What I learned at eTail 2007
I've just returned from eTail 2007. I was a moderator at Search Day and really enjoyed the experience. David Patterson from Edwin Watts helped me out and was full of enthusiasm and energy for internet retailing - as he always is. At the end of Search Day each moderator had the opportunity to tell the [...]
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Etail 2007
This week we're going to the eTail show in Palm Desert. I'm attending Search Day with one of our customers, David Patterson from Edwin Watts golf. I'm looking forward to spending a day with a group of leading retailers and talking about search. On the Wednesday and Thursday we are exhibiting, please come and visit [...]
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Shop.org First Look
This week we are going to be exhibiting at shop.org First Look in Gaylord Palms resort, Orlando, Florida. If you'd like to meet us in person we would love to see you.
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Yahoo messenger upgrade changes defaults
I'm not happy with Yahoo. This morning Yahoo Messenger asked me if I would like to upgrade. I agreed because the old version used to crash lots. As part of the upgrade it installed the Yahoo toolbar, changed my homepage to Yahoo and changed the default search on IE7 to Yahoo. At no stage was [...]
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Related Search on Google and MSN: Good for Users & Search Engine’s Revenue
I noticed that Google are experimenting more with related search and someone had spotted an ad where MSN was touting their related search (sorry, I can't find the link to this). This is good for users and for the search engine's bank balance. It's good for the users because related search is useful and really [...]
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Google jet in New Zealand
The Google jet was reported to have been in New Zealand over the holidays. First they thought it was Larry and Sergey, now they think it was Eric Schmidt. The day after the story first appeared a reporter rang my brother, Grant and asked if they were in the country to buy Eurekster and if [...]
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Apple.com search sucks

Apple is one of the most visited ecommerce sites. They have an image of being slick and user friendly. I had high expectations of their website – which they meet for the most part: their product pages show off their products wonderfully and it is easy to shop. However their search is terrible. I was […]

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Bizarre Google Request
Here's an amusing story about a retailer asking a blogger to remove himself from Google because the blogger was ranking higher than him. He goes as far as threatening him with lawyers. It demonstrates the low level of understanding some people have of how search engines operate. Dean Hunt (the blogger) is being very kind [...]
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Great things are afoot
Here's a podcast from Practical Ecommerce with one of our customers Mike Baranov from Footwear Etc. He is talking about the service we are providing for him, specifically our Learning Search and Learning Navigation.
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Cyber Monday
So how big was Cyber Monday? I took a look at the search traffic on a handful of our retail customers' sites and compared their search traffic on Monday November 27 to their average search traffic for the 3 months before Thanksgiving. On average there were 90% more searches on Cyber Monday compared to the [...]
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