Gigaom writes that although Yahoo is number two at search, they are still number one at so many other things. That is exactly what Carol Bartz, Yahoo’s CEO, wants to communicate with the world, that Yahoo is not just a search company and does great things also outside of search.

Gigaom reached out to comScore to see what exactly Yahoo is number one at and that includes:

• News
• Finance
• Sports
• Mail
• Entertainment
• Games (near tie)

Yahoo Answers is not mentioned here, but I believe they dominate that category, as well.

We don’t often discuss Yahoo’s other properties, but it is important to note that although Yahoo is a distant second to Google in search, Yahoo does dominate the web in so many other ways.

Mahalo Answers is the newest entry into the crowded Q&A reference site space, but it offers a twist that its biggest competitors don’t: the chance to earn money by contributing to the service. Mahalo founder Jason Calacanis says the new service is the third and final piece of his original vision for Mahalo, making it a site that combines search, content, and knowledge exchanges.

Yahoo Answers is the 800-lb. gorilla in this field, with some astonishing numbers reported earlier this year: 135 million users and 500 million answers worldwide, and growing at a rate of 11 million new answers per month just in the U.S.

What Calacanis hopes will set Mahalo apart is cash. Users asking a question can offer money as an incentive to attract good answers, and after the fact, other readers can also tip the best answer(er).

Mahalo Answers also brings money into the Q&A equation by giving experts the opportunity to charge money for direct questions. An SEO expert, for example, could set up shop in Mahalo Answers and charge a small sum to anyone who wants to ask a direct question.

Money was part of the now-defunct Google Answers ecosystem, which functioned very similarly to what Mahalo is doing now. The primary differences are that Google Answers required a cash payment, while it’s optional on Mahalo, and questions on Google Answers were asked to pre-screened experts, while anyone on Mahalo can answer a question.

Yahoo Answers also has an open approach with any community member being able to answer questions. But in his blog post about today’s launch, Calacanis takes a swipe at Yahoo Answers’ free-for-all approach:

“…the chance of making some money in Mahalo Answers is obviously a lot better than the guarantee of making none in Yahoo! Answers–not that I’m comparing the two products.”

But everyone else is, as evidenced by the discussion on Techmeme.

Vanessa Fox had to catch a plane, so I decided to copy Tamar Weinberg’s coverage from the Search Engine Roundtable.

It’s the fourth session of the second day of SMX Social Media and it’s all about Wikipedia.

Web users rely on community-contributed-content sites such as Wikipedia and Yahoo Answers. These sites enable you to communicate directly with an engaged audience. But contribute to the conversation with care. Too much spin and your credibility will be shot and your brand damaged. You’ll come away from this session knowing how these influential sites work and how to participate constructively.

Moderator: Danny Sullivan, Editor-in-Chief, Search Engine Land

Speakers: Lise Broer “Durova”, Administrator, Wikipedia Jonathan Hochman, Founder/President, Hochman Consultants Matt McGee, SEO Manager, Marchex Stephan Spencer, Founder & President, Netconcepts Don Steele, Director of Digital & Enterprise Marketing, Comedy Central

Matt McGee!!!!!!!!!! is up first and he says that people can use it for their expertise and knowledge for businesses, not so much for people who are providing widgets and the like.

What is Yahoo Answers? A simple Q&A site that is incredibly busy. There is a constant stream of questions and answers.

Like any social media site, you can create a profile with a link to your website (nofollow, sadly). Therefore, it’s for traffic building, not for link building. It is the #2 reference site behind Wikipedia.

They know that people are using it to market their business. In fact, they encourage that to build credibility and to create a positive brand image compared to other types of social media.

It is also okay to drop links, as long as you’re providing a helpful answer to someone’s question. If you’re a good member of the community, go for it.

Yahoo Answers gives him a huge jump of referral traffic: highest source of new visitors and the lowest bounce rate. Shocking!

Also, it gives a great amount of search traffic. It does not come close to Wikipedia but it still gives good traffic.

How to use them: - The interface is easy to use, and there are a lot of categories so it’s inundating to browse. They have RSS feeds for every category on the site and every subcategory. - Sort wisely. View by date or view by number of answers. Matt says that it’s better to sort by date. He then finds questions that are about to expire so that he can provide a more meaningful answer in order to get points. If you sort by the number of answers or by the most answers, those are answers that get a lot of traffic. It helps to get eyeball exposure rather than point exposure. - Sign your name when leaving a question or answer – why? Spammers don’t leave their names, so you don’t want to be construed as a spammer. - Don’t spam!

Next up is Jonathan Hochman, Wikipedia administrator. We all want him to take Wikipedia down, but alas, we cannot, or Jonathan won’t be an administrator anymore.

Wikipedia has a tremendous amount of traffic share over Digg and delicious. In a way, I am happy about the Digg part.

Here’s what you can do as a marketer: - Answer questions, interact with editors, donate images/media with an appropriate license, report problems, request changes via talk pages. Build goodwill.

Don’t be a dick. Don’t spam, etc.

Here are some newbie mistakes: - Don’t pick a promotional username – those are called role accounts that are not allowed. - Don’t violate copyrights. - Don’t edit stuff that you have conflicts of interests in.

Don’t start stories for yourself. Don’t write about something you’re close to. Don’t spam or you’ll hit the MediaWiki spam blacklist (and you don’t want to get there). IP addresses are not anonymous, so be careful when making edits. The actions can reflect poorly on the company.

Reputation management issue: there was a company that was called out as a spyware distributor (they did, apparently, but they don’t anymore). Fortunately, they do the right thing and talk with the Wikipedia administrators to prevent page vandalism.

Keep in mind that Wikipedia information spreads virally, especially images (they’re licensed by creative commons, which means you need to link the page when you borrow the image). Participation can improve your reputation.

3 links - Wikipedia Business FAQ - Wikipedia Conflict of Interest - Wikipedia Search Engine Optimization

Up next is Stephan Spencer, who covers Wikipedia from an SEO standpoint.

Become a virtuous participant: build edits that stick (clean up spam, fix typos, add to the value to the site in a clearly noncommercial way). Develop that profile over a period of time and you get street cred. Then you can possibly be awarded (the Barnstar award) that acknowledges your contributions. You can change your User page and Talk page to remove some anonymity. Over time, you can become an admin like Jonathan.

Incorporate content edits when adding a link. It makes it harder to revert your edit.

Communicate with the main editor (the guy who makes the most edits) to negotiate with them regarding changes.

If you add links as references, it sticks better because references substantiate claims made in the document. If you substantiate claims, you’re adding value.

What if you wanted to create brand new entries? - Be logged in with a virtuous profile. Wikipedia mantra is that you’re guilty until proven innocent. - Be careful – you can be deleted: AFD (articles for deletion) or the speedy delete. AFD is a discussion; it’s not a vote. People discuss why to keep it and here’s why, versus other people wanting to remove it. - Use lots of references: clear the notability hurdle. Get press mentions. (People, write about me.)

Notability: - Don’t put press releases to establish notability. - Discuss this with people through the talk page if it’s related to your company.

How do you make sure your investment isn’t reverted? Social networks rely on friends. Make sure that they are on top of these changes – work with the people in the community.

Wikipedia has its own politics: Jimmy Wales doesn’t like being “co-”founder of Wikipedia, so his friends try to make the edits. He also wants to bury his history in the porno industry. But the rest of us know – or we do now.

As new tools get developed, you may be found out if you’re manipulating the content.

Next up is Don Steele, who has spoken many times about Comedy Central’s success with Wikipedia. Instead of regurgitating and tiring my fingers, I’ll link you to my past coverage: Wikipedia and SEO: August 23, 2007 Wikipedia and SEO: April 12, 2007 - He talked about South Park (which I’ve written about too). - He talked about the lawsuit between Viacom and Google (he works with Viacom). He can’t comment so he won’t involve himself.

Finally, Lisa “Durova” is up. She’s another Wikipedia administrator who has written for Search Engine Land. Her presentation is about Humans 1.0. She gives accolades to Comedy Central for being involved in Wikipedia in a positive way.

A lot of people come to Wikipedia follow advice that they think is good because it’s in mainstream sources. However, they are not publishing for you – they’re publishing for themselves.

Virgil Griffith is the WikiScanner guy. That is a tool that automated IP lookups for Wiki edits.

If you have a conflict of interest, declare it upfront. Don’t do it behind their backs. A company called Melaleuca made some changes that looked like advertising copy. Two Wikipedians noticed this and they were caught. But the guy denied the involvement – however, this is not the first time that people have done this. Don’t make an article conform to your company branding. If you get banned, don’t post from a different IP address that isn’t from your company headquarters. We know when you’re using proxies. We know when you’re asking your friends. You’re not fooling us. Now, you can’t edit this company’s page. The page is protected to new edits.

Yahoo has added a social networking feature to its Answers service, allowing you to add Yahoo Answers users to your own personal collection of contacts, providing direct access to the questions they ask, answer, and star on Answers. “This allows you to identify individuals on Answers whose knowledge you value and make them part of your friend list,” said Tomi Poutanen, Yahoo’s director of product management for social search.

Answers Network is similar to other social networking services offered by Yahoo, including Flickr contacts, the Del.icio.us network and MyBlogLogs contact lists. Adding a contact is simple—simply click on a Yahoo Answers user avatar, and then from their profile page, click “Add to my contacts.”

Unfortunately, although similar to other Yahoo networks, there’s no way to combine or add your contacts from Flickr, for example, to Yahoo Answers Network. Poutanen says that’s deliberate. “Just because somebody provides really good photos, they may not also contribute good knowledge,” he said, adding that Yahoo does plan to provide tools to integrate their various networking services in the future.

The Yahoo Answers team has posted more information about Answers Network on the Yahoo 360 blog.

Yahoo is now allowing users to vote for their favorite questions at Yahoo Answers by adding a star next to interesting or high-quality questions. Similar to Flickr’s “Interestingness

Via Slashdot, What’s the Best Q&A Site? from MIT Technology Review tests several question and answer search engine services.

They reviewed and ranked AnswerBag, Askville, Live QnA, Wondir, Yahoo Answers and Yedda. So how did they rank? Out of a total 12 points, Yahoo Answers scored 11 points, coming out tops.

Here’s the rundown:

1. Yahoo Answers (11 points)
2. Live QnA (7 points)
3. Askville (6 points)
4. AnswerBag (4 points)
5. Wondir (4 points)
6. Yedda Answers (4 points)

Hitwise posted figures and data to show market share of the different Q&A search engines.

• Yahoo Answers with 96%
• Answerbag with 2%
• Windows Live QnA with 1%
• Wondir with 0.7%
• Askville with 0.11%
• Yedda with 0.02%

Yahoo Answers, arguably one of Yahoo’s most successful products of the year, has turned one today. Yahoo has listed The Best of Answers 2006 showing off some of the best user generated questions and answers for the year. You can get a free gift from Yahoo for their birthday over here. They give you a different gift based on your “levels.” Since I am a level one, I do not get a gift.

Gifts Include: Level 2: Yahoo! Answers sticker Level 3: Yahoo! Answers car magnet Level 4: Yahoo! Answers water bottle Level 5: Yahoo! Answers hat Level 6: Yahoo! Answers mug Level 7: Yahoo! Answers fleece

Postscript: Brand Republic has a write up named Yahoo! hunts brand licensees for Answers service describing Yahoo’s search for UK companies to partner with, in order to white-label the Yahoo Answers Q&A software.

Press Release:

YAHOO! ANSWERS CELEBRATES ONE YEAR OF KNOWLEDGE AND SUCCESS AS POLL REVEALS USE AND INFLUENCE OF Q&A SITES Yahoo! Answers Surpasses 60 Million Users and 160 Million Answers Worldwide

Sunnyvale, CA, December 13, 2006 – As Yahoo! Answers (http://answers.yahoo.com), the leading Q&A site on the web, turns one and celebrates a thriving community of users, knowledge and success, a recent survey commissioned by Yahoo! and conducted by Harris Interactive® indicates that one in three online adults (33%) have used a Q&A site, and, of these, half (52%) say that information from a Q&A site has influenced a decision they have made. The survey also indicates that online adults have looked for advice and reviews online and would be even more inclined to do so if the information was free and provided answers to questions in minutes.

“We believe Internet users are looking to real people for their advice and knowledge more than ever before,