Enclick Blog tag:blog.enclick.com,2011://2 2011-06-18T12:44:33Z Discussion on Online Media and Technology Movable Type 3.31 Google Panda Update Penalty Lifted tag:blog.enclick.com,2011://2.1550 2011-06-18T12:08:07Z 2011-06-18T12:44:33Z Finally! Google has recomputed its panda index correction, and one of our websites, openweather.com, has just been allowed out of the panda penalty box. The graph below shows what this looks like in unique users a day The start of the panda penalty was on the 12th of April, end... Paul Salber blog.enclick.com Finally! Google has recomputed its panda index correction, and one of our websites, openweather.com, has just been allowed out of the panda penalty box. The graph below shows what this looks like in unique users a day



The start of the panda penalty was on the 12th of April, end of the penalty for openweather is the night of the 17th of June (GMT+0).

We had a major overhaul of the openweather content. Worked and payed for better weather and forecast information. Made the website as informative as most of the website's other competitors.

After 67 days and 2 hours with a Google Panda Update penalty, we are allowed out into the full index again. Thanks Mr. Panda at Google's Algorithmic Index Department; our faith in the world is restored.

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Widget Media tag:blog.enclick.com,2010://2.1547 2010-01-08T15:55:10Z 2010-10-07T21:02:27Z After a year of extensive development, we have launched the following information services for social networks, blogs and individual web sites. openweather.com - weather widget fx-rate.net - foreign exchange rate widget localtimes.org - World Timezone, and local times widget mycountdown.org - Countdown widget mycalendar.org - Calendar widget dialcode.org - Telephone... Paul Elosegui www.eucap.com After a year of extensive development, we have launched the following information services for social networks, blogs and individual web sites.

Keeping with the current vogue for the free price policy, all the web sites have free widget services. Needless to say the services have quickly found social traction with 100,000 webmasters taking a widget

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New Enclick Offices in Central London tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1536 2007-09-28T10:53:34Z 2007-09-28T11:01:17Z Enclick has moved into plush new offices in trendy Camden. Not a stone's throw away from most of our clients! Studio One, 7 Chalcot Road, London NW1 8LH And, we have new projects coming to fruition. I will post news as soon as we place the services online.... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com Enclick has moved into plush new offices in trendy Camden. Not a stone's throw away from most of our clients!

Studio One,
7 Chalcot Road,
London NW1 8LH

And, we have new projects coming to fruition. I will post news as soon as we place the services online.]]>

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Online Shopping set to Reach 20% of All Retail tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1527 2007-05-01T10:57:15Z 2007-05-01T10:58:04Z Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com IMRG for the online retail in the next five years. UK shopping has come on in leaps and bounds, the trend continues with the forecast for 2007:
  • €63billion will be spent online by UK shoppers
  • 860 million parcels will be shipped to the UK's 26 million internet shoppers, 33 each on average
  • Online shoppers will each spend €2400 on average
  • 10% of all retail now online, rising to 20% in three years time

Online retail will grow in quality too, becoming an integral part of mainstream consumer's habits

  1. Inclusivity people of all abilities will use online shopping
  2. Normalisation online shopping will become integral to normal everyday life
  3. Diversification online shopping will extend to a wider range of products and services
  4. Shophistication online shopping services to become easier, quicker, safer and more valuable
  5. Exclusivity a rise in specialist boutiques, offering more niche and exclusive products

Cross-border Shopping

Cross border retail is gaining traction, as shoppers look for and find better deals across borders. Shoppers in Europe have forever shopped across borders, specially when located in towns near frontiers. With online shopping and international postal delivery, cross border shopping for better deals is about to take off.

Already, Spanish book purchasing relies heavily on Amazon UK deliveries, as no strong contender exists in Spain. Amazon UK has in the passed purchased advertising from hispavista.com, our parent company. Bargain hunting is about to extend across borders; and the bargains are considerable, even in spite of delivery cost across Europe. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Google's One Box for Weather tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1520 2007-04-12T17:07:54Z 2007-04-12T22:41:36Z After several trials and false starts Google seems to have entered the weather information sector using its one box result. Major weather network sites like weather underground will be feeling the impact. Similarly, Google will impact the shopping sector with its increasing use of the one-box-result to integrate its... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com google one box result After several trials and false starts Google seems to have entered the weather information sector using its one box result. Major weather network sites like weather underground will be feeling the impact.

Similarly, Google will impact the shopping sector with its increasing use of the one-box-result to integrate its other services like Froogle or Google Base ecommerce items.

So far, the services being promoted with the onebox are

  • Music
  • Movies
  • News
  • Stock Quotes
  • Weather
  • Travel
  • Maps
  • Local Businesses
  • Images
  • Shopping
  • Books
  • News Archives
  • Google Groups
  • Blog Search
  • Search History
  • Desktop Search
  • Definitions
  • Questions
  • Patents
  • Local Time
  • Patents

Google's shadow lengthens ]]> Technorati Tags: , ,

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Google Enters Affiliate Marketing tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1518 2007-03-22T09:46:18Z 2007-03-22T10:21:49Z Google has finally unveiled its Cost Per Action tariff model for its Adsense network. What was the exclusive domain of affiliate marketing networks is disrupted by Google's huge publisher and merchant base, and its superior system. In one move, Google becomes the biggest affiliate network in the sector. The... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com google adsense

Google has finally unveiled its Cost Per Action tariff model for its Adsense network. What was the exclusive domain of affiliate marketing networks is disrupted by Google's huge publisher and merchant base, and its superior system. In one move, Google becomes the biggest affiliate network in the sector.

The impact on the online advertising ecosystem will be considerable. Not only to affiliate networks, but also to the community of market makers - affiliates, which have thrived on arbitrage opportunities around CPM, CPC and CPA advertising. CPM (Costs per Thousand banner impressions), CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per action). The different tariff models provided enough market inefficiency for price imbalances to arise.

Over the last few years entrepreneurial affiliates have been acquiring traffic from Google's adsense at the minimum 0.01 per click, and driving it directly to an affiliate network merchant's site under the CPA tariff model, and got paid when and if the customer converted. The arbitrage actually resulted in positive margins. And many other similar arbitrage moves.

Google's offer of the CPA tariff model to advertisers adds new price transparency, as clients can now work out the ROI of all three tariff models on one simple user interface. The arbitrage opportunities will invariably dissappear.

Clear winners are advertisers; CPA tariff model pushes the onus of conversion onto the publisher. The advertising merchant only pays if the clickthrough actually makes a purchase. CPA is the solution for advertisers with click-fraud problems.

[Official Inside AdWords: Pay-per-action beta test] ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Matt Cutts Keynotes London Search Engine Strategies tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1509 2007-02-15T09:54:29Z 2007-02-15T10:15:13Z Matt Cutts, Google's search engine optimisation rock-star, in his keynote interview with Chris Sherman at the London Search Engine Strategies conference yesterday. The main conference room was full with over a thousand avid listeners and bloggers. The picture shows Linda Evans blogging the interview furiously, see Linda's blog entry... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com matt cutts london Matt Cutts, Google's search engine optimisation rock-star, in his keynote interview with Chris Sherman at the London Search Engine Strategies conference yesterday. The main conference room was full with over a thousand avid listeners and bloggers. The picture shows Linda Evans blogging the interview furiously, see Linda's blog entry of Conversation with Google's Matt Cutts.

None of the other presentations achieved a third of of Matt's attendance, which is not bad for a guy in jeans and running shoes. My panel, Exploiting shopping search in Europe got a tenth of Matt's attendance. Maybe next year.

The trends from Google are personalisation and localisation:

Chris Sherman: Crystal ball time, where do you see Google going in the next 3-5 years?

Matt: Fantastic question, in my own opinion – personalization, and localization. Also if you have your data, you can store it at Google. You can almost start your own business of 5-10 business for free. Google’s ambition to organize the worlds information, this is really where its going

Google desktop is also a huge benefit – no privacy issues. Helps to find old searches – makes things more accessible.

Yahoo's is progressing into User Generated Content with Y! Answers, giving them an edge over Google in certain markets. So, the next step in Search seems to be Social Search where community contribution to a knowledge base and community filtering complement algorithmic filtering of the index.

Overall attendance at this years London Search Engine Strategies was down because UK professionals preferred attending the London Technology for Marketing conference the week before. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Google Data Feed Standard Goes Futuristic tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1508 2007-02-12T17:29:29Z 2007-02-12T18:51:29Z Google not only ignores the two fledgling industry standards for data feeds, but like a bull in a china shop, goes all futuristic by extending the attribute list for products. The base attributes of the a Google bulk submission file are brand condition description expiration_date id image_link link price... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com google base

Google not only ignores the two fledgling industry standards for data feeds, but like a bull in a china shop, goes all futuristic by extending the attribute list for products. The base attributes of the a Google bulk submission file are

  1. brand
  2. condition
  3. description
  4. expiration_date
  5. id
  6. image_link
  7. link
  8. price
  9. product_type
  10. title
ARTS
oasis


A standard list which complies with the basics of the ARTS data feed standard and the upcoming Oasis new data feed trading standard.


But a few weeks ago, Google extended the optional list of attributes, stating that

....If you are submitting one of the following item types, you can increase your items' exposure in search results by including additional attributes as well...

Most product category attributes have been extended to cover color, styling, and size. For instance, the clothing category the extra attributes for a product are

  1. color
  2. department
  3. made_in
  4. material
  5. size
  6. style
For Digital Cameras
  1. color
  2. film_type
  3. focus_type
  4. megapixels
  5. model_number
  6. resolution
  7. size
  8. tech_spec_link
  9. upc
  10. zoom
For Shoes
  1. color
  2. department
  3. heel_height
  4. made_in
  5. material
  6. shoe_width
  7. size
  8. style

The intension is to provide a more sophisticated search. Rather than 3D virtual world display of garments, it is aiming at what Google does best, crunch and search data.

The question is whether online merchants can be equal partners in this futuristic vision. It is a heavy burden on a merchant's IT team to help Google "Access all the World's Data". The incentive for merchants is there though; as Google integrates its shopping search into its main search results, the amount of traffic directed to merchants will be huge.

The stakes in data feed marketing just got higher. At Enclick, we have been putting together a central database of products with attributes and data collated from various sources. We use the central database to complete the missing attributes on our customer data feeds. Google has just raised the level of data we need to collate for all products lines. ]]> Technorati Tags: , , ,

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Affiliate Marketing on the Rise tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1506 2007-02-01T11:06:25Z 2007-02-01T11:26:26Z Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com Great event for affiliate marketers organized yesterday by affiliates4u events team. Four hundred attendees, merchants, affiliates and affiliate networks.

Merchants are clearly courting affiliates and their ability to attract targeted user traffic. From Kevin Cornils buy.at presentation; affiliates sold in excess £ 2000m goods online for a fee of £140m. A year-on-year rise of 60%, taking an alleged 10% of total online advertising spend.

Clearly merchants are discovering the pay-on-acquisition model. My opinion is that CPA commissions will inevitably rise though, as merchant demand for the model exceeds the volume available through affiliate networks. In the end, buy through ad impressions (CPM), clickthroughs (CPC), and on-purchase-results (CPA) will balance out to give the same value-for-money (ROI).

Yes, what a soup of acronyms.

The word branding came up in conversations increasingly. Paid-search and affiliate marketing have a secondary benefit in addition to the immediate sale; repeat sales. In fact, the repeat sales experts extraordinares, the email marketers, were very evident at the event. It is not just about the sale on clickthrough, it is about the repeat visit. The brand and the loyalty. In fact, one expert from UK Media Ltd, who arbitrages £ 12m in volume, says branding is the next natural step for affiliate web sites. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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London Search Engine Strategies Conference: Meet Up tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1501 2007-01-30T12:32:07Z 2007-01-30T12:52:30Z I will be presenting tips on exploiting European Shopping Search opportunities in the afternoon session. The presentation is derived from my whitepaper Are you Making The Most of Shopping Portals ? (PDF file). The message is The "search tail" is often under-exploited by merchants. Most merchants own product data... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com search engine strategies conference I will be presenting tips on exploiting European Shopping Search opportunities in the afternoon session.

The presentation is derived from my whitepaper Are you Making The Most of Shopping Portals ? (PDF file). The message is

The "search tail" is often under-exploited by merchants. Most merchants own product data that can be turned into a "quick-win" in search marketing terms. My advice is get (1) "your data out" and (2) filter and push your data to the head of the search. Often the most popular and profitable keyword emerges from the tail; all a question of finding it and promoting it to the main page.

A large database of product information is worth its weight in gold in search marketing terms. Learn to exploit it and you will improve both search head and search tail. I have analytics for a shopping site (shopping.enclick.com) that started using dynamic top 10 list of products and categories based on measuring search traffic to the site.

Send me an email, (paul dot elosegui at enclick dot com) if you want to meet up. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Wikipedia Renages on Attribution by Using the "nofollow" Tag in Outbound Links tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1499 2007-01-23T11:32:14Z 2007-01-23T11:53:24Z Wikipedia is the online public domain encyclopedia, which has recently surpassed all commercial Encyclopedia services, like Encyclopedia Brittanica. In an effort to combat spammers who edit encyclopedia entries with external links in order to gain Google´s PageRank favour, has implemented the "nofollow" tag on all external links. Wikipedia has... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com wikipedia

Wikipedia is the online public domain encyclopedia, which has recently surpassed all commercial Encyclopedia services, like Encyclopedia Brittanica. In an effort to combat spammers who edit encyclopedia entries with external links in order to gain Google´s PageRank favour, has implemented the "nofollow" tag on all external links.

Wikipedia has succumbed to this controversial measure, just like all blog services, the blog search engine technorati, and the social filtering site del.icio.us. The measure was originally proposed by Google to remove the incentive for spammers to add bogus comments to blogs in an effort to increase banklinks to their spam site.

The "nofollow" tag disables the link in question from Google's algorithm, basically announcing to search engines that "this-is-not-a-good-link"; the tag removes any PageRank assignment for that link. Google first proposed the "nofollow" for fighting spam on blog comments and trackbacks. Spammers cannot leach pagerank from high PR blogs with automated comment generators.

The measure is a double edged sword for Google though. Google relies on counting links to a website to judge its importance. If webmasters use "nofollow" links which do not count for pagerank, Google will have no links to count. The concept behind their algorithm looses power.

The "nofollow" tag also goes against the central principle of attribution, which plays a critical role, that of currency, for the creative commons and open source ecology. GIven that wikipedia is lives because of the open data and creative commons ecology, this could affect it critically.

Linking out of wikipedia provides attribution to other sources and providers of information; short changing on attribution could reduce the number of wikipedia content volunteers and inbound linking to it. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Woolworths Big Christmas Push in Online Sales tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1498 2007-01-18T17:00:02Z 2007-01-20T09:01:31Z Woolworths online store has been the most popular ecommerce merchant among our price comparison service users. With almost 300,000 products in their data feed, which includes product descriptions, product references and a good category taxonomy, Woolworths has improved its online distribution through its affeliate network partners, the price comparison... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com woolworths Woolworths online store has been the most popular ecommerce merchant among our price comparison service users. With almost 300,000 products in their data feed, which includes product descriptions, product references and a good category taxonomy, Woolworths has improved its online distribution through its affeliate network partners, the price comparison sites.

Merchants with competitive prices benefit especially from supplying their product data feeds to price comparison engines. The quality of the data feed plays an important role in the share of traffic merchants get. Manufacturer´s product reference and model number information in the data feed gets the products inserted fully in the price comparison algorithms, and competing for qualified users which are at the price comparison stage of their buying cycle.

The resulting customer orders exceeded expectations and as a consequence multichannel sales grew over the 6 weeks by 204%. Releases. Woolworths online drive offsets middling high-street sales; overall results are down, like-for-like sales dropped by 4.6% in the six weeks to January 13. In Tesco's case, underlying sales (excluding fuel) grew by 5.9% in the six weeks to January 6, helped by its online store Tesco Direct, which lifted internet sales by 30% on 2005 figures, to a total of £150 million (€225 million). Online sales are estimated to have added as much as 1% to the like for like sales figures. After the successful Christmas period, Tesco is planning to increase its current 11,000 DVD, CDs with its full non-food online by April. ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Online Pizza Orders Drive Growth at Domino Pizzas tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1497 2007-01-11T12:09:39Z 2007-01-11T12:10:51Z Domino Pizza's sold £20.1 million (&euro 30 million) online. Its e-commerce orders were the fastest growing channel to market and attracted record numbers of new customers as well as delivering an average ticket value that is typically 25% higher than orders placed by phone. E-commerce sales grew by 43.8%... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com domino pizza Domino Pizza's sold £20.1 million (&euro 30 million) online. Its e-commerce orders were the fastest growing channel to market and attracted record numbers of new customers as well as delivering an average ticket value that is typically 25% higher than orders placed by phone. E-commerce sales grew by 43.8% in 2006 in the UK

Domino is also preparing its mobile ecommerce platform. It expects text message orders will also drive sales growth in the future, as the coming teenage demographic use always-on broadband and text rather than voice phones.

Domino pizza media center.]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Security Risk Reduced to Zero with PayPal Virtual Debit Card tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1494 2007-01-08T11:00:27Z 2007-01-08T11:18:07Z Though security and risk worries are becoming a thing of the past for online shoppers, Paypal has just introduced the ultimate security solution; a debit card for your paypal account. Hundreds of millions of shoppers using their paypal account to ensure security on their ebay purchases can now use... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com paypal Though security and risk worries are becoming a thing of the past for online shoppers, Paypal has just introduced the ultimate security solution; a debit card for your paypal account.

Hundreds of millions of shoppers using their paypal account to ensure security on their ebay purchases can now use their paypal accounts for all purchases. With the new debit card number associated ot their paypal accounts, shoppers can use this new "paypal credit card" to shop safely on all retailers accepting credit cards.

Paypal accounts are designed with online fraud protection, since they can only be used online. Paypal guarantees fraud protection and polices its account transaction proactively. Online security is heightened by technical encryption and authentication technologies, over and above the standard secure transaction page.

Paypal's new innitiative to improve consumer confidence online should have higher impact in countries where confidence is still low. The value is limited in the UK and US where credit card companies and major banks have dedicated online fraud units, and confidence is high.

PayPal Virtual Debit Card FAQs - PayPal ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Online Shopping Rises to Record Levels over Christmas tag:blog.enclick.com,2007://2.1492 2007-01-05T20:59:47Z 2007-01-06T16:16:59Z A quarter of all electrical goods sold over Christmas were bought online, according to Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG). IMRG also said that online now accounts for 10% of total retail sales in the UK, compared to just 0.5% in 2000. In 2006 as a whole, online sales were... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com A quarter of all electrical goods sold over Christmas were bought online, according to Interactive Media in Retail Group (IMRG). IMRG also said that online now accounts for 10% of total retail sales in the UK, compared to just 0.5% in 2000. In 2006 as a whole, online sales were up 40% from the previous year.

On commodity products that have little differentiation, shoppers search for best prices using price comparison engines like Enclick best price search.

"From talking to our members, my guess is consumers will have spent £3.7bn (€5.55bn) online just in December", James Roper, chief executive for IMRG

"This has definitely been an online Christmas. We think 25 million people are now shopping online and the spike that we see at Christmas is huge. Everything combines to push people to internet shopping over the period - bad weather, bulk buying, the inconvenience of transport ..."

Wrapped gifts was another category of massive growth this year, up 150 percent year-on-year. Statistics released by online shoppers are impressive:

  1. John Lewis saw its online sales soar 60% in December
  2. Online sales at Tesco soared by more than 30%
  3. 1.3 million shoppers ordered groceries and Christmas gifts through Tesco.com
  4. Tesco Wine Club delivered 80,000 orders in time for Christmas, up 50% since last year
  5. Amazon, the number one etailer in the UK, sold 4 million orders on its busiest day, December 11.
  6. Next Directory's sales (50% of which are estimated to be online) rose by 9.3

Offline, high-street sales are loosing market share. HMV and Woolworths both issued profit warnings at the beginning of December, and Mr Ratner of the Retail Consortium, said their Christmas trading updates were likely to be bad. Next's retail division, saw underlying sales in the 308 stores slump by 6.9 per cent from 31 July to 24 December.

Marks & Spencers is making a concerted effort to increase its online sales. Stuart Rose, M&S's chief executive, wants to increase internet sales from £100m to £500m by overhauling its website. Marks & Spencers datafeed has improved in quantity and quality recently, as it distributes its products among shopping portals.

All retailers are embracing internet shopping portals as distribution partners. For the high-street retailers, our Enclick shopping compares prices on the following number of products:

  • Woolworths: 273,000 products
  • John Lewis: 19,000 products
  • Marks & Spencers 9300 products
  • Littlewoods: 10,500 products

The enclick data feed marketing team is in high demand, helping retailers market their inventories online.

Many bricks and mortars high-street retailers are all turning to Online Sales to save their businesses. Who would have said ? ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Comparison Shopping Engines now Essential for Ecommerce Marketing tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1482 2006-10-30T22:43:34Z 2007-01-08T11:18:54Z In spite of the recent controversy on the poor accuracy of online statistics, Hitwise still produces interesting insights on overall internet clickthrough. Moneysupermarket.com, leading loans and insurance comparator, received 13.55% of total traffic from organic search, and 20% from paid search (PPC) campaigns. While 4.2% of traffic to retail sites... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com In spite of the recent controversy on the poor accuracy of online statistics, Hitwise still produces interesting insights on overall internet clickthrough.

Moneysupermarket.com, leading loans and insurance comparator, received 13.55% of total traffic from organic search, and 20% from paid search (PPC) campaigns. While 4.2% of traffic to retail sites are now being sent by comparison shopping engines, a 17% increase relative to last year. For certain products, 90% of online shoppers use comparison shopping engines to research a purchase.

One of the keys to successful use of comparison shopping engines is being able to submit your entire catalogue through a data feed. Enclick runs data feed service for merchants wishing to outsource data feed submission and maintenance to the top dozen comparison shopping engines.

[ Via Shopping sites critical to retailers: Hitwise?s Tancer] ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Controlling the Googlebots with New Google Sitemap Functions tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1478 2006-10-24T13:13:52Z 2006-10-24T13:19:08Z The Google sitemap has just released three additional functionalities to control the Googlebot. The feedback cycle is now complete, you submit a sitemap to tell the Googlebot what pages are on your site, and the googlebot now tells you what it does and finds on your site. Googlebot activity... Paul Salber blog.enclick.com Google sitemap

The Google sitemap has just released three additional functionalities to control the Googlebot. The feedback cycle is now complete, you submit a sitemap to tell the Googlebot what pages are on your site, and the googlebot now tells you what it does and finds on your site.

Googlebot activity reports

The google sitemap pages now include graphs of Googlebots activity on your site. Number of pages crawled a day, speed of the pages found, kbytes downloaded per day.

Crawl Rate Control

Is your site overwhelmed by continuous googlebot queries ? Google sitemap now lets you control the speed of the Googlebot.

Number of URLs submitted

In addition to giving you any errors, like pages not found, timeouts and unreachables URLs, you now get a confirmation of total number of pages submitted through your sitemap, as well as total number of pages crawled.

[Via Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Learn more about Googlebot's crawl of your site and more!]]]> Technorati Tags:

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Shopping Feeds Standards Fight is On tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1473 2006-10-20T20:40:25Z 2006-10-24T15:15:30Z The Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) has issued its first proposal for a data feeds standards. The standard is aimed squarely at Comparison Shopping Engines, like shopping.com, kelkoo.com and enclick.com. The goal of the standard is to allow ecommerce merchants to generate a single data feed valid for... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com association for retail technology standards

The Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) has issued its first proposal for a data feeds standards. The standard is aimed squarely at Comparison Shopping Engines, like shopping.com, kelkoo.com and enclick.com. The goal of the standard is to allow ecommerce merchants to generate a single data feed valid for all affiliate networks and shopping sites, instead of the dozen odd data feeds which are necessary at present.

Jay Heavilon of MARS, who chairs the committee for the standard states

"The current situation is a digital tower-of-Babel, where different online shopping search and shopping engines take SKU data in different formats. These specs allow advertisers, engines, and agencies to exchange product data more efficiently,”

[National Retail Federation Press Release]

Google, W3C and ARTs have competing standards for ecommece data feeds. Google has published the GData API which is a simple focused standard, concentrating exclusively on getting merchant's products into Google Base. With Google Checkout interface adding the transaction backend interface.

The ARTS standards is a more comprehensive definition of vocabulary which ties into ART's other standards for the communication along entire retail value chain. The W3C's RDF schema is also comprehensive, but the retail category XML schema is still not complete.

There Can be Only One

The three data feed standards clearly overlap in scope. Which ones attains critical mass first is still very much an open question. Each standard has pros and cons.

ARTS has buy-in from Yahoo, AOL and Microsoft, and other major players in the online retail sector.

Google Data is now the way for merchants to get their products into Google Search Results. Since Google dominates the retail clickthrough market; its search is typically the origin of 25% of all ecommerce related clickthrough. If Google keeps this lock on retail related traffic, Google Data will be an obligatory data feed for all online shops.

The W3C's XML standards have the advantage of having public domain licences. W3C waives the right to demand fees for the use of its schemas. ARTS and Google reserve all rights on the use of their standard; either organization has a right to demand fees and royalties on the use of their standard in the future. All W3C's standards use forms of creative commons licences, and are therefore truely for the benefit of the retail community.

Public Licence Standards

The public licence issue over the standard is central here. Viral marketing tenets for mass adoption recommend zero fees and minimum friction on use of the schemas. But Already Google has attracted strong criticism from internet leaders over their commercial lock-in tactics of the Google Data standard. Similarly, ARTS already levies fees for use of some of their standard; a disaster in viral marketing terms.

Meanwhile retail merchants observe in hope, as they are forced to produce half a dozen feeds for submitting their product list to price comparison engines. ]]> Technorati Tags: , ,

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Bulk Mailer Wins Ridiculous Case Against Anti-Spam Organization tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1472 2006-10-12T03:19:13Z 2006-10-12T03:21:05Z Spamhaus provides a spammer blacklist which is widely used in anti-spam filters by ISPs and webmail companies, including hotmail.com. Spamhaus is non-profit organization set up by Steve Linford in 1998 whose mission is to track the worst of organized spam operators. It provides anti-spam intelligence to internet services, Law... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com spamhaus anti-spam

Spamhaus provides a spammer blacklist which is widely used in anti-spam filters by ISPs and webmail companies, including hotmail.com. Spamhaus is non-profit organization set up by Steve Linford in 1998 whose mission is to track the worst of organized spam operators. It provides anti-spam intelligence to internet services, Law Enforcement Agencies, and government anti-spam legislation. The organization is staffed by the world's foremost anti-spam specialists who provide best their endevours to assist in anti-spam.

In an astonishingly misguided ruling, e360 Insight LLC a Chicago bulk-emailer won damages against spamhaus for being included in the Spamhaus blacklist. Spamhaus disagree on the facts of the case and on the jurisdiction, but did not appear at the US district court of Illinois; non-profit organizations of limited means cannot defend against disputes in all worldwide jurisdictions.

The bulk mailer won the $11.7m compensation, and Spamhaus was found to be in contempt of court after it failed to pay or remove the company's name from its blacklist.

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Online Advertising Tsunami has Arrived in the UK tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1465 2006-10-05T13:12:36Z 2006-10-05T14:21:21Z Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com Internet advertising nears £1 billion (€1500m) for the first six months of 2006. Though the figure is lower than the US $7900m for the equivalent period, UK spend is higher on a per capita basis than the US. The figure below shows online advertising revenue growth for the US
ad revenue

On a per capita basis, the UK leads the way with €50 per capita, followed by the US and France with around €40 per capita. Scandinavia follows with high €30 values. But online advertising has yet to reach the tipping point in southern Europe; Italy, Portugal and Spain have single digit per capita online spend values, typically €5 per capita. But growth is 30-50 percent in all countries.

The 40 percent year on year growth takes online advertising to 10.5 percent of the UK's advertising market, almost equal to the National Press' market share. UK advertising is now shared among the different medium as follows

  1. TV 22.7% market share
  2. National Press 11.4 %
  3. Online 10.5 %
  4. Outdoor 5.1%
  5. Consumer magazines 4.6%
  6. radio advertising 3.4%

The study by IAB and Price WaterHouse shows online advertising is split as follows

  1. Paid-for search takes 57.9%
  2. Online display (banners and skyscrapers) 23.5%
  3. online classified advertising 17.7%
  4. Interruptive formats, including 'pop ups', declined to 0.7%
  5. Email marketing and others taking the remaining 0.8%
CPA vs CPM stats

The US IAB study shows that performance based advertising, the Cost-per-Action (CPA) model is rising over the Cost-per-Click (CPC) models, as shown in the table left.

The sector ranking in online advertsing spend is as follows:

  1. Recruitment and finance account for over half the spend
  2. Automotive 13.8%
  3. Entertainment and Media 8.9%
  4. Consumer Goods, which includes FMCG, rose to 4.6%,
  5. Retail increases to 3%

The trend is for adspend to even out across categories, retail increasing its share by 30% as ecommerce takes off. ]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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Developments on the Standard Universal Data Feeds Front tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1464 2006-10-04T13:11:53Z 2006-10-04T15:41:10Z An announcement is due from shop.org and ARTS (Association of Retail Technology Standards) next Tuesday on Data Feed Standards in the ecommerce sector. Mirroring Sir Tim Berners Lee's efforts to structure the world's data with the semantic web project, Alan Rimm-Kaufman is pushing through a common standard for ecommerce merchants... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com shop.org and ARTS (Association of Retail Technology Standards) next Tuesday on Data Feed Standards in the ecommerce sector. Mirroring Sir Tim Berners Lee's efforts to structure the world's data with the semantic web project, Alan Rimm-Kaufman is pushing through a common standard for ecommerce merchants to publish their product listings. The standard includes reporting click and transaction information from price comparison engines back to merchants.
google code

google checkout

google base

The announcement comes just in time, as Google hurtles forward in the development of its competing GData standard for Google Base and Google Checkout. Google Base is to power comparison shopping on Google's main search, with Google Checkout providing clients and merchants with bank clearing of transactions.

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Tesco.com Sales Increase by 30% tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1463 2006-10-03T23:44:16Z 2006-10-04T13:17:41Z Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com tesco

The number one online supermarket has announced 28.7% growth for the first half of 2006. Having topped £1000m in turnover in 2005, growth is down slightly from 32% for the year ending 2005, but profits are up to 43.1% in 2006 as economies of scale rise further. Likely sales for 2006 are £1300m (topping €2000m), only behind Amazon for the UK.

Online sales are only 6% of total sales though, compared with Littlewoods 30% revenue from its ecommerce group.

Tesco has piloted specialized order fulfillment centers, which use state of the art Operational Research Software to optimize a order filler's pick up route along specialized pallets and shelfs. In addition to advanced automation to manage shelf stock. Order filler staff follow instructions on a wrist worn PDA, to fill several orders at the same time, with a minimum of movement along ailes.

Tesco is rivalling shops like Argos and Ikea by offering home delivery in two-hour slots, instead of half-day ones, and also the option to collect directly from stores.

Tesco has increased the number of CDs and DVDs it offers online to 280,000. With an additional 8,000 products in the lucrative electronics and household appliances sectors. In fact, Tesco is the highest selling household appliances retailer on the Enclick price comparator site. With close to 300,000 products, Tesco has one of the most comprehensive product data feeds on offer among online merchants.

[Via Guardian Online]]]> Technorati Tags:

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del.icio.us implements the "nofollow" tag tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1461 2006-10-02T12:53:56Z 2007-01-23T11:48:31Z The social tagging site del.icio.us has implemented the "nofollow" tag on its home page. Following the example of blog search engine technorati, del.icio.us implements the anti-spam measure proposed by Google. The "nofollow" tag disables the link in question from Google's algorithm, basically announcing to search engines that "this-is-not-a-good-link"; the... Paul Salber blog.enclick.com delicious

The social tagging site del.icio.us has implemented the "nofollow" tag on its home page. Following the example of blog search engine technorati, del.icio.us implements the anti-spam measure proposed by Google.

The "nofollow" tag disables the link in question from Google's algorithm, basically announcing to search engines that "this-is-not-a-good-link"; the tag removes any PageRank assignment for that link. Google first proposed the "nofollow" for fighting spam on blog comments and trackbacks. Spammers cannot leach pagerank from high PR blogs with automated comment generators.

The measure is a double edged sword for Google though. Google relies on counting links to a website to judge its importance. If webmasters use "nofollow" links which do not count for pagerank, Google will have no links to count. The concept behind their algorithm looses power. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Froogle is Bound for Obscurity tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1459 2006-09-28T13:51:16Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z Froogle is being elbowed out of the online price comparison sector. Like or not, the essence of a good price comparator is the quality and depth of its database, and the quality of its search. In my opinion, the google search and google base combination will inevitably see froogle... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com froogle

Froogle is being elbowed out of the online price comparison sector. Like or not, the essence of a good price comparator is the quality and depth of its database, and the quality of its search. In my opinion, the google search and google base combination will inevitably see froogle out of the the door.

Meanwhile Google is circumspect about Froogle's future, stating

G: Froogle is alive and well. We are continuing to integrate shopping and product search features into Google.com to make it as easy as possible for users to find product information through Google. We don't have any more specifics to share publicly on how this will look down the line but we will make sure to let you know about any developments. [Via John Battelle's Searchblog: News:

Google is no stranger to failed projects. In fact it thrives on them, using the darwinian approach of beta testing a huge number of potentials and only picking the best and fittest projects.]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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<![CDATA[Littlewoods €570 in Online Sales with a 10,000 product Data Feed]]> tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1458 2006-09-28T00:37:27Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z Paul Salber blog.enclick.com littlewoods online

Littlewoods has announced results of over €3000m in turnover, with internet accounting for 30 per cent, or €570, of Littlewoods’ turnover, making it the fourth-largest online retailer in the UK.

Littlewoods redoubled its online efforts a year ago, in order to beat decreasing high-street sales. Improving its distribution through price comparator sites like, enclick shopping, and affiliate networks.

Littlewood's data feed is one of the more complete on the market, with an emphasis on clothing and footwear. Littlewoods goes to some lengths to provide product descriptions and details in its data feed. Results on our price comparator show that, prices being equal, the greater the detail and depth of inventory in a merchant's data feed, the greater the the sales through vertical portals and affiliate networks. Enclick shopping has a range of 10,000 Littlewood products on sale, leading the clothing and footwear categories on Enclick shopping.

littlewoods tesco traffic

As shown in the figure, Littlewood lags behind argos.co.uk and tesco.com, with Amazon the clear number one in UK sales. Littlewoods is conspicously absent from online sales of DVD and music, where amazon, tesco and woolworths battle it out.



[Via: Guardian Unlimited Business | | Makeover for Littlewoods to boost web sales]]]> Technorati Tags: , ,

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Ridiculous Court Ruling Against Google on Fair Use of Copyright Material tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1456 2006-09-25T13:47:48Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z The look of google.be this morning. The belgium courts have favored the belgium press association to protect the belgium press against the theft of copy right material by Google. Google news has been found guilty of printing headlines and small 50 word extract of new items from belgium online... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com Google Belgium Order The look of google.be this morning. The belgium courts have favored the belgium press association to protect the belgium press against the theft of copy right material by Google. Google news has been found guilty of printing headlines and small 50 word extract of new items from belgium online newspapers. The court has deemed said action to be an infringement of the online newspapers copyright terms, outside of "fair-use" terms, and ruled as follows:
Order the defendant to withdraw the articles, photographs and graphic representations of Belgian publishers of the French - and German-speaking daily press, represented by the plaintiff, from all their sites (Google News and "cache" Google or any other name within 10 days of the notification of the intervening order, under penalty of a daily fine of 1,000,000.- € per day of delay;

The court clearly does not understand that

  • the online newspapers are liberally rewarded with a huge influx of traffic from Google
  • small quotes appearing on Google are great PR and marketing for the newspapers
  • the material published is a very small fraction of the material in each article

The belgium court in question is clearly a copyright and trademark stalwart, not even allowing for a small quotation of the copyright material. Quite the opposite of the open source business model.

Google CEO, Eric Schmidt thinks the conflict should have remained as business negotiation between Google and each newspaper.

Because of our scale and because of the amounts of money that we have, Google has to be more careful with respect to launching products that may violate other people's notion of their rights. But also, frankly, we find ourselves in litigation and the litigation was expensive, and diverts the management team, etcetera, from our mission. In the cases that you describe, most of the litigation in my judgment was really a business negotiation being done in a courtroom. And I hate to say that, but that is my personal opinion. And in most cases a change in our policy or a financial change would in fact address many of the issues.

Danny Sullivan offers the best coverage of the case, with interviews with the two parties.

It remains to be seen whether the papers are actually advantaged by being excluded from the Google search engine, which dominates European internet traffic. After all the "fair-use terms" of copyright material were designed into the law for the benefit of both authors and the community.]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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New 200x200 Adsense Format tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1455 2006-09-25T13:18:43Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z The adsense have released a new ad format, smaller than its current 300x300. Great addition given how difficult it is to design well balanced pages. The 200x200 is unlikely to be a hit in terms of clickthrough, Google has published its highest performing ad sizes: 336x280 large rectangle 300x250inline... Paul Salber blog.enclick.com Google adsense

The adsense have released a new ad format, smaller than its current 300x300. Great addition given how difficult it is to design well balanced pages.

adsense format

The 200x200 is unlikely to be a hit in terms of clickthrough, Google has published its highest performing ad sizes:

  • 336x280 large rectangle
  • 300x250inline rectangle
  • 160x600 wide skyscraper
but the narrower 200x200 will allow better design of pages. The smaller format should allow a better fit into a pages natural hot areas as shown below.
adsense heatmap

The graph shows the best performing locations for adsense; dark orange is the strongest performance location, while to light yellow is the weakest performance. Naturally, ad placements above the fold tend to perform better than those below the fold. Ads placed near rich content and navigational aids usually do well because users are focused on those areas of a page.

But nothing beats trial and error with web analytics of user behaviour. [Via Google's Inside AdSense: New channels page, new ad format]]]> Technorati Tags:

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On the Rise of Viral Marketing and Web 2.0 in Politics tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1454 2006-09-23T19:52:51Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z The declining impact of TV advertising is having a positive impact on politics. A billion dollar war chest will no longer guarantee you an elected office. Now you need support from social groups and communities that are hard to influence centrally. Collaborative filtering sites, like digg.com, del.icio.us, and even... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com george bush

The declining impact of TV advertising is having a positive impact on politics. A billion dollar war chest will no longer guarantee you an elected office. Now you need support from social groups and communities that are hard to influence centrally.

Collaborative filtering sites, like digg.com, del.icio.us, and even Google, are the political battle grounds of the future. A political candidate will have to gain approval of communities of decentralized, diverse, and independent opinion.

Community reputation in these aggregate groups is difficult to buy with money. It takes an increasing amount of money for a meritless proposition to achieve top rank in Google listings. A politician will win or lose by whether his ideas spread, by whether individuals are recommending the idea. A politician will win if his ideas are new enough, potent enough to spread like viruses. As a leading viral marketing expert explains,

pirate party

An example of such a disruptive flash political efficiency is The Pirate Party (Swedish: Piratpartiet). The party has gained wide support without institutional or financial backing, with the simple remit of re-balancing the power of copyright and patent laws in favor of the community, while still maintaing appropriate incentives for companies and authors to invest in intellectual projects.

TV advertising is being replaced by viral marketing; the ability to formulate and package the idea and addressing the right communities.]]> Technorati Tags: ,

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US Dominates the European Online Media Landscape tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1449 2006-09-20T14:22:10Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z Striking dominance of US players in the European Internet. Mountain View and Silicon Valley certainly have a head start when it comes to the global market place. Vodafone Group being the only EU player at number 10. Google dominates with 72% of the European market; higher market share than... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com european traffic; Google, microsoft, yahoo, ebay, time warner, wikipedia, amazon, adobe, ask, vodafone Striking dominance of US players in the European Internet. Mountain View and Silicon Valley certainly have a head start when it comes to the global market place. Vodafone Group being the only EU player at number 10.

Google dominates with 72% of the European market; higher market share than in the US, where it has to settle for 60%.


If you can't beat them, you join them

[Via kelblog : Google premier site Internet en Europe] ]]> Technorati Tags:

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Youtube: Waiting for Adsense for Videos tag:blog.enclick.com,2006://2.1441 2006-09-19T14:52:49Z 2006-09-30T23:16:05Z Youtube, the leading video clip sharing service, is creating a lot acquisition rumors with much of the debate centered round its valuation. Looking at reach and page view alone, with 10,000m page views a month and double digit growth rate, a billion dollar valuation range, like MySpace's, is not... Paul Elosegui blog.eucap.com youtube

Youtube, the leading video clip sharing service, is creating a lot acquisition rumors with much of the debate centered round its valuation.

youtube

Looking at reach and page view alone, with 10,000m page views a month and double digit growth rate, a billion dollar valuation range, like MySpace's, is not out of the question.

Fred Wilson offers a $150M estimate for revenues with $15 CPMs. But other opinions are much less optimistic.

The debate of Youtube revenues highlights problems with monetizing video clips. Jason Calacanis touts a low value for the likely youtube revenues, with only $20M from junk CPM advertising. Jason's estimates a $2 CPM for Youtube contextual advertising, arguing that the "dorky" video clips with very little segmentation or keyword context will not earn the higher range $15 CPM's for quality full context and full segmentation video content.

Similarly Mike Cuban sees a a dramatic decline of Youtube from major problems with copyright owners

Considering the RIAA will sue your grandma or a 12 year old at the drop of a hat, the fact that Youtube is building a traffic juggernaut around copyrighted audio and video without being sued is like.... well Napster at the beginning as the labels were trying to figure out what it meant to them

I think the biggest issue is the difficulty of using the Adsense advertising model on Videos. Given that Google's algorithm works only on text, identifying keywords from video content is ineffective, and hence advertising is no longer targeted. Categorizing videos manually is not a viable solution, when you have tens of millions of video clips. ]]> Technorati Tags:

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