BlogAllAlong » Yahoo

What’s the most searched for term on Microsoft Live?

Bashar — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 12:52:44 +0000

Google

No seriously…

And How Many People Do it?

1% of all Live.com Search Queries are “Google”!

And what’s number 2?

Yahoo!

Seems most people just use Live.com to find a way out.

So Microsoft, please just help make the world a better place and default your browsers to Google!

You can file it under a Green Environment initiative, since every bit consumes a bit of energy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/apr/30/google-yahoo

Yahoo! still single and looking!

Bashar — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 15:12:44 +0000

Several months after initial agreement and testing, Google all of a sudden decided it’s too much of a hassle to fight for the Yahoo-Google advertisement deal, and simply decided to walkaway. This coming after Google was directly trying to talk Yahoo! out of Microsoft acquisition at $33 a share seems like a fiance walking away after taking away the girl from her ex-boyfriend, and now Yahoo! are re-opening the door to Microsoft talks, however with their stock price down to $14.53!

Google are usually tough in those legal battles, like when they snapped DoubleClick against all odds, or like when they stood against handing over their customer query logs. So I wonder what made them change their mind at this time. Is it that they no longer fear Microsoft acquisition? Are they relaxed now that Yahoo! stock has fallen so hard there is no way they will sell right now? Is it the fall of Yahoo profits 64% as opposed to 31% increase in last quarter profits for Google. Perhaps this’s made it a bad looking match. Or is it really true Google have just now awakened and saw it too tough to take and no longer worth it.

At all rates, Google have stabbed Yahoo! in the back hard and at a time that just couldn’t be worse, making Yahoo! now turn back begging for past love. If such an acquisition happens, perhaps only then Google would regret.

Google Ads on Yahoo Search Pages Almost A Reality

Bashar — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 06:47:48 +0000

I left the soccer pitch yesterday 11 PM to see an SMS forward from a friend about TechCrunch Twitter alert, Yahoo-Google announcement 1:30 PM today. This is gotta be about the advertising partnership.

And indeed, I woke up today to read about the Google & Yahoo public joint announcement declaring they are going into an advertisement partnership in which Google Ads will be served on Yahoo search results for the queries Yahoo! see as rewarding for them. So Yahoo! is not giving up completely on their advertising program, but if the estimates of $800 million revenue increase in one year turns out to be true, and my senses tell it’s going to be more, I guess they could change their mind about the partial partnership.

The Justice Department ofcourse is still unhappy and are investigating a possible AntiTrust. However, since Yahoo played it smart, and made a non-exclusive advertisement partnership agreement, which means any other bidders may get theirs ads on Yahoo pages as well, then I guess there is no reason for the partnership to be stopped.

How this will affect advertisers is what makes me wonder however. Yahoo! can select the queries it want to have Google Ads for, and stick to their program for others. So how will this happen, for keyword “shopping” for example. There are two sides here:

- I am a Google Advertiser: Will I have the option to show my ads on Yahoo! search results. This could make sense to avoid possible lawsuits, or it could under the Content Network. If it’s an opt-in, the adaptation rate might be a bit slower. Not everyone is always up to date on those changes. Otherwise, it may be an opt-out option, and I doubt people want to do this really.

- I am a Yahoo! Advertiser: I am bidding for the word shopping. Does Yahoo! tell me “Sorry, go join Google and bid for Shopping word”? What if I don’t want to place my ads on Google because of say, click-fraud cases I’ve heard of. And what if not all my words are powered by Google Ads. It means I have to literally manage two advertising programs, who are mutually exclusive in the budget and tracking, to bid for the keywords I want.

I just hope there will be a bit more easier way to do it, and a sort of integration between the two.

Google doing Safe Site Scan with AVG

Bashar — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 15:09:15 +0000

Just like Yahoo started sometime back, Google is in co-operation with AVG scanning their search results for malware sites.

And while this is good in concept, I found the scan to take way too long, that I don’t think people will generally wait to see the result. An option to turn that off was not spotted. This could be troublesome for people with slow connection. Luckily, Google is not mad at my blog, but they better be careful. They don’t wanna make Yahoo’s mistake, or some say trick ;).

Soon your Google Ads may showup on Yahoo!

Bashar — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 09:16:55 +0000

Google and Yahoo! have been undergoing a testing period for the efficiency of delivering Google Ads alongside Yahoo search results. This is to measure how the ad click-throughs are compared to Yahoo’s own ads. Yahoo themselves estimate that Google Ads bring 60-70% more revenue than Yahoo. This is because of ad relevancy for one, and two I’m sure from the large collection of advertisers Google has. The more options you have, the more possible it is to deliver better results. Also, the user won’t get bored from the same results all the time. And when it comes to global market, say the Arabic region for example, or any other non-English site, it’s pretty difficult to get any geo-targeted ads. I don’t see any Arabic ads at Yahoo or any other ad network, while Google is getting more and more every day.

The test was to show Google ads at 3% of Yahoo search results inside the US for two weeks only. How did it go? Both parties have spoken general good deal of it so far. The Justice Department have been officially informed about the ongoing tests, and questions are rising right now about whether a deal between the two would give Google a monopoly over the internet ad market. Frankly, I would love for my Google Ads to show on Yahoo results for two reasons. One, Google is the best advertising program I’ve tried from many others, and gives very strong ad control and tracking. Two, I don’t want to split my money and time following multiple ad programs. Still however, for a multi-billion dollar business that large, I believe Google are over looking certain areas and need to improve on them:

Ad Filtering: Filter unwanted ads on my site. Sex & gambling mainly. Google does a brilliant job catching fraud ads, ads that do not reflect the site content, heck they even ban certain Arabic words if they are about medical terms without valid permit. I’ve had one keyword disabled “عقار” which means both real-estate and medicine. It was banned because it’s a medical term and I can’t promote medical stuff without any proof of permit, even if I really meant real estate. So their filtering is strong when they want to, yet their Google AdSense competitive ad filtering is pretty lousy. I filter a certain site and after 12 hours I can still see the ads showing up on my site. This could be really embarrassing and bad for a business. I also don’t get any chance to disallow gambling and sex sites, which I believe should be a normal easy to implement option. Google already offers to filter offensive content in it’s search, so an option to disallow those sites from advertising on mine should be pretty simple.
Customer Support: How easy is it to contact Google for support? And how long does it take for them to reply. Not what you hope for from a leading company. Google support has always been disappointing to me.
Wire-Transfer: For AdSense, most countries are still not supported for money transfer. Many smaller sites are ahead of Google and transfer to any place in the world. Google is only slowly expanding, and yet promoting the green environment thing.
Money Split: For some reason Google just don’t wish to tell you how much your share is from the click. Many other sites do. The ad is on my site and we are sharing the revenue. Any business would usually include share percentage. Google always gives vague unclear answers about the subject. If it’s bad, then you’re doing EVIL. If it’s good, then say it. One report was published before by New York Times based on announced 2006 Google financial reports estimating 78.5% of the AdSense clicks going to the publishers. Such a big number makes you wonder why wouldn’t Google reveal it. One reason I can think of is maybe they don’t want competitors to know the percentage and start a percentage share war.

All in all, Google remains a very strong source for advertising and revenue that I would like to see expand further. A bit more attention is required hoewever for customer needs.

It’s a big day in the history of the web

Bashar — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 10:30:01 +0000

This tale of this day could really be told for decades to come. It could be a day that will change the web dramatically, with Yahoo Board of Directors setting today on one table to discuss and decide on the Microsoft $44.6 billion bid to acquire Yahoo. Such an acquisition I believe has never happened before in the web. One of top 3 sites acquiring the other. Shall Yahoo decline the offer, Google would be happy to offer all the help their competitors need to get back on their foot, starting with powering their Search (again), and their Search Marketing expectedly.

Google hasn’t been looking at this only however, rumors are spreading about acquisitions of two social-networking sites, namely Bebo and Plaxo. Meanwhile, Ask.com keeps their steady silent enhancement with their Big News release, which is really appealing, and is aided with some video, picture, and Digged news.

UPDATE: Yahoo! says we are worth at least $56.4 billion ($40/share) if Microsoft is interested. While Yahoo! doubts Microsoft would bow to such claim, the door is still open for Microsoft, and this time with a certain target. I don’t think this is the end of it, but I believe meanwhile Google are gonna boast things with their rival in a joint venture, just to show Yahoo! how good it will taste.

If you can’t beat them, buy them

Bashar — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 07:27:36 +0000

This is literally what Microsoft did after more than a decade of failure to catch up with the quickly evolving web world. They are making the biggest bid in the technical world ever to acquire Google’s rival, Yahoo!. Shall such a deal go on, Microsoft would finally be #1 in the WWW customer base, and Ballmer would finally see his dream come true. Beat Google that is! I think they must have thought of this after their protest on Google acquiring DoubleClick failed. This must have been a strong hit and they wanted to strike back in any way they could. Major acquisitions also have been the latest fashion. BEA and MySQL both acquired last month, so why not Yahoo! this month? After all, they have been lacking for the past few years.

But is it a wise thing to acquire a deteriorating company instead of emerging one? In the technology world, it’s about what smart people you hire, and looking at this story, companies like Google and Facebook seem to be getting all the attention of fresh talents, while Microsoft is not anymore the dream of programmers, and Yahoo is not even close to Google. Merges of falling down companies could go real bad. Look at AMD & ATI merge and how terrible it turned out to be, and they are still suffering from it. Such major acquisitions could be really harmful not only to the end user, but to the acquiring company as well.

Either ways, Google obviously is not happy about the attempted acquisition, and is fighting it from both ends. Publicly, they went with the predicted monopoly protest statements, describing how the take over would seriously hurt the global market fair competition, and without any doubt, they are absolutely right there. Especially when the acquisition is coming from Microsoft. From the shadows however, instead of making their own bids as it would contradict their monopoly protest, news have surfaced about Google’s Eric Schmidt calling Yahoo’s Chief to co-operate in backing off Microsoft offer, probably by reaching partnership agreement, something which could be appealing to Yahoo!. Google have also been making contacts with other companies, like Time Warner, looking for possible Microsoft rival bidders. Alas, none seems interested in a lost battle against a company as large as Microsoft.

I personally have been feeling real bad about competitor acquisitions, such as Oracle and BEA. It really cuts down the choices and give the company control over pricing and portability. Yahoo!’s fall to Microsoft would be even more devastating and harmful to much larger segment. And the thing that worries me the most is Yahoo! logically saying that they will “pursue the best course of action to maximize long-term value for shareholders.”. That said, you can only imagine how $44.6 billion looks compared to annual $4.13 billion in profits.

Adobe Fairy Tale

Bashar — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 16:01:08 +0000

Once upon a time there was a lovely PDF reader called Adobe. It was used every where to read PDF documents. It loaded fast, and was wonderfully doing everything it was supposed to do for years. But then the reader felt there is more he can do to this world than just open,read, and close. He felt as if people are just ignoring him, and he should be credited more for what he does. So then every time a user opened him he would suggest new updates. People trusted him at the beginning, however new updates next time took him more time to start. Still, he kept asking for more and more updates. People were starting to get annoyed, bu they still trusted him. Eventually, it became too much for him that it takes him tens of seconds, sometimes minutes to launch and open one single document. All that time was not needed. All people wanted was to read the document. Nothing more. People lost faith in Adobe reader, and it became a symbol for slow launch time.

People complained and asked for adjustments. But the old Adobe reader’s heart now became polluted with greediness and desire for more and more. The future looks bright in Adobe’s naive brain. He wants now to give people ads aside their documents. Ads related to their document. Every time they open it, new dynamic ads are displayed. Dynamic means more load time, and ofcourse more updates to get these ads running. There was born a need, and there the need was filled. Foxit Reader to the rescue. Out of no where the young hero came. He was light, fast, and more importantly, polite. No unneeded updates, or ads on the page. I took my virtual friend’s advise and used it, and lived happily ever after.

Story Lesson: Background processes are just the fine when they remain background.

Ofcourse Adobe is not really background, but something supposed to be quick and light. No need for all that fuss.

Yahoo Mail now Talks to Live Users

Bashar — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 00:33:11 +0000

Even though I mostly use Gmail embedded Google Talk most often as it’s faster, more transient, and I have more friends on Gmail, Yahoo embedded mail chat is also cool if you are into serious chat and want some friendly interface. Today logging into my Yahoo Mail account I could see several changes coming:

Yahoo Chat with Live users: This is both good and bad. Good as a technical milestone, good that I no longer have any reason to open Live messenger. Bad because they keep pushing away from the standard XMPP protocol, and because now more people can catch me online unaware :).

2. Useful information identification: Basically a copy of Google Address verification and a map link to it.

3. New Fresh nicer interface

Still though, no matter how much Yahoo Mail improves, every time I login I just look at this guy and wonder

Who the hell came up with this figure? Couldn’t they find anything more live, more appealing, more non-idiot look. He is just ugly square T-Shirt guy. Company as big and famous as Yahoo should be able to come up with more catchy character, and if they can’t, then don’t come up with one at all! I really miss Microsoft good old clippy now.

The NoFollow Effect

Bashar — Fri, 24 Aug 2007 20:21:06 +0000

“nofollow is an HTML attribute value used to instruct search engines that a hyperlink should not influence the link target’s ranking in the search engine’s index” (Wikipedia)

So much explains it self. The attribute is part of Google’s efforts to fight blog comment spam which was implemented back in 2005. Ever since then many blog communities have started to adapt this parameter to make it less of use for spammers to gain backlink from the comments. Without ruling out it’s advantages, I have disabled it on my blog as I am filtering out all spam and thus killing the motive behind the attribute it self.

Google’s idea and efforts haven’t been adapted however by other search engines. The least not the big ones. Yahoo for example does not take that parameter into consideration. The net result is huge difference in site results and ranking, for blogs specifically, between Google and Yahoo. Let’s do a small test and see. Say we want to see all pages that link to my blog. This would be accomplished by searching for link:blogallalong.com. See the query applied on Google. 12 results only at the time of writing. Not much hah? I should note however that there are other sites linking in to my blog but for some reason they are not included in the results. Now let’s see the same query on Yahoo. At the time of writing, that’s 1,777 results! BIG DIFFERENCE RIGHT? I should consider defaulting to Yahoo they admire my blog more :).

So what’s that supposed to mean? More links means theoretically higher ranking. Means that when you search for example for Google Checkout Review, which is a post I wrote sometime back and got some good hits, if you search it on Yahoo you should get my post in the results much higher than Google. Initially the post was one of the top on both. When more and more Google Checkout reviews started to come out, mine got pushed back naturally. Surprisingly, even with so many backlinks in Yahoo, if I search the Google Checkout Review as keywords (not phrase) on Google & Yahoo, you will see that Google lists my post at end of 2nd page while I was not able to find my post on Yahoo for the first 6 or 7 pages! Search Engine world is a mystery not meant to be solved. Search the whole phrase and the post will be #6 at Yahoo and #10 at Google at the time of writing. This is because much of the results will be ruled out as we are looking for exact phrase ofcourse.

Now, the two options are available. NoFollow, and the so called DoFollow. Here comes the fun part. Wanna see what you can make with them? Do a link:blogallalong.com again on Google, and you will get mostly the blogs that do not use the NoFollow. You will see that SearchEngineJournal and the legendary Ron Gilbert both don’t use it. HINT: I comment on Ron Gilbert blog! See, you got me there. This won’t work for popular sites like Cnet however, as they have mostly non blog-comment inlinks and the NoFollow effect here is minimal. But what would the same query on Yahoo reveal? It would show you the blogs that I visit and comment on. That’s right. You can track me and see what I’ve been doing. So in a way, Google’s NoFollow respects your privacy more. That’s one more unintended advantage. So maybe we should have a WP plugin to give user option to have NoFollow on his comment or not :).

Google Suggest Still in Labs…

Bashar — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 15:20:30 +0000

I first saw Google Suggest no later than 2005 I’m sure. I was stunned just couldn’t believe my eyes. Google is able to auto-complete my query suggesting from the top results, and that was all happening on the fly. No other search engine could do it at that time. At least not to my knowledge. The service was in Google Labs back then and is still as we stand now. I wonder why all this time to make it the default search. I figured back then it must be for testing and to avoid massive extra load on the system, but by now the service should be ready for full launch. I know Firefox Google Search Plugin does come with auto-completion, but that’s not enough. You know why?

Yesterday only a friend of mine told me “Hey Bashar!, have you seen Yahoo’s new search?. They can auto-complete your query on the fly!”. Ahh, that’s old news I told him. Google has it from long time. He didn’t believe ofcourse they have the same service. He thought I am talking about stored history queries in my browser. When I showed it to him he was kind of surprised. This makes me wonder why does it take Google that long to get such brilliant service out from the labs and to the public. They are just coming with the ideas now and letting Yahoo enjoy the public reputation, when actually Yahoo are just cloning it. Even now, Google Suggest is still better as I see it. Yahoo one looks more compelling that’s true. But it’s only available from Yahoo main page search, not when you go to Yahoo Search results page, that’s for one. Another thing is the relevancy of the search. Take a look at the query result below from Yahoo and see how Google treated it as shown above. When I search for “pla”, 6 years old kid would shot “Y STATION!”, which is what we see from Google results. Yahoo on the other hand has shorter list of suggestions and misses one of the most obvious queries. This is just a quick dummy test ofcourse, but all in all, Google Suggest is capable of delivering more suggestions than Yahoo.

Now, go to the Google Labs to see list of services that have been in there for quite some time and people are still unaware of, like the Google Ride Finder for instance. How many people know they can track Taxis online in the US? This was also available back in 2005 and up till now. Sad thing is, some of those services gets killed while still in the labs, like the Google API.

UPDATE: To the people who like the feature, try AllTheWeb Livesearch Beta from Yahoo!. It’s like the Google Labs but to be honest, I love it. I just don’t understand how the sponsored results at the top are separated from normal results. I don’t see separator or anything.

My Yahoo Size Goes To ∞

Bashar — Wed, 27 Jun 2007 16:42:26 +0000

I was hoping to see such a thing from Gmail as they promised I never have to delete an email again. Either that or I will be sending all emails from Gmail to here. Yahoo Mail Beta is really nice I like it, and their web chat is (let’s be honest) way more advanced than Gmail chat. They have come from behind and surpassed Google on web chat and size. I still however find Gmail much more convenient to use and don’t wish to switch back. So this is a call to Gmail to hear the cries.

Wonder if all others have gotyrn the unlimited size storage. I read sometime back it won’t be offered for all. Maybe they just gave it to me cause I’m so much light user right now. Did anyone of you get it? I’m interested in non-paying Yahoo users more.

Yahoo Photo Off, Tough But Wise Decision

Bashar — Sat, 05 May 2007 14:54:04 +0000

This is the kind of tough decisions you have to make when you acquire a technology that conflicts not complements your own. After acquiring Flickr, Yahoo photos can only stand less of a chance, and it makes no sense to push for two different competing channels. Despite the co-founder of Flickr statement that Yahoo photo and Flickr will be two separate applications, with different access credentials and needs, the still leading Yahoo photos has been declining while Flickr keeps rising. The thing that led Yahoo to make the hard decision of killing it’s own app. To read more about the story details, click here.

What’s happening here is quite similar to Google and YouTube case, except that YouTube is already much largr than Google Video. Google are still trying to convince them selves and others that the two are separate and non-colliding. However you can only run but you can’t hide. Sooner or later, Google will have to deal with this conflict of interest. Both are video streaming communities, one is much larger than the other. Right now, Google video searches both YouTube and Google videos, and the majority of the results are from YouTube. In addition, even if you want to search Google Videos only, you have to manuall write site:video.google.com, as Google does not have an option to search within it’s site only. The acquisition has cost Google $1.65 billion, so why not use it and cut down the cost of your own I wonder. It’s bad and demotivating for the people behind it I know, but I think it’s hurts more when I keep adding to something that I think will fall any minute.

Another similar case now is the Yahoo acquisition by Microsoft. A deal that if made could be one of the biggest in history, and definitely the biggest in the web. For Microsoft this deal is a step back into the monopoly, and a quick jump ahead into the WWW which they have been lacking in for quite long time. This would also put them ahead of their worst enemy, Google. From Yahoo’s perspective however, let’s stop for a second and see what will happen. Not only for Yahoo it self, but for the whole Yahoo community who has been putting faith in the #1 site in the world.

Yahoo Search: Which one will be pushed for? Live or Yahoo?
Ads: Will Yahoo still deliver their own ads, or will Microsoft enforce their AdCenter on Yahoo network. What will happen to the advertisers as well?
Yahoo Mail: This is a tough one. Will they be supporting two different competing services, or push only for the winner (Yahoo I mean)?
Messenger: We know MSN and Yahoo are already collaborating for cross-messaging between the two, but not killing one of them over the other.

These are only quick points I can think of that will get affected. I really doubt this deal will make it through, but if it does, a hell lot of changes are going to happen out there.

Einstein Theory Holds No More!

Bashar — Sun, 01 Apr 2007 19:44:13 +0000

“Only two things are infinite, Einstein said, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”

Now, the theory is no longer correct for sure. Yahoo Mail is giving their users infinite storage space. Well, that’s what they are promising at least. But could someone really commit to that amount of storage? Or is it just a marketing strategy to hit Gmail where it hurts? As I expected, Yahoo have reported that they based their infinite storage grant on their analysis of existing users, and how most of them are still below the 1 GB storage limit. In practice, Yahoo are not expecting perhaps even 30% of their users to reach the 1 GB storage, and even more, not all users will be enjoying this infinite storage privilege anyways. China and Japan will all be excluded from this feature as well. The statement does not give details about what are the conditions that makes a person eligible for the infinite storage. Perhaps they will only give it to people who are not utilizing the 1 GB after all. Who knows! Without any restriction, imagine what a handful of people could do with the Yahoo Mail in one day. This could lead to the largest Yahoo Mail black out in history, and lose the faith of their customers for good. Just like what happened to Google when Google Reader, Google Page Creator and Google Analytics all went down in one day.

Source for more information here.

Yahoo Mail Now Unlimited In Size!?!

Bashar — Wed, 28 Mar 2007 07:03:18 +0000

I hope this isn’t 1st of April fool or something, but Search Engine Journal is writing about blog post, Yahoo Mail will celebrate it’s 10th anniversary by offering it’s users unlimited mail storage size. A knock-out for Gmail which was the first to start with 1 GB FREE, and one year later stroke out Yahoo with another 1 GB. Recently however, as I was starting to get worried about my inbox size, Gmail announced they will hitting 3.47 GB in 5 years! and there is no jump-ahead. Too slow compared to their starting speed. Now, they have made it an easy lead for Yahoo if the news is true, and if so, the maximum Google can deliver is just a late equalizer. I am still surprised how can Yahoo commit to unlimited size, there must be some restriction in terms of how many bytes per day or something. Otherwise a bunch of hackers will bring the whole service down to it’s knees in no time I believe. There is no such thing as infinite storage in reality you know.

Why Google Adwords is still the best

Bashar — Sat, 10 Feb 2007 18:15:18 +0000

When ever someone is talking about online ads, he is probably talking about Google Adwords. The widest exposure you can get is by joining the mostly used search engine world wide. But why only stick to one place for ads? Doesn’t that mean you are loosing other potential customers? I have had this thought my self and went into exploring it a bit. The two other candidates I found with good reviews are Yahoo! and AdBrite.

Yahoo, in the beginning seemed like a good candidate for ads. It’s signup page was not obvious, they simply have many advertising programs. Once you find it, signing up seemed pretty simple and the ads are pretty easy to setup. You can get expert help for a fee as well (I wouldn’t recommend it though). The first drawback was that it’s still limited to US and Canada only! Means if you have your target customers in Europe or Middle-East for instance then you’re out of luck. The other thing that stopped me was the minimum Cost-Per-Click. While Google gives you the flexibility to chose as low as 1 cent, Yahoo restricts it to minimum of $0.1. For someone who has a great turn-over in profit this might be feasible, but if you consider your sale to be $2 for instance, this means you have to get a lead out of every 20 persons only. Not easy to get always. Other than that, feeding in the keywords you can get quick suggestions and estimated traffic for the keywords. It seemed pretty good and convenient. If this pricing and market segment meets your needs, I think it would be worth it to invest part of your ads on Yahoo.

My other option was AdBrite. However I was more frustrated with this one, as my minimum daily budget has to be $5. That means minimum $150/month/ That’s not so cheap if you are just starting your own personal business and not sure how successful it will be. As Yahoo is a bigger brand, starting up and we expect to see it grow over the next few years, between the two I would suggest Yahoo they still give more flexibility, if you need a second ads channel that is. Starting point still looks Google Adwords to me.

Yahoo is so Anti-Google!

Bashar — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 19:59:31 +0000

I have been a Google fan for long, but I used to like Yahoo in the term that they focus on improving them selves rather than taking on their competitor, unlike Microsoft. Ofcourse by providing new services you aim at taking market share from your competitor, just not by aiming at him directly. Recently however, I have been noticing a change in the wind. For example, when you search Yahoo! for Google, and Google only, you get a search box above all results saying “Search the Web with Yahoo!”. Today also, I noticed something else. When I am searching Yahoo (and I rarely do that!), I noticed an ugly red message at the top saying “Search with Yahoo! from your browser”. If you hover over it, this is what you get:

Clearly saying, let go the Google and use Yahoo! to get instant suggestions. Now I know some of you would say Google is the default and that’s why they have their logo in the picture, but it’s pretty unusual to have something like this. Couldn’t they put the Yahoo! logo instead as an indication of how it will look like when you install it? And if they are referring to switching from Google to Yahoo!, for novice users, they might think that Yahoo! has the unique suggestion feature while Google doesn’t, which ofcourse is not true. One year back, Yahoo! Chief Financial Officer said after the 2006 Annual Report was released, that they are not after Google anymore, as Google are too good to beat. But I can see the war is still going on. It just seems Yahoo! wanted to release some pressure off them so they can move more easy.

Live Search Growth Goes Down by 10%

Bashar — Fri, 02 Feb 2007 17:02:52 +0000

marketwire have issued a report on the Top U.S. Search Providers showing Google at the top, with 50.8% share of all searches, followed by Yahoo with 23.6%, and then MSN/ Live Search with 8.4%, almost 2% difference only separates it from AOL!

Isn’t it interesting that while Windows is the dominant operating system all around the globe, and Internet Explorer is the default browser that is used by the majority, and is pointing by default to MSN Search, isn’t it amazing to see MSN/ Live Search share of U.S. searches forming only 8.4%, that is 9.7% LOWER than last year. So their usage is going down rather than catching up with the others as they were hoping Live Search would be. Worth noting also that the yearly growth of Yahoo is just over 30%, compared to Google’s 22.6%. So Yahoo have progressed from last year to close on Google, even though the difference is still more than a double. Search Engine Journal has more on this.

Yahoo doing evil against Google?

Bashar — Sat, 13 Jan 2007 14:07:54 +0000

Marketing Pilgrim are posting the incident of an individual who download Yahoo Messenger, and upon installation, he got an innocent vague looking auto-update option, which he normally assumed it’s Yahoo Messenger related update and decided to keep it. What he found out later is that the update downloads the IE7, sets it as default browser with Yahoo as the main page, and not only that. It changes the default search engine to Yahoo from what it was, Google.

This is a very strange incident to be, and someone already mailed Yahoo for comments. Read more and see snapshots from the original post.

Google Answers Falls as Yahoo one Rises

Bashar — Fri, 01 Dec 2006 12:31:44 +0000

The project that started as an idea from Larry Page more than 4 years back, Google Answers, is now closing down for new questions, and at the end of the year, for any new answers as well. This decision comes just few months after Yahoo launched their own Yahoo Answers, which is turning out pretty well.

The difference however is in the concept between the two. Google Answers was for people to post questions, and bit how much they are welling to pay for an answer. Then a group of researchers would look for an answer to your question. Not anyone could answer the question, and you have to pay to get the answer. This is kind of awkward in the rich forum world, and where Google users are used to the free search services.

Yahoo Answers however is more of an open community, where you have points deducted for asking, and rewarded for answering. This have turned Yahoo Answers into a wide fast growing community, where you post the question, and only have to wait few seconds before you start getting answers. Pretty good isn’t it? But the draw back of this is the nature of people using it. Usually they are the people looking for fun rather than real answers, so pretty often you would read “What’s your favorite color?” or “What’s the price of HD Drive?” when they could actually search any shopping site for the best prices. The answers also don’t come much as you hope for, if you are looking for a professional answer. One time only I remember getting professional answer for a technical question, otherwise, the service would do you just good if you want to have some fun or know the answer to a general question like “What’s the name of the movie that was shown last year about alien invasion?” Those kind of questions, you expect to get answers to them.

All in all, it is numbers that count, and Yahoo are taking this round.

BlogAllAlong » Yahoo

What’s the most searched for term on Microsoft Live?

Google

No seriously…

And How Many People Do it?

1% of all Live.com Search Queries are “Google”!

And what’s number 2?

Yahoo!

Seems most people just use Live.com to find a way out.

So Microsoft, please just help make the world a better place and default your browsers to Google!

You can file it under a Green Environment initiative, since every bit consumes a bit of energy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/pda/2009/apr/30/google-yahoo

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