search marketing blog: ambergreen

As Firefox 2.0 is launched, Mozilla has relaunched its add-ons page to help users make the most of the browser. With over one thousand add-ons available, there are plenty of useful tools which can help make your job a little bit easier, as well as some plain old fun stuff.

Add-ons include FireBug, which lets you explore the inner workings of web pages, Foxmarks Bookmark Synchronizer and FoxyTunes which places remote controls for your media player within Firefox so you can control your music without leaving the browser.

Yahoo! has announced that they will launch support for the NOODP meta tag that indicates that engines shouldn’t use the titles and abstracts gleaned from Open Directory Project data.

Tags following the syntax below will be supported following the re-indexing of content typical of Yahoo! weather updates.

META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOODP” or META NAME=”Slurp” CONTENT=”NOODP”

Following the launch of Firefox 2.0 yesterday Richard MacManus, an independent web analyst and consultant, and writer for ZDnet, published an interview with Chris Beard, Mozilla’s Vice President of Products.

Discussing the growing threat that Firefox poses to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, the importance of security, web feeds and why they haven’t included an integrated RSS Reader and much more, this is a great chance to hear about the future of Firefox from the horse’s mouth.

With the Firefox upgrade focused on tuning user experience, improving efficiency, customisation and security, the upgrade looks set to help gain the open source browser even greater market share. The 2005 release of Firefox 1.5 saw around 200,000 people per day downloading it, but today that number has grown to 350,000 and seems set to cause Microsoft a headache for some time to come.

Following the announcement earlier this year that Incisive Media and Danny Sullivan were to have a parting of the ways after a 10 year relationship, it looks like they may have kissed and made up.

In Danny’s blog he explains that both parties have reached an agreement that will see him continue to work with Incisive to produce Search Engine Strategies, including chairing the New York 2007 show, co-chairing the San Jose conference and participating in the Chicago event.

His participation with Search Engine Watch is still coming to an end on 30^th November, but he continuing involvement with the shows should keep some US based SEOs happy for the meantime.

The increasingly popular open source browser Firefox is set to launch version 2.0 today, featuring a range of updates including anti-phishing support and enhanced tab bed browsing.

The first version of the browser was released in 2004 and there have been few updates made to it since. Version 2.0 changes all that and according to Mike Schroepfer, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, there are twelve large scale changes as well as a host of minor fixes.

One of the biggest changes in this version and one which has developed as a counter to modern online fraud methods, is the anti-phishing support. This service alerts users when they hit a site known for tricking visitors into handing over valuable personal details.

Spell check is another useful addition to the browser, along with improved tab overflow and improved stability.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could custom build a search engine for your website quickly and easily, focusing on all the things that are important to your company? Well Google have heard your cries and have launched Google Co-op, a customised search engine service which allows users to create a search engine containing specific websites only.

This is a great step forward for Google as this service really does allow anyone to build a custom search engine, which is pretty cool. There are plenty of options for customisation too which make it easy to make the engine highly targeted and entirely relevant to your site.

You can search only the sites you chose, including only the pages you want, of which there can be millions if you like. You can also decide how the content should be prioritised, whether anyone else can contribute to the index, and what the search results looks like.

You can choose to have the results opened in Google, or in an i-frame if you want the results to open in your own site, giving you the opportunity to really make the results look like an integrated part of your site.

As you would expect from a Google product Google Co-op is easy to use, apparently taking ‘a matter of minutes’ to set up. No programming know how is needed and it’s all free. There is also the option to use the custom engine as a revenue source via Google Adsense.

Matt Cutts has reviewed Google Co-op and he’s pretty impressed with it. It certainly has great potential for many client sites and blogs and could help towards sites achieving authority status for their chosen topics.

Let me know if you have any thoughts.

New findings from comScore Networks show that europeans are far more likely to access the internet from their mobiles than users in the US. The research company’s Mobile Tracking Study, looks at how consumers across the US, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the UK access web content from their mobile phones.

The research shows that 29% of European users regularly access the internet from mobile devices, compared to only 19% in the US. The highest usage was seen in Germany and Italy at 34%, France (28%), Spain with 26% and the UK with 24%.

While European users tend to visit both leading online portals and those run by mobile operators, those in the US use Google, MSN and Yahoo! much more frequently.

Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe, said: “In Europe, the mobile Internet appears to mirror the dynamics of the fixed Internet. Google remains strong but the other US-based portals achieve much lower penetration, facing stiff competition from local competitors, in this case the mobile providers, who have the structural advantage of a degree of control over the access point and interface from the mobile phone.”

According to a new survey by the Royal Mail the average UK shopper has spent an average of £609 online already this year with the figure set to top £1,000 as the Christmas rush begins.

The survey showed that 61% of consumers consult a catalogue before making an online purchase, with 83% of respondents saying that they regularly use offline techniques to research products before buying online.

The Royal Mail’s Head of Multi-channel Retail Catherine Campbell, said: “Online retail continues to grow at a phenomenal rate and the intrinsic link between the rise in spending and the use of catalogues is only too clear. Consumers are demanding greater choice and convenience about how, where and when they buy their goods, and the marriage between online and catalogues is a thriving relationship.”

According to the IMRG (Interactive Media in Retail Group), online shopping accounts for 10% of all UK retail spending.

An article in The Sunday Times sets online retail growth at around 3% of retail sales, growing to 7% by 2010. Retail online spend is expected to reach £10.3 billion this year, excluding such services as travel and finance

Barriers still revolve around the intangibility of internet shopping with online retail having a higher return rate than traditional outlets usually due to user’s expectations not being matched by delivery. Fulfilment, especially during high demand periods such as Christmas, is also a concern.

Retailers with offline and online crossover opportunities are ahead of the curve, as shown by the Royal Mail survey, however the growth in high value sales ( Ebay sells a car in the UK every 2 minutes) point to additional areas of growth.

YouTube has been forced to delete nearly 30,000 files from its database after receiving a complaint from Japanese media companies concerned about copyright infringement.

Forums have been alive with the feeling that Google has made a giant mistake in paying $1.65 billion for the YouTube site, and with the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers demanding the removal of 29,549 video clips for infringement of copyright, it seems that Google may have a rocky road ahead with their new purchase.

In a bid to make the service toe the line, licensing deals have been struck with Universal Music Group, CBS, Warner Music Group and Sony BMG Music Entertainment. Of the four major companies, only EMI did not agree an arrangement. These deals should help to protect Google from major copyright infringement lawsuits, but the company will have to strike a lot of deals with a lot of companies to make sure that the site isn’t breaking any laws, including Hollywood studios and numerous television companies.

Only last month Doug Morris, chief executive of Universal Music had called YouTube and similar sites “copyright infringers”, claiming that they were owed millions of dollars from file sharing sites. The new deal with YouTube should see the music companies receive as much as $50 million which should keep the relationship a little sweeter.

Following on from the truly sickening news that Google will pocket 25% of US ad spend this year, yes that is 25%, the company has announced that its third quarter profits have almost doubled. No wonder you might say.

For a total ad spend of $16 billion this year, Google is expected to hold on to $4 billion, an increase of 65% from last years figures. Yahoo is expected to gain £2.86 billion which, while it isn’t exactly small change, shows the enormous difference between the rival paid search giants. Yahoo is moving to improve revenues with the introduction of the new Panama system, but with figures like this, a neck and neck race isn’t likely.

With a net income of £390 million over the three months to the end of September, the company had a 92% increase for the same quarter in 2005.