Today, Optify released the results of a recent study of customer keywords’ click-through rates on Google in a white paper called “The Changing Face of SERPs: Organic Click Through Rate.” The group came up with a few interesting findings. For instance, Optify found that ranking first on the second page has benefits as the CTR of result eleven (top of page two) is greater than result ten (bottom of page one).

The team at Optify even managed to surprise itself a little. Optify says, “We were surprised by the PPC-to-SEO correlation. The fact that expensive CPC terms see lower organic CTR was very surprising to us. As a measured outcome however, it seems to make sense. Google’s business goal is to drive more clicks on those terms to the sponsored links since they are worth more per relative impression for lower cost terms.” (more…)

Search is taking another step forward, inching ever closer to stuff of science fiction. Today LTU technologies announced pixlinQ. The mobile visual search platform enables advertisers to link printed ad material to digital content using a mobile device without having to add QR or 2D codes. “With mobile visual search, the trigger and call-to-action can be integrated into the visual itself instead of adding a code that may  not complement the visual message,” says Yanna Sigenlaub, vice president of marketing for LTU.

With pixlinQ, organizations can add the mobile visual search feature to mobile applications and mobile marketing campaigns. This includes an API and SDKs. It also includes a content and analytics platform where clients can upload the content they want to make recognizable with an app and define what they want to display on the users’ phone when they have taken a picture of the content. Once activated, they can use the platform to track user statistics  and monitor the success of their campaigns. (more…)

HP announced a new line of products yesterday, including HP TRIM Enterprise Records Management 7.1 that intends to provide a new holistic approach for businesses to manage information, which, according to an HP research survey, 70% of organizations do not have.

“A ‘business as usual’ approach won’t solve the information management challenge,” says Noel Rath, worldwide product marketing manager, HP TRIM, HP Software. “A fundamental shift in information management, from people or infrastructure-based to a policy-based processing of information, is required to successfully address information management in the enterprise.” (more…)

Some pretty big changes have been afoot at MarkLogic. Just this morning, the company announced its new CEO, Ken Bado. He joins MarkLogic after 8 years at Autodesk and, perhaps, just in time an IPO.

Unlike many companies, MarkLogic has continued to flourish over the past few years. Bado says, “We haven’t really seen a downturn in our business. We’ve been growing steadily, 45%  year over year from 2009 to 2010 and expect the same for 2011. We hired 100 people last year, and expect to add another 150 in 2011.” (more…)

Zinio announced today that it is now using MarkLogic’s expertise to power its UNITY multi-device platform. Zinio needed a common repository that would enable reliable, rapid aggregation of magazine content and adapt it for exportation in a common format to smart phones, which brought the company to MarkLogic.

“Zinio faces a huge challenge with the content received from magazine publishers. It comes in multiple and inconsistent formats, and many times Zinio simply receives the PDF document, which is not ideal for a good reading experience on a mobile device. In addition, it’s also difficult to get article level access, as opposed to an entire magazine,” says Seth Shearer, director of media solutions at MarkLogic. ”Then there’s timeliness – getting the content on time so the digital version isn’t lagging behind the print version. Imagine if you received a huge batch of inconsistent content today and had to clean it up and transform it so that it is available for electronic distribution tomorrow – that’s a common scenario for Zinio and creates a huge challenge in terms of the speed in which digital content can be made available.” (more…)

Google, Inc. is slated to announce it’s fourth quarter and full-year earnings for 2010 today via webcast.

According to new IHS Screen Digest research, it is estimated that Google’s full-year search advertising revenue in 2010 amounted to $25.4 billion, up 20.2%  from $21.1 billion in 2009.That’s a whopping 83%of market share in 2010, a 2% growth since 2009. Google’s revenue growth was even stronger in display and mobile advertising. As a result, Google’s total revenues are expected to reach $28.9 billion in 2010, up 22.5% from 2009. (more…)

Twitter is all about real-time communication, but if you’re  just now joining the conversation you might be wishing you had a way to look back to see what people have been saying. Well, you’re in luck. Research.ly has aggregated three years worth of tweets so you can “Discover, Connect, and Lead the Conversation.”

This search engine, however, does a lot more than just show you some old tweets. Research.ly provides some rather interesting and detailed analytics capabilities for users. You can drill down into the results by sentiment, gender, location, and even something called “degrees of separation.” (We’ll be sure to try this with Kevin Bacon, ASAP.)

What is probably of most interest to business people — at least in the long term — are the groups or communities Research.ly identifies, like dog lovers or marathon runners. Companies can use these groups to return very specific results about who is saying what — or perhaps to target very specific networks. If you’re a communications professional who has been struggling to convince your company of the benefits of engaging with customers using Twitter, you may need only point to Research.ly and its relatively easy to understand, and inexpensive analytics to make your point.

Day 1 of KMWorld and the Enterprise Search Summit under my belt. (Whew.) As the organizer of the Search Summit, the first day is particularly hectic. Opening day jitters, I suppose. Also exacerbated by the fact that the events are in a new venue and city—relocated from years in San Jose to Washington D.C.—so logistical issues dominated much of the day yesterday. That said, I did manage to pull out some themes from day one of our DC debut that surprised me a bit… in their familiarity.

The day kicked off with a keynote on “Knowledge-Driven Enterprises: Strategies & Future Focus” by Tom Stewart, chief marketing & knowledge officer of Booz & Company (and former editor of Harvard Business Review). The first half of his presentation was particularly strong, focusing on his four pillars for knowledge. However, he seems to have foreshadowed a key aspect of what I heard from attendees during the breaks when he said, “It’s good to be talking to this crowd, though it feels a bit like I’m preaching to the choir…. But sometimes the choir needs to get its nose out of the hymnal for a refresher.” Much of his talk did feel like a refresher, albeit a much needed one.

Stewart pointed out that “we’ve been talking about the knowledge economy since 1984… but that traditional organizations [still] don’t manage knowledge well.” The stakes for KM have never been higher, though, which may well explain the near-record attendance at this year’s event. As Stewart puts it, today “knowledge assets separate winners from losers.”

The stakes were made clear by the second kickoff keynote Manjula Ambur, Office of the CIO at NASA Langley Research Center who started her case study on “Exploring Search Frontiers at NASA Langley” by citing Outsell research that “Scientists and engineers spend 14 hours a week locating information… so that even an hour saved a week will save millions and millions of dollars.” Ambur offered a tour of the process her division of NASA took in undertaking to improve its research process, which began with the surprising study that its scientists and engineers often started their search process at Google.com. Given the organization’s investment in content resources, Ambur set out to enable them to have a similar experience inside the organization, while surfacing the best information quickly.

Both of these keynotes—as did many of the days sessions—clearly pointed out that despite our many advancements in technology and increasing investment in it, we continue to face many of the same hurdles and organizational stumbling blocks to maximize the knowledge and information resources in organizations. Undoubtedly, there’s a buzz here about a renewed interest in KM and the inevitable talk of Search and KM “2.0″. But we’ve heard that tune elsewhere and today I look forward to hearing some discussion of how organizations are leveraging this latest wave of enthusiasm and putting these concepts and tools to work.

[PS: our call for speakers for the 2011 NYC Enteprise Search Summit is up... join us!]