Author Archives: Nadir Garouche

Google’s Market Share In France Close To 90%

A few years ago, Altavista was the leading search engine in France. Immediately after Google launched its search engine there, people left Altavista to try this new and simple search engine, and didn’t turn back. Altavista was indeed becoming full of spammy pages and people were just annoyed with that.

A study made by French agency Xiti shows that Google’s market share is now close to 90% in this country, followed by Yahoo, MSN, Free etc whose market share has been going down for the last few years.

I don’t know what we should say about these figures? Should we be scared or happy?

Peggy Anne Salz No Longer at MoConews, Now Dedicates Herself to MSearchGroove Only

In my last post I pointed out that Peggy Anne Salz, a long-time blogger at MoCoNews who wrote some of the better analysis on the site, had launched her own site covering mobile search and content discovery.

This week I see she’s no longer listed at MoCoNews, so it appears she has decided to dedicate herself full-time to Msearchgroove.com . If you want to read the news coverage and insight that made her a voice in the mobile content space, then I suggest you check it out.

How Vodafone and Novarra Killed Mobile Commerce

After the chaos caused by Vodafone UK Live’s new Internet platforms and Services, Vodafone may be regretting choosing Novarra, the company behind their mobile optimising technology.

The new mobile Internet experience on Vodafone UK consists of a transcoding solution that automatically reformats websites so they can display properly on handheld devices.

While this technology is great for mobile users who want to access to virtually any website, as they would do from their desktop browser, it is totally ruining mobile content provider’s income, but also Vodafone’s own revenue sharing income. Basically, Vodafone shot itself in the foot.

In fact, anytime you want to access to a site from Vodafone Live’s portal, whether through Google, or through their embedded virtual browser, Novarra will download the requested site, reformats it, and display it in your browser. Novarra will do so even if the requested site is a mobile/WAP site, or a site perfectly suited to display content on mobile devices.

The problem is that when downloading the requested website, Novarra will mask the visitor’s User Agent, so mCommerce sites that rely on user agents to display their content will not have a correct transcoded page.

For example, if a Vodafone UK customer is using Google to search for ringtones, if he clicks on either the natural search or paid listing of a mobile ringtone Wap site, he will land on a transcoded page displaying a message saying “sorry, there’s no content for your phone”.

At this time, this technology is causing LOTS of mobile content providers in the UK to lose sales, and the mobile consumer experience is very disappointing.

It is possible to stop this transcoding thanks to Bango, a mCommerce platform, by registering your site to get it whitelisted. Due to the large number of whitelistings, only a few mobile sites have been whitelisted so far. But this is just a temporary workaround.

Novarra must make sure that mobile sites aren’t transcoded. Google itself is unhappy by the fact that Novarra is transcoding their mobile AdWords customers’s sites.

I’ve been informed by someone at Vodafone UK that they’re doing their best to quickly fix this major issue, let’s see what happens, hoping that this wrong strategy will serve as an example to other carriers.

I’ve also contacted Novarra directly but they didn’t get back to me yet.

Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, by Avinash Kaushik

Avinash Kaushik is probably the best web analytics consultant in the world. His blog provides useful tips and pedagogical case studies to help webmasters and marketers fine tune their web analytics strategy.

Avinash recently published a 480 page book about web analytics called Web Analytics: An Hour A Day, which I immediately ordered on Amazon.

If you’re looking to buy a book to learn or improve your knowledge about web analytics, don’t look further, this book is definitely what you need. And with a price of only $19, there’s no reason for you to hesitate.
Also note that 100% of the proceeds will be donated to two charities: The Smile Train and Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders).

MSearchGroove: New Site about Mobile Search and Mobile Content Discovery

MSEARCHGROOVE.com is the newest venture from Peggy Anne Salz, author of the industry’s first comprehensive (220+ pages) report on mobile search and content discovery. Living up to its strapline: “At the intersection of content and context”, Peggy’s site – formally launched in May – is fast becoming the industry’s premiere thinking space to discuss and debate mobile search, personalization, recommendation, targeted mobile advertising, and social networking.

The site also features primary research, analysis, interviews, and podcasts showcasing the companies and technologies just
coming out of stealth mode to have a profound impact on the industry.

Be sure to check out their great article about Google on Vodafone Live! Netherlands, the first Vodafone portal in Europe to unveil this search engine.

Vodafone To Add Google In More European Portals

Last year, Vodafone signed a deal with Google to insert its services into the carriers portals. The nature of the deal wasn’t very clear until recently.

Some EU portals will progressively add a Google search box right on the top of their homepage. The first one is Vodafone Netherlands, which launched Google search within their Vodafone live! portal on May 21. The search engine allows users to search within Google’s traditional web index (and see transcoded web pages) but also within their mobile search index.

Of course, Google will insert sponsored ads within the results, and I heard that this is how Vodafone will make money.

Some reliable sources told me that Google will soon be added in more Vodafone portals, such as the UK, France, Germany and Spain.

Microsoft Acquires Mobile Ad Company Screentonic

It’s better late than never, Microsoft has decided to purchase Screentonic, a french mobile advertising company.

It’s the second french company that Microsoft adds to its mobile division, the first one was MotionBridge, a mobile search company which has been acquired last year.

Microsoft now catches up with Google and Yahoo, which are already providing mobile advertising offers such as click-to-call or pay-per-click advertising.