Top Techno Brand : Which position Google will have next year ?

Here a table I create with the 100 Top Brands (Pdf) made by Business Week and Interbrand. To be in this select club, the company must have publicly available marketing and financial data.



It is looking like AOL be out in 2005.

PS: If Google make the top 10, this will be a major lesson for the "traditional marketers" and ad company of are really slow to admit the Web and viral marketing campaign can be really effective without big budget in other media!

Google's Initial Public Offering is on

Google's Initial Public Offering is on for the US citizen. The prospectus, Management Presentation, Request Bidder ID, FAQ, TOS & PP are online. Like always for some new features, Google wait until everybody are in week-end to launch the IPO request bidder ID.

The new MSN Search promoting Warez ?!?

The new MSN Search have some funny results on "software downloads" !

Hedge funds won't be allowed to bid on Google IPO

Google will limit hedge-funds, and large investment firms, bidding on the initial public offering through the retail portion.

Here a Flash tutorial to understand auction-style IPO.

Microsoft reveal, in private, is new Local PC File Search

Microsoft have demonstrate at the annual Microsoft financial analyst meeting their "new" technology that allows a user to search both the Web and a PC's hard drive. But this quote is not a real good news for the average users :

Mehdi did not say when the technology would be available, but mentioned it would be sold as some kind of service.

In this other article, I am a bit more sceptical about that software/technology will be out before 2010 :-)

How about software that can recognize a picture of a bar code taken with your cell phone, and provide you with product information? Or technology that can sort photos based on whether there's a face in the picture, or whether the picture was taken outdoors?

Update : A very interesting research about the semantic fail of the actual SE for sites who are structured by subtemplating (or block)! Really interesting to see that from MS !

PPC Campaign : How to avoid click fraud

Really good case study from Marketing Sherpa, tricks and tools to avoid PPC fraud.

Google now include the date in the cached page

When you click on the Cached link after the URL on the search engine result page, Google now, -- finally --, indicate the date he cached-it. This is very helpful to the SEO people or for any litigation file.

Lycos change hands again

Lycos, one of the early "real" search engines, bought by Terra in may 2000 (just before the bubble burst) for a huge $12.5 billion in stock deal is gonna change hands to a South Korean company (Daum Communications Corp ?) for a price around $100 millions. Some info at CNNMoney.

I'd like to know what will happening to the bunch of sites owned by TerraLycos like Wired and Hotbot ?

Vivísimo and the 9/11 Comission report

Vivísimo, who whas one of the first clustering engine (after the defunct Northern Light), give you access to search the final report of the 9/11 Commission. You can review the first 200 matching paragraphs in browsable folders after a keyword search. I also make a remarkable stemming, even with name like that query!

Google explanation about the MyDoom monday

Here a clear explanation from the Google Blog about the virus who affect some search engine monday and the Error-27 page at Google.

Adwords as a focus group and research tool : Hum ?

Yes, marketers can use tiny AdWords campaigns as a form of cheap focus group, but it is like log files, you will have only the metrics on keywords you're promoting using your Search Engine Optimization work or the ones you choose in your Adwords campaign but no data on keywords you'll dont used in your marketing efforts. But I got to admit the Adwords is the better way to have a fast feedback on your keywords than SEO.

But two of the "old" good ways to get a good feedback by peoples, and without any cost except your times, is to choose the right newsgroups or the goods rooms in a chat. With thoses, you'll have even a faster response and with a lot of more details and interaction. And like Adwords, you can choose the geolocation of your audience!

Back in the bubble ? The fifth highest price for a domain name

A small marketing company just bought Creditcards.com for a small $2.75 million.

Via the new MSNBot News the story at MSNBC.

Overture launch Search Optimizer

Overture launch today a new tool  to manage your PPC campaign. Search Optimizer will be available for marketers for a monthly subscription fee around 249$ to $1599 per month and will help to manage the results of your overall medium to big PPC keywords campaign. Here a a shot of the console.

SE and censorship in China

Reporters sans frontières (without borders) have a good article about the market battle of China and the freedom of expression. Also in french.

Gibeo : A new online collaborative tool

Gibeo is a new online collaborative tools who can; annote, share, IM, co-browsing, bookmark and make a RSS feed, for the site pages you surf. After a very simple, fast and free registration you can highlight some text on pages your visiting to share with the Gibeo members or with your own groups of friends. The online tool use a DHtml layer like this...

...to highlight text on the page. It use the suffix ".gibeo.net/" after the domain name to keep track of the site you're surfing. You can also use a javascript bookmarklet on your toolbar. When you see, or your friends, a highlighted portion of text in a page, you simply double-click on it to see what others users have annote in a pop-up window using a chat-like transcript.

This is a beta tool, with a small DHML banner at the bottom of your screen. In future development it will offer you two others registration option without banner and with more enhanced possibilities... A beta online tool to watch closely!

Hard day for Google : After the DNS attack, a SEC notice !

The general counsel of Google, David Drummond, has been notified that the staff of the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission will recommend a civil injunction against him for purported violations of securities laws for several accounting issues when he was a senior executive of corporate training company SmartForce, which merged with SkillSoft PLC in 2002.

More info from Reuters and CNN Money.

Google hit by a DNS attack

A lot of peoples from US and UK having problems to reach Google today. First reported by WebmasterWorld, where I published under the nick Allergic, the BBC, Zdnet and Andy Beal and its co-workers have also noticed-it today.

The future of the Google Toolbar ?

With the recent acquisition of the Picasa photo program, Google also get the hand on the Hello Instant Messaging software. I was very surprise that nobody make the link with that acquisition and the Google toolbar !

Imagine a new Google Toolbar with a IM (instant messaging) capability and with your Gmail account integrated. After that ? A Google Deskbar integrated with the Picasa technology to search the Web (and Google Image) and your computer for pictures and files!

Most Wired Nation: China in second position after US

China achieve a second position with 87 million peoples been "netcityzen" wich represent only 6.6 % of the total population!
But in the Top 25 of frequentation, Asiatic sites are Number One since june, if you take the data from Alexa. Here a post I made, in a french collaborative blog.