An expressed desire for better indexing from Google News has prompted Google to release a Sitemaps product specifically for those news publishers.

While Google has emphasized the positives for using its newest Sitemaps product, they also took a little swipe at the publishers who have attacked the company in court over its news indexing practices:

While they've always been able to use technical solutions such as robots.txt to govern which portions of their sites Google crawls and indexes, this will give publishers more granular tools to tell our crawlers exactly what should be included.
The initial release is English-language only, so even if an agency like Belgium's Copiepresse wanted to implement it immediately, they will have to wait for forthcoming options in additional languages.

Instead of simply offering Google News a RSS feed of their articles, publishers can craft a sitemap that tells Google exactly where its crawlers should go to find articles. Publishers can use the tools at Google Webmaster Central to determine where there may be indexing problems, and correct them for future crawls.

"These error reports will explain any problems we experienced crawling or extracting news articles from a publisher's site," Google News product manager Nathan Stoll wrote on the Official Google blog.

Andy Golding from the Google News team promised timeliness would be a focal point for news crawls, especially when using sitemaps:

Freshness is important for news, so we recrawl all News Sitemaps frequently. The News Sitemaps XML definition lets you specify a publication date and time for each article to help us process fresh articles in timely fashion. You can also specify keywords for each article to inform the placement of the articles into sections on Google News.
The additional data, including error reporting, that Google delivers to publishers should be a worthwhile reason for news sites to check out the new sitemap being offered.

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Art imitates life, and vice versa, they say. But in the 21st Century, search behavior may be a better mirror. In the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving - the face-stuffinest holiday - and to Black Friday - the shoppinest one - searches are what you might expect: all pumpkin pie and Playstations.

Hitwise drops us a line to say that visits to websites in the Food and Beverage category, which includes recipe sites, increased by 17.5 percent the week ending November 18, compared to data taken a year ago. That week in 2005 belonged to the recipe search, jumping nearly 66 percent, with a strange tilt toward the butternut squash.

This year, the most popular recipe-related searches centered on things you can do with Jack-o-lantern guts. Last week, [pumpkin pie recipe], [pecan pie recipe], [pumpkin cheesecake recipe], [pumpkin roll recipe], and [sweet potato pie recipe].

AllRecipes.com, an example of straightforwardness in Web address, controlled this niche, scooping in almost 37 percent of traffic from those terms. Food Network was a far second, pulling in 13.1 percent, followed by Kraft Foods with 8.2 percent.

So, what's everybody doing after riding the Type 2 Train on the Diabetes Express?

Oooh! Oooh! I know! (raising my hand) "They go jogging!"

Sorry, no. If they manage to get their hands on one, they'll be ogling a Playstation 3. While retail visits are up seven percent overall, searches for [playstation 3] spiked 112 percent over the previous week. Together, the Playstation 3 and the Nintendo Wii control 40 percent of product-related searches leading to the Shopping and Classified sites.

We saw this last year with the Xmas-box 360, sending eBay prices into the thousands. You can buy a PS3 now for just $4,000. Or you can, like the rest of us playing the poor-man's console, spend up to $600 for the Wii.

Tag: Thanksgiving Search

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The Internet is widely used by 40 million Americans as a resource for science information according to the Pew Internet Project. 87% of users have at one time used the Internet for research relating to a scientific topic.

The Internet is second only to TV for Americans looking for science related information. For Americans with high-speed Internet access it is as popular as TV for science related information.

For younger adults with high-speed Internet access the Internet is more popular than TV as source for science information by a ratio of 44% to 32%.

The nation wide survey conducted by Pew Internet & American Life Project reveals how people get their information concerning science related topics. Other results show that 9 out of 10 (87%) of online users have used the Internet to find information about a scientific concept, question or to help complete a school assignment.

On why the Internet has become such a valuable tool concerning science information John B. Horrigan, Associate Director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project and main author of the study said "People's use of the internet for science information has a lot to do with the internet's convenience as a research tool, but it also connected to people's growing dependence on the internet for information of all types. Many think of the internet as a gigantic encyclopedia on all subjects and this certainly applies to scientific information."
The results of the Pew Internet Project survey make sense, as the Internet is probably the most immediate resource for gathering scientific information.

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Verizon yellow pages launched a spin off of their popular SuperPages.com local search engine called Idearc.

Verizon's Idearc began trading today at the New York Stock Exchange while Verizon YellowPages survives the spin off.

Idearc was intended by Verizon to be, according to the company's media website, "A multi-platform media company with the most innovative ways of connecting buyers with sellers, making consumers better shoppers and businesses more successful."

The purpose of the site is to assist consumers in finding what they desire in a time efficient and simple manner and includes over 17 million businesses in the United States.

Because of parent company Verizon's established reputation, with their print directories in over 35 million homes, Idearc already has an extensive consumer base.

Idearc also assists businesses in leading consumers to their products. The site even features a "value promise" to the businesses that place their ads on Idearc Yellow Pages, which states that they will make as many cost-effective solutions available as possible.

Average return on investments, or ROI, for companies who advertise their business on yellow pages is $21 for every $1 spent. Other forms of media, including newspaper and billboard, have proven to yield a much smaller ROI than those attained through online advertising.

Idearc is the official distributor of Verizon's print directories, distributing 136 Verizon Yellow Pages and White Pages to 35 states per year.

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As GOOG climbs above $500 per share, as predicted to happen about this time last year before the great January plunge, questions as to just how high Google can get, in terms of stock, search share, and visits, get more intense. Last week, a Citigroup analyst predicted Google would overtake Yahoo in visits by the end of 2007. Hitwise disagrees.

While Google is the Wall Street darling, with stock projected to rise as high as $750 (some have timidly suggested as high as $840), and with a search market share somewhere between 40 and 60 percent, Hitwise's Bill Tancer says that not only will it take longer than a year, but much has to be assumed, lost, and gained to get Google past Yahoo and to the number one online property.

Citigroup's Mark Mahaney, based on numbers provided by comScore projected that Google would overcome a 20-million visitor deficit, supplanting Yahoo as the top spot, if current growth rates continued.

Tancer chewed that over using Hitwise numbers and came to a different conclusion. Though Yahoo's market share has dropped by 10 percent in the last year, and Google's has risen by 18.6 percent, Tancer estimates it will take three years for Google to catch up with Yahoo.

"If we apply those growth rates, and assume no material changes in those rates over the next three years (a big assumption), Google would not surpass Yahoo! in market share of visits until mid-2009," writes Tancer.

What will make Yahoo difficult to overcome is how the traffic is spread out among Yahoo properties. A third of Yahoo traffic goes to Yahoo Mail. Another third goes to Yahoo.com, and just under 11 percent are using Yahoo Search.

The traffic dispersed among the top 20 Yahoo properties is double the traffic dispersed among top 20 Google properties. At the top of Google's list is, of course, search, gathering 87 percent of Google traffic. The rest are spread out to the hundredths of a percent among all Google properties.

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SnapStream has added a new option to their Beyond TV video recording software. It will allow users to create DVDs for their favorite television shows. Users will be able to use a burning plug-in to record their programs.

A couple other companies offer similar features. TiVo has a TiVoToGo program that can burn DVDs. The cost for that feature is $50. Microsoft has included the feature in Windows Media Center and will be available in Windows Vista Home Premium.

The cost of the Beyond TV DVD plug-in is $29.99 to 39.99 depending on what version you own.
On the SnapStream blog about the DVD plug-in they write, "embedded in Beyond TV 4.5 is an optional and exciting new feature - integrated DVD burning. The new DVD Burning Plug-in makes it easy to burn DVDs of your recorded TV shows and movies. Just pop a DVD into your burner, add videos to the DVD in Beyond TV and then click ‘Burn DVD.'"
Beyond TV will also feature "SmartSkip" technology that will allow viewers to avoid commercials. Besides the DVD burning capabilities the skipping of commercials will be a welcomed feature for subscribers.

Here is a list of the technical details of the DVD Burning Plug-In:
· it supports pretty much all DVD writing hardware out there
· and it supports pretty much all types of DVD media and technologies (dual layer, single layer, mini DVDs, DVD-RAM, DVD+R and RW, DVD-R and RW)
· it's fully licensed by Dolby for Dolby Digital Audio (2-channel) so the sound quality is great
· it supports both video DVDs and data DVDs
· it supports not only MPEG-2 (program stream) videos, but Windows Media (WMV) and DivX videos as well
· burning happens in the background, while your DVD is burned, you can use Beyond TV (or anything else on your PC)

Burning TV programs to DVD may not be new. As the technology improves people will be turning less and less to major retailers for their favorite TV shows and continue the trend of burning to DVDs.

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Expect this online holiday shopping season to be a blockbuster as 80 percent of American Internet users will purchase gifts online, according to a Zogby International poll commissioned by AOL. New York City will lead the rest, more than doubling the spend of the nearest market.

A quarter of online shoppers plan to spend most of their holiday budget online. That's an average of $504.52, or almost 40 percent of their overall budget of $1,282.13. In NYC, that budget is $2,137.26, 70 percent of which will be spent online ($1483.36).

The nearest top-20 market, Orlando, will spend just $645.24 of their $1,995.41, while Cleveland residents will devote $577.31, nearly half the $1,200 they've allotted.

The online draw, as one might imagine, is the speed of online shopping and the ease of comparing products. Three in five (58%) said comparison shopping was a driving factor. Nearly a third (29%) said they found things online not available in local stores, and 24 percent said free shipping was a major factor. Seventeen percent liked the last-minute rush advantage.

The price of gas, perhaps surprising to some, is not a major factor driving consumers online. Only nine percent said they'd shop online to save money on gasoline.

"These findings clearly show that U.S. Internet users are shopping online more and more during the holiday season because of convenience, selection and price," said Robert Hayes, AOL VP/GM Marketplace. "The average consumer is starting to see the advantages of online shopping over the traditional brick and mortar store."

Items more likely to be purchased online:

60% said books and music
35% said electronics
31% said toys and games
29% said clothing and accessories
23% said software

Top Online Holiday Spending Cities:

1. New York City , average online spend: $1,483.36, (average overall budget: $2,137.26)
2. Orlando, average online spend: $645.24 (average overall budget: $1,995.41)
3. Cleveland, average online spend: $577.31 (average overall budget: $1,238.14)
4. Denver, average online spend: $558.84 (average overall budget: $1,113.67)
5. Los Angeles, average online spend: $528.69 (average overall budget: $1,282.08)
6. Houston, average online spend: $527.96 (average overall budget: $1,407.87)
7. Dallas, average online spend: $525.71 (average overall budget: $1,202.46)
8. Miami, average online spend: $509.70 (average overall budget: $1,157.68)
9. San Francisco, average online spend: $489.29 (average overall budget: $1,098.54)
10. Washington D.C., average online spend: $484.23 (average overall budget: $1,371.32)

Tag: Online Shopping

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Internet companies are usually pretty forward-thinking; this comes, I suppose, with the territory. Yahoo made a strange move today, however, by celebrating an event that's well in the past - its five-year-old "groundbreaking alliance" with ATandT.

The commemoration isn't unprecedented, though, with people also noting Google Base's first birthday, and the 21st birthday of Windows. Yahoo has worked hard to branch out from its traditional role as a search engine, and AT&T, "the nation's leading high speed DSL Internet and consumer voice services company," is in a key position to help this expansion continue.

Steve Boom, Yahoo's senior vice president of Broadband and Mobile, gave a statement that emphasized past benefits. "Our partnership with AT&T has given Yahoo! the opportunity to create truly innovative Internet experiences, not just for the PC but also on consumer televisions," he said.

The companies gave vague hints as to what may follow. "In the coming months, Yahoo! will celebrate its fifth anniversary with AT&T by offering new features and incentives to consumers." And yet, despite the overall cheery tone of the statement, some onlookers predicted trouble.

Om Malik wrote that "the past . . . has been perfect for these two partners, but deep down the future has to be tense . . . . The email accounts, the photo services or even the start page - those are Yahoo's preserve. When a person switches from AT&T DSL, the relationship goes with Yahoo."

Malik also noted, "A senior executive at one of Yahoo's other phone company partner expressed big concern over this end-relationship, and posited that in the end it would become a thorn in their side."

Perhaps it isn't really confetti that we're seeing at this celebration . . . . Perhaps the AT&T people just took out their frustration on a big stack of colored paper.

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Tag: Yahoo, AT&T

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Expect this online holiday shopping season to be a blockbuster as 80 percent of American Internet users will purchase gifts online, according to a Zogby International poll commissioned by AOL. New York City will lead the rest, more than doubling the spend of the nearest market.

A quarter of online shoppers plan to spend most of their holiday budget online. That's an average of $504.52, or almost 40 percent of their overall budget of $1,282.13. In NYC, that budget is $2,137.26, 70 percent of which will be spent online ($1483.36).

The nearest top-20 market, Orlando, will spend just $645.24 of their $1,995.41, while Cleveland residents will devote $577.31, nearly half the $1,200 they've allotted.

The online draw, as one might imagine, is the speed of online shopping and the ease of comparing products. Three in five (58%) said comparison shopping was a driving factor. Nearly a third (29%) said they found things online not available in local stores, and 24 percent said free shipping was a major factor. Seventeen percent liked the last-minute rush advantage.

The price of gas, perhaps surprising to some, is not a major factor driving consumers online. Only nine percent said they'd shop online to save money on gasoline.

"These findings clearly show that U.S. Internet users are shopping online more and more during the holiday season because of convenience, selection and price," said Robert Hayes, AOL VP/GM Marketplace. "The average consumer is starting to see the advantages of online shopping over the traditional brick and mortar store."

Items more likely to be purchased online:

60% said books and music
35% said electronics
31% said toys and games
29% said clothing and accessories
23% said software

Top Online Holiday Spending Cities:

1. New York City , average online spend: $1,483.36, (average overall budget: $2,137.26)
2. Orlando, average online spend: $645.24 (average overall budget: $1,995.41)
3. Cleveland, average online spend: $577.31 (average overall budget: $1,238.14)
4. Denver, average online spend: $558.84 (average overall budget: $1,113.67)
5. Los Angeles, average online spend: $528.69 (average overall budget: $1,282.08)
6. Houston, average online spend: $527.96 (average overall budget: $1,407.87)
7. Dallas, average online spend: $525.71 (average overall budget: $1,202.46)
8. Miami, average online spend: $509.70 (average overall budget: $1,157.68)
9. San Francisco, average online spend: $489.29 (average overall budget: $1,098.54)
10. Washington D.C., average online spend: $484.23 (average overall budget: $1,371.32)

Tag: Online Shopping

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PodZinger has announced the results of its proprietary research into consumer behavior and online video advertising viewing preferences. The research reveals that not only will viewers tolerate advertisements that appear during their search for online audio and video content, they willingly accept that short ads come with the territory.

These results, in combination with aggregated consumer behavior statistics for online content, further emphasize the importance of streamlined, targeted, non-intrusive video advertisements.

The following is a detailed summary of the study's findings gathered from the company's blog as well as the report of findings:

PodZinger also examined behavior patterns of consumers on its site to set the baseline for consumer behavior, discovering that:
• Consumers typically play only 15 percent of an entire online video or audio, which are 7.5 minutes and 22 minutes in length, respectively.
• Consumer attention span for online video is much shorter than audio - one minute vs. three minutes on average.
• Consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it by a factor of almost 6 to 1 (5.7 to1).
• Of all the categories tracked by PodZinger, five of these, including entertainment, technology, news and politics, music and sports, represent approximately 85 percent of all online activity. Additionally, online activity does not track to the volume of content available, e.g. entertainment represents 36 percent of all online video play, but only 6 percent of available video.
Click for Full Size ImageClick for Full Size Image
Highlights of the market research:
• Not only do consumers tolerate advertisements that appear during their search for online audio and video content, they also willingly accept that short 10-15 seconds ads are "part of doing business" on the Web.
• Consumers prefer 10-15 second ads in comparison to the typical 30-second television commercials. However, many expressed concern about frequency of video ads and were considered "annoying" if repeated often.
• A high percentage of respondents viewed targeted advertisements that were relevant to their online search as positive and more personal.
Other notable patterns indicate that:
• Consumers will listen to audio for almost 3 times longer as they will watch a video - an average of 3 min. versus 1 min.
• Consumers are more likely to play content online than they are to download it by a factor of almost 6 to 1.
"With Internet video consumption surging, advertisers are clamoring for a best-in-class solution for delivering branded and relevant online messages." said Alex Laats, CEO of PodZinger.

"To accomplish that, it is essential to develop a deeper understanding of what consumers are watching and listening. Our technology uniquely allows PodZinger to connect advertisers to consumers based on consumer intent, and the response in the marketplace has been overwhelming."

If you think the significance of these statistics is overrated, consider for a moment that Google shelled out $1.65 billion reasons to consider the importance of online video advertising when it purchased YouTube, the popular online video storage site.

Most Internet users understand that "free" video actually comes with a price tag, and it manifests itself in the form of an advertising model. People gladly accept that commercials offset the cost of television product, and by the same respect online video watchers are willing to endure short advertisements if it means they get to watch the clip for free.

One of the key differences between television and online video, however, is that advertisers have the opportunity to gear their marketing campaigns in a completely contextual direction, applying direct, relevant advertising and product placement to video clips in which users have already exhibited an interest by clicking.

So with contextual relevance in mind, it will be important for marketers to keep an ever-watchful eye on these types of video trends in the days to come.

Tags: Online Video, Contextual Advertising, PodZingr

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