French banks launch online payment platform to compete with PayPal
In order to compete with electronic payments provider PayPal (3 million users in France) and to take part of the new European launch of payment platforms by the end of 2013 — which is going to be sponsored by powerful brands such as Visa, Google and MasterCard — a new payment solution was unveiled on […]
Obviously, the French only go to French websites
Knowing the French you will likely expect the top sites visited by the French to be French websites, right? Wrong. According to the latest data from (French) Mediametrie* from April 2013, you have to go all the way down to the 7th most visited site to find French ownership. Where you are of course right […]
International anchor text analysis: What is most natural?
One of the most important jobs for an SEO in these post-Penguin days is trying to maintain a natural-looking backlink profile. Penguin has now been rolled out in Googles across the world, and while it may not matter as much for Baidu or Yandex, it is only a matter of time before they too start […]
YouTube Makes International Push Into High Quality Localised Video Channels
A year ago, YouTube invested a reported $150 million in 100 US-based YouTube channels (either brand new or existing channels) in a move to make its site look less amateurish and, in essence, more like TV. And the world’s top online video site is following through with this strategy, as it recently announced it will invest […]
Google tax: Internet advertising to be taxed in France
In times of Economic Crisis there is a focus on both the cost side and the income side of a Nation’s Budget. On the cost side most European countries are applying austerity policies to reduce the spending and the Budget Deficits. On the income side, with the absence of significant growth, legislators are constantly looking […]
Huge growth potential for search marketing in France
Last week on the SMX conference in Paris we had a keynote discussion and I may have been a little quick when I stated that “Search Marketing in France has a 100% growth potential”. I was not contradicted, however, but I thought it would be useful to dig a little deeper to look at the […]
Search terminology: In France “SEM” is “Référencement”
One would think that an activity worth millions of euros would have an established name after 10+ years in service, right? So, most people agree that you can call the general business activity “Search Engine Marketing” or shorter just “Search Marketing”. So that becomes SEM as an abbreviation but you may want to stay away […]
Global Online User Engagement Stats: Quick Important Takeaways
Yesterday, comScore released a report which includes statistics on online user engagement in key markets around the globe. Below are some notable takeaways: 45.3: This is the number of hours the average Canadian spends online each month, placing the hockey-crazy nation as a superior #1 on the list, followed by the U.S and the U.K. […]
France Opens .Fr Domains To Whole Of Europe
On the 6th December .fr (France) and .re (Reunion) domain names will be available for registration to all European Union citizens. Afnic, the non-profit entity managing the French top level domain names attribution, has until now only allowed companies and individuals residing in France to buy a .fr domain. Afnic will also activate the domain […]
Facebook Becomes Most Visited Mobile Site In France Beating Google
Médiamétrie has just released for the second time the number of mobile internet users in France in 2010. The figures represent traffic on websites, portals and apps from a mobile phone. France’s 2010 last quarter – Q4 2010 – accounts for 43.4million internet users of which 15.5million use their mobile phone to go online (+3.3mllion […]