But this is distinct from using natural search techniques to create the same kind of responses that paid search and ads are intended to prompt.  But consider a recent report that described the results when Americans were asked about their behavior with respect how often they clicked on paid vs natural searches:  79% said they click on natural results either “always” or “frequently”; only 20% responded the same way with respect to paid results.

In the course of our “soft launch” we’re doing some work for clients that range from relying on heavy off line advertising, heavy online ads and some that don’t advertise at all.  We’re finding that all of them could improve their natural search results with very small and inexpensive changes.  We have not yet developed the statistics to suggest that a major campaign could have done better by substituting better natural search, but that is where we are heading.

Furthermore, we continue to receive many valuable comments and reactions from our professional friends on CalibraxKPI scores.  Some have asked hard questions, forcing us to dig deeper and further explore and expand the range of questions that may be answered with CalibraxKPI scores.

In particular, two friends have challenged our thinking by asking whether a high CalibraxKPI (MCR) score might be advantageous if it is high because of an underlying high Engagement score.  We’ve focused on controlling Internet “shelf space” by seeking high CalibraxKPI (ECR) scores, i.e., those that a client controls (See http://www.calibraxkpi.com/strategic-online-performance-KPIs.html for definitions of ECR, MCR, CCR and OCR).  But their idea was that by combining the Engagement scores with MCR scores, we might have discovered a cheaper way to provide marketing types a way to see how well their positioning message is getting through to their targeted audience.  More on this to come!

The other big news is to announce the hiring, earlier this month, of Danielle Holleran as our PR and Marketing Intern.  Hailing from Ireland, Danni is in her last year of college in Dallas. We found it interesting and somewhat amusing that her LinkedIn “transition” announcement http://www.linkedin.com/companies/calibraxkpi rated first ranking by Google after our press release. Congrats, Dannni and welcome!

Last but certainly not least, it is fitting that I should thank, on this last day of the year, our long time stalwart of the company, Julie Brenner who provides the backbone of so many of our projects.  Thanks, Julie and let’s have a great 2011!

And may this also be true for you, our CalibraxKPI readers and enthusiasts: have a happy, healthy and prosperous new year!

Companies that don’t thrive on negative publicity or allegedly misleading consumers might be interested to know that there are ways to control their brand presence online to generate affirming, rather than negative, publicity.   Our scores borrow from the same Google quirk. But there the similarities to DecorMyEyes end.

DecorMyEyes has learned that lots of attention online – even if that attention is negative – drives higher the ranking of its website in Google’s listing of search results.  And who doesn’t tend to click on the higher ranked search listings rather than those buried on Google’s 17^th page?  For the consumer unwilling to do a little research before buying, that tendency – in the case of DecorMyEyes – can lead to a very bad experience, as detailed in the Times article.

Few companies consciously take this route to top Google listings.  Most would prefer to pay Google for a “sponsored link” despite evidence that suggests a much lower click-through rate for sponsored links than those resulting from natural search.  Often companies taking this approach do not control many of the natural search results that contain their own brand name and thereby give ground to detractors:

• For a long time www.boycott-delta.com appeared #6 in Google for the query “Delta airlines.” While that site seems to have gone, www.deltareallysucks is currently at Google #21.
• The Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) also knows how a grassroots movement can mobilize around the Web and undermine an entire industry. For years, www.boycott-RIAA.com appeared well above the RIAA’s own Web site in search results for “copyright,” “file sharing” and other queries important to the RIAA’s members.
• Even retail giant Walmart isn’t immune. www.walmartsucks.com, a site run by dissatisfied customers and disgruntled employees, ranks the #5 or 6 Google result for a “walmart” query.

But isn’t the current rage – social media – supposed to afford companies (or schools, governments, or individuals) the opportunity to better control their natural search results?  Yes, but until the CalibraxKPI^TM service,  there has not been a way to quantitatively measure the success of this new form of public relations.

DecorMyEyes relies on the fact that when confronted with unacceptable performance, customers tend to trash the perpetrator online more than customers write glowing evaluations of good performance.

But companies wishing to increase their natural search results rankings can use CalibraxKPI^TM scores to help them assess the success of every aspect of their online performance.  Indeed, the CalibraxKPI^TM research indicates a strong relationship between successful online performance using their scores and brand values.

In our soon-to-be released publication, the “WEB 500: The Global Survey of Strategic Online Performance & Brand Values^TM”, we will demonstrate that the median online presence control score for the top 50 brands in the world is 88%, whereas the same score for the bottom 50 brands (out of a total of 500 surveyed) is under 13%.

Ironically, DecorMyEyes would have a low CalibraxKPI^TM control score, but very high “yield” (as in “yielding control”) scores for results controlled by consumers and others – measures we also track.   So if a company wants to emulate DecorMyEyes strategy (not recommended!), they should seek high CalibraxKPI^TM yield scores.

Most companies, however, should save the money they spend on paid search (Google will hate this message!), and instead focus on getting high CalibraxKPI^TM control scores across not just PR or marketing – related matters, but all matters important to the company: how it is perceived as a place to work, how seriously it takes its corporate responsibilities to all its constituencies, the quality of its business development opportunities, and the quality of its customer service.

DecorMyEyes is unusual in seeking top results positions for negative content. For the huge majority of companies that don’t thrive off negative attention, the article’s real message is this: if you don’t own or control the top results for your name (and your brands and everything else important to your reputation and sales), then you’re leaving those result positions up for grabs by unhappy customers or employees, competitors, activists, or (as many main brand retailers knows to their cost) by discounters, counterfeiters and brandjackers.

In short, it’s better to take control of your online presence yourself!

With the holiday shopping season — especially the cyber retailing season — in full swing, we decided to see if the home pages of about 30 retail, apparel and leisure time brands in the 500 Most Valuable brands were optimized for searches related to Christmas and holiday shopping, specials, deals, etc.

Surprisingly, only one home page is optimized for these topical search terms. Other pages may be, but the home pages of the #1 brand sites returned by Google are not.  The single winner?  Only Costco had the keyword “low prices” on its home page.

We then Googled the top 20 results of these major retailer, apparel and leisure time brands with following keywords:

• “Holiday shopping deals”,
• “Holiday gift ideas”,
• “Holiday Shopping Savings”, and
• “Holiday shopping trends 2010″.

This is a summary of the 80 results:

• 79 were owned or controlled by mainstream media, consumer media or others (etailers, shopbots, price comparison agents, special deal/coupon redemption sites, etc) and not the brands themselves.
• Only 1 was owned or controlled by a Top 500 brand… a Walmart “Early Savings” press release, the #10 result for “Holiday Shopping Savings”.

It appears that none of the leading value, discount or bargain retailers own the related “value”, “discount” or “bargain” keywords.  Yet they likely each spend a great deal of money on search ads, Adwords, and other paid online media stressing their “value,” “discounts” and “bargains”.

When one bears in mind that click-through rates for natural search results are 85% while paid ads are at 15% and banners at 0.5%, one wonders why these companies continue to emphasize paid advertising at the expense of natural search. We think the top natural search listings are where a brand may cost-effectively build its brand equity and value, not in banner ads!

Many have said that our initial materials were too dense and
complicated.  That’s easy to do when one has been working on a project
as long as we have been working on this.  So we thank our many friends
that have been honest enough to tell us where we need to improve.

The other observation is that we have received many more ideas on how
CalibraxKPI scores can be used to better manage strategic online
performance.  Of course, this complicates the first problem: to try to
explain all this makes our materials only more complicated, not less
so.  We’ve decided to use our blogs for much of these explanations.
Keeping watching here and Amory’s blog at http://
searchkpi.wordpress.com.

Since then we’ve been discussing how best to present the results when we finally do so (which is soon!).  We’ve decided that the best way to present results is by industry.   While we recognize that the world of lists (Fortune, Forbes, etc) would publish our list ranked only by the CalibraxKPI score (the higher the control of the company’s online performance, the higher the ranking).  However, we are not primarily publishers, we’re business consultants.  Accordingly, because we think a quick comparison by our clients and prospective clients with their peers will be the most useful, we’ll publish the Web 500 by industry.   Look for it soon!

Earlier this year, a friend of mine, Amory Hall, showed me some work he had done years ago on how measures he had developed had a surprisingly strong relationship to the rankings of brand values on a list published by a well-known marketing communications firm.  I was fascinated.

At the time, I was working for a client of Barker Consulting Partners to develop some routines of translating brand values to enterprise values.  It was an interesting assignment being at the intersection of finance and marketing but not quite the same as what Amory had shown me.  Nevertheless, I talked to the client about it and finding he wasn’t interested, we at Barker Consulting Partners proposed and Amory accepted the idea of developing a break-out unit on behalf of Amory’s company in return for an equity stake.  (See Amory’s blog on this subject)

Since then, we’ve together refined Amory’s original processes and shaped the discovery into a commercial offering whereby all members of the corporate C-Suite and literally any institution or individual interested in knowing, quantitatively tracking and influencing what we call their strategic online performance.

Our new company, CalibraxKPI, produces a series of scores (or key performance indicators) that quantitatively measure how well our clients are strategically using their online presence.  We refer to these scores as strategic and online to differentiate them from digital media, search engine optimization, traffic statistics and the like because literally any member of the C-Suite can benefit from their use and their scope is well beyond web sites.  We speak of performance to emphasize that the service is intended to boost a client’s value over time.

We’ll be announcing and publishing the first annual WEB 500: The Global Survey of Strategic Online Performance and Brand Values soon.  The survey will demonstrate the relationship between CalibraxKPI scores and brand values.  Upon reading our survey, we think many will be eager to subscribe to our reports.  I look forward to your comments!