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Google
Grabbed 46 Percent Of Search
The November 2005 figures from Nielsen//NetRatings on search share didn't change
a bit from the month prior, as nearly 70 percent of searches passed through Google
or Yahoo.
Nielsen
Snags Blogosphere Data Monopoly
By acquiring a majority stake in Intelliseek (which publishes BlogPulse), plugging
that data into Buzzmetrics, and dubbing it Nielsen Buzzmetrics, Nielsen parent
VNU effectively cornered the market on blog data.
White
House Seeks Google Records
A scenario long feared by privacy advocates over Google's voluminous storage of
millions of pieces of information on user searches arose as Department of Justice
lawyers asked a federal court to compel...
Two
Analysts Raise Google Concerns
After a year-plus of nearly continuous share price increases matched by equally
lofty financial reports, a couple of stock market analysts think it's time to
sell Google investments.
Google
To BellSouth: Nuts!
The search advertising company is not talking to telecom companies about paying
them extra for bandwidth, and has no intention of paying for tiering their traffic.
One
Million Facts On MSN Search
The MSN Search team did something more remarkable than plug in about a million
more facts into the Instant Answers feature set: they updated their blog!
Yahoo!’s
Job Hunting With The Stars
How would you like your résumé looked over with a fine-toothed comb
by former White House silver-tongued spin doctor Ari Fleischer?
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The habit of going to a search engine has become so ingrained a behavior for Internet
users that many input names like eBay or Yahoo into a search box instead of the
address bar of the browser.
Using search engines to get to top destinations works fine for users, but how
does it impact you as a site publisher? Tell us at WebProWorld.
 A
lot of users have home pages set to various portals, like Yahoo or MSN or Google,
all of which contain a handy search box on the page. To get to a well-known destination
like online auctioneer eBay, quite a number of those users type eBay into the
search box, hit Enter, and then click on the link to the site that appears on
the search result pages.
Market researcher Nielsen//NetRatings noted in a statement on its MegaView Search
for November 2005 how the top ten search terms in all were top-level dot-com domain
names. Ebay and Google took the top two spots with each garnering over 13 million
requests. Yahoo and eBay appear twice in the list, by themselves and with the
.com appended to the term:
Why does this happen? Nielsen//NetRatings thinks it reflects the importance of search to web surfers:
"There are two types of online searchers that type a Web site's URL into a search engine rather than into the browser's address bar: Those inexperienced enough not to appreciate the difference between the two, and those that are so experienced they have become habituated to using the search engine as their portal to the Internet," said Ken Cassar, chief analyst, Nielsen//NetRatings.
"Whether this behavior is driven by ignorance or savvy, the end result is the same: The search engine is the focal point of the online experience for Internet users across the spectrum."
Requests for the term 'ebay' hit 13.871 million in November 2005, and 'google' followed at 13.301 million. No other term topped 8 million requests for the month, with 'yahoo' typed in 7.997 million times, 'mapquest' 7.431 million, and 'yahoo.com' 6.528 million.
Using the search box is just easier, no matter how experienced the user. Newcomers or people who see the computer and the Internet as just another utility probably never have typed a term into the address bar of their browser and hit CTRL-Enter (IE) or Enter (Firefox and Opera) to get to eBay or Yahoo. And they don't care to do so.
Microsoft has IE respond differently than either Firefox or Opera, regarding address bar behavior. Put 'ebay' into the IE6 address bar, or any term, and hit Enter.
Instead of being delivered to eBay.com, IE6 sends the user directly to MSN Search
results. Eventually, users can find ebay.com as the top organic link, but it appears
under a block of sponsored links at the top of the page.
About
the Author:
David is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Stanford: SEMs Are Getting Screwed
 By
Jason Lee Miller
Search engine marketers that don't know what they're doing are getting ripped
off in keyword auctions, according to a new study released from Stanford Graduate
School of Business. The researchers claim pay-per-click engines like Google and
Yahoo! have modified an older bidding model to maximize profits.
In addition to "unsophisticated bidders" overpaying in the current auction, more experienced ad buyers waste a lot of time and money trying to beat the system and outdo competitors.
The Stanford team says that while inexperienced SEM's are overpaying and experienced SEM's are misappropriating their energies, revenues from keyword auctions have earned Google more ad revenue than any newspaper chain, magazine publisher, or TV network.
The study was conducted at Stanford by researchers hailing from Stanford, Harvard, and Berkeley graduate programs. They suggest that the current mechanism could be adjusted to create an auction that better serves advertisers. That adjustment is unlikely, however, as it may not necessarily benefit search engines financially.
"At the very least, we want to educate advertisers about the fact that in some
sense they are being taken advantage of. Under the current mechanism, if they
don't think carefully about their bidding strategies, they can end up paying a
lot more to the search engines than they need to," says researcher Michael Ostrovsky,
assistant professor of economics at Stanford Business School.
Read
the Full Article
About
the Author:
Jason is a staff writer for WebProNews covering technology and business. |
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Moving Beyond "About Us"
Are there alternatives to About Us pages? Like Dcrux says below, many web sites
are made up entirely of About Us information, so what other strategies should
you consider when developing content for the biographical section? Would you consider
a "Why Choose Us" page in lieu of the standard "About Us"?
This is definitely something to consider. Drop
by the thread and share your thoughts.
|| Chris||
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Write 10,000 lines of code in 10 minutes!
Iron Speed Designer – Free
Evaluation |
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About
Us pages that work
About Us pages really don't appeal to me, yet they are generally popular. However howies manages to get away with an about us section, so there are exceptions. Utterly typical otherwise, this hosting provider differentiates with a Why Choose Us page. This law firm gets that it is not really about "Us".
Unfortunately for too many sites, every page is an "about us" page.
Care to share any About Us, Why Choose Us or interesting alternatives that work for some user purpose?
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WebPro Question: |
How do you feel about the Google Mini upgrade program?
- brian.mark
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