Google+ could displace Facebook as the No. 1 social network, according to the ForeSee Results Annual E-Business Report for the American Customer Satisfaction Index. Although this year's index does not factor in consumer satisfaction from Google's social network, the report's author, ForeSee Results CEO Larry Freed, does provide insight into what Facebook lacks. Freed said consumers struggle with Facebook's user interface and the constant changes. It's also more difficult for members to understand privacy controls. They continue to struggle with spam and ads, although advertisers and marketers like the options created to boost revenue. Forcing social networks to meet consumer needs explains why Facebook members jumped to Google+, Google's new social network. If Google+ can compete with Facebook, it will make it easier for another company to come in, such as Microsoft's Socl.com, according to Freed. "If there's too many that come out too fast, it will make it tough for Google+," he said. "Being the second social media site with a real chance of making it, you would like to see Google+ build momentum first before others get released." Microsoft Research made a "we didn't mean to, honest" publish on the Web Socl.com, an internal design project from the Microsoft research team. Overall, consumer satisfaction with social media Web sites, search engines and portals, and news and information sites rose to 75.4 on ACSI's 100-point scale, up from 2.6% a year ago. ForeSee's Index attributes satisfaction for e-business mainly to the increase in satisfaction for portals and search engines, which rose nearly 4% this year to 80, and 27% since its first measure in 2005. Satisfaction with Google rose 4 points to 83; followed by Bing with 82, up 6%. Freed believes Bing's reward program might entice consumers, too. It exchanges searches using the Bing toolbar for Amazon gift cards. Windows 7 devices and systems also come preloaded with a Bing toolbar. The site is set as the default Internet Explorer home page, which could also influence the increased number of visitors, according to the report. Ask.com at 80 jumped nearly seven points, putting it in third place behind Google and Bing. Throughout Ask.com's 11-year history, it has transitioned from a question-and-answer site to a search engine. The explosive growth of mobile has also fueled usage of Q&A sites. Citing site stats, Ask.com's iPhone app has been downloaded about 700,000 times. The online news category lost one point since last year, and remains on par with its level of customer satisfaction when first measured in 2002. News Web sites slipped one point this year with an aggregate score of 73. Foxnews.com took 82, while HuffingtonPost.com, at 69, is the lowest. Social media Web sites remain low, yet stable, with a flat aggregate score of 70. Wikipedia took the top spot with 78, up 1.3%; followed by YouTube at 74, up 1.4%. Despite reaching 750 million users, Facebook remains the lowest-scoring social media site with 66 points, up 2 points. Only 14 other sites in the 226 private sector of companies measured by the ACSI have scores tying or falling below. Those include airlines, cable companies, and a few electric utilities. MySpace didn't make the list of measured sites because ACSI could not gather enough responses to calculate a statistically reliable score. After a dozen years of measuring customer satisfaction, Freed believes satisfied customers are more loyal, as well as likely to engage in positive word-of-mouth recommendations and buy in the future. The ACSI measures 47 industries each year, online and offline, across all economic sectors.
Magnetic will launch Wednesday a site retargeting tool dubbed Magnetic Force. The offering gives site visitors text or image-based display ads, complementing the company's search retargeting service. The effort allows advertisers to leverage the intent found in search data by consumers who have visited an advertiser's Web site. About 10 clients amid the Fortune 500 have been testing the site retargeting service, but Josh Shatkin-Margolis, Magnetic founder, expects more will sign on with the fledgling company to combine site and search retargeting. The two services work together because while one drives customer acquisitions the other drives retention. It takes a consumer from a generic topic, such as "car insurance" from a search on an engine, and pushes her deeper into the funnel through different stages of intent to more specific brands. Shatkin-Margolis points to a recent study from comScore and ValueClick showing that retargeted ads increase trademark search behavior by 1,046%. And between May and December 2010, the number of U.S. marketers using site retargeting rose from 17% to 22%, according to eMarketer. The research firm also notes that during that time, the proportion of marketers launching search retargeting programs jumped from 13% to 28%. Technical similarities explain the success of combining the two strategies. A partnership between Magnetics and a network of search engines allows cookies to be dropped into a searcher's browser to identify the keywords being searched. Another cookie is dropped in the same browser when the searcher lands on a Web site. Magnetic's technology then determines the users who convert the best for specific brands and on sites. Magnetic is not the only company serving up one or both. Companies such as Microsoft claim to offer "a small volume of search remessaging," and Yahoo offers both services. Criteo CEO Greg Coleman told MediaPost the company put search retargeting on the company's product road map. Magnetic Force gives advertisers insight into customer behaviors and habits, such as the ability to gain insights into conversions by keyword, reach customers with specific brand messages, and optimize audience targeting to drive return on investment.
Back in 2008, I wrote a couple of columns for Search Insider about ICANN's new vanity generic top-level domains (gTLDs), where a person or business could now register ".anything" for the purpose of creating an open registry, or reserving it for primary brand sites (see "Anythinggoes? The Impact Of New ICANN Vanity Top-Level Domains," and "The Search And Brand Impact Of Vanity Generic Top Level Domains"). There have been many stories promoting this new development as a boon to one's natural search presence, but I beg to differ on a number of those points. One thing is clear, though: Marketers using new gTLDs will not only have to manage their sites for search and social visibility, but will also have to manage the entire gTLD for natural search. We are entering what I believe is a new frontier in search marketing, in terms of managing an entire gTLD for search visibility at a global domain level. First of all, the claims made in other articles that new gTLDs will inherently create visibility for highly competitive terms are incorrect propositions at best. The history of other gTLDs like .travel, .museum, .info, .asia, .jobs, etc., have already proven that having the exact keyword to "the right of the dot" alone does not provide any more benefit than having an exact keyword to the "left of the dot." Some of these domains have been around for almost 10 years, so there is no need to prognosticate on the benefits of keyword-based TLDs, because the proof is already there. The birth of the search-optimized TLD I do believe, however, that we have entered a new era of the "search-optimized" TLD, in the sense that the way the operator manages the registry will be a key influence on how well that TLD performs in search as a whole. Well-managed TLDs that discourage spam, or that may be proprietary, but with significant content resources and utilities, may perform well. For example, .mil and .gov are generally highly trusted TLDs with the search engines, because they are carefully managed, and contain authoritative content, with little or no possibly for spam to gain visibility. In another example, .info was not managed very well for search, and at one point the registry gave away hundreds of thousands of free domains. These domains were snapped up mostly by spammers and abused in many ways with the engines, and thus the signal for the .info gTLD as a whole was weakened greatly, to the point that may be somewhat of a search liability to build a new site on this extension. There has to be a solid content play behind the URL, with a significant amount of external signals for it to perform well in search across a wide variety of terms, if not to overcome some of their spammy neighbors on the .info TLD. Even recently, Google banned an entire subdomain on a country-code TLD (ccTLD) and freehost from its search index, because most of the content at the domain level was considered too spammy and malicious for the index. A warning about site migration One of the biggest challenges in enterprise site redesign is transitioning and maintaining natural search equity from one design to the next, even when the old and new reside on the same .com address. As some brands may choose to move their primary brand presence from .com to .brand or .keyword, they have to be careful for the sake of their search program. At stake are millions to billions of dollars in revenue, backlinks, traffic itself, and years of positive search history. But there are interesting opportunities from a branding, marketing, and utility perspective. Imagine using a URL like "keyword.google" to go directly to a Google search, or having a well-managed .music gTLD that was able to help users navigate to the music they desire. Overall, marketers should tread very carefully if they decide to move their primary presence from a .com to a .brand or .generic, and approach SEO in the same way they would approach it for a complete site overhaul. And they should also be very careful about optimizing their brand gTLD for search channels as a whole. For right now, though, I'm advising most clients to potentially acquire and reserve a gTLD, but wait on actually developing it, if they do anything with it at all, short of a 301 redirect to the brand.com.
@font-face { font-family: "Times New Roman"; }@font-face { font-family: "Calibri"; }p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal { margin: 0in 0in 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri; }a:link, span.MsoHyperlink { color: blue; text-decoration: underline; }a:visited, span.MsoHyperlinkFollowed { color: purple; text-decoration: underline; }table.MsoNormalTable { font-size: 10pt; font-family: "Times New Roman"; }p.ListParagraph, li.ListParagraph, div.ListParagraph { margin: 0in 0in 10pt 0.5in; line-height: 115%; font-size: 11pt; font-family: Calibri; }div.Section1 { page: Section1; }ol { margin-bottom: 0in; }ul { margin-bottom: 0in; } As an employer, I look at a LOT of resumes. I've found that whether you're new to search marketing or a seasoned veteran, there are certain approaches you can take to enhance (or at least not sabotage) your chances to land your perfect search marketing position. 1. Agencies and in-house are different. Approach them differently. Working for a search marketing agency is a different experience than working as an in-house search marketer. Each type of position carries with it unique perspectives. An agency addresses many types of industries and clients, whereas in-house search marketers are often focused on one industry, one company brand and its product/service brands. If you have experience in the industry the company hiring for the in-house position is in, highlight that as much as you can. Even if you don't have search experience in that industry but have an understanding of the industry, that's a plus. If you're focusing on an agency position, highlight your variety of experience in as many types of industries as you can. 2. Be active in social media, but be cautious. Especially if you're in SEO today, companies will likely research your background, but not just because they want to check out your professionalism. Social media offers a fantastic opportunity for you to showcase yourself and network with other search engine marketing professionals. But, as many HR professionals warn: be cautious. You want to be sure you put your best foot forward, so don't let some random comment or photo in social media be your downfall. Make sure your profiles are clean. 3. Blog! Show off your knowledge! Blog and share your blog posts via social media for both networking purposes and to help generate more results for searches on your name. Also, many employers are always looking for employees with strong writing skills, so show yours off! 4. If you have a really common name (like Janet Miller), consider using an initial or three names. When I first got married, my boss gave me a ribbing about the fact that I chose to go by three names (Janet Driscoll Miller). But it's served me well as an SEO, because there's only one "Janet Driscoll Miller," so I don't have to compete in search with other, non-related people like celebrities, sports figures, authors, etc. Think of your name as your personal brand. Especially if there are some negative search results for someone with the same name as you, consider other ways to encourage people to search for your name, such as adding your middle initial or your middle name. 5. Think of your resume as a "landing page." A while back, I wrote a post on my blog about making your resume your "landing page." Just like a landing page, a resume might only get browsed for a few seconds before a reviewer will make an initial decision to continue to read more or "abandon" it. What makes a landing page great? Apply many of the same principles to your resume. Don't feel you have to be boxed in by a traditional resume design; some of the best resumes I've received caught my initial attention because they didn't look like the other resumes in my massive review pile. 6. Don't tout unimpressive statistics about your experience. For example, I often meet SEOs who brag to me how they have optimized their own blog or someone's website for an obscure, super-long-tail keyword term that has very little competition, like "search engine optimizers in the West End of Richmond Virginia." Really? Don't do that. Instead, focus more on your skills and your experience.