SES Hamburg: Search Around the World
Rightyo - another go at live blogging. Today it's day #1 of SES Hamburg. Hamburg is a great city. Most of the conference is in German except for this panel and occasional presentation from myself who don't speak any German. Heck. I struggle to speak English.
Looks like a busy pane with five speakers. First up we have:
Burgio / Italy
Right. Sir. Mention SEMPO more than three times and you get -5 points.
Here's the first bullet point - Google rules (one SEMPO mention)
After Google we've got Yahoo/MSN fighting for second place. Then there's Virgilio/Alice next and the big publishing portals such as Kataweb Group, RCS and RAI (second SEMPO mention).
On the SEM/PPC front the same is true; it's all AdWords/AdSense. Yahoo's Panama is struggling to catch up and MIVA vanished. However, we're seeing people rest PPC options on sites like Facebook.
It's also the case that Italians - pushed by their agencies - are trying more social media.
Let's focus on the agencies for a while. We have the 'interactive agencies' who are moving towards web 2.0 but still forget the basic SEO. There are the 'media centers' who offer search but treat is as media purchase. There are 'in-house teams' who try and do SEO but struggle for training and resources. There are also the 'search marketing agencies' who offer the best service but many Italian businesses don't really want to pay the hefty fees that these agencies charge.
Ah... the Google story again. This seems to be a common problem. Google's Italian sales team will lure people straight into PPC and promise some level of optimisation. However, Massimo claims, they don't really deliver this.
Massimo has his hands on some Full6 research... but he's whizzing through it awfully quickly! More men than women use the internet/search in Italy and most go online at least once every day.
We see that Yahoo is by far and away the most popular second choice search engine. MSN's Live Search doesn't get a look in there.
Here's another quirky fact. 7% of Italians say they wouldn't go online to get information about something after finding out about it somewhere else.
41% of Italians will check on blogs before making a purchase. This explains the rising interest in social media in Italy.
71% of Italian users have never performed a search on a mobile. Massimo didn't translate it but I'm sure I saw a stat which said 4% of the survey respondents used the Sony PSP.
Hjorth / Europe wide
He begins with a slide showing all the languages in Europe. There are lots. That gives you the option not just to geo-target but to language-target. For example; you could target Catalan.
Let's look at character sets. Ah. Now there are only two on the map of Europe; latin and cyrillic.
Ooh. Risky jokes about there being two languages in Germany; German and Turkish.
Hjorth claims there is a German company with a link buying network which is impossible to detect. That's just wrong, though. You don't need to analysise the page to become aware of link buying trends.
We're looking at which search engines you might spend your budget on; Google, Google, Google... but let's look at some exceptions; there's Jubii in Denmark, Voila in France (but that's likely to go soon), Exalead in France and we laugh because AltaVista still lives in Sweden.
We whiz through people search engines like Spock.com, skip video search engines and come to look more closely at France.
94% of France have broadband and it's fast (400Me to 450Me). Anders top tip for bringing your search campaign to France is to get the basics right. The next top tip is to really use shopping search engines; Le Guide, Kelkoo, Achter Moins Cher, etc, etc.
PR is also important in France. There aren't many PR hubs but talk to bloggers and traditional journalists.
Oh. We're looking at a screen shot from YiGG. That's a German site so I guess we've left France. If you couldn't guess... YiGG is a digg clone.
Anders is running out of time so we're whizzing through slides fast enough to cause an epileptic fit!
Kevin reminds us that we'll be able to download the slides later. Phew!
Schmidt / Asia Pacific
Let's see how quickly Erica has to run through her slides! She only has 8 minutes. Go!
She quickly confirms that Google is the biggest search engine in Germany. Great. She asks us to suspend our knowledge about Search because its all different in Apac.
Let's look at some comScore stats - 21.3b queries in Dec 2007 Apac. That's huge!
The biggest markets;
Some other apac search engines; Duam, Empas, Soso, Sohu and Naver.
Search in Apac isn't easy. I can tell from Erica's tone of voice that she's found this out first hand! In Hong Kong, for example, users search in Chinese, then English and then in combinations of both languages.
China
Baidu is used heavily to look for free MP3s. There's even a tab for the search on Baidu. It's also worth noting that the Chinese aren't used to paying for MP3.
Google's users tend to be more business orientated than Baidu's users. Baidu is predominately paid search. The average user in China doesn't know (or care about) the difference between a paid listing and an organic listing.
Reasons why Google may find it hard in China; just a few years back the Chinese gov was automatically redirecting Google.cn traffic to China! Baidu say; "If you have an idea and are willing to pay for it - let's talk"
Japan
Yahoo is dominant in Japan. Yay for Japan. Here's the catch; the main shareholder of Yahoo Japan is not Yahoo. It's a telecom called SouthBank.
In Japan people are very used to paying for things with their mobile (cell) phone. The default engine on any DoCoMo device is Google.
Korea
Offline advertising is really used to drive search. It's the infamous Pontiac example again (pleas, someone ban this from SES and SMX).
Good one Erica! No rushed slides.
Kennedy / United States and Canada (SEO)
Anne must be shattered. She arrived here at 1am!
Anne starts by pointing out that Canada is bi-lingual. There's also the growing Spanish speaking market in the United States.
Anne tackles the question; if you're an European company why would you bother to try to market to Americans given the current economic climate? The answer; what about all those American living in the UK or elsewhere in Europe?
Two-thirds of Americans now shop online and e-Commerce accounts for $1 for every $10 spend across all retail channels in the US.
Anne rolls out the Enquiro eye-tracking charts. Thanks Anne. On the left we've got the golden triangle. On the right we've got the stretched out eye patterns we now associated with Universal Search.
37% of US adults use social media and 70% of teens use it every month (what do the other 30% do??)
Older people are sticky and the younger people are fickle.
There's not the same levels of concern about online privacy in the States than in Europe.
In summary; US market is still growing, universal search and social media are inspiring new tactics and businesses are eager.
Elesseily / Canada and United States (PPC)
Search is the largest online advertising medium. The US market is more than half the total PPC market... but that share is declining.
Elesseily asks; "What can we learn from North America??"
My first thought - how to spice up sports games by bringing in cheerleaders. Ah; Mona suggests multivariate testing.
True enough - not many people in the audience put their hands up for the question; "Who uses multivariate testing". Mona says that Page Zero tend to test 7 variables at once.
I guess GE are a Page Zero client as we're seeing the results of some of their multivariate testing. We can see the word "Get" is important. The conversion rates between "GE Dishwasher Parts" and "Get GE Dishwaster Parts" is significant.
Mona has a hit list of things to suggest testing
Mona also plugs Andrew Goodman's book. Bet he's pleased about that!
Closing
Kevin Ryan plugs the bigmouthmedia fussball competition we're running. There are trophies, you know!
Ooh. Someone objects to me typing at the back of room. N00b!
Looks like a busy pane with five speakers. First up we have:
Burgio / Italy
Right. Sir. Mention SEMPO more than three times and you get -5 points.
Here's the first bullet point - Google rules (one SEMPO mention)
After Google we've got Yahoo/MSN fighting for second place. Then there's Virgilio/Alice next and the big publishing portals such as Kataweb Group, RCS and RAI (second SEMPO mention).
On the SEM/PPC front the same is true; it's all AdWords/AdSense. Yahoo's Panama is struggling to catch up and MIVA vanished. However, we're seeing people rest PPC options on sites like Facebook.
It's also the case that Italians - pushed by their agencies - are trying more social media.
Let's focus on the agencies for a while. We have the 'interactive agencies' who are moving towards web 2.0 but still forget the basic SEO. There are the 'media centers' who offer search but treat is as media purchase. There are 'in-house teams' who try and do SEO but struggle for training and resources. There are also the 'search marketing agencies' who offer the best service but many Italian businesses don't really want to pay the hefty fees that these agencies charge.
Ah... the Google story again. This seems to be a common problem. Google's Italian sales team will lure people straight into PPC and promise some level of optimisation. However, Massimo claims, they don't really deliver this.
Massimo has his hands on some Full6 research... but he's whizzing through it awfully quickly! More men than women use the internet/search in Italy and most go online at least once every day.
We see that Yahoo is by far and away the most popular second choice search engine. MSN's Live Search doesn't get a look in there.
Here's another quirky fact. 7% of Italians say they wouldn't go online to get information about something after finding out about it somewhere else.
41% of Italians will check on blogs before making a purchase. This explains the rising interest in social media in Italy.
71% of Italian users have never performed a search on a mobile. Massimo didn't translate it but I'm sure I saw a stat which said 4% of the survey respondents used the Sony PSP.
Hjorth / Europe wide
He begins with a slide showing all the languages in Europe. There are lots. That gives you the option not just to geo-target but to language-target. For example; you could target Catalan.
Let's look at character sets. Ah. Now there are only two on the map of Europe; latin and cyrillic.
Ooh. Risky jokes about there being two languages in Germany; German and Turkish.
Hjorth claims there is a German company with a link buying network which is impossible to detect. That's just wrong, though. You don't need to analysise the page to become aware of link buying trends.
We're looking at which search engines you might spend your budget on; Google, Google, Google... but let's look at some exceptions; there's Jubii in Denmark, Voila in France (but that's likely to go soon), Exalead in France and we laugh because AltaVista still lives in Sweden.
We whiz through people search engines like Spock.com, skip video search engines and come to look more closely at France.
94% of France have broadband and it's fast (400Me to 450Me). Anders top tip for bringing your search campaign to France is to get the basics right. The next top tip is to really use shopping search engines; Le Guide, Kelkoo, Achter Moins Cher, etc, etc.
PR is also important in France. There aren't many PR hubs but talk to bloggers and traditional journalists.
Oh. We're looking at a screen shot from YiGG. That's a German site so I guess we've left France. If you couldn't guess... YiGG is a digg clone.
Anders is running out of time so we're whizzing through slides fast enough to cause an epileptic fit!
Kevin reminds us that we'll be able to download the slides later. Phew!
Schmidt / Asia Pacific
Let's see how quickly Erica has to run through her slides! She only has 8 minutes. Go!
She quickly confirms that Google is the biggest search engine in Germany. Great. She asks us to suspend our knowledge about Search because its all different in Apac.
Let's look at some comScore stats - 21.3b queries in Dec 2007 Apac. That's huge!
The biggest markets;
- China,
- Japan,
- India,
- Korea
Some other apac search engines; Duam, Empas, Soso, Sohu and Naver.
Search in Apac isn't easy. I can tell from Erica's tone of voice that she's found this out first hand! In Hong Kong, for example, users search in Chinese, then English and then in combinations of both languages.
China
- Baidu has 68% (though Erica notes these stats change hugely depending on source)
- Google has 20%
- SoSo has 4%
- Yahoo has 2%
- Sohu China has 2%
Baidu is used heavily to look for free MP3s. There's even a tab for the search on Baidu. It's also worth noting that the Chinese aren't used to paying for MP3.
Google's users tend to be more business orientated than Baidu's users. Baidu is predominately paid search. The average user in China doesn't know (or care about) the difference between a paid listing and an organic listing.
Reasons why Google may find it hard in China; just a few years back the Chinese gov was automatically redirecting Google.cn traffic to China! Baidu say; "If you have an idea and are willing to pay for it - let's talk"
Japan
Yahoo is dominant in Japan. Yay for Japan. Here's the catch; the main shareholder of Yahoo Japan is not Yahoo. It's a telecom called SouthBank.
In Japan people are very used to paying for things with their mobile (cell) phone. The default engine on any DoCoMo device is Google.
Korea
- Naver is top with 77% marketshare
- Daum is next with 10.8% marketshare.
- Yahoo has 4.4%
- Then there's search engine called Google with just 1.7%
Offline advertising is really used to drive search. It's the infamous Pontiac example again (pleas, someone ban this from SES and SMX).
Good one Erica! No rushed slides.
Kennedy / United States and Canada (SEO)
Anne must be shattered. She arrived here at 1am!
Anne starts by pointing out that Canada is bi-lingual. There's also the growing Spanish speaking market in the United States.
Anne tackles the question; if you're an European company why would you bother to try to market to Americans given the current economic climate? The answer; what about all those American living in the UK or elsewhere in Europe?
Two-thirds of Americans now shop online and e-Commerce accounts for $1 for every $10 spend across all retail channels in the US.
Anne rolls out the Enquiro eye-tracking charts. Thanks Anne. On the left we've got the golden triangle. On the right we've got the stretched out eye patterns we now associated with Universal Search.
37% of US adults use social media and 70% of teens use it every month (what do the other 30% do??)
Older people are sticky and the younger people are fickle.
There's not the same levels of concern about online privacy in the States than in Europe.
In summary; US market is still growing, universal search and social media are inspiring new tactics and businesses are eager.
Elesseily / Canada and United States (PPC)
Search is the largest online advertising medium. The US market is more than half the total PPC market... but that share is declining.
Elesseily asks; "What can we learn from North America??"
My first thought - how to spice up sports games by bringing in cheerleaders. Ah; Mona suggests multivariate testing.
True enough - not many people in the audience put their hands up for the question; "Who uses multivariate testing". Mona says that Page Zero tend to test 7 variables at once.
I guess GE are a Page Zero client as we're seeing the results of some of their multivariate testing. We can see the word "Get" is important. The conversion rates between "GE Dishwasher Parts" and "Get GE Dishwaster Parts" is significant.
Mona has a hit list of things to suggest testing
- Headlines
- Offers
- Buy words
- URL with www or without
- Capital letters
Mona also plugs Andrew Goodman's book. Bet he's pleased about that!
Closing
Kevin Ryan plugs the bigmouthmedia fussball competition we're running. There are trophies, you know!
Ooh. Someone objects to me typing at the back of room. N00b!
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