Internet Marketing Weblog
Garret Cunningham | 1:14 pm | February 29, 2008 | Google, News
Google have released more information about their new Health Service.
The service is designed to enable users to store and manage their medical information easily, and also provide a central source for medical practitioners to find all the medical information they need relating to you.
The official post from Google can be found here: Google Health
Also check out some of the screen shots:
Garret Cunningham | 4:40 pm | February 21, 2008 | Google, News
I’ve been tracking this story for a while now and it seems to be movng closer and closer to the surface.
It all revolves around Google’s (unreleased) health Service, www.Google.co.uk/health.
The service will basically allow anyone to upload all of their medical records, creating a worldwide central database of everyones medical history.
This obviously has its advantages, such as not needing to fill in endless medical questionaires everytime you visit a new docotr or hospital, and especially if you are involved in an accident and can’t answer questions yourself doctors can use the resource to find your details.
The latest rumour is that the service is due to go live in Beta testing in the next day or two, with the cooperation of the Cleveland Clininc as the first hospital to upload medical records, presumably after he service has proven itself and gotten over any bugs and shown not to hold any privacy or security risks, it will be made available to everyone.
We will keep you posted if we hear anymore on the subject, or if you have any feedback let us know.
Neil Yeomans | 10:27 am | | News
Online shoppers spent more this January than any previous January with a total sales figure in the region of 4.5, an 75% increase on last year. The figures are certainly inline with growth that had been predicted by the IAB. Key marketplaces are Electrical Goods with a 38% increase, with clothing increasing by 32%.
However January spend still fell when compared to December’s trade with a record 5.42 billion. The indication is that the larger retailers collected the benefit of the spend with big advertising pushes by Argos and Comet paying off.
Sources
IAB
Garret Cunningham | 10:56 am | February 20, 2008 | Affiliate Marketing, Google, News, Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Google have official announced the release of their Display URL update. There has been quite a lot of speculation in the lead up to the official release.
Concerns have hovered around what the implications will be for affiliates. The updates requires advertisers to use accurate display URLs which match their Destination URL.
I.e. if the disply url is for www.lakestarmedia.com, the destination url must be www.lakestarmedia.com, and does not allow for misspellings or variations in .com and .co.uk.
The worry for affiliates was, how would this affect redirects? as affiilates who run direct pay per click campaigns use affiliate network tracking which redirects to merchants websites, therefore the display url wouldn’t match, but as the official line says redirects are fine as long as the final landing page matches the display url.
For more information view the official post here.
Garret Cunningham | 5:12 pm | February 15, 2008 | Google, News, Pay-Per-Click (PPC)
Google has anounced plans to test a new plus box with sponsored links on their search engine to display videos ads.
Seems like Google are expanding the video ad platform to make it more mainstream.
It will be interesting to get the full details especially for costs.
Currently video ads can be played at no cost to the advertiser, they only pay when the user clicks for a second time and goes through to the site, so it’ll be interesting to see if they stick with this model.
The idea also offers more potential to differentiate your ads from those of others, so in theory should help with click through rate, but on a contrasting view, should help reduce irrelevant clicks, as not only do you have text to speak to your customer, but also video, so they should be in no doubt about what your website has to offer them.
Unfortunately nothing seems to have been released publically yet, but we will let you know as soon as it is!
Neil Yeomans | 3:52 pm | February 14, 2008 | News, Social Media
BeatThatQuote.com has been announced as the UK’s fastest growing website in 2007, surprisingly beating the new social network king Facebook, according to new reports released.
A Nielsen Online report concluded that the insurance comparison site saw its total UK audience grow by a total of 1,165% from 31,000 to an amazing 392,000 unique users during the a 12 month period from December 2006 to December 2007.
Other key statistics show that Facebook increased by 781% during the same time period from 1.1m to 8.9m users overall.
However as expected Google remained the most visited site with 25.1m UK unique users, keeping it ahead of closest rivals; MSN 14.7m and E bay 14.5m
Neil Yeomans | 1:58 pm | February 1, 2008 | News
Microsoft has put in an offer to buy Yahoo for $44.6 billion (cash and stock). According to Reuters.com, this would signify the largest merger since AOL and Time Warner in 2001. Microsoft Chief Executive Steve Ballmer has stated:
We have great respect for Yahoo, and together we can offer an increasingly exciting set of solutions for consumers, publishers and advertisers while becoming better positioned to compete in the online services market.
Both MSN and Yahoo have experienced tremendous difficulties competing with Google’s ever-increasing breadth of products and market share. This merger could signify a move in the right direction to present a serious competitor to Google. Having said that, they have a long way to go before this would be achievable.
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