How SocMed & Mobile Affect Search Marketing - Guru Interview with Mike Grehan: Renaissance Man of Internet Marketing

Below, Mike ties together the myriad components of SocMed, Mobile and Search Marketing so you get a firm sense of where we're headed.

This interview was keenly edited by Janet Roberts. I, myself, have reread it four times to make sure I absorbed it all. Enjoy.

Vast Differences Between Mobile and Desktop Search

Larry Chase: How is search on a smartphone different from search on a desktop computer?

Mike Grehan: People tend not to do research on their mobiles. Also, you share a lot more information about yourself with mobile information providers. I use that term, as opposed to "search engines," which is a different thing.

You also get "live" results as opposed to results from some dusty database, which I'll explain shortly. Mobile information providers know so much more about me and use that information in search results. They can say, "Yes, the restaurant is there. It's open, and we can give you a table at 7:15pm." You're getting everything in real time.

LC: Is geo-location basically a search filtering agent?

MG: Absolutely, yes.

LC: Is geo-relevance the first lens through which a search is done, via mobile?

MG: That's one aspect. The other aspect is the social element that goes with it. Social search is going to be really big on mobile. Instead of just going to Google and typing in a few keywords, you'll log into your Twitter account and ask your friends, "Where's the best place to get a pizza?"

LC: Are you saying that mobile search is inherently more social, or more social to people in your proximity or your psychographic cohort, or both?

MG: It's probably a combination of both. Take the growth of location-based services like Foursquare. You get both elements: proximity and cohorts. It represents what I call "digested discovery."

Foursquare knows where I am by using geo-location on my phone. If I'm checking into a hotel, Foursquare is going to tell me, by default, restaurants that are nearby. I didn't search for this information, but there it is.

This is different from searching Google on your desktop because you give Google less information about yourself than you do on a phone. If you and Google would share more information with each other, your search results would be entirely different and much more relevant.

Because people have privacy issues, they tend to not want to give Google that much information [unless you're using the Google toolbar or Chrome]. But with my iPhone, everything is on there, even my credit card details.

The kind of information I'm willing to share with these information providers is much greater than what I'd share with Google on a desktop machine.

Better Targeting through Social Media

LC: Will people provide more customer data in exchange for richer and more relevant advertising offers?

MG: People are already doing that, blindly. People don't realize how much data they're giving to Facebook, for instance, whether it's mobile or on the desktop.

Facebook knows almost everything about you. They know what time you go to bed, what time you wake up, what kinds of ads you click on and the demographics of people in your social groups.

There's a whole lot more that the kind of environment like Facebook can do in terms of promotion and in search to make it much more relevant to you.

LC: Is Facebook taking that information to potential advertisers and asking them to bid on specific audience selects?

MG: LinkedIn is closer to that than Facebook is for now. They aren't inviting companies to bid yet. But what is happening now is that an advertiser who wants only to talk to CMOs of large companies can go to LinkedIn, and LinkedIn will deliver that audience.

Why Google Places is So Important

LC: Why is Google putting so much emphasis lately on Google Places?

MG: The listing information in Google Places comes to Google from its users. Google doesn't have to crawl the web to find it.

LC: How is Google Places important for Google: keywords, mobile, location-based services or as a database?

MG: The important thing is that Google doesn't have to look for the data. With Google Places, Google's intention is to become the global Yellow Book. Local and mobile come together in the same sentence when you're talking to marketers.

LC: Are you saying that Google, like Facebook, wants to use real-time feeds from humans rather than dusty databases that go out of date quickly?

MG: Yes, they're using the end user as a proxy for being an editor to get some of that human relevance into search results. This is why, when connecting to real-time results at Google Places, you can see how important audience feedback is: the ranking, the rating, the five stars for something, comments, etc.

Google Instant and the Long Tail

LC: Let's talk about Google Instant. What's the impact on a keyword basis for all the people doing SEO management?

MG: I don't know why they get so excited about it. At the end of the day, it's just Google doing a little party trick with the auto-fill.

It's just automated suggestions that people who searched for a certain set of terms also searched for another set of suggested pages. Google is scraping the most popular searches from the top of the pile.

LC: Is that going to steer people away from the long end of the tail in search results?

MG: If you do a long-tail search, Google will pull out the most relevant searches that go with your terms.

LC: Yes, but they offer you so many detours on the way to doing your unique searches. Are people going to be enticed away from the long tail?

MG: Yes, there's a kind of audience manipulation going on there.

LC: If something is already popular, won't it get more popular?

MG: I think so, because ultimately, Google Instant is supposed to provide the shortest possible route to connect the end user to the content they're looking for.

LC: So you're saying very often we don't know what it is we want.

MG: Yes. Here's an example. Someone sits down and types in the words "special collection." The results aren't quite right so he changes his query to "special edition." Still not what he wants. So he types in "limited edition." Now he's got what he wanted: suggestions for limited-edition books.

Google sees this kind of query change happening thousands of times. The next time someone else sits down and types in "special collection," Google delivers the book information in the search results. That person looks at the results and thinks, "That's exactly what I wanted," even though it's not what they asked for.

New Breed of Direct Marketing Shop

LC: You say analytics companies are going to become the new marketing shops. Give me an example.

MG: A good example would be Adobe Omniture because it can do predictive analysis.

LC: So, you'd go to Adobe Omniture instead of a direct marketing shop?

MG: Yes, because they can tell clients things like the best time of day to advertise. When you can use that kind of data, that takes a lot of trial and error out of the process.

The App Economy

LC: You refer to the "app economy" versus the "web economy." What do you mean?

MG: You will see people begin to sidestep the browser in favor of apps. Look at what Google is doing. Google Chrome is now an operating system, no longer just a browser. They have Android for mobile.

Watching my peer group, the way they use their iPad or iPhones, it's more via an app. It's not the end of the web economy, but the app economy is where marketers should be looking.

LC: Are marketers going to be app-happy instead of web-happy at the expense of browser mindshare?

MG: It's so much quicker and more convenient to do it from an app than to open a browser and start typing in URLs. The minute I click the application, that's it. I'm done.

Monetizing Android

LC: Do you think one day people will turn on their Android phones and see Adwords running down the right side of the home screen?

MG: It could look like that but not as in-your-face. Where has Google failed before? Knowing so little about the end user because you don't have to declare anything when you go to Google.

When you use a device with Android software, the likelihood is that Google is going to know a lot more about you personally.

That's what I was talking about earlier, about the differences with mobile search. All of a sudden Google is no longer looking at you as if you were an impenetrable black box. It will know more about you.

About Mike Grehan

Mike Grehan is VP, Global Content Director for Incisive Media, which publishes Search Engine Watch and ClickZ. He produces the SES international conferences and is a member of the Board of Directors for SEMPO, a professional organization for the search engine marketing industry.