Google Buys Wiki Software Company JotSpot

Google has bought over the Paulo Alto based Wiki software company JotSpot. Here is the official communication from the Google Blog:

Spot on

10/31/2006 06:07:00 AM

Posted by Joe Kraus, JotSpotOK, I can finally blurt it out: JotSpot is now part of Google, and I couldn't be more excited.Three years ago my friend Graham Spencer and I set out to start a new company. We'd both recently left Excite, which we co-founded, and we had spent a few years starting a nonprofit together. We brainstormed scores of ideas, debated late into the night and ultimately exchanged a mountain of email and documents. We realized we needed a tool to help us organize our thoughts or we'd quickly become overwhelmed. So Graham set up a wiki. I was hooked because it immediately changed the way we worked together. Everything was kept in one place, not locked in email threads or on different computers. We could both make changes to the same document, without having to know HTML (well, without me having to know HTML).

After twenty minutes of using a wiki, I was convinced that they were like the Internet in 1993 -- useful, but trapped in the land of the nerds (which both Graham and I proudly inhabit). So we set out to start JotSpot as a way to bring the power of wikis to a much broader audience.As we built the business over the past three years Google consistently attracted our attention. We watched them acquire Writely, and launch Google Groups, Google Spreadsheets and Google Apps for Your Domain. It was pretty apparent that Google shared our vision for how groups of people can create, manage and share information online. Then when we had conversations with people at Google we found ourselves completing each other's sentences.

Joining Google allows us to plug into the resources that only a company of Google's scale can offer, like a huge audience, access to world-class data centers and a team of incredibly smart people.Our first order of business is to move JotSpot to Google's software architecture. While we're doing so, we've turned off new registrations. But if you're interested, sign up for our waitlist and we'll keep you posted.Finally, I feel a deep sense of gratitude for the support, feedback, grumbles and praises of our users and customers.

Thank you. That's the only way great products are built.

Useful Tool for Tracking Google Dance

Hi,

Here's a useful tool for tracking changes to your site's Page Rank during a Google Update.

http://livepr.raketforskning.com/

Found it very useful , It tracks your site's page rank across 69 different data sources and brings out the correspoding page rank found for your website from the data centres.

PPC Vs Organic ( Conversions Data)

Found an interesting article on PPC vs Organic search conversion data . Surprisingly enough , not much of a difference between the two.


Paid Search Has Only Slight Edge in Conversion Rates over Organic Search, According to New WebSideStory Study

Online Marketers Should Continue to Invest in Both Channels for Maximum Results SAN DIEGO, CA (Sep 25, 2006) — WebSideStory, Inc. (Nasdaq: WSSI), a leading provider of digital marketing and analytics solutions, today announced the results of a new study that shows paid search has only a slight 9 percent edge in conversion rates over organic search. In a study of leading business-to-consumer (B2C) e-commerce sites during the first eight months of this year, paid search – keywords bought on a pay-per-click basis at search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN – had a median order conversion rate of 3.40 percent at business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using the company’s award-winning HBX Analytics technology.

This compared to a conversion rate of 3.13 percent for organic search results, defined as non-paid or natural search engine listings, during the same January-to-August timeframe, according to the WebSideStory Index, a compilation of e-commerce, site search and global Internet user trends. The study analyzed more than 57 million search engine visits. Order conversions occurred during the same session. “For both paid and organic search, you have highly qualified traffic that converts far above the overall conversion rate of about 2 percent for most e-commerce sites,” said Ali Behnam, Senior Digital Marketing Consultant for WebSideStory. “In the case of paid search, marketers have better control over the environment, including the message, the landing page and the ability to eliminate low-converting keywords.” “There is a strong synergy between paid and organic search.

The bottom line is that marketers need to optimize both to achieve maximum results,” said Heather Lloyd-Martin, an author and the President and CEO of SuccessWorks (www.searchenginewriting.com), a search engine optimization firm. Lloyd-Martin is also Chair of the Direct Marketing Association's Search Engine Marketing Council.“With conversion rates 50 percent or higher than overall site conversion rates, both paid and organic search remain a very important acquisition source for online marketers,” Behnam said. “However, it is important to note that these are not typical results. Our clients are steeped in web analytics best practices and understand better than most how to truly optimize their search engine marketing campaigns and conversion rates.”

HBX Analytics is an award-winning on-demand web analytics solution providing actionable analysis of online visitor and customer behavior. HBX Analytics is part of the WebSideStory suite of integrated, on-demand digital marketing services, including web analytics, site search, web content management and keyword bid management. More than 1,500 enterprises worldwide use one or more applications within the suite. For more information, please visit www.websidestory.com.

Paid v. Organic Search Median Order Conversion Rates at Business to Consumer E-Commerce Sites Jan.-Aug. 2006

Marketing Channel Conversion Rate

Paid Search 3.40%
Organic Search 3.13%

Sample Size and Methodology: More than 57 million search engine visits to nearly 20 major business-to-consumer e-commerce sites using WebSideStory’s on-demand web analytics technology. These sites generate an estimated $2.5 billion per year in online sales. Order conversions occurred during the same sessions.