Some time ago, there had been reports by multiple users of massive ranking updates in Yahoo’s SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) due to a possible update. Now Yahoo! has announced that it is in the process of running a Search Index Update for its crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. This could mean more erratic changes in the page rankings and page shuffling in the index.

Recently, many users had complained to Yahoo! regarding some issues with ‘Deletion of URLs’ in the Site Explorer. According to Yahoo!, this problem has now been resolved.

It has been almost a week and a half since Yahoo! had announced its intentions to test Google advertisements in Yahoo! SERPs (Search engine Result Page). Now according to Wall Street Journal  the tests have been declared successful and a possible Yahoo! Google partnership talks have begun.

This partnership would definitely let Yahoo! breathe a sigh of relief as it will now be able to face off against Microsoft’s $42 billion bid for a takeover. Both these Online Search giants will try to draft this potential alliance in such a way that they would enable them to avoid any legal implications. However, according to some experts, this deal under no circumstances would undermine Microsoft’s dominance if it decides to march towards a takeover. In such a scenario, Yahoo! will simply pull out of the Google partnership and merge with Microsoft.

An online video marketing message delivers the message quicker and has more impact on the audience than an advertisement seen in a newspaper or a magazine. It is able to put forward a company’s profile, products and services very effectively. Although, the television media is still prevalent in almost every geographical location, still the ever evolving online industry has opened many avenues for marketers and advertisers to reach out to the masses. The Online world has always been a platform for socialization, communication and other similar activities. However, nowadays its realm has expanded from corporations to households and has made the world an even smaller place.

If you enter a search query in the MSN Live Search, the chances are that you’ll find what you have been looking for, without having to go to multiple search result pages. However, Microsoft wishes to go beyond the simplified searches, in an effort to provide users with more relevant search results. MSN Live Search has been complimented with some new features. According to the Live Search Team,  the MSN Live Search has been given a beauty treatment with a new look and has been embedded with website suggestion feature. The Live Search now looks deeper into the results to find appropriate and relevant shortcuts within the web pages that show up as search results to suggest for a query.

According top Matt Cutts, Google is bringing the past to life. In January 2004, Google had introduced the WHOIS query, which displayed a domain’s date of creation and expiration, without mentioning name of the domain owner. WHOIS was coined as the shortest Google service ever. It appeared on the Google Search page on 7^th January 2004 and disappeared on 9^th January 2004.

However, Google has reintroduced this feature as ‘WHOIS OneBox‘. As of now Google has indicated that the domain data is being taken from the Domain Tools website with a direct link to the OneBox result title. However, many observers report that the WHOIS data doesn’t seem to be in real-time as predicted by Google. Therefore, it is speculated that Google might be caching the data to some other location.

Google and Yahoo! have encountered a new hurdle in their dominance of the Search Engine world. A European Union Privacy Panel has asked Google and Yahoo! to follow the European Data Protection Rules and shed all collected user data in six months. The fact that both these Search Engines are based outside Europe hasn’t made any difference to the panel report

To enhance user trust and experience, Google Analytics has recently enabled sharing of Google Analytical Data. The improvement is primarily directed towards providing transparency, choice and improved product experience. This feature will not affect a user’s account in any ways, without the approval of the user for individual product and services.

Google Analytics Data Sharing Program

According Webmaster world, Google is allowing other Webmasters (who could also be your competitors) to damage your site and destroy its online credibility. It is a harsh reality that these days many Webmasters deploy dirty trade tricks to defame a competitive website. This is also known as ‘Google Bowling’. Some of the most common deceitful tactics employed these days are:

1. Spam: A competing Webmaster can use scam script that will leave your site’s URL in thousands of blog comments and forums. This would make the Google spiders believe that you are spamming those sites. This will greatly affect your ranking and credibility as well.

According to a recent announcement, Yahoo! Inc has stepped up its efforts towards the sales of graphical and premium advertisements by revealing the details of its new Advertising Management Platform or AMP. The project that is still in the developmental stages will enable Yahoo’s publishing partners to place advertisements on their own sites, as well as on Yahoo!. Advertisers will also have the opportunity to advertise on the websites that are rapidly associating themselves with Yahoo’s growing network. They will be able to focus their advertisements by demographic and geographic targeting and user’s online behavior.

SMX or search marketing expo which is going to be held from April 22nd to April 23rd 2007  is intended for experienced online search marketers keen on learning the power of user engagement. The expo would include high level sessions aimed at refining the marketers to the  continually growing world of online searches. This event would be a collection of affluent members of search marketing who would be able to share and learn in their native language of online marketing.