SEO Chatter Eulogy For Yahoo

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A Search Eulogy For Yahoo  And then there were two.

Make no mistake, Yahoo’s out of the search game. I know the spin. Better user interface, new ways to innovate, a winning play. Let’s not kid ourselves. They’re done. Not today, not necessarily in a year, but down the line at some point. Done, as reported by Danny Sullivan

And it’s sad, because they were one of the originals. There was a time when the mighty Yahoo roared above all other search engines. When people were so worried about being listed in Yahoo that they pondered lawsuits over the issue, because not being in Yahoo was like not being on the internet at all.

Sound familiar? Yeah, Yahoo was the Google of its day. Funny to write that — it should be Google is the Yahoo of its day, but that’s how the tables turned in the search space.

Yahoo started out in search as a human-compiled directory. Editors, finding sites, writing short descriptions about them. It worked at first. When it didn’t, Yahoo had partners that “crawled” the web automatically to provide “backup” to its directory results. Open Text was its first partner. Later came AltaVista, then Inktomi, then eventually Google.

Ah, Google. It demonstrated that you could index millions (now billions) of pages AND have relevancy. Why use a card catalog-like human directory when you had a tool like Google that could read every page in every book in the library and pull back the matching pages?

Eventually, Yahoo decided it needed to own crawler technology. In 2003, it bought Inktomi and AllTheWeb. It also bought Overture, to have paid search technology and got AltaVista as part of the deal. All these things it needed to own, we were told, because search was so essential that you couldn’t outsource:

Given how important search is to our businesses, we really needed to control our own destiny in this space and not be dependent on any one third-party provider

That’s what I was told at the beginning of 2003 by Jeff Weiner, then senior vice president of search and marketplace at Yahoo. What’s changed since then? How did search go back to being a commodity to Yahoo?

Microsoft squeezed it. No blame to Microsoft. Yahoo was sitting there with leadership that couldn’t communicate clearly how it was a strong second-place player to Google. It seemed weak, ripe for the picking, and Microsoft went to pluck it last year. Google tried for Yahoo itself through a partnership deal. The US Department of Justice, like Amy Winehouse, sang “No, no, no.” Do that, and we’ll take anti-trust action against you, Google.

Microsoft never went away, though to its credit, it continued to improve its own search offering making it even more credible. Bing’s a long way from being proven. Perhaps it might never have succeeded. But it got buzz. Not only was it not embarrassing, it was impressive to some. Yahoo didn’t seem as necessary to Microsoft’s plans.

We’ll never know if Bing could have succeeded on its own. Or, maybe we will, if the proposed deal doesn’t go through. It’s still just a proposal, subject to investor and regulatory approval. But if it does go through, Microsoft becomes the number two search player. It controls the core search technology. Yahoo will have “parity” with Microsoft to use the search technology, we’re told. Soothing-sounding words, but parity doesn’t matter when Yahoo seemingly has given up on search as a top attraction overall.

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has made plenty of noise about how Yahoo isn’t just a search engine. Or not even a search engine, at times. How Yahoo has some of the web’s top destinations. That’s true, all true. But search was a leading property as well, for Yahoo. Yahoo wouldn’t consider outsourcing its email or IM services. Wouldn’t decide that its Yahoo Finance area could be powered by someone else. So why’s search got the boot?

Because Microsoft wants it, and they weren’t going away. Neither was Bartz standing up to definitively say that in the long term, it made more sense for Yahoo to keep search as a core technology. That few companies had such crown jewels. That technology alone a year ago worth $1 billion to Microsoft didn’t suddenly become worth no upfront payment a year later.

But also because Yahoo seems to have no choice. It keeps losing talent. It’s fine to have a great machine, but someone’s got to run it — keep developing it. So if I sound harsh about Yahoo getting out of search, I’m also understanding. It would have been incredibly difficult to keep it.

AOL and Lycos are two examples of portals that gave up their own search technologies and watched their traffic drop. Perhaps Yahoo will be the exception. Perhaps it will surprise me and be a long-time search player — a place where substantial amounts of searches happen. Part of me hopes it plays out that way, if only for nostalgic reasons.

But I doubt it.

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic. For a Free Web Site Evaluation Visit SEO-Specialist-Online.com

Search Engine Optimization Chatter

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Recession Sends More and More Americans Online

The recession has affected Americans in many ways, forcing people to cut back on their spending and in some cases, out of their homes. According to a new study, it seems that more and more U.S. residents are heading online in search of solutions to their financial woes states Brandon Dimmel.

In the past, community leaders and social workers were relied upon by Americans looking for help during tough economic times. However, today there's an easier way to consult experts for assistance.

Americans Hope for Quicker Solutions Online

A recent study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project found that most Americans have ventured online to get help with their economic problems. In fact, the study estimates an astounding 88 per cent of all American Internet users have employed the web in order to research the recession and solutions of their own financial concerns. (Source: Internetnews.com)

Pew director and report co-author Lee Rainie believes the results reveal Americans' desire to get the information they need to help get through this difficult period. "People are anxious about these hard times," said Rainie. "They are more information-hungry than in normal times." (Source: reuters.com)

Web Used as Multi-Purpose Tool

The unemployment rate continued to grow last month, hitting 9.5 per cent across the U.S. With more people out of work, the Internet has received increased traffic with people both searching for solutions and creating their own blogs to help resolve the problem.

However, the web isn't just being used to search for jobs or financial advice. Many Americans are using it to research products they might have otherwise purchased more impulsively.

And that means several things: for one, there is a greater market than ever before for sites dedicated to protecting and educating the average consumer. However, it could also mean more Americans vulnerable to Internet predators. The challenge for security experts will be to keep the sharks at bay with more fish in the sea than ever before.

Happy Browsing!

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic. For a Free Web Site Evaluation Visit SEO-Specialist-Online.com

Search Engine Optimization Chatter

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Win 7 Doomed, Says ScriptLogic Survey

Just a day after analysts predicted a dominant future for Microsoft's Windows 7 operating system (due this October), a new report suggests that up to 60 per cent of all companies might be hesitant to make the upgrade from Windows Vista and XP as reported by Brandon Dimmel

The IDC Win7 forecast discussed yesterday painted a pretty picture indeed for Microsoft, suggesting that 75 per cent of all corporations would ditch XP and Vista for Windows 7 by 2011, just two years after its release. Given that most business users are XP users, that's good news for Microsoft.

ScriptLogic Paints a Different Picture

However, another group of analysts, ScriptLogic, doesn't share the same opinion.

In fact, in their survey ScriptLogic found that just 60 per cent of corporations would make the shift within the opening period of Win7's availability. Another 34 per cent said they'd eventually move over to Windows 7 by the end of next year, but even that number is in doubt. (Source: pcworld.com)

Given that Windows Vista is considered by most businesses to have been Microsoft's great "Vistake," it means that the decade-old Windows XP is most likely to be large and in charge even two years after Win 7's release

Happy Browsing!

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic. For a Free Web Site Evaluation Visit SEO-Specialist-Online.com

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It's about time, Google

Today is an exciting day in the world of Google.

As I'm sure many of you already know, Google is not just a search engine. For more than 5 years now, Google has offered web based services for email, documents, calendars and chatting. These services, called Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google Talk, have been used by millions of people around the world, but there has always been one thing that is strange about them. For Five years now, they have been in Beta!

Just in case you need a reminder, here is the definition of Beta:

"Beta is a nickname for software which has passed the alpha testing stage of development and has been released to users for software testing before its official release. It is the prototype of the software that is released to the public."  

Obviously, this does not quite match Google's definition of beta. Over the years, many people (including me) have wondered if Google would ever take their products out of the beta stage. Well, today is the day. Just yesterday, Google announced that they would be officially be taking Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar and Google talk out of beta! This is great news, seeing that it probably should have been done nearly four years ago.

PS: For those of you that use Gmail and still like that "beta" feel, google made it so you can still have the beta logo at the top of your screen. Just go to the "labs" link and turn on the "back to beta" feature.

Firefox 3.5 Released

The busy bees over at Mozilla have released version 3.5 of Firefox unto the masses. Normally, this wouldn't be too big of a deal, even for a fox follower like myself, but the developers are touting some pretty major features and improvements this time around. It warrants a look, so here's a quick run-down.

Faster Browsing – Mozilla states that Firefox 3.5 runs almost twice as fast as 3.0. This is due to a new kind of JavaScript engine that processes incoming information more efficiently.

Private Browsing – Taking a token from Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8, Firefox users are now able to surf the Internet with total anonymity. Nothing from your session is kept except downloads and saved bookmarks. Better late than never, I guess!

Tear off Tabs – Tab bar getting too cluttered, but you don't want to re-browse to a site? Just grab a tab and rip it off! You'll be given a whole new window to work with!

There's also a host of other improvements to existing stuff like Session Restore, the Awesome Bar, Customization, History Clearing and anti phishing and malware protocols.

If you're a Firefox user click Help>Check for Updates to get the new version!

For more info, go over to Mozilla.com for a more detailed rundown.

Happy Browsing!

Search engine optimization could be a tiring task but with time it sure helps you get better traffic. For a Free Web Site Evaluation Visit SEO-Specialist-Online.com

 Jim Gras
Melbourne, FL
Skype: jamiboy
800-897-6458

Search Engine Chatter

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 Jim Gras
Melbourne, FL
Skype: jamiboy
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