Web Analytics Wednesday in Helsinki - Measuring Social Media

The next web analytics wednesday in Finland will be held on 27th of February at Sanoma building. Steve Jackson from Satama will speak about measuring success of social media. A very interesting topic followed by Tommi Lehtonen from Whitevector. He will present how to measure social media’s effects on brands. This is excellent chance to get new ideas and meet the experts with relaxed atmosphere. See the below:

Search Engines in Finland

Google dominates the search engine market in Finland. According to my own little research with IndexTools web analytics system and TNS Gallup’s national interviews, Google’s market share is approximately 95 % in Finland. So, if you plan to do some search engine marketing here, Google is probably the best way to start with. I did a cross site analysis from 22 different sites last year including six month’s data from January to the end of June. At the same time TNS Gallup interviewed 3 000 people, aged between 15-79. We do have other search engines too. Here’s a list of most common ones:

• Google
• www.fi
• Eniro
• MSN / Windows Live
• Webinfo
• Yahoo

More than 200 people interested in web analytics gathered in Oslo yesterday

I had the pleasure to be attending and speaking at the gathering yesterday. WebTrends had invited their clients to a user forum, and more than 200 people showed up.

It’s the first time in Norway that I have seen more than 10 people, all interested in web analytics, in the same room. And this time it was more than 200.

Is this a signal of analytics as a growing market in Norway? Is this a signal of more focus on analytics in Norway and a bigger and better environment for the analytics profession? Or was it just a good marketing effort done by WebTrends?

Probably it’s a little bit of “all of the above”.

I had the pleasure of speaking at this seminar. If you would like to see my 15 minutes pep-talk, greatly inspired by Al Pacino, clik on the link (it’s all in Norwegian).

• Konkurrer med deg selv !!  (Compete against yourself !!)

If you are one of those people interested in learning the basiscs of web analytics, there is a course/seminar beeing held by Nina Furu on February 14.
I will be a guest speaker at this event.

Click to learn more about Nina Furu’s statistics seminar on February 14.

Facebook in Norway more than 1.000.000 users

I just checked some stats about Facebook through their advertising application. There’s now more than 1.000.000 profiles in Norway. When you make it relative that’s an overwhelming 22% of the population (4,7M).

Sweden has about the same amount of profiles (1M), but with a population double the size the relative situation (12%) is not as extreme.

As far as I can see, only Canada has a higher relative position with its reach of 24% of the population.

WebTrends seminar in Norway January 22

We’re not blessed with a lot of Analytics seminars in Norway. It’s one of those topics that seems to fade on the priority list. But this month there’s a seminar…

Arena Data, the agent selling WebTrends in Norway, are hosting a seminar.

• For more on the seminar: http://www.arena.no/sem08

Generally there are two main events for web professionals in Norway.
These are:

• Webforum Norge
• Webdagene

During the course of the year there’s always a couple of interesting seminars hosted by The Norwegian Computer Society and and occasionally in The Norwegian Polytechnic Society.

The GURU seminars by Dataforeningen tends to be quite good, since we’re not that big a country, so we don’t really see that many experts coming to visit us. We rather have to go to UK, Germany and US to find them…

• The 2008 calender for the computer society (dataforeningen)

Microsoft Looking to Buy Norwegian Search Engine

According to the New York Times, Microsoft is looking to purchase Norwegian Search Engine Firm, Fast Search and Transfer.  The deal is said to be worth $1.2 Billion dollars.

The Norwegian company, Fast Search and Transfer, based in Oslo, is a specialist in search technology used inside companies and government agencies to cull for information in documents, databases and software applications. Its software helps teams of workers quickly search the corporate storehouse of information for answers about procurement, marketing, manufacturing and product design.

A news release said Fast’s board unanimously recommended that shareholders accept the Microsoft offer.

Fast is not a competitor in consumer Web search and advertising, a market dominated by Google, where Microsoft is investing heavily and struggling to make progress.

Read the rest of the story here.

Past Search Marketing Confernces In Scandinavia

Looking to attend search engine and online marketing conferences can be a huge ordeal for many who live outside of main venues such as London, New York or San Jose. However thanks to the organizers of Search Marketing Expo, users in Sweden were able to attend SMX Sweden in October of 2007.

Search Marketing Expo was held for the first time in Stockholm, Sweden on October 31st and November 1st 2007 at the Sheraton Stockholm Hotel. The two-day conference featured workshop sessions on organic and paid search that was conducted by search engine marketing gurus from around Scandinavia and the world. The line-up of speakers and seminars include experts in a wide range of Internet marketing fields such as global search marketing, linking, SEO for multimedia and keyword research & testing. Among speakers that were scheduled to participate was Director of Nordic eMarketing in Iceland, Kristjan Mar Hauksson, who moderated interactive sessions on Search Marketing Best Practices, Global Search Marketing Tactics and Website Tuneup.

The conference was hosted by US search engine marketing (SEM) expert Chris Sherman. Chris has analyzed and influenced developments in search engine marketing for more than a decade and is the author of several books on search marketing and technologies, including “Google Power: Unleash the Full Power of Google”. He continues that work daily as Executive Editor of SearchEngineLand, a leading news and analysis blog for search marketing professionals.
Search marketing is expanding rapidly in Europe and SMX will fill an unmet need for industry professionals and the community of vendors, says Matthew Finlay from event producers Rising Media.

The SMX conference and expo is geared towards in-house internet marketers, brand managers, specialists and general web technology professionals.
To see what took place at SMX Sweden visit the full agenda for the conference.

Search Engines in Sweden

Here is a look at some of the top search engines and directories that are popular in Sweden.

Altavista Sverige
Evreka
Gotland Webguide
Lycos Sverige
MSN Sverige
Google - Sökmotor som listar ut hur relevanta länkarna är beroende på hur populära de är
Pagina
Spray
SUNET
Svesok
Tjohoo
Walhello Sverige
Yahoo! Sverige

Internet Usage in Scandinavia

I have always been a big fan of Scandinavia particularly of Sweden and Finland. Living in Canada, the closest I came to visiting these countries was during the annual World Junior Hockey Championships over the Christmas break when these countries hosted the event and I would watch the games on TV. The cities look beautiful, the people seem energetic and happy. I would like to visit Scandinavia some time in the future as I have never been out of North America.

So as I was looking up some Internet usage stats the other day, I came across some data from comScore that indicated the most popular search engines in European countries including Finland and Sweden. Think Google is the most popular search engine in Scandinavia? Well think again. To my surprise Microsoft (MSN and Live Search) appears to be the search engine of choice in Norway and Sweden. Google is the top search engine in Denmark and Finland however. Some other interesting points,

• The Netherlands and Scandinavian countries have the highest percentage of their populations using the Internet, ranging from 68 percent to 83 percent.
• European users average 16.5 usage days per month. Countries that have usage days below the European average are Russia (11.4 average usage days), Austria (12.0), Italy (12.9), Ireland (13.0), Portugal (13.4), Norway (14.7), Denmark (14.7), Switzerland (15.1), Belgium (15.5) and Finland (16.4).
• The average Swedish user views 4,019 pages per month and views more pages than any other country – 51 percent above the European average of 2,662 pages per month.

For the complete report click here.