Firefox 3 - A Record Breaking Browser

Mozilla, the organization behind the popular FireFox browser, is attempting to secure a Guinness World Record for most software downloads in 24 hours. FireFox has gained market share on chief rival Internet Explorer over recent years and the newest version, FireFox 3, is packed with even more features. FireFox has historically provided a better user experience with such features as built in pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing (long before IE 7), and tighter security.

From a developer's standpoint FireFox is far more compliant with open web standards and far less buggy than Internet Explorer. The end result is web sites look like they were intended on a variety of operating systems, screen resolutions, and devices.

If you haven't used FireFox I encourage you to download and check it out. You won't go back to Internet Explorer. You can read more about the Guinness World Record and pledge to download the browser on Mozilla's Download Day site.

Update 6/18/08: Congratulations to the Mozilla Team on over 8 million downloads in 24 hours.

First Scribe is Omniture Support Certified

Our staff recently spent a week in training at Omniture University in their headquarters in Orem, UT. At the end of the week we passed the certification process to attain the Omniture Partners-only designation Omniture Certified Professional: Support.

Omniture Agency Partner

First Scribe is the only certified Omniture Agency in the Minneapolis or Minnesota. We hold the highest level of agency certifications available from Omniture.

Our SiteCatalyst Support and Implementation certifications means that we are a full-service Omniture provider.

Yahoo Looking For Love

Yahoo is stuck right between a rock and the hard place. Their stock prices, market share and respect are sinking. Meanwhile Microsoft stopped courting the princess...

Floundering In The Search Pool

The First Scribe team has been unhappy with Yahoo search for a few years. We feel their search technology is weak and ROI from Yahoo falls well behind other traffic sources.

Obviously, we were happy to watch as Microsoft made moves to acquire Yahoo in late 2007 and early 2008. Those efforts failed so now Microsoft appears to be standing by, waiting for Yahoo to drown before they swoop in for a last-minute, white-knight maneuver.

Venture capitalist Todd Dagres of Spark Capital likened this approach to that of a crocodile. "Rather than try to eat its prey while it's warm and tough, (Microsoft is) dragging it down to the bottom of the river, sticking it under a rock and eating it later when it's cold and soft," he said.

What does this all mean to us?

All we can do is speculate but we've heard a few rumors that could greatly change the picture if they bear fruit:

• Yahoo to hand over ad space to Google
• While this will probably equate to better PPC ROI, it will certainly harm Yahoo's already poor standing with advertisers.
  
• Yahoo to merge with AOL
• AOL is also facing difficult times. A merger between Yahoo and AOL could create a significant force.
• A healthy merger creates a new way to target demographics missed by Google.

Does Yahoo Prefer Yahoo Cart Sites?

Does Yahoo prefer shopping carts in the Yahoo store environment?

We've heard this issue in quite a few circles for 2 specific arguments:

· The Yahoo engine prefers the Yahoo cart.

· A Yahoo cart won’t work in Google SEO.

While both of these points may have an amount of truth to them, neither of these arguments appear to us to be *true enough* for concern. That is to say, we aren’t concerned with the Yahoo search engine, per se. And we have Yahoo carts that perform nicely in Google.

Google is the engine of choice

Google holds the Lion's share of market value and that trend grows every year. For our clients’ sites, across product vertical, Average revenue per visitor is higher for visits from Google vs. Yahoo.

We will work through the Yahoo cart as if it’s just another website. However, we migrate people off the Yahoo cart at every opportunity. The cart is difficult to use; it is a quantifiable hindrance to Google SEO; and the backend admin area is difficult.

Does Yahoo Prefer Yahoo Cart Sites?

Not necessarily. The Cart seems to have nothing to do with this question. The answer boils down to how well the site is optimized in general. Here is a Yahoo cart site that we are watching. Their site ranks better in Google than it does in Yahoo:

	Google	Yahoo	Change
Name	1	1	0
	2	2	0
Keyword 1	5	Not in first 30.	26
Keyword 2	10	Not in first 30.	21
	14	Not in first 30.	17
Keyword 3	18	2	(16)
	23		7
Keyword 4	1	Not in first 30.	30
	2	Not in first 30.	29
Keyword 5	4	Not in first 30.	26
Keyword 6	Not in first 30.	21	(9)
Primary Keyword	1	14	13
Keyword 7	23	11	(12)
Keyword 8	12	8	(4)
	13		17
Keyword 9	11	4	(7)
Keyword 10	6	3	(3)
	15		15
Keyword 11	2	3	1
Keyword 12	6	2	(4)
			147

Summary:

This client is concerned about moving from the Yahoo cart to an eCommerce Platform but they are worried that their revenue will suffer. Yahoo is their number 2 source of revenue and they don't want to lose that share.

We don’t in any way doubt that a large portion of their business is derived from Yahoo visitors. The Yahoo demographic matches nicely with people who would go out and buy their product line.

What is the real question?

The real question is different than they think…

It would be really nice to know if revenue per visitor is higher from Yahoo versus Google. If the average is the same, then open up Google traffic and forget about Yahoo.

Yahoo traffic and revenue might well suffer with a push in Google. But the net gain should be a significant increase in revenue.