LBi Netrank: LBi Netrank Newsletter: February 2008

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2008 (12)
2007 (13)
2006 (1)

Search Engine Updates

Yahoo! Opens Up Search Results

Yahoo! has announced a new Search platform/API that will allow sites to inject more useful information into Yahoo Search results. The platform named "open search" does not directly effect the way the site is ranked, but gives the site a way to include more information about the search result including deeper links to things like related topics, reviews and photos instead of just a headline, URL and two line summary. Yahoo! described the new platform as follows: "Website owners like Yelp, WebMD, The New York Times and anyone else can supply us with their data and our patented Machined Learned Ranking helps ensure these results are presented to users at the right time."

Google revenues up but revenue from social networks "disappointing"

End of 2007 revenue for Google was reported as up 51% from its revenue figures for the last quarter of 2006. The financial release in full can be seen here http://investor.google.com/releases/2007Q4.html.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Yahoo! buys video service Maven Networks for $160 million

Yahoo! has paid $160 million for the online video service Maven Networks. Maven Networks helps television and movie studios find web sites to show their videos and manage the accompanying advertisements. It has deals with CBS Sports, Gannett, News Corp, Hearst and Sony Pictures.

Google and Dell to team up

Senior industry sources claim the two companies will reveal their plans at next month's 3GSM telecoms conference in Barcelona, although Google insiders deny an announcement is due in the near future.

Google may buy number 1 Ukrainian portal

Rumours in the Ukrainian online media industry suggest that Google is in the market to buy the number one Ukrainian portal Bigmir.net for a reported $100 million. If the rumours are true Google would likely replace the Russian search engine Yandex from providing results for Bigmir.net.

New Product Launches

Yahoo! launches 'Buzz'

Yahoo! has finally launched its long-rumored Buzz portal, a social news site where you can vote stories up or down, with the chance to send the day's most popular stories to a featured spot on the Yahoo! homepage. The obvious comparison for Yahoo! Buzz are the social news kings, Digg and Reddit. But, while there are some similarities, Buzz is not just a Digg clone. Perhaps the most obvious difference is that Yahoo! Buzz stories are not user-submitted, rather Buzz aggregates stories from selected publishers and then users can vote them up or down. While that means Buzz will lack the variety of sources that a user will find on Digg, it does handily eliminate a lot of spam and the pointless link bait articles that clutter up the Digg homepage.

Offline Google Docs coming soon

Access to Google Docs will soon be possible while offline. The ability to view your Google Docs while not connected to the internet is currently in the test stage and will be available some time in the future.

Google and Ask introduce new news sections.

Ask is introducing Bignews, which is similar to Google News, with elements of Digg. It uses something called "BigFactor" to rank stories (using signals like freshness, impact, quantity of multimedia, and amount of related discussion). It provides category clusters, and lets you browse by how many Digg like votes the news story has received. It also contains a "Blogviews" section that highlights the latest posts from selected blogs. Google has updated its news offering by introducing local news, offering a local section for any city, state or country in the world.

AdSense for Video in beta

Google is developing its AdSense programme for Video. AdSense for video permits advertisers to purchase transparent InVideo ads or small text ads which rotate along the bottom of videos which are then placed on videos embedded in pages by site publishers. This new Adsense program will officially put Google in direct competition with companies such as VideoEgg that also run online video advertising.

News and Research

Firefox market share over 28% in Europe

As of December 2007 Firefox grabbed a 28% market share according to a French web metrics firm. That means Firefox has increased its share by 20.7% since the beginning of 2007.

comScore lists top FaceBook apps

comScore has released an article listing the 'Top Facebook Application Rankings' The 'Top Friends' application came out on top of this survey. For more information see http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2021.

Google taking 77% of search advertising spend

Google controls 77% of search advertising spend as of Q4 2007 according to research undertaken by Efficient Frontier. "Efficient Frontier conducted its study by tracking campaigns of clients between Q4 2006 and Q4 2007, covering 17 billion ad impressions and 270 million clicks on Google, Yahoo, and MSN. The clients were advertisers in the Finance, Travel and Automotive sectors." (Web Pro News, February)

Top UK ISPs partner with online ad company to serve ads - will provide customer details in return for ad income

BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media have announced a deal with a company called Phorm, whose technology tracks Web users and serves them ads related to their interests. Phorm will be setting up a new online advertising platform called the Open Internet Exchange, where any Web site will be allowed to join. the deal between Phorm, BT, Carphone Warehouse and Virgin Media allows Phorm access to the three isp's customers' surfing records, letting the Internet exchange target relevant ads to what the users are looking at.

.asia domain available

The new Asia TLD .asia is now available. DotAsia, the organisation overseeing the registration, is expecting huge demand for the first domain name extension to be available for the Asia Pacific region.

Hitwise study says Google users older, richer than Yahoo! users

New Hitwise data confirms that Google attracts more users between the ages of 35 and 55 than Yahoo!, with Yahoo! drawing in more 18-34 year old users. The study also shows that Google users are more likely to be big online spenders.

Yahoo! rejects Microsoft's offer as too low

Yahoo! has rejected the Microsoft buy out offer because it was viewed as too low a price. Yahoo! claims it wants at least $40 per share. Major Yahoo! shareholder also wants them to up their bid. There are suggestions Yahoo! might try to partner with AOL instead. Other suggestions have inferred that they may also be in secret talks with News Corp (owners of MySpace).

6% of Web Users Generate 50% of Ad Clicks

A recent study found that 6% of Web users generate 50% of the click-throughs for paid ads. Most of the 6% are males between 25 and 44 and have incomes under $40k. Their clicks are also not related to any offline buying. This comes as bad news for advertisers. A similar study was done a while ago by AOL. They identify the Heavy Clickers as: Predominantly female, indexing at a rate almost double the male population. They are older. They are predominantly Midwesterners, with some concentrations in Mid-Atlantic States and in New England. What kinds of content do they like to view when they are on the Web? Not surprisingly, they look at sweepstakes far more than any other kind of content. (Both studies are focused on banner ad clicks. Not PPC search)

All five major UK mobile operators to get together to agree on standard metrics

The five major UK mobile operators are getting together to agree on a standard metric to measure the effectiveness of mobile ads. This will allow them to benefit on the growing mobile market.

Google Health

Google has announced that they have started a joint project with Cleveland Clinic (an 87 year old none profit medical centre) that will see between 1500 and 10000 of the centre's patients entrust their personal records to Google. Google is planning on storing these records online so that anyone of these patients can access their personal medical records anywhere there is an Internet connection. Google says the service is "a new kind of healthcare experience that puts the patient in charge of his or her own health information."

Update: Google health is now in beta.

Google beats Microsoft as UK's number 1 super brand

Google has gained the top position in a list of the top 500 business superbrands created by www.superbrands.uk.com. Google has knocked Microsoft off the top spot and Apple is out of the top 10 altogether. The top 10 is as follows:

Google
Microsoft
BP
BBC
Glaxosmithkline
Rolls-Royce Group
Financial Times
British Airways
Fedex Express
Hertz

Clicks on Google ads drop, driving further drop in share prices.

Google shares dropped by 4.6% on Tuesday 26 February, leaving them down 38% on last July's $747 high. This is in light of news from ComScore that the number of clicks on Google ads by US consumers in January was down 0.3% year on year, and down 7% on December 2007. This has occurred in a period where investment in organic natural search has increased and Google's search market share has risen from 56.3% to 56.9%.

Facebook unique visitors down for first time in the UK.

Facebook saw a 5% decline in visitor numbers from last month, equal to MySpace's 5% decrease the same time last year. Facebook's audience remains 712% up on this time last year however and 9% higher than three months ago. "Just as one swallow does not make a summer, one month of falling audiences does not spell the decline of Facebook or social networking" (Alex Burmaster - Nielsen Online).

Microsoft Anti-trust fine

The anti-trust suit brought against Microsoft for not providing key code to rival software makers and abusing its dominant market position has ended in the EU fining the company a record $1.4 billion.