Click – What Millions Of People Are Doing Online (WMOPADO – my abbreviation to it) is one of the best books I have read on the topic of Search so far. Bill Tancer clearly shows the power of the search results that one can leverage to improve their marketing and hence provide what the audience wants.

Among all the ideas presented in the book, there are two of those which impressed me a lot.

One is about the Search Arbitrage concept and the other is about the topic of Tipping Point between search traffic and social network traffic. I have explained both below as he has made it so easy to understand and I am eager to try and implement it across the vast search results that I have handy.

Search Arbitrage:

Arbitrage originally was used in economics where someone would take advantage of the price difference between two markets and make profits out of it.

The context here is in search world where Bill could take the search results data about top contestants at popular shows like American Idol and easily find out who is going to be announced as the winner. It is just that the data available to the judges after the users call in, is available in a relevant form – in the form of search queries about each contestant. He also explains how he had to take into consideration a correction coefficient to refine the results and get it to be accurate. Once you understand this, his initial sentences about how arbitrage is different from prediction makes more sense.

I am yet to try this out on the search data I have access to – will post again on what I find.

Tipping Point:

Tipping Point, in its original version refers to a point at which an object reaches its moment of critical mass or the threshold or the boiling point.

In the online world, this is referred to as the point at which a website explodes in terms of traffic. In this book, the author slices and dices each stage before this and how the initial momentum and buzz is brought out by the early adopters in the social networking world, then followed by the thrust given by the people who act as the catalyst to speeding its growth. As this happens, people start to write about the site in their mainstream blogs and forums, which then causes an increase in the search engine traffic leading to discussions on this topic. At a certain point the search traffic cross beyond the traffic brought in by social networking searches and that is referred to as the tipping point.

As he goes explaining this concept, he introduces the five types of users who cause a website to reach its tipping point:
– The Innovators – These are typically the founders of the websites and the people in their inner circle
– The Early Adopters and Super Connectors – These are the catalysts who are also known as influencers – as they have a good set of people following what they say.
– The Mid Adopters – These are the typical active online community who spend most of their time online, creating the buzz that is a part of the viral marketing strategy adopted by many websites in the Web 2.0 world.
– The Late Adopters – These are the conservative users who are very cautious before adopting to any new website or concept that is out there.
– The Laywards – These are the ones who finally decide to adopt because everyone else is on it

Overall, this is one of the best books I have ever read on practical usage of technology and the way in which Bill has presented it makes it one of its kind. A must read for any one who has interests in Web 2.0. btw, Bill, am I being the catalyst here? 🙂