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Hitwise: Google Leader Of The Search Pack

2009-01-13T15:45:00.000-08:00

Google accounted for 72.07% of all U.S. searches conducted in the four weeks ending Dec. 27, 2008, according to Hitwise.

Yahoo Search, MSN Search and Ask.com received 17.79%, 5.56% and 3.15%, respectively, Hitwise found. The remaining 44 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.42% of U.S. searches.

Both MSN Search and Yahoo Search saw increases of 2% and 1%, respectively, in December compared with November. MSN Search has increased five months in a row now, Hitwise found.

For 2008 overall, Google accounted for 69.48% of all U.S searches, representing an 8% increase over 2007. Ask.com increased 1% in 2008 compared with 2007

Do Search Engines Use Bounce Rate As A Ranking Factor?

2008-12-08T22:33:00.000-08:00

Your web site’s bounce rate may be a significant factor in your search engine rankings. If the bounce rate on your site is high, you could end up with lower rankings in the search engines. Correspondingly, lower bounce rates may actually offer meaningful ranking boosts. (Don’t know what a bounce rate is? Hang on—definitions below.)

Don’t believe that bounce rate is a serious ranking factor? You should. A new study by SEO Black Hat shows some significant impact in a web site’s rankings as a result of significant changes in bounce rate. It is, of course, possible that the data in the study have been affected by other factors taking place at the same time, so this one study is not be any means conclusive.

I speculated on bounce rate as a ranking factor back in August of 2007. The underlying fact is that search engines want quality sites in their search results. High bounce rates may be a very good indicator of a poor site experience, or worse still, a complete mismatch between the content of the site, and the search query entered by the user. This provides heavy motivation to look at bounce rates as a meaningful SEO factor, and how to minimize bounce rates in the hope of increasing your rankings.

Bounce rate defined

What’s bounce rate? Google Analytics defines a bounce as any visit where the visitor views only one page on the site, and then does something else. What happens next? There are several possibilities, including the user clicking on a link to a page on a different web site, closing an open window or tab, typing a new URL, clicking the “back” button to leave the site, or perhaps the user doesn’t do anything and a session timeout occurs. This is still a bit fuzzy because of the nature of how “sessions” are defined in analytics packages. Analytics software that relies on Javascript tags only know when someone loads a page of your web site (so the Javascript runs).

As a result, these analytics packages have difficulty determining what happens in the meantime. In our first scenario, user A comes to your site, views one page, and then goes to a three-martini lunch (well, hopefully not). They then come back and visit 10 other pages on your site. Because of the way that analytics packages work, this will be seen as two different visits, and the first one will be recorded as a bounce (a single page visit).

For search engines there are other possibilities. For example, a bounce could be defined as user A entering a search query, going to your web site, returning to the search engine, and clicking on another result. Another possible definition involves user A entering a search query, going to your site, and returning to the search results page in less than “x” seconds. So there are a few possibilities of these kinds for the search engines to experiment with.

Of course, the major search engines have other data available as well. For example, they have toolbars which can be a rich treasure trove of data for tracking user actions. In addition, search engines license data from major ISPs and collect additional data to track where a user goes. The possibilities go well beyond what an analytics package can do.

There are some issues, of course. What happens if the user is looking for a single bit of information, such as Abe Lincoln’s birthplace. If a search result leads to a good reference site, the user gets the answer and are done. They may still click back to the search results and search on something else, or click on another result from the original search. Even though this is a satisfactory outcome, it’s recorded as a bounce by most analytics packages.

This type of scenario will be prevalent with users who are searching for a simple answer and get their responses from almanac-like information sites. The key here is to also try and factor comparative data in the way that bounce rate is used for influencing rankings. For example, the bounce rate of almanac sites may be higher than the bounce rate of an e-commerce site, which will likely be higher than the bounce rate of a directory site (where users have a high probability of going on to another site).

My guess is that search engines look (or will look) to determine how a site’s bounce rate compares to other sites that are comparable, or other sites that it in considering returning for a user’s search query. In this latter scenario, you could imagine a run-time adjustment where the search engine comes back with the “traditional” results to a user’s query, and then make a bounce rate adjustment.

The bottom line

There is a real possibility that bounce rate is a significant ranking factor right now. Even if it isn’t, it is my opinion that it will be made a factor in the near future. Even if it is not a factor, and even if it does not become one, there are plenty of reasons to look closely a bounce rate anyway.

Looking Ahead

2008-11-30T00:10:00.000-08:00

THE LAST EIGHT WEEKS HAVE been volatile, to say the least. As I've talked to advertisers about campaign performance, outlooks for 2009, and their overall business, attitudes varied, ranging from concerned, to fearful, to uncertain, to cautiously optimistic -- the later attitude seeming to wax and wane with each passing news cycle. Though advertiser attitudes are varied, their reactions to the current consumer environment are generally consistent. Four key theses are emerging:

Search, and digital in general, is seeing a fourth quarter pullback (shocking, I know). Ironically, this has less to do with performance than with search's responsiveness. While upfront televisions buys, print and other fourth quarter marketing investments are sunk costs, search budgets can be pulled back at will. Advertisers in need of profitability over growth are pulling dollars out of search in large part because it is so easy to do so.

While the fourth quarter pullback is hitting search hard, search overall will fare better than other forms of advertising in 2009. After half a decade of advocacy, it seems advertisers are finally convinced that responding to consumer demand through search needs to remain a core component of their marketing programs. Search will see a pullback next year, but nowhere near as deep as pullback in display media, and unaddressable offline advertising.

The demand for accountability is stronger than ever. In perhaps the most dramatic shift in the search marketing landscape, advertisers are demanding profitability for every dollar spent. Marginal components of search marketing campaigns, or keyword categories that have long been said to "subsidize" other keywords, are being slashed in favor of one-to-one profitability. In other words, the portfolio approach to campaign profitability is no longer acceptable.

Additionally, efforts that drive less measurable returns, like keywords with "brand value," and even SEO, are facing far greater scrutiny. Efforts in these areas in 2009 will demand quantifiable, measurable ROI justifications, or they won't be funded.

CPCs are pulling back, and some advertisers are fleeing the space. As advertisers cut budgets and pull back on unprofitable keywords, CPC prices are falling in certain categories. Additionally, some advertisers are fleeing the paid search landscape altogether. Search marketers with a keen eye on the paid search competitive landscape are moving in to grab click share at efficiency levels that were not possible four to six weeks ago (or anytime over the last 24 months, for that matter). Over the coming months, search advertisers should fortify their competitive monitoring capabilities so they can discern and act upon these pricing inefficiencies when they occur.

Marketers are focusing internally to make their investments more effective. Given the aforementioned focus on profitability over growth, advertisers are taking a more aggressive approach with tactics like landing page optimization, field analysis and conversion funnel optimization, and site-side personalization.

Without question the remainder of 2008 and the first half of 2009 will be a challenging time for search marketers. Every dollar spent will be scrutinized, and common assumptions about campaign performance will be challenged. Search marketers who make the most of this difficult period will take the time to fortify their campaigns through exacting optimization and coordination of inbound search efforts with the site-side experience. This will serve them well when the current crisis/panic/malaise subside

Mobile internet usage on the rise

2008-11-30T00:04:00.000-08:00

Mobile internet use is growing while the number of people going online via a PC is slowing, analyst firm Nielsen Online has found.

Some 7.3m people accessed the net via their mobile phones, during the second and third quarters of 2008.

This is an increase of 25% compared to a growth of just 3% for the PC-based net audience - now more than 35m.

It also found that the mobile net audience was younger and searched for different things.

Searching news

While Google remains the most popular site for those logging on via the desktop, on mobile internet BBC News is the most visited site, with nearly a quarter of mobile internet consumers using it.

Other popular sites include BBC Weather and Sky Sports.

"This highlights the advantage of mobile when it comes to immediacy: people often need fast, instant access to weather or sports news and mobile can obviously satisfy this," said Kent Ferguson, a senior analyst with Nielsen Online.

"The fact that weather, sports, news and e-mail sites make up the majority of leading mobile sites shows that mobile internet is mainly about functionality and need at the moment as opposed to the more entertainment and e-commerce-focused makeup of the leading PC-based sites," he added.

Perhaps unsurprisingly the mobile net audience is younger than its computer based counterpart.

A quarter of the mobile net audience is aged 15-24, compared to 16% for the PC.

While 23% of the desk-top based internet population is 55 or over, only 12% of mobile internet audience is.

Facebook phone

3 has launched a so-called 'Facebook phone'

There are several factors for the dramatic rise in mobile net use, thinks Mr Ferguson.

"The barriers are finally being lifted thanks to operators offering flat-rate tariffs for data and more user-friendly handsets and improved network technology," he said.

It is thought that mobile users spend about 10 minutes online per session with an average of around seven sessions per month.

Increasingly mobile firms are encouraging users to venture online via their handsets.

Increasingly buttons for Google and popular social networks are being incorporated on handsets.

Mobile phone firm 3 has recently launched a so-called Facebook phone, which integrates the networking site with the traditional functions of a mobile.

Bullish eMarketer Chops Online Ad Forecast...Still Too Bullish

2008-11-25T23:10:00.000-08:00

Three months ago, eMarketer estimated that US online advertising would total $28.4 billion in 2009 (down from $30 billion in March). Now eMarketer has cut its forecast by 10%, to $25.7 billion. In another three months, we expect eMarketer's outlook will have been cut significantly yet again:

EMarketer's new advertising estimates represent an even bigger comedown from another projection the firm made in March. Back then, eMarketer predicted Internet ad spending in the United States would hit $30 billion for the first time in 2009.

Although it's not as optimistic now, eMarketer still expects the Internet ad market to grow by 9 percent next year. That would represent a slowdown from an 11 percent increase projected by eMarketer for this year.

Google should remain the biggest beneficiary because its system for showing ads next to search results is expected to remain an effective marketing vehicle

EMarketer predicts U.S. search ads will rake in $12.3 billion next year, up slightly from its August estimate of $11.9 billion.

The Internet's billboard-like "display ads" won't hold up as well. EMarketer anticipates online display advertising will rise nearly 7 percent next year to $4.9 billion, down from its August estimate of a 14 percent increase to $5.9 billion.

Yet another reminder that the industry needs to completely rethink display ads.

Microsoft's Ballmer Rules Out Reviving Yahoo Acquisition Offer

2008-11-09T00:39:00.000-08:00

-- Microsoft Corp. said it has no interest in acquiring Yahoo! Inc., after Yahoo Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang said the Internet company is willing to sell.

Microsoft, the world's largest software maker, has ``moved on,'' and isn't planning to make another bid, Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer said today at a conference in Sydney. It may still have partnership deals with Yahoo, he said.

``We're not interested in going back and re-looking at an acquisition,'' Ballmer said. ``I'm sure there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search.'' He didn't elaborate on the potential partnerships.

Yang said this week that he is ``open to everything'' after Google Inc. backed out of a proposed online-advertising partnership, narrowing his options for turning around Yahoo. The remarks fueled investor speculation that Microsoft might bid for all or part of Yahoo, pushing the Internet company's shares up as much as 7 percent yesterday in New York trading as the broader market declined.

``To this day, I would say that the best thing for Microsoft to do is to buy Yahoo,'' Yang said Nov. 5 at a conference in San Francisco. ``I don't think that is a bad idea at all.''

Yahoo spokesman Brad Williams yesterday reiterated Yang's remarks. He declined to comment on whether Sunnyvale, California- based Yahoo would seek to start new negotiations.

``We're open to talking to them,'' Williams said. ``We still believe acquiring Yahoo is the best option for Microsoft.''

Yang rejected bids from Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft of as much as $47.5 billion, or $33 a share, earlier this year. Yahoo stock traded as low as $11.25 last week.

Google Partnership

Yahoo sought the partnership with Google, the most-used search engine, as a way to bolster sales. Yahoo's revenue growth, excluding sales shared with partners, slowed to 3 percent last quarter, down from 14 percent a year earlier. Yang faced threats of a proxy fight with billionaire investor Carl Icahn and dissatisfaction from investors, who withheld about a third of their votes for Yang's re-election to the board in August.

Besides a deal with Microsoft, Yahoo's other option is to pursue an acquisition of Time Warner Inc.'s AOL. Buying AOL wouldn't give Yahoo the same payoff as the agreement with Google, said Jeff Lindsay, an analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York.

Microsoft dropped $1.20 to $20.88 yesterday in Nasdaq Stock Market trading. The shares have declined 41 percent this year. Yahoo, down 40 percent this year, rose 4 cents to $13.96

The Fractured Web Community Impacts Marketing Focus

2008-11-06T13:35:00.000-08:00

I found this to be an interesting read - its associated with American's, however, there is relevance for the Australian online market place.

Rubicon Consulting's web practice team recently conducted a broad survey of US web users to understand better how people in the US use the web, with a special focus on web community and its effect on consumers. Among the companies that have tried to work with communities online, many have found that the conversation is dominated by extreme enthusiasts rather than average users, and have concluded that online community is a distraction from their real customers. That turns out to be a very dangerous mistake, concludes the report.

About 80% of the user generated content on the web, including comments and questions is produced by 9% of users... the Most Frequent Contributors, says the report. About 65% of web users are passive readers who contribute content only occasionally. They account for only about 20% of content, depending on the medium. Another 9% of web users are pure lurkers, never contributing any content. And about 17% are community abstainers; they believe they never visit any community-related site on the web.

The Executive Summary posits these findings, conclusions and implications for companies:

The common perception of web communities is that they allow groups of people to share ideas and information, and that they allow companies to communicate directly with their customers. This is factually true, but also misleading, says the study. The vast majority of online conversation is driven by a small group of web users -- less than ten percent of them. The rest of the web community sits back and watches the interactions as a mostly-passive audience that only occasionally injects a few comments. Community experts have been aware of this phenomenon for years, calling it "participation inequality."

-90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
-9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
-1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs.

The 90-9-1 phenomenon means that an online community generally doesn't represent the opinions and interests of the average customer; instead, it tends to reflect the views of extreme enthusiasts.

Rubicon's survey confirms the idea behind the "1-9-90" rule, but not its specific details. The 1-9-90 rule says that 90% of web users are completely silent lurkers. In this research, a majority of web users said they sometimes contribute something, even if it's just an occasional comment. The truly silent lurkers are only 9% of the web population.

Netting it all out, about 10% of web users generate the vast majority of all user-created content. The rest of us are more or less voyeurs.

Here's what the top 10% contribute, according to the study:

Online comments and reviews posted by the enthusiasts are second only to word of mouth as a purchase driver for all web users. Those personal reviews are far more influential than official reviews posted by a website or magazine, or information posted online by a manufacturer. This means the old idea of "influencers" is confirmed and explained. The most frequent contributors are the influencers, and they have a strong influence on purchase decisions because they write most of the online recommendations and reviews.

Word of mouth (personal advice from a friend) is still the #1 driver of purchase decisions. Among web users (who are about 70% of the US population), content on the web has moved into second place, ahead of printed reviews and advice from salespeople. Reviews and comments posted by actual users are more influential than third-party reviews or information posted by manufacturers:

These findings mean online community matters enormously to companies. Online discussion is a poor way to communicate with the average customer, because average customers don't participate. But it is a great way to communicate to them, because average customers watch and listen.

Most Frequent Contributors are different from the average web user:

- They're more ethnically diverse;
- More technically skilled
- More likely to be single
- More likely to work in technology, entertainment, or communication companies
- More likely to be Democrats
- Younger than typical web users. Half of the web's most frequent contributors are under age 22

The survey also explored general use of the web community, and its impact on users' lives. After search, if you look at sites generating the most daily traffic, the most intensely used site categories are:

- Social networking (such as Facebook and MySpace)
- General news sites (such as CNN.com and NYTimes.com)
- Online banking

If you look at breadth of visitors (which sites are eventually visited by the largest percent of web users), the leaders after search are:

- Mapping (MapQuest and others)
- Retail (Amazon.com and others)
- Reference (including Wikipedia)
- Social sites are much more satisfying to teens than adults. Adults say they make fewer friends through social sites, and say the sites play a less important role in their social lives.

Despite differences over the social sites, the web as a whole has a significant impact on the social lives of many users. For example:

- 24% of web users say they have dated someone they first met online
- In the 22-30 age group, that percentage rises to 37%.
- Only 9% of web users said they visit dating websites at least once a month
- Adults and teens use their social networks differently. Most adults will approve someone as a friend on a social site only if they already know them. Many teens will approve someone as a friend as long as they have even a vague idea of who they are. To adults, the friends list confirms relationships that they already have elsewhere. To teens, the friends list is an entry point for a relationship.

Different types of web communities have very different dynamics and user bases. Approaches that work well in one type of community may fail utterly in another, concludes the study. Based on the research for this report and experience in the industry, Rubicon has developed a taxonomy of web communities that classifies them into five broad categories:

- Proximity, where users share a geographic location (Craigslist is an example)
- Purpose, where they share a common task (eBay, Wikipedia)
- Passion, where they share a common interest (YouTube, Dogster)
- Practice, where they share a common career or field of business (many online professional groups fall in this category).

Google pulls out of Yahoo advertising partnership

2008-11-05T14:08:00.000-08:00

WASHINGTON (AP) — Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. have scrapped their Internet advertising partnership, abandoning attempts to overcome the objections of antitrust regulators and customers who believed the alliance would give Google too much power over online commerce.

The retreat announced Wednesday represented another setback for Yahoo, which had been counting on the Google deal to boost its annual revenue by $800 million and placate shareholders still incensed by management's decision to reject a $47.5 billion takeover bid from Microsoft Corp. nearly six months ago.

Without Google's help, Yahoo now may feel more pressure to renew talks with Microsoft and ultimately sell for a price well below the $33 per share that Microsoft offered in May. Yahoo shares traded Wednesday morning at just $13.67, up 2.4 percent on the day.

Surrendering the chance to sell ads on Yahoo's popular Web site won't be a significant financial blow for Google, which already runs the Internet's largest and most prosperous advertising network.

But the capitulation marks a rare comedown for Google, which had been insisting for more than four months that the Internet would be a better place to do business if it were allowed to work with Yahoo.

"We're of course disappointed that this deal won't be moving ahead," David Drummond, Google's chief legal officer, wrote on a company blog. "But we're not going to let the prospect of a lengthy legal battle distract us from our core mission. That would be like trying to drive down the road of innovation with the parking brake on."

Google's management took a strategic risk by agreeing to the Yahoo partnership in June, knowing the move would increase the government's scrutiny of Google's market power. Even though it is now walking away empty-handed, Google figures to remain in regulators' sights as it tries to expand.

"For the first time, Google has run into real opposition to its marketplace goals," said Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a consumer advocacy group. "Google is aware that its aggressive moves in the online advertising business are potentially contributing to damaging its brand. The perception of Google has changed."

The collapse of the Google-Yahoo alliance shapes up as a potential coup for Microsoft.

Although it has publicly said it's no longer interested in buying Yahoo, Microsoft spent a lot of time and money trying to keep Google and Yahoo from coming together.

The world's largest software maker provided evidence that helped persuade regulators the partnership would diminish competition. Microsoft also helped orchestrate the campaign that prompted major advertisers to lodge formal complaints against the proposed partnership.

The Justice Department signaled it was considering a legal challenge to the deal in September when it hired veteran antitrust lawyer Sanford Litvack to review the case.

The Wall Street Journal reported Monday that Google and Yahoo had proposed restrictions on the deal — capping the amount of search ads Yahoo could outsource to Google — in a late bid to win favor. Google's statement Wednesday indicated the idea didn't fly.

"After four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it's clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement," Drummond wrote. "Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn't have been in the long term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement."

Now that Google is out of the picture, Yahoo co-founder Jerry Yang will have to come up with another way to accelerate his company's revenue growth and boost a stock price that has lost more than half its value since he became chief executive in June 2007.

If nothing else, Yang appears to have a bigger incentive to join forces with another tarnished Internet star, AOL. Yahoo has been discussing a possible acquisition with AOL's corporate parent, Time Warner Inc., for months. Google also owns a 5 percent stake in AOL.

But many Yahoo shareholders, including new board member Carl Icahn, have indicated they think the Sunnyvale, Calif.-based company should try to lure Microsoft back to the negotiating table.

Most industry analysts still believe Microsoft will make another run at Yahoo, particularly now that the company can be bought at a fraction of the May offer. Instead of buying Yahoo in its entirety, Microsoft might just want Yahoo's search engine, which ranks a distant second in usage behind Google's. Microsoft attempted to buy Yahoo's search engine shortly before the Google partnership was reached.

Under the terms of the proposed partnership, Yahoo would have drawn on Google's superior technology for some of the ads shown alongside the search results on its Web site. Yahoo would have pocketed most of the revenue generated from Google's ads.

The concept didn't pan out because Google and Yahoo combined control more than 80 percent of the U.S. search advertising market. Microsoft and the Association of National Advertisers, among others, argued the arrangement would enable Google to gradually increase advertising prices and exert more control over the flow of e-commerce.

Google and Yahoo said the complaints were misguided because search advertising rates are set through an auction-style system. What's more, the partnership was supposed to be non-exclusive, leaving an opening for Microsoft and others to vie to sell ads on Yahoo's Web site.

But helping out Yahoo began to make less sense for Google as it became apparent how much the proposal was alienating the government and advertisers.

Yahoogle Deal Downsized

2008-11-05T04:31:00.000-08:00

Google and Yahoo have reportedly downsized their search ad agreement in an effort to convince the Department of Justice to approve the deal.
The deal, calling for Google to power some paid search ads for Yahoo, is for an initial term of two years, not 10, and Yahoo has agreed to limit revenue from the deal to 25% of its total search revenue. Most significantly for search marketers, advertisers will be able to prevent their pay-per-click ads from running on Yahoo.

This last term is important because some marketers were willing to pay more for ads triggered by the same keywords -- "iPod," "laptop," etc. -- when those ads ran on Google rather than on Yahoo, on the theory that Google users were more likely to make a purchase. Marketers feared that without this term, they would have ended up paying Google prices for Yahoo ads.

At the same time, it's not clear that marketers' concerns were justified, given that they set ad prices by bidding for keywords at auction. If advertisers perceived that they weren't getting their money's worth for their ads, they could have simply lowered their bids.

Even with the recent concessions, it's not certain that the Department of Justice will approve this deal. Google still controls more than 60% of the search marketplace, and this deal arguably makes the company even more powerful.

As Google has grown, the company faces more and more challenges by people concerned that, despite the "Don't Be Evil" motto, it could indeed wreak havoc -- both with other businesses and consumers. While the FTC allowed the company to acquire DoubleClick, the merger sparked pushback from Congress and consumer advocates. Google's retention of users' IP addresses also poses problems, triggering a backlash to the company both in the U.S. and abroad.

Google recently agreed to cut the time it retains IP addresses to nine months instead of 18. That's still longer than the six months suggested by European regulators. Perhaps more significantly, it's still not clear why Google needs to store IP logs at all. Despite all of the company's talk about using IP logs to improve search results and to fight click fraud, it has never been able to convincingly explain why it needs to hold onto that information for any length of time to do so.

Perhaps if Google had made more concessions on other fronts, the company's deal with Yahoo would have sailed through by now.

Mobile Messages Gain Awareness

2008-11-03T21:53:00.000-08:00

Awareness of mobile ads has accelerated, per the new Limbo-GfK Technology Advertising Report being released this week. A record 104 million people (or an estimated four in 10 Americans) recalled seeing an ad on their mobile device between July and September, the highest mark since the report was introduced last year.

"Brands are doing more with mobile, spending more," said Rob Lawson, founder of Limbo, a mobile social networking community. "Only two years ago they didn't see it as a channel where they would see ads. Now they are increasingly aware. One hundred and four million isn't the same as TV, but the audience is significant." The survey was based on responses from 1,000 adults polled via the phone.

Text messaging proved to be the most commonly viewed form of mobile advertising. Sixty million Americans saw a text ad, a 42 percent increase from just nine months ago. "It's not as glamorous as mobile video, but mobile is still dominated by text. It's the medium consumers use every day," said Lawson. Marketers are also embracing text campaigns "because in tight economic times, direct response [media] hold steady or go up."

Thirty-one million people, meanwhile, viewed mobile Web ads. Despite its smaller reach, companies like Procter & Gamble and American Express are most interested in purchasing mobile banner ads, said John Hadl, CEO of Brand in Hand, which handles mobile buys for both. "It has surpassed SMS as the mobile ad medium of choice. Mobile ads have arrived."

Men (57 percent) were more likely to view an ad on their mobile device. Fifty-two percent are between the ages of 35-64 and most (68 percent) were Caucasian. It's not just about early adopters anymore, said Lawson. "As mobile matures as a medium, you can see the demographic profile flattening to look more like the population."

Study: Blogs Influence Purchases More Than Social Sites

2008-10-28T14:58:00.000-07:00

Great Article from ClickZ

Blogs can have more impact on purchase decisions than social networks, a new study finds. Blogs create a conversation and trusted resource that influences purchase decision.

The study, "Harnessing the Power of Blogs," sponsored research by BuzzLogic and conducted by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company, looks at the evolving influence from the reader's perspective. "What we wanted to do was look at the reader's side of the coin, look at reader patterns and how people are reading blogs...and drill down into the content impacting other media platforms," said Valerie Combs, VP of corporate communications at BuzzLogic.

Readership of blogs is on the rise. JupiterResearch noted a 300 percent growth in monthly blog readership in the past four years. Readers look to links and multiple blog sources to extend the conversation: 49 percent of blog readers, defined as someone who reads at least one blog a month, and 71 percent of frequent readers all read more than one blog per session. Multiple blog sources offer more opportunities for consumers to see blog ads. A quarter of readers say they trust ads on a blog, compared to 19 percent who trust ads on social networking sites.

Advertisements on blogs are an opportunity for marketers to reach consumers. The findings said 40 percent of people reading blogs have taken action as a result of viewing an ad on a blog; and 50 percent of frequent blog readers say they have taken action. Of those actions: 17 percent have read product reviews online; 16 percent have sought out more information on a product or service; and 16 percent have visited a manufacturer or retailer Web site.

"More and more publishers are become extremely savvy understanding the game and becoming better at monetizing, which is great for the advertiser as well," said Combs.

The survey also finds consumers are influenced by blogs at the moment of purchase decision. The channel plays a greater role than social networks, likely because bloggers establish themselves as an authority on a topic, particularly in niche areas, and create a relationship with the consumer.

"One of the things that's so great about them is the personal, specific information," said Combs. "Thorough, useful, honest creation, create a level of trust with the reader."

BuzzLogic is a marketing influence company that measures word-of-mouth interaction online, runs online ad campaigns, and hosts the Conversation Ad Network, an ad network built for social media and bloggers to help monetize niche topic Web sites.

Travel PPC: 10 Ways to Improve Your Google AdWords Campaign

2008-10-27T15:18:00.000-07:00

Do you do any sort of pay-per-click management for the online travel vertical? I recently attended a Google AdWords Webinar about online travel trends which they based on a ComScore study of 50,000 UK web users. Our Google rep sent me a copy of the ComScore study which I have used to bring you my top ten useful tips for running a travel PPC campaign.

Nearly half of all travel searches are brand related; can you afford to miss out on all this traffic? 36% of people who buy holidays use a brand search first and use a brand search immediately before purchasing so bid on branded keywords in your PPC campaigns
Use day parting for PPC; people are 30% more likely to purchase a holiday on a Monday or Tuesday. Increase your bids then to capture this traffic and lower them at the weekend. Only 7% of purchasers buy a holiday on a Saturday.
Get them early; 15.9% of purchasers buy their holiday from the first site they visit. Only 1.6% will buy immediately, but around 14.3% will return at some point for a conversion. Forget what you’ve learnt about the buying cycle; bidding on keywords that customers use in the research phase can get you a 15.9% conversion rate!
Make sure your URL’s are memorable; 35% of transactions occur without a search on the same day. These people must’ve seen something they liked then gone away to think about it. Make sure they can remember where they were.
Destinations aren’t as important as you think. 45% of online travel purchases are made without a destination search. Of course this means that 55% do use a destination related search term but I used to think that just about everybody would search for their destination at some point.
Save some money for January. For the last few years there has been a massive peak in travel searches every January. Look on Google Trends with the travel query of your choice. Or don’t; trust me, there will be a peak in January.
Ad variations are always a bit of a mystery. Test everything. Once I misspelled “hotels” as “hotsel” is an ad which turned out to have a (statistically) significantly better CTR. I thought I’d found something great so I rolled similar variations out across other ad groups. A few weeks later I checked to see what was going on, using splittester to judge which results were significant. Some ad groups it was better, some ad groups it was worse. I have no idea why. Test everything all the time.
Most purchasers will visit your site at least twice before purchasing; make repeat visits more likely by including new and interesting content for them.
Be patient. You’ve made all these changes, but on average it takes 29 days between first search and transaction for a holiday buyer. 30% of purchases occur more than 6 weeks after the initial search.
Don’t want to be patient? Want to get the 17% of users who purchase after only one search? Then ideally you’re from easyjet, ryanair or some other well known airline. Branded searches tend to convert quicker (63% of single search transactions are branded) so build your brand if you want the shortest gap between click and conversion

I only got to look at the study this week so there hasn’t been time to see if all of these tips really work. I’ll let you know if any big surprises come along as I collect more data.

iPhones are a must-have for Congress

2008-10-23T15:31:00.000-07:00

I found this article the very interesting:

House members in the next Congress could get Apple’s iPhone as their newest communication gadget.

The Chief Administrative Office (CAO), which oversees the communications systems for the House, has begun testing a small number of iPhones within its ranks to see if they are compatible with the working needs of lawmakers and staff.

“The reason we’re trying them out is because we heard a lot of people wanted the option to have them,” said Jeff Ventura, a spokesman for the CAO.

The iPhone has garnered tremendous attention since its release in July 2007. In addition to being heralded as one of the greatest modern inventions, it’s received its share of criticism for its touch-screen keyboard and slow connection speeds.

The CAO plans to decide whether to give members the option of using the phones, which are offered exclusively under AT&T contracts, by the beginning of the next Congress in January.

The cell phone of choice in the House is currently the BlackBerry, with nearly 8,200 in active use.

If the CAO decides to offer members the option of using the iPhone, BlackBerrys are likely to remain the primary tool of communication on the Hill. If lawmakers opt for the iPhone over the BlackBerry, they will be required to pay for it out of the Member’s Representational Allowance.

But switching to the iPhone will be a costly investment.

The House’s e-mail is set up in a way that all the messages are delivered via a BlackBerry Enterprise server. That server is not compatible with the iPhone, so the only way people could get their e-mail would be to plug the iPhone into their computer. Because the iPhones would require a new server, the CAO is testing it before making the investment, according to the CAO officials.

With the arrival of the BlackBerry Enterprise Server in 2001, e-mail through BlackBerrys became centralized and streamlined, which made for faster and more seamless delivery. The previous BlackBerry e-mail system relied on local workstations, making e-mail delivery slow and unreliable at times.

BlackBerry devices were first made available in Congress to the freshman class in 2000 and a campus-wide distribution was completed in October 2001.

The House had conducted a 1,000-user, one-month test prior to Sept. 11, 2001. In response to the terrorist attacks that day, the House Administration Committee, in conjunction with the CAO, purchased BlackBerry devices for each member of Congress as another method of communication.

The demand for BlackBerry devices quickly expanded beyond members to chiefs of staff, and before long, many more people were requesting them.

Display Sales, Search Prime for Yahoo Cuts

2008-10-22T16:42:00.001-07:00

Yahoo needs to trim down to about 12,000 employees to survive, and the lion's share of cuts -- expected to be announced as early as Tuesday -- are likely to be in ad sales, analysts said.

“It’s because Yahoo’s the leader in premium display, and that market has really gone south,” said Jeffrey Lindsay, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. And it won't be the only one to go, he said.

“If it was just the sales force, they probably wouldn’t be using consultants. It’ll be across the board,” he said.

Yahoo is expected to announce layoffs of at least 1000 people as part of its cost-cutting strategy, according to a number of recent reports. Its total staff was around 14,300 back in June.

Other analysts noted that the troubled economy makes sales a likely target for trimming, but that there could be layoffs in a number of other departments.

“I don’t know that they’re going to be cutting particularly in product development. It probably wouldn’t make sense to do that given that they need to continue to innovate and try to improve their products, but I think you’ll probably see at least something in almost every segment of the company,” said Stanford Group Company’s Clayton Moran.

Another key area that could be hit hard is search, which Yahoo has been backing off from lately, as an outsourcing deal with Google battles a Justice Department investigation.

“They seem to be emphasizing less on search. Search R&D is a large area for them and the need for that I think goes down,” says Gene Munster of Piper Jaffray & Co.

“Specifically I think probably the search has the most risk just because they’re obviously trying to figure out ways to lessen their exposure to that," he added. "So that’s the most logical place that could be cut back.”

Regardless of who ultimately gets the axe, Lindsay thinks the move should should have been made about 6 months ago.

“Yahoo’s problem is it tends not to take radical enough action,” he said, noting that it laid off 1,000 employees earlier this year but kept hiring. His company suggested last year that Yahoo cut a total of about 2,500 jobs.

“If you do it by small cuts, only just enough each time, you end up having to do it over and over and it’s disastrous for morale. That’s what happened at AOL,” he said.

Google's G1 Is Finally Ready for Its Close-up

2008-10-22T15:33:00.000-07:00

Up until now, the buzz for the T-Mobile's Google-branded smart phone has been mainly in the press and blogosphere. Starting with a campaign breaking tomorrow, the carrier has to convince consumers.

T-Mobile's Google-branded smart phone

"We chose not to do a classic teaser campaign in advance of the launch," said Denny Post, T-Mobile's chief marketing officer, who joined the company in June. Instead, it timed the G1 marketing push to coincide with when the phone goes sale, as the G1 has already reaped plenty of publicity on its own.

"There hasn't been a need to create awareness," said Ms. Post. "We choose to spend the money when people can walk into the store and buy the phone."

Tapping into Google's attributes
The campaign's theme, "Curiosity Is Everywhere," developed by T-Mobile's agency of record, Publicis in the West, ties into Google's core attributes, the search for information and knowledge. TV spots feature people looking into the camera and asking offbeat queries. As the campaign plays out, applications on the G1 will spew out answers to the queries. One spot, for example, shows two guys asking about a sci-fi convention in town; it's Google's Street View service that rises to the call.

Ms. Post said Google will "lend its digital assets to the [marketing] program" at a later time, but for now "it's been our call with the traditional media." She declined to disclose the details of Google's participation in future marketing efforts.

Of course, this is not your typical mobile-phone launch. Google's foray into the smart-phone category has made the event something of an earthquake. It's the first phone to operate both on Google's much ballyhooed open-source mobile platform, Android, and T-Mobile's 3G network, a work-in-progress.

Much at stake
Moreover, the cast of characters involved have different stakes in the phone's success.

T-Mobile, the No. 4 carrier in the country by subscriber, is looking for a hit in the G1 to fatten its user base and answer Apple's iPhone, which has AT&T as its only exclusive carrier. Google is hoping to usher in a new era of wireless computing with Android, in which the company has bet big.

It has been nearly a year since Google first announced that dozens of wireless vendors were throwing their weight behind Android. Since then, very little about an Android-based phone has been made public until Google, T-Mobile and Taiwan-based HTC, the maker of the G1, officially unveiled the phone in September. To date, the vendors behind the phone have largely sought to engage the media rather than the consumer. By contrast, Apple aired TV spots for its first-generation iPhone months before the product ever hit the shelves.

Enviable buzz
While leaving the marketing to the press and bloggers has its risks, for a phone that has seen relatively little pre-marketing, the G1 has achieved enviable buzz, a credit to the Google brand. The phone got pats on the back for a respectable, if not good, first try, but reviewers also made it clear it was no home run.

The G1 has been relentlessly compared to the iPhone; yet beyond their similar touch-screens, there is little else these phones share. The G1 comes tightly knitted to Google services, and a Google account is required for using the phone. At $179 with a two-year voice and data plan, the G1 phone is $20 cheaper than the entry-level 8-gigabyte iPhone.

The iPhone has a broader appeal than the G1, analysts said. The iPhone has been positioned as a fashion accessory, as all things Apple are. A testament to its hip but mainstream pedigree, 30% of U.S. consumers who purchased Apple's new iPhone 3G from June through August switched from other mobile carriers to join AT&T, according to market researchers NPD Group. T-Mobile declined to disclose projections for its expected conversion rates with the G1.

Where the G1 loses in sex appeal to the iPhone, it does make it up in other ways. Valerie Combs, VP-corporate communications at BuzzLogic, which measures influence among blogs and other websites, said the G1 got high marks for features such as its physical keyboard and third-party applications, all areas where the iPhone has fallen short.

Will it resonate with public?
But whether the Google phone will resonate with the general public remains a question. BuzzLogic found three-quarters of G1 online conversations refer to Android, suggesting techies were a sizable bloc behind the G1's interest, Ms. Combs said. And it's a good bet that people who will take to the phone are fans of Google's services, such as Gmail and Google Maps.

T-Mobile's Ms. Post said G1 is a phone "for the masses, not elitists," favored by young, male subscribers using data service for the first time. And since 35% of the online conversations about the G1 also talk about the iPhone, according to BuzzLogic, this could signal an opportunity for T-Mobile.

T-Mobile said pre-order demand for the new G1 is three times what it had expected and many stores are opening early tomorrow in anticipation of high interest. The company declined to disclose the phone's unit sales projections, but research firm Strategy Analytics estimates G1 sales would reach 400,000 units in the fourth quarter, for a 4% market share.

Google Ads on the iPhone?

2008-10-13T16:03:00.000-07:00

Not that anyone still doubted the iPhone's heft in the mobile ad market, but just in case: Google is reportedly telling advertisers they will soon be able to create an iPhone-specific ad group as part of their regular search campaign.

The search giant wouldn't confirm the rumor, but several agency executives say they've taken meetings with Google where the opportunity was discussed. Essentially the creation of an iPhone-specific ad group would mean that marketers could create ads that would appear specifically to iPhone users. In January, The New York Times reported that the iPhone was already the No. 1 source of mobile traffic to Google's search engine.

Google would not be the first to offer its clients this option--JumpTap and AdMob are just two that have already done that--but it would obviously be the largest. It's also notable given the recent launch of company's own iPhone competitor, T-Mobile's GI, also known as the Google Phone.

Copywriting for the Busy

2008-09-18T21:46:00.000-07:00

Great blog worth reading:

I'm constantly amazed by the folks in direct mail who send out these long letters asking me to sign up for one more credit card—I know they work, but it's not my style (and it doesn't work well on the Web). I am often reminded of a story from my youth—the 1960s—when a long-haired hippy was struggling to get a ride to his destination. The hitchhiker kept sticking out his thumb, but no one stopped. Finally, he scrawled on a piece of cardboard, "Going to the Barber" and he was picked up within minutes. Now, that's copywriting.

You see, copy doesn't need to be long to be effective. In fact, on the Web, the shorter copy often tests better because people scan more than they read. What is important is that you understand your target market, what they care about, and what will persuade them.

So, our hitchhiker realized that the people who owned cars in the 1960s were unlikely to be fellow hippies. And his appearance was turning off the few who might be willing to give him a ride. The idea that he was ready to change his appearance was enough to get someone to decide to stop. The key was for the hitchhiker to stop thinking about what he wanted (a ride) long enough to come up with a motivator for his audience.

Often, we marketers are guilty of the same blindness. In our quest for a sale (what we want), we often fail to understand what our audience wants. And we blather on and on in verbose fashion about all the little features of our offering, and how wonderful our employees are, and how committed we are to customer satisfaction and blah, blah, blah...

But do our customers care? Often, they don't. Now, you're unlikely to be as persuasive as our hitchhiker with one sentence of copy. Both customers and search engines tend to like more than that, just so they know what you are talking about. But do talk about what the customer is interested in.

Customers usually have a problem that needs to be solved. It could be a practical left-brain problem (my gutters are leaking) or a hard-to-articulate right brain problem (I feel too unattractive to date)—it doesn't matter. Either way, you need to frame your sales pitch in the parlance of the customer rather than in your own industry-speak. I might not know what a "leader" is or when the last time my gutter was cleaned. I might not know whether I want a matchmaking service or a makeover. (Or a haircut, you hitchhikers.)

But that is what the marketer needs to find out. That's what you need to write about. And when you get it right, you can persuade your audience in relatively few words. Mark Twain famously said, "If I had more time, I could have made it shorter." Remember that the right words carefully chosen do the trick and that we pile on more and more because we don't actually know what people are looking for, not because more is better.

And I better end here before this post itself starts to run on too long.

AT&T Vs. Google On BT Battleground

2008-08-14T16:26:00.000-07:00

Interesting inquiry that is worth following...

AT&T and Google have been battling each for years on net neutrality issues. Now, that feud is extending into a Congressional inquiry about behavioral targeting.
"Advertising-network operators such as Google have evolved beyond merely tracking consumer web surfing activity on sites for which they have a direct ad-serving relationship," AT&T stated to Congress in response to an inquiry about behavioral targeting and privacy. "They now have the ability to observe a user's entire web browsing experience at a granular level, including all URLs visited, all searches, and actual page-views."

In the letter, made public today, AT&T attempts to cast itself as a privacy champion compared to Google and other Web companies. "The largely invisible practices of ad-networks raise even greater privacy concerns than do the behavioral advertising techniques that ISPs could employ, such as deep-packet-inspection," AT&T wrote.

At the same time, AT&T also said that if it deploys behavioral targeting, it will first seek subscribers' affirmative opt-in consent. While that sounds like a big concession, AT&T obviously knows that at least some Congress members are heading there anyway; Rep. Ed Markey, at any rate, is on record as supporting an opt-in standard for ISP-based targeting.

Of course, AT&T, like other Internet service providers, has every reason to want to sell information about subscribers' Web-surfing activity to companies like NebuAd, who will then serve ads to users based on their history.

Google has every reason to want to prevent this from happening, as the company only stands to lose ad revenue to startups like NebuAd. If ISPs know which users are conducting searches for particular products, at least some marketers might decide they want to reach those users on sites other than Google -- which could result in a direct shift of ad dollars from AdWords to NebuAd and its ISP partners.

ISPs apparently have been waiting for an opportunity to get a share of online ad dollars for a long time. Two years ago, a Verizon executive complained publicly that Google was getting a "free lunch," on the theory that the company's profits from online advertising were only made possible by networks such as Verizon's.

So it makes sense that Google would try to frame the policy debate underway in Washington as solely about ISP-based targeting, while AT&T would try to characterize it more broadly, as about consumer privacy overall.

At the same time, there are some real differences between network-based targeting, which only operates across a limited number of sites, and ISP-based targeting, which operates everywhere. No matter how much information Google has about a particular user, an ISP will always have more.

Social Networks Surge On Growing Global Audiences

2008-08-13T16:23:00.000-07:00

Facebook and other social networking sites are enjoying rapid growth worldwide, thanks to a surge in social media activity outside the U.S., especially in emerging regions.

One notable exception is MySpace, which Facebook surpassed in April as the world's biggest social network. The News Corp. property has seen its traffic stagnate both domestically and globally in the last year.

MySpace's flattening growth stems partly from a maturing market in North America, where social networking traffic grew only 9% for the year ending June 2008, according to comScore Media Metrix. Facebook's 38% North American growth even looks sluggish compared to its 153% jump worldwide, for a total of 132 million users as of June.

But elsewhere, social networking is taking off. Consider traffic growth of 66% in the Middle East and Africa to 30.2 million, Europe increasing 35% to 165 million and Latin America rising 33% to 53.2 million.

The comScore data roughly parallels findings presented in April by Universal McCann showing online social network membership in countries such as Brazil, Russia, Taiwan, and Mexico growing at more than 70% compared to less than 49% in the U.S.

Facebook has also benefited from launching an effort at the start of the year to allow users to translate the site into different languages. Last month, the company said it would also begin to allow developers to translate their applications into multiple languages.

MySpace began a push to offer localized, foreign-language versions of the site two years ago. But with only 3% growth in the last year to 117.5 million, it appears to have reached saturation.

Facebook's traffic has grown more than fourfold in Europe, Asia-Pacific, the Middle East and Africa, and Latin America. Its jump to nearly 12 million monthly visitors in Latin America from 1 million a year ago is especially eye-catching.

In some instances, Facebook's impressive stats abroad result from having a small base. Its growth tripled in Japan over the last year to 538,000 visitors, but Facebook is still getting crushed by homegrown competitor Mixi, with 12.7 million users. MySpace was second, with 1.2 million.

Hi5 has also benefited from rolling out its site in a variety of languages this year, doubling its audience to more than 56 million. Friendster, a social networking also-ran in the U.S., meanwhile boosted traffic 50% to 37 million worldwide.

Google's Orkut and AOL's Bebo also had strong gains--with 41% and 32% audience increases, respectively, in the last year. Neither has made big inroads in the U.S. market yet, however.

3 misconception of quality score

2008-08-07T17:02:00.000-07:00

1. The first misconception of the Google AdWords Quality Score is that using different match types improves your Quality Score. The fact is match types have no effect on your quality score. According to Google, two types of quality scores are used. One is used to calculate your minimum cost-per-click bids and the other is used to calculate your ad position. Apparently, neither is impacted by match type. Furthermore, if you do have multiple match types for the same keyword in your ad group, all three match types should have the exact same quality score. The quality score for determining your ad position depends on the relevance of your keywords and a user’s search query. Your quality score is often higher if the search query and your keyword is an exact match. But this does not say that by having exact match on all your keywords will get you a higher quality score for ad position. I think the point here is if you’re obsessing over match types in your ad groups and how they may or may not affect your quality score, obsess no more. Move on and worry about a different aspect of the quality score!

Misconception #2: You can buy a good quality score. Wrong! There are so many factors involved in how Google determines your quality score, and simply bidding higher isn’t one of them. At a high level the Google AdWords Quality Score is based on the relevance of your keywords, ads, landing pages to the users search term. The more relevant you are, the better your quality score. Don’t burn yourself by trying to bid higher on keywords just to see if it works. You’ll end up blowing your budget on a huge misconception!

Misconception #3: Quality score is affected if your ads are not running. This is also false. If you turn off or pause your account, then turn it back on at a later date, assuming you haven’t switched any of your keywords or ads around during that time, you’re quality score will not be affected. The quality score is typically affected when you separate your better performing keywords from their ad texts. So just by turning off your account won’t screw up anything with your overall quality score once you turn your account back on.

New Chart: What Search Marketers Don't Pay Attention to ... But Should

2008-07-09T23:31:00.000-07:00

I found this extremely interesting:

As part of a June 2008 survey, www.marketingsherpa.com asked marketers an open-ended question about the most underused metrics in search. Then, put the varied answers into the categories above. Measuring conversion and ROI was a huge theme; more than half of the respondents to this question mentioned it in some form.

Methods for measuring conversion vary quite a bit depending on the circumstances of each marketer’s path to sale. Marketers with short, impulse-buy sales cycles were quite adamant that immediate sales should be tied to keywords when figuring out conversion.

On the other hand, marketers with longer sales cycles and less tangible conversion events pushed for more proxy metrics or KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) – such as time spent on the site, offline conversions, branding value, and lifetime value. Regardless of the path to purchase, all marketers are correct that valuing marketing vehicles by ROI is a goal that needs more attention.

Key takeaway:
With prices rising steadily, marketers who evaluate search against tangible KPIs will be the ones who will optimize and balance their spendi

Google's Privacy Policy Link: Too Little, Too Late?

2008-07-07T17:51:00.000-07:00

makes you think...

Now that it's facing a genuine privacy crisis, Google has decided to quell a completely insignificant privacy dust-up. The search giant has finally placed a link to its privacy policy on the home page. Previously, users had to click on multiple links, or search on the terms "Google privacy policy," to reach the information.
This purely cosmetic change might placate some watchdogs, who argued that Google was violating California law by not including the link on its home page, but does nothing to solve the larger problem: Google stores too much information about its users.

Among other data, the company retains logs showing users' IP addresses and their search queries. Google contends that IP addresses don't usually reveal people's identities. But that assertion ignores the reality that examining all of a person's searches can in itself reveal identity. In other words, users' identities can be deduced whether the IP address is real or a made-up sequence of numbers -- as long as it's paired with all of the searches originating from a single computer.

Last week, a federal judge ordered Google to disclose to Viacom complete user logs for YouTube, including all users' IP addresses, screen names and which videos they watched. Google and Viacom have since tried to quell privacy concerns, with Google saying it will ask to "anonymize" IP addresses, even though that won't necessarily preserve users' privacy as long as all of their information is still paired with the same identifier. Viacom has also said it will handle all information confidentially.

As privacy advocates point out, Google wouldn't be facing this problem now if it hadn't compiled and stored these records in the first place.

Louis Stanton, the federal judge who issued the order in the YouTube lawsuit, wrote in his opinion that Google argues in its public policy blog that IP addresses aren't necessarily personally identifiable. "We have proposed broad global privacy standards, and are strong supporters of the idea that data protection laws should apply to any data that could identify you. The reality is though that in most cases, an IP address without additional information cannot," the blog states.

But, on other sections of its site, Google equates IP addresses with personally identifiable information. "Due to user privacy concerns, Google Analytics doesn't report on personally identifiable information, including a visitor's IP address," the company states on a site about Google's analytics tool.

In other words, even Google realizes that, for all practical purposes, IP addresses should be treated as personally identifiable information. Given the events of last week, the company should rethink the wisdom of retaining such data.

Microsoft offers iPods as search incentives

2008-07-03T17:04:00.000-07:00

Microsoft is attempting to convince Australian users to use its Live search engine by offering products from industry competitor Apple as bait through a local venture with the Nine Network, Ninemsn. The Brisbane Times reveals that the software giant is offering the iPod nano, Shuffle, and Touch to users who perform searches through Ninemsn. Ninemsn head Alex Parsons said that it would have run the contest using the Zune, but the Microsoft-made player does not currently sell in Australia. "Where we don't have a great product or we don't have a product at all there's no internal edict that says we're not allowed to use competitor products," said Parsons.

Microsoft is approving the promotion in order to draw attention away from search and advertising competitor Google – the use of Google's services at Ninemsn is forbidden – by providing a very Google-like search interface, as well as improving search results, speed, and content. Google currently sees use from 9.7 million Australians, compared to Live at 3 million, and Yahoo at 1.4 million.

Overall, Ninemsn hopes that it will succeed in the long fight, since Google controls so much of the present marketplace.

Microsoft is currently spending a great deal of money to compete with Google in the US, with the purchase of Powerset, a company who developed "semantic web" search technology that recognizes both meaning and context of search terms.

Teens Learn From Advertising on Social Sites

2008-06-20T00:04:00.000-07:00

I found these stats very interesting. They are American driven but it paints an interesting story.
The Teen Topix study conducted by OTX, investigated the complex lives of the 13 -17 year old set, found that teens are spending an average of 11.5 hours online, doing everything from instant messaging and visiting social networking sites to shopping and listening to music, but dispels myths that this group wants to do everything online.

The study did find that 24% of teens are spending more than 15 hours a week online and when all teens were asked how frequently they do typical online activities, instant messaging came up as the most frequent activity, followed by visiting social networking sites, email, searching, and visiting virtual community sites.

45% spent from 1 to less than 8 hours on line during a typical week
31% from 8 to less than 15
24% 15 hours and over

78% of teens are concerned about computer viruses while online, followed by:

Identity theft (67%)
Unauthorized access to personal information (65%)
Scams (60%)
Spam (60%)

The average teen has signed up for over four social networking sites and currently belongs to two, reports the study. Teens are receptive to advertising on these sites, where the majority of teens learn about:

Financial services (63%)
Movies in theaters (59%)
Mobile services and accessories (58%)
Travel (57%)
Other websites (53%)

View http://blogs.mediapost.com/research_brief/?p=1730#comments

Ten things Google found to be true.

2008-06-18T20:37:00.000-07:00

Ten things Google has found to be true

1. Focus on the user and all else will follow.

From its inception, Google has focused on providing the best user experience possible. While many companies claim to put their customers first, few are able to resist the temptation to make small sacrifices to increase shareholder value. Google has steadfastly refused to make any change that does not offer a benefit to the users who come to the site:

* The interface is clear and simple.
* Pages load instantly.
* Placement in search results is never sold to anyone.
* Advertising on the site must offer relevant content and not be a distraction.

By always placing the interests of the user first, Google has built the most loyal audience on the web. And that growth has come not through TV ad campaigns, but through word of mouth from one satisfied user to another.

2. It's best to do one thing really, really well.

Google does search. With one of the world's largest research groups focused exclusively on solving search problems, we know what we do well, and how we could do it better. Through continued iteration on difficult problems, we've been able to solve complex issues and provide continuous improvements to a service already considered the best on the web at making finding information a fast and seamless experience for millions of users. Our dedication to improving search has also allowed us to apply what we've learned to new products, including Gmail, Google Desktop, and Google Maps. As we continue to build new products* while making search better, our hope is to bring the power of search to previously unexplored areas, and to help users access and use even more of the ever-expanding information in their lives.

3. Fast is better than slow.

Google believes in instant gratification. You want answers and you want them right now. Who are we to argue? Google may be the only company in the world whose stated goal is to have users leave its website as quickly as possible. By fanatically obsessing on shaving every excess bit and byte from our pages and increasing the efficiency of our serving environment, Google has broken its own speed records time and again. Others assumed large servers were the fastest way to handle massive amounts of data. Google found networked PCs to be faster. Where others accepted apparent speed limits imposed by search algorithms, Google wrote new algorithms that proved there were no limits. And Google continues to work on making it all go even faster.

4. Democracy on the web works.

Google works because it relies on the millions of individuals posting websites to determine which other sites offer content of value. Instead of relying on a group of editors or solely on the frequency with which certain terms appear, Google ranks every web page using a breakthrough technique called PageRank™. PageRank evaluates all of the sites linking to a web page and assigns them a value, based in part on the sites linking to them. By analyzing the full structure of the web, Google is able to determine which sites have been "voted" the best sources of information by those most interested in the information they offer. This technique actually improves as the web gets bigger, as each new site is another point of information and another vote to be counted.

5. You don't need to be at your desk to need an answer.

The world is increasingly mobile and unwilling to be constrained to a fixed location. Whether it's through their PDAs, their wireless phones or even their automobiles, people want information to come to them. Google's innovations in this area include Google Number Search, which reduces the number of keypad strokes required to find data from a web-enabled cellular phone and an on-the-fly translation system that converts pages written in HTML to a format that can be read by phone browsers. This system opens up billions of pages for viewing from devices that would otherwise not be able to display them, including Palm PDAs and Japanese i-mode, J-Sky, and EZWeb devices. Wherever search is likely to help users obtain the information they seek, Google is pioneering new technologies and offering new solutions.

6. You can make money without doing evil.

Google is a business. The revenue the company generates is derived from offering its search technology to companies and from the sale of advertising displayed on Google and on other sites across the web. However, you may have never seen an ad on Google. That's because Google does not allow ads to be displayed on our results pages unless they're relevant to the results page on which they're shown. So, only certain searches produce sponsored links above or to the right of the results. Google firmly believes that ads can provide useful information if, and only if, they are relevant to what you wish to find.

Google has also proven that advertising can be effective without being flashy. Google does not accept pop-up advertising, which interferes with your ability to see the content you've requested. We've found that text ads (AdWords) that are relevant to the person reading them draw much higher clickthrough rates than ads appearing randomly. Google's maximization group works with advertisers to improve clickthrough rates over the life of a campaign, because high clickthrough rates are an indication that ads are relevant to a user's interests. Any advertiser, no matter how small or how large, can take advantage of this highly targeted medium, whether through our self-service advertising program that puts ads online within minutes, or with the assistance of a Google advertising representative.

Advertising on Google is always clearly identified as a "Sponsored Link." It is a core value for Google that there be no compromising of the integrity of our results. We never manipulate rankings to put our partners higher in our search results. No one can buy better PageRank. Our users trust Google's objectivity and no short-term gain could ever justify breaching that trust.

Thousands of advertisers use our Google AdWords program to promote their products; we believe AdWords is the largest program of its kind. In addition, thousands of web site managers take advantage of our Google AdSense program to deliver ads relevant to the content on their sites, improving their ability to generate revenue and enhancing the experience for their users.

7. There's always more information out there.

Once Google had indexed more of the HTML pages on the Internet than any other search service, our engineers turned their attention to information that was not as readily accessible. Sometimes it was just a matter of integrating new databases, such as adding a phone number and address lookup and a business directory. Other efforts required a bit more creativity, like adding the ability to search billions of images and a way to view pages that were originally created as PDF files. The popularity of PDF results led us to expand the list of file types searched to include documents produced in a dozen formats such as Microsoft Word, Excel and PowerPoint. For wireless users, Google developed a unique way to translate HTML formatted files into a format that could be read by mobile devices. The list is not likely to end there as Google's researchers continue looking into ways to bring all the world's information to users seeking answers.

8. The need for information crosses all borders.

Though Google is headquartered in California, our mission is to facilitate access to information for the entire world, so we have offices around the globe. To that end we maintain dozens of Internet domains and serve more than half of our results to users living outside the United States. Google search results can be restricted to pages written in more than 35 languages according to a user's preference. We also offer a translation feature to make content available to users regardless of their native tongue and for those who prefer not to search in English, Google's interface can be customized into more than 100 languages. To accelerate the addition of new languages, Google offers volunteers the opportunity to help in the translation through an automated tool available on the Google.com website. This process has greatly improved both the variety and quality of service we're able to offer users in even the most far flung corners of the globe.

9. You can be serious without a suit.

Google's founders have often stated that the company is not serious about anything but search. They built a company around the idea that work should be challenging and the challenge should be fun. To that end, Google's culture is unlike any in corporate America, and it's not because of the ubiquitous lava lamps and large rubber balls, or the fact that the company's chef used to cook for the Grateful Dead. In the same way Google puts users first when it comes to our online service, Google Inc. puts employees first when it comes to daily life in our Googleplex headquarters. There is an emphasis on team achievements and pride in individual accomplishments that contribute to the company's overall success. Ideas are traded, tested and put into practice with an alacrity that can be dizzying. Meetings that would take hours elsewhere are frequently little more than a conversation in line for lunch and few walls separate those who write the code from those who write the checks. This highly communicative environment fosters a productivity and camaraderie fueled by the realization that millions of people rely on Google results. Give the proper tools to a group of people who like to make a difference, and they will.

10. Great just isn't good enough.

Always deliver more than expected. Google does not accept being the best as an endpoint, but a starting point. Through innovation and iteration, Google takes something that works well and improves upon it in unexpected ways. Search works well for properly spelled words, but what about typos? One engineer saw a need and created a spell checker that seems to read a user's mind. It takes too long to search from a WAP phone? Our wireless group developed Google Number Search to reduce entries from three keystrokes per letter to one. With a user base in the millions, Google is able to identify points of friction quickly and smooth them out. Google's point of distinction however, is anticipating needs not yet articulated by our global audience, then meeting them with products and services that set new standards. This constant dissatisfaction with the way things are is ultimately the driving force behind the world's best search engine.

* Full-disclosure update: When we first wrote these "10 things" four years ago, we included the phrase "Google does not do horoscopes, financial advice or chat." Over time we've expanded our view of the range of services we can offer –- web search, for instance, isn't the only way for people to access or use information -– and products that then seemed unlikely are now key aspects of our portfolio. This doesn't mean we've changed our core mission; just that the farther we travel toward achieving it, the more those blurry objects on the horizon come into sharper focus (to be replaced, of course, by more blurry objects).