I think its been a little over 6 months or just about 6 months since Google started indexing Twitter and Facebook pages. Actually I think it has been much longer for Facebook, regardless there has been a more concentrated effort by Google to index the real time information. Since then it has been left to speculation on how they were going to prioritize Tweets and insure that they are relevant. Obviously this is quite an undertaking when you can imagine that their are not just millions of web pages being created everyday, but additionally million and millions of tweets happening every day and compounding the difficulty is the fact that tweets are limited to 140 characters. So there is not a ton of context available for Google to evaluate a tweet.

I came across an article earlier this week on ClickZ or Search Engine Watch, which as usual I cannot find now Search Engine Land that vaguely discussed how Google was possibly ranking Tweets. There were a few comments from a Google technician that mentioned how many followers you may have, the quality of those followers, etc, but towards the end of the article he mentioned that Google was having a difficult time with Hashtags. He did not go into any detail as to why, but I believe I have the answer to why this poses a problem and the answer to how Google is going to be ranking Tweets.

Twitter Results in Google

Today, I did a quick search for the company “Peer 1″, not Pier 1, but the hosting company “Peer 1″ and came across these results below. This is not the first time I have come across Twitter results in the SERPs, but it is the first time I have come across it in this format.

The first thing you will notice is the very first organic results are from Twitter. The highlighted Tweet included the Hashtag “#Peer1″ and then Peer 1′s company Tweet. At the time of the index the second listing was the companies most recent Tweet. They have since updated it and now have an additional Tweet following it. After seeing this page, the comments of the Google technician in the ClickZ article are now starting to make sense. There are two very clear ways, based on these results, Google is ranking Tweets. First, is the keyword in the name of the profile? I am sure the are also looking at the profile descriptions to further validate a companies ownership. Secondly, they are ranking Tweets based on Hashtags. This can be very difficult if tweets include several hashtags, especially irrelevant tags. It is my assumption that they are not even looking at or better yet ranking Tweets with multiple hashtags. To be able to look at Tweets with multiple tags they would need to be able to rank the importance of the hashtags between each other and of course determine this with only 14o characters. That would seem almost impossible to me, but I am sure they will one day figure it out.

Evaluating the Twitter Profile

A deeper look into the profile that was highlighted by Google, @seree, you will find that there were numerous Tweets with the hashtag #Peer1. What is interesting is that the person is located in Thailand and has only 108 followers. @seree is not a “power twitterer”. This person did, however, have a number of tweets that were relevant to each other and very similar in nature. @seree also had several Tweets about Rackspace and other hosting companies.

The other thing you will notice is that Google is taking at 24 hours, at best, to index Tweets. This can also be proven if you set up Google Alerts  for your profile name. For Google to leverage the real time information provided via Twitter this will obviously need to improve.

SEO and Twitter

When Google started taking Tweets seriously it propelled Twitter into the SEO world. It is no longer simply a social media tool. It is a content creation tool used to build organic rankings. Companies that have been putting off creating Twitter accounts can no longer use excuses like, “my audience is not on Twitter” or “what is my company going to say on Twitter”, which were never good excuses in the first place.  There is now more value then simply creating a following and leveraging that following to market your product or improve your customer service. Your organic rankings are now at risk.

These results are currently a rare occurrence, but that will change soon. It is now time to get your company on twitter use hashtags in your tweets, preferably just one tag per tweet and make the tags very clear and precise. Couple that with a consistent and natural looking conversations your Tweets just may be ranked number one in Google’s search.

What has been speculated on has now been confirmed.

Summary:

• Google is looking heavily at Hashtags when ranking tweets
• Stuffing your tweets with multiple hashtags could be harmful
  
• They are also looking at the Twitter users over all content on their profile. Recent tweets, etc
• The amount of followers a person has, probably does not play a factor.
• They are looking for and ranking the Twitter accounts from company owned profiles, regardless of if the Tweet is relevant to the search.

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There are have been a number of announcements over the last two days by companies like Mortech, Leads360 and Kaleidico regarding their “partnership” with Google, more specifically Google’s Comparison Ads.  These companies are now “certified applications” for Comparison Ads and can provide some level of service for the lenders active on the comparison site.

So, coming across these announcements peaked my curiosity about what companies made the list of certified partners. Initially it was pretty tough finding this list, but I did come across a cached page that listed specific partners. I am not sure if this is a complete list, but it seemed like a recent list that now is no longer available.

I was forced to shrink the page to be able fit all the companies into a screen shot. You can either save the image and zoom in or simply take a look at the complete list below the image.

The companies included in the list are:

• Mortech
• OpenClose
• OptimalBlue
• PriceMyLoan
• Kaleidico
• LeadMailbox
• Leads360

Are there other companies?

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Google’s Comparison Ads has been live in the U.S. for about a month and a half and many are curious to know how well it is working for the lenders involved. Well, for starters everyone should understand that all the lenders are currently bound by an NDA and all public comments by the lenders go through Google for approval. Lucky for us our friend and mortgage refinance was able to get his opinions approved by Google and subsequently we are able to publish them here. specialist  at RMC Vanguard Mortgage Corporation, Owen Raun.

So with out further ado An Insiders View of Google’s Comparison Ads:

By Owen Raun with RMC Vanguard Mortgage Corporation

RMC Vanguard has been a lender involved in the initial stages of Google’s venture into mortgage lead generation.  Google makes this on line shopping option available to a limited number of consumers in 15 states who are searching for mortgage.  We are only active in 5 of those states and focus only a smaller range of consumer profiles than most so I imagine we are in the bottom quarter of total leads received to date.  Assuming this blog will be read by lenders I have the following comments.

1 – Lead quality.  The best news for lenders is the lead quality.  Consumers have already viewed pricing and costs from several lenders in a very easy to understand interface.  So once a lead calls us or requests a call back from us we have already passed whatever pricing threshold the consumer has in their mind and have made the consumers “short list”. The leads we have received are more engaged and less “evasive” than leads from other lead generators.  Other factors that speak to lead quality is the Google name which lends a level of trust, a consumer masking system that allows the consumer to initially communicate with lenders without sharing their phone or email addresses and the fact that the consumer is making a choice to speak with us, rather visa versa.

2 – Accuracy of quotes.  Lenders are not uniform on what costs we include in our quotes.  This is a bigger issue with Google than other auto price quoting lead generation systems since lenders are initially ranked by APR.  If 2 lenders have the same rate/point and costs but one leaves out a 3^rd party appraisal then that lender would be displayed higher than the one with the appraisal cost.  Something I think Google will need to monitor or perhaps the new GFE format will be something we can all adhere to. However, it will probably take some time to adopt as we are all used to the old way of quoting costs and Google built its interface on the old set of costs.

There are also some bugs in the system that allow for slightly misleading quotes.  The main example I have is that FHA quotes look better than conventional at LTV’s below 80%.  The system drops the required MI from the calculation.  This and other bugs are being worked out by Google and its lenders.

3 –Lender Competition.  I am not familiar with all lenders on the initial stages but it seems that a couple have yet to work out their pricing.  Being able to have your pricing display accurately takes some work.  The lenders I know that are using Mortech all seem to be within a normal tolerance.  There are a few others that seem to need some work (not sure if they are using Mortech or not).  I doubt any would knowingly quote rates that would lose money   I also don’t think anyone would willingly bait and switch consumers.  Google is going to work in some type of consumer experience factor so lenders that do bait and switch will eventually be called out.  A standard set of best practices and some basic on-line police work will clear this up.

4 – Tracking.  Leads that request that we contact them come with a name, Google phone # and ID #.  We can track these and build assignment rules around them. The lead also shows what quote and scenario the consumer viewed prior to selecting us.  However, a consumer also has the option of picking up their phone and calling us.  So the initial contact with a consumer is an inbound call.  Lenders like us that are setup to get the lead then make the call have some adjusting to do.  I think that a consumer that has viewed our pricing, viewed our costs and has picked up the phone to call us to call is a pretty good lead.  I am not wanting to throw out the baby with the bathwater but it would be nice to know a bit about that consumer prior to the call in, plus be able to rout that call to one of our LO’s who is licensed in the consumer’s state.   Google does follow up with a notice that a call was made but these notices do not fire out immediately after the call and I as a manager do not have a way to track who took the call other than to ask the LO’s “who took a Google call?”.  Not really good lead management on our part at the moment.

5 – Pricing.  To date the leads have been free!   Google will soon start a bid system where lenders can bid by filter or profile what we would want to pay for a refi or purchase lead and what we would want to bid for a phone or web contact.  Sine this hasn’t started I have no idea how the bid system will effect which lenders are displayed and what a lender that bid X would pay for a lead when all other lenders bid above or below X.  Google has discussed this with its lenders and assures us they have designed the logic of the bid system so that our best option is to bid a fair price for what we want, no more, no less.  Also, I am assured that a lender that has bad service and high rates cannot outbid other lenders for “position” on the display.  More to come here.

6 – Volume.  Due to our limitations we have only been getting 1-2 leads per day.  Others have told me they are in the 20 per day range.  Google has said there is a very large amount of mortgage related searches each day and that they think they are confident they will be able to produce a large amount of leads.  Volume seems to be the least of their issues.

In fitting with Google’s way of things they have released the system with known bugs.   They are aware of my issues and probably have a stack of issues from other lenders or lead management/pricing systems.   And there are more pieces to the system that are being developed, such as  allowing consumers to review and rate their lenders, additional filtering abilities for lenders and some way of allowing consumers to learn a little more about the lenders they are seeing on their screen.  Assuming all bugs can be fixed and lenders play fair with their quotes I see no reason why Google play a prominent role in the current mix of mortgage lead generation options that are available today.

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It has come:

Tipped off by Jay Weintraub, founder of LeadsCon and Author of LeadConfidential, Google recently announced the launch of Comparison Ads. Which currently is focused on mortgage rate shoppers, but obviously its name “Comparison Ads” leaves it wide open for other products to be introduced. This is big news for the lead gen space.

This new service will allow advertisers to target/filter their marketing efforts on a very granular level when compared to Adwords. When you compare it to buying leads from LendingTree, LowerMyBills, QuinStreet or any one of the hundreds of lead companies in the space there is no difference. Advertisers will be charged on a per lead basis where a lead is defined by either a phone call or the completion of a inquiry form.

Here is how a search result for mortgage may look like:

These ads will no doubt take impressions and ultimately clicks away from lead generators bidding on these keywords. They will be placed in a premium location for the best results. Once the consumer clicks on the compare rates the will go to this page and see this:

Via the Adwords blog:

While Comparison Ads is still an early-stage feature, we’ve focused on a number of ways to enhance the user experience:

• Speed — Comparison Ads shows targeted offers in less than a second. There are no long forms for users to fill out – Users see specific offers immediately and only need to fill in additional information if they wish to further refine their results.
• Transparency — Comparison Ads only shows real products. There are no teaser rates, or bait and switch offers. Comparison Ads also standardizes the information presented to users, making it easy for them to sort and compare offers on a side by side basis.
• Privacy — Comparison Ads won’t send advertisers any user information, including anonymized phone numbers, unless the user explicitly requests more information about an advertiser’s offer.

These developments are what LendingTree was looking to stop with their recent suit against Mortech. With these developments Google is now taking an active and direct role in the lead generation space. Of course they have always been a huge participant as a service provider and advertising platform, but they can now be considered competition to companies like LendingTree and others. As I asked in previous posts: Where will this end? Will Google continue to leverage their search traffic to create a massive comparison shopping engine?

I personally don’t like this move by Google for obvious reasons. Their dubious excuse for creating the comparison engine, which is to clean up the industry by presenting accurate rates, is simply an excuse to monetize their traffic even more. On the surface the objective of creating more revenue is fair, but doing so in a way that will take away revenue and traffic from their paying advertisers doesn’t seem right and definitely not fair.

What do you think?

Thanks again Jay for the tip.

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Over a year ago Google began testing a mortgage rate search within their Merchant Search platform in the UK. Not much more then a few blog post here and there discussed the new search tool. Most couldn’t imagine it going much further then just a simple test and the fact that it was circled around generating calls, not specifically data leads, added to the passive concern of so many.

With the new LendingTree suit against Mortech and the revelation of Google’s continued interest in breaking into the mortgage lead generation industry it has proven that the UK test was not performed on a whim and they did have long term intentions. What can be debated is what those intentions truly are. I think to do this we have take a look at more then simply the disheveled mortgage lead generation industry, but the online marketing industry as a whole.

Over the last 5-6 years the online advertising space has been shifting from the typical impression based pricing to click based pricing and more recently to the action based pricing model. In fact, in 2006 Google released the option within Adwords to work within the CPA pricing model, however I frankly don’t know what ever came of it. For that reason I don’t think much of anything ever did, but that may not be the case. Correct me if I a wrong. Regardless, Google noticed the shift and acted. Now, I speculate that they are continuing to act with the UK experiment and the current development of building out a mortgage loan pricing engine of sorts.

How are they going to use the Mortech technology, if LendingTree isn’t able to put a stop to it? Its my guess that they are going to allow people to price out their own loans, possibly allow the consumer to own their loan information or simply sell those inquiries on a per lead price. If this is their intent, my immediate question is where will it end? What will stop Google from running their own lead generation strategies in any other vertical?

I don’t think it is out of the question that Google would continue its push to a CPA based network and continuing to add more control over different verticals at the same time. There are verticals, like mortgage, where Google could easily bring clarity to the consumer as well as consolidate the wide range of quality and transparency issues. A platform similar to the UK merchant search, if positioned highly in the SERPs could easily affect a number of companies generating leads in the mortgage space. My guess, however is that it wouldn’t eliminate the competition completely, but it would make it much smaller. The shift to all encompassing portals with detailed content and information will have to be the norm. Simple arbitrage and landing page type marketing will not be able to compete.

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It was all over the Internet today that LendingTree has filed a lawsuit against service provider and 2008 “Innovator of the Year” , Mortech. The suit accuses Mortech of contract infringement and breaking their confidentiality agreement.

About two years ago LendingTree partnered with Mortech and recently became aware of their communications and possible partnership with the Google, whom over the past year has been quietly figuring out the real estate and mortgage lead generation industry. This suit may have inadvertently leaked the launch of a Google’s rate table application and lead generation process. This project has been rumored for a while and is an interesting topic on its own, but clearly is a threat to the mortgage lead gen world and more specifically LendingTree. This suit, while directed at Mortech, could be a foot in the door for LT to stall the launch of the new Google service. The reality is that there are a number of Mortech like companies and the actual pricing engine technology is not proprietary to just Mortech. If LendingTree can somehow prove that Mortech leaked information about LendingTree developments and future plans or have possibly used their knowledge learned from LendingTree to benefit Google, they may be able to throw a wrench into Google’s plans indefinitely.

“We will vigorously protect our contractual rights, our company, our customers and our clients in this matter,” CEO Doug Lebda said in a statement.

Regardless of the motives, LT seems to think they have a strong enough case to take this past the initial, “please, stop doing that” requests.

So what do you think? Is this all to disrupt Google’s plan to enter into the lead gen business or is this only a Mortech and LendingTree contract infringement case and that’s it?

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