None of the other presentations achieved a third of of Matt's attendance, which is not bad for a guy in jeans and running shoes. My panel, Exploiting shopping search in Europe got a tenth of Matt's attendance. Maybe next year.

The trends from Google are personalisation and localisation:

Chris Sherman: Crystal ball time, where do you see Google going in the next 3-5 years?

Matt: Fantastic question, in my own opinion – personalization, and localization. Also if you have your data, you can store it at Google. You can almost start your own business of 5-10 business for free. Google’s ambition to organize the worlds information, this is really where its going

Google desktop is also a huge benefit – no privacy issues. Helps to find old searches – makes things more accessible.

Yahoo's is progressing into User Generated Content with Y! Answers, giving them an edge over Google in certain markets. So, the next step in Search seems to be Social Search where community contribution to a knowledge base and community filtering complement algorithmic filtering of the index.

Overall attendance at this years London Search Engine Strategies was down because UK professionals preferred attending the London Technology for Marketing conference the week before.

Technorati Tags: matt+cutts

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 5:54 AM | Permalink:Matt Cutts Keynotes London Search Engine Strategies | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

Google not only ignores the two fledgling industry standards for data feeds, but like a bull in a china shop, goes all futuristic by extending the attribute list for products. The base attributes of the a Google bulk submission file are

1. brand
2. condition
3. description
4. expiration_date
5. id
6. image_link
7. link
8. price
9. product_type
10. title

A standard list which complies with the basics of the ARTS data feed standard and the upcoming Oasis new data feed trading standard.

But a few weeks ago, Google extended the optional list of attributes, stating that

....If you are submitting one of the following item types, you can increase your items' exposure in search results by including additional attributes as well...

Most product category attributes have been extended to cover color, styling, and size. For instance, the clothing category the extra attributes for a product are

1. color
2. department
3. made_in
4. material
5. size
6. style

1. color
2. film_type
3. focus_type
4. megapixels
5. model_number
6. resolution
7. size
8. tech_spec_link
9. upc
10. zoom

1. color
2. department
3. heel_height
4. made_in
5. material
6. shoe_width
7. size
8. style

The intension is to provide a more sophisticated search. Rather than 3D virtual world display of garments, it is aiming at what Google does best, crunch and search data.

The question is whether online merchants can be equal partners in this futuristic vision. It is a heavy burden on a merchant's IT team to help Google "Access all the World's Data". The incentive for merchants is there though; as Google integrates its shopping search into its main search results, the amount of traffic directed to merchants will be huge.

The stakes in data feed marketing just got higher. At Enclick, we have been putting together a central database of products with attributes and data collated from various sources. We use the central database to complete the missing attributes on our customer data feeds. Google has just raised the level of data we need to collate for all products lines.

Technorati Tags: data+feed+marketing , data+standards , retail+association , shopping+standards

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 1:29 PM | Permalink:Google Data Feed Standard Goes Futuristic | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Great event for affiliate marketers organized yesterday by affiliates4u events team. Four hundred attendees, merchants, affiliates and affiliate networks.

Merchants are clearly courting affiliates and their ability to attract targeted user traffic. From Kevin Cornils buy.at presentation; affiliates sold in excess £ 2000m goods online for a fee of £140m. A year-on-year rise of 60%, taking an alleged 10% of total online advertising spend.

Clearly merchants are discovering the pay-on-acquisition model. My opinion is that CPA commissions will inevitably rise though, as merchant demand for the model exceeds the volume available through affiliate networks. In the end, buy through ad impressions (CPM), clickthroughs (CPC), and on-purchase-results (CPA) will balance out to give the same value-for-money (ROI).

Yes, what a soup of acronyms.

The word branding came up in conversations increasingly. Paid-search and affiliate marketing have a secondary benefit in addition to the immediate sale; repeat sales. In fact, the repeat sales experts extraordinares, the email marketers, were very evident at the event. It is not just about the sale on clickthrough, it is about the repeat visit. The brand and the loyalty. In fact, one expert from UK Media Ltd, who arbitrages £ 12m in volume, says branding is the next natural step for affiliate web sites.

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Posted by Paul Elosegui at 7:06 AM | Permalink:Affiliate Marketing on the Rise | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)