What if your website performance could experience over 40% increase in average session length, double the pageviews, and 30% less bounce rate?
That’s exactly what publishers experience with Zoomd’s free on-site search tool and now is the time to do so, as people are still quarantined all over the world, stuck to their mobile phones and computers, consuming more digital media than ever.

Retain Readers with More Engaging, More Relevant Experiences

When readers browse through your site, they want to find the content they need as soon as possible, and they want to enjoy their journey.
When publishers provide an on-site search experience that is visually engaging and is customized to their needs, readers kick off their shoes, get some cake or smoothie, and keep on reading.

Visual, Engaging On-Brand Experience

Visitors are used to line after line of headlines and metadata in Google’s search results. Therefore, when they log into your site, it’s easy to immerse them in deeper experience if you turn these results to a visual party.
Check out the difference between what Google Custom on-site Search results look like and what your on-site search tool can create. What would you prefer to browse through?

Moreover, providing visual search results differentiates your website from Google’s experience. You can customize the look and feel of the search layout to match your site design, which will deepen brand recall and affinity.
The on-site search is optimized for both mobile and desktop, and both new and returning visitors.

Quick Orientation for New Readers

Chances are, your team works hard every day, investing plenty of resources, to get more people to check out your site. Once they do, they enter a form of unfamiliar land. After all, they don’t know how you’ve structured your site and what’s the quickest way to find what they need.
It’s our job as publishers to give them a quick compass – and thankfully, online readers have already shown the online publishing industry what that compass needs to be.
As our CMO Omri Argaman shared on Business 2 Community, “43% of visitors go immediately to the search bar when they enter a new website” according to a Forrester Research study.

Personalized Journeys for Returning Readers

If your visitors have already spent some time on your site, or if they’re returning visitors, the advanced technology operating your on-site search can give you an unfair advantage.
Zoomd’s on-site search is created using patented NLP technology, plus machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. Alongside our advertising products, the search tool turns 500,000,000 daily events into measurable business results.
Therefore, once a reader has spent some time on your site, the on-site search tool is able to offer contextualized results based on that reader’s personal activity. Therefore, she’s more likely to stay on the site, check out additional pages, gain trust, and eventually convert throughout your funnel.
And that’s with the basic features of the search tool alone. Smart publishers take a few extra steps, tapping into the more advanced options, to improve results even further (and yes, the advanced options are also totally free and very easy to customize – no need for tech superpowers).

Know What Content to Invest in Based on Data from Your Readers

While you don’t need tech superpowers, it *is* easy to feel like a super-publisher when you check out the data the search tool provides, and take a few actions based on this data.

Develop the Most Desired Results Readers Look for

One of our favorite parts of the search tool is that you get the information you never had before.
Usually, when a reader can’t find something on your site, she’ll just click the “back” button and ask Google to find her another resource. With the on-site search tool, she might still do that – but unlike before, you’ll know that this happened.
When you start seeing a recurring theme in searches that didn’t provide any results, you can see which content readers need most from your site – and develop it.
You can also develop more of the content you do have, once you understand how popular it is in on-site search.

Give Them Relevant Content When They Get Lost

Sooner or later, we all find ourselves stumbling upon the good old 404 page. So set your 404 page – and your readers – to success.
Use the search tool to offer contextually relevant articles and videos, presented in a visually engaging way, to encourage them to explore some more, and continue their journey with your site.

Increase Average Visit Duration and Pages Per Visit

Of course, you don’t need to wait for a reader to find your content. Using the on-site search tool, your content can find your reader as she browses through the site.
Two of the features that help your content do that:

• Top Searches: At the top of your site, present a row with popular search results. You have total control over which keywords are placed there, so the top searches can be relevant to a promotion you run, or could be topics you know keep visitors engaged longer on the site.
• Top Video Searches: Similarly, you can promote top videos during on-site search. This can be done automatically – have the tool select popular videos from your site, which are most relevant to a search query. And it can also be done manually, to help you promote specific video content.

And that’s not all. The tool also lets you promote third-party content and your own direct ads as an additional monetization path.

Increase Monetization with the Traffic You Already Have

Publishers who use the on-site search tool discover there are many ways to significantly increase monetization with the traffic they already have.
And since it’s done with such a high-quality reader experience, it actually brings them even more readers, which, you guessed it, improves monetization too.

Leverage the In-Search Ads Available in Your Free On-Site Search Tool

Add new ad units inside the search overlay, and earn money when readers click on them.

1) In-search ads- Add sponsored banners and videos inside the search overlay.
2) Native ads- Ads that blend in with your site’s design, for a better user experience.
3) Top searches-  As mentioned above, you can have a row of keywords at the top of your site, representing “top searches” on your site. The idea is to encourage readers to click on a keyword and explore related content. Some or all of these keywords can actually be ads.

Source: VentureBeat

Get More Ad Views and Clicks

1) Use data and AI to develop more of the content that works. As mentioned above, once you know which content readers want, search for and click on, you can develop more of that. More page views mean more ad views and clicks. Plus, the AI-based search tool leads visitors to the more relevant content, where they are much likelier to engage with ads.
2) Get more ad views from your current readers. More time on the site means readers can see (and click on) more ads. It also means they’re likelier to remember you and come back another time (to see and click on more ads), and/or recommend you to their friends (who, too, will see and click on ads).
3) Get more ad views from Google. A better reader experience, which leads to more time on site and more page views per visit, signals to Google this is a high-quality site, that needs to get more visitors, who can view more ads. Invest in your current readers, and Google is likelier to help you out.

Example of Zoomd on-site search layout on Times Leader website

Source: Times Leader

Optimize Sponsored Content

4) Create better conversion paths. Once you improve the user experience and reader journeys with the search tool, you’ll be able to charge more from sponsors and other direct advertisers, because you’ll know how to optimize on-site campaigns for the right readers.

Some of the Monetization Results Publishers are Seeing with On-Site Search
With so many ways to increase site monetization, these are some of the results our publishers have been seeing:

• +20% eCPM
•  $15 eCPM video ads
• An additional 3-4% revenue within the first month

Want similar results?

It Only Takes a Few Minutes to Get the Free On-Site Search Going
No matter how big or small your website is, investing in your current readers will help build loyalty, retention and even advocacy, as readers tell their friends about the differentiated experience you offer.
And the best part? Investing in this advanced on-site search tool is free and only takes a few minutes to get started. It requires only one line of code, so you don’t need advanced tech skills to get going. Click here to sign up, and you’ll zoom into growth.

About Adam:
Adam Agassi is the Director of Publisher Relations who defines, develops and executes Zoomd’s business strategy, leading the onboarding of new partnerships that mainly consist of tier-one websites from top markets. Adam has an international background and prior to Zoomd, has worked in sales and business development at ad tech and MarTech companies for over six years.
He is highly knowledgeable of publishers’ pains and needs in a market that changes on the fly. When he finds some time off, he enjoys sports activities and cooking.

Zoomd adds data about an additional 200 million monthly page views to monetizing targeted publishing as GMA Networks plans to embed Zoomd Search Tech in its leading news website

Vancouver, British Columbia, February 19, 2021 – Zoomd Technologies Ltd. (TSXV: ZOMD, OTC: ZMDTF) and its wholly-owned subsidiary Zoomd Ltd. (collectively, “Zoomd” or the “Company“), the marketing tech (MarTech) user-acquisition and engagement platform, is pleased to announce it has signed an agreement with GMA Networks, Philippines’ leading news and sports website publisher, to embed Zoomd’s on-site search engine within GMA’s platform.

The relationship with Zoomd is expected to increase of page views, decrease bounce rate, and extend average session length for the 200+ million monthly GMA web visitors.

The Company’s advanced Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Natural Language Processing (NLP) technology aims to provide new advantages to publishers by optimizing site traffic via on-site search, and guiding advertisers in managing their user acquisition (UA) across hundreds of media channels.

“We plan to pursue new client onboarding rigorously” says Amit Bohensky, Chairman and Co-Founder of Zoomd. “This is a hot period for our sector and we intend to maximize monetization opportunities and target regional expansion, getting more publishers and more clients to adopt Zoom onto their platforms. The Philippines is an important and strong market for us and we welcome GMA to our line of top-tier publishing clients.”

About Zoomd

Zoomd (TSXV: ZOMD, OTC: ZMDTF), founded in 2012 and began trading on the TSX Venture Exchange in September 2019, offers a site search engine to publishers, and a mobile app user-acquisition platform, integrated with a majority of global digital media, to advertisers. The platform unifies more than 600 media sources into one unified dashboard. Offering advertisers, a user acquisition control center for managing all new customer acquisition campaigns using a single platform. By unifying all these media sources onto a single platform, Zoomd saves advertisers significant resources that would otherwise be spent consolidating data sources, thereby maximizing data collection and data insights while minimizing the resources spent on the exercise. Further, Zoomd is a performance-based platform that allows advertisers to advertise to the relevant target audiences using a key performance indicator-algorithm that is focused on achieving the advertisers’ goals and targets.

Neither TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Disclaimer IN REGARD TO Forward-looking statements

This news release includes certain “forward-looking statements” under applicable Canadian securities legislation. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to, statements with respect GMA Network’s expected page views, Zoomd’s benefiting from the relationship and Zoomd’s ability to further grow and expand its regional partnerships and obtain new clients as a result. Forward-looking statements are necessarily based upon several estimates and assumptions that, while considered reasonable, are subject to known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors which may cause the actual results and future events to differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements. Such factors include, but are not limited to: general business, economic, competitive, technological, legal, privacy matters, political and social uncertainties (including the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic), the extent and duration of which are uncertain at this time on Zoomd’s business and general economic and business conditions and markets. There can be no assurance that any of the forward-looking statements will prove to be accurate, as actual results and future events could differ materially from those anticipated in such statements. Accordingly, readers should not place undue reliance on forward-looking statements. The Company disclaims any intention or obligation to update or revise any forward-looking statements, whether because of new information, future events or otherwise, except as required by law.

The reader should not place undue importance on forward-looking information and should not rely upon this information as of any other date. All forward-looking information contained in this press release is expressly qualified in its entirety by this cautionary statement.

For further information please contact:

Amit Bohensky
Chairman
Zoomd
ir@zoomd.com

Investor Relations
Lytham Partners, LLC
Ben Shamsian
New York | Phoenix
ZOMD@lythampartners.com

When someone mentions online search, Google comes to mind. The dominant search engine has won the digital marketing department’s hearts and minds over the years and generated enormous revenues. But search-engine marketing doesn’t necessarily have to end there, and why let Google have all the fun? Inside a company’s website lies plenty of potential in the site search to yield positive results.

Site-search and search engines like Google, Bing, and Yahoo are designed to help individual users find the content they are searching for. They provide millions of search results for users to sift through, though most users only look through the first search engine results page (SERP). Website proprietors have an opportunity to improve user journeys, which can lead to higher user retention.

“On Site search” plays a different role, though, than that of a web search engine. Google can help get traffic to a website, but how can a publisher keep users on that site? How can sites strengthen the average-visit duration and the pages per visit? Answering these questions the right way can lead publishers to increased monetization, which simply means more revenue from display ad placements on the proprietor’s site. It starts with understanding on-site search and how to improve it for the benefit of the user and the business.

For e-commerce websites, site-search engines are everything. Approximately 20 percent of these kinds of websites’ search traffic comes from the website’s internal site search, but this can reach as high as 30-40 percent. Consumers using site search already know what they’re looking for, and thus are more ready to buy. Having an optimized site search that helps guide them more quickly toward the right product can help raise purchase conversions. Remember, a frustrated customer frustrated by his or her inability to find the product is more likely to bounce.

Publishers of all sorts can benefit from site search, but it depends on what sector. The numbers vary by industry. For example, “wiki” websites or a specific website like Encyclopedia Britannica certainly could, since the search is critical for the user experience. News websites tend to lack capable site search engines, because the demand is low, with around and less than one percent of traffic. On news agency websites, users tend to look for items by category or browse through the site without an aim to see the stories since they don’t necessarily have something specific to search.

Still, it’s critical to have a search ability that answers these existing search queries. We may be facing a chicken and egg problem. Search accounts for a low amount of traffic, but it might be due to faulty search tools. After all, a study by Forrester Research found that 43 percent of visitors go immediately to the search bar when they enter a new website. That search makes up such a dramatically lower proportion of the traffic more likely than not indicates there is considerable room for improvement. There is an opportunity here to drive traffic in a way that will increase revenues.

One aspect of why search is crucial is not immediately apparent. Who is it that needs the search function the most? A new user of a website. New users do not know how the website is structured. Beyond that, the odds are they have no intention of familiarizing themselves with the site enough to understand the logic of how things are cataloged. New users need a simple way of immediately finding what they are looking for. After a publisher has gone through the painstaking efforts of finally getting a new user to the site, it is wasteful to have that user leave without finding the relevant page or content item. It is often stuffed several clicks away. Furthermore, the problem of discoverability increases as the page grows and becomes more cluttered over time.

There are several changes publishers can make at the outset to the search on site to make the user experience better and streamlined. These minor changes can make a great deal of difference to a user, especially one who uses it on his or her phone. For example, placement on the web page, the call to action button for “search,” and a user-friendly design, are critical tenets of positive user experience (UX).

Websites must deliver relevant results quickly. Relevancy has to do with semantics and how the site can analyze the user’s search query to understand what he or she is truly looking for. Providing an endless list of results can be frustrating, so taking long-tail keyword searches and designing the search to understand what’s really at the heart of the query is critical. The results can also look better. Currently, sites often list results in a very dry fashion list view. Instead, they could add features like pictures, video thumbnails, title view, or many others to optimize the look and feel. One feature showing promising results is site-search suggestions. The function can give users ideas of what to search for, and some statistics suggest 25 percent of users will click on site-search suggestions.

Lastly, the amount of data extracted from on-site search has enormous value to publishers and merchants. Query data from search can give insights into what user interests. It provides clues on what kind of content to invest in, even if some things in search are harder to find. The data can help a proprietor optimize the website to make improvements throughout in ways that will enhance the user experience, increase visit duration, and average pages per session numbers. A crucial piece of data that can only be revealed by search is data from “no results” searches. If a user clicks around but can’t find the desired page or content item, he or she leaves the site. The publisher is none the wiser on what information could have made the user stay on the site. But a no-results query reveals what useful information publishers can add to the website that users want to find.

While site search might seem like a triviality, it has tremendous merit. Many may think of “search” as Google’s area. But Google can’t necessarily provide the depth on any individual website that the website can for itself. The benefits are there for the taking, and it’s time to squeeze the most out of the potential on on-site search.

____________

The article was first published on Business 2 Community on August 19th, 2020

For centuries, people have found hundreds of ways to communicate and collaborate for both professional and personal aims. Since the time when the Internet came into play, these channels of human communication have witnessed prominent progress. It has become especially significant and impressive in the last decade, with broader availability of the Internet and the development of new technologies.

Ten or twenty years ago having a website was seen as a kind of luxury, while today it is a widely used and important factor of personal, professional, and business growth. More specifically, since the rise of corporate websites, the core business of companies was to create websites with compelling, relevant, and searchable information — from product descriptions, location pages to blog posts. However, many of these companies have put too much emphasis on external search engine results and rankings, while overlooking the importance of internal search function capabilities within their websites — claiming that this functionality receives a low priority due to a false assumption of “a low percentage of our users are proactively searching for content within the website itself”, which we know is quite the opposite.

Up until recently, users were often faced with an overabundance of hazy or off-point search results, too few results, or, in some cases, no results at all. The search engines were implemented without consideration of user-profiles — thus the search suffered, and the site visitors made notice. When users encounter a bad search experience, they remember it.

Are publishers investing resources in the correct revenue channels?

In recent years publishers have started to understand that if they spend most of their resources on optimizing their SEO efforts but neglect optimizing the specific search capabilities and inquires within their website, they are basically not completing the goal of getting their readers to the final destination, which means failing to lead each user to the right content at the right time. In other words, when a prospective reader is searching within a website, their intent is different than when they conduct an external Google search because they are devoting time on your site. They offer you clues into what specific content, product or service they are interested in.

Today’s internal website search solutions provide both navigational and informational benefits. In addition, most modern websites and apps are jammed with information in multiple formats organized in a variety of ways across different microsites and subdomains.

By analyzing how and what visitors are searching for via your internal search tool, you can define what new content you can offer, update your keyword strategies for an organic search or even adjust your site structure to present the most searched for topics first. Furthermore, if your existing users are looking for specific information that you don’t have available yet, you can create new site pages accordingly. Utilizing search analytics will also help identify and determine website navigational or site structure issues. By solving these issues, users can get to the content they need most, including key transactional pages like forms and contact pages.

After talking with and meeting hundreds of online publishers (website owners, digital editors, design directors, etc.) from many different verticals, I was astonished to find that while many of them understand the importance of having an internal optimized search solution that improves their overall user experience, they don’t necessarily agree on spending resources for development and for conducting day-to-day maintenance. As a result of an ecosystem that keeps growing and that is getting more competitive every day, most publishers are very strict about measuring each expense carefully, thus neglecting maintenance and development on their own internal search widget/tool/solution. Their lack of attention and investment concerning this important issue can also result in a loss of extra revenue. Most publishers I talked to had the basic assumption that investing in an internal onsite search is an expensive business, which in most cases it is, but they were happy to hear about an existing alternative that is free — YES, we offer it for free.

Thus, we now see a crucial need in the ecosystem for the vast majority of content-based websites to find a cost-effective solution for this problem. We at Zoomd have recognized this new opportunity. We have created a top of the line, patented on-site search solution that will solve this exact need and much more. In recent years, we also started to offer monetization solutions for those publishers interested in improving their overall eCMP (average of an additional 3%-4% revenue within the first month), inviting publishers to add us to the existing waterfall.
Our search formula saves publishers’ resources and also provides the most optimal user experience. Who wouldn’t want to use it?

From years of experience and bulk data analysis from our publishers and longtime partners, we came to understand that up to 40% of online website visitors use a site search box when it’s offered.

It’s not enough to just create a nice internal search solution “on the fly” (i.e. one that is developed in-house or by a 3rd party) simply because you don’t have or want to spend the resources necessary to improve the search algorithms.

So……how easy is it for visitors to find information on your website?

As a site grows more substantial with more resources, content, and blog posts, it becomes harder for visitors to find the content most relevant for them.
How can customers find the specific topic or resource article they are looking for without scrolling through an entire library of content?

The answer is simple.
Customers can effortlessly find content on your site using a customizable internal search tool that Zoomd has invented — completely free of charge.

About Adam:
Adam is the Senior Business Development Manager who defines, develops and executes Zoomd’s business strategy, leading the onboarding of new partnerships that mainly consist of tier-one websites from top markets. Adam has an international background and prior to Zoomd, has worked in sales and business development at ad tech and MarTech companies for over six years.
He is highly knowledgeable of publishers’ pains and needs in a market that changes on the fly. When he finds some time off, he enjoys sports activities and cooking.