July 2, 2008

SEW Experts: Yahoo's Judgment Day

Microsoft was set to save Yahoo from certain death with a solid offer to purchase assets, or so we thought. According to yesterday's shareholder presentation, the deal wasn't such a great idea. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Yahoo's Judgment Day," Kevin Ryan notes that, while the jury is still out on the merits of the Google-Yahoo partnership, this is the first time since the Yahoocrosoft insanity began that it's publicly outlined strategic thought and tactical execution plans that make sense for Yahoo's future.

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 25, 2008

Yahoo's Latest Partnership: Online and Mobile Advertising Integration with Publicis

Today, Publicis announced the launch of their new digital advertising initiative, VivaKi. And Yahoo wasted no time sending out a press release regarding the new partnership with Publicis, perhaps in an attempt to compete with the news of Google's Ad Planner. But with Google already having its own agreement with Publicis, Yahoo is really just playing catch-up.

Yahoo's partnership is a dizzying array of product integrations between the two. Let's dive in:

First up, mobile marketing. Publicis' mobile marketing agency, PhoneValley, will be the first global agency to integrate Yahoo's Blueprint, a mobile developer platform language. The integration aism to aid brands in scaling their messages to a global level. Publicis will also be creating "microsites" to leverage Yahoo's Smart Ads, a mobile advertising tech solution.

Another part of the agreement is Publicis' integration of Yahoo's Right Media Exchange with their current media buying systems. Yahoo touts Right Media Exchange as "the largest open community of buyers and sellers including advertisers, agencies, publishers and networks." Yahoo hopes the integration will help clients of Publicis be able to target demographics with a single campaign buy.

"Our goal in working together with advertisers and agencies is to help them build brands, reach consumers and increase sales in new ways," said Yahoo President Sue Decker, who recently spoke about the online advertising transformation and is believed to be behind Yahoo's latest reorganization. "Through this relationship, Yahoo! and Publicis will empower the next generation of innovative advertising solutions."

"This partnership with Yahoo! takes the biggest challenge facing marketers today-the need for hyper-personalization on a massive scale-and turns it into a scalable, direct opportunity for Publicis Groupe clients," said David Kenny, Managing Partner of Publicis Groupe VivaKi. "By creating an evolved business structure built specifically to capitalize on this medium, we'll advance the larger industry and in the process set new standards for online advertising innovation."

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

SEW Experts: Yahoo's Suicide Pact with Google

Who cares if Yahoo outsources its search advertising to Google? You should. In today's Searching for Meaning column, "Yahoo's Suicide Pact with Google," Kevin Ryan asks, 'On what planet is having only one place to buy anything a good thing for competitive pricing?'

» Full story

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 12:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 24, 2008

Yahoo's Urban Mapping License to Aid Geographic Targeting

Yahoo! has licensed Urban Mapping's Urbanware: Neighborhoods, which contains data for 40,000 neighborhood boundaries covering more than 2,000 U.S. cities and towns. The agreement will help Yahoo provide geographically-targeted results based on actual search behavior.

"Urban Mapping's neighborhood boundary information helps us offer our users access to more complete and relevant content," said Bob Upham, Director of Business Development for Yahoo! Geo Technologies. "Allowing users to search by neighborhood yields more appropriate results, adding value and relevancy to the overall experience."

Ian White, Urban Mapping CEO. "Yahoo! clearly sees the value and benefits of delivering neighborhood-based information to their community of users, advertisers, publishers and developers."

The license is expected to help Yahoo provide improved results in local search, mobile search, yellow pages, maps, and real estate among other applications.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 16, 2008

Icahn Goes Soft on Yahoo-Google Deal, Investor Urges Combo Board

Carl Icahn has gone soft in the wake of the Yahoo-Google deal, telling Reuters that the deal "might have some merit." Icahn hasn't made any actions (such as withdrawing his proxy board) or written any more letters.

Meanwhile, Yahoo investor Eric Jackson is urging other shareholders to vote on a board that would keep 5 of the existing board members while bringing in 4 of Carl Icahn's proxy board, again according to Reuters. Jackson leads a group of 146 shareholders with a collective 3.2 million Yahoo shares.

Eric Jackson has been vocal in his disapproval of Yahoo's failure to strike a deal with Microsoft. But his fears may have been exaggerated. Once the deal fell through, he expected Yahoo shares to fall back to their pre-Microsoft bid levels of $19-20 per share. While the stock fell, it never has returned to those lower levels, instead hovering in the $23-25 range.

Perhaps Mr. Jackson is softening just a bit as well?

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 13, 2008

Jerry Yang Opens Up About Google Deal, Keeping Yahoo Independent

Jerry Yang has opened up about the non-exclusive search advertising deal with Google with a post over at the Yahoo! Anecdotal blog.

Yang started off by writing, "It's no longer a rumor." Considering Yahoo! issued a press release regarding a test of Adsense last April, I'm not sure rumor is the right word here, but let's move on.

Yang justified the deal by saying the move is part of Yahoo!'s open strategy:

"WebMD sells their audiences on Yahoo!, Yelp can customize how their local search results appear using Search Monkey, advertisers and publishers will buy and sell in an open marketplace with our upcoming AMP! from Yahoo!, and we’re now opening our paid search results to Google."

Then, Yang offered assurance that Yahoo! wasn't exiting the paid search biz, but is instead positioning themselves better within the marketplace:

"As search and display continue their convergence, it puts Yahoo! in a better position to innovate and compete aggressively with Google and others for ad dollars."

One sentence stood out above all the rest.

"An independent search business is critical to our future."

Shareholders could grab onto that statement as a sign that Yang was never interested in selling to Microsoft, something Carl Icahn has been saying as part of his proxy board campaign.

Google also wants an independent Yahoo, per statements by CEO Eric Schmidt earlier this week. Though, we would assume that's for different reasons.

Of course, in order to make money from this deal, Yahoo needs to get eyeballs to their site and searches need to be conducted. But their numbers are falling in U.S. search queries, so they're going to have to do a lot more than a Google deal to save themselves.

Yang seems to understand this, "It is, of course, just one step. We’ll continue to look at all of our alternatives to advance our strategies and enhance growth and profitability." But he doesn't have much time to prove himself before the August 1 shareholder meeting.

What do you think about Yang's statements? Is comparing Google to WebMd and Yelp like comparing apples and oranges? Did his blog help or hurt him with shareholders? Sound off in the comments.

Posted by Nathania Johnson at 10:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

June 12, 2008

Yahoo, Google Collaborate on Search Ads. Apocalypse Expected Soon.

In what must be one of the seven signs of the apocalypse, Yahoo and Google have agreed to extend the advertising tests they participated in last month to a broader-scale distribution partnership.

Under the agreement, Yahoo would outsource a portion of its search ad inventory to Google, and potentially to other providers in the future. Yahoo now has the option to display Google ads alongside its own natural search results and other Web properties in the U.S. and Canada.

Yahoo will select the search term queries and the pages where Google AdSense for Search or AdSense for Content ads will be shown. The deal does not affect Yahoo's algorithmic search.

Yahoo expects the deal to improve monetization of its pages, potentially adding $800 million in annual revenue. In the first 12 months following implementation, Yahoo expects the agreement to generate an estimated $250 million to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow.

The open bidding system will likely utilize the abilities of Yahoo's Right Media Exchange software to deliver those third-party ads on Yahoo's search results. Such a deal could still include spurned suitor Microsoft, which could also allay regulatory fears that Google is getting even bigger than it already is. To play nice with regulators, the two have agreed to delay implementation for up to three and a half months to give the U.S. Department of Justice time to review the arrangement.

The agreement has a term of up to ten years: a 4-year initial term and two 3-year renewals at Yahoo!’s option. Financial terms between the two companies were not disclosed. Either party will have the option of terminating the agreement in the event of a change in control of either party, but if Yahoo initiates it within the next 24 months, it will owe Google a termination fee is $250 million, subject to reduction by 50 percent of revenues earned by Google under the agreement.

The two-week test in April reportedly affected about 3 percent of Yahoo search queries, and only applied to search traffic from yahoo.com in the U.S. and did not include Yahoo's publisher network or other partners.

As an additional token of newfound camaraderie, Yahoo and Google agreed to enable interoperability between their instant messaging services.

Posted by Kevin Newcomb at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

May 16, 2008

Yahoo, WPP Partner To Sell Ad Inventory

Yahoo just announced they will be partnering with WPP to provide access to their advertising inventory to the clients and agencies associated with WPP. The agreement involves the use of WPP's recent acquisition, 24/7 Real Media.

The press release (below) suggests Yahoo will give direct access to available inventory to the clients and agencies partnered with WPP.

The real question is if the inventory will be strategically grouped remanent traffic or direct access to all traffic in some type of bidding mechanism.

Beyond that it also seems Yahoo is trying to develop a hands off method for monetizing their traffic. First working on the change over to Google's paid search and now this partnership with WPP to sell their other media.....

The other view - which may be more accurate now before everyone just starts using the third party vendors - is that Yahoo is trying to maximize all possible ways to sell their traffic in all its forms.

Let's see how this impacts stock prices tomorrow.

Read the press release after the jump:

Yahoo! Inc. (NASDAQ:YHOO) and WPP's (NASDAQ:WPPGY) GroupM, 24/7 Real Media and WPP Digital today announced a strategic partnership that will enable WPP agencies to buy digital display advertising across the Internet more efficiently than ever before. The partnership will initially involve a collaboration between Yahoo! and WPP's GroupM and 24/7 Real Media.

"More and more, we see the need for agencies and media and technology companies to work together to create a new level of value," said Mark Read, WPP's Director of Strategy and CEO of WPP Digital. "We are very pleased to have established this partnership with Yahoo! which, enabled by our earlier acquisition of 24/7 Real Media, will turn this vision into a reality."

As part of the agreement, WPP agencies, working through 24/7 Real Media, will develop a proprietary media trading platform that connects to Yahoo!'s Right Media Exchange. WPP agencies will work with 24/7 Real Media to integrate their proprietary targeting capabilities into the platform and develop custom trading strategies, which can be seamlessly executed via the Right Media Exchange on a highly targeted and cost-effective basis.

"As marketers take new approaches to understand and engage consumers, we are thrilled to partner with a powerhouse like WPP to evolve and grow their digital practice with our next-generation solutions," said Hilary Schneider, EVP of Global Partner Solutions for Yahoo!. "We are committed to providing the technology, insights and media expertise required to deliver the most relevant audiences across the web and to power the seamless conversation with consumers that drives greater brand awareness, consideration, intent and most importantly - action."

WPP will also work with Yahoo! to develop a WPP marketplace, giving WPP's agencies even greater access to inventory, visibility across the market and insight into value. WPP intends to draw inventory for the WPP marketplace from Yahoo!'s owned- and-affiliated networks and 24/7's Global Web Alliance. The marketplace would also be open to third-party publishers.

"This partnership with Yahoo! will give our agencies and, in turn, our clients, an advantage in securing more relevant, high-quality digital media inventory. And, it will be aggregated to our bespoke needs, at the best value for our clients," said Irwin Gotlieb, CEO of GroupM.

Posted by Frank Watson at 12:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

April 11, 2008

Yahoo Execs Bad Mouthing AOL!

Guess Yahoo does not want to partner with anyone these days... well apart from their biggest competitor Google. The Wall Street Journal blog, All Things D, just posted an entry by Kara Swisher, that details the grumblings of some top Yahoo managers overheard at a luncheon CEO Jerry Yang was having with his SVPs and others.

Swisher overheard them "talking about the unhappiness they felt over the possible deal Yang was concocting with AOL, as an alternate to the unsolicited bid made by Microsoft."

Am sure Jerry will not be pleased by this story, considering he had the AOL idea. Will more senior staff be leaving Yahoo if this partnership goes forward? We wsill have to wait and see.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:47 PM | Permalink

February 5, 2008

Microsoft-Yahoo: No Mention of Publisher Deals

With all the news about Microhoo, no one's mentioned how current content deals with publishers might change -- for better or worse. Yet these licensed resources drive substantial portal traffic and ad dollars today.

As an example, let's take a quick look at news licensed by all three players:

* Yahoo licenses many well-known news sources. * Microsoft offers MSNBC-branded news content. * Google doesn't license; it scours thousands of sources.

At the SIIA (Software & Information Industry Association) conference last week, major publishers seemed more interested in driving traffic to their destinations than in licensing their online content to the portals. Even the most hide-bound publishers have delivered some content openly, and many have made their archives available online as well. In addition, they understand that engineering prowess will matter as much as editorial strength.

With these shifting priorities, do the large publishers win, lose or draw from Microhoo? It's a draw, assuming steady portal traffic and no change in news providers. Fat chance. I'm betting that most licensing deals aren't assignable -- which means anything goes with a merger.

Microhoo might play smarter, however, if they coordinate services to increase revenue for publisher sites along with their portals. They have an array of services that appeal to print and broadcast suppliers, who haven't made all their content completely crawlable yet.

Otherwise the publishers will be drawn, by default, to Google to meet their traffic and ad revenue goals. As Google's David Eun told publishers at the SIIA confab, Google will continue to provide services which help publishers become “more ubiquitous online."

Posted by Deborah Richman at 10:15 AM | Permalink

October 17, 2007

Yahoo Adds Cars.com, Forbes.com and Ziff-Davis to Publishers' Network

Yahoo announced it has signed agreements with Cars.com, Forbes.com and the Ziff-Davis publications.

The press release stated:

Yahoo announced significant display advertising agreements with Cars.com, Forbes.com and Ziff-Davis Media. These agreements represent the continued build-out of Yahoo!'s network of premium publishers, which will benefit advertisers, publishers and users. These relationships enable marketers to reach their target audiences with high-value inventory on Yahoo! and across the Web, improving reach, frequency and relevance.

"Yahoo! is developing a new marketing ecosystem where premium publishers can deliver relevant marketing messages to their users on their owned and operated sites, or on Yahoo!'s sites, while also giving marketers the ability to reach their desired audiences across the entire network," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. "When you put the breadth of Yahoo!'s owned and operated properties together with these vertically-focused leaders, advertisers will be able to reach a high-quality audience with greater relevance and scale."

Cars.com

The alliance between Yahoo! and Cars.com, one of the nation's leading online destinations for people in the market for automobiles, creates increased opportunities for advertisers to reach a highly qualified, specific audience of in-market consumers interested in purchasing cars. This alliance gives advertisers the ability to extend their access to those consumers on both Cars.com and the Yahoo! network, creating highly valuable inventory for both partners.

"It's exciting to partner with Yahoo! to give our advertisers the ability to reach their target audiences not only on Cars.com, but also on the breadth of the family of sites and services on Yahoo.com," said Mitch Golub, President of Cars.com. "This alliance with Yahoo! will significantly enhance our ability to sell a lot more advertising inventory."

Forbes.com

The Yahoo! - Forbes.com relationship gives Forbes.com the ability to extend the reach and frequency of targeted display advertising to its consumers across Yahoo!'s network of leading Web sites. This will enable Forbes.com to continue delivering to advertisers qualified business decision-makers wherever they appear across the Yahoo! network. Additionally, Yahoo! will include some Forbes.com display inventory as part of Yahoo!'s finance package to advertisers looking to reach users interested in finance, including key business leaders. Forbes.com will continue to sell its own inventory to its advertising partners on a stand alone basis.

"Yahoo!'s network of publishers offers an intelligent and cutting-edge opportunity to monetize our premium unsold inventory at Forbes.com," said Jim Spanfeller, president and Chief Executive Officer, Forbes.com.

Ziff-Davis Media

The Yahoo! and Ziff-Davis Media relationship will provide advertisers with additional opportunities to communicate with, and engage some of the most involved and influential technology and video game buyers who are active across Yahoo!'s network of premium Web properties. These audience extension opportunities will enable marketers to further support their strategies to create a voice with influential consumers.

"Extending the reach of our PCMag.com Network and 1UP.com network audiences via Yahoo!'s extended network of Web properties creates more opportunities for advertisers to reach these valuable, proven buying communities," said Jason Young, Chief Executive Officer, Ziff Davis Media. "It's an incredibly compelling proposition that's a win for Ziff- Davis Media, Yahoo!, and marketers alike."

These important relationships with Cars.com, Forbes.com and Ziff-Davis Media are the latest developments in Yahoo!'s strategy to create the largest and most effective network of premium publishers online. The advertiser - publisher ecosystem will transform how advertisers engage with customers on and off the Yahoo! network. Yahoo! provides significant added value to these publishers, and all the companies participating in its growing network of premium publishers.

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:26 AM | Permalink

Yahoo To Provide Paid Search For WebMD Properties

Yahoo announced it will provide the sponsored search results for the WebMD properties. The sites include WebMD Health, MedicineNet, eMedicine Health and RxList.

The press release stated:

In addition, WebMD will extend its advertising reach to include WebMD users across Yahoo! properties and services. WebMD will be the only significant online health publisher to represent Yahoo!'s advertising inventory.

With online advertising spending in the health and pharmaceuticals category expected to top $1 billion next year, this agreement provides both Yahoo! and WebMD with additional reach and targeting that will benefit advertisers and consumers alike. Yahoo!'s robust ad platform coupled with effective targeting capabilities will enable advertisers to reach an even larger engaged audience and consumers will receive more relevant and timely health-related marketing messages. Additionally, should WebMD choose to make its inventory available to a third party advertising network, Yahoo! will have the opportunity to extend its advanced advertising products across the WebMD network of consumer sites on competitive terms.

"This strategic agreement dramatically extends WebMD's ability to uniquely reach health-involved consumers across the breadth of both WebMD and Yahoo! properties," said Wayne Gattinella, President and CEO of WebMD. "We're pleased to bring Yahoo!'s world class sponsored search capability to WebMD users as they seek credible health information on our network of consumer sites."

"Yahoo! couldn't be more thrilled to power sponsored search for WebMD's users. WebMD is the premier destination for health information," said Todd Teresi, senior vice president of the Yahoo! Publisher Network. "This agreement ushers in a new era of collaboration and value creation for marketers seeking qualified audiences, consumers demanding relevant experiences, and for our collective organizations as we look to build upon our unique strengths."

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:19 AM | Permalink

October 8, 2007

Yahoo's Sale Of Overture Japan Questioned

The sale by Yahoo! of Overture Japan to Yahoo Japan - a separate entity owned largely by Soft Bank (41%) and Yahoo (34%) - has been questioned by Eric Jackson at Seeking Alpha. The price of $13 million seems low and the decision to sell the PPC engine of the largest search engine in Japan seems interesting.

Yahoo Japan is the most popular engine in Japan with a 65% market share, according to Forbes magazine.

I have a hard time figuring out how things are priced.... remember the $1.65 billion for YouTube and it is not making the same kind of money PPC in Japan must be.

Posted by Frank Watson at 2:25 PM | Permalink

September 5, 2007

Local.com Renews With Yahoo As Search Partner

Local.com announced it is renewing its contract to have Yahoo provide its sponsored search results, Big Mouth Media reported.

"The result is even more relevant content that helps visitors to Local.com and our network of local publishers find the businesses and services they are looking for," the CEO of Local.com Heath Clarke stated.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:22 PM | Permalink

June 21, 2007

Murdoch Wants to Trade MySpace for Chunk of Yahoo

Got to love the aggression of Rupert Murdoch. Buys MySpace and now wants to leverage it for a chunk of Yahoo!

Since he only paid $580 million for MySpace - the site that now gets more visitors than Yahoo - and Murdoch is looking to trade for a 25% share in Yahoo - I think his numbers are a little off.

The story of Murdoch's desires came to light today in the NY Post (which he owns) and other publications.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:54 PM | Permalink

April 30, 2007

Yahoo, Comcast Partner on Display Ads

Yahoo and Comcast announced today that they will partner for displaying advertising on the Comcast website. Interesting when Comcast recently joined FastMedia who is looking to take on Google, Yahoo and Microsoft.

In a ZDNet article, "FAST claims, optimistically, that within two years the FAST Media Network of sites will surpass Google in search and advertising activity. It is an expression of the long tail of search, according to Perry Solomon, vice president and general manager of FAST's Media Solutions Group. "More and more people are building specialized search, with local ads and moving out the evil empire guys [Google, Yahoo and Microsoft]".

Should be interesting to find out if Comcast is still part of the FastMedia partnership.

The rest of the Comcast, Yahoo press release read:

Comcast Corporation (Nasdaq: CMCSK, CMCSA), the nation’s leading provider of cable, entertainment and communications products and services, today announced that Comcast Interactive Media and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO), a leading global Internet company and one of the most trafficked Internet destinations worldwide, have entered into a multi-year strategic partnership for online display and video advertising services on Comcast.net. Comcast.net is a top 10 online site with more than 2.5 billion page views, more than 80 million videos viewed and 15 million unique visitors per month.

“We are delighted with our new long-term strategic partnership with Yahoo!. Their scale, experienced sales force, advertiser relationships and industry leading display advertising capabilities will bring significant new monetization opportunities to Comcast.net.,” said Amy L. Banse, president, Comcast Interactive Media. “As Comcast continues to grow its online presence we will monetize our other online sites while driving innovative cross-platform services and creating new business models.”

Yahoo!'s advertising sales organization will be the primary marketing and sales channel for Comcast.net display and video advertising. Comcast.net will tap into Yahoo!'s extensive network of leading brand advertisers and benefit from Yahoo!'s sophisticated ad-serving, targeting and inventory management capabilities to enable the pricing, targeting, delivery and reporting of display and video advertisements. Comcast Spotlight will continue to bundle Comcast.net in cross-platform and locally-targeted advertising packages to its growing base of local, regional and national advertisers through its existing sales force of over 3,000 sales executives.

“This announcement is consistent with our goal to create the leading advertising marketplace and give our advertisers the ability to connect with their target customers wherever they are on the Internet,” said Hilary Schneider, executive vice president of the Local Markets and Commerce Division and the Yahoo! Publisher Network Division at Yahoo!. " With Comcast’s high quality broadband audiences, trusted brands can effectively extend their reach and impact as we continue to deliver our advertisers’ most relevant marketing messages to the most highly qualified audiences at the right place and time."

Yahoo! and Comcast Interactive Media will collaborate to create and market new sponsorships and custom advertising packages that are supported by Yahoo!'s platform. Yahoo!’s advertising services will be integrated within the redesigned Comcast.net planned later this year. The redesigned Comcast.net will include enhanced features, user experience and new advertising opportunities across the site. Search services and Comcast Interactive Media’s other properties are not part of the partnership.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:53 PM | Permalink

April 24, 2007

Yahoo, Gracenote Provide Lyrics For 100,000s of Songs

Yahoo and Gracenote annouced a joint venture that will provide hundreds of thousands of song lyrics through Yahoo Music.

Yahoo! Music (NASDAQ: YHOO) and Gracenote(R) today announced a new licensing deal allowing Yahoo! Music to offer the largest catalog of legal, licensed song lyrics from Gracenote to Yahoo! Music's consumers. Beginning today, song lyrics for hundreds of thousands of songs from all five major publishers will be incorporated into Yahoo! Music through Gracenote's growing database. The agreement with Gracenote makes Yahoo! Music the first mass-market Web service to make licensed song lyrics available to consumers. - the press release stated.

Through the agreement, consumers can search for song lyrics from the Yahoo! Music Search bar, simply by entering even a partial lyric from the song. Consumers will have viewing access to lyrics from nearly 100 music publishers, including the top five: BMG Music Publishing, EMI Music Publishing, Sony/ATV Music Publishing, Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, and dozens of prominent independent publishers. The addition of a comprehensive lyrics library complements existing Yahoo! Music products and services such as radio, music videos and on-demand music offerings, while reaffirming Yahoo! Music's reputation for providing its consumers with the most innovative, robust and complete music experience on the Web.

"You mean Bob Dylan isn't actually saying 'The ants, my friend, are in a bowling pin?'" asks Ian Rogers, general manager of Yahoo! Music. "Finally, a free, legal and definitive way to settle a bet with the guy sitting next to you at the bar who is certain the Ramones' most famous anthem declares, 'I wanna piece of bacon.'"

Gracenote began developing its Lyrics program more than two years ago, with the goal of building the first and most comprehensive database of legal, accurate song lyrics for consumers. The deal between Yahoo! Music and Gracenote is an important step toward enhancing the digital music experience of the consumer while protecting the legal and artistic rights of songwriters and music publishers.

"Song lyrics are continually among the top 10 searches performed on major search engines, though the results often provide consumers a frustrating experience filled with inconsistent and incomplete lyrics, and annoying pop-ups," said Craig Palmer, president and chief executive officer of Gracenote. "With Gracenote and Yahoo!, consumers will have access to the largest database of high quality lyrics linked directly to the rich album and artist content available throughout Yahoo! Music."

Gracenote Lyrics are integrated into Yahoo! Music in three unique ways:

-- Yahoo! Music Search - Consumers can search for lyrics from the Yahoo! Music Search box and receive highlighted links that take them directly to Yahoo! Music and the lyrics they want.

-- Yahoo! Music Artist Pages - Each Artist section within Yahoo! Music offers a lyrics page, allowing users to easily browse all song lyrics for that artist.

-- Yahoo! Music Top Songs - Consumers can quickly find lyrics for the most popular music today.

-- Yahoo! Search - Yahoo! will be adding lyrics to its index, allowing users to search for and find lyrics from any Yahoo! Search box.

-- Yahoo! Audio Search - Yahoo! users will soon be able to find links to lyrics pages through Yahoo! Audio Search, which helps consumers find music from a wide range of services, as well as non-music audio files from across the web. Audio Search will also provide the technology that will allow users to search for songs by typing in snippets of lyrics to find matching song titles.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:10 PM | Permalink

April 17, 2007

Yahoo and PayPal Join To Challenge Google Checkout

As part of their earnings call today, Yahoo announced a new partnership with EBay. Joining with PayPal, Yahoo will offer an express check system that can be seen as a solid challenge to the Google alternative.

The press release stated:

As an extension of the strategic relationship between Yahoo! and eBay, the two companies are partnering to improve the online shopping experience for consumers. Beginning today, April 17, Yahoo! Sponsored Search results will feature a blue shopping cart icon linking to merchants that accept PayPal Express Checkout as a method of payment. The program enables a streamlined purchase process for the more than 100 million PayPal customers on the Internet, and helps extends the value of Yahoo!'s new search marketing platform (Project Panama).

"This is great news for online shoppers and for merchants. Both want the online shopping and buying process to go smoothly and quickly, and connecting Yahoo! Search with PayPal Express accomplishes that," said Rich Riley, Sr. Vice President, Online Channel & Small Business Services, Yahoo! Inc. "Yahoo!'s new search marketing platform delivers consumers more relevant search results, and now, with the shopping cart icon, a clear and simple path to making purchases."

Yahoo! and PayPal are launching this new program with a series of special offers for merchants, including: · PayPal Express Checkout merchants will receive nine months of free processing from PayPal 1 Yahoo! Merchant Solutions customers using PayPal Express will receive six months of free processing 2 a $100 credit toward ad campaigns using Yahoo! Search Marketing

In addition, participating merchants' search listings on Yahoo! will be enhanced with the shopping cart icon, pointing consumers to a bright orange button on the merchants' checkout page, which links the consumer to the clear, simplified path to complete purchases using PayPal Express.

For more information. visit: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/paypal "Offering the PayPal’s shopping cart icon in Yahoo’s sponsored search listings is one example of how Yahoo!’s new advertising system was designed to launch new features on an ongoing basis," said Riley.

Posted by Frank Watson at 10:21 PM | Permalink

Yahoo, United Online Renew Contracts

Yahoo and United Online announced they have extended their contract today. Yahoo will provide sponsored search and web search results for NetZero, Juno and BlueLight (United Online properties).

The joint press release stated: "United Online has been a trusted partner for many years and provides a highly engaged user base providing an excellent source of quality traffic for our advertisers," said Sue Decker, executive vice president, head of Advertiser and Publisher Group and acting chief financial officer, Yahoo!, Inc. "Extending this relationship is a testament to Yahoo! and United Online's shared commitment to offering the best online experience to users and advertisers worldwide."

"Being able to conduct a search and receive meaningful results is extremely important to our users," said Mark R. Goldston, chairman and chief executive officer of United Online. "After exploring several options, we decided that Yahoo's new search marketing system was the best platform for us to provide our ISP users with enhanced, even more relevant search capabilities. We strive to provide our NetZero, Juno and Bluelight members with a high-quality experience and we are confident that this agreement with Yahoo! has helped us to achieve that goal."

Posted by Frank Watson at 5:20 PM | Permalink

March 20, 2007

Britney Can Use K-Fed To Find Bars and Rehabs

Okay it could be the sign of the apocalypse - just another example of bad arbitraging - but K-Fed has a search engine.

Kudos for the advanced warning on the end of the world from Threadwatch. Big boo to Yahoo for allowing the engine to arbitrage their results.

You have to love this industry... opportunists are everywhere.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:16 PM | Permalink

March 9, 2007

Yahoo!, AT&T Issue Joint Release To Stop Speculation

Yahoo and AT&T issued the following release amid speculation today by the Wall Street Journal and others about the value of their partnership which impacted Yahoo as their stock price dropped over 5% today.

SAN ANTONIO, Texas, and SUNNYVALE, Calif., March 9, 2007 – AT&T Inc. (NYSE:T), the nation's leading broadband, wireless and voice services company, and Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO), a leading global Internet destination, today responded to speculation regarding their partnership.

As part of our ongoing business agreement, Yahoo! and AT&T are constantly discussing opportunities to expand our relationship and associated revenue streams. Current and future plans include:

· Earlier this year, the companies introduced advertising on the front page of the co-branded portal;

· Later this month, the companies are introducing advertising on their co-branded mail service;

· AT&T and Yahoo! are discussing ways to expand the partnership in the mobile arena, now that AT&T has 100% ownership of Cingular (after its acquisition of BellSouth); and

· Yahoo! services will be introduced into AT&T’s IPTV experience later this year.

According to Randall L. Stephenson, AT&T Chief Operating Officer, “Great partnerships must continuously work together to adapt to changing market conditions and changing strategies. We consider our partnership with Yahoo! a great partnership and want to continue building on our complementary skills and expertise.”

Terry Semel, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Yahoo! said: “Our landmark, strategic partnership set the standard and has given Yahoo! and AT&T the opportunity to create truly innovative offerings for consumers and advertisers. AT&T and Yahoo! have already made adjustments over the years to reflect competitive conditions and the relative benefits each party brings to the relationship. As we continue our conversations, we have a common goal to increase the economic benefits for both parties.”

Posted by Frank Watson at 8:19 PM | Permalink

January 18, 2007

PPC Back Fill Map or Who Is King Of Garbitrage

While this is not news - it really should be. Most of the small search engines are arbitraging one way or another. And the Big Three (clearly 3 since Ask back fills Google PPC) make their cuts on the front end.

A Bruce Clay map for all the PPC partnerships and the rules that govern them would be handy.

My rant here started when I noticed at Ask that we were not being served Ask ads but rather our Google ads. Spoke to one of the people over at Ask and was told that they back fill with Google when the CTR drops below their acceptable level.

Guess that is the level where Google would pay them more to put their ads in... so some of our $10 plus Google terms pay Ask more (rumors of what percentage vary but let's work with 60%) - they get $6 a click from Google when we advertise for say $3 on Ask.... so the CTR would have to be 200% to make them enough money to change....

They are not the only ones.... I see many of the small engines pushing their results out into even thinner search provider portals.... the search results may stay at the site but the results are feed straight from another engine... yet many of these engines also arbitrage their onsite inventory with one of the Big Three so they force their advertisers to bid up to at least what these other people are willing to pay.

Not making much sense - after a while people are going to realize they are just using variations on Google, Yahoo and MSN and just go there first.

I want to start a Back Fill Map - so everyone post what you know in the forum and I will develop something that we all can use.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:05 PM | Permalink

December 18, 2006

Yahoo! Helps Children's Charity Search Engine For Christmas

DonorsChoose.org and DonorsChooseGift.org got a visit from a purple-clad Santa this week.

In place of the gifts they usually give to their high-end customers, Yahoo! turned to the charity search engine and sent gift cards of donations to the charity of your choice.

The people seeking donations are various school based requests for aid that teachers from around the US make through the Donors Choose interface.

"Teachers ask. You choose. Students learn." is the slogan.

The cobranded card congratulated the recipients. "you have received a DonorsChoose gift certificate. At our not-for-profit web site, public school teachers submit propsals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These proposals become classroom reality when concerned individuals like you choose one to fund," the card read.

The site allows you to search propsals by location or area of interest. Simple but clever, this idea could take off - after I used the gift card donation code I went back and gave a little more.

Hopefully this one becomes contagious.

Posted by Frank Watson at 4:49 PM | Permalink

December 15, 2006

Yahoo!'s Overture Korea Renews With Top Korean Engine Naver

Yahoo! announced it has resigned their agreement to provde Naver, Korea's leading search portal, with their sponsored search listings. Overture Korea and Naver have been partnered since Q3 2004, according to Gaude Lydia Paez, Director of Yahoo Public Relations, providing them with paid listings for their search pages from the Naver portal and toolbar.

Naver provides over 70 percent of Korean searches, Paez said, though some reports have the number over 90 percent.

“Naver’s leadership position as Korea’s most visited online destination provides opportunities for our advertisers. We are proud to continue working with Naver to connect businesses and consumers at the point of search,” said Kim James Woo, Regional Vice President of Yahoo! Search Marketing in Asia and CEO of Overture Korea. “Our priority is to deliver high quality leads to our advertisers and relevant results to users, and this agreement enables us to drive those efforts even further.”

Naver is owned by NHN Corp. and was launched in June, 1999.

The agreement, which continues the Naver/Yahoo! relationship for several years, according to Paez, gives Yahoo Paid Search a large slice of Korean search.

“This re-contract gives us a great opportunity to reaffirm the mutual trust that we built together with an effort to develop domestic search ad market. NHN will continue to work closely with Overture to protect advertiser’s rights and interest and provide a valuable ad services to the Korean market", the deputy managing director of e-Biz from Naver, Min-Soo Yeo said.

Posted by Frank Watson at 3:30 PM | Permalink

November 21, 2006

Answers.com Integrates Yahoo Answers Into Content

Answers.com announced that they have integrated Yahoo Answers directly into their content. So if you do a search at Answers.com, you should see at the bottom right portion of the page, a box for Yahoo Answers results that match on those keywords. Gary Price has more sample searches and expert opinion on this integration.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:38 AM | Permalink

November 20, 2006

Yahoo Strikes Deal With 176 Newspapers

The New York Times reports that Yahoo has struck a deal with 176 newspapers, consisting of a 7 newspaper chains to "share content, advertising and technology." The first part of the deal will promote Yahoo's HotJobs site, where newspapers will post the local jobs to HotJobs and use HotJobs's technology on their local newspaper site for classifieds listings. Then Yahoo wants to make these newspapers content more accessible within Yahoo's search index, local news and other search services.

Greg Sterling has more information at his blog.

Postscript From Danny: As a reminder, Google cut a deal for its Google News Archive with many news organizations in September. The Yahoo deal looks far more extensive in terms of integration with Yahoo.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:04 AM | Permalink

October 23, 2006

Yahoo Resigns Ad Deal With Guardian Unlimited

Guardian Unlimited has renewed their advertising deal with Yahoo. Guardian is to keep the keyword ads (named hotspots) on the site and also keep the Yahoo search box through the site. A future possibility for Yahoo and Guardian Unlimited is to integrate Yahoo Answers into Guardian Unlimited's web site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:47 AM | Permalink

October 19, 2006

Searching Via Internet Explorer 7 & The Battle To Be The Default Search Engine

Now that Internet Explorer 7 has been released in final format, I wanted to look at how search is being handled within the browser. There's been lots of discussion and worries about this in the past. Speculation time is over; reality is here. In this article, how the IE7 search box works, how you can change it and how Google and Yahoo's toolbars behave within it to try and maintain their default status, once gained.

The biggest difference with Internet Explorer 7 is the one that's been most discussed, a visible search box built into the "chrome." In the picture below, you can see the search box, complete with the word "Google" in light text to remind me what search engine is my default.

(NOTE: I've used a lot of screenshots, drawing off my Flickr account and picked a day when Flickr has became sluggish after I wrote this. Apologies if the pictures don't show when you view the page. Try reloading or checking back).

Google is my default search engine because it was that way in Internet Explorer 6. It became my default there with my permission, when I installed the Google Toolbar on my laptop (where I did today's testing) ages ago.

I removed the Google Toolbar for the purposes of testing IE7. That didn't cause the IE6 default settings to change, and to Microsoft's credit, they didn't try to override it when I upgraded to IE7.

Microsoft had previously said that if it detected a particular search engine was set to be a default, it would respect that. So, IE7 did -- sort of. Notice however what comes up in the main window of Internet Explorer 7 when I relaunched it:

Here, I'm notified that Google's my default, and I'm asked to confirm this or make another choice. Overall, I think that's fine. Yes, it's Microsoft hoping to change some minds. Maybe "Keep my current default search provider" should be ticked already. But I'd say most people who have Google as their default now will confirm keeping it that way. It's hardly anti-competitive.

Google, in particular, has disagreed. On a new machine, where Google has no presence or partnership, Microsoft Live Search will be the default. Google had suggested that users should be explicitly asked to make a choice from one of several providers. In my past article about this, I wrote about not being sympathetic to that idea, given that Google has had no problem paying to override consumer choice to gain the default position through deals with Firefox or through Dell installations.

Since then, deals have only accelerated. Yahoo partnered with Acer and also with HP. Google cut a deal with Adobe. It's difficult to know how a consumer is going to buy a "virgin" machine where the defaults haven't already been decided or influenced by some business deal.

Given this, let's focus on how consumers can make their choices after the fact. That's pretty easy. From that opening screen that IE gives after installation, tick the "Let me select from a list of other search providers" option and then choose Save Settings at the bottom of the page.

That will brings up this page (other pages might come up for other language/country configurations):

Very fairly, Microsoft isn't positioning themselves at the top of the list or more prominently than others. In fact, I think Microsoft is making a terrible mistake by just saying "Live Search" rather than "Microsoft Live Search." I think relatively few people know the Live brand right now. I can well imagine some people thinking, "Live Search -- what's that?" and skipping the search engine from consideration.

I selected Live Search from the list. That made a pop-up box appear:

Notice the option to make the choice as my default is NOT ticked. This allows you to add several search engines to the search box, which you can then selectively use while still maintaining your default search engine. You can add a bunch of different providers, and I'll come back to this more below.

It's worth noting that the Search Provider page links to information about the OpenSearch system, a way for anyone to easily create search engines that can be added to IE7. Of course, that doesn't mean you get added to the all-important Search Provider page. It just means someone visiting your site might be able to use a button that you promote to them to change their IE7 settings.

That Search Provider page also has an interesting box allowing you to visit any search engine, then do a copy-and-paste action to make your own search box. It's very clever. You simply search for TEST on anything that gives you a search box. Copy-and-paste the resulting URL, and IE7 will automatically create the right way to access that search engine for you. I added Search Engine Watch as a search engine to my IE7 installation easily by doing this.

In the example above, I didn't change my default search provider. Now let's say I want to, perhaps some time after I've initially installed IE7. Google has previous spun the idea of changing settings in IE7 as some complicated task. It even cited research saying only one third of users could figure it out. I have more faith that people can do it, so let's go through the steps.

1. Click the Tools button in IE7's menu, then pick Internet Options  
2. On the General tab of the Internet Options window that appears, there's a Search area. Click on the Settings button here.  
3. That brings up a Change Search Defaults menu: (FYI, I wish the "Find more providers" link was much more visible here. If you didn't pick more providers from when IE was initially installed, you won't have any choices in the main selection area -- and you might miss that link. This is handled in a better way through an alternative method I'll cover below).  
4. Choose the search engine you want, push the Set Default button, then OK. Now you're done.

Well, not necessarily. After I did this, Google was shown as my choice within the search box in the chrome. Evil Google! No, it seems more an IE thing. When I closed and restarted IE7, the default was changed to Live Search.

Let's go back to that search box in the chrome. Obviously, you can use it to search. Enter some words, hit return or click the magnifying glass icon/button, and the browser will pull back results from your default search engine.

The box also allows you to temporarily or permanently change your default search provider. Next to the box, use the down-arrow to get a drop-down menu like this:

From it, any search engine you've added to your providers list is shown. You can see how several providers I've selected are added, including the custom choice I made for Search Engine Watch.

Choose a provider, and then your search will go to that provider for that particular search, similar to how the box in Firefox works. It stays this way until you change it back or until you close IE7 entirely.

Look at the bottom of the menu. The drop-down box lets you get to the IE7 search providers page or bring up the Change Search Defaults box I showed in step 3 above. That makes changing providers a two step process.

Next up, I wanted to see how the search engines competing with Microsoft were reacting to a freshly minted copy of IE7 showing up at their doorsteps. Would I get prompts to change, as we've seen in the past from both Google and Yahoo?

Google and Yahoo surprisingly did nothing. I wonder if this might because the final release of IE7 has made some type of browser agent change that the two have set to identify. We'll see. Meanwhile, Ask gave me this box enticing me to change:

Next up, time to deal with concerns that Google might be too aggressive in protecting itself once installed as the default via the Google Toolbar. I loaded up a fresh copy. In short order, Google asked me if I wanted to make it both my default search provider and notify me if something tries to change that:

To help avoid controversy, Google ought to make these separate options. But from a usability perspective, I can well understand the logic of making then a single choice. If I want Google to be my default, I probably don't want something to try and change that behind my back -- and many have had bad experiences with adware and spyware doing exactly that.

I told it Google fine, then I was surprised that the next screen made me decide whether to have PageRank display enabled or not.

In the past, I recall this as an option you were never prompted to enable. Instead, I recall it as something that search engine optimization folks (about the only ones who care) would enable by diving into the advanced options and switching it on.

I could be wrong in my recollection. If so, my apologies. But even with Google's clear "in your face" warning that enabling PageRank will send data to them, I still wonder if perhaps the screen should be different.

Maybe PageRank display should be disabled by default, rather than making you choose. The screen that appears would then ask explicitly if you wanted to change to enabled. It would explain what it provides to the user (the screen itself tells you nothing, not even a short description such as here). It would then warn, as it does now, that enabling the feature allows Google to see every page you are visiting.

All installed, Google gives me a big notice to let me know I'm ready to go with the toolbar:

I then tried to change search providers using the steps above. That seemed to work, but then I got this small notification in my task bar, along with an audible signal:

My task bar is at the top of the screen (where it belongs, in my opinion!). By default, the task bar is at the bottom of Windows machines by default, so the notification could be less noticeable there. The sound helps, but frankly I don't know why this was blocked at all.

There's a big difference between spyware changing your default setting and users themselves trying to change the default using the options within Internet Explorer. Google ought to be able to distinguish the two. Changes made by a user shouldn't be blocked. Moreover, any blocking ought to ask me for confirmation that it's going to happen, not just be done on my behalf.

In other words, consider this. I'd consented for Google to notify me if something was trying to change my default settings, as shown on that earlier screenshot. I did not consent to it doing the blocking on my behalf, which is what it did. It would have been far better if Google had produced some type of pop-up box telling me that something wanted to change my defaults and asking me if I wanted to allow this. Leave the choice with me.

I'll follow-up with Google about this. Meanwhile, what to do if you want to override the decision Google made for you? When that notification happens, you have to click on the little G button in your task bar (if the notification is gone, try changing again to make it come back). Clicking on the G brings up a box like this:

That box is what I think Google should actually show you, rather than processing it behind the scenes unless you manually make it appear. It tells you something wants to change your default, asks if you want to allow that to happen and lets you override what Google wants to do, remain the default, if that's your decision.

If you override, that should disable Google from doing any future monitoring, as it tells you will be the case:

That's what I found to happen. In fact, I see no signs that Google is still monitoring despite being told not to. That's what happened in July, when the GoogleToolbarNotifier.exe program continued to run. Google said this was a bug, which got some dubious laughs in some quarters. Bug or not, I certainly don't see it happening now.

To further test it, I went back to Ask.com and let it make it my default search provider. That worked fine.

Once you've disabled monitoring, what if you want it back? Use the Settings menu of the Google Toolbar, then on the More tab, you'll see two options:

The two different options intrigued me. What was the difference between:

• Set and keep Search settings to Google
  • Notify me on settings change

I enabled only the first. Bad, bad choice. If you do this, you simply cannot change your settings at all unless you go back into the Google Toolbar and override the option. Google will silently keep any settings from being altered. If you enable them both, then you get back to the behavior where at least Google will give you a notification.

Overall, here's what I'd like to see. The Google Toolbar should ask if you want to be notified about changes. If something tries to make a change, it should then ask you for explicit permission whether to override this, at least the first time -- perhaps it gives you an option to let Google handle these changes without notifications behind the scenes after that. But yes -- get in the users face more about what you're going to change initially, so they know what's going on.

Having played with Google, I next loaded up the Yahoo Toolbar. Ugh, not fun. First, Yahoo by default wants to cram Norton Spyware scan down your throat. Yes, right under the big Download Yahoo! Toolbar button in smaller text is an option to get just the toolbar without it. I'd rather see that option get equal play.

After the installation, like Google, Yahoo stands ready to be both my default search engine and help me get back to Yahoo if something changes my default settings:

Like Google, Yahoo makes it clear you've got the toolbar with this big pop-up window:

Decide to personalize the toolbar, as Yahoo suggests? To do that, you've got to have a Yahoo account. That means the toolbar does more than drive searches for Yahoo. Unlike Google, Yahoo's trying to generate user registrations, as well. The toolbar works without registration, of course -- but it no doubt encourages some people to sign up.

I manually changed my default provider from Yahoo to Google, using the steps above. Yahoo didn't block this. But when I closed the browser and relaunched it, I got this:

Fair enough. Unlike Google, Yahoo didn't silently switch itself back. It asked me to make that choice. It was also a one time thing. I told it to allow the change, then closed my browser and reopened it. Yahoo didn't come back and try to get me to switch back to Yahoo again.

Actually, I wouldn't have minded that. I find it very helpful that Firefox or Internet Explorer will keep asking me if I want them as a default unless I explicitly use the offered tick box not to be asked again. That's because it's easy to accidentally hit the wrong button. It's harder to both hit the wrong button and enable a tick box.

All this effort by the toolbars to maintain default status comes off the fear that the IE7 search box is going to somehow gain Microsoft tons of search traffic. I've been pessimistic about this actually happening. I've noted for ages that despite Microsoft long having hooks into IE for its own search, Google and Yahoo have both survived and thrived. My Google Worried About Microsoft's Browser Advantage? What Advantage? article goes into much more depth about this.

It's uncertain to me that the search box in the "chrome" is going to make that much of a difference, but I haven't seen much user behavior data here. I could be completely wrong, and Microsoft's competitors are certainly worried about it. We'll know in short order. IE7 is being rolled out in a mandatory fashion to Windows users beginning November 1 through the Windows update system. If Microsoft's search share rises, the chrome search box may be working.

However, I think many people will still fire up their browser and go back to the search engines they regularly use. Google and Yahoo might not have the enticements to switchover today up, but those will come. And I think those will help them to largely preserve their shares despite the IE7 rollout.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 10:16 AM | Permalink

October 16, 2006

CBS News Partnering With Yahoo; CBS News Stories In Google Earth

Yahoo adds CBS news to video lineup from the Associated Press covers how Yahoo News will be getting CBS News video clips from 14 local markets in the US to post to Yahoo News. Meanwhile, CBS Puts News on the Map Inside Google Earth from Micro Persuasion covers how CBS has a special feed (background here) that will plot CBS News stories within Google Earth. CBS appears to have been doing this since at least August, so it's not new nor requiring a specific partnership to do, as with the Yahoo program.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 11:12 AM | Permalink

October 11, 2006

Yahoo Hurting While Google Healthier Than Ever

The NY Times has an article named Yahoo’s Growth Being Eroded by New Rivals (free version available at (IHT.com). The article goes through how Yahoo is suffering and lagging behind its competitors. (1) They made a bid at YouTube but those deals broke down, according to the article, and Google "swooped" them up. (2) The new Yahoo search ad system, Panama, is over a year delayed. This "delay has sucked up the company’s engineering resources and prevented it from developing new advertising products."

Based on my coverage of Yahoo over the past year, it seems like webmasters, SEOs, and industry folks have become less and less interested with the company.

The LA Times has an article this morning that goes on the same theme. If you can't get to the article, try going through Google News to gain free access, it worked for me.

Postscript From Greg Sterling:

This is not the kind of publicity you want to see if you're on the PR team. While it's true that Google has momentum and Yahoo may need a kind of "shot in the arm," what people forget is that Yahoo is the largest site on the Internet with the most monthly uniques.

It also has a bunch of market-leading properties including mail, finance and local (among others). Mail is also the number one mobile site.

Google, though a very dynamic and powerful company with lots of momentum, is not without its challenges and vulnerabilities. If anything the YouTube acquisition was an admission of some of those. Though, by the same token, Google now has great opportunity with YouTube.

I'm not sure, from where I sit, how many problems identified in the Saul Hansell Times piece are real and how many are simply perceived. But perception does influence reality.

Yahoo is a little like a strong sports team that happens to be in a bit of a slump right now.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:40 AM | Permalink

September 29, 2006

Yahoo Toolbar To Be Installed On HP Computers IE7 Browsers

The Associated Press reports that Yahoo and HP have struck a deal to have all desktop and laptop computers in the United States to have the Yahoo Toolbar pre-installed on top of Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7. HP computers sold in Europe will have the home page default to Yahoo.com, starting immediately. Earlier this month, Yahoo & Acer set Yahoo as the default search engine on Acer computers.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:03 AM | Permalink

September 20, 2006

Yahoo Teams Up With Gore's Current TV

The news is buzzing about the Current TV and Yahoo partnership. Current TV, founded by Al Gore, and Yahoo announced the launch of The Yahoo Current Network. This network is to "combine professional and user-generated video clips" reports the New York Times. The paper says each show will likely "be preceded by a 15- or 30-second commercial," which is the first time Yahoo "included commercials with user-generated content." TechCrunch notes that this video at Yahoo describes a bit more about how the shows will run, and it also describes "VC2," viewer created content (i.e. user generated content). The user contributed videos can earn $100 for each chosen clip and if that clip is broadcast on Current's television network, you can earn between $500 and $1,000, according to the New York Times.

This is all somewhat a bit interesting in the sense that Google has a long standing relationship with Current TV. They launched the Google Current (more also here) show on Current TV a bit back. Plus Al Gore has been an adviser to Google in the past. Gore said, "Yahoo is very different from Google. Yahoo for a long time has been much more in the media space." Yahoo is a media company, Google is a search company.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:25 AM | Permalink

September 14, 2006

Yahoo & Acer Partner: Yahoo Search Default Search Engine on Acer Computers

The Financial Times reports that Yahoo has partnered with Acer, the fourth largest PC manufacturer to set the default search engine to Yahoo Search on those machines. In addition, the default home page for those browsers will be a co-branded page with links to Yahoo services. The terms of this deal were not disclosed, but we know it will be a multi-year partnership.

We know that Google partnered with Dell and that Google has also partnered with Adobe to get onto the desktop. But this all kind of leads back to Google whining about Microsoft's unfair advantage.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:37 AM | Permalink

September 7, 2006

ESPN To Manage Own Text Ads & Drop Yahoo

AdWeek.com reports that ESPN.com will be dropping Yahoo's text ads from their site and replacing it with their own ads. ESPN.com will be using Quigo's AdSonar product to manage the auctioning, keyword targeting and placement of the text ads on the site. AdWeek cites that ESPN may be making this move to keep a larger share of the ad dollar, where currently Yahoo may be taking 20% of the ad dollars made on the ESPN.com site.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:04 AM | Permalink

August 16, 2006

Yahoo Partners With Go2 For Mobile Search Ads

Forbes reports that Yahoo has signed an agreement with Go2, a mobile Yellow Pages directory service, to offer Yahoo sponsored search listings on the search results displayed on the mobile Go2 results. The Wall Street Journal has a bigger write up on cell phones and ads, stating, "some of the largest wireless companies in the U.S. are starting to allow advertising on their cell phone networks." But don't worry, "no major carrier is talking about displaying ads on home pages or while customers are making calls." You will most likely see ad integration in the form of the Yahoo & Go2 partnership, i.e. ads tied to content, be it text alerts, mobile searches, mobile browsing and more.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:34 AM | Permalink

July 27, 2006

Yahoo Partners With British Telecom For Yahoo Local UK

Revolution Magazine reports that Yahoo has partnered with British Telecom to share Yellow Pages data. Yahoo will add 120,000 businesses who advertise in The Phone Book from BT within the Yahoo Local UK platform. This helps BT offer an additional service to their Phone Book customers and gives Yahoo access to some more data and marketing opportunities they may have not had otherwise.

Post Script from Greg: Yell is the dominant yellow pages publisher in the UK and was previously owned by BT before it was sold a few years ago. Yell provides all its content to Google, as the basis for Google Local/Maps in the UK.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 11:29 AM | Permalink

July 25, 2006

Yahoo & Symantec To Offer "New Security Offerings"

News.com reports that Symantec and Yahoo will be announcing a "new security offering" sometime today. News.com says this partnership will "improve online security for consumers." But honestly, I have no more details. Is it email focused? Web search focused? Is it desktop focused? We don't know as of yet. So stay tuned.

Postscript: BetaNews has more details in Yahoo, Symantec Partner on Net Security, explaining this is allowing several Yahoo online properties such as Yahoo Mail to use Symnantec security products for 30 days free, followed by a 12 month subscription offer.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:23 AM | Permalink

July 20, 2006

Motorola To Add Yahoo Go for Mobile On Phones

Reuters reports that Yahoo and Motorola have teamed up. The Yahoo Go for Mobile service will be added to many new Motorola phones. The multi-year deal sets Motorola to add this Yahoo service on new mid-priced and high-end Motorola phones. No specific models numbers were provided.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:01 AM | Permalink

July 19, 2006

Zillow Partners With Yahoo!

Zillow, the real estate wunderkind, announced a partnership with Yahoo! in which Zillow's Zestimates (home value estimates) will show up on Yahoo! search result pages as a Shortcut. Here's the result for 'home values' on Yahoo!. Zillow will also be featured in Yahoo's real estate section (under the 'what's my home worth' link).

Read the official press release, Zillow's blog post, or the Yahoo! Search blog post.

This is obviously a major coup for Zillow and continues a trend of innovative start-ups partnering with the big search engines to get to the next level. Read more at VerticalSearch.net

Posted by Brian Smith at 2:34 AM | Permalink

July 14, 2006

Newspapers To Team Up With Yahoo To Create An Online Classifieds Network

Reuters reports on a Business Week article that shows how a "loose consortium of newspaper publishers" are in discussions with Yahoo's HotJobs to build an online classifieds network. For Yahoo, this can help increase the popularity of HotJobs and for the newspapers, it can help them drive more ad dollars, but this time, online ad dollars.

Quote from the Business Week article that shows the importance on the newspaper side;

Newspaper companies would build a network within what is one of the Web's top destinations and win a crucial concession in today's search-engine economy: getting a cut of the ads sold around search results of their content. It's a sore spot for publishers that this doesn't happen now.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:25 AM | Permalink

July 13, 2006

Yahoo Reaches Out To U.S. Hispanics Via Deal With Hispanic Digital Network

ClickZ reports that Yahoo has reached a deal with Hispanic Digital Network (HDN) to supply web search and sponsored search listings for HDN's 70+ Spanish-language Web sites. Reportedly, this gives Yahoo access to 2.8 million U.S. Hispanic visitors per month. The ads will be both in Spanish and English, not based on geo-location but based on the language used in the query. Yahoo would like to see more Spanish content web sites developed in the future, according to Peter Celeste, regional general manager for the Americas for Yahoo Search and Search Marketing.

For more information on the Hispanic market, check out our coverage of SES Latino from Monday and Tuesday.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:02 AM | Permalink

June 30, 2006

MSN Search To Officially Not Use Yahoo Search Marketing For Sponsored Search July 1

I reported over the Search Engine Roundtable that Yahoo's and MSN's relationship is coming to an official end this month. The official Yahoo announcement can be seen here and it states, "MSN's U.S. search distribution agreement with Yahoo! Search Marketing ends this month, and Yahoo! Sponsored Search listings will no longer appear in MSN's U.S. search results." MSN has been displaying mostly Microsoft adCenter ads on their search results pages for a couple months now. So the transition has been pretty gradual for advertisers and searchers.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:42 AM | Permalink

June 23, 2006

Japan's Softbank Mobile Phones To Use Yahoo As Content Portal

MarketWatch reports that Softbank, who acquired Vodafone, will be using Yahoo to "bring the broad world of the Internet" to their mobile users. The mobile phones will have some sort of direct link to the Yahoo portal, to bring the content of that portal to Softbank's mobile users.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 9:00 AM | Permalink

June 22, 2006

Google Partners With Adobe For Toolbar Distribution In Shockwave, Other Product To Be Named

Both Adobe (PDF link) and Google have announced a new deal where Adobe will distribute the Google Toolbar for Internet Explorer as part of Adobe Macromedia Shockwave Player downloads. That was supposed to begin yesterday, and bundling with other Adobe products will happen in the future.

Wait a minute? Weren't Yahoo and Adobe buddy-buddies? Yes -- a special version of the Yahoo Toolbar is built into the popular Adobe Acrobat Reader program, through a deal dating back to October 2004.

In January of this year, Google began distributing Adobe Reader as part of the Google Pack without the Yahoo Toolbar being part of it. Google told me (article for SEW members) then that the Adobe-Yahoo agreement only covered the distribution Adobe did.

So is the Yahoo-Adobe deal completely over? No. Reuters reports that Adobe says that will continue:

Adobe previously included Yahoo Inc.'s toolbar as an option with the Shockwave Player, Adobe spokeswoman Katie Juran said. Adobe still offers the Yahoo toolbar as an option for its Flash Player and Adobe Reader products, she said.

I just uninstalled Acrobat Reader and downloaded a fresh copy. I definitely see the Yahoo Toolbar as part of the latest installation.

As for the Abobe-Google deal, the bundling with Google Pack wasn't based on payment, Google told me at the time. This latest deal is a financial arrangement, though exactly how much money is changing hands is not disclosed.

As for the distribution, I downloaded Shockwave and got no prompt for the Google Toolbar to be added. Of course, I already had it in Internet Explorer, and that seems to be why I didn't get a separate install. The Shockwave FAQ suggests that you should see a separate install process and that this won't happen if you have the Google Toolbar already.

That FAQ also notes that the Yahoo Toolbar, previously bundled with Shockwave, has now been dropped. In addition, it says that that third parties that distribute Shockwave do not have to bundle the Google Toolbar with those distributions.

The Google Blog post also says:

Starting today, Adobe is offering the Google Toolbar to its customers as a free download -- a great way to take Google search with you anywhere on the web.

So far, that seems to be true within Shockwave. But it's also a bit overstated. The Google Toolbar on its own is not offered anywhere on the Adobe products page, nor does a search for "google toolbar" flag any page for those who just want the toolbar on its own

The best, most specific information is part of the Shockwave FAQ that I've mentioned. There is at least a direct link to the Google Toolbar download page. But that's much different that the idea the Google Blog suggests, that people visiting Adobe might be getting a pitch for the Google Toolbar on its own. Not yet, not so far.

Postscript Barry:

I was sent a screen capture of this in action, you can view the screen capture at tcal.net.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 6:48 AM | Permalink

May 25, 2006

eBay & Yahoo Partner On Graphical Ads, Other Areas

Everyone is talking about the eBay & Yahoo partnership, where Yahoo will be eBay's exclusive provider of graphical ads and Yahoo will promote eBay's PayPal to its merchants and publishers. Reports via the Washington Post, The Street and BusinessWeek.com stress how this poses a threat to Google and Microsoft. It is important to note that this partnership is primarily to provide graphical ads and click-to-call ads and on a lesser standpoint to provide some search ads. The limited search ads are probably because eBay does not want to detract visitors from the eBay products and auctions, which is logical.

Postscript: Hitwise has some stats on traffic that flows from eBay to other sources.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 10:22 AM | Permalink

May 23, 2006

MySpace In Partnership Talks With Google & Microsoft

The Financial Times reports that MySpace, the huge social networking site, is in talks with Google and Microsoft over partnership opportunities to better monetize MySpace with contextual and search ads. MySpace, that has "nearly 80m registered users", is seeking a search company, like Google or Microsoft to "supply internet searches on its pages, along with adverts tied to results." The Financial Times says that Yahoo is "less interested," possibly because they have their own consumer generated content going on there. This deal can be huge for both Google and Microsoft, and also MySpace.

Postscript From Danny: Oddly, the story doesn't mention that Yahoo is the current provider of search results to MySpace -- which suggests that the lack of interest might be based on an existing bad experience with conversion over there

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:50 AM | Permalink

May 11, 2006

"Online Seller Advantage Program" Taps Yahoo for Buyer, Seller Data

Prudential Real Estate is offering a new program as part of its existing marketing relationship with Yahoo Real Estate called the "Online Seller Advantage program" (OSA). It"s designed to let sellers" agents convey market information to their clients ("real-time updates") via email. Sellers will be able to receive a range of consumer-related and competitive market data.

Those data include the following:

• How often their property showed up on research results
• How often their property was viewed in detailed format
• How many viewers have saved their property in their portfolio
• New listings and photos in the seller's immediate neighborhood
• Price changes of homes in the seller's immediate neighborhood
• Status changes (sold, pending, price reductions) of competitive properties in the seller's local area

From a buyer perspective, homes for sale will be equipped with a branded 'sign rider' featuring a unique ID number. Buyers can plug that number into Yahoo search and immediately be taken to details about the specific property. This is the most interesting aspect of the announcement from my point of view because it helps connect the online and offline worlds in a very direct way. It's not clear from the available information whether there's a mobile dimension to this, although presumably the information could equally be obtained through a browser on a mobile phone. Interestingly, the seller tools and data seem to be about enabling agents to manage expectations in a cooling marketplace. As evidence, here's a quote from the press release:

"This is a time when pricing a home right can really make a difference," said Aaron Lewis, a sales professional with Prudential California Realty in Turlock, Calif. "But sometimes, the sellers' perspective of their property's value is different from what the market will bear. The OSA emails they receive daily provide hard evidence to support my recommendations on staying competitive. The OSA keeps my sellers realistic, which helps me help them."

The OSA is going to be available in 47 states and Washington, D.C. The missing three are Arkansas, South Dakota and West Virginia. But the program will be expanded in the near term to encompass those states as well.

Here's a commercial (via YouTube) for Yahoo and Prudential's marketing partnership, though not specifically this offering.

Other sites, such as Zillow offer valuation information and other market data.

The percent of U.S. homebuyers using the Internet as part of their housing search process went from roughly 2% in 1995 to 77% in 2005 according to the National Association of Realtors. The Internet is now the number one consumer resource in the home-buying process.

Posted by Greg Sterling at 12:20 PM | Permalink

May 3, 2006

Yahoo & Microsoft Have Talked Partnering, Merging

I was talking with Kevin Delaney of the Wall Street Journal on Monday about search things in general and mentioned the sense it makes for Microsoft and Yahoo to get together. Microsoft is behind with the core search technology. Yahoo's been struggling to upgrade its paid search service. Let's get these two kids together! And today in the Wall Street Journal, it turns out that there's apparently a faction at Microsoft that wants to do just that.

Via Paid Content, A Microsoft, Yahoo Tie-Up? from the Wall Street Journal has the details. Kevin and colleague Robert Guth write of there being two factions within Microsoft -- the "let's built it ourselves" group that has been in control so far and the "let's acquire" group apparently led by Microsoft senior vice president Hank Vigil.

Vigil is said to have led the failed negotiations to combine MSN with AOL. Frankly, a Yahoo deal makes more sense than that. AOL would have provided existing traffic but not solid search technology. Yahoo provides plenty of traffic, along with core search technology and a healthy, first-hand advertiser base.

What's not to love? Probably the high price of the acquisition, plus whether Yahoo -- especially cofounder Jerry Yang -- would go for it. But apparently it's plausible enough that both companies have talked informally over the past year.

The Wall Street Journal cites the hiring of Steve Berkowitz by Microsoft as perhaps being a tipping point. I'd certainly agree. Steve is the first serious outside person Microsoft has brought in for its battle in the search wars. Bringing him on was a big sign that what Microsoft has been trying to do internally hasn't been working -- and so something radical such as an Ask or Yahoo acquisition might be in order.

The big downside is that such an acquisition would give Microsoft yet another brand to confuse consumers with. After spending hundreds of millions of dollars over the years to push MSN, they've now shifted things behind making the stupid Windows Live brand their flagship. It's stupid for so many reasons. Let me bullet point two major ones:

• Most people I know don't really like the Windows brand. Heck, I'm a Windows person, fairly anti-Mac, but Windows still represents crashes and glitches to me. And this is the label you want to attach to your online services?  
• We're moving into a world where the operating system and my web-based services aren't necessarily connected. I love Outlook. I live in Outlook. But online, I might want to sync Outlook with Yahoo or Google's calendar. Forcing me to think -- overtly or indirectly through branding -- that I have to use all your products makes me want to use none of them. Let MSN operate as if it wasn't linked to your operating system or your browser and it will be a stronger service in the long run, not weaker.

So Microsoft's already coping with the confusion of two major brands. Adding in Yahoo further confuses matters, unless they perhaps make a brave, bold move and put everything behind the brand leader in the space, Yahoo.

Meanwhile, via Valleywag, Ballmer defends Microsoft's spending increase from the Seattle Times covers a likely leaked memo from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer naming Google as one of the company's chief competitors and requiring further "heavy investments" in search. The goal, which we've heard before, is to create "the web's largest advertising network, giving us an engine that twill enable us to monetize our services and compete against Google."

Ah -- but to compete against Google, you don't need an advertising network. You first need a quality core web search engine, which your heavy investment to date has failed to create. And so back to Yahoo, which has exactly what Microsoft needs, that core technology.

Microsoft's AdCenter May Fail to Topple Google From Dominance from Bloomberg covers how advertisers are getting a more formal look at the MSN adCenter service that Microsoft has rolled out over the past few months. Unlike Microsoft's failure in web search, I'd say adCenter is a big success. The service already has plenty of advertisers using it -- and anecdotally continues to draw lots of praise for its features.

Features ultimately mean little, of course. As the story cites, it's about volume. MSN could have rolled out a terrible product that advertisers would have coped with simply because it was the only way to reach MSN's substantial traffic. But to the company's credit, they did not do that. Instead, they've continued to refine and tweak and take advertiser feedback in a way that has earned them raves I rarely hear recently about the systems at Google or Yahoo. Volume remains key, but the features and wooing still certainly help.

And that brings us back to Yahoo, which has been struggling with an antiquated paid listings toolset. The Counterattack On Google from BusinessWeek covers how Yahoo's "Panama" update to its paid listings system has been progressing over the past two years and is nearing completion. But BusinessWeek correctly summarizes, in my view, the changes are more about bringing Yahoo up to Google's level of features rather than leapfrogging past Google and into features like MSN offers.

It's another argument that makes the idea of Yahoo and Microsoft getting together not wacky at all.

Want to comment or discuss? Visit our Search Engine Watch Forums thread, Yahoo & Microsoft To Combine.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 9:00 AM | Permalink

April 21, 2006

eBay Wants To Team Up With Yahoo And/Or Microsoft To Compete Against Google?

A Wall Street Journal article reports that eBay is in talks with both Yahoo and Microsoft to see which one (or possibly both) is a "worthy ally" to compete against the all-mighty Google. Currently eBay spends a ton on Google AdWords, pretty much any search you do on Google, you get an ad for eBay in the sponsored results. Google also is a heavy indexer of eBay content in the organic results. This all leads to tons of referrals to eBay's content from Google. The issue is, Google is now competing with eBay on several fronts, including a PayPal alternative, online auction service and Google's other services such as Froogle and Base together lead to a huge competing e-commerce portal. Hence the need for eBay to make some changes in the future. The article at the WSJ has a nice write up with the details here.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:52 AM | Permalink

April 13, 2006

Yahoo To Bundle Search On For New Helio Cell Phone Service

Via Yahoo's Russell Beattie, news that Yahoo is partnered with Helio, the new Earthlink-backed mobile phone service coming for the US. Yahoo Search, along with other services, will be bundled into handsets. Release is here.

Posted by Danny Sullivan at 1:38 PM | Permalink

March 27, 2006

Yahoo & 60 Minutes Debut Tiger Woods 60 Minutes Interview

Rand Fishkin describes how he was flipping through the channels and noticed the mention of the Yahoo & 60 Minutes deal at play. Rand says he was watching the "tail end" of 60 minutes, where they asked viewers to search for "Tiger Woods" at Yahoo Search. At the top you will see a "Yahoo! Shortcut" with links to http://news.yahoo.com/60minutes, which currently has exclusive footage of the Tiger Woods interview. You will also see a link to Tiger Woods profile page at Yahoo PGA and a link to the Yahoo TV listings for 60 Minutes.

Posted by Barry Schwartz at 8:38 AM | Permalink

March 24, 2006

Yahoo And CBS To Bring "60 Minutes" Interactive Content To Web; Yahoo Japan to Buy NewsWatch

ClickZ reports that Yahoo and CBS are working together to bring the show, 60 Minutes to Yahoo's Internet users. The deal involved Yahoo setting up a special micro-site to display video segments and interactive components of the show, including "special Web-only features such as interactive maps, photo galleries, Weblogs and a reporter's notebook." Reportedly, Buick is sponsoring a preview, this Sunday, by hosting a special interview with Tiger Woods.

On somewhat related front, PaidContent.org reports that Yahoo Japan will be purchasing a majority stake in NewsWatch, Toshiba Corp's online news search and clipping service unit, for $11 million.</