Saturday, July 19, 2008

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim

Linky Goodness, July 18

Posted: 18 Jul 2008 03:00 PM CDT

In case you haven’t noticed, it’s Friday. Woot.

  • German Google Webmaster Central blog has a fun interview with Matt Cutts on porn, big feet and spam. The post has a German translation of the transcript, but the video itself is in English.
  • Need help with Google Webmaster Toots, Google Analytics and/or Google Website Optimizer? An hour-long YouTube webinar covering all three is now live (via).
  • CNET says Eric Schmidt thinks Google will hit the mother lode when they get YouTube advertising right. Good thing they’re still brainstorming.
  • We’ve had a bit of a debate before here on whether branding or search is the “wave of the future.” Google took the hint, according to MediaPost and recently released a study saying that Search Marketing Increases Brand Value. But does that answer the question or not?

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Yahoo Bares Its Teeth: Using Home Page, Legg Mason to Fight Icahn

Posted: 18 Jul 2008 02:46 PM CDT

Yahoo’s letter to shareholders yesterday was just the first step in their latest defense against Carl Icahn’s attempts to elect a proxy board at the shareholder meeting in two weeks. Today, Yahoo and its allies strike two more blows.

First, Yahoo has begun leveraging one of its biggest assests—one of (if not the) most popular home pages on the Internet. Yahoo has put a notice about the pending board election below the fold. TechCrunch spotted this earlier today, with a box on the Yahoo home page below-the-fold reading “Your Yahoo!. Your Vote.” An alternate form of the box, as seen by CNET, reads “We have a couple of exclamation points to make.” Finally, a third iteration quotes Carl Icahn:

yahoo home page quotes icahn

The box links to proxyfacts.yahoo.com, which lists many of the same defenses that yesterday’s letter did. But probably most interesting is the chart showing fifteen public companies’ stock changes from the time that Carl Icahn became involved in the companies’ stocks:
Yahoo looks at Icahn investments
Of course, Carl Icahn is probably more likely to take risks on companies that aren’t doing so well anyway. Oddly enough, Yahoo didn’t put itself on the list…

Yahoo is also celebrating another victory today as at least one major shareholder supports the current board: Legg Mason, the second biggest stakeholder in the company, announced their support for Yang, Bostock & co. In a statement, Chairman Bill Miller said:

We believe the current Board acted with care and diligence when evaluating Microsoft’s offers. We believe the Board is independent and focused on value creation for long-term shareholders. . . .

We would prefer that the company and Mr. Icahn reach a mutual agreement on the composition of the Board and end this disruptive proxy contest.

via

Two points for Yahoo today: how long before Carl Icahn’s next volley?

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Using Search Engines Instead of the Address Bar to Navigate

Posted: 18 Jul 2008 12:43 PM CDT

Marhsall Kirkpatrick of Read Write Web makes a supposition that may be inherently incorrect.

A huge number of people online don’t know the difference between their browser’s address bar and search bar. Let’s keep that in perspective. What will it take for them to learn?

That particular point has created a great conversation over at Read Write Web including an extremely well thought out response from John Andrews.

The path to Amazon.com via Google is a richer experience for her [a user] than the direct navigation path, without much cognitive overhead and without much perceived risk.

To read John's entire response head on over to Read Write Web. I however believe that another commenter, Jahbuh, got it right when he said;

The answer is very simple - People feel safer with Google correcting their mistakes than the typo sending them to a virus, porn laden site. How many times has a slip of the finger sent you to a site you would never visit? Do a Google search and even if you do a typo somehow Google still points you to the site you want to go to.

I don't believe it is the advertising industry wanting to take advantage of inexperienced consumers, I don't think it is a design issue of the navigation bar, and I don't believe it is user ignorance that drives users to use Google and the other search engines for direct navigation.

I believe the majority of users use the search box for direct navigation because it provides a higher level of convenience and safe surfing. Should a user mistype a URL, if they are using a search engine, it will try to guess what the user actually intended and provide a set of search results that are free of any malicious software while providing the user with the opportunity to avoid any unwanted content.

For a number of years I believe a few individuals in the search marketing industry and some decision makers in companies promoting products that were perceived as malicious made business decisions that allowed them to make a lot of money while hardening users to the dangerous realities of the internet. This type of behavior and decision making is what changed the way users interact with the web.

Using search engines for direct navigation has almost become a common sense approach for many users because so many people in the past were infected with software that they didn't want and had enormously difficult times removing. Gator was the name that became synonymous with the term "spy ware" and it along with other similar types of software I believe are what really changes the browsing habits of the general public.

What do you think, in this day and age can users really not tell the difference between a search engine's search box and the navigation bar or is there a deeper relationship between users and search engines?