Google OUT...Internet traffic DOWN

As the headline suggests and if assertion of Arbor Networks' Craig Labovitz is to be believed, a problem in Google leads to a slow down in Internet traffic. On Thursday 14% of Google users experienced slow services or interruptions which as per Craig Labovitz led to a 5% slow down in Internet traffic.

Following graph shows a 5% dip in Internet traffic on Thursday. It shows average traffic across 10 tier1/2 ISPs in North America from Google’s network (ASN 15169). Outage began roughly at 7:48 am Pacific time.


So whats the big deal if Google is down and why should there be so much of a hue and cry about it?

Well the answer may not sound to be so simple. To start with, we all use Google everyday to search for stuffs and consequently Google constitutes 65% of search traffic. So if Google goes down, this 65% of search traffic gets affected which is huge. Also, when me and you use Google to search for products or information, what are we actually looking for? We are looking for links to those other websites which will provide us with the required information or product. So if Google is down, our access to those websites also gets affected.

Apart from Google we use lot of other services offered by Google like Gmail and Youtube. During this outage it was observed that even these services were affected.

But more importantly lets not forget the Google Adsense from which it generates huge amount of revenues. Google uses its Adsense network to display advertisement on millions and millions of websites. Also, Google Analytics is very popular tool used by webmasters to study the traffic to their website. During this outage all these sites were also affected.

These affiliate or third party sites embed code for Adsense and Analytics on their webpages. Since Google was slow, these webpages would contact Google server again and again to retrieve information. Consequently they too were slow or unavailable.

Google Killer? Wolfram Alpha goes live

Wolfram Alpha has finally gone live. We had reported earlier this week on its 15th May launch date and carried an article on what Wolfram Alpha is all about.

During their testing earlier this week there were reports of some technical glitches and unexpected issues popping up, however now everything seems to be working fine.

On the very first day Wolfram Alpha was running very slow all day which means they are already successful. This clearly demonstrates the number of people out there waiting eagerly to get their hands on this new search engine.

Wolfram Alpha is already creating a lot of buzz however experts believe its not gonna be a Google killer.

Cashback working well for Microsoft Live Search

With e-commerce on a rise and more and more people buying online, everyone still looks at avenues for saving money. We all hunt for online retailers who can offer us the product of our choice at the least possible cost. It was last year that Microsoft realized this and came out with a Cashback program. Microsoft saw opportunity in this buying pattern and offered to actually pay buyers who used their search engine to buy products they found.



New data out from Nielsen shows a 615% unique audience growth in Microsoft Live Shopping Search over the past year. Even more impressive: it was one of only two Top Ten Shopping Search Providers to grow their audience from April 2008 to April 2009.

Search to Cash conversion ratio
Though 615% unique audience growth may seem huge, all this is of no use unless the searches are turning into referral traffic for the retailers. As per data shown below Google and Yahoo still lead Microsoft Live on percent of visits and percent of dollar share. Microsoft Live can surely claim more efficiency than any other provider on a dollar per visitor basis, driving 8 percent of visits but 12 percent of dollars.



Having said this it is important note that shopping related activity constitutes only about 2 percent of total search activity. So, though Microsoft Live may show huge improvement in Shopping Search, it may not be good enough to close the gap to Google and Yahoo.

Source : Nielsen Wire

Google Revises Trademark Policy - More class-action suit?

Google has revised its trademark policy thereby allowing advertisers to include brand names in the text of their ads. Earlier, companies could not run ads with a trademarked brand name in the text if they did not own the trademark. Starting next month this new policy would come into effect. Google believes that this change will help both their users and advertisers by reducing the number of overly generic ads that appear across their networks in the U.S.

Google uses a newspaper analogy to explain the reasoning behind the move: "Imagine opening your Sunday paper and seeing ads from a large supermarket chain that didn't list actual products for sale; instead, they simply listed the categories of products available - offers like 'Buy discount cola' and 'Snacks on sale.' The ads wouldn't be useful since you wouldn't know what products are actually being offered."

Google said it would limit the use of trademarks in text ads to three types of companies: resellers, component sellers and information providers.

Its all about money, honey!!!
This policy shift is expected to be highly beneficial for Google and could improve its bottom-line.

Google's Ads are displayed through a keyword auction process which involves a combination of bid amount for per click and quality score. The quality score of an Ad is largely dependent on the click-through rate. Currently, most of the advertisers are forced to write generic ads leading to a low click-through rate consequently hurting their quality score. With this new policy third party vendors get the right to use brand names and this may ultimately force companies interested in preserving their brands to bid higher for per click to make sure their ads appear on those searches. This in effect will significantly improve Google's bottom line while companies themselves may see a huge dip in their ROI from Google.

Class-Suit action
We had reported yesterday that FirePond (FPX), a US based software company filed a class-action suit against Google in federal court in Texas. Reason being, a search for their company name on Google shows their company’s site as the top search listing but just above it, Google shows ads of competitors who paid Google to display their marketing messages whenever someone searched for FirePond, a registered trademark. Google has already settled similar suits with Geico and American Airlines.

With this new policy, Google stands in great danger of getting sued by many more companies. It will be interesting to see what revolution this new policy brings up.

Google sued again

FirePond (FPX), a US based software company filed a class-action suit against Google in federal court in Texas. Reason being, a search for their company name on Google shows their company’s site as the top search listing but just above it, Google shows ads of competitors who paid Google to display their marketing messages whenever someone searched for FirePond, a registered trademark.

FPX sued Google saying that Google had infringed on its trademark and is challenging Google’s policies on behalf of all trademark owners in the state.

Google policy on such misuse of trademarks has irked many other companies. In the past, likes of American Airlines and Geico had filed suits against Google but was settled.

Inspite of all recent episodes Google this month expanded its policy of allowing anyone to buy someone else’s trademark as a trigger for an ad to more than 190 new countries. Google acknowledged that some advertisers may be upset by the new policy but feels such a change would result in ads that are more relevant to users. For instance, someone who types “Mahindra” in Google may see not just the corporate site of Mahindra appear on top but also details of all sites who offer review of Mahindra products and also the dealers who sell Mahindra products. This in effect is bound to help the company (Mahindra in this case).

For Google their Ad business is bread and butter, its the only cash cow for company and any relaxation in policies would result in huge drop in revenues.

The buzz is Google’s new policy is likely to raise the prices that advertisers pay their company to appear higher on searches. Since Google sells it search advertisement through an auction system, it is bound to increase the bid value from rival companies for a trademark. However, advertisers complain that this new policy would compel them to pay Google more for their own ads to appear ahead of their competitors.

Tweet from space. How scary is this?

Believe it or not but human beings on earth are not the only users of Twitter.

In continuation to the article I carried yesterday on "Twitter from space", we finally have received a tweet from Mission specialist Mike Massimino.

Massimino, who is a mission specialist on the shuttle flight for Hubble mission tweeted yesterday "From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!"

Few hours back he tweeted "From orbit: Getting more accustomed to living in space today and getting ready for our big rendezvous with hubble"

With this we can easily claim that Twitter is popular in space too!!!

Google Squared

Currently there is too much data available online and the biggest challenge for search companies today is their ability to store and present data in a structured format. It is always easier to comprehend and get answers out of data which is neatly labeled, structured, and categorized. Adding structure to all the data online makes a lot of sense and Google has started working on this problem with a Google Labs project called Google Squared.

Google Squared extracts data from Web pages and presents them in search results as squares in an online spreadsheet. It is launching later this month maybe on 25th or 26th May in Google labs.

Google Squared returns search results in a spreadsheet format. It structures the unstructured data on web pages. So a search for Roller Coaster returns results with name, image, description, height, length, number of inversions, etc., in columns and rows. Google is looking for data structures on the web that imply facts, and then grabbing it for Squared results.

Following is a video available on youtube demonstrating Google Squared

Twitter from space

Mission specialist Mike Massimino Twittered this yesterday before Hubble mission liftoff that his next Tweet will be from space.

"I'm going to put my spacesuit on, next stop: Earth Orbit!!" wrote Massimino, who has been Twittering about his mission training for the past month. A few weeks ago, he announced at a press conference that he plans to keep his more than 226,000 Twitter followers updated from space.

Massimino, who is a mission specialist on this shuttle flight, has said he will Twitter from orbit when it doesn't interfere with the astronauts' busy schedule. He will be one of the four astronauts making a total of five spacewalks on this mission to repair and upgrade the Hubble Space Telescope.

Wolfram|Alpha. Coming Soon!!!

Wolfram|Alpha, a computational knowledge search engine is launching on 15th May 2009.

So what is Wolfram|Alpha all about? We visited their blog to know more and following is what we found.

Wolfram|Alpha is not just a place to look up for facts. Its ability to do sophisticated computations, both pure computations involving numbers or formulas you enter, and computations applied automatically to data called up from its repositories is what sets it apart.

Computation matters coz it turns generic information into specific answers.

To give an amusing example, every school child has at one time or another written a report on the moon, and they probably included the wrong figure for how far the moon is from the earth. Why wrong? Because the distance from the earth to the moon is not constant: it changes by as much as a mile a minute. If you ask Wolfram|Alpha the distance to the moon, it tells you not only the conventionally quoted average distance, but also the actual distance right now, which can at times be well over ten thousand miles off the average. The actual distance is a figure that can be arrived at only by computation based on the moon’s known orbital parameters.

Each such computation requires a specific algorithm, and each of those algorithms has to be explicitly created. Of course many can be reused: units conversion or orbital mechanics, once implemented, can cover any unit or any planet. But nevertheless, enabling Wolfram|Alpha to do real, serious computations, covering a wide range of subject matters, required implementing literally tens of thousands of algorithms. Some are as simple as the quadratic formula; others are among the most sophisticated intellectual endeavors of our time.

The secret weapon that has allowed Wolfram|Alpha to assemble such a vast library of algorithms, in such a diverse range of fields, is Mathematica.

The algorithms built into Mathematica include some of the most sophisticated ever developed, and they cover not just mathematical computation, but the whole spectrum of logical, numerical, graphical, symbolic, and other computation.

So if you give Wolfram|Alpha a mathematical formula, a polynomial say, or something involving sines and cosines, it will give you back a number of useful results: a graph of the function, a list of its zeros, factored and expanded forms, and more.

It can also give you the derivative and integral of the function you entered. Now, computing the derivative of an arbitrary function is a straightforward process, but computing integrals can be among the most difficult problems in mathematics.

On top of this world-class algorithm, Wolfram|Alpha adds a very nice touch: a “Show steps” button that gives you a step-by-step explanation of how to arrive at the answer.

Wolfram|Alpha is bound to create a lot of buzz once its officially launched. So set your reminder for 18th May 2009 as Wolfram|Alpha is coming!!!

Microsoft issues bond. Takeover on cards?

As per regulatory filling, Microsoft has launched its bond issue in hopes of raising 3.75 billion US dollars, sparking rumors that the US software giant was contemplating a takeover bid.

In a statement, Microsoft said its using the net proceeds from the bonds “for general corporate purposes, which may include funding for working capital, capital expenditures, repurchases of our capital stock and acquisitions.”

Microsoft is gonna offer 5-year, 10-year and 30-year bonds. Following are the details for these 3 bonds
- Two billion US dollars of 2.95 percent notes due June 1, 2014
- One billion US dollars of 4.20 percent notes due June 1, 2019
- 750 million US dollars of 5.20 percent notes due June 1, 2039.

Microsoft has already issued two billion US dollars in commercial paper, or short-term debt, under a six-billion-dollar debt authorization made by its board late last year.

With Oracle recently buying out Sun for 7.4 billion US dollars, there were strong speculations that Microsoft is looking at buying out few small businesses including Yahoo search engine business for which it had offered 44.6 billion US dollars last year. Recently there was news on some kind of a co-operation between Microsoft and Yahoo as per which Yahoo will focus on Ad business while Microsoft will focus on developing technology for search.

It remains to be seen what a cash rich company like Microsoft will ultimately do with this 3.75 billion US dollars.

Google launches first TV Advertisement

Google has launched its first TV advertising campaign across US to promote Chrome, its web browser.

Chrome was launched last in September last year as a direct bid to lure users away from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. With IE8 Microsoft has definetly taken a huge leap in browser market. Traditionally Google has always shyed away from using traditional marketing mediums, however this latest move shows how desparate Google is to promote Chrome a capture a larger pie of lucarative browser market.

Since the initial burst of publicity, Chrome has failed to provide serious competition to rival browsers, such as Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox.

According to Net Applications market share study, Chrome has under 2% of internet users compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer share of over 65% of users. Mozilla’s Firefox comes second place with over 20% of users share.

This campaign is believed to be an attempt by Google to highlight the effectiveness of the company's TV Ads system, which lets Google act as a broker to sell advertising time on television networks. Google is hoping that the Chrome campaign can help push the concept of using TV Ads into the minds of media executives.

The 30-second spot shows a stop-motion animation in which a tray of children's play bricks is rearranged to resemble a browser window – an image intended to represent the simplicity and ease of using Chrome.

In a statement on the official Google blog, the company said that the video was made by a team from Google Japan as a YouTube clip, but had proved so successful that it had decided to take it on to traditional television.

"After releasing this video on the web, we got lots of positive feedback and thoughtful comments," said the company. "We designed a Google TV Ads campaign which we hope will raise awareness of our browser ... we're excited to see how this test goes and what impact television might have on creating more awareness of Google Chrome."

Twitter inventor working on Squirrel?

As per various reports, after Twitter, its co founder Jack Dorsey is working on Squirrel. So what is the concept?

Squirrel is a service that will allow those with an iPhone to become a merchant. Basically, it’s like making use of your iPhone to take payments just like the wireless credit card swipers. While you carry your iPhone around, you can make use of it to swipe a credit card to collect payments.

Squirrel will be both a device add-on to the iPhone and an application to be installed on the iPhone. The physical device looks something like an acorn, that’s why it’s codenamed Squirrel.

The Squirrel will be useful to many people around. It could be used by sales people to collect payment immediately after booking an order. Restaurants may use also use Squirrel to replace their existing wireless credit card swipers.

Having said that, since iPhone has been a big flop in India, Squirrel may not have too many takers unless it is made compatible with all handsets. Moreover its quite difficult to understand what purpose this will solve.

Web growth on a rise. Over 46 million websites already added in Q1

Netcraft comes out with monthly surveys on the number of responses received by various servers from websites. According to their April survey, Netcraft received responses from about 231.5 million sites. This number is an increase of 46 million or 24.8 percent when compared with 185.5 million as the number of websites tracked at the beginning of January 2009.



Interestingly, as per Royal Pingdom, this is more than the number of websites added in the entire 2008 year when the number of websites increased by 29.9 million and is almost equal to the number of websites added in the entire of 2007 which was 48.7 million.



If we take a close look at the above chart, you will find that Y-O-Y growth had peaked in 2007. With over 46 million websites already added in the first 3 months, it wont be a surprise if this year a new record gets created in some sense.

Apple wants a Twitter bite

We all know that Google is hungry for data and it was quite logical for them to make a buyout offer to Twitter. Facebook too had made a $500 million offer to buyout Twitter through cash and stock option. It is believed that Twitter board has rejected both the offers.

Now reports suggest that Apple is the new bidder and they too have made a $700 million all cash bid for Twitter. It seems Apple sees some kind of a synergy between iPhone and Twitter.

Are these rumors??? Only time will tell

Google dominates mobile phone searches

We all know that Google dominates the online search market with over 60% market share followed by Yahoo with about 20% market share, but its not just the online search market that Google is dominating. As per latest facts and figures released by Internet marketing firm Net Applications, Google accounts for 97.68 percent of all mobile phone searches followed by Yahoo with 1.88 percent.

This is a great news for search engine giant coz off late for all top 3 search engines viz Google, Yahoo & MSN Live, we have seen kind of stagnancy or dip in revenues through online Ads. With mobile Ad market expected to get bigger than online market, Google is all set to grab a major pie of this billion dollar market.

Twitter To Start Indexing

We all know Google is the undisputed search engine giant who over the years has beaten big boys like Yahoo, MSN Live, etc. Having said that it wont be long before Google gets stiff competition from Twitter. Yes that's right, if reports are to be believed, very shortly, Twitter will start crawling the links that people tweet out and start indexing them. This will immediately take Twitter Search, which is currently a very basic service, to the next level.

Off late many senior people quit Google to join Twitter. Douglas Bowman (Design lead at Google), Dustin Diaz (An engineer working on Gmail) and Santosh Jayaram (VP of Search Quality) are some of the people we know.

There is no way Twitter Search will index as many pages as Google and there is no way Twitter will replace Google. This is because Twitter Search is meant to be a different kind of powerful search engine. Its gonna be more of a real-time search engine which will update itself and blend as per user response.

Following is a real-time search story from Santosh Jayaram which he used to illustrate the power Twitter Search: he told of being in the Twitter offices in San Francisco on March 30, when the Twitter engineers noticed that the word "earthquake" had suddenly started trending up. They didn't know where the earthquake was. Several seconds later, their building started to shake. The earthquake had been in Morgan Hill, 60 miles south of San Francisco, and the tweets about the shaker reached the office faster than the seismic waves themselves.

There are also talks of Twitter looking at ways to throw better search results. According to Santosh Jayaram, Twitter is looking at adding some sort of a reputation filtering to offer better search results. Now how this reputation filter would work, No one knows.

Its time to Twitt (Quit) Google

With Twitter becoming the latest hot property on web, there are number of defectors from Google to Twitter. Recently Douglas Bowman, the design lead at Google, left to become the Creative Director at Twitter. He was shortly followed by Dustin Diaz, who was an engineer working on Gmail, who resigned from Google and announced he was taking a job at Twitter. Santosh Jayaram, VP of Search Quality for Google also quit to join Twitter as VP of Operations.

Things are gonna be quite interesting coz since April this year there are talks of Google looking to buyout Twitter. It needs to be seen whether so many senior professionals quitting Google is a matter of coincidence or a well planned strategy.

Google hires goats.

With recession clouds kind of clearing the skies, Google has gone ahead and hired goats. Yes, that's right, Google has hired 200 goats....not to replace their existing employees but to replace their lawn movers.

Recently Real Estate Director Dan Hoffman blogged that from now on, Google will no longer use lawn mowers to keep the hills around the GooglePlex free of weeds and brush. Instead, it will unleash a herd of goats and let them munch to their hearts' content. "At our Mountain View headquarters, we have some fields that we need to mow occasionally to clear weeds and brush to reduce fire hazard. This spring we decided to take a low-carbon approach: Instead of using noisy mowers that run on gasoline and pollute the air, we've rented some goats from California Grazing to do the job for us (we're not "kidding"). A herder brings about 200 goats and they spend roughly a week with us at Google, eating the grass and fertilizing at the same time. The goats are herded with the help of Jen, a border collie. It costs us about the same as mowing, and goats are a lot cuter to watch than lawn mowers".

The move is a part of the internet search giant’s go green and low-carbon approach. Interestingly google rival yahoo is not far behind even they use goats for grazing on yahoo properties. The rival web firm tweeted at Google saying “Once or twice a year, a large herd of goats can be seen just past our parking garage in Sunnyvale, grazing happily on the tall grasses of the hill beyond" says Yahoo in the caption. "We have a special fondness for the goats and are always sad to see them go - which, based on their voracity, happens much faster than you'd imagine."

Jaiku : Googles twitter variant

For many who may not know, Google has its own Twitter variant and its called Jaiku. As mentioned on Jaiku website "Jaiku is a part of Google. The service is maintained by volunteer Google engineers on their spare time."

While Twitter started as a side project in March of 2006, Google had acquired Jaiku in October of 2007 for an estimated $12 million. As a matter of fact blogger.com which is currently owned by Google was owned by Twitter's Founders. Over the years there are number of unsuccessful investments made by Google, for instance in 2005 Google acquired social-networking service Dodgeball, which enables people to link up using text messages sent to mobile phones. But the company never really did anything with it, and the founders left in disgust in April.

With Jaiku hardly able to drive any traffic, Google finally moved Jaiku to Google Apps, going open source. With this move many experts believe that an open source Jaiku could make some real inroads in the custom development space. Jaiku Engine will enable users at the individual, group and organization levels to run their own micro blogging services through the Google App Engine. The Jaiku Engine will also provide support to open standard authentication, which Twitter is already using. This will thus allow the creation of a freely available open source micro-blogging service.

Identi.ca is another open source variant of Twitter's microblogging service.

Google Sued over use of Android name

Google and around 45 other companies are being sued over the name given to "Android", the open-source mobile phone operating system.

Erich Specht, who trades in the US as the Android Data Corp and the Android's Dungeon was given trademark rights to Android five years ago by the US Patent and Trademark Office and has since developed software and applications under the name. Google attempted to achieve similar rights in October 2007, a month prior to the launch of its operating system, but this was rejected by the Patent and Trademark Office in February 2008. The Patent and Trademark Office reasoning for the denial was simple: Since both Google and Specht were involved in the development of software and related services, "consumers are likely to conclude that the goods are related and originate from a single source."

In the complaint, filed in U.S. District Court, Erich Specht is seeking nearly $100 million in damages for trademark infringement. Motorola, T-Mobile, Vodafone, Samsung, Sony Ericsson and Toshiba are among the 45 companies involved in this case. They are all part of Google's Open Handset Alliance, which backs the Android operating system.

If verdict turns out in favor of Specht, Google would be forced to rebrand its mobile OS.

Microsoft Corp reports first ever revenue drop in 30 year history!

Microsoft reported its first ever Y-O-Y quarterly drop in revenue, in its entire 30-year history! In its three decades of existence, Microsoft had never before seen a Y-O-Y quarterly drop. Probably this is a sign of how bad this recession is. Revenue for the company’s third fiscal quarter dropped 6 percent to $13.65 billion, from $14.45 billion a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its revenues
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $13.65Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $14.45Bn

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - $45.34Bn
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - $44.58Bn

While 9 months figure seem to be encouraging, a drop in last quarter revenues indicate that worst is not over yet.

Also, in the last quarter Microsoft posted net income of $2.98 billion down 32 percent from $4.39 billion recorded during the same period a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its net income
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $2.98Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $4.39Bn

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - $11.52Bn
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - $13.38Bn

Notice here that net income for the 9 months period is down by a whopping $1.8 billion

Online business
The company’s online business reported a 14 percent drop in revenue to $721 million, compared to $843 million a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its revenues from online business
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - $0.72Bn
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - $0.84Bn

9 Months ended 31st March' 2009 - $2.36Bn
9 Months ended 31st March' 2008 - $2.38Bn

Notice here that for 9 months period revenue is down marginally

Also, in the last quarter online business posted a net loss of $575 million which is more than double of $226 million loss recorded during the same period a year ago.

Following is a snapshot of its net loss from online business
Quarter ended 31st March 2009 - ($0.57 Bn)
Quarter ended 31st March 2008 - ($0.23 Bn)

9 Months ended 31st March 2009 - ($1.52Bn)
9 Months ended 31st March 2008 - ($0.74Bn)

Notice here that net loss for the 9 months period is close to $1.0 billion. Also, net loss for quarter ended 31st March 2009 is almost equivalent to 9 months loss of 2008.

Perhaps its time for Microsoft to concede search engine battle to Google and give up its online advertising.

Google SearchWiki (Promote/ Remove / Comments)

How many of you use Google SearchWiki?Never heard about it....read on to know what is SearchWiki.

SearchWiki in simple terms is a tool offered by Google to customize your search results. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users so all the changes made by you are stored in your Google Account. This tool allows you to promote a website to a higher rank on a SERP or remove a website completely or even add Comments or notes to a website. I can even add a website to the SERP if i feel it is relevant to my search.


In the above image we get to see a normal SERP.



Notice the change in above image where you get to see and use 3 new tools. This tool appears coz i have logged into my Google account and am doing search for the desired keyword.

This new feature is an example of how search is becoming increasingly dynamic. Google being an innovator is giving people tools that make search even more useful to them in their daily lives.


How does Google promote, remove & comments actually work?

To use the same, simply log in to your google account and try doing a search for the keyword phrase "ipl 2009". Now on the SERP you may click on the promote button next to any of the results and you will immediately see it magically go above the previous result. You can continue to use promote button to move a web page to the first position. But is this gonna affect SERPs for other users around the world too> The answer is NO.

Log out from your account and search again for the same keyword, you will see your selected pages dropping back to its original ranking position. Log in again and you will notice your chosen pages are back to your promoted order.

If you click remove on any of your promoted website, it will return to its previous place in your Google search results. But if you click remove randomly on any un-promoted website, it will be permanently removed from any results. Oops, i deleted a good link, now what to do? To get it back to the search result simple click on restore at the bottom.


If you like a site maybe you'd like to add some notes about what you found on that site and why you thought it was useful. You can do the same by adding your comments.

SearchWiki also is a great way to share your insights with other searchers. You can see how the community has collectively edited the search results by clicking on the "See all notes for this SearchWiki" link.

Sangakkara NOT OUT, Boucher dislodged bails with his gloves

Bangalore Royals played extremely well to beat Kings XI Punjab, but the win was overshadowed by a hugely controversial incident.

Kumar Sangakkara was bowled by Anil Kumble, but the replays suggest wicketkeeper Mark Boucher dislodged the bails with his gloves before the ball struck the stumps. Both bails were down before the ball struck and as per rules of the game it’s not out.

Unaware of this, Sangakkara walked out of the park and no one protested. It was beauty of a delivery by Kumble and it very much deserved the wicket but if aware, Boucher should have ideally informed the umpires and called the batsman back.

It will be interesting to see if this incident leads to a controversy or not.


Above image shows ball just missing Sangakkara's bat, in the mean while bails get dislodged by Bouchers gloves


Above image shows impact of ball after it hits the stumps.

What's new in Twitter?

Twitter has recently come up with updates with a host of new features. You can now search for anything on Twitter, and see real time results immediately. Save searches that you know you'll repeat, and use Twitter to discover what's happening in the world. To improve user experience several exciting search features have been launched by Twitter.

Search in your sidebar
Under your usual sidebar options, you'll now see the search box. Enter any word, city, location, or search operator to find tweets about things that interest you!



Try typing in Wolverine to see latest movie reviews before checking it out. If you want to get fancy, try typing search operators directly into the search box. For example, near:"san francisco" within:5mi shows you tweets from everyone within 5 miles of San Francisco!

Saved Searches
If you think you'll search for something more than once, you can simpy save it. Clicking on the link of a saved search will show you a view of all real time tweets. You can save up to 10 searches, which are easily removable- just click the red x next to "remove this saved search."



Click the Saved Searches tab to show or hide your saved searches.

Trending Topics
With the new search integration comes a new tab for trending topics, which lists the top 10 topics people all over the world are tweeting about. Click the Trending Topics tab to show or hide the topics.

Collapsible Following bar
If you have a lot of saved searches, or you'd like to see trends instead of your following mosaic, you can now hide the photo grid of people you follow by clicking on the Following tab in the side bar.

RSS feeds for search queries
Add a query for a favorite search to your feed reader to see certain tweet searches without logging into Twitter. Click "rss feed for this query" to grab the feed and add it to your favorite feed reader.

Monster posts a net loss of $10.3 million

Monster Worldwide has reported a net loss of $10.3 million, as against net profit of $22.6 million a year ago. Revenue declined 31% to $254 million, compared with $366 million in the comparable quarter of 2008. Monster generated 43% of its revenue outside the United States and total revenue was negatively impacted by $27 million from unfavorable foreign exchange rates.

Over the past 4 quarters, monsters revenue has been sliding at an alarming rate and is down by over $100 million when compared with Q1 2008 (Jan-Mar). Following is snapshot of their revenue earnings

Q1 2008 - $ 366 million
Q2 2008 - $ 354 million
Q3 2008 - $ 332 million
Q4 2008 - $ 290 million
Q1 2009 - $ 254 million


Income from continuing operations for the three months ended March 31, 2009 includes the following pre-tax pro forma adjustments: $11.0 million of expenses associated with the Company’s restructuring plan; $3.0 million of legal fees, primarily related to the Company’s obligation to indemnify former officers for their defense in connection with the ongoing litigation related to historical stock option grant practices; and a $1.0 million reduction to total revenue due to the purchase accounting adjustment for ChinaHR. As a result, the Company recorded total pre-tax pro forma adjustments of $15.0 million.

Sal Iannuzzi, chairman, president and chief executive officer of Monster, said, “As anticipated, the challenging global economy continued to severely impact customer demand during the first quarter of 2009. We were able to leverage the power of our brand to drive awareness and higher levels of user engagement following our new product launch in early January. Our strict and disciplined approach to cost containment enabled us to preserve our liquidity position, maintain necessary investments and report a break-even quarter.”

About Monster Worldwide
Monster Worldwide, Inc. (NYSE: MWW), parent company of Monster(R), the premier global online employment solution for more than a decade, strives to inspire people to improve their lives. With a local presence in key markets in North America, Europe, Asia and Latin America, Monster works for everyone by connecting employers with quality job seekers at all levels and by providing personalized career advice to consumers globally. Through online media sites and services, Monster delivers vast, highly targeted audiences to advertisers. Monster Worldwide is a member of the S&P 500 index. To learn more about Monster's industry-leading products and services, visit www.monster.com

Twitter Quitters a worry

According to a study by Nielsen Online more than 60 percent of U.S. Twitter users fail to return the following month. This suggests that Twitter’s audience retention rate, or the percentage of a given month’s users who come back the following month, is currently about 40 percent.

According to the study, Twitter is still fledgling and some other sites that eventually lived up to Twitter-like hype suffered from poor retention in the early days. When compared with early days of social networking heavy weights like Facebook and MySpace, their retention rates were twice as high. When they went through their explosive growth phases, that retention only went up, and both sit at nearly 70 percent today.

So is Twitter worth all the hype?

Google breaks $100bn brand value threshold. Emerges as worlds No 1 brand

According to BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands 2009 ranking, Google has emerged as the world’s number one brand and become first company to break $100bn brand value threshold. Microsoft, with a brand value of $76.2 billion, occupies the second rank. Other popular online websites like Amazon.com, eBay and Yahoo have been placed at the 26th, 54th and 81st positions with a brand value of $21 million, $12.9 million and $7.9 million respectively.

The BrandZ top 100 ranking is an authoritative ranking report about the most valuable brands in the world. The valuations are based on economic and market data and the proprietary consumer research from BrandZ – the world’s largest study of consumers and business-to-business users’ brand preferences. The result is the most comprehensive and authoritative brand valuation available.

The Valuation Process
1. Branded Earnings
What proportion of a company’s earnings is generated “under the banner of the brand”?

First, the branded earnings are identified. For example, in the case of Coca-Cola some earnings are not branded Coca-Cola, but come from Fanta, Sprite or Minute Maid. Once identified capital charges are subtracted. This ensures only value above and beyond what investors would require any investment in the brand to earn is captured: The value the brand adds to the business. This provides a bottom-up view of the earnings of the branded business.

2. Brand Contribution
How much of these branded earnings are generated due to the brand’s close bond with its customers?

The portion of these earnings driven by brand equity is called “Brand Contribution”: The degree to which brand plays a role in generating earnings. This is established through analysis of country-, market-, and brand-specific consumer research from the BrandZ database.

This guarantees that the Brand Contribution is rooted in real-life customer perceptions and behavior, not spurious ‘expert opinion’: in some categories, brand is important — luxury, cars, or beer, for instance. In categories like motor fuel, on the other hand, price and location play a very strong role. Furthermore, as markets develop, consumer priorities and the role of brand may change. And even in strongly branded categories, some successful brands that compete heavily on price.

3. Brand Multiple
What is the growth potential of the brand driven earnings?

In the final step, the growth potential of these branded earnings is taken into account. Both financial projections and consumer data is analyzed. This provides an earnings multiple aligned with the methods used by the analyst community. It also takes into account brand specific growth opportunities and barriers. To capture the weaker economic outlook, all projections have been validated using IMF economic growth forecasts. The Brand Momentum™ indicator that indicates each brand’s growth is based on this evaluation. It is presented as an indexed figure that ranges from 1 to 10 (10 being high).

Brand Value = Intangible Earnings * Brand Contribution * Brand Multiple

Despite the economic downturn, the value of the top 100 brands has risen by 2% to about $2.00tn

The Top 100 list is dominated by American brands with no Indian brands making to the list.

There are 15 new brands entering the ranking this year. Pampers is the highest entrant at no. 31, followed by Nintendo (no.32) and VISA (no.36). Trends identified from this year’s rankings are:

Value — Brands that represent good value for money have done well, this is about quality as much as price, for example Wal-Mart (+19 percent), ALDI (+49 percent) and Auchan (+48 percent). H&M (+8 percent) is now the number one apparel brand.

Vice — People still reward themselves with little treats when money is tight. Brands such as McDonald’s (+34 percent), Marlboro (+33 percent) and Budweiser (+23 percent) have all done well.

At Home — Brands that can be experienced at home have shown strong growth. This includes home shopping: Amazon (+85 percent) and eBay (+16 percent); Coffee that can be prepared at home: Nespresso (+27 percent) and Nescafe (+23 percent); and gaming — Nintendo jumped into the ranking for the first time at no. 32.

Wireless — The increased popularity of using the internet on the move through devices such as the iPhone and BlackBerry has led to huge increases for the mobile operators category as a whole, driven by demand for data services. Vodafone enters the top 10 for the first time this year (+45 percent).

Following are the top 10
# Brand
1 Google
2 Microsoft
3 Coca Cola
4 IBM
5 Mc Donalds
6 Apple
7 China Mobile
9 GE
10 vodafone


Visit following link to read entire report BrandZ Top 100 2009 Report