Interactive, Networked and err….404 File not found!

It was reported recently that Britain had overtaken France as the largest user of broadband lines in Europe, according to the internet consultancy Point Topic. Today it is estimated that the UK has 9.8m broadband lines, France has 9.7m and Germany is in third place. During the same period we have seen massive growth in the online advertising market with the UK accounted for the largest share of European online ad-spend, at 39% of the total (€3.101 billion).

Typically broadband is 40 times faster than ordinary dial-up and the speed of broadband tends to be addictive, so it is doubly frustrating when you come to a screeching halt due to a browsing error. If you're running any of the popular internet browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer or Mozilla’s Firefox, you are most likely to get "The page cannot be displayed" followed by largely worthless advice that's incomprehensible to the average surfer, which concludes with "Cannot find server or DNS Error." or reference to some numbered code such “error 404” . Network Solutions Inc (NSI), the domain name registry for .com, .net and .org estimate that up to 15% of all network traffic is this sort of error traffic. Also a recent study by Google recently indicated that 404 HTTP errors alone account for 6.96% of published pages on average of the 11.5 billion web pages currently published on the web or some 800 million error pages! These huge volumes of errors and the demand for more advertising inventory has stimulated significant interest in monetising this massive untapped market characterised by one senior Ad Executive as “the last white space”.

In the past the main beneficiary of much of this traffic has been Microsoft and their MSN Search Engine. The error codes are identified by the Internet Explorer browser and the user is delivered to an MSN Search result. Consequently this error traffic has managed to boost MSN Search into second place behind Google in the Global Search Engine stakes.

Search Engines have long been aware of the value of this traffic and it will come as little surprise that the behemoth Google has had a product called “AdSense for Errors”. Google extracted contextually related keywords and advertisements from the DNS error pages by using Google's semantic technology to "understand" the meaning of each error. It tended to focus on a class of error known as an NXD or Non eXistent Domain, the error generated when a mis-spelt or unregistered domain name is typed into the browser address bar. This has evolved into Adsense for Domains focusing on the domain name business. However, Google hasn’t left the error space entirely to Microsoft, in recent years it has rolled out the Google Toolbar to “hi-jack” error traffic such as search from the browser address bar directly to Google search results in the guise of did you mean. In case you thought couldn’t possibly be any money in errors, Google has reportedly paid Mozilla millions of dollars to ensure that address bar search defaults to Google results rather than go to a DNS error page!

Verisign, the owner of NSI, got into a spat with ICANN (www.ICANN.org), the Internet’s Governing body, when it started responding to these NXD mis-spellings with a so-called “wild card response”, offering users the opportunity to buy the mis-spelt domain. Unfortunately, the service known as “SiteFinder” was poorly configured and resulted in opening many ISP and Enterprise email servers to spam attacks.

Now a British company called Barefruit (www.barefruit.co.uk) has emerged to become the Global leader in this developing error space. Barefruit resolves all the most commonly occurring errors, handling 98% of the error traffic including NXDomains, 400 Website errors including the aforementioned 404 File not found error and 500 Server errors. The company has successfully patented a technique of caching the user’s desired link and if an error occurs, analysing both the domain name information and any associated description and directing the user to either an exact match for a mis-typed brand or trade mark or providing a contextual search result to allow the user to make an informed choice. Through relationships with a broad range of databases and search partners, Barefruit delivers both organic and sponsored listings and claims to offer a near 100% relevancy of the user’s desired destination.

The Barefruit solution is available in a variety of formats which are simple to install either at the user level, via a plug-in, or in partnership with an Internet Service Provider (ISP) through modified DNS software or through the installation of a proxy server. The service also works with every browser type. The benefit of the Barefruit service is not only limited to the resolution of the error, but also provides the user the ability to navigate the Internet by the use of Keywords enabling every ISP with a “direct navigation” capability similar to AOL Keywords or Google’s “Browse by Name”.

With Barefruit, there is also a financial benefit to the ISP as they share the revenue generated by their users clicking on sponsored links. So what had been considered to be rubbish in the past and an annoyance in Internet navigation may now be turned to the benefit of users and ISPs alike. This has led to an increasing number of Tier 1 ISPs, in the UK, Europe and in the US market to adopt Barefruit’s solution. to enhance the Internet surfing experience of millions of users, monetise hitherto error traffic. This new source of traffic is also keenly wanted by advertisers since with Barefruit’s ability to extract the desired requirements of the user is helping brands to grow traffic and continue to build advertising revenues for online advertised through the delivery of qualified traffic.

2007 has seen massive growth in the development of the error correction market and it is set to become the most significant area of development of the so-called Web 2.0. A number of new players have tried to enter the market to monetise this traffic, but only Barefruit has such a broad range of patented error solutions. Barefruit’s growing reputation for extracting relevance and literally “bearing fruit” in millions of pounds of additional revenue to ISPs and online advertisers alike whilst improving the Internet users surfing experience.