As the Search Engine Marketing industry continues its maturation, the old growing pains are making way for new ones. We are glad to see that search solution providers are becoming more transparent, particularly in encouraging advertisers to own their own search engine accounts or at least making the account data easily available. This is a significant improvement over the old days when agencies “owned” search engine accounts and it was nearly impossible for advertisers to get their own data, let alone logins to the account. However, a new issue, which is perhaps equally concerning, is the trend towards removing the human element from the search equation.
We see this in two ways:
1. Search vendors provide the technology and minimum training on the platform but do not teach the ins-and-outs and, in particular, do not provide search-relevant training to make a search engine management technology truly effective.
2. Search vendors suddenly concerned about cutting cost are putting huge swaths of search programs on automated strategies and not performing ongoing analyses to understand the ramifications and strategic optimizations.
As proprietary search technologies continue evolving to provide added functionality to the search engines, it is crucial that advertisers continue demanding not only transparency but also human expertise. Search Engine Marketing is not a “set it and forget it” operation, even with the most advanced platforms on the market. There are too many externalities to depend solely on automated strategies. In order to get the most out of a search solution, advertisers should expect to change their workload from execution to strategic analysis for greater search control and success.
Josh Krafchin
