Yahoo! announced today they signed an exclusive deal with HP, the #2 global PC vendor (Gartner statistic), to be the start-up home page for every HP PC sold in Europe and North America. Even better news for Yahoo! is that North American computers will include a co-branded Yahoo! toolbar installed on every machine once the new Internet Explorer 7 is launched by Microsoft.

This news comes after a similar deal was announced between Yahoo! and Acer computers. All-in-all, it appears that Yahoo! has a very clear picture of where it wants to be; in your face as much as possible. Read more…

Today ComScore announced their research findings on the size and growth of local search in the USA.

According to their findings, 63 percent of U.S. Internet users conducted a local search in July. Local searches are considered any form of search for local information such as a local business number, address, or business website. The real kicker, in my opinion, was that Google (30%) and Yahoo! (29%) had nearly the same amount of the local search market.

Here is some more data that you may find interesting:

Share of Local Searches by Site  July 2006  Total U.S. Home, Work and University Locations  Source: comScore qSearch

                                     Total Local Searches  Total Internet Population                 100%  Google Sites                             29.8%  Yahoo! Sites                             29.2%  Microsoft Sites                          12.3%  Time Warner Network                       7.1%  Verizon Communications                    6.6%  YellowPages.com                           3.9%  Ask Network                               2.7%  Local.com                                 1.9%  InfoSpace Network                         1.9%  DexOnline.com                             1.4%  All Other                                 3.2%

I came across this interesting press release announcing the results of a Yahoo!/OMD survey of 4500 online families across 16 countries called: “It’s a Family Affair: the Media Evolution of Global Families in a Digital Age.”

If you have the time I recommend reading the entire document but here are some snippets from that I think you will find interesting. Read more…

Welcome the new Microsoft… the media mogul and software giant

Google has proven it works, so guess what? Microsoft is now jumping on board and I expect they will be astounded by their positive reception because this is a great addition of quality advertising territory. Microsoft has launched a powerful advertising solution called Microsoft Digital Advertising Solutions that will allow advertisers to get exposure across the following brands:

• MSN
  Engage up to 380 million users with your advertisement on this popular portal.
• XBOX
  Advertise directly to the gamers while they surf their XBOX Live sites.
• Windows Live
  This new brand will gain a significant following over the next few years and as Microsoft puts it this “is a highly desireable audience” packed full of confident online consumers.
• Microsoft Office Online
  Microsoft is targeting enterprise advertisers for this site that is designed as a technical extension of the popular Office suite of applications.
• Windows Mobile
  Send text ads or interactive images direct to handhelds through this portal for mobile users.
• Microsoft TV
  Here is an opportunity for exposure across Microsoft’s new age IPTV system that will provide broadcast-quality video and television to users.

So what does this all mean? Microsoft has finally clued in to the online advertising revolution and opened the doors to becoming much more than a software manufacturer. Now you can advertise across Microsoft’s considerable network in areas that you never could before.

Hmm, I wonder if they will start to buy up newspapers soon?

Here is just a quick post recommending that you read the following interview with Brett Crosby at Web Analytics World. Brett is the Senior Manager of Google Analytics and he discusses the current status as well as the future of Google Analytics. Do you want to know more about how to track your statistics? Check out Google’s free Conversion University.

The free tool that it is Google Analytics offers some very tempting functionality for any webmasterand we currently use it as a secondary stats source but I still swear by ClickTracks. ClickTracks may be a paid solution but I find it very flexible and the reports are extremely easy to understand.

Yesterday (the 26 of September), a Mr. David Eun, VP of Content Partnerships posted a blanket notice titled “Our approach to content” describing Google’s respect for copyrights. I recommend reading this posting but if you want the Coles notes… here is a snippet that sums it up well:

“… over the years we’ve come up with three primary principles to ensure that we respect content owners and protect their rights:

• we respect copyright;
• we let owners choose whether we index their content in our products;
• we try to bring benefit back to content owners by partnering with them.”

Mr. Eun does a good job of representing Google in this post. In fact, by highlighting how flexible Google is I think he does a great job of showing how silly this whole whiney copyright issue has become. I mean come on! If you (the copyright owner) wants money from Google, just be honest about it and don’t try to attack them under the guise of copyright infringement. If you don’t want to be listed in Google it is a very simple matter of implementing the proper tags.

Well you turned 8 years old today you playful little devil. You have been a temperamental child at times and lord knows you don’t follow orders very well but at least you get straight A’s for knowledge.

Cheers from the Staff at StepForth Search Engine Placement!

This holiday season Google has announced a search engine update geared towards a bolder integration of Google Base data.

At the latest Professional Ebay Sellers Alliance Summit (PESA) Google stated that they would provide a ‘refine your search’ option to those obviously searching for products using Google.com. The search box would appear after a product search was entered at which point, should a user use the refined search option, Google Base data would be provided. Read more…

While it is currently by invitation only, Monday night, Microsoft released a beta version of Soapbox to compete with the highly successful YouTube. Currently you can request an invitation; however, when clicking the link I was presented with an error “Oops. It’s not anything you did–it’s us. Our site’s down. Please try again later.” No real surprise here, after all it is a Microsoft Beta.

YouTube is the ultimate video sharing venue attracting 34 million visitors in August according to Nielsen/NetRatings. Users worldwide can upload and share their videos in just about every category imaginable. Read more…

Last Friday (Sept 15 th) a Belgium court dealt a stunning blow against Google and its Google News search service. The court is now forbidding the popular search engine from indexing Belgian newspaper content without paying each newspaper for the use of their content. Read more…