Google has launched an update to their Webmaster Tools, which introduces a new interface and improvements to some of the features. The new interface reorganizes the placement of the various features and adds top search queries, inbound links, and sitemap data to the site overview page, now renamed the dashboard. The top search queries report now includes up to 100 queries and “substantially improved data quality in this area” according to a post on the Official Google Webmaster Central Blog. The inbound links report also has received additional data. The Message Center now provides the option having messages forwarded to an email address. In instances where multiple users have access to the Webmasters Tools, each users will be able to see the status of all submitted sitemaps without having to each submit the sitemaps.
Google Introduces New Search Results Filtering Options
Google today introduced a set of features they call Search Options, which provides users with the ability to filter their search results in a number of ways. The options are accesible by clicking the “Show options …” link under the search box on the search results page. Results can be filter to only include videos, forums, or reviews. Google already provided the option to only show video results through Google Video, but the other two options are new. The reviews filter still needs work as includes pages that are not reviews, for example searching ‘iphone’ or ‘honda accord’ includes the official websites for these products.
Additional individual filter options are available for videos, forums, and reviews results and for viewing all results. When viewing all results, results can be filtered to be only from recently, the past 24 hours, the past week, or the past year. The results can also be modified to include images from the pages or with longer snippets from the pages.
Google wrote in a post on the Official Google Blog that they plan introduce more features to Search Options in the future.
Internet Explorer 6 has Enterprise Market Share of 46.8 Percent
Internet Explorer 6 has a market share of 46.8 percent in enterprises according to research by Forrester Research as reported by CNET. Internet Explorer 6’s enterprise market share is significantly higher than its market share among all users. According to Net Applications in April it had a market share of 17.52 percent. Market share for all version of Internet Explorer is also higher in enterprises, with it accounting for 78 percent of the market versus 66.10 percent among all users. Forrester Research also reported that Firefox has an enterprise market share of 18.2 percent, Chrome has 2 percent, and Safari has 1.4 percent.
Click Fraud Rate Dropped Significantly in First Quarter
Click Forensics today reported that the overall industry average click fraud rate for pay per click (PPC) advertising was 13.8 percent in the first quarter of 2009, down from 17.1 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 and 16.3 percent in the first quarter of 2008. The lowest rate in the past four quarters was 16 percent, in the third quarter of 2009. The president of Click Forensics, Tom Cuthbert, said that the drop in click fraud appears to be due to “the drop in keyword Cost Per Clicks (CPCs) and the progress Yahoo! and Google made blocking click fraud from botnet sources”. Click Forensics reported seeing an increase in click fraud from malicious JavaScript programs in the first quarter, with ad networks being especially vulnerable to attacks. Click Forensics gathers it’s data from online advertising campaigns for both large and small companies from both major search providers and over 300 ad networks.
Internet Explorer 8 Market Share Reaches 4.63 Percent a Month After Release
A month after Internet Explorer 8’s release it had a market share of 4.63 percent of worldwide web browser share according to Net Applications. This was an increase of 3.18 percent of market share from the 1.45 percent Internet Explorer 8 had on release date of March 19. Those number include users using pre-release versions of Internet Explorer 8, the day before the finalized version was released it already had market share of 1.34 percent. Internet Explorer 8 now has a larger market share than either Google’s Chrome or Opera and over half Apple’s Safari had in the month of March. Chrome had a market share of 1.23 percent, Opera had .70 percent, and Safari had 8.23 percent. In March Internet Explorer had a total market share of 66.82 percent, with Internet Explorer 6 having a market share of18.36 percent and Internet Explorer 7 having 46.54 percent.
Google Expands Use of Sitelinks In Search Results
Google has introduced an expansion of sitelinks, which brings the possibility of a more limited version of sitelinks being displayed for multiple results on a search results page. Sitelinks are links to additional pages on a website that are shown underneath a result from that website. The decision whether to show sitelinks for a given query and what links to show is determined algorithmically. In a post on the Google Webmaster Central Blog announcing the expansion, Google explains that the purpose of sitelinks is to “enable users to jump directly to important parts of a site, which is often useful for large, complex websites” and to give “users an overview of a website’s content by highlighting some of the popular parts of the site.”
Originally, sitelinks were only shown for the first result of a search with three to eight links shown in two columns. If your search for Microsoft you can see example of this along with a search box, for searching within the given website, that is sometimes shown under the sitelinks. The expansion introduces one-line sitelinks, which show up to four links to other pages on the website. The one-line sitelinks can show up for multiple results, including the first result.
In the post Google also announced changes in the ability for websites to block pages from their websites, through Google’s Webmasters Tools, from being shown as sitelinks. Google will be “speeding up our response time” in blocking pages and expanding the blocking, which is currently limited to blocking pages shown as sitelinks for a website’s homepage, to any page on a website that displays sitelinks.
Yahoo Increases Share of US Search-Ad Revenue in Q1
Yahoo increased it share of US search-ad revenue to 19.3 in the first quarter of 2009, up 1 percent from the year ago period, according to search marketing firm Efficient Frontier. From the year ago period, Google dropped .9 percent to 72.3 percent and Microsoft dropped 1 percent to 3.5 percent. Google had a click-through rate (CTR) of 2.38 and cost per click (CPC) of 54 cents in the first quarter of 2009, Yahoo CTR of 1.16 and CPC of 42 cents, and Microsoft CTR of 2.19 and CPC of 52 cents. The data is based a subset of Efficient Frontier clients and is comprised of over 84 billion impressions and 785 million clicks.
Microsoft Announces Plan for Roll Out of Internet Explorer 8
Microsoft today announced its plan to roll out Internet Explorer 8 to Microsoft’s Windows Update and Automatic Update software update services. According Microsoft Internet Explorer 8 will begin to show up in the update services “on or about the third week of April” and the show up for “a narrow audience and expand over time to the entire user base.” For users who update via the Automatic Update service the update will not be automatically installed, instead they will see a screen that will ask them if they wish to update to the new version. When Internet Explorer 8 was released on March 19 it was only made available for download on the Internet Explorer website. According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer 8’s market share had reached 4.36 percent yesterday; up from 1.45 percent on the day finalized version was released.
Google’s U.S. Search Share Reaches New High and Yahoo’s Reaches New Low
Nielsen Online today released its rankings of U.S. search share for March (PDF), with overall search increasing 16.7 percent year over year to 9.5 billion searches. Google had a year over year increase of 27.6 percent and received 64.2 percent of searches. Google’s had it highest percentage of searches ever, surpassing November of last year when it received 64.1 percent. Yahoo had a year over year increase of 1.7 percent and received 15.8 percent of searches. Yahoo’s percentage of searches was lower that 16 percent for the first time in the last two years and was 6.1 percentage points lower than it highest percentage in the last two years. Microsoft had a year over year increase of 0.3 percent and received 10.3 percent of searches.
Online Advertising Grew 2.6 Percent in Fourth Quarter
Online advertising revenue reached 6.1 Billion U.S. dollars in the fourth quarter, an increase of 2.6 percent over the same period last year, according to a report (pdf) by the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers. Fourth quarter revenue was 4.5 percent higher than the third quarter of 2008. Revenue for 2008 reached 23.4 Billion U.S. dollars, an increase of 10.6 percent over 2007. Search advertising revenue show the largest increase of any format, an increase 20 percent to 10.5 billion dollars in 2008. Display advertising revenue, which includes display banner ads, rich media, digital video, and sponsorship, increased nearly 8 percent to 7.6 billion dollars. Classifieds revenue decreased 4 percent to 3.2 billion dollars, referrals/lead generation revenue increased 6 percent to 1.7 billion dollars, and e-mail revenue decreased 4.5 percent to .4 billion dollars. Performance based advertising accounted for 57 percent of revenue, with cost per thousand (CPM) accounting for 39 percent and hybrids accounting for 4 percent.