Global Search Engine Marketing & Social Media News And Analysis » Israel

Israeli Exposure Data – Google Crosses 90% Reach for the First Time, youtube placed 5th

Gilad Sasson — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 15:16:12 +0000

TGI/Teleseker published their February data for the Israeli Internet market,

For the first time, The domination of Google within the Israeli net crosses 90 percent of weekly exposure among surfers aged 13+.

Top 10 Table:

SITE                                         07-Dec         08-Jan         08-Feb
Google.co.il                             87.80%         88.40%        90.80%
walla.co.il                                73.00%         72.60%         73.50%
ynet.co.il                                 63.00%         62.60%         57.40%
nana10.co.il                            31.70%         39.50%          37.70%
You Tube                                28.70%         33.00%         33.90%
MSN/Hotmail.com/co.il     32.90%         31.70%          29.80%
nrg.co.il                                   27.10%          28.00%         26.30%
tapuz.co.il                                23.80%         27.20%         23.10%
zap.co.il                                    23.20%         25.40%         22.90%
facebook                                  20.80%         21.00%         21.40%

Other sites in the TOP10 list, following the Big G:

Second – Walla, The veteran Israeli portal who is stable at 72-74 %.
Third- Ynet.co.il, The biggest news site with a ~6% drop from december 2007.
Fourth – nana10.co.il (formerly nana.co.il+10.tv) with 37.7%.
Fifth – YouTube.com with an Impressive leap at 33.9%, making the second google asset in this first 5.
Sixth – msn/hotmail with a moderate drop (29.8%)
Seventh – nrg.co.il (26.3%), The second news focused website in the list.
Eighth – tapuz.co.il (23.1%, Portal).
Ninth – zap (22.9%), Israel’s leading price comparison site.
and Last – FaceBook.com (21.4%).

Google opens a webmaster help group in Hebrew

Gilad Sasson — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:13:54 +0000

Google announced today that they’ve opened a new Webmaster Help Group in Hebrew

I got this email from Google representative:

Hey all,

Today we launched our Webmaster Help Group in Hebrew.

Do you want to know more about Google’s Crawling, Indexing, Ranking, Sitemaps, Webmaster Tools or are you just a curious Webmaster?

Go to our help group so other more experienced users and Google Guide will be more than happy to help around.

http://groups.google.com/group/Google_Webmaster_Help-iw?hl=iw

Cheers, and keep in touch!:)

The Israeli/Hebrew webmaster community embraced the idea fast – looks like the group is filling with relevant debates and we can only hope that Google will provide helpful and meaningful data to the community.

Israeli search firms SortFix & Omgili– simplify the experience, review products

Gilad Sasson — Tue, 18 Dec 2007 07:49:48 +0000

From Orli Yakuel’s Excellent(!) tech blog, two reviews of two Israeli Search companies – SortFix & Omgili :

Israel based SortFix offers a unique and fun way to search terms on the Web that currently works with Google,Yahoo! Or Dmoz search…The unique interface allows you to play with the suggested keywords, and create your own individual and precise query

YouTube Demo of sortfix

Omgili is a vertical search engine that scans millions of online discussions worldwide in over 100,000 boards, forums and other group discussion based resources. This is why you get the most relevant, subjective information to any term you search for.”

At the beginning of the month Omgili launched a new service – Omgili Product Reviews. Omgili product reviews enable its users to search for a specific product and get all the product reviews that match their query”

“Another service that Omgili owns is the Buzz Graphs which allows you measure and compare the Buzz of any term. The Buzz is the percentage of the term out of the total number of discussions Omgili covered on a specific date

SMX Israel becomes SphinnCon Israel. February 2008.

Gilad Sasson — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 13:29:27 +0000

We may have to wait till 2009 for an Israeli SMX conference but the good news from Danny and the 3rd door media people is the announcement of the new SphinnCon:

“a new networking event series designed for Sphinners and anyone interested in internet marketing”

The first Sphinncon event will take place in Israel, February 5th, 2008, See Ya there

More about it from Barry’s Seroundtable

Google Israel CEO – we will not censor anti-semitic sites

Gilad Sasson — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 15:43:04 +0000

In an Hertzliya convention held by the Anti-Defamation League, Meir Brand, Google Israel CEO says:

“Google cannot decide which sites will be published on the world wide web, We obey to the law and as long as there isn’t a specific law regarding specific sites we will keep those sites in Google’s index”

An SMX/Sphinn event in Israel?

Gilad Sasson — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 20:51:41 +0000

Barry from SEroundtable postes in his personal blog about a
possible SEO event in Israel, (and maybe I for once will need no hotel nor flights to arrange…)

From Barry’s post:

I can probably get a sponsor with the help of Third Door Media coordinating the event under an SMX or Sphinn thing. It is very early on, just a concept right now, so no guarantees on that. I am just fishing the idea around.

The Israeli SEO/SEM industry grows up massive, it was just a matter of time…

Web2.0Sport – Fans to Coach Team Via the Web

Gilad Sasson — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 19:36:24 +0000

LinkBait goes to 2nd grade – Israeli web2sport community purchased a soccer team and from now on all professional decisions aren’t made by a coach, the fans will decide.

From Reuters:

Most of our surfers like the idea that they can decide what the team will do: who will be in the first 11, what formation they will play and who will be the substitutes
The Internet fans can drag players they think should play into their preferred positions on a pitch diagram by a deadline. The information is then collated and the players who get the most votes will line up for the next match. We thank our sponsors – Play65 Backgammon site.

A group photo of the team – getting instructions directly from the Mac…

All the games are transmitted live and the fans decide on positions changes, substitutes (and replacing timing) etc. This makes Hapoel Play65 Kiryat Shalom the first Interactive team that is managed as a social media democracy.

sources:

Reuters – Israeli soccer club puts online fans in charge
Yahoo News – The First Web 2.0 Football Club in the World

Google webmaster tools starts to think international

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 17:20:03 +0000

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!

Israel’s Leading Internet Sites – New Data June 2007

Gilad Sasson — Sun, 29 Jul 2007 08:43:10 +0000

Quick update to “Israel’s web popularity contest” , The data comes from TNS:
The percentages relate to weekly exposure rates within the Israeli web users population.
First Number – June 2007, the second one is from January 2007 for comparison

Site Jun-07 Jan-07 Remarks

google.com/co.il 87.5% 82.7%
walla.co.il 69.6% 70.1% Israel’s Biggest portal
ynet.co.il 63.1% 55.2% Biggest News Providor
hotmail/msn 32.2% 32.1%
nana.co.il 31.8% 29.1% Portal
nrg.co.il 28.4% 23.4% News Site
tapuz.co.il 25.2% 27.1% Portal, specializing with communities
youtube.com 24.8% NA
d.co.il 22.4% 15.1% Israel’s YellowPages
zap.co.il 21.8% 18.1% Price comparison site
keshet-tv.com 19.3% 18.4% TV franchisor (one of two at Israel’s channel2, The biggest commercial channel)
yad2.co.il 18.5% 12.4% Sellers-Buyers board
yahoo.com 16.9% 16.2%
one.co.il 15.8% 17.1% Sports Portal
globes.co.il 14.0% 9.5% Finance portal

Google Israel to support Adsense in Hebrew

Gilad Sasson — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 00:14:25 +0000

Last week, Israeli Google CEO, Mr. Meir Brand, announced that the AdSense features are finally supported for Hebrew advertisers and publishers.
The back office translated interface is a bit clumsy, but still better then nothing.
Till this statement, many Hebrew site owners integrated the non supported version to their sites having a handful of encoding issues and dir=rtl/ltr difficulties.

The updated page from Google AdSense that states the supported languages.

Walla.co.il – #2 search media in Israel moves to PPC

Gilad Sasson — Wed, 29 Nov 2006 08:22:27 +0000

Walla.co.il, Israel’s biggest Internet Portal and search engine till 2005 sent a notice to all its advertisers, announcing a shift from PPI (pay per Inclusion at a fixed price) to Pay Per Click. The change will be implemented starting January 1st, 2007.
Walla, a public company, was the biggest Internet Media in Israel since 1998, A year ago was the first time for walla to get in second place, when Google.co.il, the Hebrew version of the G monster passed them.

Current weekly exposure for the two (July 2006 data) are:

Google.co.il – 79.1% weekly exposure amongst Israeli web Users (3.9 Million)
Walla.co.il – 67.6% weekly exposure amongst Israeli web Users (3.9 Million)

The new bidding system that Walla will be providing to its advertisers is very similar to Google’s adwords and the offered bidding gaps will be at Intervals of 0.25 NIS (~0.06 $).
An interesting and refreshing change that the new method is supposed to bring is that Interactive and SEM agencies will get a revenue share from the PPC deals at a percentage that wasn’t published yet.

Online advertising to exceed 10% of budgets in 8 markets by 2008

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Fri, 06 Oct 2006 10:12:26 +0000

Media research firm Zenithoptimedia reports that 8 countries will dedicate more than 10% of their budgets to online marketing by 2008. Two countries will already cross that barrier this year – the UK adn Sweden – interestingly not the US.

The 8 countries are:-

Australia

Israel

Japan

Norway

South Korea

Taiwan

In 2008 it is estimated that 17.2% of marketing spend in the UK will dedicated to online and online will be ahead of cinema and outdoor forms of advertising and not far behind radio. Smaller advertisers in particular are to benefit from the affordability and targeting capabilities of the internet (which means ’search’ to you and me!!)

Internet advertising expenditure is to rise globally by 84% between 2005 and 2008.

New adwords verdict in Israel – It’s OK to use competitor’s name

Gilad Sasson — Sun, 06 Aug 2006 08:38:30 +0000

Israel court of law, in a new verdict allows an Israeli clothes company to use its competitor name for AdWords searches conducted via google.co.il.
This is the first Israeli case in which the judge rules in favour of the sued company.
In it’s verdict, Judge Magen Altubia states that a search engine is an ad based media, and the fact that competitors use each other names is just natural. Furthermore to the loss the prosecutor (Matim-Li) will have to pay court expenses at an amount equal to 20,000$.

Via Haaretz (Hebrew)

Google to Israeli SEM firms: come on, we’re friends (sell AdWords)…

Gilad Sasson — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 14:49:53 +0000

Meir Brand, Ceo of Google Israel along with Eyal Chen and Ronen Horen(Sales directors of the Israeli Google team) conducted two seminar meetings this week in Tel Aviv, The first for Israeli leading Interactive media firms and the second (In which I attended) to the leading SEM companies in Israel.

This is a first public step from Google’s representatives towards Israeli players, the main message was:

- We’re your friends, we don’t want to steal your clients.
- Let us help you up-sale your clients.
- You got a communication channel – talk with us.

Most of the lessons were presented by delegates from the European AdWords team, Google advertising options (mostly AdWords) stood at the middle of the discussion.

Some of the agenda: API, Google analytics, MCC, Google advertising professional plan, Google sponsored video , AdWords editor, and more…

Time will tell how genuine that was, it felt like affiliate marketing at its best…

Microsoft to open new R&D center in Tel Aviv

Gilad Sasson — Thu, 27 Apr 2006 14:55:45 +0000

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer said, “Microsoft Israel’s R&D centers will play an important role in our global R&D strategy. Moshe Lichtman’s (the new R&D center manager and former IPTV devision vice president in Microsoft) vision and vast experience of product development and management makes him the ideal candidate for the task of driving forward our R&D efforts in Israel and furthering our cooperation with Israel’s high-tech industry and venture capital sector.”

Microsoft Israel is set to make substantial changes to its R&D activities in Israel. By now Israeli Microsoft activities had no relation to search, but now the rumors imply that the new center may concentrate in new search technologies for several platforms, including mobile search, TV search( via IPTV) and web-based search.
The company has appointed former IPTV division VP Moshe Lichtman as R&D president in Israel. Lichtman will oversee the expansion of Microsoft Israel’s technological investments and R&D activities in the Israeli market. He will also head Microsoft Israel’s new R&D center in Tel Aviv, in addition to overseeing activities at the existing R&D center in Haifa.

Lichtman announced a week ago that he would be stepping down from his post at Microsoft (NasdaqNM: MSFT), and returning to Israel for family reasons. The company announcement, published worldwide, said he would be replaced by Enrique Rodriguez, who comes from the company’s Xbox division. Lichtman is considered the most senior Israeli at Microsoft and was previously responsible for the development of software at Microsoft’s television division.

It is believed that the current Microsoft Israel R&D manager Avi Nathan, will continue in his post and will report to Lichtman.

via globes

Search engine landscape in Israel

Gilad Sasson — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 21:26:10 +0000

Israel’s main language (a.k.a. Hebrew) is a great challenge to search engines engineers and marketers, simply because of the fact that it’s written from right to left with funny letters and impossible grammar.

In this post, I’ll try to review the biggest players in Israel, based on TGI/TNS surveys conducted in Israel in June 2005 and December 2005 (We’re expecting a new survey next June).

Let’s get to business:
I hope it isn’t a huge disappointment but the number one site in Israel is…

1. Google.co.il – Google’s Israeli version leads with 73.3% weekly exposure among Israeli web visitors as to the Dec 2005 survey, this expresses an increase referring the previous survey (66.4% in June 2005).
Google opened a business center in Israel in September 2005, managed by Meir Brand, a former senior manager in Microsoft. The R&D rumors came with no delay and earlier this year Google announced on opening a development center in Israel, managed by Dr. Yoelle Maarek, a respected senior researcher and developer from IBM. Google Israeli Jobs are listed here .

2. Walla.co.il– The biggest content portal in Israel providing directory services, strong search engine (based on FAST + Hebrew customization), mail and recently even a paying system. Weekly exposure in Dec 2005: 61.2%, June 2005: 57.3%.

3. ynet.co.il – Israel’s biggest NewsPaper (Yediot Ahronot), The site don’t have an In-house search, their search is currently based on Nana.co.il (see later), 44.3% weekly exposure in Dec 2005, similar numbers last June.

4. Hotmail/MSN – aggregated for MS services, including msn.co.il which is partly owned by Microsoft and Partly by the Israeli ISP Internet Gold. Weekly exposure in Dec 2005: 37.4%, June 2005: 35.8%

5. nana.co.il – biggest ISP (Netvision) portal, Dec 2005: 29.6%, June 2005: 30.6%.

6. nrg.co.il – Israel’s 2nd biggest newspaper (MAARIV), 22.5% in Dec 2005, 21.8% in June.

7. tapuz.co.il – Tapuz means Orange in Hebrew, A very veteran web portal with lots of communities and thousands of members, 19.7% / 19.6% .

8. yahoo.com – opposed to Google and MSN, yahoo hadn’t started activity in Israel (Yet) nor in Hebrew , but are very known for their Yahoo! mail and other popular services. 16.7% in December 2005, 16.3% in June 2005.

9. one.co.il – a popular sport portal, Israelis excel in sports narrating and viewing, not quite as good in practicing sports per se, 15.6% in December 2005, 12.6% in June 2005.

10. d.co.il – Israel’s Yellow Pages and business directory with a weekly exposure of 11.7% in December and 11.2% in June 2005.

These are Israel’s current big ten and as you can see Google, MSN and Yahoo (despite the lack of a Hebrew version) are in it.
Google’s dominancy is very clear and ASK got zero recognition in Israel.

Most of the Google searches are conducted on the Israeli Google.co.il version, mainly due the auto geo-targeting redirect that google uses in order to serve the user a local based version, from my inventory of logs I can say that Hebrew sites get about 90% of google traffic from google.co.il and the rest (10%) from google.com and other TLD’s.

58% of Israelis have an internet connection – only 10% via dial-up

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Tue, 10 May 2005 19:41:03 +0000

The Jerusalem Post brings us the news that Israelis are well connected to the internet with 73% of homes having a computer and 58% an internet connection.

The survey was carried out by the Tel Aviv University’s Netvision Institute for Internet Research. Heavy users were found to be generally aged under 29. 43% of internet users access the web at least once a day.