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My 2 featured articles for the week ending July 22, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of July 18, 2005

947 - July 22, 2005 - 1.44 PM EST

Internet marketers speculating on domain names

Now THAT story really grabbed MY attention:
According to VeriSign, the company that administers top-level .com and .net domain names, the sheer number of websites launched only to test PPC ads from Google and Yahoo is sky-rocketing, and the company has already started in taking appropriate measures to deal with the growing problem.

In fact, VeriSign's chief executive Stratton Sclavos says there are close to a quarter of a million domain names being registered every week for only a few days, while search marketers "analyze and test" the traffic potential of those domains before simply discarding them.

The news came as VeriSign reported a 74% increase in revenue for the second quarter. It came in at $445m. Net income almost doubled to $41m over the same period last year.

Sclavos said that the company will change the way it reports the size of its domain name business, in terms of active registrations, because of the amount of speculation going on. It will reduce the size of the reported registrations by about 2%, he said.

"Names are being bought and then tested against traffic analyzers," Sclavos said. "The ones that can generate more than the $6 or $7 [registration] fee per year are kept, the other ones are returned within the five day grace period."

These speculators basically put up collections of Google Adsense or Yahoo Overture text advertising links that are more or less relevant to the topic indicated by the URL. Whenever someone comes across the site and clicks a link, the owner gets paid.

Posted on Businessblog™

946 - July 21, 2005 - 5.35 PM EST

Google's earnings up 400 percent

Well Google did it again! After today's market close, Google said its quarterly earnings soared 400 percent, fueled by strong growth in its online search advertising revenues.

Google delivered second-quarter net profits of $342.8 million, or $1.19 a share. The company, which has been publicly held since mid-August 2004, had a net profit of $79.1 million, or 30 cents per share, in the year-earlier period.

Shares of Google rose initially in extended trading on the Inet electronic brokerage network, then fell to $305.25 from its Nasdaq close of $313.94, a record high close. Its revenue, which comes almost exclusively from Web search advertising, was $1.38 billion, nearly double the $700.2 million in the year-ago period.

Analysts forecast net earnings on average of $1.12 per share, within a range of 98 cents to $1.27, according to Reuters Estimates. Revenue was estimated at $1.32 billion.

Posted on Businessblog™

945 - July 21, 2005 - 1.40 PM EST

Yahoo started an update last night

Yahoo made changes to its index last night so you should be seeing more of your pages in the index as well as some fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches.

The changes will be a little more intense than the second "weather report" and changes will continue over the next week or two.

Source: From the Yahoo Blog.

Posted on Businessblog™

944 - July 20, 2005 - 10.22 AM EST

Microsoft sues Google on Kai-Fu Lee hiring

Earlier this week, Google announced it is planning to build a new research facility in China and it has hired Dr. Kai-Fu Lee, a former corporate v.p. at Microsoft.

However, there is one hot rivalry between Google and Microsoft at the moment. Microsoft discovered that Google just hired Kai-Fu Lee from Microsoft, while Dr. Lee was possibly still under contract.

Now Microsoft is suing Google and Kai-Fu Lee. The Seattle Times reports that Microsoft lawyer Tom Burt told them that Microsoft knew Lee was going to head an office for Google in China.

However, Microsoft was taken back when they were not presented with a timeline for Lee’s departure and then read about it in a press release issued by Google on Tuesday.

Posted on Businessblog™

943 - July 19, 2005 - 9.33 PM EST

The final results to our survey are in

Our three-week survey is finally completed and all the results are in and they are very REVEALING. Some of the numbers will surprise some of you. I know they surprised me a bit.

Click here to read the results of the Rank for $ales survey on "Where do you Think the SEO and SEM Industry is Headed" for the next 12 months.

It is very good reading.

Posted on Businessblog™

942 - July 19, 2005 - 1.33 PM EST

Blinkx launches RSS feeds for audio and video alerts

Blinkx launches a new feature that will be able to notify users whenever it indexes content that matches a specific search keyword the users previously searched for.

The RSS alert system, called SmartFeed, is expected to go live on http://www.blinkx.tv today. After users enter a search term on Blinkx TV, they will get the option of setting up an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) alert for it.

Blinkx TV delivers the alerts to the user's RSS aggregator service as text links to the multimedia content.

Posted on Businessblog™

941 - July 19, 2005 - 9.59 AM EST

More on the Snap search engine

Back in 1995, when serial entrepreneur Bill Gross proposed a search engine that ranked results based on how much advertisers were willing to pay, some people scoffed.

But the concept developed into a revolutionary idea that turned Internet search engines into massive moneymaking machines.

Now Gross hopes to shake things up again with Snap.com, which is providing another commercial twist on search engines while also promising to deliver more useful results than industry leaders Google Inc and Yahoo Inc.

"We feel there is so much more innovation that can take place in search," Gross said.

"It's hard to say that little Snap will ever beat Google, but I think we can become a viable alternative."

As Snap gears up to shift out of test phase, the search engine's parent company - Pasadena-based Perfect Market Technologies Inc. - has raised $US10 million ($A13.29 million) in a venture capital round led by Mayfield, a Menlo Park firm.

Gross and Snap CEO Tom McGovern intend to use some of that money to spread the word about a system that he believes can deliver better value for advertisers.

Google, Yahoo and other search engines make money by distributing sponsored Web links that are tied to a search query or the content displayed on a page.

Posted on Businessblog™

940 - July 19, 2005 - 8.47 AM EST

Google's market share fell slightly in June

According to comScore Networks, U.S. search data for June showed that Google's market share fell slightly, as Yahoo and MSN both made small gains.

Google's market share of U.S. searches for the month was at 36.9% compared with 37.5% in May, after having an increase of 100 basis points in May.

Yahoo had a 30.4% market share, a gain of 23 basis points, and MSN had a share of 15.7%, a gain of 48 basis points.

Bear Stearns noted that Google's query volume rose 36% year-over-year versus a 28% increase for the industry, outpacing Yahoo's 32% increase but trailing MSN's 42% increase.

Posted on Businessblog™

939 - July 18, 2005 - 9.32 AM EST

Google increasing AdWords cost on irrelevant ads

Google announces it will be raising the price per click of less relevant AdWords ads. Google has announced it will start charging higher minimum bids for keywords for those advertisers whose placements prove less relevant to users.

A “Quality Score” will be associated with each ad, determined chiefly by performance, and the resulting minimum bid for a keyword may change over time.

This simply means that different advertisers will have to pay 1 different price per click at the low end of the keyword bid scale.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

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