Online Marketing Blog

Whether you’re part of the search industry or just affected by it, you’ve probably not only grown used to change but are excited by it.

Attending a session this morning about personalized and universal search, we had a panel full of excited folks and audience members all bursting at the seams to discuss what these two types of search bring.

Panelists included:

Moderator:
Greg Jarboe, President and Co-Founder, SEO-PR

Speakers:
Dave Davies, CEO, Beanstalk
Jonathan Mendez, Founder and Chief Strategy Officer, OTTO Digital
Richard Zwicky, Founder and CEO, Enquisite
Aaron D’Souza, Software Engineer, Google
Bill Barnes, Co-Founder & Executive Vice President, Enquiro Search Solutions Inc.
James Colborn, Director, US Trade Marketing, Microsoft Corporation

The personalization of search results is not the only way to target someone, you can also personalize your website to ensure your visitors feel engaged as soon as they arrive.

Gordon Hotchkiss gave some great examples and data behind personalized search and proved that I actually does work. Everyone remembers the golden triangle right? It shows how people use Google and where they actually click. Now, with personalized search and universal search enabled, the golden triangle changes quite a it. The focus shifts to the content targeted directly to the user and, if there is imagery in the results, the users start there. In their test, Gordon said that when personalized search results were given, users were 3x more likely to click on a results and much less likely to click on ads.

Spotlight on Search Interview with Gord Hotchkiss of Enquiro, SEMPO

It’s been too long since we’ve done a Spotlight on Search interview and I’m happy to say we’ve been able to catch up with world traveler and search marketing ninja master Gord Hotchkiss. He’s probably never been characterized quite that way, but there’s a first for everything. Gord is CEO of search marketing agency, Enquiro out of BC Canada and is a very busy/active speaker with a variety of industry conferences.

This isn’t Gord’s first appearance at Online Marketing Blog though, he was good enough to talk about Enquiro’s most recent analysis and eye tracking report of the major 3 search engines last year. I would highly recommend checking out this very insightful review of Google, Yahoo and MSN search results – at least until personalized search takes over.

This was more of a speed intro to some of Google’s newer services. Topics included Google Analytics, Google Gadgets, Webmaster Tools and Personalized Search. Each presenter gave a quick 10 minute overview of their topic and it was hardly enough to really get to know much about each service. The real value of this session was in the question answer portion. I learned that Google’s personalized search is going to offer analytics in the upcoming weeks so that you can see what people are looking for in your custom search. Customized Google Analytics reports are also being discussed, however it’s hard to say when that may become a reality.