Online Marketing Blog

Bacon’s will start to include blog content in it’s MediaSource PremiumResearch module. Journalists and PR folks use Bacon’s to post and find article opportunities. If you’re a blog marketer this is great news. From BtoBOnline.com

Search Engine Roundtable posts the most popular searches of 2004 from Google, Yahoo, Ask Jeeves, AOL and Lycos. Now we just need to add MSN.

MediaDailyNews reports that Isobar, the digital agency network of UK-based Aegis Group, is acquiring iProspect for $50 million. Wow. iProspect has 85 employees and Isobar will gain 68 clients. JupiterResearch analyst Niki Scevak says, You’ll see a lot of similar transactions next year,” he predicted, adding, “direct marketing agencies will lead the consolidation.”
DMNews is also thinking optimistically about a trend towards agency acquisitions.

I’m a HUGE Firefox fan. Without Firefox and the extensions Google Toolbar, Sage and a few others, I would not be able to post as much news in this blog and still have time to do all the things we do at TopRankResults.com. According to OneStat, Internet Explorer usage has dropped below 90% - Here’s a nice review of the situation at
Pandia

AOL plans to compete with Yahoo Mail, Microsoft’s Hotmail and Google’s Gmail with a new web based email service to be launched in 2005. From CNET News.com - More at eWeek

MSNSearch’s WebLog announced they’ve launched a Wiki to foster communications. Login required to edit, but anyone can read it. The Wiki categories range from Feature Requests to a list of sites/forums where you can find MSN participating in the search dialogue.Channel9 Wiki: MsnSearchFeedback

Larry Page And Sergey Brin are profiled in Dec 27 issue of Business Week - Larry Page And Sergey Brin: Information At Warp Speed

This is interesting! I wonder if they were acquired for the same type of numbers as MarketLeap when it was acquired by Digital Impact. There’s more of this in store in 2005 I think. FromYahoo News and Search Engine Lowdown

While the worm does not put Google users at risk, Google began blocking queries to Google that are generated by the worm after being contacted by several antivirus companies. As of Tuesday evening, about 40,000 web sites have been affected.
From Tech News on ZDNet

I noticed some recent coverage of Speegle, a talking search engine. But this was covered last month by ResearchBuzz. It’s pretty interesting and I recommend you try Speegle who claims the multi-colored logo has nothing to do with Google’s logo - right.

F-Secure noted that a new worm Santy started spreading today affecting web servers, infecting web sites running the popular phpBB discussion forum software. The worm uses uses Google search to find hosts of the forum software. From Computerworld

John Battelle’s Searchblog looks back at predictions made for the search industry in 2004 and reflects on those that were right on and a few that weren’t.

Right on: “Blog ecologies of like-minded folks will garner increasing cultural and social power.”

Not so right on: ” …at about the same time Yahoo, AOL, MSN, and Google will build or buy second-generation blog/RSS aggregation sites.”

Most were pretty good.

Here’s what John posts for 2005.