently not.

Finally, the report also showed Amazon claiming 51% of all paid retail site clicks for December. Fandango had the highest month-over-month growth which probably goes along with December being a much bigger month for movies than November.

If you’d like to see all the well organized charts, click here for the Experian Hitwise press release.