India has urged social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove offensive material and self-censor user generated content, unleashing a storm of criticism from internet users complaining of censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

One of the first major [...]]]> India has urged social media sites, including Facebook, Twitter and Google to remove offensive material and self-censor user generated content, unleashing a storm of criticism from internet users complaining of censorship in the world’s largest democracy.

One of the first major government pushes came in April, when the “Information Technology Rules 2011” were introduced. These rules require intermediaries – companies like Facebook, Google and Yahoo, that provide the platform for users to comment and create their own content – to respond quickly to complaints from individual users. These complaints should mainly relate to content that is “disparaging” or “harassing”. If the complainant’s claim is valid, these companies must take down the offensive information within 36 hours.

However the initial test from the Center for Internet and Society (C.I.S) in Bangalore has shown that the rules seem to encourage “privately administered injunctions to censor and chill free expression”. A third party whose information has been removed is not informed about the take-down request or given a chance to defend itself.

The study’s results show the “rules are procedurally flawed as they ignore all elements of natural justice,” C.I.S. concludes.

This week however, Indian IT minister Kapil Sibal has threatened to impose new and additional rules to weed out derogatory material from the Internet after major websites  refused to censor themselves in a dispute that tests India’s commitment to free speech.

Government officials are upset about web pages that are insulting to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, ruling Congress party leader Sonia Gandhi and major religious figures. Some illustrations have shown Singh and Gandhi in compromising positions and pigs running through Mecca, Islam’s holiest city.

The dispute highlights India’s continuing difficulty in balancing the Internet culture of freewheeling discourse with its home-grown religious and political sensitivities.

Sibal said he spoke repeatedly with officials from major Internet companies over the past three months and asked them to come up with a voluntary framework to keep offensive material off the Internet.

In a meeting Monday, the Internet companies told him there was nothing they could do.

Rajesh Chharia (president of India’s Internet Service Providers Association) commented: “India is more sensitive than other countries. Some amount of check and balance is required. But to pre-screen all material is an uphill task and may not be practically applicable.”

But Gulshan Rai, head of the Indian Cyber Emergency Response Teams (CERT-In) claims it is possible to pre-screen the contents. “The companies can design filters to check that any objectionable content cannot make its way to the websites.” Another official in the department of IT insisted, “I don’t think the government is supporting censorship. We are saying that if the sites don’t fall in line, then we will need to take action. If they do not remove the defamatory contents and take action, then we will. We are not trying to gag freedom of speech.”

It is not yet clear how far the government will go to police the web, but it certainly seems like the internet experience in India is set to change for both users and service providers.

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Facebook is now the most popular social network in India, having overtaken Orkut for the first time ever. The latest comScore figures show that Facebook has grown by 179% in the past year, and boasted 20.9 million visitors in [...]]]> Facebook is now the most popular social network in India, having overtaken Orkut for the first time ever. The latest comScore figures show that Facebook has grown by 179% in the past year, and boasted 20.9 million visitors in July. Orkut, Google’s own social network, has until now held the top spot in the country, however only saw its users increase by 16% since July 2009.

India is now the seventh largest social networking market in the world, with almost 85% of the Indian internet population now accessing social networks.

However Twitter saw the highest growth rate of any social network in India, as it continues to establish a strong presence in all global regions.

In an interview earlier in the year, Gillian Muessig of SEOmoz said that “the Indian search market is exactly like the US in 1999 – a wide open playing field”. However, if it continues to develop at its current rate, that won’t be the case for much longer. The opportunities to enter this market and establish a presence are huge – but organisations need to act now to ensure they aren’t left behind.

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Gillian Muessig is the President and Co-founder of SEOmoz, one of the world’s leading SEO resources and is a regular speaker at search marketing conferences around the world. She sits on the board of directors for two search [...]]]> Gillian Muessig is the President and Co-founder of SEOmoz, one of the world’s leading SEO resources and is a regular speaker at search marketing conferences around the world. She sits on the board of directors for two search marketing companies in India, and has just spent a month working and speaking in the country.

At the forthcoming International Search Summit, Gillian will be examining the developing search market in India and giving her recommendations on how marketers can make the most of the opportunities it offers.  For a brief insight into what she’ll be talking about, keep reading!

Gillian, if you could give just one tip to search marketers working on global campaigns, what would it be?

Know your markets intimately. Pay attention to cultural, dialectic and even weather differences between regions, as well as countries. If you don’t know whats going on in the local market, you may be trying to sell swimsuits to Miami during hurricane season or “pop” to New Yorkers, where the drink is called “soda”.

You’re going to be speaking on ‘Search in India’ at the Summit, how quickly is it developing in terms of the web?

I see the Indian search market as being exactly like the US in 1999 – a wide open playing field. It’s a little like the movie ‘Back to the Future’ – we know exactly how things are going to turn out. We know who the winners are going to be. So many portals are yet to be built out. They only need someone to execute on the opportunity. That’s incredibly exciting. But things are moving at breakneck speed – in the blink of an eye this landscape will change dramatically.

Are there any key differences between search in India and other emerging markets?

Yes. Significant differences. China is the other huge, emerging market and it’s very exciting. But Google’s current embroilment demonstrates that a totalitarian system negates a robust international market place. There is a reckoning to be had in China.

Indians complain vociferously about government inefficiencies, corruption and red tape…just like other democracies. In other words, they are free to complain, to work better systems and create businesses in an open market atmosphere. With 1.2 billion people, the disenfranchised market is still huge but the massive amount of manpower is now being viewed as a value proposition rather than a liability, that is the beginning of enfranchisement. India is a democracy with a growing middle class and it is eagerly embracing technology.

What are the main opportunities, and challenges, for organisations targeting the Indian market?

The opportunities are what i referred to before – so many un-built major portals can be had for the taking. A professionally designed and operated political or finance portal could reap millions.

On a smaller scale, marketing itself is in its infancy here. The only ‘professional’ ad campaigns on or offline are run by Tata and Reliant. If you can design a decent ad campaign, know how to design a landing page and write convincing copy, you can be the one-eyed man in the land of the blind. The market is w-i-d-e open.

When it comes to challenges, ecommerce is severely hampered by banking regulations that don’t protect consumers. Trust issues are, again, similar to those we experienced in the late 90’s and turn of the century:

1) Vendor trust issues - how do I know that the product will be delivered and will be in good order when it arrives? Can I trust this vendor?

2) Financial protection issues – what protections do I have against someone stealing my credit card information or how do I get my money back if I don’t receive a product in good working order or return it but get no refund from the vendor?

As a result, ecommerce companies may need to take orders over the phone, a more familiar process to the Indian market.

What value do you think the International Search Summit offers delegates? This is my first time at the International Search Summit and I’m very excited to be part of it. Times have been tough pretty much everywhere recently, and as a rule of thumb, I say

When times are good, globalise. When times are bad, do it faster!

One can only hope to hold steady at best and will likely slip in your profits during tough times. One of the best ways to increase your chances of growth is to expand your market. Since your current customers are tightening belts or best holding steady, expanding your customer base now, while your competition is laying low is good for business now and will be great for business when the economy turns.

International Search Summit? Be there!

The International Search Summit in May is focused on innovations – recent developments in search and social media which are changing online marketing. In your opinion, what is the most significant innovation in recent years?

That Internet thing looks pretty exciting, isn’t it?

Seriously, Social Media was the watchword of 2009 and the innovation of ‘web 2.0′ – interactive web – spawned massive human interactions online.  That was certainly huge.

Mobile web, which involved innovations in hardware and software was and continues to be huge. I have talked about the web becoming mobile for some time now. With the rapid adoption of mobile pda’s I see this happening very quickly.

But the big thing I see now is the convergence of local-social-mobile marketing and the development of deep databases, the stuff that powers it. The quality of the experience of user search and the potential for marketers takes another giant leap forward when marketing messages can be delivered to geo-located internet connected devices at the request of the consumer. This is the stuff of marketers dreams!

Early Bird tickets are available for the International Search Summit. The Summit will be held at The Barbican Centre in London on 13th May, 2010.

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Facebook has announced the opening of an office in Hyderabad in southern India to support the roll out of Facebook to the large India-based population. Already Facebook has 8 million users in India. The company is now looking [...]]]> Facebook has announced the opening of an office in Hyderabad in southern India to support the roll out of Facebook to the large India-based population. Already Facebook has 8 million users in India. The company is now looking to recruit online sales and operations teams which are to be formed there.

Don Faul, Director of Global Online Operations said in an official announcement on the Facebook blog, “By having multiple support centers in a variety of time zones, we can provide better round-the-clock, multi-lingual support. The new offices come at a significant time in our international growth. 70% of people using Facebook are outside the US and are accessing the service from more than 70 languages.”

Facebook recently also opened a new office in Austin, Texas and has operations in Palo Alto, Calfornia and Dublin, Ireland.

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The Mobile Marketing Association announced the results of its Annual Global Mobile Attitude and Usage Study conducted in 2008. The markets surveyed in the Asia Pacific segment of the study include: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and South [...]]]> The Mobile Marketing Association announced the results of its Annual Global Mobile Attitude and Usage Study conducted in 2008. The markets surveyed in the Asia Pacific segment of the study include: Australia, China, Hong Kong, India, Japan, Singapore and South Korea. It shows the strong market opportunity for mobile marketers in APAC region.

The study’s key findings for the selected Asia Pacific markets include:

* Overall, heavy penetration and reliance on mobile phones combine with strong feature and mobile web usage in these regions to indicate strong market opportunity for mobile marketers.
o In total, the top five mobile phone features used are non-voice in nature and include camera, games, text messaging, saving images to a photo library and MP3 player.
o Strong use of text messaging and mobile web (61% and 36% overall respectively) indicates mobile phone users in these regions are willing to view their mobile devices as full scale communication devices not restricted to voice services.

* Over one-third report using mobile web and one-in-five use it on a weekly basis.
o Common applications include news, browsing the internet, accessing mobile specific sites, and visiting sites related to music, weather and entertainment.

* Overall receptiveness and interest in opting-in to mobile marketing efforts is fairly strong; nearly half (48%) are moderately/highly interested in mobile marketing and more than half are somewhat/highly likely to opt-in to mobile marketing efforts.
o Applications that garner the greatest interest include mobile coupon, status alerts regarding current accounts or products owned and alerts for special sales and discounts.

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Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) announced its launch of SEMPO APAC Committee.

SEMPO APAC plans and organizes SEMPO activities in the Asia-Pacific region to educate the market, grow membership and awareness of the Online & Search Marketing Industry, as [...]]]> Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization (SEMPO) announced its launch of SEMPO APAC Committee.

SEMPO APAC plans and organizes SEMPO activities in the Asia-Pacific region to educate the market, grow membership and awareness of the Online & Search Marketing Industry, as well as to provide support to working groups under SEMPO APAC. Currently the committee has volunteers from China, Japan, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Jakarta, Australia and the US. Committee representatives are highly regarded industry professionals in each market, and are frequent speakers at local industry events.

SEMPO APAC’s recent activities include a series of webinars, seminars, networking meetings, an Asia tour with SEMPO leadership conducted in Beijing, Mumbai, and Singapore, as well as market surveys carried out in India, Japan, and Singapore.

“Our development in Asia-Pacific has been inspiring. The teams that have come together to form Working Groups are passionate and continue to drive growth. We are pleased to see the APAC team focus on the broader region to include Australia and surrounding markets. With 41% of the Internet Users in Asia-Pacific, SEMPO will continue to make a commitment in the region. We are thrilled with the Asia-Pacific talent that continues to take leadership roles in SEMPO.” Sara Holoubek, president of SEMPO Board of Directors said. ”

For more information visit http://www.sempo.org/public_groups/apac/ or write to Motoko Hunt (Chair of SEMPO APAC & Multilingual Search editor) apac-chair “at” sempo.org

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SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) Asia Tour and Seminars aim to foster awareness, educate, and promote the search industry in Asia by connecting professionals in the regions and Western markets, and creating a better understanding of search and its [...]]]> SEMPO (Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization) Asia Tour and Seminars aim to foster awareness, educate, and promote the search industry in Asia by connecting professionals in the regions and Western markets, and creating a better understanding of search and its role in marketing.

The event consists of seminars, press conferences, and networking receptions at each location. The seminars will bring speakers from search engines and SEMPO, and “Who’s-who” of the search industry are invited to attend.

Tour dates:
June 9 – Singapore
June 12 – Beijing
June 15 – Mumbai

David Temple, one of the Multilingual editors and a chair of SEMPO Singapore will be at the Singapore event and I will visit all three locations as a chair of SEMPO Asia.

For detail visit SEMPO Asia Tour page.

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Comscore has released figures showing that Google received a billion searches in June placing it number one with an 81% share. The largest local search engine was Rediff.com with a 1.5% share. India is a massive potential [...]]]> Comscore has released figures showing that Google received a billion searches in June placing it number one with an 81% share. The largest local search engine was Rediff.com with a 1.5% share. India is a massive potential and growing market with 23 official languages but where English is the only lingua franca. Google Adwords is available in several – but by means all indian languages. via Searchengineland

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For a number of years, Germany (.de) was the world’s most popular ccTLD in terms of registrations.

But about two years ago China made its ccTLD a lot more affordable and easier to get. Since then, the country has been registering [...]]]> For a number of years, Germany (.de) was the world’s most popular ccTLD in terms of registrations.

But about two years ago China made its ccTLD a lot more affordable and easier to get. Since then, the country has been registering roughly 20,000 country codes a day. The country went from 2 million registrations to 10 million registrations in an amazing 12 months.

Within the past two months, China overtook Germany for the top spot, with approximately 11.4 million registrations. It’s safe to say that Germany isn’t going to take that lead back.

Below is the list of the leading countries overall:

The country that stands the best chance of one day giving China a run for its money is India. But I’m not holding my breath. India stands at only 1.2 million registrations currently and is growing at 46% annually. It’s an impressive growth rate — a rate that is bound to increase, but China is also adding registrations at a good clip.

Why isn’t .us higher on the list? Blame .com. Most Americans assume .com is synonymous with USA. Over time, I expect this to change, but that’s a topic for a future post…

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India is unusual in having 23 official languages from English and Hindi to Kannada and Telugu – now the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has released ‘cross language search plugins’ which are intended to make search more readily [...]]]> India is unusual in having 23 official languages from English and Hindi to Kannada and Telugu – now the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC) has released ‘cross language search plugins’ which are intended to make search more readily available to the wider spectrum of Indian languages, reports India Times.

This, together with the wide availability of access, is essential to enable India to take it’s rightful place as a major economy in the modern world. Google provides natural search in just 6 languages currently – English, Hindi, Bengali, Telugu, Marathi and Tamil. Paid search is only available in English and Hindi currently. Yahoo and Live.com are only available in English.

The search plugins enable, for example, spelling corrections in the Hindi language where multiple ways of spelling the same word correctly exist as well as cross linking searches from language to language. For this development to achieve its potential, the tools really need to be adopted by the major search engines.

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comScore just released an interesting data about the search rankings in Asia-Pacific region. According to their data, Google and Yahoo were the regional leaders as “top search properties” followed by China’s Baidu.

“Because Google and Yahoo! have a strong [...]]]> comScore just released an interesting data about the search rankings in Asia-Pacific region. According to their data, Google and Yahoo were the regional leaders as “top search properties” followed by China’s Baidu.

“Because Google and Yahoo! have a strong presence in many Asia-Pacific countries, they account for the majority of searches conducted in the overall region,” said Jack Flanagan, comScore executive vice president. “However, there are several strong, local country search engines that also play a significant role in the region. Most notably, the dominant search engine in China, Baidu.com, accounts for one out of every six searches in Asia-Pacific notwithstanding the fact that its users are primarily from China.”

What interesting is that 5 out of the Top 10 Search Properties in Asia-Pacific (April 2008) were the region based engines such as Korea’s Naver and China’s Alibaba.

comScore’s data also shows the country by country breakdown of Internet audience in the region. China ranks #1 with 82,814,000 unique searchers and Japan ranks #2 with 60,050,000 unique searchers. Korean searchers have most number of searches per searcher (103.5) followed by Japan’s 102.6 searches per searcher.

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Yahoo recently added oneSearch capability, a search service designed for mobile users, to nine mobile operators in Asia. Those mobile operators include, DiGi Telecommunications (Malaysia), Starhub (Singapore), Aircel Limited (India), BPL Mobile (India), Bharat Sanchar Nigam (India), PT Hutchison [...]]]> Yahoo recently added oneSearch capability, a search service designed for mobile users, to nine mobile operators in Asia. Those mobile operators include, DiGi Telecommunications (Malaysia), Starhub (Singapore), Aircel Limited (India), BPL Mobile (India), Bharat Sanchar Nigam (India), PT Hutchison CP Telecom (Indonesia) PT Indosat (Indonesia), PT Excelcomindo Pratama (Indonesia) and PCCW Mobile (Hong Kong). Altogether Yahoo has 16 mobile phone Internet partnerships in Asia and most likely are in talks with more mobile operators in the region.

“These strategic partnerships demonstrate Yahoo!’s continued momentum, building on seven previous partnerships with Asian mobile operators and reinforce Yahoo!’s strong leadership position in mobile audience reach, mobile search services and mobile advertising,” the company said in a statement.

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It might not be a surprice but India is booming, the country might only be a sub-continent, but it is a mega-country to be in regards of internet usage, but the rise is slower than expected. According to a recent [...]]]> It might not be a surprice but India is booming, the country might only be a sub-continent, but it is a mega-country to be in regards of internet usage, but the rise is slower than expected. According to a recent “India Online Overview report” done by eMarketer India has “only” reached 10.5 million broadband households by 2011. This is not according to the goals of the Indian government that declared 2007 the “Year of Broadband,” setting a goal of 20 million broadband users in three to four years.

eMarketer also estimates that 25.5 million Indians used the Internet at least once a month in 2006 and expects India’s online population to reach 33.2 million in 2007 and 71.6 million by 2011.

Source: eMarketer

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At least two major new features are arriving in Google’s webmaster tools console according to information from the SES San Jose conference and the official Google webmaster tools blog.

The latter has announced support for the Internationalizing Domain Names [...]]]> At least two major new features are arriving in Google’s webmaster tools console according to information from the SES San Jose conference and the official Google webmaster tools blog.

The latter has announced support for the Internationalizing Domain Names in Applications (IDNA) and a series of further enhancements are expected. IDNA enables webmasters to use domain names which exist outside the original 26 characters used for the English-language – but not for too many other languages since many have odd accented characters. Additionally, this brings greater support for asiatic and arabic character sets.

The other new development which is currently being looked at, according to a senior Google source, is the addition of a tool within webmaster tools whereby you can specify the country your site relates to. The countries will be listed in a drop down list – and you’ll almost certainly only be able to choose once country per site.

For a long time it has been a problem if you site was a .com site with no history of activity in a country for Google to pick out the right ‘bucket’ in which to list your site. For some this was an embarrasment – for others a major business hurdle. Matters were worse for those .coms hosted in a country other than the one they were targeting – perhaps for business political or content management system reasons. The result was you might be targeting France with a site hosted in Norway – but not end up appearing in the ‘Pages Francophones’ of Google.fr – even if the language of the site was French.

The simplest way of solving this problem has always been to have local country domains in which case – contrary to what one SES panelist advised in San Jose, the hosting location becomes irrelevant. For many, this isn’t practical – hence the reason why some have chosen to host locally to get around the problem.

These two developments combined will help international SEO specialists manage their projects with less frustration!

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The Business Standard reports on attempts that Yahoo is making to ‘improve its relevance to India’ by adding cities and listings portals. Both Yahoo Our City and Yahoo! India Maps are at the beta testing stage – but [...]]]> The Business Standard reports on attempts that Yahoo is making to ‘improve its relevance to India’ by adding cities and listings portals. Both Yahoo Our City and Yahoo! India Maps are at the beta testing stage – but will help Yahoo’s India based users to search locations comprising of 170 cities, 4,785 towns and 220,000 villages. As India is a huge nation – those figures sound a bit small to me?

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Red Herring reports that Google is using Seedfund.com to spread start up funds to new tech companies in India.

The article can be found here.

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The Business Standard of India reported that Yahoo! was opening a research lab in Bangalore, India.

Yahoo is also starting their “Big Thinkers” lectures in India in January 2007.

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Leading Indian telco, Bharti Airtel has announced a strategic partnership with Google to offer mobile search in India. Google will incorporate mobile ads through its Adwords platform.

The President of Bharti Airtel Ltd explains,

“In India, mobile is fast [...]]]> Leading Indian telco, Bharti Airtel has announced a strategic partnership with Google to offer mobile search in India. Google will incorporate mobile ads through its Adwords platform.

The President of Bharti Airtel Ltd explains,

“In India, mobile is fast outgrowing the growth of PCs. Mobile users outnumber PC users in India by a factor of six. The first computing experience for the majority of Indians in the next few years will be on a mobile phone. Airtel is delighted to partner with Google, a company that literally reinvented the Internet, to bring its cutting edge technology to our customers.”

Sukhinder Singh Cassidy, Google’s VP of Asia Pacific and Latin America (now that’s a territory….) added,

“India is one of the fastest growing mobile markets in the world. We are very pleased to partner with Airtel, a company that has played a key role in leading India’s explosive mobile growth, to bring Google services to the millions of mobile users in India. By providing immediate access to Google, Airtel is creating a compelling experience for its users, who will now be able to quickly and easily find information that’s important to them.”

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Foxnews reports that an organisation known as “DotAsia Organization Ltd” has had its application to run domain names in asian languages under the top level domain ‘.asia’ approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The domains will [...]]]> Foxnews reports that an organisation known as “DotAsia Organization Ltd” has had its application to run domain names in asian languages under the top level domain ‘.asia’ approved by the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers.

The domains will cover China, Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and other asian countries.

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