According to AllThingsD the MicroHoo search deal is nearing completion and “definitive agreement” status. Speculation that the deal was in trouble started happening when the two companies failed to meet their self-imposed October 27 deadline to finalize the complex agreement. However it appears the circumstances were just as reported in the parties’ 8-K filing with the US Securities & Exchange Commission:

The Letter Agreement specified that the parties would execute Definitive Agreements by October 27, 2009, but given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized. The parties are working diligently on finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible . . .

On the regulatory front AllThingsD reports that “several sources said, those government approvals are now nearing completion at the Justice Department, even though the Federal Trade Commission might still ask for more assurances on privacy issues related to online advertising and consumer data.” Europe must also approve the deal.

According to the most recent comScore search market share data, the combined reach of MicroHoo search would be 27.9% vs. Google’s 65.4%. Assuming the deal goes through up next for Microsoft would be a decision about whether to attempt to buy Ask, which IAC’s Barry Diller is open to selling, and whether to bid for AOL’s search-ad business when that deal comes up for renewal in 2010.

However a MicroHoo approval would potentially make a later Ask acquisition (or maybe even an AOL deal) harder because it would reduce the number of independent search engines in the market.

While Bing is happily rolling out new search features, Microsoft can also smile at the latest search engine market share report from Experian Hitwise.

Google is still light years ahead of Yahoo, Bing, and Ask … but Experian Hitwise shows Bing with a 7% increase during October, while both Google and Yahoo saw small drops in search share.

Experian Hitwise also updates some stats related to search queries:

“Longer search queries, averaging searches of five to more than eight words in length, increased 3 percent between October and September 2009. Searches of eight or more words increased 4 percent. The same time period showed that shorter search queries – those averaging one to four words long – decreased 1 percent from month to month.”

Postscript: Enquisite has published its own research on search engine referral data. It shows Google even further ahead of Yahoo, Bing, et al. But this chart tracks click thrus from each search engine, not the number of searches done.

Yahoo has confirmed the recent rumors that it will test a real-time search feature in its search results.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Yahoo will run a test “in the coming days” with OneRiot, a real-time search engine that focuses on links and content from Twitter and other social media sources. PaidContent reports that Yahoo will also be running real-time search tests with other players, too. (See Danny Sullivan’s What Is Real Time Search? Definitions & Players for more background on possible partners.)

Yahoo will conduct its real-time search testing on a limited set of queries, the WSJ says, before deciding if the feature is useful enough to roll out to all Yahoo searchers.

Although some GeoCities web sites are still online, all three major search engines have removed the domain from their search indices. As of this morning, a site:geocities.com search on Google, Yahoo, and Bing shows that geocities.com is dead and buried.

Yahoo announced earlier this year that GeoCities — a free web hosting service that it bought in 1999 — would close this past Monday, October 26. But many users were still able to access GeoCities web sites last Tuesday. That’s when Yahoo actually pulled the plug. Millions of pages and images, the “neighborhoods” they belonged to, their URLs, everything … gone. Most importantly from an SEO perspective, millions (tens of millions? hundreds?) of links are also now gone — a small but measurable portion of the web’s overall link graph.

Google seems to have been the first to zap GeoCities from its index. Andrew Shotland tweeted on Thursday about the domain being gone from Google. On Friday, a Google spokesperson explained to us why they moved so quickly to get geocities.com pages out of their search index:

“After geocities.com shut down, these pages were effectively broken and giving a poor user experience. We took action to ensure that users wouldn’t land on the broken GeoCities pages and not find the information they were looking for.”

By Friday morning — if not sooner — Yahoo had also removed geocities.com from its index. Bing followed suit over the weekend. As of this morning, GeoCities is also gone from Ask.com, and from the Google-powered AOL search engine.

Ironically, though, Yahoo hasn’t killed off all GeoCities web sites. Over the weekend, I found one GeoCities web site that’s still alive and accessible on Yahoo’s servers:

That page lives at www.geocities.com/bolerama/. Via Twitter, Range Online Media told us that www.geocities.com/bradreviews/ is also still alive, and then blogged about several other GeoCities “zombie URLs.”

I suspect these are GeoCities Plus web sites. Those users can still access their site on the geocities.com domain, they just can’t use GeoCities tools to manage the site. We’re waiting for confirmation from Yahoo about these living GeoCities sites and will update this post when we know more.

Update, Nov. 3, 2009: Yahoo has confirmed that the “Bolerama” web site shown above is, in fact, still online because it’s a GeoCities Plus account.

I got two calls yesterday from people asking what I made of the Yahoo-Microsoft failure to meet their self-imposed search-deal deadline (October 27). I said it was probably just a case of needing more time to work through some of the details rather than a warning sign that the entire deal was in jeopardy.

There’s much at stake for both companies (somewhat less for Bing) in having committed to this deal. The market would punish both if the deal were to fall apart. It would be very hard for Yahoo to recover in the short term, having lost some of its best search people (many of whom are now working for Microsoft). And Microsoft would lose the reach that Yahoo search provides. However, ironically, Bing may be taking share from Yahoo rather than Google if these recently released iCrossing numbers are right.

The companies filed a form 8-K with the US Securities & Exchange Commission extending the time for completing the details of the search deal they announced many months ago. Here’s the text of the filing:

On October 28, 2009, Yahoo! Inc., a Delaware corporation (“Yahoo!”), and Microsoft Corporation, a Washington corporation (“Microsoft”), mutually agreed to extend the period to negotiate and execute a Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and a License Agreement (the “Definitive Agreements”) reflecting and supplementing the provisions of such agreements as set forth in annexes to their binding letter agreement dated July 29, 2009 (the “Letter Agreement”). The Letter Agreement specified that the parties would execute Definitive Agreements by October 27, 2009, but given the complex nature of the transaction, there remain some details to be finalized. The parties are working diligently on finalizing the agreements, have made good progress to date, and have agreed to execute the agreements as expeditiously as possible. The Letter Agreement was the subject of a Current Report on Form 8-K filed by Yahoo! on August 4, 2009.

The information in this report shall not be deemed “filed” for purposes of Section 18 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934, as amended (the “Exchange Act”), or otherwise subject to the liabilities under that Section and shall not be deemed to be incorporated by reference into any filing of Yahoo! under the Securities Act of 1933, as amended, or the Exchange Act.

(emphasis added.)

For more on where Yahoo stands, see Danny’s coverage of Yahoo Analyst Day.

There’s more coverage on Techmeme.

If you search on my name and location, [barry schwartz, ny], in Yahoo Search, you will see a Google Profile matches and other related content from Google within Yahoo’s new search format.

Notice the Google filter on the left hand side:

When you click on the Google button, you are taken to results only found on Google.com:

Clearly, Google has a lot of profile and local data on people, which makes for a nice way for Yahoo to show better people results. But it basically provides a site command filter on the google.com domain, which is mostly how the other filters work.

I just find it a bit comical that they specifically show a Google filter on Yahoo Search. Why no Bing filter?

Postscript: Yahoo’s VP of Search, Larry Cornett sent me some points on this topic:

• We algorithmically generate that list of site filters based on the results returned for a given query.
• The “Google” site being listed isn’t the Google search engine. It is basically pointing to content that is found anywhere on the Google domain (e.g., profile info, forums, blog posts, etc).
• In this case, Barry has a decent amount of content, comments, and profile info that is on google-hosted pages, so that is why Google shows up algorithmically. Again, it is not pointing to the Google search engine or a search results page on Google.

Very true and much of this content is useful.

Try as they might Yahoo is having a tough time convincing people that it’s still “in search.” On Yahoo’s earnings call earlier this week CFO Tim Morse, who led the call because CEO Carol Bartz was ill, used her analogy to describe Yahoo’s new way of positioning itself around search:

The next revolution isn’t with the algorithms that provide results, it’s in creating a better, more personally relevant search experience. This is where we’ll differentiate ourselves and compete vigorously without the billions required to keep up in the arms race that generating search results has become.

Let me give you an analogy that Carol has been using to explain this point. Consider basic search to be an Intel chip. An Intel chip is used in Dells, HPs and Macs to provide the computation needed to operate them but the differentiation between these products isn’t at the chip level, it’s in the different user experiences that are provided on top of them. It’s the same for us in search. We’ll innovate on top of the results that are provided to us by Microsoft.

While a clever way to discuss Yahoo’s new role, vis-a-vis Bing (the algo “chip”) it doesn’t seem to be convincing many industry insiders.

Yesterday at the Web2.0 event in San Francisco Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a “surprise” visit and talked about a range of things. Dow Jones newswires captured some of the discussion. Specifically Brin lamented the “abdication” of search by Yahoo. Here’s TechCrunch’s version of the relevant part of the exchange between Brin and interviewer John Battelle:

JB: Do you like Bing? You a Bing users?

SB: I use all search engines out there. Bing reminds us that search is a competitive market. There’s Powerset that Microsoft bought. There’s Cuil. There’s a lot of interesting stuff going on. It’s a shame Yahoo is abdicating.

JB: They would say they’re not.

SB: Sorry that was my impression.

JB: Do you have a comment on Microsoft/Yahoo search deal?

SB: I shouldn’t comment on that. But Yahoo had some interesting things, they should stick with it.

The Cuil folks should be pleased that Brin gave them a shout out.

Yahoo has announced that their paid inclusion program will cease at the end of this year. Partners were informed yesterday (such as here and here), and a Yahoo representative confirmed the move on a panel discussion moderated by Search Engine Land Editor-in-Chief Danny Sullivan at the iProspect/Range Online Media Client Summit today. We’ve also received a statement from Yahoo, which is posted below.

Yahoo wasn’t sure how they would handle paid inclusion when asked on the Yahoo/Microsoft press conference a few months back. Historically, there has been a lot of controversy over paid inclusion. Accepting money to be included in a free, unbiased, organic search index is a bit “hypocritical,” as former Ask.com CEO Jim Lanzone would say.

If you try to access Yahoo’s paid inclusion sales page you are redirected to advertising.yahoo.com. Both the “Search Submit Basic” program that charged an annual fee per URL and the “Search Submit Pro” cost-per-click program will end as of Dec. 31, 2009.

Yahoo has sent us a statement on this change:

We are committing our resources and efforts to our core areas of focus, including improving the search experience and relevancy of our ads to increase user engagement and ROI for advertisers, and as a result, have decided to exit Search Submit. We have stepped up innovation in Search Marketing, recently rolling out search retargeting, Rich Ads in Search and improved matching technology, and in Consumer Search, with enhancements like the new search results page. These enhancements deliver value, control, innovation and relevance to our advertisers, leading to increased ROI.

Yahoo! will exit Search Submit at the end of 2009. Yahoo! is providing those advertisers affected by the decision a sufficient lead time to assist in the transition. In addition, Yahoo! has recently announced a series of important enhancements to its Search advertising business and will work closely with many Search Submit advertisers to provide them with search solutions that will benefit their businesses.

According to the latest comScore survey, Google’s search market share climbed to just under 65% last month, and remains more than triple that of Yahoo, the second-place search engine.

ComScore pegs Google with 64.9% of all searches conducted during September 2009, up from 64.6% in August. Yahoo dropped from August’s 19.3% to 18.8% in September. And Bing, in third place, showed minor growth from 9.3% to 9.4%.

Despite Google’s small gains in market share, comScore says Google saw a slight drop in the number of searches — but that could be due to September having one less day than August.

Google accounted for more than 71% of US searches in September, according to the latest Hitwise survey.

While Google’s market share continues to rise slowly, both Yahoo and Bing lost ground in September — down 3% and 5%, respectively.