Search Engine Optimization Company and SEO Services - Real SEO Firm: January 2004 Archives

January 30, 2004

Google's new data centers, as of January 25, 2004

Google has removed the old DNS entries from it's database. It is believed this will now have a certain impact on future updates.

In light of these changes, what kind of results could this have on the average site owner or webmaster? It would signify the end of what used to be called the Google Dance syndrome.

In the past, most of these old data centers were used for load-balancing needs, necessary to prevent a major burden on any complex data network linking more than 10,000 servers, such as the one used at Google.

In the following table, headings that start in blue are data centers that are no longer resolving. The ones in bold black are still resolving.

As of January 25, 2004, these are the new Google directory IP addresses. The naming order is exactly the same as for the other data centers:

Previous IP addresses on the older Google directory:

directory-ab1: http://216.239.51.106/
directory-ab2: http://216.239.51.107/
directory-cw1: http://216.239.57.106/
directory-cw2: http://216.239.57.107/
directory-dc1: http://216.239.39.106/
directory-dc2: http://216.239.39.107/
directory-ex1: http://216.239.33.106/
directory-ex2: http://216.239.33.107/
directory-in1: http://216.239.53.106/
directory-in2: http://216.239.53.107/
directory-va1: http://216.239.37.106/
directory-va2: http://216.239.37.107/

www-ex: 216.239.33.100 (still working) Jan. 25, 2004

new1-ex: http://216.239.33.98/
new2-ex: http://216.239.33.99/
new3-ex: http://216.239.33.101/
new4-ex: http://216.239.33.102/
new5-ex: http://216.239.33.103/
new6-ex: http://216.239.33.104/
new7-ex: http://216.239.33.105/

www-lm: http://66.102.9.100 (Operational, started Oct. 23, 2003)

new1-lm: http://66.102.9.99/
new2-lm: http://66.102.9.101/
new3-lm: http://66.102.9.104/

Older Google data center IP addresses:

www-ab.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.51.100
www-cw.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.57.100
www-dc.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.39.100
www-ex.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.33.100
www-fi.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.41.100
www-gv.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.59.100
www-in.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.53.100
www-kr.google.com. 60 IN A 66.102.11.100
www-lm.google.com. 60 IN A 66.102.9.100
www-mc.google.com. 59 IN A 66.102.7.100
www-sj.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.35.100
www-va.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.37.100
www-zu.google.com. 60 IN A 216.239.55.100

New data center IP addresses at Google: - These are the new addresses. Google's naming order is after the first 3 data bits of the older version of it's old data centers:

www-ab: 216.239.51.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-ab: http://216.239.51.99/ www.google.akadns.net
new2-ab: http://216.239.51.102/
new3-ab: http://216.239.51.103/
new4-ab: http://216.239.51.104/
new5-ab: http://216.239.51.105/
new6-ab: http://216.239.51.147/

www-cw: 216.239.57.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-cw: http://216.239.57.98/
new2-cw: http://216.239.57.99/
new3-cw: http://216.239.57.104/ www2.google.com www3.google.com
new4-cw: http://216.239.57.105/

www-dc: 216.239.39.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new-dc1: http://216.239.39.98/
new-dc2: http://216.239.39.99/ www.google.akadns.net
new-dc3: http://216.239.39.102/
new-dc4: http://216.239.39.103/
new-dc5: http://216.239.39.104/
new-dc6: http://216.239.39.105/
new-dc7: http://216.239.39.147/

www-fi: 216.239.41.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-fi: http://216.239.41.98/
new2-fi: http://216.239.41.99/ www.google.akadns.net
new3-fi: http://216.239.41.102/
new4-fi: http://216.239.41.103/
new5-fi: http://216.239.41.104/
new6-fi: http://216.239.41.105/

www-gv: 216.239.59.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-gv: http://216.239.59.98/
new2-gv: http://216.239.59.99/
new3-gv: http://216.239.59.102/
new4-gv: http://216.239.59.103/
new5-gv: http://216.239.59.104/
new6-gv: http://216.239.59.105/

www-in: 216.239.53.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-in: http://216.239.53.98/
new2-in: http://216.239.53.99/
new3-in: http://216.239.53.104/
new4-in: http://216.239.53.105/

www-kr: 66.102.11.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-kr: http://66.102.11.99/
new2-kr: http://66.102.11.99/
new3-kr: http://66.102.11.104/

www-mc: 66.102.7.100 (older, defunct as/of Oct. 20, 2003)

new1-mc: http://66.102.7.98/
new2-mc: http://66.102.7.99/
new3-mc: http://66.102.7.99/
new4-mc: http://66.102.7.102/
new5-mc: http://66.102.7.104/
new6-mc: http://66.102.7.105/
new7-mc: http://66.102.7.147/

www-sj: 216.239.35.100 (older, defunct as/of Oct. 17, 2003)

www-va: 216.239.37.100 (defunct as/of Jan. 25, 2004)

new1-va: http://216.239.37.98/
new2-va: http://216.239.37.99/ www.google.akadns.net
new3-va: http://216.239.37.102/
new4-va: http://216.239.37.103/
new5-va: http://216.239.37.104/ www.google.akadns.net
new6-va: http://216.239.37.105/
new7-va: http://216.239.37.147/ www.google.akadns.net

www-zu: 216.239.55.100 (older, defunct as/of Oct. 20, 2004)
new1-zu: http://216.239.55.104/

Side note - Google's www.google.akadns.net data center is indicative of where Google's master database (www.google.com) has been noticed where it's been propagating in the last five days.

The www2 and www3 URL's are the IP addresses of these respectives data centers.

Source: WebmasterWorld

Posted by nakul at 05:26 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google's competition preparing for battle

Google's dominant position under threat as rivals develop competing technology.

Ask Jeeves, the internet search engine, has come up with the best answer of all. Constantly asked by sceptics whether it would ever make money, the PG Wodehouse inspired business based in Emeryville, California, produced the clearest result this week.

Steve Berkowitz, the chief executive, announced that 2003 income was $22m compared with a $5.4m loss in 2002. Sales at the company were $107.3m compared with $65m the year before and in the fourth quarter alone Ask Jeeves sales were up 58 per cent to $31.8m. "Quarter four was another great quarter capping off a great year," said Mr Berkowitz.

But if you thought the Ask Jeeves results were impressive you should adjust your search criteria and ask the question about profits of Yahoo!, the rival quoted search engine that announced results two weeks ago.

Terry Semel, the Yahoo! chairman and chief executive, said fourth quarter sales were $663.9m compared with $285m the year before and operating income for the full year was $295.7m compared with $88.2m in 2002.

But in the fiercely competitive search engine world there are others even bigger and more impressive than this. Or at least we think there are. Google, by far the biggest search engine by its share of searches conducted on the internet, has yet to reveal any of its financial information.

Google's on-off flotation plans have kept the world's business press guessing for several months and the best estimates put its revenues at up to $1bn and profits of $300m.

Until its student founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, decide to go public - with the agreement of their financial backers Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers and Sequoia Capital - we will never know how profitable the business is.

What is clear, however, is that the search engine business model is proving increasingly successful as the market experiences explosive growth.

Using search engines is now the second most popular activity on the internet, after e-mail, and it is estimated that 550 million searches are performed daily on the web. With so many people using search engines they have become an advertisers' paradise. And where there are advertisers there are revenues to be had.

Whit Andrews, a research director of Gartner, the technology analysts, said: "If you do an online search then you are essentially taking a cable and projecting it into your forehead and telling advertisers more honestly than any other way what it is you want to know exactly."

The priorities for search engines now are to differentiate themselves in terms of technology, and the sophistication they can offer users. And they need to provide advertisers with ever more subtle ways of getting their message in front of millions of pairs of eyes.

The scramble to attract advertisers in this booming market is behind the ever more complex relationships developing between the search engines themselves. Some concentrate on simply marketing their brands and farm out the technology to another search provider. Some that were basically marketing machines are now going the other way and moving into the technology field. So, AOL, a marketing-led organisation, uses Google technology to provide the results for its search engine, AOL Search. Yahoo! was using Google as well until it bought its own technology company, Inktomi, last year.

Yahoo!'s move into technology shows just how fierce the competition is getting and how Google's dominant position is coming under increasing threat. Not to be outdone, Ask Jeeves also has its own search engine technology called Teoma. If you own your own technology, it is argued, the easier it will be to differentiate yourself in what would otherwise be a commodity market.

The charts show how the UK and US search engine markets are split by brand but also how dominant Google has been in providing technology for other search engines. What makes the search engine business model so elegant is that advertising can be highly targeted with pricing accurately linked to the number of people who actually see an advert.

Google, for instance, offers advertisers a system called Google AdWords. Advertisers get text-based advertisements that appear alongside search results which include a link to the advertiser's own site.

Google's search technology matches a user's search criteria with an advertiser's text to increase relevance. The really clever bit is that advertisers pay when a user clicks on their advert. This makes sure the user is a quality "hit' in the eyes of the advertiser but also allows the advertiser to control its costs. It can set a daily budget for how much it wants to spend. Once it reaches its limit the advert no longer appears. It is the sort of one-to-one advertising that mass market mediums such as television can only dream of.

There are two other revenue generators. One is sponsored links. These come up as part of the search result and are clearly labelled as sponsored links. The other is paid-for placings. These deeply embed an advertiser's link in the search engine to make sure it appears when a very specific set of search criteria are used. "The search engines basically say 'we're going to show you an advert based on the information you've given to us in your search criteria and then charge the advertiser just to let it appear. We will then charge them extra if you click on the link," Mr Andrews said.

Spiders to guide you
Search engine technology starts with a piece of software called a spider or robot. It reads links across the whole of a search engine's index (rather than scouring the whole of the world wide web, search engines use their own indices containing 2 to 3 billion web pages). The spider categorises pages according to the key words of a search and builds a mini database in which it ranks its findings.

How efficiently pages are ranked becomes increasingly important as search engines try to differentiate themselves. There are three broad components that dictate ranking. First a text analysis finds key words then looks at a page image and compares that to the search criteria.

Second is a popularity element that measures how many links that page has from other pages on the web. Finally the spider looks at how many times a page has been clicked on before from previous searches. Other refinements look for how many links a site has from other sites in the same subject area to help establish popularity.

Source: Independant.co.uk

Posted by nakul at 05:26 AM | Comments (3) | TrackBack

January 29, 2004

Google IPO not a priority for now

Google is reported to be having second thoughts about its $16bn flotation in the spring because of concerns that market conditions are not yet right.

If true, the delay or even postponement of the hotly anticipated initial public offering (IPO) will be a blow to the tech industry, which is pinning its hopes on the Google flotation signalling a turnaround in fortunes.

Internet search giant Google has never formally announced its plans to float but the rumoured springtime IPO has been the worst kept secret on Wall Street.

But, according to a report in The Times, Google chairman and CEO Eric Schmidt is prepared to wait until the right moment to go public. In a round of private meetings with business leaders in London, Schmidt said Google is in no rush to float because its cash position is so strong.

"An IPO is not on my agenda right now," Schmidt said, according to the paper.

The reason behind Schmidt's change of heart is reportedly advice to delay the float from investment banks that claim the tech market will continue its rise.

Richard Holway, director at market analyst firm Ovum Holway, disagreed with the assertion that tech stocks are on the up.

"This goes against our views - and indeed the views of almost every expert we have spoken to," he said. "The truth, however, is far more likely to be that, with pretty healthy cash balances, profit margins of c30 per cent and revenues estimated to be 'between $500m and $1bn', the pressure to IPO is much less intense. After all, being public can be a very uncomfortable place to be sometimes."

If Google does delay its flotation then all eyes are likely to turn to salesforce.com - its IPO could raise $115m.

Source: Silicon.com

Posted by nakul at 05:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 28, 2004

Google opens it's second office in Europe

The US-based Internet search specialist Google will soon open a research and development centre in Switzerland to tap into European knowhow, company vice-president Urs Hoelzle said.

The European centre will be Google's second base outside the United States. A similar research and development centre in India is due to open in March.

"Zurich must be seen as a European location and we will bring the best computer specialists in Europe to Zurich," Hoelzle said in an interview published Wednesday in the Swiss newspaper Neue Zurcher Zeitung.

"Since many of these people don't want to work in the United States, we'll come to them in Europe," he added.

The Google executive said the centre would concentrate on software development, with a special emphasis on foreign language processing.

California-based Google, whose quirky name has become synonymous with online searches, has 21 sales offices around the world.

In just five years it has become one of the world's most recognized brand names.

To shore up its competitiveness, Google is reportedly considering an initial public offering next year that could catapult the firm into the ranks of the Internet giants.

Source: Yahoo News

Posted by nakul at 05:25 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Google lawyers order Booble.com to cease and desist

Google lawyers have sent a cease and desist email to Booble.com. They claim trademark violation and dispute Booble's claims that the site is simply a parody... which under law is protected free speech.

Here is a copy of the email sent to Booble:

Via Email to: BOOBLE.COM
RE: Infringement of Google's trademarks and trade dress.
http://www.booble.com (Our ref.: 4.614)

Dear Sir or Madam:

Google is the owner of the well-known trademark and trade name GOOGLE, as well as the domain name GOOGLE.COM. As you are no doubt aware, GOOGLE is the trademark used to identify our award-winning search engine, located at http://www.google.com. Since its inception in 1997, the GOOGLE search engine has become one of the most highly recognized and widely used Internet search engines in the world. Google owns numerous trademark registrations and applications for its GOOGLE mark in countries around the world.

Google has used and actively promoted its GOOGLE mark for a number of years, and has invested considerable time and money establishing exclusive proprietary rights in the GOOGLE mark for online computer services and a wide range of goods. As a result of its efforts, the GOOGLE mark has become a famous mark and a property right of incalculable value.

Google has developed a distinctive layout and design for its Google website. Over the years since its inception, Google has invested considerable time and money establishing exclusive rights in this layout and design. By virtue of these efforts, the layout and design of Google's website are recognized by visitors as originating with Google. Google aggressively protects and polices its intellectual property rights, including the various trademark and service marks used for its search services and related goods and services, the distinctive trade dress used to present its services to Internet users, and the copyrighted material on its website.

We have recently become aware of your website at http://www.booble.com (the Domain Name). This Domain Name is confusingly similar to the famous GOOGLE trademark. Your web site is a pornographic web site. Your web site improperly duplicates the distinctive and proprietary overall look and feel of Google's website, including Google's trade dress and the GOOGLE logo.

Your use of the Domain Name and corresponding web site constitutes trademark infringement and dilution of Google's trademarks and unfair competition under federal and state laws. Further, your improper duplication of Google's trade dress on the web site will mislead consumers into believing that some association exists between Google and you, which tarnishes the goodwill and reputation of Google's services and trademarks. Your registration and use of the Domain Name is in bad faith pursuant to the Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy ("UDRP") and is clearly designed to appropriate the goodwill associated with the famous GOOGLE mark in violation of the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act ("ACPA"). In addition, you would not be able to demonstrate any rights or legitimate interests in the Domain Name because you are using it to tarnish the GOOGLE mark.

We note that you have given interviews to the press in which you state that you intended booble.com to be a parody. We dispute your assertion that your website is a parody. For a work to constitute a parody, it must use some elements of a prior author"s composition to create a new one that, at least in part, comments on the original author"s works. See Campbell v. Acuff-Rose Music, Inc., 510 U.S. 569. Your website does not comment on the Google website at all; it merely uses the Google look and feel and a similar name for a search engine.

In view of your infringement of Google's rights, we must demand that you provide written assurances within 7 days that you will immediately:

1. Disable the http://www.booble.com website and discontinue any and all use of the Domain Name;

2. Take steps to transfer the Domain Name to Google;

3. Identify and agree to transfer to Google any other domain names registered by you that contain the GOOGLE or are confusingly similar to the GOOGLE marks;4. Permanently refrain from any use of the term GOOGLE or any variation thereof that is likely to cause confusion or dilution;

5. Immediately and permanently cease and desist from using the Google trade dress.

Sincerely,
The Google Trademark Enforcement Team

Posted by nakul at 05:24 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Network Solution's Whois service blocks Google

Network Solutions has blocked Google's service allowing visitors to look up data on domain name owners.

Domain name registrar Network Solutions has a message for Google: don't mess with our Whois.

The issue cropped up about two weeks ago, when Google quietly launched a service allowing visitors to look up data on domain name owners from public databases -- collectively known as Whois -- run by registrars worldwide. Although largely unpromoted, the service generated enough traffic to surpass Network Solutions' (NSI's) daily Whois use limits, which aim to stop spammers and other undesirables from harvesting information about its customers.

With NSI blocking most of its Whois queries, Google pulled the feature and information about it from its FAQ after a couple of days, replacing Whois queries with ads from registrars, including NSI.

"This is a public service that we're required to do, but it's been drastically abused" by spammers, said Champion Mitchell, chief executive of Network Solutions, the largest registrar of domains ending in ".com" and ".net". "We're not going to enable people to violate the privacy of our customers easily."

The tussle highlights a growing problem for Google as it seeks to be all things to all people. The company's challenge is to offer visitors helpful new search services without alienating the Internet operators that it relies on for advertising or partners that may have different priorities.

Google's try-anything attitude is in the spotlight as the company prepares for an initial public offering, which is widely expected by spring.

In the last two years, Google has broadened its scope to include services for self-publishing to the Web, advertising sales for large and small sites, and corporate search. More recently, the company has increasingly edged into shortcuts to data such as flight times and phone numbers, for example.

Although Google has pulled the Whois feature for now, the company said that it is continuing to explore ways to offer a shortcut for Whois look-ups. "We'd like to enable our users to access Whois information and we are currently evaluating different ways to make that happen," according to a Google representative.

According to NSI's Mitchell, Whois look-ups pose a substantial threat to customers, whose email addresses and phone numbers can easily fall into the wrong hands. In order to thwart abuse, the company has long set a daily cap on the number of times any third-party Web site can query its database. NSI will not specify that number, but Mitchell said that the company places the cap to deter spammers.

NSI started using another stringent anti-spam tactic last May, which requires people to type in code of five or six letters and numbers before they can access domain-registration data. That hurdle deters spammers that build automated bots to query the database for email addresses repeatedly. Mitchell also said NSI recently started offering a privacy feature, which for about $5 (£2.75) lets domain owners keep their email address confidential.

NSI's use limits apparently froze out Google despite the fact that the two companies are partners. NSI helps Google market its advertising services to new domain name owners, and advertises its own services through Google.

In delivering its Whois shortcut, Google drew on a database managed by Ratite.com, a global Whois look-up site developed by software engineer Gary Moore. Unlike NSI, Ratite.com does not sell domain names. Rather, Moore hopes to make a business out of simplifying Whois look-ups in a fragmented system where hundreds of competing registrars each run their own databases and no central repository exists.

In the few days that the service was up and running, Ratite.com exceeded NSI's allotted look-ups within an hour, according to Moore, who estimated that NSI allows a single site to make about 1,000 queries on its Whois database per day. Moore said that NSI did not respond when he tried to discuss the issue.

Moore said he has instituted his own security measures against Whois abuse by blocking the Internet Protocol addresses of anyone who queries the database more than several times a second. He added that he believes spam is partly an excuse for NSI to keep Whois traffic on its own site, where it can market its services.

"Money makes all this stuff work," Moore said. "If I had to guess, Google took it down because of Network Solutions, and Network Solutions has a commercial interest because they sell domain names."

NSI's Mitchell acknowledged that NSI is a Google advertiser and that NSI offers Google's Adwords program to its customers. However, he said that there was no link between that advertising and the closure of Google's Whois look-up service.

He added that NSI will seek to protect its Whois database from spammers and others seeking to mine information, for whatever purpose.

"I don't care who is coming to try to mine that data," he said. "We will make sure we try to stop it."

Source: ZD Net.co.uk

Posted by nakul at 05:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 27, 2004

Audit at Google moves company even closer to IPO

Google moved closer to an initial public offering on Monday, as a company-paid audit certified its compliance with the requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley law.

Google's board has been awaiting the report before giving the final go-ahead for the company to file a formal stock registration with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the New York Times said, citing executives involved with the process.

If the registration is approved at a Google board meeting that could take place as early as this week, the public offering would most likely take place during the last week in April, according to the Times.

Representatives for Mountain View, California-based Google could not immediately be reached for comment.

Source: Reuters

Posted by nakul at 05:23 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 26, 2004

Microsoft will have its own toolbar

Microsoft today will introduce a new Web search feature as the software maker plays catch-up with Google, in a critical area of Internet commerce, Monday's Wall Street Journal reported.

Microsoft will begin offering customers of its MSN online service a software " toolbar" for Internet browsers that has a window for searching the Web using keywords and phrases. The toolbar, which sits below the control panel on a browser, includes shortcut buttons to other Microsoft services such as Hotmail e-mail and its MSN Messenger product.

The software mimics similar offerings from rival Yahoo, as well as from Google, and is a critical part of Microsoft's plan to launch its own Internet search service later this year. With the toolbar, Microsoft hopes to pull millions of Internet users to its search technology, and in turn to other Microsoft services and online advertisers.

Such toolbars, which plug into Microsoft's popular Internet Explorer browser, are more than simple shortcuts to Web services. They also help companies collect detailed information about users' movements on the Web. Such Information can be used to build more sophisticated services, such as shopping sites that automatically recommend products based on people's usage profiles.

The new software comes as Microsoft races to gain a foothold in the area that has catapulted Google, of Mountain View, Calif., into a key position in Internet commerce.

Closely held Google has been a leader in generating advertising revenue from search results, and is developing new combinations of search, shopping and advertising. Yahoo, of Sunnyvale, Calif., is moving in similar directions; last year, it bought search engine Inktomi Corp. and search- advertising provider Overture Services Inc.

Source: Yahoo News

Posted by nakul at 05:22 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Netscape advertising case settled by Playboy

A week after an appeals court ruling revived a Playboy Enterprises Inc. trademark infringement lawsuit against Netscape Communications Inc., the companies have reached a settlement in the case.

On Friday, a spokesman for Netscape parent America Online Inc. and the attorney representing Playboy confirmed that a settlement had been reached in recent days but declined to discuss the terms of the settlement.

Chicago-based Playboy had sued Netscape for linking to advertisements of its competitors when users entered words such as "playboy" and "playmate" in search engines. Playboy had claimed that the practice, known as "keying," damaged its brand because its trademarks were associated with other products.

Last week, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed a district court's 2002 dismissal of the suit, allowing it to head to trial. But this week's settlement puts an end to the case, which has been closely watched in the search engine advertising field.

While the Playboy case dealt specifically with banner ads triggered by keywords, it is likely to have a bearing on other cases that involve the use of specific words to launch search engine advertising, said Robert Andris, a partner at Ropers, Majeski, Kohn & Bentley LLP, in Redwood City, Calif.

Keyword-base advertising has become big business for search engines such as Google Inc. and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - news) subsidiary Overture, that let advertisers bid on terms that return paid search listings.

Google, of Mountain View, Calif., already has faced legal challenges over its keyword-based ad service, AdWords. It is embroiled in a lawsuit with Luis Vuitton SA regarding keyword-based ads. And in November, Google asked for a California court's ruling to back its trademark policy for AdWords after facing the threat of a lawsuit from American Blind & Wallpaper Factory Inc.

Andris, who was not involved in the Playboy case, said that a settlement was likely Netscape's best option following the Ninth Circuit's decision. Netscape could have appealed the ruling further to the U.S. Supreme Court or gone to trial, but both options can be expensive and difficult to win, Andris said.

"There really are only a couple places that the losing party can go if it doesn't agree with result," Andris said.

Source: Yahoo News

Posted by nakul at 05:22 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 23, 2004

Orkut, for social networking

Google will shortly unveil its social networking site, Orkut. The Friendster clone is the work of Google employee and former Stanford graduate Orkut Buyukkokten.

Undettered by the feeding frenzy around the social networking bubble, and rebuffed by Friendster Inc, which it attempted to buy, Google has decided build one better.

Given Friendster's well documented problems with coping with a large number of users, and Google's world class expertise in scalability, it ought to be more than up to the technical challange. But will it pay?

A tsunami of VC money poured into social networking start-ups last year, although how the companies themselves monetize the users is far from clear.

"How many people will pay even $10 or even $5 a month, when they have access to their Outlook Express inbox for free?" CEO of the successful dating network FriendFinder, Andrew Cornu, wondered here last November. Other would-be social networking ventures decided against simply cloning Friendster, such as the Hot Or Not spin-off moblog, Yafro.

Google has attempted to play down the relationship with Orkut, although each page is branded "in affiliation with Google."

The Privacy Policy notes "We may share information that you submit and any non-personally identifiable information we collect with Google, Inc. and agents of orkut in accordance to the terms and conditions of this Privacy Policy," according an FAQ on the site. Fix that recursion!

If you must, you can go and start networking here. You'll need an invitation from an existing member.

Source: The Register

Posted by nakul at 04:45 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

Get a top 10 ranking in Google

GoRank.com just analyzed over 20,000 top 10 ranking sites in Google for single word queries.

There is a wealth of information contained in this data. Here are some of the averages:

For the top 10 results (single word queries)

* Average number of words on a page: 893
* Average number of keyword repeats on a page: 5.3
* Average overall page keyword density: 2.1%
* Average number of words in a title: 6.7
* Average number of words in #1 Ranking site title: 5.9
* Average number of keyword repeats in title: 0.8
* Average title keyword density: 17.3%

It helps to unlock the secrets of ranking on the first page of Google. GoRank took the approach to just present the data rather than interpret it, so they think it would be very valuable to have people post their insight into the data. There is also an interactive reporting feature that allows you to build custom reports and query the data directly.

Source: GoRank.com

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January 22, 2004

Booble: An adult search engine parodying Google

"Booble" is a new adult Website parodying Google and has hit the Net running, allowing Net surfers with a thing for porn to filter over six thousand hand-selected adult Internet content listings.

Booble is said to be the brainchild of a former Net executive, whose identity isn't yet known but who is based in New York and is putting his own money into the project, described as a "light-hearted parody of the world's largest and best-known search engine."

Google was said to be unavailable for comment on Booble as this story went to press. But Booble's mastermind says his site links to Google, "and so far we haven't heard from them."

This isn't exactly unprecedented in the adult Internet: for several years, Youho has continued its success with its parody of the original look and array of kingpin portal Yahoo. Booble's developer-founder, who asked for his anonymity to keep from being banned from his daughter's school softball games, according to Agence France Presse, aims for a site that's both fun and useful.

"I have a Web development operation where there is a bit of a frat boy atmosphere, so we stumbled on Booble," he told the news agency. "What was a bit fun and a joke became a business. People like it. It makes people smile. It's funny and I think it'll grow."

The sites to which Booble directs users will be filtered to exclude "illegal or extremely hardcore material," AFP said, with criteria for that to include whether the site is worth the price it charges and the quality of its images.

"It is fun, but there is a real story behind Booble in that it's hard to find good adult content," the creator told AFP. "There are about 25,000 adult sites and a fraction of sites in really major categories like movies and music and sports, causing a lot of clutter and confusion."

And he hopes users get the joke while having their adult fun. "We don't want to do anything is illegal," he told AFP. "It's a parody, it's funny and we're not out to confuse anybody so we hope they will take the joke in the spirit in which it was intended."

Source: AVN Online

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Google bombing again

Google bombing is now turning the Web's leading search engine into a platform for political commentary.

The New York Times reports:

Unlike Web politicking by other means, like hacking into sites to deface or alter their message, Google bombing is a group sport, taking advantage of the Web-indexing innovation that led Google to search-engine supremacy.

The perpetrators succeed by recruiting a small group of accomplices to link from their Web sites to a target site using specific anchor text (the clickable words in a link).

The more high-traffic sites that link a Web page to a particular phrase, the more Google tends to associate that page with the phrase - even if, as in the case of the president's official biography, the term does not occur on the destination site...

Some Google bombs may have been accomplished with as few as 20 links. What is important is not the number of links, but rather the popularity of the sites doing the linking and the relative obscurity of the search term.

A Google spokesman downplays the disruptive impact of Google bombing campaigns, saying that they only see it with "obscure queries" that make up a small fraction of the 200 million searches handled each day.

He's probably right on the latter point but there's empirical evidence that Google bombing can co-opt very popular phrases, too. For instance, as the Times notes, if you search for weapons of mass destruction, the top result is very likely this amusing satire.

Source: Seattle PI.com

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January 21, 2004

Survey: Top five online marketing promotions

The Shop.org / BizRate 2003 eHoliday Mood study produced some interesting results.

The top 5 marketing promotions that have been most successful in driving business for the holiday period are; free ship with conditions (59%), online only sale (27%), free ship no conditions (24%), offline-online sale (22%), and free gift with purchase (14%).

When asked what promotion vehicle has been most successful in driving business, the response was their own email promotion (86%) (?), search engine marketing (58%), affiliate marketing (50%), catalog drops (37%), and portal shopping listing (17%).

[Full story: Holiday Season Finishes Strong For Online Retailers - Shop.org].

What is truly hard to understand is when participants said their email marketing campaigns were more successful than their search engine marketing efforts.

Given the extremely high levels of email spam that are rampant everywhere these days, the opposite would have in fact been largely expected.

Source: A.M.G.Y.

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European shopping site advertising through Google ads

Internet search engine Google will sell advertisements on European price comparison site Kelkoo.

Google will provide "contextual" ads to the shopping site (http://www.kelkoo.com), so that small text ads are automatically generated to match the product or service a user is looking for.

Privately held Google, which is planning a highly anticipated initial public offering, according to people familiar with the situation, has its own shopping site, called Froogle (http://www.froogle.com), which is seen as a potential competitor to Kelkoo.

But the deal announced on Wednesday suggests the company is taking it slowly with Froogle in Europe. Froogle currently pulls in price information from sites with the ".com" suffix, which are mostly in the United States.

"The company has nothing to announce with regard to Froogle, which is still a product in beta form in the U.S.," a Google spokeswoman said.

Google has expanded rapidly in Europe by signing advertising deals with publishers and establishing ad sales staff in seven countries.

It has had few qualms in the past about competing with its business partners. Products like Froogle and Google News have shifted Google from a pure search engine toward a one-stop shop for Web content, a niche dominated by its customer Yahoo.

Kelkoo has 27 million monthly European users, making it the third-largest European e-commerce site after Amazon (AMZN.O: Quote, Profile, Research) and eBay (EBAY.O: Quote, Profile, Research) , according to measurement firm Nielsen NetRatings.

Google places ads from 150,000 worldwide advertisers through its AdWords program, ranging from small shops to large corporations.

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LookSmart's CEO has stepped down

Troubled internet search firm LookSmart revealed that its CEO has stepped down as it continues to restructure its operations in the wake of losing its key partner MSN last year.

The company, which said last month that it planned to lay off half its global workforce, announced that Jason Kellerman has stepped down as CEO and board member and that a board-directed search for a successor is now underway.

In the meantime, Damian Smith, previously CEO of LookSmart Australia and VP International, has been appointed to fill the gap as the company's interim CEO.

The company also said in a statement that it has made substantial progress in its restructuring efforts, including recently selling off the assets of its Australian operation to its yellow pages business partner, Sensis, and the closing of its UK office, first revealed by Netimperative on 8 December.

LookSmart expects to reduce its headcount from 429 at the end of the third quarter 2003 to less than 200 by the end of the current quarter.

"The team and I are now completing the restructuring of the company to align our operations with the significant reduction in revenue expected," said interim CEO Smith. "We are dramatically cutting costs and positioning our pay-for-placement business for growth."

The global deal with MSN, which accounted for about a third of LookSmart's revenue, ended on 15 January. MSN said late last year that it had decided not to renew its agreement with LookSmart after tests revealed that its own search technology, alongside that of Overture's, provided better results.

On a good note, LookSmart said that it expects results for its fourth quarter to be better than expected with revenues between $43m and $45m.

It will report final financial results for Q4 and provide a more detailed update on its restructuring plans on 5 February.

Source: Net Imperative

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January 20, 2004

Marketers investing more in Web marketing

Nearly two thirds of marketers now see digital marketing as having a very high or high level of strategic importance within their organizations, and over 75 percent of respondents plan to increase spending on digital marketing as a percentage of their marketing budget this year, according to a survey of marketing executives released today.

The online poll, entitled the Digital Marketing Dialog, was commissioned by Responsys, Inc., a premier provider of email marketing solutions, and sponsored by the CMO Council, BtoB Magazine and USA TODAY in the fourth quarter of 2003.

The study received over 400 responses from top marketing decision makers regarding the impact, role, value, and uptake of digital marketing technologies and programs across all industry sectors.

Digital marketing techniques, including email campaigns, website interaction, online advertising, and e-newsletters are growing rapidly in strategic importance, according to the study findings. Over 70 percent of respondents said brand awareness is a key use of digital marketing, second only to customer lead generation.

Spending on digital marketing is expected to increase significantly in 2004 from last year, with the biggest year-to-year increase expected for those who spent between 11-20 percent on digital marketing last year. Nearly 40 percent of those who forecast spending for 2004 said they would spend more than 20 percent of their marketing budget on digital marketing.

"The study confirms digital marketing is an essential component of a marketer's overall marketing mix," said Kathy Gogan, Vice President of Marketing for Responsys, Inc. "Those who hesitate to embrace the digital channel will miss a critical opportunity to build stronger relationships with customers, promote their products, and cost-effectively build their brands."

Business to business (B2B) companies appear to be engaging in digital marketing techniques like never before. 63 percent of the survey respondents are from the B2B sector, and these marketers are spending more and allocating a higher percentage of their marketing budget toward digital marketing.

The survey reports B2B companies are employing digital marketing for new customer lead generation (87 percent); website traffic generation (58 percent); and customer education (54 percent). Business to consumer (B2C) companies are using the channel to improve customer relationships (74 percent), as well as for cross-selling/up-selling to existing customers (63 percent), and product sales.

"Although business-to-business companies are dramatically increasing their spending for digital marketing in 2004, they seem to be focusing on one-way information transfer," added Gogan. "The business-to-consumer market has recognized digital marketing as an effective vehicle for personalized, two-way dialogs which are critical for maximum results from the online channel."

Increased spending levels on digital marketing are due in large part to the ease, speed, and measurability of the online channel. 60 percent of respondents said digital marketing campaigns are gaining in popularity primarily because of the low cost of implementation, speed of delivery, and measurable ROI.

"We have found that online channels, including online marketing tools, are an effective and engaging means of reaching our customers in new ways," said Alan Gellman, former Vice President of eBusiness at Blue Shield and a survey respondent. "We've increased revenues, decreased costs and improved consumer satisfaction through the effective use of the digital channel."

Despite the clear advantages of digital marketing techniques, many marketers gave themselves barely passing grades when it comes to digital marketing. Nearly 40 percent graded their use of online marketing at a C, D, or F, admitting there is plenty of room for improvement utilizing digital marketing more effectively.

The top areas of improvements identified by respondents included better analytics and more multi-channel integration. Half of all respondents said top improvements would include better customer profiling and analytics, integration of both online and off-line channels and touchpoints, integration of email campaigns with personalized website interaction with customers, and integration of customer information and eCRM/e-support systems.

Respondents noted three primary barriers to effective digital marketing results. Spam and other email filters and email inbox clutter were mentioned by over 60 percent of respondents as key barriers, followed by the development of qualified email lists. Recent anti-spam legislation and privacy issues are also impacting e-marketing efforts. Nearly half of survey respondents said they would place more emphasis on the quality of email lists and over 40 percent have adopted a policy of "opt-in" email communications only.

The survey included all major industry sectors, including financial, retail, travel/hospitality, healthcare and consumer packaged goods. Almost 70 percent of the respondents held the title of Director of Marketing or above, with CEOs representing nearly thirty percent of the sample.

Source: CPU Review.com

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January 19, 2004

Google linking ads to e-mail

Google Inc., which dominates the market for Web search, is developing a service that could dramatically extend the reach of its lucrative keyword-based advertising by linking such ads to e-mail, people familiar with the matter said Friday.

Privately held Google, which is expected to go public later this year, faces rising competition in its core search business from e-mail providers including Yahoo Inc. and MSN, Microsoft Corp.'s Internet unit.

Adding an e-mail service would provide a potential boost to Google as its technology lead in the search market seems destined to narrow and it prepares to answer to growth-hungry shareholders, analysts said.

The Mountain View, California, company, which has recently made several e-mail related acquisitions, is working on a way to serve advertising to an e-mail at the moment it is opened, people close to the company said.

"I'm sure Google is getting more and more concerned about locking in users. It wouldn't surprise me if they did something very sophisticated with e-mail," said Danny Sullivan, editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, who tracks the industry.

By moving into e-mail -- the Web's most-used program -- Google would open up a huge new market for its lucrative "sponsored links" advertising business that delivers ads tied to keywords in Web searches or on content pages, analysts said.

Offering its own branded e-mail -- whether for free or with enhanced services like spam filtering -- would also enable Google to tie users more closely to its search site and to steal customers from rivals, they said.

In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.

"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said.

Google has for years said it would not turn its site into a full-service Internet portal like Yahoo or MSN. However, since it opened in 1998, Google has added portal-style discussion groups and is testing a comparison shopping site called Froogle, as well as a news site.

Google late last year purchased rival Sprinks, which had technology to deliver ads to e-mail as the messages were opened. Such real-time ad serving is important because it keeps ads fresh and insures that Google will not be giving away free ads or delivering ads nobody will see, industry participants said.

Kanoodle, a small privately held search company, in the coming weeks will roll out its own e-mail advertising product as part of its deal with CBS MarketWatch.com, Lance Podell, Kanoodle's president of search and content, told Reuters.

Under that deal, "sponsored link" ads will be served to MarketWatch's opt-in subscriber e-mails, including newsletters.

Google already knows how to deliver its sponsored link ads -- which are in the form of Web links and appear on the perimeter of Web pages -- to e-mail newsletters and content sites.

Furthermore, Google last year purchased an e-mail management software maker and in 2001 registered the domain name googlemail.com.

Some in Silicon Valley also believe Google could be preparing to launch free e-mail to compete with offerings from Yahoo and MSN's Hotmail.

"If they were to go the e-mail route they'd have to provide an offering that competes with free (e-mail). Anti-spam is one form of strong differentiation," said Jim Pitkow, chief executive of Moreover Technologies, whose personalized search company Outride was acquired by Google in 2001.

Source: Houston Chronicle

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Yahoo Establishes Yahoo Research Labs

Yahoo has announced the formation of Yahoo Research Labs, a research organization focused on inventing new technologies and solutions relevant to strategic Yahoo businesses.

The group will pursue a portfolio of topics that include pay for performance search, web search, vertical businesses and platform technologies. The organization will be led by Yahoo!'s Head and Principal Scientist Dr. Gary William Flake, former chief science officer of Overture and founder of Overture Research.

Yahoo! Research Labs engineers and scientists will work collaboratively with Yahoo! business, product and technology teams to stimulate and synthesize new ideas that will serve Yahoo!'s partners, advertisers and consumers. Core research areas include machine learning, statistical data mining and efficient algorithms.

"As the most visited destination on the Web, Yahoo! has always focused on using technology and science to advance the use of the Internet in daily lives and to continually improve the user experience," said Farzad Nazem, executive vice president and chief technology officer, Yahoo!.

"As we move to the next phase of the Internet, we are excited to establish Yahoo! Research Labs, dedicated to inventive computer science solutions that will help make the Internet experience more efficient, productive, individualized, and even more entertaining.

Whether developing new algorithms or employing existing technologies in new ways, Yahoo! Research Labs will partner with Yahoo!'s global technology resources to accelerate our ability to both improve the quality of our existing network and introduce entirely new online products."

"Our mission is to help Yahoo! pioneer the next wave of the online world through innovation, invention and scientific contribution," said Dr. Flake.

"By partnering with technology resources both inside and outside of Yahoo!, we aim to cultivate knowledge and expertise, solve fundamental technology problems and translate theory into practice to help maximize the social and economic potential of the Internet for consumers and businesses."

Yahoo! Research Labs staff will focus on long-term strategic projects and fundamental research, technology evaluation and transfer, and short-term projects that allow Yahoo! to redeploy technology pieces to add immediate value to the business.

The group will also continue Overture Research's tradition of academic collaboration and scientific contribution through publication, academic workshops and conferences, and participating in the larger research community. It will continue to engage academic partners to evaluate and capitalize on emerging trends in university research.

Dr. Flake joined Yahoo! with the acquisition of Overture in 2003.

Prior to joining Overture, he was a research scientist at NEC Research Institute and the leader of its web data-mining program.

Flake, who earned his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Maryland, College Park, wrote the award-winning textbook The Computational Beauty of Nature.

Source: Yahoo! Inc.

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Looksmart being dropped by MSN

Although the LookSmart database does include listings from the volunteer based Zeal directory, most of the results are now pay-per-click text ads.

Microsoft's MSN.com portal has for a long time added LookSmart's directory listings to its search engine results.

Obviously someone at MSN realized that the LookSmart results reduced the quality of the overall search results. Moreover, it became hard to distinguish between paid entries and regular search result.

Pandia has previously reported on MSN's decision to abandon LookSmart. Last week LookSmart results started disappearing from MSN-sites all over the world, and will probably be gone in most countries shortly. (In Norway we continue to see LookSmart "Web Directory" results, though).

In the future MSN.com will deliver search results from the Inktomi search engine, and add text ads (predominantly from Overture) marked as "sponsored" and "featured" sites.

Later this year, or -- more likely -- next year, MSN will replace Inktomi with its own search engine.

Source: Pandia

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January 16, 2004

There are billions and billions of Web pages out there

As Carl Sagan might have put it, there are billions and billions of Web pages out there. So it comes as no surprise that the results lists from search sites are getting longer.

That's given rise to a new breed of solutions to help manage the information overload. One of the most ambitious recent entries is a major update of Groxis' Grokker, a program that is now a useful adjunct to any major search engine.

Grokker 2.0 converts text lists of search results into a map of floating spheres and other graphical representations (see the photo, which shows a Grokker window after searching for "Wi-Fi"). You can drill down on each object individually, and each is labeled according to organizing principles, including date and context, so you get what amounts to a visual relational database that includes Web pages, documents, and pictures.

"We do it not just by putting the results in files and folders," says R.J. Pittman, CEO of Groxis, "but by using color, shape, size, position, and order." John Seely Brown, of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center fame, helped develop Grokker 2.0.

The graphical approach lets you locate related information at a glance. Grokker now supports all the major search engines and can do custom, simultaneous searches as well as views of unstructured enterprise data. It also lets you rearrange results. Because it's a Java program, Grokker works on Windows and Apple systems.

Meanwhile, Chicago-based Dipsie is working on what it claims will be a more complete index of the Web than Google has. Dipsie promises to deliver more relevant results when it debuts later this year. No one is revealing exactly how it will work, but the Dipsie bot is already crawling the Web.

Source: PC Magazine

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Legal case jeopardizes search engines' use of trademarks

Playboy Enterprises will have its day in court over accusations that search engines sold its trademark as advertising without permission.

Dealing a potential setback to the Web search advertising market, a federal appeals court has reopened a lawsuit challenging the unauthorised use of trademarks in ads linked to search-engine keywords.

The Ninth Circuit US Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Wednesday found that Playboy Enterprises can pursue charges that Excite and Netscape Communications violated its trademark by selling banner advertisements triggered by the terms "playboy" and "playmate." The decision reverses a district court ruling that dismissed the suit without a trial in 2000.

Playboy "clearly holds the marks in question, and defendants used the marks in commerce without (its) permission," a split three-judge panel wrote in its majority decision. "Some consumers, initially seeking Playboy's sites, may initially believe that unlabeled banner advertisements are links to Playboy's sites... Once they follow the instructions to 'click here,' and they access the site, they may well realise that they are not at a Playboy-sponsored site."

The decision comes at a time when search engine-related trademark cases are mounting, thanks to the growing popularity of keyword-auctioned advertising programs pioneered by Yahoo-owned Overture Services. Google, the darling of Internet search engines, faces trademark complaints from advertisers of its popular keyword-auction programme that charge misuse of their trademarks. In December, Google asked a court to rule on whether its keyword-advertising policy is legal as a result.

Wednesday's court opinion backs up a recent decision related to another form of online advertising: pop-ups. In late December, as part of a lawsuit filed against WhenU by 1-800-Contacts, a New York district court granted a preliminary injunction that prohibits WhenU from triggering pop-ups when people visit 1-800-Contacts' Web site.

Scant trademark law exists when it comes to this type of advertising, and the opinion is the first on the issue from an appellate court, according to attorneys following the case.

John Baum, a partner in trademark and copyright law at San Francisco-based Townsend and Townsend, who is not involved in the case, said trademark owners stand to benefit from the decision, which offers a needed clarification of trademark rights in search engine marketing.

"The good news is that by reversing the... summary judgment for the defendant, the Ninth Circuit has confirmed that valuable trademark rights have to be respected," Baum said. "Some trademark owners will certainly welcome yesterday's decision as it leaves open to them trademark infringement and dilution arguments if someone uses their trademarks in a tag that links to a banner ad for competitive and even noncompetitive products."

The lawsuit centres on the search engines' practice of "keying," or selling and displaying ads related to search terms. Advertisers can buy the right to appear above or adjacent to search results related to specific query terms, such as "books" or "digital cameras." That means that when a visitor searches on the term "travel," for example, he or she might see an ad for an airline company. But advertisers also can use the system to prey on rivals' trademarked terms and poach their traffic.

In Playboy's case, it charged Excite with trademark infringement when it sold banner ads to adult-related sites keyed to the terms "playboy" and "playmate," arguing that it created consumer confusion and diluted its trademarked names. Playboy also claimed that Netscape violated its marks by displaying the same ads in partnership with Excite.

An earlier court decision dismissed the case on the grounds of fair use, among other arguments. The Ninth Circuit's analysis supports enough of a case for consumer confusion and brand dilution related to Playboy's trademarks that a trial likely will be heard.

Barry Felder, Playboy's counsel and a partner at Brown Raysman Millstein Felder & Steiner, said that the opinion is significant because it upholds traditional trademark law on the Internet.

"This type of analysis would apply no matter what the method of advertisement, with the key issue being whether or not a trademark is being used in a confusing manner," Felder said.

Defendants' attorney Jeff Riffer, a partner at Jeffer Mangels, said he was disappointed in the opinion, but that it could be precedent-setting.

"There's not much law in this area," he said. "This court said you need a trial to determine whether there's confusion around trademarks [as it applies] to keyed advertising that does not display the name of the advertiser."

Source: ZD-Net co.uk

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Google offers its AdSense program to sites in Japan

Google, Inc. is now offering their Google AdSense program for content web pages in Japan. The first Japanese partners using Google AdSense are Nifty Corp., Impress Corp., and Recruit About.com Japan.

These companies, which began using the service in December, join the growing network of Google AdSense partners. NEC Corp. launched Google AdSense this week and Jiji Press Ltd. will also launch the program on its site shortly.

Google AdSense is a program for website publishers that want to generate additional revenue from relevant advertising on their sites. Google crawls the publishers' site to identify the meaning of the web page, and then serves precisely targeted text-based Google AdWords ads that are relevant to the specific page that the user is viewing.

Hitwise releases a report found that Internet users have shited their focus ot travel sites, now that the Holiday season has ended. Hitwise data for late December 2003 and early January 2004 reveals that U.S. visits to travel websites has increased by 23% and visits to shopping websites has decreased by 12%.

The travel category registered a 1.4% share of all U.S. visits for the week ending December 20th; travel has experienced a 23% increase and now accounts for 1.7% of all U.S. visits for week ending January 10th, 2004.

Compared with the same point last year, visits to travel sites have increased by 12%. Expedia, travelocity and orbotz were the top three travel sites, week ending 1/10/04.

UK search company Espotting Media has struck a deal with Emap to provide paid listings to the company's internet properties. Emap publishes titles including FHM, Smash Hits and New Woman, and is the UK's largest consumer publisher. Emap Interactive represent 15 Internet properties that generate over 60 million page impressions each month. As part of the deal, Espotting will provide paid listings across Emap's 15 sites, power search functionality, and provide contextual advertising.

Source: MediaPost

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Google developing ad service for e-mail - sources

Privately held Google, which is expected to go public later this year, faces rising competition in its core search business from e-mail providers including Yahoo Inc. (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people) and MSN, Microsoft Corp.'s (nasdaq: YHOO - news - people) Internet unit.

In an e-mail response to questions from Reuters, spokesman David Krane said, "Google has a number of projects in the works to test monetization in various scenarios.

"In fact, Google's AdSense contextual ads are already used in a number of e-mail newsletters," he said.

GOING PORTAL?

Under that deal, "sponsored link" ads will be served to MarketWatch's opt-in subscriber e-mails, including newsletters.

Google already knows how to deliver its sponsored link ads -- which are in the form of Web links and appear on the perimeter of Web pages -- to e-mail newsletters and content sites.

Furthermore, Google last year purchased an e-mail management software maker and in 2001 registered the domain name googlemail.com.

Some in Silicon Valley also believe Google could be preparing to launch free e-mail to compete with offerings from Yahoo and MSN's Hotmail.

Posted by nakul at 05:42 AM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 15, 2004

Yahoo confirms that it is dropping Google

Yahoo on Wednesday said it will drop search partner Google during the first quarter of 2004 in favor of its own technology, opening a new phase in the battle for Web search dominance.

The announcement from Yahoo CEO Terry Semel caps more than a year of speculation over the move, which has been widely expected since Yahoo announced plans to acquire search provider Inktomi for $235 million in December 2002. Inktomi has developed so-called algorithmic search technology similar to Google's that indexes Web pages and ranks them based on search terms.

"We've been hard at work with the assets that we've acquired to develop our (own) algorithmic search engine," Yahoo Chief Financial Officer Susan Decker said in a phone interview. "We'll be swapping that out in Q1."

Although expected, the announcement highlights the changing market for Web-based search, which has been transformed in the past two years thanks to fast-growing and profitable advertising programs.

Google currently processes approximately 80 percent of all search requests on the Web through distribution deals with Yahoo, Time Warner's America Online and Ask Jeeves, according to market share data compiled by research firm Comscore Media Metrix. When Yahoo ends its deal with Google, that share is expected to drop to about 54 percent. Yahoo's reach, meanwhile, could jump to 42 percent, based on its own search traffic and a deal that provides Inktomi results to Microsoft's MSN Web portal.

Analysts said the shift means that, overnight, Web search will change from a near monopoly situation to a two-horse race.

"Competition-wise, this sets Yahoo up to take Google on," said Search Engine Watch Editor Danny Sullivan. "The minute Yahoo bought Inktomi, the idea they were partners and friends fell by the wayside. But Yahoo has not given consumers a strong reason to think of Yahoo as different from Google. They need Inktomi out there to get their own voice and differentiate themselves."

The change will likely have only a small impact on Google's and Yahoo's businesses, at least in the short term, Sullivan said. Google earned just $7.1 million in fees from Yahoo in 2001 for providing its algorithmic search results, he said.

The real money in search comes from advertising revenues. Keyword searches made up 31 percent of the $1.66 billion in U.S. online ad sales for the second quarter of 2003, according to the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB), an industry trade group.

Since November 2001, Yahoo has run advertising search links on its site from Overture Services--which it acquired last year for $1.6 billion--meaning Google won't see any loss in its advertising reach when the deal unravels.

"This will mean virtually nothing to Google" from a business perspective, Sullivan said. "I don't know how much money they were making, but I'd be surprised if it was in the tens of millions. The real money in search is in ads, but Yahoo never carried Google's ads...What you really want to understand is the reach of their ad networks. That's not changing."

Sullivan said things will get even more interesting when Microsoft gets its Web search act together, something he said he expects by the end of the year.

Semel on Wednesday said that Yahoo has expanded its deal to offer Overture's paid search results to MSN's sites throughout Europe and Asia, adding to an existing deal throughout the United States and the United Kingdom.

But the boost from the MSN deal could be short-lived, Sullivan said.

"By the end of 2004, MSN will get their act together," he said. "Then the worry for Yahoo is that MSN will prove to be a temporary boost for them."

Sullivan said things will get even more interesting when Microsoft gets its Web search act together, something he said he expects by the end of the year.

But the boost from the MSN deal could be short-lived, Sullivan said.

"By the end of 2004, MSN will get their act together," he said. "Then the worry for Yahoo is that MSN will prove to be a temporary boost for them."

Story by Evan Hansen and Jim Hu
Source: C-Net News

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Emap & Espotting in a deal for search

Espotting Media today announces a deal to provide paid listings to the internet properties of Emap PLC and publishers of titles including FHM, Smash Hits and New Woman.

Emap is the UK's largest consumer publisher, and Emap Interactive represent a suite of 15 Internet properties that generate over 60 million page impressions each month, from 2.5 million unique users. Deal highlights include:

Exclusive deal sees Espotting provide paid listings across Emap's network of 15 internet sites, including the internet properties of FHM, Smash Hits, Q, Kiss, Aloud, Kerrang, New Woman, Bliss, Max Power, Empire and Mojo.

Espotting will power search functionality, in addition to providing its Content Monetisation Solution (also referred to as contextual advertising) throughout the channels of Emap's websites. Channel implementations will be customised to each site, and relevant Espotting listings will feature alongside editorial content and product reviews; on FHM.com for example, Espotting's mobile phone related listings may appear under the 'FHM.com recommends' banner next to reviews of the latest mobile technology in the channel Manstuff > Reviews. All channel implementations will match the look and feel of Emap's current websites.

Espotting's content solutions are vertically focused, delivering precisely targeted users to advertisers' websites. Espotting pioneered content monetisation in Europe, and this deal will see implementations covering a range of demographic verticals.

The deal can be extended to any new Internet properties that Emap launch.

The implementation is expected to go live mid January.

'This is the first time we have worked with a paid listings provider, and we wanted to work with the best.' commented Niall Hogan, Interactive Sales Director, Emap. 'As the European market leaders, and the pioneers of content monetisation in Europe, Espotting were the obvious choice. We are happy to offer Espotting's advertisers the ability to take advantage of the unique demographic profiles provided by our internet properties, and Espotting's successful history of content implementations allows us to seamlessly integrate relevant content whilst staying true to Emap's many brands.'

'This deal sees the coming together of two leaders in UK media.' commented Seb Bishop, co-founder of Espotting Media. 'Our many-faceted partnership with Emap reflects Espotting's commitment to providing our advertisers with highly targeted users through vertically specific content implementations. We work closely with our affiliates to ensure that each implementation is customised to mirror their brand, and meet their specific needs.'

Source: e-Spotting

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January 14, 2004

Changes in the world of pay-per-click advertising

Bid prices in PPC (and hence the cost per click) are going up, but this can be explained by the rising awareness of PPC's potential effectiveness.

In Sebastian Junger's book "A Perfect Storm," three storm systems combine to create a deadly situation for the crew of the fishing vessel Andrea Gail.

Each of these meteorological events would have been difficult alone, but in Junger's narrative, all three combine to cause extreme mayhem in the North Atlantic.

Such is the scenario that's beginning to emerge in the world of pay-per-click (PPC) advertising. While the result may not be entirely lethal, it could be a marketing deathblow to those dependent on Internet promotion.

In Storm 1, the turbulence is relatively mild. Bid prices are going up. It seems that ad click traffic is continuing to grow, but fewer visitors are clicking through.

Likewise, Storm 2 looks typical enough. Search properties like Google are increasingly using affiliate sites to serve up more ads than they could on just their own search sites in order to extend their reach. So far, there's nothing to get terribly excited about.

But when you toss in Storm 3, the brew gets a bit headier. It seems that ad click traffic is continuing to grow, but fewer visitors are clicking through to either take some kind of meaningful action or actually transact business. In other words, clicks are increasing, but conversion percentages are declining.

At first glance, the anomaly seems to be tolerable, much as the turbulence in Junger's North Atlantic initially appeared. However, further investigation reveals a subversive undercurrent in the form of PPC affiliates employing "pay to click" personnel to artificially bolster PPC hits, and ultimately, revenue.

Needless to say, that's certainly not the way it's supposed to work, and it appears that the latest round of search engine affiliate programs may be to blame.

Overture Services has made its living by providing the technology that underpins the PPC ads on such giant sites as parent company Yahoo, MSN Search, InfoSpace and AltaVista. Google's more recent AdSense program is designed to one-up Overture by covering a broader spectrum. AdSense affiliates the owners of high-traffic Web sites, including many that you probably have never heard of.

At first glance, everyone wins. The PPC providers get more exposure and more revenue, the Web site owners get a percentage of the cost per click, and the advertisers get more eyeballs and, presumably, more traffic.

But recently, there's been a growing crop of Web ads and low-level spam offerings targeted at recruiting people to surf the Web and click on ads, using their own computer and an Internet connection. Whenever a new medium is introduced, there are invariably people who seek to circumvent its conventions and subvert its intent for short-term gain.

With just a small coterie of such people using a variety of individual Internet Protocol addresses, it is almost impossible to determine which hits are real and which are "paid to play."

Admittedly, there is no direct evidence linking Google to such practices, but those disturbing spam ads are still out there, threatening to undermine the PPC environment and ultimately, if the storm becomes big enough, the future existence of PPC advertising.

Unfortunately, it seems that whenever a new medium is introduced, there are invariably people who seek to circumvent its conventions and subvert its intent for short-term gain. One only has to think of the payola scandals in the early days of rock 'n' roll or the floods of current e-mail offers for body part enlargements and shady refinancing deals.

Of course, self-policing is the first line of defense, and obviously, some affiliates are more reputable than others. Likewise, some PPC vendors are more circumspect about choosing their affiliates than others. But as we've seen with the enormous proliferation of music online, once certain floodgates are opened, they cannot easily be closed again. As with the Andrea Gail at the end of its journey, the realization only belatedly dawned on the sailors that the storm that had been willing to let them in would no longer let them out.

We do not want to get to that point with PPC. It is a very effective medium to advertisers and, in an Internet advertising environment known for annoying banner advertising and pop-ups, a welcome source of promotional relief.

There are precious few fish to be harvested from today's troubled economic waters, and it would be a shame to see another medium sink in the swirl of uncontrolled controversy.

But, left unchecked, advertisers will, at a point, abandon PPC if they lose their trust in the process and begin to feel like victims in waiting. And if that happens, the first to go down will be those too shortsighted and obsessed with immediate gain to play the game fairly.

Story by Hans Riemer
Source: C-Net News

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January 13, 2004

VeriSign planning more changes to the DNS system

VeriSign Inc. is planning changes to a Domain Name System (DNS) component responsible for coordinating updates to the .com and .net domains throughout the DNS system, according to a company spokesperson.

The changes are intended to prepare .com and .net for more frequent daily updates of information such as new subdomains, address changes and the culling out of obsolete subdomains. Internet users and organizations managing Web sites on .com and .net will not notice the change, VeriSign said.

However, some networking experts worry that the change, which is scheduled for Feb. 9, may have unanticipated consequences that could interrupt traffic to some .com and .net Web sites and other online services.

The modifications will change the way part of a DNS component called the Start of Authority (SOA) Record is generated for .com and .net domains, according to information posted to the Nanog networking discussion group by Matt Larson, of VeriSign Naming and Directory Services and confirmed by Pat Burns, a VeriSign spokesperson.

SOAs are used to manage DNS zones, areas of an Internet domain that are managed by a single DNS server. The records contain identifying information about the zone, such as the name of the primary DNS server for the zone, the e-mail address of the person responsible for the zone and a unique serial number that can be used to compare whether the zone information in one DNS server is newer or older than that managed by other, secondary servers.

Burns denied that VeriSign would be offering the more frequent updates as a paid service. "From our perspective, this is just a way to prepare to offer a more efficient domain name registration process," he said.

VeriSign Naming and Directory Services will change the serial number format in the .com and .net zones' SOA records. Currently, the serial number format is YYYYMMDD, plus an additional two-digit number (00 to 99) that is updated whenever the zone data is updated.

Under the new system, VeriSign will change the serial number to a unique value equal to the number of seconds since 00:00:00 Greenwich Mean Time on Jan. 1, 1970, Larson said.

That will allow VeriSign to make better use of its Advanced Transaction Lookup and Signalling (ATLAS) system technology to make more frequent and efficient updates to .com and .net, from the current system of two daily updates, Burns said.

VeriSign does not anticipate disruptions stemming from the change, Larson said. But the company did allow that "processes that rely on the semantics of the .com/.net serial number" could be affected.

For example, companies that have created scripts to monitor domain change on .com and .net will almost certainly need to make changes to account for the serial number change, said Thor Larholm, senior security researcher at Pivx Solutions LLC of Newport Beach, Calif.

Also, companies that have incorrectly formatted their DNS servers to get information directly from the DNS root servers maintained by VeriSign will stop receiving updates on Feb. 9, leaving those servers and the Internet users who rely on them out of step with the rest of the Internet, he said.

"The damage won't be catastrophic, but some DNS servers could stop receiving updates," he said.

While there is general agreement within the technical community that VeriSign has the right to make the serial number changes, there is also suspicion about the move, especially after the feud over VeriSign's controversial Site Finder service in 2003, which redirected requests for nonexistent Web addresses to a Web site maintained by VeriSign.

VeriSign complied with an Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) request to shut down Site Finder after ICANN complained that Site Finder hobbled antispam filters and automated tools like Web spidering applications, and hampered the ability of some applications to determine whether or not an Internet domain existed.

"There's distrust of VeriSign on a basic level and (the Site Finder dispute) removed any level of trust for many system administrators," Larholm said.

Story by Paul Roberts
IT World Canada

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January 12, 2004

Yahoo & Google trying to outdo each other

Yahoo and Google are offering new search tricks for Web surfers, with the ongoing goal of becoming indispensable.

Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo on Friday started offering visitors the ability to search for flight information directly from the search box, matching a similarly new capability from rival Google's search engine. Google, in turn, embedded a technology shortcut for visitors to find information on domain names and their owners, helping people circumvent the WhoIs database of domain names.

Mountain View, Calif.-based Google also started displaying shopping-related listings from Froogle.com, its e-commerce reference site, at the top of general search results when it associates a query term as commercial. That development signals the growing importance of shopping search to visitors and, likely, to Google's future.

Other new features from Google include dictionary search and a tool for locating packages in the shipping cycle from Federal Express and United Parcel Service.

The latest search shortcuts join a parade of technology advancements in Web navigation. Search providers are increasingly trying to deliver a wealth of information onto results pages quickly, rather than having people sift through numerous Web sites to find answers. The more successfully they can do this, the greater the likelihood that people will return and develop a loyalty to that provider.

Examples of innovation include tools to retrieve weather, travel, package tracking and math equations on the page of search results. Google, for example, has introduced search features for math equations; news alerts; and the Google Deskbar, which lets people search for movie reviews and stock data from their desktop without using a browser. Yahoo lets people call up listings for Yellow Pages, weather and maps directly from the search bar with corresponding commands.

But the challenge for Yahoo and Google is educating Web searchers on their advancements.

Search shortcuts typically work by typing a simple command before the query term into the search box. Google's WhoIs shortcut requires the term "whois" and then a domain name, such as "Google.com," to call up whether the address has been registered, or the owners' name and contact information. It draws the information from the Global WhoIs database.

Yahoo's flight shortcut simply calls for the airline name and the flight number to access its status. For example, typing in "AA (for American Airlines) 44," calls up the latest landing time or in-flight status.

Yahoo's flight tool draws on data from Sabre-owned Travelocity, its travel partner. Company spokeswoman Diana Lee said that it was created with Yahoo's own technology. "This shows a great way that we have integrated our assets from the network."

Google did not respond to calls for comment.

Source: C-Net News

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Google Domain Park

Google DomainPark allows domain name registrars and large domain name holders to unlock the value in their parked page inventory.

DomainPark delivers targeted, conceptually related keywords and advertisements to parked domain name pages by using Google's semantic technology to "understand" the meaning of each domain name.

DomainPark currently powers over 1 million domain names.

Web sites must generate more than 750,000 page views per month to qualify.

Posted by nakul at 08:53 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

January 08, 2004

Forrester: e-commerce investments will grow by 1.9%

Forrester Research reports that customer e-commerce spending will lead the IT spending charge in 2004, growing by 4.8% this year. Buy-side e-commerce spending will grow by 1.9%, projects Forrester. In fact, Forrester estimates that three-fourths of companies will maintain or increase their IT spending for e-commerce initiatives. Forrester bases its estimates on the survey of 212 e-commerce decision-makers.

In-Stat/MDR estimated last month that small business IT spending totaled $161 billion last year and would reach $215 billion by the end of 2008.

Yankee Group estimates that there are over 5 million small businesses in the US. For further insight into the small- and medium-size businesses in the US, stay tuned to eMarketer for the Small-Medium Business IT Spending spotlight report.

Source: e-Marketer.com

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Wanadoo in France considering acquiring AOL Europe

Rival Internet service providers (ISPs) keen to acquire the once-ailing European operations of Time Warner Inc.'s America Online (AOL) division may have to look elsewhere to expand their operations.

Speaking Tuesday at a Smith Barney investor conference in Phoenix, Time Warner Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Richard Parsons called AOL Europe "a pretty interesting success story" and said rumours in late 2003 about him holding talks to sell the European business were off the mark, according to a report published Wednesday in the online edition of The Washington Post. Smith Barney is a division of Citigroup Global Markets Inc.

"In this overheated media environment, anytime you have lunch with somebody who is not related to you by blood there is speculation that there must be some deal being worked on," Parson said in the media report. Those remarks came on the same day Olivier Sichel, chairman and CEO of French ISP Wanadoo SA, said in a radio interview that he is interested in all opportunities to expand his company's European presence, including a purchase of AOL Europe. Sichel said he expects further consolidation in the European ISP market.

"We have held no talks with Time Warner about AOL Europe but as we have said all along, we aim to strengthen our business in Europe and that means we will study all options," a spokeswoman for France Telecom SA said Wednesday. France Telecom, which spun off Wanadoo into an independent unit a couple of years ago, remains the major shareholder.

The French aren't the only ones waving a flag at AOL. Rumours abound that Deutsche Telekom AG remains interested, even if Chairman and CEO Kai-Uwe Ricke denied holding talks to acquire the Internet company at a news conference in November.

Rumours of T-Online AG & Co. KG going shopping for ISPs have flourished since the German Internet company confirmed surplus capital of more than four billion euros (US$4.7 billion) days before the news conference with Ricke. Helping fuel speculation, T-Online CEO Thomas Holtrop said some of that money will be used for acquisitions in the months ahead.

"We are generally interested in increasing our market presence in Europe and are taking steps in this direction," said T-Online spokesman Michael Schlechtriem, pointing to the December acquisition of Swiss ISP Scout25 AG.

Source: IT World Canada

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January 07, 2004

Overture to help its advertisers get better control

Yahoo's Overture Services will hand more control to advertisers later this month, letting them bid for contextual listings independently from search listings.

Received wisdom in the industry contends that users are less likely to purchase goods or services after clicking on contextual ads, which appear on content pages, as compared to those that appear on search results pages.

The proof will soon enough be in the pudding, or at least the conversions, as Overture advertisers will be able to make different bids for Content Match keywords later this month. (Content Match is Overture's name for its contextual advertising product.)

"We've always had the intention of creating a separate marketplace for the product because inherently it's a different experience," said Paul Volen, Overture' VP of partner product marketing. "We got information from advertisers that they would like to control it separately." It's all about control, Volen maintained.

If advertisers take no action, their bid rate on Content Match will remain the same as it was before the change. The 20 percent discount in effect since Content Match's June launch will end with the launch of the new product.

Though contextual listings, which competitor Google offers through its AdSense program, are said to bring advertisers more traffic, many find such listings lower their ROI. This has led to the demand for the ability to bid for each product individually.

Will Google follow Overture's lead? At present, Google does not separate out the search and contextual listings. Kevin Lee, CEO of search engine campaign management company Did-it.com, says it might.

"They may. But you can make the argument that Google doesn't have to. They have over 100,000 advertisers. Let's say contextual advertising works as well for half of them, so half shut it off. You still have a lot of money coming in. So why make life more complicated with a whole separate auction you have to watch?" said Lee.

Lee maintained that results from contextual listings vary and advertisers should keep an open mind.

"Marketers and advertisers should use the tools and technologies at their disposal to figure it out by themselves," Lee said.

Source: InternetNews.com

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January 06, 2004

Google preparing to go public

Google Inc. hired Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs Group Inc. to arrange its initial public offering, a sale that may raise as much as $4 billion, a banker involved in the transaction said.

The sale by Google, the world's most used Internet search engine, would be the biggest IPO since CIT Group Inc.'s $4.87 billion deal in July 2002. It ``will certainly be the deal of the year,'' said Sanford Robertson, who founded investment bank Robertson, Stephens & Co. before starting private-equity firm Francisco Partners LP.

Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs will lead a group of underwriters that includes Citigroup Inc., Credit Suisse First Boston, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., Thomas Weisel Partners LLC and WR Hambrecht + Co., two bankers in the sale said. They spoke on the condition they not be named.

Mountain View, California-based Google may sell a stake of about one-third in the IPO, giving the company a market value of about $12 billion, the bankers said. The company will probably register the shares for sale with the Securities and Exchange Commission this month and sell them by April, they said.

Google spokesman David Krane, Morgan Stanley's Melissa Stonberg and Goldman Sachs spokesman Andrea Rachman declined comment. Citigroup spokesman Duncan King, CSFB spokesman Pen Pendleton and J.P. Morgan spokesman Brian Marchiony also declined to comment, as did Clay Corbus, head of investment banking at WR Hambrecht.

Thomas Weisel Chief Operating Officer Blake Jorgensen didn't return a call seeking comment. The fees generated from Google's IPO may be as much as $280 million if the company raises as much as $4 billion based on a 7 percent fee. Fees for the biggest IPOs are usually lower than the standard 7 percent. On CIT's sale, bankers collected commissions of 4 percent. That's still more than the 0.9 percent for corporate bonds and about 0.3 percent for advice on mergers.

There's ``a lot of buzz around'' the Google sale, said Reed Taussig, chief executive officer at Callidus Software Inc., a San Jose, California-based company.

Morgan Stanley has taken public at least six companies backed by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, one of Google's venture investors. Those sales included Netscape Communications Corp., whose August 1995 IPO ushered in the Internet boom. Goldman Sachs has arranged IPOs for at least four companies backed by Sequoia Capital general partner Michael Moritz, a venture investor in Google.

Those sales include Google competitor Yahoo Inc., Webvan Group Inc., PlanetRx.com Inc. and Etoys Inc. Goldman also arranged the IPO of Google rival Ebay Inc., which has a market value of about $42 billion.

Merrill Lynch & Co., which has the biggest brokerage force in the world, lost its bid to help arrange the sale. The assignment for WR Hambrecht, which sells shares via the Web through an auction process, will be its biggest ever. Its share of the Google sale may exceed the $309.2 million of IPOs it has done since its first in April 1999.

In WR Hambrecht's Internet-based IPO bidding process known as the ``OpenIPO,'' individual and institutional investors enter the amount of shares they want to buy and the price they are willing to pay. The bank finds the clearing price by tallying all bids and finds the highest price in which all shares can be sold.

``You need only so many banks in a deal,'' said Scott Appleby, president of mergers and acquisition advisory firm Appleby Group Inc. ``The top four banks in one deal may not be the banks in the next deal.''

Google's Internet site is the most-used in the world for Internet searches, according to research firm ComScore Networks. Google was used for 35 percent of Internet searches by U.S. users in October, ComScore said. Google's search results are also available on other companies' Web sites, including Time Warner Inc.'s America Online, which pay Google licensing fees.

Google was founded by Stanford University graduate students Sergey Brin and Larry Page in 1998 and now employs more than 1,000 people. Google generates most of its revenue from a service known as sponsored-search advertising. Customers pay Google for the right to have their Web sites come up at the top of search results. Those results are set off in colored boxes and labeled ``Sponsored Links'' to distinguish them from those businesses haven't paid to influence.

Google probably had revenue of about $1 billion in 2003 and net income of about $200 million that will increase to about $1.5 billion of sales and net income of $300 million in this year, according to Eric Martinuzzi, an analyst at Craig-Hallum Capital Group in Minneapolis. ``Any Internet site who wants to create revenue uses Google,'' Martinuzzi said.

Source: Bloomberg.com

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Yahoo only just begun its big plans for its search business

Yahoo CEO Terry Semel said Monday that the company has "only just begun" with its grand plans to grow its Web search business, highlighting 2004 as a year when search will become omnipresent throughout its family of sites.

Semel's comments, made during a question-and-answer session at Smith Barney Citigroup's Entertainment, Media & Telecommunications Conference, come after a year marked by high-profile acquisitions in the search arena. The Web giant acquired algorithmic search provider Inktomi for $235 million and then closed a $1.6 billion purchase of Overture Services to add the lucrative paid-search business.

The acquisition spree highlights the rivalry with Google, which competes with Yahoo despite powering a significant volume of Yahoo's algorithmic search results. The competition will only increase now that Google has named bankers to manage its initial public offering, according to reports Monday. Google has supplanted Yahoo as a name synonymous with Web search and has created a lucrative paid search business that mirrors Overture's.

"We woke up in time and we saw search ever present in the entire network," Semel said during the session, which was broadcast live on the Web. "We saw an enormous opportunity to be the other major player in search."

Semel added that the Overture and Inktomi acquisitions will allow Yahoo to more widely spread its search services throughout its many content sites. The move would prevent audiences of popular areas such as finance, news and music from defecting to outside search providers such as Google.

"Why not have music search in music or finance search in finance?" Semel said. "The answer is we will."

Many industry watchers expect Yahoo will replace Google's search technology with its own, given moves such as the Inktomi acquisition and related development efforts.

During his keynote, Semel praised other areas at Yahoo that have grown since he took the helm in May 2001, namely the area of paid services. Semel said Yahoo now has 5 million paid users after starting from nearly zero when he began his tenure. He added that he is "not at all concerned" about his goal of 10 million paid users, a benchmark set during his first analyst day in 2001.

"We had no infrastructure and no direct sales," Semel said during the conference. "We fundamentally sold advertising."

Central to this paid services business is Yahoo's partnership to bundle its content and services into SBC Communications' DSL (digital subscriber line) service. Last quarter, SBC reported a gain of 365,000 new subscribers for a total of 3.1 million. All of the new subscribers were also counted as new Yahoo subscribers.

Despite aggressive DSL price promotions by SBC for as low as $26.95 a month, Semel said Yahoo will continue to benefit every time a subscriber is added.

"Generally speaking, the more subscribers we sign, the more lucrative it is to Yahoo," he said.

Source: C-Net News

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January 05, 2004

Narrowing down Web searches with Vivisimo

Some intriguing technologies are getting better at bringing order to all that chaos, and could revolutionize how people search the Web for information.

As wonderful as Internet search engines are, they have a pretty big flaw. They often deliver too much information, and a lot of it isn't quite what we're looking for. Who really bothers to read the dozens of pages of results that Google generates?

Software now emerging analyzes search results and automatically sorts them into categories that, at a glance, present far more information than the typical textual list. "We enliven the otherwise deadening process of searching for information," said Raul Valdes-Perez, co-founder of Vivisimo Inc., which quickly puts search results into clickable categories.

Pittsburgh-based Vivisimo sells its technology to companies and intelligence agencies, and offers free Web searches at Vivisimo.com. Valdes-Perez describes his company this way: If the Internet is a giant bookstore in which all the books are piled randomly on the floor, then Vivisimo is like a superfast librarian who can instantly arrange the titles on shelves in a way that makes sense.

Consider it a 21st century Dewey Decimal System designed to fight information overload. But unlike libraries, Vivisimo doesn't use predefined categories. Its software determines them on the fly, depending on the search results. The filing is done through a combination of linguistic and statistical analysis, a method that even works with other languages.

A similar process powers Grokker, a downloadable program that not only sorts search results into categories but also "maps" the results in a holistic way, showing each category as a colorful circle. Within each circle, subcategories appear as more circles that can be clicked on and zoomed in on.

It takes a few minutes to get used to Grokker. But the value of its nonlinear approach quickly becomes clear. Let's say, for example, you're curious about accommodations in France and enter a search for "Paris Hilton."

Google recognizes this as a search in the category of "Regional-Europe-Travel and Tourism-Lodging-Hotels" but still produces page after page with links about celebrity socialite Paris Hilton and her exploits. That's because Google's engine ranks pages largely based on how many other sites link to them, sending the most popular pages to the top.

If you run the search on Grokker, however, the resulting circle shows all the possible categories of information the Internet offers on a search for "Paris Hilton" - including reviews, maps and online booking sites for the Hilton hotel in Paris, which are all but buried in the Google rankings. Now you've much more quickly found not what is popular among Internet gawkers, but what is genuinely useful to you.

Groxis Inc., the 15-person company that introduced Grokker last year and released an upgraded, $49 second version in December, is not out to replace Google. Grokker is not in itself a search engine - it only analyzes and illustrates search engines' results.

For example, Grokker2 can categorize and map files on your hard drive - arranging them by content, not by the folders you happened to put them in - or listings on Amazon.com. If you use Grokker2 to search the Web, it combines results from six search engines - Yahoo, MSN, AltaVista, Wisenut, Teoma and FAST, a business-focused product by a Norwegian company.

In 2004, Grokker plans to release up to two dozen downloadable plug-ins that will set its colored circles loose on a wider variety of databases, including the Library of Congress, news Web sites and yes, Google itself. "We now have the capability to `grok' anything," said R.J. Pittman, chief executive of Sausalito, Calif.-based Groxis. Would-be Grokkers, a note of caution: it requires Windows 2000 or XP or Mac OS X.

The Google plug-in is partly a market test; Google and Groxis will analyze how well it works and then consider whether to work on developing a service together, Pittman said. Google spokesman Nathan Tyler declined to comment on Groxis. Nor would he say whether Google is exploring its own measures of sprucing up search pages with categorization tools like Vivisimo or visualization aids like Grokker.

Another visualization possibility is offered by TouchGraph LLC, which has a Google plug-in that shows links as an interconnected web, an appropriate image for the World Wide Web. Such tools have been applied by the Manhattan firm Plumb Design in its Visual Thesaurus, which maps a word's meanings, or in a navigation tool it developed for a Smithsonian Institution exhibit.

Meanwhile, a number of search sites have gotten hip to honing results. For example Teoma, which is part of Ask Jeeves Inc., suggests ways to refine or narrow a search. That means a Teoma search for "Las Vegas" will serve up roughly the same links as other sites, but it also suggests "Vacation Packages" and "Vegas Wedding Chapel."

"Search has to evolve," Pittman said. "It can't just be Google sitting there with a stash of places they've crawled on the Web. People are becoming more astute and demanding better results, and they're demanding a more powerful search experience. People like to get a landscape of information once they've found out there's one available."

Source: Seattle PI.com

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Miva Becomes an Operating Division of FindWhat

FindWhat.com has acquired Miva for approximately $8.0 million

FindWhat.com today announced the completion of its acquisition of Miva Corporation.

Under the terms of the agreement, announced September 3, 2003, FindWhat.com has acquired Miva for approximately $8.0 million, with Miva shareholders receiving approximately $2.7 million in cash and approximately 165,000 shares of FindWhat.com common stock, while FindWhat.com assumes approximately $2.5 million in Miva liabilities.

FindWhat.com is increasingly focused on the needs of small-to-medium sized businesses (SMEs), and with the completion of this acquisition, is poised to offer a more complete and comprehensive business solution to SMEs in the U.S.

According to the Kelsey Group, U.S. SMEs this year will spend over $3 billion of their advertising budgets on developing, building, hosting and promoting their websites.

FindWhat.com plans to allow the tens of thousands of advertisers on the FindWhat.com Network to have access to the e-commerce shopping software, related plug-ins, modules and hosting services available through Miva Merchant and its partners, while offering the tens of thousands of Miva merchants the ability to promote their websites through the FindWhat.com Network.

FindWhat.com plans to continually advance state-of-the-art technology, solutions and services for SMEs. "We continue to be very impressed with Miva's ability to provide best-of-breed e-commerce applications to the SME marketplace," said Craig Pisaris-Henderson, chairman and CEO of FindWhat.com.

"We look forward to working on integrating our products, and providing a scalable and customizable solution for online businesses globally."

Joe Austin, president and CEO of Miva Corporation, now joins the management team of FindWhat.com as general manager of its Miva division. The Miva division is based in San Diego, CA.

Source: Biz Yahoo.com

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Online retail experienced significant growth in 2003

The online retail sector experienced significant growth during 2003 due to record holiday sales, a strong travel market and increased consumer confidence, according to a new report. Revenue for online retailers in 2003 reached $93 billion, a 27 percent increase over the same period last year, research firm ComScore Networks reported on Monday.

The growth in sales was spurred by a record fourth quarter holiday buying season, typically the largest sales period for both online and brick-and-mortar vendors. ComScore said that online retail spending during the 2003 holiday season totaled $12.5 billion, a 29.5 percent gain over the same period last year.

The online travel segment continued to outperform the rest of the e-tail market, with ComScore counting $41 billion in sales for 2003, a 35 percent gain over travel revenue recorded in 2002.

The firm reported that for several weeks during June and July, the peak vacation season, travel spending exceeded all other e-commerce product categories combined.

ComScore analyst Graham Mudd said the fastest growing areas of the e-tail market beyond travel included sales of big-ticket items such as furniture, appliances and jewelry, indicating increased confidence among consumers.

The apparel and accessories market also showed signs of renewed growth after falling off for the last two years, further evidencing a shift among online shoppers.

"Despite some weakness earlier in the year related to the Iraq war, increased consumer experience and programs allowing buyers to interact with physical store locations for returns or service helped to drive sales," said Mudd. "Renewed performance of the apparel market after two years of flat numbers also indicates that buying patterns may be shifting again."

ComScore said that consistent performance over the last two months of the year were crucial to overall growth in the e-tail segment and estimated that consumers spent an average of $200 million per day online throughout November and December.

The firm's holiday numbers appeared conservative compared to other researchers' figures. The eSpending survey published last week by Goldman Sachs, Harris Interactive and Nielsen/NetRatings indicated that consumers spent $13 billion during the holidays, a 46 percent increase over its own 2002 figures.

The positive numbers stand in contrast to a Commerce Department report released in December that found a 3.1 percent month-over-month decrease in orders for durable goods for the month of November.

Source: C-Net News

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