Tim Bray, the co-inventor of XML shares in detail his understanding of and hopes for search engine technologies on his On Search, the Series blog series of essays. Particularly interesting in these articles posted between June and December 2003 is the focus on the user experience in searching and the expressed hope for future developments [...]
The e-Consultancy (I am not associated with them) has created a very thorough report comparing 12 web analytics tools marketed in the UK and sorted by price range:
- Webtrends (NetIQ)
- RedEye
- RedSheriff
- Nedstat
- WebtraffIQ
- Site Intelligence
- Clicktracks
- Intellitracker
- Clickstream
- Steeltorch
- WebAbacus
- Speed-trap
- WebSideStory
Some of these tools are web-based, like WebSideStory, others offer both a web-based [...]
According to a survey by Ipsos-Insight shared by eMarketer, Canada is the county with the highest percentage of its adult population online - 71% or 16 million. The US is the biggest online user with 128 million users online or 68% of its adult population. Where this survey’s results became questionnable is the numbers about [...]
JupiterResearch forecasts that U.S. online retail sales will reach $65 billion in 2004, and will continue to grow by a compound annual growth rate of 17% through 2008 to top $117 billion.
More significantly for web marketers is the projection that by 2008, nearly 30% of offline retail purchases will be influenced by research performed online.
The Media Audit, a Houston, TX, based company, surveyed adults in 85 US metro markets and concluded that the percentage of adults who spend at least an hour a day on the Internet is significantly greater than the percentage of adults who spend an hour a day with the print edition of a daily newspaper.
In [...]
A new website, a fusion between a search engine and a social network, is launched today under the name Eurekster. It has the financial backing of NBC, features search results provided by AllTheWeb and sponsored results by Overture, the Yahoo! subsidiary, and enables members of the social network RealContacts to share search results, personalize them [...]
FirstGov is not a sufficient resource for search engine marketing of a government website.
Just because government websites have monopoly on .gov domain names, it does not mean they have monopoly on providing information about certain government-related subjects or locations. Unlike the case with yellow/white/blue pages where the way to differentiate between government and commercial information [...]
Chinese Web Marketplace
According to a semi-official Chinese research centre, the China Internet Network Information Centre, the number of Internet surfers in China has grown to 79.5 million people at the end of 2003, up an annual 34.5 percent.
China, which already had the world’s second-largest Web population after the United States, added 20.4 million new [...]
NetIQ just published a survey focusing on the huge cost to businesses caused by abandoned ecommerce shopping carts. The survey quotes reports by eMarketer that in 2003 some 52 percent of shopping cards were abandoned and estimates by research firm Datamonitor, that in the United States alone, the loss due to unfinished online transactions could [...]
After a couple of weeks away on paternity leave, I am resuming the WebSage blog. In 2004, you will see posted here a lot of information on current e-commerce trends, search engine marketing, web optimization, and overall ways of improving websites for the benefit of small businesses and non-profit organizations!