Yahoo! in a recent email to the Search Marketing advertisers, notified about their new terms and conditions, as well as informed that they can create ads, remove or add keywords to campaigns and optimize accounts. It has also been notified that the search engine can do all these without the permission of the advertisers. Read more at Barry Schwartz post.

Have a look at the the current version and the archived version of the terms and conditions. Here is the snippet of the terms and conditions, which states:

Keyword Discovery has added “Question Phrases” to its list of searchable database. From now, when users will enter a keyword, they will get a list of related questions that have been asked before, rather than getting related keywords. This is a great feature and an appropriate way to get content ideas!

Here is the snapshot of Question Phrases:

Below is an example of the list of questions related with the keyword ‘acne’:

Yes, you read it right! Microsoft is giving perks even during recession.

Microsoft’s SearchPerks program has been running a three-day incentive in order to encourage participants to do more searches on Live Search. It has started on January 21, and running through January 23, which is offering double tickets for every search with a maximum of 50 tickets available that can be earned each day.

Below is the snapshot of the email through which SearchPerks is notifying members about the incentive offer:

Mediadonis, a German SEO of late talked about a way through which one can check if his/her site is running well, has got penalized, or banned in Google.

According to Mediadonis, “The only thing you gotta do is put “hyves” as a subdomain in front of the domain to be checked.

=> hyves.domain.com

It’s important that hyves is no existing subdomain of that particular domain, otherwise it won’t work!”
Then, look at the page rank – through a PR toolbar for the page and you will get one of the following three results-

Nothing is spared from the adverse effects of recent recession! Even, Search Engine Marketing has not been left out from its negative effects. According to the reports of The Wall Street Journal, SEM declined 8 percent in fourth quarter of last year.

‘Advertisers who spend less than $50,000 on search ads cut their spending by 23% year-over-year, while advertisers that spend more than $200,000 on search per month cut spending by 9% during that time. Purchases by advertisers who spend between $50,000 and $200,000 were relatively flat.’

PubMatic’s display AdPrice Index saw prices worsened by almost 50% from Q4 2007:

At this point of time, when economy is declining, every company is facing a tough time at the recruitment front. But, at the same time, your company is in urgent need of a professional SEO. You might be thinking of recruiting one, but no clue how to proceed.

Recently, a blog has been able to capture the eyes of many, which focused on a few things that should be remembered by everyone, who is looking for guidance in recruiting an SEO professional. Here are some of the important points to remember:

It was in the month of June when Google ‘Website Workout Contest‘ was announced at the SMX Advanced Conference in Seattle, Washington. It was a contest where businesses were allowed to submit their websites for further analysis to make more sales, thereby boosting their businesses. Now, here are the four winners of the contest:

• Colonial Candle
• Extra Space Storage
• Outrigger Hotels & Resorts
• Team In Training

Early reports of Google Image Search for January 2009 are coming from WebmasterWorld! The reports say that Google has added new images to the image index. Those images are now showing in the result pages.

“It’s that time again, new Images are added to the index, about the filter I can not say if they have loosen up the “moderate filter” so more normal images are show like before last update, maybe we will see something in 1-2 days, but now there is added new images.” -zeus

Google has off late indulged in testing a new feature called “Preferred Sites” Well, Preferred Sites is an experimental feature for Google Search that will help you tell Google which sites you rely most and thereby let you personalize the results by adding a list of sites in the front pages of your search results or the sites you want to appear more often when you search.
According to Google, “The preferred sites feature lets you set your Google Web Search preferences so that your search results match your unique tastes and needs. Fill in the sites you rely on the most, and results from your preferred sites will show up more often when they’re relevant to your search query.”

With the roll out of personalization updates by various search engines, it is becoming quite difficult for SEOs to determine the actual ranking of their websites. Because, a personalized search result can completely differ from the results that ranking tools can provide!
Recently, André Scholten explained how Google Analytics users can track their SEP rankings and know where they rank for specific keywords. Although, the users will not get the exact position, however will be able to get a rough assumption on what page of the SERPs they rank on.