Reuters is reporting that Microsoft may be reconsidering its bid for Yahoo in light of changed market conditions and signs of potential weakness in Yahoo’s “core business.” The article cites as sources the familiar unnamed “people familiar with the matter.” There are few details and nobody from either company comments.
Here is a recap of what happened in the search forums today, through the eyes of the Search Engine Roundtable and other search forums on the web.
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
Local, Maps & Mobile
Link Building
Paid Search & Contextual
Searching
SEM Industry
SEO & SEM
Social Media
Video, Music & Image Search
Web Analytics
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
Below is what happened in search today, as reported on
Search Engine Land and from other
places across the web.
From Search Engine Land:
Search News From Around The Web:
Applications & Portal Features
Business Issues
Local, Maps & Mobile
Link Building
Paid Search & Contextual
Searching
SEM Industry
SEO & SEM
Social Media
Video, Music & Image Search
Web Analytics
Recent Hot Items From Sphinn, Our Social News Sharing Site:
Writing the Search Biz column is challenging because of the diverse group of stories that get collected every day. Today there’s an unusually large number, however, there are basically three broad themes: Google and the company’s legal challenges, Yahoo’s Jekyll and Hyde positions on China and human rights, and the revolving personnel door at both companies.
"Frankly, most SEOs are really smart and hard working; they’re just horribly misguided. They focus too much on the tricks to get people in the door and not enough on what people eat when they’re inside the restaurant."
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
In this week’s Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have, and more.
Both the Wall Street Journal and CNET are reporting about an apparently unsuccessful meeting between Microsoft and Yahoo this week. According to the Journal, “The Microsoft executives showed no willingness to raise their cash-and-stock offer, and the Yahoo camp continued to refuse to enter formal negotiations without a sweetened bid, people familiar with the matter say.”
I can’t believe it’s already April. After our own Search Engine Squaretable pranks and after several great April Fool’s jokes around the search industry (including Yahoo’s search ad for Butterfinger), things are starting to go back to normal.
Well, some things.
Dewey Update
The big stir in search forums is the “Dewey” update. People are seeing a lot of shuffling in datacenters and Matt Cutts is asking for you to submit a form to get help. If you’re impacted, tell Matt. Don’t be shy.
Earth Hour
In observance of Earth Hour, Google went dark on Saturday night. In the literal sense, Google turned its background from white to black. The goal of this initiative was to raise awareness about energy conservation. It’s 5AM as I write this and the lights are on. I guess I should turn them off…
Google Sells Performics
Google has sold the SEM division of DoubleClick which will come as a relief to many in the search industry. They’re maintaining their affiliate marketing division, but they’re shedding their responsibility (and an obvious conflict of interest) by parting ways with the SEO/PPC company. Best of luck to you guys.
Microsoft Publisher? Sign up for ContentAds
If you’re aching to join the Microsoft ContentAds pilot program, you now can sign up if you’re a publisher. Fill out the form and get information about new developments, special focus groups, and consideration for inclusion into the program.
Adderall for Yahoo, Please
It looks like Yahoo Slurp was suffering from ADHD earlier this week as webmasters reported hundreds of crawling reports daily in comparison to Google’s activity (which, as one puts it, is at “1 or 2.”) Eventually, Yahoo acknowledged and fixed the problem.
Yahoo Site Explorer Available in the UK and Ireland
Living in Great Britain? You now have your own special Yahoo! Site Explorer which is giving preference to UK links but is also showing some other links as well.
Google AdWords UK Trademark Policy Changing
Google UK has revised its trademark policy so that you can bid on trademark terms as keywords but those terms cannot show up in your ad. This is the same as the US policy and goes into effect on May 5.
Get Google News Ranking Updates
If you wanted to know the truths and myths about Google News rankings, your wait is over. Google posted about it and we reported on it. Now write some killer newsworthy content and maybe you’ll get indexed.
Blending is Permitted
In terms of blending your Google AdSense ads, it’s permissable as long as you don’t deceive your users. Makes sense.
Scrolling Arrows on Google AdSense Ads are Here to Stay
Google has confirmed earlier this week that scrolling arrows on AdSense ads are a new feature that gives users more control over the ads they can choose to read or ignore.
Google Webmaster Tools Verification Bugs Fixed and Broke Again
After we reported that Google is having difficulty verifying sites in Webmaster Tools, we were told that a bug fix is out. For most of you. If you’re hosting on an .asia domain name, you’re out of luck. At least, for now.
Toolbar PageRank = Regular PageRank
Google has finally updated the directory PageRank to match toolbar PageRank, Barry notes.
Google Quotation Search Results Refined
If you’ve done a search on Google with quotations and Google has not found any results, it will now suggest alternative searches for you without the quotes. By the way, you can’t do the query Barry suggests in our announcement post because there are at least 3 pages that show that phrase. But you can try it on another phrase that makes zero sense and you’ll see exactly what he means.
Google.de Mirrors Results…a Lot
If you applied a nifty little trick to your Google search query, you may have noticed that Google showed the same result in positions 20 through 120. Yeah, that’s a lot. But it’s only impacting Google.de.
Google Webmaster Chat = Success FTW!
Barry listened in on last week’s Google Webmaster Live help session and called the event a success. If you missed it, there are audio clips and transcripts available. He notes that Google will also be holding more of these in the future, which is great for you because it really connects webmasters to the Google Webmaster Central team. There was great representation at the first one, and I can imagine we’d continue to see that in future sessions. Nice.
Subscribe to us today
If you subscribe to Search Engine Roundtable on Google Web Search, you’ll see some cool results. It adds more personalization to your search experience, and I know some people do like that.
My BFF Lisa Barone wrote a really great post about what companies should look for when hiring in-house SEO consultants. SEO folks should have some sort of technical skills and a little coding expertise too. They also should have an analytical mindset and be willing to stare at a lot of numbers. Other highly-regarded characteristics include the ability to research well, someone who can think outside the box, someone with a sense of ethics, and an individual who can grow within your organization.
Of course, there are other characteristics. You want someone with a passion for this line of work. If they’re not interested, they may not be hanging on for a long time.
You’ll also wan someone to be on top of their ballgame. Just like a programming language has updates and you’ll have to learn new tips and tricks in order to stay ahead, SEO isn’t much different. Things change. Algorithms shift. You’ll need to be able to work on new strategies if you encounter something different, and the old tricks may not suffice.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
Should you save wads of cash to buy link building software that contacts hundreds (or thousands) of webmasters for you to give you some links? Wiep Knol says no. In his recent blog post, he explains why link building software isn’t the way to go and gives nine reasons why.
The biggest reason, at least from what I encounter on my day to day emails, is that link building requests like these are far from personal. Wiep also provides other reasons: it’s bad for your image, it’s easy to copy, it results in an unnatural link profile, and you’ll miss the links you want, among others.
It takes considerable effort to build quality links. Buying a $200 piece of software won’t do it for you. Research, commitment, and time investment are critical. Software won’t give you the results of hard labor. It takes time and energy to make it to the top.
Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.
A WebmasterWorld member has been applying regular search engine optimization and link building techniques and is noticing that the traffic hasn’t improved as substantially in the latter months of the campaign as it did initially. Is this something normal?
Actually, in many ways, it is. The first few months are typically a lot easier than the later months. Tedster mentions that sometimes it takes links time to reach their full power and cites Google’s “Historical and Age Data” patent.
There’s no reason to give up, though. It’s time to focus your energy on building links from high quality relevant sites. Focus your energy on building good content to attract such links.
Forum members also believe that it may not necessarily be link building that can be holding you back. It could be that your competition is ahead of its game. One suspects that it may even be the work of a human editor. What you can do, though, is take the recommendations and be aggressive in your link building efforts. Then see if you move up.
Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.
Google Blogoscoped reports that Google is testing the placement of one box results within the middle of the search results. We have seen Google test “search refinements” within the middle of the search results, but never really one box results, at least not in this separated form. Here is a screen shot, courtesy of Google Blogoscoped.
Google Blogoscoped reports that Google is testing the placement of one box results within the middle of the search results. We have seen Google test “search refinements” within the middle of the search results, but never really one box results, at least not in this separated form. Here is a screen shot, courtesy of Google Blogoscoped.