Twitter is rolling out features one after the other in a very subtle manner. I like the way this particular feature was rolled out! and ofcourse, I like this feature…It was long missing…Now, you can see a snapshot of who “retweeted” your “tweets” along with your original tweet 
Google launched yet another important feature today - this time in adwords - called as “Compare ads” which allows users to compare multiple offers from various advertisers and choose the best. This goes one step beyond the current structure where ads compete with one another for users attention through ad title, ad description etc., Now users can compare interest rates for mortgage loans as shown below:
https://www.google.com/comparisonads/mortgages
This feature is currently available for mortgages only in US (in select cities). But it’s just a question of time before Google rolls this out across various industry segments and geography. All those comparison shopping engines in travel, loans, insurance, books, products will be definitely affected. The middlemen will be eventually eliminated and Google will become the central hub between sellers and consumers. The users will definitely be happy about this feature. Google is beginning to deliver more and more content from within its site. I am having a bad feeling about this trend…
What’s your take on this…?
Recently Businessweek came up with a very interesting story on Google and how it is planning to stay ahead of the competition and whether it can stay on top of the web. Anyone interested in Search and Google should definitely read these articles. It throws lot of light on how google takes things seriously and why Search is still an unsolved problem and the challenges associated with Search. Worth Reading…
Can Google Stay on Top of the Web?
http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/09_41/b4150044749206_page_2.htm
Interviews with Google Folks
Google’s Udi Manber: Search Is About People, Not Just Data - BusinessWeek
…Udi Manber, Google’s vice-president of technology for core search, joined the company almost four years ago after stints running Amazon.com’s A9 search project and serving as chief scientist at Yahoo. He, like some other leaders on the search quality team,……
Google Search Guru Singhal: We Will Try Outlandish Ideas - BusinessWeek
…Inside Google’s search quality group, Amit Singhal runs the core ranking team, which is responsible for those algorithms you hear so much about. The team ran some 6,000 experiments last year that tried tweaking those mathematical formulas, ultimately producing between……
Matt Cutts: How Google Deals With Web Spam - BusinessWeek
…It’s up to Matt Cutts and his team at Google to keep search results as free as possible from Web spam, those pages full of Viagra ads or even malware. A 10-year veteran of the company, he got into this……
Google’s Scott Huffman: Many More Search Features Coming - BusinessWeek
…Scott Huffman runs one of the least-known units at Google: the evaluation team that measures the impact of every little proposed change to the leading search engine. And with some 6,000 experiments run annually, he’s pretty busy. Not to mention,……
The Visual Search feature offered by Microsoft’s Bing Search Engine is fantabulous! I couldn’t check it out before as I was getting 404 error. But, once I changed the country setting by visiting http://www.bing.com/worldwide.aspx to United States, I was able to play around with Visual search by visiting http://www.bing.com/visualsearch. I love the way the images are presented visually. The ability to sort, re-shuffle and narrow-by is also done nicely. But one has to install microsoft Silverlight to experience the visual search. I would say it’s worth it…go try it!
Yeah, blunder by Google! According to the adsense reports of individual publishers, google has sent out cheques with conversion rates of 1:1. In case you have earned 100$ you are supposed to be paid 4500 rupees (assuming a conversion rate of 45), but they have sent a cheque of Rs.100 (assuming a conversion rate of 1:1! Same problem across the globe in all countries!
The major pain point that every publisher faces with Google adsense is the 45 days to 60 days delay between the amount credit and amount realization. If Google takes another cycle to fix the recent conversion problem, then there will be major loss of goodwill against Google! Entire thread can be seen here
http://groups.google.com/group/adsense-help-earnings/browse_thread/thread/8691ce9f9deb34d1/cfbbceecc22e04c3
BTW, if at all Google can be beaten down in publisher network game, one of the ways is ought to be credit cycle. If some network can settle payments faster with publishers, there is a good chance to convert the existing customers!
A useful little tool to quickly check if a domain that you have in your mind is available or not! What I like about this is the option to check out multiple domains in a single try!
Check it out…might be useful for domain hunters
Was curious to check the websites that have pagerank 10…
* validator.w3.org Downgraded to PR9
* web.mit.edu
* www.adobe.com
* www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/index.html New on the list
* www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
* www.adobe.com/products/index.html New on the list
* www.adobe.com/downloads/ New on the list
* www.apple.com/quicktime/download Downgraded to PR9
* www.doe.gov New on the list
* www.energy.gov
* www.google.com
* www.keio.ac.jp Downgraded to PR9
* www.mac.com Downgraded to PR9
* www.macromedia.com (redirected to adobe.com)
* www.microsoft.com Downgraded to PR9
* www.nasa.gov
* www.nsf.gov
* www.real.com
* www.usa.gov/index.shtml New on the list
* www.w3.org
* www.whitehouse.gov
* www.yahoo.com Downgraded to PR9
Both Microsoft and Yahoo have lost their Page rank of 10!
I came across the story of Kevin Ham, while I was researching some facts. Kevin Ham, is the most powerful domainer in the world with over 300,000 domains under his belt!
* He is earning around $70 million in revenue from the domains that he owns (primarily through ads served on the domains that he has parked)! A small example: He owns a domain name called “weddingshoes.com” and he earns around $9,100 per year through that domain. He incurred $8 to register the domain and spends $7 per year to maintain it!
* He is the man behind a very smart domain scheme - Many people mistakenly type “.cm” instead of “.com” in the browser URL bar. “.cm” is TLD for the country Cameroon. He stuck a deal with the prime-minister of Cameroon, wherein, he received rights to redirect all “.cm” domains to a website called Agoga.com. The site is filled with ads from Yahoo!
* His team installed a line of code called “wildcard” to redirect all unregistered “.cm” domains to “agoga.com”. The code is installed in the servers owned by Camtel, Cameroon’s domain registry. Revenue generated from “agoga.com” is shared with Cameroor government!
* He is in the process of extending the same scheme to countries like Columbia (.co), oman (.om), Niger (.ne) and Ethiopia (.et). These TLDs have spelling variation of “.com” and “.net” respectively! He is fighting out the legal suits relating to the idea..nevertheless, he exploited the loophole very well!
* Agoga.com receives 8 million unique visitors every month!
* He exploited the concept called “Domain tasting”. Most domain booking sites offer a free trial period (to protect the customers who mistakenly purchase a wrong domain name). He used this mechanism to book more domains and to see which ones are bringing traffic and which one’s aren’t!
* Ham, figured out that revenue based on CPC model may not be sustainable in the long run. So, he is converting some of his best “domain names” to mini-media companies. He is hiring more than 150 designers, engineers, salespeople and editorial folks!
Other learnings:
* Verisign publishes a “root zone” file, a file containing a list of millions of registered domain names.
* Typo-squatting: A term referring to the act of grabbing domain names with typographical variations of established trademarks
* Lots of people type keywords that they are looking for in the URL Bar of the browser and combine them with “.com” or “.net”. This is called as “Direction Navigation”. There are other lots of people, who prefer typing the actual url/website address in google search box/bar and navigate to the actual website from there on. Those are called as “Navigational Searches”!
* Some browsers are capable of fixing url typos! (Curious how this is done?)
* Internet explorer catches unregistered domains and redirects to a microsoft page
Bobbie Carlyle's 'Self-made man', a statue I greatly admire and a principle I strongly believe in. "...left to his own devices, man will use his God-given talents to be creative, productive, and prosperous. Using free will, he will better his own situation and that of those around him, thereby influencing in a positive way his own destiny..."