Search Marketing Blog by Tilak

According to Hitwise the May 2010 U.S. search marketing share grew 1% from April and back up to 72% of share on search queries. Month on month change of Yahoo! Search, Bing and Ask is -3%, -2% and -2% respectively.

By Industry:

Google hasn’t been above 72% on the hitwise chart since last December. That time Google’s search market share was 72.25%.

Google has announced that Google Caffeine rollout has been completed, the new and improved web indexing system that now powers the world’s largest search engine. In August 2009 Caffeine was introduced for public. Google has explained just how their old index and Caffeine differ:

Our old index had several layers, some of which were refreshed at a faster rate than others; the main layer would update every couple of weeks. To refresh a layer of the old index, we would analyze the entire web, which meant there was a significant delay between when we found a page and made it available to you.

With Caffeine, we analyze the web in small portions and update our search index on a continuous basis, globally. As we find new pages, or new information on existing pages, we can add these straight to the index. That means you can find fresher information than ever before—no matter when or where it was published.

Here are some fun facts that Google shared as well:

• Every second Caffeine processes hundreds of thousands of pages in parallel. If this were a pile of paper it would grow three miles taller every second.
• Caffeine takes up nearly 100 million gigabytes of storage in one database and adds new information at a rate of hundreds of thousands of gigabytes per day.
• You would need 625,000 of the largest iPods to store that much information; if these were stacked end-to-end they would go for more than 40 miles.

Finally Google has also introduced a feature that lets you put a picture on the Google home page. Bing has already received praise for its home page that shows a different picture each day. It hasn’t rolled out to yet but Marissa Mayer, Google’s VP Search Products & User Experience says this will appear for users throughout the world in the coming days.

You can personalized with your photo or image to the background of the Google homepage. You can find link “Change background image.” at the bottom left for uploading a photo. You can also use pictures you’ve uploaded to Google’s Picasa photo sharing site or those within a public gallery at Picasa.

Google Inc.’s chief executive told newspaper publishers Tuesday that they should continue to rely on advertising but seek new ways to reach readers.

Without providing specific recipes, Eric Schmidt laid out a few possibilities, including a site for medicine similar to the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, which lets users collectively contribute and edit entries. He urged publishers to focus on mobile technology and the development of new platforms for delivering news.

Schmidt said there’s still room for subscription and pay-by-the-piece journalism but he emphasized advertising, the source of 98 per cent of Google’s revenue, thanks to its success matching ads with a user’s search terms and other keywords.

“The important thing here is that advertising that is useful is going to work,” he said.

Schmidt commended newspapers for staking claim on the Internet in the 1990s but said there wasn’t a second act. He says news websites take too long to read, even slower than flipping through a newspaper or magazine, a shortcoming that can be addressed by improving technology.

“At Google we’re working hard to address the technological questions,” he said at the Newspaper Association of America’s annual convention. “We don’t have any answers here.”

He said technology for reading news on devices like mobile phone must ultimately be as pleasant as reading a magazine.

“From my perspective, the online experience can be thought of as terrible compared to what I view as this wonderful experience with magazines and newspapers.”

Schmidt’s wide-ranging remarks for about 45 minutes came before an audience whose businesses have plummeted as the recession compounds a decline in print advertising that began with the shift of some advertising to free or low-cost alternatives online.

Schmidt told reporters he was deeply concerned about the decline in quality journalism but had no easy answers for the industry’s woes.

His appearance came one day after The Associated Press announced a news industry initiative to track down copyright violators on the Internet and try to divert traffic from Web sites that don’t properly license news content. The AP didn’t name any potential targets, but some news reports focused on Internet search engines like Google.

Schmidt said Google has a multimillion-dollar licensing deal for AP content.

“I was a little confused by all the excitement in the news in the last 24 hours,” he said.

-AP

Now Google AdSense introduced Western Union funds transfer as a NEW payment method for Indonesia. It is very easy and quick but few things you have to remember that

a) Western Union payments follow normal Google AdSense payment schedule and will be available for pickup next day.
b) This payment option is available for Individuals not for businesses
c) Should present government ID proof that match the AdSense payee name.
d) Funds must be picked up within 35 days of issue and will be made in US dollars.

Follow the below instructions:

1) Sign in to your account at www.google.com/adsense.
2) Visit the My Account tab.
3) Click the ‘edit’ link adjacent to the ‘Payment Details’ header.
4) Select the Western Union Quick Cash radio button.
5) Click ‘Continue’.
6) Click ‘Save Changes’ to save your payment type.

I hope soon or later we also enjoy using this new payment option in India