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Tech Investor: Overture’s sour notes - Apr. 28, 2003
It created pay-for-placement ads. Now it’s facing a big problem: Google is stealing its business.

To slip out of the noose that Google has placed around its neck, Overture needs to take action — and fast. First and foremost, it must diversify its revenue stream. Currently, its top two customers, Yahoo! and Microsoft account for 65 percent of total revenues. Its top 10 clients account for 83 percent.

This is why I don’t speculate on stocks. Google is really on a roll these days and Overture investors are starting to run for the hills.
The good news is Overture is strongly positioning itself as a global leader - not just a U.S. leader. This has the potential of far surpassing the amount of money available in the American market. But that is a long-term goal. Right now the playing field is here in the States. The scary thing from my perspective is, the 65% Overture is now banking on from Yahoo! and Microsoft is probably not going to last forever.

Earth from a different perspective

The purpose of the site is to provide a consistently updated, central point of access to the superset of Nasa?s Earth science-related images, animations, and data visualisations. These images are considered to be public domain and, as such, are freely available to the interested public-at-large, the media, scientists, and educators for re-use and/or re-publication. There are currently 5079 records in the database (41.6GB).

This site is really impressive. The above link is to an article about the site. But you can find the actual site here:Visible Earth - a searchable directory of images, visualization, and animations of the Earth. Really amazing!

GOOGLE ACQUIRES APPLIED SEMANTICS

“Applied Semantics is a proven innovator in semantic text processing and online advertising,” said Sergey Brin, Google’s co-founder and president of Technology. “This acquisition will enable Google to create new technologies that make online advertising more useful to users, publishers and advertisers alike.”

Imagine a day when you type in a phrase in a search engine and it doesn’t just show you the listings that have that exact phrase or part of that phrase on the page. Instead, the engine takes your query, determines what you mean when you type in that phrase and then shows you pages that discuss that topic. The results may not even have any of the words you initially typed in the search box.

This is what this acquisition is about - presenting context-based ads in related content.

But this is just the start. This is where much of search is heading. What does this mean from a visitor’s standpoint? This is going to be like heaven. It will be like the search engine has ESP. What does this mean from a site owner’s standpoint? It’s going to make the search engine optimization of today look like kindergarten art. Owners will be forced to become content centers - just like Google has wanted all along. You will either have content or you won’t appear in the results.

The Open Directory Updates Its Index
Did you submit a site to DMOZ in the last several months and never see your listing get placed? Well this week may be your lucky week.

Speaking of Overture, I attended a lunch, put on by the Cleveland Chapter of AIP, that featured some representatives from Overture.
They were quite friendly and, I think, offered some nice insight into the workings of Overture. I didn’t feel like I came away with any “secrets” to share. Sorry everyone.
While listening to engine representatives is always nice, it wasn’t what really made an impression on me today. What impressed me, by far, were the thoroughly intelligent questions people asked. They were asking questions about conversion utilities, positioning strategies within the top spots, affiliate marketing troubles, potential problems with Overture partner strategies with Gator… just to name a few.
I felt, Paul Elliott, the President of AIP handled the event very well.
I was very proud of Cleveland.
Nice job everyone!

Overture Makes Official S. Korea Debut
“… having already sewn up 92 percent of the market.”
With their acquisition of Fast and AltaVista (both major players outside of the U.S.), Overture is making stong ties with the rest of the world.

Yahoo! News - Overture Closes $70 Million Web-Search Acquisition
It’s official! Overture now owns Fast Search & Transfer for a cool $70 million in cash.

Retailing: Many Merchants Lack Measurement

When the 200 senior executives that participated in the study were asked to rank their top technology initiatives for 2003, measurement was dead last.
Nearly half (43 percent) [of the sites surveyed] could not provide shopping cart abandonment figures and 14 percent could not identify customer conversion rates.

This is the new frontier. We are going to start seeing a big surge in companies offering these kinds of services - primarily because it’s important.
But I wouldn’t run out and start your conversion analysis company. My instinct is it is going to become commoditized, much like email marketing has. That warning won’t be enough to hold back the companies that enter this arena as experts. It seems too good a market to pass up. There will be, and are, companies that offer this service at a very high level. But the services for small guys are mostly going to be done with plug and play software tools at a low monthly fee.

Traffic Patterns: Traffic Patterns of March 2003
The top 4 most accessed sites: AOL Time Warner, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and Google.
Is your company appearing on these sites for your industry-targeted key phrases?

SEO Outperforms Overture

The cost? $79,000 for both sites… [for] 300 keywords

If you are considering search engine optimization, get used to those numbers. Those are the numbers we’re seeing more and more.