I’m currently preparing a presentation for the local advertising association’s lunch that I’ll be speaking at this week. As I’ve gone through the presentation and asked others for their opinion, it has occurred to me as search marketing experts, we may expect that our clients and users know more than they actually do.
In fact, I’ve also noticed that sometimes it doesn’t hurt to go back and take a look at things from a non-experienced searcher’s perspective. As a result, I’ve pulled some of Google’s search features and attempted to describe each in one sentence.
Organic Search – The original product offering from Google, results are completely organic in nature; that is, Google has not received payment in exchange for placement.
Paid Search – An option for advertisers to pay Google per click to their websites based on a bid-for-keywords model in exchange for priority placement.
Local/Maps Search – Search results filtered by a location and ranked partially on that location.
Personalized Search – Search results customized based on past search behaviour.
Image Search – Search results that display only images from web sites.
Video Search – Search results that display only videos from web sites, including YouTube.
Related Search – Suggested search queries located at the bottom of the search results, related to the original search query.
Social Search – Search results are from your friends and trusted resources, as determined by your contacts and profile links (“social circle”).
Product Search – Search results are products with price and item description, submitted by e-stores directly to Google.
Mobile Search – A modified version of Google available on smartphones like the iPhone and Blackberries.
Real-Time Search – The latest search results, often only seconds old, from sites and social networks like Twitter.
When you’re talking to a non-search-savvy client, do their eyes often glaze over when you talk about Quality Score, Page Rank and Universal Search? How would you describe these features in one sentence to a non-search-savvy client?
