7 Days, 7 Stories - a Wrapup of the Week 8-14 May

After a few days at Indaba the OnlineTravelFocus team sat down to catch up with each other and the weeks events.  They came up with these top stories for the week. 

1) The Worlds Cheapest Internet in South Africa.  If the predictions by Google head in South Africa, Stafford Masie come true, we will be in for a great 2009.

2) The research around Thomas Cook’s web experience is worth review, if for no other reason than to get some pointers as to what travel business in South Africa could be doing better.

3) Yahoo to launch Search Monkey, enabling publishers to have greater control of the presentation of search results.  This news must have marketers and copywriters silly with excitement.  We will wait to see how it pans out.  Google.com/coop explain ways to influence how Google presents your site.

4) Teletext legal action could spark a frenzy of activity in the murky waters of trademark infringement now that Google have changed their bidding policy on brand names.

5) Yet another example of the user generated content and travel.  I think it will require something slightly more innovative to remove Tripadvisor from its stranglehold on the review market.

6) Mozilla’s Data project, if it comes through, would mean fantastic stats - and its freely available!  Hitwise might be a bit worried.

7) Google Analytics Error – just so we know they are human after all.