This was a blog post I did back in March 2007, but it's a goodie!

I just got into work this morning and as I suspected someone mentioned the word, “Starbucks.” My eyes widened and I immediately went to the stock, Grande Soy Vanilla Latte with Add Shot for my order. Yet I hesitated and desired something different this morning. So what did I do next? I went to my web browser and went to www.starbucks.com and low and behold, no online menu. Are you kidding me? Even if it were on that site somewhere, it wasn’t easily found in the first 10-15 seconds and I’m a power user of searching. So I went to good ole trusty Google and searched for “starbucks menu.” What do you think I found? Well, I didn’t find starbucks.com anywhere, but I did find a lot of websites featuring the menu with nutritional information. So I hit up the following website’s Starbucks Menu. As I handed in my order I thought about the significance of this because a large mainstream brand wasn’t utilizing search to its fullest potential. If I head over to the Yahoo Search Marketing tool and look up “Starbucks Menu” I find that 4,541 people searched for this keyphrase in February 2007 as well as ten other similar variations of this keyphrase. What was Starbucks thinking? This keyphrase was the fourth most popular “Starbucks” themed keyphrase out of the list. So I thought to myself, well maybe their website just isn’t focused on organic search engine optimization, so let’s see if they’ve paid for this keyphrase. What do you think? Wrong again. When I searched under the other top keyphrases I found, Starbucks was organically positioned at the top of the list and rightfully so. What we have here is a classic case of a brand that has so much emphasis offline, missing opportunities online to connect with potential customers in all aspects of their life. For a power user, who has brand loyalty, I want instant gratification and if you don’t give it to me I might just end up across the street at Diner Joe’s Coffee Shack on my next ride into work.
Big brands listen up. Search is not just about going into Google, Yahoo and MSN to be found on those big 10 million plus SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). It’s about the linguistics of the activity and how that associates with the brand. If someone is expressing that they want to be able to look up your menu online prior to giving their order to a co-worker or before coming into work, then make sure they can find you whether it’s on Google at their desk, on their cell phone or PDA. Start thinking outside the box and you just might find some of those golden grinds you never thought about.