The Razorfish Search team would like to wish you a healthy and happy new year! We hope that you are enjoying a fantastic holiday weekend, and are gearing up for all the great things to come in 2012!
Died this week at the age of 82. Coined the motto “Just win, baby” for his team, the Raiders, building one of the most successful franchises in American Sports history.
The holiest and most solemn day in the Jewish religion, also known as the Day of Atonement. Lands on Tuesday, September 25th next year.
A baseball team named after beer, 2 wins away from the World Series? America, #%&$ Yea!
Ultimate Fighting Championship. I have my money on Liu Kang.
Tabloids claim her baby bump is fake! A choreographer claims “dance moves” plagiarism on her latest music video! Wait… I know what’s happening here… Beyonce and Jay-Z are about to unveil a single with the hottest, newest dance move out there, the “Baby Bump.” Spoiler alert on the link below…
(link: http://www.gifbin.com/982265)
The best team in baseball… before the playoffs began. At least they still have one of the best mascots in sports!
‘The Walking Dead’ comes back to life for a second season on AMC. Don Draper says… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsJSRP7cZVo
In Season 4, they all sleep with each other! In Season 5, Valtrex replaces Murray’s Hair Wax as their Number #1 Product Placement.
That thing, in front of the grocery store, that nobody ever used, until Netflix shot itself in the foot, ya know? $1 rentals are back in style.
Williamsburg bars go bankrupt, as hipsters set aside “facetime” with their new devices.
Seems as if there has been a lot of whispers lately circling around Google and interface testing. Yes, some of these have come to fruition (see: Google’s Black Top Navigation Bar) while others remain steady rumors (see: Google Scroll ). On August 16th, Google confirmed what we had all been speculating to be “the new man in town.” Greetings, Mr. Expanded Sitelink.
So let’s take a step back and learn more about the yesteryears of this so-called “new man in town.” Sitelinks were actually first introduced in 2005 and have continued to remain a staple of branded queries over the past 6 years.
In the Dell example below, we can see 7 links appear below the search result (at this time, 8 was the max).
On August 16th, sitelinks hit a growth spurt of sorts and became known within the search community as Expanded Sitelinks. These sitelinks have some pronounced physical features:
So how might this impact the rest of the search community, you ask? There’s lots of speculation around this “new man,” but for now, this town (read: Razorfish Search) has predicted the following impact:
Brand-related keyword traffic may increase for sitelink URLs as they may appear to be more relevant to the searcher as competing search results are pushed down.
Expanded sitelinks (with high-relevancy due to an improved algorithm) are predicted to influence several KPIs. Time-on-site, bounce rate, conversions and total pages visited are expected to be impacted. As sitelinks become more relevant to the searcher, it may take a searcher less time to retrieve information and convert.
Paid CTR% is predicted to decrease only slightly, and although CTR% may go down, total branded traffic may increase as the site gains greater brand visibility.
As CTR% is predicted to decrease, now might be the time to throw your cards down and go all-in as a Top Sponsor for branded queries. The right rail is predicted to gain less clicks as people begin to focus their eyes more towards the center of the page.
We also compiled a list of things you may need to take into consideration before you saddle up to meet expanded sitelinks at high noon:
When you finally meet at high noon, be sure to monitor the SERPs for expanded sitelinks prompted by branded search queries on a monthly basis. Keep this all in mind as you take your next step to:
Judgment day is near. Stayed tuned for Part 2: The Results.
One of my favorite SNL skits is the NPR Delicious Dish episode with Alec Baldwin. I love food, eating, enjoying, staring, and smelling unique flavors to excite my palate. And, in fact, my post today will be centered on FOOD!
Currently at Razorfish, I work with a CPG client on the paid search side of the house. I get exposed to the “food industry” and all the latest trends or buzz surrounding food both offline and online. Earlier this year, Google released the “Google Recipe Tool”, which foodies and non-foodies alike, jumped on-board. The feature lets users filter search results according to ingredients, cook time, calories and more. Users can search, for instance, for recipes containing certain ingredient, devised by a certain chef, and even narrow down to how long the item takes to prep and cook. Pictures, ingredients and one- to five-star user ratings are highlighted in the listed results, helping users quickly discover or bypass recipes.
However, with this sudden influx of searches on the Google Recipe Tool, the search engine decided to do something with this data. Google created the Consumer Food Index, a handy internal tool that was created to gauge recipe and food search queries, trends and seasonality. For me, that is called “winning” because the team and myself now have access to see what you, the consumer, is searching on, what kind of food you love, tips/tricks, and popular recipes. The beauty of this is that our team can make a stronger connection between a brand and consumer based on this data. That is what I like to call, making online paid search magic. For our team to create this “magic” and have access to this data, there are a few things to keep in mind:
This tool is even more valuable to a paid search marketer, since Q4 is the largest volume of search on recipes, snack ideas and holiday meals. The chart below highlights spikes in search around Q4.
Why is this even relevant to you…? As a search marketer, it is crucial to have more data available to identify valuable insights within the user’s behaviors throughout the search process. Gaining as much insight as possible into the consumer behavior, activities happening offline and online, will ultimately lead to a more positive online experience for the user. In addition, it will also establish a stronger connection with the user to the brand.
Interested in the Google Consumer Food Index Tool? A POV will be available the week of July 11th, 2011.
Authored by: Rebecca Keen, rebecca.keen@razorfish.com
Google debuted quite a few initiatives at the Google I/O conference last month, including many exciting improvements for developers, with Android Ice Cream Sandwich, Google Music and Android @Home. However, one potentially landscape-altering development that came from the conference was Google’s push for the Chromebook and Chrome OS. For those unfamiliar, here is Google’s introduction to this new web experience:
For more in depth information on chrome, you can watch Google’s session videos.
Google is pushing Government, Education and Corporate adoption of these low cost devices as well, with subscription fees under $30/Month per user. They are pitching the Chromebook as a cheaper to manage, secure and efficient alternative to the traditional PC:
What does all of this mean for the world of search? It may only mean a small increase in Google’s already large market share of searches, or potentially a defense against competition from companies like Facebook. One thing is clear, when you log onto the Chromebook you are essentially working within a Google Chrome web browser and every Chrome browser’s URL bar is a Google search field.
There are many assumptions made in assuming a wide adoption of Chromebooks and the biggest question is: How could we possibly do everything we need to on the web? The answer may not be here yet but Google is working very hard to make this possible. One noteworthy development is a Google/Citrix joint project which could revolutionize the way we use applications:
This project would allow us to move our use of applications to the Cloud. Of course, without a proper data connection or with heavy use of applications like Adobe Photoshop/Premiere, you could experience some serious lag. JR Raphael of Computerworld wrote a pretty in depth review after using the original Chromebook, the CR-48, and getting his hands on some of the newer products. For the majority of us that don’t render images throughout the day, this could be worthwhile… or more importantly a game changer.
