Yahoo! at NYC SES

So I am getting ready to go to the Yahoo! party tonight. Yahoo! has been busy.

New Google Toolbar, IE 7 Beta to Launch this Summer

Google Toolbar:
Version 3.0 launched.

Version 3 of the software also lets people automatically check their spelling in Web forms; translate words in English into several languages; and add Web links to certain plain text. For example, an address could be enhanced with a hypertext link to its location on a map, with the click of a button on the toolbar.

Still no FireFox toolbar though...

AdSense:
picks up VNU as a partner.

IE 7:
to launch. Beta version available this summer. Look for search integration.

Dublin:
Yahoo! Creates Dublin HQ.

Day Trading 101:
Actually, I know nothing about day trading. For no reason at all Mamma.com went up 36% yesterday and looks like it is down 30% today. [added: there might have been a reason for part of the drop. oops]

Yahoo! Firefox Toolbar, Google Investor Day, & Cold Calling

Yahoo! FireFox Toolbar:
released, reviewed by Danny Sullivan.

Wonder when Google will do the same, they are likely missing out on some amazingly valuable data by not having an official one.

Newsburst:
Cnet creates an online aggregator that will compete with Bloglines & Rojo

Brand Pyramid:
Good post about building products and services at various price points. Also, Rob Frankle on how CEOs screw up branding.

Google Investor Day:
was yesterday. slides and audio if your into that sort of stuff. some of the sides:

  • 60: their revenue was split nearly 50 / 50 between Google.com and their partner network.

  • 72: the top 20 markets have a 17.6% web penetration.
  • 73: shows 66% of revenue was domestic.

This guy thinks they will be worth a trillion dollars in 20 years.

In 20 years nobody will remember his prediction, but Battelle gave him a link yesterday and I gave him one today. Random arbitrary predictions are a good way to gain free links ;)

Atomz:
site search provider gets snarfed up by WebSideStory. More people should use the word snarf.

Google's Search Results are Crap?
Danny says people should not be so quick to discout the opinions of SEOs.

Hiring:
Ammon Johns is hiring.

Cold Calling:
is evil. Nick W has some tips on how to cold call. My personal goal when people cold call me is to ensure I drastically increase the likelihood they will have a bad day, and to hopefully lead to eventual attrition at their work place.

New Google Maps, Yahoo! & RackSpace, About.com for Sale

Google Maps:
New version out. Danny Sullivan has more on the offering.

RackSpace:
May not play well with Yahoo!

About.com for Sale:
Bidding ends today. Price between $350 to $500 million. Bidders: Google, Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves, AOL & New York Times.

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Q

Yahoo! launches Yahoo! Q, which shows contextually relevant news and links in a small pop up box next to content.

"The thinking is that if you can read an article, you can be inspired to search," said Ken Norton, senior director of product management at Yahoo search. "We're bringing search to the moment of inspiration... We'll save them time and energy, and the most relevant search." source: MarketWatch

A couple weeks ago Jakob Neilson talked about using fat links (or smart links which offered multiple options or opened multiple windows when clicked). This is the first implimention of the concept I have seen by any major web players.

There are two major modes for Yahoo! Q:

  1. Webmasters can add the Yahoo! Q code to their pages... I will be doing that shortly just to test it out.

  2. Users can download the Yahoo! Q DemoBar or add extensions to FireFox.

Eventually Yahoo! may integrate ads into their Q boxes, but off the start they are primarily hoping to improve search usage. The fact that FireFox is part of the beta release means that Yahoo! is really starting to create products which the web community will help market for them.

I have not tested it much, but is sure sounds like cool stuff.

PostScript: I installed Yahoo! Q on all my individual post pages. It was easy to install, but I am kinda tired.

I few things I do not like about it...

  • the Yahoo! Search blog has not yet installed Yahoo! Q. What is up with that? ;)

  • It slightly messed up my template. Not sure if I am at fault or it is at fault.
  • It requires me to pop the form element up within the content tags when I would have prefered to have it lower...like near all the other search engine links. currently if I do that it might place too much weight on the post title
  • Since many of the highlights will be at the bottom of the screen it will require the user to scroll down to see the Q box. Perhaps they could find a way to ensure a large portion of it fits on the screen?
  • Jeremy stated that they are working on the clunkiness problem.

The technology is a fairly cool idea and should be amazingly useful for community driven sites.

Google Strong 4th Quarter, Yahoo! Japan Blogs, Australian SEM Conference

Google 4th Quarter:

Yahoo! Japan Blogs:
Yahoo Japan has beaten Yahoo to the blogosphere

Down Under:
Australian SEM Conference

DMOZ Post:
NickW finds Black Knight's what is wrong with DMOZ post ;)

New AdSense Feature, Yahoo! Video Search, Peter Norvig Talks Semantics & Spam

New AdSense Beta Feature:
change to ads about feature allows you to switch the ads to a different topic. example here: http://www.consumeraffairs.com/health/hearing/

Video Killed the Search Star:
in your mind and in your car. search for Yahoo! videos wherever you are...

wonder what effect that will have on the porn industry?

here is a cool video of Jobs introducing the Mac (looted from ThreadWatch)

Paid By Google:
Ben Goodger, Lead Engineer Mozilla Firefox

Spam: an Issue of Semantics:
Peter Norvig discusses semantic web ontologies

Google AdSense Problems, Making Cheap Sites, Killing Comment Spam, Google Fiber Optics

Google AdSense:
Some are questioning if & for how long it will make sense. Others are noticing some problems too.

For those Making MANY Sites:
Designing a Low Maintenance Website

Comment Spam:
Google to try to kill comment spam? ... of course even if they do people will still comment spam on the off chance that people do not impliment this.

Google Fiber Optic Network?
Google wants 'dark fiber'

Yahoo! Partners up with Verizon:
Yahoo, Verizon ink Web tie-in

Name a Book:
John Battelle is looking for a subtitle for his book.

Search Marketing UK Trade Organization...other stuff

SEMPO UK
no way Jose... Sick of the SEMPO antics, the brass of the UK SEO scene have made their own search marketing organization.
With the likes of Barry Lloyd, Ammon Johns, & Mike Grehan I am sure they will do well.

Spammer?
A White KnightTM is crowned

Yahoo!
buys Stata Labs who is the maker of Bloomba

GOOG
their stock is up a bit more on the day. Their market cap sits at 47.37B and Yahoo! is at 47.56B.

Yahoo! Link Renting: a Critical Look at Yahoo!

Yahoo! Renting Links
Yahoo! was recently renting / leasing / buying / otherwise acquiring some high PageRank keyword rich links from gasbuddy.com. Normally when large companies buy these types of ads they use tracking codes, but these ads were straight links which are analyzed by search engines. Was Yahoo! Buying PageRank? Was Yahoo! Trying to Manipulate Search Results
Only Yahoo! knows what their true intentions were with the links, but within 4 days of people mentioning the links in the SEW forums the links were dropped. If they were not buying the links to manipulate the search results then one would wonder why they were not using a tracking code.

The Yahoo! ad unit used keyword rich links. They pointed links at
http://autos.yahoo.com/ with "cars" as the anchor text
http://used-cars.autos.yahoo.com/used_cars.html with "used cars" as the anchor text
http://autos.yahoo.com/new_cars.html with "new cars" as the anchor text &
http://used-cars.autos.yahoo.com/kbb/ with "Kelley Blue Book" as the anchor text

What Did Yahoo!'s Ad Look Like
Their Gas Buddy ad unit looked like this:

Yahoo!'s Other Ads
Yahoo! Shopping is still renting other high PageRank links through the Internet.com network to boost their rankings for high margin consumer electronic items.


anchor text "cameras" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Digital%20Cameras:20148412


anchor text "laptops" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:Laptops:20148417


anchor text "PDAs" pointing at
http://shopping.yahoo.com/b:PDAs:20148420

Yahoo!'s Problem with Link Renting
Yahoo! runs their own search engine which powers a ton of search worldwide. Not only are they renting links that manipulate Google's search results, but the links also manipulate the Yahoo! Search search results.

These links are essentially used to build keyword rich link popularity from powerful websites, which may fall under the following unacceptible practices:

  • Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking

  • Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity

as set by the Yahoo! Search quality guidelines.

Recently someone at the SEW forums stated that Yahoo! told them the problem with their site is that they have too many links pointing at their site.

The Problem with Yahoo! Renting Links

Yahoo! manually edits their search results. If other people have too many links pointing at their sites it is a problem, but if Yahoo! does it then it is ok? why?

Yahoo! owns a valuable network. What they do with that network is up to them. When people search for information Yahoo! can throw whatever ads they want around the results, but the results themselves should not be internally tainted.

As an oracle of information an ethical question is raised when Yahoo! is paying people to edit their results and paying other people to manipulate those same results.

What Next?

If Yahoo! decided what they want to place in their search results how can I trust them? What happens when they personalize my search? Will that mean that I get biased crap promoting more Yahoo! stuff? Will I not be able to find the information I need?

There is a level of trust associated with search. If Yahoo! wants to manipulate Google search results that is fine. If they are going to do that then they should prevent those same pages from being indexed in their own search results.

Yahoo!'s pages rank in the top 5 of Yahoo! Search for "cars," "new cars," & "used cars." Interesting how those search terms match up with the links they were renting.

Yahoo! just shot themselves in the foot if they were hoping to catch Google in search anytime soon.

Another Link Renting Problem
If you look at the Internet.com commerce partner network
http://www.jupitermedia.com/partners/
you will notice that it is a random collection of websites. The only thing preventing these links from being considered a "link farm" is that:

  • they are expensive

  • they are attached to a huge powerful network
  • and Jupiter Media is making a ton of money from them.

    Also, how can a company claim it

    provides unbiased research, analysis and advice, backed by proprietary data, to help companies profit from the impact of the Internet and emerging technologies on their business. source

    and yet sell keyword rich ad space:

    • to random sites

    • throughout its own parent company network
    • which manipulates search results?

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