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Alexander McCall-Smith Engages Web 2.0

The Daily Telegraph is in the middle of a 20-week serialisation of an online book created by author Alexander McCall-Smith, his first such project. New Media Knowledge caught up with the organisers to discuss ‘Corduroy Mansions’.

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Business Brief: Video Advertising Looks to Future

Google has announced it will incentivise advertisers on its video properties as well as launching research programmes into how Web users consume Internet video material. New Media Knowledge spoke to a number of industry players to gauge their views on where the video advertising market is going.

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‘Virtual Home’ for Ex-Pats in London Established

A social network aimed at providing information for ex-pats living in London has been established. New Media Knowledge met the site’s co-founder to find out more.

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• Record Visits for UK Blog Sites
• Clearing Congestion
• Rough Guide to: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
• Opinion: What Happens to Newspapers?
• LinkedIn Adds Business Applications
• What Happens to Newspapers?

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The Search Landscape

The Search Engine Strategies conference series hit London last week. Ian Delaney reports on the latest research.

The Search Engine Strategies conference series hit London last week. Ian Delaney reports on the latest research.

Heather Hopkins reported the latest in UK search matters from the perspective of metrics form Hitwise. She noted that Search Engines overtook Adult Websites in October and that the market share of visits to search engines were up 22% in December and 21% January year-on-year. When it comes to market share in search, though, there were few surprises.

Google searches accounted for 78% of the UK's searches in the four weeks to 10/2/07. Google was thus up 6 per cent over the previous year. Microsoft searches, despite the launch of Live, has experienced a persistent decline over the last twelve months.

Hopkins also noted the differences in character between the search engines. Searchers using Google are far more likely than those using any other engine to search for Web 2.0-related topics such as MySpace, bebo, wikipedia or youtube. She noted that people use search engines as a portal, and type names into the search bar rather than the address bar, because this is quicker and more convenient. This means, then, that Google users are more likely to be users of those services than users of the other engines, rather than that they do not know their web addresses.

On the other hand, users of Ask were more likely to search for Friends Re-united than those using other search engines, suggesting a less trendy, web-savvy audience perhaps. She also noted that Ask.com UK sends more of its own traffic (17%) to retail websites than any of the other leading search engines. Such a result has clear implications for brands' search marketing efforts.