THE TRUTH ABOUT SEARCH

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1 THE TRUTH ABOUT SEARCH

2 Welcome to the latest edition of The Truth About Search. We are now in our fourth year and the insight we provide through these studies has helped many of our clients develop and enhance their search strategy. As the landscape and environment changes so does our focus. This year you will see there are some broader themes we address, as these themes are having both a direct and indirect impact on search strategies. The challenges brands face are many and varied, and ever-changing. Just as you think you ve got clarity, the agenda shifts and you need to rethink your strategy. With this state of perpetual change, we are finding clients are turning to us to offer clarity where there is uncertainty. We draw upon the numerous different sectors we work across to provide a whole-ofmarket view. This year, we ve tried to augment each truth with some pointers as to what clients might want to think about as ways to address the challenges we ve highlighted. Clearly these pointers are not the total solution but, if you do require a more in-depth conversation around your challenges, we d be delighted to meet you. Neil Yeomans Search Director McCann Connected

3 01 t r u t h a b o u t ATTRIBUTION WILL NEED RETHINKING IN 2018 The growth in dark traffic is being driven by links being sent from the likes of Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. This means a growing number of brands are unsure where their traffic comes from. s E A R C H This problem is being further exacerbated by the fact that browsers are starting to release intelligent tracking prevention software. Safari has already done this and the other browsers will undoubtedly follow. And the move from third party to first party cookies adds even more complexity. And as if the landscape wasn t challenging enough, the imminent arrival of GDPR will add additional layers and challenges, especially around marketing, re-targeting and exchanging data across different platforms. The reality is that brands will need to seriously rethink their approach to attribution modelling in 2018 and in many cases this will require brands to rebuild from the bottom up. First things first, it s critical to ensure that channel-specific tagging is properly set up, so that inbound links from marketing channels can be properly attributed by web analytics. Where possible, businesses should be moving to use first party cookies as much as possible, and should be looking into how they can authenticate existing customers, so that visitor sessions can be unified, even if they are accessing a site from multiple browsers and devices.

4 02 t r u t h a b o u t AMAZON AND EBAY ARE BECOMING GO-TO SEARCH ENGINES Amazon and ebay are increasingly becoming search engines in their own right for consumers looking to buy products. Comparison sites such as Skyscanner are fulfilling a similar role. Consumers are taking the view that they know what they want and where to get it, so why start the journey with a search engine, when they can go directly to the site that is the likely source of the product or service. A survey commissioned by Kenshoo across the USA, Germany, UK and France found that 72% of shoppers now use Amazon to find products, with 56% indicating they usually look on Amazon first before looking at other sites. The research also highlights the unique path consumers take when shopping for products, with 51% of respondents indicating if they see an interesting product on another site, they also look on Amazon to find alternative ideas and to compare prices. This change in behaviour by consumers means brands will have to start rethinking their approach to the customer journey and this point links back to the previous truth around changes to attribution. Brands need to be exploring the potential to be seen on these platforms, for example by starting to operate on Amazon Marketplace. It is also important to start revisiting affiliate relationships such as price comparison sites, and remember that price comparison sites can now bid to appear in Google Shopping, following a recent EU-related change to the rules.

5 03 t r u t h a b o u t AI IS ADDING DEEP CONTEXT TO SEARCH AI seems to have become an industry buzzword over the past year and it seems to be touching every aspect of digital marketing and communication. From a search perspective, AI is playing a massive role but it is very much in the background rather than front and centre. It is being used to understand the context and proximity of searches which means we need to really understand user intent and group together similar themes and related content. Machine learning reproduces this same approach by putting words into a vector space and this allows meanings and groupings to be represented. Brands need to recognise that natural language is becoming more important than outright keyword targeting, because search engines can better understand the relationship and meaning behind sentences, rather than just keywords.

6 04 t r u t h a b o u t FEATURED SNIPPETS THE NEW BATTLEGROUND IN SEARCH Featured snippets are assuming increasing importance in a brand s battle for search dominance. Up to one third of search results now show a featured snippet and we believe this will increase significantly in the next twelve months. Featured snippets allow a brand to be the authoritative voice on a given subject with the search result featuring in a special snippet block at the top of the search results page. This effectively means a brand can rank in position zero and dominate the above the fold space Leverage the power of data to understand how users are searching for given pieces of information and then combine that insight with a great user experience and compelling content. The key to success is to create content that serves your audience s needs ahead of your own. Creating engaging, compelling and ultimately useful content is key to claiming that authoritative position. Claiming a featured snippet has the added value of conferring search and ranking benefit across a brand s entire site.

7 05 t r u t h a b o u t VOICE SEARCH IS BECOMING UNIVERSAL AND IS NO LONGER AN EARLY ADOPTER TREND In the Truth About Search 3.0, we called out the rise of voice-activated search and the last year has seen it become truly ubiquitous across the mainstream consumer as opposed to a piece of novelty tech for early adopters. All the major platforms and devices have voice assistants (VA) and the technology has become even more mainstream as a result of a growing number of automotive manufacturers embedding VA technology into their cars, either directly or by harnessing the capabilities of the driver s mobile device. In many ways this trend is intrinsically linked to Amazon and ebay becoming search engines because the likes of Amazon s Alexa are an extension of their search functionality. Brands need to undertake paid optimisation across all key platforms to capitalise on the ever-increasing use of voice assistants. Put simply, the assistant is linked to the platform so Google Assistant will only send to Google Shopping and Alexa to Amazon. Brands also need to start understanding exactly how consumers are using voice assistants in terms of context and environment and shape their strategies accordingly.

8 06 t r u t h a b o u t PAYMENT SERVICES ARE AN INTEGRAL PART OF THE USER JOURNEY PayPal is a highly trusted, highly popular service that has exploded in popularity since becoming integrated with ebay. In recent years we have seen some serious competition coming of age, which we feel is disrupting the marketplace. These include: Apple Pay & Android Pay, Pay with Google / speed through checkout and big card companies like VISA releasing their VISA Checkout service. The reality is that people don t like to fill out long forms and card details when buying stuff online, so any steps to avoid this are welcomed by consumers. The idea of having a digital wallet on our smartphones, which is used to tap in and authenticate purchases, bypassing the checkout altogether, is something that is only going to increase in the future. If not using PayPal, reconsider how this can be integrated into e-commerce sites the slight hit due to fees can be compensated for by higher conversion rates. Ensure that checkouts are ready to handle new technologies such as integrating with the Google Payments API, ensure that the two key platforms of Android and Apple are catered for. Consider that your site may well evolve to be a shop window with transactions occurring via other platforms.

9 07 t r u t h a b o u t USER EXPERIENCE IS THE DRIVING FORCE BEHIND THE GROWTH IN MOBILE SEARCH Many brands like to hide content or omit it entirely for mobile devices in a bid to simplify the user journey on the small screen. This does not constitute best practice and actually runs counter to web accessibility principles, namely that content should be accessible regardless of the device it is shown on. In reality the quality of user experience is becoming key for mobile search. Brands need to recognise that Google is paying particular attention to how usable a mobile webpage is and how content is accessed. Google is increasingly ranking according to these criteria, so suppressing content to simplify the user experience will no longer be a viable option in the future.

10 08 t r u t h a b o u t CONTENT IS KING AS GOOGLE PLACES INCREASED EMPHASIS ON QUALITY AND RELEVANCE The machine learning algorithms we touched on earlier are increasingly looking to measure quality and relevance when it comes to content and we know this is becoming ever more important. The challenge for brands is to ensure they create quality content rather than simply SEO content that feeds the machine because this type of SEO content will become less relevant in the eyes of the algorithms in future. Understand their customers, understand their motivations and understand their intent before looking to create a content strategy that is on-brand, relevant, engaging and ideally both useful and entertaining.

11 09 t r u t h a b o u t PROVIDING A VIEWPOINT ACROSS THE WHOLE MARKET We work with numerous clients across multiple sectors targeting myriad different audiences. And we have drawn insights from across each of these areas to shape our views. We re a top 40 UK digital agency (econsultancy.com) and our 140 specialists span the paid, owned and earned landscapes including content production. We help our clients make sense of the complex journeys consumers make and develop marketing solutions without bias or borders. We help connect consumers with brands, technology, and, of course, each other. Some of the clients we work with and who have contributed to the Truth About Search 4.0 through discussions with us over the past twelve months are shown here. It may be that you don t see your particular market sector represented but that doesn t mean we haven t got experience in your category. As well as our current clients we ve got experience in many other sectors. So if you ve got a particular challenge you d like to get our point of view on, then get in touch using the details on the next page.

12 10 t r u t h a b o u t GET IN TOUCH If some of our truths have got you and your colleagues talking, we d love the opportunity to join the conversation and see if we can help you make sense of some of the issues you re facing. Sitting behind this booklet is a more comprehensive presentation which we d love to share with you, so if you re interested in finding out more then why not get in touch? If you want to create a wider conversation about the issues we ve highlighted, why not take the debate to social media using #TRUTHABOUTSEARCH. We ll be watching to see how the discussion evolves online and distributing random acts of kindness to the most thought provoking observations that are tagged with #TRUTHABOUTSEARCH. Jim Rothnie New Business Director jim.rothnie@mccann.com T: M: