SeoAlchemist

Yahoo is in the process of opening talks with Time Warner on merger and other partnership opportunities with AOL according to the Financial Times and numerous media outlets, some of which are discussing Yahoo selling off what are considered to be its non-core assets.

TechCrunch posted last week that one of those assets may in fact be Yahoo Answers, which opened its doors in 2005 and has become Yahoo’s flagship social property, a wealth of useful yet not always accurate content, and also an authority channel which enjoys good rankings in Google search results.

Although Yahoo Answers has delivered social media to the masses, much like the aspirations of Yahoo Buzz, Arrington writes that the site is not as well monetized as it may seem; “Yahoo Answers doesn’t bring in the premium advertising rates that other properties command, so it isn’t crazy that they’d try to sell it if the price was right.”

Hmmm .. even without Google AdWords being served?

And if Yahoo were to sell its Yahoo Answers community, which is based upon Yahoo ID’s and the Yahoo Network, would the buyer; whether it be Answers.com or Amazon for example, be able to handle the load and the switch to a new login?

Being that Yahoo does support Open ID, and everyone and their family dog seems to have a Yahoo account, the logistics might not be as tough : Amazon Answers or Answers.com, with the option to login via ones existing, yet post-acquisition third party, Yahoo ID. (more…)

A friend made a Firefox extension to add charts to rank checker.

A look at the curve to quality. As competition increases, quality must also increase.

Funny picture of Google’s Matt Cutts.

Since we have a number of popular Firefox extensions, I frequently get asked how to update Firefox extensions. Rather that writing 3 emails a week I figure it was quicker to jot down a quick blog post.

Google is officially celebrating its 10th birthday today, marking a decade that Google has been serving search results (and 13 years since their concept was first launched, dubbed BackRub).

To celebrate, Google is using the above logo on its worldwide search engines while also launching a really cool and interactive Google Timeline.

Thanks Google, and Happy Birthday, its been a great 10 years!

If Google can manage to put up website explaining their search ad deal with Yahoo, Yahoo for its part can only manage to make a post at the company’s blog, explaining what’s in it for Yahoo and how it is going to affect the search ad market. But the post nonetheless was made by Yahoo’s President Sue Decker who said that it’s now time for them to write some myth-busting explanation.

Like Google’s past statements, Ms. Decker’s myth-busting post concentrated on issues that were being raised by critics whom Ms. Decker said did understand the deal. These issues relate to the deal being bad for Yahoo’s search ad business and the deal causing both Yahoo and Google to dictate prices on search ad inventory.  (more…)

For Microsoft, they are the only company which stands a chance of rivaling Google in the search market five years from. This was the statement of Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer which was given during an event by the ChurchHill Club.

But despite those statement, Ballmer admitted that it would take a lot of hardwork and more work for Microsoft to achieve this goal. Interestingly, during the same event in 2006, Balmer said about search as being a five-year battle. Two years after, Ballmer is saying again that it will be a five-year process. (more…)

Creating a network of micro-sites for the sake of link power manipulation is an illegitimate technique; hence it has become risky to interlink your own websites even for very “white hat” purposes (e.g. to let your readers know about your other relevant sites). Nonetheless, link building with micro-sites can be a highly effective technique if done correctly.

My main idea is that creating micro-sites around your main web resource is not necessarily done for the sake of interlinking and spreading the link power. When done wisely, the strategy can aim at multiple great purposes (more…)

As Google turns 10 years old, that important birthday sees the company
more powerful than ever before. With its competitors in disarray, the Big G
seems likely to grow even further. The secret to its success? For me, it’s
what I’ve been calling the "Google Hive Mind." Rather than follow
a rigid top-down master plan, the company’s direction and success has been
shaped by decisions often taken independently of how they’ll benefit the
company as a whole. But collectively, those decisions DO form a master plan,
a hive mind that dictates what the company will do.

The hive mind has been hugely successful in growing Google’s business
through a symbiotic relationship with its customers. But that’s also a
weakness: Google may seem too threatening to those same customers, as it
grows. As it expands and expands, some of those outside the hive begin wondering if
it needs to be constrained.

Part of this is due to the fact that individually, I think Googlers themselves don’t
understand how the hive mind appears to outsiders. Thus at 10, stronger than
ever, Google also faces its biggest challenge: whether an outside force in
the form of government intervention will be brought in to halt the hive.

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