Biznology Blog: October 2005

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October 28, 2005

Why Web Site Search Users Say There Are Too Many Results

I have seen the surveys. I have sat through the usability testing. And it comes up every time. Searchers on your company's Web sites say that there are "too many results." They did their search and they saw "1,000 found" or "Results 1-10 of 46,000" and they feel overwhelmed. Why does this happen? And what are they really trying to tell you when they say there are too many results?

I remember the first time that the usability folks told me that customers wanted fewer results from the site search engine. The customers told us that is what they wanted, so we should do that, right?

"That's ridiculous," I chortled. "Why is Google so successful when it brings back millions of results for the same query?" And then I went to the usability tests. And I heard it again and again until I had to ask myself why is Google successful when this is what searchers are saying about your Web site search?

Why indeed? I think Google's success is based on having the right answer at the top. (Duh!) At least most of the time, they do. And your site search often does not. Jared Spool found that site search actually answers the searchers' question just 34% of the time. So it's fair to say that there is a problem here, even if it isn't the one that users are identifying.

Eye tracking studies show that the first place people look when a search results screen is displayed is the top left of the page, working their way down to the #1 result and scanning down the list from there. No studies show that people's eyes are attracted to the number of results. So, you can safely conclude that people have already looked at the search results before they look at the number of results at the top right of the screen.

The only reason that they are looking at the number of results is that the results listed did not seem interesting enough to draw their click. So when users complain that there are too many results, what that probably means is that the top results were no good.

Sometimes, the answer to the searcher's question is on your site, but was not anywhere listed in the results. In that case, the problem is that the search engine did not find the right pages, possibly because the content on the page was not well-written to match the searcher's words, or because the pages were not even placed in the search engine's index.

At other times, the answer to the searcher's question is not on your site at all. You might be surprised how frequently the answer to the searcher's question is not on any page. When that happens, you need to add the answers to your site.

Most frequently, the answer is on your site, and it is returned by the search engine, but it is ranked so far down in the list that the searcher does not see it. In that case, the search engine's ranking algorithm may need to be modified, or the answer page may need to be optimized so that its content more closely matches the searcher's question.

Regardless of the cause of the problem, when searchers say your site search has too many results, you do have a problem. The usability people are wrong if they insist that the number of results be reduced, but the technical folks are also wrong if they want to ignore what the users said because "Google has even more results and the users like Google." Just because users don't know how to express the problem doesn't mean there is no problem. They are trying to tell you that the wrong results are at the top of your search results page and you need to respond.

Posted by mikemoran at 4:45 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

October 26, 2005

What Book Do You Recommend to Searchers?

As a search marketing expert, you probably get asked all the time about what the secrets are to be a power searcher. I know I do. And I never had a very good answer. Yes, I know a slew of tips to pass along, but that makes for an uncomfortably long conversation. Now I have found the book that I want to recommend to every searcher who asks me that question.

It's called Google Power, written by well-known search expert Chris Sherman. The book explains all things Google, even touching on Gmail and other labs projects, but search is where it shines. The book starts with a thorough background of how search engines work and how to use each of the special features Google provides, from special operators to Advanced Search.

But this book goes far deeper than just the basics. The author correctly notes that different kinds of searches call for different techniques, devoting special chapters to explaining how to search for people, health information, news, products, travel information, business intelligence, and technical support. It's hard to imagine how any searcher could not be helped by several of these chapters, which provide hours of time-saving tips.

But my favorite chapter covers special tools designed to turbocharge your research. Although I am allegedly an expert, I learned about several tools that I plan to check out. If you don't know what a Web Research Manager is, or never heard of a Web Site Monitor, you owe it to yourself to find out. Any serious searcher needs to check out these shortcuts for organizing the results of your searches, as well as these tools that can alert you whenever a Web page (or sometimes even an entire site) changes.

Despite the title, one of the best things about Google Power is that Sherman never shies away from discussing other search engines and tools when they outshine Google. Google is a great search engine, but some kinds of specialized searches are best done by other facilities and the author lets you know when that is true.

Whether you are a search novice or already a power searcher, Google Power will teach you something. When you think about all the time we spend using Google, it is crazy not to invest a couple of hours in improving our skills. Read Google Power and you will get that time back tenfold before you know it.

Posted by mikemoran at 12:00 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 25, 2005

Marketing in a World of Choice

Advertising surrounds consumers but it is harder and harder to get their attention. And how do you get your ad into their iPods anyway? As consumers increasingly have control of what, when, and how to consume content, where does advertising fit in? October's Biznology newsletter explains what to do when you are Marketing in a World of Choice.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:05 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 23, 2005

Web Site Search for the Small Site

Sometimes it's not easy being a search expert. People expect that my Web site will have a great site search. And it should—after all, I do know how to do that. But up until now, I haven't even put a search facility on my site, much less a good one. And I think my reasons are instructive for what drives decisions at lots of small sites.

"Of course I think search is important," I spluttered to yet another colleague questioning why I have no search on mikemoran.com—I am attracting this question more and more frequently over the months. I never know what to say to people, but I ticked off the reasons again in my own mind:

• I have other priorities. It is not easy for me to even keep the content on my Web site up to date. I recently went 13 days without feeding the blog. I think that getting compelling content on the site is more important than a search facility.


• The site is not that big. I only have about 50 pages on the Web site itself with another 50 blog entries. I have an up-to-date site map that can help people find things, although I must admit that finding information on the blog is getting harder even for me.


• I need something free. Our book on search marketing is selling well, but it is not making us rich. I don't want to spend money on technology that is out of proportion to what it is worth in book sales. The really good search engines are usually not free, although there are more choices available than ever.


• I need something easy. I am capable of installing an open source search engine on my site (and so is my wife, who usually does most of that stuff for me, but it all takes time, so I'd prefer a search service.

But I think I am going to take the plunge in the next few days. I looked at Atomz Search and at Google Free. They are both good search engines and they allow me to customize the interface to look like the rest of my site, which is nice. I think, however, I am going to go with ROLLYO. On a site as small as mine, just about any search engine will work, because there aren't enough results for any one word to stress any ranking algorithm.

So, "Why ROLLYO?", you may ask. Because it not only offers a free search service to search my site, it also offers a way for me to give you searches of other sites on topics you are interested in. I have already created one on search marketing, which searches some of the best Web sites around for the information you are looking for. If I get a good response to this, I may create a few more searches on other subjects.

So let me know what you think. You can try the search marketing one now and I will make it available from my Web site in the next few days. Thanks in advance for the feedback.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 22, 2005

Another Book Review

Pandia Search News, the well-respected source for the latest in the search marketing industry, has posted another good review of our book, Search Engine Marketing, Inc., on their Web site.

Posted by mikemoran at 7:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 21, 2005

New Book Review from Dr. Ralph Wilson

Dr. Ralph Wilson is the latest to provide a strong review for our new book, Search Engine Marketing Inc. on his Web site. Ralph is a well-known author in his own right and a longtime expert in Internet marketing, so we were especially pleased at his kind words.

Posted by mikemoran at 6:20 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 20, 2005

New Tools for Keyword Research

For years, search marketers had few choices for keyword research tools. Wordtracker was the professional's choice, with those on lower budgets using free tools from Yahoo! and Google. But in the last few months, the keyword world has opened up, welcoming Trellian's Keyword Discovery and Hitwise Keyword Intelligence to the party.

Many of you know the drawbacks of the traditional crop of tools. Yahoo! designed its keyword selector for paid search, so it ignores singular and plural—which is important for organic search marketers. Google's Suggestion Tool has an even bigger drawback—it does not show the number of queries for each keyword. Wordtracker is a much more full-function tool, but it supports English-language keywords only. The market is ready for a more advanced tool, but have Trellian or Hitwise brought one to us?

Trellian, the maker of SEO Toolkit and other search tools, now offers Keyword Discovery, which has quickly become the biggest competitor to Wordtracker. Keyword Discovery takes a different approach from Wordtracker, which uses metasearch engines for its data. Keyword Discovery uses data from 170 search engines from around the world, sometimes employing search logs provided directly by the engines, but often “sampling” the referral logs of sites receiving traffic from search engines. It’s not known exactly what sites are being sampled, so some bias in the sample is possible here. Still, Wordtracker does not claim to use Google and Yahoo! data in its analysis—Trellian does.

Like Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery offers a list of keywords related to the one you’ve entered, including counts of each keyword. Unlike other tools, Keyword Discovery provides suggestions for misspelled keywords related to yours, and offers 12 months of data that allows you to see seasonal trends. It’s hard to judge the value of the data when it’s unknown where it comes from, but Keyword Discovery does offer new features you can’t get anywhere else.

Trellian offers two versions of Keyword Discovery, a standard edition (limited to 1,000 results per keyword) and an enterprise edition (offering up to 10,000 keyword results). Both editions are offered with monthly or yearly pricing as low as $390 annually.

Hitwise, a leading supplier of Web market intelligence, has begun to use its Web visitor data to analyze search keywords, even providing country-specific information. Alone among these tools, the Hitwise data collection technique ensures that the keywords shown were successful searches—that they resulted in a searcher actually visiting a Web site. Searches with no results or no clicks (including rank checking searches) are thus excluded from the data. Like each of these tools, it’s hard to judge whether Hitwise’s data sample is better than others’—it may skew to more popular queries.

Hitwise offers a basic version ($900 yearly) limited to 100 variations per keyword, while the 1,000-variation version weighs in at $1900 each year. Both prices are for just one geographic market, but at least Hitwise does offer country-specific data, unlike most of its competitors.

Will Trellian or Hitwise challenge Wordtracker in popularity? Only time will tell, but Wordtracker has never felt more competition, which can be nothing but good news for search marketers hungry for better keyword tools.

Posted by mikemoran at 9:15 PM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

October 7, 2005

Improving Your Web Site's Top Searches

In a recent entry, we asked if you knew the top 10 searches for your Web site's search facility. Identifying your top searches starts you on your way to improving them. But what do you do once you know what they are? Let's look at the major ways you can improve your Web site's top searches.

After you identify your top searches, you follow the same basic steps for each one:

1. Identify the best landing page. For the top pages on your site, this should be easy—what page is the right one to show? If you don't know, someone at your company does. At IBM, if someone searches for "websphere," they want the WebSphere home page. If they search for "web server," they want the same page. Identify the pages that should be returned for your top searches.


2. Check to see what pages are actually returned. When you enter your top queries, do you get that page that you picked? Is it the #1 result? If so, then celebrate and skip to step #4.


3. Get the right pages to show up. As with search marketing, optimizing your content is your best approach here—you fix your content for your Web site search and for Google as well. But there are other things to try as well. Does your Web site search results page allow results that you select manually? (They might be called "Recommendations" or "Best Bets" on your page.) Make sure that the correct page is listed there. Does your results page have ads or other promotions? You can get an ad to link to the correct answer as well. The more ways the searcher has to get to the right place, the better off you are.
   
4. Decide if you would click on it. If you've got the "right" page at the top of your search results list, that is great, but there's more to do. Look at that search results page. Does the title of your #1 result tell you that it is the right answer? Look at the rest of the information that is displayed on that search results page. Does it look like the information that would cause a searcher to click? It's great for the correct page to be the #1 result, but it's even better if the searcher sees that it is the right answer and actually clicks on it.


5. Check your clickthrough statistics. It's not enough to convince yourself that searchers will click on the right page—do they? For broad queries (such as "websphere" on IBM's site), you should see strong clickthrough on that top result: 30%, 50%, maybe even more. If your searchers don't click through on that answer, you may need to take a fresh look at your title and the other information displayed on your results page.

Use this basic "lather, rinse, and repeat" process to go through each of your popular searches, starting with #1 and moving down the list as deep as you can. You can't improve all searches this way, because many of your searches are entered infrequently, but this kind of attention to your most frequent ones will pay off with better search results and searchers who get where they are going on your site.

For more tips on optimizing your content, check out Search Engine Marketing, Inc. to see how to improve your Web pages so search engines can find them.

Posted by mikemoran at 8:32 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

October 5, 2005

Follow-up Appearance on Computer Outlook Radio Show

John Iasiuolo has invited my co-author, Bill Hunt, and me to join him again tonight at 8 pm US Eastern Time on a live broadcast from Computer Outlook. We'll be answering John's questions on our new book, Search Engine Marketing, Inc.

Our first interview covered the first few chapters of our book, but John had so many questions that he invited us back to get more in-depth with material from later chapters.

The show is aired on 90 radio stations, including the flagship KLAV 1230 AM in Las Vegas, and is also streamed from www.computeroutlook.com. You can also call in with questions or ask them over a live chat facility. John promised that the audio will be recorded and available from the site within a few days if you miss it.

Posted by mikemoran at 10:01 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack