Real-time results focus attention on social media

01 April 2010 | By Steve Hemsley

Consumer behaviour online is changing rapidly. Facebook overtook Google to become the most popular site in the US last month, according to Hitwise, demonstrating how attached consumers are to their online social lives. And access to social media is no longer confined to our desktops. The increasing number of smartphones means that owners have access to the web at all times.

Brands are keen to capitalise on the rise of real-time social search and Twitter search. Spending money in these areas is a must, argues Shaun Springer, vice-president of brand and digital marketing at MasterCard. “We are amazed at the rapid development in search and want to exploit the opportunities that social media gives us to connect with customers,” he says. “Investing in search and social media channels reinforces our brand’s message in the digital space.”

The popularity of smartphones is also making marketers think more innovatively about mobile search, with Auto Trader one of the latest brands to launch a search application for the iPhone. Working with applications specialist Endeca, the car listings company has introduced a mobile app based on number plate recognition. Car buyers can take a photo of a car in the street and automatically search for similar vehicles for sale in their area.

It provides, in effect, an instant price comparison site on a mobile, saving users the time of scouring second-hand dealerships or the local paper for a bargain.

The brand needed a search innovation for mobile that would not just replicate the user experience on its website, which already receives 1 billion page impressions a month. Auto Trader head of R&D Jody Goodall says: “With so many online visitors there are not many people involved in the buying and selling of cars who do not already use us,” says Goodall. “This development is about empowering the user through search and helping sellers at the same time. People are in a different mindset when they use a mobile to search for a product or service.” Yell.com has also been thinking more innovatively about mobile local search developing a couple of apps for the iPhone, recently (see topline trends, below).

Handset technology is also accelerating the move towards personalised search as results make greater use of user-generated content on blogs, forums and social networking sites.

It has left the search engine optimisation (SEO) companies sweating over the potential impact personalised search will have on their business because the importance of rankings will diminish over time. Search results will increasingly be based on user behaviour and the first page of results will vary from person to person.

For the SEO companies, it means a client’s website may automatically be demoted in favour of a competitor’s. However, the major plus for marketers is that their web pages are more likely to be found by people actually interested in buying their products and services rather than by surfers who are simply researching.

Holistic picture

Google has now made its personalised search feature an opt-out rather than an opt-in service and is personalising the results of anyone who uses its search engine. Vince Coyle, search director at Universal McCann and a member of the IPA’s Search Group, says Google collects data from a user’s various social profiles and aggregates it to generate a holistic picture of that individual.

Marketers are already becoming less focused on using search to create awareness for their brands and more concerned with targeting influencers within peer groups, adds Coyle. “Advertisers need to use the integration of social media and search to create advocates among consumers. They have to discover who really has influence and then work out what they do within their social network,” says Coyle. “If a group of lunching mums, for instance, is talking on blogs and forums about their favourite brands, marketers need to target the influencers.”

The clamour to know more about individuals is also fuelling real-time search that has implications for brand reputation. At the end of 2009, Twitter negotiated a deal with Microsoft and Google after the online giants realised they could no longer ignore the power of Tweets. They knew this data should be appearing in their search results so they now have access to all Twitter content.

Marketers must ensure their corporate social media activity is working effectively, says Nigel Muir, founder of search agency DBD Media. He adds: “These deals give brands another opportunity to get their messages out there through search, but it also means consumers will meet any negative comments about a product or service head-on.”

Search developments aren’t limited to words. Video Search Optimisation (VSO) technology is being explored, although it is very much in its infancy. The growth in high-bandwidth connections should mean demand for VSO will rise as more websites publish video content.

Voice recognition software

However, video still presents search engines with a dilemma because they cannot yet look inside a video to determine the content. They must rely on the electronic data files within the video and the text and any associated links to work out what a video is all about. There are rumours within the industry that voice recognition software may soon enable search engines to “hear” a video soundtrack.

Online marketing consultants Stream:20 is currently trying different methods to ensure one client’s video content is optimised appropriately.

“We are including the word ‘video’ regularly in any metadata because many users will include that in their searches,” says Stream:20 SEO consultant Donal Langan. “We are also giving videos a keyword-rich but catchy title and allowing users to rate the video, which boosts views if the content goes viral.”

Whatever the development in search technology, organisations must still have an effective keyword generation strategy to attract visitors to their websites.

Manchester City Football Club has sent its website journalists on a training course run by search agency iCrossing so that reporters gain a better understanding of the importance of SEO.

“The journalists now follow guidelines on tagging keywords and on writing headlines that are optimised for more effective search results,” says Manchester City’s digital media manager Victoria Stansfield. “The content they create should be optimised for social media so we can build on our relationship with the fans and encourage more visits to revenue-earning parts of the site, such as the retail area.”

The top-flight football club also uses a web publishing system provided by web content management platform supplier Sitecore. Articles generated by its journalists go live earlier and are indexed quickly by search engines. This means the site is the first source of news for fans, and stories are picked up by media outlets such as Sky and the BBC. “The technology means rich and deep internal linking is established automatically when content is published, including homepage teasers, related articles and tags,” adds Stansfield.

The world of search and keyword analysis is also making more of a splash in the call centre environment. Technology is being tested that allows marketers to track limitless keywords linked to sales calls.

Search agency Jellyfish’s Infinity product tells brands which keywords generate phone calls to a contact centre. Jellyfish claims it will help advertisers reduce their cost per click rates because a marketing director will know which keywords have generated sales leads. His team can subsequently bid higher for these specific keywords and much less for others.

Black hole

ActiveOffice, a hosted exchange provider, has been testing Infinity since December. “We felt there was a black hole within the leads we were capturing,” says James Hunter-Patterson, technical director at ActiveOffice. “We could trace online forms back to keywords but that facility was lost when someone picked up the phone.”

Marketers are always keen to hear about innovations that will make their PPC budget go further. Google’s Click to Call feature for mobile ads, for instance, is predicted to grow in popularity this year.

When a user clicks a phone icon they are asked to enter their number and Google automatically connects the caller to the organisation for free.

Grant Keller, Europe managing director of digital marketing consultants Acceleration, says Click to Call allows marketers to assign telephone numbers to their paid search ads across the desktop and mobile internet. “Advertisers who took part in Google’s trials experienced an increase in click-through rates of their ads of between 5% and 30%,” he claims.

Search technology is developing so that people can search on their mobile with a click or a touch rather than typing in a keyword. In addition, Yahoo!’s Sketch-a-Search lets people draw an area on a map which narrows the results to businesses within that area.

“About nine out of ten online searches result in offline activity by a consumer, so Yahoo!’s latest programme means offline marketing can be much more immediate and closely targeted,” says Peter Unitt, SEO strategist at online local search company Infoserve. “People are searching on their mobiles for goods they need there and then, such as a hair cut, a pizza or a pub.”

Touch technology

Touch search technology is advancing quickly, says Paul Dawson, experience director at EMC Consulting, which works on digital projects for Tesco, T-Mobile and B&Q. “There is a lot of experimentation and we are working with retailers to help online shoppers narrow down their search to match their tastes,” he says.

Dawson is also excited about new technology called Pivot unveiled by Microsoft in November. It is a search platform designed to help users who are not clear about what exactly they want to search for. If someone enters a broad search term, Pivot brings back collections of items related to the search criteria but with clear patterns of how they are linked.

“Pivot has given us a glimpse of what we can expect in the future around visual search,” says Dawson. “Search is currently based on the often incorrect assumption that consumers know what they are looking for. Pivot lets you get items in front of people that they might find interesting if they have been very broad in their search.”

Innovation in search appears linked to the growth in smartphone uptake and the continued rise in popularity of social media. The boundaries of search are changing rapidly. How people find and choose offline products and services is set to change for good.