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You go to a conference, watch in awe the keynote speaker making a very convincing case that the-world-has-completely-changed-and-nothing-will-ever-be-the-same-again and leave energized, certain that we are all just witnessing the dawn of a brave new business world where you will never have to deal with email and endless meetings, hierarchy is replaced by a flat organizational structure and any knowledge you need is within close reach–all you have to do is to Google it. Then, you go back to your cubicle or home office, and realize that your inbox and calendars are still full, you still have 10 people between you and the CEO, and getting the information you need to do your job still feels like pulling teeth. Where did all that promise go? Wasn’t the world supposed to be changing? Have you just been trapped in a really bad Groundhog Day joke?

Or is it true? We’d all like to believe in the inevitable transformation of traditional business practices towards a world where the forces of Social Business and Enterprise 2.0–whatever that means–dictate the norms. It typically goes like this:

• from top-down to bottom-up
• from broadcast to dialogs
• from designated experts to de-facto experts and crowdsourcing
• from hierarchy to meritocracy
• from governance to trust

When you think about all those bullet points, they come down to moving from a deterministic knowledge system towards a probabilistic one:

A deterministic model is one in which every set of variable states is uniquely determined by parameters in the model and by sets of previous states of these variables. Therefore, deterministic models perform the same way for a given set of initial conditions. Conversely, in a stochastic (probabilistic) model, randomness is present, and variable states are not described by unique values, but rather by probability distributions. (source: Wikipedia)

The way many of us perceive knowledge was developed over centuries and shaped by scarcity constraints. Valuable knowledge was a rare asset, coming up with it was dependent on hard-earned skills and efforts, and very few people would master that knowledge. Over the years, we have built a very elegant and complex deterministic system where authoritative knowledge is well aligned with subject matter experts. This system worked well the same way that the original Yahoo! search directories were reasonably good back in 1995. I still remember creating websites and sending a request to Yahoo! to index them. As the amount of things to search in the Internet exploded, the editorial approach used by Yahoo! became clearly inappropriate, and it was eventually replaced by a more scalable probabilistic model developed by Google, where algorithms, not people, would index the immense amount of information available out there.

So, the logic goes, if that worked for the Internet, it should also work everywhere else, right? Well, yes and no. As I mentioned in my last Biznology post, some things over the Internet work because of the sheer size of the audience. Unless your organization has hundreds of millions of people, some of the patterns you see in Facebook, Twitter, Google, Wikipedia or YouTube will never realize–and that cuts both ways. You will probably not see much of the nasty side of social media when using social business platforms internally, but you’ll also not fully realize the benefits of it. Your “crowd” is just not big enough for that.

There are several other differences between the social media patterns observed over the Internet and the social business patterns that will develop internally in the enterprise. As well stated by cartoonist Peter Steiner, “on the Internet, nobody knows you’re a dog”, but most enterprise social platforms make the majority of the content non-anonymous, making “the bottom half of the Internet” phenomenon almost non-existent in the Enterprise environment. Also, chances are that your organization’s business is very different from the social media darlings, so mimicking them is not necessarily a smart survival strategy: the fact that reptiles succeeded out of water and birds conquered the air did not mean that all species had to follow suit. The vast majority of fishes stayed in the water and most mammals are still not flying around, yet, they are still winning the survival game.

The bottom line is that, for the vast majority of businesses, the old-school deterministic model, represented by the left-side of the bullet points listed above, still make sense for a lot of what they do, and will continue existing for years to come. However, new “enterprise 2.0″ patterns being developed influenced by the consumer social media also have plenty of value to offer: that may be a better fit to address some of your old–and a lot of your new–challenges. But it’s not a regime change. Call it revolutionary, if you want, but the actual influence of social business, at least when used inside the enterprise, is more evolutionary in nature: it creates new processes and structures, and influences old ones, but does not fully replace them. To fully realize the benefits promised by the social business framework, you have to adjust your business model to allow deterministic and probabilistic models to coexist in the enterprise: traditional authoritative systems can be substantially enhanced when paired with social media-like systems focused on engagement and conversation.

Make no mistake: the use of social networking technologies in the workplace is here to stay, because operating on solely traditional models is no longer a sustainable business practice. But do understand that this change is more likely to follow a gradual path than a precipitous one, and not all benefits will be realized on year one or two. When developing your internal social business strategy, make sure you set the expectations straight around what is achievable in the short, medium and long term, and monitor it accordingly, so that you can adjust your course along the way.

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

The 2011 holiday shopping season blur, though hectic, was a welcome event for e-commerce sellers and online retailers. Recording increases from 14 percent on Free Shipping Day to 26 percent on Black Friday, online sellers generated sales from $500 million on Thanksgiving to almost $3 billion during the entire week of Christmas. These results continue the wonderful annual growth trend for e-commerce. For example, in 2009, online sales equaled $129 billion, increasing to $143 billion in 2010, with a projected increase in 2011 to $197 billion. Plus, Forester Research predicts that sales volume will increase to an amazing $279 billion by 2015.

Cyber Monday alone accounted for $1.25 billion in online sales. Between Cyber Monday and Dec. 15, over $10.5 billion in online sales padded the coffers of e-sellers. Mobile-generated sales contributed to these impressive numbers, doubling from $3 to $6 billion in 2011. During this holiday season, mobile user sales amounted to 13.8 percent of total seasonal online sales.

E-sellers and fulfillment services, once caught up in the whirlwind of 2011 holiday spending, are now recovering with smiles. The critical “marriage” of online sellers and fulfillment services apparently worked wonderfully this holiday season. Always crucial to customer satisfaction, the holiday tsunami of consumer spending could have uncovered important “weak spots” in any e-sellers’ team chemistry. But, e-sellers did not suffer this fate. “Shopping and shipping” formed a fabulous team in 2011.

Even during the deep recession, holiday online sales continued to increase over the past few years. For example, 2010 generated $43.4 billion in sales during the 4th quarter as compared to $39 billion in 2009. With 4th quarter 2011 total sales still being calculated, the U.S. Census Bureau reports that 3rd quarter sales exceeded $48 billion dollars. With the e-commerce holiday season frenzy just ended, retailers and fulfillment services will welcome the final results.

Founded in 1936, the Advertising Research Foundation (ARF) confirmed that the 2011 holiday shopping season made e-retailers very happy. Once considered merely an “annoyance” by brick and mortar retailers, e-sellers are now influential players in the general consumer market.

Offering excellent pricing, superior fulfillment services and heightened security for sensitive consumer information, e-retailers, enjoying double-digit growth from year to year, are more than making their voices heard. Their string of success is predicted to continue in coming years.

You can be confident that you’ve “made it,” when an industry creates a buzzword for your influence. For example, a new term, apparently coined by brick and mortar book sellers, “show-rooming,” is now part of our lexicon. The buzzword refers to consumers who shop and browse physical retail stores to see, feel and touch products they want, and then go to their laptops to order the same products from e-retailers for a lower price.

If you believe that the success of e-commerce is highly dependent on the quality of the fulfillment services retailers use, you are correct. Attractive product pricing may garner some first-time orders, but fulfillment services that fill and ship those orders efficiently will generate future orders. This holiday season is proof that e-sellers are here to stay. Only time will tell how business owners and brick and mortar retailers respond.

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In order to mine social media marketing gold, you really need to roll up your sleeves, put on a pair of sturdy work boots, get into that little elevator, and descend that deep shaft into the gold mine yourself, pick in hand, and get to work.  Message boards and forums are full of marketing gold but if gold were that simple to collect, everyone would be loaded. Instead of walking you through the boring pedantics required to be an effective message board marketer, I will instead share with you an exemplar using the author and journalist Paul M. Barrett, author of the new New York Times best-selling book about the cult and culture of the Glock handgun, Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun.

Long story short, I received a direct message via Twitter last November from @GlockTheBook asking me if I might be interested in receiving a copy of a forthcoming book about Glock, the gun.  Out of nowhere. Obviously someone had done their homework, and I was identified as a gun owner and sports shooter. I jumped at the opportunity to receive an early copy of the book. The folks at Crown hooked me up with a copy for my Kindle, and I read it through and was wowed. I wrote an earned media review and quickly became part of the author’s street team.

Paul had an ambitious plan:  divide and conquer the entire online Glockosphere. His marketing strategy was unique and bold, at least in comparison to other high-caste and high-pedigree writers I have met and consulted. His marketing plan included not only the influential grass-tops but went for a deep-dive into the passionate world of the firearms, pistols, Glocks, and the Second Amendment grassroots–into the deepest reaches of the gold mine and into the lowly and often-ignored message boards and forums.

As it turned out, his lovely wife Julie Cohen was the reason why Paul reached out to me and to dozens of other gun  buffs and communities all over the Internet throughout the course of his book promotion campaign. In fact, I recently discovered that it was Julie who discovered that I was a brand new gun owner who loved taking my Glocks to the range to make holes in paper and sent me the DM asking if I wanted to received an advance copy to review.

To quote Paul when it comes to Julie, “Without Julie, nothing. Not kidding. I’m the luckiest man in the world.”

Whether Julie is Paul’s puppetmaster, guiding him into the nooks an crannies of Glock-related conversation online no matter where they happen, it was Paul who was willing to get in there, all fisticuffs, and open himself up to trolls and haters in the rarefied air of anonymous communities with the ultimate goal of making friends and selling books.

And yet I hope Paul Barrett’s experience marketing online by virtually shaking hands and kissing babies was well worth his valuable time. Actually I know it was.  A few weeks ago I got to meet Paul and Julie for coffee in person before he did a reading at Politics & Prose.

I will paraphrase Julie here when I say that no matter how prestigious a live book tour is and how personally fulfilling doing readings in bookstores always is for a writer, tours are insanely expensive, time-intensive, exhausting, and all too often completely ephemeral.

However, when you’re willing to add to this real-world dog and pony show the same kind and quality of community engagement online that you do during the book tour (all from the comfort of your home), then spending the time meeting people online, where they congregate anyway, is worthwhile.

Some of the benefits are simple:  message boards are a permanent record, so all the sharing that Paul did, all the questions he answered, and all the good will he fostered is there for the life of the board.

Not only that, but because of the asynchronous nature of message boards, Paul needs to linger around each board for weeks to make sure he’s a responsive participant. It’s not as quick as just popping into a bookstore, spending a few hours reading and chatting, and then leaving.

Message boards aren’t real time–they required Paul to monitor responses and come back over the course of couple days or a week. This allows more people to engage over time, allowing Paul the ability to really consider his responses or draft and revise his response before committing. It also allows members and participants to get over being star struck and get real.

It also needs to be said that, for every message board member who actively asks questions, makes accusations, or debates an issue, there are at least a hundred, maybe a thousand, non-participants who are every bit as committed to their message board community.

These “lurkers” were completely engaged when they saw Paul and “NYC Shoots,” go at it in a heated debate on The High Road forum.  By showing commitment to the community and a bit of bravery when challenged, Paul earned respect in the community, earning new fans and protectors as well as showing what he was made of in front of potentially 143,051 High Road registered members.

If bravery, boldness, and heroism under duress and challenge can’t sell books, I don’t know what can.  If Paul M. Barrett, an assistant managing editor of Bloomberg Businessweek and author of American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion and The Good Black: A True Story of Race in America, still thinks it is essential to engage the lowly, antiquated message board and forum as part of his book publicity tour, what’s your excuse?

Two reasons:

1. The objective is too nebulous
2. The objective doesn’t “move the needle” in business terms

Goals like “We’re going to grow our online business 35%” sound great. But how are you going to do that? What actions does it inspire your team to take? By contrast, goals like “We’re going to gain 100 new followers on Twitter every month” may be measurable and actionable, but to what end? Will those followers increase brand awareness? Drive more transactions? Result in greater revenue?

Instead, look for goals that a.) clearly state what you’re trying to accomplish and b.) align with business results.

Here are a few of my favorite examples:

1. Improve repeat visits by 20% (or more) year over year. In my experience, repeat visits consistently convert better than “new” visits. If you think about it, it makes sense. You’ve created enough interest from the visitor that they’re willing to come back. In sales terms, you’ve executed a “soft close,” engaging the prospect and enticing them to come back for more. Focus on how you can get consumers to come back to your site and watch your conversion rate skyrocket.
2. Decrease bounce rate for top pages to 10% below site average. This is one of my all-time favorites for improving business results. Take a look at the average bounce rate for your website. Then make a list of the top pages on your site that have an above average bounce rate (Google Analytics has a simple report that shows the same thing). Improve your headlines, copy and calls-to-action on those pages to increase retention and sales. Alternately, take a look at the pages with below average bounce rate to see what they share in common. Then apply those same lessons to your higher bounce rate pages.
3. Increase natural search engine traffic by 25% for your top 5 top-converting terms. Most analytics tools allow you to measure conversion rate by search term. Examine this report to see which terms drive the most conversions (i.e., the most qualified traffic). Then conduct an SEO campaign specifically targeting these terms to drive more qualified traffic and revenue. Even better, if you focus this effort to increase natural search for your top 5 top-converting paid terms, you can both drive more qualified traffic and lower the cost of those paid terms.
4. Drive down cost per acquisition by 20% for your 5 highest cost keywords. Speaking of lowering cost for paid terms, look for ways to decrease your cost per acquisition for your most expensive terms. Notice, I didn’t say lower your cost per click. Calculate cost per conversion by dividing conversion rate into your cost per click. For example, a term that costs $0.10 a click and converts at a 1% rate has the same cost per acquisition as a term that costs $1.00 and converts at a 10% rate ($0.10/1% = $10 and $1.00/10% = $10).You can improve cost per acquisition by lowering your cost per click, increasing your conversion rate or a combination of the two. As with #3 above, focus on improving your headlines, copy and call to action for the best results.
5. Increase customer satisfaction by 20% in the next 12 months. No matter how you measure customer satisfaction, few things will increase your business results faster than ensuring your current customers are happy. Happy customers tend to buy more often and tend to tell their friends all about you (both on social sites and face-to-face). Survey your customers to find out what they like and dislike about your business as well as how willingly they’d recommend you to their friends. Then focus on improving those areas where you’re falling short.

You’ll note that few items in this list talk about social media. Don’t think it’s because social doesn’t work. Instead, it’s because these tactics focus on a business outcome rather than a specific media channel. Even the paid search tactics focus more on increasing revenue or reducing cost than a more nebulous “improve paid search results.”

In fact, you can use social media to help achieve any of these goals. For example, getting customers to like one of your landing pages on Facebook or Google+ can improve your quality score, search engine rankings and—if you’re using paid search—drive down the cost of terms pointing to that page.

Those “other guys” we talked about earlier spend way too much time wondering what social media is good for. By contrast, you’re looking at how social media helps you achieve your goals. And can choose specific social tactics that benefit those goals directly.

Finally, don’t worry about the specific percentages I chose for each goal. You can adjust those up or down as you see fit. But, I’d recommend shooting for larger, rather than smaller. Larger businesses may not notice the effects of smaller increases and smaller businesses may struggle to survive without larger effects.

Improving business results isn’t as hard as it sounds.

No. Really.

The biggest challenge is making sure you’re focused on the right objectives and know exactly what you need to do to achieve them. Make your goals clear, align them with your business objectives and the rest will take care of itself.

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Earlier this week I read a post by Amber Naslund over at her Brass Tack Thinking blog. She did a nice job of actually thinking about something that I feel is an affliction rather than a development in the social space: frictionless sharing. This idea was brought to us by the folks at Facebook. Simply put, it’s a mechanism to share information (like what you are reading, watching etc) with others in your social network without the repeated bother of app requests. Once you opt-in to one of these kind of sharing machines, you immediately pass along what you are doing to your friends.

Great idea, right? Social is all about sharing, right? Well, the second idea is right. As for this being a great idea? I couldn’t disagree more. Rather than some long drawn out paragraphs, here are my reasons why I am opposed to this kind of interaction in the social space.

It’s intrusive – I have under 200 “friends” in my Facebook profile. A puny measure by many standards in today’s world. Well, if even 25 of them buy into this idea that 200 becomes way too noisy way too quickly. I like my friends but I am not married to them. Having a little space is a good thing.

It’s assumptive – This kind of sharing implies that I truly care about EVERYTHING my friends do and vice versa. That’s just not how life works.

It’s not my vision – This vision is the brainchild of Mark Zuckerberg and the people at Facebook. Personally, I am not a fan of Mr. Zuckerberg’s. Doesn’t mean that what he has accomplished means nothing. I actually wish him no ill will at all. I just don’t think the way he does, although I am being forced to in the new world of frictionless sharing.

It’s short-sighted – My prediction is that even as people grow up with this kind of “openness” and it is seen as more natural for them they will find that as their lives get busier with real things like families that this kind of social interaction isn’t desirable. There is not enough time to keep up with everything that everyone is doing if you truly want to give the right attention to those right in front of you that need you most.

It’s dehumanizing – Kind of ironic how I might consider something that is said to be bringing human beings closer I would say is dehumanizing. Why do I say that? Because I cannot possibly have this degree of sharing as my mere mortal self. Just because technology exists to enable this spamming of all of my acquaintances doesn’t mean it’s ultimately the best thing for us all. Think fossil fuels. Good idea at the onset but now it’s not looking so bright is it?

One to many communications are no longer special - It used to be that you had to really work to have an audience. Now you force everyone to be an audience. That’s wrong.

As I always do with a list, I will end by saying that there is more. That’s enough sharing for right now. I hope you have a good day that is uncluttered and not full of the yammerings of your so-called friends. You may find peace and quiet to be a better form of frictionless living.

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Yesterday, we talked about how Google might have cracked the code on qualified sales leads through search. Somehow, sites are seeing drops in traffic but not all of them are seeing commensurate drops in revenue, because Google is figuring out which keywords drive revenue for each site. So, the question is whether you know which keywords are driving your own revenue. How are you tracking the connection between marketing effort and spending and your actual sales? If you’re an e-Commerce company, it’s easy–just track the sales through to your shopping cart. But for most companies–the ones that sell offline–tracking sales back to the online tactic that led to it is still an elusive goal.

In the old days, often you would see print ads that said “Call 800-555-6666 and ask for Alice.” But there was no Alice. Alice meant that the caller has seen the ad on page 27 of So-and-So magazine dated March 12. Now understand–there might have been five interactions before that ad finally got that customer to pick up the phone. No matter. Let’s at least start by tracking the last one, which most companies still don’t even do.If you can set up a way to track where people are coming from, you’ll be miles ahead of your competition, because you’ll be able to calculate what works and what doesn’t.

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Yesterday, I gave a Biznology Webinar called, “Blogging 101,” that covered the basics of starting and maintaining a blog.  Are you thinking about writing a blog for your company, but don’t know where to start?  Do you have what it takes to stick with it and create good content?  How do you coordinate blogs across your company?

In this Webinar, you’ll learn the dos and don’ts of blogging, starting with listening to your customers.  You’ll find out how to choose a topic and create a plan for your blog so that you can generate new content.  I discuss where to host your blog, and how to publicize it.  I go over how to measure your success, track your subscribers, and optimize your blog posts for search.  I also discuss the tools you can use to make blogging easier.   In this free 30-minute Biznology® Webinar, I show you how to start your blog from the ground up and which tools to use to maintain it, so that you can take advantage of the blogosphere to get your products and your company more publicity.

Thanks to all of our sponsors:

Unlike Friendster and MySpace, these message boards are generally privately-held and heavily sponsored. They’re also pretty well monetized, from offering membership levels to running raffles; from placing inline textual ads to being framed by banners. Additionally, most of the more popular forums have over 5,000 active users and have been online for well over half-a-decade. Since they’re not tied to Facebook or MySpace, they’re safe from the fickle tide of funding or popularity. These forums don’t care about what happens at Facebook, they only care about whether they can pay their escalating server and bandwidth fees.

What’s even better is that forum application developers such as vBulletin have hungrily adopted all the best parts of all the blogging platforms, publishing frameworks, social networking services, microblogging platforms, photo sharing sites, and social graphic services. It’s pretty amazing how comprehensive and mature these message board suites have become.

How do I know this? About a year ago I picked up a new hobby: shooting sports. I knew nothing about it but I knew where to go: forums and message boards.

There has been a real renaissance in both blogs and message boards because of social media and the ability to share, cross pollinate, and make easy reference to not only boards but to threads and replies. Most message boards have adopted all of the modern conveniences offered by blogs, including RSS feeds, email reminders, email updates, social media share buttons for Google+, Facebook, Twitter, and others.

Additionally, if you happen to visit a message board or forums using your iPhone or Android, you’re likely to receive a pop-up that lets you know that there’s an app made especially for your device that will allow you to easily and simply read, post, and share on that online community site.

Mobile devices developed specifically to not only read and post to message boards but also simplify the discovery of other boards and forums.  It has opened up ease-of-access via mobile devises, cell phones, smart phones, Androids, iPhones, iPads, and tablets. Not only that but access via mobile devices strips ugly advertisements, garish color choices, and a plethora of inline and banner ads.

And if you thought that blogs are like catnip to Google organic search then you need to explore the prevalence of message boards and forums in the top results of their respective topics. This is important for several important reasons: first, it seems to me that while message boards and forums are still powerful platforms for sharing, conspiring, debating, and alerting, the platform has gone well out of favor amongst the digerati.

Unfortunately, as I said in the beginning of this article, if you look at the sort of topics that have popular forums, they’re generally not at the social media cutting edge, they’re less meta — social media about social media about social media — and more practical: What caliber should I get in my first hunting rifle? What protein supplement should I buy for my CrossFit obsession?

Even though these may well be places where you can just pop in, look around, and find what you need without even registering, they can also be decades-old, more like virtual cities than just villages, and all associated protocol and terms-of-engagement must apply.  These are tight communities and if you don’t know much about virtual communities and message boards, they’re real families and the mothers and fathers of these communities are the owners, the uncles and aunties are the members with the high post counts.  And, you really should take post-count and join date very seriously, too, because message boards and forums are one of the few places in today’s anti-anonymity Internet that still encourages being who you are while also protecting your identity.

My first return to message board was RimFire Central because my first pistol was a Ruger Mk III “678″ Target. At that time, I was maneuvering clumsily via their web interface.  It felt antiquated and it was tough to sort out my latest posts or responses I needed to engage.  Later, after getting my first Glock, I joined Glock Talk via my iPhone and it offered me the ability to download OutdoorHub, the sponsored app for GT. It opened everything up for me because it became as easy to track new content, unread posts and replies, and engage both via the boards or via personal message from one single place.

However, I soon wanted to read Rimfire Central the same way.  And local shooting boards like Maryland Shooters Forum and VA Gun Owners Forum. I then discovered Tapatalk, an app for my iPhone that does cost $4.99 but is well worth it.  I just checked and Tapatalk has an app for the iPad, Android, Blackberry and Chrome. The only thing it doesn’t have is iCloud support, which supposedly is in the works — so all the boards I am registered and sorted out on my iPhone don’t translate over to my iPad.

Then, after I got to know Tapatalk better, I started exploring their Network directory of cataloged forums available and discovered and joined other shooting sports communities, including The High Road Forum, Remington Owners Forum, Elsie Pea Forum, The Original CZ Forum, Defensive Carry Concealed Carry Forum. Now, over time, these communities have become a rightly rite, and I have accrued 431 posts on Glock Talk. And, to be honest, nobody has really paid any attention to me at all on Glock Talk until now and I am really hoping that I am able to earn some awe and fear by the time I make my 1,000th post.

In next week’s post I want to go into how to market to message boards. I have recently seen a maestro in action in the form of Paul M. Barrett, author of Glock: The Rise of America’s Gun, a new book that is categorized by Amazon as a Company Profile involving Social US History, and Conventional Weapons & Warfare. When Paul started promoting online, he didn’t limit his online pre-sales time and energy to just blogs,

Facebook, and Twitter, he recognized that the most passionate owners, collector, and proponents of the shooting sports spend a lot of their time learning, sharing, bragging, and teaching on online message boards and that he needed to engage these communities well before his book went on sale to the public if he wanted to get the kind of buzz and word-of-mouth going he needed to be able to reach the lease obvious but most important brand ambassadors.

It was really a beautiful thing to see, honestly, especially after I spent years marketing on message boards and forums when I was an Online Analyst and Project Manager at New Media Strategies. Things have changes a lot since I was promoting brand online in message boards and the state of the art has evolved, become more savvy, but is very ripe and very transparent.

Man, I have a lot to share with you next week, I can’t wait!

Image via CrunchBase

Some of you follow the news every day, watching Google like a hawk every time it makes a move. This post is not for you. This post is for everyone else that has vaguely noticed that Google has made lots of changes over the last couple of years, but they aren’t sure about what all of them mean for search marketers. As someone who has been in search marketing and search technology before that for almost 30 years, I have to say that the changes that Google has made in the last couple of years have been mind-boggling. I did a speech for the Marketing Executives Networking Group on Friday to go over this very subject: The 5 Things You Need to Know about the New Google Search.

You can look over the whole set of slides, but here are the five things that I highlighted:

• Google indexes content faster than ever.
• Google shows search results as searchers type.
• Google ranks search results based on social activity.
• Google ranks search results based on human ratings of Web page quality.
• Google ranks results based on who your friends are.

All of these changes have come in just the last two years and add up to some massive changes in the way search marketing works. Where you once could conduct link campaigns (or even break the rules by buying links), that doesn’t work very well anymore, because if the human raters and the your site’s social activity don’t validate the link analysis, your site drops in rankings. If you were living off old pages and had ignored social, you might not even find your content showing up. If had good rankings for top keywords but not for the five-word long-tail keywords, you might be suffering, too.

What has brought on this frenzy of activity from Google? I think they have been running scared from Bing since 2009. Bing made massive gains in 2010–to the point that a few pundits were actually predicting that the trend showed that Bing would eventually tie Google in market share. But as these changes have rolled out, Google has stabilized its free-fall in market share, leaving Bing with a substantial 30% US share, but that number has not budged in a year.

Will Google keep innovating? Certainly. Google is worried about not just Bing but Facebook and other threats. And maybe it will even accelerate the pace. If you have  a Web site, you need to familiarize yourself with these changes so you can understand the new ways to succeed at search marketing. Check out the full set of slides for “The 5 Things You Need to Know about the New Google Search.”

So, hot on the heels of the SPYW (Search Plus Your World) incident which created such a stir amongst the Internet industry glitteratti and all of those “privileged” enough to consider themselves on the inside of the industry, Google rolls out a rather curious project called Screenwise.

In a nutshell, Google is trying to discover just how the “simple folk” uses search. They can explain it better from their website.

Google is building a new panel to learn more about how everyday people use the Internet.

The new project is called Screenwise. As a panelist, you’ll add a browser extension that will share with Google the sites you visit and how you use them. What we learn from you, and others like you, will help us improve Google products and services and make a better online experience for everyone.

What’s in it for you? Up to $25 in gift cards. Our panel management partner, Knowledge Networks, will give you a $5 Amazon.com Gift Card code instantly when you sign up and download the Google Screenwise browser extension.¹ Then you’ll get additional $5 Amazon.com Gift Card codes every three months for staying with it.² It’s our way of saying “Thank you.”

To be eligible to join, you must be 13 or older, have a Google Account (or sign up for one), and be ready to use the Google Chrome browser.

Apparently the response was so strong by the “everyday user” who really wanted that Amazon gift card really wanted to help Google get better that they had to shut the door on more interested folks.

Here’s the problem. Based on the coverage from the Internet industry media and even the likes of The Huffington Post who, in fine exploitative Internet headline fashion, chose to frame this as a Google pays people to give up privacy matter, rather than a sincere attempt to get to know the regular Internet guy or gal better play, it’s VERY unlikely that any everyday folks got a chance to sign up for the project.

I bet that of the people that signed up for this thing are mostly Internet savvy tech industry followers who like the idea of maxing out the $25 in Amazon gift cards offer from Google just because they can. Do you really think that someone who lives in say, Omaha, NE, and has a regular job and goes home to that awful everyman’s existence of a home, wife and, yuck!, kids ever even knew this opportunity existed? I sincerely doubt it.

So what does this mean? It means that if Google goes through with this study it will be likely that their impression of the everyman of the Internet looks much like the Internet industry insider thus accomplishing absolutely nothing in the process.

If they really want to know about the everyman of Internet use they can just check out this profile that I scientifically* put together.

• Is a worker bee in some company be it large or small
• Is struggling to make ends meet
• Gets online after taking care of everyman-type mundane tasks like feeding kids, getting them to practice, putting them to bed etc etc and wouldn’t know if their search results are personalized anymore than they know what an IP address is
• Doesn’t care about their privacy as long as they get the information they need from the search engine
• Only pays attention to privacy if they see something on or in the news to remind them or if something has already gone wrong
• Spends a fair amount of time on Facebook so they obviously don’t think anything of online privacy at all
• Answers the question of whether they are on Google+ or not with the classic “What’s that?”
• Will not have a chance at getting in on the Facebook IPO or will never be able to afford the overpriced shares that will leave the holding the bag eventually
• Thinks SPYW is something to do with the CIA or FBI
• Surprised that personalization of search has been around for quite some time
• Never considers doing any advanced searches on Google. In fact, wouldn’t know where that option exists
• There’s more but you get the point

* By scientifically, I mean using my own science and my own ways to prove my point regardless of whether there is any truth in it. This is otherwise known as market research ;-).

There. I just saved Google a lot of time and effort and really bad research results.

I feel good. Now I have to go help put the kids to bed.