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

Facebook Still Not Dominating In The Netherlands

Jeroen Smeekens — Thu, 11 Aug 2011 12:24:09 +0000

The beginning of August saw Google announcing that Google+ now has more than 25 million users (though the activity declines). It is too soon to tell whether Google+ will be a serious contender, but since it is a Google product, it has a good chance of succeeding.

In light of Google’s success, it is interesting to see how the other players are doing. And in particular, how is Facebook doing in The Netherlands?

Facebook vs. Hyves

The Netherlands have always been a bit off when it comes to the Internet. Ebay thought it could continue its winning streak and easily become the biggest online shop for secondhand items. But we are stubborn, and if it ain’t broken, why fix it. So Marktplaats, the Dutch equivalent of Ebay, couldn’t be defeated and Ebay eventually just gave up….and bought Marktplaats.

And here in The Netherlands we have Hyves. With a long history and almost 11 million users, of which 9 million are Dutch. And that is massive, considering our little country only has 16,8 million inhabitants.

But Facebook has been gaining ground here, with its Like-button and its more adult look (Hyves does seem a bit childish in comparison). Interestingly, although Facebook is by far the largest social network and dominant in our Western society, recent reports however show that Facebook still hasn’t been able to defeat Hyves. While it is a bit difficult to compare stats, Hyves still has more monthly active users (about 700.000 more).

Facebook does have more users who are between 25 and 35 years old. Hyves is more popular among teenagers and adults (15 – 24 years old). Also, Facebook attracts more female users and Hyves has more male users.

Will Facebook conquer The Netherlands?

The big question is: can Facebook be the dominant social network in The Netherlands. Hyves is certainly putting up a big fight, but Facebook is closing in really fast. Hyves is putting up a big fight, adopting features that Facebook has (like online games, share buttons, etc.), but its user base is shifting.

As said, Hyves does have a less adult look, and the majority of the (young) adults seem to have migrated to Facebook. I personally don’t know anyone older than 16 that is still using Hyves, but there is no denying that Hyves still has a massive amount of users. Children and young teens are still using Hyves and will so for quite a while. But the migration has begun, and I feel that it is only a matter of time before Hyves will see more users closing their accounts.

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The battle for the clicks: Google +1, Facebook and Twitter

Jeroen Smeekens — Mon, 06 Jun 2011 10:02:43 +0000

Finally, since last week people in The Netherlands (and the rest of Europe) can add the Google +1 button to their website. Also, Twitter has released their Follow-button, and Bing and Facebook are continuing their partnership. And with all this comes the battle for the clicks. With personalized search results, followers on Twitter, likes on Facebook the question arises: isn’t it a bit too much?

Social media and content

International research from Nielsen shows that 23% of all the messages on social media contain links to publicized content. This translates to 27.00.000 (!) pieces of content that are shared on a daily basis. To make it easier to share content, you can add share buttons to your websites. For our company blog we chose only the most relevant and used social media channels: Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. We don’t use Hyves, the number one Dutch network site: Hyves has a different audience (much younger), a less professional image and is hardly used by our target audience. And this is just The Netherlands. In the US we see share buttons for Google Buzz, Reddit, Yahoo!, StumpleUpon and Digg (to name a few)!

Social media and the SERPs

The exact influence of social signals on search results isn’t quite clear yet, but we know that they are getting more and more important. Earlier this year Google stated that social signals (like Tweets and Likes) did not have a direct impact on rankings, but they do look at those signals. But, as Search News Central stated, social signals do have an influence on the search results, albeit indirect. Search engines can also use them for content discovery for instance. Also, social media can be another source of traffic.

Search results are also getting more and more personalized and we get to see when one of our (online) friends has shared a webpage. And with Google +1 and the Bing/Facebook partnership it seems that social media channels are having a bigger and bigger impact on search results.

Google +1 and Bing/Facebook

Google was clearly looking for a way to integrate social media channels with its search results when Bing announced their partnership with Facebook last year. A blow in the face.

To bridge the gap, Google announced +1 in April: its own “like” button for search results and (since last week) for webpages. Check out Google +1 on the official website or watch the introduction video here.

Unfortunately for Google, Bing beats them to the punch: currently the search results in Bing are powered by Facebook data.

As far as I know Google has said nothing about +1 impacting the search results (directly). Besides that, the lack of a Google community can be a real problem for the search giant: where Bing can use the widely adopted Facebook, Google has to convince its users to create a full profile and be logged in. It is therefore more likely that users will see personalized results in Bing (via Facebook) then in Google (via +1).

But, by making the +1 button available for websites, websites are bound to use it, just in case Google +1 does affect the search rankings. We have integrated the button just to be safe. The button also makes it easier for people to +1 pages, so we should see an increase in the usage of this new feature.

An advantage of Google +1 is the stats we can get by using Google Webmaster Tools, although I would like to see them integrated with Google Analytics. With Facebook it is more difficult to track and measure your “likes”, although the handy people at Webanalisten have found a way to track them in Analytics (Dutch article).

The Twitter Follow button

And to make it even more complicated (and certainly more crowded), we can now add the Twitter Follow button. Now users can not only tweet about a page, but with one mouseclick they can connect their Twitter profiles to yours. Which is a very welcome addition, but where to put it!

It’s getting crowded in here

The fight is on: what social media channel will get a place on your website? Here in The Netherlands we only have a handful of social media channels that are heavily in use. But still, even for the Dutch (and the rest of Europe), it’s getting crowded and it is getting tougher and tougher to integrate all those buttons. Which channels should we add to our website so that our users can share the content easily, we reap the benefits and still maintain a great user experience?

For the Dutch readers I would advise to add the Google +1 button. We don’t know what the impact will be, and you might as well get a head start on Google’s social network. Since Google has 95% market share, we can ignore Bing for now. It doesn’t look like Microsoft will gain market share any time soon. Besides that, add the share buttons that are relevant to your business. LinkedIn is very popular here, and Facebook is the more mature Hyves.

Good luck, and I am curious how users from other countries are dealing with the increase in buttons and social media channels that users in their country are using. Do let me know!

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Google Shopping And the Merchant Center Finally Arrives In The Netherlands

Jeroen Smeekens — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:00:24 +0000

In February Google officially announced that the Google Merchant Center will launch in Spain, Italy and the Netherlands. Google Shopping is the vertical search engine from Google where visitors, as you’ve already guessed, can search for products. As a company, you can take part by introducing and tracking your products using data feeds. And now, after a few months of preparation, it has finally arrived here in The Netherlands and you can check it here: Google Product Search Netherlands.

Google Product Search

In the United States and the United Kingdom, Google Shopping goes under the name of Google Product Search. As mentioned, Shopping is a vertical search engine for products. It is also a price comparison site like Beslist.nl or Kieskeurig.nl. A simple comparison shows that there is little difference between sites like these and Google Shopping:

Even the detailed product pages are very similar:

Personally, I think Google Shopping is even a bit nicer to look at. The use of more white space makes it easier on the eyes in my opinion.

Visitors can also look for products at Google Shopping and then look into which providers there are and compare prices. And here too, visitors can write reviews of the products.

An advantage for the consumer is that Google has given suggestions for certain products. This enables the user to search faster, but it can also provide the consumer with ideas for other alternative products.

Providing your product data

But how can you get your product data into Google? To do that, you will have to register with Google Merchant Center. Here you will have to add a product feed (data feed) which you will send to Google. The whole process is, as we may expect from Google, documented in their Help Center.

You can provide your product data in text-DSV format or in XML format. The guidelines for the feed specification can be read here:

The following components are required:

International product code
Title of the product
Description (text description of the product)
Condition (state of the product, such as “new”)
Price of the product
Link to your own website
GTIN: (the barcode, often EAN code) – since the 3^rd of May this is mandatory)

And strongly recommended are:

Image link
Brand
MPN (part or model number of the manufacturer)
Quantity
Delivery information for the product

There are more product data you can pass on to Google, you can look them all up here.

Uploading the feed can be through a planned upload, FTP or manual upload.

Conditions for the Merchant Center

In the Google Shopping Conditions it states, among other things, that you have to ensure that all URLs to your website work and that they have to be direct URLs. The product availability must be indicated and if the product is no longer available, that must be stated, or you have to remove the product from the feed or set the quantity must to “0″. Furthermore, the products must have fixed prices and there are also conditions on the content which you present to the visitor.

Google Shopping in Organic Search Results

An advantage and a disadvantage of Google Shopping is that Google Shopping results can also be seen in the “organic” search results from Google. That is, when people “regularly” search in Google for a product, results from Google Shopping can also be returned (just as images and videos are returned in the search results). This can be an advantage for suppliers who otherwise wouldn’t appear on the first page. At the same time, this is a disadvantage for websites which were on the first page and now get a lower (visual) position because the product results push the regular results downwards.

Tough on affiliates

Affiliates are not permitted to use Google Shopping. Only companies who supply directly may forward their product feeds to Google.

Product Ad Listing for Google AdWords

Finally Bijgespijkerd noticed that eventually in the Netherlands it will also be possible to connect Google Shopping to Google AdWords, so that your products can also be shown in your AdWords advertisements. To do this, you can create text advertisements for your products or advertisements with images attached. This can be done by selecting the option “extend my ads with relevant product details from Google Merchant Center” in AdWords. Watch the video for more information on this:

Just like Sitelinks, the extension with your product listings provides could lead to a higher conversion rate. The advertisement is also shown when somebody looks for a specific product that you also have in your range.

Finally

Price comparison sites will not be happy about the arrival of Google Shopping and some companies which score well in the organic “search results” may be negatively affected by Google Shopping. Other companies may be given a further boost and the visibility of your products may be increased enormously. Time will tell, but price comparison is now getting easier and can even play a greater part in the online purchasing of products. Also, the competition may increase. Linking with AdWords may give advertisers a higher conversion rate, because the ads are even more attractive and provide for even better match with the users’ search query. The disadvantage could be that advertising via AdWords just got a little more complex.

To sum it up: Google Shopping may just shake things up in the online shopping landscape in the Netherlands. From a consumers’ perspective it seems that Goolge Shopping will prove to be a useful place for finding the best (or cheapest) place to order your product.

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The Netherlands Leading Global LinkedIn and Twitter Reach

Gemma Birch — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 11:22:39 +0000

Social Media has now reached 96% penetration in The Netherlands, with global sites Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn all growing rapidly in the country. It is still one of the few markets where a local social network is the most popular and Dutch site Hyves is still hanging on to its lead over Facebook. However Facebook has seen a huge 76% growth in the past year, indicating that this lead may not last for much longer.

LinkedIn and Twitter have also seen significant growth (70% and 67% respectively) and The Netherlands tops the table for the highest penetration rates for both sites, globally.

English-speaking markets dominate for LinkedIn with Ireland, the US, Canada and the UK making up the rest of the top 5, compared with Twitter which spans a range of continents and languages. Japan, Brazil, Indonesia and Venezuela all follow the Netherlands, with Turkey, Argentina and Singapore also making the top 10.

For more details visit comscore.com

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European Interactive Advertising Association Report Dec. 2010

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 11:47:35 +0000

The European Interactive Advertising Association has published the EIAA European Media Landscape Report Summary, December 2010.

The key findings of the report include:

521m 16+ year old people in the 15 European countries sampled
According to EIAA’s latest Mediascope Europe study 76% (396m) of all 16+ year old people across 15 European markets surveyed use different media simultaneously with almost a third (30%) using the internet whilst they watch TV
A third (33%) of Europeans cannot live without the internet, equal to the percentage of Europeans who claim they cannot live without TV
54% (279m) of Europeans use the internet in a typical week spending 12.1 hours online
16‐24 year olds use the internet more frequently than they watch TV – 79% of this younger demographic use the internet between 5 and 7 days each week while 76% watch TV as regularly
More than 8 in 10 (83%) online Europeans use a broadband connection and over half (52%) of these broadband users are wireless
The most popular web activities amongst all European internet users include;
- email (76%), communicating via social networking sites (45%)
- instant messaging (40%)
- watching film, TV or video clips (32%)
- contributing to ratings and reviews (27%)
71% state that as a result of the internet they are staying in touch with friends and relatives more, half (50%) have chosen better products or services and 47% are better able to manage their finances online
55% of European internet users actively change their mind on what brand to buy after online research

Other relevant information provided in the report:

51% access the Internet on a PC
14% access the Internet via a mobile device
43% watch or downloading films and video or stream TV
80% of the population in Norway Sweden, Denmark and the Netherlands access the Internet at least once a week, with the European average fixed at an estimated 54%

Source: http://www.eiaa.net/

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Dutch Social Media Activity: A Steady Growth

Bas van den Beld — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 11:41:51 +0000

In the Netherlands the biggest social network is not Facebook, but Hyves. And its our luck that the people at Hyves like numbers. On a regular basis they are publishing new numbers, usually showing us their growth. They always try to be as ‘honest’ as possible with these numbers, and therefore using numbers from for example Comscore.

The last update shows some interesting numbers. With 7946000 uniques in May 2010 Hyves still is the biggest social network in The Netherlands. But Facebook seems to be closing in on the Dutch giants. Where Hyves saw a growth of 1,64% Facebook grew 2,83% to 4658000 uniques in May. This however doesn’t make Facebook the fastest growing social network in the low countries. Twitter sees the fastest increase (almost 15%) followed by Windows Live, YouTube and then Facebook. The immense growth of Twitter can be triggered by the use of Twitter in the Dutch elections which were early June. The campaign was all through the month of May.

Time spent

Looking at the times spent on social networks Hyves however has the most loyal visitors so it seems. No less than 2060 million minutes were spent on Hyves in May. Facebook (261 million) and Twitter (40 million) have a lot less time spent.

There are many more numbers which Comscore has given out on the Dutch social networking market. Find them here. In general we can say that social networking in the Netherlands is growing steady. But looking at the numbers we should keep in mind that its definitely not ‘just’ Hyves or not ‘just’ Twitter and Facebook we should be focussing on.

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Google Offers Dutch Insight Tools for Dutch Elections

Bas van den Beld — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:49:14 +0000

As some may have noticed in The Netherlands at this moment politicians are battling for the attention of the voters. In two weeks time the Dutch are voting for a new government and the many debates online even made several Twitter topics trending worldwide.

The elections have also reached the attention of Google. Google Netherlands has launched a special search engine with which users can search through the election programs of the different Dutch parties.

Google doesn’t stop there, they also launched a special gadget which shows the trends around the elections, how much do people search for the current prime minister, which themes are discussed and how are the parties doing.

Finally the Dutch have looked at the US election closely and are also introducing a special YouTube channel. Dutch broadcaster NOS together with YouTube are organizing a YouTube debate.

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Google Has All of Holland, in Streetview That Is!

Bas van den Beld — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:26:23 +0000

It’s only a very small country, so it hasn’t been the biggest job the Google Streetview-people had to do, but they did it. Almost the entire country of the Netherlands has now been captured in images in Google Streetview. A total of 75,600 square kilometers (about 46,975 square miles) has been photographed to get most of the Dutch roads into the popular service.

The latest additions to the Dutch Streetview Maps have been a couple of bigger cities plus several tourist attractions like de Efteling, de Apenheul, the centre of politics “Binnenhof” and a popular Palace. The attractions are gathered on a special Gallery page.

Holland has been one of many countries where when Streetview launched, it was received with both scepticism and enthusiasm. At first a lot of the pictures had to be removed, but after the first couple of weeks the Dutch accepted Streetview in all its glory.

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ISS – Search in Holland (the netherlands)

Sante J. Achille — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 16:17:00 +0000

Search in Holland

   Bas van den Beld – Searchcowboys.com

The Dutch use Google – 94%

Localization is the primary factor.

17 million people – high density
Kingdom
Democracy
70% speaks English
60% German
Dutch are very much online 85% are online, mostly youngsters starting from age 4 are online at least once a week
5 million use broadband – they watch TV online
80% have a mobile phone – getting very important in Holland

Dutch differ amongst each other – poldermodel

everybody gets a bit of his opinion
very international focus – it’s historical
very proud to be dutch
they like trading
they like a good deal
like their privacy

how does this translate to online and search ?

like to read international websites
facebook is not the biggest SM site – Hyves is the place to be (now)
like to comment a lot – website must have interactivity
they like bargains – they have a dutch version of Ebay and it’s very big MARKTPLAATS.nl has a similar thing to adwords just for this portal
they don’t like cookies ! Privacy is a big issue they clean cookies once a week
snooping sites are very popular – they like to peek into other peoples houses

How do they behave online ?

many small search engines (verticals) 5-6% are using them
2nd biggest site is startpagina (3,5%) an opportunity, a must for the dutch market
35 out of 100 brands are on Social media, mostly on twitter, Hyves Facebook and blogs – they are there for the campaign and then disappear

KIDS

1/3 of 8 year olds has an account on Hyves with more than 50 friends
MSN most used Social Media tool
watch less TV use more online tools
they are not using much twitter

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Google expands new trademark policy – but sidesteps Europe

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Thu, 07 May 2009 22:12:38 +0000

Following the expansion of their trademark policy to the UK last year, Google has widened its looser trademark policy which basically allows all-comers to bid on trademark keywords increasing the cost of trademark advertising via the number one search engine and allowing competitors to aggressively buy each others ‘marks. The new change expands the ‘we won’t intervene’ approach to a total of 190 countries. The change comes into force on June 4th.

However, Google has sidestepped the key European countries with the strongest legal rules and where cases have cost Google most in fines (see list below). From calculations, the removal of protection for trademarked terms increases advertiser costs by as much as 80% – as well as taking revenue from additional advertisers on those terms. The policy, therefore, enables Google to increase its adverising take from advertisers. The approach also affects major global brands most significantly – because they generally spend proportionately more on advertising their brands because it is those brands – and the associated products – which have made them global.

Google has long struggled to persuade blue chip advertisers to move more of their advertising budgets to Google Adwords – this is step which leaves them with no choice. However, it is a dangerous move as it could also contribute to tipping the ROI see-saw towards other newer forms of promotion such as social media and Twitter.

Having received no significant kick-back from its UK change of a year ago – it’s no surprise that this is being rolled out now. Probably, another year will pass before more countries – especially European ones – are added. I predict that France, where the courts have levied the largest fines against Google, will be the last to go.

So the following countries (European Union countries in bold) will not see the change – at least yet. Via Search Engine Land

Austria
Belgium
Bulgaria
Czech Republic
Cyprus
Denmark
Finland
France
Greece
Germany
Hungary
Italy
Lithuania
Luxembourg
Netherlands
Poland
Portugal
Romania
Slovakia
Slovenia
Spain
Sweden

Australia
Bahamas
Brazil
China
Iceland
Macau
New Zealand
Norway
South Korea
Switzerland
Taiwan

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Forrester Research, Inc. data on mobile instant messaging (IM) in Europe

Sante J. Achille — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 10:16:50 +0000

A recent study from Forrester Research, Inc. indicates mobile instant messaging (IM) on the rise in Europe with 26.7 million users in 2007 and a projected 80 million users in 2013.

The survey was conducted on a sample of 22.000 consumers in:

France
Germany
Holland
Italy
Spain
Sweden
UK

Three years after the launch of IM mobile operators appear less than enthusiastic about this technology, fearing cannibalization of profits deriving from text messaging services (SMS), however the growth of IM is seen as “inevitable”

Niek van Veen, analyst di Forrester Research identifies IM as a means to differentiate mobile operators services and improve user experience.

All this will have a significant impact on web and search technology as mobile devices become an integral part of work and leisure.

Source: Spot and Web – N.15

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24 European states go borderless under Schengen

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 14:54:49 +0000

The Schengen agreement has been extended from 15 countries to 24 giving a wider borderless Europe with no internal border controls or checks and an open market of over 400 million people. Coming into force on the 21st December, the Schengen agreement makes physical inter-trade between bordering countries easier to manage for marketers. As Europe opens its borders, and search grows quickly in Europe, Schengen makes European business roll-outs more attractive and achievable with faster distribution and lower border costs.

The new countries joining the agreement are:-

Czech Republic
Slovakia
Poland
Hungary
Latvia
Lithuania
Estonia
Malta
Slovenia

I decided to test this with a visit to the most northerly Balkan state of Slovenia travelling from Austria through a 5 mile tunnel to the south side of the Alps. True enough the European blue flag and stars had become the standard border crossing notification and the rows of kiosks and border controls were empty and unmanned as we headed to the capital Ljublana.

Ljubljana is a town of around 230,000 people with a pretty baroque style and attractive old quarter. The local search engine is “Najdi” and the local domain is .si.

The Schengen agreement was first signed by five countries in 1985 in a small Luxembourg town ‘Schengen’ – these original five were later joined by ten others and the agreement came into force in 1995. The agreement basically means that the internal borders between the treaty countries are removed – but that those same countries cooperate to strengthen the outer border using the Schengen Information System – a database where data is exchanged. There are also special rules on how police forces work together.

The original five countries were:-

France
Germany
Netherlands
Belgium
Luxembourg

Other countries which joined up to 1995 when Schengen was finally realised are:-

Spain
Portugal
Greece

Countries who joined after 1995 but before 1997 are:-

Italy
Austria
Denmark
Norway
Sweden
Finland
Iceland
Monaco

The Schengen Agreement has only ever, in part, been deployed by the British or the Irish for fear of it encouraging immigration and terrorism – though it doesn’t seem to have helped much staying out.

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EURid suspends 10,000 .EU names squatted in China

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Mon, 10 Sep 2007 09:14:09 +0000

The .EU domain registrar management organisation, EURid has suspended 10,000 EU domain names which have been apparently legally registered by a Chinese woman – reports out-law. EURid has the power to remove the domain names from the woman – but has said that it would prefer a court to do it.

According to reports, the woman was buying the names to sell on to other parties at higher prices – nothing new in that then. EURid says that is has received complaints – not particularly new either. One key point is that only European-based organisations are allowed to hold .EU domain names.

Out-law carries this great quote from EURid, “When we screen our data bank we see that some people have an amazing amount of names. Nobody needs 10,000 names.” Strange. You’d have thought that EURid had a little more knowledge and insight about the industry in which they operate. Perhaps that’s why there were so many complaints at launch!

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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!

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Reed Elsevier of the Netherlands is testing FASTMedia’s alternative to Adsense

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Mon, 30 Apr 2007 11:36:36 +0000

Reuters via Yahoo News reports that Reed Elsevier of the Netherlands is testing Norwegian company FASTMedia’s alternative publishers contextual advertising system where the publisher retains the bulk of the revenue.

Norway’s Schibsted is already using the technology on its Sesam search engine – see ‘cheap flights’. The displayed ads follow a similar style to Google – but are not as limited in terms of how much text they show.

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European telecoms operators threaten US search hegemony

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:51:32 +0000

The UK’sTelegraph online reports that 12 of Europe’s largest telecoms operators – with one American firm – are planning to launch a mobile phone search engine to rival Google and Yahoo.

The companies concerned include Vodafone, France Telecom, Telefonica, Deutsche Telekom, Hutchison Whampoa, Telecom Italia and US firm Cingular. Combined, they have a user base of 600 million people – with some 20% in the UK expected to have broadband speed mobile phone access by the end of 2007.

According to The Telegraph, declining mobile phone revenues are forcing telecoms operators to look at all angles – and the lucrative search advertising market is clearly attractive. For telecoms operators it is very appealing to keep a larger percentage of the revenues rather than ’sharing’ with Google, Yahoo or Microsoft.

However, both Google and Yahoo have already done deals with mobile phone operators and it is not clear what impact this will have!

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Google knocks Microsoft off top spot as strongest brand in the Netherlands

Andy Atkins-Krüger — Fri, 22 Dec 2006 10:19:51 +0000

Het Financieele Dagblad, the leading financial newspaper in the Netherlands, reports that a study by CoolBranding has given Google top spot for being not only the leading site in the Netherlands – but also the ’strongest’ brand. Second was Ipod followed by Nike, Nokia and BMW. Microsoft was the winner last year and has been reduced to 10th place.

A nice Christmas present for the Google team!

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Blogs influence European consumers

Sante J. Achille — Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:40:54 +0000

A recent RM Interactive show that Google still the most used search engine.

Sometimes used
Google 96% (+1)
Ilse 20% (-2)
Live.nl 8% (-5)
Yahoo! 8% (+3)
Lycos 4% (=0)

Mostley used
Google 90% (-1)
Ilse 4% (-1)
Live.nl 1% (-1)
Yahoo! 0% (=0)
Lycos 0% (=0)

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Social Networking catching up with Traditional Internet Portals

Sante J. Achille — Sat, 12 Aug 2006 08:42:47 +0000

A study by Web Stats company Compete provides insight on social networking growth and how traffic levels compare to portals. The analysis concludes that social networks are gathering significant momentum and are catching up with “traditional portals”.

The results presented have raised some questions, however the trend is there for all to see.

Read/Write Web provides information on users behaviour and top web 2.0 applications for the following countries:

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