Website Discoverability

by Tom Schmitz on October 12, 2009

Successful marketing on the World Wide  Web depends on discoverability.

Discoverability is the ability to find information on the Internet – a fact, message, brand, company or even a website. When something is easily discoverable it is easy to find.

website discoverability

On the Internet there are two types of discoverability, citation based and algorithmic.

  1. Citation based discovery derives from mentions and links within web documents such as articles.
  2. Algorithmic discoverability or dynamic discovery refers to search engines and other web tools that use programs and software to find content, organize it then present on results pages and link to it .

Citation based discoverability depends on authority. Web pages with many inbound links are said to possess high authority. The more citations – mentions and links –  a web page receives on the Internet the easier it is to find. In other words, when a thousand websites mention or link to the same website, the site receiving all of those citations will be easier to find than a competing website that benefits from only a handful of links.

Visitors from algorithmic discoverability come from dynamic or formula-based results pages. The most popular algorithm based discovery tools are search engines. Google, Yahoo!, Bing and Ask all use formulas based on authority, trust and relevance.

In search engine algorithms when a document matches a search engine query it is said to be relevant. How relevance gets quantified can be quite complex. Does the query appear on the document? Does the query appear in the text of links that point to the document from other websites? Are their different forms of the query in the document (past, present, ing, ly, etc.)? Do words and phrases that are related to the query appear in the document (ex. for baseball – bat, glove, pitch, foul, etc.).

Authority is a product of link popularity. The more websites that link to a document the more authority that document receives. Web pages that possess more authority themselves pass larger volumes of authority than web pages that few links point to.

Do not confuse search engine authority with attitude or tone. In search engine algorithms a link from a glowing review sends the same authority as a link from a negative article. This is what search engine optimizers mean when they say, “A link is a link is a link.”

This is not to say that search engines do not use sentiment analysis or opinion mining. Their algorithms are quite complex, however, experience shows us that links with negative sentiment do boost rankings.

algorithmic discovery or dynamic discovery

A place where sentiment analysis may play a role in the search engine algorithms is trust. Trust is based on measured regard or esteem.  Imagine using human evaluators to investigate the 100 most visited websites and identify the most  trustworthy among them. You’d end up with a list that includes sites like  www.whitehouse.gov and www.adobe.com. If several of these most trusted websites link to www.examplecompanysite.com then you can deduce that this website should also be trusted. A search engine can build an algorithm around this, beginning with a list of highly trusted websites then passing that trust onto other sites based on which sites link to which.

Hopefully you are thinking about what characteristics make web content interesting enough to earn citations, trust and authority. I’ll dig deeper into citation based discovery and algorithmic discovery as we continue to explore The Engagement Economy.

Don’t confuse discoverability with findability. Findability is the ability to locate information within a a website’s architecture and design.

{ 0 comments }

The Engagement Economy

by Tom Schmitz on October 11, 2009

Broad acceptance of sites like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn has changed the face of discoverability on the World Wide Web and given rise to The Engagement Economy.

The Engagement Economy is my name for the fiscal engine created by networking – word of mouth, buzz, social media, linkbait and even algorithmic discovery via search engines.

iStock_000009728451XSmall

Before 2009 search engines dominated whether or not websites received visitor traffic. When website administrators looked at their analytics the top non-paid referrer was usually Google followed by Yahoo then either Ask.com or Bing (formerly MSN Search, Windows Live Search then Live Search).

Most companies focus online marketing strategies around search engines, either paying for traffic or crafting optimized content to earn high organic (non-paid) search engine rankings. Others invest in banner advertising on popular websites or operate affiliate programs that let independent contractors do their marketing in exchange for commissions.

During 2009 the market for online traffic changed. Celebrities like Martha Stewart and Oprah began using Twitter and companies like Coca-Cola discovered they could create brand pages on Facebook. Suddenly both businesses and mainstream Internet users started allocating resources and building content. Now, companies active in social media consistently find Twitter and Facebook among their top referrers.

As the web continues to grow and mature, expect the number of top referring websites that are not search engines to increase. Also, look for new algorithmic discovery tools based on real time and social media search to send large numbers of visitors.

But what about The Engagement Economy?

We have all seen glimpses of The Engagement Economy. For example the idea that companies cannot control their brands on the Internet or brands in the wild. On The Knot a positive review in the brides forums or on a popular member’s profile can send spikes of new customers to wedding businesses. By contrast, a negative review on the Ripoff Report can hurt a company’s reputation and sales because their reports tend to rank high for brand names.

The Engagement Economy’s lesson is that companies and brands cannot be passive. The days of sticking to your own website or blog are ending. Conducting business on the web is becoming more and more like doing business in the physical world. How can you shift the role of the offline rainmaker online? How can you network and build relationships with different audiences? How can you instigate conversations and engage in them? How can you turn conversations into revenue?

Early adaptors  are all using social media. So is much of the early majority.

image

As more people join online social media networks and as the sites and tools become more powerful, the engagement economy grows and gains strength.

Intrigued? I’ll be writing quite a bit more about The Engagement Economy and breaking down its parts. I think this is an exciting exploration. If you agree be sure to subscribe to the RSS Feed.

{ 0 comments }