Search Engines

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Hello, Real-time Search

If Google’s newest blended results feature is any indication, the rapid pace of search innovations shows no signs of slowing. The feature, dubbed “Latest” by Google, incorporates real-time data sources into search results.

Google’s algorithm may trigger this blend of universal search type for any given keyword, but most notably for timely phrases like “health care reform,” “Olympics,”“Brittany Murphy,” or other terms being frequently and actively used in real-time content generation.

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At Google, it’s high time for real time.

The search giant began rolling out updates earlier this week that it says will increase the relevancy and depth of search results. According to Google, the new features “bring search results to life” through a real-time content stream aggregating the most relevant updates from microblogging platforms like Twitter and FriendFeed as well as news articles and blog posts as they are published.

Google is fueling real-time results through partnerships with Twitter (a relationship announced in October), Facebook, MySpace, FriendFeed, Jaiku and Indenti.ca.

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Google recently introduced new search ad formats, including Visual Elements (e.g. movie trailers), Sitelinks, Location Extensions, Product Extensions and Comparison Ads. In this post I’ll look at each offering first as a search marketer and then as a consumer focused solely on my specific searches within the Google engine. Of course, when people have a good search experience, it almost invariably means good things for marketers as well.

Visual Elements

What it is: The Visual Elements feature is a hidden extension of the traditional text ad triggered by clicking a plus box.

Marketer Benefit: This is a great fit for a media/entertainment brand or anyone trying to drive awareness, as long as they do not mind if users don’t visit their actual site. If you are looking to drive revenue efficiently, this product may not be the best fit for you. However, it’s worth testing if you have a compelling video or another visual element — especially if you can include a strong call to action. Marketers pay on a CPC basis, either for a click on the link or the plus box, but the advertiser will not be charged twice.

Consumer Benefit: Since the visual element is hidden until the user activates, the placement has the benefit of a rich media ad without being obtrusive. This type of advertisement can add to the search experience – instead of detracting from it.

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Google’s new Sidewiki tool is a browser-add on that allows web surfers to contribute information next to any webpage. The Sidewiki appears on the browser sidebar, where a user can read entries or add their own comments to the content of a page (see example below). Not unlike other Google experiments, such as Knol or SearchWiki, the tool is founded on a concept of user-generated content (UGC).

Google’s new Sidewiki tool lets users comment on webpages.

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Microsoft announced yesterday that it has inked deals with both Facebook and Twitter that will effectively assimilate status updates from the popular social platforms into Bing search results. The move confirms Microsoft’s commitment to moving the needle on its real-time search capabilities, and will present both challenges and opportunities for marketers across the search and social landscape.

Tweets, as well as Facebook and Twitter pages already pop up in search results across Google, Yahoo! and Bing – but Microsoft says it is taking this to the “next level” by indexing the entire public Twitter stream and making it available via a Bing/Twitter search interface available at: http://www.bing.com/twitter. More details on the Facebook integration are forthcoming. Here’s an overview of how Twitter search on Bing works:

• Tweets updated in real-time: View all tweets “roll in” in real-time by watching the “tweet SERP” update. To view more Tweets than what’s displayed on the first page of search results, click “See more Tweets about…”
• Results ranked by tweeter’s influence and uniqueness of the tweet: According to Microsoft, “If someone has a lot of followers, his/her Tweet may get ranked higher. If a tweet is exactly the same as other Tweets, it will get ranked lower.”
• Private tweets remain private: Tweets by users who have private or protected Twitter pages will not be indexed.
• Real-time only lasts so long: Tweets will only be indexed in Bing for 7 days, further indication that Bing intends to use the Twitter integration as a way to capitalize on real-time events and searcher interests. There’s no indication that Bing intends to index and provide a historical record of Tweets.

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Google has stepped up its display game with a new solution to measure the effectiveness of brand advertising. It’s called Campaign Insights – and beginning today it will be offered to larger advertisers in the U.S. and U.K.  Eventually it will be available free of charge to all of Google’s display advertisers.

The system, which has been in beta test for the past year, uses data from a marketer’s server logs to determine who was delivered an ad and at what time. Google compares this data to Web searches and site visits for the brand and relates it to a similar group of people with no exposure to the ad.

To siphon out the influence of other media campaigns, Google compares the data of the groups’ behavior prior to the campaign start date. Thus, a brand’s display campaign can be attributed to the resulting difference.

Google aims to solve two key challenges with the new system:

1. For brand display campaigns, the click doesn’t tell the whole story as it doesn’t measure the value of the view on driving brand awareness. 360i CEO Bryan Wiener, who spoke to Ad Age this morning, said: “The consensus is the click is the wrong metric in display, but there’s a void in coming up with the right measure.”
2. Attribution is becoming critical as marketers look to find the right media mix online. Understanding what drives search queries and the path leading up to a conversion is key.

Search is clearly the bigger market – eMarketer anticipates $12 billion to be spent on search in 2009, vs. $4.7 billion on display – yet Google is hoping to lure more ad dollars into the latter by providing a more sophisticated ROI metric that will more precisely track campaign success. 360i is working with Google to discuss how this can best be deployed for marketers.

Yahoo! recently rolled out a new Search UI with a three column layout (previously, Yahoo! Search had only two columns). Their roll-out of this display should be reaching completion, riding the coattails of their new homepage redesign. Despite the planned deal to integrate with Microsoft’s Bing engine, Yahoo! is clearly committed to innovating in search. In this post, we’ll go over some of the new features of the updated interface.

Above: The left column is new. Let’s dig into what it offers.

“Intelligent Search Results”
The top of the new left-hand column includes the addition of “Intelligent Search Results.” According to Yahoo!, these results are determined based on three factors:

1. Natural Relevance – Is the domain relevant in natural results for the keyword or phrase?
2. Domain Popularity – Does the domain have high traffic volume?
3. Paid Search – Is the site running paid search ads that appear for this query?

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