Airlines Finally Agree To Travel Agents On Transaction Fee

Over the last few months, many high-profile meetings had taken place between Indian travel agents associations (TAAI and TAFI) and the Airlines (Air India, Jet Airways and Kingfisher), on the issue of zero-commission regime set by the airlines. The travel agents had argued that customers wouldn't agree to pay a separate transaction fee resulting in loss for the agent. After the latest round of meeting, the airlines have finally agreed to reflect the Transaction Fee on air tickets.

Both TAAI and TAFI are awaiting feedback from their members on this issue. Only after receiving agreement from both the associations the airlines will implement the same. However, this inclusion will be applicable only from November 1 to December 31, 2009.

According to reports, once implemented, the travel agents would charge a Transaction Fee of Rs 350 per ticket on domestic Economy Class, Rs 500 per ticket on domestic Business Class, Rs 2,500 per Economy Class booklet and Rs 3,500 per Business Class booklet.
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Why Does Matt Cutts Rank On Google Minus Google?

Google Minus Google(GMG) is a new search service, which promises to search with Google (Custom Search) without getting results from Google sites such as Knol, Blogger and YouTube.

It's a relief for people (there are many - 3000 visitors to GMG on Day ONE!) who hate a Google search result page lining up Google properties one after another - as if other sites aren't good enough.



I started with a search for keyword "google" itself ;-) and found no results from Google properties(wow!) - but hey, they ranked Matt Cutts blog! For me and many others in search marketing, Matt Cutts is 'the face' of Google.

So, why shouldn't Google Minus Google cut Matt Cutts as well from their search results. What do you think? Let me know on the poll.

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7 Tips For Cuil To Really Become Google-Killer ...Well Almost ;-)

Much has been written about the over-hyped launch and quick 'trashing to bin' of so-called Google Killer Cuil. What got them all the bad press was their over-hype on their index count and the Google Killer claim which failed to impress anyone.

But, hey life is all about failures and learning. Here are 7 'Killer'(ok, ok I'll grow up from this:) Tips, which can still give Cuil a second chance at their Google-killer claim ...almost:

1. The accordion thing is a good idea to start with - but minus the current un-focused keywords on it. My search for 'london hotels' showed such options to expand as 'Building & Structures in Westminster'. While Westminster is very much part of London, why not focus on the keyword searched. Better options could be 'star hotels in london', 'central london hotels', 'greater london hotels', 'budget london hotels', or 'luxury london hotels' - all of them very closely focused on the searched keyword.



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2. For a search for 'london hotels' why bother showing a result with title highlighting Sydney, Singapore and Hongkong? The image is also unrelated to London by any stretch of imagination.



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3. The page-numbers in blue are almost invisible. Why not put this in same background as on this top horizontal bar?



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4. Again, same as Point 1 above. For your own brand, you should be able to drum-up some good tags like, 'What is Cuil?', 'How to search on Cuil', 'Cuil board of directors', 'What's Cool about Cuil' or some such stuff. Now look at the screenshot I have in here - what a shame!



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5. Having images directly in search result is a good idea, but only when it's directly related to the keyword searched. Now what is image of Sania Mirza doing on a search result on 'Tata'? Couldn't you get any images of Ratan Tata or others? If you can't show related images - just avoid it altogether. Make it sensible.



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6. Please do something about this 'No Results Found' message. C'mon, you are a search engine which claimed to have a bigger index than Google, and you couldn't locate this keyword which is also a domain name for 7 years! Try google for the same search(2,030 results) So, hype is OK, but only as long as you show something to go with your claim.



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7. For a search for a city(bengaluru), what made you show me a furniture store site as the first result? Tweak your algorithms to return better results on such keywords - a wikipedia result on top would have saved your face.



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As we saw above, Cuil goofed up on three fronts:
# They didn't fine-tune their algo to return impressive search results.
# They over-hyped the entire thing as Google-killer
# They forgot that displaying better search results is far more important than the size of index.

Hope Cuil has learnt it's lesson and is back on it's drawing board to make a comeback plan. We ARE waiting ;-)

How To Scare Customers With Your Website Trustseal?

I got an email from Borrell Associates to download their latest report "Say Goodbye to Yellow Pages", which seemed like an interesting topic to read. For the uninitiated, Borrell Associates is a leading research and consulting firm tracking local advertising and releases special reports in this segment.





Now Borrell website has a typical way to take everyone through a shopping cart to even download the free summary. While on this page I just noticed (see screenshot above) a new trustseal from Trustwave and clicked on it out of curiosity. What popped up surprised me - Trustwave says it "does not recognize this organization" - their organization and identity is "Unknown". Scary!





While it was OK with me for a free download, this would have no doubt scared most buyers who would be ready with their credit cards to pay for the (full) report. I wonder how many potetial customers Borrell would've lost.

The lesson to learn here is - Use the trust seal on your shopping site only if is valid and working. If for any reason (like expiry...) the trustseal doesn't recognize your company - just chuck it off from your site. It's always better NOT to show this scary message to paying customers.

Be Part of New Guiness Record-Download Firefox 3.0 Today

Yeah, that's right! YOU can be part of this new Guiness Record. All you need is download Firefox 3.0 today, on June 17th, 2008 to help set the record for most software downloads in 24 hours.

Why Firefox 3.0?
Firefox 3.0 comes with exciting new features like, built-in spell checking, session restore and full zoom. With more than 5,000 add-ons, you can customize your browsing like never-before. Firefox 3.0 goes one step further by including phishing and malware protection as well within the browser.

How many others are part of this event?
As on current time close to 1.48 million people worldwide have pledged to help create this record. Hundreds are celebrating the event with Firefox launch parties as well.

Where do I download Firefox 3.0?
Head to the official Firefox 3.0 promotion HQ site created for this record-breaking event. Download Firefox 3.0 today and be part of this Guiness Record event.