Marketing Pilgrim Published: “comScore Looks at Who is Searching for What, Why and When” plus 1 more

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comScore Looks at Who is Searching for What, Why and When

Posted: 18 Mar 2011 03:09 PM PDT

Most people use a search engine because they’re looking for an answer to a question, but counter intuitively, most people won’t type an actual question into the query field.

“Who originally sang If You Don’t Know Me By Now,” becomes original, singer, If You Don’t Know. “What can I do on a visit to California?” becomes tourist, California.

But the Q&A format is the basis for Ask.com and it ties in to content sites such as eHow and Yahoo Answers so comScore decided to take a closer look at the folks who do use Who, What, Where, When, Why, and How in their queries.

When comparing January 2011 to January 2010, their survey found that “How” was the most often used qualifier from the list. How accounted for 431 million searches up 27% from the prior year. And then there’s How’s close cousin, How To.

"How to" drove over 253 million clicks in January 2011, up 35% since last year and growing every day. While the other modifiers lend themselves to text-based answers quite often, "how to" searching has shown an exceptionally high affinity for video search results. Google, eHow, YouTube, Yahoo! Answers, and others will all deliver you "how to" instructional videos with your results, whether you run this search on a search engine or on a vertical search site.

They also found that “how to” was popular with a younger audience presumably because they know less than an older audience but maybe it’s that they’re less stubborn about looking for help!

The next highest modifier was “What” with 253 million searches, up 35% over last year. To be more specific 67 million searches included “What is” with “What does” and “What are” close behind. Personally, I’d go with “What if,” but that’s just me.

“Where,” and “When” are pretty neck and neck. “Who” edged them out slightly but comScore says the data was corrupted by two popular songs with “Who” in the title that skewed the results higher than they should have been.

The least used question was “Why” and that’s kind of sad. Apparently the majority of searchers are not interesting in learning about the meaning of life or the mysteries of the universe.

Now here’s a question for you. Why don’t people routinely type full sentences into a search blank when it’s the most natural thing to do?

The Gamification of Mobile Marketing

Posted: 18 Mar 2011 11:39 AM PDT

The gamification of the digital world was an idea that popped up quite a few times at last week’s SXSW conference. Much of the discussion revolved around a presentation by SCVNGR creator Seth Priebatsch who was quoted as saying, “Game dynamics are too powerful to leave bottled up in games.”

Think about the amount of time the digitally connected adult spends playing games on his phone, online or on a game system. People have been known to spend an entire weekend working their way through the World of Warcraft and have you had enough of those Farmville updates you keep getting from your Facebook friends?

Oliver Burkeman of The Guardian says;

Videogame designers, the logic goes, have become the modern world’s leading experts on how to keep users excited, engaged and committed: the success of the games industry proves that, whatever your personal opinion of Grand Theft Auto or World of Warcraft. . . . Three billion person-hours a week are spent gaming. Couldn’t some of that energy be productively harnessed?

Couldn’t some of that energy be used to promote your brand? Tony Hoskins of AdAge follows up on this idea.

Imagine: Spending your time in the Starbucks line playing a game that could win you a free latte by the time you reach the counter. Letting your son play for a discounted ski lift ticket on the way to the slopes. Having a favorite game that gets bigger and better every time you use your phone to buy groceries.

Brilliant, simple and yet rarely done. Why? Surely we have the technology. There are several companies that use mobile check-in loyalty programs, so we know how to keep track of visits. Nearly every digital game has levels and bonus rewards based on play, so that’s not an issue. Millions of people have downloaded mobile games so we can’t be worried that there’s no audience.

Could it be that the only thing stopping marketers from gamification is fear of the game itself. Games have had a bad rap in the past. Video games have been deemed responsible for some of the most horrendous acts of violence in the real world. At the very least, they were labeled a waste of time and let’s not even talk about the billions spent on virtual goods each year. Perhaps they fear they won’t be taken seriously?

More likely the reason is that it’s a new concept and that can be a real sticking point, particularly for old school brands who have the money to build a truly nifty branded game.

A few big brands have dipped their toes into the water. McDonalds sponsored farms on Farmville and Entertainment Weekly has joined a variety of networks and studios that offer stickers on GetGlue. Now it’s time to go further. Look at it this way, marketing has always been a competitive game, only now it has bonus levels, score cards and rewards for spending time playing when you should be doing something else.

What do you think about the gamification of mobile marketing?