The library houses an important collection of books in the French language and some rare editions from authors such as Nostradamus and Newton. Not all of the books in the collection are in the French language as the Italian, Latin, English, German and Spanish languages also feature prominently. It is the second largest collection in France after the Bibliothèque Nationale de France in Paris.

Other libraries in Europe which are also involved in the project include Lausanne in Switzerland, and Ghent in Belgium.

For what it’s worth, Lyon is also a beautiful city - speaking as a former resident!

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

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.

According to the Aposition and Weborama barometer of search share in France, Google has a 91% share, Yahoo has 3% and MSN has increased slightly recently to equal Yahoo at 3%. Voila and Orange are well behind at less than .5%. Nonetheless, this is a blow to Yahoo.

The forecast from Fevad (la Fédération du commerce électronique et de la vente à distance) is for 16 billion Euros in 2007 followed by 30 billion Euros by the year 2010. In total there are 19 million online buyers in France.

According to Médiamétrie/Net Ratings Ebay is the most visited site with 9,5 millions visitors in the second quarter, followed by the French rail network voyages-sncf.com (5,6 millions), laredoute.fr (5,5), fnac.com (5,3) et cdiscount.com (4,7).

The conclusion: If you have something to sell which appeals to French consumers - they are becoming serious online buyers. The French were a little slower to move online than other countries because they have had access in most homes to a sophisticated electronic consumer directory provided by France Telecom and La Poste called Minitel. Minitel - which is now also available online . This provided not only information quickly and electronically before the web, it also allowed travel bookings and online purchases to be made using credit cards. In most of the rest of the world, people were still relying on Yellow printed guides delivered to homes! Now that’s changing rapidly and the web is replacying Minitel as the information source of choice.

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!

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!

Most surprisingly is however France that seams to have embraced this American invention, Google has just under 90% market share with Yahoo coming next with just over 3%, MSN has 2.48% with two locals following Orange and Free, 1.89% and 0.72%.

Noticeable is the total lack of ASK’s market share both in France and Germany. Also it’s worth noting that while Google has a large market share in the US it’s nothing when you compare their foothold in France, Germany and the UK.

But Google is not this strong everywhere in Europe. Neighbours to Germany are Swiss and there Google has just under 50% of the market with Yahoo’s healthy 22% following and MSN has around 11%. Russia has the strong Yandex Direct as shown here at Multilingual search on a regular basis.

If we look at Poland there worth noting that there are at least couple of strong locals, NetSprint, OnetSzukaj and Szukacz with combined market share of 20%. In Poland Google seems to have around 80%.

Google has a strong market share also in Slovakia but has a strong competition in SZN.sk.

Since the arrival of Google in Iceland in 2002, they have slowly gained around 50% of the market share with the local Leit staying strong at around 45% and the rest shares the remaining 5%. This is a according to research by Nordic eMarketing in early 2007.

It’s always good to know the search engine market shares in Europe ?

There are, however some key differences in European markets:-

• UK and German buying patterns are most similar to the US
• France is behind the average thanks to low outbound travel and fewer low cost carriers
• Spain and Italy are further behind thanks to lower broadband access and less internet use (and let’s face it if you live you don’t need to travel so much do you!!)

Via www.hotelexecutive.com

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/european-travel-market-to-hit-25-of-transactions-online/16/08/2007feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/french-internetpreneur-simoncini-saysdont-start-web-businesses-in-france/06/03/2007 http://www.multilingual-search.com/french-internetpreneur-simoncini-saysdont-start-web-businesses-in-france/06/03/2007#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2007 11:01:27 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=729 According to Meetic’s Marc Simoncini, France is definitely not the place to start a web business - the US or London are much better locations, he says, and only China is more complex than France. Simoncini was speaking during the opening keynote of AdTech’s European roll-out in Paris - to be followed shortly by Hamburg in May.

Marc Simoncini amused the French audience by listing the regulatory problems a French entrepreneur faces. “We are in 22 countries,” he said, “including Brazil. And I can tell you that nowhere, apart from China, is a more complex place to start an internet business in than France”.

He was joined in his criticisms by ShopWiki founder Kevin Ryan, who said “Many of the most capable French talent is to be found working in London or New York. Simoncini said he had to face 6 meetings with regulatory organisations just in the next week or so.

Kevin Ryan added, “The French market is tougher to work in than the US, but it’s also one tenth of the size - and yet Paris was the most logical centre for a European business.” The challenging French environment was one of the reasons that many American organisations set-up their European offices in Dublin or London. Of course, Mr. Ryan is a fluent French-speaker delivering his comments in French - which might be why he didn’t mention the language barrier!

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/french-internetpreneur-simoncini-saysdont-start-web-businesses-in-france/06/03/2007feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/10-years-of-internet-growth-ahead-says-shopwikis-kevin-p-ryan-adtech-paris/06/03/2007 http://www.multilingual-search.com/10-years-of-internet-growth-ahead-says-shopwikis-kevin-p-ryan-adtech-paris/06/03/2007#comments Tue, 06 Mar 2007 10:42:50 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/10-years-of-internet-growth-ahead-says-shopwikis-kevin-p-ryan-adtech-paris/06/03/2007/en-GB/ “The easy money in keyword advertising is gone,” says Ryan, but there are “Clearly 10 years of growth ahead for the internet” and no “The bubble is not back!” he says. Gone are the days when the biggest question he faced was “When will you start to make money” Now he believes the internet is “under-hyped” simply because the typical US exit route for founders is by acquisition rather than IPO. This lack of IPOs gives the sector less publicity oxygen than it deserves. “Whether it’s e-commerce, advertising or publishing, the web is working very well!” he states confidently.

American Kevin Ryan today presented a review of 10 years of internet alongside fellow French ‘internetpreneur’, Marc Simoncini the PDG (CEO) of 22-country Meetic. Speaking in perfect French - but with English slides - he addressed a smallish audience in AdTech terms - but significantly larger than the earlier Search Engine Strategies Paris, at the Paris launch of
AdTech’s European roll-out. Simoncini’s role was to interject a French view of the Ryan presentation. Unlike SES, AdTech also provided headphones for the simultaneous interpreting of the French language presentations.

Kevin Ryan is not just a web addict, he’s serial business founder who simply can’t put founding businesses down and would create many more businesses “If I had the time.” He did reveal that he has yet another launch coming in 2007 and that typically he builds a business for 9 months - builds the initial team of 15 - then involves Venture Capitalists. Former CEO
of Double click and founder of HotJobs (sold to Yahoo), ShopWiki, Panther Express and Music Nation, he sees “Opportunities everywhere if it takes someone more than a minute to achieve something.”

Both Simoncini and Ryan were very critical of media publishers who simply can’t create web sites and have to pay exhorbitant web site acquisition costs simply to avoid, as Simoncini says, “Hitting a brick wall”. Both men saw diminishing revenues and performance for media owners and Ryan observered the rush to acquire from media players amongst which he included Google and Yahoo. Says Ryan, “The traditional big media players didn’t invent anything by themselves”. He also highlighted a noticable decline in US radio advertising.

The future is IPTV and mobile according to Ryan who sees growth in keyword advertising not much above 15% - but he expects the IPTV sector to explode to ten times its current size very quickly. “Marketing is becoming less important,” according to Ryan, because “when the consumer controls the publicity - the product becomes all important”.

AdTech Paris Ad Tech Paris runs today and tomorrow at the Palais des Congrès, Paris.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/10-years-of-internet-growth-ahead-says-shopwikis-kevin-p-ryan-adtech-paris/06/03/2007feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/european-telecoms-operators-threaten-us-search-hegemony/04/02/2007 http://www.multilingual-search.com/european-telecoms-operators-threaten-us-search-hegemony/04/02/2007#comments Sun, 04 Feb 2007 19:51:32 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=699 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!

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/european-telecoms-operators-threaten-us-search-hegemony/04/02/2007feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/german-economics-ministers-reveals-move-away-from-quaero/18/12/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/german-economics-ministers-reveals-move-away-from-quaero/18/12/2006#comments Mon, 18 Dec 2006 18:00:34 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=661 Heise.de brings us the news (in German) that the German Government will be moving away from co-operation with the French over the search engine research project ‘Quaero’ even creating their own new project with a new name ‘Theseus’.

The announcement came from Germany’s Economics minister, Hartmut Schauerte, at an IT Summit in Potsdam. He said (translating) “The co-operation is at an end and although we won’t be cutting all ties, the project will in future be a national German project with the political and economic aims of this summit.”

Apparently, the co-operation had “Not been easy”. Heise.de reports that Hartmut Schauerte said the French were more interested in pursuing a ‘conventional search engine’ whereas the German Government expressly did not want to go into direct competition with Google and others and wanted to concentrate more on the development of the semantic web. Theseus would fulfil these aims. The partners previously involved with Quaero would remain on board, he said.

The Potsdam Summit aims to focus more German development effort on innovation in the digital field. Senior German Government ministers attended including Chancellor Angela Merkel.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/german-economics-ministers-reveals-move-away-from-quaero/18/12/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/were-all-helping-to-create-the-google-monster-exalead-ceo-ses-paris/28/11/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/were-all-helping-to-create-the-google-monster-exalead-ceo-ses-paris/28/11/2006#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 11:09:14 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/were-all-helping-to-create-the-google-monster-exalead-ceo-ses-paris/28/11/2006/en-GB/ The Google monster came under concerted attack from Francois Bourdoncle, CEO and founder of France-based search engine Exalead in the opening keynote of Search Engine Strategies Paris. The press in particular should be worried about becoming sub-contractors of Google, he said. Whilst at present Google News brings plenty of traffic to sites under the brand names of the press outlets, this would change to Google’s brand in the future. Portals - by which Mr. Bourdoucle is referring to all the major search engines - are the “Walmart of the digital world,” he added.

In a considered talk which revolved around the concept that search is not that effective and there is plenty of room for other search engines despite Google’s dominance, Mr. Bourdoncle explained that an IFOP Omnibus study had shown that 75% of searchers actually have problems finding ’stuff’. 22% think there are too many results and 45% never bother to look at the second page.

Much of search, he explained, now revolved around Yellow Pages-style search where the user knows that a particular keyword produces the set of results they are looking for - even though apparently it is a free text search - the reality is now very different.

The 30 ‘verticals’ which Google now has cannot be presented in the results. Searcher intent is problematic because searchers don’t always know what they want. This was the reason Exalead is focusing on ’search by serendipity’ whereby the user has the option to ‘zoom out’ as well as ‘zoom in’ and to discover things they didn’t even know they were looking for.

He also criticised the new sitemaps collaboration announced by Google, Yahoo and MSN at Pubcon in Las Vegas. He said, “The sitemaps specification is not nice and open and it is not nice and closed”. He believes the initiative aims to close the door to new entrants to the market place.

Exalead aims to profit from the Quaero research initiative by bringing new technologies to the search engine which, he revealed, now has a new infrastructure in place which it has taken 8 years to build. “We have moved extremely slowly but now we’re going to move extremely quickly” he stressed. Exalead, which has offices in France, Spain, Italy and Germany is to be re-launched under a new consumer-facing brand soon.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/were-all-helping-to-create-the-google-monster-exalead-ceo-ses-paris/28/11/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/blogs-influence-european-consumers/28/11/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/blogs-influence-european-consumers/28/11/2006#comments Tue, 28 Nov 2006 08:40:54 +0000 Sante J. Achille http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=643 A recent http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=615 eMarketer reports on Internet access via mobile devices.

The study was conducted in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, UK, and the US. while 29% of European Internet users regularly access the Internet from their mobile phones, only 19% of US users were accessing the web via their mobile devices.

The highest mobile Web penetration was in Germany, Italy and the UK (at 34% each), followed by France and Spain, and the US.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/europe-leads-in-mobile-internet-access/27/10/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/the-most-influential-blogs-in-german-french-and-italian/10/10/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/the-most-influential-blogs-in-german-french-and-italian/10/10/2006#comments Tue, 10 Oct 2006 17:25:23 +0000 Sante J. Achille http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=596 Steve Rubel of Micropersuasion reports on the Edelman and Technorati study of the most influential blogs in German, French and Italian.

Further information will be available during a presentation later this week in Milano where the results will be presented to participants.

The event is open to the public and scheduled on Friday 13, starting at 11,30 AM at Le Biciclette in via Torti, 1.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/the-most-influential-blogs-in-german-french-and-italian/10/10/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/relevant-traffic-has-sold-36-of-stock-to-kinnevik/25/09/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/relevant-traffic-has-sold-36-of-stock-to-kinnevik/25/09/2006#comments Mon, 25 Sep 2006 15:12:24 +0000 Sara Andersson http://www.multilingual-search.com/relevant-traffic-has-sold-36-of-stock-to-kinnevik/25/09/2006/en-GB/ Relevant traffic is a big player in Sweden with a focus on selling clicks from the search engine listings.
Kinnevik , a big investement company has bought 36% of the stocks for 28 million Swedish kronors and is hoping to expand in Europe the next two years. They are looking to expand mostly in France and the U.K. and then move into Germany.
Their turnaround was 50 million SEK and the profit was 0.4 million SEK 2005/2006.
No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/relevant-traffic-has-sold-36-of-stock-to-kinnevik/25/09/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/aol-sells-internet-access-in-france-raises-cash-to-develop-online-presence/21/09/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/aol-sells-internet-access-in-france-raises-cash-to-develop-online-presence/21/09/2006#comments Thu, 21 Sep 2006 16:23:24 +0000 Andy Atkins-Krüger http://www.multilingual-search.com/aol-sells-internet-access-in-france-raises-cash-to-develop-online-presence/21/09/2006/en-GB/ Reuters reports that AOL France is selling its internet access business to Neuf Cegetel for $365 million as it overhauls it’s online business in Europe.

The important point about the report is that AOL has simultaneously boosted its war chest by $365 million - not a small amount AND created a strong partnership with Neuf Cegetel giving it access to around 2 million web users - its own access business numbered 500,000. Looks like a good deal for AOL who’s French portal receives 5.5 million unique visitors each month.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/aol-sells-internet-access-in-france-raises-cash-to-develop-online-presence/21/09/2006feed http://www.multilingual-search.com/new-emarketer-report-on-european-online-commerce/21/09/2006 http://www.multilingual-search.com/new-emarketer-report-on-european-online-commerce/21/09/2006#comments Thu, 21 Sep 2006 14:37:30 +0000 Sante J. Achille http://www.multilingual-search.com/en-GB/?p=569 Emarketer reports Ecommerce trends for the next few years, associating robust growth in online sales to the increase of DSL lines installed both at home and at work.

The report identifies the UK as the most “mature” of all European markets, outspending european and even american counterparts on an annual per capita basis.

The study shows Spain and France as the fastest growing internet user populations, while Germany and Italy lead in broadband uptake.

The article identifies other markets such as Netherlands, Switzerland, Sweden and Norway having active online consumers, forecasting Poland and other Eastern European as “serious online retail marketplaces in their own right”.

No Tags]]> http://www.multilingual-search.com/new-emarketer-report-on-european-online-commerce/21/09/2006feed