Bigmouthmedia search engine news: b2b

Google grabs the wiki with Jotspot

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Search engine Google has added Jotspot to its list of 2006 acquisitions. The wiki application, now owned by Google, was co-founded by Joe Kraus the original president of Excite.

A wiki is a website grown by a community of users. Wikis are a collaborative effort where anyone can create, edit or delete any other page. Jotspot goes an extra mile and offers extra features and plug ins.

Wikipedia, the free online encyclopaedia, is perhaps the most famous wiki but Google's acquisition of the less well known Jotspot is inline with the search engine's usual buying habits. The YouTube deal was unusual; Google tends to buy smaller companies with an interesting idea and talented people. Yahoo has traditionally been the search engine to swoop on more established players (like Flickr or del.icio.us).

A rundown of what Jotspot offers, in addition to the pedigree of the staff, makes it clear why Google snapped up the wiki company.

Microsoft Word style "What You See Is What You Get" editing
Add-on applications
Advanced Search
Email integration

Jotspot falls firmly into the same category as Google Docs and Google Spreadsheets. Jotspot is an online application where the power lies in the application on the server and which users, everyday users, can access via any web browser (be that Internet Explorer 7, Firefox 2 or the next generation of Opera). Jotspot allows users to work together and enhance a single document - just as Google Doc allows.

Jotspot offers up an easy way to manage email lists - a functionality which can be tied to Gmail (or Google Mail as it must be called in the UK), Personal To-Do Lists - a tie in with Google Desktop, Jotspot Spreadsheets - which can now become Google Spreadsheets, a Group Calendar - which can become Google Calendar, a Blog App which could blend with Google's Blogger and a Photo Gallery service ready to be integrated with Google's Picasa and Picasa Web Albums.

In addition to being a hub which Google could hang products from, Jotspot also offers Google a way into new areas - forums, project management software and even a knowledge base.

Writing in Google's Blog Joe Kraus of Jotspot commented; "As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online."

Salar Kamangar, VP of Product Management at Google, followed with a blog comment of his own; "After all, information created by a single user becomes exponentially more valuable when it's shared and combined with information from other people or places. We've been tackling this step by step for awhile now, including enabling people to move their calendars, photos and documents onto the web -- unlocking them from one PC or one piece of paper to open up a wide range of possibilities for working, planning, socializing, organizing, and so on."

Salar asked Google's users to stay tuned for more information. For now, however, Jotspot has closed its doors to new users while it begins the process of integrating with Google.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

Google PageRank Update - Page Rank Update and Page Rank Explained

Mon, 02 Oct 2006 12:00:00 GMT

As of Friday a Google PageRank update has been rolling out across Google Data Centres. At present, Page Rank updates are visible at most DC's, but not at every single one; some data centres continue to use a slightly older infrastructure for a few query types, and so will take much longer to update their Page Ranks.

Every quarter, Google takes an imprint of their PageRank internal values and makes them available in the Google Toolbar. The new set of PageRank values replace the last updated page ranks, and these began rolling out on Friday the 29th of September. As of Monday the second of October, most of these Page Rank updates will be complete for various geographic centres from 10.00 GMT.

By way of clarification, PageRank is Google's way of determining a page's importance. It is important because it is one of the factors that determines a page's ranking in its search results. As with anything to do with Google and its various algorithms, there is always a degree of speculation as to what the contributing factors in this determination are. With the example of PageRank, bigmouthmedia knows for a fact the following are key aspects:

Inbound Links - Votes that you have received from other pages
High Quality Sites linking to your site

The above factors are particularly affected by:

The measurable strength of a brand
The traffic that a particular site receives
The quality of the website's design (for example use of pop ups could have a negative effect)
The relevancy (to your site's theme) of the pages linking to your site and the PageRank of these pages

It pays to keep these in mind when considering PageRank in many contexts. Overall, the best advice in assessing PageRank is to ignore it and focus on the variables that control it: for example, keep producing content that other sites want to link to. Page Rank is just one of the many methods Google uses to determine a page's relevance or importance, and is only one component of the larger picture when it comes to achieving Google rankings. The Google PageRank update will be completed within the next few days.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

Salesforce now has a 'GoogleForce'

Thu, 24 Aug 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Salesforce.com has joined forces with Google AdWords to offer a comprehensive on-demand business service to Salesforce's customers. This may be a further Salesforce strength with which the CRM industry will have to contend.

Is it really a "race", or have those companies that have chosen to add paid search optimization, or more specifically Google AdWords, to their business applications already won?

For Salesforce it is surely a case of victory and success. Having already integrated Google's GMail and Google Maps, seeing a 60% increase in stock in the last 12 months and a 64% increase in revenue in the last fiscal year it is a natural progression to accept Google AdWords as part of their available applications. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, reiterated these points earlier this week. The company and its customers will have to be content with their advancement to 6th place in the marketplace - an increase driven by revenue - from its previous 12th place spot.

The San Francisco California customer relationship management (CRM) company, Salesforce, provides on-demand business services, allowing its clients and users to manage and share information easily. Google AdWords further enhances these facilities for Salesforce's customers and its network.

The technology that was created and is referred to as 'Salesforce for Google AdWords', relying on Salesforce's AppExchange platform and discreetly developed and maintained by Kieden Corporation, is a technology and a service this reporter calls 'Googleforce', playing on Salesforce's taglines of 'salesforce' and 'successforce'. It is the epitome of a mash-up, integrating Salesforce's customer management programme with the Google AdWords service; or was the service integrated into the programme? Either way, the mutually advantageous relationship that has resulted in Googleforce allows clients to manage their advertising capabilities through the AppExchange on salesforce.com, or Salesforce for Google AdWords, placing ads alongside their keywords displayed in search results. This is otherwise controlled by the client and therefore means that the service is more streamlined. Benioff is happy to accept that having this control over one's own account will mean there is the prospect to do away with occurrences of click fraud. As a growing concern to pay-per-click customers it is an issue over which Salesforce will surely have to reassure its customers.

Additional benefits to the client surrounding this technology include allowing customers to create advertisements, place bids, supervise the functioning of their ads, and track the results of paid searches and otherwise. The user is effectively empowered to become more integrated with the marketing mix. In this respect, Googleforce users must be trained on how to utilize the system and benefit most from it. Customers will be given a 30-day free trial to start with, and afterwards are offered a promotional £174 ($300) charge per month for the use of this technology. There is also an undefined post-trial cost.

"Equipped with more information, businesses can make better decisions, create more value out of their marketing efforts, and ultimately reach more customers," stated a Google representative, highlighting the usefulness of the Googleforce offering.

Additionally, this opportunity opens up a market for Paid Search organizations which could benefit from those Salesforce customers who may be more willing to outsource or contract this responsibility. It provides more opportunity to SEO and new media marketing agencies like Bigmouthmedia, and creates greater scope for the expansion of the industry.

Now that Google AdWords has been implemented it is within Salesforce's range to incorporate Yahoo!'s emerging paid search technology. The former, maintaining 85% of search advertising was, rightly, a priority. Customers and the industry will be watching closely to see if Salesforce continues its current growth pattern.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

Offline advertising shifts online

Fri, 04 Aug 2006 12:00:00 GMT

There is no doubt that advertisers have caught on to the lucrative opportunities that have become available through online marketing channels. This realisation has lead to a large scale migration of advertising spending away from more established media formats such as television towards more web based marketing.

While the percentage of new internet users and online buyers may now be increasing at a relatively slow rate, the increase in the number of literate young adults and the spread of broadband access has lead to massive rises in online sales. Internet advertising allows for more specific targeting of prospective customers based on their online usage and search activities, as well as a series of different advertising delivery methods. The advance of online-advertising technology has also enabled marketers to see better how their ads are resulting in sales, which is something advertising with traditional media channels find problematic.

The past couple of years have seen several significant defections from the traditional advertising outlets such as Unilever, who chose to treble their online ad spending, and Visa who cancelled their SuperBowl promotions last year in favour of increased online activity. This trend by large advertisers is supported by Denise Garcia, Internet research analyst with WR Hambrecht + Co, who stated that:

"Procter & Gamble, large auto manufacturers and other companies have said they are decreasing spending on traditional media, like television, in favor of online media."

The Australian brewing company Fosters is the latest major television advertiser to make the shift online in an attempt to capture the internet market, with paid ad placements and a series of internet only humorous video commercials designed to target sites popular with young adult males. SABMiller who own the Fosters brand feel that the beer is perfect for online promotion and has changed the $5million US TV advertising spend over to experiment with online adverts. Ammo marketing director, Gary Stein, said, "$5 million isn't a huge amount of money, but it will probably go a lot further online." As this is only one of the brands owned by SABMiller, it is possible that if this proves a successful experiment, more spending will be channeled online for advertising products such as Miller Genuine Draft, although competitor activity may force the maintenance of a continued TV presence.

As technological changes continue to lead to the creation of new means of online social interaction, the number of targets for marketers is also growing. The escalation of the social networking phenomenon led by MySpace which, while still trying to find its feet financially, is managing to provide another market outlet to be tapped by online savvy companies. It is estimated that despite being untried territory, $280 million will be spent on advertising and marketing on social network sites in the US alone with an additional $70million in international markets during 2006.

Where new technology may lead marketing in the future is unsure, however what is certain is that there appears to be a boom time ahead for online advertising and companies willing to take on this brave new world.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

Microsoft warns Google away from Enterprise Search

Fri, 14 Jul 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Words of warning were sternly issued yesterday by Microsoft's chief operating officer, Kevin Turner.
The message was - keep clear of enterprise search!

Microsoft get tough

At only his second appearance at a Microsoft conference, Kevin Turner addressed a huge gathering of 7,000 business partners in Boston on Thursday. For us in the world of SEO, his most important words of the day were:

"Enterprise search is our business, it's our house and Google is not going to take that business."

This tough talk has come about through Microsoft's intentions to enter a new set of markets over the next 12 months thus branching out and building their business from another angle. Microsoft's intentions are accompanied by a fearsome determination to prevent Google from spoiling their parade. The strong nature of their views on Google is shown in Turner's words. He stated: "Those people are not going to be allowed to take food off of our plate, because that is what they are intending to do."

The market they are talking about is search - from the desktop to the enterprise to the internet. Enterprise search is a business which they believe will come to be of considerable importance. In the past this market has been referred to as Business intelligence: the portal, content management, workflow and collaboration market. Microsoft will tackle the market by releasing the long-delayed Windows Vista operating system, Windows Server operating system, Office 2007 desktop application package, Dynamics Live CRM, and many other products between now and the end of next year. Microsoft believes that these products represent US$20 billion of research and development coming into the market.

Microsoft is also pushing the Microsoft Live rebranding of it's MSN services online.

Microsoft and Google are increasingly seen to be battling in the business software market. The Big Daddy of search has introduced products such as Google Spreadsheets and Google Calendar of which all can potentially threaten Microsoft's desktop application business. They have not, however, spoken of any plans to progress in areas such as word processing.

In recent months Google has indeed unveiled new search appliances but as yet its enterprise search plans remain unannounced.

So what can we expect from here on in? Will Microsoft's tough words be enough to keep Google at bay? This all remains to be seen but there is one thing that we should always bear in mind when these kinds of issues arise - Google are armed with considerable muscle when it comes to market dominance.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

Even Google struggles in the search playground

Mon, 03 Jul 2006 12:00:00 GMT

Search engine listings tend to play hopscotch - even when they're being served by the big boys.

Search engine positions are a little bit like your friends in primary school. They change from week to week, sometimes even from day to day - and sometimes even depending on who's looking. Anyone who's been involved with SEO for a while, whether it be a web professional or an e-commerce webmaster looking to maximise their profit from online sales will be aware of the nervous energy generated while watching your listings fluctuate in the SERPs.

The best approach to monitoring your listings is to be vigilant, never admit defeat and be prepared to become best friends with your copywriter because they have their work cut out for them and probably even deserve a raise - copywriting for SEO is definitely not a walk in the park. It involves trial and error, constant tweaking and plenty of thinking outside the box. Those that are already involved in creating copy for their site will be all too aware that their job never ends.

This week my attention has been brought to an interesting article written by an SEO copywriter who describes an experiment she conducted with keywords on her site. The result being that she brought her site from languishing somewhere in the over 50s right up to the first page. She, of course, admits that site rankings have a lot to do with link popularity and as such did absolutely nothing with links for the duration of the experiment. Her motivation behind the experiment came after she ran a listings report only to find the site was performing rather well for keywords that were nowhere in the copy on the page. Hmmm - that's a bit curious. After some investigation she found said terms featuring in the ALT attributes (text used to describe the informational content of an image) and title tags of the page which lead her to wonder if... (cue Carrie in a Sex in the City moment!) ...despite ALT attributes previously carrying a lot of weight with search engines and then being downgraded due to blatant ALT attribute abuse, have their level of importance been reinstated?

To cut a long story short she surmised that there is no easy answer, no foolproof formula to SEO copywriting. You need a little bit of this and a little bit of that:

"It takes balance, testing and tracking to find out what works for your particular pages [take] one step at a time and trace your progress. Did something cause a positive movement? Keep it. If something causes a negative shift, take it out."

In the immortal words of my copyeditor: here here!

If you ever feel that your one on one battle with the search engines is getting you down, then here is a little something to make you, web professional or interested webmaster alike, feel better. The snap shot below shows that even Google - yes Google! - doesn't have the number one spot on their own search engine for the very key phrase 'search engine'. They rank 3rd and 4th behind Dogpile and Alta Vista of all people.

How is this so I hear you cry? They barely have a market share between them in term of users so how on earth do they pip the master to the post? We thought it might be in terms of link popularity - nope Google has around 1.6 million back links and Dogpile has a measly 88,400. Yahoo! doesn't even feature in the top 10 and they have almost 1.3 million links pointing into the site and a page rank of 9, which certainly equals Alta Vista and is higher than Dogpile. Back to the drawing board...

Eureka! We may have cracked it. What do Dogpile and Alta Vista have in common? They were both search engines back in the days when Google was a mere twinkle in the eyes of some scruffy students, and was not a verb but a way to describe someone with eyes wide open in a crazy fashion. Dogpile was the original Meta Search Engine when 'meta' was commonly known as a prefix to many words rather than a word itself. They have history, they have trust. These factors remain hugely important factors in search engine rankings. Your site needs to have consistency, reliability, stability and, it seems, a history. Have we ever told you about the story of the marathon and the sprint?

Well, don't lose hope people, and hone your patience skills - SEO is the marathon, it's the long term goal. It's a battle of endurance and the staring down of failure - but the rewards are so sweet. Hang on in there people, and remember, SERP results can change for myriad reasons, not least because of testing on the part of the search engine in question. Hold off those knee-jerk reactions and hunker down for the long-term.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia

LookSmart unveils 161 new search engines

Thu, 03 Nov 2005 12:00:00 GMT

[Press Release]

LookSmart(R) (Nasdaq:LOOK) (ASX:LOK), an online media and technology company specializing in vertical search, today unveiled 161 new vertical search sites in a variety of categories, delivering consumers relevant search results and advertisers a more qualified customer. Categorically focused and demographically defined, the sum of 13 vertical categories and 181 total sites makes LookSmart the largest single provider of vertical search destinations on the Web. The Company's "brand promise" is to provide consumers with essential information for passions, needs and repetitive tasks encountered in everyday life.

Where Consumers Look for What They Need

Like Cable was to television, vertical search is the Web's next logical step. Consumers embrace many media choices and integrate them into their lives, creating a desire for "vertical" services and content.

"It was clear to us that consumers want a trusted brand to provide vertical search and content so they can truly find what is essential and not exhaustive for subjects that are critical to their lives," said David B. Hills, president and CEO of LookSmart. "We've designed the sites and functionality to augment what consumers do with more generalized and portal services."

For each vertical category, LookSmart has developed an array of niche sites. For example, LookSmart's Money web sites include: mutual funds, real estate, retirement, savings, stocks, taxes and more. Unlike many other sites, content and articles found on LookSmart's vertical search sites are freely accessible and from a wide variety of sources.

Categorically and Demographically Targeted Sites for Advertisers

LookSmart's expansive set of sites make it simpler and easier for advertisers of all sizes to locate the audience they are after and effectively meet their online marketing goal. Advertisers can now reach these highly targeted audiences with search ads, banners and other creative formats.

"Few people thought that Cable would transform the television industry like it did. They thought the consumer and advertiser would not adopt and embrace vertical alternatives," added Hills. "The online medium and search in particular have these same elements. LookSmart is in a unique position to lead this evolution of consumer and advertiser choice on the Web. I'm extremely proud of the LookSmart team and we all look forward to this new chapter in our company's development."

Within each vertical site relevant content is broken out first by topic, then by source, and all information is compiled to suit the visitor's needs. On LookSmartFamilyMeals.com, a parent can find content on a wide variety of realistic "family friendly" recipes and cooking information such as: "quick cook," "cooking for kids," "breakfasts" and even as exact a search as "chicken dishes" for kids with particular eating habits.

Visitors to any LookSmart vertical site will find relevant articles, blogs, news and Web results delivered within a robust tool set that allows them to find what they want, save what they need and share with other like minded people, without lengthy registration or personalization.

The LookSmart-branded vertical search categories of sites include:

- Auto (www.looksmartauto.com)

- Cities (www.looksmartcities.com)

- Education (www.looksmarteducation.com)

- Food (www.looksmartfood.com)

- Health (www.looksmarthealth.com)

- Home Living (www.looksmarthomeliving.com)

- Money (www.looksmartmoney.com)

- Music (www.looksmartmusic.com)

- Recreation (www.looksmartrecreation.com)

- Sports (www.looksmartsports.com)

- Style (www.looksmartstyle.com)

- Tech and Games (www.looksmarttech.com) and

- Travel (www.looksmarttravel.com)

Which? way now?

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 12:00:00 GMT

Online shoppers have long been used to the familiar 'Web Trader' logo visible on many UK based sites, as a mark of trustworthyness and good practise.

But, from today, the Consumers' Association is to cease its Which? online Web Trader service, which it offers online retailers to use as a quality mark if they meet and maintain set standards, because it claims the service is simply to costly to run.

However, the consumers group continues to emphasise the importance such quality marks in an emerging market, particularly while consumer confidence is low, and called on the British government to set up a new scheme, preferably across Europe in scope in cooperation with the EU.

With internet trading growing at a staggering 19 times traditional retailing according to the Internet Media in Retail Group, many commentators agree that the need for some from of trade quality scheme is high.

Since the scheme launched, it had validated over 8000 businesses, issuing marks to about a third.

Digg This! | Save to del.icio.us | Reddit | Submit to Netscape | Google Bookmark This | Furl This | Add to Yahoo MyWeb 2 | Contact bigmouthmedia