Chris Winfield in Newsday: ‘Yahoo-Microsoft merger could benefit Web users’
Feb 12, 2008 by Chris Winfield | Microsoft, Press, Yahoo!
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.
This will definitely be an interesting story to watch as I believe it is far from over….
Check out the full article here @ Yahoo-Microsoft merger could benefit Web users.
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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.
Yahoo has now launched a completely revamped version of their search engine which ties together all of their recent acquisitions and moves of the last few years.
Since, we’ve seen the acquisitions of Inktomi, Altavista & Fast’s AlltheWeb, and how they’ve morphed into Yahoo Search Technology; the company’s search engine.
Enter Yahoo acquisitions of Flickr, Delicious and Upcoming.org into the mix, along with Yahoo’s own social Yahoo Video and Yahoo Answers channels, and the company has always seemed to have the potential to reinvent or dramatically change search results.
When you search on Yahoo today you will be able to see the major changes that they have made. With different searches you will find Yahoo embedded video, photos (Flickr), and announced the availability of more categories of Shortcuts (content modules at the top of results) across a range of vertical categories: events, music, movies, travel, sports, health, shopping, businesses and restaurants.
Perhaps the most important feature is Search Assist. With this Yahoo aims to make searching more intuitive and guide you in finding the perfect result. As Greg Sterling notes:
Search Assist offers suggestions, query refinements and numerous related topics when users hesitate as they enter keywords and the engine senses that help might be needed. Search Assist functions not unlike search suggestions or query refinements that are available from Ask, Microsoft Live Search and Google. However, the presentation of information is more compelling and more complete “on the front end,” meaning before the query is formulated.
So what does this all mean for Yahoo? Is this enough to usurp Google for the search crown? NO. Is it a step in the right direction? YES. Users need to see constant innovation like this from Yahoo. The most immediate change that I see coming from this is a higher retention of current Yahoo searchers. People who use Yahoo as their primary search engine will now be less likely to want to wander over to Google or Live because they will be getting better searches and seeing positive changes.
One major problem I see with it is the over reliance on paid Yahoo placements above the fold for many results. For example a search for “plasma TV” shows me only one natural result above the fold:
The same search on Google at least gives me three natural results above the fold:
Yahoo has to be careful to not shove their paid results down users throats or else it looks like they are one of two things: 1) not confident about the natural results they are serving 2) greedy.
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Yahoo Mobile: Pinpoint Advertising and Search Marketing
Jul 18, 2007 by Jake Matthews | Mobile, Yahoo!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:
So how does this situation relate to marketing? It was interesting to browse through this because there are some facts about browsing Yahoo Mobile that I did not know:
Under #2:
This is interesting because Yahoo is saying that they may look to show users services based on the type of phone that they have. I also find this interesting because it implies that Yahoo can change up the way it presents information based on the type of device and the service provider that you use.
It goes on to say…THE INTERESTING PART: “Yahoo! may use and store this information to provide enhanced location-based service as well as to serve location targeted-advertising.â€
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Hertz
www.hertz.com/lesnyc
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Marketing and Advertising Efforts + Disregard mobile advertising = long term struggles Marketing and Advertising Efforts + Pay attention to mobile advertising = long term success
We could go a lot deeper into conversion rates and such…
Other Web Sites and blogs covering the Yahoo and Google Mobile subjects:
Marketing Pilgrim – Andy Beal and Paul Bennet on Google AdSense
I’m sure there are others, so please chime in anyone and let us know where you are covering this.
Yahoo! information and resources addressing mobile advertising and publishing:
Yahoo!
Yahoo! Press Release on oneSearch for Mobile Publishers
As a side note, I’ve downloaded Google’s
Yahoo!’s complete privacy policy
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Chris Winfield in USA Today: ‘Yahoo co-founder Yang becomes CEO’
Jun 19, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Press, Yahoo!
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.
Personally, I hope that Yang builds upon a theme from his blog post yesterday about his “new job”:
I look forward to teaming more closely with her as we pursue our joint vision. What is that vision? A Yahoo! that executes with speed, clarity and discipline.
For awhile many (from inside Yahoo! and outside observers) have said that the company has become to beaureacratic and”heavy” – this is what allowed Google to surpass them in search and many other facets. This was especially brought to light by the infamous “Peanut Butter Manifesto” and the executive shakeup that followed it. It seems to me as if Yang is addressing this head-on and looking to change that. I hope he can. We need another dominant player in the search field right now, someone to challenge Google and continue to spur innovation & opportunity.
You can read the whole USA Today article at Yahoo co-founder Yang becomes CEO.
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Yahoo Deactivating Accounts Because of “Answers”
May 8, 2007 by Chris Winfield | Social Networks, Yahoo!
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.
Once a service starts to get more popular the propensity for gaming it will increase. That’s just a natural law of the online world. You want to put more time into something that will give you a better return on said time. So over the last few months I have been watching a thread in the Yahoo! Forums called Yahoo! Deactivating accounts because of “Answers”. In this thread scores of users talk about being banned from Yahoo! Answers due to many different reasons:
I recently had a 10 year old yahoo account deactivated because some of my “answers” were not liked by others. I was therefore singled out by some(one) and “reported” constantly. Needless to say, I lost alot of information and services and will no longer consider yahoo a stable platform as a portal.
In this question, someone asks If you are banned from yahoo answers, are you banned from all of yahoo too? Interestingly enough, it looks like there are two answers:
1) If you are banned for violating the Community Guidelines, you are banned from Yahoo! Answers. You can access your account, but you cannot use Yahoo! Answers. You keep your email, 360 and any pay services.
2) If you are banned for violating the Terms Of Service, your entire account will be deactivated. You loose your email and any information stored within. You do not have a period to collect important information.
Just like with any other popular social networking site, there are a few things that you should keep in mind in order to play it safe and still be able to leverage the system effectively and not get banned:
* Build up a natural profile. Become a good resource for people by asking and answering questions
* Don’t use sock puppet accounts. If you really insist on this, at least use different IPs (be consistent with them) and build natural profiles for those accounts.
* Don’t be controversial. Many of the people had their accounts banned simply because they said things that other users didn’t like and they were constantly reported. Apparently it’s very easy for this to happen (from user eruditeftw: If one person on here doesn’t like you ( Or your answers) they will target you and get you deactivated.)
* Have a proportionate number of good answers to link drops. This would be akin to constantly submitting your own stories on Digg. If you’re only going on Yahoo! Answers to drop links to your websites, it’s going to be very obvious. Answers has a very vigilant community and they will report people who they think are spamming. Definitely drop links to your sites but make sure there is a good answer around them and that you are answering other questions.
* Don’t use a Yahoo! account that you use for anything important. Hopefully you’re not using a Yahoo! email account for anything mission critical but just to be on the safe-side, set-up an account that you won’t really care if it does get banned. Because if you are banned for violating their TOS, everything will get nuked.
With Yahoo! Answers many of the same rules apply as other social networks and there is one important one to remember: the more you put into it, the more you’ll get out of it.
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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.”
My thoughts on this deal are simple. In a perfect world I feel that a Microsoft and Yahoo pairing would make a stronger company to compete against Google, with the key word being compete. Paired together their search market share would be at almost 39% – just 10% below Google’s 48%. But even in the perfect world scenario I don’t think they would be able to surpass Google in search anytime in the near future. With that being said, that’s the perfect world scenario, you are talking about two very ego driven companies that both just spent a great deal of time and money building search applications to compete with Google (Microsoft’s live.com and AdCenter; Yahoo’s Project Panama). They also used to work together (Microsoft used Yahoo’s ad platform) and that got scrapped. So….
But in the end, it doesn’t look like its going to matter anyway because according to recent reports talks have been called off for the time being. But they did say that they might still try to find a way of cooperating together in the future. Interesting times…
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Yahoo Goes Mobile: 19 Nations to Embrace Cell Phone Advertising
Feb 13, 2007 by Tamar Weinberg | Yahoo!
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.
This is a very interesting step to expand advertising beyond the Internet and into the hands of people who may not necessarily be sitting in front of a PC. And it’s entirely possible. In the past few days, gadget blogs have been showcasing a tremendous amount of newly announced cell phone models, and Yahoo is acknowledging the financial opportunity for them — and for their advertisers — on these cutting-edge mobile phones. According to Steve Boom, Yahoo’s senior VP for mobile and broadband, high-resolution color screens and Web browsers makes this decision particularly desirable, and the “mobile advertising market is [consequently] poised to explode.”
Yahoo’s initiative combines the Yahoo! Go 2.0 software platform that they plan to roll out to major mobile phone manufacturers in addition to forging the required relationships with advertisers to display the ads. The audience — end users like you and me — are in the estimated three billion users throughout the world expected to own a cell phone by the end of 2007.
So far, this looks to be incredibly promising for Yahoo. With what appears to be a well-thought-out mobile strategy, the company is poised to move ahead of Google in the mobile world, and for Yahoo’s sake, I truly look forward to this being a very big success for the company.
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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:
Thousands of advertisers, and billions of dollars in ad spending, will be watched closely, as Yahoo finally moves from the pure “highest bidder wins†model, to the “bid plus quality†model. By making this switch, Yahoo hopes to increase the average revenue per click from 2.5/3 cents to something closer to Google’s 4.5/5 cents.
What is the goal of this for advertisers?
The system will enable advertisers to have more control over their campaign, and Yahoo’s customer service will be working closely with advertisers to increase understanding into the relevancy of ads. One of the unique features being rolled out is called the “quality index,” which will provide advertisers with insights into how ads are ranked and will also provide analytics to educate advertisers about the effectiveness of their campaigns.
Over time, we’ll likely see Yahoo close the gap between itself and Google with more advertisers signing onto the system, and I certainly look forward to seeing how it plays out.
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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?
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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.
- Yahoo also decided to focus on improving its search and acquired Inktomi. For awhile, this seemed to be very promising.
- Then problems began occurring as it became difficult to integrate Overture ads into search results.
- Commitments to Overture customers (mostly Microsoft) and the direct conflict of Microsoft’s own emerging search made these integration issues even more difficult because of of the desire to please all customers.
- Yahoo decided it had to fix the problems inherent in Overture in what we now know as Panama. But at first, bureaucratic constraints within the organization made it difficult.
- Panama’s initial development had three main problems: it lacked an easy-to-use automated system, it needed a good mechanism for determining ad-relevancy, and in order to be effective, it depended on a very robust cash-management system. This caused setbacks and delayed its launch (expected for March of this year).
- So what have we learned? During technological-challenged Terry Semel’s tenure at Yahoo, the systems faltered. Semel is a good marketer and had a great background prior to being appointed CEO of Yahoo, but it looks like he missed the ball on this one likely due to his misunderstanding of software and technology and how both work.
(Yahoo responded to Wired and mentioned that overcoming challenges within Yahoo were “heroic.” And given Yahoo’s drastic reorg late last year, perhaps they are right. Those who have survived this are heroes.)
All right, I concede: maybe Yahoo really can’t be a Google rival in the areas that it is trying so hard to compete in. Maybe they won’t be the best search engine (but still, people still prefer them). I don’t think that we should be ready to prepare a “eulogy” for Yahoo so soon, however.
Let’s consider one of the points that Vogelstein only emphasizes slightly: Yahoo’s brush with social networks. Yes, they let YouTube slip by and the suspicions of them acquiring Facebook have led only to months of speculation (but nothing more). Still, I think that Yahoo has something unique. Ultimately, it comes down to this: despite Yahoo’s small 0.3 increase in search from November to December, search and advertising may not necessarily be Yahoo’s forte.
Yahoo is certainly jumping at smaller social properties, which ultimately, if integrated well, could make Yahoo a different kind of beast and not a direct rival to Google. Let’s hope Yahoo does something exciting in 2007 in these areas, and if they could pull ahead with its advertising platform as well, all the more power to them.
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