SEO:Search

Remember when we told you about Googles plans to pledge profits and stock to its philanthropic arm Google.org? Remember when we told you that Eric Schmidt saw huge opportunity in India? Remember when Google told us that Google.org was really a screen so that it could find talented workers in growing countries?

Google.org + India = Master Plan

OK, we dont remember that part either, but that seems to be part of Googles master plan for Google.org.

As both Reuters and AP report, Google is teaming-up with George Soros to pump $17 million into a venture that will fund small and medium (SME) businesses in India.

The Soros Economic Development Fund, the Omidyar Network and Google.org said the venture would make investments of between $500,000 and $3.5 million in small and medium businesses in India that lacked access to formal funding options.

Long ignored by commercial capital markets, small and medium businesses are an attractive investment opportunity as well as an engine for economic growth, Neal DeLaurentis, vice president of Soros Economic Development Fund, was cited as saying.

While you thought Google.org would focus only on health, energy and environment, its busy tapping into the talented, under-paid workers of developing countries.

Woohooohaha!

P.S. We dont really think this is evil in any way, but we needed to make this kind of dull news sound interesting.

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During the weekend, Yahoo!’s social bookmarking property del.icio.us seems to have prevented robots of other search engines including Google from spidering the website or fishing out fresh web pages, bookmarks and websites, observes Collin. It was clear that it was not a simple robots.txt exclusion, rather it was a 404 response that was being shown based on who the requesting User-Agent was.

Yahoo! Block Google From Delicious Bookmarks?

An observation was made that when the User-Agent was set to Googlebot the 404 error showed up each time, and the same response was received when any page other than the homepage was attempted to be navigated.

“I took a look at del.icio.us’ robots.txt,” says Collin “and found that it was disallowing Googlebot, Slurp, Teoma, and msnbot for the following:

• Disallow: /inbox
• Disallow: /subscriptions
• Disallow: /network
• Disallow: /search
• Disallow: /post
• Disallow: /login
• Disallow: /rss”

Why on earth Yahoo! may have done this, competition or what. As of now Yahoo has added delicious in its search pages, and that delicious is an important property for Yahoo to bank upon. Apparently, it has begun to make use of its powers from blocking other search engines from taking advantage from spidering the information contained therein.

Moreover, Yahoo! also has an edge over Ask, Google and MSN and that is, it’s able to notice the web pages, etc. through human bookmarking, tagging etc. on Delicious, even before other search engine can. Consequently, it leads to better search results and rankings.

In this case Yahoo seems to have made use of its discretionary powers to combat competition. While preventing others from examining your business secrets is a common strategy used by business, it is quite a bold move from the company. What are your thought about it?

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Tag: Google, Yahoo, Delicious

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There have been a lot of very interesting entries to the little Google logo redesign competition we started. The competition ended on Friday and here is the winner ” eVisibility.coms art directory Tyler Jordan created the hands down most impressive design (and then ended up on the Digg homepage with it):

Winner of the Google Logo Redesign Contest

You can imagine this Terminator-googlebot-technospider would not be the kind of design to be considered for the actual Google homepage, but as the competition was more for fun, thats not an issue.

However, we both thought conceptually the following logo by Niraj Sanghvi was among the most interesting:

Reading Go Ogle, This design combines the search box with the logo, making the Google homepage even simpler than before. (Looking at this creation you can also imagine the Google logo placed to the right of the Google search box as submit button.)

Bilal was the most productive participant, creating not a single but 11 different logo iterations. We thought one of the best takes of his was this one ” a pure (highly recognizable) symbol, defeating language barriers in the process of global marketing of a company or product:

Another logo which Adrian Lunsong came up with simply refers to Google as the G. This could be interesting again in markets where the word google may not fit in as easily, like perhaps China (where Google already promotes the g.cn” alternative):

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Over the past week I have been keeping the StepForth SEO Blog updated on the events focused on Microsoft’s attempted acquisition of Yahoo and the fall out since. This is becoming quite a debacle so I thought a little chronological update on how all this went down might be useful. From 2006 to Now:

Yahoo’s Road to War

1. 2006: Rumors abounded that Yahoo and Microsoft were in talks about working together and that an acquisition was possible. However, nothing substantial was revealed at the time but we later learned that Yahoo refused to work with Microsoft.

2. May 4th, 2007: The rumor mill was working overtime that Microsoft was quietly trying to acquire Yahoo for $50 billion. I was elated
3. Jan 22, 2008: The New York Times reports that Yahoo is expected to layoff hundreds of staff in order to boost profitability and share prices. The quarterly earnings report is eagerly anticipated on Jan 29th.
4. Jan 29, 2008: Yahoo’s quarterly earnings fall short of shareholders expectations.
5. Jan 29, 2008: The New York Times relays news from Yahoo that the search giant has confirmed it will layoff 1000 employees by mid-February.
6. Jan 31, 2008: Microsoft officially offers to acquire Yahoo while the iron is hot for $44 billion which is roughly equivalent to $31 per share.
7. Feb 1, 2008: Yahoo announces its Board of Directors will evaluate the unsolicited offer from Microsoft.
8. Feb 3, 2008: Google’s David Drummond weighs in on the hostile bid by Microsoft citing concerns that a potential purchase of Yahoo by Microsoft “raises troubling questions”. He goes on to ask “Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?” Check out this hilarious interpretation of Mr. Drummond’s blog posting by Kara Swisher.
9. Feb 11, 2008: Yahoo’s Board of Directors deny Microsoft’s offer on the grounds that the proposal “substantially undervalues Yahoo!” Here is a link to the common questions and answers page that Yahoo created for the media.
10. Feb 11, 2008: Microsoft promptly responds to Yahoo’s rebuff with a ‘gloves are off’ tone. In the letter Microsoft says it will “ensure that Yahoo!’s shareholders are provided with the opportunity to realize the value inherent in our proposal.”
11. Feb 12, 2008: The first lawsuit was filed against Yahoo by shareholders unhappy the company didn’t agree to the Microsoft buyout.
12. Feb 12, 2008: The first of the 1000 Yahoo layoffs begin.
13. Feb 12, 2008: Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz leaves Yahoo and moves to Google. Bradley was head of Yahoo’s Advanced Technology Division and his departure is only the beginning of a long list of talent that is likely to leave Yahoo over the coming months. See Bradley’s bio and you will see why this respected man’s departure will hurt. To his credit, however, Bradley insists his departure was not directly due to recent events.
14. Feb 13, 2008: Yahoo writes a letter to shareholders trying to drum up excitement in companies future without Microsoft.
15. Feb 13, 2008: Yahoo announces an acquisition of online video company Maven Networks. Why? “Video is projected to be the fastest growing segment of the online ad market, and Maven will significantly help advance Yahoo’s strategy, expanding the video opportunity for publishers and increasing the efficiency and effectiveness for advertisers.”

    Sniff… sniff… I smell desperation! This is yet another rallying cry from Jerry Yang to help keep Yahoo from the slobbering jaws of Microsoft… unless of course Microsoft offers $35 or $36 a share at which point OKAY.

So What Now?
First of all, forget about Google saving the day. I would put money on Google being out of the picture for any possible partnership with Yahoo; Google is just not interested in the certain SEC ramifications of such a partnership.

With that potential path closed Yahoo has had to look elsewhere. As a result there are rumours that News Corp and Yahoo are talking in an attempt to forge a deal that could counter Microsoft’s.

Meanwhile Yahoo is facing pressure from all sides to make a move that appeases the company’s particularly distressed shareholders and they had better do something soon. Otherwise, (this is hard to believe) matters could actually get uglier.

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Tag: Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, StepForth

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Google is all dressed up for todays occasion, Valentines Day. Its the day where in many cultures couples and wanna-be-couples are expected to send a greeting to their loved one, causing sales spikes for greeting cards companies and probably chocolate and flower companies as well, and depression amongst some of the singles.

Googles Many Valentines Day Specials

Google today shows a special logo, linked to a search result for valentines day, showing an elderly couple walking dangerously close to what looks like a river …

… a special Google Docs template in pink, for some countries, or accessible on a special URL (Martin in the forum: Oooow, it hurts!) …

… a Google Maps Street View person on a heart platform …

… and a heart-shaped YouTube logo:

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This morning over at Seattle-based blog SEOmoz, Rand Fishkin asks "What is an Algorithm? How does it apply to the Search Results at Google, Yahoo! & MSN/Live?" The post, How to Track the Evolution of Search Engine Algorithms & Why It’s Important to Do So, amounts to a free clinic regarding the "whys" and "hows" for professionals seeking to garner more organic search traffic.

"The vast majority of search marketers operating in the organic space at least lay claim to "following the latest algorithms" at the search engines, and in 90% of the client pitches I’ve ever heard (or made, for that matter), the subject comes up at least once. However, I think this is still a topic about which there’s not a lot of true understanding and for those new to the field, it’s probably the most daunting aspect of the work. So, to help ease some pain, I figured I’d address many of the most common questions about keeping up with the search engines’ ever-changing mathematical formulas that rank search results."
Rand Fishkin

The article gets to the algorithmic red meat: inherent trust in link metrics, domain trust over the importance of individual pages, temporal analysis of link growth, sandboxing of new websites, fixing blog comment spam, and Google’s recent crackdown on reciprocal tactics.

Beginning April 1, Google will no longer make exceptions to its policy requiring advertisers to match the display URL in an AdWords ad to the landing page to which it leads. Google’s existing policy already requires that an ad’s display URL matches its destination URL in the AdWords interface and the landing page to which it leads, but exceptions had been made for things like redirects or vanity URLs.

Under the new rules, all advertisers, regardless of past exceptions, will need to show users the same top-level domain in the display URL and the landing page where a user is sent.

The only exceptions allowed will be for using tracking URLs as the destination URL, as long as the URL of the landing page matches that of the display URL. For example, a display URL of www.google.com/adwords could use a destination URL in AdWords of www.trackingurl.com/google123, if the landing page where the user arrives is www.google.com and not www.trackingurl.com.

Display URLs will be allowed to show different subdomains or directories, as long as the top-level domain shown in the ad (such as google.com in the above example) is matched.

Microsoft’s unsolicited bid to acquire Yahoo is heading down an unpleasant path. This week, Microsoft is reportedly undertaking a proxy fight, sending letters directly to shareholders to garner enough support to oust Yahoo’s board of directors and replace them with a merger-friendly board. A proxy fight is estimated to cost Microsoft up to $30 billion, but was likely seen as a cheaper alternative for Microsoft than raising its bid price.

“We sent them a letter and said we think that’s a fair offer,” Bill Gates, Microsoft’s chairman, told The AP on Monday. “There’s nothing that’s gone on other than us stating that we think it’s a fair offer. They should take a hard look at it.”

At the same time, Yahoo’s current board has approved retention packages and enhanced severance benefits for all Yahoo employees. The aim is to both keep Yahoos around during the threat of a takeover, as well as to give them a more lucrative way out if the Microsoft acquisition is fulfilled.

As outlined in a Form 8-K filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, employees would get an enhanced severance package if they lost their job or left for “good reason” within two years of a change of control. An employee exercising the package would get a continuation of base salary and health insurance for 4 to 24 months, depending on job level. Employees will also benefit from accelerated vesting of all stock options, restricted stock units and any other equity-based awards previously granted.

Google is good to get the kids while theyre young (and its working - at least if your dad is an SEO - just see this post that made the homepage of Digg). Google has a new contest for kids called Doodle 4 Google. As you know, Im a fan of contests from Google and contests from Marketing Pilgrim.

For Kids: Google Contest

Kids, ask yourself this question, what if? and then draw a Google logo to illustrate your thoughts.

Here are some ideas:

what ifI was bionic
what ifall the glaciers melted and we had to relocate the penguins (got to get global warming in somehow)
what ifI won this contest and my mom got to go to Google headquarters with me

First, the school has to register by March 28th, then the doodles are due by April 12th. Children from kindergarten to 12th grade can enter. A panel of judges will select 40 finalists, and then the final decision will be put to a vote.

Whoever wins gets their version of the Google logo on Google.com for one day - May 22nd, 2008. The Doodle 4 Google competition is in the U.S. for kids between the ages of 5 and 18. Its broken down by grade level and regions.

An awards ceremony for the 40 Regional Winners will be held at the Googleplex in Mountain View, California on May 21, 2008. Then there will be four National Finalists chosen by the U.S. public (1 per grade group). From those there will be one named the overall winner.

Googles official doodler Dennis Hwang will choose the national winner and theyll will win a $10,000 college scholarship to be used at the school of their choice. Also, a trip to the Googleplex, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle.

The school also wins a $25,000 grant to establish or improve a computer lab.

Here are the other prizes:

• Each of the other 3 National Finalists will win a trip to the Googleplex, a laptop computer, and a t-shirt printed with their doodle.
• Each of the other 36 Regional Winners will win a trip to the Googleplex and t-shirt printed with their doodle.
• Each of the other 360 State Finalists will receive a Doodle 4 Google certificate.

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As a search marketer, you need to understand landing page optimization because it impacts your results. Higher conversion means a bigger impact for everything you do with search, and the availability of more dollars to invest back into search marketing. In today’s By the Numbers column, “Landing Page Optimization for SEM: Design and Execute,” Eric Enge outlines some of the best practices outlined in Tim Ash’s new book, “Landing Page Optimization.”