Other Yahoo! Topics Archives

As pre-warned, Yahoo is closing the legendary GeoCities software today.

This is a serious thing on the search front. Let's not forget what Google's, JohnMu, Tweeted "Surprised at how many serious sites are hosted on GeoCities: get a domain name and move your stuff out NOW!" Now he would know the value of some of these GeoCities sites.

Yes, if you have not moved your content, images, videos and sites to a new platform - they will likely be forever gone and forgotten.

An end of an era

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A few weeks ago, Yahoo announced the "enhanced" Yahoo Mail. But for many, Yahoo Mail remained the same. Now I am seeing threads with people both complimenting and disliking the new Yahoo Mail interface. Many are now getting the new Yahoo Mail by default, whereas others are still using the old interface.

I am not going to go through all the new interface and feature changes. The Yahoo Mail blog does that well. Here is a bullet list of changes:

• New interface
• More social
• 3rd party apps
• Better photo integration
• and many more features.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Last night, Google (GOOG) announced earnings and they "met" expectations, because the revenues were up 3%. There is a lot of buzz about this on Techmeme, but to read more about the earnings and the conference call about the earnings, see Greg's notes at Search Engine Land, there are some really nice tidbits in there.

Shortly after, news is leaking out that Yahoo and Microsoft are back at the table and this time, they are really really close to finalizing a deal. Of course these rumors and discussions have been going on for a really long time and many of you are tired of hearing about it. I for one, would like not to mention it until it actually happens, which I hope is soon.

Meanwhile, the biggest buzz over the past 12 hours is that TechCrunch posted stolen internal memos about Twitter's business strategy, that involved their discussions with Google, Microsoft, future growth plans and so much more. Matt McGee posted at Search Engine Land how these correspondence impact the search industry, so you can read those details there. The situation is just a sad one, and I believe law suits will follow.

That is the past 12 hours in search business news, it has been pretty busy.

Forum discussion on the GOOG news at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo 360º is shutting down on July 13th. 360º launched in March 2005 and I was a fan of it early on, that is until I started my own personal blog.

Yahoo has been closing many properties that have not been working as they would have liked. 360º is Yahoo's latest victim.

Yahoo posted documents on how to prepare for this closure. The major topics include:

• Preparing for July 13, 2009
• Saving Your 360° Blog
• Keeping Your 360° Friends
• Keeping Other 360° Information

So long 360º!

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Shouldn't there be some laws about removing historic landmarks from the Internet? I mean, we have laws about physical historic landmarks in the U.S. but not on the Internet?

If you visit GeoCities, you will notice a message that reads:

Sorry, new GeoCities accounts are no longer available.

After careful consideration, we have decided to close GeoCities later this year. We'll share more details this summer. For now, please sign in or visit the help center for more information.

In short, Yahoo is shutting it down and current GeoCity customers have to find a new hosting solution. Yahoo is of course pushing their paid small business hosting service.

Clearly, Yahoo has to turn their business around but to close down history? Maybe Obama has something in his budget to take over the historic GeoCities? ;-)

Personally, I have never used GeoCities - but it was incredibly popular. Googler, JohnMu, Tweeted "Surprised at how many serious sites are hosted on GeoCities: get a domain name and move your stuff out NOW!" Now he would know the value of some of these GeoCities sites.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Since the end of July, there's been a vacancy at Microsoft as Kevin Johnson moved on from the company. The New York Times reports that Johnson's vacancy is finally filled: Qi Lu, a former Yahoo executive, has taken the position.

In selecting Mr. Lu, who will become president of the money-losing online services group in January, Microsoft chose an executive with deep technical knowledge over others with more advertising and media experience. He will be leading the company’s challenge to Google, which dominates the search and online advertising businesses.

Suspicions with hiring technologist Lu have to do with Microsoft wanting to be more like Google. Maybe they're right.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Jerry Yang, from what I hear about him, is a kind, gentle, caring and giving person. To see the news that he is stepping down form the CEO role, for the betterment of the company, is sad but yet necessary. It is sad, cause he is a good guy, but if it was anyone else, I don't think I would be upset about it. Don't get me wrong, Yahoo needs a new CEO to step in and get the company back on track.

Between all the back and forth with Microsoft and Google, all leading to failure, it is a necessary step. Jerry Yang replaced Terry Semel as CEO in June 2007.

I like Mack's take at the WebmasterWorld thread, where he said, "I think Jerry's main problem was he was to attatched. In business you realy need to think with the head, not the heart. Yahoo! was clearly his "baby"."

Overall, I don't think anyone is surprised. Most wonder what took so long and many are not too confident about Yahoo's future.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Sphinn and DigitalPoint Forums.

Argentina Forcing Google & Yahoo To Censor Search Results from Search Engine Land covers this very well. In short, Argentina is forcing, by court order, Yahoo and Google to censor their search results. The results being censored are for select public officials, models, actors, and sports stars.

For example, a search on popular soccer player, Diego Maradona returns no results at all and a message that means:

On the occasion of a court order sought by private parties, we have been forced to temporarily remove some or all of the search results relating to it.

Here is a screen capture:

Why do results come up at Google? Well, Google is censoring the results, but not completely removing the results like Yahoo.

We have discussion on this topic at Sphinn where one member seems to really know a thing or two on the topic. He said:

This is an incredible story - congrats to OpenNet Initiative for reporting this (and SEL + Ramkarthik for spreading the word :)

My first thought was that the Argentinean government had these results removed - it´s no secret that the Los Kirchner censore with a ´soft hand´ (critical journalists are not invited to press conferences, economical figures are´adjusted´ etc.). I was quite surprised to read that it´s actually private parties who have their online presence removed. I´m no expert in law, but find it hard to understand how an Argentinean private party can oblige international SE´s to have their ´names´removed from the SERP´s (and as a result other people with the same name loose their online presence as well).

Under which law do these SE´s operate? Any ideas?

Under the laws of which they run in that specific country. That is how it works.

Forum discussion at Sphinn.

Bloomberg reports that Yahoo has gained search share in September 2008 while Microsoft has lost some of its share.

Yahoo had about 20.2 percent of queries in September, up from 19.6 percent in August, Reston, Virginia-based ComScore said today in an e-mail. Microsoft's share fell to 8.5 percent from 8.9 percent. Google Inc. handled 62.9 percent, compared with 63 percent in August.

Some feel that Yahoo's numbers are grossly miscalculated; one forum member has never seen more than 13% of Yahoo visitors and thinks that comScore's assessment isn't correct. However, pageoneresults notes that Hitwise also does a similar calculation with Yahoo at 18.06% for September. That said, the data is said to be based on "speculative algorithms."

I would argue that different users use different search engines. Maybe they aren't searching for your site/product.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums

Yahoo has released its Q3 earnings report with some interesting observations. First, the earnings this quarter are $1,786 million, which is a a 1 percent increase compared to $1,768 million for the same period of 2007.

Currently, fifteen thousand employees work for Yahoo (though layoffs are being reported), and some forum members wonder why. Most importantly, they wonder why Yahoo's CEO is still in play especially given the huge missed opportunity with the Microsoft deal. Here's one statement about the poor direction of Yahoo:

Yahoo, IMHO is terribly mismanaged to the point that it no longer is credible as a search engine or directory as search results are severely lacking.

There's still hope, though, as some people say. Yahoo needs to be a lot more innovative. The question, probably, is: how?

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

We've prided ourselves on Google Analytics. We've seen Gatineau make its debut last year. Now we're looking at something new: Yahoo Analytics. As part of the acquisition of IndexTools, Yahoo will be launching Yahoo! Web Analytics.

It's not live for everyone yet, as we're made aware that it's currently only available to Yahoo! Small Business customers who host e-commerce sites on Yahoo and Yahoo! Custom Solutions/Yahoo! Buzz Marketing advertising partners.

Is it free? Indeed, it will be (which comes at a shock to many). It also is making past paid customers of IndexTools at $400/month happy.

The best part of IndexTools beyond it being free is that it has real-time analytics tracking rather than a 24-hour delay.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, High Rankings Forum, and DigitalPoint Forums.

To continue our coverage of Google ads on Yahoo Search, where advertisers are both happy and sad about this deal...

The SEC has been sitting on reviewing the deal and requested more time. Google CEO said that with or without SEC's review, they will be launching the deal on October 11th.

"While we have been talking to regulators, we don't know what their position is," Schmidt said. "We don't know if they think it's a good deal or poor deal."

There is some leeway on that date, but not much, said Schmidt.

This is very important for search marketers.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Yesterday, Sam pinged me with a screenshot of Yahoo's explicit endorsement of Firefox 3.

The link takes you to http://downloads.yahoo.com/firefox/ which only seems to work on IE at this time (if you use FF to access that page, it will ask you to download the Yahoo toolbar instead).

Ironically, the same day that users spotted this Firefox 3 endorsement, Internet Explorer 8 Beta 2 was released. On the IEBlog, users can see the new features available to them in the newest version of Internet Explorer. On a similar note, Danny Sullivan reviewed IE8 with how it relates to search functionality.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums, DigitalPoint Forums (#2), and Sphinn.

The Yahoo Search Blog tells us that Yahoo! Site Explorer has a new interface with more dynamic features. Additionally, the redesign boasts a new Site Summary page that provides interesting statistics for sites that have been authenticated with Yahoo! Site Explorer. You can see this and more at https://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new/. (The blog post already has some nice comments, including a bunch of spam comments that I hope Yahoo deletes, like this: "Hi, This new tool is ok, though i haven't checked it but just uploaded my new website on low cost health insurance..." Enough said.)

Barry has already blogged about the new features on Search Engine Land and explains that the new Site Summary page gives you a nice bit of information as seen below:

+ Site URL
+ Number of pages known
+ Number of pages crawled
+ Number of host on this domain
+ Number of inlinks
+ Number of inlink domains
+ Number of outlinks
+ Number of outlink domains

Here's an image of the new interface as well:

It looks good. Thanks for the update, Yahoo!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Last night, Yahoo announced that they opened up Yahoo Buzz to the whole web. When Yahoo launched Yahoo Buzz, it was only open to less than 500 or so publishers, for users to use. Now, Yahoo has opened it to any web page on the internet, allowing any of their users to submit and buzz up any content on the web. You can read more of the news at Techmeme.

To submit content, go to http://buzz.yahoo.com/submit/. To add Yahoo Buzz buttons to your own content, go to http://publisher.buzz.yahoo.com/about.

We have been a Yahoo Buzz publisher for a while, so you have been able to see the Yahoo Buzz buttons on the bottom of our posts for a while now.

A WebmasterWorld thread does point out that it is "Restricted to US only." But other than that, there is not much discussion around this Digg-like service.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Just three months ago, we learned that Yahoo SearchMonkey opened its doors to everyone. On Friday, Yahoo announced that SearchMonkey is turned on for Yelp, Yahoo! Local, and LinkedIn.

Pretty cool. In fact, one forum member says that this is an incentive to develop using SearchMonkey. The SERPs will be different and it somewhat looks like an "update" (though that definition may be contested). Still, it's possible that the update reported this morning has some SearchMonkey ties to it.

Yahoo promises to make more applications that have been submitted more visible in the upcoming months and encourages developers to continue submitting applications. There's definitely good reason for that now!

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo has been having a rough time over the course of the past several months. But that doesn't mean the company stops working and competing, at least that is what you would think.

YahooSarah, the official Yahoo representative at WebmasterWorld, has not posted a response at WebmasterWorld in exactly a year from today. YahooSarah's last post was in a thread named Publisher broken? on July 16, 2007 at 3:50 pm (EST). She said:

I wanted to chime in briefly to let you know that we are aware of the problems you are experiencing and are working to resolve as soon as possible. Apologies for the inconvenience.

I'll post again when I can confirm that we have resolution.

But not post came after that. Yes, YPN was fixed, but no confirmation from Yahoo was received - even a year later.

Yes, we still have YahooPete posting in the forums. His last post was about three weeks ago. But YahooPete is responsible for Yahoo Search Marketing topics, while YahooSarah is responsible for Yahoo Publisher Network (YPN) topics. Maybe YPN is dead and there is no need for YahooSarah's posts?

After several months of indecision regarding the Microsoft-Yahoo merger, Techmeme shares multiple reports that Yahoo and Microsoft are no longer going to consider any sort of partnership (including one from the Yahoo press room.. The reasoning behind this is likely because of billionaire Carl Icahn's possible involvement; it would be too complicated to have a partnership that included the billionaire.

Still, forum members wonder why this even happened. Why does Microsoft want Yahoo so badly? According to forum members, it's because Microsoft hasn't had the history of building such great products internally, so they buy products that are built by another team and then they rebrand them. (This is similar to big brands' approach towards other products, though, considering that Google is the company that bought YouTube.)

One WebmasterWorld member says that this is more of a political battle than anything else:

Yahoo's refusal to accept a deal with Microsoft is much more to do with [their] directors history and sentiment and directly acts against the interests of [their] shareholders.

That could be true. A DigitalPoint Forums thread shows that Jerry Yang isn't very happy.

Meanwhile, one wonders if there's going to be another Yahoo/Microsoft thread in the upcoming months. It seems to be like "one big mess," but it's also a never-ending one at that.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums (#2).

The Yahoo Search Blog recently announced the launch of BOSS -- an "open platform that offers programmatic access to the entire Yahoo! Search index via an API." BOSS currently lets you re-rank and blend results, gives you flexibility on presentation, includes a mashup framework, has web/news/image search, and entitles you to unlimited queries.

The BOSS platform has had a lot of Techmeme buzz, but forum members doubt its capabilities. As WebmasterWorld members claim, search is not one of Yahoo's stronger suits. Yahoo has much better content.

However, not all are quick to discount BOSS. Brett Tabke, WebmasterWorld administrator, believes that this is one of the "most interesting development in search in a long time" and is willing to give it a try. Giving you control as boss (no pun intended) may be a really good direction for Yahoo -- and for you as a searcher.

Forum discussion continues at WebmastwrWorld and Search Engine Watch Forums.

Recent news in Yahoo has a number of innovators -- primarily young, talented, and influential Yahoo employees (in addition to some bigger execs) -- leaving the company. Among those have been Joshua Schachter of delicious, the Flickr founders, and big blogger Jeremy Zawodny. With the blogosphere abuzz of these recent developments, Yahoo must have decided it had to act. CNET reports that Yahoo upper management has been restructured to improve operations within the company.

Will this be the final reorganization? Probably not, as forum members suggest. With Yahoo and Microsoft not teaming up in the near future, CNN Money writes that Google, who may step in, is feeling the heat from Microsoft on claims of antitrust (which I find rather ironic, but moving on.). At the end, though, these two components together may improve all things for Yahoo. Yahoo has told its shareholders that a partnership with Google is better (and well, they may be right considering Google's search share). The reorganization may also help boost Yahoo's image in the eyes of shareholders.

Not everyone agrees with this sentiment, as there is still a concern about Google's control of 90% of the market. Many would rather see a Yahoo-Microsoft partnership than a Yahoo-Google partnership. But that's not happening right now. And forum members say that Microsoft should focus on creating sites with better user experience than to whine about antitrust.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld (Yahoo reorganization), WebmasterWorld (Microsoft vs. Google), and WebmasterWorld (Yahoo's message to stockholders).

Last night I was looking up a phone number for my wife and I noticed that Yahoo People Search has been totally redesigned and repurposed. The new design is extremely clean, compared to the old interface. In addition, when you conduct the search, it takes you directly into the Yahoo Search interface, as opposed to just showing you phone numbers.

Here is the before screen shot that I took back in May 2004:

Here is the new home page for Yahoo People Search:

Here is the search results page for a search conducted in Yahoo People Search:

By the way, Yahoo was able to find the phone number I was looking for, while Google failed in that search.

I really like the new interface and manner in which Yahoo People Search functions. So good job on this Yahoo. I have no idea when this was launched, it may have been months ago, but I have not read or seen any reports on this new launch.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Yesterday's news was all about Microsoft's new deal with Yahoo, which won't require an acquisition, which was dropped earlier this month, according to CNN, CNET, and other sources. Instead, the goal will be to keep the value of Yahoo high and make the shareholders happy. A number of people, including Loren Baker, assume that Microsoft may end up going for Yahoo's search technology. We'll see how this plays out.

There's mixed reviews for this new partnership (which forum members are hoping for rather than an acquisition). One goal is to take down the "Google monopoly" as one forum member puts it. But others believe that it may end up negatively impacting Microsoft since any investment would be a waste of money. Of course, others disagree with that entirely since Yahoo is one of the most popular sites on the Internet today.

What will we expect to see in 20 years if this goes through? (Heck, 20 years is a really long time. Look what has happened in 15 years!)

I guess it's hard to tell whether this is going to be a good investment or not, as there's a variety of opinions on the subject matter. Still, if it's a bad investment, it may be a risk people are willing to take, and if it's a good one, it may be "the deal of a lifetime" as one forum member suggests. Time will only tell.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Bill Slawski has written up another interesting piece about how search engines substitute other search terms for yours depending on past user behavior. Of course, this is related to a patent he discovered that was filed by Yahoo.

Bill explains how this works:

Let’s say that a large number of people who search for the term intellectual property then go on to search for the term patent attorney with their very next search, or within the same search session.

The search engine log files would uncover that such an association exists, and the search engine might explore how common it is for searchers to search for that second phrase. If it happens frequently enough, the search engine may start suggesting patent attorney as a suggested search to searchers along with a display of search results for the term intellectual property.

Therefore, it's important to take these other substitutions into consideration when optimizing your page, according to a Cre8asite Forums post. It is helpful to look at the various suggestions and optimize accordingly.

Forum discussion continues at Cre8asite Forums.

Are you a developer? You may be interested in SearchMonkey, Yahoo's new open developer platform, which was released to all developers yesterday.

The concept behind SearchMonkey is to empower developers to build applications that increase relevancy of search results. Developers can build Enhanced Results or Infobars under the Search Monkey API which can pull data from CitySearch, StumbleUpon, eBay, Epicurious, and more. According to the announcement, "Enhanced Results replace the current standard results with a richer display. All the links in the Enhanced Results must point to the site to which the result refers. Infobars are appended below search results and can include metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (such as adding a movie to a Netflix queue)."

Yahoo is also holding a contest that enables developers to create their own tools using the new API. Winners can receive up to $10,000.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday was Mother's Day and the search engines and search industry blogs/forums had special themes and logos up for the day. Here is a compilation of the logos I found:

Google:

Yahoo (Flash):

Dogpile:

Ask.com

Cre8asite Forums

Search Engine Roundtable

Plus today, Google has a special logo on Google.co.uk for Florence Nightingale:

To view last years Mother's Day logos from the search engine industry, click here. Also, Gary Price has his quick Mother's Day facts.

Forum discussion at Cre8asite Forums, Search Engine Roundtable Forums, and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo has announced on its blog that since security is so important, together with McAfee, Yahoo has launched SearchScan to protect web surfers from sites that contain malicious software such as viruses or software and spam.

If you do a search for a phrase like "screensaver," you'll see the tool in action:

While the solution is great for security, forum members wonder why the questionable results have to be indexed at all. There are a few possible answers to this scenario, including the possibility that the site can be mistakingly flagged as dangerous if there are enough reports about it. This solution instead lets the web owner see it before it's taken off the results completely and gives some information into what could be causing the warning.

Malware reviews aren't new. Google has had the feature since the beginning of 2007. It's very good for Yahoo surfers that they get the added security as well.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Last week Yahoo added a nifty feature to Yahoo Local Search. For example, let's say you are looking for the nearest ATM machine. You can type in ATM, and then your zip code. But you won't be shown the nearest ATM within an X mile radius always.

Yahoo let's you plot the diameter of the circle and drop the center of that circle anywhere you want. Yahoo will then refine the local results based on the radius you selected and the center of the circle. Here is a quick video demo:

It doesn't seem like this tool is without bugs. A WebmasterWorld thread reports a blackhole issue.

I went looking for pizza places in Manhattan and noticed certain places disappeared even if you move the circle a hundred yards or so. You'd suddenly find black holes in the middle of Manhattan where there were, according to yahoo, no pizza places. Budge the circle over an eighth of an inch and the same pizza-free streets would suddenly fill with pizza joints, so there's still some work for them to do.

In any event, a unique and interactive solution to searching locally.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Bigreds, an internet retailer has decided to sue Yahoo for $1 million over click fraud starting back in 2002. Yahoo offered Bigreds $17,000 back, but Bigreds wants more and they are suing for over $1 million in damages and penalties.

I wanted to pull out some of the best comments on this lawsuit, which you can read more about at InformationWeek, from a WebmasterWorld thread:

Look if you are going to build your billion dollar business around PAYPERCLICK then you should probably have systems, people, backups for the most obvious exploit.

It's the modern day equivalent of a bank without a safe.

Um, i'm looking at this site, and I really don't see how any traffic would convert, regardless of whether it's fradulent or not. Sorry Red, but I'm thinking that maybe the lawyers are the only ones that are going to come out ahead here.

I don't really see the problem with advertisers bringing suits against garbitrage because the advertiser foots the bill for the middle man market they create.

Decide for yourself...

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Update: It seems like Google Reader is showing embedded Flickr Videos, for me at least. I inserted a picture below showing the Flickr Video in this post, rendering in my Google Reader (on Apple Safari).

A Google Groups thread has word from a Google representative, Roger from the Google Reader team, that Flickr Video will soon be supported in Google Reader.

For example, if you are using an RSS reader, you might not be able to see the embedded Flickr video below this line:

But soon, if you are using Google Reader, you will be able to see embedded Flickr Videos - like you can see embedded YouTube or Google Video videos.

Roger of Google said:

Thanks for reporting this. We're currently working with Flickr to get Flickr videos to embed properly when viewed in Reader. We should be able to straighten it out shortly. Thanks for your patience!

Flickr first launched 90-second video clips on the night of April 9th.

Forum discussion at Google Groups.

Here is that picture:

I covered this years ago, with Yahoo!'s Logo Surprise (Yahoo! Easter Egg). Basically, if you go to Yahoo.com and click on the exclamation point in the logo at the top, it will Yodel for you. The Yahoooooo yodel.

I am pretty sure Yahoo took this down for a while and probably recently added it when they launched the new logo placement a couple weeks ago. Here is a video of it in action:

In light of all the Yahoo news, this bit fun is always welcoming.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

Flickr has announced that it is supporting video in addition to the standard digital photograph or image. Videos are limited to 90 seconds in length and 150MB in size and will still inherit other Flickr features, including geotagging, comments, captions, and privacy restrictions.

Want to see it in action? Here's a video that Barry took:

The biggest gripe for many people is the 90 second restriction. Personally, since I'm not too keen on video, the 90 second limit is a breath of fresh air. Maybe this will actually get me to be more interested in video content knowing that I won't be confined to my chair for all the much longer. Some other video services have unpredictable lengths, and it's nice to know that I won't have to sit through video that long on Flickr. Additionally, some people don't have the attention span for it. I'm not saying I don't, but I'm always busy reading and video requires my undivided attention. ;)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yesterday, we learned that Yahoo will be acquiring analytics package IndexTools.

Forum members overall think it's an interesting move. While some gripe about past customer service issues with the analytics company, others have had better experience. They hope that the acquisition will improve things for everyone.

Why now? Yahoo is going to continue to improve their offerings. You can't really blame them. Maybe IndexTools will be available for free in the future. ;)

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Werty discovered at WebmasterWorld that Yahoo's search engine was throwing a nice finger at you when you searched for the finger in Yahoo. It all came from their announcement on their blog, Yodel Anecdotal.

But it's not really the fact that they are showing you the finger that should be interesting. The results integrate the new Yahoo Video Search Ads. (On that note, Google Video Ads are already live.)

Here's what you'd see if you searched now:

I assume it'll be gone soon.

That was one cute and clever April Fool's Prank.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Last week, Yahoo launched Yahoo Buzz, which can be compared to a social news site like Digg. Here's the lowdown:

Currently in beta, Yahoo! Buzz measures consumer votes and search patterns to identify interesting and timely stories and videos from large news sources as well as niche blogs around the Web. Top stories are then given primary editorial consideration for feature placement on Yahoo.com.

People, like Muhammad Saleem, consider this a great step for Yahoo for a variety of reasons. It's social search at its finest but only considers contributions from sites that are part of the Yahoo Publisher Network.

Will this be the next social news site? Many people think that Digg is the forerunner (but personally, I'm open to new social sites).

Digg is entrenched it would be very difficult for a new entrant to enter the market without showing that it is more capable and had more features than the incumbent.

Therefore, Yahoo Buzz should have some serious potential, and the timing is good.

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and DigitalPoint Forums.

Whether or not Yahoo accepts Microsoft's bid, Microsoft seems heavily invested in search and will continue to look to compete with Google, according to Reuters. In an interview, Bill Gates is quoted as saying that Yahoo would help make the process easier, but even if they don't, Microsoft will focus on competing with Google:

"We can afford to make big investments in the engineering and marketing that needs to get done. We will do that with or without Yahoo," said Gates in an interview with Reuters.

"But we also see that we'd get there faster if the great engineering work that Yahoo has done and the great engineers there were part of the common effort," said Gates, who is Microsoft's biggest shareholder.

A lot of forum members believe that Microsoft is quite far from competing with Google in the world of search. After all, Bill Gates once considered the Internet a passing fad.

But others feel that there's more to it. Perhaps this is a wake up call for Yahoo to join Team Microsoft (to form Team MicroHoo, of course) because it is probably Yahoo's goal to defeat Google as well.

Even so, people don't believe that Microsoft and Yahoo can really merge and become one unit. One member says, " I think they would be better served by developing their own tech." Perhaps that's true.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

It's with a lot of sadness that I report about the ongoing Yahoo layoffs that have begun occurring yesterday. Danny has aggregated the news stories and headlines, and we're even seeing a Facebook group called "I worked at Yahoo until today" that has some familiar faces.

At Search Engine Roundtable, we're really sad to see this happen. All of the Yahooers have been played an important role in the search space, but many of you have also been very wonderful to us whether at conferences or with proactive approaches in the forums and blogs, and we're really sorry to see you go. We wish you the best in the future.

Forum discussion continues at Sphinn.

Tamar reported a couple weeks ago that Microsoft put a bid in for Yahoo. We learned over the weekend that Yahoo would reject the offer and they would possibly partner with AOL to prevent a hostile take over by Microsoft.

What does this all mean for search marketers? Right now, I wouldn't even speculate. There are just way too many variables right now. To start making guesses as to which way Yahoo might go? If Microsoft does buy Yahoo, if Yahoo partners with AOL, if Yahoo sticks at it alone??? Even if one of the above transactions happens tomorrow and it won't happen in a day, we as search marketers still have a tremendous amount of time to prepare for it.

Let's say Yahoo merges with AOL. The consolidation of technologies, if and when it happens, would be so far down the road that it would be pointless to speculate the consequences of such an event before we know what might happen.

If you are a stock holder, then it is a different story. But search marketers can sit back and watch.

In any event, this is major search news and the forums are buzzing up and down on the topics. Here are some threads from over the weekend on the news:

• Yahoo in Merger Talks with AOL, WebmasterWorld
• Yahoo May Merge with AOL, Search Engine Watch Forums
• Yahoo Rejects Microsoft!!! Breaking News!, DigitalPoint Forums
• Yahoo to Reject Microsoft Bid, WebmasterWorld
• The Impact on Google Adsense of Microsoft Buying Yahoo, WebmasterWorld
• Yahoo Has Formally Rejected Microsoft Bid, WebmasterWorld

If the Microsoft bid for Yahoo goes through, Reuters says that they might have to borrow money to make it happen.

"It's likely we're actually going to borrow for the first time," said [Microsoft CFO Chris] Liddell in an annual strategy meeting with analysts. "It's going to be a mixture of the cash we have on hand plus debt."

Is that the end for Microsoft? Some people think that borrowing the money is a really bad idea.

Does anyone else think that they are underestimating the cost of integrating Yahoos services into their portfolio? If they are borrowing money for the purchase, how are they going to finance rewriting all the software?

Others, however, are more optimistic:

They have 19B in cash reserves, and just a year ago they had over 40B in cash reserves. They make about $17 billion in profit a year, so I don't see any major issues here. In the worst case, they can issue bonds or choose other alternatives.

Brett Tabke feels that this might just be too high of an asking price.

Personally, I have strongly mixed emotions on the deal. I hate to see competition decreased in the search space, but I agree that the Microsoft offer is a natural and evolutionary thing for them to do. They need to do it.

However, the offer price seems insanely high to me. Especially if daddy warbucks has to go with hands out to banks to make the deal work. Lets be honest, Yahoo's market share in search is going to continue to erode. They have thrown up little in the last year that will stop or even slow down the Google steam roller. How can Microsoft make $44b possibly work? That seems soo high - too high for a falling giant.

Many agree on that point.

It'll be interesting to see how this plays out. It will be more interesting to see its impact on others in the search space.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

After Google learned of the bid for Microsoft to buy Yahoo, the Google blog responded harshly to the possibilities of an acquisition. David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer of Google, writes:

So Microsoft's hostile bid for Yahoo! raises troubling questions. This is about more than simply a financial transaction, one company taking over another. It's about preserving the underlying principles of the Internet: openness and innovation.

It also seems that Google is trying their hardest to thwart the deal. According to the Wall Street Journal, Google's Eric Schmidt has called Yahoo's Jerry Yang to broker some sort of other deal.

The Google blog post also says:

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC?

Many WebmasterWorld forum members have found flaws with this sentiment. One member calls it hypocritical to even make such a statement:

Ah, the hypocrisy! Google already has this very inappropriate influence on the internet. Quite an offensive statement from Google IMHO.

What about Google's claim on "openness?" Perhaps that's the case in America, but not elsewhere, like China.

Talk about calling the kettle black.

Perhaps Google can explain that 'openness' to the people of China. Google caved to the communist government and censored search results for the sake of profits.

On DigitalPoint Forums, members liken the blog post to Google "crying and complaining" about the proposed acquisition.

And finally, the blog post is scrutinized on Digg, where the highest-voted comment talks about Google's current search share:

I find it interesting that Google would accuse Microsoft of trying to build a monopoly over Internet-related businesses, considering that Google has over 60% of the search market. While a 60% share is hardly a monopoly, Yahoo and Microsoft combined will have just 32%, leaving Google as the dominant player.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and Digg.

In an unexpected move this morning, Microsoft has made a $44.6 billion move to acquire Yahoo. Needless to say, it has come as a shock to everyone.

What's in store? We're not sure, but we hope it's good.

I thought this was coming... especially after Bill Gates kind of hinted for something big to happen on CNBC the other day.

I just hope they keep Yahoo's properties under the Yahoo name but put in Live search.

And others are seeing the promise of fewer major search engines to worry about in SEO:

So in the future only two search engines to optimize for..... :)

Some people already saw it coming.

Yes, I predicted this sometime ago when the rumour mills were working overtime. This is only natural and the only way to counter Google. Combining the resources of MSFT and YHOO, they may be able to create a stronger search brand. Yahoo will almost certainly need to accept.

All I have to say is wow. It'll be interesting to see if any other companies step up to bid for Yahoo in the interim. This is the news to watch this month.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, HighRankings Forum, and Sphinn (hi Danny!).

Yesterday, CNet introduced that Yahoo is going to be supporting the OpenID standard for a "universal Internet log-in." The article claims that the biggest victor is not Yahoo but OpenID.

However, on WebmasterWorld, the concept of OpenID is irksome to many.

Oh, I can see it now, people don't use hard passwords...then the hackers can get it ALL in one fell swoop. That could be a disaster for many.

Not all feel this way, though. It's good to get a centralized system for password storage:

I dont think there is much of a safety issue here, most of the mainstream public use the same userId/password across different websites now anyway!...So why not legitimize (the practice) with a central userid provider (hopefully with a strict password requirement)

In any event, it's still great that Yahoo has taken this approach. You can access the OpenID program on Yahoo at http://openid.yahoo.com/.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yesterday, we heard again that Yahoo is laying off 1000 workers. Sadly, Yahoo's stock is also faltering.

Here's a 3 month snapshot:

Why is Yahoo having such a hard time? According to Roger Montti, it's because they are unable to attract teens and young adults. They also are taking in more money but are turning less profit.

Is Yahoo going to go down for good? No, forum members don't think so.

I think Yahoo has lots going for it with regards to content. It has the best email -- way better than Gmail or MSN Hotmail. The New version of the Yahoo mail (I pay for mine yearly and get the premium).

I was watching MSNBC the other night and they were talking about Y Answers and you keep hearing about their OMG site. I think its a great time to invest in Yahoo while their stock is down.

Y! is not going anywhere.

Google is Yahoo's biggest competition. And Yahoo needs to up their game, according to others:

The problem with Yahoo isn't that they soley need something new or some updates, its that they need to do something to actively shore up their % of users, right now google is pickpocketing them. Then they need to start actively competing with google, taking their users.

Additional coverage is at Techmeme and the Yahoo earnings report is on Search Engine Land.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

The New York Times reports that Yahoo is cutting hundreds of jobs this year.

Yahoo is planning to lay off hundreds of employees in an effort to increase its profitability, prop up its deflated stock price and narrow the focus of its sprawling Internet portal to a smaller number of crucial areas, people close to the company said Monday.

The announcement is supposed to be made official within the next few days, and according to reports, it's still unknown at this time who will get the axe and who will remain at the company.

One thing, however, is that it looks like this is just the beginning of a trend at many Internet companies, according to a forum member.

I suspect such layoff notices may become a common occurance for many Internet companies over the next few months.

Is the bubble about to burst? I don't know ... look at Google's stock and tell me:

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo has begun shipping out their Christmas gifts. One Yahoo Search Marketing advertiser received his gift. CPA Affiliates posted a picture of the gift he received, a nice looking laptop case.

You can see a picture of the inside at CPA Affiliates.

Google gave out 2GB Memory Cards and some advertisers also got a $100 DonorsChoose card to give to their favorite school. But some special advertisers received a Flip Ultra Video Camera.

Love schwag, so does Tamar, she devoted a blog just to schwag at SchwagAddict.com.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.

There's a lot of news coverage on the imprisonment of pro-Democracy journalist Shi Tao and discussion in the forums. Search Engine Land writes that Jerry Yang has apologized to the family of Tao and says that they will support them while he is in jail.

Forum members are a bit disgusted that Yahoo gave information to China about this reporter which helped him be imprisoned -- but then refused to acknowledge any part in it. Eventually, Yahoo succumbed to the pressure, but forum members are unimpressed. As one forum member says, "hypocrisy knows no bounds."

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

WebmasterWorld members have reported that there are problems with the Yahoo Site Explorer API. The problem seems to be either that the service is unavailable or that Yahoo only provides the first 50 results and nothing further.

There's no word from Yahoo about this issue, but the problem is confirmed by at least two individuals in the WebmasterWorld thread, where the discussion continues.

Yahoo has released Yahoo! Mash in what appears to be the closest thing to a Facebook-MySpace clone that I've seen coming from Yahoo. Initial impressions seem to indicate that it's not much different than Facebook at all and many individuals are happier using the older social network.

On WebmasterWorld, moderator martinibuster points out from a NY Times blog that the differentiating feature of Yahoo! Mash is that profiles can be edited by multiple users.

The site, which began an invitation only preview Friday, is quite an homage to Facebook, but it adds one significant new wrinkle: users can edit each other’s profiles, redecorating, changing information, and adding features. Think the Wikipedia version of a social network.

Of course, not all users are enthusiastic about this feature. Would you want to find your profile altered in a bad way by friends (or enemies?) I wouldn't think so. I do have a Mash Pet on my profile though, and I see that my friends are taking good care of him. (Please continue to do so.)

But others think that this is a plus, because you'll only be adding true friends, not people who would blatantly edit your profile. Also, some elements of other users' profiles cannot be altered (I tried. No luck).

For those who don't have access yet, here's a preview of my profile.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld, DigitalPoint Forums, and Cre8asite forums.

Justin Goldberg, a Search Engine Watch regular, has announced on the Search Engine Watch Forums that he has created a feed that combines four Search Engine Watch forums feeds. Using Yahoo! Pipes, he has created a single feed that integrates the Search Engine Watch homepage feed, the blog feed, the forums feed, and the experts feed.

If you're interested in subscribing to that for more forum goodness, you can do so by clicking here.

If you'd like to preview the data, you can do so here.

That's pretty cool stuff.

Forum discussion continues at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Last week we reported on a Yahoo update and a new method of crawling. The new crawl behavior is supposed to help the Yahoo bot, Slurp, be more efficient on your site.

It seems that many SEOs and Webmasters are not happy with this change.

A WebmasterWorld thread has several negative comments:

OK, this is completely bogus and helps nobody. The number of IPs that Slurp uses? WHO CARES...

The fact that Yahoo has multiple crawlers for every division that crawl independently and don't share the common cache, now THAT's a problem that needs to be fixed.

We get 50% of our pages crawled every day.

Well Yahoo is a waste of bandwidth on one of my sites (a large directory). It hammers it almost every day and has only sent about 975 referrers this month. That is so low that I wonder if people even use Yahoo in Ireland for anything other than e-mail. I am strongly considering blocking it.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

While Yahoo may not own the largest piece of the search market, it's still the preferred brand over Google, according to a recent report.

Data from the University of Michigan American Consumer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) showed Yahoo had seen its customer satisfaction score rise 3.9 percent from a year ago to 79 out of 100 points, while Google's rating fell about 3.7 percent to 78 points.

While Google remains the dominant Web search engine, Yahoo's Internet presence is gaining user approval for its network of Web sites, e-mail, social networks and other features, according to the survey.

I'm a huge fan of Flickr and del.icio.us, so I can see that their social networks play a big role in this approval system.

However, many webmasters on WebmasterWorld believe that the poll doesn't amount to much. They believe that Yahoo's search technology needs improvement. Even so, that doesn't discount the fact that their social sites totally rock.

Another WebmasterWorld thread points out that Yahoo "topped Google as a portal, but not as a search engine." The same is echoed in a DigitalPoint Forums thread. That would explain the doubt in the first WebmasterWorld thread.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld (1), WebmasterWorld (2), and DigitalPoint Forums.

Yahoo has bought a stake in Tyroo, an online advertising agency in India, according to InfoWorld. The article says that approximately 35 to 50 percent of the company was acquired for an undisclosed amount of money. With this move, Yahoo hopes to capture more of Indian's fast-growing advertising market.

A WebmasterWorld member is not happy with this move. He says he has already been approached by Yahoo to replace his ads with Tyroo's.

Reduction of competition in this space is not good news. They had approached us with ad inventory offerring to replace adSense with Tyroo ads with a better EPC.

Given that Yahoo publisher network is non existent in India, I hope they will not interfere with the network Tyroo has created for itself.

However, the same member thinks that this move is good for India-specific traffic, which is exactly what I believe this acquisition was meant to accommodate.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

In what may be a response to Terry Semel's departure from Yahoo, WebmasterWorld moderator martinibuster reports that Wenda Harris Millard, Yahoo's Chief Sales Officer, has left the company. Search Engine Land reports that Millard will be working at Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia.

This is also part of a Yahoo initiative to combine search and display advertising teams under the leadership of David Karnstedt, according to a June 24 press release. Yahoo has written in the press release that Millard is leaving "effective immediately."

However, Millard has told the Wall Street Journal that it appears that they misrepresented her departure.

"I feel badly that Yahoo has had such a tough time lately," said Ms. Millard in an interview. "And I'm sorry they announced the story this way because clearly I resigned and I have a great new job," she added.

According to forum members, Millard is "going to be missed big-time."

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Update: Kara Swisher has interviewed Wenda Harris Millard regarding the recent change in management. [Thanks, Christine Mohan!]

According to numerous reports and a WebmasterWorld thread, Yahoo is rumored to be looking to acquire MySpace for 25% of its company stake, which apparently is equivalent to $12 billion.

With Yahoo's acquisitions of Flickr, del.icio.us, MyBlogLog, and Rivals.com, we're aware that Yahoo likes to involve itself in the social sphere. But we're not sure that MySpace is worth so much.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out and if Yahoo acquires the #1 social network, second to Facebook.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo! has hit its "teenage years," according to a L.A. Times article (subscription required). But investors are bothered the "growing pains."

Yahoo Chief Executive Terry Semel presided over the company's annual shareholder meeting here, emphasizing the positives but acknowledging missed business opportunities.

It appears that Terry Semel, Yahoo's chief executive, is getting used to the fact that he's #2 behind Google. Last year, an investor says, he was more "combative... He was really angry about people comparing Yahoo to Google then."

A WebmasterWorld discusses the article and Yahoo's predicament in greater detail.

The growing pains? One member says: "Like a parent pulling the sheet over their eyes!" Puberty is a frustrating thing.

What is Yahoo here for? Another member wonders:

What bothers me about Yahoo is that I'm not exactly sure what they're for.

Google is a search engine with spin-off businesses, but Yahoo's core directory has effectively been abandoned, so there's not really anything familiar or obviously useful about the yahoo.com homepage.

Others believe there is promise for Yahoo:

I use yahoo a lot, and I get a lot off traffic from them too,

So, I for one hope they do better, and raise their game

Go Yahoo!

Furthermore, a few members are frustrated with Google and want to focus their energy on Yahoo. They hope that things improve for the company.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

The big news this morning is that Microsoft is looking to acquire Yahoo for $50 billion. Over at Search Engine Land, Danny also covers the possible merger.

Ironically, DigitalPoint members are hoping that this ends the the Google search monopoly:

Thats a good news.. Thats another way to remove Google's monopoly..

But on WebmasterWorld, they think that Google will only get ahead:

great news for google

What about rankings? Whose search engine will take over?

I think the deal would be bad, some of us rank good in one search engine, and poorly in the other

That's a really good point.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint.

In an attempt to improve the consumer shopping experience, Yahoo! announced yesterday that it is looking to partner with eBay's PayPal and will add shopping cart links to sponsored results for merchants who accept PayPal Express Checkout. A WebmasterWorld thread looks at this partnership more closely.

Yahoo! has introduced a PayPal Checkout Program with more information for how merchants can sign up.

Since PayPal is still a familiar household name and Google Checkout is a relatively foreign entity, this seems to be a win in the forum community:

I'm excited about this. I've always liked PayPal and I'm rooting for Yahoo to do great things. It seems like Y may win this little battle.

Chris Sherman covered this topic on Search Engine Land. After speaking with Rich Riley, Yahoo! Senior Vice President, about how this differs from Google Checkout, Chris received a response that is quite similar to my own opinion: the number of PayPal customers is huge (over 100 million!) and this partnership is a great thing for Yahoo!

I have also included a screenshot of the shopping cart link:

The one thing that confused me was that nothing happened when I clicked on the icon or hovered over it with my mouse. In due time, I suppose.

Forum discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Earlier this week, I wrote about Yahoo offering unlimited mail storage. I didn't mention this recent WebmasterWorld finding that states that Yahoo is going to offer new APIs for Yahoo mail. According to a news report:

Late on Wednesday, Yahoo plans to deliver application programming interfaces (APIs) for Yahoo Mail, said Chad Dickerson, head of the Yahoo Developer Network. The move comes on the heels of an announcement to offer unlimited storage capacity for Yahoo Mail users starting from May.

Yahoo officials had indicated in September of last year their intention to let external developers write applications for Yahoo Mail, and the tools will now be available at the Yahoo Developer Network Web site.

The Yahoo Mail API will be added onto Yahoo's many APIs available to programmers, including Yahoo! Answers, Yahoo! Shopping, and Yahoo! Maps, among many others.

Discussion continues at WebmasterWorld.

Members at DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld Forums note that Yahoo is now offering unlimited mail storage. Yahoo confirmed this on their company blog, saying that it is in honor of its 10th anniversary. The unlimited quota will kick in in May of 2007.

On DigitalPoint, many people seem happy at the news:

Clever Marketing...Unlimited really sells people...

Others hope that Yahoo will increase the attachment quota that is currently set to 10MB:

i like unlimited space but i want more than 10mb attachment filesize. hope they provide that soon.

Happy 10th birthday, Yahoo!

Forum discussion continues at DigitalPoint and WebmasterWorld.

As I reported yesterday at Search Engine Land, Yahoo Launches Suggestion Boards - Digg Community Upset. In reality, Yahoo! had these "suggestion boards" for a while, at least a few months. But Yahoo! officially announced them two days ago.

As you can see by the screen capture above. Users can submit "suggestions" and then other users can vote on those suggestions, so that Yahoo! can determine what are the most wanted suggestions out there.

Digg has the same model, but are conceptually different, in that users vote on news stories.

So if you want a new feature on a Yahoo! property, you add the idea to the list and hope others want it as well, and vote for it.

In my opinion, this is very different from Digg.

So go ahead and vote at the SiteExplorer Suggestion Board for your favorite feature requests.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I was lucky enough to be invited to Yahoo!'s party last night at the Palms Hotel. Yahoo! rented out the Hugh Hefner's Sky Villa, which I hear goes for 40k per night. They had Chris Pierce performing live with his band during the event. The suite is absolutely cool. You walk in and to the left is a bar, with two bartenders, past that is a living room type of area with a fireplace, big TV, sofas. It all looks out to the Vegas skyline, seriously a sweet view. Then there is an outdoor mini pool that looks like the picture below.

On the right of the lower rooms is an other bar with more sofas. Then you can walk upstairs to the rooms. There was a photobooth on the left, past that on the left is the bathroom and shower, Rand decided to give it a try. Outside the bathroom is the revolving bed, you can see Andrew Goodman, Rand Fishkin and Myself on it at the same time. Outside of that room, top level, right side of the level, was Hef's room (wasn't allowed in), this massage room, and then some other bedrooms.

The invite list, I hear was small, when I left, I took a cab back with someone who was pretty upset he was turned away at the door.

Very cool party and tons of pics at Flickr. Thanks Yahoo!

Chris Sherman has the ultimate write up on Yahoo Updates Toolbar and Bookmarks. Here is a bullet list of updates, as I see them:

• auto-complete feature
• bookmarking with thumbnail captures
• bookmark folders
• bookmark tags
• bookmarks searched by toolbar
• bookmarks and tags are private in nature with this toolbar

Download the new toolbar at http://beta.toolbar.yahoo.com/.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums and WebmasterWorld.

Shandy King posted a thread at Search Engine Roundtable Forums letting us know that you can now use Yahoo! TV to program your TiVo to record shows for you. FYI - I do not own a TV, so I am not addicted to TiVo's but a lot of people are.

To schedule programming, visit http://tv.yahoo.com/onlinesch/tivo/introscreen.

What do you need to make this happen?

• A valid Yahoo! account with a yahoo.com e-mail address
  
• A valid TiVo user account
  
• A TiVo Series2 DVR
  

So now what is the benefit of using Yahoo! TV over TiVo's interface?

(1) Yahoo! gets to associate your TV watching preferences and history with your Yahoo! profile
(2) If you are a Yahoo! user, you have one place to manage this stuff

But number one is a biggy for bridging online ads and TV ads.

This was a long time coming, Yahoo! partnered with TiVo back on Nov. 7, 2005.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

If you go to Yahoo!, I bet you'll have a had time trying to use Yahoo!'s Blog Search feature today. Well, at least until it goes back online. Try doing a search at blog.news.search.yahoo.com, it is gone! Yes, it has also been removed from being embedded in Yahoo! News, and has been replaced by Yahoo! Images, for now. A search on google.com at Yahoo! News would typically show both a Yahoo! News listing and Yahoo! Blog Search listing for this site, now we only see a Yahoo! News listing.

Is it gone forever? Nope. At least that is what Greg Jarboe finds from a Yahoo! spokesman, Brian Nelson.

In an email sent a short while later, he added, “Maybe this goes without saying, (but) blog content remains an important part of our overall news and news search strategy. It’s worth mentioning again because I’ve read speculation in the blogosphere about what Y! might be thinking bigger picture when it comes to blog content.”

What is interesting is that the forums are pretty dead on this topic. I was not able to find a WebmasterWorld thread on this, but I did find a Search Engine Watch Forums thread with some limited discussion.

Why didn't Yahoo! post something about this? Why pull it without telling anyone? Heck, the blog community is almost in an uproar about this, as you can imagine. Take a look at Zawodny's recent links section and how he quotes, Steve Rubel;

To me this is a sure sign that Yahoo is gearing up to launch an integrated feed reader/search engine the way Ask.com/Bloglines did in June. This is the second piece of evidence in the puzzle.

Of course Jeremy can't say anything or he would have. Quoting someone else... Well, let's see.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

I wrote about this news yesterday at the SEW Blog. But why is it important for SEOs to know about this specific API? Well, Yahoo! is doing a ton of marketing for Yahoo! Answers. That product has grown very quickly. The content is very rich. The content is formed in a question and answer format. The content is perfect for those long tail queries.

If you use the API properly, you too can pull that content, repurpose it around your niches. You can:

(1) Build more content for you niche
(2) Provide more information for your users
(3) Help your users more
(4) Rank for more keywords
(5) Give users more of a reason to stay on your site
(6) Give site owners more of a reason to link to you

APIs have given many SEOs the edge to ranking well for their desired keyword terms. If used properly and with some creativity, you can do wonders with APIs, specifically this one.

The API is available at http://developer.yahoo.com/answers/

Good luck!

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Announced yesterday at the Social Search Overview session, the Yahoo! Search Builder.

With Yahoo! Search Builder you can create a custom Web search engine by selecting a set of trusted sites to search across or you can tune the search algorithm to the topic of your choice. Beyond Web search, Search Builder includes Site search and News search.

More details at Yahoo! Search Blog and Yahoo! Search Builder Help.

Yahoo! Search Builder at http://builder.search.yahoo.com/

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo launched a new tool in the Korean domain named Webzari. What it does is use the Site Explorer data to map your inlinks on a map, in the form of planets. A link map, in a sense, with AJAX and more flavor.

You can check it out in action by clicking here.

Pretty cool and here is a screen capture.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

Every now and then I check the directory listings I have at Yahoo! to see what is up with them. I have bookmarked them ages ago and when I have some free time I check them out. I checked last night and noticed that Yahoo! has added the "Save to My Web" button to the top right corner of the pages.

Social search, online bookmarking, is found everywhere with Yahoo!. In Yahoo! Local, where I bookmark phone numbers I use every now and then and now in the directory, which gets less and less attention from Yahoo.

The little icon to me is very useful. If you want to see my listings you can check them out in the New York Consulting list or the generic Yahoo! Web Rank.

I posted a forum thread on if this is a new feature for the Yahoo! Directory or not at Search Engine Watch Forums.

It appears as though India has blocked both Yahoo!'s Geocities and Google's Blogspot services from access within India. Folks in India are reporting that they cannot reach either free hosted pages services. Is this a censorship issue? Not sure. Is it a security prevention issues? Not sure. Probably somewhat of both.

Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums:

• Geocities.com pages not accessible in India????
  
• India Bans Blogspot, Typepad, etc... Wow!

A WebmasterWorld thread asks if there are any issues with using hotlink protection for your images and the same images suffering in image search. Hotlink protection, if you do not know what it is, is when you want to dissuade others from pulling your images directly from your server. You can use hotlink protection, such as with htaccess, to either block or serve up a different image, to those pulling the images from you. But does this affect your search rankings in image search engines like Google image search?

Most of the folks in the forum discussion say there is no issue with Google and hotlink protection. Some recommend that you allow certain domains to display the images properly, such as your own domain (duh) and the shopping search engines (if that applies), news engines (if that applies), blog engines, image search engines and so on. But that list can get long.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

A WebmasterWorld thread named Yahoo is Altering Webmaster Content describes how Yahoo! has added a security feature that removes all JavaScript from the publishers. The security feature is a tagged known as "securty=restricted" which disables all javascript in Internet Explorer. That means any AdSense or JavaScript driven banners are stripped from the content.

Senior Member Cabbie says; "To me this constitutes blatant theft. For all purposes they are providing your content on your bandwidth and at the same time preventing you from getting a return. How can anyone buy anything while in a secruity restricted frame, when all cookies and java is disabled."

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Yahoo! has relaunches Yahoo! Video to be more YouTube and Google Video like. The Yahoo Search Blog announced the new features which include;

• New user interface to search and browse by new, featured, popular, category and more.
• A place to upload, manage, and share your videos named My Studio.
• RSS abilities
• The concept of "channels" which seem to be search based triggers.
• MyFavorites section
• And more sharing abilities...

Also there is a new Yahoo! Video Team Blog.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

I posted under embargo that Yahoo Adds Babel Fish at midnight, Wednesday night. Yahoo! has has revitalized Babel Fish at http://babelfish.yahoo.com/. Babel Fish is a translation tool first on December 9th, 1997 by Alta Vista (see SEW). You can translate up to 150 words of text to dozens of languages, you can translate a Web page, you can download babel fish widget to your Yahoo! toolbar, or you can add the feature to your web site. In addition, there are special features for German and French users that enables a "searcher's queries and looks across the entire Web in multiple languages to find the most comprehensive set of relevant results. Yahoo! Search results are returned on one multi-lingual page." For more information on Bable Fish, see the Babel Fish Help page at Yahoo! Also, see Gary Price's historical roundup on Babel Fish and the Yahoo! Search Blog.

WebmasterWorld members seem to be overall very happy with this announcement. Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Chris Sherman reported Wednesday that Yahoo's Farechase Adds Features. New features include;

(1) Integration into the main Web search. For example, a search on flights to st. louis puts this Yahoo Shortcut at the top of the results.

(2) They added a social networking element, where you can save fare searches to Yahoo My Web. I conducted a search and saw a "save to my web" link at the top. Attached is an image of how it looks, cropped a bit, click on the image for a full view.

(3) They also integrated satellite imagery of Yahoo Maps beta into FareChash, but I am not sure how that works.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

This was written on 4/12 and schedule to be published today.

YahooSarah posts at Search Engine Watch Forums that Yahoo! will be holding a small business event exclusively for small businesses in the New Orleans area. They are working with Bell South to offer "free training and up to $1,500 in free products and services to session attendees to help facilitate small businesses recovery in the Gulf Coast."

WHEN: Friday, April 7, 9 a.m. – 5 p.m.

WHERE: InterContinental Hotel, 444 St. Charles Ave. (at Poydras), New Orleans, LA

The event page with more information can be found at http://events.yahoo.com/backinbiz.

Yahoo! employees from around the country will be on hand to get your business set up online. You’ll be eligible for up to $1500 worth of free online services. We’ll help you create a web site, build e-commerce offerings, and launch search advertising programs to promote your products and services on the Web.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

Last week I reported over at the SEW blog New Look for Yahoo's Home Page. It seems like now folks in the forums are noticing this limited beta test of the new Yahoo! home page. A DigitalPoint thread named Yahoo! Homepage Redesigned shows one or two people noticing the new design.

I have archived the image from flickr of the new design.

Forum discussion on the new Yahoo! design at DigitalPoint Forums.

About a week or so ago, a member posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Significant flaw in desktop search - Outlook which describes how Yahoo Desktop Search locks your mail file (.PST), preventing it from being backed up. So he asked in the thread if anyone knew a way around it. So I emailed Yahoo! and they provided an answer.

There are actually very few steps for you to execute. Assuming that you'll be running a batch file to execute the backup:

1) Add a line to the batch file, prior to running the backup

c:\> taskkill.exe /f /im "YahooDesktopSearch.exe"

2) Add another line in the batch (after the backup is executed) to restart YDS.

c:\Program Files\Yahoo!\Yahoo! Desktop Search\> YahooDesktopSearch.exe

(Note: the path above may be slightly different on your computer, though this is the default path)

If this is done correctly, every time his backup is run, YDS will be shut down before and restarted after the backup is complete.

Forum discussion at Search Engine Watch Forums.

DigitalPoint forums has a thread with a poll asking Should jeremy Zawodny as a Yahoo! employee sell backlinks from his blog?

Currently the responses are scattered with no strong position either way. Of the 17 polled, currently, the answers are as follows;

No, it's a conflict of interest [3] 17.65%
I see nothing wrong with it [5] 29.41%
It's ok but doesn't shine a good light on him or Yahoo! [5] 29.41%
I really don't care one way or another [4] 23.53%

If you can get over to the thread and vote it would make for an interesting poll.

Oh, btw, funny how I place this in the Yahoo Topics category.

Yup, its true, the worlds are converging. I keep referring back to Yahoo! Life Engine but its true, it is happening. The next phase is, as Gary puts it, Program Your TiVo via Yahoo. Gary notes that if you go to http://tv.yahoo.com/ you will notice this button;

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Just cant wait for the search integration with all this TV stuff, including Google's efforts and hopefully Ask Jeeves efforts with IAC.

Danny Sullivan has the write up at the SEW blog on Yahoo Gains Podcast Directory. Basically Yahoo! launched a directory and search engine for podcasts at http://podcasts.yahoo.com/.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

Looks like another follow the leader situation. Businessweek reported on Saturday about Yahoo annoucing a new blog search to come shortly. The search may be "cover only one aspect of blog or RSS search, and not the comprehensive release the search industry's waiting for." according to the article. I do hope it goes one for one with Google's blog search they released last month.

Could not find forum discussion on this, but check out Battellemedia or SEL for more discussion.

Before accepting invitations within Yahoo! 360 I try to do my background checking. For some reason, this one slipped through. I received an invite from "CARAMEL_KISSES", her named sparked some investigative work, so I checked our her profile page but it looked fairly clean. So I decided to hit that "accept" invitation button. Then when viewing my home page, where it syndicates all the new items for my connected friends, I saw some porn news feeds coming in. So I immediately removed CARAMEL_KISSES from my friends list.

You won't see those feeds on her profile page, unless you are a connected friend (I assume). I forgot to take screen shots of the feeds, so I have no evidence now. But trust me, the URL of the feeds was from world-se*-news.com (put a * there so a stop filter wouldn't trigger on the ads). I have also reported her to Yahoo! 360, just now. Nice spam tactic, if that was what was intended.

It's Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" for the year 2005. You type in a search phrase into http://instant.search.yahoo.com/ and watch this contextual bubble overlay the bottom portion of the page, within that contextual bubble you find the number one result for your query (sometimes). Here is an example of the number one result for the search phrase, "search engine", at Yahoo!.

Danny has a large write up at the Search Engine Watch Blog and I started a forum at the Search Engine Watch Forums.

It is very interesting to watch Local Search grow and mature. Today I found a WebmasterWorld thread named Yahoo Local Integrates Editorial Reviews. That is right, instead of the normal user reviews, they have added professional editorial style reviews. One example is of Connie's Pizza in Chicago, IL, with an editorial review.

WebmasterWorld members note that the link to vote if the review is helpful or not, is missing from the editorial reviews and is only an option for the user reviews. Here is one member's concern;

I agree with you about the potential problem of Editorial reviews trumping user generated reviews. A novice user could easily interpret the logo'd Gayot review as the authoritative opinion on the business. On the other hand, when I buy a book from Amazon the first review is always the editorial review, and then I scroll down to read user reviews. I know the difference between the two, but I can't speak for novice users. This would be interesting to explore.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

This past Tuesday Gary Price reported that Enhancements Made to Yahoo Mail Search. I rarely ever look at Yahoo! mail, and even Gmail, but its an important thing to note. I have been waiting for some of the forums to start chatting about it before I write anything on the topic. Gary listed the new features:

• Attachment Search
Find keywords not only in email text but also in attachments.
• Dynamic Search Refinements
Results get broken down into five categories: Senders, Folders, Attachments, Message Status, and Date.
• Photo View and Attachment Views
Quickly see photos and attachments associated with your results set.

At WebmasterWorld they have a thread on the topic. Here is WebmasterWorld's moderator physics comment.

When I search now it searches inside the messages (not just the titles and sender) and then shows a serp-like page with snippets and all. Also shows senders that sent emails with those key phrases in them (clicking a link to a sender narrows the search to just include said sender), folders they were found in, nice. Watch out gmail ;)

An other member noted that "the search feature only works on messages as far back as August 25." I am not sure if that is accurate but doesn't sound too accurate to me.

Last week we discussed Yahoo! Local twice; (1) Yahoo Local & 360˚ Adds Vertical Reviews and (2) Yahoo! Local Using Wrong Localized English. Today, I want to point you to a thread I started at SEW Forums the other week, named Yahoo! Local Driving Web Leads?

Basically, some are seeing a positive affect from having a listing at Yahoo! Local and also Google Local. I personally have not "noticed any significant referrals from Yahoo! Local in my stats." (I just quoted myself)... Member, MoneyMan said, "It's worth noting that in terms of "click-through" and viewing detailed business data, the results I have seen from YLocal on clients have been fantastic."

It is a bit early to tell, but I would love to get more feedback at the thread or over here.

The other day, when I was reporting on Yahoo Local & 360˚ Adds Vertical Reviews I stumbled across my company's profile also at http://local.yahoo.com/details?id=11262068.

What I noticed was that under the "Payment" type section, it reads "Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Cheque."

Notice anything weird? "Cheque" is not how good American's spell "check." Yahoo! is a US based company, they know that my business is in New York, USA - they should know to spell using American English, right?

I know, I am giving them a hard time. I just thought it was funny so I posted a thread at Search Engine Watch Forums named Yahoo! Local Bad with Localized Language describing this. It lead into people rating my company, which I already got myself in trouble with (see bottom).

Many of you know I am a big fan of Yahoo! 360, I use it, I believe, the way Yahoo! intended. That is, I use it to connect the dots in my life, work and blogosphere. One recent addition was the ability to use the new Yahoo! Local at http://local.yahoo.com/ to conduct vertical reviews. By vertical, we mean, rate a restaurant based on food, ambiance, service, value and a hotel based on amenities, room quality, service, and value.

Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld. Also you can view all my yahoo local reviews if you want, I only have four or so.

I am a big fan of Yahoo! 360, I really am. July 25th, the Y! 360 team announced new updates including the ability to add selected feeds to your top page. However, if you go to my top page at http://360.yahoo.com/rustybrick you should notice that the feeds, right under my Y! 360 blog is most recent up to August 1. Today is August 5th and I have written at least 35 new entries since then at this blog. I just wish it updated more often.

In addition, I am very excited for the opportunity for them to 360 up YPN so I can make some cash from my contributions over at Yahoo! 360. I have a feeling it is in the pipeline over at Yahoo!. And I keep thinking, it is all coming back to, Yahoo! Life Engine, it is and has happened.

Update: Just checked this afternoon (2:45PM) and it looks like all my latest entries are now in. Maybe they are reading, since our comment system is offline temporarily, we won't know for sure.

Yesterday Google released Google Maps API and so did Yahoo, with their release of Yahoo! Maps Web Services. I have not seen any much search forum discussion on this, so I posted a thread at DigitalPoint's Yahoo! API forum on the topic.

Just got word from Yahoo that they along with Sir Richard Branson have annouced a winner to Yahoo's Search Marketing "Think Big" contest. If you are not familar with Yahoo's contest it was started about in April to allow small business owners to submit their ideas for thinking big for an award of 10 million free ads on the Yahoo! network. The offical judge is Sir Richard Branson, Chairman and founder of the Virgin Group of companies, who will choose one lucky one small business owner he believes truly �thinks big.�

The winner of the contest is Phoenix-based StairCycle(TM) Innovations who's product combines the benefits of stair-step exercise systems and a recreational bicycle that you can use indoors and out. It's a pretty neat cycle, and looks like a very good choice, you can check it out here.

Now not only will the winner receive 10 million free ad impressions across the Yahoo Search Marketing network the �Think Big� winner will be operating business as usual out of a glass office cubicle constructed in Times Square. How cool is that to do for one day. At the same time Yahoo will be running the winner�s ads (10 million free impressions!) on its network. So if you run across some nifty ads for a bike that can walk up stairs then your seeing the company who won this incredible contest.

For more information read the Yahoo press release or visit Times Square today to see the man in the glass box.

Yesterday was a slow day in the office, so I took the time to update My Yahoo! 360 Page. I added a blog entry, updated my blast, added information to my profile and then decided to add a "local review". I clicked over to the local reviews and then decided to review my company, which is listed under Yahoo! Local as Rustybrick, Incorporated, it should read RustyBrick, Inc. - so that kind of bothers me. Anyway, I posted a review under my screen name "rustybrick". My review read:

I am sure that after I publicly report that I have abused my own company's user reviews, that it will be removed but it is important to report on. After submitting the review, Yahoo! said that it may take 24 - 48 hours to be reflected in the reviews section. They said something to the effect that the review must be first manually reviewed by a Yahoo! quality assurance individual, to ensure that it is not biased. I thought to myself that the review will never go through, but it did. So here I am, a company with a 5 star review!

If you have Yahoo! 360 or even if you want to give us a review, go ahead. Local reviews, I hope, will be a major factor in online marketing in the future.

Update: Randy Farmer from Yahoo! has sent me a Yahoo! 360 Email that he has removed my biased review. This is a good thing, I think. :)

Thanks for reporting the inappropriate review in Yahoo! Local [even if you used an unusual venue to make the report]. It has been removed.

:-)

Not sure if this SEM blog is an unusual venue, it did get the job done. :)

Yesterday Ben (Phoenix) blogged about a cool game called "GUESS-the-GOOGLE". So, I started a thread at SEW forums to get some discussion and Gary Price replied with another *very cool* memory game that uses Yahoo! Images. I've played it and is a lot of fun as well. The game's instructions aren't in English, but Gary was kind enough to provide ones for us:

1) Enter a search term, let's say fruit
2) Select how many images you want to have to remember (1-28)
3) Click "Go"

Boxes appear. Click one, remember the image, and now click to find the same image elsewhere on the grid.

Have fun!

Why does http://360.yahoo.com/rustybrick work and http://360.yahoo.com/rustybrick/?

Shouldn't the trailing slash work? Bugs me. They also do this in their engine, which I discussed at Yahoo's URL Normalization Issues.

It has been a little over a week since I first got my Yahoo 360 Invite, since then I have made over a 120 friends, by giving away invites to 360, in fact there are over 60 invites I sent that have not been accepted, I assume a spam filter thing. So besides for the the community aspect of Yahoo 360, it has a ton more features.

Many have complained that is too overwhelming, too confusing and too large. But I like it, I love all the features and yes it is a huge waste of time, but I think I know have the hang of it. I spend no more then 20 minutes with it each day, including sending out about 25 invites a day :). But I really am understanding the whole 360 degrees "thing". In one place I am (1) connected to "my friends", (2) a blog to connect my other blogs, (3) my photos, (4) my music, (5) my books, (6) my interests, (7) my mail, (8) "blasts" are a broadcast type of thing to tell my "friends" about something, (9) my reviews of local (10) my lists and (11) my groups. All of those are part of the overall larger Yahoo! network, all connected by Yahoo! 360. A personal page at http://360.yahoo.com/rustybrick has it all in one place.

I like it now, but its still new. Will I get bored? I do not know. We will see if it turns into an other Orkut but this service has a lot more to offer, in my opinion.

Tim Mayer just hooked me up with a Yahoo! 360°. I got about a 100 to give out. But I will only give 25 out here. So if you want a Yahoo! 360° Invite act fast by commenting below and leave your email.

I have yet to play with it, so no comments from me on it.

They keep refilling my invites, so keep requesting, I'll hook you up until they clean me out. :)

A thread at Cre8asite Forums notes that "Yahoo reaching out to small business."

Check out the Yahoo! Small Business Resource. They have "about 1,000 articles from sources like Inc. Magazine and Entrepreneur.com on topics ranging from marketing and legal to finance and human resources."

Do You Yahoo? You do if you go to http://e.my.yahoo.com/. That is what that page reads, here is the source code. Stupid find of the day...

<html><head><title>do you yahoo?</title></head>
<body>
<h1>do you yahoo?</h1>
</body></html>

<!-- e18.my.dcn.yahoo.com compressed/chunked Mon Oct 18 08:47:53 PDT 2004 -->

Yesterday Yahoo! announced that it will be offering 100MB of free mail storage to its free user base. Currently Yahoo! is offering 4MB, but recently Google came out with Gmail, a free Web based email service with 1GB (1000MB) of storage. In an attempt for Yahoo! to keep their users, Yahoo! announced that they will be bumping up the free storage from 4MB to 100MB.

I personally believe that this courtesy on Yahoo!'s behalf will make a huge difference with keeping their user base. In addition, Yahoo! will be offering "virtually unlimited storage" for its paid e-mail customers. "Virtually unlimited storage" is going to be limited in some sense, but as the CNET article points out, Yahoo! is trying to "make storage quotas irrelevant to users."

I think the 4MB to 100MB upgrade will make an impact on the Yahoo! mail users. Google still has this whole privacy debate going on and they are still only on invite only terms. Yahoo! is established and the 4MB user is really going to love the extra 96MB. Personally, I do not know how anyone can live on 4MB, but that is for an other story.

If you want to read a funny story on this whole matter visit Jeremy Zawodny's blog. To discuss this in the forums, visit WebmasterWorld.

I frequently use both Yahoo! People Search and Yahoo! Yellow Pages throughout the day. Today I noticed that Yahoo! People Search has a new layout. Not sure when this layout was changed, but I like it.

First thing I noticed was the ability to search the "Entire USA" in the state field, something I have wanted in the past. Additionally, they have the people search bar at the top of the page of your results. So if you make a typo, you do not need to click that back button and reenter the information. You just go to the search box at the top of the screen and adjust the query there.

View Large Image

The GMail topic just is not cooling down, besides for all the forum debate that is still taking place at:

• SEO Chat
  
• Cre8asite
  
• WebmasterWorld
  
• JimWorld
  
• HighRankings
  
• IHelpYou
  
• DigitalPoint
  
• SitePoint
  

The debate is still hot amongst some of the most popular blogs. Recently, Tim O'Reilly, the founder of O'Reilly Books, posted in his personal blog an entry named The Fuss About Gmail and Privacy: Nine Reasons Why It's Bogus. Where he gives his opinion on why the GMail controversy is really not such a big deal and people should really give Google a break about it.

Jeremy Zawodny, the Yahoo! guy, posted an entry in his blog in response to Tim's post. Jeremy named his blog entry, Blinded by Gmail's Gigabyte?, where he discusses his objections to Tim's view. Tim then later posted a comment at Jeremy Zawodny's blog stating.

Jeremy, maybe you didn't read Rich Skrenta's blog, which captures the reasons for my enthusiasm. Gmail is an example of what you might call a "tipping point innovation." That is, it's been possible for some time, and there are a number of players (your employer, Yahoo! included) who could have pulled it off. But someone finally did it, and it happened to be Google. Giving 100 to 250 times the free storage provided by other services and making it work with Google-level search capabilities means that webmail can be more than a secondary convenience, or the email of choice for home users. More significantly to me (because I'm interested in understanding long term trends and their impact on what becomes possible as time and technology advance), it makes a bold statement about where both storage and the network are going...

For the full comment scroll down to the comments section about 70% down the page, where it reads On or around April 17, 2004 08:47 AM Tim O'Reilly wrote this:.

The debate goes on...So you think Google expected this? You know what they say, no PR is bad PR.

About a week ago Yahoo! Search in conjunction with The Onion launched Yahoo! Soul Search.

For example, do a search on what is my destiny in Yahoo! Search. Results will come back that look similar to the following screen shot.

Forum coverage at WebmasterWorld.

One thing - this proves Yahoo has a sense of humor.

We have Frienster, Orkut and soon to come a Yahoo Social Networking site? This blog does not cover much news related topics, but my obsession with the obsessions over these social networking sites influenced this post. Over at C-Net, they report on Yahoo hints at social networking service. I certainly had enough of these types on online services.

Also read my last post on Orkut.

I was just talking with someone last night about how Yahoo is trying to be more like Google (i.e. cache, news, etc.) and Google is trying to be more like Yahoo (i.e. local results). I was kind of exaggerating but if anything Yahoo now made it clear that they want to be Google.

Yahoo yesterday released its Yahoo! Companion Toolbar - BETA (version 5.4.9) with WebRank. WebRank versus PageRank, this will be fun for us SEOs. ;)

Yahoo! Web Rank is the name that Yahoo! has given to a technical measurement of a particular URL's popularity. If you choose to enable the Yahoo! Web Rank feature on the Yahoo! Companion Toolbar, a toolbar icon will display the Yahoo! Web Rank value of each URL that you visit. The Yahoo! Web Rank values range from 1 to 10. This feature is currently in Beta release.

Forum coverage at:
SEO Chat
WebmasterWorld

Yesterday I posted a entry named Questions for Yahoo? Ask At WebmasterWorld. If you want the answers to the questions you or others have asked please see the WebmasterWorld thread named Answers from Yahoo!, by Mike from Yahoo! Search.

The folks over at WebmasterWorld were able to get some of the Yahoo reps to stop by an answer your questions about the new Yahoo! Search and Overture - SiteMatch.

WebGuerrilla, a WMW Admin, posted the following:
Here�s how it will work:

Questions will be posted in this thread. We will let this thread run for the next few days. Once we have a solid list of quality questions, this thread will be locked. If/when someone from Yahoo Search decides to respond to a question from this thread, we will split off that particular Q&A into its own thread. Any follow-up questions or discussions will take place in the new thread. Doing this will help us keep everything on-topic.

With that in mind, here are some ground rules:

1. Keep the questions focused on Yahoo Search�s products and services. (No asking Tim what his favorite color is)

2. Keep the questions short and sweet. (You will have the opportunity to get long-winded in any follow-up discussions).

3. No specific site information. (We are not the Yahoo help desk or spam police)

4. Keep the tone positive and professional. (All rants will be nuked)

5. Read the other questions before you post yours. (I hate spending time deleting duplicates).

Visit the thread at WebmasterWorld's Questions for Yahoo!.