SES San Jose 2005 Day One
August 8 , 2005. San Jose, CA.
SES San Jose 2005
Welcome to the day one recap of Search Engine Strategies conference in San Jose occurring August 8-11, 2005. I am attending the conference and will be reporting my daily session attendance here, with a brief description of the highlights. Fell free to discuss the topics in a thread of your choice at our forums!
Day 1: Monday, Monday…
After a nice round of Golf on Sunday afternoon in the shadow of the GooglePlex in Mountain View California, I eagerly attended my first session of the day, titled: “Eye of the Storm: Lessons from Large Search Marketers.” The session was a structured Q&A moderated by Zia Wigler of Jupiter Research. The panelists were Allan Dick, the owner of Vintage Tub and Bath, a bath tub supplier that does 99% of his business online, Ethan Giffin from Allegis Group, Inc., Emily Schubert of the Vertical search engine Travelocity, and Cam Balzer of Perfomics.
Topics in this session included a forecast of the paid search market (expected to reach US$7.5B by 2010) and a discussion about the values of using agencies to manage paid search initiatives. The predominant theme seemed to be the use of bid management tools and web analytics systems in order to “stay ahead of the curve.” Zia described a “sophisticated” Search Marketing Firm as being one that employs such software and manages at least US$250K in paid search funds per year.
The majority of the panelists have used both outsourced firms as well as in-house management of their campaigns. Since Allan relies on his online presence to support his entire business, he carefully trains all employees about the subtleties of online marketing, in order to help get as much data about the clients’ search behavior when finding Vintage Tub and Bath. This has helped him to maintain the majority of his paid search management in-house.
The consensus was that SEM is used to increase direct sales primarily, with little if any current emphasis on the branding value of paid search. Most panelists kept a fairly close eye on their competition. Emily stated that Travelocity has to be especially careful to watch for affiliates overstepping their boundaries. All three speakers had a positive outlook for the next few years, predicting the continued success of search engine marketing as a whole.
The second session I attended was the “Searcher Behavior Research Update,” moderated by Detlev Johnson of Position Technologies, Inc. The panelists included Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro, Jonathan Mendez from Digital Grit, and Allison Kane and Inga Johnson from Atlas OnePoint. Gord Hotchkiss started out with an interesting summary of the recent research dubbed the discovery of the search “Golden Triangle.” In essence the top left corner of Google was found to be the most actively viewed in a test of eyeball scanning conducted by volunteers. Without getting into specific numbers, it can be safe to say that the top positions both paid and organic receive the most attention.
Gord also discussed the difference between fixation, scanning , and actually clicking on a listing. Fixation means a temporary read of the title, while scanning indicates further interaction with the text, and a click is a fairly obvious action. Jonathan spoke next and the highlight of his presentation was the outlining of the difference between “defined” and “latent” searcher goals. The defined goals are what people are actually typing into the search box, but it is the presence of words in their mind (usually action verbs), called latent, that actually spur the click-though.
Allison and Inga also presented very useful information, providing research that shows that people tend to search for a long period of time before actually making a purchase. A look at searcher behavior indicated 43% clicked on multiple results, an average of 2.3 sites visited per search. One trend was the use of a brand name as last (converting) search, with 26% on average being a navigational search. Yahoo says 91% of consumers converting on a trademark search started with a more general search.
Cam Balzer spoke last and provided information regarding a study that Performics conducted of 5 e-commerce sites in different industries. In the study, roughly half of buyers made a relevant search before online purchase, as far back as 12 weeks. Interestingly, many searchers performed their last search prior to purchase more than two weeks prior to the transaction. This shows that online purchases take time, and it is important to use longer-lasting cookies in order to effectively track purchases.
The third session I attended dealt purely with Vertical search engines. It was titled: “From Broad to Specific: Capitalizing on vertical search and other niche publishing opportunities.” Moderated by Sapna Satogapan of Jupiter Research, this was also a structured Q&A. Sapna started with some statistics about the current verticals, including industries currently leading in paid search: Retail 32%, Financial Services 21%, Media/Entertainment 16%, Travel 10%, Telecommunications 6%. Health 4%. Automotive 2% other 9%.
The session mostly covered the future of vertical search, with all speakers agreeing that it was “bright.” The speakers included Phil Carpenter of Sidestep.com, Gary Price, an Editor at Searchenginewatch.com, Kirby Winfield from Marchex, and Micheal Yang from become.com. Some of the highlights included Yang’s comparison of the vertical market to cable television before its huge growth. There will be many more verticals as people become more used to using them to find more specific results for a particular industry. Phil proposed that vertical users may be more sophisticated since they know that vertical search is more likely to provide specific results. This makes them worth more, and marketers are ready to pay for it.
The last session of the day was going to be “Partnering with Search Engines,” but that was unfortunately cancelled. Instead, I attended a very interesting presentation titled “Competitive Research.” Another session in the research track, this was also moderated by Detlev Johnson and the focus was again on case studies of Allan Dick’s Vintage Tub and Bath. Allan started by listing his favorite tools to use in his “competitive research toolkit.” these included Alexa, Archive.org, market leap.com, email alerts from Google Alerts, Feedster, and Technorati, the use of special Google commands in the search box known as “google hacks,” and finally e-Bay- dubbed “the forgotten search engine.”
Other speakers included Dave Williams of 360i, who nicely summarized some interesting statistics generated by a product they use called “Optisite.” Cam Balzer from the earlier session spoke about reverse engineering PPC campaigns in order to try and put a finger on what is successful for the competition. Gavin Appel from Hitwise demonstrated some very robust reporting technologies created by Hitwise, and “online competitive intelligence service.”
After a day of sessions and writing real time coverage that is available at surmountable.com, I was certainly tired. I attended the SEMPO meeting but was too late to receive my accolades for volunteering. After that I attended the Yahoo party thrown at Paramount’s Great America. I am not a roller coaster fan so sorry no rides to review. Lastly, I attended the Verizon superpages.com party and learned of their new pay for call product coming in September. I am truly old, now I know, because I came back to the room to change for the next two parties, and found that the bed looked too inviting. Will try harder tonight. :)
Chris Boggs.
