Smart Marketers are statistically improbable according to Amazon.com

Amazon recently turned on Search Inside for The New Rules of Marketing & PR.

I finished the manuscript for the book way back in December 2006 (about a decade in Internet time). As an author, some of the things that get surfaced by Search Inside jolt me. Did I write that? It’s like running into an old girlfriend after many years.

Search Inside takes every word of the book and runs it through a bunch of algorithms. Many authors and publishers don’t like search inside because they feel people can "steal" their work. Nonsense. Having my book appear in search results when someone enters a phrase that is used in the book is a terrific benefit. Search Inside also allows buyers to virtually flip through the book as they would in a bookstore. Being able to browse before a purchase is important for any Web site. Amazon lets publishers opt out of Search Inside, but I think those who do are making a mistake.

I'm particularly intrigued by the Amazon.com Statistically Improbable Phrases which are the most distinctive phrases in the text of books in the Search Inside program. To identify Statistically Improbable Phrases, Amazon indexes every word of every book in the Search Inside program. Phrases that occurs a large number of times in a particular book relative to all Search Inside books are considered Statistically Improbable Phrases. The idea here is if a consumer is looking for a book on a subject, the Amazon search engine surfaces the right books by analyzing the text inside the book, not just the title and subtitle.

Some of the Statistically Improbable Phrases for The New Rules of Marketing & PR include: buyer personas, online media room, news release content, persona research, news release strategy, persona profile, influential bloggers, news release program, search engine marketing, click fraud, landing page, social networking sites, blog posts, online news sites, smart marketers. What a great way to surface long tail content.

So if someone, such as Adele Revella for example, had entered buyer personas into the Amazon search engine, my book would pop up in the book search results page because that phrase is statistically improbable and it appears in my book a lot. How cool is that?

I think the list of Statistically Improbable Phrases that are surfaced for my book is a great one. My book is about those things!

But hey, why are "smart marketers" statistically improbable? What does that say about marketing people?

Comments

[Michael A. Stelzner]

Hey David;

I was shocked to see the terms "Accountability Training Program" (something from my appendix) in my Amazon search inside SIP and key phrase. After all, my book is called "Writing White Papers," not about accountability.

What I did (and so should you David) is include a link to a free PDF of chapter one of my book in my Amazon Blog.

I get about 5000 people a month reading it and it is much easier than the Search Inside.

Mike

[Steve Weber]

I'm also a fan of Search Inside and SIPs. But it's fairly obvious Amazon needs to do some real research into which of its features help consumers decide what to buy. Its book detail pages are a mess.

Here's something I recently wrote about Amazon Tags vs. Categories:
http://www.weberbooks.com/2007/06/tags-vs-categories-which-amazon-feature.html

[Julia Schopick]

David:

I, too, love Amazon.com's Search Inside the Book feature, and agree with you that many publishers and authors are missing a terrific marketing opportunity by NOT allowing their books to be searched.

In addition to its value for authors and publishers, Search Inside the Book offers a goldmine to ANYONE who is seriously searching for information.

For instance, my business blog, WebBasedPR.com, like yours, is all about teaching people to effectively market their expertise online. One of the techniques I most often recommend to clients for getting their important message(s) out to their markets is to leave well-crafted, informative comments on other people’s blogs.

I therefore like to quote other experts -- and link to their books and their websites -- who have themselves written interestingly about leaving blog comments.

Using Amazon.com, I search under “Books” for “blog comments,” and find 85 that use the term within the book. If I don't put quotes around the term, there are 252! (These figures can change from day to day, of course.)

Even better, the Search Inside feature shows an example of the exact words the author uses. I am then able to search within each of the 85 (or 252) books that discuss blog comments, to see if there are any books I should be reading and linking to from my site.

I use the Search Inside feature for my HonestMedicine.com blog, too. But in this case, I look for books that expose pharmaceutical company chicanery, as well as books that discuss doctor-patient relations, physician incomes, alternative medicine, and other related topics. My search terms change, depending on the articles I am writing.

The Search Inside feature is wonderful. It is also what makes me so loyal to Amazon.com.

I wish more publishers and authors were as enthusiastic about it as you and I are.

Julia Schopick
http://www.WebBasedPR.com
http://www.HonestMedicine.com

[David Meerman Scott]

Mike, Steve, and Julia,

Thankyou for adding to this post with your thoughtful comments. It looks like you guys know more about all this Amazon stuff than I do! I'll need to bone up.

One of the biggest challenges is keeping up with all these things. How does a one mand company (me) keep on top of a blog, Facebook, Squidoo, other great blogs (like yours), the media, and on and on?

David

[TIm]

Meerman,

(We love using your more distinct middle mane - as you taught us!) Nice meeting you in NY. I have given the book to most of our staff and outside freelance marketing types as well. In addition, we have now posted a review from one of our freelance book reviewers at www.blogonbooks.com. Feel free to check it out!