We would suggest you read this blog post and also read Google’s view on the matter .

You may also wish to express your views at Getup: http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/SaveTheNet&id=892

See more here: http://www.seoibiza.com/blog/2009/08/19/google-caffeine-observations/

The result will see Yahoo using Microsoft’s Bing search engine technology in conjunction with Yahoo’s ad network.

I don’t see this an an attempt to try and take Google on head-on. I think we will  find that the pair have joined forces to adopt a different tactic, aimed at gradually eroding Google’s market share.

The recent introduction of more specialised and ‘niche’ search tools, such as Wolfram Alpha is leading to a slight distillation of the search market, where certain groups of people will perform their searches on specialised tools rather than using the ‘default’ tool (Google).

I wouldn’t be surprised if Microsoft and Yahoo attempt to target Bing (or variations/extensions of it) at specific niche audiences, in the hope that they can chip away chunks of the search market from Google. I don’t think a full-frontal attack on Google will work anytime soon, but by being nimbler and focussing on specific markets it may be possible for them to make decent inroads into Google’s customer base.

Goggle hopes that the cost per impression for ads carried on YouTube will gradually increase over time to start generating more significant revenue, and of course YouTube carries some major brand recognition value.

But as things stand, YouTube is losing money in a big way – estimates from Credit Suisse suggest that YouTube will lose nearly $500 million USD in 2009. Google are a huge company, but no-one likes the thought of losing half-a-billion each year…

Google has been experimenting with various advertising models to get a better return but the figures suggest that the current CPM needs to be improved something like 30-40 times before YouTube would show a profit on the current model.

Sponsored content seems to be the way to go in order to get a more guaranteed return but how many people will be keen to watch advertorials and sponsored clips? 

Google will no doubt live with the pain for a while but expect to see a shift towards sponsored content, and who knows, maybe a parting of the ways if they can’t find a cure…

What is Wave?

Well – to quote from Google:

A “wave” is equal parts conversation and document, where people can communicate and work together with richly formatted text, photos, videos, maps, and more.

Here’s how it works: In Google Wave you create a wave and add people to it. Everyone on your wave can use richly formatted text, photos, gadgets, and even feeds from other sources on the web. They can insert a reply or edit the wave directly. It’s concurrent rich-text editing, where you see on your screen nearly instantly what your fellow collaborators are typing in your wave. That means Google Wave is just as well suited for quick messages as for persistent content — it allows for both collaboration and communication. You can also use “playback” to rewind the wave and see how it evolved.

It is going to be in developer preview for a while, so expect some changes to occur, but looks like it’s going to be big and open-source with a full developer API and toolkits to develop your own apps based on the Wave protocol.

I don’t suppose Big G will be buying Twitter now.

Full details at the Official Google Blog

The guys at Memorable Domains ran a study which showed that: “All other things being equal (same headline, same ad copy, same bids, same landing page etc.) the ads that used an on-topic generic domain name received up to twice the clicks that ads using a “coined” non-generic domain name did”.

Full details of the experiment and the results obtained can be found in the report at http://www.memorabledomains.co.uk/ppcanalysis.pdf

The results are something that many of us might have guessed at, but it’s nice to see some specific figures to back-up that intuition. Part of the reason could be down an increased ‘trust’ by the visitor in the generic sounding domain name, but the report proposes some more specific reasons, and certainly gives some food for thought.

Read the report – it’s only a few pages long. I hope it will encourage you to do some experimentation of your own with generic names.

Thanks to Memorable Domains for permission to post about this.

http://brucemarler.com/exclusive-interview-with-xfcom-founder-and-professional-domainer-aron-meystedt/

It’s a informative piece which could provide a bit of inspiration for new and experienced domainers. Many of the points Aron makes relate to areas that have been discussed here before, such as:

• Development vs Parking
• Strategies for getting into domaining
• Decline in PPC
• .com vs CCTLDs

All in all, a nice interview and well worth a read. Thanks to Bruce for publishing it.

2008 US revenue (MOT Worldwide, just the US) came to a record $23.4 billion, surpassing 2007’s record of $21.2 billion by 10.6 percent.

The figures indicate a continuing shift from traditional to online modes of advertising, and a realisation that online provides a more targeted and measurable approach, which can be important when every advertsing dollar needs to be accounted for.

Search related advertising kept its position as the main player, accounting for almost half of the total spend, with an almost 20% increase over 2007. ‘Direct’ advertsing is also growing.

The largest vertical markets were, as in 2007, retail, financial services, computing and automotive.

The full article can be read  here:
http://www.webpronews.com/topnews/2009/03/30/online-ad-revenue-up-106
Some points that arise from this article:

• Given that Search showed such a healthy increase in spend, this didn’t seem to be reflected in Adsense publisher’s incomes. This is anecdotal evidence of course, and there are always some publishers/sites who can show good growth but from looking around on the forums it certainly seems that the increase didn’t generally make it through to Adsense publishers’s wallets.
• It could well be that the increased spend was spread more thinly over the ever increasing amount of Web Real Estate, or inventory. More sites, more advertsing spots, more spend but distributed across an ever increasing pool of publishers.
• If that is the case, then will there be a ’saturation point’ where the amount of available Web Inventory becomes just too big? Will the growth in advertising outstrip the growth in available traffic, and returns start to flatten out naturally?
• If the online spend is being spread ever thinner, that only goes to highlight the importance of providing something different, regular site reviews, updates & changes (unlike this site recently – haha) and effective SEO to make a site stand out.
• Is it going to be better to run loads of sites to try and catch some of that thinly spread advertsing spend, or concentrate on a few key names that you can really push – and sell off the rest of your stable?
• Publishers should look more and more into ‘direct’ advertising (something that IM/MMO Bloggers in particular do anyway). Advertisers like PR and content, and the knowledge that traffic will be targetted, so activley pursue direct advertsing/sponsorship opportunities for all your sites.
• Only park domains when you have to. Parking can be good as a holding option, but you’re getting an even smaller slice of that spend when you do it. Review your parked domains, pick the best potential ones (through keyword analysis, seacrh temrs, parking stats etc) and stick a minsite on them, with a combination of static and RSS/Video type feeds. Throw Adsense, Adbrite or whatever floats your boat on there – you’ll see an increase over parking revenue, the chance of gaining some PR and backlinks, a growth in organic/search traffic – and open up the potential for adding direct advertising or selling the developed site on at a profit.

Just some thoughts.

Nice to be back

I know the big G has been making some changes to it’s targetting lately, and introducing the new personalised visitor cookie stuff – but seriously, something bad has happened to the clicks. Early March I was doing just fine, but in the last 10 days or so views have stayed the same but my CTR has fallen through the floor.

Anyone else out there noticed this?

Coming soon: An explanation about my completely shite start to 2009 and why I’ve been so slack.

Back from my Christmas and New Year break – spent a lovely couple of weeks over in Queensland (you know it – ‘Beautiful one day, Perfect the next…’). Surf, sea, kayaks, cold beer and all that stuff.

Settling back in now and looking forward to 2009 – a few things coming up over the next few weeks, such as:

• A look at Google’s horrible little personalized search thingy
• Continuation of the Domain Development/Flipping articles series
• A very neat little tool I’m putting together aimed at MMO/SEO/IM Bloggers
• Re-skin, addition of extra features on Internet Babel
• Domain news – such as possible delays in the introduction of the new high level TLDs
• A look at proposed Government Internet censorship in Australia

Now I’m back home I’ll see where the various Blog sales are at as well, cos there were a few Blogs that came up for sale at around the same time towards the end of 2008. Be interesting to see what happened.

Anyway – hope everyone had a great holiday season and we all have a happy and rewarding 2009.

Cheers
Dave