Yahoo Pulse
Yahoo! takes steps to enhance its presence in the Social Media arena. In 2010 Yahoo launched Yahoo Pulse including Facebook integration. Yahoo Pulse will aggregate updates from social networks such as Facebook. Yahoo Pulse has mail integrations similar to Google Buzz but unlike Google Buzz Yahoo Pulse has a complete mail privacy menu. Thank you Yahoo! This is a welcome feature considering how Google and Facebook have not dealt well with the privacy issues.

Internet history shows that no big name is safe and anyone can come along and offer something better. Yahoo is learning from the others and making improvements. I first learned about Yahoo when I was at the second Spring Internet World in San Jose when Yahoo! was awarded the “Best of Show” award. Originally called “David and Jerry’s Guide to the World Wide Web” the list was renamed in 1994 to Yahoo! and the domain was registered in January 1995. The founders Jerry Yang and David Filo, two very geeky looking guys, received numerous paper cuts from all the cards being thrown at them by Venture Capitalists after they left the stage. All Yahoo was at the time was a list of web sites they had compiled using Stanford’s computers.

In the nineties the strategy for being first in a Yahoo category was to name the site with words starting with A or AAA as they listed everything alphabetically using the ASCII alphabet.
In February 2008 Microsoft made an unsolicited bid of $44.6 billion for Yahoo which they rejected. Today Yahoo has a market value of only $20.6 billion showing how internet companies can change over time.

A couple of days ago, Yahoo has launched “Yahoo My Display Ads”, a self-serve display ad marketplace for ads on Yahoo sites and partner sites.

AdReady, a Seattle-based technology provider powers the ad customization part of the program. Further, Yahoo’s Right Media exchange manages the ad inventory for Yahoo and other partner network sites.

With Yahoo My Display Ads, now advertisers can create and customize their campaigns using over 800 display templates, with a choice to make between Cost-Per-Thousand Impressions or Cost-Per-Click pricing. The ads will be targeted on the basis of geography, audience demographics and channel.

It seems that Yahoo My Display Ads is an extension of a limited program Yahoo and AdReady offered to a large number of Yahoo Small Business Customer in 2008.

“This is an affordable and easily accessible option for the businesses to run their brand and performance campaigns. In this way, they can reach local customers who matter to them the most,” said Joanne Bradford, Senior VP, North America Revenue and Market Development at Yahoo.

From this, it can be said that like Google, Yahoo is looking to convert its search ad business to more lucrative display ads. Even though, Yahoo has been offering display ads since the time of its inception, Yahoo My Display Ads, with the ability to create ads from templates will make it much easier for smaller businesses to enter the display ad market.

There have been reports about new changes in Yahoo! Search, soon after its last update in the month of February. People have been speculating about the changes, since they are seeing heavy fluctuations in the Yahoo Search results. According to the reports, Yahoo!’s new updates are about:

• Link counts dropped
• Reports on canonical issues
• One person reported “different titles and descriptions for singular vs. plural of my main keyword. It’s the same URL, so kind of odd.”

According to the Yahoo Search Japan blog, “Yahoo! In search, Yahoo! Inc. UEBUSACHIENJIN has developed the “Yahoo! Search Technology (YST)” has started a full update of the index.

The Index Update?

YST, every day to make a more user-friendly search engine, such as Japan’s own and respond to the world stage and improve the work of Akira Osamu develop new features and functions. To reflect the results of this search engine, built-in indexer will update the entire index.

Position changes are expected to be improved with the results of this search. The full completion of the update takes a few days.

Yahoo! Search Project”

Many webmasters at WebmasterWorld are talking about Yahoo Search update. According to them, Yahoo Search is updating its index and algorithm. However, officially it has not been confirmed yet! Below are some of the important points from the WebmasterWorld thread:

1. Link counts have seen some amount of drop.
2. Canonical issues are also discussed.
3. One person is reporting “I am seeing two different titles and descriptions for singular vs. plural of my main keyword. It’s the same URL, so kind of odd.”

Even though Yahoo! has not announced the update officially, but the Yahoo Search Japan blog announced it. Here is the translation

“Yahoo! In search, Yahoo! Inc. UEBUSACHIENJIN has developed the “Yahoo! Search Technology (YST)” has started a full update of the index.

Yahoo! Search Project”

For more information, visit forum discussion at WebmasterWorld

After Zimra founder Satish Dharmaraj marking his exit from Yahoo!, another executive to resign from the search engine is Marco Boerries. The top mobile executive has already announced his resignation

Boerries wrote in an email,“With a very heavy heart I have to tell you, that I will be leaving Yahoo!.” He cited personal reasons for the departure. Boerries spent four years as Yahoo!’s top mobile executive. He was named the 16th most powerful person in the wireless industry by FierceWireless in the year 2008.

“Most of you know about my personal situation, the “living in 2 continents” and the importance of my family to me. I cannot reconcile these personal needs, my future plans and ambitions and Yahoo! anymore. And that’s why it is time to say good bye.

I had four extremely interesting, exciting and mostly fun years at Yahoo! in which we developed and gained a leadership position in Mobile against all odds and are about to do the same for the Connected TV space. And most importantly I got to work with an incredible team: YOU!!”

As part of marketing strategy, Yahoo! Canada has joined hands with the Air Miles Rewards Program to issue Air Miles collectors some free reward miles for doing everyday searches through Yahoo! With this partnership Yahoo! is all set to increase its market share in the world of search engine.

According to Gina Cothey, Director of Network Optimization, Yahoo! Canada, “This is a great opportunity to partner with a loyalty program to offer reward miles to Canadians, and we believe this will help Yahoo! Canada to continue to be a force in the highly competitive search business.”
However, toolbar installation for cash or reward is not new, but the practice is getting common in recent days!

“As Canada’s leading loyalty program, we are committed to expanding the ways our Collectors can earn reward miles,” said Chief Marketing Officer, Neil Everett, AIR MILES Reward Program. “This agreement has the potential to re-shape online consumer behaviour through one simple download,” he added.

“We are excited to launch the AIR MILES Toolbar, our new, dynamic shopping-enabled toolbar platform,” said Founder, Matt Adkisson, FreeCause Inc. “This application leverages the value of consumer loyalty to create incremental value for the millions of AIR MILES Collectors across Canada. As industry leaders, we see this technology as the future of online loyalty marketing.”
Here are some important points of the deal from the press release:

• Yahoo! Canada aggressively pursues search engine market share growth through partnership with Canada’s premiere loyalty program.
• AIR MILES Collectors to earn free reward miles for online searches, in addition to reward miles earned while shopping online.
• Software solution innovator FreeCause Inc. targets expansion in Canadian marketplace.

Yahoo! has recently indulged in testing a new feature called “Search Pad,” which automatically collects sites and content when users conduct online research. The feature is almost similar to Google’s Notebook application (that has already been disposed!) But, now reports are that the webmasters are not happy with Yahoo’s Search Pad. According to them, it is a scrapper tool! Some of them are even willing to block this tool completely. The point is that the tool has not been getting much positive reviews!

Below is a video to help you know more about its working:

For more information visit forum discussion at the Webmaster World

Yahoo! Search Marketing has recently updated its help center. Following are changes that have been made:

• Better organization and easier navigation: Now, fewer clicks, and better navigation is the main motto of Yahoo! Search.
• Stronger search functionality: Now, search results are more relevant than they used to be.
  Links: Users will now get links to their related search as well.
• Single Page FAQ: The Help Center FAQs are now hosted on a single page. Users are not required to surf them every where.

Now, you can also find four main sections on the front page of the Help Center:

• Advertise Online with Yahoo! – This section outlines the account sign-up process for prospective advertisers.
• Managing Your Account – This helps walk existing advertisers through the campaign creation process.
• Fine-Tune Your Account – Advertisers ready to manage their account to a higher level of performance, can mine this section for info on optimization features and general strategies for managing to specific business objectives or by industry.
• Learn Online – A repository for all training materials, tutorials, webinars and webinar summaries, and general education material to help raise your advertiser IQ.

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:

Accordingly, you expressly agree that we may also: (i) create ads, (ii) add and/or remove keywords, and/or (iii) optimize your account(s). We will notify you via email of such changes made to your account(s), and can also include a spreadsheet of such changes upon your written request.

Recently, Yahoo! announced that its data retention policy from 13 months has been reduced to just 3 months. Now, people are eager to know what would be the reaction of Google to this news.

As far as the users’ experience with Yahoo! is concerned, they are not going to notice any difference, regarding its products or services, or any other facility. Moreover, advertising procedure on Yahoo! will remain the same as the earlier.

“In our world of customized online services, responsible use of data is critical to establishing and maintaining user trust,” said Anne Toth, Yahoo’s vice president of policy. “We know that our users expect relevant and compelling content and advertising when they visit Yahoo, but they also want assurances that we are focused on protecting their privacy.”

“This policy represents Yahoo’s assessment of the minimum amount of time we need to retain data in order to respond to the needs of our business while deepening our trusted relationship with users,” Toth said. “We’re proud this new policy sets a new benchmark for the industry.”

“What we’ve done since April is evaluate the multiple uses of search data to ascertain if we can, in time, move to a six-month time frame,” said Peter Cullen, Microsoft’s chief privacy strategist. “Our answer is yes, we can, but we don’t believe it makes sense for us to make this change until our competitors also commit to meeting this higher standard with respect to both the method and time frame for anonymization.”

It seems that Google is not that interested in making such a move, since it has already decided to reduce the period of keeping personal information in its datalogs to 9 months. However, this move is certainly going to put pressure on other search engines!