Google Adwords with a private label / White label

In Norway, several search engines are trying to compete with Google. They're having two basic problems:

• Relevance
• Ad platform

In terms of relevance, sesam.no is doing a great jobb. They are incorpating Norway specific content like telephone listings, company information and Norwegian newspapers. Sesam is taking advantage of their location.

Sesam's main problem is the ad platform. They currently use Yahoo Search Marketing, which is far inferior to the Google Adwords platform(even after they upgrade to the new Panama platform in Europe).

So Sesam basically has three choices:

1. Build their own ad platform(which I think they're trying to do)
   
2. Use Microsoft Adcenter, Yahoo Search Marketing or Ask's ad platform
3. Approach Google and get a private label version of Google Adwords
   

If they choose option on, they will most likely fail just like Microsoft and Yahoo have with their "new" platforms. They've spent million of dollars on development and they're still far behind Google Adwords.

If they choose option two, they have a better chance of succeeding since they benefit from the resources of the larger players.

The last option of private labeling Google Adwords is the most interesting one. This option has probably not even been considered, since it may not be possible. I think it would be interesting to explore. The advantage to Sesam is that they would get a user friendly and scalable ad solution that would be easy to fill up with advertisers(because advertisers already know how to use it). The advantage to Google would be that their platform would become the standard for internet advertising(it probably will anyway..) and at the same time assisting a smaller player generate more revenues. If Google's goal is to make Adwords the standard platform for all internet advertising, it would be a great move.

As Sesam continues to burn money, another Norwegian search player is way off. I recently blogged about how Kvasir is failing to understand (in Norwegian) the importance of an automated ad solution and they responded that they thought is was really important that their "talented" sales people took care of their advertisers communication. To me that seems very strange since the majority of Google's revenues comes from the Google Adwords platform.

Click revenues generated by bidding on brand names should go to the brand owner

Search engine marketers know that bidding on strong brand names is a great method to generate sales.

E-mail marketers know that a brand name in the e-mail subject line usually increases the open rate.

Online marketers know the power of branding in purchasing processes. Customers feel safer when shopping on well-known websites and the conversion rate on well-known sites will be higher(if all else is equal).

Brands are important. Large and small companies around the world are struggling to protect their brand names in all marketing channels.

Among the strictest are Nokia and Apple. If you are a mobile phone dealership and you would like to promote your product using Google Adwords, you have to ask Nokia and Apple for explicit permission to bid on terms that they own, i.e. Nokia and Apple iPod.

Instead of refusing advertisers to advertise on brand terms, Google should offer the brand owners a chance to make money when people bid on their brand names.

This is how it would work:
- An advertiser bids on the term NOKIA.
- An automatic e-mail is sent to NOKIA requesting permission to advertise.
- Click revenues generated by bidding on brand names should go to the brand owner
- Google should be paid a transaction fee for enabling the brand name rent

If this implemented the brand owner will always be able to spend more on protecting their brand in Google. The brand owner could pay more to affiliates and afford a higher cost per click. Google would avoid expensive lawsuits while enabling brand owners to spend more on keyword advertising.

Win - Win - Win.

Interesting statistics:
Hitwise Research shows that Internet users are increasingly searching by brand - 75 of the top 100 search terms across all categories in February 2006 contained brand names, an increase of 17% versus February 2005.

A potential description to Youtubes and Googles copyright problems

I believe somebody will come up with a solution to the copyright problem.

Here's one potential process:

1. A copyright-owner goes to worldcopyrightassociation.com, uploads their content and activates the copyrights.
2. The copyright association partners with major text, video, sound search engines and crawls all the content in the world.
3. When the search engines find illegal content, an automatic e-mail is sent to the website owner and the hosting company.
4. In the e-mail the website owner and the hosting company is introduced to a set of tools that enables them to automatically remove the content, identify the person who uploaded the content and temporarily blacklist the IP-address of the uploader. The system also provides the siteowner with tools to monitor the illegal uploader.
5. The website owner can also implement a micropayment solution that's completely integrated with Paypal, Google Checkout and other payment systems. This way, all websites can offer copyrighted content, make some money on it and pay the content owner in a reversed affiliate program™.

Any comments?

Google replaces "I'm feeling lucky" with "shop" button

Consumer research released by Become.com last week showed that when tested head to head against Google, users preferred Become.com’s shopping search results by a 55% to 45% margin.

Some time ago, information about Google's "I'm feeling lucky" button leaked from Google, showing that almost noone uses the button.

If Google's goal is to give relevant information to the searchers, they would replace the "I'm feeling lucky" button with a button that says "Shop".

This could improve the search results for the people looking to shop. It would increase the conversion rates for online merchants and Google would make much more money on ads showing up when people hit the "shop" button.

On the otherhand, Google might confuse the users by changing a button. I think it would be a smart.

10 ways to improve Google search

Larry Page once said: "The ultimate search engine would understand exactly what you mean and give back exactly what you want".

I believe Larry Page, co-founder of Google, is wrong!

I think it's possible to go beyond giving people what they want. I believe that a search engine that gives me "more than I want" would be better than Larry's ultimate search engine.

Larry wants the search engine to meet your expectations. I want a search engine that exceeds your expectations.

So here are 10 ways to improve Google search. Somebody has probably written all of this before and Google(or somebody else) is probably working on all of it as we speak, but I'm writing it anyway.

1. Improve inbound link factoring. Instead of just valueing inbound links from quality websites like PageRank does, give higher scores to inbound links from websites that my friends and professional network value. This shouldn't be that difficult using data from my list of MSN-friends, the people I send mail to through gmail and the google toolbar.

2. Ask clarifying questions. When a user searches for Columbia, Ask.com asks you: "Did you mean Space Shuttle Columbia or the country Columbia".

3. Include conversion factors in the ratings. Increase the search scores of sites with high conversion rates. These sites probably have desirable product offerings that are more relevant than sites with low conversion rates.(Google is probably already measuring this for a lot of companies)

4. Increase the search scores of sites with loyal users. A site that people are loyal to is probably a good and relevant site.

5. Introduce a human side. Connect the Google search results directly with Google Answers. Can't find what you're looking for? Get a quality answer to your search from a real person that's an expert on what you're searching for

6. Add e-mail notification features. Include the option of e-mail notification when a person responds to your search

7. Add Social search. Add functionality similar to www.lijit.com where google's search result pages are enriched with information about the sites from people I trust.

8. Analyse sentences. Give the user options in the search results to let the user narrow down on the search. See how the search engine Infact.com does it.

9. Switch the "I'm feeling lucky" button with "I wanna shop". Usability studies performed on Become.com indicate that people like the two options better than Google's options. According to Google studies, nobody uses the "I'm feeling lucky" button on Google anyway.

10. Sesam.no has some nice people search functionality. I can actually type down the name of a person in Norway and get address information and which companies that person is affiliated with. Pretty neat.

Feel free to comment and improve. Some of my suggestion categories probably overlap. I will try to improve the list as I get comments.