ArticleSnatch Blog

You are browsing the search results.

Advantages of Modular Own Homes

Twitter Updates for 2008-11-14

links for 2008-11-14

Finding a Good Source For Dropship Suppliers

Rate this: 2.6

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer has responded to Jerry Yang’s comments about being open to a Microsoft acquisition. Speaking to a group of developers in Sydney, he dismissed the option of an outright acquisition, but remained open to a search deal. Though, even that didn’t sound particularly promising:

We made an offer… We made another offer. It was clear that [Yahoo] doesn’t want to sell the business to us and we moved on. We tried at one point to do a partnership around search, not an acquisition. And that didn’t work either, and we moved on… and they moved on… We are not interested in going back and relooking at an acquisition. I don’t know why they would be either, frankly. They turned us down at $33 a share … I’m sure there are still opportunities for some kind of partnership around search.

Of course, all of this has been a game of poker from the start. So, whether Ballmer is truly saying no or simply just waiting to see if Yahoo’s stock drops so low that Microsoft becomes the JP Morgan (Yahoo being the Bear Stearns, of course) remains to be seen.

And why not wait for a merger of Yahoo and AOL and then scoop up 2 competitors for the price of 1 (and a reduced price at that!)?

Microsoft is smart to hold on to its stash of cash while the economy hangs out in the pooper. Sorry, Jerry, but you had your chance.

Friendster has named Google’s regional managing director of South Asia, Richard Kimber, as its new CEO. It has also raised $20 million in funding.

Despite the waning of its popularity in the United States, Friendster is the #1 social network in Asia, and the 9th largest website in the world.

“Friendster is growing at an enormous rate in Asia Pacific and is clearly leading the competition. I believe this is partly because the Internet is transforming the lives of everyone, and it will probably become one of the greatest liberators of our time,” said Kimber. “Utilizing the Internet to connect to your friends is one of its greatest benefits, and is changing the way relationships work globally. With more than 75 million users, it is clear that Friendster has already made a dramatic impact. I look forward to growing our business further as we continue our global growth and strong focus on Asia.”

Related Reading:
Friendster Drops Yahoo For Google
Consumers Ok with Social Ads, But Rarely Find Them Targeted

via NYT

For anyone following the Search Zeitgeist, this is a sad day. Google has just changed updates on Google Trends from hourly to daily.

The change is so new, Google hasn’t even updated its FAQ on Google Trends:

How does Hot Trends work?

Hot Trends reflects what people are searching for on Google today. Rather than showing the most popular searches overall, which would always be generic terms like “weather,” Hot Trends highlights searches that have sudden surges in popularity. Our algorithm analyzes millions of web searches performed on Google and displays those searches that deviate the most from their historic traffic pattern. The algorithm also filters out spam and removes inappropriate material.

For each search, Hot Trends shows related searches, a search-volume graph, and the top cities. We also display news, blog, and web results to help give context about why a search may be appearing on the Hot Trends list today. Hot Trends is updated hourly. You can also choose a date in the past to see what the top Hot Trends for that date were.

It’s a shame Google has made this decision. The company shares very little data about searches done on the search engine. Google Trends was the best way to keep abreast of what captured people’s imagination in more-or-less real-time.

We hope Google didn’t make this change due to our report on glitches in Google Trends or the appearance of spam more frequently in the Google Trends results.

We also hope Google returns Google Trends to an hourly basis before the service comes out of beta.

I have been hearing and reading a lot of reports about decreased income from AdSense. A recent detailed post on the topic was done over at WebMasterWorld.

Barry Schwartz and the SERoundtable crew polled publishers at the beginning of the month and found that 63% have noted a drop in their AdSense income.

Add to that the changes in the T&Cs where sites that don’t meet impression and click numbers will be terminated from the AdSense program and you have some serious changes to the AdSense landscape.

Has Google finally gotten to the point where they feel they can cut back their publishers? Have they started to thin the herd by making the pay outs lower? Or have the bigger publishers started to take all of the higher paying ads, leaving the rest of the publishers a much lower paying pool of ads to run?

Other possibilities are Google is pushing their newer ad styles such as video - with drops in text maybe publishers will feel more inclined to run the other options….

Is Google not getting enough people embracing the new ad types?

Have the little publishers served their purpose now that Google has many of the once suspicious large publishers?

Has policing small sites become too much work?

The future direction of AdSense seems to be changing. Where it now plans to go is something they should be sharing with the people who helped get them to where they are today.

I would love some input…. losing AdSense income, tried the newer ad formats, have an opinion? Post comments here.

Unless you’ve been living in a cave this past week—or at least not reading this blog—you’ve heard about Microsoft’s offer to buy up Yahoo! for $31 a share, for a total of $44.6 billion. John Markoff, of the New York Times, called the moved the “firing the final shot of yesterday’s war”—the war in question being one we all know well: the battle for search advertising.

Nothing could be further from the truth. Buying Yahoo is firing the first futuristic shot in tomorrow’s war; Yahoo! is just the beginning for Microsoft. And the war is not for search advertising space alone; even a combined 34.6% for Microsoft/Yahoo! (assuming no one drops off during the merger) doesn’t compete with Google’s 61% (including its major partners). This deal is about much more.

For one, it is about mobile, one of the last frontiers in which Google’s dominance is still tenuous. Google has spent time and made waves developing the Android mobile operating system, but its mobile offerings are relics compared with the new Yahoo! Go 3.0 and Microsoft’s recently-acquired TellMe service. It’s about emerging ad space, like Facebook—of which Microsoft owns a piece and has a 10-year exclusive advertising deal, beating out a Google bid—and advertising exchanges like Right Media, which was acquired by Yahoo!

Google may have video covered online, as it owns most video streams via its acquisition of YouTube and most video searches via its new integrated search bar and rumors of true frame-by-frame video search being developed. Photos, however, are still fair game, with Yahoo! holding on to more than 2 billion photos via its acquisition of Flickr. Blogging is worth fighting for as well. Blogger.com has been given over to spammers, but Windows Live Spaces and Yahoo! 360 both do well, with 45 million users between the two of them.

Microsoft wants Yahoo! for search, but it recognizes the need to lead in every other emerging online market where advertising dollars can be spent. And that means more acquisitions. And lots more shots fired.

Want a snapshot of the day’s search marketing news? Here we’ve collected today’s top news stories posted to the Search Engine Watch Blog, along with search-related headlines from around the Web:

From the SEW Blog:

• Property of Google? No! The Google of Property
  Just when you thought the days of aspiring Googles had ended, vertical search took on a life of its own.
• Facebook Ads & Applications: Critical SEM Learning Curve
  If your business or agency’s search marketing department has dismissed Facebook applications & paid ads, as outside of your product’s demographic, think again.
• SEW Experts: Inside AdWords and Contextual Advertising: The Tipping Point
  Once the ugly stepchild of online ads, contextual advertising has shed its “remnant inventory” reputation.
• Facebook Drops Another Hurdle
  Still looking for some attention from the social networks? Facebook delivered a new client library on Friday afternoon, which makes your widgets easier to launch in their ecosystem.
• Google Enigma: Code Cracked by Carr
  Nick Carr asks the question every forward-thinking executive has top of mind: Should innovation-minded managers view Google as an exemplar – or a freak?

Click to read the rest of this post…

Still looking for some attention from the social networks? Facebook delivered a new client library on Friday afternoon, which makes your widgets easier to launch in their ecosystem. While this library isn’t exactly the second coming, it’s welcome news.
According to Facebook developer Wei Zu, “This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook [...]

Still looking for some attention from the social networks? Facebook delivered a new client library on Friday afternoon, which makes your widgets easier to launch in their ecosystem. While this library isn’t exactly the second coming, it’s welcome news.

According to Facebook developer Wei Zu, “This JavaScript client library allows you to make Facebook API calls from any web site and makes it easy to create Ajax Facebook applications. Since the library does not require any server-side code on your server, you can now create a Facebook application that can be hosted on any web site that serves static HTML.”

Facebook also encourages developers to install applications outside its domain, which I understand was possible (if more difficult) before this release anyway. Blogger Nick O’Neill is ebullient about the social connections to be made across the web, if you place these applications on your site.

My reaction is just more measured, that’s all. When someone arrives on your site, they can connect with others only if they are signed into Facebook. Will you attract people or turn them off? This entirely depends on your business and whether joining up is an important attribute right now.

Here’s a gameplan for your Facebook interactions. Since the widget hurdle has been virtually dropped, it’s worth thinking about what kind of traffic (or links) you might get from Facebook overall. Like any social network, it’s not under your control — but you should try to become more available and present there. Consider the following approaches for engagement.

Click to read the rest of this post…

Wal-Mart is pulling more than 1,000 magazines from its stores.

Just about every major publisher will be affected. The retailer is thought to be responsible for generating more than 20 percent of all retail magazines in the U.S.
read more

More: continued here
wal mart drops 1000 magazine titlesRate this: 2.5