International Search Summit adds Nokia to agenda
 Nokia’s Digital Strategy Manager will speak on Global SEM at the International Search Summit in London on 13th May. Steve Capone is responsible for developing and managing Nokia’s global digital marketing strategy and has many years of experience in international search. Other speakers at the event include Bas van den Beld, Chief Editor of SearchCowboys, Anne Kennedy of BeyondInk and Andy Atkins-Krüger of WebCertain. Early Bird Tickets are now available for the event, which will be held at the Barbican Centre. The Summit will cover topics including Mobile, Video, Twitter and Social Network Advertising.
Book Now!
|
ICANN approves first non-Latin domains
 After announcing that it was to introduce domain names in multiple alphabets, ICANN has approved the applications from Egypt, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the UAE to begin registering domains in their own languages. The new Arabic and Cyrillic domains will be accessible to users from the middle of the year. According to ICANN, over 50% of global internet users use languages which use non-Latin characters and this development is being hailed as the biggest technical change to the internet in 40 years.
|
Yandex sees rise in revenues
 Russian search engine Yandex has reported that it achieved a 14% increase in revenues in 2009, with the number of advertisers using the engine growing by 55%. These figures are perhaps unsurprising as overall search traffic in Russia doubled from December 2008 to December 2009, as the internet becomes more accessible to citizens across the country.
|
Social Networking is the priority for marketers
 According to research conducted by the Society of Digital Agencies, marketers across the world see the use of social networks and related applications as a top priority for 2010. The survey targeted senior marketers, the majority of who said they considered a range of digital activities important, including SEO and Mobile. Over 80% of those surveyed expected to increase their number of digital projects in the coming year, and over half will be moving budget from traditional media to digital.
|
Global search market grew 46% in 2009
 131 billion global searches occurred in December 2009, which is a 46% increase on the previous year, according to a recent comScore report. The most searches took place in the US, followed by China, Japan and then the UK. Russia demonstrated the most significant growth, almost doubling its traffic.
Google is still the most used search property, followed by Yahoo! and Baidu. Microsoft comes fourth in the rankings, but saw the greatest increase in 2009 with number of searches increasing by 70%, following the introduction of Bing.
|
Ustream to focus on Asian expansion
 Video streaming website Ustream has announced plans to develop its services and user base in Asia, following a substantial investment from Japanese internet and telecoms company Softbank. Ustream’s Chief Executive said that Asia is an untapped market for streaming video and that Softbank’s investment will help the site make significant steps in that market. The Ustream site lends itself well to mobile usage and the high mobile penetration in many Asian markets makes it a natural target market for Ustream to increase its audience and revenues.
|
International Search Summit travels to Berlin
 As well as the London event in May, there will be a further International Search Summit in Berlin in June. The Summit will be co-located with Localization World, a leading worldwide globalisation conference. Details of sessions and speakers will be released later this month.
|
Chinese Court rules in favour of Baidu
 Baidu has been cleared of internet piracy charges by a court in Beijing, much to the dismay of the record companies trying to enforce intellectual property laws in the country. The ruling stated that the deep-linking to unlicensed music doesn’t constitute copyright infringement, despite the fact that this makes music available illegally to users from a range of sources. The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry claims that 99% of music consumed in China is downloaded illegally. This is the latest controversy to surround the government of the internet in China, which has strict censorship laws imposed by the authorities.
|
