Decisions… Decisions… Conversions?

The phrase “Decision Engine” seems to be a bit of a buzzword these days. With Bing, Hunch and Wolfram|Alpha recently released, it seems like there’s a push to differentiate from industry leader Google by going beyond just showing search results to offering decisions based on the results. As a marketer however, should we be concerned that these “decision engines” represent the beginning of a movement that keeps traffic on the SERP and ultimately results in lower on-site conversions?

To be successful, these “engines” need to break into the population of Google loyalists, however merely claiming to have “better search results” has been shown to be ineffective. For now, offering “decisions” is a differentiator and it might just be enough to get people thinking about which service is best for their specific query. Let’s take a moment to look at some of the newer engines out there that could be classified as “decision engines”:

Microsoft owns the term, literally. If you type in decisionengine.com into a browser, you’ll be routed to a Bing promotional page. We’ve already provided a brief review of Bing so I won’t repeat the same information but if you’ve played around with any sort of travel related searches you’ll see search results that don’t even require a click through to get the desired information. For instance, “What’s the cheapest flight to Chicago?” I can answer that without leaving Bing.

Google has a Labs project that’s received some buzz lately call Google Squared and it’s based upon the ability to generate a matrix of results for a given category. They use the term “roller coasters” as their example on how Google Squared works. Type in the term “roller coasters.” What’s returned is a list of specific coaster names as rows. Categories such as speed, height and description are broken out by columns. There’s even a way to add your own categories if you choose. Think of someone searching for a “smartphone” and you might start to see the importance of how this engine can drive decisions without even leaving the SERP.

Hunch claims to “help you make decisions and get smarter the more you use it.” Think of it as a combination decisions engine and community forum. Upon going to the site, you are immediately presented with a series of questions to help Hunch understand a little more about you. After answering these questions, you then have the option to ask for help in making a decision. Let’s take the smart phone example again. Before it gives me a recommendation, I’m asked more specific questions such as if I use Microsoft Exchange or not, or are there specific smartphones I would like to avoid. Ultimately, what is presented, is a number of recommendations from Hunch, prioritized by relevancy and reviews from other users on pros and cons. Again, I’ve been presented with a recommendation without ever leaving the engine.

Even with Wolfram|Alpha, which is less of a decision engine and more of a “computational knowledge engine” the same result occurs. A search for “San Diego” provides me with population, location, local time, weather, elevation, and nearby cities…all without leaving the results page.

While these engines are unique in their own way, each has found a way to differentiate itself from traditional search engines by focusing on decisions and not just search matches. The interesting piece to consider is how these decision results might affect us as marketers. With more and more relevant data appearing on the SERPs, the need to click through might start to decline. Lower click-through rate could result in lower traffic and lower on-site conversions, even though the end goal of helping users find your brand may have still been achieved. Also, showing up as a top result may become even more important than it once was. If there are only a few results (like Hunch) then not appearing first could ultimately be hurtful to your bottom line.

ACTIONABLE INSIGHT: From an SEO Manager’s perspective this is something to keep an eye on to see how it develops. Is it something to worry about now? Probably not. These engines need to gain significant market share but, could this be a sign of things to come? Maybe. If these results prove to be preferred over the traditional format, it won’t be long before more traditional search engines start thinking about new ways to bring the answers to the SERP and as a result, keep traffic on their page and not yours.

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