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My 2 featured articles for the week ending June 30, 2005:

Archived blogs for the week of June 27, 2005

917 - June 30, 2005 - 9.29 AM EST

Google risks possible litigation over click fraud

Google could face litigation over some allegations that it neglected to protect AdSense customers from click fraud.

Click Defense, a retailer of online marketing tools, claims that it has lost at least $5mn to click fraud, an industry term for the practice of deliberately clicking on Web advertisements to artificially inflate the figure for the number of times an ad is clicked.

Because Google charges advertisers on a per-click basis, the practice can prove very costly. In some cases companies have even employed people or computers to click on rivals' ads.

Advertisers pay a set amount, which can in extreme cases be as high as $95 per click. Their ads are run alongside standard Google search results, when the search keywords match those that the advertiser has allocated to their ad.

Google relies almost exclusively on ad revenue and rejected Click Defense's claim. 'We believe the suit is without merit and we will defend ourselves against it vigorously,' a spokesman said.

Posted on Businessblog™

916 - June 29, 2005 - 11.02 AM EST

MSN Search best at blocking pornographic sites

According to the Government Accountability Office, porn site filtering and blocking technology used by MSN's search engine is vastly superior than what Google and Yahoo uses.

In the hit Broadway musical Avenue Q, the puppet Trekkie Monster sings the X-rated show-stopper, "The Internet Is For Porn."

Congressional investigators confirm what Trekkie Monster and most Web surfers know--you can easily find porn by using the popular search engines Google and Yahoo. Filtering technology used by MSN Search is more effective at blocking porn images than the filters used by Google and Yahoo, the Government Accountability Office said in a report issued Monday.

The House Government Reform Committee asked the GAO to determine how easy it is to access pornographic files on popular peer-to-peer programs and the risk of inadvertent exposure. In conducting the examination, GAO looked at Google, MSN, and Yahoo, and how well they filtered requests for hard-core content.

MSN uses a filtering system similar to the one used by the peer-to-peer file-sharing program Kazaa, which identifies titles and metadata to effectively block pornographic and erotic images.

Posted on Businessblog™

915 - June 29, 2005 - 10.21 AM EST

AAP asks Google to suspend its plan to digitize books

The Association of American Publishers (AAP) has asked Google to suspend for six months its plan to digitize books from the collections of several major research libraries, thus making them searchable online.

AAP Vice President for Legal and Governmental Affairs Allan R. Adler told the Chronicle of Higher Education that the group made the request in a June 10 letter that stopped short of calling for the project to “cease and desist.”

“We’ve simply asked for a six-month moratorium to facilitate discussion,” said Adler.

Adler said in the June 21 Chronicle that the letter was prompted by AAP members’ concern that they have not “gotten satisfactory answers to their questions about copyright infringement.” It requested a meeting between Google executives and leaders of the publishing association.

Susan Wojcicki, director of product management for Google Print, told the Chronicle, “We have received the letter, and we have read it, and we are in discussions with publishers, authors, and the associate organizations to understand their concerns—to listen to them as well as talk about the benefits of Google Print.”

Posted on Businessblog™

914 - June 29, 2005 - 9.29 AM EST

Google officially launches Google Earth

Google has officially made available its new earth mapping service that uses Google Local Search and relevant satellite pictures to offer users a 3-D view of terrain, streets and buildings.

Google Earth, announced on Tuesday, uses technology from the company's Keyhole division, a satellite mapping service it bought in October. The software for the service can be downloaded free from the search giant's Web site.

Google Earth lets people search for a location to get an aerial view, then zoom in to see 3D images of certain buildings and landscapes in select U.S. cities.

Images can be tilted and rotated. It also offers dynamic navigation and video playback of driving directions. Users can combine multiple layers of information and save their results for later use, Google said. The company already offers local search and mapping services for Web users and mobile phone users.

Posted on Businessblog™

913 - June 28, 2005 - 3.58 PM EST

Google hits all-time high in search referrals

On June 6, 2005, Google’s U.S. search referral percentage hit an all-time high, climbing above 52 percent for the first time, according to WebSideStory.

According to independent research that was collected and analyzed by WebSideStory, Google’s search referral percentage – the percentage of search traffic it sends to other sites on the web – is more than double that of its nearest competitor and culminates a meteoric, four-year rise.

Posted on Businessblog™

912 - June 28, 2005 - 1.02 PM EST

Associated New Media selects Site Search

Fast Search announces today that Associated New Media has selected the Site Search and Sentiment Analysis capabilities of FAST Enterprise Search Platform(TM) for its online travel site, ThisisTravel.co.uk.

As part of the company's plan to enhance the user experience on its ThisisTravel site, ANM required a search solution that would provide search results with extremely high relevance.

In addition, ThisisTravel needed to crawl numerous travel sites and extract specific information on thousands of properties, then add this to the search experience.

ANM wanted to add value to more than 130,000 independent hotel reviews by automatically analyzing the sentiment of each review -- be it positive, negative, or neutral - and displaying a summary of these results to the user.

Initially, ANM anticipated the need to buy multiple solutions to get all of the capabilities they needed - a solution for search and contextual navigation, and another for sentiment analysis.

Instead, FAST provided ANM with a single, yet powerful enterprise search solution that surpassed the site search functionality of its previous search solution and competing solutions, as well as replacing manual hotel reviews with automatic sentiment analysis.

It also provides flexibility and scalability to grow as the site continues its trajectory of success.

"FAST is enabling ANM to offer its ThisisTravel site users new search functionality that offers a cleaner, faster and more relevant search experience," said John M. Lervik, FAST's chief executive officer.

Posted on Businessblog™

911 - June 28, 2005 - 10.27 AM EST

Paid-for search and what it means for media

How much better would your response rates be if every ad you ever placed was directly related to the environment and page it was placed in? Well, of course, you can get that online– it's called search-engine marketing.

Search – and in particular pay-per-click marketing has never been bigger. PPC alone accounts for some 40% of the total spend for online advertising, estimated at £356m for the end of 2005.

According to some figures, online as a whole is more than matching radio for the size of its market, but just PPC search alone has left cinema trailing in its digital wake, and its ad spends are set to get bigger as advertisers see the rewards that can be reaped and how accountable every penny spent really is.

Even with such compelling stats available, there still exists a pervading sentiment of "I never click on a paid-for search listing ad".

Recent research by e-consultancy reported that 92% of UK internet users claim they never click on a paid-for listing.

But when you consider more than 60% of UK search users don't know the difference between paid-for listings and organic listings (free listings), [source: IT Facts], you start to appreciate how confused the original statement really is and that maybe they actually are clicking on the links.

The search model initially developed from the growth of natural or organic search. This was the preserve of the pioneering online boffins who developed web-crawling technology, implemented metatags and all sorts of other crazy things to allow the simple user fast navigation and an invaluable way of identifying individual web pages.

Those pioneers were Yahoo, Excite and Lycos. As the technology developed and the internet matured beyond the stage of a place to simply find out some cool stats and jokes, the commercial possibilities started to flow.

Media owners, in particular Overture – now Yahoo! Search in US – and Espotting – now Miva – saw the value that could be had from guiding the online user direct to the information they wanted and charging the advertiser for bringing them.

Posted on Businessblog™

910 - June 27, 2005 - 5.04 PM EST

Google shares close above $300

On Monday, Google's stock closed above the $300 level for the first time, sparking memories of the dot-com stock mania of the late 1990s.

To be sure, today Google shares closed at $304.10, slightly below its high for the day of $304.30. The stock has now gained nearly 260 percent since it went public last August at just $85 a share.

Posted on Businessblog™

909 - June 27, 2005 - 9.12 AM EST

Google to launch video playback today

Google today is to launch video playback via an in-browser media player feature. Video playback is the latest in a series of steps Google has taken to be a major force in online video, following video search and video storage via submissions.

The logical next step is a tie-in with the Google e-pay system in the wings, the subject of much speculation and a tiny bit of confirmation in the last 10 days.

Of course, this requires yet another media player -- Google has adapted the open-source VLC Player and plans to make its code available for other developers.

Posted on Businessblog™

Copyright © Serge Thibodeau 2005. All rights reserved.

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