Link Development - good, bad and ugly. Part 1.

Thinking of SEO in retrospective, how it was a few years ago it's funny thing to do. Well, at that time I seriously believed that paid inclusion in Yahoo Directory, Dmoz, submission to directories will always be around BUT...


Yahoo has officially stated that they gonna close their paid inclusion program till the end of this year and, quite frankly, it is about time. Knowing that having your site included in Yahoo dir does not influence neither your site ranking on Google nor your traffic as it used to be would you invest $299 / year? I wouldn't.


Dmoz. Phew...what can I say?! The idea was great but its implementation faced with a human factor. I'm not telling that it's completely corrupted but when you have a suspicious that your site hasn't been included after 6+ Universe knows how many months is because the editor has its own interest is quite often way more than just a suspicion. It happens and A LOT.


Directories. What directories? Dmoz - see the previous paragraph. Local vertical directories may help but they aren't free and they won't help your ranking on Google as you may expect. 


When I think about running Link Development campaign I think about what authority resources I can find for a particular site. We know that the Internet is huge but in reality it has divided on certain types of sites - social sites, blogs, vertical directories, review sites, product sites, personal pages, portals. But there are lots of sites for which it seems like it's impossible to find such authority sites to get a link from.


Of course if there is a white hat in SEO there should be a black one too. Right - buying links from resources with either big traffic or lots of pages in Google Index or high PageRank. The matter fact it's a tricky question - if this technique belongs to black or white hat. Of course Google against this practice and I completely agree with its point of view on it. But....there is always 'but', many online projects either don't have time to grow its traffic naturally or desperately have to bring profit in a short term or struggle financially and their owners go into all methods of a traffic increasing they can think of and all ethic, moral criteria go out of the window.


There is sad, rarely spoken loudly true - Google simply can't make happy all site owners by giving them high ranking in their Search Results, there is always a competition and we don't know for sure if the best products / services, so to speak, go up in Search Results. There is no a simple correlation between a service or product quality and its ranking on Google. Obviously pointing links do not work, this criteria has been abused So Many Times. And I can't see any new way on a horizon, which people who want to win the race for Google Top 10/20 will not abuse. Period. 


Microsoft people talk about understanding people's intent on Web 2.0 Summit as a way to provide the most relevant search results possible, but lots of people can't themselves understand their own intent :-) To be continue....

Quick post about Snow Leopard. Process | Fan | Battery

Even if you aren't a tech geek when you hear your Macbook fan you realize that your battery is been draining fast at this moment. The beauty of Snow Leopard is that it much quicker pass your notebook resources - processor and memory in a moment when they don't need for resource consuming tasks anymore. The best example would be video file converting, big image editing in Photoshop and that sort of tasks.


It means your fan doesn't have to cool down your processor and motherboard that much and as a result it doesn't require energy at this moment. Bottom line - as less you hear your fan as longer your battery lasts without recharge and Snow Leopard is great in helping you with it.

Twitter updates on Google

Ok, I've been waiting for this since Twitter became a news information source plus to its original function and finally it has happened. If you use Twitter as a tool to communicate with your customers / prospects / just your site audience in general having your Twits on Google SERPs is the crucial thing! From now your twits will be exposed to much broader audience and in real time, just like you've already loved it happens on Twitter itself. The source - http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/10/rt-google-tweets-and-updates-and-search.html

Bing's Growth Slows, Google Recoups Losses in comScore September 2009 Report

Just as I thought I will be :-)

Bing's Growth Slows, Google Recoups Losses in comScore September 2009 Report: "

comScore has released their search engine share report for September 2009 and we're seeing yet another twist in the 'Can Bing catch up with Google?' saga. You may remember that Bing has been on quite a roll since launch gaining over 1 percentage point, with Google and Yahoo! trading off the losses.

Well, the tides began to turn last month, with Google regaining 0.3% of its loss and Bing gaining another 0.1% in share, which is not the rate of growth they have been experiencing. This time, Yahoo! suffered the losses with a 0.5% decline. Ask.com and AOL held steady.

Another interesting tidbit is YouTube's continued growth and how it compares to search. Greg Jarboe already provided you with the scoop on how more YouTube videos were watched in August than searches conducted in September. Be sure to read his post because this is a phenomenon to watch for sure.

Also, read up on Promoted Videos, which is essentially paid search for YouTube. You can now purchase Promoted Videos in AdWords, which will appear in the search results over at YouTube.

Will or do social sites kill email?

One function email has certainly lost or rather keep loosing is keeping people up to date about your life - personal or professional. I mean before social media came into the play I used to write long emails about certain things which had happened in my life, now I can broadcast my personal events via FaceBook or Twitter daily / hourly. But there is other thing which social network sites simply can't kill - taking time. When you type a message on Twitter you unconsciously try to do it fast, of course - it's Twitter, it's about your life up to a second, you gotta to deliver your news fast :-) At least you think so. And there is other thing which is subjective, but in my opinion, prevents email from fading away near soon - an affection to your favorite email client, I simply love to compose emails in my Mail app on Mac OS! And finally - for now none of social sites allows you compose/edit/delete your messages offline, it's simply against their nature - they suppose to keep your messages in a cloud. I can't see the way how FaceBook or Twitter will get its own Gears app like Gmail has.

A personal question 'hm...do you twit?'

I guess these days instead of asking 'Do you want a people's attention?' you can just ask 'Do you twit?' Forget about the original idea - to be able to update your relatives, friends, colleagues. Right now Twitter is your way to get people's attention to your ideas, comments, products, services, you name it. 


After you spend on Twitter more then couple month you begin to realize that people basically twit in two different fashions. Number one - shameless, bold, unstoppable promotion, people who follow this pattern consider Twitter as the next trumpet they've grabbed to scream the world about their product or services. Number two - people who have realized that Twitter is the ecosystem where they can communicate with their audience but not just push their stuff. The second way is so much harder and this is not about to be always cool in your posts or showing your superb sense of humor, it's about being a human being which is has something to tell people he cares about.


At this point the number of Twitter users has stopped growing exponentially and goes up rather gradually. I believe it suggests to the fact that it seems like the majority of people who wants to speak to the whole world has already joined 'the conversation' on Twitter.


You either don't have to join nor have to, this is your choice. If you twit it doesn't mean that you have automatically become a marketing guru or a person with a million followers. If you twit about your job and tell your potential customers about your product / service plus give them a sense that you aren't a T800 but a real human being you'll see their response. They will appreciate it. Twitter is not a silver bullet to give your business 100% success on a market, if you don't know your customers Twitter won't help to do that as you need a basic amount of information to begin with.


See you on Twitter :-)

Snow Leopard - little things that make difference.

I bet you've heard a lot about the fact that Snow Leopard is rather a big update than a new operation system. But why should we invent a new wheel if people like to drive using the one they've got used to, what they really want is just to make it more efficient. A huge percentage of people who switched from Mac OS 10.4 to 10.5 speaks for itself - people loved Tiger but Leopard showed lots of new useful stuff people found useful. At this point improving Leopard  means  bringing lots of small improvements that as a whole makes a Big Difference. That's what Snow Leopard is about.


Let's review top 5 improvements I've noticed since they turned out to be really helpful, at least for me :-)

1. Language switching. People who are fine with English as a single language on the Mac can simply skip this paragraph, but people who use 2 or more languages on their Mac and quite often have to switch between  will find a new language switching indicator extremely helpful. Where do you watch as you're switching a language using a shortcut? Right - on the right upper corner of your screen but would you prefer to keep watching on a text you're writing? The new switcher will allow you to do just that. It is a small improvement but I just love how it's been implemented and actually help me to stay focus on what I'm typing.
2. Expose built-in Dock. I love Dock and Expose as tools without which I can't imagine using Mac OS. What happens when you combine these tools? Exactly - once again it helps you to stay focus on your work.
3. Grab in Preview. I love Grab application but I found it a bit of a hassle that I can't save a captured image in any other format as TIFF, of course I wouldn't mind to save it in JPEG as it's the major format I and many of you keep our images. And so now Preview allows you to take screen shoot in a similar way as we do it in Grab. Now I predict eventually Grab will fade away as Preview starts to obtain its function.
4. Thumbnail resizing in Finder. I guess this function was pretty obvious to add as before Snow Leopard you could adjust distance between icons and icon size it a folder properties and so adding this function right to a window was a really logical step to take.
5. Separating Safari and its plugins in different processes. Right, now you can not only complain about Flash viewer bad coding for Mac OS but you can actually see how this process eats up your CPU and memory :-) Well, seriously - this separation allows you to close a certain plugin or force it to quite without crashing / closing Safari.

'Build great content!...' (c) Matt Cutts

Recently I was watching one of the Matt Cutts videos on the Google Webmaster Channel and once again heard from him the idea - that is the best thing a webmaster can do for his site to get high traffic is to build a good content, make it useful for visitors. Well, I totally agree with this idea, but as always there is BUT.

This is like telling to any offline company owner to just make good products and people will buy it for sure and leave a huge competition off the equation. And it's tremendously true for online businesses. You can not come up with next FaceBook or Twitter any given day and expect visitors will flood your site within weeks. 

There are niches on online market where a competition so high, so there is literally no way to make your product or service being stand out of a crowd. I know that 'never say never' but at this point it seems like everybody around you have tried every tiny marketing idea to promote their site and so either you leave the field or....put a Black SEO Hat on...

I realize that Matt will never admit publicly that 'just make a good product' is not a silver bullet to make your online business successful one. As well as it is physically impossible to come up with the best 10 sites for any given query, because it's very subjective thing - what is better and what is worse. I know there is a thing as customization of your search results and even Google SearchWiki but I don't think it works efficiently enough at this point. And so we keep fighting for this spot on top 10 or at least top 20, but it's easier to come up with next 'Yesterday' written by Paul and John and hit the Top 10 in a chart then get a high ranking by some highly competitive keywords and get into Google Top 10 Search Results page.

Omigili Figures Out How To Hack Google For Real Time Results

I wonder how soon Google will present it officially as a new feature, I bet Googlers do play with this function a lot to see if it really gives you what you expect from it - real time search data.

Omigili Figures Out How To Hack Google For Real Time Results: "
Way to go dudes at Omgili!


By now you probably know about the 'Search Options' feature Google introduced in May. One of its features is to limit the search results by time frame. By default the available time frames are: Any time, Past year, Past week, Recent results and Past 24 hours. Past 24 hours is nice but still far away from Real-time. What Google isn't telling you is that you can search in the past minute and even in the past second. The trick is to change a parameter in the URL that will narrow down the time frames. ....Notice the URL parameter qdr:d. I assume qdr stands for Query Date Range (sounds about right). All you have to do to search for the query in the past minute is to change the parameter to qdr:n, and for the past second to qdr:s.


Past Minute:
http://www.google.com/search?q=barack%20obama&hl=en&output=search&tbs=qd

Mac OS 10.5 Mail app hints - additional header area fields.

By default a new message has only two fields - 'To' and 'Subject' and it's perfectly enough for 90% cases when you have your reply-to address and signature pre-defined in your email account settings and basically you don't need to change anything in your message header fields.

Now when want to change signature for different messages, reply-to address or even smtp server to send a message from, you need a bit of customization and here is what you need to do:

1. Click on the small square field in front of a Subject line and click on 'Customize' and now by checking these fields you can specify which fields you want to have in hand for all your new messages. 
2. CC, BCC, Reply-to and Priority fields are on the list next to 'Customize' item on the same pop-up menu.

To specify different signatures you need go to 'Preferences --> Signatures', to specify different smtp servers to send your messages from go to 'Preferences --> Accounts --> Choose account you want to specify servers for and then click on drop down list at 'Outgoing Mail Server (SMTP): ---> Edit Server List.

Mac OS 10.5 Mail app hints - 'To Do' items in Gmail via IMAP

Finally I've cut some time to post Mac OS hints. I would like to begin with the most frequently using app which is Mail.


One of the Mail features which was presented in Mac OS 10.5 was the ability to add Notes and To Dos for email messages, it's especially useful feature if you have iPod Touch or iPhone as you can sync your 'notes' and 'to do' items between your Mac and iPhone / iPod Touch. 


It works really simple and effective - whenever you need to take any action about a particular email you add 'to do' item by right mouse button click anywhere in a message or even use a text in a message as a text for 'to do' item. By adding 'to do' items you get a list of them, for each item you can set a date, due date, priority or status 'done'.


Now be aware that if you use Gmail as your email service provider you will face with an issue which up to date both Apple and Google hasn't addressed, which is a conflict between how Mail and Gmail treats adding, editing 'To Do' items via IMAP protocol. Basically there is only one way, which may help you to handle with this conflict.

1. Go to Mail preferences --> Composing --> Create Notes and 'To Do's items in: On My Mac.
2. Close Mail and log into Gmail via browser, go to Settings and then either go to 'Labs' and specify 'Enable' for 'Advanced IMAP controls, then go to 'Labels' and uncheck 'Show' for 'Apple Mail To Do' items OR simply delete this item. Close your browser and get back to Mail.

Yahoo new Search interface

Ok, correct me if I'm wrong but several weeks ago Microsoft and Yahoo made a widely discussed deal and so from now Yahoo doesn't suppose to work on R&D any search technologies and instead use Microsoft Bing? And so this news does seem to sound really controversy but here is what I think is happening.


Of course the deal was made couple weeks ago but we have to keep in mind the scale of the companies like Microsoft and Yahoo. The deal was made on paper, btw hasn't been approved by FTC yet, but it will take at least a year or so to make this deal real in terms of technological aspects. But until then why Yahoo has to burry all its technological innovations in Search?! I think by keeping the things rolling the guys in Yahoo campus want to keep their users from jumping to Google and so to avoid a situation when the dial will become reality the majority of Yahoo users have already been switched to using Google on regular base just like those 65-70% of people who do it now.


I find it's interesting to watch how Yahoo will try to avoid such frustration situation.

Translate documents: sharing across languages and generations

Now this is huge! I've been waiting for this feature for a while as it does seem logically as Google already has translation tool, why not to integrate it with Google Docs? And finally it'd happened.

Translate documents: sharing across languages and generations: "My cousin is in first grade and sometimes she writes short stories for class. I try to share the stories with her grandparents, but because Japanese is their first language and they don't speak English very well, it's been tough. Today we're releasing a feature for Google Docs to make this kind of multi-lingual sharing easier � you can now automatically translate documents into 42 different languages.


So for my cousin's latest story, I helped her type it up in Google Docs and then clicked 'Translate document' from the 'Tools' menu. In a matter of seconds, Google Docs has translated the whole story into Japanese using Google Translate's technology.




You can replace the original document with the translation or make a new translated version. I like keeping an English version for friends here and creating a separate Japanese version for her grandparents. All the formatting and layout is preserved no matter what language it's in � translations aren't perfect, but we are continuously working on improving translation quality over time. We hope this new feature helps you more easily share information without worrying about language barriers.


Posted by Rita Chen, Associate Product Manager Intern, Google Docs

SEO Remains Steady While PPC, Email and Direct Increase

Another reason why SEO is a good choice when you evaluate promotional methods in current tough economy.

SEO Remains Steady While PPC, Email and Direct Increase: "
Engine Ready has released another study revealing the growth rates among various traffic referrers. While SEO showed the least amount of growth in conversion rates and value per visit, it also showed the least amount of decline in order value, which is significant in this economy.
For conversion rates and average value per visit, the data mimicked results from an earlier study conducted in 2008: big growth across the board, except for SEO.






But when Engine Ready took a look at the average order value (AOV), things had changed. PPC was no longer the highest AOV, surpassed by direct access/bookmark as well as other referrers.
SEO declined the least, which supports the theory that these changes are a reaction to the economy. While SEO does cost money if you hire a consultant or retain an in-house employee, there are no extra charges for ad buys as there would be for PPC.

Snow Leopard is coming...

I didn't expect that Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard will come that fast. I thought it will be somewhere in the middle of september but it's this Friday!!! :-)

I put into this blog title Mac OS hints and despite I haven't written anything yet I do want to share by some tricks I came across by chance or after reading through forums, helps and manuals. And sure I'm gonna dig into the difference between Leopard and Snow Leopard. Stay tuned.

Blind Search Test: You Might Be Surprised at Which Results You Prefer

Now it's very interesting point of view on the current situation with the search. And you know what? Even after reading this short article I still prefer Google as my search tool and the reason is simple it does find me the stuff I look for and I know that the guys who have been working hard in Google Campus to make Google as useful as it is still have lots of ideas for innovation and improve. It's my gut feeling.

Blind Search Test: You Might Be Surprised at Which Results You Prefer: "
Last night, I began playing around on BlindSearch, which returns results from Google, Yahoo! and Bing, but doesn't tell you which one is which. Then, you vote for the results you like the test and it reveals which search engine you chose.


BlindSearch was developed by a Microsoft employee, but not on the company dime or time. (Plus, if it was designed to trick you into liking Bing, it would be entirely too easy to prove that it was tampered with.)


I searched for things I've been searching lately. Waterproof watch, flip flops, Bahamas. (My family is going on a cruise this fall.) I was surprised at how many times Yahoo! results were the ones I liked.


Then I searched topics I'm very familiar with. 'Thyroid cancer' (was diagnosed over 6 years ago) and 'Synthroid' (which keeps me alive). The best search engine was Bing. This was also the results I felt the strongest about my vote. I know exactly which sites I would want to send people to if they got thyroid cancer and Bing ranked them the best.


It made me think - why am I searching on Google so much when the results I trust the most on topics I'm an expert on - are on Bing?!


On topics where I'm more of a casual observer, though, it was difficult to even choose a clear winner. the results are virtually identical for so many searches. The idea that Google is superior is definitely a myth.


It's clear that we're at a crossroads in search. Too many searches must be refined and the results the Big 3 engines are giving us are pretty much the same. Whoever is able to reduce task time in search will emerge as the next winner.

Make a decision using Search Engine - is it possible?

The recent presenting of Bing as a Search Engine for making decision brings up such a question as it is possible to make decisions using Search Engines as this point at all?

The real life data about using Search Engines tells us that there are 3 major types of search - navigational, commercial and informational. Let's review each of them in an attempt to answer the question I put in this post title.

• Navigational search. In a nuts shell it's about typing a website domain name as keyword when you aren't sure if you spell it correctly. With the veracity of domain names it's no wonder that people do that type of search. But certainly this kind of search doesn't lead a person to make a decision. You are already know what you gonna do when you type a domain name.
• Commercial search. These days more and more people do make a decision to purchase something based on what they read about this product or service on the Internet. Let's say I want to buy a new LCD monitor (the matter fact I do:-) ) and before going into a store and asking questions to a seller, who basically can't be objective, I turn on my Macbook, go online and start googling this product.

But wait - I don't use Google for finding information about which LCD to buy, I use for this purpose Cnet.com - in a sense, a vertical Search engine for making purchase decisions. Now this is just a one example, there are tons of products and services we purchase and sure enough - there isn't 'Cnet.com' for every single of them. You simply can't create a vertical, means dedicated to specific product or service, Search Engine for all stuff you need either purchase or sale.

So the idea to equip a regular Search Engine like Google or Bing with vertical SE abilities is an important and logical one. And Google, Bing, Ask already have so-called Shopping search function. The bottom line is at this point we can make decisions using Search Engines when it comes to shopping.

• Informational search. And this is the hardest part. When you think about an example of searching for information it's really hard to come up with the one as there are so-o-o many kinds of info we need daily and I don't think that any algorithm is capable of allowing a person to make decisions about info they look for using Search Engines. Quite frankly the day when a Search Engine will allow you to make a decision about information you look for is the one when artificial intelligent becomes reality.

Seven Common Mistakes That Cause New Advertisers To Fail

Now, this is the best summarising of PPC mistakes people do, I know it for sure cause I used to do them too when I was new to SEO business :-). Read it carefully and don't repeat these mistakes.

Seven Common Mistakes That Cause New Advertisers To Fail: "The fundamentals of a good pay-per-click campaign have not changed over the past six years. However, every single day, advertisers new to the world of PPC advertising are making the same mistakes as veterans made years ago.
You can save yourself lots of time and money by examining the mistakes of others so that you do [...]

Sharing with Google Groups

I just love how the product evolves. I still can't imagine a situation when I don't use my iWork suite for complicated docs but when it comes to sharing files at work Google Docs is superb and now it becomes even better! Period.

Sharing with Google Groups: "As more and more businesses and organizations 'go Google,' we find that many of the features we develop based on feedback from large enterprises end up benefiting all of our users. We recently rolled out improvements to the way Google Groups interacts with several of our applications. Now, sharing calendars, sites and documents with multiple people is easy � instead of adding people one at a time, you can simply share with an entire Google Group.


As an example, imagine you're organizing a local intramural softball team tournament. You use Google Docs to keep track of the rosters for each team as well as each team's performance.



You want all the players, but only the players, to have editing access. You already have a Google Group set up with the tournament participants, so you simply share the spreadsheet with the group itself, granting the group members permission to edit.




Now, when people join or leave the Google Group, they will automatically gain or lose editing access to the spreadsheet. It's that easy.


This was a feature that people wanted to 'just work' � and now it does. Go ahead and try it out with your sites, calendars and documents!


Posted by Jeffrey Chang, Associate Product Manager, Google
"

A few more bits about Ya-Bing

You know what? I guess the smartest move for Microsoft will be not to mention about Bing on any of the Yahoo products they gonna keep rolling. This way they won't push away people who used to use Yahoo Search and really not like using Bing.

Twitter to Officially Adopt ReTweeting (And You Might Not Like It)

I do not think is a good idea either, ReTweet and Tweet should be clearly distinguished. It is important as Twitter is all about personalities and people which opinion you trust and value. Check out what Nathania Johnson from Search Engine Watch has to say about it:

Twitter to Officially Adopt ReTweeting (And You Might Not Like It): "

Twitter is planning on making the act of ReTweeting an official Twitter feature. Right now, it's just some crazy phenomenon started by users. It wasn't all that far-fetched, really. People have been using @username to respond to comments on blogs for years.

However, Twitter plans to post those ReTweets in a different way. The ReTweet will appear as a regular Tweet, with the avatar of the original Tweeter and everything but underneath, it will say 'ReTweeted by so and so' in tiny text.

I do not like this idea at all. Neither does Dan Zarella, arguably the most knowledgeable of the ReTweeting trend. He has done studies on ReTweeting. He is a big ReTweeting geek (that's meant with the nicest sentiments).

Writing on his blog, Zarella explains:

I follow people because I trust and enjoy their point of view, I don't nessecarily trust the POV of people I don't follow, so using the original poster's picture and name in my timeline destroys any social proof the ReTweeter may have lent the Tweet.

I agree. I want it to be obvious when something is a ReTweet. I think I even pay attention to ReTweets more because the nature of a ReTweet is something cool and/or newsworthy or something we wish we'd said but didn't think of it.

Having said that, many people ReTweet using the 'via' formula. This happens automatically with some desktop clients. The designer behind the Twitter adoption of ReTweeting does and therefore, that must explain why she designed the new feature that way.

Twitter should just add a simple feature that allows BOTH. Let those who wish to ReTweet do so and those who wish to Via do so. Plus, Twits should be allowed to decide how they would like to view the shared Tweets. Doing away with a popular format that most likely helped spread the use of Twitter does not seem like a smart move to me.

Caffeine: A Fundamental Rewrite of Google, A Shift to Real Time

This is the post from John Battelle's SearchBlog about the next Google Update. I guess its name is pretty obvious as we all drink lots of coffee working late and so Google should drink this stuff too :-)

Caffeine: A Fundamental Rewrite of Google, A Shift to Real Time: "

Matt Cutts points to a video interview (embedded above) on Google's Caffeine infrastructure update.

'It's a pretty fundamentally big change' Matt says. What I'd like to know is why and in response to what changes on the web. Of course, the major changes in how the web works are clear: Real Time Search.

In this post (and/or this one) I said:

In short, Google represents a remarkable achievement: the ability to query the static web. But it remains to be seen if it can shift into a new phase: querying the realtime web.

It's inarguable that the web is shifting into a new time axis. Blogging was the first real indication of this, but blogging, while much faster than the traditional HTML-driven web, is, in the end, still the HTML-driven web.

Part and parcel to this shift is the web's adoption of Flash/Silverlight/Ajax - a shift to assuming the web works in real time, like an application on your desktop. That makes it damn hard to index stuff, because pages are not static, they are created in real time in response to user demand. This is a new framework for how the web works, and if Google doesn't respond to it, Google basically will become relegated to a card catalog archive of static HTML pages. No way will Google let that happen...

(By the way, one of the reasons I was impressed with Wowd was exactly because of its ability to, at scale, track a new signal in the web - the signal of what we are actually doing in real time...as opposed to the signal of the link...but more on that later.

Matt was asked if Caffeine was specifically about Real Time, and he was not totally specific about this but it's pretty obvious it is all about this shift.

Oh, and Matt says it's not because of Bing. In one way, I agree. But let's be real. Microsoft and Yahoo did this deal because Yahoo alone could never sustain the infrastructure costs associated with indexing and processing the Real Time Web. So in truth, Google did this because it had to, just like Microsoft and Yahoo did what they did because they have to. If you want to play, you have to get the infrastructure right.

Here's SEL's take on it.

Yahoo - Microsoft. Ya-Bing deal.

Well, after the epic battle which lasted 1.5 year it finally has happened - Microsoft has bought Yahoo Search. I believe now Jerry Yang is watching on this deal with pretty complicated emotions. Now I clearly remember how it was not easy for Jerry to answer on John Battelle's questions about Yahoo's future as a company, as the company which used to dominate on a market, a last autumn on Web 2.0 summit. I guess at that point he already realised that it will happen but just wanted to do his best to change the future. There is an irony at this situation, back in early 2000 I remember the moment when Yahoo search technology served MSN search and now it's vise versa - Bing will do search for Yahoo. Taking into account the companies size and the number of products they have, good or bad ones, it's a real challenge to combine it. Here are few key points to highlight:

Who has won?

Basically you hear two opinions about it from industry analytics - Microsoft and...Google :-) But none of them points to Yahoo as the winner. Obviously, Yahoo has thrown a towel, they simply do not have a vision about the search and its future and they don't have the right team to beat Google and offer a superior solution and superior search experience for people. It's hard to say if there was a better way for them to go instead of selling the search to Microsoft. From what's known about this deal Microsoft will handle all search technology and will do all necessary R & D, Yahoo will do marketing, sales with big clients. The only benefit for Yahoo which is visible at this point is that Microsoft will pay Yahoo for search results gradually but nobody can predict will this deal do what Microsoft and Yahoo expect from it in a future?

A point which is being made about why Google might be the one who's achieved from this deal the most is the following. Before this deal took place we had 5 major players on the Search market - Google (65% of the market), Yahoo (~20%), MSN/Bing (~10..11%), AOL (~4), Ask (~2%). After the deal - only four: Google, Yahoo+Bing, AOL and ASk, and remember that AOL gets its search results from Google and, so roughly speaking, Google has ~70% of a market share and so we will have only 3 players. Now again we have to realize that before this deal will happen technically at least a year should went by and so Google will have a great opportunity to gain even bigger market share, today's Yahoo Search and Bing users, who is and will become aware of the situation with Yahoo, will likely prefer Google as a reliable and superior search tool. I really don't know how much market share will be left for Bing+Yahoo to gain in 2010...

Brands and Products.

What about tools like Flickr, Yahoo Local Search, Yahoo Maps, Yahoo Mail? At this point their future is not clear. Will Microsoft pick up their development with it's own developers team or let people, who has dedicated several years of their life to its development, to continue to work on these products. We don't know yet.

The search interface. Which way to go?

As I see it there are two possible ways - to leave Yahoo GUI as it's now and feed it with Bing search results and perhaps to put a little note 'Powered by Bing' or completely surpress Yahoo interface with the Bing one. It's no brainer that the first option is better but quite frankly GUI is the strongest advantage Bing has and it makes sense to use it for Yahoo Search as well. But if we can forget about technical details for ordinary people who might not know about this deal at all it's better to keep things intact. Imagine millions of Yahoo users one morning will try to perform a routine search and they won't see Yahoo GUI they've got used to! What will be their reaction?!

FTC approve

When it comes to a deal of that scale of course FTC is interested to investigate it and evaluate if anti-monopoly measures should be taken. So potentially a situation when they say 'No' and Microsoft and Yahoo will have to decide what to do with the deal is quite possible.

AardVark -The serious move towards Real Time Search.

Nobody and me either would argue that we live in ara when Google = Search. And it's far more than just a search tool but after 11 years of incredible grow it still can't address one simple but at the same time hard thing - Real Time Search. No, I'm not gonna devote this post to Twitter as for Twitter being a real time search tool is more of supplemental benefit it is not its main purpose. I'm gonna talk about AardVark .

Well, if you don't watch the Animal Planet here is the short WikiPedia dig about what its name stands for - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aardvark and here is why this online service got its name - http://vark.com/help#about_4. Aardvark or just Vark is built on a simple idea of a volunteer collaboration on things, problems or sharing a piece of mind with either your friends, colleagues or completely strangers but still your friends in terms of tastes, common interests. Despite this service is quite new and not widely known, which is just a matter of time, it's fair to outline several purposes for what AardVark is useful:

1. You have a question but you don't know how exactly to search for it in Google. I mean you don't know the right keywords to lead you to the information you've been looking for. And so you basically you ask for help to Aardvark community, there are huge chances that other AardVark users do know the right keywords to search for the info and they will give you the right answer.
2. You don't have a time to search for information as you've tried but failed on your first shot in Google - wrong keywords you chose didn't return anything close to the stuff you expected to find. AardVark users may know the answer right away and will give it to you almost instantly.
3. You need a piece of information about a time sensitive matter, in this case Google or, for Christ sake, Bing don't have any information, which is related to a time frame like today/ yesterday / couple days ago but AaardVark community may have this kind of information.

And finally one of the strongest AardVark advantages is you do not have to stick to its site to answer or ask questions, the system will hook up to your GTalk / AIM / MSN contact list and will forward you questions or answers about the topics you specified in your profile as the ones you have expertise for or you just feel confidence to give a peace of mind about those topics. I'm sure you will love

SEO of your site - why bother?

I remember the first time I faced with Search Engine Optimization, at that time back in early 2001 even the term itself wasn’t well known and basically SEO didn’t exist. Website owners had heard of meta tags and they thought that stuffing meta tags and a website page with keywords was enough to achieve groundbreaking results in terms of ranking on Google, Yahoo, AOL, MSN, AltaVista ( I hope people are still familiar with this pre dinosaur age Search Engine).

Well it’s sad but still true that there are some website owners who are up till now think of SEO as a process of stuffing a website page with keywords or worse - consider SEO either a hoax or simply time wasting practice.

But today the reality is almost screaming about the fact that well professional, based on practice, which Google and Yahoo suggest to follow, Search Engine Optimization is what almost any, except well known brands, site needs. Of course banner ads and email marketing do still exist and perhaps won’t disappear any time soon but these two promotional channels simply can not compete with Search Engines in terms of ROI and bringing quality traffic to a site.

This statement was true several years ago and as time goes by it becomes more and more correct and crucial. And now consider this fact - the Internet grows constantly and it means that more and more businesses go online and therefore they bring more and more competitiveness on a market.

Having your site optimized for Search Engines to get traffic does not mean that you suppose to stress on topics of your site that corresponde to highly competitive keywords. Quite frankly - you, as an owner of a brand new site, do not have much of chances to compete with other sites on the same highly competitive keywords. Your job is just like with a regular marketing - find a competitive, winning feature, that makes your product or service unique and use this feature full potential. And it’s always good to repeat old Apple Inc. slogan - ‘Think different!’

Twitter. Have we carried away a bit?

I bet at this very moment you have Twitter.com opened in your browser or in some application which allows you to post what you have to say about your job, personal stuff, about pretty much anything you want to share with the world.

Well, I do the same every other day but sometimes when I read articles, check different directories which offer to increase a number of your followers I wonder if anybody remember the initial idea which stands behind the Twitter?

Let’s check what Wikipedia tells us - ‘Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that enables its users to send and read messages known as tweets.’ Social networking means Twitter is the tool to keep in contact with your relatives, co-workers, clients, any people you deal with in your online or offiline life.

But you won’t find anywhere neither on Twitter itself nor on Wikipedia that you have to participate in all sorts of ‘increase your followers number’ movements. It is nonsense! Once again we witness a process which took place earlier with MySpace and then with Facebook - abusing the original idea.

For me it’s another signal which speaks to the fact that as the Internet evolves a competition between commercial sites grow and people who run their online businesses grab ANY idea, these days it’s about social networking sites, to benefit from it.

I’m quite happy with getting more or less followers in a completely natural way - if somebody is interested in what I’m talking in my tweets he follows me, otherwise - he doesn’t. As simple as that.