----------------------------------------------------------------- SearchReturn Discussion List "Understanding Internet Search Technology" ----------------------------------------------------------------- Moderator: Published by: Detlef Johnson SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com ----------------------------------------------------------------- November 16, 2006 SearchReturn Issue #107 ----------------------------------------------------------------- SEND POSTS: ----------------------------------------------------------------- Refer a friend: http://www.searchreturn.com/subscribe.shtml ----------------------------------------------------------------- .....IN THIS DIGEST..... // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // "Sweeping Launch Of Sitemaps Protocol" "Q3 Numbers" ----------------------------------------------------------------- // -- ESSENTIAL NEWS -- // ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Sweeping Launch Of Sitemaps Protocol http://blog.searchenginewatch.com/blog/061116-000001 Essentials: For those that use Google Sitemaps you'll be interested to know that the other major engines (save Ask) have agreed to an open Sitemaps standard. This is a move that Yahoo! has called for since Google's initial launch of a proprietary Sitemaps XML schema. At the moment, the protocol remains the same as Google's, so nothing needs changing. However, the XML namespace for the standard has officially moved (even in Google's case) from the proprietary Google resource to an open resource located at the newly launched www.sitemaps.org website. This is quite a large and sweeping change that deserves applause from the webmaster community. There is now an open protocol for describing the architecture of your website using XML containers and a language that is simple for those who know HTML. We expect each engine will treat the information slightly differently, however by adopting it as a standard, at least website owners have the facility to bypass faith in the engines that they can learn about their content architecture and make judgments about it entirely by unassisted crawling. ----------------------------------------------------------------- ==> Q3 Online Ad Numbers http://www.searchreturn.com/digest/refs107.shtml Essentials: The numbers are in and online advertising, of which search marketing represents generally 40%, reached new highs for third quarter US spending. This is the eighth consecutive quarter of growth for online ad spending. Although some corrections to forecasting of online ad spend figures have been made by the likes of Merrill Lynch recently, this report continues to cite online ad spending as hovering around 5% of total advertising spending. It could start to be reported as closer to double that amount. The third quarter numbers show strong growth of which search remains the driver, and there appears to be plenty of headroom left. This news should come as no surprise to practitioners in the field and is further evidence that Marketing Sherpa (which reported little growth for search 2006) might not have enough usable data, or improperly analyzed their numbers before drawing conclusions that search spending all but stopped in 2006. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Stay Tuned. Got feedback?: http://www.searchreturn.com/feedback.shtml Archives: http://www.searchreturn.com/digest-archive.shtml Alternate formats: http://www.searchreturn.com/info-formats.shtml Manage Subscriptions: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/manage-subs.shtml Problems unsubscribing? Contact the postmaster: mailto:postmaster@searchreturn.com Information on how to sponsor this publication: http://www.searchreturn.com/help/advertise.shtml Published by SearchReturn http://www.searchreturn.com Website Membership: http://www.searchreturn.com/register.shtml The contents of the digest do not necessarily reflect the opinions of SearchReturn or Detlef Johnson. SearchReturn and Detlef Johnson make no warranties, either expressed or implied, about the truth or accuracy of the contents of the SearchReturn Digest. Copyright 2006 Detlef Johnson. All Rights Reserved. -----------------------------------------------------------------