Barefruit

Barefruit is an internet new media startup based in London, UK established in 2004.Infobox_Company
company_name = Barefruit Ltd
company_type = Private
company_slogan =
foundation = 2004
location = London, UK
key_people = Shane Ambridge, Dave Roberts
num_employees = 25 (2006)
industry = Internet & New Media
products = Software
homepage = [http://www.barefruit.com/ www.barefruit.com]

Technology

Barefruit has developed a range of solutions to identify and redirect internet error traffic. These errors are either user generated, such as Domain Name System (DNS) errors as a result of mis-typing domain names into the internet browser address bar, or HTTP errors which are a result of broken links in websites and server failures. Barefruit works with Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and major portals to use a range of software solutions which modify the ISPs DNS service such as the BIND software and also a specialist proxy solution known as a "Frootbox" to capture the errors and redirect its clients to navigation pages that may contain sponsored listings and algorithmic results. If a user clicks on a sponsored link, Barefruit and the ISP share the revenue. Barefruit's HTTP solution is covered by a granted European patent (Patent No. EP1706823)

Partners

Barefruit is under Non-Disclosure Agreements (NDAs) that prevent them from releasing a list of all participating ISPs, however, from ISP Blogs it is known that Barefruit is active with Earthlink and Cox Communications in the US as well as a number of other partners in both the US and Europe. Their site also claims to have relationships with Blue Coat Systems, The Measurement Factory and Yahoo!

Error Analysis

Error correction is becoming a significant area of web navigation development, which enhances the Internet surfing experience for users, enables ISPs to monetise hitherto bad request traffic, aids brands to grow traffic and builds advertising revenues for CPC and CPA players with through the delivery of qualified direct navigation traffic. The PPA (Payment per acquisition or payment by results) or PPC (Pay per click) sponsored click through is the fiscal model behind all the error solutions currently in use.

One early version of "error" navigation was the development of "Keyword" navigation. A keyword typed into the address bar is regarded as an Non Existent Domain or NXD by the DNS system. Originally pioneered by RealNames and AOL, the user entered a keyword and was taken directly via a paid-for route to a specific web page. Hence ‘jobs’ would be bought by Jobs.com. Each time the word ‘jobs’ was typed in the browser address bar of IE4, the user was taken to jobs.com website via an interstitial advising the user that they were navigating by a RealNames keyword. RealNames had a database of over 1.5m keywords, all of which were paid for. They were both brand names and a limited number of paid-for generic terms. The user of generics was restricted by MSN to use by them to navigate to MSN results pages.

The raison d’être of direct navigation was that an early study by MIT in 2000 revealed that each time a user was forced to click to the next page to uncover a particular location, 50% of the audience was lost. Hence if a deep site location was 5 clicks away for every 1000 users searching for the initial site only 31 users would follow through. A subsequent study by the University of Boston proved that direct navigation improved eCommerce conversion by between 65% and 300% depending on category.

Since 2002 there have been a number of direct navigation solutions based on keywords that have been deployed. Most notably AOL continues with AOL keywords (although their use is restricted AOL subscribers). Yahoo! has deployed their own version on Yahoo! enabled browsers, as have Firefox and Opera. Most recently Google has moved to introduce a keyword direct navigation system based on the RealNames approach with the so-called “Browse by Name” approach, as well as a browser based spelling correction service using stored URL data. Google is offering both Brands and Generics with direct navigation. Since it uses the Google enable browser they have dispensed with any interstitial page. Type “Ford Explorer” in Google Browser and it will navigate directly to the deep site Ford Explorer page. Similarly type “Mortgages” it will directly navigate to “UK Mortgages Online”. All these solutions are browser-based. To date Google has not charged for this "keyword" service.

Error correction as a result of mis-spelt domain names and broken links in search results, resulting from 400 class client errors and 500 class server errors are relatively new phenomena. Due to the difficulty of isolating the broken link and analysing the referring page, Barefruit appears to be the only player capable of this error solution.

Controversy

Initial approaches that have been adopted were limited to the analysis of NXDs. The first to be introduced was SiteFinder from VeriSign using “wild card” technology in the US. This technology identified when a non-existent domain was being sought and offered the user the opportunity to buy the erroneous input. However, the service responded to both the “A” record domain name request to the authoritative name servers and “Mx” record which is associated with email. Providing a positive answer to an incorrect email address resulted in opening ISPs SMTP mail systems to virus attack. The service was quickly abandoned after a formal request by ICANN , the Internet’s governing body. This experience has made ISPs very suspicious of any DNS “modifications”.

In August 2006 EarthLink teamed up with Yahoo and Barefruit to redirect web browser users accessing nonexistent domains to a page containing sponsored search results, ads, and a Yahoo search form. The DNS protocol requires that a query for a nonexistent domain must return the "NXDOMAIN" error response. Instead of this response, EarthLink's DNS servers return several IP addresses for the HTTP servers that implement their redirection service. While such redirection might be helpful to users of some web browsers, it breaks the functionality of many other Internet applications, which assume that the DNS is implemented according to the standard specifications. Barefruit avoids impacting on applications that rely on the NXD response by excluding them within their software set-up. Earthlink also provide a none patched DNS server address to enable users to have a standard NXD response. Barefruit has offered a range of opt-out solutions which their ISPs have applied.

Error Market

Network Solutions has indicated in the past error traffic makes up up to 20% of total network traffic and of that NXD errors make up as much as 15% in addition 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 on the web. These huge volumes has stimulated significant interest in monetising this "lost" traffic.

Competitors

Some of Barefruit's competitors in the DNS error space include Nomimun (the founders of BIND), Paxfire, Golog, Simplicita (recently acquired by Sandvine) and OpenDNS. There are currently no competitors monetising http errors.

External links

[http://www.barefruit.com Official Homepage]
[http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=332705 Google Answers - 404 Errors]
[http://www.wipo.int/pctdb/en/wo.jsp?WO=2006/008516 Barefruit Patent Details]