eBay Previews Possible Geotargeting Feature for Sellers

As you may know, Black Friday is a pretty popular day for online shopping as well as offline. With that in mind, it is no surprise that a lot of people turned to eBay to find deals and work on their holiday gift buying.

eBay has created an interesting visualization of the site's Black Friday activity across the United States. This comes in the form of an animated map, which shows the areas of the country with the most shopping activity, and shows new areas as their first purchases were made. It's really easier to grasp if you just watch the short 2-minutes clip eBay provides:

On the eBay Holiday site, the company explains a little bit about the methodology and data execution that went into creating this animated map:

The visualization is based on raw data that includes eBay sales and purchases occurring in approximately 33,000 U.S. ZIP codes. To best represent large population areas and to condense data for a seamless display, ZIP codes were grouped to create 3,118 distinct areas. The methodology used to create these areas was based on the distance from the center of one ZIP code to adjacent ZIP codes. Those with a distance of less than .35 (latitude or longitude) between them were combined into an area.

The size of each point on the map corresponds to the number of ZIP codes encompassed within that area. In other words, the more ZIP codes included in an area, the larger the point on the map. The color of the points ranges in intensity, and areas with lower transaction totals appear in yellow while those with the highest number of total transactions appear in red. The spectrum of color can be most easily understood by comparing points on the map to the Activity Level Indicator, found just beneath it.

The map is available for interested parties as a widget, which can be embedded. That can be found here.

Interestingly, the company notes on the eBay Ink blog: "Even more interesting will be to see if we can make this a regular feature. It takes some fairly detailed transactional data to come up with such a high-level but targeted visual map. Crucial data for sellers looking to see geographical purchasing behavior patterns partnered with peak purchasing times (down to the second)."

This could be a popular feature (if released) for sellers to better target their offerings. This could in turn help with the marketing of their eBay stores. Would you find such a feature useful? Share your thoughts here.

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Hulu Makes More Search Improvements

Popular online video site Hulu has made some new improvements to its search interface. They have added a new Advanced Search feature, which offers the user additional search filters than were previously available.

With Advanced Search, users can search by a keyword or phrase (use quotes to set off a phrase), search within specific fields (such as show title, video title, etc.), or use common search operators like "and," "or," and "not."

"If you search for videos on Hulu often, we offer search operators that correspond with each of the fields in our Advanced Search menu, so you can type in a complete search query directly from the search bar," says Rebecca Harper on Hulu's blog. "For instance, you can use the plus sign ('+') to add keywords to your search string. For example, +jim +pam +wedding calls up videos related to Jim and Pam's wedding on The Office earlier this season."

"The Advanced Search menu also offers a way to limit your results to videos with closed captioning — just click on the appropriate check box," says Harper. "In addition, a family-friendly search option offers an easy way to search for content that might be more appropriate for younger viewers. (The filter will exclude videos that are rated TV-14, PG-13, TV-MA, R, NC-17, NSFW or NR.)"

Hulu's Advanced Search feature can be accessed via any search results page on the site, or by following a link at the bottom of Hulu.com.

Earlier this year, Hulu rolled out some changes to its search results pages, and allowed results to be refined through filter menus. You can display only clips or full episodes. You can also sort by relevance, airdate, or by shows with closed captioning. Other features recently launched include a "coming soon" page and custom playlists.

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Beware Tiger Woods Accident Information Sources

The Tiger Woods car accident has had the web abuzz over the weekend. Like nearly anything else that creates such buzz, cyber-criminals will find a way to exploit it. This incident is no exception.

According to security company Symantec, interest in Tiger's accident and rumors surrounding its cause has given scareware peddlers "ripe opportunity" to "poison web search engines." Because the story has generated such a swell in web traffic and searches, malicious entities surely couldn't resist. The story has appeared frequently in the top Google searches since the news broke.

Symantec says it has observed that some search results redirect users to different malicious domains, such as:

- vir-curemypc-now.com
- egafuki.cn
- online-scanner-free.net

"From an IT security point of view, this unfortunate incident is just another fruit ripe for the picking as far as malware writers are concerned," says Symantec's Hon Lau. "It comes as no surprise that the creators of rogue antivirus or misleading application software have already jumped on the bandwagon and attempted to poison web search engine results to take advantage of this spike in web search activity."

Naturally, the company is advising web searchers and those interested in the Tiger Woods story to be on guard. Symantec reminds us that when you search for info on the web, it is best to make sure your computer is secure. In addition, stay away from online sources that seem to "strong-arm" you into buying anti-virus software.

On a related note, Tech Blorge notes that the Tiger Woods story was broken on Twitter, as opposed to traditional media. These cases always provide for an interesting look at how new media is changing in the era of social media.

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Google Checkout Discounts Announced

It's no secret that the economy hasn't been good this year, but today's Cyber Monday, and if you're planning on doing some shopping online, Google wants to help.  Individuals who pay for things using Google Checkout may be able to save as much as $20 per purchase thanks to a new promotion.

A post on the Official Google Blog urged readers this morning to "save with exclusive discounts of $5, $10 or $20 at hundreds of participating stores, including TigerDirect.com, BlueNile.com and Petco.com."

What's more, the promotion runs through December 17th, so Google's not trying to push consumers into making snap decisions.  And a new Google Checkout: Deals page makes it easy to see what sorts of discounts are available.

The only things that are time-sensitive are a few offers from places like Toysrus.com, Babiesrus.com, and Buy.com.

This campaign may help Google Checkout gain a little ground on PayPal over the next 18 or so days.  It could be viewed as a sort of assault on Bing Cashback's position, too.

Of course, it also seems that Google missed a big opportunity by not ramping things up prior to Black Friday.

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