Industry News

Consumers Urged to Shop Online
Interactive Media in Retail Group is starting an extensive marketing campaign to encourage consumers to shop online. The campaign kicks off today. [Internet Retailer]

HotBot Announces New Toolbar
The HotBot Quick-Search Deskbar gives searchers access to more than 200 search sites, many of them inaccessible by Web crawlers. These sites include dictionaries, news and weather services to name but afew.[PR Newswire]

Daily Internet Usage Up
More people are logging onto the web, including a larger percentage who log on daily. [Internet Retailer]

Amazon sets date to meet international sales target
Amazon expects international sales to match those in the United States by 2005 as the group tries to close the profitability gap between the two parts of the business. [The Scotsman]

Dot-Com Lawsuit against Merrill Lynch Quashed
Investors hoping to extract money they lost in the dot-com meltdown lost when judges in two separate rulings tossed out class action lawsuits against Merrill Lynch and other investment banks. [InternetNews]

Content Matters in Web Advertising
The effectiveness of Web site advertising is directly and significantly impacted by the level of personal loyalty audience members feel toward the content of specific sites. [Ad Age]

A Google-ized World
In the past three years, Google has gone from processing 100 million searches per day to more than 200 million searches per day. Only one-third come from inside the U.S. The rest are in 88 other languages. [Silicon Valley]

Tesco Breach Spam Rules
Oops, Tesco sent an email out proclaiming its intent to protect customers without gaining opt-in permission first! [netimperative]

Spam Block Unpopular with Visually Impaired
An increasingly popular technique for preventing e-mail abuse is frustrating some visually impaired Net users, setting the stage for a conflict between spam busters and advocates for the disabled. [CNet]

Google Dance Syndrome Explained
The Google update is a tense time for Webmasters as they eagerly await the results to see if site rank has been affected. [Clickz]