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The message from Wall St. to Google rang as clear as the opening bell today. Unfortunately for Google, it was finally “For Whom The Bell Tolls.”

After hours, Google found itself in a Matrix of its own making. Analysts played the role of Morpheus to Eric Schmidt’s Neo:

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.”

The blue pill: Google starts giving guidance to Wall St. and manages expectations. The red pill: have it your way and suffer the slings and arrows of analysts who project exponential growth. Let’s face it, it’s tough for investors to read the tea leaves.

Look for Google stock to yoyo as investors try to figure out what’s behind the deceleration in growth. Mary Meeker received some Homer Simpson-style credit for noting paid search revenues were at the core of Google’s problems. D’oh Henry.

Google posted revenue growth of 51% Y/Y and 14% Q/Q with Google properties revenue revenue growth up 58% Y/Y and 14% Q/Q.

Google stated property revenue growth (+58% Y/Y) was driven by “strength in the holiday retail season.” We’ll look closer at what’s really driving Google revenue growth in the coming days. Battelle summed it up: Google…Disappoints.

Google network revenues increased 37% Y/Y and 12% Q/Q. Strong international performance, with $2.3 billion in Q4 international revenue.

Google has added some “dots” to their new slogan: now, “Search.Ads.Apps Strategy.” The Street feels they’d be better off dotting their i’s and crossing their t’s in executing on social media / social search strategies.

Google ecosystem numbers were healthy. Good for the rest of the Internet; not as good apparently for Google. Traffic Acquisition Costs, revenues Google shares with partners in the Google ecosystem jumped to $1.44 billion in the fourth quarter of 2007. Last quarter, TAC of $1.22 billion in the third quarter of 2007.

TAC as a percentage of advertising revenues was 30% in the fourth quarter, compared to 29% in the third quarter of 2007.

Reading the search headlines these days, it may seem like we’ve gone a long way to get right back where we started: human-generated search. Well, not exactly where we started; these new breed of search engines aren’t human-powered in the same way DMOZ and the original Yahoo were, they’re algorithmic search engines that have been human-enhanced by allowing searchers to rank or vote on results, and even to tag or comment on them—much like social bookmarking sites like Digg and Reddit do.

And they are growing in popularity, with some of the biggest names in search behind them. Jason Calcanis, entrepreneur poster-boy and SEO public enemy #1, recently introduced an update to Mahalo , his human-powered engine, that adds aggregation of user profiles and pages from various social networks . Matt Cutts hinted that Google was integrating social interaction into results and we’re beginning to see Google test it. And Google’s best friend, Jimmy Wales, is making headway with Wikia Search, his admittedly “poor” but improving search engine that integrates the philosophies of Wikimedia and user-generated content.

So are human-enhanced search engines really the future? And if they are, is that a good thing?

Click to read the rest of this post…

If you register for Search Engine Strategies London by Friday, February 1, 2008, you can save £100 with the early bird special. (Which as everyone on this side of the pond knows is worth almost $200, as everyone on the other side of the Chunnel knows is worth €134, or as everyone North of Hadrian’s Wall knows is worth a 750 ml. bottle of Johnnie Walker Blue Label.)

Now, if you haven’t decided to attend “The Premier Event for Search Engine Marketing & Optimization” yet, check out the conference at a glance, which has been updated since I wrote Its “Horses for Courses” at SES London back on January 8.

Fredrick Marckini

There will be an opening keynote by Fredrick Marckini, Chief Global Search Officer, Isobar. Fredrick founded iProspect in 1996 and is recognized as a leading expert in the field of search engine marketing. He has authored three of the SEM industry’s earliest books, including Secrets To Achieving Top-10 Positions (1997), Achieving Top-10 Rankings in Internet Search Engines (1998), and Search Engine Positioning (2001). Fredrick is considered one of the pioneers of search engine marketing and was named to BtoB Magazine’s Top 100 Marketers in both 2005 and 2006.

Fredrick was a founding Board Member of the Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO), where I worked with him during the non-profit organization’s early years. He’s also from the Boston area, as am I. So, it will be a little “roundabout” to go all the way to England to see someone I know from New England. But, hey, search is that kind of industry.

Other additions to the Search Engine Strategies London conference agenda are two sessions in the Kelsey Group Local Track on Tuesday, February 19. One is entitled, Local Search 2.0, and the other is entitled, Mobile Local Search: A Moving Target.

While I should disclose that SES London is a client, others agree that this is a must-attend event. For example, Lyndsay Menzies, Managing Director UK, bigmouthmedia, says, “If you live and breathe search, or just want to know more about it, then Search Engine Strategies is for you. SES is a great show for anyone who wants to hear experts share their knowledge, find out about the latest developments and future technologies, and hone their search expertise.”

In an interview with VentureBeat, Google VP Marissa Mayer says that social search is one avenue Google is pursuing to improve relevance in future iterations of its search engine. The algorithms could incorporate search history from a searcher’s Gmail contacts, or input from human experts, as startups like Mahalo, Search Wikia, Collarity and Eurekster are doing (in different ways).

Some ways to incorporate social data into search results that Mayer mentioned include:

1. Labeling or annotating search results, similar to the way social bookmarking sites like del.icio.us and StumbleUpon let users add comments and tags to sites they find.
2. Show results from “users like you,” the technique used expertly by Amazon.com to help shoppers discover new products they may not have even known they wanted.
3. Using aggregate search histories of friends (or Gmail contacts) to influence search results

When asked what Google will look like ten years from now, Mayer replied, “I think one way it will be better is in understanding more about you and understanding more about your social context: Who your friends are, what you like to do, where you are. It’s hard to imagine that the search engine ten years from now isn’t advised by those things.”

Social search is expected by many to define the next generation of search. According to search historian Danny Sullivan, search 1.0 used on-page elements to rank pages, search 2.0 added external linking, and search 3.0 is the current state, with universal search and blended search. Search 4.0 will incorporate these social factors.

So far, we’ve shared some New Years resolutions, and predictions from several search marketers and social media marketers. I asked many of those same marketers what they would most like to see from search engines in 2008. Yesterday, we ran part one, and today we share even more wish lists from search marketers in “Search Marketers’ Wish Lists, Part 2.”

Local search guru Peter Krasilovsky of Local Onliner fame reported on Yellow Pages veteran Pat Marshall’s move from Superpages to archrival Yellowbook back in July 2007. As the CNMO (Chief New Media Officer) Marshall assumed operating responsibility for Yellow Book’s new media products, including yellowbook.com and search engine advertising. Krasilovsky noted that YellowBook’s website wasn’t really a priority at the company, and one line of business where Idearc had a strong lead.

So how’s he doing? The chart on the left shows traffic through Oct, 2007. Here are the comScore numbers for December:

Yellow Book Network jumped 137 percent to 10.4 million visitors. Visits to Yellowbook.com network sites tripled (up 207 percent to 4.6 million visitors) with the acquisition of a new property.

Yellowbook can’t rest on its laurels. AT&T’s Yellowpages.com has replaced Yahoo Local Search for AT&T’s broadband and Internet customers. (Krasilovsky also reported YellowPages.com recently told analysts it expects to attract two billion searches in 2008, and three billion by 2010.)

Yellowpages.com Network grew by 51 percent to more than 24 million visitors in December, 2007.

Mike Boland of The Kelsey Group explained in SEW Experts why Google, Yahoo, and MSN need to take the IYP threat seriously. Verizon’s also reportedly competing with Google for the $4.7 billion C-block for 700 mhz wireless spectrum, according to Saul Hansell of The New York Times.

For search marketers, their clients, and small and medium sized enterprises, that means online-offline integrated search advertising.

I’m constantly on the lookout for software tools and services that help us serve our clients better. Since I’ve been a closet geek and software junkie my entire life, I get a mild kick when I come across software that’s well-designed and provides value and features that really stand out. Yesterday I was tipped off to one that almost literally knocked me out of my chair.

It’s called CrazyEgg, and it analyzes site visitor behavior in ways I didn’t think possible — and presents the results in a strikingly powerful, engaging manner.

The thing is so chock full of features that time and blog space don’t allow me to go into too much depth. In a nutshell it lets you see exactly what elements a site page visitor clicks on - in various graphically-rich ways - like a scatter-map (they call it “confetti”), or a “heat map,” or a variety of other views.

It also allows you to test page variations against each other in novel ways - absolute gold for conversion optimizing.

Best of all, it delivers tremendous value, available elsewhere at a much higher cost. But they’re giving away most of the valuable functions for free.

Run, don’t walk.

P.S. Rumor has it a search industry luminary is behind the service.

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