Web Stuff and Whatnot

Yahoo has now doubled Google’s index of of online documents and images.

After a major upgrade, Yahoo now claims to have over 20 billion online objects indexed in its search engine. Google currently has just over 11 billion objects indexed- about 8 billion Web pages and about 2 billion images. Looks like this rivalry is heating up.

Just because Yahoo has a larger index does not mean it will be a better search engine, but it could be. The relevance of search results is what matters most, but there is no large-scale way to measure search relevance. Different search engines are likely to be more or less relevant on specific searches based on the specifics of the keywords searched for.

Google is still the search leader in terms of market share with a 36.9 percent share as of June vs. Yahoo’s 30.4 percent share (according to comScore).

The Chineese search engine company, called Baidu (www.baidu.com, ticker symbol: BIDU) more than quadrupled in its IPO today. The shares traded from a low of $27 and topped $151 at one point during trading. BIDU closed the day at $122.54. While this success is rather exciting, it is most likely attributable to a small share offering- only about 4 million shares were sold here on the NASDAQ.

Baidu makes money in much the same way Google does, by selling text based search advertising. And as if the Google guys were not rich enough already, Google happens to own about 2.6% of Baidu’s stock. While the business models are similar, Baidu is quite small when compared to Google, and probably quite a bit more risky. Baidu must follow Chinese government regulations, so there is always the chance that they may have to pull the plug some day. Unlikely, but still a risk.

From a news story published by Media Buyer Planner, Advertising.com finally suffered a bit for its sneaky SpyBlast software. The SpyBlast program was promoted as a spyware stopper, yet it secretly installed pop-up ad generating software behind the scenese on a user’s computer. Certainly not surprising to hear of such treachery from the likes of Advertising.com and America Online (which owns Advertising.com), but a sad story none-the-less. As if people using AOL weren’t bombarded by enough pop-up ads and poor Internet software to begin with. Hopefully more of these unethical businesses will be cracked down on, but clearly there is still a long way to go for victory in the Spyware and Adware battle.

As reported by Internet Retailer, a new study from Jupiter Research outlines the spending habits of that all-important group of consumers- Baby Boomers.

Apparently, Baby Boomers are likely to spend more money online than the average online consumer, even in the same income ranges. In general, Jupiter Research believes that 76% of Baby Boomers have purchased goods or services on the Internet.

Baby Boomers are also believed to be the largest age group on the Internet (Baby Boomers were born between 1945 and 1964). 48% of this group has been online for more than five years, making this the most ‘experienced’ group of users on the Internet.