Blended Search and the New Rules of Engagement

Eli Goodman & Eli Feldblum

October, 14 2010

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Our Presenters

Eli Feldblum

CTO & Co-Founder

RankAbove

Eli Goodman

Search Evangelist

comScore, Inc.

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comScore Customer Knowledge Platform: A granular 360 view of the multitude of online activities of 2MM global users

Designed to be representative of the total online population.

TRUSTe certified for information privacy & security.

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About RankAbove

•RankAbove is a software and professional services firm specializing in large scale SEO for

major brands and corporations that have websites with tens of thousands of pages.

• RankAbove's Drive business intelligence software lets you dig deeper into information

already at your fingertips: do competitive analysis, run reports, and make predictions based on

past performance. Drive saves corporations time and money while increasing ROI from natural

search traffic. Put your business in Drive.

RankAbove optimizes rich media, builds video site maps, consults on search engine

optimization, and provides business intelligence software.

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Agenda

What is Blended Search?

• Blended Search Statistics

• Totals

• Engines

• Growth

• Click-Through Rates

Rich Media

• How Does Google Treat Rich Media?

• How Do Users Treat It?

• What Can It Do For Your Business?

• How Do You Do It?

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What is Blended Search?

* Source: SEOSOS Blog, Wordpress

Blended search, also known as ―Universal Search‖

or ―Search 3.0,″ is incorporating results from non-

web sources (like books, videos and images) into

the regular web search results.

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How Often Do We See Blended Results on the Big 3 Engines?

Source: comScore Custom Analytics

Total Searches August 2010

Blended

Non Blended

67%

33% 1/3 of all Searches

displayed a

Blended Result

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How Does Blended Search Differ by Search Engine?

Source: comScore August 2010

0

1000

2000

3000

4000

5000

6000

7000

8000

9000

Google Web Search

Bing Web Search

Blended

Non Blended

54%

33%

Over 50% of all Bing searches

came back with Blended

Results!

Google’s % YOY is down from

40% in August 10

(MM)

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What are The Top 5 Most Common Blended Results?

Source: comScore Custom Analytics,

August 2010

News

Video

Local

Images

Dictionary/Def/Answers

992 MM

872 MM

853 MM

432 MM

1.4 B

Total Pages containing each category in August 2010

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What are the Fastest Growing Types of Blended Results?

Source: comScore Custom Analytics,

August 2010

0%

50%

100%

150%

200%

250% 220%

126%

52% 51%

YOY Growth by Category August 2009-August 2010

229%

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Click-Through Rates – Blended vs. Non Blended

Source: comScore Custom Analytics,

August 2010

Pages with Blended Results = 101% Click-

Through Rate *

Pages with no Blended Results = 110% Click-

Through Rate *

*Searchers clicking on multiple results from their 1 search = 100% + CTR

Why?

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Click-Through Rates – Pages with Blended Results

Source: comScore Custom Analytics,

August 2010

Highest Click-Through Rates per

Pages Displayed

• Shopping – 126%

• Local – 107%

• Real Time Results – 107%

Lowest Click-Through Rates per

Pages Displayed

• Stocks – 66%

• Maps – 73%

• Dictionary/Def/Answer – 80%

Certain Types of Blended Results do not require Clicks

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Does the Presence of Shopping Blended Results Impact the Paid

Search Click-through Rate?

Source: comScore August 2010

Overall Paid Click-Through Rate: 9.2%

Overall Paid Click-Through Rate when a blended

result of any kind is displayed: 8.7%

Overall Paid Click-Through Rate when no blended

result is displayed: 9.3%

Paid Click-Through Rate when ―Shopping‖ Blended

Results are displayed: 27%

Not all Blended Results are created

equally. Different strategies for

different types of campaigns…

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Rich Media – It Does Make a Difference

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

Total Internet

Video Streamers

21%

Buyers per visitor vs. video viewer

20%

21% 22% 22% 22%

Video viewers are 20% more likely to make a purchase online

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Agenda

What is Blended Search?

• Blended Search Statistics

• Totals

• Engines

• Growth

• Click-Through Rates

Rich Media

• How Does Google Treat Rich Media?

• How Do Users Treat It?

• What Can It Do For Your Business?

• How Do You Do It?

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Search Engines Love Rich Media

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Google Gives Rich Media An Unfair Advantage

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Users Love Rich Media Too

0% 5% 10% 15% 20% 25% 30% 35% 40%

Regular

Blended

12%

38%

Blended Results Garner Much Higher Click-Through Rates Than Regular Results

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Users Especially Love Images & Video

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

Imag

es

Vid

eo

New

s

Tex

t

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Image Results are Amazing, Sometimes

Personalities/Fashion

Products/Commerce

91%

8% CTR

87%

43%

Bounce Rate

1.03

1.87

Depth

0:22

1:41

Length

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Video Drives Click-Through Rates

0%

2%

4%

6%

8%

10%

12%

14%

16%

18%

20%

Text

Video

12%

19%

Across all positions, video results with thumbnails generate higher CTRs

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Video Especially Help Results in Lower Positions

0%

5%

10%

15%

20%

25%

30%

35%

40%

45%

1 2

3 4

5 6

7 8

9 10

Page 2 Video CTR Text CTR

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Video Works Even Better With Google Instant

Before Instant

After Instant

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Which Would You Click?

Vs.

CollegeHumor formatted

its videos so that

Google understood

they were videos.

Once they did, and

thumbnails began being

displayed in the SERPS,

CTRs went way up.

After all, which

would you click?

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Post-Click Engagement

8%

7.81

8:49

0% 100% 200% 300% 400% 500% 600% 700% 800% 900%

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% 120% 140% 160%

Bounce

Depth

Length

Other

Video

Video Users stay on the site longer, visit more pages,

bounce less often—and even buy more!

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How to Add Content

Video

– People like videos; they are good for eCommerce sites too, not just content

– Create video content

– Create & Submit a Video Sitemaps

– Mark up videos with microformats to let the Search Engines know they are vidoes

Pictures

– Pictures benefit some sites, not all

– Make sure there is a reason to see the next photo

News

– Submit site to Google News

Products

– Submit data feed to Google Base

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How to Optimize Rich Media Content

Video

– Make sure your sitemaps and/or microformats are correct.

– Make sure your URLs are not too long

– Your videos must be family-friendly

– Choose a good thumbnail

– You need textual content too: transcripts, tags, titles, comments, translation, etc…

– Regular SEO for the page

– Use multiple navigational paths: hierarchical, folksonomic & supplemental

Images

– Alt tag, image name, title and content on the page around the image

– Add more data: EXIF, tags, context, captions and more

Others

– Correct formats

– Keep track of new blends, like episodes

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What Does the Future Look Like?

www.rankabove.com

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RankAbove Data Sample

RankAbove Looked at 10 Sites Over Six Months. Monthly, We Analyzed:

– 150MM+ Visits from SEO

– 20MM+ Video Hits from SEO

– 100K+ Image Hits from SEO

– 1MM+ Keywords

– 100K Tracked Rankings

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Thank you!

Eli Goodman

egoodman@comscore.com

@LosBuenos

Eli Feldblum

eli@rankabove.com