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Article Source: http://www.articlesbase.com/ – Google: The search party is over — offer by Www.go-shop.com.au

Yes, the company is still growing at rates that would be the envy of the rest of the Fortune 500. But its core business is slowing, its stock is down, its Android mobile platform generates scant revenue, and competition (hello, Facebook) is fierce. Can Google find its footing in this brave new world?

Stroll across the Googleplex in Mountain View, Calif., and you are confronted by a world that sparkles a bit more than whatever slightly dreary one you just left. Massive stone busts of ocean explorers like Jacques Cousteau fix their gaze on the cobbled paths that flow into the main Google buildings. At sunny tables outside, Google employees — the coolest, most confident techies you’ll meet — eat their free food and chat animatedly about who-knows-what arcane computer algorithms, or the latest must-do pastime of the young and affluent Silicon Valley set, like kite-boarding or indoor skydiving.

It looks a lot like the midday break at some elite college campus. But almost 12 years after it was launched by precocious Stanford grad students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google and its founders are grappling with a very grownup set of problems. Google’s core business, online search, is slowing. That is partly due to Google’s own success; it’s hard to keep posting record growth rates when you dominate a business so thoroughly — Google sites lead the U.S. market with 64% of all searches conducted. But more crucially, the web has changed significantly since Google became a verb. There is (at long last) fresh competition from Microsoft’s Bing, and also a new wave of sites and services that offer alternatives for consumers’ time and attention — and the advertisers that follow them.

The Googlers certainly know this, but in classic Innovator’s Dilemma fashion, the company seems unsure about how to move beyond the core search business that has brought it such massive success. Google has placed expensive bets on acquisitions, chief among them its .6 billion purchase of YouTube, a .1 billion wager on ad network DoubleClick, and more recently its 0 million purchase of mobile advertising platform AdMob. But none of those deals have yet significantly diversified Google’s -billion-a-year revenue stream: Google’s main focus continues to be driving people back to the search box and the ad dollars that Google collects for helping marketers reach highly targeted consumers. Even Google’s most successful new product, the Android operating system for smartphones, generates scant revenue for the company: Google gives the licenses free to mobile-phone operators to facilitate, you guessed it, searches and use of other Google services on mobile phones. And while it lets its whip-smart engineers dedicate a portion of their workdays to dreaming up the coolest products for the web, all that Googley experimentation hasn’t had a huge impact on the bottom line.

That was fine when the search business was expanding at 30% or 40% a year, and Google’s revenue was growing at twice that. Long-term projections for growth in the search business are more in the 15% to 17% range. Yet analysts estimate that 91% of Google’s revenue still comes from the AdWords and AdSense business model that Google built around Page and Brin’s breakthrough PageRank algorithm. Even more telling, an estimated 99% of its profit does too. This year’s projected earnings growth of 18% is a third of what Google averaged over the past five years. A lot of companies would kill for that growth, but for technology companies, and Google in particular, those numbers don’t impress. Google is rounding a corner that all the fruit smoothies at its Silicon Valley campus make it hard to pull back from. This year Google (GOOG) has joined the ranks of just about every great technology company before it, including IBM (IBM), eBay (EBAY), Cisco (CSCO), Microsoft (MSFT), and Oracle (ORCL). Google, against its will, and defying its massive cash hoard, is transitioning from a growth company to — and there is no kind way to put it — a cash cow. That ranks right up there with being a former supermodel, but it is a taint Google can’t seem to shake right now, at least not on Wall Street. It’s a big part of the reason that Google shares are down 21% since Jan. 4, underperforming the Nasdaq (up 1%).

Up against the ever-changing web

Some investors also worry about Google’s ability to keep pace with consumers’ evolving use of the web. Say you want to buy running shoes to train for a marathon. Five years ago you would have simply Googled it, looked at the list of results, weighed your options, and made the purchase, perhaps by clicking on one of the sponsored links that accompanied your search. Today you might still do that, but increasingly you might pose the question “What running shoes should I buy?” to your friends on Facebook, or maybe write “Who knows about training for marathons?” on Twitter. By the time shopping service Groupon sends you (and 25 of your friends) an offer for the perfect shoes and registration for a race, you’ll probably just pounce on it.

And what if you don’t even have a question to pose? What if you just need help? Consider the case of American graduate student James Buck. Egyptian police detained Buck for taking photographs of a protest in a city outside Cairo. Using his cellphone and his Twitter account, Buck broadcast a single word, “arrested.” Buck’s network alerted officials at the University of California at Berkeley, who ultimately got the U.S. State Department and a local lawyer involved. Buck was out of jail in 24 hours. Try that with a keyword search.

This is the phenomenon Google is up against. In the decade-plus since Page and Brin came up with PageRank, the web and the way we use it have changed dramatically. As Buck’s example shows, the web experience is increasingly mobile and social. We take it everywhere, and are connected almost all the time. Google needs to find real success in this new world — or invent the next major evolution of the web. It isn’t easy to create new multibillion-dollar businesses, but the rewards are great for the companies that do: Consider former Google ally Apple (AAPL), which has dominated add-on businesses (music players, retail) that are more profitable than the one that brought it prominence (computers). Apple is just killing it, and it is now the most valuable technology company in the world, with a market cap of 6 billion vs. Google’s 6 billion. Thus far Google has been tight-lipped about plans for a world beyond search. Marissa Mayer, head of search at Google, says the company doesn’t provide financial guidance, but contends that Google doesn’t need a huge second act, a collection of smaller businesses will suffice. The original search business will always dwarf any subsequent new units. And Page, Brin, and Google CEO Eric Schmidt simply haven’t articulated a vision for Google’s future. “That is what is scaring investors,” says Sameet Sinha, a senior analyst with JMP Securities in San Francisco. “There is no clear path toward what Google is doing, or wants to do.”

There are good reasons why companies, and tech companies in particular, want to maintain the mantle of Growth Enterprise. For starters, Wall Street values you differently. A growth company stock commands a premium price/earnings multiple based on its future potential that, in turn, helps it lure employees with stock options. Just as important, being a growth company affords employees and founders (and even shareholders) a huge psychological boost: You’re driving the economy, you’re changing the world. Facebook and Twitter are packed with engineers who’ve left formerly hot tech companies. As soon as early adopters smell a whiff of last year’s technology, they are on to something new.

That particular odor has never attached itself to Google since it launched in 1998, crushing all comers. You may recall AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, and HotBot. Google’s edge was better technology (see “smart engineers,” above), so it must be somewhat worrisome in Mountain View that Bing is gaining in popularity — Microsoft sites had about a 12.7% share of searches in June, according to comScore, up from 12.1% in May — partly due to its interface and other features. Indeed, Google has dispatched Ben Ling, a former YouTube wizard, to help improve the quality of its mainstay business.

“Google is not the hot company anymore,” says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com (CRM). “Their stock has been mostly flat for five or six years now. How can you claim to be a leader with equity performance like that? That’s starting to look like Microsoft or Yahoo (YHOO). They have to get into some other place, and quickly.”

Microsoft is an apt comparison, except the software company found a second engine of growth to supplement its Windows computer operating system business eight years after MS-DOS hit the market. That business would become Office, the world’s most profitable application software, which today accounts for roughly 40% of Microsoft’s earnings. Of course, Microsoft has been struggling since to find its next big winner. Its server business chugs along. Its gaming console, Xbox, could still be an engine of growth, but it hasn’t moved the needle yet. Once Office saturated the workplace and then some, Microsoft lost its growth-company status.

So what is Google’s best shot? It won’t be international growth. Google dominates search in developed countries, and it will be a long slog in other parts of the world, such as Russia and China. (In China, where Google recently renewed its license despite strained relations with the government, Google’s 30% share trails China’s homegrown search king, Baidu (BIDU).) Google has plenty of real estate on the web to which it can attach more advertising, such as Google Maps and Google Images. And indeed, during the recession Google boosted its ad revenues by opening up inventory on its sites to marketers. But those are incremental gains, not a big new source of revenue.

Searching for Google’s next big thing

The company’s recent acquisitions and product launches fall into four main avenues of business: the mobile Internet (Android, AdMob), display advertising (splashier, graphics-heavy ads with DoubleClick), YouTube and video, and applications. A fifth area, social networking, is likely to be a big push for Google and holds the most potential. The company is widely rumored to be pursuing a “Google Me” project to do battle with Facebook.

Google does not report specific financials of businesses outside of search, but Sandeep Aggarwal, an Internet and software analyst with Caris & Co., estimates that mobile, display, YouTube, and apps generated about .5 billion in revenue in 2009, and this year should bring in about .1 billion in sales. On a bottom-line basis, that translates to about .44 in earnings per share this year. That’s peanuts today — Google is expected to earn per share in 2010 — but those are areas that are already outpacing traditional search in their rates of growth.

Amazingly, Google’s biggest and most promising opportunity to date, its successful Android operating platform for mobile phones, doesn’t produce much revenue or profit for Google — by design. The company in 2007 made the technology available to all comers in a bid to make the web more accessible on smartphones and in turn to encourage consumers to do more Google searches on their mobile devices. The strategy worked. Encouraged by this easy access to Android, handset makers began churning out multimedia phones, and the Android platform has been a consumer success: Google says some 160,000 new Android devices are activated each day, and device makers from Motorola (MOT) to HTC have all released popular phones on the Android platform. But Google doesn’t make gobs of money on those devices. (Google dabbled in phones but discontinued its Nexus One after only six months.) Apple, on the other hand, also stoked the smartphone market with its iOS, but with very different financial results: Last year the company posted an estimated billion in iPhone sales, a benefit of making the hardware and the software.

So where will Google’s next billion come from? It may not come from one blockbuster new business but rather from a handful of smaller opportunities. Google insiders are optimistic about YouTube, which accounts for 10% of all the time spent online worldwide, according to comScore. (The only greater time-suck on the web is Facebook, at 17%. We’ll get back to social networking.) Four years after buying the money-losing video site for .6 billion, Google seems to have figured out a way to eke out operating profits by selling video and display ads against a growing pool of professionally produced programming, including infomercials and other content created by marketers. Likewise, Google’s .1 billion acquisition of DoubleClick, the ad exchange that’s been folded into Google’s display network, will help expand Google’s ability to place multimedia and display ads on websites, including its own properties: It essentially hopes to do for online display what it has done with text ads. But few analysts see those businesses, in the short term at least, becoming Google’s next huge follow-on business — its Office equivalent, to use the Microsoft analogy.

Could its Office equivalent be, well, an Office equivalent? It’s a long shot, but one of the more profitable efforts at Google, and one that doesn’t have a thing to do with advertising, is its nascent business-software operation, Google Apps. For an annual licensing fee of per head, Google provides corporate customers with Gmail, collaboration tools, and other services that are delivered via the Internet. Some companies have started ditching traditional software vendors (including Microsoft) for the Google Apps’ cheapness and flexibility (adding or dropping a new account takes just a few clicks). In June, Google announced that more than 2 million businesses were using Google Apps for Enterprise. That sounds like a big number, but analysts peg revenue from Apps this year at about 0 million, or just 5 per business. Nikesh Arora, Google’s president of global sales operations and business development, told analysts at a technology conference in June that he expects the number of apps customers to double in the next few years.

The net effect of all these efforts? Analyst Aggarwal pegs revenue from Google’s nonsearch businesses at billion to billion in 2013. For any other company, that might be enough, but Aggarwal estimates that the company’s search revenue will be about billion three years down the road. In that context, nonsearch revenue still isn’t enough to make a huge difference in how Google is valued. For the foreseeable future Google will remain a search company.

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The real shift going on within the Internet

Mike McCue has had a front-row seat watching the web grow up, and as far as he is concerned, the search box is all about the past. McCue was an early Netscape guy, and he recently launched tablet software company Flipboard, which takes all your Facebook updates, your Twitter feeds, all the news sites you like and subscribe to, and in a very elegant way publishes a constantly updated magazine of text, photos, and video. “There is no need to do a search,” McCue says. “We almost view it as a bug if we have the user search for something.”

At Google, where every problem is waiting to be solved by some form of search query, that is tantamount to blasphemy. But Flipboard sums up the shift going on within the Internet, one that is arguably the biggest change to the web and the way we use it since Google came on the scene. Your network simply provides you with answers, stories to read, bargains to buy — and you often don’t even need to ask a question.

In this new phase of the web, one of the largest threats to Google and its core search business is the expanding Facebook footprint around the world. Not only because social networks (and those used for work like LinkedIn fall into that same category) offer a substitute for search for consumers, but also because they offer a substitute for advertisers as well. In display advertising, for example, Facebook has a 16% share of the roughly billion market, according to comScore (Google sites have 2.4% of the market), and advertisers say they’re looking for more ways to plug into Facebook.

“Facebook has got Google in its sights,” says Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with eMarketer. “Advertisers get the best of both worlds — a mass audience but also the ability to target more than anyone else. Who are the advertisers? In a lot of cases, they’re Google’s advertisers.”

Most alarming to Google is that much of this new social and real-time world is closed off to Google’s core search business, and its index of the world’s information. Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter are essentially “closed” platforms. “It’s a growing chink in their armor,” says a former Googler now working at a popular social network. “They know that. The question is, What can they do about it?”

Google’s Mayer believes the answer lies in delivering better-quality — almost intuitive — search results. Mayer calls this implicit or passive search. It’s the sort of thing that makes connections between, say, a friend who is an amateur expert on travel in Australia and your upcoming trip Down Under. A keyword search could not only flag hotels and tourist hot spots but also find blog posts, e-mails, messages, and even pose questions to your friend about where to go shopping or dining in Sydney — without bothering the rest of your network. “Who you are, your context, what you are doing, who your friends are — if all of that comes in as the search input,” she says, “what is the right output?” (The key word in her quote? “Friends.”)

Mayer won’t say what Google is building (perhaps the rumored “Google Me” service?), but clearly she is pushing the company in a more social direction, which means changing users’ perceptions of Google. “You need to create a place where it’s okay to be social,” Mayer says. Google doesn’t have that yet, and in fact, its efforts so far have been widely panned: Remember Google Buzz, which drew the ire of consumers for automatically sharing Gmail users’ lists of friends? If would-be rivals are worried, they aren’t letting on. “Google is smart to figure out how to make its stuff social,” says Chris Cox, head of product at Facebook.

But critics question whether Google can make the leap. “They are just not that good at it,” says Tom Coates, until recently the head of product at Yahoo’s defunct Brickhouse lab. “Google is very good at building these utility-type products — search, e-mail, and messaging. They are sort of like the power company of the Internet. But what they lack is a sense of how people share and collaborate.”

Coates’s point is that you don’t have friends on Google, you have contacts and tasks. These services reflect an engineering culture that’s all about utility, but one that makes it hard for the company to create something that’s friendly and social. But if Google can change its utilitarian ways, the company stands a real chance of tapping into that next growth engine. Imagine if it added that social layer to its core search business and to Android, and blew it out on YouTube, giving people a reason to hang out on Google sites for long periods. Advertisers would come flocking. If it can get that right, as the former Googler now working in social media sees it, “Google would be unstoppable.” Just like it used to be.

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The first week of visits over Facebook Google search site as the fourth largest United States

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 20:45:11 +0000

The first week of visits over Facebook Google search site as the fourth largest United States

The first week of visits over Facebook Google search site as the fourth largest United States

“A few months later, Facebook may be beyond the Ask.com, the fourth largest search site the United States.” One day in early April, the analyst Liz Gannes holding Compaq Presario R3000 Battery comScore released U.S. statistics report says. The statistics in the March report of the U.S. search market share in, Facebook has been to 2.7% of market share, more than AOL, ranked fifth, behind in front of it is occupied 3.1% market share Ask.com.

While in less than a month ago, a more sensational news had already spread to the U.S. Internet Industry: Internet traffic monitoring agency Hitwise reported that, in the second week in March, the weekly visit social networking site facebook.com The total amount of site visits in the United States share of 7.07% for the first time exceeded the 7.03% google.com, became the most visited website. Hitwise analysts even used a “landmark” to describe the significance of this event on Facebook. In the view of some, Facebook than Google seems just around the corner.

Facebook, the big brother beat in last year Myspace, get on the top spot in SNS website, really can become a Google killer it?

Visits Google really super?

“Look at Hitwise’s report,” the industry Jessi Hempel pointed to the same rank in the report rafts of Gmail and YouTube, said, “Google’s Web site can be more than google.com.” He silently calculated, “the report on The visit to Google’s Web site accounted for more than add, to 11.03%, Yahoo’s Web site to access than the sum of accounts also reached 10.98%, while Facebook is only 7.07%. “

Appears in the Jessi Hempel, Facebook wants to go beyond Google, not only to beat google.com, but also beat Google’s army of other sites.

In fact, even if the army does not consider these sites, only to HP F4809A F4812 Battery and the Google search engine to compare, Hitwise data still can not prove the heat of Facebook users on more than a Google search.

Jessi Hempel said: “Hitwise’s statistics include only google.com.” But now that many users of the Google search engine in the browser toolbar next to the other site, or use the Google search bar to search.

Jessi Hempel, then although concise, but in the phrase: Hitwise’s statistics too single, did not include general usage, it is unconvincing.

In addition, one analyst pointed out: “Hitwise statistics indicators Visits (visits). Yanjiujieguo view from the Internet measurement, community-Lei Wang Zhan in the Visits and Frequency (visit frequency) performance of the Pu Bianyao other leading Yu Sousuo Deng categories of sites. “

Indeed, the use of Hitwise’s statistics to measure the popularity of the two companies is slightly biased, but these data reflected the momentum of rapid growth of Facebook is that no one can doubt.

Has the potential to beat Google

Google belong to a decade ago, the Internet’s next generation is SNS, Facebook founder Zuckerberg always uphold the idea of such.

His analysis of this idea with some people thinking. It seems these analysts, Google now has the experience and Microsoft has quite similar.

“In the past, when times change from the interaction between man and man machine interaction and information network, the company found itself occupied only computers, but Google has such a huge new force, to become the overlord of that new era.” Then, the industry to tone changed, “Now, times and information from human interaction to human interaction network slowly into the core of the network, Google also began to find their only possession of information and applications, and not the same as the maximum Facebook possessor. “

Industry analyst Kurt Scherf would give such an example: “Imagine, when through Facebook, you know 80% of the friends are watching a particular TV series, how would you do? That produced human interaction What a powerful message. “

Nielsen analyst Alex Burmaster also stood on the SNS side: “Social networking is changing the way people gather information. Today, many people find the information HP Pavilion ZD8000 battery Twitter or Facebook, rather than through Google.”

SNS platform, information is being accumulated in expanding its influence is to expand the information. Said Kurt Scherf, SNS platform, the accumulation of information is valuable, the key issue is who is going to dig this information and how to use the information.

Overall, the industry generally optimistic SNS value of this model. As a leader in the field SNS, Facebook seems logical to have the potential to beat Google: last September to February of this year, registered users increased significantly in 100 million, to reach 400 million users; in the UK, with 23 million registered users, nearly one-third of the population; from Jianzhan Search, Google Search Engine search prevent the station information … … but the situation really got his wish for the better I am afraid that Facebook is not easy.

Mo set foot on the old road MySpace

When people in the sharp increase in the number of users Facebook applauded, and in this regard that it already has a strength against Google, the do not forget to look at the history of MySpace.

The same as Facebook over MySpace, MySpace has also gone beyond the earlier one fell swoop into the SNS in the field of Friendster; as Facebook users are now rapidly expanding the scale of the same four or five years ago, MySpace has rapidly expanded the number of users, in July 2006 during the week weekly visit myspace.com accounts to 4.5% behind the United States than the first. At that time, people commented MySpace: maybe it can not keep up the profitability of Google or Yahoo, but it is likely to become the next Internet platform.

But now what? Market research firm Alexa statistics unveiled MySpace scars: June 2009 ~ July, MySpace’s unique visitors in the United States decreased by more than one hundred million; July ~ August, the independent traffic dropped more than 4 million; 8 months to September, that number reached 5,000,000.

This downward trend in the magic spell the actual description of the Dell Inspiron 500m battery: SNS site has a more significant cluster effect. When the SNS website due to some mistakes after losing part of the user, will drive even greater loss of part of the user.

Therefore, Facebook should always maintain the right strategy, and guard against the impact of competitors from the same area. These competitors include Google.

Google has long been aware of the power of SNS. From the failure of shares to buy Facebook Twitter refused, Google has been trying to enter the piece in the field. Today, Google hard with their own social networking site, Buzz, and with Gmail, and many other resources connected. Although still not see Buzz much improvement, but the strength of Google, you really want to fight with Facebook, Facebook probably not be able to stand.

In addition, one of the industry known as Chris also pointed out: “Google has technology and distribution has been long in the mobile field, with considerable advantages, Facebook is overshadowed in these areas.”

Meanwhile, Facebook and Google’s revenues are also far apart. In 2009, Google’s revenue reached 23.65 billion U.S. dollars, while Facebook’s estimated income is less than 700 million U.S. dollars.

It seems, Facebook though favored, but faces its own challenges in the field from the SNS, and the Google threat. Facebook wants to become a Google killer, I am afraid that too earlier to ensure stable development of their own situation, profitability model to solve the problem.

Link

The history of Facebook

@ February 2004, Zuckerberg and Dustin Moskovitz, Chris Hughes, Eduardo Saverin co-founder of Facebook. Initially the site only for college students do, and only used in only a few American university networks. To December 2004, Facebook has 100 million users.

@ 2005, Facebook will be the network extended to several universities and foreign university network. The end of 2005, Facebook users amounted to 5.5 million.

@ 2006, Facebook’s mobile site was established to end the year has 12 million users.

@ 2007, Facebook created entity gift shop. At this point, advertising slowly becoming part of their income. In the same year, developers are invited to the Facebook platform development process. October 2007, Microsoft invested 240 million U.S. dollars to Facebook, holding 1.6% of Facebook shares.

@ 2008, Facebook have 100 million users. In the same year, Facebook HP pavilion dv9000 battery 21 languages in the world of service.

@ 2009, Facebook over MySpace into the SNS website boss. The end of 2009 reached 350 million users. @ Early 2010, Facebook more than 400 million subscribers.

Why Facebook Is Worth Over $10 Billion

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 20:51:59 +0000

Yahoo! have been in talks with Facebook for over a year now and apparently recently got shy at Facebook’s $1 billion asking price but as I will explain here Yahoo! have missed out on an absolute bargain.

Facebook have 18 million users, plenty. However MySpace has 100 million + and sold for a mere $580 million to News Corp’s in 2005. YouTube sold to Google for a reported $1.65 billion in 2006 but it serves over 100 million video’s a day and has over 25 million visitors a month. So what makes Facebook so valuable? It gets relatively huge traffic levels but not on par with YouTube or MySpace. Despite now being available to anyone it began life as an exclusive network for students (you needed an educational email to register) and this is still its primary user group.

So where’s the money?

Currently Facebook displays conventional banner advertising on users’ homepages and selected pages through the site. Adverts are unobtrusive and random in so much as they’re not targeted at any particular user- they’re just served to the entire site on a random basis. Facebook are doing ok out of this arrangement on the basis of the number of page impressions they receive, although in reality they’re keeping advertising at a minimum in order to build up the value of the site for its eventual sale which will almost certainly happen in 2007/8. Smart guys!

The power of information

Register with Facebook and quickly you can find yourself giving away huge volumes of valuable personal information. Think about it… Facebook know your name, they know how old you are (actually your D.O.B which is infinitely more valuable as I’ll go on to explain), they know if you’re male or female, they know your hometown, your postcode if you choose to give it away (although I doubt many users choose this), they know if you’re single, in a relationship (and who with), married, divorced etc, they know your sexual orientation. Ok so you can answer all these questions as honestly, dishonestly or vaguely as you like but from what I’ve seen people happily give accurate information about themselves as it’s their friends and potential friends who are going to see it- and no one else right?

But what else do Facebook know? Well they know where you went to school, where you work, more sinisterly your religious and political views. From this we can start to build up a pretty valuable market profile. As I’m telling Facebook I may as well tell you I’m Male, 22 (born in August), Straight, in a relationship, conservative, atheist from Brighton, England. Went to school at Blatchington Mill Secondary, college at a place called BHASVIC, University at Bournemouth. From this information we can draw further assumptions- I live in Brighton and based on the location of my schools catchment area we could pretty accurately map places in Brighton I know about, visit, and live in (think Google maps API). I’m a straight; conservative from a reasonably wealthy area in full time employment therefore I’m probably white, middle class with a decent disposable income.

So what else? Facebook know what you look like, they probably know what you used to look like a few years ago as well. Probably most significantly they know who your friends are, they know how you know them, they know when you talk to them, what they look like and ultimately they know exactly the same information about them as they know about you- you’re interests, likes and dislikes and your friends tastes as well.

They know your email address, so they know if you use Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail etc. They know your phone number so they could pretty easily work out your phone provider. They have your IP address so they could work out your ISP. They know where you’ve arrived at the site from so they know what search engine you use (enter Yahoo! And Google to the bidding war), what browser you’re on, they know if you’re visually impaired or have learning disabilities from the settings on your browser.

Facebook know when I’m logging in and from where so they know the hours I work, if I’m using the internet at work, the pages I leave Facebook to go to or the pages I come from so they know what other sites I look at. I can set my current status and tell Facebook exactly what I’m doing or feeling right this second.

Ok so you get the picture by now, one last thing though, is your Facebook password the same as your email account password, your internet and telephone banking password, every other password you use in your daily life (because until I wrote this post mine was!) how much more information do you want to give away?

What’s the risk here?

Realistically it’s pretty slim. Facebook are a nice bunch of guys and a great site, I love using it and despite knowing what I know about information security and the like I choose to give away a big chunk of the information I’ve talked about here.

Yahoo! And Facebook

So if Yahoo!, Google or god forbid Microsoft successfully purchase Facebook (as I say I’m reasonably confident this will happen this year) the Orwellian lucid dream proposed by this post becomes a perpetual nightmare. Imagine a company who have made billions and dominated the fastest growing market in the world by developing algorithms which crawl hundreds of millions of pages of random information (the internet) and categorize that information with the ultimate goal of matching it to businesses and selling advertising.

The search algorithm let loose on Facebook

Imagine the search engines let loose on Facebook. An algorithm tuned to pick out profile information (John, born 13.08.84). Map it to keywords in personal interests i.e. football, Manchester United. Plot your location on a map i.e. Brighton, England. Follow links to your closest friends with similar interests i.e. Bob and Dave who live round the corner and serve me an advert something like:

Happy birthday for next week John.

Did you know its Dave’s birthday the week after?

Why not book tickets for Brighton and Hove Albion vs. Manchester united on 12.08.07

Click here to book now and get 3 tickets for the price of 2 (why not ask bob to come along- he supports Brighton and you haven’t spoken in a while).

Book today and we’ll give you a half price limo from your house to the game with trashy-limo’s.com.

Now that’s powerful advertising and it’s just around the corner. If Facebook has 25 million registered users by the time it’s sold, half of whom visit every day that’s a minimum 12.5 million page impressions a day. Serve the advert above at $1 a click (which is far less than its worth based on the current AdWords CPC model) expect a click through rate of up to 10% based on the precise nature of the advertising and that’s $1.2 million minimum a day- almost $½ a billion a year. Grow that user group to 50 million (realistic if Google or Yahoo! can tap into their existing user database) and sell ad space on an affiliate basis say the football tickets at $300 with a 10% affiliate kickback and a 10% conversion rate =$3 per user x 25 million users =$75 million a day or $2737500000 in year 1! OK lets not get carried away people aren’t going to spend $300 every other day but the logics there and so the cash.

Will the audience except it?

Better quality advertising means less advertising- less websites rammed with banners so you can’t find what you’re looking for, less popups, less low quality products. This is the main driving force behind the success of search marketing programs and profile based advertising is already in place with Google’s personalized search returning more targeted AdWords ads than previously possible. If it falls into the hands of Microsoft then people may be more wary but with the image of Google or Yahoo! and Facebook profile information is seen as soft information as the company doesn’t sell you products directly and he service is free. It’s the way the internet is going and I believe it’s where we’ll be in 5 years.

Identity theft

The point I’ve been making tediously through this post is that we should be more careful about what information we give up and to whom. If the internet was a county it would be Nazi Germany and Facebook would be the Gestapo! Social utilities like Facebook are afforded the sort of privileged information fascist governments the world over would and have killed for. We moan about identity cards being introduced in the UK (ironically there’s several Facebook groups dedicated to the cause) but we happily give up personal details to a bunch of college geeks in the states who are ultimately planning on selling our details to the highest bidder (the value of any site is based on the volume, quality and amount of information they have about their traffic- but best of luck to them) possibly to the company who already control the majority of world business systems through the windows platform.

This post is not meant to scare- it’s simply a recognition of the power of new internet technologies, their possibly applications and to pose the question- if your Facebook friends are your real friends shouldn’t they know your birthday? Are Facebook really going to buy you a present?!

Vanilla Digital for pure search marketing. A Search marketing blog. Read the full article at Vanilla digital

7 Things You Can Do Today To Make Google Fall Head Over Heels In Love With Your Small Business Website

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 17:57:51 +0000

Creating your own small business website can be a scary thing to do. It requires some planning to get it right and make Google sit up and take notice of your site at first glance. Small business website search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the keys, but all too often, astute business people leave the creation of their websites up to a family member or a friend who happens to know something about it. This is strange, for they wouldn’t dream of letting the same people build their bricks and mortar store or office.

Of course, getting an expert who fully understands small business SEO to build your website is not likely to come cheap, but it may be the best solution if you are starting out from scratch. However, this article is aimed at those small businesses that already have a website, but are disappointed at how poorly it performs. If you’re frustrated because your website appears on page 42 of the Google search results, and no one is visiting your website, here are 7 things you can do to quickly improve your results.

1. Create an Effective Website Title Tag, Description Meta Tag,
and Keywords Meta Tag

The most important part of any website page (in the eyes of the search engines) is the title tag. The title is enclosed between the opening title tag: and the closing title tag: . It is located in the head section of an HTML document, or web page. You should use your page’s main keyword in your title. Try to use your main keyword near the beginning of your title, and perhaps again near the end. But always strive to make your title readable, and not obviously keyword stuffed.

Your description tag plays an important role in SEO for your local small business. This tag is used by most of the search engines in their listings, so you need to spend some time getting this right. The description tag looks like this: and it is also found in the head section of your web page.

Something brief such as, “Acme Incorporated, Makers of Blue Widgets,” gets the message across, but you could do much better. Try to list benefits rather than features, and use your main keyword in your description as well. Keep your description reasonably brief, but not too short. Something like, “Acme, Inc., Makers of the Strongest, Most Powerful and Affordable Widgets on the Planet” is better.

Like a headline for an ad or sales flyer, your description may take time to develop. Start with a list of all of the benefits your product or service offers and then try to write 20 different descriptions for your site based on those benefits. Test your descriptions by reading them to your customers, employees or others familiar with your business. You’ll find out which description resonates most strongly with your potential prospects – and that’s good for the search engines and for your sales.

The keywords tag, again found in the head section of your web pages, looks like this: . The keywords you choose for your page are important, because they tell the search engines what should be found on the page. Google and all the other search engines present search results based on relevancy – how relevant your web pages are to the keywords and phrases your prospects are searching for.

Keep your keyword phrases to less than seven and don’t repeat the same words. For example, if you have two keyword phrases, which are, “blue widgets” and “bright blue widgets,” you should only include unique words after including the first “blue widgets” keyword.

Curious to know what your Title, Description, Meta and Keyword tags currently look like? Here’s a simple tip – just go to any page of your website, then click on “View Source” or “View Page Source” from the “View” menu. There you’ll be able to see exactly what your tags are telling Google when they crawl your site.

2. Optimize Your Website Copy

Your website copy consists of the words on every page of your site. Try to make it interesting and informative. One simple way to arrange your articles, or informative pages, is to use a simple three-step format. Begin with an introductory paragraph that tells your visitor what you are going to tell them. Then in the next two or three paragraphs, tell them. Finally, wind up the article by telling them what you just told them.

This may seem overly simple, but it works. Speak to your website audience as you would to a seven-year-old child. Don’t patronize them, but lay it out clearly in simple steps using straightforward language that anyone can understand.

When writing your copy for each of your pages, make sure to focus on one or two keywords per page. If you are selling widgets in all colors and you also sell thingamajigs, then widgets should be on one page and thingamajigs on another. Keep it simple for your customers and the search engines by focusing on one idea per page and your customers will thank you for it, and Google will thank you too.

3. Establish an Acceptable Keyword Density for Your Website Copy

While optimizing your website copy you also need to establish a keyword density that is acceptable to the search engines. Opinions differ, but somewhere between 2% and 5% is probably about right. This means that for effective small business SEO, your main keyword phrase should appear around three times for every 100 words.

Where your keyword appears is important too. Try to use your main keyword or phrase twice in the first paragraph, once in the second paragraph, once around the middle of the article, and once again near the end of the article. Try to start and end the first paragraph with your main keyword if possible, but don’t force it. Always aim for copy that is readable before copy that has perfect keyword density.

4. Create Quality Back Links to Your Website

Increasingly, the search engines are giving added weight to the number of quality back links your website has. It used to be that reciprocal linking was quite acceptable, and it still is, but now Google and the other search engines give higher credibility to one-way back links as far as your search engine rankings are concerned.

And it’s not just any back links either. You need to have quality back links, or back links from sites that are similar to yours. It’s not much good getting a back link from a site about butterflies if your site focuses on racing cars. With Google, it’s all about relevance. You should also strive to get back links from so-called authority sites. These are sites that the search engines deem to be an authority on their chosen subject. They tend to be quite big and to have been around for some time.

5. Use Local Directories Effectively

If you are marketing to a local market, then make use of local directories. How do you find them? If, for example, you are located in New York, then go to Google and search for, “directory” + “new york.” This will return a list of all the local directories in that city. You could even try searching for, “blue widgets directory” + “new york,” if you are marketing blue widgets.

Once you find a suitable directory, submit your website to it. People do search on local directories, so even if your product has worldwide appeal, there’s a greater chance that you will get the sale if someone finds you in a local directory over someone else located in another continent who can deliver just as cost effectively or as quickly.

6. Create a Proper Site Map and Google Site Map

Every website should have a site map. This is merely a directory of all your site’s pages with links to every one. You should have a link from every page of your site back to your site map, and your site map must be updated whenever a new page is added.

A Google Site Map is also a site map, but one that is in a special format that Google can easily spider. It has the great advantage of allowing Google to instantly “see” your site and evaluate it. It can be a very useful tool in getting Google to index your site more quickly than otherwise. For more information on creating a Google Site Map, go to: http://www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/.

7. Add Fresh Original Content to Your Website at an Acceptably Measured Pace

Your website should never be considered finished. It should always be a work in progress that is constantly expanding with fresh and original content. The easiest way to do this is to add new articles on specific subjects on a regular basis. One article a week is the least you should aim for, but don’t add content too quickly either. Dumping 100 articles a day into your site will ultimately work against you, because the search engines look for organic growth – in other words, growth that seems natural. Since it’s not likely that you were able to write 100 articles in one day, Google and the other search engines will see this as unnatural and will count it against you in your page ranking.

SEO for your local small business is easier than you might think. Getting Google to fall head over heels in love with your small business website is not rocket science. You only need to implement a few simple things on a regular basis, and over time Google will notice and your page rank – and your placement with the search engines – will start climbing.

Entrepreneur and outdoor photography adventurer Caroline Melberg is President and CEO of Small Business Mavericks, a division of Melberg Marketing. She has over 20 years of experience creating marketing communications materials and writing copy for some of the largest and most successful companies in the world. When you subscribe, you’ll also get a FREE copy of her e-Book, “Local Small Business Internet Marketing Secrets” – learn insider secrets to marketing your local small business on the Web today! Get your FREE subscription at http://www.SmallBusinessMavericks.com.

Webmasters Are Obsessing Over Page Rank

admin — Tue, 02 Mar 2010 04:10:45 +0000

Page Rank was started to help internet users understand which page is relevant and important in a search, normally the higher the page rank the better search position you will have on Google. Page Rank is a number form 1-10 which Google gives each web page so internet users know the importance and the Google search engine knows how to position the page on the search engine results. Google thinks the page is on the web. Many people who have a website are looking at the best ways of increasing their Google page rank. An important fact to remember is that Page Rank is calculated on a webpage by webpage basis not on a website by website basis.

To other website owners your page rank may be a source of envy. Given that the internet has grown so rapidly over the past decade, the competition for the best search engine position has created an enormous market focused on how best to position a website for better rankings on Google, Yahoo and other prominent search engines.

Search engines will rank your page higher than one with less links back to it. The formula to increasing your page rank is quite easy, but you will have to work to get it.

1. Join a reciprocal link exchange program, some are free some cost money. Try to get at least 30-50 exchange per week.

2. Write article and distribute them to as many article sites as possible or join a program that will distribute for you. Write at least 4-5 article per month.

3. Submit your links to as many web directories as possible. Submit to 30-50 per week.

4. If you are selling a product create an affiliate program where others sell your product. They will place the links their sites and they will point back to your site, another one way link.

Links that are pointing to your site are very important in the page rank system, each link is counted as a vote to your website, if you receive votes with high pr that will you’re your pr, more links the more votes the better the ranking in the search engine results.

PR does not depend on the quality of site but it is the criteria which measures the value of a web page only. Many webmaster put a lot of emphasis on page rank, and most of the time they will not link their site with a site that has a page rank that is lower than their own in the fear it will drop their page rank. When you link your site to another website that means you vote for it. To get your PR rating up it is essential to have a significant number of good quality links to your site.

So how do you attract traffic the natural way. Sadly, most of this traffic is not qualified. The most difficult challenge most web designers face is getting traffic to your site. If you do not have a large advertising budget, traffic exchanges can be an effective way to advertise your site for free. Traffic exchanges, sometimes known as surfing sites, can bring a steady stream of visitors to your website, for no payment – very important for a business startup if you want to make money online from home.

Most people believe that the higher your Google Page Rank, the higher you’ll be in the search results listing. Yes pages and or sites with a higher page rank seem to rank better than those sites that do not have a page rank, but don’t be fooled the site without a page rank might have a higher ranking but Google has not updated its page rank on the tool bar, Google usually updates 4 times a year. The only thought on most peoples minds if they own a website is how do increase traffic and how do I get a higher page rank.

David Marc Fishman is the owner of www.linknetics.com and www.myarticlezine.com. The link marketing software that promotes link exchange

Over $50 Million Worth of PPC Ads Was Given Away by Hophunt.com

admin — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 19:04:30 +0000

You read that right.

Over 500 smart webmasters quickly availed the $100,000 in Free PPC Ads offered by HopHuntâ€¦ That was a total of over $50 million dollars worth of Free PPC Ads.

Some webmasters were anxious to avail the $100,000 Free PPC offer because of the following seven reasons:

1. HopHunt doesnâ€™t ring a bellâ€¦ who cares?

2. They donâ€™t like to avail the $100,000 Free PPC Offer.

3. They think itâ€™s too good to be true.

4. HopHunt doesnâ€™t have much trafficâ€¦ why bother?

5. They have lots of money to pay for paid ppc traffic.

6. They have much money to burn with high cost of ppc ads.

7. It maybe a waste of time if they try.

Well, that could be a crazy mindset my friendâ€¦

For just 3 months, HopHunt is now in the top 400,000 websites among millions of websites on the Internet according to Alexa traffic rank.

Over 300 of the free sponsors were active and already receiving free ppc traffic. Some of them have almost consumed all their free credits. That means they already received lots of free ppc traffic and they keep on silence because of competitions.

If you are a novice marketer you are likely to lose money on ppc advertising. At HopHunt, you have nothing to lose. With the rising cost of pay-per-click ads and of paid traffic, you are crazy not to avail the free ppc offer.

Just avail the $100,000 in Free PPC Ads offer and save your hard-earned ppc money. Promote now your products, services, or websites for free before itâ€™s too late.

Hophunt.com Going Crazy Has Given Away Over $70 Million in Free PPC Ads

admin — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 10:55:44 +0000

HopHunt, a new start-up unknown search engine website was going crazy…

First, it provides extensive and cleaner search experience to searchers. It hops between major search engines and get the best and cleaner top listings.

Searchers no longer hop between major search engines anymore, they just hop on at HopHunt to find what they want and get cleaner listings without plenty of paid ads.

Plus, HopHunt has already given away over $70 Million worth of free ppc (pay per click) ads to webmasters and advertisers. No one else did it even Google and Yahoo.

In just five months, over 700 webmasters, Internet marketers, affiliates, bloggers and seo experts became free sponsors and got $100,000 each worth of free ppc ads.

The free sponsors or advertisers were now happy promoting their websites, blogs, products and services for free and get quality visitors for nothing. They keep on promoting but keep on silence because of competitions.

For just 0.05 cents per click, sponsors can get 2 million free visitors using the $100,000 worth of free ppc ads. For 0.10 cents per click, you can get 1 million free visitors and for 0.30 cents per click you get over 300,000 free visitors.

However, for more competitive keywords, sponsors can bid as high as $30 per click to outbid other competitors and get over 3,000 free visitors using the $100,000 worth of free ppc ads.

This is the same in the real ppc world such as Ad words or Yahoo PPC, advertisers bid as much as $30 to outbid other top competitors and still earn profit or lose money if they were not clever.

If you are a newbie marketer you are likely to lose money on ppc advertising but if you try to advertise for free at HopHunt using the free ppc ads, you have nothing to lose but you always gains ppc experience.

It’s very easy to get the $100,000 in free ppc ads at HopHunt. Just create sponsor account, inside your sponsor account you can create as many ads as you like to promote you websites, blogs, products or services.

HopHunt would like to give away $500 Million worth of free ppc ads within a year, that would not take long considering that it is now the talk of the web and being buzzed in the webmasters community, so you should hop in right now to avail.

You might still say that HopHunt doesn’t have much traffic yet. But take this, when Google started on the Internet it didn’t have much traffic also but now is the second most trafficked site on the entire Internet.

Think about it… one, two, or three years from now. It is no doubt it will also get more traffic. With the ever rising cost of ppc ads today, it’s worth your time to avail the free ppc offer before it’s too late.

Spend 30 Minutes Daily on Facebook to Generate Over 20 MLM Qualified Leads Every Day

admin — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 14:51:25 +0000

Facebook is not just another social network. It is the granddaddy of all social networks, the definitive social network. Facebook appeals to most all people because of its versatility and ease of use. By far the world’s most popular social network, Facebook has just about as many members as the United States has citizens! A real network marketer will have a Facebook to capitalize on the veritable treasure trove of MLM leads.

Those who know the secrets of Facebook – the power users of the network – are able to generate 20 to 30 leads every day, just by leveraging their presence on the network. With access to so many people, Facebook gives you the ability to exponentially grow your network. And Facebook offers you the chance to do this in an incredibly cost effective method.

Want to harness Facebook for your own revenues? Here are the tips that the power users employ to generate leads using Facebook.

Use Facebook for What It’s Meant to Be

Like all social networks, Facebook is meant to do one thing: social networking. You shouldn’t use Facebook only as a marketing tool. People join Facebook to connect with all their friends, old and new, keep up with colleagues, form relationships and even to find dates. Being someone’s marketing target is never the reason anyone joins Facebook. Use Facebook properly. Make friends. Form relationships. Be friendly. Share information about yourself or what you do. Even find dates but the most important thing is never become a marketing nag. This will cause people to block you out and keep them from ever becoming a prospect for your business. And it wastes your time and efforts.

Have Fun and Add Value

Use Facebook to enhance other people’s life. Share valuable information about yourself or a subject on which you are knowledgeable. Even pointing people to articles or news items you find interesting can help open that social door to creating a relationship. This helps you find common interests. Have fun and socialize, that’s why people join Facebook, to be social and have a good time. You can send marketing messages, of course, but you don’t want this to be what defines you. Make sure that you are enjoying Facebook. You will find that when you do something you enjoy, you will do it even better. The primary focus of Facebook is not business activity. It’s more like a hangout for friends. Enjoying Facebook as a social outlet is the best way to translate the relationships into business

Connect with New Contacts

When you get new subscribers or make new connections on other venues, find out if that person is on Facebook. You can send them a friend request and then a personal note. A new fiend you have on twitter just might want to share more information with you and Facebook is the place to do that. This small gesture of “thinking-of-you-and-wanted-to-get-connected” goes a long way in turning that relationship into a warm lead.

Don’t assume you have a connection, you have access to them. Every time you post an article, upload a video or make a business move, all your connections get reminded. You’re not annoying them. Your friends and connections will be appreciative that you are just staying active and sharing information. The more you share the more people learn and want to know more about you. It’s true that people only want to do business with someone they know and trust so build that trust with valuable information.

Facebook will surprise you with its value. As a simple social network, Facebook is just a hotbed of prospects, leads and other marketing activity.

The Competitive Edge an SEM Specialist Gives You Over Competition

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 15:36:37 +0000

An SEM specialist offers suggestions and/or services to increase a website’s visibility and traffic generation. They manage an array of strategic angles to encourage visibility and traffic to a businesses website. There are a large amount of strategies that can be used but it’s not always a requirement to use every single one.Methods needed will sometimes vary depending on the services or products offered by the site. Search Engine Marketing (SEM) calls for extensive amounts of time and effort for the average business owner. SEM is an field that calls for extensive knowledge and practice to acheive targeted traffic generation and #1 placement in search engine rankings. And even if one understands the array of skills needed, they almost certainly don’t have the time that’s necessary to spend for greatest results.

SEM specialists identify with what it takes to contend with your individual competition and what’s required to send targeted visitors to your site. They use special techniques that get the businesses website in front of customers and ranking at the top in search engines. These methods entail SEO, SEM and other mixtures of methods to get results. Keeping a website ranked highly within the search engines is never a finished task, but once the primary work is done and the site is ranking on the first page, it’s just a matter of maintenance on the business owners’ side. Of course, the maintenance can also be efficiently monitored and maintained by an SEM specialist.

The first move a SEM Specialist will undergo is to pin down the best keyword for your niche. Once this information is determined, it’s time to optimize the website with the keywords. After the site has been optimized properly, they place the spotlight to Search Engine Marketing. Now the magic can take place. If planned and executed properly, it can achieve remarkable results. Pulling a storm of traffic to a businesses website is the whole point in having a website in the first place. But to accomplish these results, it calls for optimization strategies and skills.

If your site is not attracting the traffic you yearn for, SEM specialists are practically a requirement. With their expertise, it could very well signify the distinction in a website that never gets any attention at all, to a website that pulls lots of traffic day after day. If a businesses is going to be ready to keep up with its competition, it is crucial to its survival that it implement an online business strategy.

SEM Specialists spend years acquiring, understanding and creating strategies. It takes a certain craving to learn these skills. The best SEM Specialists are especially passionate about their careers and love being neck deep in a good challenge. Generating results is what they do. Utilizing the assortment of tricks they have in their bag, they will establish results. And it can be quite exhilarating to witness the growth while it takes place. Online businesses need to guarantee they assert an extremely visible online authority.

An SEM Specialist concentrates on their specialty to step up profits for your business so that you can focus on your forte in managing your business.

Over 60% of IT Professionals Believe Speed-to-Market Pressure Impairs Software Quality

admin — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:55:32 +0000

BOSTON, MA and LINZ, AUSTRIA–(Marketwire – December 15, 2009) – According to a recent survey of IT professionals in the US, UK and Central Europe, more than 90 percent of organizations experience pressure to deliver software releases in unrealistic timeframes, while fully 62 percent believe that this pressure directly and negatively impacts the performance and overall quality of the software they create.

Many pundits predict a jobless economic recovery in 2010(1). In this environment, IT and software development organizations are under tremendous pressure to do more with less. Applications of all kinds, particularly Web-based e-commerce applications, are seen as engines of growth that can deliver the elusive combination of increased revenue at a low cost. As a result, pressure to deliver new and improved releases of applications is unrelenting. Almost two-thirds of the survey respondents cited unrealistic lead times in delivering software as a problem of high or medium impact in their organization.

For consumer-focused companies, deadlines imposed by the holiday shopping season place a particularly acute strain on development and IT operations teams to create, fix and update the applications their organizations rely on to turn a profit. Almost half of the survey respondents report losing at least one day every week reproducing and fixing performance and availability issues. This indicates a loss of hundreds of hours that could otherwise be spent building new features to attract, engage and retain customers. Aggressive application delivery deadlines don’t allow for such inefficiency. As a result, the scramble to meet target dates often results in lower-quality, slow-performing software that can disappoint end-users. This can damage a brand and hurt a company’s bottom line. These challenges, noted in a report by Keynote Systems, observed that almost all leading retail sites slowed down on Black Friday and some even had major outages(2).

According to Forrester Research, on average, companies that provide a superior experience have 14.4 percent more customers who are willing to consider them for another purchase than companies in the same industry that offer a poor customer experience(3).

“App dev shops are under increasing pressure to deliver apps faster, but hasty application development can result in lower quality,” said Mike Gualtieri, senior analyst at Forrester Research. “A poor user experience created by bugs or performance problems in applications can be disastrous to a firm’s bottom-line.”

Increasingly, companies are learning that application performance is the most important determinant of the online experience, and that features and elegant user interfaces cannot compensate for slow-loading Web pages. Research from Google and Microsoft, released earlier this year, found that performance issues resulting in delays of as little as a half-second can distract users and greatly impact business. The results of user performance tests, revealed at the June 2009 Velocity Conference by Microsoft’s Eric Schurman and Google’s Jake Brutlag, assess the aspect of performance that is most important — speed. The growing complexity of today’s applications can lead to delays caused by poor performance, which their research found not only distracts users, but can cause them to abandon sites altogether.

The survey, hosted by dynaTrace, a provider of application performance management (APM) solutions, examined the challenges and costs associated with delivering scalable and high-performing applications. Based on responses from almost 500 developers and IT professionals, the study assessed the impact of new technical and organizational trends that complicate efforts to ensure strong application performance. It also evaluated the ability of organizations to deal with these new challenges.

About dynaTrace software Inc.

dynaTrace is the innovator and emerging leader in application performance management (APM). The company offers the only continuous APM system on the market — one that can monitor all transactions at all times and one that is used by all key contributors to application performance — architects, development, test and production. Industry leaders such as UBS, Salesforce.com, Renault, EnerNOC, Fidelity, and Thomson Reuters use dynaTrace’s patent pending technology to gain deep visibility into application performance, identify problems sooner and reduce the mean time to repair issues by 90%. Leading companies rely on dynaTrace to proactively prevent performance problems from happening and quickly resolve those that do occur — saving time, money and resources. dynaTrace can be found online at www.dynatrace.com

(1) For example, see ‘A Jobless Recovery’ in The New York Times (Nov 11, 2009) by Casey B. Mulligan, professor of economics at the University of Chicago

(2) See press release dated November 28 issued by Keynote Systems entitled “On Black Friday Leading Retail Web Sites Slow Way Down, Reports Keynote Systems”

(3) Forrester Research (September 4, 2009). “Best Practices in User Experience (UX) Design”