The Free Site Hosting | Reviews & Top Hosts

For some time now, a sort of "Google vs. Everybody" situation has been developing in Germany.  The bad news for the search giant is that, as four online marketing agencies have prepared to team up, the situation’s continuing to take shape, and the European Commission is fine with it.

G + J Electronic Media Service, IP Deutschland, SevenOne Media, and Tomorrow Focus Portal intend to work together in the realm of online display advertising.  A statement issued today explained that they will "develop and sell a new product to allow advertisers to reach better defined target groups of Internet users whose profiles would be created based on anonymous data collected throughout a large network of participating websites."

Individually, these organizations all appear to be rather important and at least fairly successful.  Together, they should represent quite a force.

So here’s the extra-noteworthy part: the statement later added, "The Commission concluded that the proposed concentration was unlikely to raise competition concerns given the parties’ low market shares in online advertising and the presence of strong competitors like Google."

We’ll try to keep an eye on how this joint project proceeds.  Meanwhile, a big hat tip goes to Robert Andrews.

Related Articles:

> More Complaints Filed Against Google In Germany

> German Justice Minister Likens Google To "Giant Monopoly"

> YouTube Faces Formal Complaints In Germany

Opera announced that five million people are using Opera Turbo, its compression technology, which is present in both Opera 10 and Opera Mobile. Opera Turbo reduces the size of Web pages by up to 80%, according to the company, dramatically improving browsing speeds over slow networks and saving money on "pay as you go" connections.

Opera Turbo saw an increase of 60% in user growth in a single month, from October to November. "This rapidly increasing usage rate denotes a distinct market need for Opera‚s turbo-charged technology, and reflects the universal burden of slow surfing speeds," Opera says.

"The numbers have spoken. Opera Turbo is resolving the universal discontent with slow browsing. This is not an issue particular to one country or one type of device; it is an issue that affects us all at one time or another," says Opera CEO Jon von Tetzchner. "Now, no matter where in the world Opera 10 users find themselves, they know that Opera Turbo is available to assure quick and efficient Web surfing."

The five million Opera Turbo users viewed about 1.5 billion compressed pages in November. That’s a 36.6% increase in page views since October. Opera Turbo served more than 72 terabytes of data to users in November.

In November 2009, Opera Turbo served more than 72 terabytes of data to users. The average compression rate for Opera Turbo in November was 63.6 percent, meaning that those users would have received 199 terabytes of uncompressed data if they were not using Opera Turbo. Since October 2009, data traffic has increased by 38 percent.

"The average compression rate for Opera Turbo in November was 63.6 percent, meaning that those users would have received 199 terabytes of uncompressed data if they were not using Opera Turbo. Since October 2009, data traffic has increased by 38 percent," the company says. The top five countries in terms of unique users of Opera Turbo were: Russia, Ukraine, Germany, Poland, and the United States.

Users can activate Opera Turbo by clicking the Opera Turbo icon in the lower, left-hand corner of the Opera 10 browser.
 

Related Articles:

> 40 Million Reasons You Need a Mobile Web Presence

> Opera Turns Your Computer Into a Server

> Opera Releases Latest Version of Popular Mobile Browser

Google has launched some new features for the Google Analytics API. These include support for advanced segments and 48 new metrics around goal performance, as well as goal configuration data.

"With advanced segmentation, you can look beyond your aggregated data and peer into the nuances of traffic and visitor activity on your site," says Nick Mihailovski of the Google Analytics API Team. "For example, the average time on site for all visits could be 60 seconds, but when you segment by country, you might learn that average time on site of visits from Germany is over 2 minutes."

Google has added two new ways to use advanced segments through the API including creating them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query and using advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.

The following video shows how to work with goal configuration data in the API.

Google has also added 10 new dimensions to access custom variable data and each one that is used is available through the account feed.

Google has updated all of its documentation for the API, and is encouraging the continued feedback of users.

Related Articles:

> Google Analytics Gets a Bunch of New Features

> Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes

> Google Adds Heavily Requested Features to Analytics API

About a month ago, WebProNews interviewed Google’s Matt Cutts, who suggested that page speed may soon become a ranking factor in the world’s most popular search engine. Speed has been a consistent theme with the company over the past year or so, with the release of various tools and announcements. It has become quite evident that Google places a great deal of importance on speeding up the web. With that in mind, it’s not hard to see why Cutts’ suggestion could soon become a reality. Google has always maintained that it is trying to deliver the best user experience, and by delivering results that load quickly users should get just that.

Do you think it’s a good idea for Google to use speed as a ranking factor? Share your thoughts here.

While many webmasters are embracing the notion of speed as a ranking factor as a welcome change, there are also plenty of people who do take issue with it for a variety of reasons. We’ve had some interesting comments from readers on the subject. Here are some of them:

So, we all have to pay for the most expensive hosting now or we won’t get found in search engines. I won’t be able to host on my own servers at work now. It went from paying for backlinks with huge advertising corporations to get sites PageRank up, Now we have to go with even bigger corporations that can afford to have a massive pipe connecting to the Internet. I don’t think Google mean to, but they are squeesing the poor people of the World out from search results and glorifying huge corporations – Be careful Google!
…
Page speed is going to be a big political issue. Apart from concerns about net neutrality, what about countries who’s internet infrastructure is vastly inferior to the technology rich countries. Regions like south east asia and central china have much better connections than east africa. Even some parts of Scotland have poor internet links based on the ageing BT networks. Also the people who can afford dedicated servers and high quality bandwidth have a big advantage over the common Joe who has to rely on shared hosting. Does this make google less democratic? or are they just following what they think people want, ie faster loading sites?
…
What do you think will happen to the sites that are mainly using rich media like video blogs? Can they really accelerate their load time? If not, are they doomed to drop from the SERP?
…
The speed thing concerns me. Next to a tiered internet its the biggest slam agains the small time net player. Corporations will take over fast and knock out anyone who can’t afford a lightning fast server.

Those are just a few reader comments that were left on the video interview. You can read them all here. You can read quite a few more on this related article as well. Voice your own concerns here.

Regardless of how you feel about the possibility of Google using page speed as a ranking factor, it’s probably going to happen, and it’s something you’re more than likely going to have to deal with. Besides this even being a factor for regular organic results, consider Google’s recently introduced real-time results. The quicker Google can crawl you, the quicker you can potentially appear in this section.

As far as speeding up your site in general, Bill Hartzer recently shared a few tips on the subject in an interview with WebProNews:

And of course, Google has its own tips. The company offered a few on site performance improvement using its Webmaster Tools. Webmaster Tools has a Site Performance feature, which shows you a performance overview graph. This looks at the aggregated speed numbers for your site, based on the pages that were most frequently accessed by visitors who use the Google Toolbar and have the PageRank feature activated.

"By using data from Google Toolbar users, you don’t have to worry about us testing your site from a location that your users do not use," explains John Mueller, Webmaster Trends Analyst, Google Zürich. "For example, if your site is in Germany and all your users are in Germany, the chart will reflect the load time as seen in Germany. Similarly, if your users mostly use dial-up connections (or high-speed broadband), that would be reflected in these numbers as well. If only a few visitors of your site use the Google Toolbar, we may not be able to show this data in Webmaster Tools."

There is also a section that shows you some examples of pages and the average, aggregated load times that users observed while they were on your site. "These numbers may differ from what you see as they can come from a variety of different browsers, internet connections and locations. This list can help you to recognize pages which take longer than average to load — pages that slow your users down," says Mueller. "As the page load times are based on actual accesses made by your users, it’s possible that it includes pages which are disallowed from crawling. While Googlebot will not be able to crawl disallowed pages, they may be a significant part of your site’s user experience."

Google recommends that you watch the load times over a short period of time to see what’s stable, because you may see spikes here and there. If you consistently see high load times, that is probably representative of what most people see.

There is also a section that gives you Page Speed Suggestions. It gives you some example pages from your site and suggestions on how to optimize those specific pages. The suggestions are based on Google’s Page Speed Firefox/Firebug plug-in.

Google give more information on each of these features here.

Sites aren’t the only things Google places emphasis on speed with.  Last week, Google launched a new extension for Chrome, which lets developers identify performance problems with their web apps too. The tool is called Speed Tracer, and it uses a "sluggishness graph" combined with other metrics to help users pinpoint the problems that are slowing their web apps down. You can read more on that here.

Are you worried that speed as a ranking factor may have a negative impact on your rankings? How do you plan to deal with it? Discuss here.

Related Articles:

> Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

> Google Tracks User Data to Monitor Load Times

> Google Introduces Page Speed Tool

> Google Wants the Web to Function Like a Magazine

> Google Provides Tool for Speeding Up Web Pages

> Google Launches Site Performance Feature

> Google Announces SPDY Application-Layer Protocol

Amazon has released an iPhone app for the Kindle to over 60 countries. Now users in a total of 64 countries can read Kindle books on their iPhones and iPod Touch devices.

"We are excited to make the Kindle for iPhone App available to iPhone and iPod touch users in more than 60 countries, allowing them to access the vast selection of the most popular books, all available wirelessly from the Kindle Store," said Ian Freed, vice president, Amazon Kindle. "The Kindle for iPhone App is the perfect companion for customers who own a Kindle or Kindle DX, and a great way for customers around the world to download and read books even if they don’t yet have a Kindle."

Amazon says that with the app, customers in over 60 countries will be able to: 

- Purchase, download and read hundreds of thousands of books available in the Kindle Store.

- Read the beginning of books for free before they buy them.

- Add and automatically synchronize bookmarks and last page read.

- Access their library of previously purchased Kindle books stored on Amazon’s servers for free.

- Choose from six different font sizes and adjust words per line.

- Add and view notes and highlights marked on Kindle and Kindle DX.

- Read books in full color including children’s books, cookbooks, travel books, textbooks and graphic novels.

Countries where the app is available include: The United States, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, El Salvador, Estonia, Finaland, France, Greece, Guatemala, Germany, Honduras, Hong Kong, Hungary, India, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Republic of Malta, Republic of Moldova, Romania, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, United Kingdom, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Vietnam.

Amazon says that in the coming months, they will be releasing Kindle for Mac and Kindle for Blackberry. Amazon’s Kindle reached record sales in the month of November.
 

Related Articles:

> Amazon Working on Accessibility Features for Kindle

> Amazon’s Kindle Breaks Sales Record in November

> Amazon Rolls Out Kindle For PC

European online Christmas shopping season got off to a strong start this year in the U.K., France and Germany, according to a new report from comScore.

Visits to retail sites were up 18 percent during the first week of November compared to an average week during the prior two months, and increased even more throughout the month to reach a 41 percent growth rate during the week ending November 29.

France saw solid gains, resulting in the same 41 percent growth rate during the last week of November, while Germany showed slight lower growth at 16 percent.

"That we’re seeing such strong growth in visitation to retail sites in three of Europe’s leading countries prior to the December pre-Christmas rush is, hopefully, a positive sign for the overall European economy," said comScore chairman, Gian Fulgoni.

"Right now the U.K. and France appear to be demonstrating the highest rate of traffic growth to retail sites, outperforming the U.S. by a considerable margin. While German growth has been slightly slower, the heavy part of the country’s online shopping season should begin in earnest during the first week of December."

During the month of November, average weekly visits to online retail sites grew 35 percent in the U.K. compared to the prior two months. Among the top 5 online retailers as ranked by average weekly visits, Play.com sites experienced the largest growth at 62 percent, closely followed by the Home Retail Group (61%) and Tesco (50%).

Visits to online retail sites in France were up 36 percent during the first week of the month and remained steady during November. Groupe PriceMinister has the fastest growth rate at 188 percent, followed by Amazon and Cdiscount, both at 40 percent.

In Germany, visits to online retail sites got off to a slightly slower start than in France and the U.K., but still showed 17 percent average weekly growth. Amazon was the fastest growing retail site during November, up 46 percent, followed by Neckermann Gruppe (up18%).
 

Related Articles:

>Cyber Monday Deals Attract Online Shoppers

>Walmart Wins Thanksgiving, Amazon Wins Black Friday

>Online Retailers See Strong Cyber Monday Sales

Social networks such as Facebook are being used to express and communicate genuine personality, instead of an exaggerated identity, according to new research from psychologist Sam Gosling at The University of Texas at Austin.

"I was surprised by the findings because the widely held assumption is that people are using their profiles to promote an enhanced impression of themselves," said Gosling of the more than 700 million people worldwide who have online profiles.

"In fact, our findings suggest that online social networking profiles convey rather accurate images of the profile owners, either because people aren’t trying to look good or because they are trying and failing to pull it off."

Gosling and a team of researchers collected 236 profiles of college-aged people from the United States (Facebook) and Germany (StudiVZ, SchuelerVZ). The researchers used questionnaires to assess the profile owners’ actual personality characteristics as well as their ideal-personality traits (how they wished to be). The personality traits include: extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism and openness.

In the study, observers rated the profiles of people they did not know. These ratings were then compared to the profile owners’ actual personality and their ideal personality. Personality impressions based on online social network profiles were accurate and were not affected by profile owners’ self-idealization.

Accuracy was strongest for extraversion, mirroring results of face-to-face meetings and lowest for neuroticism. Those findings were consistent with previous research showing that neuroticism is difficult detect without being in person.

"I think that being able to express personality accurately contributes to the popularity of online social networks in two ways," said Gosling. "First, it allows profile owners to let others know who they are and, in doing so, satisfies a basic need to be known by others.

"Second, it means that profile viewers feel they can trust the information they glean from online social network profiles, building their confidence in the system as a whole."

Related Articles:

> Yahoo Deepens Integration With Facebook

>Facebook Cracks 350 Million Users, Adjusts Privacy Settings

>Nearly Half Of Consumers Would Recommend A Product On Facebook

If a French court has its way, eBay will soon have to fork over $2.6 million.  The fine stems from a ban on the sale (or purchase) of LVMH goods, and actually ties to a case that ended in eBay being told to pay LVMH $61 million.

LVMH, which is the entity behind luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, Tag Heuer, and De Beers, won a major case against eBay in June of last year.  LVMH claimed to be concerned about the sale of counterfeit merchandise, and eBay was supposed to keep all related items off its French site as a result.

Apparently eBay wasn’t completely successful, however (misspelled listings may have created problems), hence the latest fine.

Now, Alex von Schirmeister, the general manager of eBay in France, has stated, "We believe that the higher courts will overturn this ruling and ensure that eCommerce companies such as eBay will continue to provide a platform for buyers and sellers to trade authentic goods.

von Schirmeister also said, "The fine itself is disproportionate given that eBay complied with the Injunction.  It is out of step with our legal victories in France, UK, Germany, Belgium and the U.S."

Look for further developments down the road, then, as eBay appeals the ruling.

Related Articles:

> eBay Sued By Shoe Retailer

> eBay Collects Another Win Against L’Oreal

> eBay Wins French Ruling Over L’Oreal Fakes

Google’s Matt Cutts discussed how the search engine handles sites that that are "in the cloud" with regards to how listings are affected. Matt’s explanation was a response to the following user-submitted question:

Can moving my website to "the cloud" harm my listings? Say my server’s in Germany and I move the website to Google’s App Engine or Amazon S3. Does this harm my listings for German results – or is it enough to set the "geographic target" in GWT to Germany?

Matt broke the question down into separate parts to answer them. First, he took on the part about moving a site to "the cloud" harming the users’ listings. His answer for this is basically that Google doesn’t even know if your site is in the cloud, so it can’t use that information to affect listings.

"We don’t know what is happening on the side of your web server. Your web server could be running Perl, PHP, Python, or Ruby on Rails," said Cutts. "All we know is what the web server returns. So your web server could be running code that would go talk to Amazon’s cloud or Appspot or anywhere else in the cloud, but we wouldn’t even know that. We don’t even know whether a page is dynamically created or statically created. All we know is what the web server sends back."

He says if your site is talking to the cloud behind the scenes, there is now way for any search engine or bot to know about that. Watch the video above to hear Matt’s explanation for the second part of the user’s question.

Related Articles:

> Google: Page Speed May Become a Ranking Factor in 2010

> Google May Change Your Page Titles

> Where Google Stands on the "Keywords" Meta Tag

A major change has taken place behind the scenes at Xing, the business networking company based in Hamburg, Germany.  Burda Media is now the primary shareholder due to a transaction that saw it purchase a lot of stock from Cinco Capital GmbH.

Burda bought a whopping 1,323,041 shares for €36.50 each (which works out to about $72.3 million).  It controls a 25.1 percent stake in Xing as a result.  This wasn’t any sort of hostile takeover, though.

Stefan Gross-Selbeck, the CEO of Xing, wrote in a blog post, "I’m very excited about this participation and the future cooperation with Burda.  It’s a match made in heaven: Burda Media as the leading European media group and XING as the leading European business network."

Gross-Selbeck next went on to describe Burda as a long-term investor with an interest in international matters.

What we have here, then, is a significant gesture of confidence in Xing and the business networking field.  Along with what may be a sign that Xing will try harder to challenge LinkedIn in the U.S., or at least expand into other parts of the world.

In case you’re curious: Xing currently has 8 million members who handle their online networking affairs in 16 different languages.

Related Articles:

> LinkedIn, Twitter Connect Through Status Updates

> LinkedIn Tests A New Design

> LinkedIn Announces 50 Million User Milestone