On Internet Business

Googles 9 principles of Innovation

Posted by Michael under SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

It is impossible to know what the future holds. It can’t be predicted. There is radical uncertainty.

During the two hour discussion on Tuesday between a group of EO members and Google’s Robert Swerling  I learnt what principles Google uses to stays ahead of the competition ?

1. Innovation, not instant perfection.

Launch and improve. Never come out of Beta. I remember Tom Peters referring to this as “Ready, Fire, Aim.” Some programmers like to code for months or even years and hope they will have built the perfect product. That’s castle building. Companies work this way, too.  The problem with this approach is that if the users don’t like the product all the time spent on the product has been wasted. If the idea doesn’t work it is better to find out sooner rather than later.  
‘The Googly thing is to launch it early on and then iterate, learning what the market wants–and making it great.’ The beauty of experimenting in this way is that you never get too far from what the market wants. The market pulls you back.”

2. Ideas come from everywhere

At google they accept ideas come from anywhere external or internal. Since the meeting I have read, they have an internal list where people post new ideas and everyone can see them. It’s like a voting pool where you can say how good or bad you think an idea is. Those comments lead to new ideas.”

3. A license to pursue your dreams.

“Google is engineering company” and to retain the best engineers, it lets them pursue their dreams.  An engineer’s time is split 70% /20%10% between main, adjacent and completely different projects. Engineers spend 20% of their time working on whatever they want, and Google trust them to build interesting things.

4. Morph projects, dont kill them.

Any project that is good enough to make it to Labs probably has a kernel of something interesting in it, even if the market doesn’t respond to it straight away, there maybe a way of commercialising it. If users don’t take to the product morph it into something that the market needs.”

5. Share as much information as you can.

Everyone can see what everyone else is working on. Collaborate and over communicate! Google has sophisticated systems including their intranet that shares information across the company, employees have insight into what’s happening with the business and what’s important. To reduce duplication every Monday, all the employees write an email that has five to seven bullet points on what they did the previous week. These are then collated into a giant Web page which is indexed.

6. Users, Users,Users.

Google believes by focusing on the users the money will eventually follow. In a virtual business, if you’re successful, you’ll be working on something that is necessary. Subscribers or advertisers will eventually pay for it.

7. Data is apolitical.

Some companies think of design as an art form. Google treat it as a science. It all comes down to data. Run a test and whichever design does best is chosen. Google have an academic environment where data is king.

8. Creativity loves contraint.

People think of creativity as this sort of unbridled thing, but engineers thrive on constraints. They love to think their way out of that little box: ‘We know you said it was impossible, but we’re going to do this and that to get us there.’”

9. You’re brilliant, were hiring.

Cultural fit is a key part of google success. Googlers want to work on big problems that matter, wanting to do great things for the world, believing that we they build a successful business without compromising on standards and values. Google is extremely focussed on ensuring that only the smartest and most committed people make the cut and become employees. They use rigorous recruitment methods to ensure only those who can thrive in Googles environment make the cut.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

“They came, they puked, they left !” what I learnt from Avinash

Posted by Michael under SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

“They came, they puked, they left !” what I learnt from Avinash

Most of Tuesday was taken up listening to people from Google. My morning was taken up by Avinash Kaushik, an analytics evangelist at Google and the most enthusiastic person I have ever heard speak about statistics.

What did I learn:  

1.Never Forget the Long Tail

Rather than focuses on the top 10,20 or 50 keywords that bring sales, manage the “long tale” that generate sales.

2.Attribution and does it matter

How do you attribute value to the all the various channels or parties (affiliate, PPC, organic search, banner ad) that have contributed to a sale?

An important point to note is that if the normal cycle from first customer visit to purchase is short ie (1 day) the attribution issue doesn’t really exist and the sale should be attributed on a last click basis. If the time taken by a customer to go from enquiry to purchase is much longer then attribution is more important.

There are numerous models that are being suggested. Avinash’s preference was “nuclear decay”. This attributes greater value to the clicks closest to the date of purchase.

3.Do the basics right

Avinash showed how often internet retailers frustrate rather than fulfil the demands of consumers. Simple searches for “wireless printers went” led to pages and sites that didn’t offer or display “wireless printers”.

Even searches for “underwear UK” , showed a similar pattern. If a consumer is looking for underpants and a retailer is paying for an advert, it makes sense to take them to a landing page offering underpants. But even leading retailers like M&S don’t do it. You want underpants, they take you to their home page.

4.Every business is unique.

Rather than assuming what works for other companies will work for you or that universal business truths always hold true, be “thoughtful, sceptical and objective”. In short test what you believe and prove yourself right or wrong.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

Adtech London September 22-23rd 2009 Review

Posted by Michael under SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

Ad:Tech London finished yesterday.  For me the highlight of the presentations was Will Chritchlow of Distilled Media .  This was a perfect presentation for a number of reasons.

1. Know your subject

The speaker clearly knew what he was talking about. This contrasted greatly with another presentation I saw at ad:tech by an SEO company who claimed to have helped their client by propelling  two content sites that mentioned their clients product in a favourable review to the top of the google organic listings within 48 hours. How did they do this ? Ah well that’s a secret. Yes of course it is ! 

2. Useful Information.

He gave away few tasty titbits that certainly interested me. How did you get your stats to record a paypal sale. This is an issue that has been bugging me and hence our programmers for months. No one expects presenters to gave away the shop but a few useful bits of information starts a relationship of trust and will pay back in the long term. 

3. Presentation Style

He is a natural presenter able to engage with a group of people. His slides were interesting and professionally styled.  All in all 10 out of 10.

Jennifer Janson of Sixdegrees PR also gave an excellent presentation on a subject which all Marketing Directors should be focussed on. Marketing Metrics (how to measure the success of your PR efforts).

For me one or two nuggets makes it worthwhile going to an exhibition so thank you Ad:Tech.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites

SES London 2009 Review

Posted by Michael under Paid Search, SEO Conferences and Exhibitions

SES London is still the pre-eminent UK search marketing conference.  Overall SES London is still useful if you are involved in Search but the really useful “nuggets” seem to be fewer and further apart,

The good

The presentations I enjoyed were:

1. Rob Pierre, Managing Director, Jellyfish

Advanced Paid Search Techniques

This was a really interesting and rather technical presentation on advanced methodologies for paid search campaign management.

He showed by having each keyword in all 3 match types how to make the campaign as targeted as possible. The essence of his methodology was to ensure that each keyword was associated with the most targeted ad copy possible and the most relevant landing page on the website.

The interesting part for me was how he used negative matching of keywords to ensure the correct ad text and landing page were shown. For example he would negative match on a brand term such as Sony to ensure that a search for digital camera would display a more general ad text and landing page.

2. Nick Seckold Head of Search, MindShare

Advanced Paid Search Techniques

Nick Seckold in his presentation weighed up the Value of Automated Bid Management Tools. With the popularity of bid management tools and the huge claims being made by some of the vendors, it was useful to hear about the reality of using bid management tools to manage a PPC campaign.

3. Pete Wailes, Managing Director, Searchlight Digital

Advanced Paid Search Techniques

In his presentation Pete should how Taguchi Arrays can be used to improve PPC testing. Genichi Taguchi developed statistical methods originally to improve the quality of manufactured goods. The benefit of his method is that it allows multivariate tests to generate usable data, without having to run every possible combination.

This allows PPC copy, landing pages and other factors all to be tested in one go.

The Bad

Search Advertising Tools

Maybe he was badly briefed but the session was supposed to be about “a range of popular search engine advertising tools.“

In this session Mike Chowney banged on about how good Kenshoo is !

Maybe it’s just me but when a speaker gets up at conference and shamelessly plugs their own product it really gets my goat. I have paid up to £995 per person for my ecommerce team to be at the conference. Do I really want to pay to hear your sales spiel ? I think not.

Bookmark It

Hide Sites