Yahoo! It’s time to buy YHOO.

Posted on April 27, 2006 by JoeDuck

I've been waiting for a "sign" to buy Yahoo (well, some SHARES of Yahoo ) which seems due for a huge surge when their publisher network revenues kick in later this year. Yahoo has more traffic than Google but you sure wouldn't know it from the buzz, even among industry insiders. Capitalization lags Google big time for what appear to be no really good reasons.

My sign that Yahoo will do very well came last week as I signed up and used Flickr, which ranks among the most intuitive and brilliant applications I've ever used. Checking their Alexa stats Flickr is 85th most visited site and rising fast – proving that Yahoo can take a good idea, make it better, and expand a giant community almost overnight. A giant community that posts, for example, pictures from an Antarctica Science Voyage. Is Web 2.0 cool or what?

It's not that Flickr alone will increase YHOO profits. What strikes me clearly is that Yahoo – far more than Google – is positioning itself as the front runner with big plans to grow and maintain the flexibility to fill many niche spaces created by the rapidly expanding Web 2.0 economy.

Yahoo's profit boost will come from online publisher revenues which now comprise about 43% of Google's revenue and will flow to Yahoo if they offer publishers a higher revenue share. Yahoo will be able to legally adjust profits upward very strategically using this technique and I'm guessing that they are now drooling at the thought of doing that.

Flickr is only one of many aquisitions of Web 2.0 companies by Yahoo, which is clearly the 2.0 leader.

Google's equivalent in the photo space? Hello? Hello? What the HECKo? It may be a good application, but I'll probably never know and almost everybody's using Flickr now, pulling others in every day.

People are very, very unlikely to switch away from a great application like Flickr once they start using it. This EBAY effect is powerful in some niches like online auctions or photos where the main barrier to participation is signing up and learning to use the service.

Contrast this with NO barrier but the admittedly powerful "habituation" to search engine use where it's likely people will flow to the 'best search' over time rather than the one they started with. Now that Yahoo is equal to Google in relevancy this will tend to work in their favor as well.

Time to buy Yahoo!

Jeremy’s paying attention to our lack of concentration

Posted on April 26, 2006 by JoeDuck

Jeremy Zawodny is having trouble concentrating. I think he's speaking for a large and increasing number of people who suffer from the simply overwhelming and seemingly infinite amounts of information now available.

The barriers to massive amounts of information access approach zero in the online environment, a very different state of affairs than a mere 10 years ago when even simply answers required trips to stores or local libraries and good quality research on complicated or in-depth topics generally meant many trips to a university libary.

In the comments Tracy wondered if "Maybe technology is the downfall of humanity…

This is always a provocative notion. I hope the concentration problems mean we are not losing the tendency for good thinkers to spend long and reflective amounts of time solving complex problems when needed.
I'm still in the "pro technology" camp that says technology is far more likely to save us than bury us, but I'm not sure I'd want to debate that in light of the current state of global affairs and internet abuses and info overload.

If it wasn't a dispicably bad pun I'd suggest we have one of those open format conferences and call it "Concentration Camp"

WebmasterWorld Boston Site Reviews, part Deux

Posted on April 24, 2006 by JoeDuck

More site reviews from WMW Boston, continued from HERE

6. eomega.com

27 years teaching Tai Chi and other personal enrichment technniques. Want to rank better for terms like Tai Chi since they are a key resource.

Tim: Not clear from site what you actually do at the institute. Write more about your key focus which helps both people and SEs figure out the site. Put "Yoga" and "Tai chi" keywords on home pages!

Bruce: Look at competitors Static pages with more decriptions would be better. Send more NON volatile content to home page. [By Non Volatile he means less flash, dynamic, changing material which can confuse the indexing process]

Matt: A good site map is important. If you use java mouseover navigation FIND ANOTHER WAY.

"Treat Search Engines as dumb little kids with short attention spans"
(do a separate post on this concept which is important)

Change your huge URLs to more intuitive reading like /carol-anderson/. Weird or long URLs can fool the search engine and you have a lot of them.

Thomas: List of workshops is WAY too long – cut it up into sections with better categories which will spider better. (Matt nodded that this was a good idea).

Jake: All Title tags in the site appear to be the same! Bad.

7. Shopping.com [this is one of the largest shopping portals]. They appear to be having big ranking problems though they have a huge number of indexed pages. He said 80% of their server load is from SE crawling(!).

Matt: Mouseover problems? Always use DASHES as separators rather than underscores. Underscores will be treated as connecting the two words.

Jake: Load balancing at the servers can lead to duplicate content filtering.

[Shopping.com said they had som latency (slow loading page) issues. Matt indicated this is UNlikely to cause problems with Google but might with MSN.

Users have complained about empty epinions.com pages – get rid of them.
Use more user friendly URLs – more for users than for Search engines.

8. CorporateCasuals.com. Now in top 60 for most terms but can't rank for "embroidery".

Tim: More descriptive anchor text needed.

Matt: 3 parameter URLs are not good. DO NOT use ID=. Best to use NO parameters but keep to 1-2 if you must do it. Stop using nofollows on (internal?) links. These prevent the SE from following internal navigation and beefing up the site.
Think about attracting attention to the site to get more inbound links.

Bruce: Descriptions are NOT unique and that is bad.

9. Arcamax.com "We syndicate content. Site Tips wanted. Comics are top read at the site. They send out joke of the day. 30-40 subscribers per week from home page and position of subscription box on home page does NOT appear to affect this. 40-50% leave home page without going in to site.

Matt: I see irrelevant ads and a toolbar download that might scare people. Focus on other things like jokes and cartoons.

Tim: Leverage RSS power. Need content surfacing [more readily available?] Make more specific calls to action.

WebmasterWorld Boston pictures and blog posts

Posted on April 21, 2006 by JoeDuck

HERE are a few more WebmasterWorld Boston pictures. Garrett at Search Engine Journal
has a great set of links to posts about the conference as does Lee Odden.

I think a much better picture set is going to get posted by Jake Baille soon – I'll try to link to that when I find it.

Google and Yahoo review websites at WebmasterWorld Boston

Posted on April 21, 2006 by JoeDuck

The best session at WebmasterWorld Boston had site reviews of nine websites by Matt Cutts of Google, Tim Mayer of Yahoo, and SEOs Thomas Bindl and Bruce Clay. Jake Baille did a fine job moderating, keeping the reviews fast. Here's a summary which I'll add to during the day as I recover from the conference here in Concord, MA.

1) Britannica.com Problem: Brittanica's subscription content is behind the pay firewall and therefore not crawlable. They don't want to change this model too much. They rank poorly for many terms for which they think they are authoritative. What should they do?

Matt Cutts: Wikipedia gives people all the information they are looking for and therefore ranks above Brittanica. Paid firewall snips are NOT enough information to attract inbound links. Consider picking a few articles in highly searched areas and making 100% of that content crawlable. It's tough to rank a page with just a paragraph of text and even tougher to get links to that content.

Bruce Clay: Check your "Expertness" by analyzing inbound links, outbound links. Check technical factors related to weighting and content rankings. Check server issues including accidental replication of content which can lead to duplicate content filters.

Tim Mayer: Consider a more colloquial writing style (I understood this to mean that that SE's are looking for natural conversational styles over formal or automated content though I don't think Tim said that specifically). Talk to the Search Engines about an information feed program.

ResumeRabbit.com He wanted optimization comments on a new home page here: edirectpublishing.com/newlandingpage/ BUT in a fun moment at the start of this review Matt said he'd gotten a LOT of unsolicited emails from ResumeRabbit and felt that may have "tainted" the brand. "how about ResumeAardvark?" suggested Matt in perhaps his *worst* piece of advice during the conference.

Matt: Links look good, you've made the site crawlable.
Thomas: Links, links, links (I think he meant one always needs more quality inbound links)
Tim: Use keyword tags! They matter in some SEs
Bruce: Drop id= which is in the source code for some/all pages.

InternationalLiving.com Problem: We are one of the best sites in the niche, but don't rank high.
Tim: Lose the flash download at home page. You are losing people immediately by forcing them to download stuff to see the whole site.

Bruce: Put the postcard thing in an IFRAME, consider more consistent home page text rather than regular changes.

Thomas: Consider CSS style sheets for better look. Use of H tag is good.

Matt: The site feels "thinner" than it really is. Emphasize the detailed content and the fact the project predates the web and has been online for a LONG time. Try to buy Internationaliving.com, a similar URL that could be taking some traffic away due to spelling confusion. If you do this use 301 redirect to send them to the real [canonical] site. People make weird queries you can't predict so cast a wider net [using emphasis on more keywords] to pull in long tailed searches.

Cherokee-NC.com

As the big flash home page …. slowly ….loaded …. the crowd erupted into laughter. [Note to all my friends in Travel and tourism STOP HIRING PRINT AGENCIES TO BUILD YOUR WEBSITES and STOP USING FLASH as a key component of any part of the site – it does NOT index well and often confuses the search engines!]

Problem – they get 80% of the traffic from terms "Cherokee" and "Cherokee NC"? and want more long tail searches to deliver traffic. How to optimize.

Tim: Build another site that is static and optimized for search. Flash is a BIG disadvantage.

Matt: Do not build a separate website but do a text version of this one. Note that if you select a text blurb on your site and can find it elsewhere you may be under a duplicate content penalty/filter. [he mentioned tripod.com because I think he found some duplicatation of this site there?]. Flash: You are not getting link credit in the index for [the flash based links?] but duplicate content is probably more important.

Separate navigation links from Flash. Matt: I turn off Flash. You may be losing 5% of traffic just by using Flash.

BigMouthMedia.com

I don't think Big Mouth asked for this, rather somebody wanted Matt to explain why and how they got dropped and then back in the index so fast.

Matt: Turn off CSS to see if hidden text is a problem. Look at internet Archive (or Alexa Wayback Machine) for page history [?] They had 13,000 characters stuffed into a small box, this was considered hidden text and they were banned. They cleaned it up and filed for reinclusion and are now back. Matt indicated they are not "out to get you" and this was a simple case where he did not go back in to fine every possible violation, rather when they removed the offending hidden text he felt they deserved back in. PR7 indicates a "robust" site.

Continued HERE

Webmaster World Day 2 – Jeremy, Matt, Robert on blogging

Posted on April 20, 2006 by JoeDuck

The blogger session at PubCon Boston was a crowd favorite. Jeremy Zawodny, Matt Cutts, and Robert Scoble talked about their experiences as the key "unofficial" spokespeople for Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft. The big item here was "Where is Matt's Mom's blog?"

Jeremy also gave an interesting summary of his experiences blogging about the troubled history at Yahoo Finance. He compared it unfavorably to Google's new product suggesting Google was doing things Yahoo should and could have done long ago. His gutsy post got him a meeting with the new Finance program manager who was new and wanted to brief him on what appear to be excellent upcoming features. The moral of the story seemed somewhat in line with Scoble's insistence that companies need to "blog or die" and that allowing this type of open examination is healthy, leading to faster action and enlightenment.

I'm not so sure that on balance negative blogging episodes have a positive impact on the company, but I do think that the long term, honest blogging by Zawodny and Scoble and Matt's new efforts send a very powerful credibility signal to the community and indicate their companies "get the new web" in an important way.

I hope that YPN and other "official" blogs work to retain an honest, creative voice. I'm skeptical and waiting to see if that is even possible when the blog is under corporate management. Better to just cut your people loose, treat them well, and involve the whole world in the conversation.

Webmaster World Boston

Posted on April 19, 2006 by JoeDuck

The session of the Webmasterworld conference wrapped up today with PubCon tomorrow afternoon.

Tomorrow I'll try to post pix and summaries of my two favorite sessions which were Jeremy, Matt, and Robert about blogging and the site reviews by Matt, Tim, Bruce, and Tom where I have a very detailed summary of all sites reviewed and much of the advice given. Yahoo also threw a very nice party at a local club called "Saint" which was so stylish with the simple "St" on the door I walked right past and had to ask directions.

Overall the "big news" to me is that there is not a lot of new complexity to the SEO scene – in fact it's clearer than ever that site quality is the best metric for how you'll do in the rankings. Things seem to be moving away from organic optimization and to PPC optimizing.

Web 2.0 as the “generous” internet

Posted on April 9, 2006 by JoeDuck

Over at O'Reilly's blog there is an excellent discussion about the nature of biz in a Web 2.0 world (why does the term Web 2.0 BOTHER so many people? Get over it!)

Doc Searls seems to suggest that old style biz is selfish where new style is generous, sharing resources in a virtually unrestricted way. One poster suggests, I think wrongly, that generosity comes after affluence. Based on my experiences I'm often surprised that when I share ideas openly and honestly I build trust with people and that trust leads to opportunity *for everybody in the equation*. Sure there is a *chance* that somebody will nab your idea, implement it better than you can, and do great thing. But that is:

1) OK because ideas, even great ideas, are not a key component of change. The key is a fully implemented great idea and is a much taller order.

2) unlikely, because they are probably working on a new angle or different idea or implementation anyway. At MashupCamp I was pleased and surprised how few people were even interested in doing some of the things I thought would make "great mashups" in the travel space. Why? Because they were busy with THEIR vision of the next big thing. Cool, and the best part is that the collective intelligence in such a group, or in the internt community at large, leads to a sort of *collective* expanion of horizons and creation *even better* stuff than without the open exchanges. I'd note that MSN's traditional failure to understand and harness this power may be their biggest impediment to moving ahead successfully in the new Web world.

What one should seek in the new "generous" internet are relationships and mechanisms (e.g. blogs, websites, wikis, wifi, free computers, etc, etc) that foster bigger and better ideas which in turn will foster bigger and better improvements to the global web, still a very immature system.

Google are you becoming an Ads hole?

Posted on April 7, 2006 by JoeDuck

Google's claims about keeping organic listings separate from advertising are ringing increasingly hollow. I actually think they have every right to do exactly what they appear to be doing now – mixing ads and organic listings – they just should not mislead people about this, claiming that they don't do it!

Here's a search for "dallas to SFO". The results page sports not one but TWO entire ad blocks in the white, formerly "organic listings only" section. On my 15" laptop screen about 65% of the results page shows advertising.

Amr at Yahoo pointed out recently that Google could have trouble keeping up earnings since the advertising was now very well optimized. But how about just adding a LOT more ads?

Web

Results 1 – 10 of about 3,290,000 for dallas to sfo. (0.14 seconds)

Google Wifis San Francisco….sung to the tune of “I left my router…in San…Fran…CISCO”

Posted on April 6, 2006 by JoeDuck

It's brilliant for Google to offer free internet to any metro area, and maybe even rurally though that gets more complex logistically. Google doesn't need ISP fees, they to keep up market share and ad clicks. Even a linked logo to Google will probably create enough ad clicks to justify the cost here and certainly if you include brand awareness it's worth the money for them.
A drop in Google's bucket of cash to consolidate the position as search leader.

Where the HECK are Yahoo and MSN when all these cool initiatives spring up?

Joe Duck

Have Blog. Will Travel. Vaccinate!

Category Archives: yahoo