PlanWebs Web Design, Online Media & Marketing

Information Week
Later this month, Google will begin weighing new factors in determining its search Quality Scores, which influence the placement and pricing of ads on across Google’s vast network. Excessively large Web pages, or Web pages served by slow servers will cost more to advertise. Also, ads leading to landing pages that take a long time to load will perform worse than ads linked to easier-to-load pages.

In a blog post, a Google AdWords team member explained the changes. “Interstitial pages, multiple redirects, excessively slow servers and other things that can increase load times only keep users from getting what they want: information about your business. Second, users are more likely to abandon landing pages that load slowly, which can hurt your conversion rate.”

In an email response, Google said the changes are only relevant to advertisers and would not influence organic search placement.

TechCrunch
Yahoo is preparing to launch a new search platform that would allow third parties to modify results by adding images, data and links. Listings can be modified, but the order of results cannot. Codenamed “SearchMonkey”, Yahoo execs say the effect is supposed to be similar to that of Greasemonkey, a Firefox add-on that lets users see modified versions of Web sites. Similarly, SearchMonkey would be a series of search add-ons that users could turn on and off (though some will be turned on by default).

Open search would certainly open the door to more information for a given result. Yelp, a user generated local business review site, is one of the launch partners. Its listing will now include a photo, review information and the address and the company’s contact information.

This is yet another example of Yahoo’s “open” push. Third parties would benefit from modified search results by driving more traffic to their sites, and more calls to their businesses. When the platform launches, anybody will be able to modify and promote any Web site, adding reviews, information, video, etc.

The New York Times
Microsoft is finally embracing the push towards open software (sort of). In a conference call which failed to mention any progress on the Yahoo front, Microsoft executives unveiled a “strategic shift” in the company’s business practices, the broader push of which is to bring Microsoft’s flagship products-the Windows OS and Microsoft Office-further into the realm of Web-based computing.

CEO Steve Ballmer said the move was partly to address Microsoft’s sticky legal situation with the European Union-EU regulators demanded that Microsoft share technical information about its software with outside developers-but was also about adapting to “the opportunities and risks of a more connected, more services-oriented world.”

The first giant step will be putting 30,000 pages of technical documentation about how its Windows and Microsoft server programs communicate-information the company used to regard as a trade secret it licensed out to developers for a hefty fee. Ray Ozzie, Microsoft’s chief software architect, said the move would make it easier for writers to create programs that tap into personal information on a PC.

by Tameka Kee
Search rebounded at the start of 2008, with Americans conducting more than 10 billion “core” searches in January, up nearly 9% from December 2007, according to comScore. In contrast, search volume had slid downward in December, with an almost 4% dip in queries versus the previous month.

Adweek
VideoEgg, a video advertising network, is launching a new ad metric where advertisers only pay if a user interacts with their ad. The units appear like standard display ads, but when users mouse over them they open a Flash window that plays a full advertising clip.

Called AdFrames, the new service costs between 20 cents and $1 per interaction. Microsoft is one of its first test advertisers. AThe software giant is paying under 50 cents per view when users interact with ads of comedian Amy Sedaris showing off new features for Office 2007.

The idea here is to apply greater accountability to branding formats like video advertising, as pricing for Web ads remains heavily weighted towards performance-based formats like cost-per-click. According to the IAB, 50 percent of the deals completed in the first half of 2007 were performance priced. Brand advertising has a long way to grow–but it needs scale. VideoEgg says it reaches 50 million users per month, delivering video ads to sites like MySpace and Bebo.

by Jason Hahn

Click Forensics, Inc. recently released its Click Fraud Index for the fourth quarter of 2007.  Click fraud for the pay-per-click industry reached 16.6% during the last quarter of last year, the highest rate observed since the index was launched at the end of 2006.  This figure was 14.2% in the same quarter of 2006, and 16.2% during the third quarter of 2007.

http://www.bizreport.com/2008/02/click_forensics_click_fraud_up_16.html 

Mozilla has released Firefox 3 Beta 3, the latest test version of the open source Internet browser.Firefox 3 Beta 3, released Tuesday, is intended for testers and developers; casual Internet users are advised not to download it. Known issues, including lack of compatibility with Windows Live Mail and systems freezes in Google Docs, make this release unsuitable for general use.

Beta 3 includes more than 1,300 fixes from the previous version. In addition to better performance and stability, Beta 3 includes improved security, ease of use, and personalization.

In terms of both form and function, the updated browser is now more elegantly integrated with Linux, Mac OS X, and Windows Vista.

Among the features that work better in the new version are one-click site info, which lets users click on the favicon in the Firefox location bar to find out more about a Web site, and malware protection, which warns users when they attempt to visit sites known to install malware.

In November, Jeff Jones, security strategy director in Microsoft’s Trustworthy Computing group, posted a report on the vulnerabilities in Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox over three years. He found that Internet Explorer had fewer vulnerabilities than Firefox.

“While the data trends show that both Internet Explorer and Firefox security quality is improved in the latest version, it also demonstrates that, contrary to popular belief, Internet Explorer has experienced fewer vulnerabilities than Firefox,” said Jones.

Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla’s VP of engineering, doesn’t consider Jones’ numbers trustworthy. In a blog post, he dismissed the vulnerability statistics as impossible to verify because Microsoft’s security process ian’t open to public scrutiny.

In its 2007 security report, Secunia found that Mozilla tended to post Firefox patches more quickly than Microsoft posted Internet Explorer patches.

Duncan Riley - Still number one social networking destination MySpace has entered the casual flash games market with games.myspace.com.The new site won’t win any awards for innovation, indeed it looks like a < $100 template buy from Digitalpoint, but ultimately that doesn’t make a difference. Casual flash gaming combined with a youngish user base in the millions makes this a no-brainer in terms of going to be a success for MySpace. The only question is whether it will cut into similar sites that also offer flash gaming. It’s certainly not in Kongregate territory yet, but there are plenty of smaller players with very similar looking sites and games. (Having said that, the first game offered on the site is Desktop Tower Defense, so maybe it is slightly higher up the tree).

Games.myspace.com offers a variety of multiplayer and single player games. A link can be found to the service from the front page of MySpace.

MediaPost
Microsoft may be trying to maneuver a takeover, but Yahoo isn’t sitting on its heels: Yahoo is acquiring Maven Networks for $160 million in a merger that makes Yahoo “the leading premium video publisher on the Internet.” The Sunnyvale, Calif. Web giant already claims to have the Web’s biggest library of professionally produced, licensed video.

The addition of Maven, gives Yahoo access to video content from more than 30 major media companies, including Fox News, Sony BMG, CBS Sports, Hearst, Ganett, Scripps Networks and the Financial Times.

The words, “professionally produced legally licensed video” are music to marketers’ ears, as advertisers continue to shun highly trafficked sites like Google’s YouTube, due to continued copyright problems and the sometimes questionable nature of user-produced content. Yahoo, for example, claims to have advertising deals with more than 75 percent of the top television advertisers, as well as video producers like Comcast, eBay, Newspaper Consortium and Forbes.com