With the current passing of so many participants in the shared experience; Neda Soltan, Ed McMahon, Farrah Fawcett, Michael Jackson & Billy Mays, one can’t help but have an interest in how the population is reacting. Below are two graphs created by utilizing search statistics from Google Trends. The first graph plots the keywords; “neda soltan”, “ed mcmahon”, “farrah fawcett” & “michael jackson” from June 20th (Neda’s murder in Iran) to July 3rd (today).  The second graph adds the keyword “billy mays” for the same time frame.

Neda’s death on June 20th starts the cycle but is interrupted by Ed McMahon’s death on June 23rd.  Even though Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson both died on June 25th, Farrah Fawcett’s search queries were over three-times Mr. Jackson’s.

Billy Mays scored a 6700 for a peak search on Google vs. 655 for Mrs. Fawcett, 139 for Mr. Jackson, 132 for Mr. McMahon and finally 184 for Neda Soltan.  Billy Mays scored over five-times the search query scoring of the others.  With the weekend approaching and the July 4th holiday now upon us, one can clearly see the attention of the population shift elsewhere. Timing is everything. May they all rest in peace.

Tags: billy mays, ed mcmahon, farrah fawcett, google, google trends, graph, graphs, Humanity & Energy, july 3rd, michael jackson, neda, Net Neutrality & Stats, participants, peak search, population shift, search queries, search query, search statistics, soltan, target, three times, time frame, traffic

On Wednesday June 3, 2009 U.S. District Judge Vaughn Walker dismissed the lawsuits against the nation’s telecoms for participation in the drag-net electronic surveillance program that captured untold riches about who we all really are. Your every credit card purchase, text message, phone call, website visited and email sent were potentially harvested by these companies in the name of protecting us from terrorism. The unconstitutional telco warrantless wiretaps are now RULE OF LAW.

Yet one cannot help but imagine the value of possessing this data. With a large enough sample, such data can be mined with supercomputers and cloud computing to provide fairly accurate profiles for nearly every citizen. By ranking these profiles using psychological personality traits, one could highlight groups such as “free thinkers with potential networking capability who are 18-35″ or “religious, high earners with families of more than four children who fill prescriptions for STD medication”.  The potential abuses are enormous, the data is literally who we are on a day to day basis.

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Tags: administration, company defendants, earners, electronic communications, electronic frontier foundation, electronic surveillance, free thinkers, frontier, immunity, law, mark klein, national security agency, Net Neutrality & Stats, personality types, phone call, Secret, supercomputers, surveillance, surveillance program, target, telecommunications company, terror attacks, untold riches, warrants

GOOGLE Website Submit

Properly Submitting your website to the search engines is a critical part of any successful Internet footprint. Each has their own particular procedure. Each is demystified below.

The first step is to establish a FREE Google account. Once the account is ready, point your web browser to Google webmaster central and click [Sign in to Webmaster Tools]. Follow the instructions to verify your website (file upload or meta tag). Verification gives you access to a wide range of helpful information about your website like; Pages with external links, Top search queries, What Googlebot sees, and Web crawl. Set your preferences under [Settings] and choose; target users in the US or worldwide, display your domain with the www, and include your website images in Google Image Labeler (remember to search engine optimize your image titles).

Once your preferences are set it’s time to upload your sitemap. Your sitemap.xml should contain a weighted and formatted list of every page. If you don’t already have one, creating your sitemap is easy with this FREE online sitemap tool. After the sitemap is compiled and uploaded, return to Google and enter the path to it. If the sitemap was uploaded to the root of your website, this will be http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (if otherwise located, enter that). Be sure the check the status of your sitemap and correct any errors. Updating is done via the [Resubmit Selected] feature on the Webmaster Toools sitemap page.

There is one additional file to create and upload so that we are prepared for when the search bots visit your website.  Point your web browser to Generating a robots.txt file or Manually creating a robots.txt file and follow the instructions.  The purpose of the robots.txt file is to tell the search bots what portions of your website should “Allow” or “Disallow” indexing of content. Google is now aware of your content. Now let’s move to Yahoo.

YAHOO Website Submit

Yahoo also requires you to establish a FREE account. Once ready, point your web browser to Submit Your Site and click on [Submit Your Site for Free] then [Submit a Website or Webpage]. Enter your website address (URL) and login to your Yahoo account if prompted. You should see the following:

Thank you! Your URL has been added to our list of URLs to crawl. Please expect a delay of several weeks before your URL is crawled. Note that in the effort to maximize the quality of search results that appear on Yahoo! and our other distribution partners, we do not add every submitted URL to our search index. Therefore we cannot make predictions or guarantees about whether your URL will appear as a search result.

Now we need to authenticate your website to Yahoo. While in Yahoo Site Explorer, choose [My Sites].  Click on your website address (URL). Here you can check the Authentication Status and Number of Pages Indexed. Choose [Authentication] from the left menu. Follow the instructions to verify your website (file upload or meta tag).

Once your website is authenticated, return to the Yahoo Site Explorer and again choose your website under [My Sites]. Now choose [Explore Site] toward the bottom.  Voila, a full list of indexed pages as they appear in the Yahoo’s organic listings.  Click [InLinks] at the top to display a full list of incoming links to your website.  If the data is blank, simply give the Yahoo bots more time to do their work. The big two are done, MSN Live Search and Ask.com are next after the fold.

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That’s right.  According to the IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, by PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP and Universal McCann, “Internet advertising revenues (“revenues”) in the United States totaled $23.4 billion for the full year of 2008, with Q3 accounting for approximately $5.8 billion and Q4 totaling approximately $6.1 billion. Internet advertising revenues for the full year of 2008 increased 10.6 percent over 2007. The results reported are considered the most accurate measurement of Internet/online advertising revenues since the data is compiled directly from information supplied by companies selling advertising online.” IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, Mar. 08, 2009 iab.net

Search remains the largest revenue format, accounting for 45 percent of 2008 full year revenues, up from the 41 percent reported in 2007. Search revenues totaled $10.5 billion for the full year 2008, up 20 percent from the $8.8 billion reported in 2007.

Display-related advertising revenues totaled $7.6 billion or 33 percent of full year 2008 revenues, up nearly 8 percent from the $7.1 billion (34 percent of total) reported in 2007. Display-related advertising includes Display Banner Ads (21% of 2008 full year revenues or $4.9 billion), Rich Media (7% or $1.6 billion), Digital Video (3% or $734 million), and Sponsorship (2% or $387 million).” IAB Internet Advertising Revenue Report, Mar. 08, 2009 iab.net

The facinating graph below illustrates the degree to which Internet advertising has outpaced broadcast and cable TV.  As stated by the Silicon Alley Insider, “The growth of Internet advertising through the medium’s first 14 years obliterates the growth of advertising for cable and broadcast television over their first 14 years. Here’s a revenue comparison in current inflation-adjusted dollars.  (Dare we say that online advertising looks as though it has gotten a bit ahead of itself?)” CHART OF THE DAY: Internet Ads Growing Faster Than Any Medium In History by Jay Yarow, Apr. 14, 2009 businessinsider.com

[Read the full 2008 Report, 263k]

Tags: 1 billion, accounting, accurate measurement, advertising revenue, advertising revenues, broadcast and cable, broadcast television, cable tv, digital video, graph, images, insider, insight, insights, Internet, internet ads, internet advertising, Net Neutrality & Stats, pricewaterhousecoopers llp, q3, scherr, selling advertising, silicon alley, sponsorship, target, United States, universal mccann