Google Share of US Searches Up to 65% in April · MarketingVOX

I'm a huge fan of Quantcast. I've blogged before that it may be the best free tool for online marketers.

And now it's even better.

Two weeks someone showed me that whenever you are looking at a web site, to see how much traffic it has, that there are two arrows that PREVIOUS and NEXT, so if you are looking at the 100th most popular web site, you can click on NEXT and see the 101st most popular.

Last night I was told about a great site for buying cell phones online called letstalk.com. So I checked it out and they do seem to have most phones and most carriers, so a lot more options than you typically see. They offer referral bonuses as well. My friend got a free Blackberry Pearl and loves it.

Our top priority at World Vital Records is understanding our customers needs. A VC friend told me recently that if you choose a market and understand your customers' needs better than anyone else, and meet those needs, that you will be successful.

I found this a little hard to believe--both the percentage of companies supposedly doing mobile marketing and also the overall advertising budget for mobile marketing.

From MarketingVOX:

A study this month from JupiterResearch found 22 percent of companies advertising online also are doing mobile marketing. Overall, the study predicted, mobile ad spending would more than double - from an anticipated $1.4 billion this year to $2.9 billion in 2011.

Comscore and Telephia have teamed up to offer data about web sites that are being visited by mobile web users.

In their first report, Comscore and Telephia show some interesting data about mobile web use. It looks like checking weather is very popular.

Nice article on why marketers should care about local/mobile search:

According to the article, the top five uses of mobile search are:

1. Maps and directions
2. Directory listings
3. Restaurants
4. Stores
5. Local movies

A new Comscore study shows that most traffic to U.S. ad-based web sites comes from outside of the U.S. It reports that 89.1% of Google's page views come from international visitors. This is actually pretty staggering. All online marketers need to focus more on geographic targeting.

I asked the question in my last post, "Will Compete's toolbar become an essential tool for internet marketers." After 15 minutes with the tool, and after watching the excellent Flash presentation about what this service aims to do, I answer with a resounding, "Yes!"

My favorite slide in the Flash presentation was this:

Bill Gross, one of the world's most prolific entrepreneurs and an inspiration to me for more than 10 years, officially launched Compete.com today. (See the Alexa Chart for Compete.com.)

I just downloaded the Compete toolbar. The graphics indicates that 2 million people are already sharing their clicks so that we can all know better what sites are popular and what sites we can trust.