Archive for the ‘Search Engines’ Category

Google shares rise as 3Q results signal Web ad rebound with search leader as prime beneficiary
NEW YORK (AP) — Google Inc. shares rose in premarket trading after the company’s third-quarter results signaled that the Internet advertising market is experiencing a turnaround and that the search leader is set to be the prime beneficiary.
At least one analyst said the company’s shares could hit $700 apiece, a level not reached since December 2007.
The Mountain View, Calif., company’s results were “stellar,” said Jefferies & Co. analyst Youssef Squali, lifting his price target on the stock to $600 from $470, and raising his earnings estimates for the company.
Canaccord Adams, meanwhile, raised its target by $140 to $700, saying YouTube results are improving and advertisers’ budgets are likely to ramp up for the holiday season.
Google shares peaked at nearly $750 in November 2007, just before the start of the recession. In the third quarter, the company posted its biggest quarter-to-quarter sales increase — 8 percent — since the end of 2007.
Google shares were up $17.34, or 3.3 percent, to $547.25 in premarket trading Friday. They’re already up 72 percent this year, but the stock is still attractive given Google’s prospects of 15 to 20 percent growth every year for the next several years, Squali said in a note to clients.
“Advertisers both in the U.S. and overseas are coming back,” Squali concurred, and “committing bigger budgets.”
Continued growth is also likely to come as search traffic increases and consumers’ click-through rates on ads rebounds, said Merriman Curhan Ford in a client note. Additionally, there are revenue growth opportunities in display ads and mobile phones, according to FBR Capital Markets analyst Heath Terry.
“Google is the company best positioned to benefit from the recovery in the ad market and overall growth in Internet usage,” Terry wrote. He has a price target of $680 on the shares.
Google is considered a barometer for the state of online commerce because its search engine serves as the hub of the Web’s largest advertising network.
Meanwhile, analysts commended Google for cutting expenses, which bolstered earnings. Year-to-date, capital expenditures are down 70 percent compared to last year, said William Blair analyst Megan Friedman in a note to investors.
Google executives said the company is set to ramp up spending, increasing hiring, buying up tech startups and spending more on computers.
In the third quarter, Google earned $1.64 billion, or $5.13 per share, a 27 percent increase from last year.
Excluding expenses for employee stock compensation, Google said it would have made $5.89 per share — above the average estimate of $5.42 per share among analysts polled by Thomson Reuters.
Revenue for the three months ending in September climbed 7 percent to $5.94 billion. That is Google’s fastest revenue growth rate so far this year.

Thanks to Mike Adler for suggesting this timely read from Yahoo Finance

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

That’s right…this is Google’s 10th anniversary/birthday. Funny enough, nobody really knows the exact day, as quoted directly from Google’s Answer Pages: “Google opened its doors in September 1998. The exact date when we celebrate our birthday has moved around over the years, depending on when people feel like having cake.”
TechCrunch offer’s their own theory in their article, Happy Tenth Birthday Google! When Are We Celebrating?

“Google is actually nearly 13 years old if you go by their own corporate history page: “By January of 1996, Larry and Sergey had begun collaboration on a search engine called BackRub, named for its unique ability to analyze the “back links” pointing to a given website.”
But if you go by when the Google.com domain name was registered, they’ll turn 11 on September 15.
However, the date Google celebrates as their birth month is September 1998. They celebrated on September 7, their date of incorporation, until 2005. Since 2005 (and also randomly in 2002), they’ve celebrated on September 27.”

If you have any other theories, I’d be glad to hear it. Google, at the age of 10 is already more successfull than I’ll ever be. YOU CAN FORGET GETTING A GIFT! All the best Google and thanks for your app’s!

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

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If you don’t know by now, Google recently released a web-browser – CHROME! “Google Chrome is a browser that combines a minimal design with sophisticated technology to make the web faster, safer, and easier.” (~Google.com/chrome)
It has only been in beta release for a few hours, but I am extremely impressed. It’s fast, it’s simple in design and it’s minimalistic approach is quite sophisticated. Now, with every browser comes geeky followers with their own “Google Chrome Themes” and “AddOns“. Well, after 1 simple search using Chrome and the simple term “Google Chrome Themes”, this is what I came up with…

1. Nothing Here – Freechromethemes.com
2. Cheap Marketing – Digg.com
3. FIRST REAL *NEW* THEME – Chrome Dar (by NukeIt.org)
4. A forum for “Chromers” – Chromespot.com
5. Another THEME here too – GetChromeThemes.com

Well, 2 out of 5, not bad so far. This list will undoubtably grow. This a marketers dream and I imagine this will make theme/addon designers PPC Rich and sites like Digg and StumbleUpon very…very happy!

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

You may be asking yourself, “yea, like that would ever happen!” Well, guess what? IT DID! And if you don’t believe me, check out these three articles:

• GigaOm Article: Gmail’s Out…Again
• Reuter’s Article: Google Gmail users have trouble accessing accounts
• ZDNet Article: Gmail locks out users for an hour

According to Reuters (a reliable source) “Users across the United States, Canada and India reported problems with Gmail and a Google employee also reported that the company’s own corporate e-mail account was down.” The problems started at about 5 p.m. EDT (and around 2:30pm Pacific Standard Time here in Seattle, WA.).
And it seems this isn’t a one time occurance. Quoting GigaOm, “in recent weeks, not only Google’s services but those of Amazon’s S3 and Apple’s MobileMe have gone on the blink, leading us to rethink our assumptions about the reliability of the web as a platform. Clearly a lot of work still needs to be done.”
So what did you do during “the G-Crash”? Well, considering this may happen again, I suggest you come prepared. I call out to all of you Gmail, GApp, Googler Lovin’ Hippie Geeks…stand tall and heed my words of wisdom…
Here are your “Top 5 Things To Do When Google Shuts Down”:

• Take a nap and when you wake, hope the world hasn’t collapsed into itself.
• Revert to your SmartPhone in hopes that it has found a loop hole during these depressing moments of your internet life
• Pick up a newspaper and “read it”.
• Oh wait, Blogs still work so there’s no need to go to such lengths…I suggest www.RedRussak.com
• If you made it this far, I’d assume that Google’s 19,604 full-time employees and $23 Billion have come up with a solution.

…I’m glad we made it through these tough times. It’s funny, I can’t imagine what would happen if Google decided to take a vacation for longer than 5 minutes. That would make for a great blog post

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

French advertising company Publicis Group has acquired the Performics Search Marketing business from Google. Performics housed more than 200 search marketing specialists and since its 1998 inceptions has expanded from Chicago, San Francisco, New York, London, Hamburg, Sydney, to Singapore and Beijing.
According to MediaPost article, Publicis Acquires Performics From Google, Expands Search Marketing Capabilities

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Publicis, the parent of Starcom MediaVest Group, Zenith Optimedia Group, Digitas, Denuo, and agencies such as Leo Burnett and Saatchi & Saatchi, said Chicago-based Performics would be integrated into Publicis’ new VivaKi Nerve Center. [...] Google did not comment on the reasons for its divestiture of the unit, but in a statement, Chairman-CEO Eric Schmidt said, “We look forward to working with Performics as a partner.”

According to an AlleyInsider article, Google Sells DoubleClick’s SEM Business To Ad Conglom Publicis (GOOG)

Publicis has been “cooperating” with Google for more than a year, but we’re not exactly sure what that means — mostly because the companies didn’t reveal any details in a cryptic press conference in January. They did say that “Google would exchange its technological know-how for Publicis’s analytical and media planning expertise,” according to Reuters. We’re assuming this deal won’t have an effect on their prior relationship.

So why would a Search Company giant sell of part of their search services? After Google acquired DoubleClick, the SEM portion created a “conflict of interest” for a search company to own a search engine marketing company under a different entity. Google just took on the Affiliate Marketing division of Performics and sold the rest to to Publicis.
A great move by Google, but I think everyone is asking the same question: “At what cost?”

Article By: Josh Marmer (Josh@aclion.com)

Who wants to take on the big boys? Microsoft and Yahoo have tried to partner up to challenge them – and there are many other really cool search engines who have a neat gimmick or logo that vertically target, horizontally target, industry target, subject matter target, Target, Walmart, and more. So what makes this Cuil (pronounced Cool) search engine think they can really be bigger and better than the biggest and baddest boys on the block? Well, they aren’t just upping the GPA requirement it takes to qualify to get an interview…

Cuil is a new search engine launched by ex-Googlers – that alone turns the heads of most internet savvy users. Mention Google, and it’s a good start. Add to that $33 million in two rounds of funding from Greylock & Tugboat Ventures and Madrone Capital Partners, and they look like there’s something good going on.
So how is Cuil different? Size – it boasts 120 Billion webpages indexed in their “world wide web” – about triple that of Google. So Cuil is in fact, bigger. Since Cuil does not rank based on popularity of clicks, but more heavily on relevant content, there is no need for them (at this point) to store personal usage history. So, Cuil is, it claims, safer.
Also there are neat tabs, drilldown menus to breakdown categories, and rollover definitions – so it may actually be “cooler.” Also, they have an awesome logo, black background on the homepage, and aesthetically pretty pages…but that’s just me. I did always like the pictures.
So my first few test searches have been a great experience, but it remains to be seen if the appeal of Cuil will hold with the public who somehow magnetically drew to Google faster that the Millenium Falcon got pulled toward the DeathStar by the tractor beam. In fact, once I was done surfing on Cuil – I went right back to my Google Toolbar to look for a restaurant for my wife and I to go to tonight.
We’ll see. A more user friendly, more relevant engine will be welcomed – but it will need to pull some great results from that 120 Billion index in order to sway the public’s habits. Exciting – let’s see what happens. Will we use it? Will Google just buy it? And another question that comes to mind: Why didn’t they just buy www.cool.com? Maybe making new words is part of the gig…

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

That’s right…AC Lion’s very own Dan Goldsmith has officially made search “SEXY” for job seekers. And just to confirm your suspicions, he has the support of Sara Holoubek the contributing editor of the DM News' SearchBuzz newsletter and a regular author of the DM News Optimized column. And I quote Sarah from her DMNews article below.:

“Search has returned as a must-have for Fall 2008.”
In 2008 Ms. Holoubek was elected to the Search Engine Marketing Professionals Organization (SEMPO) board of directors for a third term and co-founded the SEMPO NY Working Group. She is also an active board member of CampInteractive, a non profit dedicated to bridging the digital and leadership divide among inner city youth From 2003-2005, Ms. Holoubek served as iCrossing's Chief Strategy Officer, building the firm's New York office, repositioning the iCrossing brand as it raised an early VC round of $13 million.
…so if Sara thinks search “sexy”, then Dan can’t be wrong! Feel free to check out the article for yourself below (or simply click here:

Article By: Joshua ‘The Red’ Russak (Red@aclion.com)

I’m usually very protective about just copying and pasting articles verbatim, but considering the nature of this blog, it makes sense in this case. “Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past monthly.” (Read the main article here) Search Engine Land is a great source of information for the world of Online Search. It’s a great blog and I would suggest you subscribe to them by clicking this link, but feel free to read to your hearts content…below

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