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Posts Tagged ‘yahoo’
Monday, November 21st, 2011
Yahoo! has announced that today spells the death of a search tool that has been with us since 2005. That was when Yahoo! actually tried to be a search engine.
Yahoo! Site Explorer is no more.
Yahoo! Site Explorer is a tool that many webmasters used to see who was linking to them, and who was linking to their competition. For years, every webmaster who wanted real live link metrics used it. Even those search marketers who gloried in the death of Yahoo! at one time sang the praises of Yahoo! Site Explorer. It was the best free link popularity tool on the Web for the longest time.
But now it’s dead.
What this means to webmasters is that we will be relegated to using paid-for-services for the best and most accurate link data. Yes, you can use Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Webmaster Tools, but neither one of them shares the same information on links that Yahoo! Site Explorer was known for. If you want that data today, you’ll have to pay for it.
That might make the information sellers happy, but even Rand Fishkin, whose MozRank is very popular, is singing a dirge for the death of Yahoo! Site Explorer.
R.I.P. Yahoo! Site Explorer.
Tags: search tools, yahoo, Yahoo! Site Explorer
Posted in Tools for Small Business | 4 Comments »
Saturday, June 4th, 2011
It’s not often that all three major search engines (Google, Bing, and Yahoo!) team up together on a project, but this time the project is well worth the mutual cooperation. The three search giants have partnered to launch the site schema.org, which helps webmasters define structured data for their websites for easier searchability.
First, you might be wondering what is structured data? It is also called microdata, or microformats. This is a type of markup that defines more narrowly specific content on a web page that humans might understand when they read the text content, but that search engines would have a difficult time understanding from the text.
The Schema.org website uses this example:
*h1*Avatar*/h1*
(note: replace * with < and >)
Avatar is a term that can be used in more than one context. For example, it could refer to the movie or it could refer to your Web graphic or profile picture. The simple html tag H1 tells browsers how to render the text, but it doesn’t tell search engines the particular context of the reference.
To fix this, you could add a schema to your html code to tell the search engines what “Avatar” means. If you are referring to the movie, then you’d enter code that looks like this:
*div itemscope*
*h1*Avatar*/h1*
*span*Director: James Cameron (born August 16, 1954) */span*
*span*Science fiction*/span*
*a href=”../movies/avatar-theatrical-trailer.html”*Trailer*/a*
*/div*
Itemscope is the schema and the content that falls between the div tags is the microdata that defines that schema.
The brilliance of schema is that it is flexible, so flexible in fact that webmasters can define their own schema beyond the definitions offered by the search engines. If those schema become popular enough, then the search engines will begin to use them for search indexing purposes.
I encourage you to look over the schema.org website and see if you can identify any web pages that could benefit from defining microdata. It could push you up a little in the rankings by helping the search engines define your content a little more clearly.
Tags: bing, google, microformats, schema, yahoo
Posted in search engines | 2 Comments »
Saturday, May 28th, 2011
At one time, it seemed that no one could topple Yahoo! from the top of its mountain as king of online display advertising. It seemed that nobody really wanted to. Until now. And that somebody is, of all entities, Google.
Last year, Google owned 13.3% of the display ad market online. Yahoo! had 13.6%. This year, the numbers are 14.7% and 12.3% for the first quarter, respectively.
But don’t take from this that Google is taking Yahoo!s advertisers away. They aren’t. Yahoo!s target market are big corporations who advertise on television. Google’s target market are PPC advertisers who are now trying online display advertising. Completely different markets.
While all of that is interesting to note, there are two other bits of interesting data the AdAge article shares. First, online display advertising is growing overall. More companies are interested in the display advertising channel (this one is interesting because online display ads have been on the decline in recent years). And the second bit of information is that Facebook is in a very close third place in the online display ad race.
All of this is really good news for advertisers. The competition means that you have choices, and it also spells lower advertising rates as the companies compete for your dollars.
If online display advertising is something you’ve been considering for your business, now might be the time to get in.
Tags: Display Advertising, google, online display advertising, yahoo
Posted in Display Advertising | 2 Comments »
Friday, May 20th, 2011
If you are involved in any link building efforts at all – and you should be – then you’ll have to keep track of where you put your links and which ones are tracked by the search engines. I recommend a simple Excel spreadsheet for the former – or you could buy a bit of software that does it for you (if you really want to spend the money). But for keeping track of what the search engines consider inbound links, you have two options.
- You can buy a program that monitors each search engine’s link count (which won’t be 100% accurate – especially for Bing and Google)
- Or you can use a free link checker
There are link checkers online that are free. Of course, the free ones are no better at accurately counting the inbound links from Google and Bing than the paid ones are. That’s because these two search engines don’t report all their links. They prefer to keep that information secret.
Yahoo!, on the other hand, has always been open about letting website owners (and the whole world) know what it considers to be a good inbound link. You can find that information through Yahoo!s Site Explorer.
Site Explorer is free and allows you to get more than just inbound link information about your websites. And you can use it to explore link opportunities for your websites. It’s one of the world’s most valuable free tools.
Tags: bing, google, inbound links, link building, link checker, yahoo, Yahoo! Site Explorer
Posted in link building | 3 Comments »
Thursday, April 28th, 2011
Yesterday, the Internet’s largest has been – Yahoo! – sold Delicious. But unless you’ve heard the news, you might not guess who the buyers were. Do the names Chad Hurley and Steve Chen mean anything? No? How about YouTube?
Mssrs. Hurley and Chen are co-founders of YouTube, which they sold to Google awhile back. So I suppose they had the money to buy the struggling social bookmarking website.
Delicious is one of the early forerunners of social bookmarking. You would think that it would have a lot more clout today because of its early start status. And it might have had it not been purchased by Yahoo! a long, long time ago.
The question is, can these two successful entrepreneurs take Delicious and turn it into a superstar? They’ve already been a big part of two other Internet companies that achieved superstar status – PayPal and YouTube. That at least gives me a little bit of confidence in the future of Delicious. I was afraid that it might get shut down.
Yahoo! sent out an e-mail to Delicious members asking for their permission to transfer bookmarks to AVOS, Mssrs. Hurley’s and Chen’s new venture. Users of Delicious have until July 2011 to accept AVOSs terms of service and to transfer their bookmarks. Its current life will expire at that time and the new Delicious will be born. Are you as excited about this news as I am?
Tags: Delicious, social bookmarking, yahoo
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »
Saturday, March 12th, 2011
If you’ve been watching the drama surrounding Yahoo unfold for the past two or three years, then you are well aware that it can rise to a fevered pitch. The latest is around the social bookmarking site Delicious. Yahoo had originally said it was going to fold the site, but then the groans started. Now, the rumor is they have sold it.
What’s the reported price? $5 million.
I think that is a gross underestimation of Delicious’s value, though I’m no expert on business valuations. Nevertheless, if it’s true, it could be a big boon to Yahoo. I mean, I’m sure they could they use the $5 million for something. And if you use Delicious, then you won’t have to export your bookmarks to someplace else. That surely must be good news.
Personally, I hope Delicious sticks around. I think it has been a major contributor to the social landscape for more than a few good years. Perhaps another company will take it and make something out of it.
Still no word as to who the new owner of Delicious might be. Does it really matter? If it’s anyone with half the clout that Yahoo! has had, it might be a step up. Yahoo hasn’t done anything with it since owning it and there is certainly a lot of potential there.
Should we jump for joy if Delicious was sold?
Tags: Delicious, social bookmarking, yahoo
Posted in Social Media | 1 Comment »
Tuesday, December 14th, 2010
According to a study discussed today on Marketing Pilgrim, Google is the most often used third-party login. Facebook is second. And Yahoo! is third. Really?
Forgive me if I seem surprised, but I didn’t think Yahoo! still had it in them. But I’m also surprised that Google’s third-party login platform is more popular than Facebook’s. I’d have thought the other way around. But if you look at entertainment websites alone, then Facebook is top dog – to the tune of 41% to Google’s 13%. And Google is fourth in line there behind Windows Live and, again, Yahoo!
Should I be surprised by these results?
I’m actually not that surprised by the entertainment numbers. Facebook has a firm hold on entertainment logins. Windows Live has done a better job than Google, overall, of reaching entertainment searchers. And Yahoo! as well. So those numbers don’t really surprise me.
I’m curious as to your reaction, however. Do you use third-party logins for your social site? If you had a social site, would you use third-party logins? Which ones would you use?
Are you a bigger fan of Facebook as a login platform, Google, or Yahoo! Which is your top pick?
Tags: facebook, google, logins, Social Media, yahoo
Posted in Social Media | 2 Comments »
Saturday, October 23rd, 2010
Last week we talked about Quora, a relatively new service that presents a great reputation management opportunity for small business owners. This week I’d like to discuss Yahoo! Answers.
What advantages does Yahoo! Answers have over Quora? Actually, a few:
- It has a lot more traffic going to it.
- Yahoo! Answers is one of the forerunners in the Q&A space so it has built up a reputation for being a place people can go to for answers on just about any topic.
- Answers provided by experts like you often show up high in the search results.
- Yahoo! Answers has more topics.
- It’s an older site so has earned more trust among questioners and askers alike.
I’m not saying Quora isn’t a good opportunity. It is. I’m not even saying that Yahoo! Answers is a better opportunity. In some ways it is and in some ways it isn’t. I am saying that it has a built-in reputation element to it with a lot of traffic that you can tap into. And you can use it to boost your reputation as an expert in your field.
If you are the type of person who likes to provide answers to others’ questions then try Yahoo! Answers.
Tags: Reputation Management, yahoo
Posted in Reputation Management | 1 Comment »
Wednesday, June 2nd, 2010
Newspapers have not had it easy in the last 10-15 years. Ever since the dawning of the Age of the Internet, print news media have been in decline. Alan Mutter, a longtime newspaper man himself, predicts that Yahoo! is on the verge of putting some local newspapers out of business and taking over their turf.
Mutter’s prediction is based largely on Yahoo!s recent purchase of Associated Content. If he’s right then Yahoo! could make a move to position itself ahead of Google once again in terms of amount of traffic. And the revenue that it can generate by having print newspapers transition into local ad sales reps, something that newspapers have traditionally done well, can give it added clout and make it more competitive.
Google hasn’t done too well with its newspaper partnership program, but Yahoo! has had that relationship for a few years now.
So here’s the question for you small business owners. Would you advertise with Yahoo! if it published your local news? If that’s where people went to read what was going on in the world, and in your part of the world, instead of their current local newspaper’s website, would you purchase advertising in hopes of getting those eyeballs to your website?
Tags: newspapers, yahoo
Posted in Small Business Internet Marketing | 1 Comment »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Yahoo! provided an update on its transition to and integration with MSN adCenter on the Yahoo! Search Marketing Blog. The back up plan is to push the transition back to early 2011 “If we determine that we cannot transition with quality before the holiday period.”
I’m still trying to imagine what it’s going to be like to have two major search marketing providers. Google is still the dominant player in the search marketing space, but Bing taking over Yahoo!s search marketing initiatives could make it a rival. Then, there’s Facebook. So maybe we’ll be back to a Big Three.
But I think it will be a couple of years at least before Facebook springs into some real serious competition.
If you have been using Yahoo! as your primary search marketing vehicle because you didn’t want to pay the higher click prices at Google then MSNs adCenter is probably going to be your best shot. You better start now and become familiar with the adCenter tools.
Tags: search marketing, yahoo
Posted in PPC for Small Business | 2 Comments »
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