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Trae’s take on search analytics

MM: One of the things I’d like you to speak to, Trae, is the notion of search analytics.

Yes.

MM: Many companies have volumes and volumes of search terms and arguments used on their websites. Unfortunately, a great many of those terms really don’t bring satisfying results.

Right.

MM: How have you seen forward-looking innovators start to use those search terms and frequency and derivations into providing some additional insights. In terms of who’s wanting what, and how we’re not fulfilling what they want.

I have two distinct thoughts on that. The first is, there are really innovative thinkers in the area of search. They’re starting to realize that consumer-centricity, targeted search is where the real return is.

For example, it may be that putting a particular word out there — or buying a word, let’s say…

MM: I want to draw the distinction between buying ad words and search terms as linguistic artifacts that reflect a particular ontology of desire—awareness, consideration, trial, commitment, loyalty, and advocacy. I surmise that we’d find a great treasure trove of actual search terms that somebody used at large site-the actual words that put into the search box. It seems to me that there’s both an ontology and taxonomy of desire that’s just laying there which very few companies analyze, much less apply in any kind of useful way.

I’m really glad you brought that up. It’s funny. For a few years now — and this is just one angle on what you’re saying… We do host, develop and certainly analyze and report on many web properties for our clients. One of the things that I, personally — as well as many others in the organization — really harp on is the need for internal search.

To your earlier comment about the voice of the customer — you get no more direct voice of the customer than someone typing in, “Here’s what I want you to give me from your site.”

We’ve had some success in that area — and sometimes not so much, in terms of getting our clients to understand just how valuable that is. So there’s internal and external, obviously.

One of the things we do for a few of our clients is — and this sounds very fundamental, but again, I don’t know of many others who are doing this… When an individual finds your website — let’s say they’re coming from outside. They type in a term on Google, and they’re driven to your website, as a result.

If you know what you’re doing — from a technology standpoint — you can certainly do what virtually everyone does… Track the term with which they entered your site — and what drove them there.

However, I don’t know of very many that are using or storing that term in a database. So if I know this is John Smith or that it’s Cookie1234, regardless of how I choose to identify that visitor — [I can] store the term that brought them there.

You can use that analytically in many ways. For example, people that come to my site searching for “Term X,” tend to exhibit the following pattern of behavior. So when somebody comes to my site in the future, using that same term, I’m going to then dynamically serve up content that I know they’re most likely going to want to see. So I can use it predictably in that way.

Then of course there’s internal onsite search, which I think is just as, if not more, important — depending on the particular client. When somebody’s on your site and you allow them search functionality— and they say, “I’m looking for product A or product Z,” or, “I want information about whatever…” obviously, in a very practical and functional way, that’s what you’re going to serve up.

But then you should store what they’ve arched for. So let’s use a hypothetical example. If somebody comes to your site and they always search for products in a particular category… Shoes, let’s say. If that person’s opted into a newsletter, then guess what content should be at the top of their newsletter? It should be “shoes.”

So we use that as a very rudimentary example. But again — not too many in my experience are utilizing that very valuable information.

Here’s the Alterian advertising, again… It all comes from and starts with a data model from a data approach that says, “I’m going to appropriately store and capture what an individual tells me they want — on my site. What’s driving them to my site, et cetera.”

Then from a campaign standpoint — and I use that term loosely… It could be dynamic web content. It could be a mobile campaign. It could be outbound, et cetera. I’m going to be able to leverage what they told me they want from a content standpoint. Again, in very much a test-and-control environment.

So I can learn if — in fact — this is causing an increase in engagement or if it’s causing an increase in purchase.

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