I was reading this interesting article about the power of Google and its near monopoly over internet search and it got me to thinking about how the big G's increasing desire to do everything is having a detrimental effect on smaller publishers, like little ol' me.

I have a website which is a directory of computer support companies. It has high rankings on Google for a number of terms like "computer support" and "computer support + location". This high ranking then enables me to sell premium listing space to companies that want a guaranteed top listing on my pages.

Recently I have noticed that Google has been extending its "local business search" into the area of computer support and on many of the listings at which I was number one in the organic results, I am still number one but below a whole load of Google's own results for computer support companies in that area. This immediately means I will get less traffic and damages my site as a business because my premium listings are a less attractive proposition to advertisers.



I don't say that my site has some automatic right to be found first. It's Google's search engine after all, and I'm sure they and many others would say it's a good thing if they can help people get the information they want quickly and without fuss - and they may be right - but from a publisher's point of view, it's still pretty galling to see this giant extending itself ever further and at a stroke demoting competitor data providers. As the article I highlighted earlier says, if one company is to be some kind of universal gateway to information, that isn't a healthy thing.

But are there any obvious threats to Google's position? Well, there's still Yahoo!, MSN and Ask of course but despite their efforts (even resorting to paying people), they seem incapable of being really serious challengers. Perhaps the most interesting player could be Wikia search from the people behind Wikipedia. It's still early days with that project and the results are nothing to write home about yet, but imagine for a second that they managed to get it right. And then say that one day, at the top of every Wikipedia page appeared a new form to search the wikipedia and to "search the web". They could very well get a nice little slice of the search market at a stroke, and people may sit back and wonder of Google, "how do you like them apples?"

It's May 19th. The weather is great outside. And yet, I've just had an order come through one of my websites for a christmas tree decoration. I'm all for forward planning, but that's a little bizarre!

Apologies if you already read this, but I just saw this interesting article over at InsuranceDaily (not part of my usual reading I might add!) reporting on several big name insurers quitting affiliate marketing or scaling down their activities.

The article fingers the "credit crunch" as the likely trigger for this, but also suggests that companies are instead deciding to invest in SEO rather than affiliate marketing although I guess the obvious rebuttal might be that affiliate marketing is a sales channel and it's possibly short sighted to think that SEO is something that can replace affiliate marketing activities.

I'm not sure if I have seen any effects yet of the economic slowdown. Certainly, contract mobile sales are down for me but I don't know if it's just me or sector wide. Has the so called credit crunch had any impact on you yet? I can imagine it would actually be good news for sites which help customers find better value for their money, so comparison sites, code sites, utility switchers etc may well benefit as consumers tighten their belts and look at ways of making their money go further.

Virgin Money Withdraws Insurance Affiliate Schemes

As you will know, eBay recently announced the creation of eBay Partner Network, allowing affiliates to work directly with the world's biggest auction website.

I said at the time that I was happy about that because I have never enjoyed using Commission Junction. Well, I thought it would be a good move and so it has proved to be (for me at least) with me making much greater use of eBay links since I signed up for the partner network.

It's now just a more pleasant experience to go in and get the links you need, and there's also geo-targetting so you can sign up for various flavours of eBay (.co.uk, .fr, .ca etc) and it will display the right ads for you.

To mark my rekindled interest in eBay, I spent a bit of time playing with the eBay Shopping API and have worked out how to embed listings and search results into my pages (without using Javascript widgets). Here's one of my first attempts, where I display eBay search results below a toy listing to see if it can be got cheaper from the auction site: WWE Superstar Microphone

By the way, if you are working with, or planning to try working with the eBay API, you might well need to look at creating your XSL stylesheets to display the results nicely on your page. I can really recommend Oxygen XML Editor which I'm currently running a trial version of.

The only annoyance I have so found with the eBay Partner Network is that if you want to create plain links, it only generates Javascript code as opposed to HTML. This is a pain but can be got round fairly easily. Other than that, Im pleased with the new platform and look forward to making some dosh with eBay!

Labels: commission junction, ebay

Friends Reunited is, I guess, one of the original social networking websites, linking up old school friends and making a pretty good job of it with 19million registered users. I remember brainstorming sessions into the night in an effort to find the "next Friends Reunited". For a long time though, it has looked clunky and not as slick as the recent "2.0" style sites. Also, it's business model of charging members for emailing each other has been challenged by the free social networking sites like Facebook etc.

Friends Reunited, now owned by ITV, has mounted its fightback with a new look site and some interesting functionality - some of it replicating what's been seen elsewhere ("add as friend") and some new stuff like a timeline of your life. They also now emphasise keeping in touch with current friends as well as old friends. I was never a great user of the site but it does look a lot better and should revitalise a site which was starting to look a bit stale. Check out the new look Friends Reunited.



One I think I couldn't help but notice though is that the new logo bears a startling similarity to the logo used by Boris Johnson's campaign for the London Mayoralty.

It's always interesting to see new ways people are using the internet to make a quick buck. This tactic may not be new exactly, but it's new to me and kind of leaves me staggered at the brass neck of it...

The Wii Fit has been a smash hit, of course, and people are reserving it at branches of Argos using their online "Click and Collect" and then selling the 6-digit reservation code on eBay to anyone that wants to go and collect it. They don't all sell so there is some risk to the seller, but I looked through the completed auctions and saw that the average selling price is a fiver.

From the sellers point of view, there's practically no work involved. Go to Argos, find the item, find branches where it is in stock, enter an email address to reserve it and then just sell the reservation number. It's easy, clever and damn cheeky. From the buyer's point of view, it adds a £5 premium to a hard to get item so it's not too bad but it would certainly leave a bad taste in my mouth. I think Argos should look at requiring a bit more information for a reservation to try and eliminate and multiple reservations.

I did actually do a Wii Fit website myself and I kind of forgot about it and thought it was a flop project until I started seeing sales come through on Thursday night. It had managed to rank quite well on Yahoo! UK and traffic was great but, frustratingly, stock levels meant it was hard to cash in as well as I might of.

I hadn't planned to get a Wii Fit myself but after seeing the sales, I kind of got caught up in the buzz and went to get one on Friday. I must admit, I'm bored with it already, and when I got on it, it just said "get off, you're fit enough". But seriously, I don't think there's much fun to be had with it but I guess I should persevere with it since it just cost me £70!

It's great when you review a product that is genuinely very good and reaches, or exceeds, every expectation you have of it. I've been trialling 3's latest mobile broadband offering, using the Huawei E169G USB modem stick, and it really is excellent. I've already been using my HSDPA mobile phone to be able to enjoy mobile working, but I was still keen to check out this cool little modem stick and see how easy it is to setup.

They've really done a great job of making the setup process very simple. No CD is required because the drivers and installation program are on the modem itself - I guess using some kind of Flash memory like a USB storage device. After putting a SIM card into a discreet little holder on the modem, you simply plug it in, and then, using Vista, just click next a few times and before you know it, you are online. It's breathtakingly straightfoward to complete. Put simply: if you can turn a computer on, you can manage now to install mobile broadband.

I haven't tried it yet with my Eee PC although I read on the the EeePC User forum that some kind of software update might be required before this particular model works on there.

Web browsing occurs at very nice speeds, FTP works a treat (so I can manage my websites from anywhere) and also I was really pleased that I could connect up to remote servers using the Remote Desktop Protocol without any problems whatsoever. Remote Desktop is great - I can use it when I'm out to connect back to my desktop at home, or connect up to client servers that I work with or to a Virtual Private Server.

So what does mobile broadband mean to me? It means that I can blog, create websites and generally run my business from almost anywhere. When I started my website about wifi hotspots, they were like some perfect solution for being able to access the web out and about. But the truth is, often they have been expensive to use and the fixed locations do limit you. Mobile broadband solutions such as this one really trump wifi hotspots in almost everyway.

Find out more about the tariffs available from 3

I made this little video to go on myHotspots.co.uk to demonstrate how easy it is to set this up.