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Okay, I understand that we’re all trying to “give a jolt” to the economy. But I was still surprised today when Lycos provided a list of Christmas gift ideas two days before Thanksgiving Day. Aren’t we all supposed to wait until Black Friday?

Nevertheless, for shoppers who like planning ahead — or for online retailers and etailers looking for what will be hot this holiday season — Lycos just announced its ninth annual list of the most popular toys and video games, based on web search activity.

(For a complete list and commentary of the Lycos Top Toys and Video Games of 2008, go to the Lycos 50. You can also voice your opinion on this year’s list, and weigh in on weekly Internet trends and pop culture on the Lycos 50 Blog or follow the Lycos 50 on Twitter.)

It shouldn’t come as a shock that Apple’s iPod holds the top spot as the #1 most-searched for toy this holiday season. But this year, the Apple frenzy includes hot-searched items like the iTouch and iPod Nano.

Harry Potter, at #11, makes a fifth consecutive appearance in 2008, with Harry Potter games, books and DVDs dominating Harry Potter-themed searches.

New in 2008 is KOTA, the Triceratops Dinosaur (#15), generating more search interest than Fisher Price’s New Elmo Live (#19). Meanwhile, not so hot in 2008 are Hannah Montana-related toy items, which made a big splash in 2007, but fail to make this year’s list.

Spongebob Squarepants (#14) takes over as the top licensed character-themed toy of 2008. Spongebob was last seen on the Lycos Top Toy list in 2005. And when it comes to dolls, Barbie (#6) continues to reign, extending her run on the annual Lycos list of Top Toys and Video Games to nine consecutive years of appearing in the Top 10. But there’s not enough data on Caribou Barbie to see if that will be a big hit this year — let alone in 2012.

Gaming consoles see a big resurgence in search popularity in 2008, with the Nintendo Wii (#10) capturing the most search interest, generating 25% more search activity than the Xbox 360 (#12) and Playstation 3 (#13). Also seeing a resurgence in 2008 are old school classics like Monopoly (#17), despite the current housing market.

Five of the top 25 toys in 2008 originate from the popular world of anime including Naruto (#3), Pokemon (#4), Dragonball (#5), Inuyasha (#7) and Gundam (#16). Meanwhile, one new toy making the 2008 list may be unfamiliar to most adults, but if search activity is any indication, expect the Bakugan Battle Brawlers (#24) to be flying off the shelves this holiday season.

On the video game front, the massive multi-player game RuneScape (#1) scores big with web users for the fourth consecutive year as the most-searched video game of 2008, while Final Fantasy makes its first appearance on the list since 2005, with Final Fantasy XIII (#3). Also racking up points online, making first-ever appearances on the top video games list, are war-themed games including Call of Duty: World at War (#9) and Gears of War 2 (#14), while Guitar Hero World Tour (#8) and Wii Fit (#15) are the most popular Wii-themed games based on web searches in 2008.

Also new in 2008 are Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 games Fable 2 (#17), Fallout 3 (#18), Street Fighter IV (#10), Dead Space (#19), Far Cry 2 (#22) and BioShock (#25). This also marks the fourth consecutive year the Madden football-themed games fail to make Lycos’s Top Toys and Video Games list.

As for me, I don’t do any Christmas shopping until the very last minute. That way, I don’t have to figure where to hide presents where my three kids (or wife) can find them before December 24th. Yep, when I say “last minute Christmas shopping” I mean last minute shopping. You’d be surprised how simple decisions are on Christmas eve.

I get this question a lot: “Now that I’ve self-published I need to find an agent, how do I do that?” Well, it might seem to be a simple and easy transition. I mean you’re already published so it shoul…
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how to get an agent or publisher for your self published book

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Google and Yahoo have revised their search advertising partnership in the hopes of winning over the DOJ. Primarily, the deal has been reduced from 10 to 2 years and a cap has been placed that would restrict Yahoo to only being able to bring into 25% of their search advertising revenue from the deal with Google.

It’s unlikely that shortening the deal will qualm the fears of advertisers. Robert Liodice, president of the Association of National Advertisers, which opposes the deal, told the New York Times, “If a deal can’t survive long-term scrutiny, what’s the benefit of allowing it for the short term?”

Still, keeping Yahoo alive as the second place competitor in the search market is ultimately good for advertisers. As Mike Masnick over at TechDirt wrote, “We’re still waiting for a clear explanation of how this deal will actually negatively impact consumers, but some people still insist it will. For those who believe so, let’s ask a simple question: how is this any worse than Yahoo disappearing from the marketplace? Because if the company doesn’t do something soon that may be what we’re looking at.”

Online advertising networks are struggling to make ends meet during a tough economy and a slowdown in industry growth. JellyCloud and Adzilla have shut down while AdBrite had to lay off 40% of its staff.

It’s a crowded field with over 300 ad networks, many of them designed to target niche markets. Bigger ad networks, such as AOL’s Platform-A, are experiencing struggles in niches such as auto, financial, and telecommunications.

What do you think of this slowdown? What are your experiences with ad networks? Let us know in the comments.

via WSJ

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The quality scoring system used for search engine ads is based on a complex group and series of calculations that take into consideration hundreds of factors that the search engines won’t reveal. In today’s Profitable PPC column, “Those Mysterious Quality Scores: Fundamentally Simple,” David Szetela points out that you don’t really need to know what those factors are, as long as you create your campaigns correctly and make sure you’re giving visitors what they’re looking for.

» Full story

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Social search engine Scour is now faster. Not only that, there’s a whole host of new things that have been added.

Such as:

• Search speed improved by 80%—For example, a search for “shoes” is averaging .123 seconds with the newly overhauled speed.
• New layout—Limited the top sponsored results and added more listings per page to help users find what they’re searching for quicker and without clutter.
• New search filter—Double click on any word in the results to add or remove the word to your search.
• Open results in new tab—More tabs available for easy navigation.
• Site search from results—Now users can conduct a site search using their current query on any site in the results page.
• Better comment view—Users can better organize comments left by other Scour members
• Enhanced points box—Users can get a detailed snapshot of their total points breakdown with a simple click without leaving the page they are on.

What do you think about the updates? Let us know in the comments.

Related Reading:
Is It Time for Social Search?
Who’s Who in Social Search
Google’s Marissa Mayer Looks Beyond Universal Search to Social Search
Expedia Chooses Baynote Social Search to Improve Site Usability

Today, there are more updates to Google products than you can shake a stick at. So intead of writing a bunch of short, little posts, I have consolidated them into one for you, faithful SEW reader.

Both my awesome husband and my awesome 11 year old son have pointed out to me the new changes to iGoogle. I personally don’t use my iGoogle page all that much (Keepin’ it real [simple]), but I did browse over to it and found some cosmetic changes (The Foo Fighters theme was already there.)

Notice the tab on the left hand side. It includes links to the widgets on your iGoogle page. When you click on one of the links, it switches to a screen with that widget. Some take up the whole page. Others present a list of similar widgets as suggestions. Still others make use of Google reader to present a feed.

Moving on to other Google properties….

Webmaster Tools now testing a Message Center warning that alerts webmasters to possible vulnerabilities with their Content Management Systems (CMS).

Google TV ads has announced new partnerships with COREMedia Systems and Harris Corporation. The COREMedia partnership allows CoreDirect customers to view their Google TV ads right along with their CoreDirect data. The Harris Corp. one adds more inventory for Google TV advertisers.

AdWords has separated the metrics for Google and search partners such as Ask, AOL, etc. This is probably in preparation for the implementation of the Yahoo search advertising partnership.

Last but most important is the changes to the Google algorithm regarding Adobe Flash. Brian Ussery has a writeup about it on his extremely minimalistic-looking blog. Basically, he finds that indexing of Flash still isn’t ready for prime time. I know there may have been some hope with recent news of Adobe working with Google to provide better indexing, but we’re just not there yet, folks.

And that concludes the flurry of Google updates for Friday, October 17, 2008. Leave your thoughts, impressions, etc in the comments!

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