RAMP-The Content Optimization Company

In a release that went out this Monday, iProspect revealed that according to a recent study comparing universal and vertical search:

…in the case of news, image, and video results, search engine users click specialized content within general search results more than they do within vertical search results.

The study, conducted by Jupiter Research demonstrates the natural user preference towards universal search as well as the increasing importance of getting content onto the coveted first page of search results.

Only 17 percent of search engines user click a “news” result after conducting a news-specific search whereas 36 percent click “news” results within blended search results. With video, 17 percent of search engine users click “video” results within blended search results, compared to only 10 percent who click a “video” result after conducting a video-specific search. Among the various content types now showing up in blended search, “news” results were found to be the most clicked form of vertical content. And what about video; why are the numbers so low? The study noted:

Google—the largest search engine in terms of searches performed—does not offer a vertical specific search for videos on its main search page. Instead, video search is an additional click away…This is one of several probable reasons why video finishes a distant third behind images and news in terms of vertical search usage.

According to the iProspect study, it is paramount for marketers to optimize all of their digital content types so that they may be found within blended search results. The study emphasizes how important it has become for publishers to have all of their digital content turn up at the top of search engine results lists, both from a traffic-generating perspective as well as a branding perspective. Those organizations with a diverse portfolio of digital assets are best positioned to capitalize on the benefits provided by blended or universal search.

In order to successfully get these digital assets to the top of Google—and other search engines—Web publishers will need to optimize their content. One constant throughout the evolution of the Web has been the importance of text in driving search and navigation. The key to optimization across content types is the text associated with each article, image, sound bite or video clip. The ability to attribute these objects with text in the form of tags, categories and transcripts is critical to plugging this content into the top search results pages across the Web.

“Blended search allows marketers to capitalize on their digital assets without the need to affect a change in user behavior,” said Robert Murray, President, iProspect.

It essentially brings a variety of content types to users – where they are most comfortable and open to receiving it – and allows them to choose between the various result types…The bottom line is that companies that have optimized a variety of digital assets will have a distinct advantage. Those who lack such assets will essentially forfeit page real estate to their competitors.

Information Week had an interesting article last week responding to the addition of the extra site-constrained search boxes that now appear on Google search results pages.

Google believes these new destination search boxes will help make information more accessible to users as they allow searchers to conduct follow-up searches, drilling down into a specific site’s content without leaving google.com. Some find the change irksome, as searches conducted through the new search boxes mean more ad revenue for Google. As Google describes it:

Our goal is to provide the best user experience, and ads that are related to searches from competing providers are useful to consumers.

According to Google, they developed this feature to improve the user search experience—something all content producers and distributors should also take very seriously. Satisfied users stay on your site longer, consuming more content and in turn increasing your advertising revenue.

This “search within search” makes a strong case for the growing importance of good SEO practices and improved universal site search. Because the currency in the search economy is text, search engine-friendly Web pages must use text to increase the discoverability and placement of all content—including audio and video—across the major search engines. If your content is optimized so that users find specific, topically relevant pages in Google search results—and are not merely directed to your home page—odds are better that the searcher will click through to your content sooner.

But getting users to your site is only the beginning. Even IDC search analyst and Google critic Sue Feldman acknowledges that many small sites (and I would say many medium and large sites as well) have poor search capabilities—which may make users leave the site more quickly. If publishers improve their internal site search by surfacing results across multiple forms of content, they will keep users engaged; I will stay on the site longer if I can read an article, then move onto a related video clip or sound bite. For this kind of comprehensive, universal site search, publishers need to use the text currency as well. In this way they create a microcosm of the Internet’s search economy within their own site across their own content.

It may not feel fair, but it makes a whole lot of sense that Google would try to capitalize on this opportunity to both improve the user search experience online and increase their ad revenue. The best response from content producers would be to make sure their own content—text, audio, video, and image—is discoverable and consumable both through search engines and within their own sites. Google has already taken off with text content, but video is still a relatively new frontier. As such, online video offers a new opportunity for content owners to get ahead; with the right tools, content owners can take control of the optimization, distribution and consumption of their video content in a way they never could with text content. Control is essential for content owners because only by managing their brand, the context within which their content is consumed and the associated advertising can they capitalize on the growing revenue opportunities online.

According to Peter Morville, we are “at the crossroads of ubiquitous computing and the Internet” however as he sees it, “the user experience is out of control,” and “findability” will become the real story moving forward. In a recent post on Read Write Web, Richard MacManus examines Morville’s ideas, particularily his notion of ambient findability—which Melville defines as “the quality of being locatable or navigable.” Ambient findability, Morville contends, becomes more and more fundamental as information overload increases and mobile devices play a greater role in our day-to-day activities.

Morville’s most recent book, appropriately titled Ambient Findability, explores his theories on user experience and information overload. The central thesis is that information literacy, information architecture, and usability are critical components of the new world order. He further states that only by planning and designing the best possible software, devices, and Internet, will we be able to maintain this connectivity in the future.

Search is among our most important and complex challenges. As the choice of first resort for many users and tasks, search is a defining element of the user experience. And, as a unique amalgam of content, metadata, technology and design, the search results interface demands intense cross-disciplinary collaboration.

Morville believes that the future will be about something beyond search—and that something is his “findability.” His conclusion is a broad call for greater innovation—the seeds of which he sees in both Google Book Search and EveryZing. As the wealth of information continues to expand and the line blurs between on and offline activity, search becomes increasingly complicated and multidimensional. Business intelligence systems, such as software built to find and sort based on patterns, will need to bring together taxonomies and tags so that browsing and search complement one another and enhance the user experience.

Search is not broken, however the search results leave much to be desired. Meta Data, which is really just “information about information”, will be one of the biggest growth areas this decade in terms of R&D and application development. The Semantic Web vision will only happen when content producer invest in technology and systems to automatically and consistently generate accurate meta-data for their content. This meta data becomes the key to “Ambient Findability” for all content across all formats and all devices.

As globalization increases, technologies grow more advanced and human knowledge expands, we must adapt on an individual as well as a societal level. Our knowledge continues to mushroom, becoming too great to store in our print libraries and, for each person, in our minds alone. As online networks and social sites become deeply integrated in people’s lives, the virtual becomes inextricable from our “offline” activities, communities, and lives. With greater amounts of personal information moving online, we need ever more powerful and accurate search to keep our contacts, photos, videos etc. accessible. Universal search will become invaluable as people take advantage of the free storage capacity the web has to offer for everything from pictures to videos to calendars and contact lists; as our lives and our memories move online, our need for comprehensive universal search will grow exponentially. Web storage—unlike our attics and basements—must be easily navigable.

Storage Capacity

There are a number of factors that point towards the exciting direction of information storage, particularly as it relates to people’s sense of their real and virtual selves and the steady merger of these concepts into one cohesive identity. As Bhavin Turakhia, Founder & CEO of Directi highlights on his blog, Web 2.0 applications act as extensions of our desktops, storage costs are continually dropping, and people now expect nearly unlimited storage online.

The Implications

Dropping storage costs and free space to store data online—particularly within social networking sites—mean that more and more you can store anything and everything about your life at little to no cost. YouTube, Flickr, Facebook et all are already accumulating multiple facets of people’s lives online. The virtual world has grown so that what we do and how we represent ourselves online are now essential components of our identities. A recent report from accustream entitled, “User Generated Video 2005 – 2008: Mania Meets Mainstream” shows that the market for user generated videos grew by an estimated 70% in 2007, up from a total 13.2 billion views generated in 2006. These are videos average people are making and uploading; these are vignettes, pieces of our lives on YouTube. The same report forecasts that the market will continue to grow by 52% in 2008, reaching 34 billion views.

Social networking sites only want to encourage these trends. In a MediaPost article about the coming launch of the MySpace Developer Platform (an initiative in direct response to the success that rival Facebook has had with its own open developer program), MySpace COO Amit Kapur states: “This is a critical year in the evolution of the Internet” describing his focus for MySpace as creating an increasingly “personal, portable, and collaborative Web.”

The Transactive Web

And what about our own personal storage capacity: our memory? MediaPost’s Search Insider blog had an interesting couple of entries by Gord Hotchkiss recently relating to what he calls “transactive memory” and its place in the digital age. As he illustrates, we have different methods for storing our memories. Hotchkiss explains that as some people are better at remembering certain types of things, we have adapted to extend our memory capabilities collectively by using transactive memory. This neurological plasticity allows our brain to prune itself, getting rid of capacities we no longer need while strengthening those that we do.

Hotchkiss raises the questions: What about computers, and, by extension, the Internet? What about search? New technologies let us dump the details of our life on a hard drive or website somewhere and search for it when we need it. In the place of all this memory digital storage is freeing up, Hotchkiss thinks we may develop greater skills in navigating online spaces. We may improve our navigation skills, but more importantly, we will expect comprehensive, powerful universal search technology to make finding all things virtual as easy as a simple click of your mouse.

Forums and communities are the gathering space on the Internet for like-minded people to share ideas, ask questions, and possibly connect and make friends.

We decided to take a peek and observe some podcasting forums (which are abundant with chatter) to check out some of the popular topics being discussed on podcasts.

Here are just a few:

• Ways for podcasters to make money
• Promoting your podcasts
• Podcasting business models
• Podcast creation technology
• Recording phone calls on podcasts

If you are planning to do your own podcast, do check out some of these forums for some really good information. We found out a great get-together for podcasters in the Chicago area coming up in June. Check it out if you are in the area.

By the way, it seems like monetizing podcasts seems to be a hot topic in these forums. Many of these podcasters spend a lot of time and effort in producing their shows and they need to be rewarded in some way.