Which Information Sources Do Europeans Trust Most?

"Only 30% of online Europeans trust information on TV". This is interesting research from Forrester’s Technographics® Benchmark Survey on Q2, 2010.  E-mail from people you know is the most trusted source of information. Search engines and portals are ranked second of most trusted source of information.  Surprisingly, Wikis gains only 32% of trusted information!  Another interesting is "Price Comparison website" gains more trust compared against manufacturer websites. 

Google Places Result in Web Search Result

Google starts showing the Google Place result in web search result, I try this with Google.com.sg with signed-in with my Google account and search for broad key term like Insurance , Travel. Google shows some screenshot as shown below which are difference result with not signed-in Google account.

This new result will be impacted of SEO strategy, that you need to emphasize more on Local SEO strategy. Again, I would confirm that "SEO is NOT dead", there are many link-baiting articles about "SEO is dead" which are show up over and over again. 

Update Google Search Interface

Today I discovered new improvement of Google search result from Google.com, It highlights each listing with soft-blue color when you do mouse-over.  The highlight will appear only when you are using mouse. If you use keyboard, it still look the same as usual. 

You may also notice in this screenshot, Google also displays the "Zoom" icon, this icon will use as Full Preview of the listing, it will be partially launching and testing for some particular markets at this moment.. 

Google keep testing on new user interface, introduced this year more than 150 User Interface changes. User feedback and interactive from users will be used as ranking signal in the future. 

Google's patent of "System and Method for Modulating Search Relevancy Using Pointer Activity Monitoring", was filed on February 16 2005, as Google currently used click-through rates (CTR) as ranking signal. The new patent takes the idea a step further, looking to reorder search results by monitoring when users show interest in web content without actually clicking on it. 


On October 19, 2010, I have found another search result differently from usual search result. It shows only 4 listings. Let check it out.

Google Instant - Findings

Google recently launched the new service to change the Search Experience, called "Google Instant", this new service becomes talk of the town to all news and media including CNN as well. This new service, SEO community started talking about a month ago and discuss in 
different perspective from SEO and Users. 

The one that I have discovered from last couple days, check it out these findings.

- Search evaluation process will be more competitive (for example : Searching for Kindle , you will see Google suggests "Kindle VS Nook". 

We can use the data visualization tool (ie., Whatdoyousuggest.net) to retrieve  the Google Suggest data for expanding your idea when you develop keyword strategy. This below figure is example of Kindle suggestion. 

- Trend is inspiring the searcher who looking for new product and alternative. For each market, the trend is different. You may see the example for Samsung (US market VS UK market), the product interests and keywords are significant different.

- Search Listing is more significant important (SEO is playing important role on this). As users will have spend less time to scan on each AJAX refreshing the result and will keep searching until they found what they are looking for. Title and Description will be key role to attract their eyes.

- Online Reputation Management will be more important as Google suggestion might create some suggestion which devalue the brand to users and make them notice and continue searching on in-depth information. This search query is good example for Thailand Travel, Google suggests "Thailand Travel Warnings", that you will see the different result when you search for other destination.

- Search Analytic , this is interesting that we need to start tracking the partial search query apart from usual full keyword tracking. After this launch for a week, you will start seeing people sharing the discover and findings from the new tracking methods. Love to see other analytic reports. Please do share if you have started implementing. 


You may try this set up method and share what you found. I've already implemented for my own blog. 


For people who wanna see full launch of Google Instant, you can check it out this video. It's a bit long video but really worth for watching.

Will keep you post more on findings for Google Instant. 

Organic Search Trends for Internet Retailer

I have reviewed the great research paper from Conductor, about Organic Search Trends for Internet Retailers, It is analysis and breakdown of the natural search visibility, optimization effectiveness, and trends and integration planning of the corporate and consumer facing brands of the Internet Retailer 500. This research  gathered and compiled the data during the fourth quarter of 2009. There are some key takeaways as following.

• The Internet Retailer 500 as a group spent approximately $1.2 million per day on 88,758 keywords – yet only 33% of these keywords rank in the top 50 natural search results.

• The Internet Retailer 500 companies were slightly more visible in natural search than the Fortune 500, yet still scored a ‘D’, and did not break out of the ‘Very Low’ visibility category.

• Web only retailers were the most active merchant type in paid search and most visible in natural search, while traditional brick and mortar retailers were the least.

• Only 7% of the domains (not companies) surveyed showed a significant number of their terms in the top results. 

• 36% of Internet Retailer 500 companies studied showed mid to strong presence for their most advertised keywords. 

• 38% of Internet Retailer 500 companies have low to mid presence. 

• 19% of Internet Retailer 500 companies have very low or non-existent visibility for their most advertised keywords. 

• Internet Retailer 500 natural search visibility decreased with longer search queries.

Social Media in China

I have found this interesting presentation about Social Media websites in China that I would love to share to you guys. There are some key important thing in this market as following.

• Virtual goods market in China is 5 time of US market
• Online + Social Games generated significant net margin , Tencent got 40% of Net Margin from Virtual Goods (90%) and Ads (10%)    

Social Marketing Compass

Today I have browsed to Brian Solis Blog and found great stuff that would like to share to you, it is Social Marketing Compass, serving as  value system when defining marketing program activities. It points a brand in a physical and experiential direction to genuinely and effectively connect with customers, peers, and influencers, where they interact and seek guidance online. Brian Solis is one of globally recognized as one of most prominent thought leaders and published authors in new media.

I really like what he thought about this social marketing!. Great job!

Future of Digital Marketing

I have seen this slide presentation from Mirko Behnert about Digital Marketing and would love to share this cool idea, about his thought and presentation, it quite interest that he divide to two sides as Industrialize and Emotionalize. The keywords in the left and right, it is key element to make campaign achievement.

For this figure, you can set up the communication strategy planning in clear path and you can priority your plan in different product cycle. One important thing, effective digital marketing campaign can't be standalone , it must integrated in order to support in different stage of searching, involvement, make purchase, retention to existing customers to secure the long term relationship. 

Coke Social Media Strategy

Today I have reviewed the "Coke's Fan First" , the approach for social media strategy, that's really amazing of their results and integrated long term campaign that we frequently see the new thing from Coke come up every month, now you can see the full campaign from this presentation.


There are some findings from this presentation as following.


 - "Share" is the key message that use in this campaign. No interrupt their audience of new promotion, new promotion or whatever that can scare to people. 
-  Continuously convey the same message as Happiness to let people feel happy and wanna share the good thing to their friends, colleagues and also family.
- Campaign based on Earnings Sustainable Relationships - leverage the existing audience and grow it for future use.

Social Media Count

The social web has exploded in the last year and below are some of the key data points that the ‘Gary’s Social Media Count’ is based on (many will be updated!).

• 20 hours of video uploaded every minute onto YouTube (source YouTube blog Aug 09)
• Facebook 600k new members per day, and photos, videos per month, 700mill & 4 mill respectively (source Inside Facebook Feb 09)
• Twitter 18 million new users per year & 4 million tweets sent daily (source TechCrunch Apr 09)
• iPolicy UK – SMS messaging has a bright future (Aug 09)
• 900 000 blogs posts put up every day (source Technorati State of the Blogosphere 2008)
• YouTube daily, 96 million videos watched, $1mill bandwidth costs (source Comscore Jul 06 !)
• UPDATE: YouTube 1Billion watched per day SMH (2009)- counter updated!
• Second Life 250k virtual goods made daily, text messages 1250 per second (source Linden Lab release Sep 09)
• Money – $5.5 billion on virtual goods (casual & game worlds) even Facebooks gifts make $70 million annually (source Viximo Aug 09)
• Flickr has 73 million visitors a month who upload 700 million photos (source Yahoo Mar 09)
• Mobile social network subscribers – 92.5 million at the end of 2008, by end of 2013 rising to between 641.6-873.1 million or 132 mill annually (source Informa PDF)
• SMS – Over 2.3 trillion messages will be sent across major markets worldwide in 2008 (sourceEverysingleoneofus sms statistics)

Keyword Strategy based on User Behavior

There are different user behaviors when they are looking for information online, searching and also action. But there are some basic category of keyword that can group segment of keywords into three type : Informational , Navigational and Transactional. I recommend to utilize all these keyword types into different stage of purchasing process.

Informational keywords are the keywords that user searching for general information, for example : weather, local guide , etc. For these keywords we can use to build up the brand awareness , branded sites can adapt the idea that generate good information in order create the favor and make the users return or recall the brand again when they are looking for specific information or products.

For this keyword type, we need to use the long tail content strategy to build the ton of contents in order to build the exposure when people searching topic related content and found our website that it might turn to our prospective customers, customers in the future.

Navigational Keywords are the keywords that user search for destination website instead of typing into Address bar. We can adapt this idea to steal the traffic away from destination site or competitor site by bidding those keywords.

For the navigational keywords, it always impact if we have very great offer deals advertise in the heat zone like top 3 ads.

Transactional keywords are the keywords that use for specific product , for example : "Canon EOS 500D Discount" , this kind of keyword will generate direct lead or sales which is highest value of keyword.