Search Optimization Marketing

Ask Maps Replace Mapping Platform with Microsoft Virtual Earth!

admin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 10:25:29 +0000

According to the MSN Virtual Earth Blog, Ask.com has thrown out its mapping platform for Ask Maps and is now using Microsoft Virtual Earth as its new platform.

Ask.com is using Microsoft Virtual Earth for Ask Maps, Ask City (search for Businesses, Events and Movies per US City) and their Web Search including the Bird’s Eye view. The new integration is as of now visible in the United States only. However, speculations are that other countries such as Japan, Spain, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and the UK that are still running the Ask Maps in the Beta phase will be reverting to the new platform very soon.

Ask Maps:

Business Search (City):

Smart Answers (Web Search):

Smart Answers - Movies (Web Search):

Bird’s Eye View:

Another Ranking Fluctuation. Now it’s July 2008 ‘Google.co.uk SERP Changes’!

admin — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 09:47:57 +0000

According to Webmaster World, the google.co.uk domain is undergoing SERP changes, that is a part of the ‘July 2008 Google.co.uk SERP Changes’. Due to this, the Webmasters are experiencing severe ranking fluctuations for their websites in this domain.

Here are some of the interesting posts from the Webmaster World thread:

“I decided to perform an experiment last weekend and constructed a brand new 35 page promotional brochure site on a 14 year old .co.uk. This .co.uk has been pointing at our .com for a couple of years now and both have been hosted in the U.K. from inception.

Googlebot came in mid-week and performing a site:example.co.uk returns only 6 results, the index page and five product pages! So I decided to check to see if I could find those pages in the SERPs using the three word keyphrases for the five product pages.

All the pages are authoratative with plenty of text, images and relevant information and all five, I’m pleased to say, are in the top 10 results, we’ll see how long that lasts.
I find it strange that Googlebot has taken the entire site and only showing six pages at present, it’s not as though it’s a huge site.
Meanwhile I am still having yo-yoing problems with the 10 year old retail brochure site and really cannot see any point in attempting anything whilst there is such an extreme flux occurring.
Meanwhile G has moved a load of my .coms hosted on a US server back into the Google.co.za results…argh…what are they doing?”

“For small sites:

You’ll find Google is quickest to find a new site, but the number of indexed pages only goes up slowly.
Yahoo will take longer to find the site initially, and will get to 100% in just a few steps.
Live will take the longest to initially find the site, but once found, will get to 100% in only a couple of steps, in only a week or so.
That’s been my experience with new sites in the last few months.
I also find, for Google, large variances in pages indexed in different datacentres. Additionally, if you have a “custom site search” that will be ahead of everything else.”

“Has anyone seen a shift in the UK geolocation issues? I’m wondering if UK sites are still disappearing inappropriately, or if the situation is improving for at least some websites. “

“there has been a massive shift.
in the .co.uk index i am seeing sites on page one. for the same phrase on the .com are dropped to page two.
the .com index is about 95% .com sites which is a bit crazy.”

“A couple of things about the yo-yoing 10 year-old brochure site.

Searching Google.com for the most important 3 keyword phrase and nothing can be found, Google.co.uk and it’s now back in 6th position…for the moment.
I believe that Google has created and imposed its own duplicate penalty! This site has always been known as example-example.com with exampleexample.com parked on top since inception.

Recently several pages started appearing in the SERPs with exampleexample.com and doing site:exampleexample.com revealed many pages in the index.
I’ve now hardcoded all links as example-example.com so I’ll await and see what happens however, interestingly, Yahoo! has the site #1 correctly with example-example.com yet Live has it #1 with exampleexample.com.

I am totally perplexed as to why, after 10 years, G & Live should suddenly “decide” that exampleexample.com is the correct site.”

“Still a massive difference for my UK .com site although a slight improvement over the last week - a few places which puts me at the top of page 2 for UK searches (still top 5 for US searches).
I have made no changes which might effect the geo-targeting for a couple of weeks - so it is either the .co.uk links starting to take effect, or google tweaking their G-UK algo. “

Matt Cutts Speaks on White Hat Link Building!

admin — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 07:47:20 +0000

In an interview with Eric Enge at the Search Marketing Expo Advanced, Matt Cutts, the Head of Google Webspam Team, spoke about link building and gave his views on the same. Matt Cutts stressed on the fact that the best links are those that are original research and provide value to readers for example, in the form of a Firefox extension. Moreover, he also expressed his concern over too many reciprocal links. Here are some excerpts from the interview with Eric Enge:

Eric Enge: So, what I’d like you to start with, Matt, is just an overview of your thoughts of what the approach should be. And then, we can get into some more detailed stuff.

Matt Cutts: Yeah, totally. So, what are the links that will stand the test of time? Those links are typically given voluntarily. It is an editorial link by someone, and it’s someone that’s informed. They are not misinformed, they are not tricked; there is no bait and switch involved. It’s because somebody thinks that something is so cool, so useful, or so helpful that they want to make little sign posts so that other people on the web can find that out.

Now, there is also the notion of link bait or things that are just cool; maybe not helpful, but really interesting. And those can stand the test of time as well. Those links are links generated because of the sheer quality of your business or the value add proposition that you have that’s unique about your business. Those are the things that no one else can get, because no one else has them or offers the exact same thing that your business offers.

Eric Enge: Right. So, do you have any specific tips or approaches that you would recommend? A range of ideas would be interesting to talk about.

Matt Cutts: Yeah, totally. I mean, one of my favorites is original research. So, Danny Sullivan, for example, did some sweat of the brow research about how well the different hotmail, Gmail, and yahoo email products did at detecting spam. He decided to forward all his mail to the same three accounts, including his normal email. I am going to see how much spam falls through and how much spam I catch. And, he tracked it for only a couple of weeks. And then, when he was done, he had a complete list. “Okay,Gmail killed 394; so it had a 98% success rate.

It was a lot of work that he put into it, but when he was done; he was able to definitively say Gmail is better at spam, which was cool, that got my attention, and as a result I linked to it. There is a perception that Gmail is good on spam, but how many people can back that up with numbers?
So, that sweat of the brow, original research pays off. Aaron Wall did a post a while ago, where he gathered a ton of different statistics about certain keywords together. I’d rather find out about something because where somebody has done a bunch of original research or something like that, instead of just saying something controversial. Just taking the anti side or trying to be sarcastic.

There a couple of interesting posts over at Webmasters World in regard to this conversation:

“In general it sounds like Google is aiming for a relatively complex taxonomy of link types and weighting for them. “

“Did you understand what Matt said about Digg? Do we know how valuable Digg links are?
I’ve hesitated about adding that Digg link on my site, because I’ve seen Digg pages that look like 950 penalties waiting to happen. They have pages full of links with the same anchor text, virtually, one after the other.

Perhaps your site wouldn’t get 950d from the incoming link, but the Digg site would. (My main site was able to give good link juice while it was 950d.)

Do you use the Digg graphic/link on your sites to invite new links?”

“Originally, Google did not mention reciprocal linking at all. The word “reciprocal” did not even exist on their webmaster page. Then they addressed the issue of reciprocal and had to fine-tune it to add the word excessive.“

“As I read it, Matt’s not talking about the Digg pages themselves. He’s talking about links you get from other sites because Digg put your site into the limelight. They visited you, they liked what they saw, so they linked to it.

And even if the Digg page itself gets a -950 treatment from Google, it still passes some juice. I have no concerns about linking to Digg because of that. I’m sure Google has figured out how to handle social media links in an even-handed manner.

I haven’t used a Digg chicklet on the sites I build, but not because of any concern. It’s just not a good fit for my topics. I do have clients who use them”

The interview is a really interesting one and it deserves to be given complete attention. Hence, I would recommend to my readers, that they should definitely go through the Matt Cutts interview for a thorough perspective on this topic.

Yahoo! And Retail King Walmart Finalize Landmark Multi-Year Advertising Deal!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 10:09:44 +0000

Yahoo! has announced, the completion of formalities for its multi-year advertising deal with the retail-king Walmart. The new deal will enable Walmart to use Yahoo’s advertising platform and simultaneously, Yahoo! will be become the sole platform for the online display of Walmart’s advertisements and inventory.

As per the new deal, Yahoo! will use its existing abundance of leading brand advertisers for Walmart, as its primary marketing and sales channel for its video display and advertising. Through the use of Yahoo’s AMP (Advertising Management Program), Yahoo! has also taken the responsibility for Walmart’s ad pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting. This would mark Walmart as another addition to Yahoo’s AMP. In a related AMP news, Yahoo! has also announced its multi-year Global Partnership with Havas Digital, where Havas too, will be borrowing heavily on Yahoo’s AMP.

According to Todd Teresi (Senior VP, Yahoo! Publisher Network), “This announcement builds on our strategy to be the partner of choice for leading brands looking to engage more customers with compelling offers online. By combining Walmart.com’s leading position as a multi-channel retailer with our industry-leading display advertising sales and ad management technology and sales force, we will be able to provide advertisers with the easiest, most effective way to deliver targeted, relevant marketing messages to Walmart.com shoppers.”

Here is the Yahoo! Press Release on this new development:

NEW YORK, Jun 04, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide, today announced a strategic, multi-year relationship for online display and video advertising with Walmart.com. This agreement enables Walmart.com to leverage Yahoo!’s advertising platform to present new offers to online customers. Yahoo! also becomes the exclusive portal to resell Walmart.com’s display inventory.

Yahoo! will bring its extensive network of leading brand advertisers to Walmart.com and serve as the primary marketing and sales channel for the site’s display and video advertising. Yahoo! will also apply its industry-leading ad-serving, targeting and inventory management capabilities to power ad pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting for Walmart.com. The site will ultimately become a participant in AMP! from Yahoo!, the recently announced advertising management platform that will become available to publishers later this year.

“This announcement builds on our strategy to be the partner of choice for leading brands looking to engage more customers with compelling offers online,” said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. “By combining Walmart.com’s leading position as a multi-channel retailer with our industry-leading display advertising sales and ad management technology and sales force, we will be able to provide advertisers with the easiest, most effective way to deliver targeted, relevant marketing messages to Walmart.com shoppers.”

Marketers will be able to take advantage of Yahoo! and Walmart.com’s partnership in the online retail category later this month. For more information on Walmart.com advertising opportunities, contact your Yahoo! Sales representative or visit http://advertising.yahoo.com.

About Yahoo!

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

About Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.

Every week, millions of customers visit Wal-Mart Stores, Supercenters, Neighborhood Markets, and Sam’s Club locations across America. The company and its Foundation are committed to a philosophy of giving back locally. Wal-Mart (NYSE:WMT) is proud to support the causes that are important to customers and associates right in their own neighborhoods, and last year gave more than $296 million to local United States communities.

Google & Yahoo! Announce Agreement on a Non-Exclusive Search Partnership

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:15:12 +0000

Google and Yahoo! have finally done it. Yahoo Inc and Google have announced a non-exclusive advertising agreement. Yahoo! Press Releases give out the details of the partnership and also state that Panama will be functioning just the same. Yahoo! shares still dropped Friday in spite of this good news. Henry Blodgett from Silicon Valley Insider thinks the deal is very good for Yahoo, even better than the strange “wacky chop-shop plan Microsoft proposed” that has now died.

More at Yahoo! Finance

Yahoo! Press Release:

Agreement Advances Yahoo!’s Open Strategy; Enhances Ability to
Compete in Converging Search and Display Marketplace

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jun 12, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, announced today that it has reached an agreement with Google Inc. that will enhance its ability to compete in the converging search and display marketplace, advancing the company’s open strategy. The agreement enables Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo!’s search results and on some of its web properties in the United States and Canada. The agreement is non-exclusive, giving Yahoo! the ability to display paid search results from Google, other third parties, and Yahoo!’s own Panama marketplace.

Under the terms of the agreement, Yahoo! will select the search term queries for which - and the pages on which - Yahoo! may offer Google paid search results. Yahoo! will define its users’ experience and will determine the number and placement of the results provided by Google and the mix of paid results provided by Panama, Google or other providers. The agreement applies to paid search and content match and does not apply to algorithmic search. The agreement also applies to current partners in Yahoo’s publisher network.

Yahoo! CEO and co-founder Jerry Yang said, “We believe that the convergence of search and display is the next major development in the evolution of the rapidly changing online advertising industry. Our strategies are specifically designed to capitalize on this convergence — and this agreement helps us move them forward in a significant way. It also represents an important next step in our open strategy, building on the progress we have already made in advancing a more open marketplace.”
“This agreement provides a source of funds to both deliver financial value to stockholders from search monetization and to invest in our broader strategy to transform display advertising and advance our starting point objectives with users,” said Yahoo! President Sue Decker. “It enhances competition by promoting our ability to compete in the marketplace where we are especially well positioned: in the convergence of search and display.”

Agreement Provides Attractive Economics and Enhances Search Monetization

Yahoo! believes that this agreement will enable the Company to better monetize Yahoo!’s search inventory in the United States and Canada. At current monetization rates, this is an approximately $800 million annual revenue opportunity. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo! expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

The agreement will enhance Yahoo!’s ability to achieve its goal to grow operating cash flow significantly, while at the same time providing flexibility to continue to invest in ongoing initiatives such as algorithmic search innovation and search and display advertising platforms. It gives Yahoo! complete flexibility to continue to use its Panama paid search results.

Significant Benefits Will Flow to Users, Advertisers, Publishers and Employees
Users will also benefit from Yahoo!’s ability to invest incremental operating cash flow in ongoing improvements to its search services, building upon recent major innovations such as Search Assist and SearchMonkey. Advertisers will continue to benefit from multiple marketplace alternatives including Panama, Google and others. Publishers will benefit from a winning combination of distribution, monetization and services to help them grow their businesses. The financial benefits will enable Yahoo! to broaden the scope of its investments and initiatives, enhancing Yahoo!’s ability to offer attractive career opportunities to its employees.

Terms of the Agreement

The agreement will enable Yahoo! to run ads supplied by Google’s AdSense(TM) for Search and AdSense(TM) for Content services next to Yahoo!’s internally generated paid search and algorithmic search results. Yahoo may also run Google-supplied ads on non-search Yahoo web properties, as well as on current members of its partner network. The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a four-year initial term and two, three-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. It applies to Yahoo!’s operations in the U.S. and Canada only. Advertisers will continue to pay Yahoo! directly for clicks served by Yahoo! from Yahoo!’s Panama and Content Match marketplaces. Advertisers will pay Google directly for each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo! owned and operated network or certain affiliate sites. Google will share a percentage of such revenue with Yahoo!.

In addition, Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services, bringing easier and broader communication to users.

The agreement allows either party to terminate the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party. The agreement also requires Yahoo! to pay a termination fee if the agreement is terminated as a result of a change in control that occurs within 24 months. The termination fee is $250 million, subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google under the agreement.

Although Google and Yahoo! are not required to receive regulatory approval of the deal before implementing it, the companies have voluntarily agreed to delay implementation for up to three and a half months while the U.S. Department of Justice reviews the arrangement.

Goldman, Sachs & Co., Lehman Brothers and Moelis & Company are acting as financial advisors to Yahoo!. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP is acting as legal advisor to Yahoo!, and Munger Tolles & Olson LLP is acting as counsel to the outside directors of Yahoo!.
Yahoo! will host a conference call to discuss the agreement with Google at 6:30 p.m. Eastern Time today. To listen to the call live, please dial 877-391-6847 (reservation number 70308474#). A live audiocast of the conference call can be accessed through the Company’s Investor Relations website at http://yhoo.client.shareholder.com/index.cfm. In addition, an archive of the audiocast can be accessed through the same link. An audio replay of the call will be available following the conference call by calling 888-286-8010 (reservation number 84138579).

About Yahoo! Inc.

Non-GAAP Financial Measures

This release refers to operating cash flow (operating income before depreciation, amortization of intangible assets, and stock-based compensation expense, or OCF), which is a non-GAAP financial measure. The most comparable GAAP measure is income from operations. With respect to the OCF numbers provided in this release, the estimate of income from operations is the same as the estimated OCF, as the Company does not expect to incur any additional depreciation and amortization or stock-based compensation expense related to this agreement.

Google Press Release:

Companies will also Enable Interoperability Between Their Instant Messaging Services
MOUNTAIN VIEW, Calif. (June 12, 2008) – Google (Nasdaq: GOOG) today announced that it has reached an agreement that gives Yahoo! the ability to use Google’s search and contextual advertising technology through its AdSense™ for Search and AdSense for Content advertising programs. Under the agreement, Yahoo! has the option to display Google ads alongside its own natural search results in the U.S. and Canada. In addition, Yahoo! can serve contextually targeted ads on its U.S. and Canadian web properties as well as on its current publisher partner sites. Yahoo will continue to operate its own search engine, web properties and advertising services.

In addition, Yahoo! and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their respective instant messaging services bringing easier and broader communication to users.

“This commercial agreement provides Yahoo! with the opportunity to deliver more relevant ads to users and provide advertisers and publishers with better advertising technology to help them succeed in their own businesses,” said Eric Schmidt, Chairman and CEO of Google. “This agreement will preserve the competitive and dynamic online advertising space.”

As a result of the agreement, Yahoo! will be able to complement its own advertising program with Google’s advertising technology. As a result, advertisers will be able to better reach consumers, and Yahoo! and its current publisher partners can generate more revenue. Yahoo can use Google’s advertising technology on as many or as few of its search results and content pages as it chooses.

This non-exclusive agreement allows Yahoo! to enter into similar agreements with other advertising providers. In addition, Yahoo! will maintain relationships with its own advertising customers and will continue to rely exclusively on its own advertising program outside of the U.S. and Canada. The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a 4-year initial term and two 3-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. Financial terms between the two companies were not disclosed.

Although Google and Yahoo are not required to receive regulatory approval of the arrangement before implementing it, the companies have voluntarily agreed to delay implementation for up to three and a half months to give the U.S. Department of Justice time to review the arrangement.

About Google Inc.

Google’s innovative search technologies connect millions of people around the world with information every day. Founded in 1998 by Stanford Ph.D. students Larry Page and Sergey Brin, Google today is a top web property in all major global markets. Google’s targeted advertising program provides businesses of all sizes with measurable results, while enhancing the overall web experience for users. Google is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia. For more information, visit www.google.com.

Over at Tech Crunch, there is a entire transcript of the conference call between Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang and Yahoo! President Sue Decker after the announcement of the Yahoo!-Google deal. Here is the transcript for our users:

“Jerry Yang: Our discussions with MSFt have concluded, after a number of meetings, including a meeting on June 8 in which chairman Roy Bostock and management participated. Discussed a number of transaction options. Microsoft stated unequivocally it didn’t want to buy all of Yahoo. Microsoft’s search offer is not in best interest of Yahoo stockholders.
The agreement with Google does not preclude a change of control agreement with a third party.

Clearly it is time to move on.

Deal with Google strengthens competitiveness. The strategy is to capture the growth opp in the online ad market. Core to this strategy is the convergence search and display. We view an open strategy as the key to future success.

We have taken a number of steps already down this path. The commercial agreement with Google promotes growth and profitability.

We entered into a commercial agreement—yahoo will serv paid search ads from Google along Yahoo search results.

Panama continues to operate.
The deal is non exclusive. Paid listings can come from anyone else.
It is a 10 year deal, with a 4-year initial term, and two 3-year renewals at yahoo’s option. US and Canada only.

Both companies voluntarily agreed to delay implementation for 3 and a half months while Dept. of Justice reviews.
Expect $250 to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow. We believe there is $800 million revenue upside opportunity in US and Canada for search queries where upside opportunity exists.
See this as a natural extension of Right Media acquisition, and the upcoming ad management platform launch. Part of natural efforts to pursue an open marketplace. We believe an open marketplace is critical.

Sue Decker: We are really excited about the potential of what we are announcing. It allows us to do what we do best. And it gives Yahoo full control over all aspects of its business.
Hallmark of this agreement is its flexibility. It also enhances our options. Lets us determine whether and how we display Google’s paid search ads alongside ads from our own Panama marketplace. We will display Google paid search results where they deliver better value. We decide how much of our search inventory will display those ads. We keep unfettered control over the user experience.
Advertisers pay Google directly, Google will then pay us TAC for clickthroughs. Our advertisers continue to pay us for our ads.

AMP, new display ad platform, will be available next week. Recent announcements such as SearchMonkey, Search Assist, Buzz and others are showing success with consumers. We remain strong in algorithmic search.

Agreement also includes interoperability between Yahoo and Google’s instant messaging platforms.

Jerry Yang: Talks about how this will maximize stockholder value.

Questions & Answers

Q: Will advertisers still want to buy Yahoo when they can get on Yahoo pages through Google’s advertising system? Why learn two systems? Any interest in serving yahoo ads on Google pages?

Sue: One thing we learned is that GOOG monetizes well for query ads, but not as competitive in the tail. So we want control in segments where we are comparable in terms of performance. So with this we get the best of both worlds.
We might look into helping them with display ads on Google.

Q: What percentage of search queries do you expect to show google ads?

Sue: There is a considerable amount we think we can continue to monetize in the head of the curve. [Doesn't answer].

Q: How much was the TAC split debated?

Sue: It is competitive.

Q: Do you think there are opportunities where partner sites will go to GOOG and bypass Yahoo, and are there minimum guarantees?

Sue: Yahoo Partner network is included in this deal. That will be an option. The deal does not extend to new partners that join our Publisher network. I can’t comment on financial terms in terms of guarantees.

Q: Is this a different set of advertisers, and is the $800 million annual?

Sue: The revenue opportunity is annual, based on current monetization numbers not future. We are open to third party networks in display in the way we are now with Google. We think an open approach will assure scale and the best advertising rates and the best match for consumers.

Q: What will be the biggest regulatory hurdle?

Yang: Given it is a commercial agreement, no regulatory hurdle. But we agreed with the Dept. of Justice on a voluntary basis to a 3 and half month review. We have engaged with Google to backfill our ad inventory.

Q: What revenue might you be cannibalizing?

Jerry: The ramp towards full implementation, we won’t be talking about that. We want to leverage this relationship to build a sustainable marketplace around Yahoo. As we learn of ways to create benefits for Yahoo advertisers, we will understand more as we get into it.

Sue: What we saw from testing was consistent. When we contemplate incremental cash flow as we ramp up, we contemplate how we may ramp that up in various verticals or queries where Google is strong and we don’t have a strong position now.”

In a related news, Yahoo! also announced the end to the Yahoo!- Microsoft saga, as in a press release Yahoo! Stated that Microsoft talks have concluded and that in no manner what so ever, neither Microsoft nor Yahoo are interested in any sort of bidding negotiations.
Yahoo! Press Release:

SUNNYVALE, Calif., Jun 12, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet company, today announced that discussions with Microsoft regarding a potential transaction — whether for an acquisition of all of Yahoo! or a partial acquisition — have concluded. The conclusion of discussions follows numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft regarding a number of transaction alternatives, including a meeting between Yahoo! and Microsoft on June 8th in which Chairman Roy Bostock and other independent Board members from Yahoo! participated. At that meeting, Microsoft representatives stated unequivocally that Microsoft is not interested in pursuing an acquisition of all of Yahoo!, even at the price range it had previously suggested.
With respect to an acquisition of Yahoo!’s search business alone that Microsoft had proposed, Yahoo!’s Board of Directors has determined, after careful evaluation, that such a transaction would not be consistent with the company’s view of the converging search and display marketplaces, would leave the company without an independent search business that it views as critical to its strategic future and would not be in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders.

Yahoo! remains focused on maximizing value for stockholders by continuing to execute on its strategy of being the “starting point” for the most consumers on the Internet and a “must buy” for advertisers. The online advertising industry is projected to grow from $40 billion in 2007 to approximately $75 billion in 2010 and the company believes it has the right assets, strategic plan, Board of Directors and management team to capitalize on this growth opportunity.

Forward Looking Statements

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning Yahoo!’s projected financial performance as well as Yahoo!’s strategic and operational plans. Actual results may differ materially from those described in this release due to a number of risks and uncertainties. The potential risks and uncertainties include, among others, the implementation and results of Yahoo!’s ongoing strategic initiatives; Yahoo!’s ability to compete with new or existing competitors; reduction in spending by, or loss of, marketing services customers; the demand by customers for Yahoo!’s premium services; acceptance by users of new products and services; risks related to joint ventures and the integration of acquisitions; risks related to Yahoo!’s international operations; failure to manage growth and diversification; adverse results in litigation, including intellectual property infringement claims; Yahoo!’s ability to protect its intellectual property and the value of its brands; dependence on key personnel; dependence on third parties for technology, services, content and distribution; general economic conditions and changes in economic conditions; and potential continuing uncertainty arising in connection with the withdrawal of Microsoft’s unsolicited proposal to acquire Yahoo! and the announced intention by a stockholder to seek control of our Board of Directors, the possibility that Microsoft or another person may in the future make another proposal, or take other actions which may create uncertainty for our employees, publishers, advertisers and other business partners, and the possibility of significant costs of defense, indemnification and liability resulting from stockholder litigation relating to the Microsoft proposal. More information about potential factors that could affect Yahoo!’s business and financial results is included under the captions “Risk Factors” and “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations” in Yahoo!’s Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended December 31, 2007 and the Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended March 31, 2008, which are on file with the Securities and Exchange Commission (”SEC”) and available at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov. All information in this press release is as of June 12, 2008, unless otherwise noted, and Yahoo! does not intend, and undertakes no duty, to update or otherwise revise the information contained in this letter.

About Yahoo! Inc.

Yahoo! Inc. is a leading global Internet brand and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide. Yahoo! is focused on powering its communities of users, advertisers, publishers, and developers by creating indispensable experiences built on trust. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.

Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.”

Google Explains ‘Duplicate Content’! A cure for Webmasters’ Main Concern!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:48:58 +0000

If you are a Webmaster, then you must be scared of the possibility, that your website might be penalized for duplicate content, even if it wasn’t your fault. In a recent post at the Google Webmaster Blog, Google has explained the concept of duplicate content and how it may or may not negatively affect your website. This post has been written keeping in mind the dilemma of duplicate content, that every Webmaster faces.

Duplicate content is a result of a ‘copy-paste’ procedure undertaken by a third party website without the Webmasters authorization. However, Google does point out that, because a Webmaster has no control over the copying of his content, therefore, Google doesn’t consider it as a violation of the Webmaster Guidelines. In the case of a duplicate content, Google employs a series of procedures to determine the original source of the content.

Google is able to differentiate between two major scenarios for duplicate content:

Within-your-domain-duplicate-content, i.e. identical content which (often unintentionally) appears in more than one place on your website.
Cross-domain-duplicate-content, i.e. identical content of your site which appears (again, often unintentionally) on different external websites.

In the first scenario, according to Google, a Webmaster has the ability to restrict the occurrence of duplicate content within his website. You should include the preferred version of your URLs in your Sitemap file to help avoid content on your site being crawled as duplicate. There is more information available about ‘Duplicate Content’ at two other Google posts. One is ‘Deftly dealing with duplicate content‘ by Adam Lasnik and the other post is ‘Duplicate content summit at SMX Advanced‘ by Vanessa Fox.

The second scenario again touches the ‘copy-paste’ methodology, where a third party copies your content and publishes it in their website. Google takes into account a couple of factors to establish the ownership of the content. However, you need not worry about the negative impact of the ‘duplicate content’ on your website, because Google is quite competent in picking out the rightful owner of a ’scraped content’.

In case you do find the ‘duplicate content’ ranking higher than the original content, then you need to check these following factors:

Check if your content is still accessible to Google’s crawlers. You might unintentionally have blocked access to parts of your content in your robots.txt file.
You can look in your Sitemap file to see if you made changes for the particular content which has been scraped.
Check if your site is in line with Google Webmaster guidelines.

In most of the cases, the duplicate content doesn’t have a negative effect on you website’s presence in the Google index. A Webmaster would only be penalized for duplicate content, if he is found to have posted the content deliberately and with a malicious intent.

Google Algorithms Gone Bonkers! Traffic Loss by Almost 90%!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 07:06:53 +0000

Webmasters at Webmaster World, have been running a thread, almost 5 pages long about a serous concern, that has all these Webmasters on the edge. According to the reports, there seems to be a sudden and a dramatic traffic drop from Google. This drop in traffic is estimated to be 90% of all Google directed traffic. Google also seems to be dropping hundreds or maybe thousands of pages from these Webmasters’ websites.

Due to sheer volume of posts in the Webmaster World thread, I’m displaying a couple of selected and relevant posts, just to give you an idea about the severity of the situation:

“I can now join the catastrophic loss club! UK site, PR6, rock solid rankings, 400k pages indexed, fast loading - 90% loss of traffic since 2 days ago. Last time the site went AWOL was early February for a couple of days.
Looking up what I used to rank for approx 20,00 medium to long phrases then all top listing just disappeared BUT results can now only be described as awful - in fact on one query results 11-20 contained sites from Poland, Germany, Czech, .info and not a single .com or .co.uk - when will Google admit that they really screwed up big time this time?
As my site is a .com hosted on uk servers then it seems that I have now moved to the index for Mars. Time to move to the dark side methinks rather than stay in the Google lottery.”

“one of our sites was hit hard. it was a “landing page” looking site, without css.
most were not hurt,
one with really great css, (the page looks like old style internet informational pages without css), it has PROPER use of H1, h2 and h3 with videos on most pages and lots of properly tagged images (like for the blind person who HEARS the screen) and it was not hurt and has climbed!
G said they were going to start paying a whole lot more attention so sites with great user experience including video and properly tagged images.
I guess its time to make sure all our sites concentrate on great user experience and contain videos and properly used alt tags”

“I have a few mini-sites and one of these has seen its traffic go up 20 fold and it simply does not deserve to rank for what it is ranking for - no SEO effort whatsoever - a blog with about 20 pages of content!
Perhaps the solution is to take the 400,000 pages of content - yes they are product pages and turn them into 2,000 x 200 page websites, crosslink them all and buy lots of cheap backlinks as this seems to be the sort of site that Google now favours.

The silence from Google is deafening on this one - we all know they have had UK geo problems and my guess is that they have attempted a fix that is wreaking havoc in some areas.

As an aside, I noticed that Google spider stopped spidering some of my other sites early on Wednesday like it was on holiday or something but today the crawl rate on the PR6 site seems to be running at 3x its normal rate - it is like Google lost a whole block of indexed pages and is now trying to get them all back ASAP. The loss of 100,000 pages would clearly hit ranking if internal support pages were lost and the unusual spider activity is certainly something that I have not experienced before - the one thing a large site has in its favour is the remarkable predictability of activity so when that predictability disappears then one notices the impact pretty quickly.”

“Lost 90% of Google Organic last week on one of our country TLD sites. Daily 30K organic traffic dropped to 3K, so Google is STILL sending some traffic. We have a network of sites all hosted in the US. All other sites are fine. One application runs the whole network. Network of TLD sites in each country of a major continent.

Only one country was hit. Our oldest and largest site (4 years). Go figure.

1,000,000 pages still indexed for the lost country site though. No obvious penalties.

I can search for some of our unique titles and find a high result other are gone. That being said we are a long tail site so we have 1000s of keywords constantly changing so not beholden to a few keywords.

We do very very little linking out without a NOFOLLOW.
Emailed back and forth with Google, they said they couldn’t see anything wrong. (shut off our AdWords account so I could get someone to talk to me)
No link exchanges or link campaigns. We’re web standardistas. Absolutely no black hat strategies. We try to escape out any UGC trickery. Some users could have slipped something by us and we’re still checking but its unlikely.”

“A few more interesting observations.
Firstly, the number of search results being reported on some popular UK products seems to have fallen dramatically - my guess would be 80-90% reduction.
Secondly, and I find this one amazing, I am starting to see sites where the total number of NON SUPPLEMENTAL pages being reported in the serps is significantly more than the total number of pages INCLUDING supplemental pages - the numbers are nonsense.

Thirdly, for say a five word search then the cache reports say two of the words on the page and say three of the words in links pointing to the page BUT the words linking to the page seem highly unlikely. Could this be the effect of all of these external search type query parameters being hosted on remote sites? If this is the case then it seems that the spammers may well have found a way of unduly affecting the Google algo.”

“There is at least one site that records Google searches and what pages ranked in the top 20 for specific search terms - but it has about a three week lag in its data.

What I intend to do is take a copy of the 20,000 or so search phrases that I used to rank for before 4 June and in a few weeks time take a copy of what I now rank for after 4 June and compare the two lists to see what was affected and, perhaps, more importantly what was NOT affected to see if I can see any pattern.
At least I would be able to confirm independently the timing of the loss and that some sort of wholesale site penalty filter has hit me. The speed of the loss indicates some sort of site penalty rather than a gradual change from a page algo change, but I may be wrong!
If my site returns then this particular exercise will still be possible and worth doing, in my view.”

“Hmm i’m also in to the club. It all started in the morning(GMT) of last fourth. My website is a PR4 .com, mainly vbulletin forum, tech related,usa hosted one. Daily google referels dropped from 15-20k to 1-2k. Competitors all going strong.
Over 200k Pages are still indexed. Google is still referring a few visitors. No drop in PR.

A few changes i made recently:

1. Changed the forums’ skin.

2. Enabled RSS feed. (I disabled it in last December after a similar penalty. )

3. Posted comments in a few blogs with anchor text as my domain. Mainly do-follow blogs.

In the forum all the outbound links are hidden for guests, including crawlers.”

Google Re-Defines ‘Doorway Pages’!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:57:49 +0000

According to Search Engine Watch, Google has redefined the term ‘Doorway Pages’

The new definition at Google Webmaster Help Center reads:

Doorway pages are typically large sets of poor-quality pages where each page is optimized for a specific keyword or phrase. In many cases, doorway pages are written to rank for a particular phrase and then funnel users to a single destination.

Whether deployed across many domains or established within one domain, doorway pages tend to frustrate users, and are in violation of our Webmaster guidelines.

However, the cached version of the same page still contains the old definition:

Doorway pages are specifically made for search engines. Doorway pages contain many links - often several hundred - that are of little to no use to the visitor, and do not contain valuable content. HTML sitemaps are a valuable resource for your visitors, but ensure that these pages of links are easy for your visitors to navigate. If you have a number of links to include, consider organizing them into categories or into multiple pages. But in doing so, ensure that they are intended for visitors to navigate the sections of your site, and not simply for search engines.

In the new version of the definition, key sentences, words and adjectives have been changed and replaced by more generic terms. Discussions carry at the Search Engine Watch Forum. It seems that Google has tweaked the definition in order to make the look of the page more subtle than technical.

Webmasters Update the List for Current Google Data Centers!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:47:15 +0000

Users at the Webmaster World have updated a list of almost all of the Google Data Centers, spread throughout the globe. Here are some of the Google Data Centers from the updated list:

1. 66.249.81.nnn – gfe-bx/bx2/bx3

2. 66.249.83.nnn - gfe-wx/wx2

3. 66.249.93.nnn - gfe-ug/gfe-ug2

4. 72.14.205.nnn - gfe-qb/qb2

5.72.14.207.nnn - gfe-eh/eh2

6.209.85.129.nnn - gfe-fk/fk2/fk3

Here are a few excerpts from that thread:

“Google search can be accessed in several different ways:
There is of course, google.com and all the various country google TLDs.
Next there is the direct IP address. There are several thousand of those, as listed below.

There used to be access at a URL like www-xx.google.com but those were replaced in 2005 with the newer gfe-xx.google.com system.
Finally, there is the direct alias per-IP address, all like xx-in-fnn.google.com where xx is the same letters as from the GFE name, and nn is the last octet of the IP addesss (like 107 from 66.102.9.107 and so on).”

“In 2005, people were listing only 56, or so, IP addresses spread over about 18 Class C blocks.

At that time, Google did have more online (not much more though), but people just hadn’t yet discovered them.
Things have changed a lot since then.”

“Back in 2006 I showed that Google used approx. 43 Class C blocks for their search operations and postulated that this corresponded with 43 datacentres (or at least 43 “server rooms”) active.

So, about 43, then 41 (when some fell out of use), then 47 (when new ones were discovered) Class C blocks were in use in mid-late 2006.
Since the 2006 lists were produced, 11 more have fallen out of use, and 34 new blocks have come online.

Going back a little further; in the last two years they have therefore closed about 11 of the older server farms (mostly in the older 66.102.nnn.nnn and 216.239.nnn.nnn Class C blocks). They have also opened 28 more in the 209.85.nnn.nnn range, and 10 more in the 74.125.nnn.nnn range, at the same time.
There are currently 70 Class C blocks in use, and the current system of allocation allows for a maximum of 288 such blocks to be brought in to use at full capacity.

When you take into account the individual GFE names like gfe-ro and gfe-pn3 there are approx. 204 of those active at present. Their current system allows for 1152 of those to be allocated, at a maximum of four per Class C block. Some blocks use less, but most new blocks seem to come online with four GFE names resolving these days. However, their naming convention has room for 2704 GFE entries, so there is plenty of room for expansion.

Although not a directly useful measure, the number of individual directly accessible IP addresses in use is already in excess of 1400.
The number of servers at Google appears to have almost doubled in the last two-and-a-bit years alone.“

“For new sites, or for new pages added to existing sites, there can be considerable differences and many days before they are even close to being synchronised.
For unchanging sites, there are not so many differences, though several IP ranges are always in use testing new things out - which range that is, differs from week to week.”

Google Custom Search Engine Business Edition Now with Custom Indexing!

admin — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 06:34:45 +0000

According to the Market Pilgrim, the Google Custom Search Engine Business Edition is now being given a new name and is now also equipped with custom indexing. This service will now be known as Google Site Search. Apart from the new nomenclature, there have been incorporated several new features and upgrades in the new version. These features are:

Enhanced index coverage: Comprehensive search results on any website by crawling and indexing more content, even pages deep within a site. It would mean that Google will be looking for and assimilating more content so as to make the Search results even more relevant.
Synonyms: Queries expand to include commonly-searched terms and website owners can add their own custom synonym dictionary.
Date biasing: Website owners can influence search results based on the age of documents.
Top results biasing: Specific sections of the site (such as the product catalog) appear at the top of search results.
Full customization of the look & feel: site owners can fully customize the search results interface to integrate with the unique look and feel of their sites.

A main drawback of Google Custom Search Engine was that it relied entirely on Google.com. It meant that if a website wasn’t entirely indexed by Google, then the non-indexed pages would not be displayed in Google Custom Search. However, now Google Site Search can take advantage of other data, such as site search queries, that “could” be leveraged in Google.com.

Google Site Search charges $100 a year for up to 5,000 pages. Here is a snapshot of Google Custom Search: