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From the perspective of a digital agency, you sometimes get the feeling that the entire world is using either Firefox or Safari.

But in fact the real story of the last few years has not been the remarkable rise of Firefox (and I am a massive fan, of course!) but of the resilience in Internet Explorer's market share.

I cobbled together the graph below (click on it for a larger version) from browser statistics up until the end of Q2 2008 from TheCounter.com.  (This will understate the impact of the launch of Firefox 3 on the 17th of June - Wikipedia quotes a share of 19.73% for Firefox in August 2008.)

So Firefox has eaten into Internet Explorer's market share - but as of June 2008, IE still enjoyed 78.3% of browser usage.  Over the last two years, Microsoft's share of the browser market has dropped by just eight percentage points.  For the majority of users, there have not been compelling reasons to switch from a browser that is stable and works pretty well.

Those who were dissatisfied with Internet Explorer will already be using Firefox or Safari - and it is these early adopters who are most likely to jump once again over to Google Chrome.

I've been thinking for a while that the one area where Google's domination of search is just a tiny bit shaky is around control of the browser.  That's why I got excited about the 'Awesome Bar' in Firefox 3, with its convenient ability to search through your browser history. 

And suddenly it really does look like we might have another browser war on our hands.  Internet Explorer 8 is now available for download in its second pre-release beta.  And around an hour ago came the news that Google is launching a new open source browser - Google Chrome - tomorrow. 

There are signs that Google has acted somewhat hastily to get the launch of Chrome out the door.  They admit that they sent out a comic book release explaining the thinking behind chrome a little early.  And the browser's homepage - www.google.com/chrome - currently hosts a hand-coded 404 not found message.

So a quick take on this news.  Anything that speeds up or improves internet access can only be a good thing.  Pushing the envelope on the web browser could potentially kick start a new wave of site development as companies look to take advantage of new functionality.  And Microsoft does seem to have been somewhat asleep at the wheel with its browser developments - IE7 came out almost two years ago, a lifetime ago in web terms.

On the other hand, Google needs to be careful not to flirt too closely with the 'M' word - its domination of search is clearly monopolistic, it owns one of the largest ad serving companies and is a major player in many other sectors.  Control of the browser as well may well just be a step too far towards global domination.

And this, presumably, is why Google's announcement is of an open-source browser, and they stress that any improvements they have engineered in - for example - javascript support, will be shared with competitors.

So welcome to Chrome.  A shiny, friendly metal... nothing for us to worry about. 

Probably.

  

Jason Calcanis is stirring things up nicely by pointing out that Google is ranking content on Knol - Google's new wikipedia-beater - extremely highly after only a few days of operation.

His screen grab on Flickr shows Knol coming in just behind Wikipedia for searches on "music in Capoeira".  Matt Cutts commented on Twitter that the results need time to bed down - but funnily enough repeating the search in the UK this morning shows Wikipedia edged down to fifth, behind both Knol and Youtube!  (screen grab below)

Jason no doubt hunted long and hard for a search that shows Wikipedia being 'unfairly treated', but he does raise some serious questions - as Google moves into content creation and management, can they be trusted not to give their own properties an undue advantage.

The sun is shining and I'm on holiday next week, so I'm going to err on the side of hopeless optimism and say that they will.  The integrity of the algorithm is just too important to be sacrificed simply to support another potential outlet for Google Adwords - once we stop trusting Google's search results, the golden goose really is dead.

One of the classic "well they would say that wouldn't they" is Google's argument that it is important to be top of both natural and paid search.

Here's the standard bit of Google research on the subject, which suggests that you can treble the amount of traffic to your site by being prominent in both natural and search.

But is that still true if there is no competitive activity on PPC? According to our recent research - which is covered today in iMedia Connection- many prominent UK brands simply don't bother to bid on their own brand terms.

Last year's spat between Google and eBay led to eBay pulling their ppc spend from Google. Hitwise looked at the data and found that there was little or no impact on overall traffic through to eBay over this period.

The story would be very different for non-navigational terms, but for navigational / brand terms it seems that big brands are happy to ignore Google's advice.

TechCrunch reports that Live Search volumes have grown by 15% since the launch of the much derided Cashback offer a month ago. 

Fifteen percent may not be that significant in the grand scheme of things - the increase in search volumes takes Microsoft up to 9.2% in share of the search market.  But if users are shifting to Live for searches associated with purchases then this might well be taking significant revenue away from Google and Yahoo.

Live Search Cashback has only been introduced in the United States, but a successful launch presumably means that we can expect to see it in the UK before too long.

A few weeks ago I blogged excitedly about what seemed to be an exciting new trend at Google towards more openness in terms of how search results are ranked. 

There hasn't exactly been a flood of information since then, but now we have another useful post on Google's official blog - an introduction to Google Ranking from Amit Singhal who runs the ranking team within Google's Search Quality Group. 

Of course, we don't get an insight into the secret sauce within Google, and I guess we probably wouldn't be able to make much sense of the algorithms even if they were revealled.  However, the basic principles behind the ranking process are interesting:

1) Best locally relevant results served globally.
2) Keep it simple.
3) No manual intervention.

The last point will raise some eyebrows - there are endless rumours in SEO circles about particular sites being singled out for ranking penalties. But according to Amit, these changes are simply the result of tweaks to the algorithm. Hmmmm.

Anyway, more information is promised and I can't wait. Google is doing a fantastic job of demystifying the business of getting a high search ranking - which can't be entirely welcome news in those areas of search marketing agencies whose business depends on making the process seem as complex and difficult as possible.

Now that the dust has settled on Google's controversial changes to trademark protection in the UK, we've completed a piece of research to see how the search landscape has changed.

We took a list of 100 top brands across different sectors and looked at the search results page for searches on the brand name itself.  I was expecting a scene of carnage as brands bid against each other in a scramble for valuable traffic.  The reality was very different - in fact the remarkable thing really was how little paid search is happening around key brand terms.

• Almost half of all brands - including companies like HSBC, Tesco and Marks and Spencer - are not bidding on their own brand terms.
• 14% of our surveyed brands showed no paid search activity.
• Bidding by direct competitors on brand terms is largely restricted to just two sectors: finance and travel.

Finance is one of the most competitive sectors - but even here, massive brands like HSBC, NatWest and LloydsTSB have essentially opted out of Google Adwords for their key brand terms.

The full white paper on Trademark Bidding on Google is now online. 

The IAB has today launched a new set of resources for search marketers in the UK. 

I sit on the IAB's Search Council which has put these resources together, so I've had the inside track on the hours of discussion (and even argument) that lies behind these documents.

The Search Council is kind of unique in the UK as it is (I think) the one forum where representatives of the key search engines (Google, Yahoo, MSN) and many of the big digital media agencies sit around the same table.

I'm glad to see that the resources are actually tackling some thorny subjects (which it would have been easy and tempting to disregard).  So you'll find information on trademarks, copyright, privacy for search, invalid clicks and

We're continuing to monitor the situation on Google after the rules on bidding against registered trademarks were lifted last month.

The new rules allow anyone to bid against a trademarked term - but not to use that trademark in their ad copy.

I expected to see competitors and aggregators taking advantage of this - but I have to say I'm surprised to see the way Sky News are enjoying their new freedom.  Here's the search results page for EasyJet - where Sky News has placed an ad reading: Sky Breaking News.  Budget airline plane with 170 people on board went off the runway.

Not too helpful for EasyJet I would guess!