Such musing is a way to introduce some new stats from internet monitoring and analyst firm Pingdom on how the internet has exploded in growth since the beginning of this century, in just ten years. If the 1990s were the time of embryonic development, experimentation and no way ready for a global mass market, then the 2000s – especially since 2005 – were the time for the start of enabling a mass market to develop around the world that enables people anywhere with a connection to the internet to do amazing things.

In the words of Pingdom:

Here is how much the Internet has grown since the year 2000.

There were only 361 million Internet users in 2000, in the entire world. For perspective, that’s barely two-thirds of the size of Facebook today.

The chart really says it all. There are more than five times as many Internet users now as there were in 2000. And as has been noted elsewhere, the number of Internet users in the world is now close to passing two billion and may do so before the end of this year.

The Internet hasn’t just become larger, it’s also become more spread out, more global.

1. In 2000, the top 10 countries accounted for 73% of all Internet users.
2. In 2010, that number has decreased to 60%.

This becomes evident when viewing the distribution of Internet users for the top 50 countries in 2000 and in 2010. Note how much “thicker” the tail of the 2010 graph is.

That’s one heck of a 5″>long tail.

Read Pingdom’s post for more detail including comparing top countries then and now, and how internet use in Nigeria has grown by a whopping 21,891 per cent. Must be all that email traffic with offers of “Cheap Viagra®” (have you noticed how those emails always include the registered trademark symbol?) and “genuine fake Rolex” that we all get.

In any case, it really is amazing to see the extent to which the internet has become an essential tool for connecting people around the world in such a short time. Pingdom bases its analysis largely on data from Internet World Stats, itself a very useful information source.

I wonder what 2020 will look like. That’s only ten short years way.

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The new update, though has raised doubts about, how it will impact the page traffic to a Website. However, responding to all speculations, Google has assured that the latest update will have no significant impact on the ranking of search results. Google also added that the new feature will not change the way ads are served but now they will be displayed as per the “predicted query.”

What Benefits Does Google Instant Gives:

• Fast Search Results: Google Instant, by predicting the search query shows relevant results, even before the user finishes typing. It has the ability to save up to 2-5 seconds per search.
• Smart Predictions: The user sometimes might not be sure, what to type in the search box to get the desired result. Google Instant guides the user with better search predictions.

Its Impact On Ad Impressions On Google Instant, ad impressions are counted only when:

• A user starts to type a query in the search box and clicks on any part of the page – a search result, an ad, a spell correction or a related search.
• A user selects to click on a particular search result or selects one of the predicted search queries.
• If a user stops typing further and the search results stay on the page for minimum 3 seconds.

Google said that with Google Instant, advertisers might find their impression levels to increase or decrease depending on the predicted queries. However, it has the potential to improve the quality of clicks as because, users type such terms, that they believe would give them the desired answers. This may lead to improvement in the overall campaign performance.

Its Impact On Long Tailed Keywords

Google Instant is surely going to give a boost to long-tailed specific keywords. With it, the user will keep on typing until the desired results are not displayed. This will help in better conversions unlike before.

Its Impact On User Experience

A former Product Manager for search quality with Google, Avichal Garg, points that “It will have a tremendous impact.” According to him, the effect of Google Instant on SEO and search performance, will be defined according to the user experience rather than ranking algorithms now. He also, predicted that users’ click patterns, page scanning behavior and query construction patterns will see a major change with the emergence of Google Instant.

“If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.” With over a billion searches a day and over a billion users searching each week, that adds up to 350 million hours of user time saved a year” said Google’s Matt Cutts

Google Instant has been launched for users in US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Russia who use the following browsers: Chrome v5/6, Firefox v3, Safari v5 for Mac and Internet Explorer v8. In the coming weeks and months, Google has plans to make changes on it, in order to cater to different geographic locations and platforms. Google also said that, it is planning to make it available on mobile quite soon.

These improvements to Google will certainly manage to change the way how people do their search. What only remains to be seen is how good or bad, it will be for ad impressions.

The Google Instant can be enabled with this URLComments

Well in the book you will find all kind of knowledge and the guidelines regarding the writing styles that are prevailing in the present day world and are usually adopted by big online content writers. From the content page, it is understood that the book is all about the basic standards of writing styles and guidelines used in for web.

In the book, yahoo has recommended some points about SEO (Search Engine Optimization). They have stressed on the importance of keyword research in order to know the volume of the traffic on the web and with regard to this, they have advised :

• “Search engines, to understand what the subject of a page is, look for keywords throughout that page, including at the top (the introduction) and the bottom (the conclusion). But don’t just shove keywords into the top or the bottom of your page distribute them evenly throughout.”
• “To a search engine, good writing means using variations of your keywords, including those with different endings.”
• “Like a muffin with the right amount of blueberries, it [the page] should have juicy keywords distributed evenly throughout, but not so many that they overwhelm the whole.”
• “Strategically seed your copy with keywords”

Despite having so many features, experts have said that the book contains no such feature that could make it distinguished or unique in itself. Because there number of books and manuals available that have proved better in the past times and are followed even today. So to what extent,Yahoo’s style guide would serve the needy people is still uncertain.

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An emailed sales pitch from a sales rep from Quattro (a mobile ad network recently purchased by Apple) obtained by TechCrunch refers to a “new program launching this month called ViP (Verification of iTunes Purchase)”. The programs ties iPhone and iPad ads in apps directly to your purchasing data from iTunes where than can learn, among other things, the conversion rate of ad impressions to downloads via a “proprietary direct link from the ad to App Store”.

Using personal data to refine how ads are delivered is not new, and right now iAds VIP is designed to help developers sell more apps. But any ad program that offers “a proprietary direct link” direct to your iTune’s purchase data has huge implications for both fans and music marketers.

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The North American search engine marketing industry is expected to reach $16.6 billion by the end of the year. This will represent growth of over 13% from 2009 – which was about $14.6 billion.

And there’s no prizes for guessing who the dominant search engine is. Google of course, and by quite a significant margin.

Image Courtesy – Search Engine Land 2010

According to the 1500 agencies and marketers surveyed, 97% currently advertising on Google (71% in Google’s search network) – with only 50% using Yahoo! and 44% advertising on Bing.

SEO vs PPC?

It seems the proportion of businesses who include SEO in the marketing mix has remained relatively unchanged at 90% (which reinforces the perceived value of SEO in the search marketing mix) – but PPC has continued to grow – reaching 81%.

And in the coming year – budgets are on the increase across the board. SEO expenditure is set to grow 43% and PPC will increase by 37%.

Social Media

It seems that while Social media usage and marketing appears to be on the increase – it hasn’t been reflected in budgets up to this point – with 23% saying the social media marketing budget was zero.

But 2010 will see this change. 59% of respondents are set to increase their social media marketing budgets – and for many – that will mean their first formal investment in the space.

All in all – it’s encouraging to see how consistently search engine marketing performed over the global crisis and how it looks to be bouncing back even further as industry confidence grows.

I would hasten to say that traditional media and marketing reports are significantly less optimistic.

What’s your plans for 2010?

• Will you be increasing or decreasing SEO and/or PPC spend?
• What about Social media? Do you already invest in SMM or do you plan to?

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What about paywalls on the local level though? How will more localized papers fare when it comes to asking people who do not subscribe to the publication to pay to see the content online? If the results at New York Newsday are any indication its not a pretty picture.
Crain’s New York Business tells us just how bad it is

Here is one paid model for online journalism that isn’t exactly setting the world on fire: Nearly three months after Newsday put its Web site behind a pay wall, Newsday.com has attracted only 35 subscribers.

In addition, traffic to the Long Island daily’s site has dropped by half, according to Nielsen.

Newsday is the local paper for all of Long Island and a good portion of the NYC borough of Queens. Not exactly a small place. In other words, if there are this many people in the area and there are only 35 of them in three months willing to fork out a few bucks a week to access the information online this has to be viewed as a failure. Here’s what readers who do not subscribe elsewhere see when they try to get information from the website

To be fair it’s not like only 35 people read the online content for the paper since the content is literally available to a large portion of the population.

Newsday.com can be accessed free by the paper’s home subscribers, as well as by Cablevision customers and subscribers to the cable operator’s Optimum Online broadband service.

According to the paper, that means about 75% of Long Island households just have to register to have access. Anyone else who wants to read the paper online has to pay $5 per week.

Still, the number of online subscribers shocked members of Newsday’s union—Local 406 of the Graphic Communications Conference of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters—which is in a bitter fight with the paper’s management over a proposed contract offer that would cut pay by 10%.

What this outcome may be telling the industry is that paywalls may very well limit the reach of your publication. Long Island is of particular interest considering just how many people have relocated from the area to parts all around the country. Now, if these people want to keep up with current events from ‘home’ they would have to pay and it looks like those folks are saying to Newsday “Forgetta about it!”.

So if this tactic isn’t working to generate more revenue what is the point of doing it? Maybe Newsday doesn’t want to be one of the first major local newspapers to try this and then be one of the first to drop it all in the span of a few short months.

Whatever the reasons this experiment looks to be a huge bust thus far. Not exactly the success story you parade out to other publications considering the same tactic. So what do you think? Will local publications be able to enact a paywall and have success or is this just a desperate move by an industry that decided to change as a means of survival rather than doing it as part of their ongoing business plan to move into the future?

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As we talk about often it’s not even that Google is on top anymore. That’s a given. In fact, its dominance is what makes the uninformed cry monopoly. Once again market dominance doesn’t mean it’s the only game in town. People just like it better and use it more.

What is interesting is the drop in share of the next three biggest players. Google is up one percent but all three of the others are down 4%. There is no search ‘cannibalism” going on here where they are feeding off each other. Are people looking for other search options other than Yahoo, bing and Ask that are not named Google?

While this is always interesting it is certainly getting a bit mundane. I would love to see true competition for Google if only to stop the silly talk about Google’s dominance restricting others’ opportunity. I just don’t see it happening. Do you?

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You know the one. They play it a lot at NC State football games?

C’mon, you know it. “Boom, here comes the boom….”

No?

Forget it! I’ll Google it instead!

Yes, that’s it!

And, pretty soon, you’ll never have problems finding a song, artist, or album again–thanks to a new “Discover Music” onebox from Google.

Maybe you remember only the chorus — or maybe you remember who sang it, but you forgot the exact name of the song. If you’ve ever heard a catchy song in a car or cafe, but just can’t figure out the name of the song, you’ll know what I’m talking about. This search feature also helps you find many of those songs by entering a search containing a line or two of lyrics.

Cool, huh? Google has partnered with MySpace and Lala to source the results and Pandora, imeem, and Rhapsody are standing by to help you discover music related to your query. Not only does the Onebox show the result, but you can click the play button to activate the pop-up–and play the song!

**Time out! Google is allowing pop-ups now? That’s the topic for a another blog post!**

If you’re not seeing the results yet, Google has launched a music search site you can try out.

The only thing missing? Maybe a partnership with Shazam, so I can play music to Google and have it recognize it–without me knowing anything about the song. That would be cool!

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