Google's Personalized Search Shifts SEM Landscape

With the expanded implementation of its Personalized Search, Google has quietly but significantly altered the search engine marketing (SEM) playing field, according to Search Engine Land (SEL).

Because Google now weighs a variety of new and ever-changing variables in determining what to return for a search, some established SEM techniques no longer apply, or at least must be altered.

Google's algorithm now takes into account searchers' click history as well as their Personalized Homepage when it returns search results. The changes are designed to offer results that are more useful to the searcher, with each new user behavior becoming a new factor in future searches.

For search engine marketers that means the days of trying to divine that one secret formula for scoring high among search results are now gone. Now there are an unlimited amount of variations in search results even for a single search term, because search results in part depend on the click history of each user.

Also being factored into returning search results are the types of sites in users' Google Bookmarks, a social tagging tool analogous to del.icio.us. SEL speculates that Google Reader feed subscriptions or feed click history are not being used for Personalized Search, but the RSS aggregator could provide yet another data set for Personalized Search.

SEL provides tips on how best to approach optimization in this new search world, in general ensuring that sites are optimized for Google's services, specifically, and social search and social networking, in general.

Source: http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2007/02/09/googles-personalized-search-shifts-sem-landscape/

World's Oldest Newspaper Goes Digital

AP: Associated Press

Published: February 05, 2007 4:00 PM ET

STOCKHOLM For centuries, readers thumbed through the crackling pages of Sweden's Post-och Inrikes Tidningar newspaper. No longer. The world's oldest paper still in circulation has dropped its paper edition and now exists only in cyberspace.

The newspaper, founded in 1645 by Sweden's Queen Kristina, became a Web-only publication on Jan. 1. It's a fate, many ink-stained writers and readers fear, that may await many of the world's most venerable journals.

"We think it's a cultural disaster," said Hans Holm, who served as the chief editor of Post-och Inrikes Tidningar for 20 years. "It is sad when you have worked with it for so long and it has been around for so long."

Queen Kristina used the publication to keep her subjects informed of the affairs of state, Holm said, and the first editions, which were more like pamphlets, were carried by courier and posted on note boards in cities and towns throughout the kingdom.

Today, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar, which means mail and domestic tidings, runs legal announcements by corporations, courts and certain government agencies _ about 1,500 a day according to Olov Vikstrom, the current editor.

The paper edition was certainly not some mass-market tabloid. It had a meagre circulation of only 1,000 or so, although the Web site is expected to attract more readers, Vikstrom said.

The newspaper is owned by the Swedish Academy, known for awarding the annual Nobel Prize in Literature. But it recently sold the publishing rights to the Swedish Companies Registration Office, a government agency.

Despite its online transformation, Post-och Inrikes Tidningar remains No. 1 on a ranking of the oldest newspapers still in circulation compiled by the Paris-based World Association of Newspapers.

"An online newspaper is still a newspaper, so we'll leave it on the list," WAN spokesman Larry Kilman said.

Source: http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003541952

Krillion Launches First Actionable Local Search Engine

Unique Localization Technology Changes Way Ready-to-Buy Online Consumers Find Stores and Products

MOUNTAIN VIEW, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- February 05, 2007 -- Krillion™ (www.krillion.com), the leader in actionable local search, today unveiled its ground-breaking solution to the problem: why isn't search local today?

Despite the fact that 75% of those who buy big-ticket items do all their research online and make over 90% of their purchases offline, today's search engines typically are unable to find and deliver results pinpointing specific local stores with specific products.

Krillion solves this problem with its unique Krillion Localization Engine™ that scours the Web to find, integrate and present actionable local search results for the ready-to-buy consumer. As of today's launch, Krillion has over 275 million pages of relevant local search results displaying local product information for major appliances in over 40,000 U.S. cities and towns.

"Krillion delivers local search results that combine very specific product information with very specific locality information. These results truly are 'actionable' meaning that when consumers have completed their Internet research, they can grab their keys, hop into the car, drive to the store and buy the product," said Joel Toledano, co-founder and CEO of Krillion.

"We are delivering an inventory of search pages that have never before been available and we see this as a giant step forward for manufacturers, retailers and consumers," continued Toledano.

Category Focus: National Brands, National and Regional Retailers

Krillion delivers search results category-by-category and the first category to be covered is the $18 billion major appliance category: refrigerators, ovens, ranges, washers and dryers, and dishwashers. Moving forward, Krillion will deliver search results for additional categories such as consumer electronics, lawn and garden, seasonal appliances and others. Additionally, Krillion focuses on finding and delivering relevant search results for national brands that are sold by national and regional "big box" retailers. This focus enables Krillion to efficiently deliver usable search results for the majority of consumers.

"One of the historical challenges with local search, and online shopping in particular, is connecting Internet research with offline purchase behavior, which is where the majority of transactions occur," said Greg Sterling, principal, Sterling Market Intelligence. "By offering information about where to buy products locally, Krillion better serves consumers and further confirms that the future of online shopping is offline."

New Local Search Inventory for Advertisers

Krillion is also announcing today the immediate availability of millions of pages of local product advertising inventory, and customized analytics to measure the effectiveness of a Krillion-based campaign. Krillion expects to become the "last-mile" in a national ad campaign, linking the ready-to-buy consumer with the specific store where he or she can purchase the desired product. A click-to-call feature is available so consumers can quickly check on specific product inventory prior to visiting the store.

"Krillion's approach offers the opportunity to significantly redefine the ways in which brands engage with consumers at the local level. It's an innovative approach that will help drive growth in this market and better serve the needs of advertisers," said Torrence Boone, president, Digitas Boston.

Unlike many other local search providers, Krillion does not expect consumers to abandon or change their search habits. Consumers don't need to search directly on Krillion to find results by Krillion; instead consumers can search using their favorite search engine (Google, Yahoo!, etc.) and Krillion results will likely be displayed on those pages. Consumers then click to find Krillion for their local product and store information.

About Krillion

Krillion (www.krillion.com) is the leader in actionable local search; local search that results in consumers taking action to buy. Krillion's mission is to transform the way ready-to-buy consumers find and buy national brands, locally. Based on its unique Krillion Localization Engine, Krillion search results are more accurate than any local search information available on the Internet. Krillion, founded in February 2006, is funded by Hummer Winblad Venture Partners.

Krillion™ and Krillion Localization Engine™ are trademarks of Krillion, Inc. All other product names and trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

Source: http://www.marketwire.com/mw/release_html_b1?release_id=210889

Craigslist posts satisfaction

The classified-ad site could make millions more, but that's not the point, its CEO says.

By Gregory M. Lamb | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

Jim Buckmaster wasn't always CEO of Craigslist. First he was a satisfied customer. "I got my current job off of Craigslist," says Mr. Buckmaster, who's been at the helm of the online classified-ad site since 2000. "I put my résumé up on Craigslist in late '99. Craig saw it there and invited me in for an interview."

Craig is Craig Newmark, who founded Craigslist in 1995 and who, according to lore, first thought of it more as a hobby than a business. Today Craigslist is the 37th most popular Internet site in the world, according to Alexa.com, which tracks online traffic. It receives more than 15 million unique visitors per month, people who are placing classified ads or looking for things – jobs, household items, information, tickets, personal connections, and much more.

With a few exceptions, placing ads and responding to them is free. And since Craigslist operates as 450 local listing services in all 50 states and 50 countries, whatever you're looking for is probably going to be nearby.

"We get e-mails from users who've found their husband or wife, and their job, and their apartment or house they're living in, and a lot of their furnishings, and their cat or dog, and a lot of their friends, and some of their social activities, etc., all on Craigslist, all for free," says Buckmaster, summing up why the site keeps growing. "That's pretty powerful."

In a world where companies regularly skyrocket or flame out in a matter of months, Craigslist is a rock of stability and low-key, long-term success.

The company, run by just 23 employees out of a Victorian house in San Francisco, has never paid to advertise itself. Its entry page ( www.craigslist.org) consists of long lists of ad categories – all in lower case (as though bothering even to capitalize would be a frivolous waste of keystrokes). No graphics, photos, or colorful company logo tout the site. (Users, however, often post photos or other graphics with their ads.)

"Fancy graphics really do nothing more than slow down the page loading," Buckmaster says matter-of-factly. "[I]n reality, all of that [graphics] stuff is really useless. It's actually counterproductive."

Despite its under-the-radar way of doing business, Craigslist has attracted a bevy of critics. It's regularly skewered as a "newspaper killer" because it pulls classified ads away from local papers and contributes to that industry's woes.

The site also must fight an ongoing battle with spam and inappropriate ads. Users may enlist themselves in the bad-ad war by clicking a button to flag an ad that violates discrimination laws or hypes illegal goods or services. Spammers sometimes violate site rules (advertisers may not place ads in more than one city at a time, for example).

On the charge of "stealing" ads from newspapers, Buckmaster remains quietly unapologetic. The big newspaper chains continue to be about twice as profitable as the average American business, he says, "so it's not as though they're hurting." Newspapers have become "beholden to Wall Street," he says. "The primary focus is not necessarily on journalism; it's on maximizing revenue.

"Anything that's taking money from newspaper chains in the long run may very well be the most healthy thing that can happen, as far as newspaper journalism is concerned," he concludes.

Perhaps most inscrutably, at least to capitalists who figure that Internet businesses exist to make as much money as possible, Craigslist refuses to "monetize" itself. It leaves money on the table that's there for the easy taking, analysts say. If they ran related text or display ads next to listings, for example, they could add untold millions to their balance sheet.

The privately held company, which doesn't release financial figures, could also sell itself to the highest bigger. Google recently bought the video-sharing site YouTube for $1.6 billion. (According to Alexa, YouTube is the fifth most popular US website; Craigslist is No. 9.)

Why doesn't Craigslist take advantage of these opportunities? Because its customers aren't asking for them, says Buckmaster in a telephone interview. "Our users, up to this point anyway, have not been requesting text ads or banner ads or any of those things. So that's why we haven't been adding them."

Becoming as profitable as possible isn't even a company goal, he says. "The average business operates to see what's the maximum amount of money that can be made, even if that involves taking an adversarial role toward their users or customers. We're not interested in entering an adversarial role with our users."

Craigslist makes money by charging $25 for job postings in six major US cities (New York, Los Angeles, Washington, Boston, Seattle, San Diego) and $75 per job posting in San Francisco. It also charges New York apartment brokers $10 per listing. The rest of the ads, as well as numerous discussion forums on subjects from fitness to travel, are free.

While Craigslist doesn't disclose its income, anyone putting pencil to the back of an envelope can see how the dollars add up. If just 100,000 of the 750,000 monthly job postings were paid for at $25 each, for example, that would generate $2.5 million per month or $30 million annually.

With such a strong cash flow and modest expenses, Craigslist simply may have no desire to change its laid-back approach. And since the company continues to grow, its value will only rise if Mr. Newmark (who continues at the company under the title of "customer service representative" while pursuing outside interests as well) and his co-owners ever decide to sell.

"They've got a loyal audience; people are used to seeing [Craigslist] look a certain way and using it in certain ways," says Barry Parr, an analyst at JupiterResearch in San Francisco, who tracks Internet technologies and businesses. "Very often, tampering with those kinds of business models can lead to unexpected and unpleasant results. There is that old story about the goose that laid the golden egg. And that story exists for a reason."

As Craigslist continues to hover between being a moneymaking business and an online community, where it should go from here may be as much a philosophical decision as a strategic one, Mr. Parr says. "[I]t kind of flows from that idea that you don't turn every successful community into an opportunity to make the maximum amount of money," says Parr, who speaks from personal experience: He's bought and sold things himself on Craigslist and "the experience has been uniformly positive."

Instead of being puzzled that Newmark isn't squeezing every dollar out of Craigslist, says Paul Saffo, a longtime Silicon Valley trend forecaster, entrepreneurs ought to try to emulate him. Newmark is an example of the adage, "Know yourself, and know what's enough," says Mr. Saffo, who adds that he's become "pretty well" acquainted with Newmark, and that Newmark is "a happy man."

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0205/p13s02-stct.html

Online Ad Sites Challenge Google, Yahoo

By MICHAEL LIEDTKE

The Associated Press
Monday, February 5, 2007; 12:35 AM

SAN FRANCISCO -- Like thousands of other Web sites, EDN.com relies on Google Inc. to handle a lucrative piece of Internet advertising _ the briefly worded links that produce revenue-generating clicks by targeting each individual reader's interests. The relationship has been profitable so far, but the managers of the technology Web site believe they could be making even more money if Google's system stopped serving up ads about potato chips or poker chips when a visitor is reading an article about computer chips.

"We think we could extract more value from our advertising by not mixing potato chips with computer chips," said Stephen Baker, who oversees search-based advertising for EDN and dozens of other Web sites owned by London-based Reed Elsevier Group PLC.

Although he has no plans to drop out of Google's network, Baker said he may try out a new advertising alternative being announced Monday by Fast Search and Transfer, a Norway-based company that specializes in providing search tools for businesses.

Fast is marketing its platform _ dubbed AdMomentum _ as a one-stop solution for Web sites that want to become less dependent on Google and the other large advertising networks operated by Yahoo Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

"It's like a digital marketplace in a box," said Sue Feldman, an IDC Research vice president who reviewed early versions of AdMomentum. "This gives Web sites an opportunity to become more independent and take more control over their revenue stream."

More money is rapidly flowing into "keyword advertising" _ the industry's description for the intuitive algorithms that quickly analyze search requests or other content displayed on a Web page before deciding which marketing messages to show.

Annual spending on keyword ads is expected to top $10 billion in 2010, up from $6.8 billion last year, based on estimates from eMarketer, which tracks the industry.

With more money at stake, Fast is betting Web sites will be increasingly interested in developing their own ad systems so they won't have to share revenue with Google and the other networks.

"Publishers are not going to want another hand in their pockets every time they are selling ads," said Perry Solomon, Fast's vice president of strategic market development. Solomon declined to discuss AdMomentum's pricing model.

Some Web sites already have embraced alternative channels. In one of the biggest examples so far, Walt Disney Co.'s ESPN.com dropped Yahoo as its advertising partner in September to sell the commercial links on its own, using a platform called AdSonar offered by New York-based Quigo Technologies Inc.

AdMomentum figures to face an uphill battle in a market dominated by some of the world's most influential technology companies.

Mountain View-based Google looks particularly imposing, having raked in $20 billion from online advertising during the past three years. The company shared $6.7 billion of that amount with its advertising partners.

Yahoo has spent the past two years tweaking its system so it does a better job of matching its marketing messages with readers' interests. The Sunnyvale-based company plans to unveil the long-anticipated improvements Monday.

This isn't the first time Fast has challenged Google and Yahoo. For several years, it ran a general-purpose search engine called AlltheWeb.com that never made a dent in the market.

Fast wound up selling AlltheWeb and several other affiliates in 2003 for $100 million to a company that was eventually bought by Yahoo. AlltheWeb now serves as a testing ground for Yahoo's alternative approaches to search.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/05/AR2007020500051.html

YaWho? Exploring the Internet-Defining Brand’s Missteps and its Potential for Redemption

February 5th 2007 by Chad Little

t times I’ve wondered if Yahoo! should consider replacing the exclamation point at the end of their name with a question mark. In light of some of their decisions and actions over the years, it seems that Yahoo? would be more fitting, as in Ya who do they want to be?

Do they aspire to be a media giant? The leading online ad platform? An information destination? All of the above? Depending on which mission statement you come across on Yahoo!’s website, their mission is either to A) Be the most essential global Internet service for consumers and businesses, or B) Connect people to their passions, their communities, and the world’s knowledge.

Where is Yahoo! going? What do they want to dominate in and why? I’m not exactly sure. If you were to ask the same questions about Google, the answer is clear. Google’s stated vision is to “Organize the world’s information” (and make enough money doing it to finance the creation of a new world). Do I agree with that statement? I’m not sure I do as a lot of their actions aren’t congruent with the statement. I find them to be a large media company looking to utilize technology to distribute their advertisers wherever and however they can…but I digress. Agree with it or not, they at least have a vision statement that is clear and concise and their performance to-date backs it up.

How did Yahoo! arrive at its current place playing second fiddle to Google? There was a defining moment in the history of these two companies that has had ripple effects that we can still see today. In a recent article on Wired.com, Fred Vogelstein suggests that Yahoo! blew it during the summer of 2002 when their $3 billion offer to purchase Google was rebuffed and Terry Semel, Yahoo! CEO, balked at the higher $5 billion dollar valuation of Google.

After that failed merger Yahoo! subsequently purchased Overture. While it was a strategic move they needed to make to compete with Google, Yahoo! was already at a competitive disadvantage. Google was able to build their ad platform from scratch and seamlessly integrate it with their search technology. Yahoo!, on the other hand, had the monumental task of consuming Overture, a company I personally characterize as culturally dysfunctional.

I had business dealings with Overture dating back to their pre-Yahoo! days and one of the common criticisms shared by my peers in the industry was how difficult it was to do business with them. Their culture appeared to be dysfunctional from an outsider’s perspective.

If you’re familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan, Overture would have played the role of the other guy – the one that walked past the man in need. They often gave the appearance of a company that would just as soon ignore its partners/traffic providers/customers rather than offer assistance. This isn’t to say that this type of behavior is uncommon for companies that grow to a certain size, but Overture excelled at it.

Now, fast-forward a couple of years to Yahoo!’s hiring of Terry Semel, the Hollywood deal-maker. Yahoo! had its sights set on becoming the next media giant so bringing on a seasoned and accomplished Hollywood insider was the logical choice at the time. In hindsight however, one might question the logic of hiring a CEO with very limited technical knowledge to guide a company that is defined by technology. This lack of technical savvy would be an extremely difficult hurdle for anyone to overcome when leading the merger of two technology-centric companies like Yahoo! and Overture, in addition to the challenge of overcoming the cultural differences.

Here we are almost five years later and Yahoo! has just launched their revamped ad platform named Panama. While Yahoo! touts this as a strategic leap forward, the bottom line is that Panama was a task that needed to get completed just to remain in the game. Early returns have been good for Panama, as evidenced by Merrill Lynch’s positive outlook for Yahoo! stock and their 13% increase in ad-related revenue from one year ago. The response from advertisers has been positive for the most part, however, some smaller companies are finding it difficult to switch platforms and transition their existing accounts. Panama is an important upgrade for Yahoo!, but the battle for dominance in paid search has already been won by Google.

Second place in the paid search industry is certainly not an insignificant position, but the same questions still remain. Do they have the leadership, vision and focus to reassert themselves as a leader, pioneer and dominant force that they once were?

Yahoo! is an amazing company, and a brand that has defined the Internet as we know it, but they have missed the mark recently and lost opportunities to surge ahead. What’s next for Yahoo!? I have my own theories, but they all depend on who is leading the company and if those people can define a clear and concise vision for the future that can take Yahoo! to new heights. I am curious to see what that vision will be and if it will give them the ability to regain the competitive advantage they once held.

Source: http://www.adotas.com/index.php?s=YaWho#