Real-time search: 4 questions that deserve answers
Last week’s post on Google’s introduction of “real-time” search sparked quite a bit of discussion. SmartBrief on Social Media readers had a number of questions, concerns and fears about what this shift in the search landscape might mean to marketers. For answers, I turned to George Bounacos, COO of Silver Beacon Marketing and a SEM practitioner who has been involved in monetizing online efforts since 1986. Here is an edited transcript of that conversation:
Are real-time results on Google, Bing, etc., a permanent shift or more of an experiment?
This is the beginning of a permanent shift and natural cycle. Home Internet usage grew when home modem prices decreased. Mapping became prominent on search-engine-results pages (SERPs) when people searched online maps for information. Search engines offer presumptive results now, like tracking a UPS package, if the search string is recognizable. Real-time is evolutionary.
The collective wisdom of tens of millions of individuals actively communicating will be packaged. Marketers previously dealt with PageRank to sort sites, and I expect Google and Bing will create a “SocialRank” that examines a person’s connections and values their real-time contribution.
Epinions modeled something similar a decade ago. They call their metric the Web of Trust, and that model still dictates a large part of the order and visibility of reviews and people on the site.
Real-time search is simply a function of Main Street acceptance. Twitter is the world’s biggest chat room with a memory. Had chat rooms become popular at the scale of Twitter and Facebook, real-time search results would already be published.
Many SEO experts recognize the importance of social media on organic results. Will real-time social results play a larger part in defining organic ranking?
The people who take action and engage the real-time results on a search page will skew the results most. This is part of the long-standing second-click problem. If a search engine embeds videos, maps and other data in the SERP, they control the search and the outcome of providing actionable information.
For example, I recently posted a traffic warning I heard on local radio on Twitter. Others re-conveyed that information, but the original creator is not involved in the information exchange. Attribution only solves part of that problem.
That’s because of the people act inside the SERP instead of another site. If I appropriately attribute a story to a news outlet or Web site, but that tweet or social media comment stays on a SERP for interaction, rankings will be impacted. We’ll also continue driving media entities employing reporters and fact-checkers out of business faster.
Combine this with personalized search as the Google default regardless of an individual’s logged-in state, and organic ranking and trend data appears to have limited practical use in the future.
Marketers must rethink how to describe successful organic efforts. I asked a panel at SES San Jose about this in August, and they agreed: Rankings are easy to show clients and bosses, so we do. As an industry, we have dug our own hole. Now we have to find a better way to show success.
We’ve noticed that when “SmartBrief” is searched, the real-time results are displayed first, and in most other cases, it’s toward the middle of the results. What dictates where “real-time results” appear on the SERP?
Part of a search engine’s world is ABT — always be testing — with enough traffic to get statistically valid results fast. They still test placement of maps, calls to action and links. Our analysis is finding real-time information for brands like Comcast that have great social media outreach alongside their local map, too.
For big brands, engines are balancing news results, maps, videos and sitelinks while adding real-time streams. But it’s critical to remember that advertising is the real balance.
Google generates a billion in cash flow every month and maybe $550 million in net income. Nothing can diminish those funds. That’s why the rotated L-shape where ads are displayed on the top and right of a SERP remains consistent. But real-time advertising components could be tested. I wouldn’t be surprised if Bing tested wedging advertising into a SERP’s real-time results.
We know that Google is now sourcing Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. What’s next? Can we expect to see updates from LinkedIn, blog comments (via BackType, Disqus, etc.)?
Great question! LinkedIn is sometimes ignored in social media, but they have business world credibility and their rich, recent data could make them a content player. I almost always open LinkedIn’s status update e-mail that tells me if someone I know has changed companies or updated their profile.
Plaxo is a social media dark horse. Many questions were answered when Comcast acquired them. But they have millions of non-traditional Comcast users, five million as a low number, with unified address books and feeds from blogs or social networks.
Blogging certainly isn’t dead, but almost all have small audiences. I like Disqus’s technology and recommend it, but they won’t have impact like LinkedIn or Plaxo. And don’t stay too North America-centric by leaving out Bebo. The Bebo demographic skews much younger than Twitter, and their engagement time is at Facebook levels.
There’s a lot of talk about hackers taking advantage of real-time search. How do you think Google can combat this moving forward? What can business do to combat this?
Technology threats to any brand or reputation always exist. Search engines will use the same techniques that identify black hat SEOs or devalue sites. Someone in your company or your agency should already using good monitoring tools to identify trouble spots.
Real-time spam will occur just as there is map spam and other poor web experiences. But there is too much search engine vigilance for unethical marketers to remain successful against an army of really smart people who study things like word patterns and linking structures for a living.
Businesses should have boilerplate language ready to send a webmaster to defend their intellectual property and be vigilant about monitoring. That’s a great role for a marketing assistant or anyone who wants to be more involved in the organization’s branding because that person is often much closer to the actual keywords being used. Arm them with good analytics and turn them loose on the bad guys!
Image credit, GeofferyHolman, via iStock
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Tags: George Bounacos, Google, search engine optimization, Social Search
Categories: Ideas in Action, Social Search
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Posted by George Bounacos on December 21st, 2009 at 6:18 am
Thanks, Rob. It was fun gazing into the crystal ball. One thing I didn’t touch on that continued gathering steam this week was the rate of Google acquisitions and new service offerings.
The Yelp acquisition — if true — is big as Google pushes its way into small self-serve advertisers with the promise of millions of pieces of local UGC in the database and more to come. Other technology acquisitions like Docverse (to round out Google apps) or an iPhone substitute sold directly to consumers are big, but Yelp pushes Google AdWords downmarket very fast.
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Posted by uberVU - social comments on December 21st, 2009 at 9:24 am
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Posted by Real Time Search & Social Media: Time Waits For No Man on December 21st, 2009 at 10:21 am
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Posted by James Ball on December 21st, 2009 at 10:28 am
Rob, thanks for an excellent and informative set of questions and answers on this topic! Real-time search, and how social media plays into it is a huge interest of mine. I have added a link here from my post on the topic as a great resource – Real Time Search & Social Media: Time Waits For No Man http://noteasytoforget.com/2009/12/real-time-search-social-media-time-waits-for-no-man/
Posted by David Spark on December 21st, 2009 at 12:54 pm
The big part of real-time that everyone misses is how much of it is not being indexed and not being reported. By one estimation, Twitter only constitutes 11 percent of all the real-time content out there. In addition, 74 percent of all Twitter content is being generated by 5 percent of the users. If a search engine is only indexing Twitter conversations, it’s missing a whopping percentage of the real-time audience and it’s highly skewed.
This is just some of the information I discovered when I was writing my analyst report: “Real-Time Search and Discovery of the Social Web” (20-page PDF – Free) http://bit.ly/rt-search. Check it out for more info.
Posted by Kaila S | Vertical Measures on December 21st, 2009 at 1:31 pm
Quite an interesting world we are living in. Real time search seems like its here to stay, just interested to see how spam might play a role in this new equation of search.
Posted by C,. Scyphers on December 21st, 2009 at 1:44 pm
“Plaxo is a social media dark horse” Based on my experience, Plaxo isn’t a dark horse, it’s viewed as a mark of bad judgement. The spam factory nature of the updates, the nagware aspect — I tried it for a very short period of time. I’m still apologizing to my contacts…
Posted by George Bounacos on December 21st, 2009 at 6:16 pm
@cscyphers – I absolutely agree with you 100% about Plaxo’s early days. Kind of like Twitter now, eh? The reason that I’m intrigued by Plaxo is that even News Corp’s acquisition of MySpace doesn’t come close to what Comcast will bring to Plaxo.
It’s very much like AOL & Time Warner was supposed to be, but there’s been constant evolution since then online and in the way people interact online. If Plaxo ends up being the backbone of a Comcast social media strategy, the site will change. It’s the main social site for an organization with a $50 billion market cap.
What it evolves into rather than what it has been before it was sold this year is what makes the story interesting.
Posted by C,. Scyphers on December 21st, 2009 at 11:13 pm
@georgebounacos — “@cscyphers – I absolutely agree with you 100% about Plaxo’s early days. Kind of like Twitter now, eh?”
I disagree about Twitter, mainly because of the asynchronous aspect. I tweet, you can follow (or not); you won’t be nagged or otherwise bothered. Plaxo, on the other hand, tries to be synchronous. Now, maybe that’s a selling point (we’ll keep your contact info synced), but it’s a net loss for me in my situation, as most of my contacts don’t want the big brother trait of Plaxo.
And, as a side note, my foray was about 7 weeks ago.
I also tried DUB (sort of an electronic business card), but the same problem is there, too. I’d like an easy service which allows me to hand out my contact information electronically while respecting everyone’s privacy and without expecting anything in return. Any suggestions?
Posted by Real-time search: 4 questions that deserve answers | The Perfect Storm Team on December 22nd, 2009 at 12:27 am
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Posted by Merritt Colaizzi on December 22nd, 2009 at 9:44 am
George, thanks for all this amazing food for thought. Out of curiosity, how have you been involved in monetizing online efforts since 1986?! Clearly you live and breathe online marketing so I’m not doubting your prowess, I’m just thinking of where *I* was in 1986 and I believe Atari was involved…
Posted by Rob Birgfeld on December 22nd, 2009 at 12:13 pm
Well, so much for the Google/Yelp deal. For now, at least:
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/21/who-walked-google-or-yelp/
Posted by George Bounacos on December 23rd, 2009 at 9:50 am
@merritt — 1986 was a long time ago, wasn’t it? Atari wasn’t involved for me, but Jack Tramiel’s Commodore legacy was a little involved. I did some spot work early-on with Q*Link, as did my SO at the time. I still remember the outcry when email was moved from a basic to a premium service. I want to say the charge was 6 cents a minute then, but it might have even been 4 cents. If there were flash mobs then, you would have seen one over email costing money!
The cool story then, though, was a bulletin board format that The Source and others were using called Participate. A company in the Northeast was targeting the finance sector at $48/hour connect time, and our role was to write content that engaged people enough to keep them online. The things that worked were the things that still work: astrology, debate (I remember running a section called “Argue With Me” where I simply took the counter of whatever was proposed) and personal issues.
To keep in the holiday spirit, though, the feature that worked like gangbusters for no time investment?
“Letters to Santa Claus”
Yep, traders online at 80 cents a minute typing out which Benz they wanted with that year’s bonus.
Naturally Santa answered with an open-ended question.
It was good fun, and if they enjoyed it, I certainly enjoyed when people would would want to argue about Reaganomics while their boss paid $8 for them to post a reply.
Posted by What real-time search means for you « FCEdge Powerful Marketing Communications on January 7th, 2010 at 10:45 am
[...] efforts,” Bounacos says. “We have to find a better way to show success.” SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)But who is going to vet the vetters who [...]
Posted by Next steps with real-time results « FCEdge Powerful Marketing Communications on February 11th, 2010 at 10:51 am
[...] Next steps with real-time results Live search is going to change the way online marketers do business, says George Bounacos, chief operating officer of Silver Beacon Marketing and a pioneer in monetizing online efforts. Marketers now use ranking tools to gauge their success, but will quickly need to find new ways to measure less easily quantifiable social metrics. “Marketers must rethink how to describe successful organic efforts,” Bounacos says. “We have to find a better way to show success.” SmartBrief/SmartBlog on Social Media [...]