SES Toronto and the Canadian Search Landscape

After SMX, training Frenchies, SES Toronto, and getting sick, I’m back in the office attempting to tackle a mountain of tasks (I’ve never empathized with Rand more than I do right now). Jane and I will soon publish the so-late-it’s-just-ridiculous coverage of SMX Advanced, but for now I want to talk about SES Toronto and the Canadian Search Landscape session.

This session was pretty rife with Canadian search statistics (but in an interesting way). According to Ken Headrick from MSN Canada, Canadians made 12 billion search queries in 2006 and 1.4 billion queries in April 2007. Searching is the #2 activity that Canadians do (I’m assuming that the #1 activity is either wrestling moose or harvesting maple syrup). Ken also mentioned that, in Canada, searcher loyalty is declining. In February 2007 10.4 million searchers were uncommitted to a specific search engine, and the number jumped to 13.1 million in April 2007.

Jeff Lancaster from 24/7 Real Media talked about a variety of up and coming search engines, such as Kanoodle and Miva, and regional engines like La Toile du Quebec and Networld Media. He said that local search in Canada is still in the developmental stage, meaning that if it’s an underutilized opportunity in the United States, it’s a veritable goldmine up north. Jeff concluded that successful search marketers in Canada use a well-balanced approach to search, and that it’s important to know your customer and know what works.

Guillaume Bouchard, friend of SEOmoz, talked about French Canadian search. Only 38% of French Canadians make online purchases because 80% of Frenchies purchase using debit, which often isn’t supported online. The Quebec search landscape is more experienced than France, and Guillaume shared some search strings with the audience to show that a higher percentage of French Canadians perform long tail searches than French searchers. Montreal is a bilingual city, with 50% speaking English and 50% speaking French (if you go outside of Montreal it skews more towards 90% French). Guillaume then shared some interesting strengths and weaknesses of various search engines.

Guillaume presenting

Martin Byrne from YSM Canada said that Canadian searchers are more “conservative” than U.S. searchers. They are cautious consumers who will look at, on average, 2.5 brands prior to making a purchase–they are knowledge seekers and like variety, choice, and exploring the alternative. Searching also often leads Canadian consumers to new brands–the top ranking positions in search often convey perceptions of leadership, and ultimately drive traffic. Martin also noted that Canadians spend a “dismal” amount on search marketing, with 47% saying that it’s too expensive, 27% saying they don’t know enough about it or how to get started, and 20% saying they don’t have enough resources to manage it.

Eric Morris from Google Canada also mentioned that Canada has a less competitive ad market. He added that, according to Google’s Traffic Estimator, French Canadian terms are less competitive and are more heavily discounted vs. English Canadian terms, which makes for a great ad opportunity. However, there are some subtleties in the French market, such as a more rigid grammar, more synonyms (e.g. auto, autos, char, chars, voiture), and longer words.

I found this session to be very interesting in that I didn’t know much about how the Canadian search landscape compares to the U.S.’s. Paid search is really an underutilized platform in Canada, and the French Canadian landscape is even more so overlooked. Overall, I found SES Toronto to be a nice little conference, though I would have liked to see even more of a Canadian emphasis.

Anyway, I’ll end this post with some photos and some thank yous: Thanks to Ken Jurina and Matt Glass for arranging travel and a dinner venue, and thanks to Epiar, Acquisio, NVI, and Adviso for splitting the bill with us. Dinner was fun, drinks in Joe Morin’s suite was crazy, and a 3:30 am run to Tim Hortons was scary. Thanks also to my weird cab driver for talking about various fruits non-stop from the airport to the hotel, and for insisting that I take a handful of rambutan with me (I’m not kidding, he gave me four). Lastly, it was great to meet some of the NVI crew–Eric, Francis, and Matt, you guys rock and are welcome to visit Seattle any time (I really have to schedule a trip to Montreal to hang out with all of my new Frenchy friends).