To celebrate their three decades on the air, PBS’ Nightly Business Report teamed up with Knowledge@Wharton, the online research and business analysis journal of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, to select the 30 most important innovations from the last 30 years. The results are in, and the Internet reigns supreme.

The complete results:

30. Anti retroviral treatment for AIDS [Health Care]
29. SRAM flash memory [Electronics]
28. Stents Health [Care]
27. ATMs [Finance]
26. Bar codes and scanners [Retail]
25. Bio fuels [Biotechnology]
24. Genetically modified plants [Biotechnology]
23. RFID and applications (e.g. EZpass) [Electronics]
22. Digital photography/videography [Electronics]
21. Graphic user interface (GUI) [Computer Science]
20. Social networking via internet [Media]
19. Large scale wind turbines [Energy]
18. Photovoltaic Solar Energy [Energy]
17. Microfinance [Finance]
16. Media file compression (e.g., jpeg, mpeg, mp3) [Computer Science]
15. Online shopping/ecommerce/auctions (e.g., eBay) [Information Technology]
14. GPS Systems [Electronics]
13. Liquid Crystal Displays [Electronics]
12. Light emitting diodes (first real devices in 1960s; in products in mid-70s) [Electronics]
11. Open source software and services (e.g., Linux, Wikipedia) [Media]
10. Non-invasive laser/robotic surgery (laparoscopy) [Health Care]
9. Office software (Spreadsheets, word processors) [Computer Science]
8. Fiber optics [Telecommunications]
7. Microprocessors [Computer Science]
6. Magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) [Biotechnology]
5. DNA testing and sequencing/Human genome mapping [Biotechnology]
4. E-mail [Computer Science]
3. Mobile phones [Telecommunications]
2. PC/laptop computers [Computer Science]
1. Internet/broadband/WWW (browser and HTML) [Telecommunications]

Back in 2006, Google predicted that India would become the biggest online market in the world. They may just have been right. The potential for e-commerce in this massive region of 1.13 billion people is very promising.

India is now ranked fourth in the world in terms of internet population, with 81 million internet users. This only represents seven percent of India’s population.

JuxtConsult reported a massive increase between 2006 and 2008, of online shoppers, from 12 to 19 million.

Greig Holbrook, MD of international search engine optimisation company www.obanmultilingual.com, explains the importance of how Indians search when buying online. He says the language Indians use online is a version of English uniquely couched in Indian culture.

“A client was looking to attract Indian visitors to London to use its travel and limousine facilities,” says Greig. “A very popular keyphrase used by Indian searchers was ‘LHR’. Many Indians search for airport information with this term, adding it onto phrases like ‘hotel’ and ‘apartment’.”

This form of searching is unique to India, adds Greig. The client optimised their website for natural search and paid search with these phrases, and received a 250 percent uplift in conversions and enquiries through the site.

One of the most important Indian search providers is Rediff, which is the largest local search engine in India. Rediff offers comprehensive pay-per-click campaigns for its sites, says Greig. “By volume, it often delivers at a higher rate than Google and commonly at a far cheaper cost-per-acquisition. As Indian searchers are more familiar with Rediff, they are more likely to convert on their ads too,” he explains.

Since most of India’s consumer mass is formed of people who speak local languages, these languages are becoming increasingly important in online commerce. There are 23 official languages recognised by the Indian constitution, and they delve off into over a thousand dialects.

It is thought that Hindi may join Chinese and English in the top three internet languages.

Social Networking and Blogging

Over two-thirds of Indian web users use social networking sites frequently, an increase of 40 percent since last year. The top Indian social networking site is Orkut.

Blogging has been slow to catch on in India, with only a third of online users reporting being involved with blogs in any way.

Internet usage in rural India exploded by nearly 70 times between 2000 and 2007. This represents about seven times more online growth than in the cities.

A 2008 JuxtConsult study shows that one in five Indian internet users now come from rural areas.

India is one of the most culturally, linguistically, and genetically diverse regions in the world. These differences are beginning to shape the face of the internet, as opposed to the other way around. Marketers wishing to target India will do well to acquaint themselves with the diverse Indian cultures and languages, so as not to be left behind.

Oban Multilingual is an expert in multilingual SEO and international PPC. With offices in over 26 countries worldwide, the company is unique in being able to offer expert localised search strategies for a number of multinational companies. For more information visit: http://www.obanmultilingual.com/

Guest writer Greig Holbrook, MD of Oban Multilingual, specialists in international SEO, is an expert on international online search behaviour. Here, he shares his analysis of Russia’s online search habits and predictions for Russia’s online future, with some insight into how to use this knowledge to get in on the ground level of Russia’s massive internet development.

New research from eMarketer shows that by the end of 2008, Russia will be the second largest internet market in Europe. It’s predicted that 40.3 million Russians will be online, representing nearly 30 percent penetration.

Russia’s GDP has seen a massive 368 percent growth since 2003 to reach £1.3 trillion this year. And Russia’s e-commerce has grown right along with it. Between 2006 and 2007 alone, there was a 30 percent growth in Russia’s online spend. In 2007, Russians spent £5.16 billion online. Nearly half of this spend was in online retail.

Russians also spend quite a bit of time online. A February 2008 study from comScore showed Russians logging on for an average of 13 days, at 82 minutes per day, and reading 2,322 pages of content during the month.

According to eMarketer, the massive popularity of social networking in the country has been a big contributing factor in Russia’s internet growth. The most popular social networking site in the country is (…not Facebook…) Vkontakte.ru.

Cyrillic is Idyllic

Looking ahead to 2009, Russians will be able to create their first internet addresses using their native Cyrillic script in lieu of Latin letters. This is in light of the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers’ decision to greatly expand top-level-domains, which comes into effect early next year. Russians will then be able to surf the web entirely in Russian, which eMarketer predicts will further increase the number of internet users in Russia.

This is good news, since Russians prefer to search the web in Russian. Greig Holbrook, MD of www.obanmultilingual.com, explains that if marketers are looking to reach Russia’s vast market, their website should have Cyrillic content that has been optimised with keywords unique to Russian culture.

Greig explains that the keywords cannot be directly translated from English, since they are often a mix of English and Russian. “Russian searchers do prefer to search in Cyrillic,” says Greig, “but they often write the phrase phonetically based on English phrases. An example would be the term ‘business travel’. We’ve found that many Russians search for this term in Cyrillic while using the English phonemes.”

The YandeX Factor

While most people assume that Google has conquered the world, a native Russian search engine dominates in Russia. Yandex remains the top search portal in Russia, having handled nearly half of all Russian searches in February 2008.

A profile of Yandex by BusinessWeek detailed the reasons for the Moscow-based company’s stronghold in Russia over Google, Rambler Media and Mail.ru. Its primary advantage, reported the magazine, stems from its ability to cater to its users in the local language.

Yandex is able to index and search documents in the major Cyrillic languages: Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarusian. From 1997 to 2007, the size of the Russian language portion of the Internet grew from a mere four gigabytes to about 28,000 gigabytes, making the job of indexing these prolific languages much bigger than it used to be.

The search engine recently launched its geo-targeting model, allowing advertisers to not only target countries and cities, but also to target within cities. Yandex is continually developing its search engine marketing offering and products, which means better choices for companies and marketers alike.

Having started its life as a blog search engine, Yandex still gives preferences to blogs over standard websites. Greig therefore suggests that, “companies wishing to target Russia may want to consider setting up a locally hosted blog and/or a stand alone website.”

As the pay-per-click costs on Yandex tend to be much higher than on other engines, search engine optimisation offers a better chance of return on investment over the long term.

Yandex is so strong that comScore recently named it the number two search outfit in Europe.

So for those marketers out there not yet zeroing in on the Russian e-market, now is the time. And best to do it with their cultural preferences in mind – because the Russian bear bends to no marketer.

About Oban Multilingual

Oban Multilingual is an expert in multilingual SEO and international SEM. With offices in over 26 countries worldwide, the company is unique in being able to offer expert localised search strategies for a number of multinational companies. For more information visit: http://www.obanmultilingual.com/