This morning the Google Blog announced a staggering milestone that even had Google engineers astounded; 1 Trillion unique URLs were found by Google on the web at once.

This statistic not only shows the amazing power of Google’s indexing engines but outlines just how massive the Internet has become… it is truly mind boggling.

The full blog posting is located here but the following are some interesting segments quoted from the blog posting.

• How big is the Net if that is what Google manages to index? “Strictly speaking, the number of pages out there is infinite — for example, web calendars may have a “next day” link, and we could follow that link forever, each time finding a “new” page. We’re not doing that, obviously, since there would be little benefit to you.” Read more…

June 30th 2008 was a day that Flash developers had been waiting for a long time; Google and Adobe had finally announced that Flash .swf files could be crawled by Google! In fact, the extensive news release from the Adobe Developer Center also stated that Yahoo would be incorporating similar technology in short order. When I read this news and the consequential articles from the web marketing community it became very clear that this update was a great step but far from the fix that some Flash developers are likely to pitch to their clients. As a result, I wanted to add my voice to the buzz on this topic and share with you my thoughts on how to optimize a site using Flash while considering the current updates. Read more…

I just finished writing a post for Search Engine Guide on Yahoo’s latest idea that I think is positively brilliant. Here is the lead in if you would like to go there and read it in its entirety:

“At Yahoo Anecdotal today Yahoo announced they had recently opened the Yahoo Accessibility Lab; a place where only Yahoo employees (for now) can experience the world of the Internet as a disabled web surfer would. Read on for a peak at accessibility guidelines and more on what Yahoo had to say about this important issue.”

Continue reading Yahoo Champions Internet Accessibility for the Disabled at Search Engine Guide

Yahoo has their second quarter shareholder conference call Tuesday evening and the numbers are in.

For Q2 of 2008 Yahoo’s Revenues were $1.79 Billion, representing a 6% increase over 2007 Q2 Results. Their cost of revenues were also up substantially resulting in a gross profit up by only $18 million compared to 2007. Granted that a profit of more than a Billion dollars is nothing to sneeze at, but $18 million in growth is really peanuts in this multi-billion dollar industry.

For a full rundown of all the figures or to listen to the conference call, visit Yahoo Investor Relations.

Rambler Media, a Russian company, has recently sold their contextual ad service, “Begun” to Google for $140 million according to Reuters and announced in a Google Press Release Friday. As part of the deal, Rambler also agreed to use Google results and advertising on its Russian based site, www.rambler.ru. Ramblers search results will be enhanced by Google with Google Ads being displayed along side.

“Google is very committed to giving Russian users, advertisers and partners the best possible service and experience,” said Mohammad Gawdat, Managing Director Emerging Markets, Google. “This agreement will result in better search results and more relevant advertising for our Russian users and publishers.”

Currently Rambler Media owns 50.1% of Begun and will be buying the remaining 49.9% from Bannatyne Limited before selling the entire firm to Google.

Google’s earnings are in after the second quarter report was issued yesterday. While their net income is up from the same period in 2007 by approximately $325 Million (925.1 Million in Q2 of 2007, 1.25 Billion in Q2 of 2008), this is not as high as was expected – Wall Street was expecting to see $4.74 per share – actual earnings were $4.63 per share.

With the economy down on its luck Google still managed to make more than $300 Million – roughly a 35% increase over the same period last year.

Microsofts profits for Q2 are also up by roughly 46 cents a share. They saw earnings in Q2 of 2007 at $3 Billion, and an increase of 42% to $4.3 billion for 2008. These are impressive earnings, however, Microsoft’s online business did not help much in terms of this profit. Compared to 2007, Q2 of 2008 actually saw a loss of $488 Million!

Had Microsoft’s Internet division actually turned a profit, they would have achieved Wall Streets estimate of 47 cents per share, rather than their actual 46 cents.

Yahoo has not yet released their Q2 Earnings for this year. Their shareholder conference call to discuss earnings is scheduled for July 22 at 5:00pm ET.

comScore released the latest figures for search engine rankings and their respective market share Friday, and Google has actually seen a drop! For all you Yahoo and Microsoft fans out there, don’t get too excited, it’s quite small to say the least.

For June 2008 Google has shown a 61.5% hold on market share, down 0.3% from May of 2008. Yahoo also showed a 0.3% change, only in the positive direction moving from 20.6% up to 20.9%. Microsoft had the biggest leap of a whopping 0.7% up from 8.5% to 9.2%.

When comparing numbers from June 2007 with June 2008, Google has seen a sizable gain stealing users from MSN and Yahoo. In the past 12 months Google has seen an increase of 6.6% with Yahoo and Microsoft both losing, 2.9%, and 3.1% respectively.

ICANN has recently approved a proposal to expand the availability of top level domains to virtually unlimited levels – at least if your pockets are deep enough.

On Monday the Wall Street Journal reported that businesses, or even individuals with money to burn will be able to apply for top level domain names using just about anything they want as the suffix.

What this means is, rather than the usual .com, or .ca extensions, companies could purchase the rights to brand name extensions such as “.google”, or “.ebay”, or if I was given a hefty raise and felt the need, I could spend a half million dollars and register “www.scott.vanachte”, (although I am not sure what I would do with such a pricey piece of online real estate).

Don’t get too excited however, according to ICANN it could be upwards of two years before the new domains are released, and with these vanity domains going for as much as a half million dollars, we are likely to only see them used by the big corporations until prices come down.

Marketing Sherpa is a company I have nothing but respect for due to their years of offering outstanding marketing handbooks and case studies.

Recently they updated one guide that just plain begged to be advertised – because it has the information that can increase your online conversions as much as 55%. The best part is this isn’t any fluff… everything they say is backed up with hard proof based on case studies and test after test.

If you have a website that could use improved conversions (who doesn’t ) check out the revised 2008 Landing Page Handbook without worrying about paying for something that won’t work for you because they have a full money-back guarantee so if you don’t like it send it back and get your money back. I wish everything could be that simple. Read more…

I’ve had people ask me why I dislike using Internet Explorer so much.

I suppose part of the reason for my distaste is the behaviour Microsoft has displayed in the past and present. Forcing the use of their software has never sat well with me, particularly when the software in question is always so full of holes. Internet Explorer is infamous for bugs, ranging from major security flaws to simple annoyances and everything in between.

I just don’t trust software that has always had so many obvious as well as not so obvious problems. Read more…