July 20, 2008 - July 26, 2008
July 25, 2008
RushmoreDrive IAC Search Engine Will Give Away Range Rover
Billing itself as a "Super Search Engine,"IAC's RushmoreDrive.com has announced a 2009 Range Rover Sport Sweepstakes.
RushmoreDrive.com, the new search engine for the Black community from Barry Diller's IAC (InterActiveCorp) announced its Range Rover Sport Drive Away Sweepstakes at the Michael Baisden LIVE event held at the Nokia Theatre in New York City.
Surprisingly, there's no mention of the Sweepstakes on the search engine's home page or media pages.
RushmoreDrive.com hopes to change the way the Black community searches the World Wide Web for information, jobs and news. The job search feature is especially important given the current job market and economic uncertainty caused by the sub prime mortgage crisis, high gas prices, etc.
Michael Baisden encouraged members of the Black community to not only register at www.RushmoreDrive.com every day from now until the September 5, 2008 drawing for the Range Rover Sport, but he also reminded them that this first-of-its-kind search engine was built by Black people, for Black people.
RushmoreDrive.com employs a patent-pending technology that reputedly enables the search engine to identify sites with heavy online traffic from Black users and to elevate relevant information in the way in which it is listed.
The search engine is complemented by a job search and networking feature as well as a news section that presents several points of view on current events coming from mainstream and Black media sources and outlets. "Finally, Black people across the country have a search engine that is shaped by the interests and usage of the Black community," said RushmoreDrive.com's Johnny Taylor in a statement.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Social Media Metrics: How Internet Famous Are You?
Monitor, monitor, on the wall, "Who's the most Internet Famous of them all?"
Wired.com has launched a new, free service for everyone who wonders how Internet famous they currently are.
It's called the "Celebrity Meter." It won't tell you how whether you have celebrity friends, but it will let you know - in rough numbers - how much of an online celebrity you are.
Wired’s Celebrity Meter launched in beta this morning. The program uses data from Google’s Social Graph service to see how many people are following you on MySpace, Twitter, and a personal blog/site. It takes into account things like incoming links and number of friends or followers to give you a numerical score — which you can then compare to other big names in the blogosphere and across the Web in general.
We know Jason Calacanis, Robert Scoble and Mike Arrrington will be battling for the top spot.
Wired writes, "Of course, it’s not a complete view. The measurement doesn’t account for FriendFeed, Facebook, or a lot of other social services just yet. But it’s still hard to resist giving it a whirl."
We agree.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Randy Pausch Last Lecture: Advanced Education for Search Marketers
Randy Pausch delivered the "Last Lecture" after he learned that he'd developed terminal pancreatic cancer.
His video became an Internet sensation, with over 3,000,000 views on YouTube. Pausch was a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
You can find Randy Pausch's home page here: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pausch/
Randy Pausch died today at the age of 47.
He is survived by his wife, Jai Pausch and three children, Dylan, Logan and Chloe - to whom he dedicated his video lecture.
We've written a great deal about the education of a search engine marketer. Ron Jones's column, SEM.edu, provides a wealth of information about learning the technical aspects of SEM and SEO.
Today we'll take a brief look at the most important goal: achieving your dreams.
Here's the complete video of the "Last Lecture" by Randy Pausch.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 12:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Microsoft's BrowseRank Aims for Better Results than PageRank
While Google is busy rolling out a PageRank update, Microsoft is researching what they hope will be the next big thing in search: BrowseRank. The technology takes user browsing habits into account when determining relevant search results.
We propose computing page importance by using a ’user browsing graph’ created from user behavior data. In this graph, vertices represent pages and directed edges represent transitions between pages in the users’ web browsing history. Furthermore, the lengths of staying time spent on the pages by users are also included. The user browsing graph is more reliable than the link graph for inferring page importance.
You can read the full paper by Microsoft Asia researchers here (pdf).
Earlier, we reported that Steve Ballmer says that search needs innovation. Will BrowseRank achieve that goal? Let us know what you think by leaving a comment.
via CNET
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)
Benchmark Natural Search vs. Paid Search Traffic
Compete has enhanced its Web analytics product features to include a breakout between organic search traffic and paid search traffic.
Compete just announced Paid vs. Natural Search Breakouts in Search Analytics.
This new metric takes an even deeper dive into competitive search data by showing the percentage of search referrals that a Web site receives from paid search, trended over the last six months. This metric can be found in the Site Referral and Compare Sites tools in Search Analytics.
Users will be able to compare a site’s paid vs. natural search traffic to uncover even deeper insights into a site’s search strategy.
Users can find out if rivals are relying more heavily on Search Optimization (SEO), or Search Engine Marketing (SEM). Spikes in SEM campaign activity with 6 months of trended data can be found as well. It will be possible to benchmark paid search activity against rivals.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 11:53 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Microsoft Moves on from Yahoo Again; Talks Internal Search Innovation
After the latest round of attempted negotiations with Yahoo and investor Carl Icahn, Microsoft is once again saying that it is moving on from trying to acquire the second-place search engine.
Addressing the attendees at Microsoft's financial analyst meeting, Ballmer explained Microsoft's Plan B for building search and competing with Google. And like Joel McHale on E!'s The Soup, I've read the transcript so you don't have to. Here are the sound bites.
First up, the reason why Microsoft thinks it can compete in a Google-dominated search marketplace:
Search is ripe for innovation. It has not been the most innovative category in the world. I mean, think back, what did search look like five years ago, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe some ads on the top. What does it look like now, 10 blue links on the left, some ads on the right, and maybe something on the top. It is ripe for innovation. If you say to yourself, five years from now, 10 years from now will search be as humdrum, hard, 50 percent of searches don't actually lead to an answer to somebody's problem, is this an area that's ripe for innovation, in user experience, natural language, semantic understanding, consumer experience? The business model hasn't been touched.
Give Google credit, they invented the business model that supports the modern search business, and yet it hasn't been touched. How do you involve the consumer? How do you move to a pay-for-action model? How do you reward the consumer, and involve the consumer economically? This is a category that's ripe for innovation. And that's important, because if it's not ripe for innovation, we shouldn't be doing what we're doing. We will not be able to be very successful by only doing what the market leader does.
Next Ballmer says that Microsoft is ready to get in the ring with Google:
Second strategy for us I call it focus, but in my own mind I think of it as kind of our Mohammed Ali, float like a butterfly, sting like a bee strategy. Pick focused areas of search, really innovate, change those areas, differentiate from the market leader. That doesn't mean Google won't come back and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Ballmer says blah a lot.
And last, but not least, we will work to reinvent the user model and the business model. I know this from past experience, it's often harder for the guy who is market leader to reinvent their category than it is for somebody who is, so to speak, the Avis of the business, number two and trying harder.
Of course, competing in search is all about making a profit from ad dollar$.
We need more relevant ads. It turns out that one of the big advantages the market leader has is they have more advertisers in their system.
You don't say?
So if you look at two pages today, one from Google and one from Microsoft, the thing that's perhaps most interesting is, because they have more people bidding on advertising, they have more opportunity to serve up a relevant ad. A lot of our discussion around Yahoo! really centered as much on this issue as any other issue. How do we get enough advertisers to have a pool of advertising to change the whole advertising approach.
Buy AOL, whose Platform-A is the leading online ad network? Pony up the money for Yahoo?
And last, but not least, we're going to have to invest in search and advertising, in fantastic brand, and fantastic marketing.
That's two last but not leasts. Not sure which not least is the most not least.
Later, Ballmer handed over the stage to Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President heading up Microsoft’s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts.
When it comes to best results, we have to ante up to create the core infrastructure. That allows us to have a very rich index, a deep and broad index, that helps us actually experiment on the relevance improvements, which is a continuous game. You can think of it as, like, drug discovery, where you continuously are in the game of improving your relevance.
So we have made progress on all of those. In fact, if you look at it, last fall is when we reached a huge milestone for us. We increased the index many-fold. Our relevance improved. We today believe we are comparable to the best in the United States when it comes to the core relevance. And that was not something that we could have said last year at this time when you were here. So that's substantial progress.
Nadella echoed a Yahoo researcher's recent article on Semantic search. Microsoft acquired semantic search company Powerset earlier this year.
We think the Search experience is going to evolve to really understand the query intent, as well as the document content, in rich ways. So this is where we're building the algorithm and capabilities to be able to get to that deeper level of semantic understanding, natural language understanding, so that we can really help users of search engines with their tasks, because nobody does queries in isolation. Queries are always done in the context of some task.
Microsoft has big plans for image search:
One of the nice things about our image search is that we've been able to sort of take an experience where we have infinite scroll capability, so you can – you don't have to paginate to be able to see, you know, hundreds of thousands of images. You can just keep going down. And we have a nice experience for infinite scroll here.
Want to refine those images searches? Ok.
We have the ability for you to refine by size. So if I'm looking for a specific size, I can refine that and find that. So in the case I'm looking for some large images, I can look for color. So if I'm looking only for black and white, I can go ahead and hit black and white. And if the demigods smile, I will actually get that. So, in any case, the idea is to be able to have rich filtering capabilities with your image search to get filtering.
The other thing that I can also do is to be able to drag and drop. I can open up the scratch pad and I can go ahead and drag and drop these images and make a new collection, because if I wanted to come back to a collection of images that I used in this project, then I can have a series of collections.
No offense, but that's not innovative. That's done by Google and Flock, too.
That's ok. Let's just move on to video search.
One of the things that we have done, working with MSR, Microsoft Research, is to do what we've done, all of us in the Search business have done for Web search, in terms of creating previews of content before you click on the link. We've done that for video. So we crawl all of the videos on the Web.
We created something called the Smart Motion Thumbnails, which, in fact, are basically summaries of video content out there. And we call them Smart Motions because we can actually do scene detection. So if it's a news clip, we can actually summarize the news clip. If it's a video of a sports event, we can make sure that we do the scene detection to get the complete shot, and what have you. So this is – so all you have to do is hover over the video. You get the summary before you actually click on it. And this is, again, best in class or first in class when it comes to creating video summaries that are semantically smart.
Just to compare that to what Google has, Google has, you know, a video search product where they have images. They don't have the summary capability. The one other difference is the selection. If you look at our selection, we have from MSN, AP, MSNBC, you know, and CNBC, ESPN -- lots of different sources, as well as YouTube – whereas the selection in video for Google is a lot more biased toward their own owned-and-operated indexes.
Nadella moves on to talk about travel search. This must be part of Ballmer's ideas about focusing on specific parts of search and innovating them:
Whenever you're booking a flight, one of the specific things you're looking for is to time your purchase. We know that airline fares are volatile, so the idea of being able to purchase when we think is the best time to get the best fare is fairly critical. So in this case, if I go ahead and click flights from Seattle to San Francisco, what I do is I get back on something called an Instant Answer. It says that there are many results of flights from Seattle to San Francisco. It also has this prediction algorithm.
Enter in the Farecast acquisition and re-launch.
In this case, it looks like it's a good time to buy. Let's go ahead and look at the actual flights. It takes me to something called a Smart Calendar. I can actually pick the date pair, so when I want to leave and when I want to come back. So let's say I want to leave Thursday and I want to come back on Saturday; I can go ahead and do that. I will hit Find Flights. And at this point, Farecast is going out to all the agencies and all the airlines and bringing back search results that meet the criteria of the dates I picked.
But Microsoft's plans for the HP Toolbar is where they hope to take some precious market share away from Google.
How do we really get more people to know about Live Search and get the taste for some of the value, like, in particular, the cashback value? So the place where we are innovating is in the toolbar. We have recently done a distribution deal for our toolbar with Hewlett-Packard. So this is the toolbar that Hewlett-Packard will carry with some customizations of their own. It's the MSN toolbar.
And so let's say I'm on Google and I type in Xbox. I can go ahead and search for Xbox, and automatically the toolbar detects that you're searching for Xbox on Google and a Gleam view that there is a cashback on Live Search. And so I can go ahead and at this point click on that Gleam and it'll take you to Live Search, or it's supposed to take you to Live Search. Oh, it is on Live Search. See, I didn't even notice the transfer. So it's so seamless that now you're on Live Search. You can get the cashback for a particular Xbox that you want to buy. So that's just an experiment on how we get the word out, get more users trying Live Search, and getting the value of things like Live Search cashback.
What do you think of Microsoft plans? Can they gain market share? Let it fly in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:08 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
Google PageRank Updates to Roll Out Soon
Google's head of web spam, Matt Cutts, has announced that updates to PageRank will be visible in the coming days. Cutts also said that some existing penalties will be expired with the update.
If you're new to search engine marketing and want to learn about PageRank, here's a whole slew of posts to get you in the know:
Google PageRank: Simplified
Google PageRank isn't the Same as Ranking in Google
Should You Join the PageRank Hysteria?
Thankful for PageRank Updates, Blended Search
The Art of Sculpting, or There's Nothing Wrong with Knowing SEO
Google Will Bank on VisualRank - PageRank for Images
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: The Local Advertiser of Today and Tomorrow
Local advertising is a key component of any vertical search marketing strategy. In today's vertical search column, "The Local Advertiser of Today and Tomorrow," Gregg Stewart discusses staying on top of the competition now and preparing for the future.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: Trademarked Terms: Guaranteed Conversions, Guaranteed Controversy
Bidding on trademarked kewyords may bring big conversions, but the strategy is often perceived to carry a grand amount of legal trouble with it. In today's SEM Crossfire column, "Trademarked Terms: Guaranteed Conversions, Guaranteed Controversy," Frank Watson explores whether or not bidding on competitors trademarks is a worthy strategy.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 24, 2008
Microsoft and Facebook Enter Into Search Partnership
Microsoft Senior Vice President Satya Nadella announced at the company's financial analyst meeting that their partnership with Facebook has been extended to include search.
The existing partnership has Microsoft serving up banner and sponsored ads on the popular social network. Last year, Microsoft paid $240 million to own a 1.6% stake in Facebook, a private company.
Microsoft expects Facebook members to see the integrated Live Search, including search ads, by the end of the 2008.
Earlier today, Facebook announced a new initiative, opening up its platform to aggregate feeds from other sites, including local search site Citysearch and other social networks such as Digg and Twitter.
In March, Microsoft announced its alternative to Google's OpenSocial, a data portability partnership across 5 social networks: Facebook, Bebo, Hi5, Tagged and LinkedIn.
Meanwhile, Microsoft has announced a reorganization which will split the Platforms and Services Division into two new divisions: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
AdMob Launches New iPhone Ad Solutions, Offers Free Advertising to iPhone Developers
Leading mobile advertising provider AdMob has announced brand spanking new advertising solutions designed specifically for the iPhone. Advertising options will be made available for both branding and performance and function in both browser and native applications.
Have an app you want to promote? AdMob is giving away a total of $1 million in advertising to iPhone developers wanting to market their applications.
"AdMob has seen enormous growth in both our iPhone traffic and advertiser interest. This new class of device, led by the iPhone, is pivotal to the future of mobile browsing and of mobile media business models," said Omar Hamoui, CEO and Founder of AdMob. "We are excited to leverage our platform to take advantage of the uniquely mobile connected experiences that the iPhone makes possible."
AdMob recently forged a partnership with DoubleClick to integrate their ads into their mobile ad network. DoubleClick was recently acquired by Google.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: Link Building with Customers
When it comes to link building, a great source for links might be right under your nose! In today's link building column, "Link Building with Customers," Justilien Gaspard talks about asking your customers for links as well as embarking on link recovery missions.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Facebook Connect Aims to Aggregate Social Media While Protecting User Privacy
In May, Google announced a new initiative called Friend Connect that enables site owners to add social media to their websites, and allows internet users to connect their social accounts more seamlessly. But while Facebook was initally part of the effort, later they banned Google's Friend Connect from their site, citing issues with privacy and the redistribution of user data.
Instead of waiting for Google to comply, Facebook has announced their own initiative: Facebook Connect. It's designed to do basically be a FriendFeed - to aggregate information from users' various profiles on numerous social sites in order to view it all in one place. Here's the details of what to expect:
- Trusted Authentication - easily authenticate into partner sites using your Facebook account
- Real Identity - leverage your real identity across the Web in a trusted environment
- Friend Linking - take your friends with them wherever they go, enabling trusted social context anywhere on the Web
- Dynamic Privacy - assurance that the same privacy settings users have set up on Facebook will follow them wherever they decide to login throughout the Web
- Social Distribution - share actions on partner sites with your friends back on Facebook through feeds
Straight out of the gate, the following sites will utilize Facebook Connect:
Digg
Citysearch
Twitter
Seesmic (online video conversation tool)
Six Apart (blog publishing platform)
Hulu
CBS.com
CNET
CollegeHumor
Disney-ABC
Evite
Flock (social media browser developed on Firefox)
Kongregate
Loopt (new social network for iPhone)
Plaxo
Radar
Red Bull
Socialthing! (think FriendFeed)
StumbleUpon
The Insider
Uber
Vimeo
Xobni
What do you think of Facebook Connect? Let us know in the comments!
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Knol Is Googlepedia
Knol is knowledge without the W(ikipedia) and an edge.
Knol is the newest product launched by Google. The Wikipedia competitor is in beta. Get ready for Knollywood.
Knol is basically Blogspot on steroids, organized by topic.
Google states the key principle behind Knol is authorship. Every knol will have an identified author (or group of authors). It's their knol, their voice, their opinion. Google expects multiple knols on the same subject.
With Knol, we are introducing a new method for authors to work together that we call "moderated collaboration." With this feature, any reader can make suggested edits to a knol which the author may then choose to accept, reject, or modify before these contributions become visible to the public.
People can submit comments, rate, or write a review of a knol. At the discretion of the author, a knol may include ads from our AdSense program. If an author chooses to include ads, Google will provide the author with a revenue share from the proceeds of those ad placements.
The New Yorker magazine will allow any author to add one cartoon per knol from the New Yorker's cartoon repository. Cartoons are an effective (and fun) way to make your point, even on the most serious topics.
Of course, The New Yorker is a publisher.
Google will continue to claim that Google is not.
It's like the famous New Yorker cartoon, "On the Internet, no one knows you're a publisher."
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Former Yahoo, Tacoda Exec Heads to interCLICK
Jason Lynn, Director of Solutions Engineering for Yahoo/Right Media is exiting the Sunnyvale search engine to become Executive Vice President of Product Management at online advertising network interCLICK. Prior to his Yahoo/Right Media stint, Lynn was Director of Product Management at behavioral targeting firm TACODA, which was acquired by AOL in July 2007.
That's the same month Yahoo finalized its acquisition of Right Media.
Lynn joins an exodus of Yahoo execs as of late. Network Division Executive Vice President Jeff Weiner left and became Executive in Residence at two venture capital firms. Vish Makhijani, Senior Vice President of Search, is now heading up the Bay Area operations of Yandex, a Russian language search engine. Brad Garlinghouse, Sr. VP and author of the Peanut Butter Manifesto, and Qi Lu, Executive Vice President of Search and Advertising Technology have left as well.
Founders of other Yahoo-acquired companies aren't sticking around either. Flickr co-founders Stewart Butterfield and Caterina Fake and del.icio.us founder Joshua Schachter have said their goodbyes.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Baidu Profits Soar 87% in Second Quarter
Google, Microsoft and Yahoo may have disappointed Wall Street, but Baidu is proving to be a Dark Knight in this tough economy.
Boosted by advertising sales in advance of the Beijing Olympics, the Chinese search engine posted an 87% jump in profits in the second quarter of 2008. Net profit came in at $38.6 million, beating expectations of $35.5 million.
Baidu owned 63% of the search market in China, accoring to iResearch. Google had 26% and Yahoo came in third at 8%.
source: Reuters
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Microsoft Reorganizes Platforms & Services Division; Kevin Johnson is Out
Microsoft has announced the reorganization of its Platforms and Services Division (PSD). The department will split into two new divisions: Windows/Windows Live and Online Services. Kevin Johnson, PSD President, is leaving Microsoft to head up Juniper Networks.
Senior vice presidents Steven Sinofsky, Jon DeVaan and Bill Veghte will report directly to CEO Steve Ballmer to lead Windows/Windows Live.
The Online Services Division will be headed by a newly created senior lead position for which an executive search will be conducted among external and internal candidates. For the duration, Senior Vice President Satya Nadella will continue to lead Microsoft’s search, MSN and ad platform engineering efforts.
In a memo to Microsoft employees, CEO Steve Ballmer addressed goals for many of Microsoft's products and services. Here's what he had to say about search:
Google: We continue to compete with Google on two fronts—in the enterprise, where we lead; and in search, where we trail. In search, our technology has come a long way in a very short time and it’s an area where we’ll continue to invest to be a market leader. Why? Because search is the key to unlocking the enormous market opportunities in advertising, and it is an area that is ripe for innovation. In the coming years, we’ll make progress against Google in search first by upping the ante in R&D through organic innovation and strategic acquisitions. Second, we will out-innovate Google in key areas—we’re already seeing this in our maps and news search. Third, we are going to reinvent the search category through user experience and business model innovation. We’ll introduce new approaches that move beyond a white page with 10 blue links to provide customers with a customized view of their world. This is a long-term battle for our company—and it’s one we’ll continue to fight with persistence and tenacity.Yahoo: Related to Google and our search strategy are the discussions we had with Yahoo. I want to emphasize the point I’ve been making all along—Yahoo was a tactic, not a strategy. We want to accelerate our share of search queries and create a bigger pool of advertisers, and Yahoo would have helped us get there faster. But we will get there with or without Yahoo. We have the right people, we’ve made incredible progress in our technology, and we’ll continue to make smart investments that will enable us to build an industry-leading business.
What do you think about Microsoft's reorganization? Will Kevin Johnson's departure hurt them? Leave your thoughts in the comments.
Related Reading:
Microsoft Adds Record Number of Employees, Rules Out Acquisitions
Microsoft to Build Search Technology Center in Europe
Microsoft to Work on Live Search Reputation
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: The Top 4 Best Facebook Practices
When engaging in social media, companies are often encouraged to engage consumers on Facebook. In today's Brand Equity column, "The Top 4 Best Facebook Practices," Erik Qualman explains why playing in this space is not like traditional marketing methods.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 23, 2008
Yahoo Researcher Seeks to Combine Semantic Search Methods
Yahoo researcher Peter Mika has written up an extensive article on semantic search. First he talks about the limitations to syntax-based search:
- It is almost impossible to return search results that relate to the secondary sense of a term—especially if a dominant sense exists—for example, try searching for George Bush the beer brewer as compared to the President
- The capabilities of computational advertising, which is largely also an IR problem (for example, retrieving matching ads from a fixed inventory), are clearly impacted because of the sparsity of advertisements.
- When no clear key exists, search engines are unable to perform queries on descriptions of objects. For example, try searching for the author of this article with the keywords ‘semantic web researcher working for yahoo.’
- Current search technology is unable to satisfy any complex queries requiring information integration such as analysis, prediction, scheduling, etc. An example of such integration-based tasks is opinion mining regarding products or services. While there have been some successes in opinion mining with pure sentiment analysis, it is often the case that users like to know what specific aspects of a product or service are being described in positive or negative terms and to have the search results appear aggregated and organized. Information integration is not possible without structured representations of content.
- Multimedia queries are also difficult to answer, as multimedia objects are typically described with only a few keywords (tagging) or sentences. This is typically too little text for the statistical methods of IR to be effective.
Mika says there are two approaches to semantic search: Natural Language Processing (NLP) and the Semantic Web.
Natural Language Processing "builds on the automatic analysis of text." Semantic search company hakia is an example of natural language processing. Interestingly, hakia uses Yahoo search technology, including the recently announced Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your own Search Service). Powerset, which was recently acquired by Microsoft, is another example of NLP. These NLP semantic search providers "extract entities from text, disambiguate them against large-scale background knowledge sources (PowerSet uses Freebase, Hakia has its own ontology), and then record the relationships as found in the text." Users can query by asking full questions, though many still use keywords.
Semantic Web "aims to make the web more easily searchable by allowing publishers to expose their metadata." Mika says most publishers are willing to share their data if it results in increased traffic. Plus, semantic web allows publishers to avoid costs and quality issues associated with NLP. But last year, Yahoo researcher Mor Naaman declared the Semantic Web dead. Naaman's reasoning was the limitation of microformats, but Mika says that the new RDFa standard would have greater capabilities.
What Mika wants to do is to integrate the best of NLP and semantic web. He says Yahoo's SearchMonkey platform allows for this integration to occur.
To dig into all the technical nitty gritty, check out Mika's full article, "Semantic Search Arrives at the Web."
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
15% of Fortune 500 companies have blogs
PRWeek reports that a new study conducted by Burson-Marsteller has found that 15% of Fortune 500 companies communicate with consumers via blogs.
The survey, conducted in February and March this year, found that 74 Fortune 500 companies actively maintain blogs, many of them technology-related corporations. The top four industries with blogs were: Computers and Office Equipment (IBM, Dell, etc.); Network and Other Communications Equipment (Motorola, Lucent Technologies, etc.); Semiconductors and Other Electrical Components (Intel, AMD, etc.); and Internet Services and Retailing (Amazon, Google, etc.).
Of course, the next step is learning how to optimize your blog. For that, may I recommend that representatives of Fortune 500 companies attend the "SEO Through Blogs & Feeds" session on Wednesday, Aug. 20, at SES San Jose. The session will be moderated by Rebecca Lieb, Contributing Editor, ClickZ, and the speakers are:
* Chris Boggs, Search Engine Watch Expert & Manager, SEO, Brulant, Inc.
* Lee Odden, CEO, TopRank Online Marketing
* Amanda Watlington, Owner, Searching for Profit
* Daron Babin, CEO, Webmaster Radio
Check out the session to learn more about the unique advantages that optimized blogs and RSS feeds offer to companies large and small.
Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
SEM Platform Provider Kenshoo Opens U.S. Office
Tel Aviv-based search engine marketing platform provider, Kenshoo, has announced plans to open an office in the United States. The office will be located in San Francisco. Kenshoo has a European subsidiary in London as well.
Kenshoo provides a third generation SEM platform called KENSHOO SEARCH.
"We see North America as a key market and are very happy to hit the ground running. Following our plan, we have decided to take the needed step and establish a local company. This move will help us expand our already solid base of U.S. customers while improving our service." said Yoav Izhar-Prato, CEO of Kenshoo.
Related Reading:
Online Advertising Shifting from Branding to Direct Response
Local Advertisers Shifting Dollars to Internet
Global Internet Ad Spend to Exceed $106 Billion by 2011
Online Ad Spend Intact Despite Weakening Economy
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Rumored to Buy Digg for Third Time
A few months ago we explained why Digg would be worth $200 million to Google.
Now it appears the rumor mill is reporting that Google will buy Digg for $200 million or so.
Rumor has it the two companies have signed a letter of intent and are close to a deal that will bring Digg under the Google News property.
Microsoft has an advertising deal with Digg so the deal would be a competitive blow to the Redmond giant.
This is the third time the buyout rumor has surfaced.
Is it "three strikes and you're out" or the "third time's the charm?"
Digg has yet to publicly disavow the rumor but it's still early on the West Coast.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 9:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
SEW Experts: How Valid Are Your Landing Page Test Conclusions?
Are your landing page tests telling the whole story? In today's By the Numbers column, "How Valid Are Your Landing Page Test Conclusions?," Tim Ash talks about the care and feeding of landing page tests - and their results.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:51 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: The Japanese Search, Why Don't We?
"Drive to search" campaigns are hot in Japan. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "The Japanese Search, Why Don't We?," Kevin Ryan explains the trend and how you can implement similar techniques in your search marketing campaigns.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 22, 2008
Yahoo Q2 2008 Disappoints Wall St.
Yahoo Second Quarter 2008 Financial Results
• Revenues were $1,798 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 6 percent increase compared to $1,698 million for the same period of 2007.
• Marketing services revenues were $1,587 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 7 percent increase compared to $1,486 million for the same period of 2007.
“Yahoo!'s transformation gained momentum in the second quarter as we announced new product initiatives and partnerships along with solid financial results,” said Sue Decker, president Yahoo! in a statement. “We advanced our position with users by opening up Yahoo! through new innovative offerings like SearchMonkey and BOSS in search and have seen great improvements with Buzz in the freshness of content on our home page. Our commercial agreement with Google is another great example of our open strategy and we expect it will strengthen our competitive position as a leading provider of search and display advertising. On the advertising side, our growing list of major agency partners including Publicis, WPP, Havas and premier publishing partners including walmart.com, and CNET and Turner are great examples of our ability to be the partner of choice across search and display advertising. We remain confident that our efforts will lead to a stronger and more profitable Yahoo!.”
o Marketing services revenues from Owned and Operated sites were $1,016 million for the second quarter of 2008, a 14 percent increase compared to $892 million for the same period of 2007.
o Marketing services revenues from Affiliate sites were $571 million for the second quarter of
2008, a 4 percent decrease compared to $594 million for the same period of 2007.
• Fees revenues were $211 million for the second quarter of 2008, a less than 1 percent decrease compared to $212 million for the same period of 2007.
• Revenues excluding traffic acquisition costs (“TAC”) were $1,346 million for the second quarter of 2008, an 8 percent increase compared to $1,244 million for the same period of 2007.
• Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 was $101 million, a 45 percent decrease compared to $185 million for the same period of 2007.
o Operating income for the second quarter of 2008 includes incremental costs of $22 million
incurred for outside advisors related to Microsoft’s proposals to acquire all or a part of the
Company, other strategic alternatives, the proxy contest, and related litigation defense costs.
• Free cash flow for the second quarter of 2008 was $231 million, a 30 percent decrease compared to $328 million for the same period of 2007.
• Net income for the second quarter of 2008 was $131 million or $0.09 per diluted share compared to $161 million or $0.11 per diluted share for the same period of 2007.
“Despite a difficult economic environment, we posted solid results in line with the ranges we indicated in April,” said Blake Jorgensen, chief financial officer, Yahoo! in a statement. “GAAP revenue was $1.8 billion, with operating cash flow on a normalized basis coming in at $449 million. Our diverse advertiser base and compelling value proposition for our customers were key factors behind Yahoo!’s strong second quarter performance.”
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 5:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yang to Yahoos: One Team, One Voice
We're not sure what the long-term implications of the Yahoo-Yang-Icahn settlement will be. In the short term, though, the agreement that ended the impending proxy fight appears to have inspired Jerry Yang to use capital letters in his memos to employees.
Here's the full text of Jerry Yang's take on the Icahn affair.
Today, Yahoo! moves past a distracting proxy contest. This morning we announced a settlement with Carl Icahn which will enable Yahoo! to put an end to this challenging chapter in our history, and allow us to get back to the business at hand – building our business and maximizing value for all stockholders.Over the past few weeks we’ve made progress communicating with investors, helping them to better understand our roadmap for long-term growth, our valuable combination of assets, and our solid position in the converging search and display marketplaces. These discussions have been productive for everyone.
Under the terms of the settlement with Mr. Icahn, he has withdrawn his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting, and has agreed to vote his Yahoo! shares in support of the Board’s nominees. At our annual stockholder meeting on Aug. 1, we’ll ask stockholders to re-elect eight of our current directors. (In connection with the settlement of the proxy contest, Bobby Kotick has notified the Company that he will not stand for re-election to the Board.) After the annual meeting, Mr. Icahn will be appointed to our Board. We’ve also agreed to expand our Board to make room for two additional members to be chosen by the Board upon the recommendation of the Board’s Nominating and Governance Committee from a list that includes the rest of Mr. Icahn’s slate and Jon Miller, former Chairman and CEO of AOL.
We’re pleased that both parties were able to work together productively to accomplish this settlement, and we look forward to working with the new Board members and benefiting from their fresh perspective.
Yahoo! is now moving forward with one team and one voice, and we’re excited about what the future holds.
Jerry Yang
CEO and Chief Yahoo
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 2:03 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Expedia Chooses Baynote Social Search to Improve Site Usability
Travel search site Expedia has announced the selection of Baynote to add Social Search to complement its search results. Baynote uses what other searchers find most helpful or most interesting to refine search results.
“Baynote’s Social Search technology is a great fit for Expedia because the collective input from our millions of monthly visitors constantly improves the relevance of the search results,” said Tom Taylor, director of strategy for Expedia.
Expedia says users will now be able to search for specific types of trips or hospitality vendors instead of simply browsing the site. The goal is to provide a better experience for the user. Adds Taylor, “The Baynote solution is able to deliver the most relevant results based on what other Expedia customers have previously found most useful for similar queries.”
Earlier today, SEW expert Mark Jackson posted about the connection between Usability and SEO. Looks like social site search could be another way to incorporate usability while aiding your SEO campaign.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEO copywriting tips from Jill Whalen of High Rankings
I went to my first Search Engine Strategies back in the spring of 2002. And one of the SEO experts speaking at that search engine conference was Jill Whalen, the CEO of High Rankings.
Six-and-a-half-years ago, Jill spoke at a session entitled, “Writing for Search Engines.” And six-and-a-half-years later, I’m still quoting her SEO copywriting advice in the “Introduction to Search Engine Marketing” sessions at SES conferences because it was “built to last.”
As Jill says, “Good SEO work only gets better over time. It’s only search engine tricks that need to keep changing when the ranking algorithms change.”
And next month, Jill will be speaking at SES San Jose at the “Building a Search Friendly Site” session on Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, at 10:30 a.m. as well as the “Keywords & Content: Search Foundations” session later that day at 2:45 p.m.
I recently interviewed Jill and asked her to share some of her SEO copywriting tips. The video interview is below.
Copywriting: High Rankings Jill Whalen
Jill is a pioneer in search engine optimization. She founded High Rankings in 1995 and since then, it has grown to be one of the pre-eminent SEO companies in the United States, providing hundreds of clients in more than 40 industries with expert SEO consulting, website audit reports, SEO campaigns and in-house SEO training classes.
Jill is also the founder of the popular High Rankings Search Engine Optimization Forum, the author of The Nitty-gritty of Writing for the Search Engines, and the co-founder of the Search Engine Marketing Network for New England (SEMNE).
If SES San Jose is going to be your first search engine conference, then I strongly encourage you to attend both of the sessions where Jill will be speaking. Her advice is “built to last.”
Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
80% Buy from a Store Whose Site They Previously Visited
Measurement and analytics are crucial to a successful online marketing campaign, but the relationship between online marketing and offline purchases has been a tricky one to figure out. But as more attention is given to the matter, we're learning more about the connection.
Media measurement company, Nielsen Online, conducted a survey to examine the relationship between online research and offline purchases. They found that 80% of participants who had recently bought consumer electronics from a brick and mortar store whose site they visited first.
- 53% bought from the site where they spent the most time.
- 58% would choose the internet if they could only use one channel to conduct product research on consumer electronics. Only 25% chose the brick and mortar store.
Nielsen used "pet food" as another category to examine the online/offline connection. They used this category to examine a niche that might not need as much research. I personally think this was a bad topic for that purpose due to last year's pet food crisis. But let's check out the data anyway.
Here's the percentages of pet food survey participants who would use the internet to research each topic.
- 48% Learn about nutritional specifications
- 45% Learn about product ingredients
- 45% Learn about recalls
- 40% Learn more about safety issues
- 40% Find sales/promotions
Of course, as we learned yesterday, more and more people are turning to the internet to make purchases due to rising gas costs.
But the message is clear, online marketing and company websites impact consumer purchasing decisions.
What do you think of the data? Share your thoughts in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Google Barely Inches Out Yahoo for Top Web Property; Platform-A Top Ad Network for June 2008
comScore has released the top 50 ad networks and top 50 web properties for June 2008.
In ad networks, AOL's Platform-A takes the top spot, reaching 90% of American internet users. Yahoo comes in second, reaching 83% and Google comes in third with 81%. Here's the full list:
In web properties, Google leads the pack 140.2 million unique visitors, but Yahoo comes in a very close second at 140.1 million. This past April, Google's sites beat Yahoo's properties for the first time. Microsoft trails in third with 119 million. AOL is in 4th with 110 million and Fox Interactive rounds out the top 5 with 85 million. Here's the chart:
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: Usability and SEO
How does the usability and accessibility of your website affect your SEO efforts? In today's au Natural column, "Usability and SEO," Mark Jackson explains the connection and gives you tips to make your site user-friendly.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:43 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: Why Links are Like Shoes
Is that incoming link a Manolo, a Jimmy Choo, or a bargain pump from Payless? In today's small business SEM column, "Why Links are Like Shoes," Carrie Bradshaw, I mean, Carrie Hill indulges the fashionistas among us with a catwalk of links - and how to make them part of your wardrobe.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 21, 2008
Peace In Our Time: Icahn Gets Yahoo Board Offer
Seems Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has made an end move to stop the bickering between the usurpers and his current slate of board members. They have offered Carl Icahn a spot on the new board along with another of his proposed new slate of candidates, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Very clever Jerry. Adding Icahn and former AOL Chairman and CEO Jonathan Miller is a good way to stop the schoolyard emails and press releases we have seen over the past month or so.
That shareholders meeting on Aug 1 should be interesting.
Posted by Frank Watson at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
SEW Experts: PPC Keyword Sets: Words to the Wise
When it comes to paid search, there's no such thing as a free lunch. In today's Profitable PPC column, "PPC Keyword Sets: Words to the Wise ," David Szetela explains why a successful paid search campaign requires a constant gardner.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 1:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Google Mobile Search for iPhone 2x Faster, on 3G and EDGE
Whether you stood in line for hours for an iPhone 3G or are still hanging with your first gen iPhone (that's me), you are likely to use your touch-screen gadget to conduct searches. Google has not only created a downloadable application for its search product, but has also increased the speed of its web-based mobile search application. Users should now find search to be twice as fast as it used to be - and that's not just for 3G, but EDGE as well.
There's also easier access to other web-based apps including Calendar, Gmail, and Reader. (Hey Google, any chance of getting downloadable apps for those products? Just sayin')
The web-based apps also all have new icons. Thank goodness.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
AdWords Editor Update Launches Performance Statistics Download
Just over a month after releasing Adwords Editor 6.0, the team at Google AdWords has released a new update. The update launches a highly requested feature: the ability to download performance statistics. If you have AdWords Editor, you should be prompted automatically to download the new update, Version 6.0.1.
The update will not affect comments or unposted changes. Because of this, Google says:
- You don't need to export an archive of your account. In the auto-update prompt, choose the 'Update without Backup' option.
- After you upgrade, your account will already be in the new version. You won't need to download your account again.
What do you think of this update? Give your opinion in the comments.
Related Reading:
Conversion Optimizer Now Supported by Adwords Editor and API
Google AdWords Editor a Great Tool for Content -- and for Yahoo/Microsoft!
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:19 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Gas Prices Send Consumers Online to Shop
As gas prices rise, mall traffic has been dropping. But all is not lost for retailers. Consumers are increasingly turning online to conduct their shopping, according a report in the New York Times.
J.C. Penney saw 8.7% growth in online traffic for the first quarter of 2008, while same store sales saw a 7.4% drop. Gap saw a 21% increase in online sales compared with an 11% decline in same store sales.
Looking for a way to get shoppers to buy from your site? Free or discounted shipping is a popular strategy. Makes sense, doesn't it? If people are looking to save on gas, then reduced/free shipping is all the more reason to buy online. Or try couponing, which is up 56%.
The Times also points out that deals on shipping are a stark contrast to businesses who raise fees to cover their costs due to increasing gas prices (yeah, we're talking about you, airline industry!).
Are you noticing a change in consumer behavior due to rising gas prices? Let us know in the comments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 11:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Conference speakers from brand name companies at SES San Jose
Last Thursday, I had a chance to spend a full day with a diverse group of search engine marketers during the Search Engine Strategies “Optimizing for Universal Search” workshop in Seattle. Over lunch, we talked about SES San Jose – which is coming up August 18-22, 2008.
The people around the table were excited to see that conference speakers from brand name companies like Adobe, Cisco, Discover, Forbes, HP, Humana, IBM, Intuit, P&G, Monster, Napster, New England Journal of Medicine, The New Republic, The New York Times, Stanford University, and Walt Disney were on the agenda.
Um, yes, of course. How could I have possibly overlooked that significant market trend?
Okay, so maybe I’ve attended too many SEO conferences. When I looked at the agenda in my post, “Optimizing your schedule for Search Engine Strategies San Jose,” I was excited to see that Matt Cutts, the Software Engineer Guru from Google, was speaking on Day 2 during the Orion Keynote Panel: Technical & Information Giants.
And I’m so used to seeing conference speakers like Marshall D. Simmonds, the Chief Search Strategist of The New York Times / About.com, on the SES conference agenda that I had missed the fact that he is being joined at SES San Jose by more than a dozen other conference speakers from brand name companies.
This market trend is significant.
In the past, conference speakers from brand name companies have been under-represented at search engine conferences.
Part of this is evolutionary. In the early days, most search engine experts either headed up SEO companies or worked at one of the search engines. And these segments are still well represented on the Search Engine Strategies conference agenda.
But part of this is revolutionary. Kevin Ryan, VP of Global Content for the SES series, named an advisory board in August 2007 that included a number of individuals from brand name companies.
Their input is clearly reflected in this year’s agenda at SES San Jose. Here are some examples:
(Monday, Aug. 18, 2008, 1:30 p.m.)
Orion Keynote Panel - How Much Search is Enough?
Moderators:
• Kevin Ryan, Vice President, Global Content Director, Search Engine Strategies and Search Engine Watch
• Anne Kennedy, Managing Partner & Founder, Beyond Ink
Speakers:
• Robert Murray, President, iProspect
• Aaron Goldman, VP, Marketing & Strategic Partnerships, Resolution Media, an Omnicom Media Group Company
• Steven Kaufman, Senior Vice President, Media Director, Digitas
• Bob Tripathi, Search Marketing Strategist, Discover Financial Services
(Monday, Aug. 18, 2008, 4:30 p.m.)
Opening Keynote Presentation
• Lee Siegel, senior editor at The New Republic and author of “Against the Machine: Being Human in the Age of the Electronic Mob”
(Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, 9:00 a.m.)
Keynote Roundtable: Why Does Search Get the Credit for Everything?
Moderator:
• Bill Hunt, CEO, Global Strategies International
Speakers:
• Randy Peterson, Search Marketing Innovation Manager, Procter and Gamble
• Terry A. Cox, Manager, Search Engine Marketing, Walt Disney Parks & Resorts Online
• Mikel Chertudi, Sr. Director, Online & Demand Marketing, Omniture
• Sharon Gallacher, West Coast Managing Director, Neo@Ogilvy
(Wednesday, Aug. 20, 2008, 2:45 p.m.)
War of the Search Worlds: Unifying Your Global Search Marketing Program
Moderator:
• Kevin Heisler, Executive Editor, Search Engine Watch
Speakers:
• Olivier Lemaignen, Group Manager, Global Search Marketing, Intuit
• Jay Middleton, Senior Manager, Worldwide Search Marketing, Adobe
• Mark Scholz, Interactive Manager of IPG Worldwide, Hewlett-Packard
• Russ Mann, CEO, Covario
(Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008, 9:00 a.m.)
Morning Keynote
• Chip Heath, Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and author of "Made to Stick"
(Thursday, Aug. 21, 2008, 2:45 p.m.)
In House SEO: Lessons Learned & Victories Won
Moderator:
• Jessica Bowman, SEO Strategist and in-house SEO Expert, SEMinhouse.com
Speakers:
• Marshall D. Simmonds, Chief Search Strategist, New York Times / About.com
• Derrick Wheeler, Senior SEO Architect, Microsoft
• Kara Jariwala, Search Marketing Strategist, Cisco
• Laura Lippay, Group Program Manager, Search Strategy, Yahoo!
Of course, you can also see plenty of search engine experts from SEM and SEO companies speaking at SES San Jose. This includes Greg Boser, Christine Churchill, Barbara Coll, Mikkel deMib Svendsen, Bryan Eisenberg, Kevin Lee, Jeffrey K. Rohrs, Dana Todd, Amanda Watlington, and Jill Whalen, who were all speakers at the first SES conference that I attended in the spring of 2002 -- which was programmed back then by Danny Sullivan, who will also be speaking at the SES conference in San Jose next month.
And you can also hear lots of representatives of the top search engines speaking at this year's Search Engine Strategies San Jose. The fact that it is being held in the backyard of Google and Yahoo explains why the top search engines are sending so many people from their engineering and search quality teams to both the conference and expo.
So, some things haven’t changed.
But, the growing number of conference speakers at SES San Jose from brand name companies is a significant market trend that’s worth noting. It’s “the new new thing” in Silicon Valley.
Posted by Greg Jarboe at 10:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
comScore and Nielsen Release Search Market Data for June 2008
comScore and Nielsen have released their search market data for June 2008. comScore gives insight into month-over-month growth while Nielsen's report shows year-over-year growth. Let's look at comScore's data first.
Google dropped by .3% from May 2008 to reach 61.5% of the search market for June. Yahoo gained that .3% to rise to 20.9% for June. Microsoft gained .7% to 9.2%, while Ask.com and AOL dropped .2% and .4% respectively. Here's a handy chart:
Taking a look at the number of searches conducted, Google sites saw over 7 billion searches, Yahoo saw 2.4 billion and Microsoft saw 1 billion. Americans conducted a total of 11.5 billion searches, up 7% from may.
Nielsen's data has Google seeing 59% of the search market, up 19% from the year before. Yahoo is at 16.6%, down 12.4% year-over-year, while Microsoft is at 14.1%, up 12.5% over June 2007. AOL was down 17% to 4.3%, and Ask.com was up 4.9% to 2.0%.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yahoo Settles with Icahn - Yang Keeps Job; Icahn to Join Board
Jerry Yang threw Carl Icahn a bone today. So Carl Icahn called the dogs off.
Yahoo! Inc. (YHOO),announced today that it has agreed to settle with Carl Icahn to avoid a proxy contest related to the Company's 2008 annual meeting of stockholders.
* Jerry Yang will remain CEO.
* Carl Icahn will join the board.
* Eight Board members will face re-election.
Under the terms of the settlement agreement, eight members of Yahoo!'s current Board of Directors will stand for re-election at the 2008 annual meeting: Roy Bostock, Ronald Burkle, Eric Hippeau, Vyomesh Joshi, Arthur Kern, Mary Agnes Wilderotter, Gary Wilson and Jerry Yang. Robert Kotick has decided not to stand for re-election to the Board at the 2008 annual meeting.
After the 2008 annual meeting, the Yahoo! Board will increase to 11 members. Carl Icahn will be appointed to the Board and the remaining two seats will be filled by the Board upon the recommendation of the Board's Nominating and Governance Committee from a list of nine candidates recommended by Mr. Icahn, which includes the eight remaining members of the Icahn slate of nominees and Jonathan Miller, currently a partner in Velocity Interactive Group and former Chairman and CEO of AOL.
As part of the settlement agreement, Mr. Icahn, who owns an aggregate of 68,786,320 shares, or 4.98% of Yahoo! common stock, has agreed to withdraw his nominees for consideration at the annual meeting and to vote his Yahoo! shares in support of the Board's nominees.
"We are gratified to have reached this agreement, which serves the best interests of all Yahoo! stockholders," said Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock in a statement. "We look forward to working productively with Carl and the new members of the Board on continuing to improve the Company's performance and enhancing stockholder value. Yahoo! is a world-class company with an extremely bright future, and collaborating together, I believe we can help the Company achieve its ambitious goals."
"This agreement will not only allow Yahoo! to put the distraction of the proxy contest behind us, it will allow the Company to continue pursuing its strategy of being the starting point for Internet users and a must buy for advertisers," said Yahoo! Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang in a statement. "No other company in the Internet space has our unique combination of global brand, talented employees, innovative technologies and exceptional assets, attributes that will help us take advantage of the large and growing opportunity ahead of us. I look forward to working together with our new colleagues on the Board to make that happen."
Mr. Icahn said in a statement, "I am very pleased that this settlement will allow me to work in partnership with Yahoo!'s Board and management team to help the Company achieve its full potential. While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole Company or the sale of its Search business in the right transaction must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo!'s valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders. I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship going forward. Additionally, I am happy that the board has agreed in the settlement agreement that any meaningful transaction, including the strategy in dealing with that transaction, will be fully discussed with the entire board before any final decision is made."
Yahoo intends to file the full text of the settlement agreement later today with the Securities and Exchange Commission, and will also file and mail to its stockholders, supplemental proxy material.
Posted by Kevin Heisler at 8:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Yahoo and Carl Icahn Agree to Settlement
Yahoo has announced that it has forged an agreement with Carl Icahn. Here's the details.
Yahoo's board will expand to 11 members, but only 8 of the current board will stay on. They are:
Roy Bostock
Ronald Burkle
Eric Hippeau
Vyomesh Joshi
Arthur Kern
Mary Agnes Wilderotter
Gary Wilson
Jerry Yang
Robert Kotick is the remaining board member. He's decided to step down.
The expansion will occur AFTER the August 1 shareholders meeting. Carl Icahn will become a board member, and then 2 more will be added from a list of 9 that Icahn will supply. The list will be the 8 remaining members of Icahn's now-cancelled proxy board plus Jonathan Miller, partner in Velocity Interactive Group and former Chairman and CEO of AOL.
Icahn owns an aggregate of 68,786,320 shares, or 4.98% of Yahoo! common stock. He will vote his shares for the current board at the August 1 shareholders meeting.
Here's the corporate-speak:
"We are gratified to have reached this agreement, which serves the best interests of all Yahoo! stockholders," said Yahoo! Chairman Roy Bostock. "We look forward to working productively with Carl and the new members of the Board on continuing to improve the Company's performance and enhancing stockholder value. Yahoo! is a world-class company with an extremely bright future, and collaborating together, I believe we can help the Company achieve its ambitious goals."
"This agreement will not only allow Yahoo! to put the distraction of the proxy contest behind us, it will allow the Company to continue pursuing its strategy of being the starting point for Internet users and a must buy for advertisers," said Yahoo! Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Jerry Yang. "No other company in the Internet space has our unique combination of global brand, talented employees, innovative technologies and exceptional assets, attributes that will help us take advantage of the large and growing opportunity ahead of us. I look forward to working together with our new colleagues on the Board to make that happen."
Mr. Icahn said, "I am very pleased that this settlement will allow me to work in partnership with Yahoo!'s Board and management team to help the Company achieve its full potential. While I continue to believe that the sale of the whole Company or the sale of its Search business in the right transaction must be given full consideration, I share the view that Yahoo!'s valuable collection of assets positions it well to continue expanding its online leadership and enhancing returns to stockholders. I believe this is a good outcome and that we will have a strong working relationship going forward. Additionally, I am happy that the board has agreed in the settlement agreement that any meaningful transaction, including the strategy in dealing with that transaction, will be fully discussed with the entire board before any final decision is made."
What do you think of this settlement? Sound off in the commments.
Posted by Nathania Johnson at 8:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
July 20, 2008
Is YouTube about to pass Yahoo in expanded searches?
On Friday, comScore announced that Google retained its lead in the U.S. core search market capturing 61.5 percent of the searches conducted in June 2008. By and large, the press coverage focused on the fact that Google's share of core searches was down slightly from May, while Yahoo! and Microsoft's share of core searches were up slightly from the previous month.
But, farther down the comScore press release was data on the "expanded search queries" for June. This includes the top properties where search activity is observed -- like YouTube. And here's what comScore qSearch 2.0 found:
-- 7.3 billion expanded search queries were conducted at Google in June;
-- 2.5 billion expanded search queries were conducted at Yahoo that month;
-- 2.3 billion expanded search queries were conducted at YouTube and other Google sites;
-- 1.1 billion expanded search queries were conducted at MSN-Windows Live.
And the month to month growth of expanded search queries at YouTube was 15%, while it was 8% at Yahoo!
So, let the countdown begin. How many months do you think it will take before YouTube passes Yahoo!?
According to comScore Video Metrix, 82.2 million viewers watched 4.1 billion videos in May on YouTube.com -- that's an average of 50.4 videos per viewer. It's also worth noting that YouTube.com accounts for more than 98 percent of all videos viewed at Google Sites, which means that Google Video is now round off error.
Okay, to be fair, expanded searches includes ones for mapping and local directories as well as user-generated video sites. So, YouTube and Google Maps are being combined in the comScore data.
Nevertheless, the media world still seems focused on core searches, which doesn't count about 5.1 billion expanded searches a month.
So, it's important to remember that vertical search engines are ... search engines, too. And getting found in all the right places increasingly means optimizing video for YouTube as well as web pages for Google, Yahoo! Search and Live Search.
Posted by Greg Jarboe at 12:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
