The last week of radio silence has been a result of our impending product launch, the excitement is brewing here at Camarès! Our new offering is for small and mid-sized businesses and will address this issue head on:

SMBs whether selling B-to-B or B-to-C find themselves confronting two voracious converging online trends:

1. Intense flattening of our markets: regional enterprises go online to find they are now competing with other regional enterprises around the nation – and the world. Price wars ensue, in a race to the bottom.
2. Ever increasing customer expectations: first it was web 1.0, then web 2.0 filled with engagement mechanisms and video. Mobile is on the horizon, if not already here. With each iteration, SMBs find themselves having to spend more to keep up. Even though programming development costs are going down, the average cost of a full-featured web site has not changed much since 1995 – it costs to stay in the game.

An environment this chaotic is unforgiving. SMBs find themselves in the challenging position of having to out smart the web to succeed. Our new offering will help them do that. Stay Tuned!

Media Post has confirmed what my Alexa toolbar has been telling me for months. Facebook is the Big Number 2 on the web. As frustrated as I have been with FB and its kloogy interface for users and advertisers alike, I have to give them credit for re-inventing the Web.

Love it or hate it Facebook is the elephant in the room. Funny, I said that about Google back in 2004. Speaking of which, I should remind everyone, that Google will become increasingly less relevant and sooner than we think. Google will face that Microsoft Moment. That Windows vs. Mac moment. I’ve been saying this and writing about it for a long time.

Typical of tech cycles, we work from chaotic fragmentation to behemoth to orderly fragmentation. Facebook will be going there too, not to long after Google has its moment of truth.

For at least five years have been writing and talking about how search will eventually move to vertical portals. It is official, it has.

I was speaking to a family member. A savvy young woman in her early 40s who I would call an average computer user. Her work does not keep her at her screen 10 hours a day, in fact she uses her computer to augment her work and to support her personal needs (kids’ homework, occasional shopping, email etc). The rest of the time she works face-to-face with retail customers.  Here is what she said, “I hate Google, because when I go there to help my kids on their homework I just get shopping information. I don’t want to buy, I want to know. I use Wikkipedia.”

And there you have it. A regular Joe/Josephine who has discovered that there are other more effective places to get answers than Google. Google will go the way of the IBM. Too big, too cumbersome, too out of touch. Too worried about being gamed on a meta scale to deliver anything relevant on the user scale.

Enter Bing. A compelling hybrid. Ironically this Microsoft product learned a lesson from Apple: Beautiful to look at, solving a chosen group of user needs. It is clear that the folks at Bing asked themselves: what do users use search engines for most? The answer: Entertainment, News, Travel and Shopping. “Let’s place ourselves there in a most aesthetically pleasing and robust manner.” Bing will become the go-to consumer search site. But don’t go there to research your term paper, or to conduct any other type of muscular search. It just won’t return good information. And the truth is, neither does Google. It is only slightly better than Bing in that department. Doing robust deep research still involves endlessly long search phrases and serious poking around over an extended period of time.

We are actively engaged in researching new technologies here at Camarès and we are finding that it can take weeks and hundreds of searches on Google alone – never mind Wikkipedia, YouTube and other engines. Invariably we find our answers nested deep in blogs that are linked to each other and NOT as a direct result of a Google or Bing search. Our Josephine described the essence of the problem: “Half the time I don’t know the right question to ask.” Well the truth is she does know the right question and so do we at Camarès, it is the engines themselves that are not indexing information in a way that humans actually search for it. I call this the Nuance Gap. Humans are nuanced, search engines are not. And it is the one place that Google has consistently failed the user since day one.

Until Google bridges this gap (and my bet it will never, ever be able to do this) it will die a slow twisting death, nibbled away by more compelling vertical competitors. Right now it is skating on its huge cash reserves and the fact that companies are willing to auction up the price of keywords beyond anything that is affordable. It is also skating on all the other Joes & Josephines who have not yet changed their behavior, but will over time.  Traffic will diminish – in fact it already is. Right now, Google may simply be calling it “market saturation” but if it were doing its job right, it would have out Binged, Bing a long time ago.

I wish I had written today’s op-ed in the NY Times. I am glad to see that my concerns regarding Google’s supremacy are shared. Adam Raff talks at length about his business being “disappeared” by Google’s indexing bots. His self-interest in the problem doesn’t make his concerns any less important. Google’s indexes are a monopolistic gateway and the practice of Search Engine Optimization has never been more dicey.

The truth is that most companies are shunted off to Google’s Siberia indexes – making paid search a necessity for many. And there in lies the source of the monumental rip-off that is Google. I used to laugh: “Google won’t show you organically, then they add insult to injury and ask you to pay for the top slot.” That in and of itself should make us all very concerned, but the manner in which Google Adwords are sold makes things even worse: it has always been cloaked in secrecy and has become increasingly so over the years (see my previous post).

Google Adwords is not an auction at all but rather an Extortionist’s Ball.  The FTC ought to be looking long and hard into Google’s Adwords practices. If Adwords was a the NYSE, even the SEC would shut it down.

Sometimes a great lunch with a colleague with whom you’ve shared life in the trenches brings things into focus. Missa Goehring – a member of the Web marketing vanguard – and I were talking about an antidote for my general crankiness about things web – especially how hype simply blinds business people causing them to waste countless hours on useless online endeavors. Missa (like Denise) recommended that I consider more uplifting blog posts. And as if to reinforce their point I happened to run into a White Rabbit walking down an empty 6th Avenue as I made my way back to my car…

So through Deb’s looking glass folks! Here are my top picks for things fabulous on the web:

Facebook Advertising: Yes, you heard it here, I actually like the ads. And so does Missa who enthusiastically told me it delivers ads that mean something to her. I agree! Proof point: I just discovered Gardener’s Index a social media site for rabid gardeners like, well, me. How? A targeted Facebook ad got me there.

YouTube: Now a more mature platform, passionate communities are forming around special interest film and video. I am considering giving up Cable TV all together. YouTube offerings are far more compelling. Even those that you think would not interest me like Lauren Luke the eye shadow queen. Proof? For a person who never wear’s eye shadow, I find her delightfully authentic and very watchable. Or better yet, the fabulous Italian music group Audio Toys’ Time (not a Bohemian Rhapsody by the Muppets) who had the moxie to “Miss” piggy back on the Muppets’ Bohemian Rhapsody success and gain exposure. Bravo Muppets! Bravo Audio Toys!

Bing: Now why would I, hater of all things Microsoft, have anything nice to say about them? Because they FINALLY  created something that is not only useful, it is beautiful! They actually reached my satisfaction bar, and let me tell you, in case you haven’t already guessed, that is tough to do. A team over at Microsoft sat down and said: What do users use search engines for most? Let’s deliver it to them in a clean, fully thought through, intuitive, aesthetically FABULOUS way. Buying something, or selling something? Check out cash back gleams. BING! Shopping for airline tickets? Watch how they tell you when you will most likely get the lowest price. BING! News search: their Universal Search pages are fabulous with their glide over videos. Their Visual Search, is a knock out. BING!

How does that impact your business? If you are considering search, look at Bing, if you are looking for cost effective targeted advertising look at Facebook and if you have something to SHOW visually, a story to tell, you may find your most influential Passionistas on YouTube.

Oh yeah, and then there was the White Rabbit…he was advertising Wonderland’s Most Wanted: alice a Syfy TV event Sunday Dec. 6 check the really cool web promo.

The New York Times reported on its front page this morning that Walmart and Amazon is in an all out price war. Target is joining in too as retailers fight not to cede market share with others. This is old news! If you think this is not affecting you small online business, it is. Online marketers have been in a discounting double death grip since the recession began. Aggressively bidding higher on search engines to gain, keep and hold market share close.

There is only one solution: Change the game by manufacturing something unique and desirable, preferably niche market oriented.

The quick fix of broadening product categories to increase average sales value is a non-starter – it simply places you smack dab in the same situation again with larger competitors.

And, this solution as any major business solution demands investment and time, read: risk taking. But it must be done because 1% margins are not sustainable. Even by the big boys.

Think about this: When you go to buy a stock, you know the last purchase price, the volume of shares traded and the type of shares being sold — among many other things.

Now when you buy a keyword or key phrase at “auction” on Google or Bing or any other search engine, you know nothing, zero. After awhile of spending money and watching closely you can gauge how much you need to spend to get to your desired position. BUT…

You don’t know

• The volume of clicks.
• The latest bid.
• What is being purchased (exact, phrase or broad) among many other items.

Yes, Google rates your ads and landing pages, but they don’t tell you HOW they are rating them. And they are allegedly applying better pricing to better ads — but what does that mean? We really don’t know their parameters.

Imagine buying a stock and not knowing the last tick? Or the trading volume?

You wouldn’t participate would you?

Google’s closed auction is much more akin to a Vegas gambling game: the house ALWAYS wins. Scott Cleland over at Precursor.org doesn’t even think it should be called an auction at all. “If Google were interested in fair representation and truth in advertising, Google would represent Adwords as Google’s algorithmic secret selection process or GASSP.”

I love the acronym, because that is exactly what advertisers are doing right now gasping for breath as prices go ever higher and Google Adsense makes less sense than ever before. Yes a searcher is the most motivated buyer on the planet BUT the value of that click depends on your product price point, conversion rates and margins.

If ever there were an application from HELL it is Facebook.  Let us look at it from multiple levels shall we?

1. The User Experience:  Tabs/buttons are hard to find, obscure and unexplained. Worse they are duplicative! We all know that the key to any online product is to minimize clicks and create an intuitive interface. Facebook features neither. So like other online players who grew too large too fast, it delivers a miserable user experience. Kloogy.

2. The Concept: What is a “friend”? People have many passions, not all their friends share all their passions. DON’T FILL OUT YOUR PROFILE! Goodness, the geniuses at Facebook actually believe you might want to talk to the folks you went to high school with. High school was not a very passionate time for me. Though for some it was; recently my partner went to her 50th high school class reunion luncheon and noted that the hostess had her Prom dress on display. I guess some folks never graduate. But the rest of us got a life a long time ago. The buckshot approach to friending, waters down the proclaimed power of Facebook. People enjoy  friends and business colleagues under the circumstances in which they engage with them – Facebook blurs that engagement and diminishes the power of social connections.

3. For Advertisers:  Allegedly 45 million people a day update their posts, so, naturally, advertisers are all over getting inside the medium. BUT even though it displays ads based on keywords from profiles and posts, the truth is that display ads deliver notoriously poorly. Such is the case for all disruptive or interruptive advertising across the board! We’ve known this since the advent of the TV clicker — why don’t advertisers get it now?

I have seen Facebook work. BUT in specific niche markets with an intense amount of work on the part of  business owners. In one case we are talking about spending the entire day five days a week over weeks and weeks to systematically manually search for “friends” who share the passion. It is a deeply personal, time consuming effort and it works because it is real. The business owner is a professional with a deep and abiding life-long passion. And it should be noted that this particular group already is highly attuned to networking offline. FB simply allows them to do it more efficiently.

And that brings me back to the overall concept of Facebook — it is not terribly original. Social networking exists easily and more powerfully without the Internet (and it could  be argued that forums, message boards, email and the woeful telephone serve as well if not better in many cases). So where is the value add? I have heard many call it  an addicting waste of time. After the novelty wore off, I find the FB experience mundane and that is not because my friends are boring people, they are bright, engaging and funny when we meet and catch up – we hear the high points of each other’s lives and participate in an extemporaneous two-way dialog. But in the drip, drip,drip of daily postings there is simply no excitement in the execution of our daily lives.