SMTrends would like to convey deepest sympathies for those affected by the horrible events at Virginia Tech this past week. As an example of how this kind of news can create a sort of “disaster effect” driving online activity, Hitwise Media Relations Manager Mark Tatham provided industry reporters with the following statistics regarding Online traffic behavior after the incident occurred:

• Online traffic to the Virginia Tech Facebook website increased 555% on Monday, April 16 versus traffic on Sunday, April 15. Compared to the previous Monday, April 9, traffic was up 407%.
  
  
• Online traffic to News and Media websites increased 16% on Monday, April 16 versus traffic on Sunday, April 15. Compared to the previous Monday, April 9, traffic was up 27%.
  
  
• Yahoo! News was the most visited News and Media website on April 16, receiving 8.69% of all visits to the Hitwise News and Media category. Traffic to the website increased 62% on Monday, April 16 versus traffic on Sunday, April 15.
  
  
• The TV Network websites saw big gains as well - ABCNews.com visits increased 245%, MSNBC.com increased 161%, FOXNews.com increased 64% and CNN.com increased 59%.

Following the format from issue #39, the following are some quotes from last week’s highly successful Search Engine Strategies Conference in New York.  Detailed analysis of particular topics and emerging trends will begin next week.

Putting Search Into the Marketing Mix - “There are two prerequisites to being able to perform ‘Search Informed Marketing’ (SIM): Willingness to embrace change - to genuinely provide what the market demands; and willingness to change your vocabulary to match what people are asking for...”  Full blog coverage.

**Please note this and the following were covered and published nearly “live,” so grammatical and/or spelling errors may be present

Search and Branding  – “(Kevin Heisler from JupiterResearch) finds that richer advertising techniques will start to replace traditional display ads.” Full blog coverage.

Search Ad Buyers Forum – “(Search) Standardization is a good thing, because it makes it easier to manage bigger campaigns, will encourage more advertisers to run across multiple engines, requires less internal training, and of course, makes everyone more money.” Full blog coverage.

Auditing Paid Listings & Click Fraud Issues – “Search providers have made great progress (with the Click Fraud issue), with Google’s plans for IP exclusion functionality to Yahoo! naming a VP to oversee the issue. However, none of this eliminates the need for a third party monitoring.” Full blog coverage.

Google up to 64% of U.S. Searches – According to Hitwise, Google accounted for over 64% of search engine traffic in the U.S. during March 2007, increasing their recent domination.  Find further coverage here and here.

Cookie-Based Metrics Can be Flawed - comScore released a study this week indicating that metrics like unique visitors/users, that depend on cookies, are overstated by up to 150% because 3 of 10 U.S. Internet users frequently delete both first- and third-party cookies.  Thus, if cookie-based analytics shows 10,000 unique U.S. visitors, the true number may be closer to 4,000.  The Press Release is available here, with further analysis found here.