WebProNews

The way searchers behave on search engines provides a lot of insight into what companies can do to improve their search services. A SES San Jose panel covered some recent enlightenment on searcher behavior research.

SES: Searcher? Oh, Behave!

(Our on-scene WebProNews staff has passed along this latest news from SES San Jose 2007. If you can't be there, you need to be here with WebProNews this week, for videos and reports.)

Pavan Lee of Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions has a lot of respect for soccer moms. Microsoft has measured and explored their Net usage to determine the role of search in their buying habits.

It's fertile ground for exploration. Lee said their findings showed their soccer moms possessed considerable Net and search savvy. They also have tremendous influence on household purchases.

Nine out of ten of them use the Net a couple of times a day, and when they surf they are looking for deals. Lee noted that 80 percent of the moms look for something in the consumer-packaged goods category at least once a day.

ComScore senior VP James Lamberti said these packaged goods searches bode well as a preview of the "digital shelf," where Net users can browse just as they do in a brick and mortar marketplace.

As e-commerce entrepreneurs reach for customers, Lamberti suggested they market to the consumer’s motivation. Examples of motivation would be one's lifestyle, like active or laid-back, or lifestage, such as college student or married parent.

Citing Kellogg's Organic Cereals as an example, Lamberti said an opportunity had been missed. They built a brand through much work, but neglected to consider search, as demonstrated by this query.

Oliver Deighton, a Google product marketing manager, talked about brand advertising. He said brand fixation behaviors occur in the URL and the title of a listing, not in its description.

As a best practice, one should place the brand in the URL, title, and as close to the start of the description as possible.

(Editor's note: Deighton also recommended buying brand keywords for advertising. It just happens we posted an opposing viewpoint to consider. Briefly, if a brand already ranks highly in organic search, paid search could be an inefficient use of one's marketing budget. - David)