Graham Charlton

Does paid search affect organic search engine rankings?

Even if your search engine optimisation strategy is successful it is still important to promote your brand using paid search, according to Susan Minniear at the Official Google CPG Blog.

by Graham Charlton 05 March 2007 12:51pm 6 comments

Babelgum launches to rival Joost in IPTV battle

Babelgum is a new internet TV service, using P2P technology to stream video to your PC at near -TV resolution, very much like Joost.

Like Joost, Babelgum has plenty of financial backing. While Joost's founders Niklas Zennström and Janus Friis raised around £1.3bn from the sale of Skype, Babelgum founder Silvio Scaglia has just sold a quarter of his stake in Italian broadband firm Fastweb for £148m.

by Graham Charlton 02 March 2007 12:08pm 1 comment

Google to provide tools to combat click fraud

From next month, Google is to provide more data, as well as tools to help its pay per click advertisers detect and combat click fraud.

The online ad giant will allow PPC advertisers to specify which IP addresses will be prevented from receiving their ads, in order to stop unscrupulous rivals wasting ad budgets with repeated clicks.

This is a smart move towards the greater transparency many advertisers have been demanding.

by Graham Charlton 01 March 2007 11:45am 0 comments

Fizzback bags $5m from Advent Venture Partners

Advent Venture Partners has announced that it has invested $5m (£2.5m) in online customer feedback provider Fizzback Group.

Formerly known as 'Instant Market Intelligence', Fizzback works with a number of companies, National Express included, to help them capture and analyse feedback from their customers.

by Graham Charlton 01 March 2007 11:38am 0 comments

France cracking down on online gambling?

The Guardian is reporting today that online gambling group PartyGaming has closed its French website, without notifying investors. One shareholder has offloaded around £50m of stock in the firm.

Meanwhile, John Anderson, the former chief executive of 888 Holdings, has been summoned for interview by the French authorities, prompting speculation that French authorities are about to crackdown on online gambling.

This in itself is prompting speculation that the French and American governments actually agree on something.

by Graham Charlton 01 March 2007 17:20pm 2 comments

Nectar relaunches website, but why?

Nectar is the UK's largest customer loyalty programme, and since its launch in 2002, more than ten million UK households regularly collect Nectar points.

The Nectar website, which allows users to spend the points they have earned on everything from CDs and DVDs to discounts on holidays, has recently relaunched with a view to improving usability.

We caught up with Roger Sniezek of Loyalty Management Group (which owns and operates the Nectar brand) to find out more about the site's relaunch.

by Graham Charlton 01 March 2007 12:20pm 0 comments

Another report claims that blogging has peaked

A post by Pranam Kolari on ebiquity's blog claims that the English-speaking blogosphere has reached its peak.

This echoes predictions made by Gartner in December that the blogosphere will top out this year at 100m blogs, and start to decline thereafter.

by Graham Charlton 28 February 2007 09:32am 1 comment

BitTorrent to sell movie and TV downloads

BitTorrent, makers of P2P software often used to trade pirated movies, has launched a site which will sell legal downloads of movies and TV shows.

The BitTorrent Entertainment Network is set to launch today with films from Warner Bros, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, as well as episodes of TV shows such as '24'.

by Graham Charlton 28 February 2007 11:02am 3 comments

Fox Interactive acquires online ad firm

Rupert Murdoch's Fox Interactive Media has bought interactive advertising technology company, Strategic Data Corporation.

SDC specialises in the delivery of online advertising, and its technology will be used to serve FIM's network of sites, including MySpace.

by Graham Charlton 23 February 2007 11:10am 0 comments

Google's Schmidt in YouTube copyright pledge

With a view to halting the plethora of copyright cases and complaints brought against YouTube, Google will soon offer anti-piracy technology for copyright holders to prevent their content being shown on the site.

Google has been heavily criticised for seeming to be willing to take action over copyright infringement only when they have an existing content agreement with the content owners.

by Graham Charlton 23 February 2007 14:27pm 0 comments