Serendipitous Web searching

Sometimes serendipitous web searching turns up little gems, today was no exception.
In a fascinating web Blog titled (link) ‘Paid Search Marketing’ I have copied vast chunks of the Blog keeping the structure of the form of the argument.

http://www.seoresearcher.com/paid-search-marketing-vs-natural-search-promotion.htm


The premise of the piece starts with:-

“Many web marketers see paid search marketing as the fastest way to bring traffic to their online shops. At the first glance the pay-per-click scheme looks easy: you bid on a keyword, higher bids get higher positions (Overture), and web users see your listing among the top results for your target keyword”.

The problem he identifies is:-

“You pay for your visitors and hope to quickly get targeted traffic. But more and more often you have to raise bids above the threshold of profitability in order to put your listings to the top of paid search results?”

The resulting question-

“Is it worth to do online business at all? --- is time to seriously consider promoting your website in natural (organic) search results”

The Blog analysis utilizes eye activity, i.e. eye-hit maps to show:-

“that web users search organic results first (even if they have to scroll down!) and only after that and not always look through the paid search listings”.

This produces a number of ‘facts’

“1. Natural Search pulls 250% more traffic than the paid search.

2. Paid Search Lives Off Natural Search - a parasitic system – it uses natural search to make money from the paid listings - - clearly – web users search organic results first (even if they have to scroll down!) and only after that and not always look through the paid search listings - that 63% of top organic listings will get a click.

3. Long Tail Search Keywords Convert The Best. -- One multiple-keyword phrase brings much less traffic then a generic one-word search term - even mediocre pages get substantial traffic

4. Natural Search Visitors Convert Nearly 30% Higher Than Paid Search”.

To Sum up the Blog said “

1. 
   

For many websites more than half of traffic comes with long tail keywords than from shorter one-two keyword phrases. For some recently created sites almost all traffic is supplied by long tail keywords.




Targeting long tail keyword phrases will bring more revenue since they represent a bigger part of your traffic.




You will make more sales with long tail keywords because they have a higher conversion ratio.




It doesn’t take much effort to rank well for long tail keywords in natural search results.




You will get more income from visitors coming from natural search results because they convert better than those arriving to your website via paid listings.




Having traffic from the long tail keywords in natural search results saves you your PPC campaign money”.

My interest here is that it would appear; that people doing the searching ‘discriminate’ when searching. They recognise that an ad promise to sell something, does not necessarily equate to solving the problem that invoked the reasons for the search in the first place.

This would imply that there is a need to rethink the approach advertisers should take on the Web.

ads and marketing

Thumbing through the web, this blog comment caught my attention
The blog “YouTube hailed as advertising medium of the future” by Jane Hoskyn, vnunet.com 26 Jun 2006

The key points of the article says:

“YouTube is the advertising model of the future, according to one of the world's biggest ad agencies…..The viral, interactive and community-led nature of the free video-sharing site make it the ideal platform for ads and marketing….YouTube has a greater reach among some US audiences than music broadcaster MTV….. advertisers should use, and learn from, sites like YouTube…..Once consumers have interacted with brands, they will not go back to being shouted at by marketers…Consumers should be allowed to create their own commercials…..even if they are negative.”

umm..... I thinks another sign of change

Social Network Analysis of Ajax Books

A Post Agile Ajax: Social Network Analysis of Ajax Books by Dietrich Kappe (Pathfinder’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO)) on August 21, 2006 produces an interesting display using a directed graph on Ajax books sold on Amazon following the links "customers who bought this book also bought..."

This led me, via a link, to The Social Life of Books and a comment "A book author and/or publicist could use the knowledge of existing book networks to position a book where there is a hole in the network....rich upside of untapped possibilities of how to analyze the data and apply the findings ."

Interview: What is meaning-based computing? - IT Week

Interview: What is meaning-based computing? - IT Week: "Interview: What is meaning-based computing?"

MBC

"This is a big change [in the way IT works] as it is really moving the data back to what humans want. We started with human data, then IT came along and we took all the rich information and boiled it down to database tables. Now we are going back and computers are catching up with what the humans can do. We are just at the beginning of this movement, but in a few years time you will see unstructured information used and processed all over the place."

Knowledge is a Commodity

The philosopher Lyotard proposed that the post-modern condition has, and fundamentally is, a process of, externalizing the learning and teaching of knowledge. For him, the key contributing cause is due to the scientific status and role of informatics. The science that places a reliance of values upon the codification of information; that is; its use, transmission and method of production (as an example see the mission statement of the IFIP Technical Committee). Perhaps the best example of this codification at work is found in the in the role that Requirements fulfils in the production of IT systems. If, externalizing the process of knowledge is the natural part of the post-modern condition, why should we be concerned by this process?

Lyotard argues that the externalizing process of knowledge, fundamentally changes our relation to it and affects all aspects of life today. For instance he argues that “the informational commodity indispensable to productive power – is the ‘major’ stake in the world-wide competition for power”.

Taken from this viewpoint the concept of commoditization of knowledge, binds together product and services in a post-industrial glue that transforms information into an economic resource.

How long should a Blog Be?

Fifteen minutes of fame makes the point that mass audiences would only pay attention to any issue for 15 minutes, but how long does it take to read and digest the contents of a Blog. In Blog of Dreams it is suggested that “When talking about blog post length specifically, it’s really a question of subject matter”.

Hence, there is a dilemma of tension between ‘attention’ and ‘subject matter’. Attention is the subject matter belonging to the individual, my time, that I spend attending to your subject matter. On the other hand, subject matter is from your time that you want me to attend to.

At some point, your subject matter and my attention intersect.

With the intersection is the succession to the demand and supply constructs. Such as my demand for that subject matter, your supply.

Except, now, in virtual spaces, having a virtual alter existence, my attention is a physical data item, recordable in milliseconds of a Blog internet web search. My grazing for content of subject matter is explicitly known within the millisecond of typing in and returning a recognisable name. My attention is known on the same level as your supply of subject matter.

My attention, is directly related the match to the subject matter returned on a search.

Thus, if I deem that it does not match my attention, then a choice appears to reject or attend to the subject matter.

So how long does that take to attend, to capture attention in the web, is the length of time I devote to looking. The Web and especially Web2.0 marks a fundamental change in a relationship, where previously, my attention could only be considered as part of a mass, as an aggregate of others anonymous demands for subject matters.

Now the relationship is a one-to-one. With a nano-second attention span.

How do we find others in Web2.0 communication

There are two assumptions that I think will need re-assessing by the taxonomists who want to impose structural organisation and order upon the concepts of Web2.0 thinking.

These are not new questions – but the point about searching is the ability to find what you want.

The first problem concern is; whether or not, we know what we want before we are able to ask the right question. If we already know, what we are looking for, then why bother in looking up an answer?

Alternatively; if we do not know what we are looking for then what is the question?

A library / super / meta search facilitates known end points. Or a proceeds down a branch until the leaf node is reached. And this relies upon a structure of hierarchy, that is based upon known structure and form.

The problem is that the structure of Web2.0 especially Blogs is that they are flat and not hierarchical. The only progression is now one of time – a temporal order –

We have to think in terms of mosaic patterns and colours;

i.e. the squares surrounding me are different to the one I am on NOW ;
the surrounding squares may be another colour, (different hue)
but - I leap over there, (somewhere else) to the same colour, I will end up on a different part of the pattern or picture. (Additionally I will not know the picture)

If I need to look up the exact usage then I link to the Wikipedia the free encyclopaedia

Making serendipitous discoveries is apart of what happens – the sense making is the sense that we place on the information, in the here and now, for the purpose, intention we wish to use it, at the time – that is the preceding moment - of the search, or link.

Fluidity

I would like to suggest that one of the most important aspects of Web0.2 is - ‘fluidity’ – but what would – does that mean to information

Current approaches of IS-IT tend to think of information as an object to categorise, label or pigeon hole. I would like to suggest that this is not unlike, and should be considered similar to the Marxists ideologies in setting out a code to fit to a particular mindset.

In Web0.2 we have to think that information is no longer static, it has the quality of ‘fluidity’.

Information can start out as just ‘gas’ a vapour of an idea, a notion or a concept and condenses into droplets of visible ink, written thoughts of a plan, as the author forms up the notion of a communication, at which point the publishing on WEB 0.2 facilitates, invites other to contribute, until a stream of a thought appears as a liquid state, amendments, criticism re-writing. Eventually the flow will naturally slow down, the subject begins to meander around even stagnate, if the temperature drops, the activity slows down then the laws of nature usually suspends activity turning it into ice.

Therefore, Information has potential to move between states of activity

Blogerism

Blogerism is - ism's

Negative
Worrying aspect is that anybody can say anything about anybody else
Is Blogging nothing more than an ideal conspiracy medium
The problems of defamation
The problems of copying
The problems of Web-Mobism - that the leaders politico become distracted into respond to the Mob on the Blog web -
the 'Must-do-something-about-this' - response without long term thought

Positive
The freedom to challenge
gather a range of opinions
freedom to name or expose the truth
dissemination of information
the politician has to take notice of the individual

Content authoring

Web 2.0 has various characteristics that differentiate it from its immediate predecessor Web 1.0

Perhaps one the main differences beginning to expose itself is the ability to ‘change content’, with given authoring permissions, anybody with enabled access is able to make changes to text and in doing so are able to change the informational characteristics of the text. This is rather obvious perhaps and certainly not new, as many authors often start by reiterating other author’s positions and words. But the ability for anybody to amend or delete a piece of text and consequently alter its meaning ‘moves’ the centre of the ownership of the authoring, and of the meaning of text, out of the private sphere, and relocate its meaning into the sphere of activity carried out in a public domain. Thus making a writer a performer. Whereas before, in the pre-Blogging era, the act of writing was largely considered to be a private relationship with the reader, as the reading followed-on, an appendage to the finished publicised article.

Updated Monday, 12 December 2005

Three philosophical positions of Requirements

Three key arguments stand out, Behaviourism, Functionalism and Cognitivism, which promulgate a claim to be theoretical solutions to Descartes’ dualism. The Cartesian challenge, the problem of other-minds, and the mind-body problem, has long held a certain fascination and engagement for computer scientists, supplying the foundations for some very powerful arguments, whose relevance, underpinning and justification still reverberate around today in much IS thinking. Its relevance is especially pertinent to a theory of Requirements; this is a brief discussion on how Behaviourism, Cognitivism and Functionalism underpin Requirements
- To Be Continued -

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