How Fast is the Digital Horse?
Recently, I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of publishers of all sizes to get a sense of their perspective on this important issue. My take is that Yellow Pages executives believe there will be a major…
Recently, I have had the opportunity to speak to a number of publishers of all sizes to get a sense of their perspective on this important issue. My take is that Yellow Pages executives believe there will be a major…
Having waited and waited to upgrade my cellphone technology and music listening experience, I read with considerable interest the hot rumors about the pending product launch of a new Motorola cellphone that comes loaded with iTunes software. With 2.5G and…
Last week the New York Times did pieces on the current state of the movie rental market and the state of movie going. Both thought-provoking articles offer views of the challenges industries built before the age of the Internet are…
Internet service providers (ISPs) have long been frustrated by the seeming indifference of their subscribers to their content offerings. Comcast, in particular, has more recently been very aggressive in trying to beef up its content offerings so that it doesn't…
Rupert Murdoch has gone from lambasting newspaper publishers about their online inaction to building with several swift strokes of his checkbook pen an Internet powerhouse that, via its collection of properties, now claims to be "the fifth most trafficked presence…
Commenting on personnel matters is outside the typical scope of this blog, but Om Malik argues that Google's announced hire of Vint Cerf from MCI indicates that GoogleNet (the national broadband wi-fi network) is real. Read more.
In the battle of the interactive maps, MSN is seeking to challenge Google's satellite mapping supremacy with a suite of mapping tools that will seek to combine the best elements of satellite mapping with A9's Yellow Pages local business photography…
Last Fall general purpose (as opposed to niche) search engine Accoona launched to considerable media fanfare. Yes the name does come from the Swahili phrase "acoona matata," popularized in the U.S. by the Disney film The Lion King. Though I'm…
Click fraud is getting more attention and media coverage lately. And now there's a cottage industry emerging around the perceived problem. My question is: Will this motivate or accelerate a move to an alternative model (e.g., cost per lead/action) that…
Loren Baker posted some information on the search engine competition going on in China. He cited a survey which showed that Baidu.com Inc. had boosted its market share in Beijing by 10.8 percentage points to 52 percent. Google share was…
We noted with interest on RHD's latest earnings call that it has removed cover ads from its SBC-branded directories in Illinois, the logic being that cover ads make it harder for the publisher to distinguish its brand from its competitors.…
BellSouth put out a press release today quoting BAPCO CEO Ike Harris announcing that the company's RealPages.com IYP site has reached 20 million monthly searches. The press release also claims that search traffic has grown by 18 percent from 2004…
AdWeek reports this week that YellowPages.com has selected SBC's longtime advertising agency GSD&M to handle the advertising account for YellowPages.com, the company jointly owned by SBC and BellSouth. The magazine estimates the size of the account at US$4 million. This…
About a decade ago, I wrote a lengthy article for Link magazine (anyone remember Link magazine?) about the efforts of the U.S. Postal Service and others to crack down on bogus Yellow Pages scams, which exploit the inattention of busy…
For the better part of 15 years, TMP was the 900-pound gorilla of the national Yellow Pages market. Some time in the late 1980s with Andy McKelvey at the helm, TMP began an aggressive CMR acquisition roll-up strategy. By the…
Danny Sullivan asks the question of whether search engines becoming portals -- in part because they're so furiously competing with each other -- implies a potential decline in quality. Google reportedly announced its "fusion" strategy because users were requesting greater…
Ask Jeeves has acquired Excite Europe from Tiscali for 6.1 million euros (an apparent pittance). In March of last year, Ask Jeeves bought Excite.com in the U.S. Also today, Ask Jeeves and InfoSpace announced they had settled litigation associated with…
Search-engine marketing firm TrafficLeader, whose technology supports BellSouth€™s "Real Search Engines Solutions," announced a deal with the Houston Chronicle to sell search marketing to local businesses on a similar €œflat-fee, guaranteed clicks€ basis. We had predicted €œsimplified search€ would make…
No such luck. This was simply a Forbes.com headline designed to suck readers into a brief news story. Oh, and by the way, why don€™t you respond to the question, €œWhat do you think is the best search engine?€ For…
As if the landline business hadn€™t suffered enough with wireless carriers taking share for domestic usage and VoIP taking share for international calling, now comes a slew of cheap international long distance calling plans from the cellular operators. Verizon and…