I have a problem with Personalized Search. I want it to stop defining me.
So, for those of you who don’t know, the approach of personalized search is to take your search patterns, and provide you results, based on those patterns, that are relevant for you. Specifically you. Based entirely on how you have searched. It is pretty amazing stuff, when it works. Like behavioral targeting with banner ads, the targeting can be spot on. But there’s a big difference with behavioral targeting for banner ads, and results targeting based on previous results. One is an ad that may or may not be acted on presented in concert with several other page elements – content, pictures, other ads. Search results are the sole reason I’m on a search engine. And if those results are tailored well, then excellent! If, however, my intent has changed, my interests have evolved, or I simply have “become a different person”, personalized results may be behind the times.
The trick that some personalization algorithms haven’t taken into consideration is personal evolution – a good personalized search result factors in shifts and ebbs in your search patterns that are representative of who you are and how you are changing, and doesn’t cast you in one light forever.
Take for example photo-social platform Instagram, in all its sepia-toned glory. It’s a great platform – providing both photo filters as well as uploading and sharing. I’m not a big picture guy. I try and remember the moment as opposed to remembering the moment in an image. In fact, I almost never use the camera on my phone – let alone the camera that gather’s dust on my desk. I signed up so I could follow a friend’s trip in Southeast Asia. When I downloaded the app and signed in, I noticed the “Popular” tab on the app – clicking it, I viewed through a few screens of photos, tapping on one occasionally as I recall, though I can’t recall what images I tapped on.
Well, based on that little bit of tapping around, and following my friend, I’m pretty sure that Instagram has personalized its results for me going forward – forever. Now, whenever I open the app (generally on Saturdays. At the mall. Whilst sitting in front of J. Crew while my wife parties) the majority of the images I get are South Asian landscapes and pictures of people’s pets. And I’ve opened it a lot. And I’ve tried to adjust its personalization settings for me by clicking on any image that is not a pet or a Thai sunset. I feel like I’m making progress, but its slow. Less pet pictures, more pictures of fashion week (another friend’s images, I swear), but still a lot of jungle landscapes.
Personalized search can be a scary thing – it doesn’t allow you to factor in positioning as much. In the instance of Instagram, your results may be completely eliminated from many people’s “SERPs” because they’ve been shoehorned in another direction.
For businesses, SEO, personalized or not, is still a matter of best practices – strong content, good-linking, scannable architecture. You will be found, but trying to adjust for every variable that could go into a personalized search is too much – at least now. There aren’t good roadmaps that show the decision trees of the algorithm, and the reality is deployment is limited, with sites getting plugged in as “wild cards” based on their prominence within the algorithm – not necessarily because of personalization (which tend to be more significant for smaller niche sites and searches).
The advice for developers in smaller scale environments (such as Instagram) is straight-forward – build less prediction and more wild card into your results. This will prevent your results from becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy – of the same thing over and over. Just because I looked at trees does not mean I will always and forever want to look solely at trees. While Google has toyed with personalized search for years, we only occasionally see a broad deployment of it. I suspect part of the reason is the wild card factor – for the smartest engineers in the business, it’s still a difficult task to personalize and wild card – for everything.
We will see more personalization – that is inevitable. As the engineers mine the data, they will see trending elements of what wild cards to include, and what personalizations are immutable. The trick in the short term is making sure that you aren’t in that self-fulfilling prophecy – if your search results are predictable – regardless of where you search – you may be stuck in a personalization loop of no return. I recommend rebooting. Or, at the very least, clearing your cache.
Despite a slowing adoption rate, Google+ is still a destination where marketers need to develop and maintain a presence. Google’s committed to making the product a success, and that means you have to as well. With that in mind, an excellent article was written recently at Conversation Marketing in an effort to better understand what ranking factors are driving content from Google+ into regular Google search results.
I encourage you to read the entire article, but to me the biggest takeaway is the importance of frequent posting. It suggests that posts older than 72 hours won’t show up in Google’s regular search results. This is important, because the temptation for many companies right now with G+ is to establish a profile and begin populating with content later on, once a critical mass of users has been established.
That’s simply not going to be a viable tactic if you want to harness the potential visibility of Search Plus Your World. You’re going to have to commit to posting as frequently on G+ as you do on Twitter or Facebook.
This concept is also intriguing because it reflects the shifts that have been occurring within Google’s organic algorithm over the last few years. As I’ve mentioned in this space in the past, Google continues to refine its algorithm to reward fresh content. So this research should really come as no surprise; they’re simply carrying forth the same standard on their social platform as they would your own site.
Whether G+ has legs long term is still to be decided, but as long as it’s around in its current form, you’re going to have to make it a part of your social marketing mix, and according to the current research, that means maintaining it as you would the other major social platforms.
Why?
It really is that simple. Why should I split my time between two social sites – one where I’ve already invested hours (if not days) in – I’ve got friends, profiles, and I know the rules (until they change them) vs. a technically more savvy startup that doesn’t have very many people engaged? It just doesn’t sound that “social”.
The most recent Compete numbers are bearing out a simple trend – Google + adoption has plateaued. After the buzz, after the talk, and several months in, Google + has around 20 million uniques (based on Compete.com’s January numbers). Facebook has 168 million. Hell, Twitter has 40 million. Now, an important distinction – this is desktop only, but knowing that – it’s still a huge crater in Google + usage. Even after the much vaunted (and woefully boring) integration known as Search + Your World.
There are two simple reasons that can plainly explain Google +’s failure to launch – user fatigue and microsoftitis.
The user fatigue is pretty obvious. Facebook has become a huge part of our lives. Check out the phones around you next time your at Starbucks, or down the couch from you while you’re watching a tv show. Odds are good you’re going to find Facebook up. This, in and of itself, signifies a loyalty pattern, but we’re hearing more and more jokey commentary about being tethered to Facebook: “Oh, I’m giving up Facebook for Lent”. “I’m going to turn off Facebook for the night and just chill out.” “Dude – just call me – don’t post it on my Wall” and my favorite “If I get one more Farmville request…”. These are all pretty common complaints – for email – but we’re seeing Facebook become the day to day annoyance of that email is. Which means that people are beginning to see it as a necessary evil – one that can and should be escaped from time to time. If you’re already so tightly integrated into one necessary evil (Facebook), why would you knowingly sign up for another (Google +)? People are becoming socially exhausted – by their own choice mind you – but that means that they’re going to minimize their exposure to more activities.
Which brings me to microsoftitis. I should start, though, with a disclaimer. I find Microsoft vile. Not for the reasons that many Apple Fan Boys do – to be fair, I’m not sure why they do, but for me, I find their software painful to deal with. It has been (and continues to be) developed from an engineer’s perspective. That is to say, a team of software engineers have decided how they would interact with a word processing, presentation, and spreadsheet programs and built programs that only engineers could love. Overall, the usability stinks. Features that should be intuitive are not, and items that most users never engage are in the forefront.
They attempted to solve this usability issue by putting forth an animated paper clip to help you negotiate their world. Based on a drunken analysis of the software I did one night, I can only assume that, from a Microsoft software engineer’s perspective, everyone knows how to set up a pivot table, but no one knows how to write a letter. Thus, whenever I’m confronted with anything that is overdesigned and under-usable, I say it has microsoftitis.
This term can apply to anything that has been overthought from a narrow perspective. I think this video is hilarious – and a great representation of the approach Microsoft has taken to everything they have done for the past 25 years.
What if Microsoft did the packaging for the iPod?
Google + has this same issue (but alas, no inquisitive paper clip). “Circles” are how the Googlers would organize their friends. And that’s great, but it’s a fair amount of categorization and maintenance, not to mention the amount of work that goes into it when you want to post something. “Does this go to my friends, my work friends, my work friends and acquaintances, work acquaintances, or everyone?” It’s an excellent level of control, but it’s a lot of work to do for something that you already feel obligated to do elsewhere.
When and if you point this out to a Google + advocate, the responses range from “have you tried a Hangout” to “check out the product roadmap!” I’m sorry – but Hangouts are a functional tool that have been in use for years already. It’s called Skype. The simple integration hasn’t helped create Google + as a superior entry anymore than it benefitted when Facebook added in video chat a few months ago. It’s supplemental at best. And as for the product roadmap, items like “games integration” isn’t something that’s going to make Google + a necessary stop, let alone an infrequent destination. My complaint from the beginning has been that Google + offers little new to the social space. Google +’s engineering response has been “look at how we integrated these widgets – it’s bad ass!” Yawn.
For the record, a novel approach to the social space is Pinterest. How well-targeted is that? It’s exploded because it has distinct functionality that creates interest and usability for its targeted audience. It’s fun (or so I’m told) and very unique from any other social network out there.
At the end of the day, Google + is going to have a long, slow road to slog, and it may have a fair bit of symbolism for Google as a whole. As Google itself becomes more proud of and mired in its engineer culture, they may forget that their achievements are measured not in their pride in tackling an engineering problem, but in tackling the right engineering problem. Not too long ago, there was a company that revolutionized search for users by making it relevant. And they made advertising work for companies by making it effective. If that company expects their social product to work, they’re going to need to find a way to make it useful and interesting.
On February 1st, Microsoft announced a few new features that became available with the January 2012 AdCenter Release. Below is a rundown of what’s new:
New Mobile Targeting Options – Advertisers who place mobile campaigns through AdCenter now have the option of targeting specific mobile operating systems, as well as separating out tablet users from mobile phone users. Mobile phone operating systems that can be specifically targeted are: Blackberry, Android, Windows, and iOS (Apple’s operating system.) Tablet operating systems that can be targeted are: iOS, Android, and RIM. This new functionality allows advertisers to zero in on categories of phones, or potentially target separate campaigns based on phone or tablet operating system to help determine if users of certain phone types act or convert differently than others. The device targeting settings can be employed via the AdCenter Online interface, or through the API. The functionality does not, however, exist in the AdCenter Desktop tool.
Ad Copy Description Character Allowance Increased – The description ad copy character limitation was increased by one, from 70 characters previously to 71 allowable now. This move will make it easier for advertisers to copy their Google campaigns over into AdCenter without having to adjust ad copy.
New Budget Widget – A new budget widget is now present on the home page dashboard, and doesn’t require any additional plug ins. The widget shows percentage of budget depletion at a daily and monthly level, and allows users to edit budget settings.
In other AdCenter news, the Microsoft-Yahoo Search Alliance is expanding to European Markets. Microsoft AdCenter ads have been added to the rotation on Yahoo pages in the UK, France, and Ireland in mid-January. Currently only about 10% of Yahoo’s ads in these markets are being powered by Microsoft. Soon advertisers in select European countries will have the ability to manage MSN and Yahoo ads from a centralized AdCenter interface, as has been the case in the US for over a year.
It seems that every day over the past week there’s a new story regarding privacy and transparency concerns in the social space. For example:
We continue to see user anxiety about privacy issues that Facebook Timeline will create.
Social network Path outraged users by accidentally posting its users’ address books publicly.
Google continues to frustrate users with its privacy policy change and its focus on increased personalization of search.
Pinterest, the hottest topic in the social sphere at the moment, is causing a bit of controversy over the fact it’s monetizing pins without disclosing that info to users.
And now, Google looks to be offering beta testers the opportunity to trade in their browsing privacy for 25 whole dollars. What a deal!?!
Unfortunately, despite protests from many about these privacy and transparency practices, most of the aforementioned sites are so ingrained in our personal routines that we won’t stop using them. Can you imagine a day without Googling? I didn’t think so.
And that really means the envelope will only be pushed further until legal boundaries are encroached.
What does this mean for you as a marketer? Well, in some ways, the disregard for user privacy is a good thing for you. The more data that is collected, the more robust profiling that can be done by ad networks, and in theory the better you can target potential customers.
On the other hand, if the envelope continues to be pushed, and at some point there is government intervention, that could set tracking, targeting, and reporting efforts back considerably. For instance, in the UK, recent legislation states that by May 25th, all sites must offer their users the opportunity to opt-in, not out, of cookie acceptance. And without those cookies, a tremendous amount of ad targeting and site analytics data will be lost. The consequences for marketers will be fascinating to monitor.
Perhaps the best case scenario is that some of these offending sites will at some point see a loss in traffic that will force them to reconsider their stance on privacy issues. With better self-regulation, government intervention, and potentially serious consequences that come with it, could be avoided for marketers.