Not the whole Internet, but a substantial proportion of sites, large and small, have temporarily shut their doors today, 18th January 2012, in protest against the proposed SOPA law currently before Congress in the USA.
The general feeling is that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act), and its near relation PIPA (Protect IP Act), are less about ending piracy and protecting intellectual property and far more about censoring the Internet. Whilst this is a US law, there are grave concerns about the impact that it could have worldwide on the economy and jobs, and on chilling innovation. Sites such as Wikipedia, BoingBoing, Flickr, Tucows and even Google have got involved in the one day protest – a full list can be seen on SOPA Strike.
The Internet is being used to full effect to spread the word at the outrage felt about the two laws. The concern for those in other nations is that more countries will follow the US lead if these two laws were to be passed, making it virtually impossible for many of the exciting innovations which the Internet could enable to come to fruition. For instance, there would be no Youtube, Google, Twitter, Facebook etc. For companies using the Internet to promote their brand, products, services, this would have a devastating effect, whilst protecting only a small minority of companies e.g. content creators such as Hollywood and the music industry, and failing to prevent piracy.
Social networks would struggle to exist, as would search companies who would have a burdensome responsibility for every site listed, with time-consuming and expensive legal action possible at every turn. The consequences of such an act would be dire. There is also a level of hypocrisy from any country endeavouring to introduce such laws, as are also being considered within the EU, where that country has spoken out against China’s censorship of the Internet.
The US government are due to vote on the proposed Bill shortly, although there has already been one postponement due to major concerns. An alternative – the OPEN Act – has been proposed and is supported by hundreds of businesses, enterpreneurs, and so on. The OPEN Act protects privacy and IP through far more sensible moves designed not to kill the golden goose.
Meanwhile, for those interested, the best hashtags and keywords to follow today on Twitter so far would seem to be #sopastrike, End Piracy, #fightsopa. Let us know your views on SOPA and how this could affect your business in the future if it is voted through.
New figures have shown that Yahoo! has finally been overtaken by Bing in the US search engine marketing, according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
Having launched just over two and a half years ago, Bing now has a 15.1 per cent share of the search engine market – compared to the 8.4 per cent on its launch.
The figures, released by comScore, saw Yahoo! slip into third position during 2011. Its share of the market fell from 15.1 per cent to 14.5 per cent.
Google – a site popular for search engine marketing initiatives – built on its lions share of the market, with 65.9 per cent of searches made in the US conducted via the site – representing an increase of 0.5 per cent.
Meanwhile, 18.2 billion searches were made during December – an increase of two per cent compared to November’s figures.
Google conducted 12 billion of those searches; Bing 2.7 billion with Yahoo! coming in just behind with around 2.6 billion searches.
Ask and AOL conducted 531 million and 287 million searches respectively.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Yahoo! – one of the longest-running places for running online search engine marketing initiatives – has finally appointed a new CEO, having previously sacked Carol Bartz back in September, according to an article published by ClickZ.
Scott Thompson, the former president at PayPal, will take the role. The move will see Tim Morse, who acted as CEO during the search for Bartz’s replacement, resume his previous role as chief financial officer.
Speaking during a conference call, Thompson stated that his previous experiences with PayPal – in maintaining a fine balance between the needs of customers and merchants – would be key to his new position.
He said: “We need that at Yahoo! – balancing value between consumer experience and the advertisers.”
Providing a possible insight into the areas that could provide Yahoo! with the best opportunities, Thompson revealed: “Data is a very hard concept to understand unless you’re in the middle of it. There’s tremendous value if you can organise and interrogate data at the scale Yahoo! has.”
Yahoo! recently revealed a revenue of $1.1 billion for the third quarter of 2011 – a decline of 5 per cent when compared to the same period of 2010.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Search engine giant Google is in the process of unveiling the most significant changes to its home page that it has ever made, according to an article published by BBC News.
The latest changes see the black bar – running horizontally across the top of screen – removed and replaced with a simple grey logo.
When users click or highlight the logo, a drop down menu appears listing Google’s seven other services. There is also an option to bring up eight additional services.
First announced towards the back-end of last year, Google – a popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives – is unveiling the changes in a gradual roll-out, meaning only a limited number of users will currently see the new features.
Commentators and analysts have said that the move has been taken to allow Google to highlight its other services – without causing the home page to become cluttered.
A Google spokesman commented: “Constant revision and improvement is part our overarching philosophy.”
He added: “If you compare the original Google home page to today’s version, you will see that a makeover every so often can certainly be refreshing.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Google – a platform popular for search engine marketing campaigns – has ventured into the world of politics with the launch of a hub dedicated to providing information about the upcoming US elections, according to an article published by VentureBeat.
Rather than providing journalists, voters and politicians with search results, the hub – found at Google.com/Elections – organises and presents the latest news and information into a centralised dashboard format.
Each candidate will have their own page in the hub, which will be updated with news, videos and information as soon as they become available. The hub’s ‘Trends’ section also provides access to statistics such as mentions in news stories featured on Google News and views of videos featuring the candidate on YouTube.
Commenting on the launch of this latest product, Google’s Eric Hysen, wrote on the company blog: “There’s no question that the Internet is set to deliver more political information, opinion and news than any other medium throughout the 2012 US elections.”
He added that the Google Politics & Elections hub is “an election hub where citizens can study, watch, discuss, learn about, participate in and perhaps even make an impact on the digital campaign trail.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – a best practice Internet Marketing Agency.
A platform popular for search engine marketing initiatives, Google has been named the most visited website in 2011, according to a study cited in an article published by BBC News.
Market researcher Nielsen’s latest figures have shown that the search engine giant received 153 million unique visits each month.
Based on a collection of data gathered between January and October, Facebook was found to be the second most visited site – with just over 137.5 million visitors per month.
Yahoo rounded out the top three with around 130 million unique visitors per month.
Analysts have warned that Yahoo could see its visits drop significantly if younger users continue to move away from using web-based email.
A recent Comscore study found that younger users of the Internet were gradually moving away from using emails to communicate.
Ian Maude from Enders Analysis, referencing the Comscore study, said: “Yahoo’s basic problem is that people are no longer looking for an all-you-can-eat service and instead want best-in-breed.
“For Social networks that is Facebook, for search it’s Google,” he added.
“Email is a front door to Yahoo and if people are no longer using their service it will affect them more broadly. If Comscore’s data is an early indicator of a growing trend they have a major problem.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Google has revealed that it will be paying Mozilla $300 million each year to ensure that its leading web search – popularly used for search engine marketing initiatives – remains as the main search engine on the Firefox browser, according to an article published by CNET.
While the announcement was originally made last week, financial terms of the agreement hadn’t been disclosed – with both parties declaring that the deal would simply provide “a significant and mutually beneficial revenue” source.
As a result of the deal, Google will now sit above other search engines – such as Yahoo, Amazon.com and Bing – in Mozilla’s Firefox browser.
The disclosure of the deal’s figure has led many commentators to speculate on how Google will use the opportunity.
Mozilla has previously stated that search engine deals provide it with the vast majority of its revenue. For last year alone, it was revealed that Google contributed around 84 per cent of the $123 million in revenue made by Mozilla during 2010.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Google has announced that it has signed a new contract to keep its place as the search engine of choice in Mozilla’s Firefox browser, according to an article published by V3.co.uk
Although none of the financial terms in the three-year agreement have been made public, the deal is expected to be worth a significant amount to Mozilla – who have previously stated that the majority of its royalties come from search engine deals.
A popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives, Google and Mozilla released a joint statement.
Alan Eustace, senior vice president of search at Google said: “Mozilla has been a valuable partner to Google over the years and we look forward to continuing this great partnership in the years to come.”
Gary Kovacs, Mozilla’s chief executive, echoed the sentiment. He added: “Under this multi-year agreement, Google Search will continue to be the default search provider for hundreds of millions of Firefox users around the world.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Search engine giant, Yahoo!, has announced that its social news sharing tool, Yahoo! Activity, will now be available to use in the United Kingdom and Europe, according to an article published by New Media Age.
Launched in September, the tool uses Facebook’s Open Graph to allow users to share the content they’ve been reading on their Facebook accounts.
To use Yahoo! Activity users are simply required to login to Facebook via the tool; it will then automatically do the sharing.
Yahoo! – a popular platform for search engine marketing initiatives – has revealed that the application has attracted 11 million users in the US already, and are hoping to see a similar kind of success in Europe.
Yahoo!’s UK MD and VP of sales, James Wildman, spoke about what Yahoo! Activity had bought to Facebook so far.
He said: “When Facebook recently unveiled its most-shared stories in 2011 in the US, of the 40 most shared, 12 came from Yahoo!.”
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
Google – the most popular site for search engine marketing – has made another small alteration to its SERP (search engine results page), according to an article published by Search Engine Watch.
This latest change sees the previously ever-present +1 button dropped from being constantly visible; instead users will only see the button when they hover a cursor over an entry on the SERP.
Launched in an experimental form earlier this year, the +1 feature has proved to be popular amongst webmasters and has since been integrated into Google’s social network, Google+.
It also allows users to share any site, image, video or other result that catches their attention.
Although only a small design update, it is thought that the change has been made to keep the appearance consistent with other Google properties such as Gmail, Google Reader and YouTube; navigation on those features is also expected to undergo a significant revamp – also for consistency reasons.
News brought to you by ClickThrough – experts in Search Engine Marketing & Internet Marketing.
