Barrack Obama’s new administration said Yes You Can to Googlebot on their first day in office, as reported by Jason Kottke.

According to Kottke, up until yesterday, the robots.txt file (the file on a web site which tells the search engines which pages to disallow) contained approx. 2400 exclusions including the following:

User-agent: *
Disallow: /cgi-bin
Disallow: /search
Disallow: /query.html
Disallow: /omb/search
Disallow: /omb/query.html
Disallow: /expectmore/search
Disallow: /expectmore/query.html
Disallow: /results/search
Disallow: /results/query.html
Disallow: /earmarks/search
Disallow: /earmarks/query.html
Disallow: /help
Disallow: /360pics/text
Disallow: /911/911day/text
Disallow: /911/heroes/text
Disallow: /911/messages/text
Disallow: /911/patriotism/text
Disallow: /911/patriotism2/text
Disallow: /911/progress/text
Disallow: /911/remembrance/text
Disallow: /911/response/text
Disallow: /911/sept112002/text
Disallow: /911/text
Disallow: /ConferenceAmericas/text
Disallow: /GOVERNMENT/text
Disallow: /africanamerican/text
Disallow: /africanamericanhistory/text
Disallow: /agencycontact/text
Disallow: /appointments/text
Disallow: /avian/text
Disallow: /avianflu/text
Disallow: /bioshield/text
Disallow: /birdflu/text
Disallow: /blackhistory/text
Disallow: /budget/text

So, Google, with the Bush administration, do not ‘expect more’… Being from across the pond, it is not my place to comment as to whether or not one was able to expect more from Bush and what was actually delivered. However, I think the world is excited by the prospect and the potential promise of a truly multicultural president at the highest auspices of the government. I digress.

Bush’s robot.txt says disallow information on 911 heroes, messages, patriotism - which to me seems sad. Ok, maybe they dont want to rank on the search engines for words within the messages left but isn’t this an important legacy? 911 is about many things, which is fiercely debated thoughout the web, but one of the biggest take-aways is the demonstration of the spirit of the American people which words struggle to sum up: courage, tenacity, kindness, selflessness, support.

Google, do not include information on our ‘bioshield’ - intriguing- ‘avianflu’ or our ‘budget’. Need we say more? But with the new dawn in US politics comes the launch of a new robots.txt and new ‘accessibility’ for the search engines.

Apparently Barrack Obama’s team, perhaps in an effort towards transparency(?), has removed all of these exclusions and has a robots.txt file which allows Googlebot to visit all of the files on its site, apart from the /include/ file. Interesting.

Looking at other people covering this on the web, from Jason’s post, I smiled at part of Ron’s comment on shimonsandler.com: “…would I need to disallow robots.txt file in my robots.txt file so the robots.txt file isn’t indexed?” which was possibly a serious comment but amusing nonetheless.

Thank you so much to Web Accessibility Guru , Ian, who forwarded this on to me this morning and it tickled me so much I had to commit ‘fingers to keys’ and share this one straight away.

Looking forward to the new edition of Build Your Own Web Site, Ian.

Search Engine giant Google generated substantially more revenue in advertising than ITV1 did in the third quarter, according to The Times, with £327 Million compared to £317 million in this three month period.
ITV1 had a huge boost in revenues from advertising during the Rugby World Cup. but despite this Google romped in first in the financial stakes for the first time ever. In the year to September 2007, Google generated £925 million in the UK and is expected to attain £1.25 billion by year end. Compared to last year’s £871 million, the growth of this titan is a substantial 43.5%.
Despite the initial drawing ahead of the search engine, fourth quarter advertising revenues for ITV1 are expected to be substantial in the run up to Christmas pipping Google to the post with an expected £1.3 billion by year end. The ITV group (1,2,3) are expected to generated £1.45 billion in total, but with growth in online advertising spend with the search engine collossus - which currently has 75% of the search advertising market - it is expected that it will overtake the ITV traditional and digital channels by the close of the financial year, 2008.
Faced with this information, ITV has called for a reduction of the regulation on ‘traditional’ ‘brand builder’ advertising compared to ‘brand finder’ search advertising.
Advertising in the UK hit £9.1 billion in the first 6 months of this year, according to the IAB & PriceWaterhouseCoopers, which included an increase of 41% in online advertising as businesses realise the potential of the internet and the online advertising environment.

A new study by Burst Media has shown that the female population of the UK are particularly active on the Internet to the extent that 66% would be lost without access to the technology for a whole week. For Women in Britain, the internet has become an integral part of daily life and the thought of not having online access would be as devastating as any of us would feel about going out without a mobile phone.

The Burst Media study of 25+ year olds finds that over a half of women say that the World Wide Web is their main source of information when conducting research into items that they might purchase. This, naturally, has a massive impact for anyone who has females as their target customers: from car manufacturers to clothing, from technology to toys, lingere to leather sofas.

Internet useage, identified by the study, indicates that the about 70% of women are online for personal use from 7pm to midnight and about 50% online from 4-7pm shopping, browsing, researching with over 55% of females not online before 7am. During most parts of the day, over 80% people are online at any one time. These are great statistics for anyone targetting lady customers using PPC as it informs the ad scheduling that they might like to engage in.

The latest data from comScore has confirmed that it is Britain which is leading the way in internet use in Europe. According to their research, the average Briton spends 34.4 hours per month surfing: looking for information, engaging in social media and shopping online. The usual british ‘have a go’ spirit is completely in evidence in the cyberspace mediums! Coming second to the UK is Sweden with 31.7 hours per month, followed by Espagne at sound 30.6 hours per month. Would that be, perhaps, due the not unsubstantial number of Brits who reside in Spain - would that be helping the Spanish figures, one wonders?

The ‘highest percentage of people online award’ goes to the Netherlands, which has 83% of its population online, whilst Germany has the most users - at a staggering 32.5 million during may alone.

With 122 million Europeans online every day, spending on average 24.1 hours online every month, the internet has to be the main part of any marketing campaign for any serious online business.

ComScore’s Bob Ivins states that the correlation between broadband “roll-out” and internet useage is incontravertable: the more widespread broadband becomes, the greater the number of internet users (and regular internet users).

I was delighted to attend the pricegrabber birthday party at the penthouse at One Leicester Square. A fabulous venue (and scene of the MTV Show, One Leicester square, we were delighted to go up to the top floor at this very cool location to join the guys of Pricegrabber.

Upon arriving on the top of the world, we were warmly greated by Pricegrabber PR Guru, Michele, and PRBite who had helped put the bash together before a great waiter with something that included blueberry and vodka came directly over to help us to unwind after a long day in the smoke!
It was fantastic to see our host, the gorgeous Ben Hadley, and catch up with him this side of the Atlantic and to meet Paul, Jeff, Warren and Sean from DMG Media, amongst others.

Guests included the lovely Annabel Carmel, recently returned from high profile interviews in the states, product owners, online stores and various publications.

Pricegrabber really looked after us with great cocktails and excellent canapes before the CEO thanked clients for their support over the previous year and looked towards the future synergism of Pricegrabber with its customers and to a future laden with mutual benefits and profit! The DJ then let the music hit the decks and the party rocked on…