Healthy Blog Reviews

Well it looks like the “Will they renew or won’t they renew?” arc of “As Google-China Turns” is over and it has a happy ending for Google. In the past few weeks Google had backed off its hard line stance on China by not redirecting its in-country traffic to the Hong Kong site. Instead it started to offer the opportunity for Chinese visitors to go to the Hong Kong uncensored version via a link on Google China’s home page. Industry experts like Danny Sullivan wondered if that move would be enough to keep Google’s license in China. “If the Chinese government isn’t happy with them running uncensored search results out of the Hong Kong site — I don’t see why they’ll be any happier just because it becomes one click away,” Danny Sullivan, who runs the search-analysis Web site Search Engine Land, told Bloomberg News. I agreed by saying that this offering by Google seemed pretty weak. Well, one man’s weak is another company’s license I suppose. Reuters reports that all is well again between Google and China for now . Google Inc (GOOG.O) said on Friday that the Chinese authorities had renewed its license to operate a website, averting a potential shutdown of its flagship search page in the world’s biggest Internet market. Google is obviously happy with this development considering the size of the opportunity in China and the fact that it is playing a distant second fiddle to China’s own Baidu. I think Google likes a good challenge since bing and others seem to not provide it for them anywhere else. China has renewed our license,” a Google spokeswoman told Reuters. “We are very pleased that the government has renewed our ICP license and we look forward to continuing to provide web search and local products to our users in China.” So at least for today it looks like Google and China get to walk off into the sunset hand in hand while the credits roll. Also, we can all feel safe that Google will be able to continue its quest for world domination one Chinese searcher at a time. All is good with the world again.

Tags: China, chinese, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, Danny Sullivan, development, google-china, hong, internet, Search, search-engine, sunset, world
Posted July 9, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

According to MAGNAGLOBAL paid search is the leading form of online advertising, accounting for nearly 50% (actual 46.3%) of all online advertising. To Internet marketers this is not much of a surprise but it is something that many businesses still don’t grasp. The study predicts a steady path of growth in overall online advertising spend as seen in the chart below. Paid search should continue to lead the way moving in to the future. The report tells us. Paid Search has quickly become the most important component of online advertising, and in 2010 this segment will account for $29.8 billion, up by 16.5% over 2009 totals on a constant currency basis. Google remains by far the global leader in Search, although a handful of other suppliers of search advertising are dominant in certain countries. Unfortunately for Google, China and Russia – the fastest growing large markets for online advertising – pose a challenge for foreign-based search engines. Separate government actions have led to Google closing its operations in those countries. However, domestic players (Baidu and Yandex in particular) have instead become dominant. The enormous influence – and profitability – of Paid Search increases the probability of governmental involvement in many countries in the years ahead. Such actions are unlikely to constrain the medium’s growth. The caution of government intervention into this system is something that everyone should keep in the back of their mind since it can be a huge wild card as to the impact any government actions could have on the current system. How is your online advertising budget broken out? Do you have paid search as half of that spend? Is it more? Is it less? Studies like this often miss what many of the smaller players are actually doing because they are not considered in the research. While it is good to keep a finger on the pulse of these trends as a whole it is even more important to know just how they impact your business and what blend of advertising options best meet your specific business needs. Do you have thoughts to share with us? Pilgrim’s Partners: SponsoredReviews.com – Bloggers earn cash, Advertisers build buzz!

Tags: become-the-most, China, internet, mind, online, Online Advertising, other-suppliers, Research, Russia, Search, search-as-half, spend-as-seen, total-online
Posted June 17, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google has to walk an interesting line at times. It needs to keep itself at arms length from government scrutiny and activity but at the same time needs to be close enough to call on governments (as in worldwide) for assistance. That is certainly the case as Google looks to the US government and European government for help in addressing Internet censorship in China. Google’s woes in China have been well documented and it is one of the rare moments where Google appeared to walked away from a fight. What might have really happened is that they just stepped back to regroup as The Canadian Press reports: Google Inc.’s top lawyer said Wednesday that the world’s leading search engine is asking the U.S. and European governments to press China to lift Internet censorship, describing it as an unfair barrier to free trade. David Drummond told reporters that western states should defend the free trade in information with the same kind of rules that they use to complain of China’s below-cost sale of products. He said government talks are “the only way that it’s going to change, that this tide of censorship or this rising censorship is going to be arrested.” Interesting talk coming from Google but it makes sense to take this approach. Even a company like Google is probably ill equipped to handle taking on the Chinese government on such an issue. Better to let the diplomats take care of this so now Google can stay at arm’s length and not do anything that would set off an international issue. Since being attacked by Chinese hackers that were seeking the Gmail accounts of human rights activists Google has been careful in its talk around China. Since late March, Google has been redirecting search requests from mainland China to Hong Kong, which doesn’t have the same restrictions. “The cyber attack was sort of the final straw because we felt that it was increasingly hard to do business there in accordance with our values,” Drummond said, describing the company as in danger of becoming “part of the same apparatus” of Chinese state censorship. “Censorship, in addition to being a human rights problem, is a trade barrier,” he said. “If you look at what China does — the censorship, of course, is for political purposes but it is also used as a way of keeping multinational companies disadvantaged in the market.” “It should be obvious that the Internet sector is very important to the west and so we should be working on seeing that that kind of trade is protected,” he said. Apparently some support is being offered by the French, German and US governments already, but this is likely to be an ongoing issue for some time to come. If Rome wasn’t built in a day then censorship in China certainly won’t disappear quickly (if ever).

Tags: censorship, China, chinese, David Drummond, defend-the-free, european, french, german, internet, itself-at-arms, really-happened
Posted June 10, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

We have all heard of Baidu and the hold that the Chinese search engine has on one of the largest potential markets in the world. Google’s Chinese experience has probably done more to advance Baidu than Google itself. Well, it’s a big world out there with another large market opportunity for search in Russia and the former Soviet states that end in ‘stan’. Whether Google will have trouble there is yet to be seen but there are developments on the search front from that part of the world as Russian search engine Yandex announces its global launch. SearchEngineLand reports In its announcement (Russian language) , Yandex calls this an “alpha service” and the “beginning of a long journey.” In this English-language news release , the company says it’s been indexing foreign web sites and adding the content to its search engine for the past two years. Good opportunity to use Google Translate on the Russian release, huh? So what’s this mean for the rest of us? Too early to tell but apparently Yandex is doing a nice job out of the gate. I used it to do some basic searches on myself because I figured if there is information in there about me then they are going pretty deep into the web already . Honestly, the results were pretty decent as compared to the results I am accustomed to from the big three (Google, Yahoo, bing). Several people have chimed in saying that this engine has some age on it and is a serious player, which is taking on Google and gaining market share. Others give kudos to relatively spam free results for some high spam keywords that, you can guess, are the ‘gold standard’ of spam phrases (Viagra). Of course depending on the products you sell and whether Russia and its cousins are viable markets for your products will play a role in just how much this news impacts anyone. While Russia doesn’t appear to have the same censorship concerns that China does it will be interesting to watch as the battle between Google and engines like Yandex heats up for supremacy in another large global market. Any time an American company does business elsewhere in the world (essentially outside of English language cultures) there is always some backlash that must be dealt with over time. Any ideas on what the potential speed bumps and roadblocks could be in the race Russian search market share?

Tags: baidu, China, products, race, Search, whether-google, world, Yahoo
Posted May 20, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media

Google’s already made big waves in the international arena this year by deciding to pull out of China after too many censorship demands and a cyber attack targeting human rights activitists’ email accounts . Although they’re now redirecting google.cn to google.co.hk, Google says that the situation “ seems to be stable ” now. CEO Eric Schmidt spoke at the annual shareholder meeting this week. MarketWatch reports that Schmidt said their engineers and sales forces remain in place in China. However, Schmidt recognized that the status quo could always change: “should the Chinese government become upset with us,” they could always block access to the Hong Kong version of the site. BusinessWeek reports that Google will continue to sell ads within China. However, overall, the move has hurt Google in China, it seems: After Google said it might exit China, the company lost ground to rival Baidu Inc. Google’s share of the Internet search market in China fell to 30.9 percent in the first quarter from 35.6 percent three months earlier, according to Analysys International. Baidu’s market share rose to 64 percent from 58.4 percent, the Beijing-based researcher said. Meanwhile, Baidu split its stock 10 to 1 this week, and saw a major surge. A few weeks ago, Baidu reported that its profits had doubled since January, when Google made the announcement that it would be leaving China. What do you think? Will Google be able to rebound in China?

Tags: announcement, baidu, China, chinese, cloud-computing, cloud-hosting, engineers, international, internet, legal, schmidt, week
Posted May 14, 2010 by cgseo under Social Media