The most popular activity for shoppers using their smartphone is price comparison. Countless apps in the iOS App Store and Android App Market allow users a myriad of ways to check prices of products at both online and brick-and-mortar retailers. Thirty-eight percent of smartphone owners check prices online while they’re in a store, and 38% also shop from their phones. Reading online reviews of products was the second most popular activity at 32%, while nearly a quarter (24%) look for online coupons.

Interestingtly, the least popular activity on Nielsen’s list is also the thing the most smartphone owners wish they could do. Only 9% of users said that they use their phone to pay for goods or services at the point of sale, yet over 70% of all app downloaders said they were at least slightly interested in doing so. Interestingly, iPhone users expressed more interest in mobile payment technology than Android users.

Several Android phones have the necessary near-field communication (NFC) technology to power mobile payment systems. Google even has its own mobile payment service, Google Wallet, that is available to some Android users. The iPhone, on the other hand, has no NFC capabilities, despite persistent rumors that the technology would be coming to the previous two generations of iPhone.

Rumors that the next iPhone would be getting NFC technology gained new life earlier this month when MasterCard executive Ed McLaughlin said in an interview that every handset manufacturer he knew of had NFC technology in the works. When asked if that included Apple, McLaughlin avoided answering directly, but insisted that every manufacturer was working to incorporate NFC.

Whether Apple really is working to incorporate NFC into the iPhone is certainly up for debate, but Nielsen’s numbers suggest that they have good reason to consider it. Almost 40% of iOS users said they were either extremely interested or very interested, while a further 36% said they were somewhat or slightly interested, leaving only 25% of iPhone users who were not interested in the technology at all.

What do you think? Would you like to see mobile payment technology come to the iPhone? Would you like to see it expanded on Android phones? Sound off in the comments.

"We’ve taken this notion that you make decisions online using your social network," Bing says. "And we said how can we take that experience….and make it part of the core search experience that you can use to get stuff done faster."

On every product on Bing shopping, there is an "Add to List" button. When clicked, a shopping list module will appear on the bottom left of the screen with a button to share that list anytime.

Once you share it and go to your Facebook Wall, it’s treated like any other shared link on Facebook, and you can add additional messages, such as, "Would you go with the Jordans or the Reebok Pumps?" or "Which Xbox should I get?"

"Now you can enlist the help of your favorite gadget geek," says Bing. "Give your friends and family a nudge by publishing a wish-list to your Facebook Wall."

The Search-Meets-Social Trend

This is just one of the latest in a continuing trend of social media features added to search. In fact, Google is also currently experimenting with a new section in Google News for "most shared" that appears to show activity on social networks like Twitter (ht: Mashall Kirkpatrick). 

The new Bing feature, however, is basically just sharing search results more than it is tapping into existing friend data that’s out there, which is more what another Facebook/Bing announcement was about. 

It’s an interesting time for search-meets-social because there are so many possibilities for creating effective integrations. The two complement one another in many ways, and social can help users reach decisions about their search results. We talked about that at length here. It’s also why Facebook has great potential as a search engine. 

Bing is smart to take advantage of Facebook data in different ways, and we’ll no doubt see more integrations as time goes on. Google can’t get the kind of access Bing has, and it refuses to go the Facebook Connect/social plug-in route that a substantial portion of the web (even Myspace) has embraced.

Bing and Facebook are two of the biggest competitors Google has, and the more they work together, the more Google has to worry about. 

Related:
What if Facebook Goes Search While Google Struggles to Go Social?
Why Windows Phone 7 Could Be Google’s Biggest Threat

As Google Checkout ramps up, many thin arbitrage / shopping aggregator sites are going to see a significant love loss from Google. In September Andrew Goodman wrote a piece on how paid search and organic search quality criteria may play off each other, after coming across a post on Inside AdWords where Google stated that some types of sites are likely to merit a low quality score:

The following types of websites are likely to merit low landing page quality scores and may be difficult to advertise affordably. In addition, it’s important for advertisers of these types of websites to adhere to our landing page quality guidelines regarding unique content.

• eBook sites that show frequent ads
• ‘Get rich quick’ sites
• Comparison shopping sites
• Travel aggregators
• Affiliates that don’t comply with our affiliate guidelines

Market Saturation

It does not help any of the shopping aggregators that there are about a dozen competitors (BizRate, Shopping.com, Shopzilla, MSN Shopping, NextTag, Epinions, DealTime, Pricegrabber, Pricerunner, Yahoo! Shopping, etc.). From a marketing standpoint almost all of them offer near identical user experience, so few of them are remarkable or linkworthy. The whole field (including Yahoo!) compete based on renting large swaths of links.

Everyone MUST Rent Links to Compete

Given Google’s recent war cries against buying and selling links, and that there are so many shopping comparison sites, it is easy for Google to whack a few of them with it going unnoticed by anyone outside the companies. But if you are in the comparison shopping field and do not rent links, how can you compete with Yahoo! when they do? You can’t.

The Fall of BizRate.com

I am uncertain if the drop in Google was algorithmic or editorial, but BizRate’s Alexa ranking is off sharply over the past couple weeks, and if you look at top keywords they ranked for on Google (via Compete.com, SEO Digger, or SpyFu), their site is no longer ranking for many of them. In fact, I didn’t even see the US site ranking for "biz rate". For that term bizrate.co.uk ranks #1. When I visit the UK site from a Google search result for "biz rate" the site asks if I want to view the US site or the UK site.

Google’s Algorithmic Whitelists Are Not Carved in Stone

BizRate, which sold to the E.W. Scripps company for $525 million, used to be on Google’s editorial white list.

Comments

The session, simply titled "Shopping Search Tactics," featured presentations from analyst Brian Smith of ComparisonEngines.com, and from Brian Mark, chief technical officer at Toolbarn.com.

Smith opened his portion with a gloomy warning: This will not be as easy as Google AdWords. If you’re submitting your product information to a shopping engine, read the directions carefully – each engine has its own guidelines for data feed submissions.

There’s no optimal automated XML solution (though some circles are pushing for an open standard), so for each feed, you’ll have to hand key the information, adding as much as possible in the spaces provided. 

There are lots of engines to submit a feed to, but an important one is Google Base. "There is an amazing opportunity to get a lot of sales through Google Base," said Smith, "because if you get to the top of these results you appear in Google’s main results."

But also, he teases, Google Base offers custom attributes, and the Mountain View, Calif.-based company "is going to announce something very soon that will make this more advantageous."

Until then, Smith gives this nutshell full of advice:

There is an opportunity to do great SEO work through your data feed. Look at the data feeds for blank fields.

If you don’t have a title that is unique you are in trouble. Make titles that are more specific for search engines. There is an opportunity to really get out there and show the user what they are searching for.

No matter what people say search engine optimization is still about the content on the page. Make sure your product pages have good content.

Don’t use image links with the shopping engines.

Say exactly what you sell in the one-line description in your data feeds.

Just how important is it to establish your presence in the shopping search engines? Brian Mark says it’s about 40 proof worth of important.

"The shopping engines can offset drops from organic search results," said Mark. "We are getting over 20% of our customers from shopping engines. From AdWords, 4%; MSN, 6%; Yahoo, 9%; and 22% of our customers are repeat customers at toolbarn.com."

Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.

Our lawyers say: Bad. Very, very bad. You can only “Google” on the Google search engine. If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to “search” on Yahoo or any other search engine.

I applaud the attempt, after all, Google must show that it is at least trying to police its trademark – important, if you want to keep it – but with hundreds of millions of users, it’s unlikely they’ll win this battle.

Now, please excuse me while I go and google a story about some yahoo who went shopping after asking his webMD why he kept going (micro)soft. [groan]

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Andy Beal is an internet marketing consultant and considered one of the world’s most respected and interactive search engine marketing experts. Andy has worked with many Fortune 1000 companies such as Motorola, CitiFinancial, Lowes, Alaska Air, DeWALT, NBC and Experian.

You can read his internet marketing blog at Marketing Pilgrim and reach him at andy.beal@gmail.com.

With much lower costs and a much greater reach, online advertising makes up the second largest area in which advertisers spend money and marketers pass messages. There are a growing number of advertising channels available via the Internet and the major search engines are interested in acting as facilitators for as many of them as possible.

These channels or services, unlike traditional predecessors, are open and available to virtually anyone with a product to sell or message to communicate. Openness, ease of use, a sense of fairness and the global reach of the Internet are factors that make search marketing so popular. Ultimately, the versatility of the Internet combined with the much lower costs associated with online communications is what has brought search marketing to today’s prominence. Add the evolution of the medium and expanded accessibility and it is a safe stretch to say that search marketing will eventually surpass traditional television advertising by 2010 as the communications vehicle of choice. Here is a short list of what the search engines currently offer in the way of services to small business advertisers.

Organic Listings

By far, the strongest form of search engine advertising is found in the free organic listings, at least if your site is in the Top10. According to a number of studies, the most well known of which is Gord Hotchkiss’ Google Eye Tracking study , the vast majority of search engine visitors examine and select organic listings over paid listings.

Organic listings are also the least expensive form of online marketing. All that is required is a good website and information on items people are searching for. Delivering a bigger bang for less money, a strong placement at Google, Yahoo and MSN can provide dramatic increases in site traffic.

Ironically, organic search marketing is not seen to be nearly as sexy or interesting as its wealthier cousins from the paid-placement side of the family. The free, organic listings are the loss leader of the search engine world. None of the major search engines makes a penny providing free listings and the search marketing sector servicing organic placements is still seen as an arcane and murky world by many advertisers.

Pay Per Click Advertising and Placement

Pay Per Click or PPC is currently the most popular advertising service offered by the major search engines. Mainstream marketers love it because PPC is fairly easy to understand and not nearly as difficult to explain to others as organic SEO. Because of this, and the base fact that search engines make money hand-over-fist from PPC programs, the rise in interest in search by major advertisers mirrors the evolution of the various PPC systems offered.

Overture started the ball rolling with their original pay per click search engine GoTo.com. The model was copied and modified by Google and Yahoo purchased Overture, rebranding the service Yahoo Search Marketing. Overture was fairly successful in its early years, sticking deals with the search engines of the day to display paid results much in the same way Google and YSM do today but it wasn’t until Google introduced AdWords that mainstream advertisers took notice.

When they did, the sky was suddenly no longer the limit. (Google is actually working to send search services to space.) Mainstream advertising agencies and the absurd amounts of money they control started attending conferences and learning as much as they can about pay per click and other forms of search marketing.

PPC offers a number of definable results that organic SEO simply cannot. You can guarantee with absolute accuracy that the result will be visible on the front page as long as the money and effort is there to make it happen. Good SEOs haven’t made guarantees for a number of years now. PPC has another hidden advantage that makes it widely attractive to larger advertisers.

Contextual Ad Delivery is possibly the coolest thing since the automated bread slicer was invented, at least if you think like a marketer or a search engine financial executive. The delivery system works in two unique ways. The first is based on keywords entered by searchers; the second is based on keywords found on a page or document.

Many search engines display ads generated by a larger search tool. AOL for example currently runs ads generated by Google. The specific ads coming up to the right of the organic search results are placed there because they somehow correspond to the keyword query made by the searcher viewing them. That’s the basic form of contextual ad delivery.

The more complex form is found on non-search related documents. Next time you visit a website that is not a search engine, (perhaps even this one), take a look around the sides of the screen. If you see any ads by Google or YSM, you are looking at contextually delivered product. The ads appear on the screen because the website owner has partnered with Google or YSM. The ads are generated based on keywords found on the document on which they are displayed. Whenever a site visitor clicks on one of those ads, the site owner shares a percentage of the click-through bid. Similarly, users of Gmail have become accustomed to seeing paid advertisements generated based on keywords found in the text of their email messages.

Marketers see contextual delivery as the predecessor of personalized ad-delivery, a service MSN feels it is close to introducing when it takes adCenter out of beta.

Shopping Search

Another form of search service is shopping based search engines. Shopping engines deliver product information directly to consumers, and help them find online merchants to purchase from. They are not meant to be places people look for lost relatives or seek solutions to common health ailments but they would be glad to refer visitors to a good book or microwave oven.

Most shopping search engines receive information directly from the databases of merchants using their systems via an XML feed. Two well-known independent examples are Become.com and Shopping.com . They are not alone however as the major search engines know a good thing when they see it. Earlier today, another well-known shopping engine, PriceGrabber.com was purchased by London based GUS PLC for $485million.

Google, Yahoo and MSN all have their own shopping search engines. Of the three, Yahoo’s is arguably the most interesting application of Web2.0 philosophy, MSN is the most traditional and Google is the most comparative.

Yahoo Shopping has moved forward into the world of Web2.0 providing lists of products and reviews compiled by its massive user base. It actively promotes users to save lists to an area known as my lists, and to make those lists available to other users. Yahoo has tied Yahoo Shopping into Yahoo local search and provides maps to stores found through their shopping engine.

MSN Shopping is fairly traditional and straight forward with product listings by category and price range.
Google’s shopping service Froogle is actually more of a comparative price engine than a pure shopping engine but, in conjunction with Google Local and Google Maps, Froogle can provide directions to the lowest cost items near you.

Local Search

Perhaps the biggest marketing bonanza will be found in local search engines. Many search engine observers suggest local search will replace the Yellow Pages as users start to interface with search via handheld devices and cell phones. Most often used by consumers looking for a product or service near their own home, local search engines tend to draw information from the general search databases.

The types of search services mentioned above are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the full range of features, tools and services offered by the major search engines. For small business advertisers though, these are the services that are easiest to take advantage of and tend to return the best results.

Marketing in general has become more complicated and search marketing is becoming extremely complex. Small businesses that already have a relationship with an SEO or SEM firm might want to arrange a meeting with their search marketing vendor to discuss plans for the coming year. With or without the assistance of SEOs or SEMs all online advertisers have a lot to think about over the holiday season. 2006 looks like it is going to be wild and highly productive year.

Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc. Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel – 250-385-1190 Toll Free – 877-385-5526 Fax – 250-385-1198

The keyword which Yahoo is using to advertise on Google is “RSS.” RSS, which stands for Rich Site Summary, is a format for, according to XML.com, “syndicating news and the content of news-like sites.” When users search the term RSS in Google, Yahoo’s keyword related advertisement garners the top AdWords position.

If Yahoo’s AdWords ad is clicked, the user is taken to a landing page for Yahoo Shopping, Yahoo’s shopping portal. The landing page is a Yahoo Shopping SERP.

In Google’s AdWords program, clients who won the keyword bid must pay the cost for the click to Google. This applies to Yahoo as well. MarketingVOX suggests “the campaign may be an effort at keyword arbitrage. In keyword arbitrage, Yahoo would pay for clicks with the expectation that the Yahoo advertisers will pay more once the original Google visitor arrives.”

Who says competitors can’t work in unison to benefit each other. Google is receiving money each time Yahoo’s RSS ad is clicked. Meanwhile, Yahoo has the opportunity to sell items and gain click revenue from advertisers on their landing page, once the user reaches Yahoo’s ad destination.

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To our knowledge, this marks the first time that a paying AdWords customer has been superceded by a link advertising Froogle. Common ethics would dictate that the highest bidder should get the first position. However, Google seems to be ignoring this in favor of promoting its shopping web presence.

The reader, who happens to be an AdWords customer, believes that Google should not be doing this. First position is usually reserved for the person that bid that highest. However, Google seems determined to push Froogle, and evidently feels that Father’s Day shopping is a good place to start.

A report by Nielsen//NetRatings done to measure Mother’s Day shopping traffic showed Froogle, while getting an 80% jump in shoppers, still ranked below MSN and AOL in overall traffic. Perhaps Google is taking a more aggressive approach for Father’s Day. Giving Froogle the first “paid” position is certainly an indicator.

Is this a new practice for Google? Are they going to give Froogle preferential treatment for every holiday associated with shopping? If they are, how are AdWords clients going to respond to not receiving first position, even though they bid the highest?

All of these are legitimate questions. Unfortuantley, at the time of this article was written; there are no concrete answers. However, WebProNews will be following up on this story on Monday, June 7.

Chris Richardson is a search engine writer and editor for WebProNews. Visit WebProNews for the latest search news.

You’re probably wondering what this means and rightfully so.

Regardless of training and experience, site owners and search engine optimizers alike exchanged links with other sites to attract traffic from other web sites. The Hyper-Text Markup Language was developed to make linking possible turning previously non-connectible documents into a web of information. However, many web site owners acquired links to their business with less helpful link text. Links to external resources must be identified in the link text by the target. Obviously, a link to another web site would be either another company or web site; however, the title of the page or topical representation should be used instead of the company or domain name.

Here’s the problem due to the lack of attention to detail. Anyone that has links coming into their web site or providing links to others should use the title of the page they are linking to. This may be hard if the page doing the linking can’t work the target title into the link text, but something close should be used.

For example, the Apple Pie Shopping Cart a search engine friendly shopping cart must be linked in such a manner as to not marry the term “Apple Pie” to the primary subject of the site. By placing Apple Pie in the link text the site becomes topically matched to “Apple Pie.”

Imagine the problems people have because of the search directories listing sites in alphabetical order and people using numbers, non-alpha-numeric characters and possibly the name of their product or company. This has turned into more problems than those webmasters and search engine optimization companies had expected. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done about links that may have existed for years except ask the linking webmaster to change the link text. This may fall upon deaf ears as those webmasters may become over burdened with the large task of updating tons of links.

What can be done now?

As everyone is aware, we need to be out there seeking link exchanges with as many sites as possible. Now, that you know your link text should be based upon the title of your page or the topic of your site, if the title of your homepage is based upon your company or domain name. This should be a continuing activity for any online business.

If you think the link text doesn’t make any difference, you can go to Google and do a search for “miserable failure.” You’ll find President George W. Bush listed first in Google’s results. The power of the link text cannot be ignored any longer.

In the past you’ve read and possibly heard me state that the Standards for proper web design must be used. All web sites must be developed and promoted using proper web development standards. Failing to do so will destroy your online business.

I anticipate the next move of the search engines to be a higher level of code validation. The search engines are already examining codes used in web pages. But, as we all know change takes time and people must be led into doing the “right thing” in ways they may not be aware of the lead being used.

As a point of reference, you can’t lead a mule or push a mule due largely in part to their stubbornness, but you can coax a mule into doing what you want it to do through subtle suggestions or challenges. The mass of web designers using poor HTML programming techniques and web design techniques can be compared very well with a mule. While there are those that understand, there are many that do not and are so stubborn they refuse to improve their skills.

So, where’s the road map now?

The road map hasn’t moved or changed; only the landscape has changed. All the links to one’s web site still exist and people can find one’s web site through the various search engines. However, with Google the landscape has been, in the opinion of many, replaced with a stronger foundation upon which the roads won’t get washed away if the inroads are developed correctly.

Lee Roberts President/CEO of target="_blank">Rose Rock Design, Inc. and owner/developer of the Apple
Pie Shopping Cart
the search engine friendly shopping cart.