I'm really enjoying reading Vanessa Fox's new book: Marketing in the Age of Google.

I'll review more about the book next time, but I wanted to jump all over something else this morning. In the Book, Vanessa makes (basically) the following points:

• Of the 18 Billion searches each month nearly 12% are retail focused. 70% of product searches are for categories (digital cameras, washers)
  
• For most searches, the home page is not the entry point. "Any page can be the entry page" "We have to rethink our approach to site design and user interaction based on the new world"
  
• "Even those retailers who don't sell products online or who have substantial offline sales are still impacted by search." "Sixty three percent of search-related purchases occur offline" "In a webvisible/Nielson study, 82% of respondents said that they've used the Internet to find local businesses; 80% say they've researched a product or service online before buying it locally."
  
  

So here's the thing I wanted to test.. How does traditional advertising impact search queries? From that: How does search marketing play a roll in overall advertising strategy? Does Corporate Blogging?

Check out the following images:

Notice the peaks? What do those peaks have in common? If you guessed Sunday you win the prize. Ok, consider this (although it may be obvious to you now) Big retail invests millions of dollars every week creating beautiful, compelling enticements to buy new products. These go into our newspapers every Weekend.

What these inducement's clearly do is create demand for the products advertised. What do the readers of these Advertisements do? They do just what Vanessa Fox says they do...they go online and research the products that caught their eye. Not only the brands (you see spikes in branded searches too) ... but the products themselves.

If these brands are not ranking on these product searches, didn't they just spend all that money to send shoppers into the arms of their competitors? About one million searches are done each month for [samsung led tv]. Not a single big brand shows up organically to help the consumer buy this product locally.

There are millions of searches that contain the term washer spread over hundreds of different phrases or queries. To Vanessa's point: "Any page can be the entry page" "We have to rethink our approach to site design and user interaction based on the new world". This is why retail businesses are looking at the scale afforded them through enterprise level blogging software. It's the perfect tool for thinking differently about SEO.

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