Search 2010: Thoughts on the Future of Search by Leading Experts

As we approach the end of the year and make our predictions for the next year in Search Marketing, Gord Hotchkiss from Enquiro hosted a webinar on December 11, 2007 with leading experts on search to discuss its future. They met to share their thoughts on the future of Search in the year 2010 but also what will most likely show up on the radar next year. Enquiro previously released a Search 2010 Whitepaper where topics of discussion included:

* Impact of Personalization of search Search 2010
* How much change will we see in 3 years? In 5 years?
* Impact of Universal Search Results
* The promise of Mobile
* What might happen with search advertising?
* How will the user experience with search evolve?
* What might happen with the search interface as we know it?

What’s The Future of Search Going to Look Like? (and what does it mean to you)
As I was listening to the webinar, which included thoughtful comments by Marissa Mayer, VP, Search Products and User Experience, Google as well as Jakob Nielsen, User Advocate and Principal of Nielsen Norman Group, Chris Sherman, Executive Editor, Search Engine Land & Greg Sterling, Founding Principal, Sterling Market Intelligence among others, I took lots of notes which I want to share with you. These are no scientific findings but my own interpretation of what you can do, in simple terms, to adjust your search marketing plan to the new reality that lies ahead.

Search 2008:
According to Marissa Mayer, Search won’t see drastic changes in the upcoming year. For Google we will most likely see an increased level of experimentation & integration of universal search (aka: blended search, unified, 3D). There will also be improvements on how the Google snippets are collected. (Snippets mean the piece of text below every link on a given search results page). Every search engine is trying to define new technologies to understand every user intent, based on their search query. This gap can not be reached easily according to all the people on the panel and we won’t see any breakthrough on that level anytime soon. No technology can actually make it happen. According to Marissa, most search queries are perfectly acceptable the way they are and even if we add rephrasing of search queries, grammar, refining search queries options or the Yahoo assist technology in the steps of disambiguation of search intent or query refinement, you won’t see a major jump in functionality happening next year. According to Gord Hotchkiss, personalization might be the answer to this challenge of understanding user intent and thus provide more relevant search results.

What do these changes mean to you?
Universal search has had a big impact on capturing user attention on a given search page. In a nutshell, eye tracking studies show that universal search results move the eye scanning process down the page, creating an E-shape form rather than the traditional F-shape form, in the initial golden triangle study:

New E-Shape Form

Traditional Golden Triangle (F-Shape)


Consequences:

There are more eye attention being scattered across the page, especially below the fold of search results (paid and organic).

Same idea (as above) applies to Google paid ads on the right rail

E-shape: means in order to capture attention with the first word on a vertical axis, that word must be the first one in your page title. Make sure your page titles are strong and work with search results.

Google Snippets may no longer be the default Meta Description Tag. Make sure all the text on your site is SEO friendly as every little piece may be called for action in search results.

Adwords: you might get away with lower paid positions (4+) in search results, but there is still a major disconnect when it comes to user eye tracking focus & the PPC opportunity.

Eyes are trained to scan pages, there will be a retraining process involved with universal search which might have an impact on PPC advertising.

Google might want to start finding other revenue sources than traditional PPC ads as they focus on the users in other areas as well as universal search, which they are very keen about. Eye tracking studies show a diminishing amount of attention to paid ads at the top of search results. Therefore, unless these ads are spot on relevant, effectiveness of PPC is slowly going down

Avoid traditional marketing lingo in PPC ads as the use of this terminology will most likely accelerate the ineffectiveness of your PPC ads

Use more down-the-tail search terms in your PPC ads and work harder on your ad copy

The best form of advertising is relevance or no advertising at all (organic results). Put more focus on Organic search in 2008 than you did in 2007.

We may see other ad formats appearing in search results to counter balance the eye scanning retraining process and maintain interest, as these studies point out. Be aware of those.

A better balance in terms of investment should be implemented between SEO and PPC advertising in 2008. 

Closing remarks:
If you want to use Google to promote your business, you have to understand what they do, why and their pace of innovations should be reflected in the innovations you put on your site as well. They provide the rhythm and they make it clear about what they want. Follow it. If you don’t stay informed about what Google does and only look at your online presence from your perspective, it is unlikely that you can succeed in the long run. I recommend that, much like Google, you continue focusing on the users, keep trying with new ideas, put content on your site and evaluate what it does for you. Take risks & innovate and you may be surprised how big you can win in the process. Remember: It is no longer the big eating the small but rather the fast eating the slow. 

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