Mozilla’s General Counsel, Harvey Anderson, announced the Russian builds of Firefox 3.1 will drop Google for Yandex. He explained that after months of research and surveys, Mozilla learned that their “Russian users really wanted direct access to the Yandex search.” So, in the next build of Firefox, the default search provider will be Yandex for Russian users.

The big loser in all of this might not be Google. PaidContent.org reports that Rambler, one of the big Russian portals, will be letting their CEO go after seeing their market share drop from 14.9 percent last year to just 6.4 percent. The CEO’s departure might be a signal that Google may not follow through on the Begun purchase, where Google would buy Rambler’s contextual ad service for $140 million.

In August of last year, Google renewed their deal with Mozilla to be the default search provider in Firefox. When Google came out with their browser, Chrome, it may have ruffled some feathers.

BusinessWeek and Interbrand have come out with their latest ranking of the value of global brands. The big winners, in terms of positive change in the value of the brand, were Google, Apple and Amazon in that order. The greatest losers included Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, Citi, Ford and Gap.

The methodology for ranking the brands is described below.

Here are the top 10, showing their rankings compared with 2007:

Source: Interbrand (2008)

Here’s how Interbrand evaluates brands:

All brands [are] subject to the following criteria:

–Financial Analysis –Role of Brand Analysis –Brand Strength Score

There are other brand studies and rankings in the market. For example, using a different methodology, Millward Brown named Google the world’s top brand in its annual “Top 100 Most Powerful Brands.”

While Microsoft and Yahoo move further apart from creating Microhoo, they both continue to make changes internally with the intention of building out a better search company.

paidContent.org reports Microsoft is restructuring their Search Business Group. Microsoft is adding a new group focused on commercial search. Leading the commercial search unit is Jeff Kelisky, the CEO of Multimap, who will be the general manager of this unit. That unit will be responsible for Live Search cashback, MSN Shopping, local, consumer mapping, Virtual Earth, and mobile. Jeff’s boss is Brad Goldberg, the GM of the Search Business Group.

paidContent.org also reports that Yahoo is losing another executive. This time it is Todd Teresi, SVP for its Publisher Channel. This comes right before a major launch of Yahoo’s two ad programs, APEX and AMP. Teresi said he is leaving for a “lifestyle” change, but sources told paidContent that he is leaving to take on a top role at some “venture-backed company.” Teresi has been with Yahoo for nine years.

This just in via adAge. Teresi is going to Quantcast, who provides a “new media measurement service that enables advertisers to view audience reports for millions of sites and services to build their brands with confidence.” Teresi will be Quantcast’s Chief Revenue Officer.

TechCrunch is reporting that Google and Yahoo both lost two important employees. Google lost Richard Kimber, Google’s Managing Director of Sales and Operations for South East Asia, to Friendster. Yahoo lost Adam Hyder, Yahoo’s Senior Director of Engineering for its Advertising Management Platform, to Jobvite.

Richard Kimber will be the new CEO of Friendster, and the old CEO, Kent Lindstrom, will become Senior Vice President of Corporate Development. Adam Hyder is joining Jobvite as the company’s new CTO. Previously, Jobvite hired Yahoo HotJobs leader, Dan Finnigan, as its CEO.

There’s a ton of search-related news and intrigue coming out of the Dow Jones “All Things D” conference in Southern California. Let’s start with the ridiculous remark from IAC’s chief Barry Diller that “Google is irrelevant to us.” That’s only true if Diller doesn’t care about search revenue. Google is essentially the source of that revenue for IAC.

He also reportedly said, “I believe our product is in most respects better than Google,” and that he thinks Google’s dominance cannot last indefinitely in search: “At some point Google will not live ever after with 60 or 90 percent of market.”

Ask 3D was certainly more daring in most respects than Google’s Universal Search, but arguably the core relevance of search results on Ask doesn’t match Google. Diller’s statement about Google not being dominant forever is a kind of bland truism about all market leaders.

On to Yahoo and Microsoft. On the All Things D blog itself there’s a fairly extensive summary of Walter Mossberg’s interview with Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang and President Sue Decker. Mossberg was very pointed in his questions about Yahoo’s strategy, its potential relationship with Google, and the failed Microsoft merger. It appears to have been a frank discussion with no new revelations about strategy.

Yang compares the failed Microsoft bid to the breakup of a high-school romance: “It’s like when you break up with your girlfriend in high school. It very quickly becomes he-said/she-said. I don’t want to look back. But I think we both understand that there is a tremendous amount of power in a combination like the one Microsoft proposed.”

Yang also says, “I’m the best person to run Yahoo.” He and Decker also apparently make lots of general statements and claims about exciting future plans and products, but with few specifics other than what’s already been announced elsewhere.

Yang apparently played golf with Steve Ballmer (his ex-girlfriend?) over the weekend, according to the Wall Street Journal, but no deal emerged. The full buyout is off the table and what they apparently discussed is Microsoft’s current interest in acquiring the search/search advertising business.

News Corp. Chairman (and owner of All Things D parent Dow Jones) Rupert Murdoch was also in the hot seat at the conference (coverage also on Barrons). He said that he was impressed that Yahoo held off Microsoft’s charge but also expressed that he doesn’t see the company succeeding in search or appeasing shareholders with a Google deal. He also dismissed the Carl Icahn proxy challenge to Yahoo’s board, saying that it “wasn’t serious.” As a practical matter, Microsoft’s abandonment of its takeover quest for Yahoo appears to thwart Icahn’s ultimate ambition to restart the merger discussions.

The Murdoch interview appears to have been the most interesting and candid and also the most free-ranging. It ran the gamut from the state of the US newspaper industry to online social networking, video distribution, search, and the US presidential election (the traditional conservative Murdoch appears to be leaning toward Obama).

All Things D’s Kara Swisher asked, “How do you look at Google right now?” Murdoch responds, “We love them . . . We think they’re fantastic, the greatest company in America. But you don’t want anyone to be a monopoly.”

Finally, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg and new (ex-Googler) COO Sheryl Sandberg took the stage to discuss the state of all things Facebook (summarized by Barrons). Facebook has been poaching a steady stream of Google employees and has become something of a “second front” for Google, with Microsoft being the primary one. Yet, Zuckerberg’s tone was conciliatory: “I’d like to work with them on something.”

Hmmm . . . “something.”

For her part, Sandberg had nice things to say about Microsoft. Barron’s paraphrases her: coming from Google, you don’t spend a lot of time at Microsoft; it’s a good partnership; it will continue to be important. Most of the discussion about Facebook’s business model and future advertising plans was about brand/display and trying to further innovate in those areas following the Beacon debacle.

It remains a mystery, however, that the company doesn’t implement web search and related monetization on its site (see Microsoft’s Facebook Ad Deal Doesn’t Include Search). Perhaps that was the “something” that Zuckerberg was alluding to with Google. We’ll see.

For over a year, Microsoft has been experimenting with games to help build its search marketshare. Yesterday, I learned of one that certainly caught my eye: Indiana Jones Search.

Designed for those in the UK, you perform a search:

Then at the top of the search results page, two stones turn, with you hoping they’ll turn green:

Then you get your results. I lost:

You also get shown how many people have won prizes that range from a trip to the New Mexico film location, to an Indiana Jones hat, whip, DVDs, and more.

If you don’t live in the UK or Ireland, you can’t win. Sorry. But you can still have fun playing with one of the latest ways Microsoft is trying to build traffic.

I’m going to take a longer look at the games activity Microsoft has been doing in a future post. Until then, check out Microsoft On Search Gains & Live Search Club, which I wrote last year and covers some of Microsoft’s goals, plus some controversy that has come up in the past over whether game-driven searches should be counted.

Ratings service Compete, in particular, seems to have been filtering these queries out. Last month’s Microsoft Dips In Compete’s Revised March 08 Search Figures shows what happens if you don’t.

At a Microsoft event I attended yesterday, I talked briefly with Microsoft Live Search general manager Brad Goldberg about how the games are going. One big takeaway was that he said they are indeed helping create regular users for Live Search.

Games and giveaways have worked in the past to help build share, at least in the short term. iWon did this in 1999 and last year did a revamp to try again.

As for Microsoft, we’ve covered these launches over the past year:

• Microsoft Tries Search & Win Again?, November 2007
• Microsoft Launches Search Prizes With Virgin In UK: Big Snap Search, February 2008

In the US, Microsoft Live Search Club continues to be the place where Microsoft offers search-related gaming ranging from Chicktionary (where you try to arrange letters to unveil a word, with search being used to offer hints) to Spelling Bee. You can even use Search and Give to donate to charities based on searching.

In the UK, it’s Gamesbox that serves as the home to search-based games, such as Search Star to the new Indiana Jones one (which isn’t yet listed on Gamesbox, but it replaces Big Snap that is listed).

Google would never do this, of course. Yeah, Google’s done it at least twice, far less organized than Microsoft, and around movies. The Ultimate Search For Bourne was a tie-in with The Bourne Ultimatum that Google ran last year. In 2006, it did a similar gaming site with the Da Vinci Code.

A couple weeks back I wrote a LinkWeek column here titled “Your Site’s Manifest Linking Destiny“. At the end of that column I closed with the following thoughts…

What if I told you that one of the sites was created, owned, and operated by a single mother who is an African American with locations in six cities across three southern states? None of these facts change the content of the sites. They remain nearly identical. But these facts can alter the manifest linking destiny of one of the sites dramatically, in a way that can impact everything from search rank to direct click traffic, for link builders who recognize why.

Among the feedback I received both publicly and privately (you caught me sza :) ), a theme emerged. Any links a person can pursue and obtain just because that person has certain defining personal characteristics should not be able to positively affect search rank. In essence, such links are irrelevant to the site and products being sold and are just another potential method for gaming link-based algorithms. An African American single mother in the South is no different than a American Indian senior citizen in the West, or any other person for that matter.

Yes. I agree, and to exploit such personal differences for linking benefit is opportunistic and spammy.

That is…right up to the moment a searcher is looking to do business with someone like them. And then it makes perfect sense to seek those individual and differentiating links, and it also makes sense for the engines to rank that site higher for specific searches related to those links. Let’s look at another example. If I am a disabled veteran living in California and I’m looking for graphic design services for my business, and I’d like to spend my money with a graphic design business owned by a disabled veteran in California, then my search might just look like this:

california graphic design services disabled veteran

And I might find this site, which I may not have known about yet, and which I will be happy to learn about. And I will probably end up doing business with one of those companies.

In this example the pursuit of the link has nothing to do with gaming an SE algorithm. The link is a by-product. By virtue of a specific set of personal characteristics, the business owner is included, listed, and linked to by the California Disabled Veteran Enterprise Alliance directory web site. And for the right searcher and the right search terms, Google would be crazy to NOT consider such links as potential signals or differentiators.

Now, I totally accept and agree that some sites will look for and exploit any linking advantage they can find, and that’s their choice. I can see the white hat/black hat argument for any flavor of link. We can argue the blackest link nearly white, and the whitest link black as coal. The art of opportunistic linking depends on the intent of the link seeker. We know what’s in our hearts, and search bots don’t. Yet.

Here’s a better example of link opportunism. Have a look at all the companies offering discounts to University staff, faculty, and students. Follow some of those .edu links. Which of these companies have done so just so they can be listed and linked on a .edu human resources web site’s University Discount Program, and which of the companies were doing so prior to links impacting rank? It’s impossible to know for sure, but as I scan this page here, some of those vendors look, um, shall we say out of place? I hesitate to say which ones, because I don’t know the background and relationships between this particular school and all the companies listed and linked.

I’ll bet, however, that the person who handles this discount program is baffled as to why he/she is getting so many requests for participation, and now, will probably get even more.

Eric Ward has been in the link building and content publicity game since 1994, providing services ranking from linking strategy and private customized link building training. The Link Week column appears on Tuesdays at Search Engine Land.

Cuill, the stealth search startup backed by former Google, AltaVista, and IBM search experts, has completed a second round of funding to the tune of $25 million. The round was led by Madrone Capital Partners and follows on a first round of $8 million from Tugboat Ventures and Greylock Partners. From the release:

“We are pleased with the confidence of our investors,” said Chief Executive Officer and co-founder Tom Costello. “Our team is using breakthroughs in search architecture and technological advances to create a new paradigm in search, and we now have the resources to reach the next level in pure search.”

Cuill has assembled a premier team of search experts from Google, IBM, eBay, Alta Vista, Xerox PARC, the Internet Archive and Stanford University. These highly respected search veterans have a proven track record in the search industry and are focused on creating the next generation of search.

“We are thrilled to receive additional funding,” said Anna Patterson, President and co-founder. “I’m very proud of the experienced team we have recruited and the board we have assembled. Our goal is to offer a dramatically improved search experience and we look forward to sharing Cuill with everyone on the Web.”

For more about Cuill, see my The Google Challengers: 2008 Edition post from earlier this year.

Forbes is out with the latest billionaires list, and Google executives are well represented. Plus, Yahoo president Susan Decker saw a 63-percent increase in her salary, with a 29-percent bonus increase from last year.

Gary Price posted a link to the Forbes billionaires lists, which includes several search faces such as Bill Gates of Microsoft at number three with $58.0 billion and Steve Ballmer at number 43 with $15 billion. As for Googlers, Sergey Brin ranks at number 32 with $18.7 billion, Larry Page at number 33 with $18.6 billion, and CEO Eric Schmidt was ranked 142 with $6.6 billion.

paidContent.org reports, in other news, that Yahoo president Susan Decker has seen a 63% raise, earning $815,000 up from $500,000 last year. Plus, Decker’s bonus increased almost 30% to $1.1 million. Note, however, that Decker’s increase is from taking over the president’s position. Previously, she was Yahoo’s CFO. Blake Jorgensen, Yahoo’s new CFO’s, took Decker’s old salary of $500,000 and saw a bonus of $405,000 in 2007.

Back to the billionaires list, here are more search billionaires:

• David Filo of Yahoo is worth $2.5 billion and ranks in at number 462
• Jerry Yang of Yahoo: worth $2.3 billion and ranking at number 524
• Omid Kordestani of Google: worth $2.2 billion and ranking number 553
• Barry Diller of IAC (Ask.com): worth $1.3 billion and ranking number 897

Last week comScore came out with a report that showed a 7% sequential decline vs. December 2007 in paid search ad clicks. Plus, they showed an 8% drop in the number of clicks per Google searcher from December 2007. The report set shock-waves through Wall Street and caused the stock to drop and drove concerns about a recession.

James Lamberti of comScore spoke about the concerns on the Searchscape panel at SMX West. He expressed that after careful analysis, the data does not directly support evidence of a recession or a weaker Google.

Why Google’s surprising paid click data are less surprising from comScore addresses much of the concern. comScore explains that the drop in paid clicks was not due to advertisers holding back on spending but rather Google’s “quality initiatives.” In order for Google to gain more market share, they want to drive more quality. In the short term, it might lead to less revenue but in the long term, Google’s share will increase and revenue will increase with that.

SEO Blackhat shares why comScore’s Google clicks are flat, while Google CTR Down Due To Click Area Changes from TechCrunch makes me want to kick myself. Why? This article makes me think, “Why didn’t I think of that!” Google changed the clickable area for their search sponsored ads in April 2007, but in mid- November they changed the clickable area for AdSense ads. A possible reason for less paid clicks can be due to the fact that a lot of the clicks on AdSense ads were accidental. It kind of supports what I have seen, where most AdSense publishers are earning less than they ever have in the past with Google.

Feb ‘08 Paid Search Market Share: Google Gains, Yahoo Loses, Economic Slowdown Not Observed from Rimm Kaufamn says he hasn’t seen a drop in paid search activity with his clients. It seems like maybe they don’t advertise on the contextual network, which is possible.

In summary, the comScore data was never meant to hint at signs of Google falling apart or of an economic recession. It seems like Wall Street jumped on the news without fully understanding the data.