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In-depth analysis and expert insight intoWhich Sites Dominate Search Rankings?
SpyFu has some amazing stats on which sites most frequently show up in top Google rankings. The usual suspects are well-represented: Amazon owns product searches, Wikipedia owns proper nouns, and a smattering of other obvious sites own various common query categories. Interestingly, Amazon is trending upwards: whether this is due to…
Why do Car Comparison Sites Have So Much Pricing Power?
Digiday notes that car comparison sites are price setters, unlike nearly everyone else in the online ad world. This seems counterintuitive, especially since it doesn’t apply to sites one level downstream (e.g. eBay Motors) or one level upstream (like auto blogs).
Turntable.fm Signs Record Deals…
Google Updates SEOmoz analyzes how Google handles local results. In most cases, Google puts Places results ahead of local organic results, but generally behind at least a few national results. This is something worth tracking over time, though; Google has shifted their local-versus-national and Google-owned-versus-web leanings several times in the past. Google is truncating results…
Facebook’s S-1 was a disappointment. Not that the company isn’t impressive—far from it—but the S-1 mostly reveals that Facebook has already been a de facto public company for at least a year or two.
The revenue and net profit numbers we’re seeing are in line with existing estimates, the engagement numbers are largely trending in the…
Is Online Advertising Just Good for Direct Response?
Seth Godin notes that easily-analyzed, numbers-driven direct response ads are the dominant form of online ads, which has some negative side effects. But a Vizu survey indicates that advertisers will spend more online dollars on branding than direct response in the coming year.
What gives? First, there’s sampling: Vizu…
How Search Engines Decide Whom to Trust
Bill Slawski does the usual patent deep-dive, evaluating how Google decides which writers to trust. As Google moves from domain trust to author trust, this will hurt the dwindling number of online media companies that rely on cheap, mass-produced content. (One surprising side effect: this will make…
Digital Due Diligence Weekly