'Net Features : aol

Search Rankings Remain Steady – Explicit and Core

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 13 Jun 2011 21:26:00 GMT

comScore released its monthly analysis of the U.S. search marketplace last week.

Google Sites led the “explicit core search" market (searches occuring directly/explicitly at those destinations) in May with a 65.9 percent share, followed by Yahoo! (15.9 percent), and Microsoft Sites (14.1 percent). Ask and AOL rounded out the list with 3 percent and 1.5 percent shares respectively.

According to comScore, more than 17.0 billion explicit core searches were conducted in May (up 5 percent versus April). Google Sites ranked first with 11.2 billion searches (up 5 percent), followed by Yahoo! Sites with 2.7 billion (up 5 percent), Microsoft Sites with 2.4 billion (up 4 percent), Ask Network with 502 million (up 2 percent) and AOL, Inc. with 254 million (up 2 percent).

When it comes to “core search” – which includes partner searches, cross-channel searches and contextual searches – Google once again let the way. Google Sites accounted for 63.3 percent of total core search queries conducted, followed by Yahoo! Sites with 19.6 percent (up 1.7 percentage points) and Microsoft Sites with 13.1 percent.

The Ask Network comprised 2.6 percent of total search queries, followed by AOL, Inc. with 1.3 percent.

The Gap's Big Gaffe, and the Mobile Web for Your Business

Mike Phillips — Wed, 13 Oct 2010 18:30:00 GMT

The Gap suffered a branding debacle this week; we'll discuss what we can learn from it, and also some interesting news from AOL. Then, you'll hear our conversation with Giovanni Calabro of Siteworx on the mobile Web, mobile apps and how to use them (or not) for your business.

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If you would like to have your questions answered on Website Magazine Radio, please send email to mike@websitemagazine.com with "WM Radio" in the subject field.

AOL Diving into the Daily Deals Pool

Linc Wonham — Fri, 08 Oct 2010 18:24:00 GMT

While recent reports have indicated that some merchants may be tiring of the daily deals craze, the online shopping phenomenon created by Groupon remains a favorite of consumers. The hugely successful model has also spawned dozens of clone companies, and even some entries from among the Web’s most established properties.

The latest to join the fray is none other than AOL, which has announced the upcoming launch of daily deal site Wow.com. Yelp is another high-profile Web company that has recently entered the space, while another notable addition is OpenTable. Back in July, Amazon acquired daily deal site Woot for more than $100 million to establish its foothold on the rapidly developing market.

But none have enjoyed the success of Groupon, which is expected to bring in more than $350 million in just its second year of existence. Along with Groupon’s meteoric success have come some important lessons for merchants about the potential perils of poorly managed or badly suited daily deals.

It’s too early to say what kind of parameters AOL has in store for its merchant partners on Wow, but the company is actively pursuing such relationships on the new site’s homepage. For consumers, Wow will offer daily savings on dining, shopping and outings at both the local and national level.

PRWeb Distribution to AOL Money & Finance

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 15:55:00 GMT

The real value in sending press releases is in the distribution and syndication (and even more if you can embed a few keyword rich links in the copy) of content. When you've found an entity that enables you to share a message across a seemingly infinite number of outlets, you should use it reguarly.

PRWeb just announced that it has extended its press release distribution to AOL Money & Finance and the Quotes and Portfolio pages. The AOL partnership now enables those publishing press release to appear on that site, as well as within existing partner news outlets such as the Associated Press and Yahoo! News, to reach online audience of more than 70 million unique visitors in the United States alone.

"With PRWeb's rapid growth and expansion, it is becoming a key goal for our customers to get their news to the financial community," said Bill Wagner, chief marketing officer of Vocus, Inc. (Owners of PRWeb.com). "With over 15 million unique visitors each month to AOL's Money & Finance site, the partnership increases our customers' exposure in the financial community and helps generate interest among some of the top business investors and analysts."

Comscore August Search Rankings

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 19 Sep 2008 13:38:00 GMT

Is Search at a Tipping Point?

Comscore released its monthly comScore qSearch analysis of the U.S. search marketplace today. Americans conducted 11.7 billion core searches and Google extended its lead by 1.1 percentage points, to 63 percent of the searches conducted (up from 61.9 percent in July). However, the total number of searches was virtually unchanged from July.

AOL (4.3%) and ASK (4.5%) made modest gains (+0.1 and 0.3 respectively) while both Yahoo (19.6%) and Microsoft (8.3%) slipped slightly. In the comScore August 2008 extended search analysis of the top properties where search activity is observed (which includes partner searches and cross-channel searches), Google sites led with 10.2 billion searches, a 2-percent increase versus July. Yahoo! sites ranked second with 2.4 billion searches, followed by Microsoft sites with 1 billion and AOL LLC with 839 million.

AOL Acquires Bebo - Why?

Mike Phillips — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 15:36:00 GMT

Just when you thought AOL couldn't age itself any more than it already has - they go out and buy Bebo. For a whopping $850 million. They must have a lot of faith accross the pond, because nobody uses the social network in the U.S.

When NewsCorp bought MySpace in 2005 - for the low low price of $580 million - they were on the upswing in a big way. Social networking was growing at a rapid rate. It made sense. But you'd be hard pressed to find an analyst these days that doens't believe social networking has peaked. As the Web continues to grow and become more personalized, social networking is taking a back seat to micro-networking. People are looking for smaller, more intimate networks devoid of spam and unwanted requests and solicitations.

Unwanted solicitations includes advertising. And that's a big issue - remember Facebook's Beacon advertising flop? All these social networks have been able to prove over the last several years is that they can suck up large amounts of venture capital funding without finding a way to ultimately monetize these sites.

comScore has shown double-digit percentage drops in the amount of time people are spending on social networks in the last few months of 2007. Specifically, Bebo visitor's average time on the site was cut in half. And when you're not engaging visitors, you're not making money for advertisers.

But perhaps the most damning of all is this - Bebo has never been able to make so much as a dent in the armor of MySpace and Facebook. What makes them think that they will now? When social networking is on the decline - especially the large networks - it doesn't mean the guy in third place will suddenly jump in the lead. It means the guy in third place will fall the fastest.