Was just chatting the other day with a close friend and her tag line said, “When in doubt Google”.  I gave this a decent thought and came to the conclusion that Google actually runs our life. We query Google for every small thing, from finding information on a travel destination to looking for that perfect recipe which will make your dinner a class apart.

Surprisingly though, Google always finds a way to give the right results. You can also make an argument that we believe Google is right because we follow it and do not turn to other search engines like Yahoo, Live, Netscape (yes, they do exist) to cross check the results thrown in by Google.

This gave me a thought and I was curious to know how much of the world market does Google dominate. Not surprisingly, I “Googled” for this too. Anyways here are some results as per the Market Share stats

Google is making a killing with almost 78% of the market share (was shocked to know this).  Yahoo is second with 12.21% and MSN is third with just 3.27%.

If this trend continues then Search Engine Optimization (SEO) would have to be soon re-coined as Google Optimization or may be as one of my colleague puts it – Googlization. Think about it???

With Microsoft announcing that it no longer wishes to persue the acquisition of Yahoo, what promised to be the year’s most talked about blockbuster deal may have ended in a little more than a whimper. But… has it really ended or is it a ploy by Microsoft to wait till the Yahoo stock plunges and then rebid at a lower price?

If major newswires are to be believed, at Yahoo, Jerry Yang is most likely to face several angry share holders who believed that he should have accepted Microsoft’s offer. On his part, Jerry Yang has been quoted as saying, “with the distraction of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal now behind us, we will be able to focus all of our energies on executing the most important transition in our history”. I wonder what that transition is?

From a paid search advertising perspective one only hopes that they improve their own offering instead of selling out to Google’s Adwords program. If they do decide to tie up with Google, then Google Adwords will have a virtual monopoly in the paid search advertising space and that would be quite sad.

Whatever it is that ultimately happens… the future promises to be interesting!!! 

This was something that I wanted for office since ages. Finally, a few weeks back we got a table tennis table at the New Bombay office and it’s a huge hit. People use it and feel that it is a great way to relax after a hard day at work.

This was something that I wanted for office since ages. Finally, a few weeks back we got a table tennis table at the New Bombay office and it’s a huge hit. People use it and feel that it is a great way to relax after a hard day at work.

Users using the Yahoo search engine would have noticed google ads showing up on their search engine result pages. While this has just been a test so far, rumours have it that the test has been a success and Yahoo is considering a more extensive deal with Google.

What does this mean to Google, Yahoo & paid search advertisers?

It means that the Yahoo search marketing program may take a back seat to Adwords. It will also mean that Microsoft may have to pay a little more for Yahoo considering the fact that the Yahoo balance sheet may look better with part of the Adwords revenue than it would have with the Yahoo search marketing ad.

Google announced its first quarter results a few minutes back and the results were better than street expectations. Google’s Q1 EPS was $4.84 and the revenue was $3.7 billion. Amid fears that the economic slowdown would have a negative result on Google’s paid ads program, adwords, Google announced that paid clicks were up 20% in the first quarter.

So I guess the paid search marketing world has nothing to worry about and atleast Google is continuing to see an increase in revenue from it’s pay per click ads.

Finally… and I say finally with my hand on my heart. Google Analytics has introduced a graph that shows us traffic trends not just by day, but also by week and month. Have a look at the screen shot below -

This was a graph that I sorely missed. This graph will save a lot of people some trouble. People, who like me want to see the increase/decrease in monthly traffic to judge the success of an internet marketing initiative like SEO that takes time to show results.

Google launched a free hosted service on Thursday that helps Web site publishers manage advertising slots on their site.
Ad Manager, like similar paid management services, can target ads at specific users. It can deliver ads depending on a user’s domain, Web browser, the PC’s operating system and bandwidth.
A site not using Google’s Adsense ads can also use the Ad manager. The Ad manager can be configured to fill in the unsold slots with Adsense ads if the site owner wants.
Overall, a useful tool. Let’s see how successful it is and how Google plans to make money from it. My gut feeling is that the next step will be a “friendly” message asking users to share their data anonymously if they want to use advanced features (remember the message on Google Analytics!).

There’s a been a buzz since months now, but Microsoft finally officially announced an unsolicited $44.6 billion bid for Yahoo. The $31-a-share bid of cash or Microsoft stock is 62 percent more than Yahoo’s closing price yesterday, reports bloomberg.

So how does this change the search equation?

Google, based in Mountain View, California, captured 56 percent of U.S. Web queries in December, almost double the combined share for Yahoo and Microsoft, which attracted 18 percent and 13 percent. Searches will account for 37 percent of the $27.5 billion U.S. online advertising market in 2008, estimates research firm EMarketer Inc.

Both Yahoo and MSN have been continually losing market share to Google in the search space (both paid and organic). This can be confirmed by looking at Yahoo’s quarterly balance sheet, which shows 8 straight quarters of declining profits. Now, the combined force of Yahoo & MSN, may just be able to start regaining market share that they’ve lost to Google. However, today Google’s search engine is far superior to both Yahoo’s and MSN and they need to be able to offer a compelling reason for users to switch over.

Going back a few years in history, when Altavista and then Yahoo dominated search. In came Google with its cleaner interface, faster search query processing and more accurate results. Today, I see no reason for Google users to switch to any other search engine  simply because there is no value addition that any other search engine can provide. And this is something that Microsoft needs to address if they manage to take over Yahoo… otherwise it may just end up being another hotmail, which only lost marketshare and became one of the more marginal players in the email space after the Microsoft takeover.

Google has made the next logical move after pay per click and pay per call. They have now introduced pay per action. This means that you pay not when someone clicks on your ad but when someone actually completes an action defined by the advertiser. Advertisers can choose to pay when a user makes a purchase, signs up for a newsletter, or completes any other clearly defined action that they choose.

This is very similar to the affiliate marketing model, where the merchant pays a publisher only when a defined action takes place.

As always Google has gone a step further to ensure that the cost per action is automatically worked out by their system. They’ve said that advertisers should have received more than 500 conversions through CPC or CPM campaigns in prior 30 days to be eligible to participate in this pay per action program. This means that they have enough data to calculate the best performing keywords, campaigns and cost per conversion that you’re incurring.

I may be wrong, I guess there may not be a huge change in the cost incurred by an advertiser if he chooses either pay per click or pay per action, all other factors remaining equal.