10e20 Blog

Last week I spoke to Richard Dalton from Newsday and gave him my thoughts on Microsoft and Yahoo coming together for a story he was doing. The article ran in today’s paper and can be seen here. Here are my thoughts from the piece:

Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, an Internet marketing company based in Fleetwood, agreed that neither Microsoft nor Yahoo can effectively compete individually against Google.

Microsoft’s search capability is a few year’s behind Google’s, while Yahoo’s search engine is good but lags Google’s as well, he said.

“Personally, I would much rather have two really strong options than just one really good option and then two OK ones.”

Rich ends the article with the most recent news about Yahoo! turning Microsoft down (for now): Even though Yahoo’s board has rejected Microsoft’s initial offer, some experts believe Microsoft will inevitably work out a deal to obtain the company – and then deal with an issue the software giant is familiar with – antitrust.

In football, there is an old saying – “They came to play.” What that means is the team is a competitor, they aren’t going to be content to simply go through the motions and let things happen to them. For awhile now it seems like Yahoo Search has been willing to gladly accept the role that Google has given them of second fiddle (and perhaps even third recently based on many of Microsoft’s moves) but as of October 1st, they have come to play.

Back in May, Google changed the way we searched (again) with their introduction of a new set of results for your searches. Their “Universal Search” system blended listings from its news (Google News), video (YouTube), images (Google Images), local (Google Local) and book (Google Books) search engines among those it gathers from crawling web pages (Google Search). This was an integrated approach to make searching more comprehensive and to also help blend together their properties on top of their core search business. Now Yahoo! has taken essentially the same leap and perhaps gone a step further.

I am a huge fan of browsing the web on my mobile device (a Blackberry 8830 World Edition from Verizon Wireless). In addition to great telephone reception and a speakerphone, the browser helps to load web pages quickly. It downloads full images and HTML pages really well and it browses mobile versions of sites with great speed and efficiency. The roller-ball mouse is a really sweet feature that makes navigation a breeze.

One of my favorite mobile Web Sites to go to is Yahoo! Mobile. I love checking Yahoo Finance, Sports and my Yahoo E-Mail (Yahoo! Mail Beta is FANTASTIC) But since I spend so much time on this site with this device, I explored a bit further into Yahoo! and the Yahoo Mobile Privacy Policy. They have a table of contents for this which includes:

Yesterday I spoke to Jeff Graham from USA Today regarding Yahoo! co-founder Jerry Yang taking over for former CEO Terry Semel. My thoughts from the article:

“Yahoo had to do something,” says Chris Winfield, who runs 10e20, a New York firm that helps businesses run search-marketing campaigns. “I’m hoping Jerry gets in there and really tries to fight to get Yahoo back on top, so Google isn’t the only option in town.”

There are lots of different ideas and rumors flying around about this move. CNBC has sources that say Yahoo! is going to buy MySpace in a $10 billion dollar deal (giving News Corp a 25% stake in YHOO) and then Yahoo! is going to go back to outsourcing their search to Google. Others think that it will be much of the same (Yang carrying on in much the same way Semel did) and then Yahoo becoming a possible acquisition target.

Yahoo! Answers is a community-driven information exchange website that allows users to ask and answer questions posed by other users. You can either ask a question (ex. What is the fastest animal?) or answer questions (ex. The cheetah). The question asker then gets to pick which is the best answer and users are rewarded with points. In the “Answer” space, it is the clear leader even leading Google to close its own Google Answers service back in November. Yahoo is starting to really push this service (I actually heard live read commercial for it this morning on ESPN Radio) and its popularity has not gone unnoticed by marketers. When used effectively, it is a great way to send very targeted traffic to your website.

Yesterday I spoke with Jeff Graham from USA Today and I am quoted in his story about the alleged Microsoft and Yahoo deal.

Could a potential Microsoft/Yahoo deal solve the freefall?

Short answer: no. Long answer: Internet analysts say it couldn’t hurt.

“Overnight, MSN and Yahoo’s market share doubles,” says Chris Winfield, president of 10e20, a New York firm that helps businesses set up search marketing campaigns. “They still aren’t as strong as Google, but they are healthier together than apart.”

Even though Yahoo is still in the “Big 2″ for search, not being #1 has got to be disturbing. It’s like looking for your desired keyword term in the SERPs and finding that someone else is in the #1 position with you not far behind — but you’ve apparently done everything you could possibly think of to make it to the top. What can you do next? Well, in Yahoo’s case, they are looking to be better in another area. (Likewise, you can focus your SEO tactics on other keywords or go long-tail.) If you can’t beat them somewhere, beat them somewhere else. Find an area where you can excel in and go with it.

Over the weekend, Yahoo announced that it is focusing its advertising efforts in the mobile world. Yes, that’s right, cellular telephones in 19 countries will begin featuring Yahoo brand advertising for a number of major service providers and products, including Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Intel, Nissan, and Hilton’s Embassy Suites.

After much waiting and anticipation, and at 3pm Pacific today, Yahoo will officially launch their Panama advertising platform. For anyone who is not familiar with the discussion surrounding the Panama system, I’ve put together a small FAQ on what you should know.

What is this Panama?
In a nutshell, Panama is Yahoo’s brand new avertising system which will allow advertisers to pay for search terms based on the popularity of these terms. These advertisements are known as contextual ads, advertisements that are generated based on the content of a web page.

Will Yahoo be down as a result of this rollout?
No. Yahoo expects the changeover to be completely smooth.

What is the goal of this for Yahoo?
Yahoo has rolled out the system in an attempt to catch up with Google. As Marketing Pilgrim puts it:

So they predict that 2007 is the year of the Widget. MyBlogLog has been a big hit so far. Now Yahoo, after acquiring the primary widget preferred by thousands of bloggers, has gone the next step to create a nifty little widget that allows users to see how many incoming links their website has from Yahoo’s Site Explorer.

The Badge, which Yahoo calls it, is Javascript code that appears to dynamically update itself with the number of incoming links to a particular page or site from Yahoo’s search engine. With just the installation of the code, individuals can see how many inbound links point to a particular website or web page instead of having to perform the research by hand. How cool would it be if there were widgets for every link statistic publicly available to help publishers easily determine the location of their weak points — from just a quick glance?

Yesterday, an interesting article appeared on Wired about critical mistakes that Yahoo has made that has caused them to “blow it.” Reporter Fred Vogelstein takes an in-depth look the failures of Yahoo over the past few years that has allowed Google to pull ahead of the former giant.

The 5-page article, summarized, goes a bit like this:

• Yahoo could have acquired Google in the summer of 2002. They offered $3 billion but Google wanted $5 billion. Yahoo didn’t think of this as a strategic move on their part given that Google’s revenue was only $240 million at the time, whereas Yahoo’s revenue was $837 million.
• Consequently, Yahoo needed to do something that directly competed with Google in order to stay in the lead. Yahoo CEO Terry Semel decided to focus its energies on advertising by investing in Overture.
• Google saw that they could compete Overture by offering the very efficient AdWords program.