Bigmouthmedia search engine news: amazon-a9

Books 'most popular online shopping item'

Mon, 28 Jan 2008 12:00:00 GMT

More than half of internet users have purchased a book over the web in the last three months, making books the most popular item among online shoppers.

This is according to a study by Nielsen Online, which also found that over 85 per cent of the total online population have made at least one purchase over the internet in the past.

Developing countries such as China, Brazil, Vietnam and Egypt harbour some of the biggest purchasers of books, the research discovered.

Other popular purchase categories for online consumers were found to include videos, DVDs and games, as well as airline tickets, clothing, accessories and shoes.

Meanwhile, eBay, Amazon and Target were the top three online retailers during the month of December, Nielsen Online said.

"The internet is no longer a niche technology - it is mass media and an utterly integral part of modern life," commented Jonathan Carson, president of International at Nielsen Online.

He added: "As our lives become more fractured and cluttered, it isn't surprising that consumers turn to the unrivalled convenience of the internet when it comes to researching and buying products."

In related news, comScore Networks recently released research findings suggesting that online shopping activity during the Christmas period peaked in between December 3rd and 9th.

Amazon and Apple were found to be the most popular online retail sites over the course of the Christmas season.

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Google is a summertime hit in the UK

Tue, 02 Oct 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Leading search engine Google was the most visited site in the UK in August, according to new research.

Figures released by comScore indicate that the internet property had 28.3 million unique visitors aged 15 and above, reaching 89 per cent of the total UK internet audience over the month.

Microsoft, which attracted 26.8 million unique visitors (an 83 per cent audience reach), was a close runner-up in the popularity stakes over the period.

Also enjoying notable success was Yahoo!, which grew by 1.3 per cent over August to achieve 21 million unique visitors and challenge internet auction site eBay, which had 21.6 million, for the position of the third most visited web property.

The fastest growing top-ten property over the month was Amazon, which increased total traffic by 6.3 per cent to attract 13.3 million unique visitors. Facebook, which was just outside the list, increased its total traffic by an impressive 18.3 per cent in the month.

The social networking site was the highest rising internet property and has experienced a 2,167 per cent growth within the UK since September 2006, when it opened up registration to the general public.

During the same period, Facebook has also enjoyed increasing popularity across Europe, where it has grown by 2,446 per cent to reach a total of 13.2 million unique visitors.

According to other comScore figures published recently, Yahoo! retained its position as the most popular web property in Japan in August, with over 41 million visitors to its sites over the month.

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Amazon 'set to introduce e-book reader'

Tue, 11 Sep 2007 12:00:00 GMT

In October Amazon will launch an electronic book reader called Kindle, according to reports in the New York Times.

Insiders told the publication that the device will be priced at between $400 and $500 and will allow users to wirelessly connect to an e-book store on Amazon's website.

The online retailer has been developing the Kindle for some time but has delayed its release on a number of occasions over the last year.

It is believed the device will be able to download books as well as to browse the internet without connecting to a computer.

People who have seen the new technology say that Amazon will introduce incentives for customers, such as free reference books and the opportunity to subscribe to feeds from major newspapers.

The Kindle also reportedly has a keyboard in order to allow users to annotate books and to browse the internet.

However, not everybody is convinced by the market potential of e-book devices, with some experts expressing reservations.

Research director at Jupiter Research Michael Gartenberg told the New York Times: "Books represent ... pretty good value for consumers. They can display them and pass them to friends and they understand the business model.

"We have had dedicated e-book devices on the market for more than a decade and the payoff always seems to be just a few years away."

Amazon recently topped an IMRG-Hitwise Hot Shops List of the 50 most popular UK e-tailers.

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Amazon takes top spot in online retail poll

Fri, 31 Aug 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Amazon UK continues to be the most popular choice for online buyers, according to new research.

The internet retailer has topped an IMRG -Hitwise Hot Shops List of the 50 most popular UK e-retailers as determined by the number of visits received.

It was followed by Argos, Tesco.com and Play.com who came second, third and fourth respectively.

Commenting on the results, IMRG said that the most notable thing about this year's list is the lack of movement made by the e-retailers.

Of the 50 companies, 26 were within three rankings of their spot last year and, in May, 16 of these were within one place.

Amazon remains "well ahead of the pack every time", according to IMRG, with Argos and Tesco.com closely contesting the second and third positions.

With travel seemingly on the minds of the UK public, 18 travel companies were pulled onto the list, including the newcomers TravelRepublic.co.uk and National Express.

IMRG's chief executive officer James Roper said that the stability of retailers' positions on the list against a backdrop of significant growth in online sales, up 80 per cent on last year to over £4 billion in July, is significant.

It indicates that "these market leaders are satisfying their customers pretty well and competitors are having little or no effect on their progress", he added.

IMRG is an industry body for global e-retailing which aims to maximise the commercial potential of online shopping.

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Street level maps from Google

Wed, 30 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Google have expanded their Google Maps service to include new street level views of major US cities.

Known as Street View, this new Google Maps feature enables users to view and navigate within 360 degree street level images of select US cities, including the San Francisco Bay Area, New York, Las Vegas, Denver and Miami. Maps of other cities will make their way online in the near future.

Where enabled, clicking on the 'Street View' button in Google Maps presents the user with a blue outline of the streets covered under the new street view feature. By moving a 'person icon' around the city, the user is presented with a 360 degree panoramic photo bubble of the mapped area. Navigation buttons within the street view essentially allow visitors to 'walk' round a city and see local landmarks, restaurants, shops and even street signs.

Google are not the first to include this feature into a mapping tool: A9.com from Amazon have had similar street-viewing features - known as BlockView - for some time, covering more than twice the number of Street View enabled cities. MSN also have a similar service on their virtual earth mapping tool.

Google Maps have also announced a new tool for developers called Mapplets, designed to enable third party developers to create mini applications for display inside Google Maps. Google suggest these Mapplets can host a variety of information: from housing listings to crime data or distance measurement.

For developers, these widgets are nothing more than a mix of HTML, JavaScript and Flash, ensuring that the majority of web designers and developers can use these tools to create their own solutions easily and quickly. Once created by developers, Mapplets can be selected by users much in the same way as iGoogle, to form a library of useful applications that help get the most out of Google Maps.

At the moment, the preview version of Mapplets features three unique tools, including a distance measurement tool, movie show times and real estate search.

These two announcements from Google follow a raft of similar improvements from the likes of Yahoo! and MSN - all driving forward the idea of Web 2.0 hybrid applications, which take the relatively simple notion of an online map and add features that traditionally would have been offered by entirely independent services.

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Facebook opens its doors to third parties

Fri, 25 May 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Facebook is taking a leaf out of MySpace's book and opening its door to third-party software developers.

The popular social networking site has enjoyed incredible growth since becoming available to all web users last autumn, but still lags behind MySpace in terms of market share.

Facebook founder and chief executive Mark Zuckerberg revealed at a media event that the site will be allowing developers to create applications or 'widgets' for users.

The site will also allow companies to open retail services and advertise products, unlike MySpace, which only allows itself to advertise on the site.

"You can serve ads...or if you don't want to advertise, you can just sell something," he told an audience of journalists and outside developers. "You keep all the revenue."

Among the 65 partners Facebook has signed up to build web applications are Microsoft and Amazon, while Photobucket, recently acquired by MySpace, and multimedia presentation site Slide will also be building services.

"Until now, social networks have been closed platforms. Today, we're going to end that," Zuckerberg added.

Facebook will be hoping the developments continue to bridge the gap between itself and MySpace.

Recent figures released by Hitwise showed that MySpace dominated the US social networking market with 79.7 per cent of category visits, while Facebook claimed 11.47 per cent and Bebo 1.28 per cent.

However, in the 12 months from April 2006 to last month, visits to Facebook in the US increased by 126 per cent, while MySpace only saw a 70 per cent rise in traffic during the same period .

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Google Checkout attempts to rival PayPal

Mon, 19 Feb 2007 12:00:00 GMT

2006 saw Google launch a service which would offer online shoppers a one-click method of paying for their purchases, while also helping minimise the risk of their credit card information being stolen from a website. The service, Google Checkout, works by linking to credit card accounts, but is faster and more secure than typing in a 16-digit card number.

Despite being utilised by one hundred of the top 500 online shopping sites, including Toys R Us, Linens N Things and Buy.com, the past three months have still seen Google's drive of an aggressive marketing campaign to lure shoppers away from its more established market-place rival, PayPal - a similar service owned by internet auction giant, eBay. Incentives such as $10 discounts off first purchases throughout Christmas and around Valentines Day, in addition to waiving the standard fee of 2 percent per purchase until the end of 2006, has cost Google around one per cent of its revenue, estimated at $32 million during the final three months of 2006.

With more options now available for making online purchases, consumers stand to benefit from the rival service offered by Google. At stake for Paypal, however, will be its stranglehold and near-ownership of the online payment market - a highly lucrative business that contributed 25 per cent of eBay's revenue and accounted for around $11 billion worth of transactions during the final four months of 2006. Paypal differs from Checkout in that it can also be used to draw on funds from a bank account - so account holders can use Paypal to make payments between individuals in a similar manner to writing cheques.

Paypal currently handles 70 transactions for every one made through Checkout and can lay claim to having 133 million account holders according to Hitwise, a firm that measures online traffic. Furthermore, since eBay bought PayPal in 2002, it has become a profitable business for the online auctioneer. However, neither eBay nor Amazon, the internet's biggest retail store, currently allow customers to use Checkout on their site. Furthermore, eBay claims that Google's Checkout service lacks a proven record in terms of security.

Google service highlights the complicated relationships shared among internet companies as they strive to expand their audience; after all, web-based companies frequently advertise with one another while simultaneously competing with their own array of competitive services.

Up to now, Google and eBay have enjoyed a mutual relationship: the companies had a multi-year advertising deal which saw eBay's advertisements appear alongside Google SERPs and Google placed advertisements on eBay auction sites across the globe. However, Checkout now seems to place Google and eBay as rivals.

For consumers though, Checkout's biggest virtue is the fact that it is free. Despite teething problems during the early months of its release, Google now says it has made improvements to the service and are happy that the service is secure and customers are satisfied. Now, eBay merchants are petitioning the auction giant to allow Checkout to be used on the site.

Some analysts claim that the Google service is just another part of the company's bigger push into the e-commerce market, further encroaching into eBay territory. Google already has Froogle, a rival service to price-comparison site Shopping.com, and Google Base, an online classifieds site similar to the eBay service, Craigslist. Other analysts claim, however, that the Checkout service offered by Google has less to do with e-commerce revenue and more to do with harvesting data relating to how online shoppers respond to advertisements. Google claim that 37 per cent of online purchases begin with an internet search, and that information regarding sale closure after clicking on an ad will help the company's advertising business.

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The financial future of Wikipedia: a big question mark

Tue, 13 Feb 2007 12:00:00 GMT

Wikipedia, the hugely popular online encyclopaedia which can be edited by anyone with internet access, has hinted that it's facing severe financial difficulties.

The news came from Florence Devouard, chair of the board of Wikipedia, speaking at a recent appearance at the Lift 07 conference in Geneva. Devouard suggested that Wikipedia finances were running low, with only enough funding for another 3 to 4 months. She then went on to say that if additional funding was not found, "Wikipedia might disappear."

The blogosphere has speculated heavily on the comments with some declaring that it was simply a cry for help, aimed at deep pocketed donators. Others are calling for Wikipedia to run online advertisements to generate funds for themselves. Indeed, as one of the 20 most popular websites in the world (according to Alexa), a huge amount of revenue could be reaped if Wikipedia was to place banner or contextual ads on each page.

However, many believe that it is highly unlikely that Wikipedia would ever resort to selling ad space, because part of the Wikipedia ethos is to keep the information neutral and unbiased. It also creates a problem for the thousands of volunteer editors who are happy to donate their time to a non-profit organisation, but might feel differently if Wikipedia was making money off the back of their hard work.

Some bloggers have speculated that internet giants such as Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Ebay or Yahoo would be well placed to scoop up Wikipedia, which is estimated to be worth several hundred million dollars. However, again, many believe Wikipedia would not allow itself to be taken over, as it would compromise the integrity of the entire Wikimedia foundation.

Since the initial statements were made, Wikipedia spokesperson Sandy Ordonez has stated that Ms Devouard's comments were taken out of context and that "Wikipedia will not be closing any time soon." She did, however, acknowledge that there was an ongoing, pressing need for funds.

The Wikipedia organisation was launched in 2001 and has largely been hailed as a huge success. Its mission - "the development and maintenance of online free, open content encyclopedias, in all the languages of the world that will be distributed free of charge to the public" - has earned it massive respect and it's even been deemed "the moral fibre of the internet". Wikipedia has managed to pay for the huge costs of hardware, bandwith and a handful of staff purely from donations by way of supporters.

Though Wikipedia has been criticised by some for containing inaccurate information, it still remains a hugely useful resource, especially as it contains data on recent or very obscure topics that aren't covered in traditional print encyclopaedias.

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Amazon's Askville.com attempts to fill the void left by Google Answers

Thu, 04 Jan 2007 12:00:00 GMT

In November 2006, bigmouthmedia reported that Google had axed its Google Answers service after four years, following increasing competition from Yahoo!'s free rival service, Yahoo! Answers. The massive success of Yahoo! Answers has caused some companies to launch similar question and answer services. In December, for instance, Amazon.com launched their Askville answers rival service to the public.

The service, very similar to Yahoo! Answers, is free and allows users to accrue points for good quality answers. One main difference, however, is that users will soon be able to redeem the points on Amazon's Questville.com rather than use them to climb up "levels" of users on the service. The scope for the Askville and Questville rewards scheme is large and users may be attracted to the vast array of products that Amazon could potentially offer. One question currently on the website is "What would you (realistically) like to be able to use your QuestCoins for?", showing that the scheme is already stimulating the interest of some users.

Another trump card for Amazon's service is their relationship with Mechanical Turk, a research service owned by the company. Users of this service work together to carry out demanding work such as transcription, translating text or identifying specific objects in images. Users are paid for the work that they do; in this way, the site bears a large resemblance to Google's defunct Answers service. The affiliation with Mechanical Turk will, according to Amazon, guarantee at least one answer to every question that is asked on Askville. This will guard against unanswered questions that sometimes get swept away on Yahoo! Answers due to the sheer number of questions asked and will also stop users from being frustrated when they ask a more in depth question which doesn't get answered.

2007 is widely touted to be a major year in the development of human-assisted Internet search with Answers.com, Answerbag.com, Keen.com and Microsoft all vying to compete with Yahoo! and Amazon. Yahoo! undoubtedly has the upper hand in the battle for users so far, but don't expect them to end up as winners without a fight.

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What will Wikiasari look like?

Wed, 27 Dec 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Reports that Amazon and Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, will be launching a search engine called Wikisari in 2007 are creating confusion.

On the 23rd of December Techcrunch posted a screen capture of what was thought to be the Wikiasari search engine.

Amongst the comments on the post was one from Jimmy Wales himself, "The screenshot has nothing to do with anything related to the Wikia Search project, which in turn has nothing to do with Wikpedia,"

On Christmas, Michael Arrington updated; "So if Wikisearch isn't Wikiasari, what the heck is it?" In explaining where the original post came from, Arrington wrote, "Our source was good, and I went with it".

Techcrunch's screen shot showed a search engine interface with the logo "Wikisearch" in the top left. The search engine has a small tag cloud across the top of the screen, sponsored listings on the right, wiki links above the organic results and then organic search results in a similar style to Google's. Wikisearch is a search engine.

Wikia's own site describes Search Wikia as a new open source search engine. It supersedes a project known as 3apes which was to have been a directory-style search engine. Search Wikia is both wiki and database of URLs, keywords and other meta content. Search Wikia is a project of two halves; the wiki and the search engine software. It is the search engine software which is called Wikisari. The project itself has no official name but has inherited the moniker Wikiasari from the software half.

Jimmy Wales is creating a for-profit search engine. In an interview with The Times he said, "Google is very good at many types of search, but in many instances it produces nothing but spam and useless crap. Try searching for the term 'Tampa hotels', for example, and you will not get any useful results." The Times article also calls the search engine Wikiasari.

Amazon's involvement is thought to be purely financial, as they are part of the $4m funding Wikia has managed to raise, and Mr Wales has stressed that his project is nothing to do with A9.

One possibility for the origin of the screen capture showing Wikipedia-like design wrapped around a search engine is simply the monetisation of Wikipedia's search functionality. A "web search" extension for the Wiki's "go" or "search" functions would provide a valuable revenue stream for the site.

The original screen capture uses the phrase "Wikisearch" as a logo and it looks likely that phrase will not be synonymous with either Search Wikia or Wikiasari.

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