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As social applications like Facebook, Myspace, Ning, and dozens of others attain sky high valuations few are focusing much attention on how poorly most of these social networking sites monetize their enormous traffic levels. Microsoft's Emerging Business guru Don Dodge, in an excellent post about Social Networking, notes an example where a Facebook application only manages to generate $6,000 to $15,000 per month revenue with page views of .... wait for it .... three hundred million per month. This disparity is so great I'm wondering a bit about his source for those numbers, but it is certainly clear that social media monetization is no walk in the PPC park. Google's dominance in the very lucrative search pay per click market has made Google the global online advertising leader in terms of advertising traffic and advertising revenue. Despite this success, even Google has been failing to find another holy grail. YouTube may eventually justify its huge valuation in indirect ways, but it does not appear to be a very healthy way to capture revenue for Google or for affiliated video publishers. Likewise Facebook's key advertising revenue has come somewhat indirectly - from a guaranteed advertising deal with Microsoft rather than from clever internal advertising schemes like Beacon, which practically blew up in Facebooks ... own Face when issues were raised over privacy and potential misuses of Facebook user account information. People, and certainly the advertising market, are still adapting to social networking so it is too early to know if social networking will prove to be as fertile a ground for advertisers as search. What is clear is that not much revenue is growing there yet. Labels: Facebook, facebook revenues, Google, MySpace, Search, Social Networking
Google stock soared in after hours trading to over $500 per share after a very favorable earnings report that suggests Google is doing a much better job of pulling revenue out of paid advertising clicks. After hours GOOG showed a gain of over 11% from today's closing price. Reuters ReportsLabels: GOOG, Google, Search, stocks
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo and Google are closer than ever to a deal where Yahoo would outsource their search monetization to Google. Google continues to do a much better job of producing revenue from searches - some estimates suggest that Google gets more than twice Yahoo's revenue per search click. Yahoo also is continuing to negotiate with AOL as part of Yahoo's efforts to stave off a takeover by Microsoft. The Journal suggests that Yahoo's April 22 earnings report may play a key role in the Microsoft takeover argument. If Yahoo comes in with strong earnings it will strengthen the idea that the Microsoft bid is too low, but if earnings are weak it will support Microsoft's efforts to force a Yahoo merger against the will of the current Yahoo board. Disclosure: Long on YHOO Labels: Google, Microsoft, msft, Search, Yahoo, YHOO
A landmark one million dot-ca (.ca) domain names have been registered in Canada. According to the Canadian Internet Registry Authority, the dot-ca represents Canada on the internet and is a means to verify you are dealing with a Canadian or Canadian business online. Dot-ca now reportedly ranks seventeenth in the list of internet domain name registry. Would be interesting to know how many of those domain name owners also registered dot-com (.com) versions of their sites and redirect to their .ca counterpart.  Domain name registrations, in general, are on the rise. As of Dec. 2007, there were 153 million domain name registrations worldwide across all of the top level domain names (TLDs), an increase of almost 33 million domain name registrations since the end of 2006. The total base of country code top level domain names (ccTLDs) was 58 million, a 33 percent increase YOY. Across all of the gTLDs and ccTLDs, .com has the highest base followed by .de (Germany), .net and .cn (China), and .uk (United Kingdom) and .org. tied for the fifth spot with approximately the same number of domain name registrations. (Source: Domain Name Industry Report) But how do cctlds rank on a Google.com search? It seems to make sense that cctlds would rank better on Google's regional/local search engines e.g. Google.ca versus Google.com and would help to serve geo-location relevant search results. In fact, supposedly if you do a Google search in another country, Google is able to anticipate the user's intended destination based on their originating IP address and can determine their location and redirect them to the country specific site - which is a huge user experience plus. And if you don't want to be redirected, you can notify them. Labels: Google Search, Search, websites
The number of searches in the U.S. on the major search engines increased from 9,882 billion in Feb'08 to 10,771 billion in Mar'08 representing a 9% jump. According to comScore, Google sites were the biggest beneficiaries and accounted for more than 6.4 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo sites with 2.3 billion, and Microsoft sites with 1 billion. Google also continued to lead as the top search engine with a 0.6% increase in the share of searches followed by Yahoo, Microsoft and AOL which all experienced decreases in their market share. comScore qSearch 2.0 Report - Total U.S. Home/Work/University Location
Searches Query Volume by Site
Search Entity Feb-08 Mar-08 Mar vs. Feb
Total Core Search 9,882 10,741 9.0%
Google Sites 5,855 6,438 10.0%
Yahoo! Sites 2,136 2,296 7.0%
Microsoft Sites 953 1,012 6.0%
AOL Network 488 512 7.0%
Ask Network 450 503 12.0%
* 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. comScore qSearch 2.0 Report - Total U.S. Home/Work/University Location
Share of Searches (%)
Search Entity Feb-08 Mar-08 Mar vs. Feb
Total Core Search 100.0% 100.0% 0.0
Google Sites 59.2% 59.8% 0.7
Yahoo! Sites 21.6% 21.3% -0.3
Microsoft Sites 9.6% 9.4% -0.2
AOL Network 4.9% 4.8% -0.1
Ask Network 4.6% 4.7% 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.Labels: GOOG, Search
Yahoo and AOL are in discussions to combine their web operations reports the WSJ. The move is aimed at thwarting Microsoft's bid to acquire Yahoo. The terms being discussed between AOL would fold into Yahoo and make a cash investment in return for about 20% of the combined entity. The deal which does not include AOL's dial-up access business values AOL at about $10 billion. Yahoo would use the AOL cash investment and put up additional funds to buy back several billion dollars worth of its own stock at a price somewhere in the middle of the range between $30 and $40 a share reports the WSJ. Labels: AOL, displace advertising, Online Advertising, Search, Yahoo
 Yahoo said it plans to carry search advertising from Google as part of a test that could lead to a broader partnership reports the WSJ. The two-week trial, which will be limited to U.S. traffic and no more than 3% of Yahoo's Web search queries, is designed for the two sides to evaluate the revenue potential of a broader search ad outsourcing arrangement. Yahoo already had been in negotiations to outsource its Web-search advertising in Europe to Google since last year, say people familiar with the matter.  Citigroup Global Markets analyst Mark Mahaney estimates that Yahoo could boost its cash flow more than 25% annually by outsourcing all its search advertising to Google. Some investors have called for Yahoo to abandon its own search advertising system as a quick way to boost its revenue. Analysts predict that outsourcing its search ads to Google would boost Yahoo's cash flow, since Google's system generates significantly more revenue for each search query than Yahoo does. Under such an arrangement, Yahoo would likely garner a majority of the revenue and Google keep the rest as a commission. In a press release, Yahoo said "the testing does not necessarily mean that Yahoo will join the AdSense for Search program or that any further commercial relationship with Google will result. " Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has previously said "We believe having a principal position in both search and display advertising is critical to creating...long-term shareholder value". Labels: displace advertising, Google, Online Advertising, Search, Yahoo
 Web advertising stimulates off-line sales and in most cases, online campaigns increase sales more at advertisers’ retail cash registers than on their websites, according to a report by comScore. The data was gathered by observing the behaviors and purchase patterns of over two million people that had installed comScore's tracking software on their PCs. The conclusion was that online advertising influences consumers' behavior A study conducted for a retailer with more than $15 billion in annual revenues (most from their store) revealed that U.S. sales increased by 40% online and by 50% off-line among people exposed to an online search ads and display-ads. The study also found that people tend to respond "with their wallets" more to search ads than to display ads. Search ads are text advertising that appear on search engines based on a search query and only appear after a user has searched for that term. They are generally more costly per impression than are display ads. The study concludes that using both types of ads in one campaign increases sales more than the two, added together, do in separate campaigns. Labels: displace advertising, Online Advertising, Search
 A European Commission advisory body on data protection has said that search engines should delete data held about their users within six months reports the BBC. The proposed rule specifieds that "Search engine providers must delete or irreversibly anonymise personal data once they no longer serve the specified and legitimate purpose they were collected for." Google and Yahoo anonymise user data after 18 months and MSN does the same after 13 months. The body said search companies were not "clear enough" on their data protection policy and the recommendation is likely to be accepted by the European Commission and could possibly lead to a clash with search companies. The recommendation could have broader implications such as getting user consent before serving them personalized advertisements. Peter Fleischer, Google's global privacy counsel, said in a statement: "Google takes privacy incredibly seriously; protecting our users' privacy is at the heart of all our products. It is the reason we were the first company to commit to anonymising our search logs, and also why we dramatically shortened our preference cookie lifetime." Search engines presently collect and store information every search query such as search term, IP address, browser type, time, and number of clicks. The search engines say this information it required to better serve the user. The advisory body said search engine providers had "insufficiently explained" why they were storing and processing personal data to their users and that personal data of users should not be stored or processed "beyond providing search results". The report also said search engines did not need to gather additional personal data, beyond the IP address of a machine being used, in order to deliver basic search results and advertisements. The advisory body said, "Search engine providers mention many different purposes for the processing, it is not clear to what extent data are reprocessed for another purpose that is incompatible with the purpose for which they were originally collected". Thus search engines should not use personally identifiable data to improve their services or for accountancy purposes. Nor should personal data stored for security purposes be used to improve services and if search engines enriched personal data about users from third parties they could be breaking the law unless customers had given explicit consent. It said users should have the right to access, inspect and correct all the personal data about themselves held by search engines, including their profiles and search history. The report issued a set of obligations to search engines firms, including: - Search engines should get informed consent from users if they correlate personal data across different services, such as desktop search
- Search engine providers must delete or anonymise (in an irreversible and efficient way) personal data once they are no longer necessary for the purpose for which they were collected
- Personal data should not be held by search engines for longer than six months
- In case search engine providers retain personal data longer than six months, they must demonstrate comprehensively that it is strictly necessary for the service
- It is not necessary to collect additional personal data from individual users in order to be able to perform the service of delivering search results and advertisements
- If search engine providers use cookies, their lifetime should be no longer than demonstrably necessary
- Search engine providers must give users clear and intelligible information about their identity and location and about the data they intend to collect store or transmit, as well as the purpose for which they are collected
Labels: Google, Microsoft, Online Advertising, personalization, Privacy, Search, Yahoo
Google's newest employees learned on April fool's day that they would no longer have a job. The employess today were assured that it was not a joke but real. Vanity Fair reports that "DoubleClickers’ heads are rolling left and right. Hopefully, Google’s generous severance package—two months pay with an additional two months if you sign a non-compete agreement—will keep them from jumping out the window. Google’s suggestion? Take two months vacation and don’t even think about it. Or start looking now." It is rumored that the entire DoubleClick finance department will be let go. DoubleClick’s U.S. workforce of about 1,500 will be reduced by 300. In a statement, the company said: “Since our acquisition of DoubleClick closed on March 11, we have been working to match and align DoubleClick employees in the U.S. with our organizational plan for the business. As with many mergers, this review has resulted in a reduction in headcount at the acquired company.” Labels: Google, Online Advertising, Search, Search Engine Marketing, Search Engine Optimization
Yahoo announced a new mobile search strategy for Yahoo OneSearch at the CTIA Wireless trade show. Marco Boerries, executive vice president of Yahoo OneSearch said users will get "instant answers to any query, not just web links." This means that search results will expand from traditional hyperlinks into other media. A search for "New York" could yield subway schedules, for example, or a search for local sushi restaurants could bring up available reservations. OneSearch will be incorporating voice-enabled technology similar to GOOG411. "Consumers can search for anything, including flight numbers, locations, Web site names, local restaurants, and more, by simply speaking," according to a report put out by Yahoo. More>>Labels: Mobile, Search, Yahoo
US online social network ad spending is predicted to near $1.6 billion this year according to a survey by eMarketer. The figure includes all forms of advertising appearing on social network sites, including branded campaigns as well as search, video, local advertising and ads delivered via ad networks. According to the survey 29% planned to spend over $2 million, 11% planned to spend between $1 - $2 million, 26% planned to spend up to $1 million and 34% planned to spend less than $300,000. Breakdown of Online Social Network Planned Marketing Spend by Marketers and Marketing Agencies - March 2008 Spending Amount Percentage
$2,000,000 and over 29%
$1,000,000 - $2,000,000 11%
$300,000 - $999,999 26%
$300,000 and less 34%
"At those amounts, social network spending may still be categorized as experimental for many marketers. As in many other developing advertising markets, much of the spending on social networks is driven by leading-edge marketers who are willing to take risks," said Debra Aho Williamson, senior analyst at eMarketer. Labels: Online Advertising, Search, social networks, video
 Google has finally figured out a way to pay for the YouTube acquisition. Video ads, have started appearing on Google's search results page according to a report from Digital Inspiration. Video ads from AT&T appeared on the Google search page for the keyword “phone” - the video clip remains hidden until you click the “Watch Commercial” link. You then get to see the video in a neat drop-down video player. Google is possibly charging higher rates for the video ads since it is served only on-demand when requested by the user. Though these video ads appear with other CPC ads on Google search results, the advertiser will pay when users click to see the video, even if they never click through to the advertiser’s site. Labels: Google, Online Advertising, Search, video
In February, Google Sites extended its share of core searches to 59.2 percent, up from 58.5 percent the previous month. Yahoo! Sites ranked second with 21.6 percent, followed by Microsoft Sites (9.6 percent), AOL LLC (4.9 percent), and Ask Network (4.6 percent). comScore qSearch 2.0 Report - Total U.S. Home/Work/University Location
Share of Searches (%)
Search Entity Jan-08 Feb-08 Jan vs. Feb
Total Core Search 100.0% 100.0% 0.0
Google Sites 58.5% 59.2% 0.7
Yahoo! Sites 22.2% 21.6% -0.6
Microsoft Sites 9.8% 9.6% -0.2
AOL Network 4.9% 4.9% 0.0
Ask Network 4.6% 4.5% 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 9.9 billion searches at the core search engines, representing a 6-percent decline versus January. Each of the five core search engines experienced search query declines as a result of February being a seasonally soft month for overall search activity. Google Sites saw more than 5.8 billion core searches, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.1 billion, and Microsoft Sites with 953 million. comScore qSearch 2.0 Report - Total U.S. Home/Work/University Location
Searches Query Volume by Site
Search Entity Jan-08 Feb-08 Jan vs. Feb
Total Core Search 10,492 9,882 -6.0%
Google Sites 6,139 5,855 -5.0%
Yahoo! Sites 2,332 2,136 -8.0%
Microsoft Sites 1,030 953 -7.0%
AOL Network 514 488 -5.0%
Ask Network 475 450 -5.0%
* 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.Source: comScore
Labels: Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo
 Interesting comment by David Hallerman, senior analyst at eMarketer "Several elements unique to the Internet will support continued US ad spending growth even if other media falter.""The greater ability to measure ads online will likely encourage marketers with reduced budgets," Mr. Hallerman said. "Those same marketers are finding that the audiences they need to target are spending more of their media time on the Web."Search will account for the largest portion of online ad spending in 2008, at 40%. That percentage will decrease slightly through 2012,  when it will account for 37.3% of US online ad spending. Conversely, spending on rich media and video advertising is set to grow as a percentage of online ad spending, rising to 18.5% in 2012 from 10.2% in 2008. Bear Stearns analyst Alexia Quadrani said US ad spending would increase 4% in 2008, up from an estimated 3.3% in 2007. Ms. Quadrani said that, despite fears about the economy, marketers still have reason to spend on advertising. "Many marketers face an extremely competitive landscape with products that aren't very different from those of rivals. They also have raised prices and need to advertise to get consumers to continue to buy their goods." Labels: Online Advertising, Search, social media
 Is Google evolving into a portal? That was the debate at SES New York. Of the 1.2 billion or so search queries on Google during a one-week period in January 2008, 17% of the queries were sent to Google destinations reports James Lamberti, SVP, Search and Media, comScore. "The search result page is beginning to operate as a destination. The consumers are a priority. Not the marketers," said Lamberti. Google sent nearly 400 million search referrals to their own multi-media properties, such as YouTube, over six months. That includes 148 million referrals to YouTube and 173 million to Google Images, the comScore data show. John Battelle, CEO, Federated Media, said "Google's moves, including its purchase of YouTube and use of video overlay ads on that property, suggest the company is rethinking its business model." Battelle also wondered out loud whether Google gives preferential treatment to its own content, such as Google Finance over Yahoo Finance? "It's interesting, if you put in 'stocks,' Google Finance comes up first... It used to be that Yahoo was first," he said.
Jack Menzel, project manager for Google's Universal Search, said the aim is to provide relevance. "We try not to promote ourselves any more than we believe is fair," he countered. "We try to be relevant as possible and not biased toward ourselves." Battelle went on to say exact what most are thinking these day. He said, "You guys are becoming a media company and let's call it that." He went on to say that he had met with comedian Damon Wayans previously and Wayans told him that he's a YouTube partner, has a revenue sharing arrangement, and indicated that YouTube guarantees his channel 60 million impressions. Labels: Google, online services, Search
Google has recently launched the ability to search within a site from the Google search results page. Smack dab in the midst of your search results, you can be served up a search box to directly search the site you are seeking. The idea is to get you to the exact page on the web site.  Labels: GOOG, Google, Search
China's 920 million telephone users have a new way to search online for information. Baidu.com (BIDU) just announced its new voice-activated search. Upon dialing 400 666 8585 the call will be answered by a Baidu engineer who will performance the search and offer search results based on the request. Search results can be provided back to the search requester (user) using voice or sent via SMS to the user's mobile phone. Labels: Baidu, Search
 Baidu (BIDU), China's leading search engine has selected Omniture (OMTR) to provide web analytics and online optimization services. Baidu is looking to improve the advertiser experience by providing better data points on China's fast growing web audience.  Omniture's timing is great because the U.S. economy is slowing and ad spend budgets for ad services, tools and infrasture will follow. By signing up Baidu, Omniture is getting some insulation. Omniture's clients include companies like Microsoft (MSFT), Time Warner's (TWX) AOL, and eBay (EBAY), which have strong presences worldwide. Labels: Search, Web Analytics, Web Optimization
Search engines continue to be the primary way Internet users navigate to key industry categories. Comparing February 2008 to February 2007, the Travel, Entertainment, Business and Finance and Sports categories showed double digit increases in their share of traffic coming directly from search engines.
U.S. Category Upstream Traffic from Search Engines and Google
Percentage Change February 2007 - 2008
Category Search Change Google Change
Health and Medical 43.74% -1% 28.69% -1%
Travel 32.97% 9% 22.17% 19%
Shopping and Classifieds 25.30% 0% 16.26% 6%
News and Media 21.43% 3% 14.04% 6%
Entertainment 23.98% 13% 14.96% 13%
Business and Finance 17.46% 13% 10.97% 23%
Sports 13.53% 14% 8.75% 19%
All figures are based on U.S. data from the Hitwise sample of 10 million Internet users.
Source: HitwiseLabels: Google, Search
Hitwise, just released searches traffic for February 2008. Google accounted for 66.44 percent of all U.S. searches in the four weeks ending February 23, 2008. Yahoo! Search, MSN Search and Ask.com each received 20.59, 6.95 and 4.16 percent respectively. The remaining 46 search engines in the Hitwise Search Engine Analysis Tool accounted for 1.87 percent of U.S. searches.Percentage of U.S. Searches Among Leading Search Engines
Domain Feb.-08 Jan.-08 Feb.-07
www.google.com 66.44% 65.98% 63.90%
search.yahoo.com 20.59% 20.94% 21.47%
search.msn.com 6.95% *6.90% *9.30%
www.ask.com 4.16% 4.21% 3.52%
Note: Data is based on four week rolling periods (ending 2/23/08, 1/26/08; 2/24/07) from the Hitwise sample of 10 million US Internet users.
* - includes executed searches on Live.com and MSN Search.
Source: HitwiseLabels: Google, Microsoft, Search, Yahoo
Ask.com is abandoning its effort to compete with Google and will instead focus on a narrower market consisting of married women looking for help managing their lives reports the SF Chronicle. About 40 employees will be laid off as a result. The company will return to its roots by concentrating on finding answers to basic questions - about recipes, hobbies and children's homework. The decision to cater to married women primarily living in the Southern and Midwestern United States comes after Ask spent years trying to build a better all-purpose search engine than Google. Ask ran the Internet's fifth-largest search engine in the United States with a 4.5 percent market share, according to comScore Media Metrix. Google holds a 58.5 percent share. Labels: Internet Marketing, Search
The Wall Street Journal is reporting that Yahoo and AOL's parent Time Warner have stepped up talks over creating an alternative to Microsoft's and Google. The talks center on a deal that would fold Time Warner's AOL Internet unit into Yahoo. If the merger is successful and executed well it could be a strong alternative to Google & Microsoft. AOL has been organizing all their advertising divisions into a single unit to better compete with Google (GOOG), Microsoft (MSFT), Yahoo (YHOO) and ad networks such as Facebook and MySpace. (NWS). Labels: AOL, Search, Yahoo
 Bill Gates will today announce the launch of Search Server 2008 to rival Google's Search Appliance. The software allows users to search files and documents inside their corporate network. However unlikely the expensive Google Appliance which is a box with software, Microsoft will offer the service as a free software download. Yes, you heard that right! No hardware, no packaged software. It will be a web offering featuring online administration, reporting and provisioning features. Essentially, Microsoft is beating Google at it own game with this web offering. Today's announcement targets Google's weak spot - Enterprise. It is also interesting to note that for the Search Server Microsoft's has adopted Google's traditional sales model, that does not require customers to buy expensive hardware, lock-ins and Google has adopted Microsoft's style tactics with the Google Appliance. All Paths Lead To SearchCouple of weeks ago Microsoft announced the purchase of FAST Search, an enterprise search specialist. The thinking is that if customers start using Microsoft's search products on their network they might start using Microsoft's internet search and advertising products. Last week, Google announced a web site publishing tool called Google Sites for enterprise users to set up and run their team collaboration similar to SharePoint, which allows workers to share documents and plan projects on secure web sites. If Microsoft gets traction on the enterprise side and that translates to search traffic on Live.com and ad dollars on adCenter. Then Microsoft would have made inroads into Google's lucrative advertising empire. Google will not sit on the side lines either. Operation Google has begun - the search war is under way. Labels: Google, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Search
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