A9's original idea, keeping and saving your search history, is being copied. Both Google and Yahoo have announced their own versions in the last week. Like A9, you'll need to create an account, then the service will allow you to start saving your searches. Links: A9, Yahoo My Web beta, Google My Search History beta.
I assume that Ask.com and MSN will be announcing their versions soon, just like they did with desktop seach.
Yahoo and Google have added an interesting twist to the feature. With the integration of desktop search and search history, they both let you store the pages you view. So, even if the page changes, you still have the old version handy. It seems to me, if the Wayback Machine were more reliable, quicker to archive and had a good search feature, these features would be moot.
I have to admit that I've always wondered about search history. It is a lot of computing power and storage for a feature that I need only occasionally at best. I'm not sure search history will ever be profitable. But I guess the game here, like in the bubble days, is to get customers at any cost -- and the way to do that is to have more and better features.
Thursday, April 28, 2005
Tuesday, April 26, 2005
The Apprentice, Oprah Winfrey and Pontiac
Pontiac is on a promotional roll. Last September Oprah Winfrey and Pontiac teamed up to give away 276 Pontiac G6 cars -- a $7 million promotional give away. Then, just last week, The Donald (Trump, not Duck) included the new Pontiac Solstice in a weekly challenge -- for an estimated $4 million price tag.
Was it worth it? In Oprah's case, no. Take a look at the Reach graph for Pontiac.com. Last September, when Oprah gave away the cars, it had a modest effect on Pontiac.com's traffic, increasing their reach from 50 to 175 per million. In other words, .005% of Alexa's audience went to Pontiac.com prior to the show, and after the show .02% of Alexa's audience visited. In real dollars per site visitor, that cost $112 per...
How about Trump. Did he do any better? Again, take a look at the graph. Prior to the show, Pontiac had been improving their audience size to a more respectable 150 per million, or .015% of the Alexa audience. After the show, Pontiac.com hit 700 per million, or .07% of the Alexa audience. Not bad. That works out to approximately $11.50 per site visitor -- a much better bang for the buck than Oprah's giveaway. Of course, Pontiac is not in the business of getting people to visit their Web site. They are in the business of selling cars. But still, the number of people of visiting their Web site can't be ignored as irrelevant.
Pontiac gets kudos for having impressive marketing savvy, but it still has a long way to go before it can "trump" Ford or Toyota, both of which have an average Reach of 400 per million. As of today Pontiac is back down to a Reach of 175 per million. Comparison Graph Link. By the way, have you seen the new Pontiac Solstice? Nice... (They didn't pay me to say that... unfortunately.) Link.
Was it worth it? In Oprah's case, no. Take a look at the Reach graph for Pontiac.com. Last September, when Oprah gave away the cars, it had a modest effect on Pontiac.com's traffic, increasing their reach from 50 to 175 per million. In other words, .005% of Alexa's audience went to Pontiac.com prior to the show, and after the show .02% of Alexa's audience visited. In real dollars per site visitor, that cost $112 per...
How about Trump. Did he do any better? Again, take a look at the graph. Prior to the show, Pontiac had been improving their audience size to a more respectable 150 per million, or .015% of the Alexa audience. After the show, Pontiac.com hit 700 per million, or .07% of the Alexa audience. Not bad. That works out to approximately $11.50 per site visitor -- a much better bang for the buck than Oprah's giveaway. Of course, Pontiac is not in the business of getting people to visit their Web site. They are in the business of selling cars. But still, the number of people of visiting their Web site can't be ignored as irrelevant.
Pontiac gets kudos for having impressive marketing savvy, but it still has a long way to go before it can "trump" Ford or Toyota, both of which have an average Reach of 400 per million. As of today Pontiac is back down to a Reach of 175 per million. Comparison Graph Link. By the way, have you seen the new Pontiac Solstice? Nice... (They didn't pay me to say that... unfortunately.) Link.
Tuesday, April 19, 2005
FireFox Flying High
I've been keeping a close eye on the FireFox browser. If you haven't installed it yet, what are you waiting for? It is a good browser -- some say better than Internet Explorer. Whether or not that is true, I am just glad to see competition and innovation back in the browser marketplace. I've installed it myself, but rarely use it because I depend on the Alexa Toolbar, and we haven't built one for FireFox... yet. (note: A9 has a FireFox toolbar with some Alexa Stats built into it.) If FireFox can make a major dent in the browser war, we'll hop on the train. The million dollar question is whether FireFox is gaining ground on Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser, or is it just a flash in the pan. Here is a round-up of some stats that might help you decide for yourself.
Boing Boing announced today that FireFox just passed Internet Explorer on their internal site stats. 38% of Boing Boing's users have FireFox and 35% have IE. Link. But is that typical? Boing Boing's audience probably skews toward the tech-savvy early adopter crowd. If we look at another site, search engine Snap, we see dramatically different stats. According to Snap, FireFox has less than 8% of the browser share. Link. That's a big difference. What about another source, like W3Schools? 24% and growing. Link. But again, that's a techy audience. Maybe we need another source, like Web Side Story. They get their data from a large number of sites, so it is probably more balanced than the previous examples: 5.7% Link.
So what's the answer? Is FireFox winning? Among the early adopter crowd, yes. There is clear evidence that FireFox is gaining ground and is a serious threat to Internet Explorer. But, among the general population, FireFox is just a minor blip on the radar still rating in the single digits. The more interesting question is whether the early adopter crowd is predictive. Is FireFox like the iPod, first coveted by early adopters then embraced by the public at large. Or is it more like the Segway, adopted by a few, but shunned by most?
My guess is that FireFox is headed for a 10% market share, but I hope that FireFox will prove me wrong. I'd love to build a FireFox toolbar.
Boing Boing announced today that FireFox just passed Internet Explorer on their internal site stats. 38% of Boing Boing's users have FireFox and 35% have IE. Link. But is that typical? Boing Boing's audience probably skews toward the tech-savvy early adopter crowd. If we look at another site, search engine Snap, we see dramatically different stats. According to Snap, FireFox has less than 8% of the browser share. Link. That's a big difference. What about another source, like W3Schools? 24% and growing. Link. But again, that's a techy audience. Maybe we need another source, like Web Side Story. They get their data from a large number of sites, so it is probably more balanced than the previous examples: 5.7% Link.
So what's the answer? Is FireFox winning? Among the early adopter crowd, yes. There is clear evidence that FireFox is gaining ground and is a serious threat to Internet Explorer. But, among the general population, FireFox is just a minor blip on the radar still rating in the single digits. The more interesting question is whether the early adopter crowd is predictive. Is FireFox like the iPod, first coveted by early adopters then embraced by the public at large. Or is it more like the Segway, adopted by a few, but shunned by most?
My guess is that FireFox is headed for a 10% market share, but I hope that FireFox will prove me wrong. I'd love to build a FireFox toolbar.
Wednesday, April 13, 2005
Goodbye Old Media, Hello New Media
I wish I could claim that I found this first, but earlier today when I was searching for Alexa on TagCentral (which I found via del.icio.us) I saw that somebody had posted an Alexa traffic graph on Flickr. Link to graph. The graph shows that Wikipedia has surpassed the NY Times. Yes, that's right, a small start up, powered by volunteers is more successful than the venerable, highly paid, stalwart New York Times site.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. Just look at the circuitous path I took to find the graph. First to del.icio.us, then to tag central, then to flickr. There's a new media path if ever there was one. This gets me thinking. What is the difference between new media and old? Is the new media of today the old media of tomorrow? Will these fun and interesting sites grow, become public companies, hire hundreds of people and start charging for their content? Perhaps. But for now, these new sites are making the Internet exciting again, like the early days. There is always a new site popping up and challenging the way I think about the Internet and what it can become. The good old days are back.
Update: There is an interesting article here called Mainstream Media Meltdown that sees a broader trend in the new vs. old media. Link.
It shouldn't be a surprise to anybody. Just look at the circuitous path I took to find the graph. First to del.icio.us, then to tag central, then to flickr. There's a new media path if ever there was one. This gets me thinking. What is the difference between new media and old? Is the new media of today the old media of tomorrow? Will these fun and interesting sites grow, become public companies, hire hundreds of people and start charging for their content? Perhaps. But for now, these new sites are making the Internet exciting again, like the early days. There is always a new site popping up and challenging the way I think about the Internet and what it can become. The good old days are back.
Update: There is an interesting article here called Mainstream Media Meltdown that sees a broader trend in the new vs. old media. Link.
Tuesday, April 12, 2005
Tangled Web -- Indeed
With the dot-com boom, bust and subsequent boom a lot of search engines have disappeared, changed hands, or partnered with other engines. It is getting harder and harder to keep track of them. Who powers whom? Who owns whom? If you are like me and you want to know then you need the Search Engine Decoder.
With this cool tool you can click on the name of any search engine and see where the results come from and where they go. For example, I clicked Yahoo and the decoder told me Yahoo received paid results from Overture (they own Overture) and delivers results to Inktomi, Altavista and Alltheweb (I guess they own all those too.)
Search Engines are in a fast changing landscape. For example, Last week I noticed that the information for Lycos was out of date (by only a week... and it is now corrected.) And now it looks like HotBot is out of date.
Regardless, it is well done, enlightening and fun to play with. Link.
With this cool tool you can click on the name of any search engine and see where the results come from and where they go. For example, I clicked Yahoo and the decoder told me Yahoo received paid results from Overture (they own Overture) and delivers results to Inktomi, Altavista and Alltheweb (I guess they own all those too.)
Search Engines are in a fast changing landscape. For example, Last week I noticed that the information for Lycos was out of date (by only a week... and it is now corrected.) And now it looks like HotBot is out of date.
Regardless, it is well done, enlightening and fun to play with. Link.
Thursday, April 07, 2005
Catholics Flock to the Vatican... Online
Is it wrong to call the Vatican a Mover and Shaker? Perhaps I can avoid the plague of locusts and further smiting by just saying it is highly trafficked.
Somebody here at Alexa asked the question: "Why isn't the Vatican on the Movers and Shakers?" Good question. Vatican.va was ranked around 10,000 and eventually peaked up to and inside of the Top 100. Now that's a lot of believers. (Who is the patron saint of traffic anyway?)
After some digging around we figured out that the vatican IS in the Movers and Shakers list, but not the one shown on the front page. You have to click through then go to the Global Movers and Shakers. There you will find the Holy See at the top of the list.
I guess all Alexa Toolbar users aren't pagans after all... just most. Check out #4 on the list. Link.
Somebody here at Alexa asked the question: "Why isn't the Vatican on the Movers and Shakers?" Good question. Vatican.va was ranked around 10,000 and eventually peaked up to and inside of the Top 100. Now that's a lot of believers. (Who is the patron saint of traffic anyway?)
After some digging around we figured out that the vatican IS in the Movers and Shakers list, but not the one shown on the front page. You have to click through then go to the Global Movers and Shakers. There you will find the Holy See at the top of the list.
I guess all Alexa Toolbar users aren't pagans after all... just most. Check out #4 on the list. Link.
Friday, April 01, 2005
April Fools
We were toying with the idea of playing an April Fools prank of our own and scrambling everybody's rank... (insert your own joke here.) So, without a good joke of our own, I give you other April Fools Day pranks on the web.
* Google Gulp
* BoringBoring
* Exclusive: Motorola iTunes Phone
* Star Trek TV Pilots in Production
* Water on Mars - NASA!
* Britannica takeover of Wikimedia
* Ask Jeeves
* Google Gulp
* BoringBoring
* Exclusive: Motorola iTunes Phone
* Star Trek TV Pilots in Production
* Water on Mars - NASA!
* Britannica takeover of Wikimedia
* Ask Jeeves
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