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