Seems that we’re not the only ones to take issue with Cuil.

Eric Chabrow, a writer for CIO Insight, says the same thing. Seems like there’s a lot of hype and spin for the engine, and though it shows promise, it’s far from Google-Killer status.

Let’s set the stage:

a) Google buys technology from budding entrepreneur

b) Entrepreneur leaves Google

c) Entrepreneur launches competitive search service

Sound familiar?

Yesterday, Anna Patterson and a team of ex-Googlers launched Cuil (pronounced Cool), the latest in a line of Google-killer search services. The latest numbers from the Cuil team indicate they have over 120 billion pages indexed.

But apparently, the 120 billion pages don’t include our site (click that link for a Cuil search on Azul 7).

Hey Cuil - with so many pages, couldn’t you find space for our site? We have good search engine love from the other big boys - where’s the love from you? I’m in to page 4 of the results set, and I’m not seeing anything…yet.

See an article on CNN announcing the Cuil launch.

(click the image to start the presentation. Quicktime is required. You can download Quicktime here)

This presentation was given to LifeScience Alley on Thursday, June 26 2008. It was a great opportunity for us to talk with those in attendance about Search Engine Optimization, Paid Search Advertising, and how these strategies influence the biomedical marketplace.

You can also download the presentation in Powerpoint or PDF format.

I got some great feedback on my last blog post, “Why Advertising is Irrelevant.” It has spurred some great discussions with people I admire and who’s opinion I respect. I have to admit I wanted to be provocative because of the tired old approach of blanketing the earth with ad copy to get my attention, or worse, reading about work that puts gold statues on agency shelves but doesn’t help the client.

That said, I think I need to decamp for a moment. Everything in the marketing mix has it’s time and place. A TV ad still is probably the best choice for quickly gaining general awareness for some consumer audiences. My point is that we’ve got to start thinking differently.

Our goals as marketers should be to come up with great creative work, but it needs to be more driven by consumer input than ever before….and I don’t mean the kind of input that chooses the ending of Hollywood movies. I am talking using a measurement-driven marketing model to make the appropriate choices at the appropriate times by using input gathered from your customers.

This is easy to write about in a blog, but much more difficult to implement. This is hard stuff for most companies. Even most consultants who are talking about measurement-driven marketing, only get a piece of the puzzle (the left brain or the right) but can’t put the entire picture together in their own consulting company, let alone with the clients. You know as well as I do that internal silos, management structures and lack of clear directives are keeping measurement practices from gaining ground in most companies.

We’ve been thinking a lot about this problem and have been developing some alliances around this involving management consultant, analytics tools and design and development practices that are helping companies gain customer insight through metrics to improve marketing effectiveness. To steal a phrase from Mike Ackmann, one of our favorite consultants, the goal is “Data, not Drama.”

To meet this goal, we’ve crafted a different approach:

1) Strategy Integration
Develop integrated strategies involving key stakeholders across all disciplines in the company. Involving Marketing, Operations, HR, Finance, Technology and Sales.

2) Profitability Practice
Develop processes and practices to integrate customer interaction data into actionable business intelligence across the organization. We translate what is happening out there in the marketplace to what it means for your business.

3) Practical Application
Start simple. Measure what you can today and begin to develop a measurement/profitability practice within your organization. This applies to technology we choose as well. We look for the simplest, most cost-effective tools and technology to get the job done. Learn more about getting started ……

Microsoft released it’s adCenter Excel Plugin. Ok, so it’s not really a true Microsoft product, but at this point who cares? This is the kind of functionality that search marketers have been waiting for - the ability to tie the wealth of data available in the search platform with the analysis and modeling capabilities of Excel.

The Excel plugin ties in to the MS Keyword Services Platform. Originally developed by ad Sage, this plugin allows search marketers direct, integrated access to Microsoft’s Keyword Services Platform - which is the holy grail for all things related to MS’s keyword intelligence.

Our first thoughts - VERY impressive. The ad-hoc querying ability encourages exploration (not to mention that the big buttons are easy to understand). It’s pretty straightforward to drill down into deeper intel. Excel automatically puts differing dimensions of keyword research onto different tabs making it easy to organize your research.

The only downside we can see at this point is that this data is coming from the Internet’s #3 (or lower) ranked search engine. So this really only represents a fraction of the keyword intel that’s available.

Still - it’s a huge step in the right direction, and kudos to Microsoft for being the leader. Google and Yahoo have the capabilities to do this, perhaps they’ll follow suit?

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel steps down from the helm of the search/media giant. Yahoo founder Jerry Yang (otherwise known as “Chief Yahoo”) returns to
head the company for the first time in more than a decade.

:: continue reading this ocean post ::

On Monday AdWeek published an article pondering the question - ‘Does Search Get Too Much Credit’. The article discussed the rising popularity of search engine marketing, how it relates to larger branding initiatives, and the tendency of marketers to apply too much credit to the “last click” leading to a sale or conversion.

From the article:

…if you go upstream from (search) clicks, a lot of users have been to the advertiser web site before because they’ve been exposed to other advertising…

This article couldn’t have come at a better time. Search marketing budgets everywhere are expanding and more organizations are devoting resources to the interactive space. It’s nice to see that a leading publication such as Adweek is taking notice, and their commentary on the last click debate sheds
light onto an increasingly complex scenario - who gets the credit for success?

:: continue reading this ocean post ::

In a widely anticipated move to counter Microsoft’s entrance into the on-demand application space, Google and Salesforce have teamed up on a global partnership and announced “Salesforce Group Addition featuring Google AdWords” today.  This jointly developed product will allow a connection between Google AdWords accounts and Salesforce accounts, offering smoother integration and linkage between AdWords and Google accounts.  This first release of a co-developed product is targeted at SMB’s who may already be customers of SalesForce but haven’t hooked AdWords and Salesforce together.

The buzz on the Internet has been speculating that Google and Salesforce would join forces, but many thought it might be more than just a simple integration between SF and AdWords.  Microsoft has been making a strong push into the hosted-apps space with their Live platform, and is expected to move forward with a strategy to offer it’s Dynamics software suite as a hosted application.  This would be a direct competitor to Salesforce.   With Google pushing it’s “Apps” platform, a merger between Google and Salesforce seemed like a natural fit, in part to stave off the looming threat from Microsoft as well as to diversify it’s revenue streams.

First steps in partnerships are often much less glamorous than most would like.  Many were expecting a larger initial engagement between Google and Salesforce right out of the chute and today’s announcement is more evolutionary than revolutionary, but it’s likely to get more intense moving forward.

Salesforce.com, Google Launch SMB Tool via [PCWorld.com]

Which came first - the chicken or the egg…the advertisers or the buyers?

Following in the footsteps of Google, Yahoo has rolled out Quality Pricing for their “Panama” search advertising platform, and is betting that if advertisers jump on their bandwagon, the buyers will soon follow.

The basic premise is the more time advertisers spend in making sure their ads are highly relevant to users’ queries, the more they will be rewarded by receiving higher levels of traffic at cheaper rates. Says Yahoo, “Spend more time creating great ads that generate traffic, and we’ll cut your prices”.

The move by Yahoo comes at a time when their search engine share is a distant second to Google (at least in the US), and Microsoft, Ask, and other 2nd and 3rd tier engines are slowly but surely siphoning away customers and traffic. Part of their strategy to stop/reverse this trend is based on the premise that if advertisers start crafting better campaigns, the searches will be more productive, users will be presented with better search results, and traffic to Yahoo and its other web properties would grow.

In doing so, they’re playing the chicken or the egg game in a space that’s boiling with competition and innovation. All of their eggs (pardon the pun) are in one basket. They’ve turned over the future of their online advertising business to the one group of people that are directly responsible for revenue - the advertisers.

But what incentives to the advertisers have to write better ads if the traffic isn’t there to begin with?

In the not-so-distant past, Yahoo/Overture advertisers could spend as much time optimizing their campaigns as they would engaging in a cat and mouse game of click price inflation. The old Overture platform gave so much information that advertisers could see exactly what their competitors were paying per click for a specific position in the search results. With a watchful eye, savvy advertisers could position their ad campaigns to receive tremendous exposure at a fraction of the cost of a competitor. But for others it was a constant battle to manage exposure and cost.

Then came Panama, and those days were over. Competitive click pricing was out, and cost trends and projections (similar to Google AdWords) were in. Instead of seeing fixed cost for a specific position on a search results page, advertisers had to pay more attention to the quality of their ads and get back to search marketing basics - optimization and testing.

The latest move could be forcing the hand that feeds Yahoo one too many times. With Panama, the change was needed. Smaller players with little web advertising experience or resources couldn’t compete with the larger behemoths that had the people and finances to throw at online campaigns. Panama changed that and provided more equal footing to all advertisers.

But though its intentions are good, Yahoo has gone one step too far in the wrong direction by placing responsibility in the hands of advertisers. Searchers want to see good content, search results, AND good ads - not just good ads. Yahoo isn’t losing traffic because their ads aren’t attracting visitors, Yahoo is losing traffic because Yahoo isn’t attracting visitors.

The fundamental behavior of web users is changing from passively receiving information to actively exploring and seeking out information. With the rise of “Web 2.0″ sites like Digg and YouTube where users are responsible for elevating and demoting content, the marketplace is shifting from the behemoth portal model to one that’s more fluid and dynamic.

Users no longer cry to be spoon fed “Picks of the Week” or “Hot Sites”. Search engines and other discovery tools have enabled web users to control their own online journey, regardless of the information they’re seeking. And it’s not uncommon for people to use one service for search, a different for email, and yet another for news or entertainment.

To presume increasing the quality of advertisements will miraculously draw back all the users Yahoo has lost is misguided. Despite the financial incentives to advertisers, Quality Pricing places too much responsibility for solving Yahoo’s problems on advertisers, and not enough on Yahoo itself.

Overview: Quality-Based Pricing via [Yahoo.com]

comScore has released its latest search engine rankings for April 2007. Not surprising, Google continues it’s march towards search dominance, moving up 1.4% from the previous month to 49.7% of all US internet searches.
Both Yahoo and Microsoft’s search sites declined slightly, as did Ask’s rankings. It will be interesting to see how Ask’s numbers move (up or down) as they move forward with their “algorithm” advertising campaign here in the US.

comScore Releases April U.S. Search Engine Rankings via [www.comscore.com]