I spent Monday at SES Chicago participating in a panel called "Search: Where to Next?". Overall, the show struck me as well attended with a strong current of optimism for growth in the coming year. I was pleasantly surprised that our panel was packed with folks interested in where Comscore, MSN, and Efficient Frontier see things headed next year.
A big theme that was discussed in my panel, as well as in other sessions throughout the show, is the changing SERP. In the panel before mine, David Pann of Yahoo! described the search results page as a "multi-media platform." Do a query like "flights from san francisco to vegas" on Bing or "mortgage" on Google and you'll see a vastly changed SERP. Even a query like "bottled water" on Google yields a SERP full of imagery. While I'm not sold all the changes to the SERP create a better experience. Let's face it, like it or not the days of an image, price, and video free SERP may be gone forever.
As a result of the evolving results page, marketers and their partners need to explore all of the new opportunities to expand coverage on the SERP and draw clicks from relevant consumer queries. Exploring the use of images and deeper site links are tactics to investigate. Using all the structured data available from your business, data that may contain locality, product, and pricing information, is an important tactic to increase coverage and relevancy.
The buzz on real-time and mobile search was still humming at SES. And the growing exchanges have added display to the mix. But I would argue the changing SERP was shaking things up at SES in a category accustomed to blue text links. One woman in the panel before mine pleaded for a consolidated resource to stay on-top of "the fundamentals of SEM" given how quickly they change. It was a plea that resonated with the audience and a reminder that while we spend a lot of energy on the shiny new objects, we should never lose focus on delivering the fundamentals.
Justin Merickel
Vice President, Marketing and New Product Development
A big theme that was discussed in my panel, as well as in other sessions throughout the show, is the changing SERP. In the panel before mine, David Pann of Yahoo! described the search results page as a "multi-media platform." Do a query like "flights from san francisco to vegas" on Bing or "mortgage" on Google and you'll see a vastly changed SERP. Even a query like "bottled water" on Google yields a SERP full of imagery. While I'm not sold all the changes to the SERP create a better experience. Let's face it, like it or not the days of an image, price, and video free SERP may be gone forever.
As a result of the evolving results page, marketers and their partners need to explore all of the new opportunities to expand coverage on the SERP and draw clicks from relevant consumer queries. Exploring the use of images and deeper site links are tactics to investigate. Using all the structured data available from your business, data that may contain locality, product, and pricing information, is an important tactic to increase coverage and relevancy.
The buzz on real-time and mobile search was still humming at SES. And the growing exchanges have added display to the mix. But I would argue the changing SERP was shaking things up at SES in a category accustomed to blue text links. One woman in the panel before mine pleaded for a consolidated resource to stay on-top of "the fundamentals of SEM" given how quickly they change. It was a plea that resonated with the audience and a reminder that while we spend a lot of energy on the shiny new objects, we should never lose focus on delivering the fundamentals.
Justin Merickel
Vice President, Marketing and New Product Development
Looks like everyone is doing everything to get their SERPs up. I have been wanting to outrank austin search results on google and it's taking more time and effort than what it would have a little while ago.
Nice share...thanx.
Posted by: Maria | January 12, 2010 at 01:11 AM