Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Latest search engine traffic rankings reviewed
The latest search engine traffic has been released by comScore for January 2010 U.S. Search Engine Rankings
In January 2010, Americans conducted 15.2 billion core searches, with Google Sites accounting for 65.4 percent search market share. Microsoft Sites grabbed 11.3 percent market share, up 0.6 percentage points versus December.
January 2010 U.S. Core Search Rankings
Google Sites led the U.S. core search market in January with 65.4 percent of the searches conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites (17.0 percent), and Microsoft Sites (11.3 percent). Ask Network captured 3.8 percent of the search market, followed by AOL LLC with 2.5 percent.
| comScore Core Search Report* January 2010 vs. December 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch | |||
| Core Search Entity | Share of Searches (%) | ||
| Dec-09 | Jan-10 | Point Change Jan-10 vs. Dec-09 | |
| Total Core Search | 100.0% | 100.% | N/A |
| Google Sites | 65.7% | 65.4% | -0.3 |
| Yahoo! Sites | 17.3% | 17.0% | -0.3 |
| Microsoft Sites | 10.7% | 11.3% | 0.6 |
| Ask Network | 3.7% | 3.8% | 0.1 |
| AOL LLC Network | 2.6% | 2.5% | -0.1 |
* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.
Americans conducted 15.2 billion searches in January, up 3 percent from December. Google Sites accounted for 9.9 billion searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites (2.6 billion), Microsoft Sites (1.7 billion), Ask Network (574 million) and AOL LLC (375 million).
| comScore Core Search Report* January 2010 vs. December 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch | |||
| Core Search Entity | Search Queries (MM) | ||
| Dec-09 | Jan-10 | Percent Change Jan-10 vs. Dec-09 | |
| Total Core Search | 14,737 | 15,167 | 3% |
| Google Sites | 9,688 | 9,920 | 2% |
| Yahoo! Sites | 2,544 | 2,583 | 2% |
| Microsoft Sites | 1,576 | 1,715 | 9% |
| Ask Network | 545 | 574 | 5% |
| AOL LLC | 383 | 375 | -2% |
* Based on the five major search engines including partner searches and cross-channel searches. Searches for mapping, local directory, and user-generated video sites that are not on the core domain of the five search engines are not included in the core search numbers.
January 2010 U.S. Expanded Search Rankings
In the January analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed, Google Sites led the search market with more than 14 billion search queries, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion queries and Microsoft Sites with 1.8 billion searches. Bing experienced large growth during the month with an 11-percent increase in query volume to reach more than 1.5 billion searches. Craigslist jumped one position to #6 with 636 million searches, while Facebook grew to 395 million searches, representing a 13-percent increase from the previous month.
| comScore Expanded Search Query Report January 2010 vs. December 2009 Total U.S. – Home/Work/University Locations Source: comScore qSearch | |||
| Expanded Search Entity | Search Queries (MM) | ||
| Dec-09 | Jan-10 | Percent Change Jan-10 vs. Dec-09 | |
| Total Internet | 22,741 | 23,163 | 2% |
| Google Sites | 14,019 | 14,045 | 0% |
| 10,101 | 10,378 | 3% | |
| YouTube/All Other | 3,918 | 3,667 | -6% |
| Yahoo! Sites | 2,629 | 2,670 | 2% |
| Yahoo! | 2,605 | 2,647 | 2% |
| All Other | 24 | 23 | -4% |
| Microsoft Sites | 1,620 | 1,772 | 9% |
| Bing | 1,399 | 1,549 | 11% |
| Microsoft/All Other | 221 | 223 | 1% |
| Ask Network | 696 | 736 | 6% |
| ASK.COM | 332 | 336 | 1% |
| MyWebSearch.com/ All Other | 364 | 400 | 10% |
| eBay | 680 | 659 | -3% |
| craigslist, inc. | 583 | 636 | 9% |
| AOL LLC | 588 | 576 | -2% |
| AOL Search Network | 325 | 317 | -2% |
| MapQuest/All Other | 263 | 259 | -2% |
| Fox Interactive Media | 424 | 403 | -5% |
| MySpace Sites | 416 | 398 | -4% |
| All Other | 8 | 5 | -38% |
| Facebook.com | 351 | 395 | 13% |
| Amazon Sites | 302 | 238 | -21% |
The key points are that Facebook traffic is still growing with the other largest moves being a surpring drop of traffic to YouTube- down 3% and the amazon group of sites which may be showing the post Christmas blues as they suffered a 21% fall.
Labels: Facebook, Google, search engine marketing, search engines, Yahoo, YouTube
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Tuesday, March 09, 2010
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Monday, March 8, 2010
Social gaming is the new battlefield in the battle for internet supremacy
A Facebook fans page has attracted a huge online following- and is making money for it's owners.
Today, tens of millions of people around the world will log in to Facebook playing Farmville, a cute, colourful game where players take on the role of a farmer — a game whose extraordinary success is forcing many to rethink the future of the internet and social media.
Farmville is a fairly mundane idea, but one that draws heavily on the traditional world of board games for inspiration. Given the task of caring for and expanding their land and livestock, players have a certain number of action points each day, which they can spend on tending the farm. They can even trade with “neighbours” — Facebook friends who also play the game.
The numbers behind this simple concept are huge. More than 80 million people play every month with almost 30 million logging in every day to check the status of their virtual allotment. It is free to play, but consumers can spend real money on virtual goods to use on their farms.
Combined with advertising revenue — including some controversial revenue from advertising deals, which users complain are little more than marketing scams — this makes Farmville into a business worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
For years, games have lain on the periphery of the internet. Playing games online has been popular among young men for more than a decade — but this was never seen as a commercial activity that could have a significant impact on services such as Facebook or MySpace, let alone Google or Apple.
The success of Farmville, to which more than a quarter of Facebook users have signed up, challenges that assumption. Furthermore, it is leading a new wave of online games that are rewriting our most basic ideas about what videogames are, and who plays them.
The most extraordinary statistic to emerge from the research into this fast-growing phenomenon is the profile of the “average” player of social videogames — namely, 43 years old and female. Young men barely get a look in — more than 60 per cent of people playing social games on Facebook are aged between 30 and 60.
What has attracted this surprising new audience to online games? In part, it’s the subject matter of the games themselves — which ranges from Farmville’s focus on nurturing and growing to the addictive puzzles of games such as Bejeweled.
Equally important is the social aspect of Facebook. No longer is playing games a solitary pursuit — instead, it’s something you do with friends, challenging them to beat your scores or collaborating to help each other out.
Half of those who play social games such as Farmville claim that they visit Facebook each day specifically to play. Suddenly, Facebook isn’t just a tool for staying in touch with friends — it’s also a platform for games and entertainment.
While Facebook’s owners are undoubtedly delighted at the success of Farmville, there must also be a sense of unease. After all, with a game this successful now providing so much of Facebook’s traffic, to what extent, exactly, are Farmville’s creators, Zynga, beholden to Facebook — and vice versa?
It’s a sentiment that resonates across the industry. Apple, for years an online gaming ostrich whose Mac computers provided little support for game developers, was forced to publicly embrace gaming last year as it became clear that social gaming was by far the most commercially successful products on the iPhone’s App Store. Microsoft and Sony, meanwhile, have had a foot in the door of the videogames market for years.
This is the new battleground in the war for hearts, minds and wallets being fought between the world’s technology giants. The millions of acres of virtual land being ploughed by Farmville’s players each day are breathing new life into an old adage — where there’s muck, there’s brass.
Labels: Facebook, online marketing, online marketing uk, social media websites, social web marketing
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Monday, March 08, 2010
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Friday, March 5, 2010
Twitter to copy Google's advertising business
Twitter is examining whether to post adverts tied to searches of its social networking website as a means of making money from its business.
Twitter has been working on different ways to generate revenues from advertising over the last six months and intends to use the $100 million it raised in financing last summer to fund this and other potential options, which are still in the process of being developed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, the idea is that if users search under the term ‘laptop’, they could generate an advert from an advertiser such as Dell. Such adverts would only appear in search results, however, and not in regular Twitterstreams.
Adverts would also be based on the standard Twitter format of 140 or fewer characters and be distributed via the third party software and services that use the organisation’s application programming interface to connect to its platform. Participation by service providers would be optional, however, and any resultant revenues would be shared with Twitter.
The organisation intends to work with advertising agencies and buyers to seed the programme, but plans to move to a similar self-service model to Google’s over time.
The scheme is expected to be launched during the first half of this year in pilot mode, but Twitter is currently still trying to work out such details as how advertisers would buy and price adverts. It is also considering how to refine its search mechanism to make it more useful to users.
Another issue is finding ways to gather user data in order to make targeted advertising more meaningful. The model works for Google because it has a reasonable idea of consumers’ identity and intent, but Twitter does not currently require users to provide any personal information when they sign up to its services.
The online search model was pioneered by Google, which now generates 97% of its £18 billion in revenues from advertising. Twitter users currently send about 50 million tweets per day, up from 5,000 in 2007.
Labels: Google, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Friday, March 05, 2010
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Thursday, March 4, 2010
Google search engine optimisation requirements official review
Dr Search's post yesterday in Google's own official search engine optimisation requirements exposed highlighted Google's own internal research into it's website.
Today I'm examining in greater depth the results of that reserach.
The first observation from the 49 page pdf is that metatags in the form of both the titles and descriptions are key search engine optimisation elements.
The heartening point is that Google admits that roughly 90% of it's own pages could do with improvements in these respects.
Nearly a third of it's pages need headings improvements.
Even it's internal text links- a key algorithmic element of Brin and Page's mathematical calculations, need improvements in a third of it's own pages.
Conversely only a third of it's pictures and logos have correct links.
For the full Google report card, please see: http://www.searchclinic.org/google-seo-report-card.pdf
It is 1.64 Mb in size and in PDF format.
Dr Search at the Search Clinic openly lives by the adage- "Give a man a fish and you will feed him for a day, give a man a fishing rod and you will feed him for life."
Yes you can learn and do your own search engine optimisation- but would you rather spend time doing what you do best- building your business or on improving your website?
Labels: Dr Search, Google, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimisation, search engines
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Thursday, March 04, 2010
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Wednesday, March 3, 2010
Google's own official search engine optimisation requirements exposed
Yesterday Google's announced it's own search engine optimisation requirements for it's own site.
Topics covered included- how many of Google's web pages use a descriptive title tag? Do we use description meta tags? Heading tags? While we always try to focus on the user, could our products use an SEO tune up? These are just some of the questions we set out to answer with Google's SEO Report Card.
Google's SEO Report Card is an effort to provide Google's product teams with ideas on how they can improve their products' pages using simple and accepted optimizations.
Google's blog says: "These optimizations are intended to not only help search engines understand the content of our pages better, but also to improve our users' experience when visiting our sites. Simple steps such as fixing 404s and broken links, simplifying URL choice, and providing easier-to-understand titles and snippets for our pages can benefit both users and search engines.
From the start of the project we also wanted to release the report card publicly so other companies and webmasters could learn from the report, which is filled with dozens of examples taken straight from our products' pages.
The project looked at the main pages of 100 different Google products, measuring them across a dozen common optimization categories. Future iterations of the project might look at deeper Google product web pages as well as international ones. We released the report card within Google last month and since then a good number of teams have taken action on it or plan to."
Dr Search wil ge going through the 49 page download and will post back for you.
Labels: Google, search engine marketing, Search Engine Optimisation
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Wednesday, March 03, 2010
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Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Yahoo- 15 years old today
Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic says Happy 15th Birthday Yahoo! and reproduces this message from their founders.
We want to share our pride, gratitude and excitement on this 15th birthday, with all Yahoo! users (600 million of them), customers and partners. It continues to be an incredible ride for the two of us, as well as for thousands of Yahoo! employees we have had the privilege of working with over the years.
We’ve had the unique opportunity to help create an industry and shape the online world, and will continue to focus on the values that brought us here —working hard, having fun, being passionate about your ideas, believing in each other, and always trying to invent the future. And as we celebrate 15 years today, we are even more excited than ever about what lies ahead, and the potential of Yahoo! and the Internet.
Of course, we didn’t set out to start one of the world’s largest Internet companies or be leading a movement that has changed the world. We were just a couple of Stanford graduate students doing our research (supposedly) while our professor was on sabbatical.
More interesting than our research was our total fascination with the web and all the cool stuff it suddenly made available. But it was incredibly hard to keep track of the thousands of great websites sprouting up everywhere. We thought it would be fun to catalog the sites by developing a simple directory. So all this began with nothing more than a hobby to help other early Internet users.
Amazing things happen when we’re doing what’s fun.
We soon learned a huge lesson just as relevant today as then: change and growth on the Internet happen at warp speed—especially if you’re filling a need. With the proliferation of websites and with hundreds of thousands of people accessing our guide, it was simply impossible for us to continue doing this on our own.
Taking big steps takes belief in yourself—and in others.
After many late nights and a lot of pizza, we decided to take the big leap, turn our hobby into a business, raise money and devote ourselves totally to building a company. This was no sure thing. For example, 15 years ago, we wanted a free service that was ad-supported.
But the conventional wisdom was that our business needed to be subscription-based. Few people thought that advertising could be the key revenue generator for the Internet. Of course, the conventional wisdom was wrong and so today we know that August, 1995, the month our first ad went live, was a critical milestone in the history of Yahoo!, as well as the history of the internet.
Focus on the future: it still looks phenomenal.
Internet growth continues to be simply phenomenal, and we’re nowhere near done. Fifteen years ago, there were 18,000 web sites and fewer than 10 million people globally on the Internet—less than one third of a single percent of the world’s population at the time. Today there are more than 200 million websites with 90,000 created daily. There are estimated to be 1.6 billion people on the internet today—about 25 percent of the world’s population.
These numbers are astonishing, but even more important and more exciting is the impact that the Internet is having on so many people around the world. From socio-economic opportunities to more accessible health care to educating the next generation and beyond, the Internet has changed the way we live, work and learn. It has overcome geographic and political barriers and has made it possible for people to raise their voices as they seek greater economic opportunity and freedom. And Yahoo! has been a leader in enabling these tremendous technological advancements every step of the way.
Let’s aim to be even prouder fifteen years from now than we are today!
All this in just 15 years. Yahoo! has been built by thousands of dedicated employees, hundreds of millions of loyal users and scores of advertisers who envisioned a future that was exciting, challenging and at times daunting. To work in the sandbox that is Yahoo! and the evolution of the Internet is truly amazing.
And yet as fast as the Internet and Yahoo! have grown and as remarkably our lives have changed, we are just at the beginning of this great transformation.
The Internet still has enormous and untapped potential. There are billions of more people we need to drive online, and then provide them with relevant content and opportunities that they’ve never dreamed about before.
We are confident that 15 years from today, we will look back in marvel at how far you, and the Internet have traveled in such a short time. Just as we are doing today.
Jerry Yang and David Filo
Co-Founders & Chief Yahoos
From:
Labels: Dr Search, Search Clinic, search engines, Search Marketing, Yahoo
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Tuesday, March 02, 2010
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Monday, March 1, 2010
Out of date social networks sites are harming brands
Eight out of ten multinationals may be using social media, but only twenty per cent are employing the multiple tools necessary to deliver a truly effective communications strategy.
Furthermore, abandoned social networking initiatives can also be damaging - with idle, out of date accounts having a detrimental impact on the brand.
These are the findings of a survey undertaken by PR and communications company Burson-Marsteller, which looked at the use of social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogging among the world’s largest companies.
The study called the 'Fortune Global 100 Social Media Check-up', found that most companies had dipped their toe in the water, "some with a big splash and others with a timid ripple".
But while 79% were using at least one social media platform, only 20% were using all four to try and engage with stakeholders. The report warned, however: "No single social media tool can stand on its own. For a company that wants a truly effective communications strategy, leveraging multiple social media tools for their individual strengths is required."
Another problem was that many organisations had multiple accounts, which included not only the main one controlled by corporate headquarters, but also others handled by local offices and divisions as well as accounts set up for one-off corporate events.
Of those surveyed, some 65% had Twitter accounts, 54% had Facebook fan pages, 50% had YouTube video channels and 33% corporate blogs. But of the companies that were actively engaged in communicating with customers via such channels, each had 4.2 Twitter accounts, 2.1 Facebook pages, 1.6 YouTube channels and 4.2 blogs.
Again the report warned, however, that the situation was generating challenges by "creating mixed messages and tones and by leaving abandoned Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages, which may be detrimental to the brand".
These are the findings of a survey undertaken by PR and communications company Burson-Marsteller, which looked at the use of social networking sites Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and corporate blogging among the world’s largest companies.
The study called the 'Fortune Global 100 Social Media Check-up', found that most companies had dipped their toe in the water, "some with a big splash and others with a timid ripple".
But while 79% were using at least one social media platform, only 20% were using all four to try and engage with stakeholders. The report warned, however: "No single social media tool can stand on its own. For a company that wants a truly effective communications strategy, leveraging multiple social media tools for their individual strengths is required."
Another problem was that many organisations had multiple accounts, which included not only the main one controlled by corporate headquarters, but also others handled by local offices and divisions as well as accounts set up for one-off corporate events.
Of those surveyed, some 65% had Twitter accounts, 54% had Facebook fan pages, 50% had YouTube video channels and 33% corporate blogs. But of the companies that were actively engaged in communicating with customers via such channels, each had 4.2 Twitter accounts, 2.1 Facebook pages, 1.6 YouTube channels and 4.2 blogs.
Again the report warned, however, that the situation was generating challenges by "creating mixed messages and tones and by leaving abandoned Twitter accounts and Facebook fan pages, which may be detrimental to the brand".
Labels: blogs, Facebook, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter, YouTube
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Monday, March 01, 2010
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Friday, February 26, 2010
Buzz causes Google a storm on data privacy worries
Good Customer Service is always the key to profitable businesses. However upsetting loyal users is only part of the danger. Like Microsoft before it, Google also risks antagonising business partners and regulators.
Any move into a new area can now seem like a naked attempt to grab market share, or a defensive gambit to shore up a weak flank.
The warning from Vodafone, for example, is a sign that mobile operators are starting to worry that Google’s dominant advertising business will eventually suck all the profits out of their industry.
That fear echoes the mobile industry’s distrust of Microsoft a decade ago, when it tried to extend its Windows monopoly on to phone handsets.
The warning from Vodafone, for example, is a sign that mobile operators are starting to worry that Google’s dominant advertising business will eventually suck all the profits out of their industry.
That fear echoes the mobile industry’s distrust of Microsoft a decade ago, when it tried to extend its Windows monopoly on to phone handsets.
In a telling moment earlier this week, Google revealed that 60,000 handsets a day are now being shipped with its Android software installed – a rate that exceeds the number of handsets carrying Windows.
For now, the mobile industry has not reacted to Google’s incursions by repelling it: its open-source Android software is viewed as an independent platform to counter giants such as Nokia and Apple, making Google still more of an ally than a threat.
After the rapid changes it has made to correct the missteps in Buzz, the privacy row will no doubt fade and users may indeed see the benefits in a social networking service tied closely to their e-mail.
For now, the mobile industry has not reacted to Google’s incursions by repelling it: its open-source Android software is viewed as an independent platform to counter giants such as Nokia and Apple, making Google still more of an ally than a threat.
After the rapid changes it has made to correct the missteps in Buzz, the privacy row will no doubt fade and users may indeed see the benefits in a social networking service tied closely to their e-mail.
But this week’s developments carry a clear message: if Google wants to keep the goodwill of customers and business partners as it continues to expand, at the very least it must work harder to convince them it truly has their interests at heart- rather than just it's own.
Labels: bing, Buzz, Google, Microsoft, mobile marketing, social media websites
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Friday, February 26, 2010
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Thursday, February 25, 2010
Buzz causes a storm on privacy fears II
Further to my last post on the botched launch of Buzz the fiasco, it has intensified a feeling that has been growing as Google has sought to extend its reach: that it is deliberately using its dominance in one area to gain a stronger foothold in new markets, much as arch-rival Microsoft did before it.
Antitrust regulators have already rebuffed Google’s attempt to forge a deal with Yahoo in search and are investigating its plans to extend its advertising reach into the mobile arena through the acquisition of Admob.
Antitrust regulators have already rebuffed Google’s attempt to forge a deal with Yahoo in search and are investigating its plans to extend its advertising reach into the mobile arena through the acquisition of Admob.
This week, in clearing a rival Microsoft search alliance with Yahoo, the US Department of Justice highlighted the arrangement’s importance in countering Google’s “dominance” of internet search and the advertising that accompanies it.
In any other industry, Google’s conduct would be considered good corporate practice. In the technology world, however, where start-ups with disruptive new products are romanticised and companies such as Apple and Google have built their brands largely on their ability to out-innovate rather than outmanoeuvre their competitors, it is often seen as unimaginative.
For ordinary internet users, there are clear potential benefits from Google’s strategy of extending its influence into more and more corners of the internet – as well as some obvious dangers.
Yet as the Buzz privacy debacle has shown, internet users have different expectations of the different services they use. Trying to merge them can lead to confusion and distrust.
Facebook has learnt this to its cost. In its pursuit of Twitter, where most communication takes place in public, it recently reset some of the default settings for its users so that more of their information appears publicly. As with Buzz, that brought an outcry from privacy interest groups.
In any other industry, Google’s conduct would be considered good corporate practice. In the technology world, however, where start-ups with disruptive new products are romanticised and companies such as Apple and Google have built their brands largely on their ability to out-innovate rather than outmanoeuvre their competitors, it is often seen as unimaginative.
For ordinary internet users, there are clear potential benefits from Google’s strategy of extending its influence into more and more corners of the internet – as well as some obvious dangers.
Yet as the Buzz privacy debacle has shown, internet users have different expectations of the different services they use. Trying to merge them can lead to confusion and distrust.
Facebook has learnt this to its cost. In its pursuit of Twitter, where most communication takes place in public, it recently reset some of the default settings for its users so that more of their information appears publicly. As with Buzz, that brought an outcry from privacy interest groups.
Labels: Buzz, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Twitter, Yahoo
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Thursday, February 25, 2010
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Wednesday, February 24, 2010
Buzz caused a storm on privacy fears
Google has caused a lot of anger since the catch up launch of Buzz it's social networking service.
Launched on February 10 2010, it is meant to give Google a stronger foothold in the booming social networking business, where it is rapidly losing ground to Facebook and Twitter.
Its main effect in the short term, however, has been to stir up an outcry over privacy that the internet giant could have done without.
It has also served to reinforce a bigger narrative about Google that has surfaced in other ways this week. This holds that the company is prepared to use its growing market power as a blunt instrument to muscle its way into new markets – and is not too concerned about whose feet it treads on in the process.
In one sign of these growing fears, even Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone – nominally one of Google’s business partners – raised a red flag over the potential spread of its search dominance into the mobile world. Regulators should take a close look at Google’s massive market share in search, he said, “before it is too late”.
The outcry included an official complaint to US regulators and left Google scrambling to stem the anger, with a public apology and two changes to the service announced within its first four days. In the aftermath of its recent decision to abandon censorship of its search results in China, this looked like another case of testing the limits of the “Don’t be evil” motto, only to later back down.
At the root of the problem is Google’s decision to use Gmail, with its 175m active users, as a launchpad for its latest push into social networking. All users were enrolled as soon as they clicked a link to look at the service, and many found the names of those they corresponded with most frequently by e-mail – usually a private list – became the basis for a public “social network” of contacts on Buzz.
It has also served to reinforce a bigger narrative about Google that has surfaced in other ways this week. This holds that the company is prepared to use its growing market power as a blunt instrument to muscle its way into new markets – and is not too concerned about whose feet it treads on in the process.
In one sign of these growing fears, even Vittorio Colao, chief executive of Vodafone – nominally one of Google’s business partners – raised a red flag over the potential spread of its search dominance into the mobile world. Regulators should take a close look at Google’s massive market share in search, he said, “before it is too late”.
The outcry included an official complaint to US regulators and left Google scrambling to stem the anger, with a public apology and two changes to the service announced within its first four days. In the aftermath of its recent decision to abandon censorship of its search results in China, this looked like another case of testing the limits of the “Don’t be evil” motto, only to later back down.
At the root of the problem is Google’s decision to use Gmail, with its 175m active users, as a launchpad for its latest push into social networking. All users were enrolled as soon as they clicked a link to look at the service, and many found the names of those they corresponded with most frequently by e-mail – usually a private list – became the basis for a public “social network” of contacts on Buzz.
That risked exposing the details of “estranged spouses, current lovers, attorneys and doctors”, according to the complaint to the US Federal Trade Commission from the Electronic Privacy Information Center (Epic), a privacy advocacy group in Washington.
Google executives concede that they did not do enough to warn users that their private contacts would be disclosed publicly. But they put this down to a mistake made in good faith and characterise it as one of the inevitable teething problems of a new online service.
“You can’t incubate these kinds of products in a Petri dish and pull back the covers on a fully baked opus,” says Bradley Horowitz, vice-president of product management for Google’s applications business. “If you look at any company that’s been successful in this space it’s because they have been able to iterate, refine, listen, stumble, dust themselves off, get up.”
However, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of Epic, says that Buzz’s privacy settings were in fact the product of a deep corporate agenda. “The way they could compete was to enlist all their Gmail subscribers. That’s a very clear corporate decision.”
Google executives concede that they did not do enough to warn users that their private contacts would be disclosed publicly. But they put this down to a mistake made in good faith and characterise it as one of the inevitable teething problems of a new online service.
“You can’t incubate these kinds of products in a Petri dish and pull back the covers on a fully baked opus,” says Bradley Horowitz, vice-president of product management for Google’s applications business. “If you look at any company that’s been successful in this space it’s because they have been able to iterate, refine, listen, stumble, dust themselves off, get up.”
However, Marc Rotenberg, executive director of Epic, says that Buzz’s privacy settings were in fact the product of a deep corporate agenda. “The way they could compete was to enlist all their Gmail subscribers. That’s a very clear corporate decision.”
Dr Search will continue my review of Buzz in my next blog posting.
Labels: Buzz, Facebook, Google, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Wednesday, February 24, 2010
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Tuesday, February 23, 2010
Evil let loose after Google's buzz breaches email privacy
Once again Google has breached millions of peoples' personal privacy- this time with the launch of it's new social networking site Buzz.
The launch of the Buzz networking site has backfired badly
On Tuesday Feb 16th Eva Hibnick, a Harvard law student, opened her Gmail account and saw an offer for Buzz, a new service from Gmail’s owner, Google. She wasn’t interested. “I just clicked ‘No, go to my inbox’,” she said. Within hours she and millions of others realised that sometimes no means yes.
Now Hibnick is taking Google to court, and the search giant is left fighting a rearguard action in the latest skirmish over privacy on the internet.
Hibnick, 24, is the lead plaintiff in a class-action lawsuit filed against Google over the launch of Buzz, a social networking service that lets people bring their online connections together to share status updates, videos and photos.
With 146m users, the sheer size of Gmail instantly catapulted Buzz into the top ranks of social networking sites alongside Facebook and Twitter.
As Gmail users were quick to point out, though, they chose to join those networks, while Buzz’s new army was conscripted. The service raided a Gmail user’s contacts book to set up the social network.
The people we contact most frequently are not necessarily those with whom we have the closest relationship. Within hours of the Buzz launch, angry tales were being told of people’s contact details and other information being passed on to the “psychotic” and “abusive ex-husbands”.
Actress Felicia Day, Vi in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, found herself deluged with messages from strangers after posting one message on Buzz. “Buzz things turn up as a message in your inbox? Disabling now. Heart attack,” she wrote. Before Google changed Buzz, some fans would also have been able to see who Day emailed most frequently.
Hibnick and her lawyer claim that information she had a right to consider private had been shared among her Gmail contacts. “I signed up for a private email account, not for a social networking site. They can’t just opt you in,” she said.
“Basically all my email contacts were accessible. Everyone is so shocked that Google would do this.”
Fellow Harvard law student Benjamin Osborn, who is assisting on the case, said the initial problem was that it was not clear what information was being shared and with whom.
Hibnick’s lawyer said Google could face statutory damages of $1,000 per occurrence — a potentially huge sum given Gmail’s size. But he added that the real aim was to force Google to put better checks and balances in place over privacy.
The Electronic Privacy Information Center, the watchdog based in Washington DC, has now asked the Federal Trade Commission to investigate whether consumers were harmed and has asked the commission to demand that Google ask Gmail users to sign up for Buzz instead of enrolling them automatically.
Google moved swiftly to contain the crisis last week, dropping the automatic sign-up and offering clearer instructions on how to opt out of the service and keep messages private.
“We made some mistakes and we accept that,” said Peter Barron, Google’s head of communications. “But if you look at the way we responded, I hope people will see that we reacted quickly to those criticisms and made significant improvements.
“These days everyone leaves a data trail, whether it’s from shopping online, using your mobile phone or doing a search. When you use a credit card you are exposing far more about yourself than in an online search but people generally trust credit-card companies not to misuse their data. At Google, users’ trust is all we have. We take privacy very seriously and build privacy features into all our products based on the principles of transparency, choice and user control.
“Those features were and are present in Buzz, but we accept they could have been clearer. Buzz is not about making private information public unless you choose to.”
Don Cruse, a Houston based lawyer, said that what disturbed him most about Buzz was that it was automatic. In a blog he warned clients, and journalists, that they could end up sharing confidential contacts if they used the service. He said Google was “repurposing old data in a way that flouts our expectations of privacy”.
“People have an expectation of privacy with email. There are lots of famous examples of emails making it to people they shouldn’t have reached. But this was not an accident, it was a deliberate change in structure,” he said.
“The big story is that they wanted to set up a social network, something they have failed to do well in the past. The downside is that they have hurt the Gmail brand.”
The Buzz controversy is unlikely to end in epic fines for Google. Last year Facebook paid $9.5m (£6.2m) to settle a similar class-action lawsuit over Beacon, an advertising system that tracked Facebook users’ online activity outside the site and told other users what they had been up to.
Perhaps more damaging is the damage Buzz has done to Google’s image. John Quelch, a Harvard Business School professor, said it faces two problems in any new venture. “First, Google is a hostage to its publicly stated aim to ‘Do no evil’. That definition of evil is open to considerable interpretation. They have to be very careful that this aim isn’t viewed with cynicism rather than respect.”
Second, Quelch said the execution of Google’s search business is so far ahead of its rivals that people had high expectations of any new service. “They rather missed it on Buzz,” he said.
Dr Search suggests that if the financial penalty is a grand apiece that equates to a worst case scenario of a whopping $146,000,000,000 fine. That's equivalent to roughly it's entire shareholder value.
However even greater reputational damage has been done by reminding everyone that despite it's "does no bad" stance Google has past form on the rough and ready treatment of people's data privacy.
And a wake up call to those of you thinking of joining the GoogleWave- where all of your documents and files sit on their servers. Not just your emails.
Interview with Eva Hibnick on Times Online at:
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/industry_sectors/technology/article7034912.eceLabels: Buzz, Dr Search, Facebook, Google, Google Wave, Search Clinic, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Tuesday, February 23, 2010
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Monday, February 22, 2010
Apple removes 5,000 apps from App Store
Apple has banned thousands of apps from the App Store, blaming inappropriate content for it's censorship.
Apple has removed around 5,000 apps from its App Store, including some that it claims feature "overtly sexual" content.
Dozens of developers received a message from Apple stating that the company was refining the guidelines under which the App Store operates, and that content that it had "originally believed to be suitable for distribution" were now no longer deemed appropriate, following "numerous complaints from customers about this type of content".
Jon Atherton, the creator of Wobble iBoobs, said he had received a letter saying his app was being removed from the store. The letter, from Apple's iPhone App Review team, said that if Atherton made changes to the app so that it complied with the recent changes to Apple's terms and conditions, he could resubmit iBoobs for review.
However, Apple has not confirmed whether it has made specific changes to its App Store rules. Instead, it said it reviews problems on a case-by-case basis.
"Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them," said Apple in a statement. "If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple."
According to AppShopper, which monitors App Store activity, the number of applications being removed each day grew sharply on Feb 17, with a higher-than-average number of removals taking place over the following days.
Industry insiders believe Apple is cleaning up the App Store ahead of the launch of its iPad tablet, which Apple is hoping to promote as a device for families and schools.
But the move has sparked renewed criticism of Apple's already confusing App Store approval process. Last year, the company was criticised for banning the Eucalyptus ebook application, because it allowed users to download the Kama Sutra to read on their iPhone.
Apple has removed around 5,000 apps from its App Store, including some that it claims feature "overtly sexual" content.
Dozens of developers received a message from Apple stating that the company was refining the guidelines under which the App Store operates, and that content that it had "originally believed to be suitable for distribution" were now no longer deemed appropriate, following "numerous complaints from customers about this type of content".
Jon Atherton, the creator of Wobble iBoobs, said he had received a letter saying his app was being removed from the store. The letter, from Apple's iPhone App Review team, said that if Atherton made changes to the app so that it complied with the recent changes to Apple's terms and conditions, he could resubmit iBoobs for review.
However, Apple has not confirmed whether it has made specific changes to its App Store rules. Instead, it said it reviews problems on a case-by-case basis.
"Whenever we receive customer complaints about objectionable content we review them," said Apple in a statement. "If we find these apps contain inappropriate material we remove them and request the developer make any necessary changes in order to be distributed by Apple."
According to AppShopper, which monitors App Store activity, the number of applications being removed each day grew sharply on Feb 17, with a higher-than-average number of removals taking place over the following days.
Industry insiders believe Apple is cleaning up the App Store ahead of the launch of its iPad tablet, which Apple is hoping to promote as a device for families and schools.
But the move has sparked renewed criticism of Apple's already confusing App Store approval process. Last year, the company was criticised for banning the Eucalyptus ebook application, because it allowed users to download the Kama Sutra to read on their iPhone.
However, it allowed Baby Shaker, an app in which players violently shook a virtual baby to stop it crying, to go on sale before hastily withdrawing it.
In the latest round of deletions, Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet, a game for the iPhone and iPod touch, has also been removed from the store, allegedly because the cartoon heroine wears a bikini.
In the latest round of deletions, Daisy Mae's Alien Buffet, a game for the iPhone and iPod touch, has also been removed from the store, allegedly because the cartoon heroine wears a bikini.
Yet the official Playboy app, featuring pictures of scantily clad "playmates", remains on sale, as do dozens of other applications that could be considered to feature "overtly sexual" content.
Labels: mobile marketing, social media websites, social web marketing
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Monday, February 22, 2010
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Friday, February 19, 2010
HootSuite adds social media CRM functionality
Social media dashboard HootSuite has released an upgraded version boasting social CRM tools for marketers and customer support teams.
Already popular for enabling users to distribute messages across multiple social networks, including Twitter and Facebook, the latest iteration features tools to gather intelligence, manage audiences and track campaigns.
Designed to appeal to marketing departments and customer support teams, HootSuite has announced it will enable users to:
* Know your audience by learning who follows you, and who they are via a ‘Friends and Followers’ chart, and by viewing profiles, influence and activity levels.
* Gather intelligence and discover what outreach tactics work best with customer URL parameters which allow deep analysis in Google Analytics and Omniture
* Answer efficiently by building an archive of stock responses to common customer support queries
* Track success by examining click-through rates on messages, examining time and region breakdowns and reporting as CSV for custom reports or PDF for printing
"In the last update, we added Wordpress, URL previews, and trending topic details, but we didn't rest in the nest," said HootSuite President Ryan Holmes. "With the new version, marketers can hone tactics with deep campaign tracking and reporting tools.
Further, the friends and followers charting features will help everyone build the relationships which make social networking tools so useful."
Dr Search handles a growing number of Twitter, Facebook as well as Google accounts. So the growing idea of one contrilling panel appeals to us.
Labels: Dr Search, Facebook, Search Clinic, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Friday, February 19, 2010
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Thursday, February 18, 2010
Social web marketing suggestions
On Tuesday Dr Search posted- Few online shops have social networks media, but the majority of UK shoppers buy from them.
More than two thirds of all UK online shoppers use social media, with Facebook being by far the most popular but half of top online retailers have a minimal or non existent presence social media presence.
When we reported on the findings of a poll among 10,000 visitors to the UK’s top 40 e-commerce websites undertaken by ForeSee Results, an organisation that measures online customer satisfaction.
The main conclusion was get a Facebook page Now!
With follow up suggestions of:
- Make sure you have someone to monitor it and post good, timely information.
- Promote it to your most loyal customers through your regular communications venues (emails, ads,
stores, coupons, etc.).
- Use your Facebook page to post promotions and product information.
Easier said than done admittedly. There are a lot of ins and outs to social media strategy and the right formula will differ for each company. But for those retailers who have a poor to middling presence on Facebook, it’s a good place to start while you figure out how social media plays into your global brand strategy.
However here’s a truly revolutionary idea: DON'T listen to all of these ideas and opinions about what your customers and prospects want based on over 10,000 online shoppers of 40 of the biggest online retailers in the United Kingdom.
Instead ask your own customers what they want.
- Find out what social media sites they frequent.
- Find out whether they want sales or coupons or technical support or product information.
- Find out how satisfied they are with your current social media efforts and
- How likely they are to purchase, return, and recommend your business as a result of your interactions.
There’s a lot about social media and online marketing initiatives that is really hard to work out, but asking customers what they want from you is a truely great marketing initiative.
Labels: Dr Search, Facebook, online marketing, online marketing uk, Search Clinic
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Thursday, February 18, 2010
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Wednesday, February 17, 2010
Few online shops have social networks media, but the majority of UK shoppers buy from them
More than two thirds of all UK online shoppers use social media, with Facebook being by far the most popular but half of top online retailers have a minimal or non existent presence social media presence.
These are the findings of a poll among 10,000 visitors to the UK’s top 40 e-commerce undertaken by ForeSee Results, an organisation that measures online customer satisfaction.
The study indicated that of the 69% of online consumers who use social networking sites, about 37% opted to ‘friend’, ‘follow’ or ‘subscribe’ to retailers, with more than half of such respondents doing so in order to learn about their products.
A further 40% did so to learn about special deals, while only 6% used social media primarily to obtain customer support.
About 56% of all online shoppers used Facebook, however, with the figure jumping to a huge 80% if the focus was narrowed to regular social media users.
This would appear to imply that the site is the best place to reach shoppers in both categories, not only because they are there already, but also because it appears that many are keen to hear from chosen brands.
Despite such findings, an unofficial look at the Facebook pages of the top 100 online retailers indicated that a quarter had no official presence and a further quarter had less than 10,000 followers.
In a further note of caution, nearly three quarters of social media fans chose to ‘friend’ or ‘follow’ less than five organisations, with only 4% interacting with more than 20. This means that the majority of online shoppers give very few retailers any air time.
Kevin Entell, vice president of retail strategy at ForSee, said: "Site visitors who also interact with a company on a social media site are more satisfied, more committed to the brand, and more likely to make future purchases from that company."
But there was a chicken and egg situation taking place, he added. "It is likely that customers who are more satisfied and loyal to begin with are the ones who will friend us on Facebook or subscribe to our YouTube channels," Entell said. "However, research shows that when retailers provide rewarding social media experiences, our customers become even more satisfied and loyal."
The results were backed up by another poll from digital marketing agency dotCommerce among 100 UK retailers. It indicated that a mere 42% of UK retailers had a social media presence, with only 12% using more than one site.
Of the retailers using such sites, only 24% had a Facebook presence, while 26% preferred Twitter. They preferred to employ the latter to keep consumers aware of product updates (73%), push out marketing messages (63%) and company news (58%).
Dr Search asks if you one of the three quarters being left behind by the social web marketing growth? If so and you would like some help- please just ask here now!
Labels: Dr Search, Facebook, online marketing, online marketing uk, Search Clinic, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter, YouTube
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Wednesday, February 17, 2010
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Tuesday, February 16, 2010
Mobile firms unite to offer mobi apps applications
Twenty four of the largest phone operators have banded together to challenge Apple's dominance of mobile apps applications.
The Wholesale Applications Community, as it is known, aims to make it easier for developers to build and sell apps "irrespective of device or technology".
The alliance, which includes Vodafone, China Mobile and Sprint, has access to more than three billion customers.
Analysts said it was an attempt by operators to "regain control of apps".
The app market is currently a lucrative business for mobile firms.
Analysts at Gartner have predicted that spending on the specialist pieces of software will hit $6.2bn (£4bn) this year with the number of downloads rising to 4.5 billion from 2.5 billion last year.
It predicts that downloads will top 21 billion by 2013, yielding almost $30bn.
Apple currently dominates the app market, with more than 3 billion downloaded from its app store in 18 months.
Blackberry, Google, Nokia, Symbian and Microsoft all offer their own app stores.
As a result, developers often have to create different versions of apps and go through separate approval processes for each individual store.
The Wholesale Applications Community aims to overcome this fragmentation by offering a single "open platform that delivers applications to all mobile phone users".
It aims to develop a common standard for applications in the next 12 months.
As well as the 24 network operators, the work is also supported by hardware manufacturers such as LG Electronics, Samsung and Sony Ericsson, as well as industry body the GSM association.
The consortium's approach to simplify application development and distribution is echoed by software firm Adobe.
The company has announced that it will begin to offer its AIR platform on mobile devices, starting with phones running Google's Android operating system.
AIR is currently available on desktops and allows developers to build desktop applications for services that are more commonly found in the browser.
For example, there are a number of Twitter applications that use AIR. Until now it has been unavailable on smart phones.
The technology could make it easier for developers to create and publish apps that can run on many different platforms at the same time.
Apple has traditionally spurned some Adobe software - such as Flash - on its iPhone.
However, Adobe has now built a tool that allows developers to build an app for phone running AIR and easily publish a slightly different version which should also run on the iPhone.
Dr Search notes that the implications are clear for online businesses if you don't already have a version of your website that is mobile compatible- do so in the next 12 months as your competitors are already.
Labels: Dr Search, mobile marketing, online marketing, online marketing uk, Search Clinic
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Tuesday, February 16, 2010
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Monday, February 15, 2010
Fundamental flaws found in UK's chip and pin security systems
Cambridge University scientists have discovered a fundamental design flaw in the UK's chip and pin credit card readers raising worries that the defects could be exploited to perpetrate fraud on a massive scale.
More than 90% of point-of-sale card transactions in the UK are now conducted using chip-and-pin systems, according to the UK Payments Administration, which represents the interests of payment card companies. In 2008, plastic cards were used to make 7.4 billion purchases, worth a total of £380 billion.
But Cambridge academics have now found a way to trick the system into thinking that the correct pin number has been entered by exploiting the way that remote readers communicate with the main shop terminal.
Flaws in the Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) protocol, which enables chip-and-pin transactions to be validated, means that third party devices can be introduced between the readers and terminals to intercept communications.
Such breaches are known as "man-in-the-middle" attacks and would allow fraudsters to use stolen credit or debit cards by simply entering four zeros. The cards tested were issued by Barclaycard, the Co-op Bank, the Halifax, Bank of Scotland, HSBC and John Lewis.
Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University told the BBC’s Newsnight programme last week: "Chip-and-pin is fundamentally broken. We think this is one of the biggest flaws that we’ve uncovered – that has ever been uncovered – against payment systems, and I’ve been in this business for 25 years."
The researchers, who have already contacted the banks about the problem, said that the programming skills required to build a ‘man-in-the-middle’ device were relatively simple.
But the UK Payments Administration rejected the conclusions found in their paper entitled 'Chip and PIN is Broken'. It said that there was no evidence that such attacks were not happening in UK stores today, although the research would help it to evaluate the direction in which criminals may move.
More than 90% of point-of-sale card transactions in the UK are now conducted using chip-and-pin systems, according to the UK Payments Administration, which represents the interests of payment card companies. In 2008, plastic cards were used to make 7.4 billion purchases, worth a total of £380 billion.
But Cambridge academics have now found a way to trick the system into thinking that the correct pin number has been entered by exploiting the way that remote readers communicate with the main shop terminal.
Flaws in the Europay, Mastercard and Visa (EMV) protocol, which enables chip-and-pin transactions to be validated, means that third party devices can be introduced between the readers and terminals to intercept communications.
Such breaches are known as "man-in-the-middle" attacks and would allow fraudsters to use stolen credit or debit cards by simply entering four zeros. The cards tested were issued by Barclaycard, the Co-op Bank, the Halifax, Bank of Scotland, HSBC and John Lewis.
Ross Anderson, professor of security engineering at Cambridge University told the BBC’s Newsnight programme last week: "Chip-and-pin is fundamentally broken. We think this is one of the biggest flaws that we’ve uncovered – that has ever been uncovered – against payment systems, and I’ve been in this business for 25 years."
The researchers, who have already contacted the banks about the problem, said that the programming skills required to build a ‘man-in-the-middle’ device were relatively simple.
But the UK Payments Administration rejected the conclusions found in their paper entitled 'Chip and PIN is Broken'. It said that there was no evidence that such attacks were not happening in UK stores today, although the research would help it to evaluate the direction in which criminals may move.
Dr Search has long known of flaws, not only in the chip and pin process, but more fundementally in the UK banking system.
UK banks have repeatedly failed to state in a UK court of law that their offline systems are 100% secure. So how can an online system be 100% secure? Until such time as the UK banks finally make their systems secure or they admit to errors we suggest that you don't trust your bank.
Labels: Dr Search, online marketing, online marketing uk, Search Clinic
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Monday, February 15, 2010
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Friday, February 12, 2010
Dr Search lectures at University of Gloucestershire
Dr Search the Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic yesterday gave a talk to MBA students at the University of Gloucestershire on the subject of Managing Online Customer Relationships for social media marketing.
Dr Search commented- "It's amazing the lack of online marketing knowledge of really intelligent people."
Over a century ago Lord Leverhulme the founder of Unilever worked out that he wasting half of his marketing budget.
The Search Clinic has saved one of our clients over 93% of his pay per click budet- and still get the smae amount of traffic.
If you would like some help with your online marketing, please just click here now- online marketing.
Labels: Dr Search, Search Clinic, social media websites, social web marketing
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Friday, February 12, 2010
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Wednesday, February 10, 2010
Facebook is the new threat to Google
Facebook is now sending more traffic to US news sites than Google- as the proportion of traffic from Facebook has tripled while that of Google News stayed static.
More people are coming to US news sites via Facebook and other social networking sites such as Twitter – supplanting Google News, which had been one of the primary sources of readers, according to research by the metrics company Hitwise.
During the past year, the proportion of traffic that Facebook sends to US media sites has tripled from around 1.2% to 3.52%, while that sent by Google News has remained roughly static, at around 1.4%, says Heather Hopkins, North America analyst for Hitwise.
The growing power of Facebook also means that publishers which want to demand money from – or alternatively to lock out – Google News because of claims that it "leeches" on their content could do so without fearing a dramatic impact on their reader figures.
With more than 400m users, Facebook forms the newest – and most unexpected – threat to Google, say some analysts.
Last weekend the search engine spent $5m on a TV advert during the Superbowl, puzzling many who do not see a threat from rival search engines such as Microsoft's Bing, which has less than half of its proportion of search queries.
But Hopkins notes in a blogpost for Hitwise that: "Facebook could be a major disruptor to the News and Media category. And with the Wall Street Journal already publishing content to Facebook, perhaps the social network can avoid the run-ins that Google has suffered recently with Rupert Murdoch. We will continue to watch this space."
Murdoch's editors and executives have repeatedly criticised aggregators such Google News, claiming it is leeching off their content by displaying snippets of their work. In the UK, the Murdoch-owned titles have gone as far as blocking access to their sites by Newsnow, a smaller news aggregator.
Eric Schmidt, chief executive of Google, has argued that publishers should take advantage of the traffic that it sends them – pointing out that it sends about 4bn such links per year.
But Facebook provides the perfect counterweight, where publishers can choose how much of their content they display and view how well it is followed. Sites such as Facebook and increasingly Twitter contribute hundreds of thousands of visits every month to UK sites, according to analysis by the Guardian.
John Minnihan, the founder of the software code respository Freepository, warns that Facebook poses one of the biggest threats to Google on the web. "With recent data showing a large uptick in 'Facebook as home page', [Google] may well indeed need to remind emerging generation who/what it is."
"In that case, the [Superbowl] ad makes some business sense. Whatever the real reason, it has nothing to do with 'sharing video more widely'. If FB dev'ed an integrated web-wide search engine, think about how much traffic would evaporate [from Google] overnite. That's nightmare stuff."
Tellingly, Minnihan's comments were made on Twitter — which Google is rumoured to be trying to compete with in a "social version" of its Gmail webmail product.
Google has already tried – and failed – to create a world-scale social network with its Orkut product, but been obliged instead to purchase access to Twitter's search results to provide real-time insight into what people are talking about.
Facebook's content however lies beyond its reach – and that could be crucial in the forthcoming months as news publishers in the US and UK consider putting up higher paywalls or demanding money from aggregators.
Dr Search found the social media news story on the Guardian's website at:
Labels: bing, Dr Search, Facebook, Google, Search Clinic, social media websites, social web marketing, Twitter
# posted by Dr Search- Principal Consultant at the Search Clinic : Wednesday, February 10, 2010
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