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My 2 featured articles for the week ending August 12, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of August 8, 2005

967 - August 12, 2005 - 1.03 PM EST

Summer vacation time!

Summertime, and the living is easy... as Rogers & Hammerstein's lovely lyrics describe this time of the year so perfectly, I'm leaving for Vermont for a week today so I won't be posting any updates during this period.

Also, please note that our SEO Weekly Newsletter won't be published tomorrow and next Saturday, August 20. I will certainly return rested and with a clear mind ready to tackle the daily challenges of SEO and SEM.

Have a great weekend everyone. I'm off to the beautiful Green Mountains of Vermont!

Posted on Businessblog™

966 - August 12, 2005 - 12.12 PM EST

Local search increasingly getting popular

The ability to search locally in your neibourghood for specific types of products and services is getting increasingly popular and may very well be living up to its expectations real soon.

To date, between the major search engines, Yahoo’s Local Search is leading the way and setting the mold for local business listings with customer reviews, enhanced business listings, and locally targeted advertising.

Local search is anchored by traditional search engine offerings like Yahoo and Google Local.

However, these services are using an integrated method of ranking based on business listings, yellow pages info, business site information, links, and data centers such as Acxiom and InfoUSA. According to Hitwise, Yahoo Local had over 4 times the traffic than Google Local in July 2005.

Google Local is growing fairly rapidly however, as Google Local’s market share increased 61% between February 2005 and July 2005, while Yahoo! Local grew 14%.

Hitwise explains that “Google Local’s catch-up is occurring amidst the growth of Google Maps which has quickly grown…. Maps have proved important to local search users, as 17% of Yahoo! Local’s visitors went directly onto Yahoo! Maps in July 2005.”

Besides Google and Yahoo - MSN, AOL, Ask Jeeves, and even Amazon.com have entered the market with strong local search products.

The local search market, however, is still young and open to domination by other innovative search offerings (although Yahoo should continue to thrive with its huge registered user base).

One of the companies which is about to make a big splash in the local search pool is Interchange. Interchange has entered the local search market with a strong brand and local offering, Local.com (the domain name was bought last year for $700,000).

Posted on Businessblog™

965 - August 11, 2005 - 8.43 AM EST

Yahoo acquires Alibaba.com for 1 billion cash

Yahoo finalized an agreement to acquire 40 percent of Alibaba.com for one billion dollars in cash.

Yahoo wants to increase its Chinese presence, and Alibaba.com is China’s largest eCommerce company. Part of the deal includes Yahoo handing over the running of its China operations to Alibaba, meaning Alibaba.com will run Yahoo China.

The Yahoo-Alibaba deal is now the largest investment by a foreign company to break into China’s 100 million Internet user market (second only to the US).

This creates a $4 billion e-commerce giant out of Alibaba, which will now compete directly with eBay and Google over the Chinese Internet market.

Posted on Businessblog™

964 - August 9, 2005 - 8.43 AM EST

Baidu.com's stock soars

Baidu's stock soared as much as 26 percent in its second day of US trading. Baidu's stock rallied almost fivefold on Aug. 5 after its initial public offering, marking the biggest IPO debut in more than five years and the largest U.S. offering of a foreign company on record.

The surge underscores parallels investors drew between Google and Baidu.com's future growth. Baidu.com raised $109 million, 40 percent more than it initially sought, as investors seek to profit from China's 100 million Web users. Google, the world's most- used search engine, owns about 2.6 percent of Baidu.com.

``It's shocking to see a company trading at such a high multiple so early in its life cycle,'' said Paul Bard, an analyst at Renaissance Capital in Greenwich, Connecticut. ``The stock price right now is pretty much implying that Baidu is going to grow 100 to 200 percent a year for at least the next five to 10 years.''

American shares of Beijing-based Baidu.com, each representing one Class A share, jumped $15.36 to $137.90 at 1:58 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market composite trading, with 11.9 million shares changing hands. The stock earlier touched $153.98, giving the company a market capitalization of almost $5 billion.

Posted on Businessblog™

963 - August 8, 2005 - 2.01 PM EST

Online ad spending to reach $18.9 billion by 2010

In five years from now, online advertising is expected to reach $18.9 billion, compared with the $9.3 billion at the end of last year, according to research recently conducted by Jupiter Research.

Jupiter also expects search engine advertising will generate more revenue than display advertising.

Online display advertising is forecast to increase at a 7 percent compound annual growth rate, whereas search is expected to increase at a 12 percent rate.

Posted on Businessblog™

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