A new eyetracking study from the Microsoft Research group, finds that 24% of time during a review of search results is spent looking over the URL.

Punchline here is pretty simple; your search URL should be human readable, add credibility and correspond as much as possible to the searcher’s query and to your ad copy.

I love Gord Hotchkiss – or at least his insights. His recent analogy of online marketing being akin to a Gordian Knot, with search being the glue that binds together each of the intersection points was sheer poetry.

But I was very surprised by his recent article titled “Doing Search Only Counts if You're Seen” – focusing around the Ontario Tourism Bureau's lack of budgetary backing for its Search Engine Marketing (SEM) program and as a result, the scope of their Search program. Talk about missing the point completely!

So why is it that we are berating the Ontario Tourism Bureau for lack their lack of budget commitment to SEM? Do we really believe that by simply pointing out the strong performance of SEM as an online marketing tool that we can change their behavior? And further, do we really believe that because the program is under-funded that somehow that completely negates all the SEM efforts being made, as the headline suggests?

I am going to answer no to those last two questions, and further I would challenge anyone in the SEM community to come forward to say that they have never worked with a company who under funded their SEM programs. Or that they have never worked with a company who short changed their SEM programs in favor of less accountable marketing efforts. I would even go out on a limb to say that most SEM providers have more than a few client companies that fit that category. So by inference, are we as “SEM professionals” failing miserably? I would say yes only to the extent that we as a community tend to expect everyone to “get it” in the same fashion we do. The reality is that a good portion of companies have marketing staff that struggle to even articulate what SEM is, let alone champion moving millions of dollars from their safe, predictable, known marketing channels over the mystery black box of SEM. The challenge is not lack of funding, it is lack of maturity.

I am frustrated as the next person by the ongoing challenges in the SEM space, that on one hand we have “crossed the chasm” yet on the other hand, I can deliver a 25-page in-depth analysis showing SEM as having delivered a 10X return on investment only to have the program canceled (making me as guilty as the next guy for taking a numbers first approach).

What I would really like to hear from the community is not research justifying what we already know – but rather how have each of you have been successful in educating your client companies in the space? Because honestly, if we could just throw a bunch of statistics at someone and have them get it the first, second, third or fifth time – we would all be (SEM) golden children.