Vietnamese search service launched mobile search recently with focus on BlackBerry user experience. BlackBerry users could have some problems reading Vietnamese fonts and m.xalo.vn can correct. Xalo is trying to build its advantage in local language against incumbent Big Google.

Technorati Tags: Google, Xalo

Indian social networking service BigAdda faces big problem of traffic from search engine Google these days since its organic result from the Big G when entering BigAdda into the search box returned the bad results with top from bigadda.in (humor site).
There is no PageRank for BigAdda.com also. Who can save BigAdda now?

Technorati Tags: BigAdda, Google, PageRank

Baidu released a list of hottest search keywords for 2008:

1 QQ
2 Mp3
3 Novel
4 Movie
5 Game
6 Xunlei
7 NBA
8 Handset
9 Music
10 Kart Rider

While Google China’s most popular search keywords for 2008 are:

1 Sina
2 NetEase
3 Taobao
4 Youku
5 Tudou
6 QQ
7 Sohu
8 Xunlei
9 UUsee
10 NBA

Technorati Tags: Baidu, China, Google

Baidu (Nasdaq: BIDU) plans to officially release its right-side advertising system, “Phoenix Nest,” in the second quarter of 2009, reports qq.com citing sources. September reports said the new system, similar to Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) AdWords, would be released soon, but Baidu has yet to announce a release date. The report said Baidu planned to spend three years developing the new product, but has speeded the release in response to recent press.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Baidu, Google

In the world of search service with big names such as Google, Yahoo, MSN … there are some vertical search: Truveo for video, SimplyHired and Recruit.net for job. Another way to go is visual search by Like.com (just raised $32M Series C)
Now came the Modista that “simplifies online shopping by searching inventories across multiple retailers and displaying results in an intuitive interface. Our patent-pending technology organizes items according to their visual similarity using digital image processing and machine learning algorithms.”
Modista’s UI seems fit female users while Like.com is better for savvy searchers.
Let’s see how Modista team develop their product in the coming time.

Technorati Tags: Google, Like, Modista, MSN, Yahoo

After Overture and Google revolutionized the contextual text link ads on Internet, many startups now trying to use the technology to automate display ads based on some algorithms. There are three companies claimed to build these tools for advertising industry.

Adisn’s approach has been to build a database of related words so it can assess the content of a Web site or blog based on the words on its pages. Adisn then buys space on Web sites, and uses its information to find an appropriate ad to show visitors to those sites. If a visitor views pages about beaches, weather and Hawaii, it might suggest that the visitor is interested in Hawaiian travel. Based on that analysis, Adisn’s system pulls different components — actors, fonts, background images — to make an ad.

Tumri’s approach is slightly different. It creates a template for ads, including slots for the message, the color, the image and other elements. Unlike Adisn, it does not buy ad space, but lets clients — like Sears and Best Buy — choose and buy space on sites themselves. And rather than building a contextual database like Adisn, Tumri uses whatever targeting approach advertisers are already using, whether it is behavioral or contextual or demographic, and assembles an ad on the fly based on that information.

Advertising simplified. “One click” does it all with iPromote.
Gone are the days of needing huge budgets and creative teams to run successful promotional campaigns on the web. With iPromote, you can promote your webpage across hundreds of premium web destinations using beautiful rich-media display ads, all with the simple click of a button!

Technorati Tags: Google, Overture

China’s leading search engine Baidu stock fell sharply after the bad news of its sales practice. Some medical product companies can pay Baidu to get a high ranking in the search engine results.
It might be the pressure from Wall Street as a public company to maintain revenue growth. But in the long run, the action should destroy its brand image. And who could benefit from the error: Google, Yahoo.
Google had passed Overture in PPC advertising by not accepting paid inclusion and now the chance showed up to Google again in China.
For an emerging market such as Vietnam (behind China online market 3 to 5 years?) while Google is an incumbent search service, the chance for local search players is at niche market like video, music, local search. But be prepared not to burn yourself with some “pretty money” from clients. Put users experience first and your services would win the heart and mind of clients too.

Technorati Tags: Baidu, China, Google

Google just released the Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide that covers many areas that webmasters might consider to optimize their websites. Again Google insisted on fresh and unique content maintenance.

“Creating compelling and useful content will likely influence your website more than any of the other factors discussed here. Users know good content when they see it and will likely want to direct other users to it. This could be through blog posts, social media services, email, forums, or other means. Organic or word-of-mouth buzz is what helps build your site’s reputation with both users and Google, and it rarely comes without quality content.”

Download the guide in pdf at Google Guide.

Technorati Tags: Google

The Google DevFest in Vietnam will be similar with Google giving introductions their APIs like the OpenSocial and App Engine APIs among others, and Social Network giants Friendster and Hi5 talking about their platforms too.

Venue: HCM University of Technology, A5 Building
Date: 4 November 2008, Tuesday
Time: 1pm to 10pm

What’s more, we will be having 5 Google Engineers coming all the way from Mountain View to join in the DevFest and to provide assistance to the developers. Grab this chance to mingle with them!

Here are the short profiles of the Google Engineers coming down:

Jason Costa
Jason has been a Technical Programs Manager at Google since 2005. He’s worked on several products at the company, including Google Analytics, the Google Checkout API, and OpenSocial. Jason likes to help developers find innovative solutions to complex problems, and believes in APIs & the open web. He graduated with a degree in CS from USC, and is currently working from the Google China office in Beijing.

Patrick Chanezon (blog)
Patrick has been a Developer Advocate at Google since 2005. He has built and grown developer ecosystems for OpenSocial, Checkout and AdWords. Previously he has worked on portals, blogs and syndication feeds at Sun Microsystems, AOL and Netscape. He’s the co-founder of the ROME - Atom and RSS utilities in java open source project and the OSSGTP (Open Source Get Together Paris) group.

Pamela Fox
Pamela is the Developer Programs Engineer for the Google Maps API. She graduated from USC with her CS masters, where she helped grow the video games department and dabbled in the 3d animation and linguistics departments. She enjoys helping developers innovate with the Maps API and combine it with many of Google’s other amazing APIs.

Conway Chen
Conway has been at Google since 2005 and is a member of New Business Development. Working together with product, engineering and management teams, he has helped introduce and foster a number of new product initiatives and is currently focused on doing the same within the Greater China and SE Asia region. Prior to his time working in business development, Conway was an attorney focusing on venture capital and private company representation at a leading Silicon Valley law firm.

Bruno Rovagnati - Globant
Bruno is a social networks guru at Globant as well as an expert on cloud computing. He joins us all live all the way from Buenos Aires, Argentina! Bruno has worked extensively with the Google Checkout API, and is an active contributor to Shindig - an open-source reference implementation of the OpenSocial spec. Bruno graduated from Instituto Tecnológico de Buenos Aires.

Technorati Tags: Google, Google Maps, OpenSocial

When we tried to check the results of a keyword “máy tính” (computer) on Google.com.vn, the sponsored links showed a URL of the leading chip maker Intel.com.vn but the landing page lead to a local computer makers. VTB is a local electronics assembler known for its subprime TV sets. By adding to the Display URL in Google AdWords dashboard, they tried to make Internet searchers think of Intel association so that the click through rate could be higher. However if VTB did not have a special partnership relationship with Intel the action could destroy its image and PR endeavor and potential customers might dislike. Conversion rate is much more important than pure click through.
Click the image to enlarge.

Technorati Tags: AdWords, Click-through rate, conversion, Google