Hitwise overall search terms 12/08/09 to 12/09/09
Hitwise UK have released the last four weeks search terms, here they are -
1.facebook 3.49%
2.youtube 1.02%
3.ebay 0.93%
4. facebook login 0.72%
5. bebo 0.42%
6. ebay uk 0.32%
7. you tube 0.26%
8. argos 0.22%
9. bbc 0.22%
10. amazon 0.22%
The result aren’t so surprising but has made wonder how the general public do not know how to use search engines properly.
What got me thinking was the search terms, all the sites that the general public are searching for are domain names, facebook being number one is a simple domain to remember – facebook.com, likewise with youtube – youtube.com, bebo – bebo.com, ebay uk – ebay.co.uk.
So looking at this data it begs the questions -
1. Do the users in the UK need a crash course on how to use the internet
2. Do internet search engines need to rethink the way they work
3. Does the internet need a revamp.
1. Do the users in the UK need a crash course on how to use the internet – short answer yes, long answer yes, users in the UK are of many nationalities and is proven that users are from all age ranges, so searching for a domain in a search engine could be a trust thing or it could be they do not remember the domain name. Again being a confident user it suggests to me that users need to remember the domain name, its not difficult to remember facebook.com, most big companies own all the domain extension and send you to your local/national domain.
2. Do internet search engines need to rethink the way they work – short answer yes, long answer – here goes…… Search engines do a good job, not great but does the job currently. I think one of the major search engines or discovery engines or whatever they are called now needs to release technology where you search just once word and it takes you to the domain, wouldn’t take much work for them and would save searching the results. The other suggestion that I have come up is browsers do something similar to chrome and newer firefox, where you enter your term in and it takes you to the domain or offers you a few suggestions. (if this does happen remember to tell me so I can take the credit)
3. 3. Does the internet need a revamp, short answer yes, long answer (can of worms coming) right where do I start? There are now hundreds of millions of websites available for you to use, many sites are now blogs, and many sites are parked so they get paid when you click on their ads or search on their site. I think the internet as a whole does need some sort of changes made it enforce some clarification.
However back to the real question and point, domains/websites should be easier to find, not essential for it to be localised but maybe categorized so its easier for the internet users and easier for the search engines and web browsers to direct you to the right place. There are many things I would love to suggest to change but its impossible to write them all in one post. So yes the internet does need a revamp but changing one small thing or standard will affect millions of websites and search engines.
So from ten little stats i’ve rewritten the internet…but seriously I think it cannot be that difficult for the users to put .com after the domains, or use their favourites on their web browser. Especially when getting connected to the internet is so important.
Rant over until the next time 
Danny Denhard
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Facebook
Facebook lite review and preview – back to the glory days!
So facebook lite was released today (to most people in US and has hit me in the UK)
I thought i’d give you a quick break down -
The stupid apps are gone!
No facebook chat
Its back to the main feed in the middle and no silly so and so has reached level 24 of Mafia Wars
Its back to the simple ways – post a photo, post a video, write a wall post, inbox, events and profiles are all brief and user friendly.
I do not think facebook thought this would be a twitter killer as a number of “industry experts” are referring to it, but it does show how easy facebook is and what it was originally designed for, quick, easy and simple communication which twitter delivers.
The one thing which twitter holds over facebook is the openness and how you can network more easily, this could happen of course but at the moment facebook lite is of course a work in progress.
Ultimately it is like the facebook mobile app but personally speaking it’s gone back to the glory, simple communication, a brief overview of activity and easy to use.
What is next for facebook?
Dedicated email functionality – think this will be a real winner for them
Search – the world of search is clearly where they want to be, being a portal for search and a one stop shop could be the next big step. It has been said facebook wants to challenge Google and co for top spot on the internet
Ad revenue – If search takes off then the advertising platform will be their next project, self funding is the only way forward and they clearly fancied their chances at providing their own ads. The idea of working like adsense/adwords would be the best for them, I think this could go hand in hand with search.
So a little conclusion, facebook lite will be for the smaller user, the one who sends an message or keeps up to date briefly.
The full version is for the stalker user, the one who needs to know everything that is happening with their friends. The ones who flirts and the ones who use it plays Mafia wars and the other games. For me facebook lite will be where I will be!
Facebook lite – http://lite.facebook.com/
Full facebook – www.facebook.com
Danny Denhard
@betalabs
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Top 5 social sites – week ending 28/08/2009
1. Facebook – 47.50%
2. YouTube – 16.63%
3. Bebo – 4.26%
4. Twitter – 2.21%
5. MySpace – 2.21%
No surprises here from the weekly release from hitwise. The only point to take note off is Twitter which has over taken Fox’s Myspace.
Myspace is basically an online space for music videos and emerging artists which is very one dimensional. I cannot remember the last time anyone referenced Myspace.
Whereas Twitter has proven to very beneficial for music artists, marketing companies, SEO’s and “normal people” communicating with one another. The ability to link with people with the same interests is so easy and offers a good way to engage with end users or your target audience.
Facebook dominates social network sites for a number of years now and with the recent work undertaken by them to integrate updates into twitter accounts they are effectively becoming the first port of call for the internet (the doorway to other sites). Facebook have also appointed the brains behind gmail to increase the usability of facebook and maybe actually use it as an online webmail client (I know I have been battering on about it for months now)
Twitter has close to 51 million registered users (this will include spammers and dead accounts) but increase in users have exploded worldwide, Biz Stone has suggested the social HQ for the 3 year old company is London which would surprise most.
It might be a case of Bebo looking over its shoulder for twitter, the one thing Bebo has on its side is the younger user, the 12-17 year old bracket is monopolised by bebo currently, this could be down to twitter limiting users to 140 characters and bebo is more like a mini website rather than a profile.
Youtube – google’s video sharing site is staying steady in second place.
Youtube have recently changed a number of elements to its site and in the UK has brought back the ability to add music video’s. I think the sooner the other social platforms integrate directly into youtube the sooner both Google and the other networks can share revenue.
The issue with Youtube recently is the amount of video’s pulled down, which has led to site such as vimeo to become more popular with bloggers aka social activists and music promoters and artists to promote their content. Personally I like the way in the UK there is a new wave of content being uploaded by the tv stations, it shows how online broadcasting is the way of the near future and how important it is to keep their content available in other avenues.
I expect to see Twitter in third place by Q2 next year, the only thing standing in the way could be a sale or spam accounts.
Danny Denhard
Twitter: @betalabs
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Top 20 websites via Hitwise week ending 27/07/09
1. Google UK
8.39%
2. Facebook
4.91%
3. Windows Live Mail
2.78%
4. Google
2.07%
5. eBay UK
1.97%
6. YouTube
1.89%
7. MSN UK
1.62%
8. BBC Homepage
1.23%
9. Microsoft
1.14%
10. BBC News
1.04%
11. Yahoo! UK & Ireland
0.99%
12. Yahoo! UK & Ireland Mail
0.80%
13. Wikipedia
0.76%
14. Google UK Image Search
0.62%
15. Bebo
0.62%
16. BBC Sport
0.59%
17. Gmail
0.48%
18. Sky Sports
0.44%
19. Amazon UK
0.43%
20. Bing
0.39%
Its always interesting to review the top 20 websites (well for me it is) and its also strange I could predict the top 3 or 4 each week. Although website popularity rarely changes too much month to month its good to see some surprises in there.
To break it down –
4 search engines were in the top 20, this is not including google image search,
Two sports site are also in top 20, what surprised me was BBC was more popular than a bigger and possibly better service Sky Sports.
Facebook was number two, thats 13 places above its nearest rival bebo, one surprise was twitter but with all the 3rd party applications you can use Twitter with its not too surprising.
Hotmail aka live mail is the most webmail service, more popular than Yahoo mail and Gmail, all three being in the top 20. Just a thought… Maybe is facebook took on and allowed email addresses direct into facebook they could wipe out the free webmail alternatives.
Youtube continues to be extremely popular and helps Google dominate the top twenty visited sites, that 5 sites in the top twenty.
Wikipedia the online encyclopaedia although has come into some criticism recently, still seems the most trusted human edited service on the internet with 0.76% of visits.
Lastly, two big online shopping power houses still buck the trend and stay strong in top twenty, auction site Ebay are number 5, obviously it provides buyers and sellers a safe and secure way to sell but also seems to be offering a better peer to peer shopping experience than any other, rival Amazon is 19th. Wonder what amazon could do to break Ebay’s strong hold?
Danny Denhard
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Search engine search enquiries last four weeks via Hitwise
Hitwise released their latest stats for search engine enquiries this week, it includes the last months data -
1. www.google.co.uk – 78.39%
2. www.google.com – 12.19%
3. uk.search.yahoo.com – 2.91%
4. www.bing.com – 2.36%
5. www.uk.ask.com – 1.71%
With the worlds biggest search engine Google scooping up 90.58% of all search queries, its hard to see how any of the other places will catch up.
With this weeks tie in with Yahoo and Microsoft it would only pull 5.27% of all search queries.
I think over the coming months as seen with the new deployment of Jeeves over at ask.com and Bing aka Microsoft have seen with deployments of new search engines/result engines/decision engines and leap of faith taken into the new search engines its going to be a long but productive change for yahoo/bing.
Where the likes of ask and bing differ is the new services they offer –
Ask in the UK offer an answers service, fronted by the modernised Jeeves. They have a daily Q&A and works well with the marketing champaign that works with it. Jeeves on twitter offers daily pointers and shows how using twitter can push your professional service, its a shame they do not actually have more visitors.
Bing on the other hand now sell themselves as discovery engine, the traffic has increased and think that anyone is willing to give new versions/alternatives a try. I personally like the look of bing but the search engine is not that tight, maybe with the yahoo tie in it will really help improve the algorithms and get search right, the bing look definitely makes up for the lack of constant results.
Personally until a search engine delivers the best search results and can take full human style questions (which no search truly does) its google who will dominate the search market.
The only way big players or a new search player can compete is by using their search engines as the main section on their portals and offer out their search facilities on other big sites or tie in their search with other sites, blogs and even work with the likes of wordpress, typepad etc to have their search engine as the default search.
Danny Denhard
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Special Blog from America – @MC_Mandy
Hey so I’ve made a good connection on Twitter,
Her name is MC_Mandy she has two Tumblr blogs which cover all types of good things from geeks needing to get laid to Michael Jackson tributes to covering up to the minute news.
Her blog is really funny and a good daily read her RSS feed is the best way of keeping up with her awesome blog post, don’t forget to add her on Twitter
Links to her blogs – Link
Danny Denhard
@betalabs
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Trust Me – The Streets remix contest
Love it –
If you do not know Mike Skinner is having a remix contest via everyones favourite social networking site twitter and like all competitions you upload your remix and the winner is chosen by Mike himself. The original trust me is awesome and is a real summer track.
Updated video
Free download via Mike Skinners twitter or link to the download
Danny Denhard
Betalabs
My twitter page @betalabs
Mike Skinners page @skinnermike
Mike Skinners blog www.skinnermike.com
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Firefox 3.0 now the most popular browser in Europe
Firefox is now officially the most popular browser in Europe, it has now over taken IE 7. The very useful Statcounter Having every windows compatible browser available on both my laptop, home pc and mobile phone it is easy to see why this would be true.
Firefox most popular browser in Europe
Many users are becoming used to using alternative browsers and Firefox has seemed to be the bridge between the geeks and the main stream.
To see my previous post on web browsers check out this link this article
For download of the latest Mozilla FireFox web browser here is the link – Firefox download
Danny Denhard
Betalabs
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compare the meerkat outtakes
From the funniest advert on TV comes compare the meerkat outtakes
Danny Denhard
Betalabs
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WordPress plugins I cannot live without
Here is my must have, cant live without wordpress plugins -
Akismet – link
We all hate Spam right, well so does WordPress thankfully – so Akismet does all the hard work for you and prevents nasty spiders, bots and net crippy crawlers from posting millions of links and spam on your site – its a must have.
Cystats – link
This is the ultimate stats plug in, must more reliable, much more accurate than Google analytics and breaks down all visits into bots, hits, visits, referrer, pages, terms etc. If I may this is the best suggest just one to download this would be the bad boy!
All in one SEO – link
Optimises your meta tags and titles for search engines. If you are serious about getting noticed on search engines and need a little help with SEO add this.
Mobile Press – link
Have you considered that a large number of your blog readers or website followers are mobile users? Well my site visiters from mobiles are 1 in 6 – well this transfers your site from a massive online site and becomes a smaller more readable site. You can even enforce a mobile user to view your site in mobile mode and there is even an added section dedicated to market leading Iphone
Sociable – link
You know those sites (like mine) with the mini logos which allows you to add a favourite page to Digg, facebook and Twitter, well you probably know how important it is to gain more traffic from social sites well this is a highly customisable plugin which allows you to add social sites by ticking boxes. Awesome
Google XML sitemap – link
This automatically adds all your posts and pages compliantly to a Google XML sitemap, this allows all spiders and bot to check your site and register pages automatically with search engines – another must have!
Related posts – link
This plug in does exactly what it says on the tin, but does it right! Need related posts need this plugin
Danny Denhard
Betalabs
LinkedIn
If you want to see my LinkedIn profile, click on this button:
