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Planet
Earth Notes Google Downtime
The world's greatest search engine experienced a bit of an outage recently, and tremors were felt throughout the blogosphere.
Google Patenting Attention Data Display
Is your attention important? Google is patenting the display
of it, the search engine journal is reporting today.
Microsoft
Adds To VoIP Repertoire
As part of their latest online initiative for extending
Microsoft services to the masses through Windows Live
and Office Live, the software giant announced today their
acquisition of Swiss software company...
Teens
Do Lots Of Content Creation
Pew Internet and Life said in a recent report that 57
percent of teens now create Internet content, whether
it is a blog, a web page, or simply sharing offline content
online.
Democrats
Apply Election Laws To Bloggers
Political bloggers beware. Democrats on Wednesday halted
a bill designed to amend election laws to exempt bloggers
from massive federal election regulations.
Yahoo!
Local Events Browser Demo
One of the coolest things I've seen recently came out
of a small group of hackers in the Search group at Yahoo.
Yahoo’s
New Pretty Maps Are Doomed
Has Google disrupted the businesses of Yahoo and Microsoft?
Yes! It got me out of bed to write this post.
AOL
Confirms Discussions with Search Engines
Two weeks ago, AOL CEO Richard Parsons dismissed speculation
that his company, part of the Time Warner media empire,
was in negotiations with Yahoo, MSN and/or Google.
Google
Personalization Goes Global
Personalized home pages have been limited to the United
States until recently, as Google has expanded the number
of countries where they will be available.
Marketing
Thy Blog
Katy Whitton has a few basic tips on making one's blog
a more appealing one for visitors, and pulling in those
sweet advertising dollars.
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Bill Gates thinks that users should benefit from using one search
engine or another, and predicts price competition could emerge
as engines bid for users.
Editor's Note: Bill Gates calling Google imitative? What do you think? Let us know on WebProWorld.
The interview Gates did with British publication Computing
touched on a variety
of technology topics. For one thing, the man respects Google,
but one will need to find the 'Unimpressed' crayon to color
in his views of the search engine company:
But, while acknowledging Google as ‘a fine company, a serious competitor', he is dismissive of the threat.
"Which Google products are you talking about? Seriously? Other
than search, which are you talking about? Google Talk? Wow. A total "me
too" product. Even Gmail - what is the unique thing?" he says.
We'll revisit his opinion of Google in a moment. But what's
all this about being paid to use a search engine?
As Gates sees it, Google makes about $50 per user every year
from the searches they perform. Being atop the search pile means
there's no competition, and Google's highly relevant results have kept
it there.
 Once
competition does really begin, and one has to believe Gates
means "once we figure out how to out-Google Google with MSN
Search," users will benefit as he said in the interview:
"As
search becomes competitive and people realize that other offerings are
as good, or are even significantly better, there will be price
competition.
"You will get some free content or a check, or some incentive
to use a different search engine. Competition for users has not even
kicked in. I can assure you it will not stay that way."
And he added: "We are going to run some experiments on that in the next year."
Microsoft has a cash pile believed to be worth about $50 billion
dollars. Shareholders have always wanted the company to give some of
the cash back, and Microsoft did finally start paying a dividend in
recent years.
But here it sounds like the company could use some of that to
bankroll a campaign to get users to switch search engines; once its
advertising network gets under way, some of its profits could take over
funding incentives.
Amazon.com offers a small percentage discount on its web site
for users of its A9.com search engine and toolbar. After a certain
number of searches go through A9, users become eligible for a 1.57
percent discount on their purchase. That could pale in comparison to
what Microsoft might offer.
Computing cited a Forrester analyst who doesn't see relevance being pushed aside simply for financial gain:
...Hellen Omwando says the quality of the search results will still be the major factor.
"What is relevant is whether the site is good enough to give
people what they want from a search," she said. "Financial incentives
alone will not be enough."
In the meantime, Microsoft will keep building its search and
prepping its advertising network for debut in the US and elsewhere
(it's running in France and Singapore now). Until then, Gates would
like everyone to pay attention to Google:
And he can't resist one more dig at the world's biggest search engine company.
"Google is great, they are smart people, the press should
continue to feed their arrogance as much as possible," he
says.
About
the Author:
David is a staff
writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Revolution
2.1
By Jim Hedger
The second Internet revolution has clearly started to take shape. Remember the massive changes forecast by hundreds of tech-writers, including myself, for the past two years? While slower in coming than expected, the last critical stage for their mass adoption of these changes, their introduction, appears to have begun. Welcome to Revolution 2.1.
Revolution, according to one definition offered by Princeton University's WordNet is, " a drastic and far-reaching change in ways of thinking and behaving."
Revolutions come in stages, generally brewing for long periods before overwhelming the traditional order with the weight of massive social adoption of new ideas, tools and methods. They almost always stem from increased social or technical knowledge and require the support of a prosperous middle-class majority to fully succeed.
In this case, that majority is the Internet users themselves. The search engines are providing the tools forged by in-house and third party software developers whose creativity formed the framework for the coming changes. Underpinning the revolution is the virtually universal access to broadband, high-speed connectivity in North America and most of Western Europe, Oceania and Asia .
The last thing a successful revolution requires is the need to have one in the first place. Unless a society or economy is horribly oppressed, revolution really is a lot of bother and hard work. Why go to the trouble of establishing a new way of doing things if the old one works?
The current Internet economy works just fine, at least for those
who can exploit opportunities in or around it. A vast improvement
on personal empowerment from the socio-economic order of the
post WW2 corporate-economies, the Internet has provided tens
of millions of people the essential tools to become entrepreneurs
and add value to their lives and their communities.
Read the Full Article
About
the Author:
Jim Hedger is the SEO Manager of StepForth Search Engine Placement Inc.
Based in Victoria, BC, Canada, StepForth is the result of the
consolidation of BraveArt Website Management, Promotion Experts, and
Phoenix Creative Works, and has provided professional search engine
placement and management services since 1997. http://www.stepforth.com/ Tel - 250-385-1190 Toll Free - 877-385-5526 Fax - 250-385-1198
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Analyzing the Jagger Fall-out
As many of you are aware, the most talked-about subject concerning ebusiness has to do with Google's notorious Jagger update. Since knowledge of Jagger was realized, there have been discussion forums galore that have completely blown up with people essentially freaking out by the changes brought about by Google's index "renewal".
In our latest spotlight discussion, poster virtualtraveller
is attempting to take a more levelheaded look at the various
effects of Jagger and what can be done to succeed, SERP-wise,
in such an environment. Be sure and check out Andrew's incredibly
thorough look at the post-Jagger search engine world. It's quite
informative.
|| Chris||
Early
Prognosis of Jagger
OK, we've had two weeks of frantic posts and comments on the forums and plenty of time to analyse what we all think is the significant changes in Google's 'jagger' update.
Let's now try to draw up a definitive list of what appears to have made differences. Although the only comment everyone seems to agree on is; 'what and see, it usually settles down after a month', now is a good time to identify the important changes while they are still so stark and obvious. Later we can perhaps revise these once Google has tweaked the filters and turned down the emphasises.
The following are my observations based on analysing my field
(travel guides/information for a specific popular location,
which has a handful of competing SEO sites, but is mostly a
lesser competitive keyword lexical set.):
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