Some interesting stats and facts have come to light this month – in this instance concerning the rise and rise of m-commerce. In a report conducted by Tamar (UK Based Research) suggest that 19% of consumers will do their festive shopping via a mobile handset in 2010. I’d hazard a guess that there are also a huge number of individuals that will conduct their primary research on a mobile but might leave the “last mile” to be concluded elsewhere for a variety of reasons (some set out below). Tesco in the UK expect 10% of their sales will come through

An interesting digging match is ongoing in London over the use of trademarks and Google adwords. The case was taken by Interflora against M&S over their used of the trademark name “Interflora” as a keyword in their adwords campaign (CPC of the keyword is €0.63 here). The case even dragged Google in with Interflora looking to hit them in the suit as well. However the ruling stated that Google simply facilitated third parties and did not mean that Google itself was using the mark. The court ruled that a third party could be liable ‘in the case where the ad

The Sunday Business Post ran adverts for Sherry FitzGerald last Sunday where the adverts carried QR codes. The codes, once read in an appropriate reader on a Smartphone, will link the advert to the sherry FitzGerald website. And fair enough, it’s a bit of innovation in an arena that slow to innovate. A follow-up article this week gave the impression that this was somewhat ‘cutting edge’. Whilst Sherry may have been the first to use the QR code in an advert, its far from cutting edge. Similarly, there was a story in the Irish Times in April extolling the virtues

EuroStat, the research body for Europe, published some interesting comparative figures in late September, which I finally get to comment on (not that the boffins in the EU are holding their breaths waiting for my comments!). The survey was conducted in the EU 27 countries and a further four countries to cover a ‘euro zone’. The questions are fairly basic but at least we are able to draw a competitive between ourselves and the rest of this Eurozone. Looking at the stats it has to be remembered that there are massive regional differences. Some countries adopted to the Internet much

Further to the post yesterday and whilst I am waiting for some updates, I decided a look over the pond might be in order. If we thought that our market was competitive for car insurance, then the UK would take your breath. Flick through any of the Golds or Paramount channels and you will see an array of direct and comparison sites for Car insurance vying for eyeballs. Anyway, I did the same as yesterday and took the top sites currently appearing in Google.co.uk to see where they would end up, if and only if, the Caffeine formula was applied

With Google testing its current beta search engine “Caffeine” its worth having a look at one incredibly competitive market – Car Insurance. It’s interesting to see how the different companies square up to each other now – and how, under the proposed changes of Caffeine, will the rank thereafter. It should be noted that this search engine is very much in development and that the results should, like the engine, the treated as beta. There are no guarantees that after the new formula has been adopted the results here will be the same. As people comment on the results Google

As a small update on the new sandbox – I have been running this in the background this morning to give a better picture of what Google suggests will be the search rank of ‘Dublin hotels’ if the sandbox formula was inherited. The list shows that at the top the changes are, in the main, minor – but only in comparison to some of the violent swings seen in the outer reaches. The real points are that some sites have disappeared completely from the top fifty and others have shot to fame. Take The Hilton website, it doesn’t currently exist

Google have, seemingly, been working feverously in the background for the last few months on a ‘few modifications’ to its search engine which they have made available. These search results modifications are currently in a beta and can be viewed here. The explination as to the changes can be viewed here. They have made alterations to the way in which some sites will rank in their “new modified search engine results”. And they quote that: The new infrastructure sits “under the hood” of Google’s search engine, which means that most users won’t notice a difference in search results Won’t notice

If you’ve been away, and I mean somewhere completely devoid of communications, then you missed the ‘crises’ in the car industry. New car sales have hit rock bottom and its been the worst year in recent times. In January alone new car sales were about 35% of the previous year’s level of sales. So, if the new car business wasn’t moving, there was (or is a growing) demand for second hand cars and seemingly an even bigger demand for cars within certain emissions categories which have the effect of reducing your overall running costs as well as the car tax.

At one point yesterday, about lunchtime, I got a massive attack of boredom… So I decided to see what the policy of Tender Me was either conservative or “publish and be dammed” It’s the latter, well it was momentarily. The ad removed not too long after posting.

The words “Starbucks” and “coupons” would have to be predicated with the adage “once bitten..”. The reasons for this are legend and well documented. However it’s good to see that they seemed to have learned their lesson and, in a recent promotion, they teamed up with Facebook to offer their customers a chance to sample one of a range of new ice-creams. Facebook users simply (a little over exaggeration) used a widget to claim one pint of ice cream. The widget allowed them to download a coupon delivered through Coupons.com. This coupon is then redeemed at the counter of your

I have a real issue with Twitter in the respect that it’s hyped as ‘the next big thing’. This ‘other’ next big thing is without a sustainable (or any) business model, cash or purpose, bar celebrity voyeurism. This week has shown the application to be multi faceted. On one hand the world was kept abreast of activities in Iraq through the site. On the other, we had femme fatales spewing more bile about each other via the site too: Whilst its ability to inform the world in real time has to be applauded, I feel that it is increasingly becoming

Here are some basic steps in trying to optimise your blog posts to be crawled and indexed by search engines and also how to ‘sell’ your posts when they are seen in search results. When you write a post, the two main ostensible factors are the post’s title (or headline) and the body copy of the post. Left to their own devices, these two elements would automatically deliver information about your post/blog to the search engines. This raw information may not be the information would prefer to be the public face of your blog so you are afforded plenty of

In 2006 there was an unfortunate incident in AOL when they spilled the results of 20m search queries on to the Net – by mistake naturally. Its showed the search queries of AOL clients during March 2006. The searches are an insight into the minds, individually and collectively, of searchers. The data is still available online and you can query the 20m terms at www.aolstalker.com. Key in a search term and you will be given the id numbers of the people who broad searched that term. Click on their ID and you will be given his/her full search history that

With a little inspiration from Hitwise, I had a look at quick look at the trends for large Polish websites in Google trends, but searches from Irish IP addresses. As you would expect, this trend has a southward feel to it as many return home again.  The largest of these sites being visited form Ireland was www.nasza-klasa.pl, the largest polish social networking site, keeping you in touch with friends both home and abroad. From a high of 20k daily visitors in July 2008 to half that now it really shows the rate of decline the speed at which people decided

Nice to see some updates on the electronic side of some of the media with Independent Digital giving stats for their properties for March 2009. In the chart the blue line is independent.ie and the red are, collectively, the other sites. The average for the month was 113,256 the newspaper site and 26,800 for the others combined. I would point out that the figure for March 7th look a little spurious, but it’s the one published in the report. The spike on March 23rd can be put down to primarily to a sporting weekend of the Grand Slam and the

Here’s a really good example of merging mediums, there are plenty, but I liked this one for its simplicity and a small bit of ‘wonder would that happen here?’ A Taco chain in Florida Taco Maker reported a 21% increase in Q1 sales, crediting a promotion it ran between radio advertising and mobile handsets for the increase. I don’t think there are many companies that can boast a 21% increase in sales, let alone double digit in Q1. They developed a new character called Juan Maker, and Mexican-American character that made radio appearances to chat about his freebies. These were

Personally, I think that, for many companies, it junk – pure and simple. Companies investing time, effort and presumably money to put up 140 characters at a time of absolute inane rubbish. Where’s the ROI – how is this being measured and, more importantly, why are you doing it? Someone told one of the big chiefs that it’s the ‘next big thing’ and so someone else dived on it. I could spend a lot of time on this – but I don’t have it handy – so I will have to accept the fact that companies are going to participate