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« SearchCap: The Day In Search, May 4, 2007 | Main | Last Chance To Save On SMX Advanced! »

May. 6, 2007 at 8:17am Eastern by Danny Sullivan

Search Month: April 2007 Search News, In Review

Search Month is a monthly newsletter that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past month. It's also available by feed here. Below, news about Search Engine Land itself, then our 10 most popular stories written last month, then a major story for various search marketing topics along with other stories related to those topics.

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Search Engine Land News
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Here at Search Engine Land, we're gearing up for our first live conference, SMX Advanced. The show happens in Seattle on June 4 & 5. Aimed at intermediate-to-advanced search marketers, the program has debates, summits, tips & tactics sessions and several networking events. We're looking forward to seeing many of our readers out there. Thinking of going? Register by May 8 in order to save on the registration price. More about the show and other Search Engine Land news in the links below:

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Our Top 10 Most Popular Stories
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1) Google Declares Stephen Colbert As Greatest Living American - It's official. Stephen Colbert is the Greatest Living American, or at least now ranks tops for that phrase at Google. It's all come from the latest Google bombing campaign sparked off in part by Stephen himself. The backstory on this, plus the "I thought Google bombing didn't work anymore" angle, in this story.

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2) George W. Bush: A Failure Once Again, According To Google - Remember how Google introduced a link bomb fix in January that, among other things, finally got US President George W. Bush out of first page of results for searches on miserable failure and failure at Google? Bush is back, at least for failure, and the White House has only itself to blame.

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3) Goodbye Froogle, Hello Google Product Search! - Back in December 2002, Google launched its long expected product and shopping search engine. It was called Froogle, a combination of "frugal" and "Google." Just over four years later, Froogle is finally loses its cutesy name for something more descriptive -- to become Google Product Search. It also gains a cleaner interface, as well.

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4) Google Search History Expands, Becomes Web History - Google's Search History feature, which was switched on as a default option for many Google searchers in February, has now been renamed Web History to reflect how it has expanded to track what Google users do as they surf the web. It's a huge move for Google and raises anew privacy issues. A detailed look at how the system works, how to pause or delete logging if you want, the impact on search results and more.

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5) Search In Pictures: Easter; Search Fun, Google Power, Art & Signs - In this week's Search In Pictures, here are the latest images culled from the web, showing what people eat at the search engine companies, how they play, who they meet, where they speak, what toys they have and more.

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6) Google Releases Improved Content Removal Tools - Google has rolled out new tools to help people quickly get content removed from its search engine. Those targeted at site owners allow for speedy removal of pages and cached copies of pages. Other tools allow those to request the removal of images or links to pages with personal information about themselves, in the right circumstances.

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7) What Is Google PageRank? A Guide For Searchers & Webmasters - Several times in the past few months, I've written about new Google features where PageRank was involved. Unfortunately, Google itself has very poor information about PageRank that I could use for those wanting to learn more about it. To solve that, here's a guide to PageRank, designed for searchers and site owners alike.

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8) Q&A With Garrett Camp, Founder & Chief Architect, StumbleUpon - Search engines are great tools to help you find things you suspect exist on the web, but they leave a lot to be desired when it comes to discovering the unexpected or unknown. Enter StumbleUpon, a service that lets you "channel surf" the internet, displaying sites that others have "stumbled upon" and recommended.

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9) StumbleUpon Acquired By eBay: "Just Rumors," Says Founder - The blogosphere is abuzz with rumors that eBay is acquiring StumbleUpon, but they're "just rumors," Garrett Camp, one of StumbleUpon's founders just told me on the phone. "There have been rumors before and that's what they are now," Camp said.

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10) SEO Is Easy? Let's Look At The Hard 5 Percent - There is a new battle waging, and on one side you have people calling SEO 'stupid easy,' 'bullshit,' 'snake oil' and so forth. On the other side, you have folks like me taking some pretty serious offence to our livelihood being denigrated by non-SEOs. A large part of the argument is that SEO is 95 percent easy, and it's the other 5 percent that is what we really get paid for -- and that 5 percent is the slimy stuff that makes the web a worse place to be. We're going to take a look at that 5 percent in this article based on actual work I've done for real clients.

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AOL
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AOL's Search Marketplace - AOL is launching a new program for advertisers to buy Google AdWords directly from AOL. But AOL Search Marketplace, as the new program is known, goes beyond simply white-labeling Google sponsored listings. "We're allowing advertisers to specifically customize their campaigns on AOL search," said Dariusz Pacsuski, Vice President, Search Products, AOL Platforms.

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Ask.com
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Now Starring: The Algorithm - Ask.com To Focus On Ranking System In New TV Ads - Ask.com is launching a new TV and web ad campaign today, to try to generate buzz about the Ask.com search engine. The article says this ad campaign is "gearing up to a relaunch of the site and the debut of its new search technology later this year," which I assume is the Edison project. See also:

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B2B
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Navigating Keyword Strategy In B2B SEO - Perhaps nowhere is keyword strategy more complex than in B2B SEO. The lack of shared lexicons, the obscurity of most B2B brand names, the multiple parties involved in the purchase decision, and the extended nature of the buying cycle present unique challenges for B2B marketers. Here are some tips to keep you on course. See also:

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Business & Revenues
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Reprise Media Acquired By Interpublic - A quick heads-up and congrats to the gang at Reprise Media, which has now been acquired by global advertising company Interpublic. Reprise will remain an independent company within Interpublic, as part of the newly formed Futures Marketing Group. Reprise will be the first company to reside within FMG. Other assets there include the IPG Emerging Media Lab and investments in Facebook, Spotrunner & Spongecell. More news from the official release and Reprise blog post here. See also:

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Click Fraud
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Industry Group Proposes Eight Principles To Ensure Click Quality - The Click Quality Council, a group of online advertisers, advertising agencies and click quality monitoring firms formed to propose and help establish standards for search advertising quality, has proposed eight principles for ensuring industry-wide click quality. See also:

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Digg
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Digg Gives In To User Revolt; Are Those DMCA Takedown Notices Even Valid? - After a grassroots revolt by Digg users, Digg has decided to stop censoring posts about an HD-DVD decryption number used by the industry-backed Advanced Access Content System to protect HD-DVDs. How the story unfolded, plus more on how the DMCA takedown notices being issued by the AACS to Google don't seem to be valid and certainly aren't like the usual ones fired off for actual copyright theft. See also:

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Google: AdSense
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Google Pays Out Over $1 Billion To AdSense Publishers In Q1 2007 - Google has paid out over $1 billion to publishers for the first time. The amount -- $1.13 billion to be exact -- was paid out in the first quarter of 2007. That's up from $976 million from the previous quarter. See also:

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Google: AdWords
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Google AdWords Goes Yellow & Changes On Click Event - Google has two changes on how the top sponsored listings in the Google search results are handled. (1) A color change from a blue background to a yellow background was pushed through today after much testing. (2) Now you have to click on the title of the ad for it to take you to the advertiser's page. In the past, you can click anywhere on the blue background and Google would count it as a click. See also:

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Google: Acquisitions
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Google Likes To Invest In "Crazy Ideas" - "Google's Acquisitions Chief Looking for 'Crazy' Ideas" from Bloomberg.com reports Salman Ullah, Google's director of corporate development, as saying he considers investing in crazy ideas because those are ones that can become big successes. See also:

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Google: Business Issues
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Google's Q1 2007 Profit & Revenue Rises Over 60% - Google announced first quarter earnings for 2007 showed revenues of $3.66 billion, an increase of 63% compared to the first quarter of 2006 -- and an increase in profits of 69%. See also:

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Google: DoubleClick
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Google To Acquire DoubleClick For $3.1 Billion - Google has reached an agreement to buy DoubleClick for the sum of $3.1 billion. With this purchase, Google will have access to DoubleClick's ad management software and its base of web publishers, advertisers and ad agencies. See also:

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Google: Legal Issues
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AFP & Google Settle Over Google News Copyright Case - The most significant copyright case against Google News, that filed by Agence France-Presse back in March 2005, has now ended. Google has signed a licensing agreement with AFP that settles the suit. See also:

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Google: Maps
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Google My Maps: Mashups For The Masses - Google has just launched "My Maps," an impressively simple tool within Google Maps that allows users to create personal "mashups" and save or share those with friends or the world at large. A range of formatting options enables the maps to be highly customized and include images or video. Maps can be created "manually" by dropping placemarks on the map or through one-click saving of selected search results. See also:

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Google: Mobile
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Google Voice Local Search Launched - You've heard the rumors. Now you can try the experimental service from Google Labs, Google Voice Local Search. Call (1-800-GOOG-411) and get local information by talking to your phone, at least in the United States. See also:

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Google: Offices
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Oklahoma, Where The Google Comes Sweepin' Down The Plain - From California, Google has spread out across the great land of the United States. New York! Washington! Arizona! And now which of the fifty nifty United States is Google heading to next? Oklahoma! Below, some news of Google's plans for the Sooner State and well as a recap of what other states it has conquered over time, as it builds the United States Of Google. See also:

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Google: Personalization
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iGoogle, Personalized Search And You - Yesterday was "Google Personalization Day." The Google personalized home page service has officially been renamed iGoogle, which is now available in 26 languages and in more than 40 countries. iGoogle "themes" are being rolled out internationally, and Google introduced Gadget Maker. As part of Personalization Day, we spent roughly two hours touring the history of personalized search at Google, the genesis of these products and getting a glimpse of where it all might be going. See also:

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Google: SEO Issues
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Google Webmaster Central Provides More Detailed Anchor Text Reporting - Vanessa Fox of Google Webmaster Central announced an upgrade to their anchor text reports. See also:

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Google: Searching
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Google To Integrate News With Web Search Results - Soon, Google will quietly begin changing the way it blends news results and standard web search results, co-mingling links to news sources and web pages if your search terms are relevant to current news events. The new format will replace OneBox news links that have normally appeared at the top of a search result page. See also:

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Google: TV & Radio Ads
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Google TV Ads: Google Brings Auction Model To TV Advertising - Google is launching a beta trial of TV ads with cable company Astound and satellite TV provider Echostar, which owns Dish Network. See also:

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Google: Video & YouTube
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Google Responds To Viacom Case: Bring On The Jury - Google has responded to the copyright infringement case filed against it by Viacom over video content on YouTube. Key takeaway? Google says the DMCA Safe Harbor provisions protect it from liability and wants a jury trial to prove its innocence. See also:

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Google: Other Products
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Microsoft PowerPoint, Meet Google Presentations - Google CEO Eric Schmidt confirms the rumors that Google will be rolling out presentation software within the Google Docs suite. See also:

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Link Building
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The Coming Link Apocalypse - Everyone uses the same tools, the same tactics, the same tricks, the same companies, the same link requests, the same link-ridden press releases, the same approaches, with almost no thought or differentiation. This is why many link building tactics people use now—whether they work now or not—ultimately won't make a difference in your ultimate success or failure on the web. See also:

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Local Search & Maps
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Domaining & Subdomaining In The Local Space - Part 1: - The practices of domaining and subdomaining have steadily grown into increasingly hot topics in the local search marketing space for the past few years. "Domaining" is the practice of buying domains mainly for their potential keyword value. "Subdomaining" is the practice of delivering sections of content on sites under third-level domain names. A look at the impact of both in local search efforts. See also:

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Microsoft: adCenter
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adCenter Improves Ad Quality Ranking Algorithm - The adCenter blog announced that they have made improvements to the ranking algorithm to take into account several quality factors. See also:

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Microsoft: Business Issues
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Microsoft & Yahoo Said To Be Talking Merger, Cooperation - Both the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal are reporting that sources say Microsoft and Yahoo are talking again about how they might merge or cooperate.

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Microsoft: Live Search
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Q&A With Microsoft Live Search General Manager Derrick Connell - It’s hard to believe, but it’s already been more than a year since Microsoft Live Search launched. Now that Live Search has been out for a year, I thought it would be interesting to get an inside perspective on what’s going on with Live Search. Fortunately, I recently had the opportunity to chat with the person who would know best: Derrick Connell, the General Manager of Live Search. See also:

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Microsoft: Mobile
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Microsoft's Tellme Launches Three Local Search Services - Microsoft, which recently acquired Tellme Networks, announced three new local business search services, all accessible via phone. See also:

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Mobile Search
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iCrossing Finds High Demand For Search And Local Content Among Mobile Users - Search marketing firm iCrossing just released the results of a mobile Web usage survey with 1,001 US residents over the age of 16. The study found that about 30 percent of mobile users access the Internet, but among that population, 75 percent used search. Assuming the survey methodology is sound and statistically valid, the findings are striking and have powerful implications. See also:

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Paid Links
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Paid Links Under Scrutiny By Google Again - Matt Cutts of Google has written two posts this weekend on links that started a mountain of discussion in the SEO community. "How to report paid links" and "Hidden links" from Matt Cutts discussed how Google is in the process of testing out new methods to detect and handle paid links and their impact on the Google search results. See also:

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Paid Search & Contextual
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Key Differences Between Yahoo Search Marketing & Google AdWords - Let's run down some of the most impactful real-world differences between the two search marketing platforms, in the wake of Yahoo's Panama rollout and some recent Google AdWords updates. See also:

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Popularity
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Google Passes Microsoft For Most Visited Site In The World - Google is now more popular than Microsoft, in terms of worldwide visits. See also:

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Privacy & Security
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EU Group May Serve Google With Letter Over Data Retention Policies - Google might be receiving a letter from the European Union's Article 29 Data Protection Working Party relating to the company's data retention policies. What's in the letter -- if there are concerns, requests, demands -- is unknown at this point. See also:

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Searching
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Stop Presses! Google Bested In Search Shoot-Out! - PC World has released the results of its most recent search engine shoot-out, and surprise, surprise, found that "Google is indeed the best search engine." However... This wasn't just a casual test, and Google wasn't the best across the board with all types of queries and content. The author tested 55 services in six categories: general (text info), video, mobile/local, news, images, and blogs. The goal was to simulate how "real people" searched, so no special commands or modifiers were used. See also:

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Search Marketing Industry
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Fifty Questions You Need Answered Before Starting Your SEO Campaign - An online business owner basically has two choices when it comes to their website marketing efforts. They can outsource it or they can do it in-house. Both of these options bring a number of secondary options to choose from and its up to the business owner to do what is best for his or her situation. Here is a rundown of the possible choices. See also:

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SEO & SEM
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Search Engines Unite On Sitemaps Autodiscovery - Last November, Google, Microsoft and Yahoo united to support sitemaps, a standardized method of submitting web pages through feeds to the search engines. Today, the three are now joined by Ask.com in supporting the system and an extension of it called autodiscovery. This is where the major search engines will automatically locate your sitemaps file if the location is listed in a robots.txt file. See also:

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Shopping Search
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Analyzing The Major Shopping Search Services - This week I'll look at shopping search from the user's perspective. We'll be starting with the big three offerings from the major engines, Google's Froogle, Yahoo Shopping and MSN Shopping. See also:

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Small Business SEM
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Meet Your New Employee: Writer, Marketer, Evangelist - We're getting to the time of year when many small businesses are thinking about hiring summer help. You might think it's time to add a new salesperson, or someone to help with product/service development. Here's my suggestion: Hire an evangelist. See also:

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Social Media
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The Four Returns Of Social Media Marketing - There are essentially four different types of return that you can expect from a successful social media marketing campaign: links, mindshare/branding, sales and consumer interaction. Below, a look at each type of return and how you can tap into it, depending on your goals. See also:

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Video Search
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Autonomy To Reclaim Blinkx, Then Spin It Off - Autonomy is to exercise an option to take over Blinkx, then spinning some consumer-facing search technology that its owns into an independent company Blinkx, that will go public in London. See also:

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Wikipedia
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The Art Of SEO For Wikipedia & 16 Tips To Gain Respect - Wikipedia's importance as an authority site is undisputed. Despite the introduction this year of a policy across Wikipedia to "nofollow" all external links, so that no link gain passes from Wikipedia to any external site, there is still traffic to be gained, since a top ranking Wikipedia page can still drive plenty of direct visitors. See also:

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Yahoo: Business Issues
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Despite Panama, Yahoo Earnings Fall 11 Percent -- Investments Blamed - Yahoo showed a decline in their profits by 11 percent. Revenue was up about 9 percent, excluding certain payments to partners. However, MarketWatch notes "the revenue Yahoo generates for every search using its Internet search engine dipped in the quarter by about 7%, contributing to the quarter's less-than-expected profits." See also:

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Yahoo: Paid Search
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Preliminary Scorecard: How Effective Is Yahoo's Panama Upgrade? - The world of search marketing is divided into two types of people, it seems: Those who have never actually used Yahoo's new Panama sponsored search upgrade and never will; and those who are in knee deep working on their accounts, and want to find out how other fellow marketers are faring, so they phone me. Never fear, we're all in this together! And I'm happy to report that on the whole, our lives are getting easier. Based on my rough industry survey, here goes with some preliminary Panama findings. See also:

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Yahoo: SEO Issues
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Yahoo Supports New Robots-Nocontent Tag To Block Indexing Within A Page - For over a decade, search engines have supported standards allowing you to prevent pages from being spidered or included within a search index. Today, Yahoo now supports a new twist -- a way to flag that part of your page shouldn't be included in an index. It's called the robots-nocontent tag. See also:

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Yahoo: Searching
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Yahoo Testing Alpha (Beta) Multi Search - Yahoo's just launched Alpha (in beta version, natch). Both of the aforementioned blogs call Alpha a customized search engine similar to Google Custom Search Engine, but Alpha is really more of a multi-search tool that submits your query to multiple sources and aggregates results from all of them on one page. See also:

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Yahoo: Photos
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Goodbye Yahoo Photos; Yahoo Loves Flickr More - Yahoo is to close its popular Yahoo Photos service completely in the coming months, telling people to either switch to Flickr or leave to a number of other competing photo sharing services.

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Yahoo: Right Media
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Yahoo To Acquire Right Media; Joins Google In Buying, Rather Than Building, Display Ad Network - Yahoo has announced it will acquire Right Media, which operates an auction-based display ad exchange called Remix Media. The move is widely seen as Yahoo fighting back against Google's recent plans to acquire DoubleClick, which itself is seen as Google jumping more firmly into the display ad network game. Both moves to me underscore how neither players' own existing ad networks have apparently been good enough for their display ambitions.

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Have A Laugh!
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Snakes On A Google - On April 1, the python pet of a Google employee in New York got loose. No joke. The python was found yesterday, and no one was harmed. Not even the python. See also:

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