The NASDAQ 100 Rebalances With Apple Losing and Google and Microsoft Winning - The Nasdaq-100 index will be rebalanced on May 2, to reduce the weight of Apple’s stock by about 40%. The NASDAQ-100 weighted index, which reflects the stocks of 100 of the top Nasdaq stocks, meaning that the index does not own an equal amount of all stocks. Apple currently represents 20.5% of the index. On May 2, Apple weight will be reduced to 12.3%. Of course where there are losers, there are winners, so the rebalancing will increase the weight of other tech stocks, including Microsoft and Google. On ... read more ...

Microsoft Files Anti-Trust Complaint With The EU On Google Where They Have a 95% Market Share - According to Microsoft’s blog, by Brad Smith, Senior Vice President General Counsel, of Microsoft, the  Company filed “a formal complaint with the European Commission as part of the Commission’s ongoing investigation into whether Google has violated European competition law.” “We thought it important to be transparent and provide some information on what we’re doing and why.” “By the European Commission’s own reckoning, Google has about 95 percent of the search market in Europe. ... read more ...

Disco.com, Bought At DomainFest For $255K Is Owned By Google & Launched As A “Group Texting ” Site - The domain name Disco.com sold at Domainfest, New York in September of last year for $255,000. Disco.com was ranked by DnJournal.com as the 31st highest domain sale of 2010. The domain name is now owned by Google and has been launched as a Group Texting site. “”Group Texting on Any Phone Now that’s groovy!”” says the sign up form. And yes there is an App for that. And its free and available on iTunes Google and Apple haven’t been the best of friends and its interesting to see Google displaying ... read more ...

Yahoo Answers Google’s Instant By Rolling Out Search Direct: Guess Who Owns The Domain - According to TechCrunch.com, Yahoo has countered Google’s Instant Search Product with it’s own named “Search Direct” “It looks a lot like Google Instant: as you start typing a query into Yahoo Search, the site will begin populating results with each new character entered (in other words, you don’t have to hit the ‘return’ key). The feature is now live at search.yahoo.com.” “Yahoo says that Search Direct is looking to help match users with “answers, not links”. As you start ... read more ...

Google Starts Allowing Users To Block Sites: Worse For Content Farms Or Parked Pages? - According to a post on its blog,  Google as of today is allowing users to block sites as they surf. “You’ll start seeing a new option to block particular domains from your future search results. ” “Now when you click a result and then return to Google, you’ll find a new link next to “Cached” that reads “Block all example.com results.” “Once you click the link to “Block all example.com results” you’ll get a confirmation message, as well as the option to undo your ... read more ...

Demand Media Buys CoverItLive.com Live Blogging System - Demand Media has just acquired CoverItLive.com an extensive tool one can use for liveblogging live events or other real-time stuff such as earnings calls and  press conferences. CoverItLive powered live blogs for the Oscar ceremonies on People, TMZ, Entertainment Weekly, Variety and Mashable uses it as well. Chairman and CEO of Demand Media Richard Rosenblatt said of the acquisition: “CoveritLive really reflects our mission as a company – publishing what the world wants to know and share. Consumers ... read more ...

Tucows Reports Earnings: YummyNames Scores Another 1.5 Million In Sales In 4th Q - After the stock market closed today Tucows a member of our Domain Stock Index report earnings for the 4th Quarter ending December 31, 2010 Here are the highlights: “”Net revenue for the fourth quarter of 2010 increased 8.6% to $22.1 million from $20.3 million for the fourth quarter of 2009. “Net income for the fourth quarter of 2010 was $1.2 million, or $0.02 per share, compared with $1.7 million, or $0.03 per share, for the fourth quarter of 2009. ” “Deferred revenue at the end ... read more ...

Texas Investigating Whether Google Is “Manual Overriding Or Altering” Search Result Rankings. - According to Fortune.com the Texas Attorney General Office is investigating whether Google is “manual overriding or altering” search result rankings. As part of the investigation the Texas AG demanded that Google turn over a broad range of internal documents as part of an antitrust review including its formula for determining advertising rates. State investigators also are investigating complaints of Bing and Yahoo about purchasing ads on Google. This comes just a couple of weeks after SearchEngineland.com ... read more ...

Marchex Reports Earnings: Revenue Up & $2.1 Million In Domains Sold In 4th Quarter - Marchex, Inc. a member of our Domain Parking Stock Index, reported its results for the full year ended December 31, 2010 after the market closed today. Here are the highlights of the 4th Quarter 2010 Results Revenue was $28.0 million for the fourth quarter of 2010, compared to $23.4 million for the same period of 2009. GAAP net income applicable to common stockholders was $593,000 for the fourth quarter of 2010 or $0.02 per diluted share. This compares to GAAP net loss applicable to common stockholders ... read more ...

HitWise Jan Search: Bing Gains On Google - According to a report released yesterday by Hitwise, Bing is gaining some market share at the expense of Google. Google’s market share for search in January was almost 68% down 2% from December. On the other hand Bing.com and Bing-powered sites collectively rose by 6%, giving Microsoft’s search engine a 27.4% market share. (Credit: Experian Hitwise) Bing.com by itself accounted for 12.8% of all searches, a 21% gain from December. Searches conducted at Yahoo sites powered by Bing were down ... read more ...

New Study: Why The Yahoo-Bing “Search Alliance Is Paying Off for Paid Search” - According to a report published by Marin Software Wednesday. The report, “Why the Search Alliance Is Paying Off for Paid Search,” suggests the Microsoft and Yahoo search alliance increased the share of paid-search impressions by 4% and share of clicks by 2%, while Google’s share declined by the same percentage. Microsoft and Yahoo saw paid-search share of impressions rise from 19% to 23%, and paid clicks rise to from 19% to 21% in the first few months after the alliance went into ... read more ...

What Is Demand Media Worth? SeekingAlpha Says $5-$10 A Share - As you know Demand Media went public this week closing around $20 a share after getting to as high as $25 on its opening day. There is a lot of debate concerning what the proper valuation of Demand is from inside and outside the domain industry. SeekingAlpha, a site that focus on investing and the stock market in general, published a story on Thursday when Demand Stock was trading at $22.65 (closed Friday at $20.44), entitled “The Bubble is Back: Will Demand Media Go Below $10?” SeekingAlpha ... read more ...

VeriSign Reports Earnings: 9% More .com & Nets: Revenue Up 13%: But Is That So Great When They Get A Guaranteed 7% Increase? - VeriSign, Inc a stock we follow in our Domain Stock Index,  reported earnings for the 4th quarter after the market closed today. And while the executives are busy patting themselves on the back for the great job they did to increase Verisign revenue 13% we can help but point out they VeriSign is guaranteed, like few companies on the planet, a 7% annual price increase in any 4 of 6 years they feel like increasing prices (this last year being one of them) without needing to show increased cost or ... read more ...

Demand, VeriSign, Web.com and Neustar Added To Our Domain Stock Index - We added 4 companies to our Domain Stock Index which tracks some of the public companies that are heavily involved in domain names. As always stock prices are updated every 15 minutes through each trading day. The stock index is located on the bottom right of our main page. Demand Media owns Enom.com the 2nd largest registrar in the world, NameJet.com the auction house, and hundreds of thousands of domains. VeriSign as most of you know runs the .com and .net registries and also owns the .Tv registry.  ... read more ...

Quick Poll: How Much Will Demand Media Stock Be One Year From Now? - Shares of Demand Media closed its first day of trading at $22.65. As you know by now, the company’s stock went public at $17 a share,  its first trade was at $23.50 and traded as high as $25. So the question now becomes at what price would will the stock of Demand Media be trading at the same time next year? Today is January 25th so lets call for the closing price as of Friday  Janauary 27, 2012. You can make your selection at the poll on the right and leave any comments below including any exact ... read more ...

Demand Media Shares Jump Up A High As 47% As It Begins Trading - Shares in Demand Media which started trading today on the NYSE under the symbol DMD which were priced at $17 a share started trading at $23.50 In the first half our of trading the stock has already hit a high of $25 a share, which represents a 47% gain over the issue price. The shares are currently trading as of time of publication at $22.24 an increase of about 33% from its offer price. I do think regardless of your personal opinion of the company or the stock, a big demand for Demand stock can ... read more ...

Demand To Go Public Tomorrow - According to several reports Demand Media is going public tomorrow (another report here). With a target price of between $14-$16 a share, I got a call today from a broker who said they were oversubscribed and they expected trading to being north of $17 a share. There will be many people at Domainfest next week with restricted shares in their pockets and Demand becoming public will add some extra attention to the domain industry during its busiest show. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

Yahoo Search Revenue Down 27% & They Cut 1% Of WorkForce - Yahoo reported earnings after the market closed today. Yahoo  had net revenue of $1.21 billion, down 4% drop from the 4th quarter of 2009. 4th Q net income rose to $312 million, or 24 cents a share, from $153 million or 11 cents a share in the same period a year earlier. Yahoo said its search-advertising revenue fell 27% in the 4th quarter compared with the period in the prior year. Shares are trading at $15.52 down 3% in after market trading. “We just completed a very encouraging quarter ... read more ...

Google: Content Farms & Mini-Sites We Are Gunning For For You - Today Matt Cutts who is the Principal Engineer at Google, posted on Google’s blog that they was gunning to eliminate junk sites, including what many would refer to as mini-sites and content farms from being indexed in Google. “Just as a reminder, webspam is junk you see in search results when websites try to cheat their way into higher positions in search results or otherwise violate search engine quality guidelines.” “As we’ve increased both our size and freshness in recent months, we’ve ... read more ...

Google: Revenues Up 26%; Paid Clicks Up 22%; Cost Per Click adult 5% & Eric Schmidt Is Out as CEO - After the market closed today Google reported earnings for the 4th Quarter of 2010 ending on December 31, 2010. Google reported revenues of $8.44 billion for the quarter ended December 31, 2010, an increase of 26% compared to the fourth quarter of 2009. ” “In the fourth quarter of 2010, TAC (Traffic Acquisition Costs)  totaled $2.07 billion, or 25% of advertising revenues. GAAP operating income in the fourth quarter of 2010 was $2.98 billion, or 35% of revenues.” This ... read more ...

QuinStreet Hits $1 Billion Dollars In Market Cap - Just 10 months after starting trading at $15 a share, QuinStreet, the company that bought, Insurance.com, CarInsurance.com and Insure.com has hit an all time high of $23.40 a share today (current sitting right at $23) giving it a market cap of $1 Billion Dollars. The stock is now up some 50% since it acquired CarInsurance.com in November for $49.5 million dollars. We own shares in Quinstreet. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...

DemandMedia Files Amended Prospectus, Now Looking To Raise $138 Million & Prices Its IPO - According to the New York Times, Demand Media in an amended prospectus with the SEC yesterday. In the document, Demand Media says it hopes to raise $138 Million dollars and price its shares between $14-$16 a share. At the mid point of $15 a share the company would have a market value of about $1.25 billion. Google+Michael Berkens ... read more ...