Wednesday, September 01, 2004
The Google Backlink Dance Resumes..or does it?
The Google Backlink Dance Resumes: "The Google Backlink Dance Resumes"
What's Google's Growth Strategy?
Motley Fool Ultimately, one has to argue what business is Google in? It's not search, exactly. Last year, selling advertising accounted for 97% of the company's revenues, and that figure has edged up to 98% so far this year.
So if the bulk of your intake comes from selling ads -- whether it's on paid search results, email pages, or my rent-ready forehead -- isn't Google's goal to grow the number of pages that it serves up?
Google has the traffic. It's a gift that shouldn't be squandered. Does that mean that Google should roll out online services like personals or job ads like Yahoo! has or enter the auction game to face a formidable eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY)? Should it branch out into proprietary content? I don't think that Google needs to diversify its revenue base. Paid search is a growing field. However, now that Google is a public company, it is all but mandated to forge ahead and grow. That means serving up more pages to satisfy the sponsored demand. Be the portal, Google!
Forum discussion:
So if the bulk of your intake comes from selling ads -- whether it's on paid search results, email pages, or my rent-ready forehead -- isn't Google's goal to grow the number of pages that it serves up?
Google has the traffic. It's a gift that shouldn't be squandered. Does that mean that Google should roll out online services like personals or job ads like Yahoo! has or enter the auction game to face a formidable eBay (Nasdaq: EBAY)? Should it branch out into proprietary content? I don't think that Google needs to diversify its revenue base. Paid search is a growing field. However, now that Google is a public company, it is all but mandated to forge ahead and grow. That means serving up more pages to satisfy the sponsored demand. Be the portal, Google!
Forum discussion:
Sunday, August 22, 2004
Google IPO reviewed
It's a case where the company took control of the process and dictated to the investment bankers, and they're not used to that situation," said Jay Ritter, professor of finance at the University of Florida and an initial adviser to Google on the Dutch auction system. "A lot of the underwriters did not go out of their way to tout the stock." Furthermore, the company made a number of mistakes, magnified under an intense media spotlight. _ Google failed to account for 23 million stock options granted to employees and was forced to offer to buy them back; _ Company founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page gave an interview published in Playboy magazine a week before the IPO was to have hit the market, a violation of U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission rules. _ The company went ahead with the IPO in a very oversold market, with technology shares particularly battered in recent months. _ The Dutch auction system was designed to garner as much money for Google as possible while limiting the usual jump in price on the first day of open trading. While the auction priced Google at $85 per share, the stock quickly soared to $100 in the first hour of trading, and closed Friday up $7.98 at $108.31. With better pricing, Google itself could have gotten that extra $23 a share - or more than $30 million. However, with Google so popular with both investors and the public, most Wall Street firms felt they could not afford to sit out. Only Merrill Lynch publicly dropped out of the auction, reportedly unhappy with the cost-benefit equation. Google may not have met Wall Street's definition of success, since the Dutch auction system poses a threat to major underwriters' business models. But it nonetheless raised $1.6 billion, and its investors saw strong gains in the first two days of trading. "It's certainly a success in that Google went public, and they did it the way they wanted to," said Matt Rhodes-Kropf, associate professor of finance and economics at Columbia Business School. "But it was a failure in the sense that they didn't get the price they could've gotten if they had gone through the traditional method. And they did not eliminate the first-day jump."
No matter where they stood on the success or failure of Google's IPO, most experts and insiders agreed that other companies would attempt IPO auctions in the future, and would try to involve the public to one degree or another. And Wall Street would continue to be, at best, ambivalent about the concept. "Certainly, the lead underwriters did not want to use an auction. In that regard, a lot of them have not been anxious to paint this as a success, since it's a threat to their business model," Ritter said. "But outside of the top 10 or 15 underwriters out there, there are plenty of smaller underwriters who would be happy to pick up the crumbs and try to make inroads using the auction system. There aren't that many IPOs around, after all."
No matter where they stood on the success or failure of Google's IPO, most experts and insiders agreed that other companies would attempt IPO auctions in the future, and would try to involve the public to one degree or another. And Wall Street would continue to be, at best, ambivalent about the concept. "Certainly, the lead underwriters did not want to use an auction. In that regard, a lot of them have not been anxious to paint this as a success, since it's a threat to their business model," Ritter said. "But outside of the top 10 or 15 underwriters out there, there are plenty of smaller underwriters who would be happy to pick up the crumbs and try to make inroads using the auction system. There aren't that many IPOs around, after all."
Google's spats with venture capitalists
Very interesting history of Googles relationships with named venture capitalists... Tensions between entrepreneurs who start a company and venture capitalists who finance them are as common as spats between husband and wife...the rows between Google's two strong-willed founders and their venture capitalists are legendary up and down Sand Hill Road.
Wednesday, August 18, 2004
Are you sick of Google yet...some astute comments
cbs.marketwatch.com
"The founders of Google are waltzed from one blunder to another by experts who appear to be setting them up for failure. The experts are doing a great job but not for Google"
"The founders of Google are waltzed from one blunder to another by experts who appear to be setting them up for failure. The experts are doing a great job but not for Google"
Wednesday, August 11, 2004
Google history February 17, 1999 The IPO Report
Google.com: Next Brainchild To Go Big?
by
Tom Taulli
February 17, 1999 : "By being at Stanford, Google.com has a tremendous advantage. The two other search engines -- Yahoo and Excite -- came from this fertile university. Late last year, the company talked to various angels for investment capital. 'They all said yes,' according to Page. One notable investor is Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun.
The company is expected to get a venture-capital round in a few months. Who knows -- perhaps Google.com will be the next Stanford start-up to get its Nasdaq ticker symbol and multibillion-dollar market cap"
by
Tom Taulli
February 17, 1999 : "By being at Stanford, Google.com has a tremendous advantage. The two other search engines -- Yahoo and Excite -- came from this fertile university. Late last year, the company talked to various angels for investment capital. 'They all said yes,' according to Page. One notable investor is Andy Bechtolsheim, the co-founder of Palo Alto, Calif.-based Sun.
The company is expected to get a venture-capital round in a few months. Who knows -- perhaps Google.com will be the next Stanford start-up to get its Nasdaq ticker symbol and multibillion-dollar market cap"
Tuesday, August 10, 2004
WebProWorld :: Tips For Link Buying Part 3: Matt Cutts From Google..Don't even go there..
WebProWorld :: Tips For Link Buying Part 3: Matt Cutts From GoogleTips For Link Buying Part 3: "
Matt's approach to link building was more of a philosophical one than straight tips and tricks. However, when taken with the advice that appeared in the previous link building articles, you have a fairly comprehensive list of ideas to keep in mind when designing a website, not just attempting to build links.
Making your content valuable enough to be linked to seems to be the emphasis of all speakers well, that and link relevancy. Of course, the first part is a little easier to control than the second. The thinking seems to be: if you build it (quality content), they will come (links pointing to your site).
Though he was philosophical about how to build links, Matt was specific on things to AVOID when link building. One of the first things he said while speaking on what to avoid was controlling whom YOU link to. Make sure that that any site you are linking to is relevant, quality site. Again, no shady SEO users should appear. He also stated another obvious point: avoid hidden links. Be sure and place your links where site visitors can find them.
Matt also suggests avoiding links coming from or pointing to guest books. These are notorious havens for spammers. He did not say whether or not Google discounted these links, but because he warned about them, you can guess that they don't give much relevance to these types of links.
He also mentioned to avoid buying anything that will artificially boost PageRank. Reading Google's Information for Webmasters Page discusses why this is something that should be avoided: 'Linking schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank, and will often do a site more harm than good. Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value, but will distribute your email address without your permission, resulting in an increased volume of unwanted mail to you."
Another area that should be avoided is interlinking of sites within your own domain. Google can perceive interlinking between domains, because they are on the same IP, as link spam, and this is an action that they can and will penalize." (Update:he meant to say don't interlink multiple domains on the same IP. Internal linking should be fine.)
Matt's approach to link building was more of a philosophical one than straight tips and tricks. However, when taken with the advice that appeared in the previous link building articles, you have a fairly comprehensive list of ideas to keep in mind when designing a website, not just attempting to build links.
Making your content valuable enough to be linked to seems to be the emphasis of all speakers well, that and link relevancy. Of course, the first part is a little easier to control than the second. The thinking seems to be: if you build it (quality content), they will come (links pointing to your site).
Though he was philosophical about how to build links, Matt was specific on things to AVOID when link building. One of the first things he said while speaking on what to avoid was controlling whom YOU link to. Make sure that that any site you are linking to is relevant, quality site. Again, no shady SEO users should appear. He also stated another obvious point: avoid hidden links. Be sure and place your links where site visitors can find them.
Matt also suggests avoiding links coming from or pointing to guest books. These are notorious havens for spammers. He did not say whether or not Google discounted these links, but because he warned about them, you can guess that they don't give much relevance to these types of links.
He also mentioned to avoid buying anything that will artificially boost PageRank. Reading Google's Information for Webmasters Page discusses why this is something that should be avoided: 'Linking schemes do not increase a given site's PageRank, and will often do a site more harm than good. Many sites that advertise link-sharing programs not only offer little value, but will distribute your email address without your permission, resulting in an increased volume of unwanted mail to you."
Another area that should be avoided is interlinking of sites within your own domain. Google can perceive interlinking between domains, because they are on the same IP, as link spam, and this is an action that they can and will penalize." (Update:he meant to say don't interlink multiple domains on the same IP. Internal linking should be fine.)
Thursday, August 05, 2004
Google primer presentation
This was the keynote address at Search and Collaboration Seminar 2004 | Introduction 2004 in Haifa. PDF Paper
Wednesday, August 04, 2004
Different search strings for Totaltravel.co.uk Google Search: allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk
Google Search: allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk: "
Web Results 1 - 2 of about 31,500 for allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk"
repeat the search with the omitted results included: about 47,400 for allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk
Google Search: site:www.totaltravel.co.uk
Web Results 1 - 2 of about 31,500 for allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk"
repeat the search with the omitted results included: about 47,400 for allinurl:www.totaltravel.co.uk -www.directory.co.uk
Google Search: site:www.totaltravel.co.uk
Tuesday, August 03, 2004
Monday, August 02, 2004
August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com)
August 2009: How Google beat Amazon and Ebay to the Semantic Web (Ftrain.com): "Google allowed you to search for buyers and sellers, and then, using a service shamelessly copied from the then-ubiquitous PayPal, handled the transaction for a 1.75% charge. Sure, people could send checks or contact one another and avoid the 1.75%, but for most items that was your best bet - fast and cheap. 1.75% plus advertising and a global reach, and you can count on millions flowing smoothly through your accounts. "
Tuesday, July 27, 2004
show all 28,500 Google Search: allinurl:www totaltravel co.uk
Google Search: allinurl:www totaltravel co.uk: " 1 - 100 of about 28,500 "
19,400 Google Search: allinurl:www totaltravel co.uk
Google Search: allinurl:www totaltravel co.uk: "Results 1 - 9 of about 19,400 "
Google's 15 minutes of fame inc history of search related share prices...
Google's 15 minutes of fame: "Google's 15 minutes of fame Commentary: Atypical price for an atypical company "
By Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 9:35 PM ET Jul 26, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- So, you want to buy Google at a valuation of some $32 billion and a price-to-earnings multiple of 100-plus?
That was the question with which investors were left after Google's latest filing Monday, in which it said it would offer 24.6 million shares for between $108 and $135 each.
For a company that wants to be accessible to small investors, the price is a psychological deterrent. But investors will have at least a couple of weeks to determine whether they want to bid at that price.
If you're one of the lucky 800 or so big-time investors invited to Google's road-show luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan on Tuesday, you'll even get to rub elbows with the Google executives. The official IPO launch is slated for the week of August 9, according to investors looking at the deal.
I'd imagine that anyone interested in investments might find it a bit hard to decline any of these shares if they were offered.
Why is Google apparently worth it to some?
For one thing, Google's more profitable than Yahoo. In Google's latest S-1, the company said it had an operating profit of $326 million in the first six months of this year. That was earned on sales of $1.3 billion. By comparison, Yahoo posted a smaller operating profit of $281 million on a larger revenue base, $1.59 billion.
Google's also been the top-rated search engine, ahead of Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Additionally, Google's search revenue grew 7.5 percent in the second quarter from the first quarter. For its part, Yahoo said that its search sales were essentially flat in the same period.
Another positive note for Google is the pent-up demand that may be present by the time Google goes public, especially after the recent correction in Net shares.
Reasons not to buy
But Google is expensive.
Its float alone is larger than the market caps of Ask Jeeves (ASKJ), InfoSpace (INSP) and FindWhat (FWHT) combined.
At Google's latest price, it's estimated to earn $1.26 per share on sales of $1.8 billion, according to Mark Mahaney, an analyst at American Technology Research. That means, at Google's midpoint proposed IPO price, it will trade around 96 times 2004 earnings. Yahoo is expected to earn 33 cents per share. At its current price of $28, it's trading at around 85 times this year's earnings.
I question whether Google deserves such a premium multiple.
First of all, there is a huge overhang of shares. Google is making 10 percent of its company available to shareholders. That means for every 1 share owned, there are nine waiting to be sold down the road.
Secondly, at such a multiple, it's unclear whether the bankers have priced in future erosion of margins due to competitors, like Microsoft and Yahoo. We'll hear some words from Mr. Softy about its push into search this Thursday at its analyst day.
It's unclear how formidable Microsoft will be in search. But clearly, Microsoft has the money to make a difference and the know-how to be a monopoly. Google has yet to be the de facto Web search tool for anyone.
As for Google's ability to compete with Yahoo, it's unclear whether Google has the wherewithal to move into what will be the sweet spot in online advertising: Branded advertising.
This appears to be the next phase of growth, most observers agree. Sure, when Yahoo went public at a market valuation of $334 million in 1996, it generated sales of $19 million in that year. But sales also rocketed 252 percent to $67 million by the following. Those aren't the type of growth rates a mature company like Google is experiencing.
Search explosion was in 2003. What will be the driver in 2005? If it's brand advertising, search engines don't have what brand marketers want: stickiness.
According to comScore, the average time spent on Yahoo is 4.4 hours in a month compared to 22 minutes for Google. Time Warner's (TWX) AOL seems to keep users on its properties for 6 hours in a month, on average.
15 minutes
Yahoo has both search and branded advertising. What will it cost Google to maintain its attractiveness to consumers and investors? It's already taking the steps to emulate Yahoo by offering Gmail.
But does it know the media business like Yahoo does?
It seems that every three years, a new search engine takes the lead and has its 15 minutes of fame.
Alta Vista, the pioneer of Web searches, learned the hard way. Its technology started in 1995 inside Digital Equipment and was the leading search product in the early commercial days of the Internet in 1996. That was before DEC was sold to Compaq Computer and Compaq was sold to Hewlett-Packard, Now, Alta Vista's part of Overture. See related story.
Inktomi was a 1999 darling that inflated to a market value of roughly $30 billion during the bubble heyday. Now, it's part of Yahoo (YHOO).
Google, which had 10 employees in 1999, grew to be the most widely recognized search brand in the world by 2002. See Web searchers doing the Google.
But now Microsoft (MSFT) is brewing up its own "secret sauce" of algorithms to search Web pages.
What will happen by 2005 is anyone's guess, but here's a look at what has happened so far:
1996: Search goes public
(all IPOs are split-adjusted prices. Source: Dealogic)
Jan. 1996: Google founders collaborate on search engine called BackRub
April 1, 1996: Lycos goes public at $4 a share
April 4, 1996: Excite goes public at $8.50 a share
April 11, 1996: Yahoo prices at $1.83.
1998 and 1999: New batch of search engines go public and Google is born
1998: Google opens its doors (answers 10,000 search queries Oct. 7, 1998)
June 1998: Inktomi goes public at $4.15 (market cap at IPO was $370 million)
December 1998: InfoSpace (INSP) goes public at $15
May 1999: Excite merges with At Home for $6.5 billion
June 1999: GoTo.com goes public at $15. Company changes name eventually to Overture Services.
June 1999: Ask Jeeves (ASKJ) goes public at $14
August 1999: LookSmart (LOOK) goes public at $12
August 1999: CMGI buys 83 percent of Alta Vista for $2.3 billion in stock, plus bonds
2000 and 2001: More consolidation and bankruptcy
Oct. 30, 2000: Terra Networks (TRLY) buys Lycos for $46.40 per share, or $5.1 billion.
Sept. 28, 2001: ExciteAtHome goes bankrupt. See story.
2002: Back to search roots
Nov. 13, 2002: Alta Vista relaunches its search site. See Alta Vista's constant search.
December 2002: Yahoo says it'll buy Inktomi for $233 million in cash.
2003: Google accelerates position and portal expansion; Microsoft launches Web crawler; Search gets deeper
March 2003: Google surpasses Yahoo in searches with 1.1 million searches. (source: comScore)
March 4, 2003: Ask Jeeves says it's buying Interactive Search Holdings for $343 million. See full story.
March 11, 2003: Yahoo's maps meet Yellow Pages See Yahoo local
March 29, 2003: Google's Froogle launched See Google's Froogle.
April 7, 2003: Yahoo revamps its search functionalities. See Yahoo returns to search roots.
April 21, 2003: Ask Jeeves unveils its new look. See Ask Jeeves' search gets smarter.
April 28, 2003: Overture completes purchase of Alta Vista for $106 million stock and cash
June 19, 2003: Microsoft tests its own Web crawler. See full story.
July 1, 2003: MSN to recast search to make algorithmic searches more prominent. See MSN to recast search.
Oct. 7, 2003: Yahoo completes purchase of Overture for $2.2 bln in stock and cash.
2004: Google's long awaited IPO
April 29, 2004: Google announces it'll try to raise $2.7 billion through an IPO, offering shares in a Dutch auction. See full story.
So would you buy Google shares at this price? E-mail: Bfrancisco@marketwatch.com Or, you can e-mail me at: Bambi.blogs.com
By Bambi Francisco, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 9:35 PM ET Jul 26, 2004
SAN FRANCISCO (CBS.MW) -- So, you want to buy Google at a valuation of some $32 billion and a price-to-earnings multiple of 100-plus?
That was the question with which investors were left after Google's latest filing Monday, in which it said it would offer 24.6 million shares for between $108 and $135 each.
For a company that wants to be accessible to small investors, the price is a psychological deterrent. But investors will have at least a couple of weeks to determine whether they want to bid at that price.
If you're one of the lucky 800 or so big-time investors invited to Google's road-show luncheon at the Waldorf-Astoria in Manhattan on Tuesday, you'll even get to rub elbows with the Google executives. The official IPO launch is slated for the week of August 9, according to investors looking at the deal.
I'd imagine that anyone interested in investments might find it a bit hard to decline any of these shares if they were offered.
Why is Google apparently worth it to some?
For one thing, Google's more profitable than Yahoo. In Google's latest S-1, the company said it had an operating profit of $326 million in the first six months of this year. That was earned on sales of $1.3 billion. By comparison, Yahoo posted a smaller operating profit of $281 million on a larger revenue base, $1.59 billion.
Google's also been the top-rated search engine, ahead of Yahoo (YHOO) and Microsoft (MSFT).
Additionally, Google's search revenue grew 7.5 percent in the second quarter from the first quarter. For its part, Yahoo said that its search sales were essentially flat in the same period.
Another positive note for Google is the pent-up demand that may be present by the time Google goes public, especially after the recent correction in Net shares.
Reasons not to buy
But Google is expensive.
Its float alone is larger than the market caps of Ask Jeeves (ASKJ), InfoSpace (INSP) and FindWhat (FWHT) combined.
At Google's latest price, it's estimated to earn $1.26 per share on sales of $1.8 billion, according to Mark Mahaney, an analyst at American Technology Research. That means, at Google's midpoint proposed IPO price, it will trade around 96 times 2004 earnings. Yahoo is expected to earn 33 cents per share. At its current price of $28, it's trading at around 85 times this year's earnings.
I question whether Google deserves such a premium multiple.
First of all, there is a huge overhang of shares. Google is making 10 percent of its company available to shareholders. That means for every 1 share owned, there are nine waiting to be sold down the road.
Secondly, at such a multiple, it's unclear whether the bankers have priced in future erosion of margins due to competitors, like Microsoft and Yahoo. We'll hear some words from Mr. Softy about its push into search this Thursday at its analyst day.
It's unclear how formidable Microsoft will be in search. But clearly, Microsoft has the money to make a difference and the know-how to be a monopoly. Google has yet to be the de facto Web search tool for anyone.
As for Google's ability to compete with Yahoo, it's unclear whether Google has the wherewithal to move into what will be the sweet spot in online advertising: Branded advertising.
This appears to be the next phase of growth, most observers agree. Sure, when Yahoo went public at a market valuation of $334 million in 1996, it generated sales of $19 million in that year. But sales also rocketed 252 percent to $67 million by the following. Those aren't the type of growth rates a mature company like Google is experiencing.
Search explosion was in 2003. What will be the driver in 2005? If it's brand advertising, search engines don't have what brand marketers want: stickiness.
According to comScore, the average time spent on Yahoo is 4.4 hours in a month compared to 22 minutes for Google. Time Warner's (TWX) AOL seems to keep users on its properties for 6 hours in a month, on average.
15 minutes
Yahoo has both search and branded advertising. What will it cost Google to maintain its attractiveness to consumers and investors? It's already taking the steps to emulate Yahoo by offering Gmail.
But does it know the media business like Yahoo does?
It seems that every three years, a new search engine takes the lead and has its 15 minutes of fame.
Alta Vista, the pioneer of Web searches, learned the hard way. Its technology started in 1995 inside Digital Equipment and was the leading search product in the early commercial days of the Internet in 1996. That was before DEC was sold to Compaq Computer and Compaq was sold to Hewlett-Packard, Now, Alta Vista's part of Overture. See related story.
Inktomi was a 1999 darling that inflated to a market value of roughly $30 billion during the bubble heyday. Now, it's part of Yahoo (YHOO).
Google, which had 10 employees in 1999, grew to be the most widely recognized search brand in the world by 2002. See Web searchers doing the Google.
But now Microsoft (MSFT) is brewing up its own "secret sauce" of algorithms to search Web pages.
What will happen by 2005 is anyone's guess, but here's a look at what has happened so far:
1996: Search goes public
(all IPOs are split-adjusted prices. Source: Dealogic)
Jan. 1996: Google founders collaborate on search engine called BackRub
April 1, 1996: Lycos goes public at $4 a share
April 4, 1996: Excite goes public at $8.50 a share
April 11, 1996: Yahoo prices at $1.83.
1998 and 1999: New batch of search engines go public and Google is born
1998: Google opens its doors (answers 10,000 search queries Oct. 7, 1998)
June 1998: Inktomi goes public at $4.15 (market cap at IPO was $370 million)
December 1998: InfoSpace (INSP) goes public at $15
May 1999: Excite merges with At Home for $6.5 billion
June 1999: GoTo.com goes public at $15. Company changes name eventually to Overture Services.
June 1999: Ask Jeeves (ASKJ) goes public at $14
August 1999: LookSmart (LOOK) goes public at $12
August 1999: CMGI buys 83 percent of Alta Vista for $2.3 billion in stock, plus bonds
2000 and 2001: More consolidation and bankruptcy
Oct. 30, 2000: Terra Networks (TRLY) buys Lycos for $46.40 per share, or $5.1 billion.
Sept. 28, 2001: ExciteAtHome goes bankrupt. See story.
2002: Back to search roots
Nov. 13, 2002: Alta Vista relaunches its search site. See Alta Vista's constant search.
December 2002: Yahoo says it'll buy Inktomi for $233 million in cash.
2003: Google accelerates position and portal expansion; Microsoft launches Web crawler; Search gets deeper
March 2003: Google surpasses Yahoo in searches with 1.1 million searches. (source: comScore)
March 4, 2003: Ask Jeeves says it's buying Interactive Search Holdings for $343 million. See full story.
March 11, 2003: Yahoo's maps meet Yellow Pages See Yahoo local
March 29, 2003: Google's Froogle launched See Google's Froogle.
April 7, 2003: Yahoo revamps its search functionalities. See Yahoo returns to search roots.
April 21, 2003: Ask Jeeves unveils its new look. See Ask Jeeves' search gets smarter.
April 28, 2003: Overture completes purchase of Alta Vista for $106 million stock and cash
June 19, 2003: Microsoft tests its own Web crawler. See full story.
July 1, 2003: MSN to recast search to make algorithmic searches more prominent. See MSN to recast search.
Oct. 7, 2003: Yahoo completes purchase of Overture for $2.2 bln in stock and cash.
2004: Google's long awaited IPO
April 29, 2004: Google announces it'll try to raise $2.7 billion through an IPO, offering shares in a Dutch auction. See full story.
So would you buy Google shares at this price? E-mail: Bfrancisco@marketwatch.com Or, you can e-mail me at: Bambi.blogs.com
Monday, July 26, 2004
Google Closes Doors on One Nation
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: Google Closes Doors on One Nation: "Google Closes Doors on One Nation
Those poor citizens of Azerbaijan can no longer claim to have a Google all to themselves. According to media powerhouse 'BakuToday' (yes, my tongue is in my cheek), Google has decided not to continue with their www.google.az domain.
Google was the most popular international search engine in Azerbaijan. It is translated in Azerbaijani, and fully supports Azerbaijani language standards (Unicode and UTF-8). "
Those poor citizens of Azerbaijan can no longer claim to have a Google all to themselves. According to media powerhouse 'BakuToday' (yes, my tongue is in my cheek), Google has decided not to continue with their www.google.az domain.
Google was the most popular international search engine in Azerbaijan. It is translated in Azerbaijani, and fully supports Azerbaijani language standards (Unicode and UTF-8). "
Tuesday, July 20, 2004
Google to post quarterly results | CNET News.com
Google to post quarterly results | CNET News.com: "Google is expected to give an indication of how much it expects bidders to pay for its shares in an updated initial public offering filing as soon as this week,"
Google Crawls Into Academia
Google Crawls Into Academia: "Google and DSpace have embarked on a pilot program designed to allow universities to better manage their intellectual output. "
Saturday, July 17, 2004
Guardian Unlimited | Online | All eyes on Blinkx the woman taking on Google
Guardian Unlimited | Online | All eyes on Blinkx: "All eyes on Blinkx
Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google
Thursday July 15, 2004
The Guardian
Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. The editor she was meeting brought two other people as he didn't know much about the subject himself.
She left the office at noon, saddened that it had not gone very well. "I thought I did a lousy job. I've never really done this whole PR thing." She retired round the corner to Starbucks with her public relations adviser for a debriefing. He told her to be more provocative in future, not so humble and more proud of what she had accomplished. "He was also convinced we didn't stand a good chance".
But by the time she had got back to her hotel, there was an email from one of the people at the meeting, Om Malik, whom she had never heard of. He said he had "blogged" the item on his website at 12.40pm while she was still commiserating over coffee.
Malik wrote that he had the same tingling sensation watching Blinkx being demonstrated as he had had almost five years ago when two fresh-faced boys called Larry and Sergey had stopped by the offices of Forbes.com to demonstrate something called Google.
Malik's comments were soon picked up by other bloggers and Rittweger started getting a wave of emails and calls, including some from venture capitalists, a breed thought to be in hibernation after the dotcom excesses.
The blog was posted on a Friday, and by the Monday there were 5,000 links to it and people were discussing it all over the world. Since then, there have been 130,000 direct downloads, and many more through users swapping files. This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Rittweger and her British business partner, Suranga Chanratillake, who used to work for the UK search engine company Autonomy, ought to be locked up for even thinking of trying to take on the almighty Google, especially at a time when it and the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo - not to mention dozens of smaller companies - are teeing up for the next battle in the search engine wars.
Blinkx has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. It does all this unobtrusively in the background until you pass your cursor over icons at the top or bottom of the page, when it reveals a digest of related sites as well as material from Word, Excel or PDF files. If you are working in a word processing document, it provides the same service.
It also searches blogs. This function has just been added because Malik suggested it would be a good thing to do. "I didn't appreciate the significance until he wrote the article and then I thought, 'Right, I get it'," she said disarmingly. Blinkx can also search digital TV on the internet, which, in practice, means video output from the BBC. Why? "Because the BBC posts its digital TV free on the internet."
Both Google and Microsoft are working on unified engines that search your desktop as well as the web, and some others already do it. But Rittweger believes Blinkx is the only one that offers all these facilities including video search now. So the company has a window of opportunity in a market where consumers can switch allegiance with two blinkx of an eyelid.
The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. "What it is trying to say," she explains, "is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas."
Blinkx's planned business model involves getting advertising revenue from contextual adverts, product channels and white labelling, but she emphasises that the search is independent: it is mathematically based and just looks at words and their context. She adds: "It is clean, but users don't know that so we show our advertisements in a different colour".
Her moment of truth came when doing a project on Japanese tourism a few years ago and found that when she put a page into a search engine, nothing happened because search was limited to 10 words. Later, she met Suranga Chanratillake, who shared her ideas and had the technological expertise to develop them.
Whether they succeed is an open question. It is a tough market to crack because for many users, Google is as good as it gets - and, like Yahoo and Microsoft, it has immense resources. But people are also starting to realise that search engines are mining only a tiny proportion of available knowledge. And loyalty is only as deep as the click of a mouse. files. This week"
Victor Keegan spoke to the woman taking on Google
Thursday July 15, 2004
The Guardian
Less than a month ago, Kathy Rittweger went to the office of the technology magazine Business 2.0 in San Francisco to demonstrate Blinkx, a late entrant to the search engine market. The editor she was meeting brought two other people as he didn't know much about the subject himself.
She left the office at noon, saddened that it had not gone very well. "I thought I did a lousy job. I've never really done this whole PR thing." She retired round the corner to Starbucks with her public relations adviser for a debriefing. He told her to be more provocative in future, not so humble and more proud of what she had accomplished. "He was also convinced we didn't stand a good chance".
But by the time she had got back to her hotel, there was an email from one of the people at the meeting, Om Malik, whom she had never heard of. He said he had "blogged" the item on his website at 12.40pm while she was still commiserating over coffee.
Malik wrote that he had the same tingling sensation watching Blinkx being demonstrated as he had had almost five years ago when two fresh-faced boys called Larry and Sergey had stopped by the offices of Forbes.com to demonstrate something called Google.
Malik's comments were soon picked up by other bloggers and Rittweger started getting a wave of emails and calls, including some from venture capitalists, a breed thought to be in hibernation after the dotcom excesses.
The blog was posted on a Friday, and by the Monday there were 5,000 links to it and people were discussing it all over the world. Since then, there have been 130,000 direct downloads, and many more through users swapping files. This week, the site - which is only launched today - has been recording 6m links or hits a day solely from word-of-mouth publicity.
You would be forgiven for thinking that Rittweger and her British business partner, Suranga Chanratillake, who used to work for the UK search engine company Autonomy, ought to be locked up for even thinking of trying to take on the almighty Google, especially at a time when it and the likes of Microsoft and Yahoo - not to mention dozens of smaller companies - are teeing up for the next battle in the search engine wars.
Blinkx has two selling points. First, it doesn't only search the web but simultaneously scours news sites, emails, attachments and your own hard disk. It does all this unobtrusively in the background until you pass your cursor over icons at the top or bottom of the page, when it reveals a digest of related sites as well as material from Word, Excel or PDF files. If you are working in a word processing document, it provides the same service.
It also searches blogs. This function has just been added because Malik suggested it would be a good thing to do. "I didn't appreciate the significance until he wrote the article and then I thought, 'Right, I get it'," she said disarmingly. Blinkx can also search digital TV on the internet, which, in practice, means video output from the BBC. Why? "Because the BBC posts its digital TV free on the internet."
Both Google and Microsoft are working on unified engines that search your desktop as well as the web, and some others already do it. But Rittweger believes Blinkx is the only one that offers all these facilities including video search now. So the company has a window of opportunity in a market where consumers can switch allegiance with two blinkx of an eyelid.
The second selling point is that, unlike Google, it uses artificial intelligence to rate stories, not page rankings. "What it is trying to say," she explains, "is that all words are not equal in a sentence... Quite critically, if you are looking at a document and trying to figure out what it means, Blinkx reads everything you are reading and sorts out what are the key ideas."
Blinkx's planned business model involves getting advertising revenue from contextual adverts, product channels and white labelling, but she emphasises that the search is independent: it is mathematically based and just looks at words and their context. She adds: "It is clean, but users don't know that so we show our advertisements in a different colour".
Her moment of truth came when doing a project on Japanese tourism a few years ago and found that when she put a page into a search engine, nothing happened because search was limited to 10 words. Later, she met Suranga Chanratillake, who shared her ideas and had the technological expertise to develop them.
Whether they succeed is an open question. It is a tough market to crack because for many users, Google is as good as it gets - and, like Yahoo and Microsoft, it has immense resources. But people are also starting to realise that search engines are mining only a tiny proportion of available knowledge. And loyalty is only as deep as the click of a mouse. files. This week"
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: Google's Patrick Keane Afraid of Search Engine Optimizers
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: Google's Patrick Keane Afraid of Search Engine Optimizers: "However, don't you think the process should be a two-way thing? Let me get to my point...
Google's head of sales advertising, Patrick Keane, just finished a presentation here at AD:TECH. The usual stuff, with Google keeping to it's 'quite period' by having some of its AdWords customers do the talking. However, Patrick Keane was asked about whether SEO companies can really help a company to get better positioning on Google and the search engines [tick...tick]. Waiting for Patrick's response, I felt confident that, despite my reservations about SEMPO, they had at least been able to educate the key figures at Google. A positive response about SEO was surely about to leave Patrick's 'SEC regulated' lips. [tick...tick...tick...]
Oh, how I wish it had. [tick....] Patrick basically replied that there is no way to improve your rankings on Google and that any claims by a SEO company were false. [tick...tick] He suggested that a few simple 'design changes' were all that could be done and that a SEO firm wasn't needed. [tick....BOOM!!!!]
Uh, hello? Isn't Google sponsoring SES in San Jose next month...the same SES that has dozens and dozens of sessions on SEO and how to improve your ranking. Are the 1300+ clients that WebSourced assists, and the many thousands more using other SEO companies, simply imagining the great results they are getting on Google, Yahoo and other search engines? If it were not for us SEO's there would be no hype about Google's IPO right now. Granted, paid search is the revenue generating aspect of search, but who do you think created the whole search engine buzz in the first place? Us SEO's that's who! And many of "
Google's head of sales advertising, Patrick Keane, just finished a presentation here at AD:TECH. The usual stuff, with Google keeping to it's 'quite period' by having some of its AdWords customers do the talking. However, Patrick Keane was asked about whether SEO companies can really help a company to get better positioning on Google and the search engines [tick...tick]. Waiting for Patrick's response, I felt confident that, despite my reservations about SEMPO, they had at least been able to educate the key figures at Google. A positive response about SEO was surely about to leave Patrick's 'SEC regulated' lips. [tick...tick...tick...]
Oh, how I wish it had. [tick....] Patrick basically replied that there is no way to improve your rankings on Google and that any claims by a SEO company were false. [tick...tick] He suggested that a few simple 'design changes' were all that could be done and that a SEO firm wasn't needed. [tick....BOOM!!!!]
Uh, hello? Isn't Google sponsoring SES in San Jose next month...the same SES that has dozens and dozens of sessions on SEO and how to improve your ranking. Are the 1300+ clients that WebSourced assists, and the many thousands more using other SEO companies, simply imagining the great results they are getting on Google, Yahoo and other search engines? If it were not for us SEO's there would be no hype about Google's IPO right now. Granted, paid search is the revenue generating aspect of search, but who do you think created the whole search engine buzz in the first place? Us SEO's that's who! And many of "
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: Google's Patrick Keane Afraid of Search Engine Optimizers
Search Engine News :: Search Engine Lowdown: Google's Patrick Keane Afraid of Search Engine Optimizers: "post something controversial on here. If it's about Google, you can bet that they are are on the phone to me to discuss their position and make sure that I am 'educated'"
However, don't you think the process should be a two-way thing? Let me get to my point...
Google's head of sales advertising, Patrick Keane, just finished a presentation here at AD:TECH. The usual stuff, with Google keeping to it's "quite period" by having some of its AdWords customers do the talking. However, Patrick Keane was asked about whether SEO companies can really help a company to get better positioning on Google and the search engines [tick...tick]. Waiting for Patrick's response, I felt confident that, despite my reservations about SEMPO, they had at least been able to educate the key figures at Google. A positive response about SEO was surely about to leave Patrick's "SEC regulated" lips. [tick...tick...tick...]
Oh, how I wish it had. [tick....] Patrick basically replied that there is no way to improve your rankings on Google and that any claims by a SEO company were false. [tick...tick] He suggested that a few simple "design changes" were all that could be done and that a SEO firm wasn't needed. [tick....BOOM!!!!]
Uh, hello? Isn't Google sponsoring SES in San Jose next month...the same SES that has dozens and dozens of sessions on SEO and how to improve your ranking. Are the 1300+ clients that WebSourced assists, and the many thousands more using other SEO companies, simply imagining the great results they are getting on Google, Yahoo and other search engines? If it were not for us SEO's there would be no hype about Google's IPO right now. Granted, paid search is the revenue generating aspect of search, but who do you think created the whole search engine buzz in the first place? Us SEO's that's who! And many of us are also commanding the paid search budgets of some of the world's largest companies.
Search engine optimization is real...it works...it can help you get to the top of Google. There may be some bad apples, who make totally ridiculous promises, but you get that with any industry. Please, please, someone, anyone at Google, take Mr. Keane aside and quietly remind him that search is not just about paid search and agencies. SEO may be the "red-headed step-child" as far as Google is concerned, but we are still family and deserve the respect!
- Search Engine News by Andy Beal | News Link | Others' Thoughts (18)
However, don't you think the process should be a two-way thing? Let me get to my point...
Google's head of sales advertising, Patrick Keane, just finished a presentation here at AD:TECH. The usual stuff, with Google keeping to it's "quite period" by having some of its AdWords customers do the talking. However, Patrick Keane was asked about whether SEO companies can really help a company to get better positioning on Google and the search engines [tick...tick]. Waiting for Patrick's response, I felt confident that, despite my reservations about SEMPO, they had at least been able to educate the key figures at Google. A positive response about SEO was surely about to leave Patrick's "SEC regulated" lips. [tick...tick...tick...]
Oh, how I wish it had. [tick....] Patrick basically replied that there is no way to improve your rankings on Google and that any claims by a SEO company were false. [tick...tick] He suggested that a few simple "design changes" were all that could be done and that a SEO firm wasn't needed. [tick....BOOM!!!!]
Uh, hello? Isn't Google sponsoring SES in San Jose next month...the same SES that has dozens and dozens of sessions on SEO and how to improve your ranking. Are the 1300+ clients that WebSourced assists, and the many thousands more using other SEO companies, simply imagining the great results they are getting on Google, Yahoo and other search engines? If it were not for us SEO's there would be no hype about Google's IPO right now. Granted, paid search is the revenue generating aspect of search, but who do you think created the whole search engine buzz in the first place? Us SEO's that's who! And many of us are also commanding the paid search budgets of some of the world's largest companies.
Search engine optimization is real...it works...it can help you get to the top of Google. There may be some bad apples, who make totally ridiculous promises, but you get that with any industry. Please, please, someone, anyone at Google, take Mr. Keane aside and quietly remind him that search is not just about paid search and agencies. SEO may be the "red-headed step-child" as far as Google is concerned, but we are still family and deserve the respect!
- Search Engine News by Andy Beal | News Link | Others' Thoughts (18)
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