• by David Berkowitz , October 10, 2006

I recently heard that a friend looking for help in optimizing her independent online publication received a quote from a search optimization specialist for $100,000 for the initial consultation, plus a monthly retainer. My friend told me if she had that kind of cash, she'd hire someone to work in-house. The quote seemed even funnier since I'd just returned from EyeForTravel's Travel Distribution Summit in Chicago, where a panelist from AOL described search engine optimization as "the poor man's SEM."

If that consultant receives fees anywhere near what he's quoting, he knows full well where his next meal is coming from (presumably chef Thomas Keller's Per Se, Masa with its $350 prix fix tasting menu, or if he feels like being frugal, Nobu).

EyeForTravel offered a number of presentations and sessions worth discussing here, but the one with the most meat for this column (even beyond those which I had the pleasure of taking part in) was on targeting consumers through search engines, featuring panelists from AOL, Yahoo!, Google, and Tralliance. Here's a recap.

Opt-In Sponsorships Jeff DeKorte, vice president and general manager of AOL Travel, provided a glimpse of some of AOL's newer services, such as the new AOL Search, which feels more like a mashup of Google, A9, and Windows Live. The feature to watch here is a line atop the natural results or below a field of a few sponsored results that says "see sponsored links for" and lists related searches. I wonder if consumers will make the effort to click that, or if, as I predict, that option will one day disappear.

Credible vs. Findable Jasper Malcolmson, Yahoo Travel's general manager, described travel advice as "credible, viral, powerful, findable, and personalized." He said that the most important aspect was credibility, though I disagree. If you can't find it on the page itself or if you can't find it in a search engine, everything else is meaningless. The process goes more like this: you find the advice, assess its credibility, and if it's powerful enough and speaks to you in some way (personalized), you can then decide whether you forward it (viral).

Social Media Goes Viral Yahoo's social media sensibility is seeping through all of its properties. For example, Yahoo! Trip Planner combines social networking, photo sharing, blogging, and reviews. Malcolmson said that some of the highest quality trip plans can be copied as many as fifty times as starting points for others planning their trips, and within a few generations (the first user's plans copied by various users, and then other users copying the copies), that first plan can generate as many as 1,400 others. What is Yahoo's role in all of this? It merely facilitates the community, makes it as easy as possible to use, and then steps back.

Malcolmson also noted that the Yahoo Answers phenomenon, which registered its 10 millionth answer on May 7, has now generated over 100 million answers from 60 million users around the world.

A New Travel Search Engine The one panelist not from a search engine was Ron Andruff, president of Tralliance, which manages the travel top-level domain (the extension along the lines of .com). He said that tens of thousands of .travel domains have been registered, and some countries have been especially keen on jumping aboard, with Canada, Egypt, and Malaysia among the pioneers (see www.niagarafalls.travel as an example).

The domain is also being used as the backbone for www.search.travel, a travel search site. While the engine includes all sorts of domains (general web results and sponsored links are powered by Ask.com), .travel sites in the listings include ".travel authenticated" seals and profiles, along with easy access to those sites' phone numbers. The engine includes filters that allow users to set parameters for various categories (destinations, travel agents, cruises, etc). How well this can catch on in the crowded travel search field is another question. Building it doesn't mean they'll come.

The Experience Ted Souder, Google's Midwest regional team manager for travel, not surprisingly stayed on message for Google with the company line that marketers should take their assets, put them in digital form, and get them online. He then added Google's follow-up point, that marketers should incorporate blogging, video, local radio ads, and other channels to provide a year-round consumer experience, even if the consumer would normally have a few brief touchpoints with that marketer. This led me to have one of those thoughts I know I'm not the first to think: when do we, as consumers, have time for all these experiences? I can't fault Souder for his advice; the experience is everything, right? I just like to keep my experiences for when I'm actually having them.

The Ultimate Mashup After digesting all these visions for travel search, I could envision the ultimate mashup--a travel search engine combining AOL's multimedia listings displayed on the search page with Yahoo's user-generated content, Tralliance's filters and verified results, and Google's multichannel, auction-based ad distribution platform.

That could be brilliant, or maybe it would just be dismissed as the poor man's search engine. If any of you at the engines need a consultation, you can pick my brain over dinner at Masa anytime. We'll have to make reservations well in advance, because I hear all those poor man's SEM practitioners keep snagging the best tables.