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Baidu profits double as search engine dominates China

Local search engine Baidu has picked up Google’s losses in China’s search market - and then some. The leading Chinese-language search engine reported on Wednesday that its profits more than doubled in the last quarter, ending 30 June with net revenue of 837.4 million yuan (

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Brand Me

Define yourself. When beginning, this is the first step in branding yourself. You need to realize that you are very good, even an expert, at what you do. You surround yourself, either in your job or in your circle of friends, with others who are experts in what you know. Then, you begin to believe that everyone knows what you know and you see yourself as average and begin making mental statements such as “What do I have to offer that is different or unique? Everyone knows what I know.” WRONG. You have friends, neighbors, and associates that come to you asking for your help and advice. Or perhaps asking, “can you teach me how to do that?” What kinds of questions do they ask you? Ask yourself this powerful question: “What sort of things are people asking me when they ask ‘Can I pick your brain for a minute?’” Fire Your Financial Advisor suggests the following to stimulate ideas on who you are and how you can stand out: “Do you have a certain skill where someone said ‘Can you teach me that?’ Or, have you overcome a certain experience, such as death of a loved one, divorce, financial ruin, raising children, passed a training, etc

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Brand Me

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.CO Domain Names Landrush: Boom or Bust?

The new .CO domain name extension is being hyped as a must-have for all business websites. But is it worth the inflated price? It’s the latest domain name extension to be opened to the public worldwide. Domain name registrars have been hyping the “.CO Landrush” and have even extended this “pre-registration” period an additional three days, to July 16. In the days of the 1849 California Gold Rush, more miners went bust than boom when seeking that elusive gem stone. Will .CO turn out to be another case of Fool’s Gold? The fee to reserve a .co name during the Landrush ranges from about $230 to $300 for the first year. I wonder what all the fuss is about.

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.CO Domain Names Landrush: Boom or Bust?

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Facebook fan page saves Nigerian football team

The president of the African nation of Nigeria has recanted his promise to bar the country’s 2010 World Cup team from playing for two years, citing fan protests on Facebook as a major factor in his decision. “I have listened to your voices,” said President Goodluck Jonathan in a Facebook post. After what he deemed a sub-par attempt to capture the crown of the football world, the ongoing FIFA World Cup in South Africa, the president issued the ban against the national team. However, a further decision was demanded by FIFA, which disallows governmental interference in football matters. Jonathan reviewed the decision and repealed it on Monday, before the FIFA deadline, issuing a statement proclaiming that the Nigerian Football Federation would “grow a new senior national team that will bring glory rather than consistent embarrassment to Nigeria on the world stage.” The president attributed his turnaround of opinion to outcry from the Nigerian public, including former leaders of the African nation, as well as the growing number of protesters on Facebook.

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Facebook fan page saves Nigerian football team

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Over 50s dominate new web audience

As ever more Brits connect to the World Wide Web, one of the growing age groups is the over 50s - causing a surge in demand for net services catering to older users. A new study by the UK Online Measurement Company (UKOM) found that Britain’s internet audience rose from 36.9 million last year to 38.8 million in May, with more than half of these newcomers being aged 50 or older. The new arrivals also consisted of more men than women, with men over 50 accounting for 38 per cent of the 1.9 million new users. “The internet is getting older in more ways than one,” Alex Burmaster told BBC News on behalf of UKOM. “Not only is the medium itself maturing, but the audience is shifting towards older age groups.” Over-50s now account for 31 per cent of the UK’s total online audience. The largest user base is those aged 35 to 49 - exceeding 25 per cent of the total audience - and the findings also revealed a marked difference between men and women, as seen below. “There is a still a perception that the net is youth-centric but this is clearly not the reality,” Mr Burmaster explained. The research company identified a wide range of sites of particular appeal to the older generation, including community, fashion, genealogy, travel and video sites

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Over 50s dominate new web audience

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Google boss believes smartphones are key to democratising information

Google chief executive Eric Schmidt has reaffirmed his company’s aim to be a driving force for good in the world, by explaining how Google’s breakthroughs in smartphones and search engines are bringing about a generational shift towards the democratisation of information worldwide. “Over my lifetime, we are going to go from a small number of people having access to most of the world’s information, to virtually everybody in the world having access to virtually all of the world’s information,” Schmidt told The Guardian. “That’s because of web search, cheap phones and automatic translation. That’s a pretty amazing achievement and Google is part of that.” Smartphones were identified as a key focus of advancing the company’s agenda, as the Google boss explained the development of Android operating systems and Google-branded phones at the Guardian’s Activate Summit. Despite Gartner rating Android as the world’s fourth most popular mobile operating system for the first quarter of 2010 - behind Nokia’s Symbian, Research in Motion’s Blackberry and Apple’s iPhone - Schmidt is hopeful about his company’s fortunes in the mobile web sphere, particularly as Google’s vast network of data centres means it could potentially handle more traffic than its competitors. “I believe that the very best engineering is now going on the mobile devices - the hardest problems and the most clever solutions,” Schmidt explained.

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Google boss believes smartphones are key to democratising information

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Google testing retailer rating integration for PPC

Would knowing whether a retailer was trusted or not before you visited their site effect whether you visited the site at all? Would it impact your chances of buying something from them? If the search engine told you, in advance, that the retailer was widely believed to be rubbish would you visit at all? If Google told you that the retailer was commonly rated highly would you visit that site in favour of others? These questions are all relevant to a new test Google is conducting; showing retailer ratings below paid search ads. Google’s seller rating integration with PPC is out in the wild. In the example below we can see how a search for [world cup] produces a Pad Search ad for Amazon and Alicia Keys (Alicia Keys performed at the World Cup ceremony so it’s not a mis-match) and as part of that ad we can see Amazon.co.uk’ rating. The retailer scores 5/5. It’s possible to click on the rating link

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Google testing retailer rating integration for PPC

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Online retail sales rise by 22 per cent

New figures have revealed that online retail sales increased by 22 per cent in May - the strongest monthly growth in the sector since June 2008. Shoppers in the UK spent

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Twitter to Become Your Online GPS

This week Twitter announced a new feature for twitter.com and mobile.twitter.com called Twitter Places . The idea is to allow users to tag their Tweets with their specific location, acting like an online GPS of sorts. The geo-location data is made possible with the help of Twitter partners TomTom (manufacturer of in-car GPS navigation systems) and Localeze (a search marketing firm specializing in local search). Apart from tweeting your own location, the new feature allows you to click a Twitter Place within a Tweet to see recent Tweets from a particular location. Users of geo-social networking services Foursquare and Gowalla will be excited, because the new feature now integrates with these services. If you click on a registered Twitter Place, not only will you see standard tweets from that location, but you’ll also see recent check-ins from Foursquare and Gowalla. The timing of Twitter’s new feature launch deliberately coincided with the kick off of the World Cup, to encourage people to tweet from and view tweets from World Cup stadiums in South Africa

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Twitter to Become Your Online GPS

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Yahoo! beefs up news staff

With Google running far ahead as the world’s search engine of choice, Yahoo! is strengthening in other areas, including its web-leading news services. The elder statesman of the internet has reportedly pulled in several big names in journalism, and has opened an office in Washington, DC, to generate more original content. According to the New York Times, Yahoo! has beefed up its staff with Politico blogger Michael Calderone, Good Morning America’s Anna Robertson and Jane Sasseen of Business Week. With a reported 43 million visitors in February alone, the news site already leads the web in popularity.

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Yahoo! beefs up news staff

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