Friday, November 10th, 2006
Industry News
Yorkshire Forward have launched a revolutionary online portal designed to give youngsters as young as 14 support in setting up their own business. Spreadlikewildfire.org is an online resource which provides those with a business idea everything from access to mentors, including the founder of Coffee Republic, to a creating a business homepage through the site. After completing the process, they will be provided with a business plan, suitable for showing to potential investors. They are also guided around Business Link, the mainstream resource for entrepreneurs.
Alex McWhirter, head of enterprise at Yorkshire Forward, said: “A
growing number of young people are thinking about starting their own
business. Most never get the chance to experiment with their ideas
because they do not have easy access to people who will encourage and
support them.
“The Wildfire website is a hub for young people in which they can
develop business ideas within a few minutes of landing on the site. The
really exciting part of the website is that youngsters can get actual
feedback and learn from the experiences of people who have established
their own business.â€
Monday, November 6th, 2006
PPC
There’s a search engine that’s been quietly gaining market share over the past few months. But it’s not an entirely new player. In fact, it’s an relatively old site, which has been dramatically redesigned, with a number of new bells and whistles added.
Ask.com, previously AskJeeves.com, is keen to remind people that not only are they still around, but that they could be the success story of 2007. An in-depth article on CNet.com revealed that they have been chosen by Lycos to replace Microsoft as their Natural Search engine and replace Google as their sponsored listings provider. So where has this come from?
New features, such as a zoom option to expand or narrow a search, and binoculars to see a preview of the sites next to the search results, has won acclaim from experts and led it to be identified as the second fastest growing search engine in the US (Google making the number one spot). Another reason for their growing success has been attributed to their advertising strategy - in essence, they’ve reduced the number. An executive at the company reasons that although this has led to a drop in advertising revenue, more people have returned to the site, which long term has increased revenue. They are well aware of the fact that the biggest challenge they face is to convince people to change their search engine allegiance, which is going to take more than a few user interface tweaks.
[Via Cnet]
Tuesday, October 31st, 2006
Google Adwords
Last week, Google posted on their blog about their brand, and, as they saw it, the bastardisation of their years of hard work. They are, apparently, sick to the back teeth of people saying ‘I Googled X’ when in actual fact they used a competitive search engine.
To turn what could be perceived as a slightly irritating post on their part, they added some ‘helpful examples’ of where they would allow us to use their name, and where it would be entirely inappropriate. For example, the following:
"Usage: ‘Google’ as verb referring to searching for information via any conduit other than Google.
Example: "I googled him on Yahoo and he seems pretty interesting."
Our lawyers say:
Bad. Very, very bad. You can only "Google" on the Google search engine.
If you absolutely must use one of our competitors, please feel free to
"search" on Yahoo or any other search engine."
Interestingly, Google don’t allow for comments on their blogs. Perhaps because they could predict the backlash they might provoke? But it does present a conundrum – is it a good or a bad thing when your brand becomes synonymous with the action they promote? It seems the general answer from the blogosphere is that this is no more a sign than Google getting too big for its boots – such as the post here.
Sunday, October 29th, 2006
Google Adwords
As we know, Google are big fans of experimenting. This is admirable (even if it does seem that many of the products never leave their initial beta testing) and this week has seen another such product, doing what they do best: search engines.
Google Co-op is a search engine that you can build yourself, based on your own particular interests and passions. You can they use it to add to your blog or site. For instance, some of the sites created so far have been on Global warming, wine, gadgets – all manner of different areas on interest. It’s simple to create and Google are keen to get everyone involved (as long as they’re got the essential Google account).
Once you’ve chosen your name for your search engine, the description and a list of which sites to search, you’re invited to choose whether to keep this search engine only accesible to your friends, or to everyone. This means you could receive suggestions and amends from anyone. And of course, despite being able to specify that you only want to receive results from the sites you’ve added to the search engine, there’s still space for the crucial Google Ads!
Tuesday, October 24th, 2006
Industry News
Ernst and Young have predicted that Yorkshire and Humber’s growth will continue to boom, thanks to the current buoyant, and still improving, economy. They used the Treasury’s forecast model to make the predictions, which identified increase of 2.9% GDP in 2007.
This growth has been attributed to a recovering retail sector, a booming labour market and a property sector which is also performing well, but according to the experts at Ernst and Young, could still go faster. However, they added a warning note to their optimistic prediction. Whilst the added pounds in the Government’s tax coffers are handy, they predict that they’re not going to go to decreasing the budget deficit – currently standing at £11bn.
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