Will Yahoo Y!OU Be Enough to Entice You

On September 28, 2009, Y!OU And Yahoo will be officially unveiled to the public. The theme of the new worldwide marketing campaign is to put you, the web surfer in the middle of Yahoo’s new offering.

Simplification and personal relevance are the keywords that Yahoo is using to describe its new offering. More relevant search, simpler photo sharing, high quality video calling for Yahoo Messenger and a new mobile Yahoo homepage are what will be leading the marketing campaign.

According to comScore Yahoo properties took second place behind Google properties in regard to unique visitors in August 2009. But, Yahoo search has dropped dramatically and Microsoft Bing has come on strong since the end of July to surpass it as the number 2 search engine.

One wonders whether Y!OU And Yahoo will be enough to keep the company growing and keep another Microsoft deal at bay? You or Y!ou’ll find out in just a few days whether the hype is all about you or not.

Bing Rising in Search and Shopping

Since Microsoft’s revamped MSN search, now named Bing, was launched in June 2009, the search engine has slowly gained market share in search and shopping. For several years now, MSN search has hung around the 5-percent market share point, with Yahoo over 20-percent and Google between 60 – 70 percent.

After the two month honeymoon phase is over, Bing search has gained a percentage point in the market from 8.23 in June to 9.41 this month. Now, this may not sound like a lot but it makes a Bing / Yahoo partnership more understandable.

Consider that last year Yahoo search was over 20-percent in market share and now its numbers are half of that. Also, consider that Google is around 77.5, so with Bing and Yahoo combining forces, there will once again be some semblance of competition.

Bing has also made significant strides in another area as well. Bing Shopping has increased 169-percent since its debut in June. Bing Shopping is now the 4th largest shopping comparison site (with Yahoo Shopping in 1st place).

And, just this week, Microsoft has announced Bing Shopping’s Double Cashback promotion. By purchasing from merchants enrolled in the Cashback promotion, Microsoft will send you a direct check.

In the Bing interface, you sign up under the Extras pull down in the top right corner and then any store that displays the Cashback logo will qualify you for a Microsoft check. Now, for years Microsoft has been lackadaisical about search.

Bill Gates a couple of years ago even commented about how Microsoft underestimated the value of search from the very beginning. But, in 2 months time, Bing has made some serious headway as a tool to search for both information and products.

It may take a while before Bing takes a ding out of Google and gives us a bang for our buck. Google followers are a loyal bunch. But, building a better mousetrap will always turn people in your direction and so let’s see in the weeks and months to come if Bing becomes such a mousetrap.

Beat the Heat with a Twittering Tweet

As things heat up this Spring heading into Summer so its these tweeting season courtesy Twitter.com. As you know, Myspace and Facebook have their loyal following but there is something about Twitter with its 150 character limit and drive-by, drive-thru mentality that is quite an attraction to many.

It’s so attractive in fact that Larry King is a tweeting fool as well as Barbara Wa-Wa (Walters to you and me). In fact, Twitter is now so popular that neither could get their own names on the social media site and had to opt for something less brandable.

But, the big news perhaps is that AOL is rumored to have an interest in acquiring Twitter. Now the Wall Street Journal has pooh-poohed this idea but its really not that far-fetched. Right now Twitter doesn’t monetize itself through ads, so it makes sense that someone will want a payday with this large Internet property.

Google, where are you? If anything one would think the Big G would want to spread its domination to one of the hottest social media sites for now and sometime to come.

Powerset Semantic Search of Interest to Microsoft

There is an article on CNET that speculates that Microsoft may be interested in acquiring Powerset, which is close to publicly rolling out its semantic search engine. The early reviews of the Powerset semantic search have been favorable.

Instead of basing its search results on keyword as Google does, Powerset uses word relationships, concepts and meanings plus other linguistic aids in order to deliver more meaningful results. For instance, if a user types in a phrase or question, they may be directed to part of page where the answer appears and not just the page itself.

During user testing of Powerset, the Powerlabs testers will be able to give search results a thumbs up or down, which will help the developers in refining their algorithms. Google has also experimented with this feature on a limited scale.

But, Powerset may change more than how a search engine delivers results. It may change user behavior in those searches. When Ask.com was AskJeeves.com users were encouraged to type in questions that affable butler would try to answer.

Powerset semantic search may be similar in that it may urge users to type in longer search strings, sentences or questions in order to achieve optimal results. Perhaps if Microsoft passes on this technology, then Ask.com would then be interested since it would take them back to their roots in search.

If user behavior does change in this new semantic world of search, then this will also affect the SEO community. Will SEO’s optimize pages based upon keywords or semantics? Ten years from now, keyword searches may be a thing of the past.

Powerset may not be a Google Killer, but it may start changing the tide as to how searches are performed and results delivered on the Web. And, this changing tide may help Web surfers get their information more quickly and more accurately than ever before.

Google Has New Search Within a Search

Every Spring I dream about a nice, exotic vacation somewhere so I was doing a search for “Amazon Peacock Bass Fishing” to check out a nice little trip to Brazil. When doing a search for just “Amazon” I noticed that Google now has a search box embedded with the results for Amazon.com in which a person directly upon the website.

The search button says, “Search Amazon.com” and the results that are displayed are upon the Google site of different keywords results for the Amazon.com website. The same holds true when doing a search for DMOZ.

But, you’ll notice that when searching for DMOZ, Google has an additional feature. Not only is there a handy-dandy site specific search box for DMOZ, but there are also sitelinks listed as well. Google Sitelinks is another feature that is rolling out more broadly for older authority websites that several specific popular pages.

Generally, a website has to be online for more than 2 years, be in the number one position in the SERPs and have many back links to it before Google will generate Sitelinks for a website. By offering two methods of searching an authority website, Google is doing both searchers and authority sites a favor.

Well, have to wait and see, though how those in the number two through 10 positions feel about this extra real estate devoted to the website in the number one position. Chances are there will be a lot of squawking in the message board over these new developments.

Optimizing a Web Page for Too Many Keyword Phrases

When a client comes to me complaining of low rankings, one of the first items I check is to see if their homepage or any other page is optimized for too many keyword phrases. The client may have tried to optimize the page themselves, had a friend do it, had an SEO do it that was working under outdated rules, or had an SEO do it who thought they could make it work through sheer force of will.

But, optimizing a web page for too many keyword phrases such as the website’s homepage is an exercise in dilution. For instance, if you try to optimize a web page for the keyword phrases green apples, yellow lemons, red cherries and purple grapes you could, at one time, rank well for all of these phrases. But, as time marches on, competition encroaches and more web pages are optimized for each of these singular keyword phrases, your fruit basket of a page will also drop in the rankings.

The solution is to set up a separate page for green apples, another for yellow lemons, etc. so that each page is well-defined and only optimized for one keyword phrase apiece. This will also making it easier to gain targeted back links to these pages with the appropriate keyword text.

Some clients think that because their homepage is optimized for several variations of the same keyword phrase that this dilution does not occur. But, this is a mistaken assumption. A page needs to a have a certain keyword density, otherwise it is diluted. It also needs to have back links with that same specific keyword phrase in it, otherwise it, too is diluted.

The trick is to be as targeted as possible on a page with the same keyword phrase emphasized on that page and on the links pointing to this page. When these elements are in alignment then the rankings most often fall into place.