Net Applications data for January is out, and there are some interesting trends displayed.

First, the data shows that Google’s Chrome browser has managed to snatch usage share from Internet Explorer and Firefox.

Here’s the data:

• Chrome: 5.20% (up from 4.64% in Dec ‘09)
• IE: 62.18% (down from 62.69% in Dec ‘09)
• Firefox: 24.41% (down from 24.61% in Dec ‘09)

Note: While we may debate as to whether Net Applications is a reliable metric or not, Mozilla both accept and use its data in its PR propaganda.

Note that this is the second month in a row that Net Applications has shown a decline in Firefox usage.

I noticed over the holiday period that Google was aggressively pushing Chrome through ads, even going as far as to offer customized downloads that could be sent as gifts via email.

The top browser spot has also changed hands, now belonging to IE8, with 22.31%, beating IE6 (20.07%). Still far too many people browsing the web with IE6 …

In other news, Windows 7 global usage share hit 10% on January 31st. Overall, Windows 7 ended January with a 7.51% usage share (leaping ahead from 5.71% for Dec ‘09). Also interesting is the data that shows that Redmond WA, home of Microsoft, shows the highest Windows 7 usage share within the US, a robust 42%.

Overall, Windows usage is down to 92.02% (from 92.21% in Dec ‘09 – even strong Windows 7 gains can’t halt the slow erosion of Windows usage share), Mac is up to 5.13% (from 5.11% in Dec ‘09), which I admit probably isn’t significant, and Linux is unchanged at 1.02%. iPhone OS platform is also up marginally to 0.47% (up from 0.44% in Dec ‘09).

Net Applications measures operating system usage by tracking computers that visit the 40,000 sites monitored for clients, which represents a pool of about 160 million unique visitors each month. This data is then weighted based on the estimated size of each country’s Internet population.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes blogs.zdnet.com

Russia Internet search engine “Yandex” named the most popular search topic in 2009. As it turned out, the main event last year was its conclusion: the number of queries on the topic “New Year” close to 21 million. Closest pursuer – the theme “Ready homework” – left behind more than twice (about 9 million requests).

Judging by the rankings “Yandex“, the most popular dishes on New Year’s table was a salad with calamari and Caesar salad, goose or duck with apples and oranges. Legitimate to increased number of requests associated with New Year’s gifts and attributes, although the most popular purchase was the new operating system Windows 7 from Microsoft.

In the last five minutes of 2009’s most popular search query were online broadcast TV channels, as in the first five minutes of 2010 – social networking.

In the New Year, the top ten most popular topics of search queries in 2009 were three more holidays: Women’s Day (more than 4 million requests, 6 th), Defender of the Fatherland (3.5 million, 9-th place) and Valentine’s Day (2,8 million, 10-th place). Educational those two: in addition to those already mentioned finished homework in the top ten hit theme “EGE 2009″ (more than 6 million queries, 4 th place). In the top-10 were two computer games: GTA 4 (about 6 million queries, 5-th place) and The Sims 3 (more than 4 million, 7-th place).

The third took place in the rating “Eurovision 2009″ held in Moscow (7.8 million requests). Also in the top ten hit theme “Swine flu” (nearly 3.8 million queries, 8 th place).

lenta.ru

A small Missouri company with the word “Bing” in its name has sued Microsoft for branding its search engine with the same word, alleging trademark infringement and unfair competition by the software giant.

Bing Information Design filed the case in a St. Louis circuit court this week, seeking damages including corrective advertising paid for by Microsoft to eliminate confusion between the brands, the company’s law firm said in a statement on Thursday.

The design company, which offers computer-related illustrations and other services, has used the name Bing since 2000 and applied to register the trademark “Bing!” on May 26, according to U.S. Patent and Trademark Office records. The USPTO initially refused the application on Aug. 25, giving the company six months to file supporting information.

Microsoft filed its application for the trademark “Bing” (without the exclamation mark) on March 2.

Microsoft’s use of the name Bing and its aggressive advertising have “gutted” efforts by the small design company to distinguish itself, the statement said. Bing.biz, a Web site linked to in the statement, showed sample graphics from the company and gave the job titles of its two principals as “overlord-in-chief” and “the brains behind the operation.”

Microsoft has not been served with a complaint but is aware of the lawsuit based on media reports, a Microsoft spokesman said in an e-mail.

“We believe this suit to be without merit and we do not believe there is any confusion in the marketplace with regard to the complainant’s offerings and Microsoft’s Bing product,” the spokesman said.

Microsoft launched its Bing search engine earlier this year as a revamp of its Microsoft Live Search service.

www.computerworld.com

We reported that Google would be replacing Russian search leader Yandex as the default search engine and ad server on Mail.ru, the most popular online destination in the country with more than 50 million unique monthly users.

This morning, Mail.ru confirmed (in Russian) that it will be replacing Yandex with Google as its default search provider starting January 2010.

The company noted that Mountain View will indeed refrain from branding the search engine with the Google name and logo like it usually does.

Mail.ru has an estimated 10% search share in Russia, behind Google with 23%, but both pale in comparison to leader Yandex, which takes up no less than 58% of the market. By replacing Yandex as default search engine on the Mail.ru portal, Google will grow its share to over one third of the market.

Google will also be powering the contextual advertising part of the equation for Mail.ru, in a country where its size is estimated at around $400 million.

The agreement reportedly spans 1 year, and the terms stipulate that Mail.ru will receive a 60 percent share of revenues from ad clicks (which is more than Mail.ru currently receives from Yandex).

Mail.ru already worked with Google for search and ads from 2003 to 2005.

www.techcrunch.com

Today is a partner of Yandex Advertising Network has become the company Microsoft with its major global search engine Bing.com.

Now among advertising sites Yandex.Direct not only popular and leading sites Runet, not only the largest resources of the CIS countries, but also one of the leading international search engines. In the United States Bing takes the 3rd position among search engines with a share of queries in 10,7% and is the fastest growing search engine, according to research firm Nielsen* (Table 1).

While the proportion of Bing in Russia is not so high, but we are very pleased that one of the world’s largest companies expressed a desire to monetize in RuNet with the contextual technology Yandex.

Testing ads Yandex.Direct, which took place from September to December, showed the high effectiveness of advertising on the Bing. So we have every right to congratulate advertisers Yandex with the advent of another high-quality search sites!

*NEW YORK– September 14, 2009 – The Nielsen Company today reported August 2009 data for the
top U.S. Search Providers. Total searches on MSN/Windows Live/Bing Search increased 22.1
percent month-over-month in August, making it the fastest growing search provider among the top 10.
Share of searches for Bing increased from 9.0 percent in July to 10.7 percent in August. Google
Search continued as the No. 1 search provider, with 7.0 billion searches and a 64.6 percent search
share.
MegaView Search data – including total searches, unique searchers, search share, and all other
search figures – cannot be trended with search results prior to June 2009 due to recent methodology
changes.

Table 1: Top 10 Search Providers for August 2009, Ranked by Searches (U.S.)

Searches represent the total number of queries conducted at the provider. Example: An estimated
7.0 billion search queries were conducted at Google Search, representing 64.6 percent of all search
queries conducted during the given time period.

clubs.ya.ru

Search engine Yandex has decided to close the top popular blog posts. Told Anton Volnukhin, project manager for “Blog Search“, in a company blog. From the site Yandex top blog entries will be removed in December.

Volnukhin explained the decision was that the top entries, which was conceived as a mirror of the blogosphere has become a media platform. Many bloggers use a social twist, asking friends to put links to their records and thus bring them into the top.

In addition, as noted in Yandex, the rating was used to attract media attention by all, including the radicals of all stripes.

The developers’ goal of Blog Search “offered to all who wish to access the programming interface rating. With it everyone can create its own rating of popular recordings. Entries are given in raw form. Users of the software interface will have to sort them yourself.

Search for blogs and forums Yandex launch on Dec. 22, 2004 and is the largest such service in Ru.net. As of November 3 they had indexed over 11 million blogs.

lenta.ru

According to information received, at least once a month, read the news 77 percent of Russians surveyed – data RUmetrik. At POF and The Online Monitor figures are virtually identical – 65 percent and 66 percent of users are interested in news. About e-mail in the POF survey did not ask, according to the 2 other companies, e-mail use 74-78 percent of Internet users. Weather, according to their own data, interested 67-68,4 percent of users. Regarding search, the data vary: from 50 percent in POF, 69 percent have RUmetrik and up 81.4 percent at The Online Monitor.

Downloading and viewing, listening to audio recordings, videos and photos are interested in from 40 percent to 50 percent, post videos and photos 23-24 percent of users. Audio files at the same time publish a network of less than 10 percent of users. As for software, then spread his interest in upgrading or downloading – from 33 percent to 49 percent. Blogs and forums read 33-42 percent Runet, write to them – from 12 to 16 percent of respondents. In online gaming interest from 23 to 31 percent of users, online TV – from 16 percent to 19 percent. The acquaintance of a network of about 15 percent of respondents.

With regard to shopping online – they make from 17 percent to 21 percent of users, on average, every fifth. With regard to payment for goods and services, electronic money, then, according to various studies, the proportion ranges from 7 percent (FOM) up to 15.4 percent (The Online Monitor), the holding of other financial and banking transactions online – from 5 percent  (FOM) to 12,4 percent (RUmetrik).

For comparison, the report of foreign research team Pew Internet & American Life Project shows the usual daily activity of a global network of users outside of Russia. According to these data, the most common network service for Internet audience is e-mail – 60 percent of daily users check their electronic mailboxes. Their share in the last 7 years has increased by 15 percent.

Search the Internet popularity among users of a global network was on the 2 nd place with 49 percent of daily hits. According to Pew Internet, over 2002 popular Google, Yahoo, MSN and other such services grew by 69 percent. Reading the news, according to foreign reports, was in third position with 39 percent popularity, 30 percent are interested in the weather forecast online, 29 percent – are looking for information related to their hobbies, 28 percent – go to different pages for fun. Visit social networking sites ranked seventh (13 percent) in the list of daily activities of users.

Comparing the data on the daily activity of the Internet audience in Russia (RUmetrik ) abroad (Pew Internet), Rambler analysts have concluded that the significant difference in Internet audience regarding Internet search and e-mail-communication there. For example, 60 percent overseas and about 65 percent in Russia daily by e-mail, 49 percent are looking for information in a global network and 51,5 percent – specifically in RuNet. But reading the news every day Russians are paying attention to almost 2 times larger: 70 percent according to RUmetrik and 39 percent – Pew Internet. Weather in Russia are interested in 56.6 per cent against 30 percent of Internet users abroad.

www.bit.prime-tass.ru

www.liveinternet.ru

Employees’ Blondinki.ru also shared the expensive requests for some popular subjects. It turned out, for example, that the subject “Finance” highest average price was at the request “gambling” – 132 rubles. Followed by “bank deposits” (113 rubles) and “Bank contribution rate” (105 rubles).

In the “Properties” active advertisers offering rent, sale and purchase of apartments – from the ten most expensive position 6 belongs to them. Nevertheless, the primacy hold inquiries “elite cottages” (125 rubles), “rent warehouse” (100) and “buy a cottage “(95 rubles). In the topics “Building and repairing” the first place in August divided the “plastic windows and metal doors.” In a single click on the ads on these words offered an average of 108 rubles.

In August of all items subject to “Auto” rates rose. The first place a request to “nissan almera” (27 rubles), the second section requests “buy car” and “ford focus cost” (26 rubles). The most expensive tourist request by a wide margin were “Hotel St. Petersburg” – an average of 40 rubles per click.

lenta.ru

During the summer of 2009 Runet users viewing a page with search results more than 3 billion times a month. Every day was set about 85 million search queries.

The average Internet user finds the information he needs, after three requests. Community portals (yandex.ru, mail.ru) in 51% of asking only one request.

In August this year, the average query length is three words, a year ago this figure was 2.5 words.

Longest inquiries asking visitors Ukr.net – 5 words. Up to 80% increased their share of queries longer than 4 words.

Almost 90% of search queries contain at least one noun, but the queries with swear words – very small, about 1%. The emergence of search tips proportion of errors and typos in queries has decreased by 3%.

2,5% of search queries are a direct question, which contains the words «какой», «сколько», «кто» (what, how much, who).

news.tochka.net