Dienstag, 13. Mai 2008

Is Blinkx the next acquisition target?

Speculation is rising around a potential acquisition of Blinkx, a video search engine by either Google or News Corp (and possibly Yahoo!). Traffic to Blinkx has increased steadily over the past year – the market share of visits for the week ending May 10, 2008 is 10x higher than the same week in 2007. Much of this growth is being driven by new users, since 62% of the traffic to Blinkx during the same timeframe had not visited the website in the past 30 days.

Blinkx WMS 05-10-08.png

Among a custom category of 68 online video websites, Blinkx currently ranks #10, but their strength is really to serve as a referring partner for many of the sites. Of the websites that received traffic from Blinkx, Photobucket was the main beneficiary with 20% of the downstream traffic followed by The Weather Channel and Google. Websites for News Corp. (Photobucket and MySpace), Google (Google, YouTube and Blogger), and Yahoo! (mail, search, and video) are all well represented in the top 10 downstream for the week ending May 10, 2008, highlighting why they make logical potential bidders.

Downstream Blinkx 05 10 08.png

Sieben Maßnahmen gegen Klickbetrug

In Deutschland ist Klickbetrug zwar noch kein ganz großes Problem. Doch es schadet nicht, wenn man als Werbetreibender weiß, wie man sich dagegen schützen kann.

In den USA, so schätzen Marktstudien, wurden im dritten Quartal 2007 16,7 Prozent aller Klicks auf Google Adwords via Klickbetrug generiert. Mit den falschen Klicks versuchen entweder Publisher, die Werbeumsätze auf ihrer eigenen Site in die Höhe zu treiben, oder Wettbewerber engagieren "Klickdienstleister", um der eigenen Konkurrenz im Web finanziell zu schaden. In Deutschland liegen die Raten, wie Suchmaschinenbetreiber nicht müde werden zu versichern, zwar deutlich unter den US-Ausmaßen. Dennoch schadet es nicht, die wichtigsten Schutzmaßnahmen zu kennen. Sieben Strategien hat Clickforensics.com, ein US-Dienstleister gegen den Kampf von Klickbetrug, als externer Link in neuem Fenster folgtkostenloses PDF zusammengestellt:

1. Schließen Sie Low-Quality-Sites als Werbepartner im Google-Publisher-Netzwerk aus. Google bietet die Möglichkeit, bestimmte Seiten namentlich auszuschließen.

2. Beobachten Sie, wer auf Ihre Anzeigen klickt und gleichen Sie Ausgaben und Conversion Rates täglich ab.

3. Analysieren Sie, zu welchen Zeiten die Konversionsraten Ihrer Anzeigen besonders schlecht sind. Nutzen Sie Zeittargeting, um auszuschließen, dass Ihre Adwords in diesen Zeiten ins Netzwerk eingespielt werden.

4. Ermitteln Sie die Keywords, die zu den schlechtesten Konversionsraten führen. Oft sind es die teuersten, die auch Klickbetrüger am stärksten ansprechen.

5. Identifizieren Sie Ihre Wettbewerber und blocken Sie deren IP-Adressen und Domains.

6. Nutzen Sie Geotargeting, um Ihre Anzeigen auszuliefern. Viele Klickbetrüger wohnen in Dritte-Welt-Ländern.

7. Beauftragen Sie einen qualifizierten Dienstleister mit Schutzmaßnahmen gegen Klickbetrug.

Yahoo! Shows Google as a Malware! Turns out to be Yahoo! URL Mix-Up!

Since the successful launch of McAfee powered Yahoo's Search Scan, it was only a matter of time for something to go wrong. It seems luck just isn't going Yahoo's way.

According to a post on TechCrunch, a small glitch in the Yahoo! SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) that are now powered by SearchScan showed the Google Home Page as a potential Malware Threat.

Search results on Yahoo! for the query Astalavista returned various results with Google.com as a part of search results. The Google home page was placed at position tenth and was marked as 'Dangerous Downloads'. It seems like Yahoo! somehow managed to mix-up Google's URL with that of Astalavista's.

Yahoo! Shows Google as a Malware! Turns out to be Yahoo! URL Mix-Up!

However, Yahoo! has now corrected the mistake and for the same search query, the results are exactly what they should be.

Yahoo! Shows Google as a Malware! Turns out to be Yahoo! URL Mix-Up!

Yahoo! needs to take a second look at these mistakes, as it may cause further troubles that might be difficult to encounter. Additionally, if Yahoo! is indeed looking for a partnership with Google, it should better watch its steps.

Matt Cutts Talks about Spam and SEO!

Google's Matt Cutts enlightened the audience with an incredible presentation at O'Reilly's web conference. Matt Cutts is widely acclaimed as a titan in the realm of Search Engine Soldiers. He has knocked out more search engine spam sites than any one has even heard of. The 'Spam Killer' spoke about some critical issues regarding Spam. Some of the main points of focus were:

  1. How Google detects Spam.
  2. The kinds of technology and systems that are designed to defend against Spam.
  3. How a Webmaster can defend his website from Spam Attacks.

The 10 minute video is widely considered as the 'Best Ten Minute SEO Video". According to Matt, he had always been looking for an opportunity to clear a misconception that many people had. It was commonly believed that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) was considered as Spam by Google and that Google hated SEO. However, with his 10 minute presentation Matt is quite certain that he has been able to reach out to a lot of people and clear this misconception. Matt Cutts or 'The Spam Killer' as he is more commonly known, has indeed given quite an insight on the world of Spam and how it is being combated by Google.