Microsoft have added tabbed browsing to Internet Explorer via their toolbar. I haven’t tried it yet but Asa Dotzler is not impressed.
Update: Gizmodo isn’t impressed either.
Update 2: Lifehacker can’t get the tabs to work.
Google Maps is exanding across the Atlantic, starting with the UK. Looks like the Netherlands, my native country, has finally flooded.
Expedia Canada has a promotion that’s great example of a smart way to increase their marketing intelligence. They’re running a contest where consumers can win a trip they build themselves. In the meantime of course, Expedia learns about the individual preferences so they can personalize and target future communications. They also have a clever way to grow their database by encouraging people to invite their friends to enter the contest. Well done, and I’ll forgive them for the Flash.
Google just updated Google News with a personalization component. This is very nice, I added a “travel website” section. I can now remove my email alert. I’m impressed by the interface, but what Google should add is an RSS feed to Google News, then I would happy.
An interesting eyetracking study was conducted about Google’s result page. The results are predictable but that doesn’t make it less interesting. Anything below the 5th position in the organic rankings receives less than 50% visibility. That was also the fold by the way. The top sponsored ad receives 50%, down to 10% for the 5th spot and below. Focussing on organic remains important.
The map indicating where users viewed the web page is also interesting. Maybe just because I’m jealous I haven’t been able to this for any of our websites yet. But I’m going to work on it.
Little known Search Engine Snap.com has been around for almost 6 months. It has a very interesting business model. It’s based on conversion and transparency.
First, Snap has introduced a Cost-Per-Action advertising model. An advertiser only pays when a user does a specific action. This can be a purchase, or a form submission, or something else that’s meaningful to the advertiser. The higher the conversion, the better placement an advertiser gets. Makes sense, most advertisers measure this anyways and Google offers a tool to track conversion so why not base your model on it? The search results are determined by the conversion rate. The rational is that the higher the conversion, the more relevant the website. Very similar to the Overture approach what worked well for searches for products and services.
Secondly, Snap is very transparent in all this. The search results show the user how much an advertiser pays and what their conversion is. So a user can see how valuable their business is to the advertiser, and therefore, how relevant. I haven’t seen a conversion rate on any search results I’ve seen but Snap doesn’t get very many searches yet (75,000/day, Google receives millions). Snap is transparent about their whole business model. Click on stats on you can create all kinds of interesting reports including popular keywords, traffic, advertiser specifics and Snaps financials. Very interesting.
And third, Snap has an interesting product search as well. Search for Digital Camera, for example and a special search results show where the user can filter and sort the results. They use similar technology as Google is experimenting where user input immediately results in action without a service call. Jesse James Garrett has coined the term Ajax for it.
I like what Snap is doing. It uses a model a lot of companies use for measuring advertising and transparency users will appreciate. Call Snap crazy, but it’s run by the same people who created Overture, who introduced pay-per-click bidding and sold the company for 1.7 billion to Yahoo. Question is if users will adopt this over the big guns Google, MSN, Yahoo or Ask. Probably not likely. The key will be in syndication their search results. That’s what made Overture a success.
No RSS? No downloads? No interaction? Fake content? You’re fired!
Will techies and marketing folks ever get along?
Update 3/3: MSN found site in question and Sean Carver from the Microsoft search team is defending it on the MSN search blog. The comments are nasty. I frown upon the strategy but the real success can only be measured among it’s target audience.
I signed up for a notification shortly after Gmail launched about a year ago. Today I received an invite from Google to open a Gmail account. I got an invite shortly after Gmail launched so I’ve been using it for a while now and although I’m not using it as my primary email account (yet), I love the functionality. I basically use it as online storage. But this is another indicator Google might be close to rolling out Gmail to the world.
If you are one of the few that doesn’t have a Gmail account yet, drop me an email at william at williamsweekly dot com and I’ll send you an invitation, I have 50 left I think.
Microsoft will finally release a new Internet Explorer browser this summer. Originally, the browser was to be introduced with the new longhorn operating system but Microsoft changed their plans. Firefox certainly played a key role in this decision. This is great news because web authors and developers have complained for a long time about the current IE’s lack of support for web standards and it’s security issues.
Related:
Just found out Google maps launched. First impressions: