MOST NOTEWORTHY: ComScore, Duke Realty, Nordstrom and Sun Healthcare were among today's noteworthy upgrades:

• ComScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) was upgraded to Outperform from Perform at Oppenheimer to reflect the strong Q1 report and strong customer additions.
  
• Duke Realty (NYSE: DRE) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Wachovia upgraded based on valuation.
  
• Nordstrom (NYSE: JWN) was upgraded to Outperform from Neutral at Credit Suisse.
  
• Sun Healthcare (NASDAQ: SUNH) was upgraded to Outperform from Market Perform at Friedman Billings based on valuation and notes the Medicare rate cuts will be as drastic as feared.

OTHER UPGRADES:

• MedAssets (NASDAQ: MDAS) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Piper, which thinks the company's acquisition of Accuro will strengthen its revenue cycle management offering, and the firm believes the tight credit markets make the company's MedAssets a compelling product in the short-term. In addition, Piper notes that the company has recently had success with large hospital systems.
  
• Jones Apparel (NYSE: JNY) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Merrill citing sales expectations for the l.e.i. brand at Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT) and margin improvements from leaner inventories.
  
• Affiliated Computer (NYSE: ACS) was upgraded to Buy from Hold at Jefferies based on valuation and expectations for better bookings.

MOST NOTEWORTHY: Apple, AstraZeneca and KLA-Tencor were today's noteworthy upgrades:

• Thomas Weisel upgraded Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) to Overweight from Market Weight, citing a re-set in FY08 expectations and expected growth from Mac market share gains, accelerating iPhone revenue growth and increased iPhone ASPs.
  
• WestLB upgraded shares of AstraZeneca (NYSE: AZN) to Add from Hold as they believe the company's growth in core franchises are being overlooked.
  
• Citigroup upgraded KLA-Tencor (NASDAQ: KLAC) to Buy from Hold , as they believe several near-term catalysts are likely to develop against an increasingly favorable cyclical backdrop. They think KLAC's near-term business is better than most think and maintain a $56 target on the stock.

OTHER UPGRADES:

• Goldman upgraded Anglo American (NASDAQ: AAUK) to Buy from Neutral and added shares to the Conviction Buy List.
  
• UBS (NYSE: UBS) was upgraded to Buy from Neutral at Merrill and added to the Europe 1 List.
  
• Jefferies raised comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) to Buy from Hold.

Google's (GOOG) shares continue to be stuck below $500 where they have been since late February. Part of the reason for the fall is that comScore data showed that the number of people who clicked on ads at the big search engine was weak in January.

It looks like the stock will drop again as "click rates" for Google ads rose only 3% in February when compared with the figures for the same month last year. According to MarketWatch: "Google reported 25% growth in paid clicks in its fiscal fourth quarter ended in December. But comScore data released last month showed flat growth in Google's paid clicks in January." Now, investors can ponder another piece of bad news.

The easy answer to the Google data is that a recession is slowing down advertising activity everywhere. Google carries millions of ads in its AdSense program, so it would make sense that it should suffer some fallout.

But, the answer may be more troubling than that. Readers of Google's search pages may be discovering that the text ads next to the listings are from marketers trying to take advantage of people looking for information by clogging pages with related messages. As more people understand the system of targeting based on search results, fewer are willing to be sucked in by companies trying to reach them due to their behavior.

If the Google system of matching ads to search results is putting its customers off, that would be worse news than the effects of a recession.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) stock is declining after AOL did not perform well in a report detailing market share in the global web search market. According to comScore data, AOL, a division of TWX, pulled in a 4.9% market share in February, far behind Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). However, data across the industry has led many analysts to believe that the market for web search is maturing, and that there is little growth to be found in the industry. This could be a bad sign for TWX, whose once-dominant AOL division is far behind industry leader GOOG with little hope at catching up. If you think this stock won't be rising too far in the coming months, then it could be a good time to look at a bearish hedged play on TWX.

After hitting a one-year high of $21.97 in June, the stock hit a one-year low of $13.65 on Monday. This morning, TWX opened at $13.98. So far today the stock has hit a low of $13.94 and a high of $14.35. As of 11:30, TWX is trading at $14.33, down 8 cents (-0.5%). The chart for TWX looks bearish and steady, while S&P gives the stock a neutral 3 STARS (out of 5) hold rating.

For a bearish hedged play on this stock, I would consider a July bear-call credit spread above the $17 range. A bear-call credit spread is an options position that combines the purchase and sale of call options to hedge risk in case the stock doesn't do what you think but still leverage nice returns. This particular trade will make an 11.1% return in four months as long as TWX is below $17 at July expiration. Time Warner would have to rise by more than 18% before we would start to lose money.

TWX hasn't been above $17 by more than a few cents since December and has shown resistance around $16.50 recently. This trade could be risky if the US economy turns around quickly, but even if that happens, this position could be protected by resistance TWX might find at its 50 day moving average, which is currently around $16.

Brent Archer is an options analyst and writer at Investors Observer. At publication time, Brent neither owns nor controls positions in TWX, but he does write for a financial blog on AOL.

Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) YouTube continues to gain visitors. It competitors have to be dismayed. Why bother posting video content at all when YouTube owns the market.

According to comScore, YouTube had a 34.3% share of all videos watched in the U.S. during January, an improvement of 1.7 share points over the previous month.

The competition barely registered. AOL, Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Viacom (NYSE: VIA), and Disney (NYSE: DIS) had embarrassing share figures, none posting a figure better than 3.2%.

Visitors to Google video sites spent an average of almost 110 minutes per viewer. No other large internet site was above 33 minutes.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

It's always interesting to see what online audience and traffic measurements have to say about overal web use; traffic, number of users, website loyalty, etc. Now that Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) AOL is acquiring the UK-based social networking site Bebo.com for some $850 million, the site measurement companies are showing their own data. Notice that every one generates a different result.

When you look below, you'll see that all web measurement tools and methods generate different results.

In November internet search engine rankings by comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) again lead the pack, with 5.9 billion core searches conducted -- a 58.6% market share of all searches in the internet. This was almost the exact same level as October.

Coming up a distant second (as usual) was Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) with market share of 22.4%. The next three were Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) at 9.8%, IAC/InterActiveCorp.'s (NASADAQ: IACI) Ask.com at 4.6% and Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) AOL at 4.5%. In November (a seasonally weak month for web searches), U.S. web searchers conducted 10 billion searches -- a 5% decline from October.

Do these rankings surprise any web surfer? They shouldn't -- Google continues to dominate internet searches and Yahoo!'s Project Panama -- although technically a job well done -- is probably too late to the party to put any significant pressure on Google. Microsoft's Live Search push has garnered it about the same market share as in the past (a decent third place). The power of first-mover advantage is quite evident in Google's placement, and I'd suspect it's not going anywhere soon.

Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) has had several opportunities to "fix" itself recently. One was its new Panama search technology. Shareholders were eager to see it work as a better competitor to Google (NASDAQ: GOOG). So far, it has barely moved the needle.

Some analysts hoped that the company's new management would cut costs to improve margins. A figure of 20% of the staff has been suggested. But, if anyone at Yahoo! has been pushed out beyond a few management types, no one knows about it.

Yahoo!'s hopes now appear to ride on the back of better targeting for online display ads. Delivering marketing messages based on the user's behavior is the "next big thing" for internet advertising. Unfortunately, other web portals and Google have their own ad-serving and behavior-targeting products.

What the problem boils down to is that the market still tends to value Yahoo! on its ability to get consumers to use it to search the internet. Yahoo!'s piece of the search market is a proxy for its success or failure.

The new comScore search engine figures for November are out, and Yahoo!'s piece of that market fell .4% to 22.4% from October. It may not seem a lot, but at this rate, it would not be many months before Yahoo!'s share of market falls below 20%.

Yahoo! stock is having trouble holding $24. In late October, things seemed more promising and Wall Street believed the company would do something significant to change its business for the better. The stock traded at $33.99.

It won't be back there again soon.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

To an inordinate degree of fuss, British rock group Radiohead self-released its seventh album, In Rainbows, on its website back in October, employing a pass-the-hat pay model whereby downloaders could pony up what they wished for the album, from as much as 100 pounds (about $200) to as little as virtual pocket lint.

The band has kept mum on the actual download figures, as well as their take, but a comScore study on In Rainbows' early success estimated that just 38% -- less than two in five downloaders -- bothered to put up anything at all. comScore's findings -- which Radiohead has disputed -- suggest the band gave out some 744,000 copies of the record for free, not to mention all those unrestricted downloads that bewilderingly saturated the file-sharing piracy sites, despite their free availability.

There has been real concern about this year's e-commerce numbers. comScore has online spending up about 18%. The data for the period from November 1 through December 14 show sales of $22.67 billion.

But, these numbers are down from a growth rate of 26% for the same period last year. Part of that may be due to big percentages being harder to hit as the base grows. That explanation may not be acceptable to Wall Street. Online revenue is still only about 5% of total retail sales. A drop-off in the numbers must have some other explanation.

It turns out that there is reason, and it is an unpleasant one. comScore's data show that people in households with incomes under $50,000 have only increased their spending 10% so far this holiday season. Shoppers in households with incomes over $100,000 are spending 28% more.

What is evident is that people with modest incomes are feeling pinched. It's no wonder with fuel prices high and home prices low. These essentials usually make up a larger portion of the budgets of those who are not in the affluent tiers of the population.

Who gets hurt by the numbers? Discount retailers which cater to the middle and lower classes such as Wal-Mart.com (NYSE: WMT).

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) continues to gain market share in the search engine market place. According to comScore research data released last week Google handled more than 42 billion queries for the month of October. That is a stunning 80% growth rate over October of 2006. Of course, search engine queries only generate more advertising opportunities and revenues.

To put Google's dominance into perspective, global searches for October totaled 55 billion with Google handling 42 billion of them. The industry grew 56% year-over-year and Google the aforementioned 80%. The beauty of the Google story is the company is gaining share in a growing market--a win-win situation.

Google's share gain came at the expense of its main competitors namely Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT). Yahoo! generated 8.7 billion queries for October while Microsoft generated 2.1 billion queries. Both key competitors saw their respective market share numbers decline.

One of the top IPOs for 2007 is comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR), which is up more than 71%. The firm provides sophisticated measurement tools for online advertising, and has clients like Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Google (NASDAQ: GOOG), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT).

However, today comScore announced that it is canceling its follow-on equity offering. Why? According to the company's press release, there is "unwillingness of management and other selling shareholders to sell under current capital market conditions."

Actually, we are seeing other signs of weakness for equity offerings. For example, CreditCards.com and Paradigm (which is a software company) have withdrawn their IPOs.

Most likely, these companies will go to private investors for funding. In fact, this may be an opportunity for private equity firms looking for deals.

Also, keep in mind that the IPO market has only a few weeks left -- because of the Christmas holiday. In other words, don't expect much action until next year.

Tom Taulli is the author of various books, including The Complete M&A Handbook and The Edgar Online Guide to Decoding Financial Statements. He also operates DealProfiles.com.

comScore has released its TOP 50 Web rankings for October 2007, and Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) still has an impressive place there.

This gives the following breakdown for total unique visitors out of an estimated 182,206,000 users in the United States:

Yahoo Inc. (NASDAQ: YHOO): 136,775,000
Google Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOG): 131,639,000
Time Warner Network: 121,130,000
Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) Network: 120,502,000

But there is one phenomenal property here: AOL's Advertising.com platform showed an entire reach of 159,204,000. That is roughly an 87% reach of the estimated 182+ million users in the U.S. measured by comScore.

The thing to watch is that ALL ratings and measurement companies give different data. comScore's data is based on a global cross-section of more than 2 million consumers who have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior. That means there can always be some slippage and mis-measurements, but this still gives a decent ballpark figure of web usage and web reach.

If you look at the data, this also bodes well for Jim Cramer & Co. over at TheStreet.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: TSCM). The financial web site owner showed a 125% gain in unique visitors with a 125% gain to more than 8.9 million unique visitors.

As business has discovered, successful methods of advertising on the Internet are constantly changing and keeping up requires expert help. There is an outfit in Reston, Virginia that stays abreast of the latest trends by constantly surveying a very large group of online consumers.

comScore (NASDAQ: SCOR) quantifies behavior in the digital world, on the basis of responses from a global cross-section of more than two million consumers. These panelists have given comScore permission to confidentially capture their browsing and transaction behavior. They also participate in survey research that captures and integrates their attitudes and intentions. Company analysts use the information so obtained to help corporate customers enhance their marketing initiatives. comScore serves more than 700 clients, including Best Buy (NYSE: BBY), Merck (NYSE: MRK) and Expedia (NASDAQ: EXPE).

The firm pleased investors earlier in the week, when it issued upside guidance for Q3 results. Management now sees EPS of 15-17 cents and revenues of $22.1-22.5 million. On average, analysts had been looking for 12 cents and $21.89 million. The company expects adjusted EBITDA to be in the range of $4.2-4.6 million, compared to previous guidance of $3.4-3.5 million.

Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX) has some good news still cranking out of its AOL unit. comScore has just released its new Internet "Top 50" lists today, and in August, Advertising.com remained atop the Ad Focus Ranking. comScore said that Advertising.com is reaching 89% of the more than 181 million Americans online.

If you just run some simple math, this would generate a total audience reach of roughly 161 million Americans. Obviously an audience reach is not the same ranking for search or time spent per visit on a website, but the number is more than substantial.

If AOL is or is not going to end up being its own unit or a tracking stock, this advertising.com is a major help. If you will recall, the parent just rolled out the Platform A that integrates all the online ad properties and builds upon the Advertising.com business. That should help extend the reach even more, although you have to wonder if any changes may cause a skipped beat here and there. Obviously AOL wants to increase the depth of this reach now. Even a slight incremental increase in "per user" metrics can have a major impact with numbers this large.

Jon C. Ogg is a partner in 24/7 Wall St.; he does not own securities in the companies he covers.