Soon, you can muck with Google search results

Google is testing a way for users to personalize search results. This is revolutionary, since up to now Google has relied upon the wisdom of crowds to give you the highest-ranked web pages based on how popular they are with the rest of the world.

With Google personalization, you decide what's important -- and edit results for frequent searches by removing pages you don't like, adding comments, or viewing comments from others. Note that paid ads ("sponsored links") are missing from the demo video; Google obviously has the good sense not to mess with its advertisers.

This personalization misses one angle -- most people "search" for things they don't know how to find, so customizing a search is like changing your commute route after you've already arrived at the office. How do you personalize results if you don't yet know the results you want? If Google could find a way for people to pre-edit search preferences, and then have new search results tailored based on those preferences, it would be on to something.

Expect to see it at Google Labs soon. Via TechCrunch.

Google and NYT knock out software by watching you

Last fall we came across Google's image labeler, a little game that invites you to race a stranger (somewhere out there) in tagging photos with titles that make sense. We got served Drew Barrymore and typed "knockout."

Turns out Google and other companies are using your personal down time to improve how computers recognize photos, video and scanned text. Humans are better than computers at image recognition; but if millions of humans say an image is X, the computer begins to get it too. In the cleverest move, the twisted-word Captcha codes you type to gain access to Twitter or Facebook are being monitored by The New York Times to improve computer recognition of printed words ... in essence, using 10 seconds of your brain to refine software that will scan back issues of NYT from 1851 to 1980.


Both ideas, the image play and "ReCaptcha," are brainchilds of Luis von Ahn -- a Carnegie Mellon guru who created the fuzzy password tests for Yahoo in 2000, and is expanding to use downtime to solve problems of artificial intelligence. The average U.S. consumer spends 1.1 hours a day on electronic games and 1.7 hours using email, all input-heavy interactions that could conceivably be leveraged for broader computing tasks.

Just think of what he'll do with the 17 minutes you spend in the bathroom.

Tip from Brad Ward.

Forget privacy. Your IQ told us it needs help.

Consumer privacy groups are upset that ISPs (such as your local cable company) are designing tools to track web viewing habits and to sell this information to advertisers. Web tracking has been around for a decade by individual sites, and then by collections of hundreds of sites known as ad networks. But Internet Service Providers give you the modem by the wall and thus see everything you do. If they could mine all that data, think of the targeting potential ... and privacy risks.

Except all these concerns have a single flaw: You now actually need people to track things for you.

Think of it. What would happen if your computer crashed, you lost all your bookmarks, all your contacts, all those emails with distant relatives or colleagues cc'd? Memorization has become an obsolete skill set; most U.S. consumers now have cell phones, and so the number of phone numbers in our heads has fallen from hundreds to perhaps a handful.

If you protest, please answer two questions:

1. Who was the second president of the United States?
2. What is your mother's cell phone number?

You don't know. You don't need to know. The answers are lodged in Google and your smart phone.

We hit the memory brick wall ourselves this week, while on vacation in Maine, when we realized the friends' computers we borrowed didn't have all our saved passwords and bookmarks. Suddenly pulling information from the web was hard -- so many breadcrumbs were stocked in our home Mac computer, the trail to knowledge was now fogged.

Do humans now need others to remember things on their behalf? New Zealand professor James Flynn has found that human IQs are rising, but our newfound intelligence is now focused on abstract reasoning. Old pragmatic knowledge skill sets such as rote memorization are falling away, as we learn to search and make cognitive leaps but require information tools to fill in the gaps.

So perhaps the ad targeting privacy people have it all backwards. We are all leaving click-streams in almost any device or store we touch today, so thinking we have privacy is a myth anyway. We all use Google, which invades other content sites, scans their knowledge and posts results without a please or thank-you. We all pay bills; skip a few and then apply for a loan, and you'll see how carefully organizations are tracking you. And it is all a good thing ... because after all, someone else has to remember what we want.

Photo: Tokyo Lunch

In case you missed it, Google just killed the portal

What if all those banner ads you see on web sites were little video screens, offering free TV programming that you really want to see?

Naughty, naughty Google just announced it will shake up the entire communications world this September by pushing free entertainment video instead of banner ads to hundreds of web sites as part of its AdSense network. Google will provide raucous humor clips by Seth MacFarlane, creator of TV's animated "Family Guy." The videos will include embedded ads, but the focus is on the entertainment with the ad being the trailing party.

Play this forward a few years and you may see the end of online portals altogether. Who needs ABC or iTunes or YouTube or Break.com or Hulu.com as an entry point, if personalized entertainment comes and finds you?

Photo: Joe5ho

Google hints Obama will win. What about your brand?

If you haven't already played with Google Trends, you're missing a free tool to assess the market for your business. TechCrunch notes that the Google tool indicates many more internet searches for Obama than McCain -- not a clear indicator of who will win, since Obama's supporters skew younger and thus more tech-savvy, but an indicator nonetheless.

See what Google has to say about your industry or service here.

Why is Google advertising outdoors?

Google is now running transit ads in San Francisco and Chicago to promote its Maps program, which is steadily gaining market share at the expense of MapQuest. "Because they've been extending their portfolio of solutions, there's now a mass of things they offer that perhaps many people haven't gotten to know about," Nigel Hollis, top analyst at Millward Brown, told AdAge.

The outdoor media push may indicate Google thinks Maps will be a killer mobile app -- the first main tool consumers will use when they finally get handy with GPS on their cell phones. The internet is becoming untethered, and you can dial in from your hip. But if you're standing outside, you'll need good old billboards to trigger the message.

Via Shelton.

Look at the map, honey, there's a Google news alert

Yeah, some days we get tired of writing about Google's innovations, but the addition of news to Google Earth is a landmark in journalism. Google has added a feature to its free 3-D mapping program that allows you to click "news" as a layer, and then zoom in to areas around the world and see headlines and articles pop up.

The revolution here is the addition of geo-location to timeliness and relevance. Viewers can take an almost God-like stance, swooping down on the planet to peruse the latest happenings of mankind. Perhaps a hint of things to come on your cell phone, as Google Android and other software makers add GPS location to the features that serve up content, communications and ads. You also get a whiff of why old newsprint can't compete for consumers' hunger for information, right now, right down the street.

The brilliance and big problem of Google Health

Google Health launched yesterday to give patients a simple way to maintain a personal health record. It will probably fail, despite Google's billions and drugstore partners, because physicians have no market incentive to share information.

To understand the problem, let's first put a human face on it. The photo above is our mom, a cancer patient being admitted to Dartmouth-Hitchcock, one of the best hospitals in the United States. The procedure was about her 25th at this hospital, yet she was asked to fill out a form listing past surgeries and current prescriptions.

Mom is sharp, but she takes about 30 pills a day and her body has more scars than an Iwo Jima vet. If her surgical success depends on her personal memory, well, that's not a great idea.

Now we won't go off on the stupidity of this; Dartmouth is a fine hospital and is simply doing what physician groups do around the United States -- using isolated information systems that don't talk to anyone outside the walls. The problem is physicians have reason not to share.

You see, hospitals are just like the United States Postal Service. USPS makes a lot of money from some customers (businesses who ship packages) and loses a boatload of cash on others (Aunt Ginnie who needs letters delivered in rural Oklahoma). Physician groups have the same customer value issue. They make a huge profit from some patients (knee replacement, bariatrics) and lose money on other patients (inner city emergency care). Hospitals have to provide both levels of service, so it is vital that they attract lots of high-profit patients to offset the losses elsewhere.

Sharing information via a personal health record would disrupt that model. What happens to a surgeon who "owns" your personal records if suddenly those records are easily transported to any other expert in the country? Think how much the competing surgeon groups would love to have a quick, complete history of your health.

And this, dear patient, is why unified health records do not exist in the United States.

There is hope. Other industries, finance in particular, have built unified views of customers because they realize sharing information outweighs the costs. Your credit score is a perfect example of every lender and transaction being recorded instantly and shared, to help banks offset the risk of giving loans to deadbeats. But this system only works because the market benefit -- avoiding risk -- outweighs the market cost -- giving away competitive information.

Pharmacies are the first to start building unified records; MedCo and RxAmerica have partnered with Google, because the unified view of a patient could make ordering pills a lot safer. But hospitals and physician groups still have little incentive to join. The only hope is that some hospital somewhere will realize giving patients control over their information may be a competitive advantage -- a new way to help that sets them apart.

For now, Google Health invites consumers to upload and manage their own information. Good luck remembering that tonsillectomy, and downloading the file to your surgical team next time you're bleeding in the emergency room. We love Google's initiative and hope it succeeds. But the reality is for many years more, your docs will ask you to fill out a form.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt gives a brilliant view of the problem here:

How nonprofits use the news on Google

Earthquakes in China. Drownings in Myanmar. 

Relief organizations with ads on Google.

This is more than a post for a good cause (although you really should punch Myanmar into Google and make a donation). The rash of Google PPC ads for fund-raising points out the extreme efficiency of the search engine. Consider that World Vision is soliciting cyclone relief with donations starting at $25, and that perhaps 10% of the people who click on a Google ad through to the World Vision web site will make a donation, so the Google ads have to perform for $2.50 per click just to break even. If the nonprofit wanted to make $4 for every $1 it spent on Google advertising, it would need to generate traffic at 50 cents per click.

The small paid ads have to work, or nonprofits simply couldn't afford it. (For some, the search ads can be discounted of course; the Google Grants program supports many 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Click here to see if your nonprofit qualifies.)

Worth noting for your own SEM campaign: Are you including timely news related to your industry in your own Google Adwords copy? Or are you even on Google at all?

How to search for sexy violinists? Don't ask the Google librarian.

Google search results are now formulaic. The constant prioritization by relevance now means that any search topic is likely to turn up a main site, a series of paid ads, one stately Wikipedia entry, a news report, one YouTube video, and perhaps a comment in The Huffington Post.

It's the knowledge equivalent of a salad bar: The best information, all lined up, ready to go.

But damn if some topics don't cry out for spice, and here comes Addict-o-matic to serve up buzz. Addict is a bit like a spontaneous RSS feed, except with a beautiful layout that politely crams groups of web finds on one page, starting with social media first. You get blog postings, Digg raves, Flickr photos, YouTube videos, top news, and yes standard relevance-based web listings (but those are clustered nicely at the bottom).

We tested this recently with a search for Lili Haydn, a violinist who could be the offspring of Yo-Yo Ma, Tori Amos and Salma Hayek (if three-way genetic sharing were possible ... hmm). Google gave us Wikipedia. Addict-o-matic gave us photos, videos, blog rants, and news.

Nice work by site founder Dave Pell. Found via Seth.

Will the web in your pocket replace your PC?

Our column for BusinessWeek on how advertisers may be squeezed by new mobile devices stumped some readers. Many commented that people just won't put up with ads on cell phones; others said mobile ads will have higher response rates; still others suggested that cell phone use will be additive to web use, so really there will be no reduction in overall ad inventory.

Shelly T said the entire column was surprisingly thin, uninteresting, and poorly thought out. Yikes!

But when we see new mobile concepts like this BenQ Siemens Black Box, where the very interface layout changes depending on the function you are using, we can't help but believe mobile devices will replace some old-school PCs.

One way to think of mobile replacing PCs is it is not an either-or proposition. Even if time spent on Google and content web sites diminishes 10% or 20% due to people spending hours on iPhones, that will create huge cascades across web business models.

All content media is supported by advertising; and advertisers invest their dollars like you invest in a portfolio of stock funds. For example, look at the current death spiral in newsprint. As readers abort print for online news, response rates from newsprint ads decline. A marketer with $1 million to spend looks at the $350,000 allocated to newsprint and thinks: Hmm. I better trim that to $250,000 next year, and invest the $100,000 remaining in my internet ads, which are pulling better responses.

Slight shifts in media performance create a migration pattern among marketers, and suddenly the cash flow of one medium is threatened. Have you ever wondered why it takes three page views to navigate on a weather site to find a five-day forecast? Because each page has 15 slots for ads, so three views equals 45 ad placements. When people use iPhones to get weather in one click, all that ad inventory -- and cash for the web site, and results for marketers -- will go away.

Mobile is coming. Get ready. That BenQ phone is looking mighty fine.

Google to consumers: Please don't shut the window

The sky isn't falling on advertising. At least, not yet.

But as our piece today in BusinessWeek points out, there are serious challenges ahead for Google, internet advertisers, and anyone really who is trying to market in this world of changing media. The challenges come down to three:

1. Accelerated channel fragmentation. A lot has been written about this, ever since Al Ries and Jack Trout mentioned in the 1981 book Positioning that someday there might be scores of TV channels. Every forecaster has gotten it wrong; the trend has constantly moved faster than expected until Chris Anderson simply called it the Long Tail -- where millions of niche content-sharing nodes replace traditional mass media. And that makes reaching the masses with advertising very difficult.

2. Changing customer modality. Teens and young adults are morphing from passive content recipients into active creators -- writing blogs, texting on Twitter, uploading photos, socializing on Facebook. Every hour spent immersed in socialization and content sharing is time spent in a "new mode" that shuts advertisers out. This trend is important for marketers to watch, because people take their media habits with them as they age. Senior citizens are heavy TV viewers, because TV was the medium of choice in the 1960s and 1970s. The average age of video gamers is now in the low 30s, because this demo learned to love video games back in the late 1980s when they were teens. Today, 35% of all teen girls blog and 54% have posted photos online. As today's emerging generation learns to create, and not just watch, media, advertisers will face continued difficulty in getting their attention.

3. A reduction in visual inventory. Simply put, cell phone screens are smaller than PC screens -- and consumer adoption of mobile technology is about to tip big in the United States. Because tiny screens greatly reduce the "visual inventory" of ad space, tightened supply will create lower response rates for anyone who advertises online. This threatens the very nature of advertising itself, since most media has made money on the implicit bargain that we'll give you content for almost free in exchange for you putting up with interruptive ads. What happens to magazines, newspapers, TV, radio and even major web sites if the preferred mode of receiving text and video becomes sexy glass screens only 2 inches wide? What happens to Google if it can only fit 2 ads, and not 10, on a search results page? In the curving universe of supply and demand, shrinking ad space means the costs of marketing will go up.

That's the doom and gloom. Stay tuned in coming posts for steps we think advertisers should take today to get out of tomorrow's shrinking ad box.

Jared Goralnick deserves to be popular

Occasionally we read something so brilliant we have to digest it twice. Jared over at Technotherapy just dissected the current ratings arm race that pits bloggers and web sites against each other. His point, to do it severe injustice, is that using social media to chase numbers -- a Top 150 Ad Blog ranking, or massive site traffic -- is the wrong objective.

Perhaps it's more important to connect with people in meaningful ways. We mean, just think of the irony; we all now have amazing tools to text thoughts, share photos, post comments, author essays, and send video ... and yet many internet users are so obsessed with fame that they spend more time trying to game the system to be perceived as popular than they do actually connecting socially with other minds.

The current ratings race also creates huge problems for marketers. It's a bit of the tragedy of the commons; if your web site isn't frantically trying to game the system with SEO content stuffing and link farming, you better believe your competitors are. This eats into the common good of quality sites, as consumers have more difficulty finding relevant content -- and your poor brand gets lost in all the clutter.

The best solution we've seen, and frankly try to practice, is to set up a blog or two related to your brand category -- but to make the content truly meaningful. Rather than tout your services, analyze trends in your industry. Provide helpful tips. Readership and interest will build more slowly, but in social media, it's not about hunting, it's about helping. Right, Jared?

Lawsuit: Google bids to take more of your ad budget

Yikes. A new lawsuit claims that Google is misleading advertisers by making its second-tier ad program, the content network, an "opt out." The suit suggests this allows Google to suck up your remaining ad budget, if not enough web searchers click on your ads.

The tricky part, according to the suit, is some advertisers don't realize Google runs two types of ad programs. The one most people recognize, Google AdWords, has paid text ads, or "sponsored links," that appear after a computer user searches for a phrase at www.google.com. But Google also runs these same text ads on a vast AdSense "content network" of web sites if they have articles with vaguely related content.

So if you sell shoes, your ad for shoes might
1. appear in front of consumers actively searching and shopping for shoes at www.google.com, or
2. appear next to a fashion article and draw a few errant clicks.

How do you now opt out of this second "content network" program? The lawsuit contends Google requires advertisers to type a zero into a certain field, rather than just leaving it blank, and if the advertiser is not hip to this requirement they're automatically enrolled in the second-tier content network program.

Look, we're sure we have this wrong. Google wouldn't obscure its advertising registration process to try to lure advertisers into a lackluster ad program just to boost revenues.

Right, Google?

Google, au contraire

Yes, Google beat Wall Street's hopes today with a 42% surge in revenue. Some of this is driven by growth abroad; the UK Times notes that for the first time ever, overseas business garnered more revenue than U.S. operations.

But the real story may be Google has figured out how to raise its advertising prices. Here's the story of sticker shock in 3 easy steps.

1. Competition to place ads on Google is now fierce.

2. Increased competition has driven up bids, or the cost, to place ads for popular search terms.

3. Ah, and for all those obscure phrases that few of your competitors think to bid on ... these once were a bargain, but Google is now using a "quality score" evaluation of your web site to determine whether it should block you from bidding on these ads.

Hmm. Increased prices for popular ads; a way to block you from buying cheap ads. No wonder revenues are up. Dear advertiser, Google has just optimized you.

It's official. Google is now mapping your office plants.

We love Google Earth, a free program that lets you zoom down onto Mount Everest or the White House and see 3-D maps of the world. But Google's latest update is freaky. Now, you get photo-realistic illustrations of buildings in major cities and set the angle of sunlight just so.

Pretty soon, you'll peer inside a window and see yourself peering back out.

Downloadable here.

One reason Google search results are slipping

Look, we keep explaining it. There are only so many hours in the day.

(Via Herd, orginally from eMarketer.)

Why Google's cloud computing will win

The prognosticators of progress are debating whether cloud computing will win -- the idea that a network of servers will eventually run all of your technology, so you just need tiny devices that plug in. Google and Oracle like this concept, while Microsoft, of course, does not. Redmond's executives can't make money selling Office apps to PC users if everyone just boots up inside a web browser window.

Paul Boutin in Slate argues that cloud computing will NOT take off, because our local devices are still more powerful than networks and frankly, people need horsepower. Boutin says (1) most networked apps, such as Google Docs, still suck compared to local programs, and (2) the photo- and video-heavy wizardry of today's iPhone-type gadgets just won't work on networks for years to come.

These are fair points, but our money is still on Google. People will adopt cloud computing for a simple reason -- we value personal connections more than high fidelity. Boutin misses a trend of how people use technology today, where humans put a premium on social connections over resolution. We want YouTube, not movies; MP3s, not CDs; horrible Blogger text interfaces (ahem), not Microsoft Word. In the past 20 years we've taken numerous steps backward, if the gadgets or interface make social communication easier.

If technology helps us connect, then we jump in. We text via Twitter vs. send beautiful letters via U.S. Mail. Who cares if the technology is rough as long as it helps us connect.

There is one exception. If Microsoft invents a TV remote control that actually works, we don't care how big the hard drive or software OS -- sign us up today.

Gmail Custom Time revolutionizes email, saves marriages

We love Google. Its web email service, Gmail, has added a brilliant "custom time" stamp feature allowing you to set any date you want on an email -- so if you forget to mail a business proposal or send Mom a birthday card, simply email a retroactively dated message, and it will pop up in the recipient's inbox in the proper chronological order.

We can't fathom why no one has thought of this before. Gmail offers an added bonus, you can have the email pop up marked as "read" or "unread," so if your contact claims you never sent the message, you simply say, "Check your inbox -- it came in last Tuesday," and it will appear that it did and has already been opened.

No word yet if falsifying data creates legal issues, and we hear privacy advocates in the European Union are already protesting. Pity. Internet sociologist Lirpa Loof notes that shifting time stamps could lead to marketing fraud, but might help personal relationships strained by the cold typing of social media. "Now, even if you forget to tell someone you love them on your anniversary," Loof said, "you can send a backdated poem and have it arrive on time. It's still a lie, but one oh so sweet."

Lost your job at Bear Stearns?

Check Google. Those pay-per-click competitors don't waste any time.