• Twitter.com accounted for 0.14% of upstream visits to News and Media sites last week. (Note that we are measuring website visits from Twitter.com only.) This compares to 3.64% from Facebook and 1.27% from Google News.
• Facebook was the #3 source of visits to News and Media websites last week. Google News was the #11 site and Twitter.com ranked #39.
• Upstream visits from Twitter.com to News and Media sites have grown by 54% over the past year.

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Facebook filed suit against Power.com in December. Facebook claimed the one-stop social-media aggregator was infringing upon their copyright, violating their TOS and scraping proprietary data. At the time, we weren’t sure whether “proprietary data” included user information.

Power.com finally decided not to take this sitting down. TechCrunch reports that Power.com has now filed a countersuit, claiming Facebook is “unlawfully withholding the data that users own (as stated in Facebook’s own ToS), and is stifling competition by refusing to allow third party services like Power.com to access the data, among other things.”

Facebook also faces legal action from RootZoo, an erstwhile advertiser. After analytics from their Nov 2007-June 2008 campaign varied greatly from Facebook’s reported data, RootZoo requested Facebook’s logs and a refund. Facebook said no to both.

RootZoo’s complaint uses 2 June 2008 as an example of the discrepancies between the two. While Facebook reported 804 clicks on their ads, RootZoo’s analytics programs show 300 clicks from the social networking giant.

While there have been rumblings about Facebook click fraud for some time, this is the first suit in the matter.

What do you think? Does Facebook have anything to worry about from these legal claims against it? Is there anyway to avoid getting slapped with lawsuits once people see you’re making some money?

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As initially reported yesterday there were click fraud complaints that up to 100% of clicks were fraudulent. While click fraud is nothing new to pay per click advertisers this was a bit different. Many Facebook advertisers were getting charged for clicks that simply never happened. In ‘traditional’ click fraud (if there is such a thing) the clicks are seen by advertisers but they are ID’d as not legitimate sources thus labeling them fraudulent. Facebook advertisers just were getting charged and there were no clicks.

While there are always problems with pay per click models it was Facebook’s apparent lack of attention given to complaints until there was recognition of the issue with TechCrunch. Many complaints were found on WickedFire and there was some heated discussion including (in which I have replaced some of the wonderful language that these folks use to communicate)

This is experienced by not just those that use 202. When in doubt, look at your raw apache logs – which I did. The result: 15% – 20% clicks never make it to my LP. Clearly a case of click-fraud going on. Tested on 3 different servers at 3 different DCs (not a network issue).

Sucks how high the numbers are today. Its clear the problem is getting worse daily. I’ve moved most of my “%$#^” off facebook for the time being and magically my %$#^ is all positive again. Crazy how that works. There are lots of places to buy traffic, some that will even actually give you the traffic you are paying for. Facebook is never going to admit to whats going on. I can almost guarantee you that.

Facebook is still reporting 20% more clicks than I actually get. This is bull$#%#. If I were at least getting bot traffic or something that would be one thing, but right now Facebook is simply stealing 20% of clicks that I paid for, which adds up to thousands of dollars. Someone should threaten legal action, this is straight up fraud on Facebook’s part.

What really got under the skin of the advertisers is the response they had received from Facebook regarding their issues.

According to the WickedFire posts, Facebook isn’t officially acknowledging the problem or giving any refunds so far. But they are asking some advertisers to send in logs to show the discrepancy. So far, advertisers who go to the trouble to do this aren’t getting the response they wanted: “I was asked to send in my logs so I spent over an hour compiling logs over the time period in question, and they replied with their &^#$ing scripted bull^%#$. I was sooo ^#$%ing pissed, since I took the time to do that and they churn out a 2 second response.”

So if you are Facebook, what should you do once this becomes something that is more than a few compaints? Well, Brandon McCormick at Facebook chimed into the comment stream over at TechCrunch with

This is Brandon on the Facebook communications team. I wanted to chime in to make sure that our voice was part of this discussion and to clarify how we are addressing this issue.

We take click quality very seriously and have a series of measures in place to detect it. We have large volumes of data to analyze click patterns and can identify suspicious activity quickly.

Over the past few days, we have seen an increase in suspicious clicks. We have identified a solution which we have already begun to implement and expect will be completely rolled out by the end of today. In addition, we are identifying impacted accounts and will ensure that advertisers are credited appropriately.

TechCrunch has published an update for this post that outlines some aggressive (but apparently not real subtle) attempts to grab some business from Facebook. As with anything in life it’s actually never about the problem. Stuff happens and in the Internet space that is even more prevalent. What is most important is how a problem is dealt with.

Had Facebook addressed these complaints differently from the start do you think the level of frustration expressed on WickedFire and elsewhere would have been as damaging? Online reputations are just like ‘traditional’ reputations (once again, if there is such a thing) in that the best way to handle any problems is quickly, head on and with transparency. Does it mean you will get a perfect solution every time? Absolutely not. It does, however, give you the best shot at making a bad situation better. So Facebook, remember that when you ask “What’s on your mind?” you have been cleaning up your side of the street.

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That’s the predicament facing Click Forensics as its fourth year of providing its Click Fraud Index shows a dramatic drop in the average industry click fraud rate. The fourth quarter of 2008 was all gloom and doom, with the rate climbing to 17.1%, but the first quarter shows a drop to 13.8%–that’s about a 20% decline.

Never fear, there’s bottom line to protect, so Click Forensics gets granular and explains that while overall click fraud may have dropped, what’s there is getting more sophisticated.

One new type of fraud discovered this quarter was perpetrated by malicious scripts that execute when a visitor views a web page disguised as relevant content or search results. The script initiates “Zero-iframe” or off-screen clicks that route the visitor session through an alias referrer website, and on to unsuspecting advertisers who pay for the phantom click. All this occurs transparently to the offending site’s visitor; they never see the ad or visit the advertiser, and their computer is not infected with any type of malware or botnet.

Before we all panic over this, keep in mind this is very likely an isolated incident as it was only just discovered "this quarter." That said, you have to tip you hat to Click Forensics for being able to identify such a complex case of click fraud.

I guess the big question is whether this drop is a blip or a trend? Are you seeing a drop in click fraud on your paid search campaigns?

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TechCrunch points out that over 30% of click fraud is via automated bots—another all-time high. This is a 14% increase over last quarter. I’m surprised the search engines aren’t doing a better job at keeping the bots down. This clearly continues to be a problem and needs to be addressed. I think the search engines need to release a state of the industry report on how they plan to cut these rates now ASAP.

Outside of the U.S., Canada is the largest driver of click fraud (7.1%), followed by Germany (3%) and China (2.3%).

TechCrunch also calls out that Click Forensics believes this may be a result of the economic state of the U.S., as old tricks like link farms are being used again. I think it is a direct result of a lack of focus, and perhaps effort, on the search engines’ side of things. What do you think?

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According to Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience at Google, the interface will be released soon. With Google Trends people can search the latest trends in the market.

During the Webcast demonstration of Google Trends on Tuesday, Mayer said, "the company would eventually release a Google Trends API." Further, she added "the company would make it possible to download data from Google Trends into spreadsheets". No time frame for either action was provided by her.

At Google Trends, one can also compare specific searches. Here one can get the search volume for search terms changes over a particular time period with interactive graphs, and even get list of top 100 searches for any given day. To know about the Google Trend features, click here.

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Just head to translator.live.com/AddIn.aspx, select the language your website uses, and it’ll give you the code. If your site is in English, this will be the code:

< script type="text/javascript" src="http://translator.live.com/TranslatePageLink.aspx?pl=en" >< /script >

Just dump that anywhere in your template (hopefully somewhere people will notice) and your visitors will see a drop-down menu, where they can select usually from up to eleven languages to read the page in (non-English languages will have fewer options).

If you’d like to display flags of different countries as a means of showing translated versions, you can hack the code to link the flags to the proper translation. You’ll need to link the flags to URLs like this one:

http://www.windowslivetranslator.com:80/BV.aspx?lp=en_nl&a=WEBSITEADDRESS

The “WEBSITEADDRESS” has to be replaced with the actual web address, or a function that inserts the web address, and “en_nl” has to be replaced with the codes for the original language (”en” for English) and the language being translated into (”nl” for Dutch). To see this page in Dutch, click here.

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(click to enlarge)

Previously, the primary component of user content on the site was limited to user ratings and reviews associated with business listings.

Some of the new features this recent upgrade added include allowing all users to enhance basic biz profile information, uploading pictures of organizations, wiki-like biz listing “blog” features which could allow simplistic blogging by businesses and/or could be used as a consumer comment or Q/A zone for each business since any user could submit info to them.

Of all the top online yellow pages and local search sites, I believe that Superpages may now have the distinction of having the greatest variety of Web 2.0 features. Out of Local.com, DexKnows, Yellowpages.com, YellowBook, Citysearch, and Google Maps — none of them have photos + ratings/reviews + “blogs” + user-provided profile data. Only Yahoo Local really approaches this number of user-content features, I believe. Out of all of the top IYP and local search sites, only Yahoo Local and Superpages openly invite any users to supply photos for locations — Google Maps only allows business owners and content partners to supply photos.

Now, I can see that they may still be working a few of the kinks out in these new services, and the display of this new content seems a little bit siloed or distanced from the business’s profile page, requiring a click to see it. But, I expect these are things which will evolve and expand as they get more content added in. There’s always something of a chicken-or-egg dilemma when adding new content like this to sites — stuff can look a little sad when there’s little content, but it’s hard to get content without making the features really visually apparent.

But, critique of the implementation aside, Superpages appears to be keeping a ahead of the game by striving to differentiate themselves from the competition in terms of these new user features, along with the robust data sources and diverse ad products they already had.

You may recall that Superpages recently brought their video ads out of beta release, and they also acquired Switchboard.com and announced plans to deploy local content through Microsoft Windows Live Messenger via a partnership with Multiplied Media. Just before that, Idearc acquired the LocalSearch.com domain name along with some portion of ownership of AmericanTowns.com (a company which has substantial local information sites and content).

There’s an arms race that’s been going on for quite some time in the local space wherein the yellow pages directory sites and local search engines have all been seeking to outpace each other by ramping up on product features and richness of data. With the recent flurry of multiple announcements and deployments of new functionality and distribution channels, you can see that Superpages is aggressively working to outpace the competition and make it challenging for others to match their suite of features. The programming for such stuff is relatively easy in some cases, but the logistics involved in managing quality issues can be expensive — you don’t want people adding malicious or obscene images to businesses, so it requires human auditing to keep the quality up.

I think these recent changes may begin to transform their info pages from being the traditional business profiles into something more like dynamic information clusters around businesses.

The strategy could be worth it in terms of driving user loyalty and in helping to differentiate from the competition. The interest and adoption of sites like Yelp.com have demonstrated that user communities can effectively be built around directory information sites, so user-generated content could be the next frontier for IYP, if it can be done in an affordable manner that doesn’t degrade quality.

Obviously, a prime motivating factor behind all this pumping of investment capital into Superpages.com is Idearc’s expectation that revenues on the legacy print side of the house may continue to decline. In the recent figures from Idearc’s third-quarter financials, Idearc’s stock took a heavy beating, in part because of a 3% fall in print revenue. Lehman Brothers analyst Anthony DiClemente stated:

“I think the concern from investors is that you are seeing the transition of the business to electronic from print faster than expected.”

Hmmm…. it sounds a bit like my theory that Google Trends could be indicating a pretty fast slump for traditional yellow pages usage might actually have some basis. But, I digress.

Idearc’s not taking the paradigm shift laying down — the cagey adoption of Web 2.0 hallmarks on top of the solidly-performing product will help them keep ahead in the local search game.

(Disclosure: I used to work for Idearc Superpages.com and you can reasonably consider that I might still hold stock and/or options from them. Despite this, I do try to write objectively about them and the local search industry in general. Heck, I’ve even been accused recently of being biased against yellow pages for stuff I write. Even so, I just want to state for the record that this article is an opinion piece by me with no intention of influencing stock prices, and you shouldn’t be basing stock purchase decisions on me anyway. After all, I’m *still* stinging a bit from my stock losses suffered during the dot-com bust!)

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"It starts in February 2008 and is open to any higher education institution from anywhere in the world. Students will work with local businesses to devise effective online marketing campaigns. They will outline a strategy, run their campaign, assess their results and provide the business with recommendations to further develop their online marketing. It’s a great chance for students to gain practical, real world online marketing experience whilst getting all the excitement of competing with other students from all over the world."

Haochi writes that, "Global winners will receive a trip to the Googleplex in Mountain View and meet the AdWords developers, and regional winners are invited to their local Google office." Teachers who wish to register their class for this challenge, click here.

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"This webinar will cover consumer’s search and shopping trends during the Holiday season including online/offline purchase behaviors, search volume trends, the combined impact of search and display on consumer engagement and spend. The webinar will conclude with search best practices for the Holiday season"

What to expect in the webinar:

Users move between paid and algo listings:

• 66%of clicks are from consumers clicking marketers’ listings multiple times.
• 37% of conversions come from consumers clicking more than one of marketer’s listings, natural or paid.
• 12.6% of conversions credited to natural search results were actually preceded by clicks on a marketer’s paid listings, more than twice as many as occur in converse scenario.

Campaigns managed holistically – where keywords used in sponsored search also rank well in algo – deliver superior performance:

• 39% lift in revenue.
• 31% lift in perception of campaign.

Some best practices tips for marketers:

• Apply seasonal modifiers to keywords.
• Plan ahead and use scheduling for short term promotions and include special messaging in title and descriptions.
• Create robust gift guides to encourage cross shopping to different categories and drive traffic to that gift guide.

To sign up for the webinar, click here.

As the webinar is interactive anyone with YSM questions, queries, suggestions, criticisms or just an opinion, can post them here. We will forward them to the people at Yahoo! who will then answer all your queries.

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