Last week Yahoo launched its new homepage, which allows users to customize the site and improves overall usability. The centerpiece of the recently launched Yahoo homepage is My Favorites, the new customizable left column that allows users to add third party content and make it more of a personal "dashboard." The Yahoo mobile browser homepage, the most recent version of which was launched in Q1, already featured a heavy dose of personalization. However, Yahoo has updated the mobile homepage to bring it more into alignment with the new PC homepage. The updated mobile homepage, which offers s [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Mobile | Yahoo: Mobile & Go

Social shopping relays an e-commerce method of traditional shopping in which consumers shop in a social networking type of environment. Social shopping sites reflect users’ personal tastes and allow for online conversation. Visitors can learn what’s popular, get shopping ideas, and follow links to products they wouldn’t necessarily find on their own. Using the wisdom of crowds, users communicate and aggregate information about products, prices, and deals. Many sites allow users to create custom shopping lists and share them with friends. Others concentrate on the user interactions and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Search & Social

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News Search The Moon With Google Earth For Moon Yahoo's New Homepage Gets Personal, Tests [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

In anticipation of a spin off/IPO for AOL, TimeWarner bought back Google's 5 percent interest in the company for $283 million dollars. Google originally purchased the equity stake in AOL in 2005 to preserve its search relationship with its largest partner and fend of Microsoft, which was seeking a potential deal with or acquisition of AOL. The original Google investment was $1 billion, which valued the TimeWarner AOL unit at $20 billion. The current valuation of AOL, based on the share buy back, would be roughly $5.6 billion. Here's what Google said, before it wrote down most of the va [...]

Related Topics: AOL: General | Channel: Industry | Google: Business Issues | Google: Legal | Google: Partnerships

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Geekynomics? Finding The Hidden Government Within Google’s Magic Money MachineJoseph Heath, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, has published the timely Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (HarperCollins, 2009), a clever romp through formal economic theory. As even-handed as any intellectual inheritor of The Simpsons sensibility, it debunks six economic myths of the right, and six of the left. Heath [...] When Big [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

Tomorrow, July 28 at 1 PM Eastern, Search Marketing Now hosts a free webcast "Attribution Management Buyer's Guide: 10 Features of a Good Advertising Analytics Solution." Adam Goldberg of ClearSaleing will look at key attribution management features to consider when selecting analytics solutions. For example, will the analytics package allow you to attribute fractions of an order, revenue, profit, or some other measure? Can it track beyond the last click if a conversion happens offline? Find out what you need to consider -- and what questions to ask. For more information visit Search Mar [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SEM Industry: Conferences | SMX & DMD Alerts

Joseph Heath, a philosophy professor at the University of Toronto, has published the timely Filthy Lucre: Economics for People Who Hate Capitalism (HarperCollins, 2009), a clever romp through formal economic theory. As even-handed as any intellectual inheritor of The Simpsons sensibility, it debunks six economic myths of the right, and six of the left. Heath writes like a Gen-X’er, coolly interjecting phrases like "Holy crap!" into formal academic commentary. Logical leaps being my specialty, let’s jump right into paid search. Heath’s book happens to provide brilliant tools for gra [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Paid Search

"What's our Social Media Strategy?" Has anyone in your company asked you this lately, or at all? Chances are if you haven't heard this question from a VP yet, you will soon. It's what everyone is trying to figure out - not if we should be using social media, but how we should be using it. In this column, I'm going to look at a few ways that Yahoo!, and others, are using social media and how it's evolving from a big-brand perspective. But first, a bit of perspective Why is it that SEOs typically end up being the ones in their respective companies who are responsible for social media? [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEO | Industrial Strength

A report analyzing traffic and click-through rates from ad network Chikita finds that "Bing users are over 50% more likely to click an ad on your site than Google users." What this means, according to the post, is those who arrive at third party sites via Bing click more frequently on ads on those sites than those coming through Google. TechCrunch offers a bit more detail and speculation about why this might be (i.e., "the law of large numbers"). According to Chikita, the respective click rates are: Google: .97 percent Yahoo: 1.24 percent Bing: 1.5 percent Bing appears has made some [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Partnerships | Stats: Compete | Stats: comScore | Stats: General | Stats: Hitwise | Stats: Search Behavior | Stats: Size | Top News | Yahoo: Display Ads | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search Ads

In February, Google added Panoramio pictures to Street Views, and today, Google is giving users the ability to zoom into those pictures. The new feature visually shows you which parts of the image has higher resolution, and then allows you to click on that section of the picture to zoom in. This is a neat feature that lets you explore landmarks directly in Google Maps, at a higher resolution. Here is a quick demo, by Google, on how it works: To see this in action for yourself, click here. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Google: Maps & Local

Is the much ballyhooed Google Chrome — the new open source browser — as shiny for advertisers as it is for those testing the Microsoft beta version and commenting via online posts? Those of us in local search are sitting on the edge of our seats to find out for sure, since Google is considered by many to be "the" player in the local search space. Google began developing Chrome when rethinking the traditional browser, which was originally designed for simple text pages. Today, of course, the browser is tasked with rich, interacting applications. Google's belief was that we needed not jus [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Local | Local Search

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News Report: Search Ad Spending Stabilizes While Bing Gains On Google, Yahoo At One Mont [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

Search Week is an exclusive weekly newsletter for Search Engine Land premium members that recaps stories covered on Search Engine Land over the past week. Below are top stories organized by topic that happened over the past week. Each topic (or Search Engine Land column) is also a link, where you can click through and drill into the Search Engine Land members library to find other stories in that area. Because some stories are listed in more than one category, you may see them repeated. Top News Land Grab: Google Expands Real Estate Listings Yahoo Search Pad To Launch Tomorrow [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search Week

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Google AdWords To Add Addresses On Ads: Location ExtensionsThe Google AdWords Blog announced they will be allowing advertisers to add the full address to their search ads through location extensions. Location extensions gives advertisers a way to create new local ads with extensions from scratch or add extensions to your existing text ads. This will replace the need to have local [...] Microsoft Misses Earnings, Yahoo Board Meets About Potential M [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | SearchCap

The Google AdWords Blog announced they will be allowing advertisers to add the full address to their search ads through location extensions. Location extensions gives advertisers a way to create new local ads with extensions from scratch or add extensions to your existing text ads. This will replace the need to have local business ads as a separate ad unit. The feature is not yet live for all, Google will roll it out to advertisers in the upcoming weeks, but you will be able to add this feature in the future. To do so, you login to AdWords, click on a campaign, then click on settings. [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Google: AdWords

Microsoft reported worse-than-expected earnings yesterday. The company was about a billion dollars off analysts consensus expectations. According to the Microsoft release, the company had huge revenues but still missed: $13.10 billion for the fourth quarter ended June 30, 2009, a 17% decline from the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $3.99 billion, $3.05 billion and $0.34 per share, which represented declines of 30%, 29% and 26%, respectively, when compared with the prior year period. For the full fiscal year reve [...]

Related Topics: Channel: SEM | Microsoft: Bing | Microsoft: Bing Ads | Microsoft: Business Issues | Microsoft: Employees | Microsoft: Partnerships | Yahoo: Partnerships | Yahoo: Search | Yahoo: Search Ads

Image search could use a little organization, especially when you're searching for generic terms like place names -- cities, states, or tourist/geographic attractions. Who wants to browse through a couple million images of Boston to help plan your first visit there? Yahoo is making it easier to virtually tour popular places with what it calls a travel image refiner -- photos of popular destinations are organized in a new left-side column to speed up the search/browse/find process. On a search for Boston, as shown above, Yahoo lists 10 popular destinations within Boston on the left, and [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Consumer | Yahoo: Images

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. Google DC Comics: Elliott Yamin At Yahoo: Google Moon Space Ship: Google Space Suit Man: Cereal Boxes in Yahoo Car: Yahoo Family Day: [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Other | Search In Pictures

In the previous posts of this Excel series for Search Engine Marketers (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4), I've shared various tips and tricks for the tool. However, today's post is just going to cover pivot tables, as I feel they are such an important piece for online marketers to not just grasp, but master. Excel itself can be intimidating and pivot tables are doubly so. I hope this will be the definitive guide to pivot tables for anyone in this industry who has yet to feel one hundred percent comfortable with this crucial Excel feature. By the time you finish this post, you will be a Pi [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Search | Search Marketing Toolbox

From traditional media to blogs big and small, there are countless stories in circulation about how businesses are using Twitter to find customers and serve existing ones. Some businesses have figured out how to use Twitter Search and other similar tools to hear what customers are saying and make connections with local prospects. But Twitter itself has been relatively quiet about all this, letting business owners and marketers find their own way when positioning Twitter as a business platform. Until now. Twitter has launched its first major outreach to business users: Twitter 101 for Bus [...]

Related Topics: Channel: Social | Top News | Twitter