• Click fraud rates went down last quarter (16.0 percent) compared to the previous quarter (16.2 percent).

Other than that, that is about all the good news for PPC advertisers and click fraud.  Here is the bad news:

• Most click fraud happens on Search Engine content networks (Google Adsense and Yahoo! Publisher Network, for example).  On those networks, the fraud rate was 27.1 percent last quarter.
• 27.6 percent of click fraud traffic came from botnets, which is up more than 2 percent from last quarter (25.2 percent).  Another reason for users to protect their computers from hackers.
• Russia (4.9 percent), France (4.8 percent) and the U.K. (3.5 percent) are the coutries most responsible for click fraud traffic outside the U.S.

The sad thing about this is that, according to Tom Cuthbert, president of Click Forensics, a primary reason for the slight decline in click fraud from last quarter is because of the efforts of the ADVERTISERS, not necessarily the Ad networks.  According to Click Forensics, the advertisers have spent more time checking their clicks and filtering out the fraudulent ones before their campaigns were affected.  The Ad Networks have made better strides in doing that automatically, but it is still not enough.  In the end, it is still up to the people who pay to double-check their accounts, which is unfortunate that it has to be left up to them.

With the PPC click fraud rate being 16 percent industry wide, that loosely translates into $16.00 out of every $100 you spend is lining the pockets of some person who is not the least bit interested in your product or service.  If your monthly budget is $100, you are paying a lot per year for fraudulent clicks.  Pretty steep to me.

If you only advertise on Google and Yahoo, that number could climb to $27 out of $100, loosly figured.

This indicates that one should not just jump into Internet Advertising without examining all the angles.  It can certainly provide great benefits, but also presents risks that one should measure first.

It should also be noted about Click Forensics that their data are gathered from their own network called the Click Fraud Network.  That network is made up of more than 4,500 online advertisers and agencies, but it does not include everyone.  So, if you are weighing the pros and cons of PPC advertising, you should review data from multiple sources including the actual Ad Network you are considering joining.

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Currently, the Beta version is only released for use by a targeted group:

• Yahoo! Store
• Yahoo! Developers (Y!OS)
• Yahoo! Head Advertisers (Microsites)

If you do not fall into at least one of those categories, “No soup for you”.  You will have to be patient and wait your turn.

You can, however, visit the Yahoo! Web Analytics website and signup to receive updates and get a sneak peek at some screenshots of the dashboard.

Dennis Mortenson explains on his blog:

…this is not a free-for-all-come-and-get-it launch, but a carefully planned controlled access launch, which will keep all of our functionality in place and even enhance it. There is no dumbing down of the tool in any of the engagements above – and we will be working hard to add to the list of customers who can get access. So expect the above list to grow rapidly over the course of 2008.

Michael Stebbins also reported on this on his web analytics blog, which is a must read.

Until everything is released to the masses, we will just have to wait and keep using Google Analytics and ClickTracks.

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It was a novel approach to attempt to increase search engine market share.  Currently, Google has a commanding lead at about 63%.  Yahoo! is second with just under 20% and Microsoft is third at just over 8 percent.

The latest “pay to search” program from Microsoft is called SearchPerks and it works pretty simply:

1. Visit the site using Internet Explorer 6 or higher and sign up for SearchPerks.
2. Download and install the tracking program to a Windows PC.
3. Use Microsoft Live Search and earn “search tickets” every time you search – up to 25 per day.
4. Redeem those tickets for prizes.

The first time you signup, you are credited with 500 tickets and the first prize point is 5 music downloads for 525 tickets.  You can even get things like airline miles.

It could be worth a check because it is sort of like Microsoft giving you $5 to use Live Search.  If you download music, typically each song costs about $1 (5 songs = 5 bucks).  So, signup for SearchPerks, use Microsoft Live Search for a few days and redeem your 525 tickets for 5 music downloads .

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Then in June ‘08, the alpha was re-launched.  They knew the results were bad and needed to improve before they could become a real player in the search engine market and they expected the results to begin to show improvement within a few weeks.

So, what do we think now that about 2 months have passed since Alpha relaunch?  Well, wow, it is bad.

Here is what a search for “buy computer online” will show:

1. An article about Best Buy from Wikipedia.  Ok, fair enough if you want to give props to Wikipedia first above all else, even though that does not help me buy a computer online.  Maybe a link to Dell or HP or something like that would be more helpful.
2. A link to ebay’s main search page where I have to retype my search query “buy computer online”.  Well, at least it is possible to actually buy a computer from the site you directed me to.  But could you not at least direct me to the Electronics category or even, *cough* the Computers category?
3. A link to about.com where I can download computer games.  But wait, I have not even bought my computer yet – I am trying to make a purchase first and then I can download and install games.  Proverbial “cart before the horse” I think.
4. A link to Apple’s home page where I can at least see a computer, eventually, after I first wade through the gaudy iPhone pitch and then stumble on the little button at the top that says, “Mac” – assuming I know what a Mac is and am not a complete computer novice.
5. A link to a site that will tell me how to make money online (refer to comments on #3 listing).
6. A link to oreilly.com where I can download PDF files and a bunch of other stuff that is no help because I still do not have a computer yet.
7. A link to the Scottsdale Public Library, which is possibly where I am physically located because I still do not have my own computer and am using one of theirs.
8. I give up…

What’s is more, at the top of my search page is a small graphic that prompts me to see results from Google and Yahoo.  Wait, I thought that was one of the points behind WikiaSearch – to take market share away from Google and Yahoo.

Anyway, I would not hold your breath on a Beta launch of Wikia Search anytime soon.  They are way behind nearly every other search engine in the Internet and the main way the intend on improving is by having you and I edit their search results telling them when we find something irrelevant.  I think the concept is good, but I don’t have time to do that.  A search engine is not a destination; it is a waypoint.  I want to type in my query and move on.

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As one might expect, an announcement of a new search engine has created a pretty good buzz around the Internet, but many searchers using Cuil are less than impressed.  You can easily find comments about it taking minutes to return results and about it returning zero results for popular terms.  Many of the feedback that I have seen has been quite negative, which one might expect in today’s “instant gratification” Internet where you have only seconds to make an impression.

However,  I tend to be ever-so-slightly enthused with Cuil for two basic reasons:

• The are at least trying to come up with a new way of presenting results and are supposedly indexing more of the web than Google (although I have not heard Google making any claims as to how many pages it indexes).
• Their GUI is somewhat refreshing.  I like the colors and I like the “Explore by Category” box that breaks down information related to your search into categories.  I think the entire interface is well done.

Having said that, I certainly think that the returned results leave something to be desired.  Many of the searches that I did returned completely unrelated results on the first page, which would indicate an issue with the ranking algorithms.  I am sure they will sort that out, but I can’t help but wonder how much testing they did before launch.  For example, a search for “cuil search engine” on Cuil will not even list cuil.com in the search results.  Hmm.

Another issue is the slow response time for some searches.  It would appear that their servers are not currently up to the challenge of being a real threat to Google, or even Yahoo! or MSN.

Those last two points make me wonder how much testing they did and how exhaustive it really was.  One would think that success in those two areas would be the very foundation of a modern search engine and, therefore, would be top priority.  But maybe it was just a case of first day jitters.

All-in-all, I think it is unfortunate that there has been so much negative publicity surrounding Cuil.  They have some bugs to work out and that is to be expected.   I think that their algorithm will get smarter and their servers’ response times will improve.  In fact, a few of the searches that I tried early yesterday, which returned woefully unrelated results, were vastly improved when I tried them last night.  That is a step in the right direction and I would expect that things will get better.

Google competitor?  Not at the moment.  Threat to Google?  Not at the moment.  Should Yahoo! and MSN pay attention?  Not right now, but don’t get too comfortable.

TechCrunch and Search Engine Land have some extensive reviews of Cuil.

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Even though Yahoo and the other search engines lag way behind Google in market share, they still have approximately 20% of the market.  So, you can’t completely ignore them when they make changes.

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In a letter sent over the weekend, Roy Bostock and Jerry Yang had a few barbs sent Microsoft’s way:

As a follow up to a recent meeting among our respective legal advisors we had on this topic, and at your request, we provided to you on March 28 a list of additional information we would need to further our understanding of the regulatory issues associated with any transaction. To date, you have still not provided any of the requested information…

We consider your threat to commence an unsolicited offer and proxy contest to displace our independent Board members to be counterproductive and inconsistent with your stated objective of a friendly transaction. We are confident that our stockholders understand that our independent Board is best positioned to objectively and knowledgeably evaluate our Company’s alternatives and to maximize value.

In conclusion, please allow us to restate our position, so there can be no confusion. We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing.

Seems pretty clear to me. Yahoo is not opposing ANYTHING that brings value to its stockholders, including a purchase by Microsoft. Although, if Microsoft buys Yahoo, it will probably be a big blow for Open-Source software since much of Yahoo’s platform is open source and Microsoft wants the whole world to only use it’s clunky software.

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Despite that drop, Yahoo! search traffic was actually up. In fact, according to a comScore report, they were the big winner for the month with a 0.5% increase in use and, since they dipped 0.4% in November, that basically put them back where they were in October with a 22.9% overall market share. However, Google is still the big dog with 58.4% share of the Search market. That translates to more than 5.5 billion (yes, billion) searches per month using Google. That number does not include searches performed on YouTube and other Google owned properties, which tracked an additional 1.5 billion results in December alone.

As you can imagine, search traffic on shopping sites climbed quite a bit in December. For example, Amazon sites logged 215 million searches, which was a better than 20% increase over their numbers in November. eBay was up 3.9% and Craigslist was up 6.3%.

Social networking sites saw a decline in use in December. My guess would be the fact that people were actually networking the old fashioned way – fact-to-face at parties. That means they were not spending as much time searching on Facebook (-14.3%) and MySpace (-19.9%). Plus, in many cases, people are accessing those sites while they are at work and, since most workers are using up their vacation time before the end of the year, they were not logging in each day.

At any rate, the numbers should be back to normal starting this month, but Google is still going to be on top.

Check out our Flash graphic in the far right column for a visual .

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Of the 10 billion searches tracked, here is how they broke down during the month:

• Google captured 5.9 billion
• Yahoo! accounted for 2.2 billion searches
• Microsoft dropped just below the 1 billion mark at 984 million
• Ask was used 463 million times
• and AOL/Time Warner sites were used for 453 million searches.

AOL/Time Warner had the largest jump during the month (0.3 points) and Yahoo! had the biggest drop of -0.4 points.

For all you visual people out there, we have a pretty, little Flash graphic in the right column, so check it out

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