Topix.net, a specialized search engine for news, made news itself this week, announcing it had acquired the domain name topix.com for a hefty $1 million. Why a company that has branded itself around a domain name it does own suddenly feels compelled to spend big money for a variant domain name is a fascinating topic in its own right, but there's a better angle to this story.

In announcing the purchase of this new domain name, company management publicly fretted to the Wall Street Journal that they were afraid of taking a traffic hit by moving from ".net" to ".com," and suggested that Google (which is the source of 90% of the company’s traffic) should somehow assist companies in the same situation so they would not be penalized in search results rankings. That's not a crazy request in this day and age, but consider Google's remarkable response to this idea: websites shouldn't become overly reliant on traffic from search engines!

How does one even begin to respond to a statement like that, especially since Google is right, provided that your website operates in a parallel universe where people discover websites by ... well, how exactly? Google helpfully provides some ideas, suggesting that sites could, for example, set up user forums, which presumably users would learn about by, well how would they learn about them?

Google has earned itself a $138 billion market capitalization because it was instrumental in helping to make search engines everyone's favored entry point onto the web. Now that everyone is so dependent on search engines for both discovery and navigation, and Google has monetized its leadership position in search six ways from Sunday, guess what? Google's new stance is "dude, you need to make some new friends."

Google wants it both ways. It wants the revenue that comes from operating the biggest toll booth onto the web, but not the responsibility. But the reality is that, because of its dominance, its every move has consequences for other businesses, and they are not all positive consequences. Until Google does the math on this simple equation, I guess our only option is to start getting busy with those new user forums.

InfoCommerce Models of Excellence

We're pleased to announce that Oodle Inc. has been selected for a 2007 InfoCommerce Model of Excellence award.

Labels: google, Infocommerce, oodle, topix, topix.com, topix.net, web traffic

New Hope Natural Media, a media resource and information provider for the natural, organic and healthy products industry, has partnered with SPINS (an organization that provides sales data for the natural products industry) to offer SPINS' industry-specific sales data to New Hope customers.

The results of the partnership will take shape quickly. New Hope's magazine, The Natural Foods Merchandiser, will feature a "Trendspotting" page beginning with its March issue that will include analysis from SPINS. SPINS will also provide other content in the magazine going forward and SPINS experts will be featured speakers for the magazine's webinar series.

This partnership will help New Hope form a stronger connection with its magazine readers. As we have all known for years, readers want more than plain content. They want the value-added features. They want the analysis that helps them more effectively use that content -- and they expect publishers to deliver. They realize that data is useless if they don't know what it means. And if publishers don't have the analytics capabilities in-house, they have to seek partners that have proven expertise in their given industry.

Convincing potential partners to collaborate shouldn't be very difficult. The benefits are powerful for them as well. For instance, in the New Hope deal, SPINS will gain a connection to the NFM readers who might not be aware of the firm's capabilities; and it is possible NFM subscribers will seek out the firm's services for a more customized analysis.

At the end of the day, it doesn't matter if publishers have their own analytics team or if they outsource this function. In order to be a full-service information provider, the only source of data customers choose, publishers must make analytics a must-have part of the business.

Labels: analytics, data, Infocommerce, new hope natural media, SPINS