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COOPER ON SEARCH

Search may be safe but still has plenty to shout about

Fri, 14 May 2010 | By Will Cooper

There’s an ongoing debate within the new media age office on whether the search industry is middle-aged – in other words, safe and even a bit boring.

Has the sector lost that drive and creativity it was synonymous with, certainly a couple of years ago, as profit margins have narrowed?

Pioneering search agencies have been or are being bought (Bigmouthmedia, The Search Works) or, in contrast, have seen tough times (Latitude).

It’s safe to say that search as a media buy has become commoditised, and it’s certainly not the route to quick riches that it once was – Google’s removal of Best Practice Funding put paid to that for many.

All this points to a sector that, while nowhere near close to decline, doesn’t seem to have the verve it once had.

But before we’re inundated with comments arguing the opposite, here’s my point: I’m certainly not seeing as many pragmatic uses of search as we once did, so those that are discussed really stand out.

Take the current hype surrounding the New York creative who bought keywords against the names of leading ad personalities, with his CV popping up when they searched for their names. Is it justified hype? Certainly. But such examples are few and between.

I’m positive there are great uses of the channel daily, hourly, and every minute, but they’re not shouted about. Maybe it’s time for the industry to talk a bit louder?

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Readers' comments (2)

  • Nick Jones | Fri, 14 May 2010 3:52 pm

    Search may be middle aged in internet terms but its far from boring. I'm sitting here in an office surrounded by super intelligent experts, most in their early and mid-twenties who are daily generating thousands of pounds of revenue for our clients. As I type, our natural search team are brainstorming innovative link building and content ideas for one of our clients, and our paid search team are busy integrating search and facebook bidding strategies. With search the devil is in the detail and clients and agencies guard their successful tactics closely, innovation and lateral thinking are a day to day reality for search professionals. The focus of the media has naturally fallen on up and coming areas such as social media and mobile where innovation is more straightforward to illustrate.
    Attention spans are short these days as we are regularly told.

    Will, maybe you've just got bored about writing about search!

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  • Sotos | Fri, 14 May 2010 4:20 pm

    I agree that search is not what it used to be but this is a natural process with everything.

    Blaming search for the lack of creativity is like blaming the handset for the arrogant, impolite customer service manager on the other side of the line.

    Although the "medium" can define quality (bad line signal can cause a bad telephone conversation experience) it is again the participants that have to push boundaries and make it better.

    My only real issue at the moment is congestion. Can a page (search is page 1, everything else is just noise!) really serve the needs of such a massive market? This is when the "medium" defines quality. Its limitations become a problem.

    We, the marketers, have to push the boundaries and don't just expect from search engines to change the "medium".

    Segmentation could be the answer. Premium search for premium clients and normal search for everybody else.

    The screen "real estate" is getting more expensive by the minute. As you would expect in real life, you either have to move to a new neighbourhood (social media/networking, mobile etc.) or expect until they build new skyscrapers to fit them all in the same.

    If for the sake of argument all companies agree to stop search advertising and go to Facebook would Google just sit and watch its slow death? No. it will have to adopt. It might not succeed but it will change.

    Meanwhile we can be as creative as we want and need to be and exploit all these changes.

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