@IAMAI Digital Marketing: The Blended Search Revolution – A Discussion On Searchability, Local & Vertical Search
After 1, 2 and 3 here is the 4th panel discussion which happened at IAMAI Digital Marketing (Bangalore). This session was on “THE BLENDED SEARCH REVOLUTION”
The session moderator was the Founder of the Matrix Partner’s backed local search service Asklaila Mr.Shriram Adukoorie.
Shriram Adukoorie, Founder, Asklaila started the panel stating that the entire ecosystem is trying to help users but is also creating a lot of confusion with multiple services targetting the same audience.
Over time he said users will figure out whether they would want to go for blended searches or vertical search engine to go. Also as a company people will ask which search engine would they want to be primarily visible on.
Milind Mody, Chief Executive Officer, eBrandz Inc gave some statistics and insights on blended search result clicks:
- 31% images clicked
- 17% videos clicked
- 36% news items clicked
- Blended search has redifened consumer behavior ->shift from linear scanning
- Result- reduced importance of first few results , more importance to result closest to image video or news to be most effective
He also outlined steps to improve ur searchability:
- Local search – Have good reviews about ur company in local search engines to enable google to through up better results
- Video Search – Video digital assests on youtube, msn video, metacafe, google video etc. In this case identifying right video with a good script to be uploaded with relevant content (tags, title, description) is key.
- Image Search – Image submission on flickr.com, picasa.com about your company, its people etc.
- Document Search – Presentation submission on slideshare, authorstream about company profile, key product portfolio. Other relevant company documents can be uploaded on docstoc.com and scribd.com
- Higher Ranking – Invest time in online hubs, bookmarking sites like digg, delicious.com as well.
- Higher PR – Online press release submission – ensure ur press release is filled with right seo terms. Sites like indiaprwire.com and businesswireindia.com.
- Word of Mouth – Blog -> starting a blog is easy but one needs to maintain the blog rightly. Ensure that u end up on blogrolls of famous professional blogs/famous bloggers.
- Staff/Management Profiles – Have top management/company profiles on google friendly sites like Linkedin, Zoominfo, Spoke etc
He also advised on monitoring one’s searchability:
- Track your presence on websites that are search engine friendly. (Bookmarking sites usually are.)
- Have a backup plan if the site loses favor with google. (Could be different content focus.)
- Follow search engines activites like google trends
- Follow Google yahoo MSN patents on google patent search will give u a better insight on how search being done.
Vivek Bhargava, Managing Director, Communicate2 spoke about the evolution of search engine and how It is becoming a better mind reading machine day by day. He stated revenue numbers of google which is just $150 million but the market capitalization is $ 100 billion. He pointed out that this valuation is based on finding content and increased scope for advertising as we make content relevant.
He stated that search engines are valued high because they are content finders in context across mediums and search will always be powered by advertising. The challenge is how to make a search useful and ad friendly.
He spoke about how search could penetrate offline mediums
TV -> All of TV going digital and gave the example of TiVO. He said ‘What content I am searching for is opportunity to server better ads suited to my taste on tv , Google TV’
Radio -> Time of content delivery and appropriateness can change the game. Internet radio search can it fill a gap here ?
Phone-> Can we record conversations, Transcribe it, Index it and interupt my call by playing an ad to both parties and pickup the bill for a few minutes of the call? Also scope to record make dtmf based inputs from the users?
OOH-> Cameras on top billboards and change the ads using the videofeed to determine right and relevant ad to the person.
He concluded: Future of search is medium and device agnostic also analog digital agnostic pervasive across mediums.
Vinod Nambiar, Director of Global Delivery, Position2 pointed out that Current challenges in search are opportunities for marketers and that blended search has made the no.1 spot on results less important.
He outlined case studies where google trends was used to promote a particular client and adapt its postioning in blended search.
He gave 5 pointers on how to walk the road ahead:
- Dont neglect god old seo content /context/creatives
- Invest time on building digital assets
- Leverage social media
- Keep your eyes and ears open to the conversations of digital world
- Ride the waves by studying trends and analytics
Narasimha Jayakumar, Business Head – Travel & Local, Google India started by admitting that Google is trying to build one search box for all questions and Making google simple and easy to use is a very hard job.
He felt a comprehensive search engine should look at contentbreadth, user experience, relevance and speed all at once. He expressed his thoughts on local search as well and said ‘Local search is primarily used for rating, reviews, driving direction, contact information’
He stated that Google was very serious about search and was making a lot of investments in:
- Gathering results -> New infrastructure added
- Ranking results -> Develop new alogirthms refine existing ones
- Displaying results-> Listed order by relevance
Post the panel there were many interesting questions asked and answers were given by the panel:
Q) Does google think one company can dominate search or multiple niche search engines will evolve?
A) The big one company will use the content from niche players to provide information to simple users and drive traffic of advanced users to niche engines. (This is what google is doing with local search by tying up with burrp and metromela.)
Blended Search -> Search market is 1% of what it is going to be in india and 80% of client not aware of blended search. Blended searchs success is highly dependent on quality of content in local search engine and vertical search engine which is still being built.
95% of consumers make simple search queries and all search engines give same results today. The business is in adapting to the remaining 5% users.
Mobile Search -> On the mobile search front The challenge is the real estate available and connectivity pipe limitations. (3G when it arrives can solve the connectivity issues)
Sms Search -> On the sms search front spelling is a major problem and quality of results needs to be paramount as user is paying for each sms and so are we to send back the sms. Location bases services feature of telecom networks may hold a key.
Voice Search -> Voice bases search -scalabbility is an issue there are times we want to speak to someone there times we dont want to cateri ng to users need is key
Q) Vertical Search and Local Search – How long before any of these companies see monetization and scale?
Lot of local search is offline today (via yellow pages). 60% of search queries today are local based queries on google and there is no doubt it is going to grow a lot also it is here that adversting is more effective.
Real estate sector in india is the first mover in sponsoring local search and they have effective returns. In US 90% of SMEs are using niche search engine advertising as well as any search advertising. In india it is still top corporates who are embracing advertising primarily.
So as more SME sector enters advertising on the web the monetization will grow and this is the tipping point although no one knows when but it will come. Also niche search engines are partnering with major search engines ad networks for monetization in US similar trend expected in India.
Q) Do you foresee India becoming a outsourcing hub for SEM? What will be the major challenges?
Today already low end and mechanical SEM industry is using India as a back office but moving up the value chain is tougher and client trust and credilibity built by company, its relationships will drive this. Challenges also are SEO training education and trained manpower, branding India as a hub and building individual brands that can take care of backlash against outsourcing if any.
Next post is the 5th and the last session of IAMAI.. So stay tuned.
(We would like to thank Deva our guest blogger in bangalore for the coverage)
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