Yahoo Beating Google! Sort of

The latest traffic figures from comScore shows that Yahoo has a comfortable lead over Google.

In a way.  If you look at the numbers in a certain light.

In the measure of unique pages views of site networks, all Yahoo sites delivered more views (136 million) than all Google sites (131 million).

In a measure of how many web users had viewed an ad appeared on on any Yahoo site, Yahoo scored 85 percent, compared to Google’s 76.

Of course, these numbers tell, at best, a part of the story. Comparing revenue, searches conducted, total reach, etc., Google has a commanding lead.

And in first place among ad networks whose ads were viewed by the most Internet viewers? Why, advertising.com,  now owned by Time-Warner’s AOL.

Viz This: Some More Great DataViz 08 Tools

As the political primary season grinds on–oh, no, wait, it hasn’t actually started yet–I’ve become a collector of interesting data visualization projects that various publications have created for the year in politics ahead.

I’ve previously publicly admired the New York Times Debate Analyzer, USA Today’s Candidate Match Game, and the Washington Post’s Issue Tracker.

Three other dataviz [data visualizations, in webbist jargon] projects have caught my attention recently:

The LA Times’ Primary Tracker. Want to see why “SuperDuper Tuesday,” 25 Jan., will have such extraordinary impact on who the candidates in the general election will be? One quick slider-push on this tool makes it clear in alarming detail.

MSNBC’s Candidate + Issues Matrix. My current favorite in the “deadly cool if slightly clunky in use” category.

GlassBooth.com: View how you stack up relative to the candidates. Less visually playful than the USA Today entry in this field, but quite elegant to use.

They say politics brings out the worst in people. This campaign season, it’s bringing out the best is some dataviz designers.

[In the spirit of full disclosure: I'm working on an '08 dataviz project myself, which is why I've been watching. And I'm a former employee of the Washington Post.]

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Sex Sells, Version 2.0

Curious synchronicity in the newsfeed today, with two stories about brand-name softcore porn site relaunches.

• The New York Times reports on Penthouse’s acquistion of a group of social networking sites. Odd detail: Among the 25 properties acquired from Various Inc., is bigchurch.com, a social networking site where people try to link up based on spiritual inclinations.
• JackMyers.com has a good overview on the web strategy of Playboy Enterprises, which is relaunching its website next year–but keeping the most popular multimedia features behind a paid wall.  The report says little about the company’s social networking plans, but it does talk about its foray into mobile content. There are currently blogs and live chats by the featured women.

For the record, I would like it noted that I made it through this entire entry without a single winky-winky sex pun. I even resisted an easy play on 2.o. I think I deserve a reward for this.

The First Amendment Is Not A Financial Model

Anyone who enjoys the bloodsport of arguing over the future of journalism must bookmark Seattle Times’ editorial page editor James Vesely’s “The Handoff: Newspapers in the Digital Age.”

The folks who edit newspapers’ editorial pages are by now expected to fling tinfoil thunderbolts at the heavens, crying how the world is doomed to an endless hell of YouTube videos unless newspapers can continue to do God’s work on earth. Vesely is clearly a man who loves newspapers and insists on the importance of the work they do. Yet in this excellent piece he avoids most of the sentimental indignations of most of his peers.

My favorite passage:

We can’t rely on the First Amendment to provide us with a paycheck; the First Amendment is not a financial model.

Nobody knows the way out of the mess newspapers have created for themselves with decades of overfeeding at the trough of monopoly: the inflated sense of self-regard that comes from commanding a landscape bare of competition; the habituated conservatism that derives from consistent dividends; the inflexibility of body and mind that follows years of holding one’s place fastly in the midst of a powerful cash flow and negative public opinion.

Vesely understands that merely insisting journalism is important–to the public welfare, to our civic institutions’ quality, to democracy itself–does not guarantee its future.

That may not sound like a profound thought. Among his peers, however, he nearly comes off as a heretic.

Health 2.0h, oh. . .

Practitioners of Web 2.0 in the health space–at least the good ones–understand that they work under a different burden than most 2.0perations that seek merely to amuse, transmit, annoy, aggregate traffic for monetization, etc. In the health online space, people turn to the web for information on their own, or a loved one’s health care treatment. They are not, to understate, just noodling around.

And so today’s report about a University of Toronto study about rampant misinformation about the flu on YouTube is a bit frightening.

Short version: 45 percent of YouTube videos on flu immunization contained misinformation contrary to Canadian and U.S. government best practices advice.  Many were ill-informed anti-immunization screeds.

This is unsettling stuff: Misinformation in most 2.0 applications results, at worst, in a flamewar followed by a disingenuous backpedal.

In Health 2.0, the results of misinformation can turn up on the obituary page.

[Interest revealed: I'm a former employee of Steve Case's Revolution Health, and I currently consult to several web operations in the Health 2.0 space.]

Click Fraud: Not Just a Scam, a Sport!

An article today in MediaPost today reports that a company called Click Forensics estimates that 28 percent of the clicks on those Google and Yahoo text ads found next to search results, blogs and various web sites are fraudulent. This is to say the are clicked on with malicious intent, in order to generate revenue for the websites that host the ads.

To vastly oversimplify a very complicated process of auctions, algorithms and audacity: Let’s say an advertiser agrees to pay Google 15 cents for every click that comes from its ad to its site. Google drops the ads on sites or search results whose content corresponds to the material in the ad. Google collects 15 cents times 120 jillion for each click to the ad, or whatever its current reach is. If the ad is on a blog or web site, Google gives (say) 5 cents to the site for each click. Google keeps a dime. Advertiser gets qualified leads. Win-win-win.

Unless it turns out those clicks are generated by robots or stooges in the employ of blogs or websites that host the ads, trying to steal from advertisers 5 cents at a time–which, the report suggests, happens with 28 percent of all such clicks.

As someone with no investment in the Adwords game–and who rarely clicks on those ads–I’m not sure what all this means to the larger world of commerce. But I offer this curious observation: When the MediaPost story on click fraud showed up in my Gmail inbox, the ads below appeared next to it. I invite you to click them all–either to strike a blow for purity in web commerce or, if you like, purely for sport. It certainly won’t make me–or cost me–any money.

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