Publishers! Don’t give up the Second Click

Micah shot me an interesting article the other day. It is titled "The Fight for the Second Click". It pretty interesting and predicts Google's move into [more] media services in order to monetize the click that occurs after the "search". Google clearly owns the first click and has managed to monetize it rather effectively. In order to continue the revenue ramp, they will be increasingly forced to own the second click.

I found this concept fascinating. At Lijit we know from watching reader behavior on our publishers' sites that a huge percentage (33%-50%) of readers come from horizontal search (The Second Click).

We also know that the normal behavior of one of these readers is to read the article that Google referenced and then hit the back button. Reader gone, moment lost, second click wasted.

This is precisely why the Lijit Re-Search feature was added to the Lijit Search Wijit. When you have this feature turned on, Lijit hooks the reader into staying for a third click and beyond. Bottom line, you only get one click to keep to your readers around – do the most you can to mine that opportunity.

Re-Search activates when a reader enters your site from a horizontal search. For instance, using an example from my personal blog. When a reader types "Comcast tivo cablecard" into the Google box, many results are returned, perhaps thousands. If one of those results is a link to your publication and that reader clicks it they end up on your site and The Second Click has been executed.

On a normal site without the Lijit Wijit installed it's now a crap shoot what happens to that reader next. Statistically speaking the "back button" is most often the next click. By contrast, as the reader reads the reference article/post "Re-Search" goes out and finds other articles/posts written by you on that same subject and offers them up in the Search Wijit. When the reader is done reading the reference article, there now exists the opportunity for you to own the third click – one of the other articles/post on that subject.

Publishers! Maximize your second click, the one you own!