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CitySquares Acquires Online Retail Directory Yokel.com

Nathania Johnson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 18:30:30 +0000

Local search site CitySquares has made a very cool acquisition. They’ve purchased an online retail directory, Yokel.com.

Yokel is designed to help you find which local stores carry specific products or brands. It was the brainchild of Scott Randall and Don Zereski and launched in 2006.

CitySquares has been one of the fastest growing local search engines. It began in the Northeast and quickly expanded nationwide. Acquisitions such as Yokel will help advance CitySquares’ place in the fast-growing local search landscape.

Searches for ‘Apple Tablet’ on the Rise

Nathania Johnson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:59:10 +0000

After years of speculation, Apple is finally expected to unveil its new tablet product at the end of the month. There is great anticipation over the new device, with rumors, predictions and punditry littering the blogosphere.

Apple fanboys and girls can’t get enough. They’re turning to the search engines to gobble up any ounce of information about the new gadget. Hitwise has the data:

Google Adds Fast Flip to News Homepage

Nathania Johnson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:30:44 +0000

If you go to Google.com/news and scroll all the way to the bottom, you’ll now see Fast Flip. This is a visual-based news platform that was launched into Labs last September. It’s designed to enable users to read the news similar to how they would a print edition – there are pages, that you flip through.

Google was keen to point out that Fast Flip remains in Labs. But it is a feature that is quickly growing. Last month, 55 resources were added to Fast Flip.

This does appear to be an attempt by Google to coddle traditional news publishers. Many of them are losing ad revenues and subscriptions due to the dang internet. Perhaps displaying the news online in a format that mimics print will allay fears. It will only do so if adopted by web users, however. And for that, we shall see.

Google Shows How People Have Been Searching

Chris Crum — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:00:10 +0000

Before 2009 came to a close, Google provided a look (as always) at the most searched for terms of the year. It showed the top ten fastest rising and fastest falling terms on both a global scale, and in the U.S. Globally, "Michael Jackson" was the fastest rising, while "Beijing 2008" was the fastest falling. In the U.S., "Twitter" was the fastest rising (just above "Michael Jackson", and "John McCain" was the fastest falling (just over the Olympics).

Google has now shared some other interesting facts related to search behavior over the course of 2009. These are:

- Proportion of Google users in the U.S. making over one query per day: 7 out of 10

- Proportion of Google users in the U.S. making over 10 queries per day: 1 out of 7

- Fraction of Google queries, duplicates excluded, never seen before: More than 1/3

- Fraction of Google queries, duplicates included, never seen before: More than 1/5

- Country with the greatest increase in Google web search traffic in 2009 vs. 2008: Indonesia

- Approximate percentage of Internet users in Indonesia: 11.1%

- Average amount of time it takes a user to finish entering a query: 9 seconds

- Average amount of time it takes Google to answer a query: Less than 1/4 second

- Number of search quality improvements made by Google in 2009: 540, ~1.5 each day

Proportion of Google result pages that show a map in search results: 1 in - 13

- Average increase in driving distance on weekends vs. weekdays on Google Maps: 11km

- Median distance from a user's location to ice skating rinks found on Google Maps: 30km

- Median distance from a user's location to ski resorts found on Google Maps: 300km

Google notes that most of the stats are based on U.S. traffic during weekdays. World Bank, World Development Indicators are cited for the Indonesia stats.

Statistics like these provide for an interesting reflection of search on a broad scale. Those directly connected to the search and marketing industries may sometimes have a hard time stepping out of the box and looking at things from the average person's perspective. Information like this kind of puts thing into that perspective.

For example, it's hard for me to imagine a weekday where I would make less than 10 queries in a day, but according to Google, only one out of seven make over 10 per day. Does that make search any less of a factor? No. It doesn't have any effect on the importance of being there when consumers do search.

Related Articles:

> Google Year-End Zeitgeist Published

> Bing Searches in 2009

> Google's Year in Custom Search

Kiss Your Phone Leads Goodbye

Tim Ash — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:30:30 +0000

Landing page optimization (#lpo) can be a powerful way to increase conversion rates and to get more people to complete online forms.

What you do after the form-fill can be even more important.

If your next step is to follow up over the phone, you are probably kissing away money and costing your company a fortune – unless you dial the phone within five minutes…

Delaying your first-dial response time from 5 to just 30 minutes decreases your chances of qualifying the lead by 21 times!

Even delaying the first-dial from 5 minutes to 10 will cut your lead qualification percentage by a factor of four.

This information comes from a joint study between M.I.T. and InsideSales.com (download the whitepaper)

How much effect does a 21x increase in qualification have on the overall sales revenue of a
company?

How many companies understand the importance of this strategy?

There is no excuse for not having a fast first-call time with power dialers from InsideSales.com natively integrated into CRM platforms like SalesForce.com.

So get off your butt, and on the phone – the clock is ticking…

German Justice Minister Likens Google To “Giant Monopoly”

Doug Caverly — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 16:00:55 +0000

Germany’s justice minister is less than happy about the direction Google’s headed. Sabine Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger thinks the search giant may become a monopoly, and she’s not of a mind to sit by while that happens behind closed doors.

Germany has often posed something of a problem for Google. It never won the right to the name “Gmail” in the country, faced criticism over Chrome, and was forced to change its Street View data deletion practices. YouTube’s been the subject of complaints, too.

Now it looks like another battle might be brewing. According to Reuters, Leutheusser-Schnarrenberger told German magazine Der Spiegel in reference to Google, “All in all, what’s taking shape there to a large extent is a giant monopoly, similar to Microsoft. My initial response is not to ban something or stop something. But I do want to create more transparency and ensure that users know what is going on with their data.”

She then continued, “I think the companies have an obligation here, and a lot of things ought to be improved. If that doesn’t happen soon we may have to take action as legislators.”

Given how battles in Germany tend to go for Google, the company’s no doubt hoping it doesn’t come to that.

BetOnSports CEO Sentenced To Prison

Mike Sachoff — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:30:47 +0000

David Carruthers, the former director and CEO of online sports wagering firm BetOnSports, was sentenced to 33 months in prison on Friday, the Justice Department announced.

Carruthers, a citizen of the United Kingdom, was hired by BetOnSports founder, Gary Kaplan, in 2000 as CEO of the online wagering company, which was based in Costa Rica.

"The prosecution and conviction of Carruthers is significant to the Government's efforts at enforcement of U.S. laws against offshore Internet and telephone sports wagering businesses, because Carruthers was both a foreign national and a top executive of BetOnSports," said Assistant U.S. Attorney Steven E. Holtshouser.

"Previously, executives, owners and investors believed that they were immune from the reach of U.S. law enforcement; even their business plans were directly aimed at the U.S. market. Both the conviction of, and sentence handed down against Mr. Carruthers should send a message to any foreign business conducting illegal activities in the United States, that geography does not render it untouchable."

Carruthers was arrested in Texas in July 2006, and pleaded guilty to racketeering charges linked to BetOnSports operations in the U.S. Carruthers agreed to cooperate with U.S. authorities.

The sentencing concludes a lengthy investigation and prosecution effort by several law enforcement agencies, the Justice Department said.

Enterprises Seeing Increased Complexity at Data Centers

Chris Crum — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 15:00:59 +0000

Symantec has put together its “State of the Data Center” report, which is the product of a survey of 573 businesses in 26 countries.

“Although mid-sized enterprises tend to evaluate and adopt new technologies at a faster rate than larger organizations, they still face similar data center complexities that are compounded by adopting new initiatives,” says Deepak Mohan, senior vice president, Information Management Group at Symantec. “Standardizing on cross-platform solutions that can manage new technologies and automate processes will drive immediate cost reduction and make their jobs easier in the long run.”

Symantec cites the following as highlights of the survey:

- Mid-sized enterprises are adopting new technology initiatives such as cloud computing, replication, and deduplication at 11-17 percent higher rates than small or large enterprises.

- Most enterprises have 10 or more data center initiatives rated as somewhat or absolutely important and 50 percent expect “significant” changes to their data centers in 2010.

- Half of all enterprises say applications are growing somewhat/quickly and half are finding it difficult and costly to meet service level agreements (SLAs).

- One-third of all enterprises say staff productivity is hampered by too many applications. Adding to the complexity is the continued increase in data causing 71 percent of organizations to consider data reduction technologies such as deduplication.

- Security, backup and recovery, and continuous data protection are the most important initiatives in 2010, ahead of virtualization. Eighty-three percent of enterprises rated security somewhat or absolutely important. Seventy-nine percent said backup and recovery is somewhat/absolutely important and 76 percent rated continuous data protection as one of their top initiatives.

- Staffing and budgets remain tight with half of all enterprises reporting they are somewhat/extremely understaffed. Finding budget and qualified applicants are the biggest recruiting issues. Seventy-six percent of enterprises have the same or more job requisitions open this year.

- One-third of disaster recovery plans are undocumented or need work and important IT components, such as cloud computing, remote office and virtual servers are often not included. Almost one-third of enterprises haven’t re-evaluated their disaster recovery plan in the last 12 months.

- Virtual machine protection continues to be a focus for enterprises, with 82 percent of enterprises considering virtual-machine technologies in 2010. Respondents cited granular recovery within virtual machine images as the biggest challenge in virtual machine data protection.

The security company recommends that businesses employ software that supports heterogeneous environments and eliminates islands of information, and deploy deduplication closer to the information source to eliminate redundant data and reduce storage and network costs.

Symantec also highlights the importance of disaster recovery planning, saying enterprises should seek to improve the success of testing by evaluating and implementing testing methods that are non-disruptive.

French Govt. Wants To Tax Online Ad Revenue Generated From Thier Country

Frank Watson — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:30:27 +0000

The French government is working on a tax plan to charge online advertising revenue generated from actions within their country, Clickz reported Friday. Just how they would determine the numbers will be interesting to see.

” A report presented to the French government this week suggests that each time an ad is clicked, online firms should be charged a levy of between one and two percent of the revenue generated, which would then be used to compensate media and content owners in other sectors, such as recorded music or print media, for example.

The proposal, commissioned by the government, was written by former music executive Patrick Zelnik, former minister Jacques Toubon, and the president of Sotheby’s France, Guillaume Cerutti. It singles out a number of major online ad firms including Yahoo, Microsoft, and search giant Google. According to the Guardian, Toubon told the Libération newspaper in France the aim of the proposal was to curb “the limitless enrichment” of the world’s leading internet players,” ClickZ stated.

The scope seems to be broader than PPC generated revenue and considering people spend money to get placement in the organic results and make money from the traffic it could become a tax on all search engine activity.

As SitePoint asks “how can the Government monitor sponsored links when they are clicked by French users? ISPs could be forced to implement link monitoring software but that’s a huge and costly undertaking. In addition, how would revenue amounts be associated with each link? Click costs can vary from a fraction of a cent to hundreds of dollars.”

Forcing ISPs to monitor the clicks and then determining if income was generated would be hard and then getting companies that have no offices or servers in France would create even more challenges.

Google Tries to Carve Out its Place in Mobile

Chris Crum — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 14:00:07 +0000

Arguably the biggest news in the tech industry so far this year, has been Google's launch of the Nexus One smartphone. The company rocked the mobile space when it announced that it would be selling the device on its own without the need of a carrier contract (although such contracts are available). The device has come under fire from some consumers, who complain about poor 3G connections, as well as customer support issues. It has reportedly been difficult for people to get the support they're after via phone call, with the company apparently preferring online and email support. Google has acknowledged the problems that exist though, and seems to be taking the position that everything will get straightened out, chalking up the trouble to a new way of doing things. One Google spokesperson is quoted as saying: "We've worked closely with our Nexus One launch partners to make support available through a variety of channels. This is a new way to purchase and support a mobile phone, and we're committed to sorting out the few kinks that do exist." Google is advertising the Nexus One hard. For a while, it even had its own spot right on the Google.com home page. As other have noted, the company has been flooding the web with ads for it in general. The Nexus One is only the beginning of Google's mobile plans though. In time, the company will release more devices. WebProNews recently spoke with GoogleAndBlog author Michael Martin about the company's plans in the mobile market (keep in mind this was shot prior to the release of the Nexus One):

The Nexus One has been forecast to sell 5 or 6 million units this year, and generate between $2.6 billion and $3.2 billion. Google is currently selling the phone for $529 on its own, with T-Mobile offering it with a two-year contract for $179. eWeek reports that it costs $174.15 to make, according to iSuppli.