There are so many Google product releases and industry news bulletins about their implications, it’s easy to miss a big one. We’re calling attention to www.focusontheuser.org, a project designed by interested Google-watchers, to highlight a monumental decision by the search giant: to overrule its ranking algorithm in promoting Google+.

The product in question – “Search Plus Your World” – was marketed as simple elevation of relevant social links in search results. The people behind focusontheuser built a widget to demonstrate that, actually, the new product cherry-picks Google’s own social results from Google’s index, no matter what the holy algorithm has deemed most relevant to the user’s query. It does indeed look very much like “Search Plus Your World” lifts Google+ results above Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn results that Google’s search algorithm correctly ranked higher.

This flies in the face of Google’s culture, core to which is the belief that optimal engineering is the optimal business plan. No wonder the decision is causing a wave of disgust in the developer community. It’s fascinating that Google has released no statement defending the decision (we requested a comment and waited 48 hours before publishing this post). Google resisted the business case for advancing its own properties via search throughout Eric Schmidt’s 10-year tenure as CEO. It seems co-founder Larry Page feels differently now that he’s the one reporting quarterly earnings. The fact that Google’s communications department doesn’t have its story straight yet suggests this huge decision wasn’t even thought through.

As newspaper circulation continues to decline, so does the reach of printed ad circulars/free standing inserts, which are important drivers of both brick and mortar and ecommerce sales. Along with challenges of decreased reach, retailers are also finding that the promotional lift of circulars is declining. According to research conducted by Nielsen, printed circulars are less effective than they were 6 years ago. In 2010, the average ROI boost of printed circulars was 20% compared to 28% in 2005. Retailers are faced with the challenge of maintaining and/or expanding the reach and efficiency of circulars in a declining print market.

In many ways, the internet has replaced the Sunday paper. According to an Audience Insight Survey released in December 2011 from interclick, two thirds of Americans are learning about in-store deals online. In addition, 42% of consumers prefer online advertising to newspapers and other sources, and those consumers who see in-store deals online are more likely to visit a brick and mortar store. This is especially true for electronics, grocery, drug, department, and clothing retailers.  Many retailers have made circulars available on their websites; however the associated user experience of these is fairly poor and very few can be viewed on tablet or mobile devices.

Google has acknowledged this challenge and recently launched a new product that offers an interactive and personalized circular experience aptly named Google Circulars. This product was launched in October 2011 with a small alpha test of US retailers including Macy’s, Best Buy, Home Depot and others. The success of the alpha has led Google to move this product into a beta release launching in Q1 2012 with an expanded set of retailers and vendors.

Google has always had an emphasized focus on the retail industry, and many of the beta opportunities they have rolled out over the past few years have been designed specifically for retail partners. They have increasingly understood the challenges retailers face in utilizing online channels to drive in store purchase. With Google Circulars, they are hoping to further bridge this gap by offering a more robust and user friendly digital circular solution.

Google Circulars presents an exciting new opportunity to utilize digital circulars in a highly customized and targeted way. The breadth of data that Google has access to use in serving personalized circulars is unprecedented and this new ad format has shown early success. As with any new marketing opportunities, there are risks involved in being an early adopter. The lack of proven success, as well as the potential resources required to run such a program, are very real barriers. In addition, the monthly minimum media spend would result in incremental cost or reduced spend in existing tactics. Success of this initiative is ultimately dependent on consumer adoption and engagement. While it’s too early to say whether or not Google Circulars will be a success, this product offering does attempt to fill a growing need of offer communication between retailers and consumers.

To read the full Razorfish Health POV on Google Circulars, click here.

There’s been a lot of speculation about the future of Google+ since it launched last June. Recently, we heard about their strong December showing with a hefty increase in sign ups, but the jury is still out on whether this offering will end as a flop or resounding success.

After going public in September, the nascent social network now has around 50 million active users. Some estimates put the number over 60 million, with still others going as high as 150 million. The approach so far has been to emphasize the use of Circles which allows users to easily control what they share with members of their network. This, along with Hangouts, has formed their core value proposition thus far. While it may not be destined to overtake Facebook as the king of the social world, it may be able to carve out its own niche and help Google stay relevant in an increasingly “social” world. One can only imagine how targeted Google could make its ads once it pulls in a user’s Google+ info.

Either it will be a huge success or it’ll suffer the fate of Buzz and countless other failed pet projects the internet giant has launched in the past. The new network certainly has several things going for it, so this could be a case where the final ruling lies somewhere in the middle.

Brands Can Augment Paid Search and SEO Efforts

With the introduction of Google+ pages for businesses, one trend we have noticed is that Google+ pages are enjoying increased visibility within organic search results. As reported by multiple sources, many top brands now have Google + pages which now appear in organic results, taking up a decent amount of real estate to boot. This could serve as a clear sign to businesses that setting up a Google+ page is akin to an investment in SEO, allowing them greater presence on and potential dominance of the search results page.

Integration with Android Devices

The latest generation of Android smartphones are now optimized for Google+, allowing the social network to grow along with the Android platform. The Android OS already owns about half of the US smartphone market. As adoption grows, Google+ will come along for the ride, enjoying the benefits of Android’s success. With the activation of every new Android device, Google+ will be given the opportunity to increase its ranks.

Google’s Acquisition of 200+ IBM Patents

Google’s recent move to purchase patents from IBM was undoubtedly an effort to bolster its defenses against litigation of the intellectual property variety threatening Android. Yet, there were some curious patents in its latest haul that could hint at new products/innovations. Perhaps the most interesting was a patent detailing the analysis of user-generated content to ascertain potential interests and preferences. The system would use semantic cues from user posts to identify individuals who may be interested in particular topics without having to rely on self-reported interests. This would allow Google+ to connect its users with other individuals who may share their interests based on their behavior within the Google+ community and would also allow for even more relevant search results.

Since we all know Google is in the business of providing results that are as relevant as possible (read: those most likely to be clicked), this validates the purchase of these patents. Also, the benefit to advertisers cannot be ignored, as this could serve as an invaluable tool allowing for more precise targeting of potential customers.

If Google+ is to survive, it will need to distinguish itself. Given their preeminence in search, the continued growth of the Android platform, and any potential innovations they may have planned (whether related to newly acquired patents or not), Google may carve out a truly unique identity for its little social network that could. They will need to continue highlighting the benefits of Google+ and how it differs from its competitors, so that users are motivated enough to try yet another social network. The road ahead will be a long one, but if they arrive at their desired destination, it will be well worth the effort.

Following the 2010 acquisition of travel software company ITA Software, Google has been actively rolling out ‘experiments’ in the travel space such as Google Flight Search and Hotel Finder which are an attempt at providing “travel tools that provide faster, more flexible, and more useful results to online travel searches.”

Google’s latest experiment builds on the Hotel Finder tool and is known as a Google Hotel Comparison ad. Given the ad’s prominence within the premium ad space and the potential impact on Hotel advertisers, the Razorfish search team has pulled together a brief POV that should provide some deeper details on what a Hotel Comparison ad is as well as potential implications on the Hotel Industry.

Background

• Google Hotel Finder, the destination of Hotel Comparison ads is designed to maximize the travel consumers experience from discovery to booking
• Google Hotel Finder launched July 2011, an online hotel tool that lets users add Hotels to a short list, isolate desired neighborhoods, select travel dates, view user ratings & reviews, price compare and book through Hotel Price Ads (via reseller or suppliers)
• Hotel Comparison Ads were first introduced Fall 2011 and were eligible on <5% of queries-recently scaling to an unknown number of queries on Google.com

What is Google Hotel Comparison Ad?

• A “house ad” placement that does not participate in the auction, serves in “Top Promotional” spot above the white line within sponsored listings and drives to Hotel Finder

• Does not impact other ads ranking on the page
• Does not impact the number of eligible ads that can appear on the page ensuring all impressions and positions are available to advertisers
• Does occupy the most desirable real-estate within paid results indirectly impacting the value of the available positions (e.g. pushing down the paid listings)
• Hotel Comparison ad is only eligible for hotel-related queries, appears to be serving on unbranded and US only at this time

Implications:

• Google has no immediate plans to iterate to a reseller or supplier ad opportunity at this time

• Geared towards driving traffic to Hotel Finder and ultimately Hotel Price Ads
• With user traction Google has opportunity to emerge as one-stop research and booking platform
• Organic property link is displayed within Hotel Price Ads at point of the Booking, additional paid link opportunity exists through participation in Hotel Price Ads via API integration
• Pushes down paid real-estate available to advertisers through the auction

Additional Reading:

• http://searchengineland.com/google-tests-hotel-finder-as-comparison-ad-104661
• http://www.seroundtable.com/google-hotel-ads-14458.html

We would love to hear your thoughts on the potential impact of Google’s new experiment or even discover how this experiment has impacted your campaigns. Feel free to continue the conversation in the comments below, on Facebook or on Twitter @searchshots.

Background:

Google has been getting personal with search results since 2009 customizing and suggesting results based on your web history.

Now Google is getting personal with marketers – stripping the search keyword from the Google organic referred traffic for signed-in Google account users. There is no impact to paid search as this time. Google will continue to provide insight to queries generating traffic via paid search allowing advertisers to optimize to relevant behavior. Google describes this latest announcement as an enhancement to protect privacy of users.

Situation:

On Tuesday October 18, 2011, Google announced on their blog that users logged into Google would see their organic queries default to HTTPS (Secure HTTP) https://www.google.com instead of HTTP.

This change will reduce visibility into why visitors are coming to web properties for signed-in Google searchers. In other words we won’t be able to determine the type of keyword used to arrive to the site from Google organic search. We also won’t be able to track the content viewed or actions taken from that particular organic keyword visit.

This referring information will be missing from all the solutions that track usage on web sites, including Google analytics and all the web analytics vendors (Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics). However, according to Google, we will still be able to get to some of this in depth keyword information in Google Webmaster Tools.

Immediate Impact:

At this time it is estimated that this change is currently impacting just fewer than 10% of the referrals originating from Google.

Here is why:

• Queries are only encrypted and noted as “not provided” when users are signed-in to Google accounts and perform a search on Google.com (not a partner site or Google toolbar)
• Google has not fully enabled this change to all Google signed-in users

Why this Will Likely Change:

The adoption of the new social network Google+ (see appendix) got off to a quick start, reaching more than ten million users in its first few weeks of field trial. However, Google+ has struggled to reach the “mainstream” audience and is currently only 10% of Facebook’s audience reach. Google+ also has .01% the level of engagement with the total online population compared to Facebook.

The Google+ adoption rate is a key consideration, as users flock to the network it is likely more users will remain “signed-in” to Google accounts throughout the day. The continued growth of Gmail, YouTube and other “sign-in” Google properties will also continue to influence the number of signed-in users in the future as well.

Strategy

• The best practices for optimizing your site – on-page, backlinks, social, internal linking – are unchanged

Measurement

• To quantify impact, Razorfish recommends benchmarking “not provided” visitors as % of total visits referred by Google Organic to gauge scale of signed–in users

• Available Through Omniture

What performance indicators/views are at risk for secure search signed in Google traffic?

• organic keyword performance (traffic, ROI, bounce rate, engagement, page views etc.)
• landing page keyword targeting and benchmarking growth
• paid/organic keyword click/revenue share
• competitive footprint

Technology

• Ensure Webmaster Tools Account with Google is verified

• Webmaster Tools account will provide top organic queries
• Available referring queries will exclude site interaction such as page views and on-site activities (bookings, conversions, leads, etc.)

Conclusion:

While the immediate impact is limited to less than 10% of traffic this has the potential to scale with stickiness of Google products requiring sign-in such as Gmail and Google+. With scale, blocking this data from site analytics reporting also impacts ad networks that rely on this data to monetize content based on search/user on-site behavior.

An important next step is benchmarking impact and creating proxies for potential loss of insight over time.

Typically Google does not release a lot of details around these types of changes. Razorfish plans to trend data over the next few weeks and develop a formal Point Of View detailing impact.

Download the Google Secure Search POV.

About Google+

In July, Google launched Google+, a new social network poised to offer a more custom experience compared to social network giant Facebook. Google+ is seamlessly integrated with all Google products (Gmail, Google.com, Maps, etc) and virtually any experience you have on the web. With the Google+ Button (similar to the Facebook “Like”), you signal to Google what you are interested in. When this is combined with what you are searching for and the sites you visited, Google has the capacity to aggregate these data points to create an experience just for you. This personalized experience is well positioned to be monetized via “interest based” advertising categories. For more information on Google+, download the Razorfish Google+ POV.

Background

The Google Display Network (GDN, formerly referred to as the Google Content Network) has an extremely large inventory pool of sites across the internet. GDN was initially launched on October 23, 2000, and in more than a decade has grown to one of the largest online advertising properties in the world.  It is estimated that this network reaches 89% of the internet in the U.S., with over 1 million publishers and 211 million unique users per week (comScore Networks machine-based panel). Paid search and display media ads can be served across this network, and audiences can be targeted in several different ways. Ads are served alongside content specified by the advertiser. This brief will take a deep dive into the targeting capabilities of the GDN, and the benefits of the GDN for a paid search advertiser.

GDN and Digital Advertising

Paid search advertising and display media advertising both have the opportunity to advertise within the GDN. The main difference between these two mediums is cost structure. Display media is usually bought on a cost-per-thousand (CPM) basis, meaning the advertiser pays each time 1,000 impressions are served. Thus, each advertiser’s display media impression must be a valuable placement.

Paid search advertising is usually purchased on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. This means that the advertiser only pays when their ad is clicked on. With this cost structure, there is more flexibility in what sites these ads are placed. If the site is not compatible with the ad, then the ad will not get served and no cost is incurred. Paid search advertising using the GDN is an excellent way for an advertiser to reach a greater audience and still maintain efficiencies.

While targeting is critical for both types of digital advertising to reach the right audience at the right time, the implications of highly specific targeting are usually more essential for display media to ensure that impressions are not lost on an extraneous audience. However, all targeting options in the GDN are available for purchase on a CPM or CPC basis for both text and display ads, depending on the advertiser’s goals.

Types of GDN Targeting

Contextual Targeting - selecting specific keywords and/or topics where the advertiser would like an ad to appear. Contextual targeting is done on the page level, not the site level for maximum relevancy.

Keyword Contextual Targeting – advertisers select certain keywords that are relevant to them, and bid to appear alongside this content. This ad may appear on any site across the GDN where there are those keywords on the page. The scale of this method of advertising could be very large, depending on the keywords that are being targeted. It is usually recommended to layer this type of targeting with another method to increase relevancy and minimize waste.

Topic Contextual Targeting – advertisers select certain topics that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear on pages of these sites.  This ad may appear on sites across the GDN that are categorized under that topic. This method is very broad-reaching as well, and is usually recommended in combination with another targeting method for an advertiser interested in reaching a specific audience.

Placement Targeting – advertisers select certain sites and/or sections of sites that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear on pages of these sites. These sites can be selected by the advertiser using Google Tools such as Ad Planner, which uses Nielson data to index sites in the GDN based on:

• Demographics (Household Income, Age, Gender, Education)
• Online Activity (Other Sites Your Audience Visits, Keywords Your Audience Searches For)
• Interest Categories (i.e. Cooking & Recipes, Women’s Interests, Weddings)

In practice, Razorfish usually finds this method to be the most successful approach to the GDN, because sites/sections that index highly against a target market can be cherry-picked for extremely relevant targeting.

Behavior Targeting – Advertisers select certain topics that are relevant to them, and bid for their ad to appear across the GDN to users who match those interests. This method can be used to reach a large audience as well as a more targeted, niche audience. A user’s interests are either declared interests (through the Ad Preferences Manager), or are inferred based on their browsing behavior, specifically their recent and frequent site visits. This method of targeting is usually used for broad-reaching awareness campaigns or advertisers that seek site visitors that abandoned part of an intent funnel.

Inferred Demographic Targeting – advertisers bid on an audience where Google has inferred their demographic based on their GDN history. A user’s demographic is determined by a number of sources, including user registration data, 3^rd Party data and site composition. The registration data that is used in Inferred Demographic Targeting may come from YouTube registration, or other undisclosed sites in the GDN that capture registration information. Specific targeting sources cannot be cherry-picked, and Google takes all into account when inferring a demographic. The composition index of a site determines the inferred demographic. For example, if a person visits a fashion site, and then visits a parenting site, then Google may infer the demographic as a Female 25-54. If an advertiser uses Inferred Demographic Targeting for this target, then Google will serve an ad in the GDN network to that person. Google is constantly improving the dataset used to determine user Demographics and will incorporate new data sources as they become available. Additionally, this feature is currently in Beta and advertisers must request to be whitelisted by Google to participate.

This newer method of targeting may have benefits for an advertiser that has an extremely specific audience they wish to target, and should be tested alongside other GDN methods. However, because demo-inferred targeting is still in beta and takes very little user self-identification into account, it should not be used exclusively as a preferred GDN targeting method without the support of testing and analysis alongside the other methods.

Below is an example of how an advertiser can use a Google tool, Ad Preferences Manager, to target select audiences.

Remarketing – advertisers bid on an audience that visited their site (or a site which will allow them to implement a pixel) and their ad is displayed across the GDN. This method is often used for CRM marketing, or if the visitor was in the middle of a conversion funnel and then left. In the example given below, Special K can remarket those that visited the Special K Challenge Registration page but did not fulfill registration.

Hybrid GDN Targeting - GDN Targeting products can be combined together to reach a very specific, desired audience. As targeting layers increase, an advertiser will be reaching a more specific audience and a smaller percentage of the total population.

GDN Benefits for Paid Search

With the targeting capabilities and mass reach of GDN, there is a greater opportunity to expand paid search marketing campaigns. Expanding an advertiser’s paid search marketing presence will lead to impactful benefits such as:

1. Efficiencies – It has been established with prior campaign history that paid search is one of the most efficient means of advertising. However, paid search on sponsored search (i.e. Google.com) can sometimes be expensive if an advertiser is bidding on keywords where there are many other competitors, which may increase CPC and overall cost significantly. Including GDN and network targeting can be essential for an advertiser with many competitors who is concerned with efficiencies such as CPC and CPA (cost-per-action).

2. Reach – there are a finite number of searches for a set of keywords, and search trends must increase if an advertiser wants to expand their paid search marketing efforts. GDN offers an opportunity to expand reach beyond basic sponsored search results.

3. Relevancies – GDN is an opportunity for an advertiser to appear alongside relevant content or a target audience efficiently.

4. Testing - GDN is a way test sites and targets with minimal cost commitment (budgets can be set as low as $1 a day for only one day)

5. Turn-Key Implementation – ads are the same format as traditional paid search ads (130 characters) and can be created quicker than other advertising creative.

Google has officially announced Google Analytics Premium! Google’s first enterprise analytics product will be available directly from Google and many Google Analytics Premium Certified Resellers. They apply a more simplified pricing approach compared to the confusing contract pricing which is based on server calls and options that the rest of the enterprise industry has established. The especially interesting thing is this flat fee could result in saving money for larger clients switching from Omniture or Webtrends; however, this could also end up being more expensive for medium-sized clients looking to move to Google Analytics Premium. Regardless, it’s important to weigh the Pros and Cons of each product’s features and perform an analysis of whether the investment is worth the price tag. Here are the key features of your Premium investment:

In addition to requiring no code change to upgrade from Standard to Premium, one great aspect of Google Analytics Premium is that the interface look and feel hasn’t changed at all. The only change is the addition of the Unsampled Report export button:

Attribution Modeling (PREMIUM ONLY): Advanced analysis, simplified

Although it’s limited to only Google Analytics Premium customers, this advanced analysis tool provides powerful multi-channel attribution that actually seems easy to use! If your client is a DART For Advertisers customer then this tool will prove even more powerful since media impressions can be weighted in the model as well. There are several different types of attribution models that a user can select or compare based on their needs. Here are the ones that were presented:

• Last Interaction (only the last touchpoint matters)
• Linear (every touchpoint gets equal credit)
• First Click (only the first touchpoint matters)
• Time Decay (more recent touchpoints get more credit)
• U Curve (value early and recent touchpoints)
• Engagement-based (value the touchpoints based on the amount of time on site they drove)
• Custom (you name it, you got it)

This powerful feature may truly put Attribution Modeling on the map, in terms of digital analytics, in the same way that Google Analytics initially put Bounce Rate on the map. Unfortunately, only Premium customers will get to feel the power. The interface looks relatively simple, but will require a truly analytical eye to glean actionable takeaways. One note worth mentioning is that Google demands that privacy policies be updated to include mention that attribution modeling is taking place, yet no PII is being collected.

Google Analytics Right Now: Real-time site-side reporting

Google has a completely new product feature that nobody else in the enterprise site-side analytics space has created: real-time reporting. According to Google and tests we’ve performed, this new report set has a delay of only 1-2 seconds between the tag being called and the report populating. When you view the reports, you can see a live stream of statistics and learn exactly how your website is being used at that very moment. Google has actually decreased the session timeout to just 5 minutes for Right Now. These new reports provide the following report data:

• Medium / Source
• Geo-Location (IP-Based)
• Pages
• Pageviews
• Visitors
• New vs. Returning %

Right Now seems to be one of those features that sounds (and looks) really cool, but probably won’t get used every day. While chatting with colleagues at Razorfish, it sounds like the best use for this data could be during events: new site launches, campaign launches, marketing events, and social media events.

If you’d like to gain early access to Google Analytics Real Time, you can sign up here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/

In Conclusion: A lot to get excited about

These great features are certainly worth getting excited about! Now that Google Analytics Premium has been officially announced, it will be very interesting to see how the enterprise analytics landscape changes.

What are some reasons clients will prefer to stick with Omniture or Webtrends?

• Improved Pathing Capabilities
• Visitor-based Segmentation Capabilities
• External Data Sources
• Site Optimization and Display Ad Targeting Integration
• Social Data Integration
• Search Management Integration
• Genesis Integration
• Classification Systems
• Familiarity with the System
• Built-in Hierarchy Tracking
• Built-in Video Tracking
• XML Data Insertion API
• Export Capabilities to PDF, HTML Email, Scheduled Reports, and Alerts
• Improved Shopping Cart Tracking
• Option to keep data in-house (Webtrends OnPremise)

Webtrends has already released their opinion on Google Analytics Premium: http://blogs.webtrends.com/blog/2011/09/30/why-enterprise-marketers-should-be-wary-of-google-analytics/

In a previous post, I wrote about Google Hotel Finder – an experimental search tool that allows users to find hotels faster and easier.  I mentioned that Hotel Finder is one piece to the “planning-a-trip” puzzle, not knowing that Google was cooking up more magic in a few weeks to come.  Last week, Google introduced Flight Search.   Similar to Hotel Finder, Flight Search allows users to find flights quick and easy.

In April, Google acquired travel software company ITA for $700 million.  After the acquisition, many speculated and waited to see how Google would make its stance in the travel industry.  On September 13th, Google made its presence by launching Flight Search.  With the launch of Flight Search, Google hopes to “build new travel tools that provide faster, more flexible, and more useful results to online travel searches.”

What does this all mean?

Well, now when you search on Google: “flights to [destination]”, a “Flights” link will appear on the left panel of the Google SERP.  The “Flights” link directs the user to www.google.com/flights.

When I searched “flights to Miami”, a list of flights (my departure automatically defaulted to NYC airports) appeared and I was able to view a variety of carriers’ round-trip fares. A few listings came up as “unknown price” – but more on that later.

Along with convenience of searching for flights right through the Google interface, Google also prides itself as delivering “super-fast results.”  No more waiting for the site to load and “Finding the Best Prices for You!“, nor do you have to deal with 100 different screens opening in different windows so you can “compare” prices.

The user is also able to get a sense of when to travel. When you click on the calendar icon, a graph appears and allows you to compare prices at different times.  Below, I’m comparing prices between my desired travel time of October 6 – 10^th, as well as the weeks ahead and before my desired time.   The dark blue line indicates the week I have chosen, which happens to be the week with the highest price range. The price seems to decrease for the weeks following this time.

Last but not least, Flight Search gives users options and more options!  Now that it is getting cold in NYC, I’ve decided that I need a little more warmth – so maybe I’ll head to Miami.  But, at the same time, Miami is too much like New York, except with palm trees and warmer climate, in my opinion.  So, where else can I go that’s relatively close but warmer?  Flight Search gives the user the ability to explore other destinations by filtering by price, airline carrier and flight time.  So now, since I want to find another warm destination other than Miami, I can choose a filter for, let’s say – Continental Airlines, within 5 hours of NYC and costs less than $500…. The result: Dallas, Texas (amongst other destinations that came up) – not sure if I had Texas in mind, but it’s an option!

Now, for the Good, Bad and Ugly of the new feature:

• The Good:  I did save time in finding flights and I did not have to deal with annoying pop-up windows to compare prices.  I also like the fact that I can customize my searches and filter for different carriers, price points, etc.
• The Bad: For now, the user is only given the option to search for flights within the United States. I originally searched for flights to CDG (Charles de Gualle) and was given an error message (hopefully international flight search is in the near future).
• And The Ugly:  Earlier I mentioned receiving an “unknown price” box appearing when I searched – I have seen this a few times in the feature.  Not sure if this is a glitch in the system or deliberate?  But, not being able to view prices takes away from having a flight search tool in the first place, no?

You can learn more about Flight Search here.  All aboard!

Google recently (officially) announced that Google+ and +1’s are influencing your search results, and given the opportunity for Google+ to augment this even more, expect to see an influx of social applications on your search engine results pages (SERPs) in the next year.

This wish list includes several features that may socially alter search results and the searcher’s experience within them. Some are immediately applicable, while others err on the lofty side. But, if you are going to dream, dream big.

Social Influence Categorization:

As Google+ grows and users are forced to engineer Circles and group greater amounts of connections, search results influenced by shared information across the social network will need categorization. Imagine you’re searching for a particular topic and you have 1000+ connections. If several connections shared the same link that rises to the top of the results, wouldn’t it be beneficial to tell the searcher to categorize certain Circles above others? For instance, if I’m searching for movie reviews and the top result was shared by my Marketers, Friends, Family, and Google Circles, I’d be much more influenced by my Friends and Family Circle than my Marketers Circle – which includes thought leaders I’ve never met. Leveraging this user-provided data will make my results more relevant; therefore, increasing my satisfaction with the search results.

Social Meta Information:

When a connection shares a link on Google+, they rarely share only the link. Usually, they’ll also share a little blurb or opinion on the link. To augment the context of that shared link in search results, wouldn’t it be nice to see an excerpt of that blurb right below the search result? Google introduced more white space and spacing between results with their latest creative refresh, and this increased white space allows them to provide more detailed results when applicable. I’d love to know why my friend shared a link and their opinion on it versus only showing the fact that it was shared. In essence, this creates a dialogue between you and your connections within Google search instead of purely relying on what search marketers provide in the title and description.

Social Paid Search Ads:

Facebook has an offering similar to this idea. However, Google+ and +1’s proximity to Google search make this a winning feature. As paid search marketers, we are constantly striving to provide more relevant results to searchers in hopes of improving our CTR and increasing site traffic, leads, and revenue. In order to connect search marketer’s desires with consumers’, Google should roll out a new product offering within AdWords: Social Paid Ads. This offering would allow paid search marketers to serve special ads that immediately call out that the domain of your landing page was shared by a searcher’s connections.

Social Filters:

As Google’s database of shared information continues to grow, it would be very beneficial to filter by “Results Shared by your Connections”. The slash search engine, Blekko, already enabled this feature, but they are lacking the database to fully pull it off.

Google+ Comment Plugin:

As the +1 Button continues to span across websites, there’s a clear opportunity to allow these sharers the ability to add their voice to the +1 as they browse a website. Similar to Facebook’s Comment plugin, this would immediately post the user’s comment on Google+ and potentially influence the idea of Social Meta Information above.

What are your ideas on how Google can make its core business more social? Sound off in the comments.

On this episode of, “W.W.G.D.?” (What Would Google Do?), we present to you – Google Related.   Google Related is a new Chrome extension/Google toolbar feature that enables users to view content that is related to the site they are browsing.  For instance, if I’m browsing on restaurant XYZ’s webpage, Google Related will appear as a toolbar on the bottom of the screen, suggesting several options related to this site – including reviews of restaurant XYZ, mapping the location, or viewing images etc., all while staying on the restaurant’s web page.

Keeping it all in the Google family, Google also allows you to “Google+” anything that you find interesting in the Related section, allowing you to show your friends topics or things that interest you.

I installed Google Related and navigated to the Michael Jackson official website to test the tool out.  At the bottom of the webpage, the Google Related bar appeared and suggested videos, images and articles on the web that relate to M.J.

• Google suggested web articles from TMZ, Wikipedia, Billboard.com, amongst others. (You can Google+ these articles as you read)

• I also began to watch Thriller, from the Videos section of Related.

I was unable to find the Google Related tool on every site.  It seems like this feature may still be rolling out to additional sites.  Or possibly, the toolbar won’t show on every given site.  For the other sites where the toolbar was present, it was interesting to see that Google would suggest a competing brand on a site that you are already browsing.  For example, I was browsing a specific hotel brand website and Google suggested another hotel brand. I’m sure brands wouldn’t be too pleased with Google suggesting competing brands/sites while users are viewing their page.

Although there are no ads on Google Related, I’m curious if this will have any impact on the way users search.  This seems to fall along the lines of contextual targeting, in that users are not actually searching for your brand/site, but instead are being fed relevant information that relates to what they are interested in.

You can learn more about the Google Related feature here.  Have you used Google Related yet? If so, what are your thoughts?