The European head of Google, the giant internet company, has warned that Europe still lags behind the US in exploiting the commercial power of the internet. Nikesh Arora, the vice president of Google's operations in Europe, said British and European businesses needed to focus more on building their online operations to meet consumer demand.

Speaking on the eve of Google's "Zeitgeist Europe" conference in Hertfordshire, which will be attended by 250 top European executives, he said: "The internet will change the shape of commerce, advertising, newspapers, entertainment. . . of most industries it touches.

"Europe has not embraced the internet as a commerce platform as much as the US."

Europe is failing to exploit internet, says Google chief

Surprising statement in view of the UK's ferocious uptake of the internet and the recent online economy results. But justified, when comparing the percent of retail sales transacted online in Europe and US.

Nikesh Arora was likely addressing the retailers in Europe, where the figure is still 10 times lower than in the UK. Nikesh's communication drive seems to be impacting German, Italian and French media and blogs most, while the UK and US media is focusing on Google's assumed role in the market.

Technorati Tags: ecommerce , google

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 1:33 PM | Permalink:Google Chief says Europe failing to exploit the commercial power of the internet | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

From statistics by hitwise, IMRG has just published the top 50 online retailes in the UK. These retailers are reputed to be grossing £50b in sales through the online channels

IMRG - IMRG Index Special report

MAY 2006
1. Amazon UK www.amazon.co.uk
2. Dell EMEA www.euro.dell.com
3. Argos www.argos.co.uk
4. Tesco.com www.tesco.com
5. Play.com play.com
6. Amazon.com www.amazon.com
7. Expedia.co.uk www.expedia.co.uk
8. easyJet www.easyjet.co.uk
9. RyanAir.com www.ryanair.com
10. Apple Computer www.apple.com
11. British Airways www.britishairways.com
12. lastminute.com www.lastminute.com
13. Thomson Holidays www.thomson.co.uk
14. Next www.next.co.uk
15. Ticketmaster United Kingdom www.ticketmaster.co.uk
16. Tesco Register www.tesco.com/register
17. MyTravel UK www.uk.mytravel.com
18. Thomas Cook www.thomascook.com
19. Tesco Superstore www.tesco.com/superstore
20. John Lewis Stores www.johnlewis.com
21. Thomsonfly.com www.thomsonfly.com
22. Comet UK www.comet.co.uk
23. Marks & Spencer www.marksandspencer.com
24. B&Q www.diy.com
25. bmibaby www.bmibaby.com
26. First Choice www.firstchoice.co.uk
27. Currys www.currys.co.uk
28. O2 Shop shop.o2.co.uk
29. QVCUK.com www.qvcuk.com
30. PC World E-Commerce www.pcworld.co.uk
31. Carphone Warehouse www.carphonewarehouse.com
32. HMV.co.uk www.hmv.co.uk
33. XL.com www.xl.com
34. Tesco Electrical Warehouse www.tesco.com/electrical
35. Flybe.com www.flybe.com
36. Debenhams www.debenhams.com
37. Travelodge UK www.travelodge.co.uk
38. Packard Bell United Kingdom www.packardbell.co.uk
39. Jet2 www.jet2.com
40. Littlewoods Online www.littlewoods-online.com
41. Woolworths UK www.woolworths.co.uk
42. InterContinental Hotels Group www.ichotelsgroup.com
43. The Orange Shop shop.orange.co.uk
44. Seetickets.com www.seetickets.com
45. Monarch Airlines www.flymonarch.com
46. Screwfix Direct www.screwfix.com
47. HP www.hp.com
48. Opodo UK www.opodo.co.uk
49. ASDA www.asda.co.uk
50. ASOS www.asos.com

Many of these retailers make heavy use of affiliate networks and use our shopping feed solution or are members of our merchant partner scheme for our online shop.

IMRG Index Classification: Beer / wine / spirits, Books, CDs / tapes / records, Clothing / footwear / accessories, Computer hardware / peripherals /
consumables, Consumer electronics, Digital downloads (e.g. music, software), Flowers, Food, beverages and household supplies, Furniture, Garden /
DIY, Health and beauty, Home appliances (e.g. washing machines), Household goods (e.g. kitchenware, bedding), Jewellery / watches, Software,
Sporting goods, Tickets (e.g. cinema, theatre, events), Toys, Travel (e.g. flights, holidays, hotels, car hire), Video games, Videos / DVDs

Technorati Tags: ecommerce , onlineretail , onlineshop

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 12:02 PM | Permalink:Top Online Retailers in the UK | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (1)

Microsoft is not happy with owning 99% of the PC desktop market. It wants to own all of the internet search too. Microsoft made unofficial approaches to take over Yahoo's search technology. Only to be rebuffed by Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel.

Semel said: "My impartial advice to Microsoft is that you have no chance. The search business has been formed."

The thought of another quasi-monopoly on internet search does not bare thinking about.

Technorati Tags: microsoft , monopoly

Posted by Paul Salber at 12:49 PM | Permalink:Microsoft aims to rule the world | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The volume of spam comment arriving on Enclick has tripled over the last few weeks. Spammers are systematically targetting blogs, specially well placed and referenced blogs for attack. Over 90% of blog comments are spam, reports Akismet

Note volume of spam on the graph below published by Akismet, a spam security firm for blogs.

Technorati Tags: spam , spamming

Posted by Paul Salber at 1:52 PM | Permalink:Spammers have latched onto blogs | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

CNET reports that Google's share of the U.S. Web search market continues to increase against Yahoo and Microsoft, according to April 2005 data from ComScore Networks:

"The search giant's market share among home, work and university Internet users climbed from 42.7 percent to 43.1 percent from March to April of this year–up from 36.5 percent in April 2005, ComScore said Monday.

In second place, Yahoo saw its market share hold steady at 28 percent between March and April, a decrease of 2.7 percent from last year. […] The relative number of search queries through Microsoft's MSN also continued to fall, leaving its market share at 12.9 percent in April of this year, down from 16.1 percent at the same time last year."

So there's a massive 15% between first-place search engine Google and second place Yahoo. Google is even more dominant in Europe, a trend that looks likely to continue based on this data.

Technorati Tags: google

Posted by Paul Salber at 9:16 AM | Permalink:Google maintains its market share | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

We need government funding and technology, not just legislation. So states Eran Reshef, the CEO of an email security firm which has been forced out of business by continual Denial of Service attacks on its company servers.

The company was well funded having recently raised $5m in equity. According Eran Reshef

"This is something that's really got to be left to governments to decide. To fight the spammers you really need to spend $100m."

"It's a dirty little secret that there is no real way to totally prevent denial-of-service attacks - if the attacker is prepared to put enough money in, then they can beat you every time."

A worrying turn with the ever increasing volumes of spam arriving at company servers.

Technorati Tags: can-spam , spam

Posted by Paul Elosegui at 8:32 PM | Permalink:Only Governments Can Tackle Spammers | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A subject of discussion among the early adopters. The debate is increasingly heated. The conservative faction insists the problems of spam and unnecessary email can be reduced through common sense; Ready for the rebirth of email? - Information World Review. The enthusiasts insist email is dead and the future is RSS, though it may be still be hard to use for some.

Rather than speculate, a brief look around the market shows adoption rates increasing among large companies. 63% of big companies plan to syndicate content via RSS by the end of 2006, according to JupiterResearch. If that comes true, it would be a huge increase. Currently only 29% do.

A big adopter of RSS feeds is none other the eBay. I often subscribe to the daily email notification of the newly listed items that match what I am after. Now I have the option of subscribing to the an RSS feed instead. The reasons I like it:

• I can check on the new items posted at my leasure, in real time
• I dont have to delete anything once viewed, the RSS feed automatically refreshed itself
• I dont have to manage any inbox folders or clean up
• I dont have any problems with spam filters blocking emails, images, carriage returns or links in the text
• I dont loose notifications in all the spam in the junk folder
• I can view the feed from anywhere with ease
• I can stop the feed immediately
• I dont give out my email address and personal details

A good breakdown of the pros-cons of email vs RSS can be found in Email v RSS, let us move on.... The biggest drawback of RSS used to be the difficulty in handling RSSreaders . The issue is no longer.

Technorati Tags: rss

Posted by Paul Salber at 12:33 AM | Permalink:The Choice Between Email and RSS ? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Spammer's habit of faking the sender address on their mailings with innocent email addresses, joe-jobbing spam is causing heavy server loads on company networks. The huge bounce or reply traffic for spam email is going back to innocent bystander networks and PCs.

Bounced spam messages hammer corporate networks | The Register

More than 50 per cent of the largest US corporations have experienced mail service outages or delays because of bounced spam messages targeting their networks, according to a study by gateway security firm Ironport Systems.

Spammers commonly forge the sender's email address so that some poor innocent - rather than a spammer - has to cope with the load of bounced messages sent to invalid email addresses. According to Ironport's study, these bounced messages make up 11 per cent of all all "hostile mail", other categories of which include spam, viruses, and phishing emails.

Spammers have been known to harass anti-spam campaigners by using their email addresses for the spam broadcasts. The anti-spam campaigners receive volume of bounce or complaint email. The practice has been ongoing for 5 years now, in spite of the CAN-SPAM legislation.

Technorati Tags: spam

Posted by Paul Salber at 11:55 PM | Permalink:Bounced SPAM Messages is Costing Businesses $5b | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Google opens its search statistics with
Google Trends.

Specially useful for seasonal trends in particular keywords. Note the seasonality, strong peak in June for bathrooms searches from the figure below,

Google trends is a great complement to Alexa and Google Keywords tool analysing trends.

Technorati Tags: googletrends

Posted by Paul Salber at 9:23 AM | Permalink:Market Analysis with the New Google Trends | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Technorati founder has published the second of his state of the blogosphere posts 2. Dave has concentrated on geographical blogging activity and languages. The quick summary is

• English, while being the language of the majority of early bloggers, has fallen to less than a third of all blog posts in April 2006.


• Japanese and Chinese language blogging has grown significantly.


• Chinese language blogging, while continuing to grow on an absolute basis, has begun to decline as an overall percentage of the posts that Technorati tracks over the last 6 months


• Japanese, Chinese, English, Spanish, Italian, Russian, French, Portuguese, Dutch, and German are the languages with the greatest number of posts tracked by Technorati.


• The Korean language is underrepresented in this analysis


• Language breakdown does not necessarily imply a particular country or regional breakdown.


• Technorati now tracks more than 100 Million author-created tags and categories on blog posts.


• The rel-tag microformat has been adopted by a number of the large tool makers, making it easy for people to tag their posts. About 47% of all blog posts have non-default tags or categories associated with them.

Tagging and metadata is a trend to watch

Technorati Tags: tagging

Posted by Paul Salber at 8:54 PM | Permalink:Language and Tagging in the Blogosphere; Dave's Newest Analysis | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Webmasters are in a state of confusion over Google's behaviours over last few months. Being de-indexed from Google is an unpleasant and stressful experience, but with the Florida and Jagger algorithm updates, the de-indexing was justified and could be corrected. The last algorithm update has not shown this consistency. Some of our clients and web-sites have been de-indexed from the Google search results for discernable reason, only to re-appear a few days later.

Google has admitted, however, that the problems may be due to lack of enough machines. Full-up Google choking on web spam? | The Register

More worrying, the machines are apparently full of spam and robot generated blog pages.

Technorati Tags: google , seo

Posted by Paul Salber at 8:37 PM | Permalink:Google is Full ? | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Email mailing lists are becoming less effective in reaching clients. A review of fundamentals of email marketing is good way of maintaining results.

Email Marketing Lists Open Rates Continue to Slide during 2006

Doubleclick's latest report on email marketing showed open rates fell for the fifth consecutive quarter. The volumes of spam show no sign of dropping in spite of the CPAN-SPAM act of 2003. The Q2 2005 EMEA Email Trend Report revealed that the average open rate was 32 percent, down from 40 percent in Q2 2004.

The reasons for the drop in open rates are partly technical with the default blocking images on emails on behalf of ISPs and email service providers. Largely, subscribers have become more selective in what emails they open. For email mailing lists to be successful, the subscriber must include you in his safe safe senders list that has become default in email applications like Outlook.

Email Marketing Principles

The subscriber is in increasingly in control of what he views. Spam filters provided by email applications like Outlook make email filtering the default. Interrupting him with unsolicited emails through rented mail lists has virtually zero results nowadays. Client acquisition is better through other channels, like seach engine marketing and affiliate marketing. You must offer the subscriber incentives in exchange for his permission and colaboration in including him him in a mailing list.

Seth Godin's Permission Marketing principles offer a basis to construct good email marketing campaigns. Incentives and a win-win situation must be designed with every mailing to your email list. Much like the process of dating someone, you must

• offer the prospect an incentive to volunteer and opt-in to the mailing list,
• profile the subscriber as much as possible in every one of his visits,
• remember what he said in subsequent communications and taylor what you say according to what he needs,
• use incentives in all dialogues, and continue to collect data. The idea is to increase the level of permission as you know more about the prospect and you taylor your offers and responses accordingly
• over time, leverage the permission to identify the prospects explicity needs and eventually towards closure
• it is now the law that the customer can decline further emails from you, effectively ending the relationship. This is the obligatory opt-out clause in all emails

You can no longer legally force an unwanted interaction on a mailing list

Stay Legal in your Mailings

• Opt-out mailing lists, where "senstive personal data" is not involved is still legal in most countries. Here the subscriber has not been explicitly asked permission to be sent an email. These email mailing lists provide poor results, as increasingly people expect to receive email for which they have agreed to, or opt-in.
• When buying email lists, care should be take to ask the email list broker how those on the list were asked to whether they whished to opt-in or opt-out.
• Take care of the domain and servers from which your mailing list is sent as email deliverability is nowadays dependent on using a non black-listed server

Now more than ever email marketing must be a transparent and credible conversation with the subscriber.

Technorati Tags: emailmarketing

Posted by Paul Salber at 9:03 PM | Permalink:Email Marketing Fundamentals | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

If you have not had time to read his latest book, "All Marketers are liars", or the "Big Red Fez". Here is a short ebook on web design,

Seth's Blog: Free KnockKnock ebook now available

Technorati Tags: sethgodin

Posted by Paul Salber at 8:53 PM | Permalink:Free ebook on web design from Seth Godin | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)