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Saturday, March 27, 2004

More Insight into MSN's Pending Search Technology

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 1:26 PM

MSN has released new information on its forthcoming search technology.

MSN Blogbot & Newsbot
MSN product manager, Karen Redezki told Matt Hicks of eWeek that MSN will be launching a blog and news service to the public before its new algorithmic search engine is released.

The blog search is appears to be receiving a major focus of MSN so you can expect significant innovation in this release. MSN is even holding a Social Computing Symposium which will feature blog technology brainstorming.

MSN's news search technology coined Newsbot has even broader implications as it appears that MSN will be folding in the first generation of personalization technology. According to a Mercury News article the personalization technology to be included is currently being developed under the name "NewsJunkie" by senior Microsoft researchers Eric Horvitz and Susan Dumais. "Using principles of artificial intelligence and information retrieval, NewsJunkie keeps track of what a reader has already seen. It reorganizes news stories to rank those with the most new information at the top and push those with repetitive information to the bottom, or filter them out entirely." (writer Kristi Heim, Mercury News)

MSN Answerbot
MSN appears to be close on the heals of AskJeeves with its own version of Jeeve's natural language processing engine. Normally I would say that this is nothing for Jeeve's to worry about (considering their vast experience with this technology), however, it appears that the NewsJunkie personalization technology will be integrated into the Answerbot engine. Will this truly affect the results of an inquiry? I am not certain considering that AskJeeves provides extremely relevant results within its current processing engine without the aid of such technology (as far as I know).

In Summary
All in all, it appears that Microsoft is jumping into the personalization game with its characteristically fierce gusto. Will they strike gold with their personalization technology instantly or will there be a ream of familiar technology updates? I know that I am leaning towards the latter, however, the StepForth team will be sure to keep you apprised.

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 1:26 PM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: More Insight into MSN's Pending Search Technology

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Yahoo! Gets Bigger - Watch Out Stay Puff!

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 12:24 PM

On March 26, 2004, Yahoo! announced the pending purchase of the european comparison shopping portal Kelkoo.com.

According to Terry Semel, chariman and CEO of Yahoo!,"Kelkoo will add depth and breadth to Yahoo!'s integrated network of services for consumers, and adds another set of powerful tools for marketers seeking to reach them." He also explained the purchase in more detail: "commerce has emerged as a key component of search, and the combination of Web search, product search and comparison shopping will help further Yahoo!'s goal to create the most comprehensive and best user experience on the Web globally." That is 7 out of 8 notches for Yahoo!'s bid to match Google's formidable technology toolkit;

1 for directory search (their one founding element)
2 for creating their own search engine spider (Inktomi being version 1)
3 for Image Search
4 for News Search
5 for implementing their own Pay-Per-Click Model (started with Overture)
6 for comparison shopping search engine (adding Kelkoo should improve their existing technology - when the sale is final)
7 for Groups Search (Yahoo! Groups)
8... what are they missing here? Yahoo! still does not have its own clearly defined Blog system!There were rumors back around August or September that they were hunting down potential technology investments, however, it does not appear anything came from it. The only site that Yahoo! does have in place for blogging is in Korea at kr.blog.yahoo.com which is perhaps a hint at a future implementation to Yahoo.

Currently blogs.yahoo.com is referred to the groups.yahoo.com site... I can only hope that this is a temporary solution and one that will be remedied soon.

Are you interested in keeping up on all of the nuances of Yahoo!? There are many nuances with any company as large as Yahoo! and I found a site that does a decent job of keeping up to date on the latest news and gossip: http://yahoo.weblogsinc.com/

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 12:24 PM.

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View this Article Only: Yahoo! Gets Bigger - Watch Out Stay Puff!

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Friday, March 19, 2004

Google and Yahoo :: What works well and what won't

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:19 AM

Last week I wrote about how we plan out our search engine placement campaigns. The past few months have been an interesting time in the world of search engine marketing but now the dust seems to be settling. Google has appeared relativity stable for the past month and the SEM world now has a better handle on the submission fees introduced by Yahoo two weeks ago. Now that we have survived the changes and absorbed an extraordinary amount of information we need to adapt to the new basic steps required to achieve the Top Placements on Google and Yahoo, the two most important places to place. There are a few new basic rules webmasters and search engine optimizers need to know and a number of old-rules that remain important. There are a few new techniques that may cost client's money if you choose to pursue them. There are also a number of new loopholes worth looking at, some of which might save you or your clients a great deal of money.

Google's Newest Needs
Google remains the only major search engine that does not mix paid-submission/inclusion results with its traditional (or organic) listings. Submission to Google is easily accomplished by either simply providing a link to the website from another site already in Google's database, or by directing Google to the INDEX page of the site by entering the URL here. Before submitting the site to Google, there are several elements you will want to pay attention to.

1/ Make certain the titles and description tags match the content. The best titles include an incident of the targeted keyword phrase for search engine spiders to consume and also include the specific topic of the page in question. The description should contain several phrases culled from the body text of the page. The keyword meta tag should include popular misspellings of specific keywords.

2/ Google-Bot follows text links. Be certain the website is open to full spidering by including text links to every major page in the site either through a sitemap appended to the end of the website, or through a text-based navigation map generally found at the bottom of each page in the site. For larger sites, it is a best practice to include both mapping techniques.

3/ Obtain as many relevant incoming links as possible. This step is critically important as the "new" Google places very high weight on the number and quality of incoming links. Recently, several sites with high page-ranks have taken to selling links, thus making links a commodity. While Google officially frowns on the purchasing of links, sometimes spending money on a large set of links is what it takes to get the strong placements at Google. Costs can range from $250/month to over $5000/month. These costs must be weighed against the benefits of a Top10 listing at Google but, if sufficient ROI is there, spending the money may be the best option.

4/ Update important pages in the website frequently. Google continues to reward sites with fresh content that is updated on a fairly regular basis. At StepForth, we use our news and blog sections to accomplish this.

Yahoo's New Needs
Yahoo has changed significantly in the past few months, most notably in that Yahoo is now its own search engine and does not display data culled from outside sources. That said, Yahoo has a large number of internal resources to call upon. Last year, Yahoo purchased many of the most well known search tools including Overture, Alta Vista, AlltheWeb, and the Inktomi database. Yahoo has consolidated the various submission programs offered across the network of search-sites it now owns. This consolidation was the topic of last week's feature article in this space. Before submitting to Yahoo and its family of sites, webmasters and SEOs should be certain the following elements have been optimized efficiently. Webmasters should keep in mind that in some cases, a live-human will review the site so before submitting to Yahoo, double check the content and optimization work.

1/ Much like any other search engine, Yahoo pays close attention to the title and description meta tags, looking for topical relevancy in both elements. As with Google, the best titles include at least one target keyword phrase and a mention of the specific topic addressed by the page the title is applied to. Similarly, a well written description tag is important to Yahoo. Lastly, while we would not spend too much energy on the keyword meta tag as it does not carry much power, we believe Yahoo gives the keyword meta tag a bit of relevance.

2/According to Overture (owned by Yahoo) spokesperson Jennifer Stephens, Yahoo's spider, SLURP, will act much like Google-bot in that it will follow each text-link it sees on a site and record the information on the pages it finds. It is therefore extremely important that webmasters and SEOs leave clear paths through the website for Yahoo's spider to follow.

3/ Keyword densities had a fairly significant effect at Inktomi and that seems to have carried through to Yahoo. Keyword densities refers to the ratio between the number of keywords as measured against non-keywords used in the body text, title, link-anchor text, and meta tags. This ratio can vary from sector to sector but is often a key in getting better placements than your competitors.

4/ Submissions to Yahoo are radically different today than they were in years past. Last week's article discussed paid submissions to Yahoo via Overture's Site Match and Site Match XChange programs. Yahoo also allows for unpaid submissions but does not respider sites that have not paid submission fees nearly as often as it respiders sites that do pay the fees. Since it costs so much to submit to Site Match, have your site reviewed, and you still have to pay a per-click fee for each click-through, webmasters of sites that will not change frequently might want to take advantage of the free-submit option. Here's the big tip on Free-Submit at Yahoo, submit each page in the site, one by one. You should probably space this process out over a few days just to keep the folks at Yahoo from thinking you are taking advantage of them. ;)

These are just a few of the rules as we read them this week. Please remember that this is a time of flux and these rules may change in the coming weeks as both Google and Yahoo tighten their algorithms. There is always the chance that Yahoo will make changes to its submission and click-through fee structure as well.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:19 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Google and Yahoo :: What works well and what won't

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Google looks local

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:16 AM

Google is beta testing an extraordinary new tool, Google Local Search. The test is limited to sites from the United States but, if and when Google introduces this feature internationally, it could pose a serious challenge to the publishers of local Yellow Pages directories.

Results from Google Local Search are divided into three column. The first shows the name and phone number of listings. The second column shows the street address. The third column is the most interesting as it displays the website the listing was culled from along with a link to related sites. As a Canadian and a child of the 1980's, one of the only US zip codes I know by heart is "90210". As a 14 hour a day IT worker, one of the most important uses of the Yellow Pages is finding a good pizza delivery. Combining the two produced this list.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:16 AM.

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MSN Inks New LookSmart Deal

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:15 AM

MSN has inked a deal with LookSmart to display LookSmart results in place of Inktomi results from time to time. The deal, which was finalized early this week, allows MSN to transfer from results drawn from the Inktomi database to results fed by LookSmart whenever MSN feels it is necessary, for whatever reason.

One of the easiest ways of telling if the results you see on MSN are from LookSmart is to look in the top right hand corner of the results page and see the number of sites associated with the keyword phrase. If the number is smaller, the results are most likely drawn from LookSmart. At this time, it is not known why MSN would want to draw results from LookSmart, however the deal does add much needed revenue to LookSmart's beleaguered bottom line.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:15 AM.

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PPC Thoughts: Is Google AdWords Right for a New Online Business? (by Scott Van Achte - PPC Manager)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:15 AM

So you have just opened the doors to your new online business. You website is still too new to generate any traffic from the search engines. So while you are waiting for your site to be spidered and indexed, what can you do to start driving customers through the doors?

The first thing I would suggest is start with an aggressive link building campaign. Whenever you have any spare time, try to seek out some extra incoming links. This will ensure that not only are you spidered sooner and more frequently, but also once you are indexed that you will rank higher in the se’s.

But this article isn’t about link building, so I will stop there. The real question is, should you, or should you not dive into AdWords, or any PPC Campaign for that matter? Weather or not to advertise with a PPC Engine really depends on a lot of things, your advertising budget, market competitiveness, and even overall site design.

Before starting any paid advertising campaign, double check to ensure that your site is ready for traffic. Check for the obvious things like dead links, but more importantly how is the navigation on your site? Assume that when a user comes to your site they know nothing about you or your products. How easy is it to find answers to any questions they may have? If they have to hunt around chances are they will go elsewhere and you will be out your 25 cents for the click. Make sure your site is user friendly before investing too much into PPC.

How competitive are your main keywords? If your website is small, chances are you wont be willing to pay two dollars a click. I would suggest coming up with a list of as many relevant keywords as possible. Check on Overture to see how much these keywords are going for, and keep all the inexpensive ones. These cheaper keywords will probably draw much less traffic, however this traffic is likely to be more qualified and less expensive! And for a new business starting out, less expensive is definitely a good thing.

If your new company targets a specific market niche that few online retailers cater to, I say go with PPC until your natural listings appear. These keywords are likely to be very inexpensive, and the traffic will be highly qualified.

What it truly all comes down to though, is your advertising budget. PPC advertising for a new business is sort of a chicken and egg thing. You don’t have the revenue to pay for advertising, but with out advertising you wont make any sales. If you are able to target some low cost 5-10 cent words, even a budget of five dollars a day may bring in some sales and help to get the ball rolling.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:15 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: PPC Thoughts: Is Google AdWords Right for a New Online Business? (by Scott Van Achte - PPC Manager)

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Weekly Quick Tip: The Google Basket (by Dave Davies - Sales and Marketing Manager)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:14 AM

At some point or another we have all heard the old adage, “Don’t put all your eggs in one basket.” Until very recently site owners, webmasters, SEO’s, and pretty much anyone who had anything to do with the Internet was concerned with marketing on one property: Google.

This made a lot of sense. Google sold it’s results to many engines including Yahoo which meant that it provided the results for about 80% of all worldwide searches. While putting all one’s eggs in one basket may not be exceptionally wise, this basket was so large, and so rich, that there didn’t seem to be much choice. Constantly we at StepForth would get calls from people wanting to know how to get their rankings higher on Google, with little or no concern for the “other engines”.

But today things are different. Yahoo now shows it’s own results as opposed to Google’s. MSN now gets its results from Inktomi (ironically, Inktomi is owned by Yahoo). Google’s popularity, as far as % of searches performed on its database, has significantly declined.

The latest Nielson NetRatings (January 2004) show that while Google is still in the lead, it is no longer the dominating power that it once was. Google is currently the search engine destination for 39.4% of all searchers with Yahoo coming in second with 30.4% and MSN at 29.6%. In fact, if we consider that Yahoo owns Inktomi and that MSN draws its results from Inktomi, Yahoo is now the strongest force in the search world.

What is important to conclude from this is that, while Google is still a highly relevant and important factor in optimizing your website, it is no longer the end-all-be-all. There are now 3 major players. Of these three the trends seem to show that Google will further decline, Yahoo will continue to grow it’s properties and influence, and MSN will be launching its own search engine in the next year-or-so, which will further shake things up as Microsoft makes a major play on the search engine market.

For those of you who have until recently, been concerned only with Google, it’s time to move some of your eggs before the basket shrinks too much and your eggs hit the floor.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:14 AM.

Copyright ©2006-2012, The SEO News Blog, StepForth SEO Services
View this Article Only: Weekly Quick Tip: The Google Basket (by Dave Davies - Sales and Marketing Manager)

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Tuesday, March 16, 2004

Changes Afoot

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 5:12 PM

Moments ago our PPC Expert, Scott Van Achte caught a quick preview of the latest Google rankings; it appears there is a serious Google Dance happening at this very moment. We noticed drastic differences in backlinks (link popularity) and placements. In our case, our links popped from 220 to over 750 in mere moments but then they were back to 220 a few minutes later.

It is clear that Google is updating their datacenters so brace yourself for a new round of havoc... lets hope this one is spam-free.

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 5:12 PM.

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Friday, March 12, 2004

LookSmart Listings Linger on MSN - by Brian Morrissey - DMNEWS

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 3:30 PM

LookSmart has signed a deal with Microsoft for MSN to display LookSmart search results at times. The recent agreement, which LookSmart announced yesterday, leaves it up to MSN to decide when to use the listings.
On Jan. 15, MSN officially eliminated the directory layer of its search results, after terminating its agreement with LookSmart to display its paid inclusion listings. In paid inclusion, advertisers pay to have their Web sites included in indexes, though relevancy determines ranking.

"After the end of that relationship, MSN wanted to continue using LookSmart search results as they transition to their new search solution," said Dakota Sullivan, LookSmart's vice president of marketing.

Sullivan said the directory listings still appear occasionally, and LookSmart did not know how long MSN would continue to use them.

"Whether that takes them a week, a month or the rest of the year, that's up to them," he said.

The loss of Microsoft staggered LookSmart, wiping away the source of two-thirds of its revenue. The San Francisco-based company shut its United Kingdom office and said it planned to cut its staff 50 percent. It also replaced its CEO, Jason Kellerman, with Damian Smith on an interim basis. LookSmart's board of directors is searching for a permanent replacement.

To cushion the blow from losing Microsoft, LookSmart began a paid search service in October. The company said the new offering is doing better than expected, thanks to offering lower click rates than search providers like Google and Overture.

"Search marketing has become so popular that there's been such an influx of major advertisers accustomed to paying network TV rates ... for many advertisers who have been doing search marketing for a year or two, they can't get an ROI from that," Sullivan said.

Following the lead of search companies like FindWhat.com, LookSmart has focused on second- and third-tier search sites to distribute its listings. While the top four search sites handle about 75 to 80 percent of all search queries, hundreds of smaller sites account for the rest. Sullivan said LookSmart sifts these sites to find the ones that have quality traffic.

"We're trying to bring the same sort of rigor that Overture and Google bring to this tier of traffic," he said.

LookSmart's distribution network has 75 sites including SearchFeed, myGeek and Brainfox. Though such sites have smaller audiences, they provide quality leads at a price lower than on Google and Overture, Sullivan said.

"There's a need in the marketplace for the same high-quality traffic that converts at a lower cost," he said. In a typical category, Sullivan estimates that LookSmart advertisers can pay 20 to 25 percent less for a lead than the same listing on Google or Overture.

Thanks to paid search growing 25 percent compared with a year ago as well as the fruits of its cost-cutting efforts, LookSmart raised its financial guidance for the first quarter. It now expects $21 million to $23 million in sales, up from $16 million to $18 million. Net loss, not including stock compensation, is forecast at $10 million to $12 million with $4 million to $5 million in restructuring costs. This is down from previous guidance of a $12 million to $14 million net loss and a $5 million to $6 million restructuring charge.

Sullivan said LookSmart had not seen widespread advertiser defections since the end of the MSN deal. The company no longer reports its advertiser base. In October, it said it had 32,000 advertisers.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 3:30 PM.

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View this Article Only: LookSmart Listings Linger on MSN - by Brian Morrissey - DMNEWS

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Something's Happening at Google

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 11:41 AM

Check out Google's directory against the page rank numbers delivered by the Google ToolBar. Something is happening at Google and we should see the effects in the coming days.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 11:41 AM.

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Seach Engine Marketing Campaign Planning

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:34 AM

The search engine marketing environment is undergoing enormous changes as the industry and the Internet mature. The changes we've seen over the past six months are only the tip of a much larger iceberg as new technologies and innovations on established ideas radically alter how we look for information and how that information is delivered to us by search engines. For marketers and advertisers in the traditional world of print and broadcast media, change happens slowly, generally with enough warning to allow for long-term decisions and campaign planning. On the Internet however, change happens at light-speed and alterations to search engine algorithms, fees, services and listing distribution can literally happen overnight. These rapid changes present several planning issues for search engine advertisers and the marketers who represent them, especially for those running active campaigns.

"It is a bad plan that admits of no modification." - Publilius Syrus (~100 BC)

Most readers will remember November 16th, the day the Florida Update was implemented at Google. In less than 48-hours, Google's results were radically altered and literally millions of websites which enjoyed prominent placements appeared to vanish from Google's listings. Two months later, Google made another obvious tweak to their algo, resulting in more changes and dislocation of many websites. Last week, Yahoo announced a conglomeration of its paid-inclusion and cost-per-click programs that continues to create buzz in the SEM world. Six days ago, Ask.Com announced the acquisition of the once popular search engine Excite. Today, Yahoo unveiled a local-search feature that combines maps with search results. Sometime in the coming months, MSN is going to unveil its own, proprietary search engine. In short, there is so much going on it is difficult for anyone, even the professional search engine marketers to keep up. Imagine trying to outline a six-month campaign or trying to explain the impact of these changes to a client. While the best laid plans of mice and men often produce unexpected outcomes, it is still very important to map out your plans and intentions for a search engine placement campaign. Here's a glimpse into our planning process as it works today (March 10, 2004).

"If anything is certain, it is that change is certain. The world we are planning for today will not exist in this form tomorrow." - Philip Crosby, Reflections on Quality

Step 1 :: Keyword and Competition Research (2 - 6 hours)
These may seem like separate steps but in our methodology, they must be conducted in conjunction with each other. As search engine marketers, our perceptions of what constitutes a competitive businesses is often slightly different from those of our clients. While ABC Widgets and XYZ Widgets may have a fierce rivallry for clients in the mainstream world one or the other might not have a website or they might not be competing for search engine placements under the exact same keyword phrases. Our idea of competition is found on Google, MSN and Yahoo under the Top10 placements for a specific keyword phrase or a set of phrases. On one hand, we don't really know who the competition is until we research the keywords we are targeting while on the other hand, the companies indicated by our client as important competitors often help us find keyword phrases to research, recommend and target.

Step 2 :: Cost Benefit Analysis (2 - 4 hours)
Every day for the past seven days I have fielded phone calls from concerned clients. This week they are thinking about the new fee structure introduced by Yahoo and the impending costs associated with these new fees. With Yahoo stating they will charge $0.15 to $0.30 per click for sites participating in the Site Match program, and costs between $0.15 to $1.00 per click for much larger sites feeding data to Yahoo through the Site XChange program, businesses need to know the least expensive methods of getting prominent placements. In order to provide the best possible advise, StepForth is now conducting a cost-benefit analysis for all new campaigns and will be applying this analysis to currently existing ones.

The major factors in relation to Yahoo/Overture placements involve the actual costs associated with the new fee structure. Even after signing up for Site Match, paying the review fee and agreeing to the cost-per-click fees that will be charged against the listing, Top20 placements will still depend on good site optimization. As any honest SEO will tell you, search engine optimization is a kin to loading dice. Getting the placement is still a roll of the dice but at least we can help weigh those dice on your behalf. So, SEO is a good bet for front page placement at Yahoo but we know of a 100% sure bet, Overture. There are several examples where the cost-per-click charges that will be imposed by Yahoo will be higher than the third place bid-per-click at Overture. With the top3 bidded listings at Overture displayed on the front page of Yahoo and other Yahoo owned search engines, the best option for our client (in this scenario) would obviously be to pursue Overture advertising and avoid rolling the dice on SEO/Yahoo cost-per-click. Not only will the costs be lower, front page placement is guaranteed as long as Overture and Yahoo retain the distribution agreement that displays Overture ads at Yahoo. We have a general idea of costs existing clients will face by taking their average number of visits per day, dividing it against the approximate 41% market share Yahoo currently enjoys, and multiplying the dividend by $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the client's business sector. Please note, we realize how unscientific this method may be but it does offer our clients at least some approximation of the long-term costs of their campaigns. This is an oversimplified view of our analysis but it does express our basic premise, there is almost always a less expensive option to find for the clients.

Step 3 :: Optimize for Inktomi/Yahoo and Link Build for Google (8 - 24 hours)
Our current SEO methods have us optimizing for Inktomi / Yahoo and link-building for Google. The thinking behind this method is based on the behaviours of Yahoo, MSN and Google. Both Yahoo and MSN are currently drawing from the Inktomi database though we know this will change in April as Yahoo will be drawing from its own database, (which will likely be drawn from sites already included at Inktomi). According to Overture spokesperson Jennifer Stephens, Yahoo-Slurp (Yahoo's spider) will act much like its famous cousin Google-bot by crawling sites, following every link found, and incorporating the information found on these pages into its database of spidered sites. Google-bot continues to work the way it always has but the information it gathers is being measured in different ways than it was before. Links are the most important factor (of nearly 100 unique factors) to Google rankings. Assuming the site is well optimized for Yahoo and Inktomi, good, strong links will produce good, strong placements at Google. It is therefore summarized simplest in the phrase "optimize for Yahoo, link-build for Google"

Step 4 :: Submit and Monitor (72 hours - 6 weeks)
After all is said and done, the site needs to be submitted to the search engines and monitored for several months to see what happens. During the second phase we conducted a cost-benefit analysis so we have a plan for how we want to submit the site and can offer reasonable expectations to our clients for the amount of time it will take to be spidered and hopefully appear in the Top20 or Top10. At this point, we begin monitoring the site on a daily basis starting 72-hours after first submission. By that time, we expect to see evidence of search-engine spiders appearing in server logs and may even see a debut placement for the site. One of the greatest benefits of a paid-inclusion program is the increased frequency of spider-visits to a website. Most paid-inclusion programs promise repeat spider visits every 48 - 72 hours, making the SEO job a bit easier as we can see the effects of tweaks in fairly short order.

An important submission note: Most search engines continue to support free-submissions however preference is shown to sites which have paid their inclusion fees with a far greater frequency of visitors. Jennifer Stephens from Overture said that sites participating in Site Match will be revisited every 48 hours while sites that are found by the Yahoo-Slurp spider and are added to the database will be revisited approximately once each month.

Step 5 :: Client/Sector Communication
In times of great change, the one constant will be people wanting to know what the heck is going on. Businesses of every size need to know how their money is being spent and what factors might effect how that money is spent. All humans react better to known quantities than they do to unknown quantities. Clients who feel broad-sided by changes are generally less than happy clients as many of us in the SEO sector found in November. Even though we were broad-sided by Google's Florida Update many clients expected us to KNOW what was going on. One of our saving-graces at StepForth was our level of communication with clients and the fact that we honestly stated that we did now know but would work to find out. Always tell the truth to your clients. They will never accept it if you try to bluff your way through but will almost always accept honest answers, even if they don't particularly like the facts (or lack thereof) presented to them. When major change happens, we write about it here and issue a client-wide bulletin.

Change Happens
The information age has brought about the greatest changes to human interaction since the end of the Dark Ages. The information age, as an era is less than fifty years old. Change happens very quickly these days and that pace of change is quadrupled on the Internet. Even in the midst of rapid change, planning is the best part of execution. Aside from providing a loose road-map, the very act of planning helps perfect your plans.

"In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable." - Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890 - 1969)

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:34 AM.

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View this Article Only: Seach Engine Marketing Campaign Planning

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Are These the Next Search Engine Candidates for Acquisition? (by Ross Dunn)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:31 AM

About one month ago we noticed that a healthy chunk of our traffic was coming from a search engine in China called Baidu.com. In this case the actual site was mp3.baidu.com and the search engine had honed in on Jim Hedger's mp3 recorded interview with the BBC regarding Google's possible IPO. Since StepForth primarily promotes english-oriented search engines, this was the first time we had ever seen Baidu.com. So we decided to do a little digging on this search engine. Now according to an article from Reuters found on ZDNet, Baidu is among a host of Chinese search engines that are looking to make a dent in the search engine industry! In fact, the CEO of an up and coming search property bought by Yahoo! in November (anyone left out there?) said that his job is to "kick Google's ass."

The three main contenders in China are Baidu.com (a Google duplicate),Yahoo subsidiary 3721.com and Zhongsou.com (roughly translated as "China search"). Each company is profitable and partakes in pay per click advertising in some form with up to 80% of total revenues from sponsored links.

At this time analysts say that Baidu.com appears to be the best candidate for acquisition by Google since it broke into the black at 2003 year end. Baidu.com is also the most established brand which will likely make it more appealing when Google decides it wants another sibling.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:31 AM.

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AskJeeves Gets Some Muscle (by Ross Dunn)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:29 AM

Further to my AskJeeves Exclusive posted last week there have been some significant changes in the AskJeeves empire. For one thing it doubled in size on March 5th as it bought Interactive Search Holdings, a privately held company in Irvington N.Y. with over $100 million in annual revenues and 200 employees for between $362 million US. Interactive currently owns a family of popular web sites including Excite.com and iWon.com. As of this purchase, Ask owns the "12th-busiest group of Web sites in January, attracting a total of 23.8 million unique visitors, according to comScore Media Metrix, a research firm. AskJeeves ranked as the 26th popular destination with 15.6 million visitors." (from CNews) With this purchase, AskJeeves has just increased its market share to approximately 7% of the search engine industry, a significant leap from the 3.1% that it had as of November 2003.

In my March 3rd interview with Jim Lanzone, VP of product management at AskJeeves, Jim mentioned that AskJeeves "strategy is to grow" and that Ask plans on "going it alone" by focusing on "our technology, partnerships and user base." I now have no doubt that he was inwardly chuckling as he told me that considering the momentous changes only days away. In any case, Ask is now in a better position to make some ripples in the Google/Yahoo ocean, it should be very interesting to see what happens next.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:29 AM.

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Norton Renders AdWords Advertising Useless (by Scott Van Achte)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:29 AM

For those that dislike advertising and pop-ups Norton Internet Security 2004 is a dream come true, but for advertisers it could be your worst nightmare...

The newest version of Norton Personal Firewall includes a new web assistant that allows users to block ads and pop-ups, this setting is turned on by default and is stirring up some controversy, but how does this affect the PPC world?

For an advertiser running a Google AdWords campaign, you may be losing out on potential traffic when a user performs a search on Google, AdWords and sponsored listings become un-clickable! If the Searcher has Norton Personal Firewall 2004 installed, and the ad blocker option is selected, (turned on by default), the searcher will see a mutated version of your ad. All titles are removed and the remainder of the add is left un-clickable. Probably the biggest problem with this is that ad impressions will still be recorded by Google. Since payment isn’t by the impression, this doesn’t cost the advertiser anything directly, but indirectly not only do you lose the chance at a potential sale, it reduces your Click Through Rate, effectively reducing your ranked position.

Google AdWords are probably the best known target, but by no means does this stop there. Featured sites on MSN, Sponsored sites on Yahoo (supplied by Overture), paid advertising on many other sites, as well as banner advertising are all affected, as are many affiliate links.

I suspect that Google is working on a fix for this problem, as it only seems fitting to do so. Unfortunately I was unable to reach David Krane, public relations manager at Google by press time to get verification.

Until a fix is announced at Google to prevent Norton from disabling AdWords links, there is little that can be done from an advertiser standpoint. My best advice at this time is to continue to focus on well-targeted ad copy. Well-written ad copy is essential to draw the attention of the user, if you write an ad that is focused enough you may get the odd searcher that is determined to type your URL into the address bar, however, this is unlikely to draw much traffic.

If you run an affiliate website and are concerned that your links are being blocked by Norton, I suggest contacting your affiliate manager to see if they have developed any solutions.

The most notable problem with Norton’s new ad blocking techniques is that at times it will inadvertently block non-ad related material. If your Site Logos or header images fall within a set of specific dimensions it will be flagged as a banner and removed from your site. In order to be effective at ad blocking, something will have to be done to solve this.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:29 AM.

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High PageRank Links (by Dave Davies)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:28 AM

We all know that incoming links are an important part of any search engine placement strategy. Exchanging reciprocal links is one of the easiest ways to attain links to your website from other webmasters and there are many sites out there willing to exchange links with you. That said, not all of them are valuable links that will benefit you – so where do you find them?

A great place to start is the Google Directory. The best thing about the Google Directory is that when you are viewing the top sites there it ranks them in order of PageRank with the highest PR sites being listed at the top. (Click here for a definition of PageRank and why it is important.) You can visit the Google Directory at http://directory.google.com.

Once you have found your category, finding the links is relatively simple. Let’s assume that you run a fitness website. You would go through their directory until you landed at Health > Fitness. There are a number of sub-categories here and I would recommend checking them all out. The sub-category “Directories” will probably produce many leads for link-building but outside that you would click on all the sub-category links and visit the top sites in each category. For example, if we click the “Aerobics” link you will be taken to http://directory.google.com/Top/Health/Fitness/Aerobics/ where you will find the top site is http://www.aquafunfitness.com/ with a PageRank of 7. Right near the top of the page they have a link to their “Links Page”. You’ve just found yourself a good link, all’s that’s left is to email the webmaster and request the link exchange.

Now repeat as necessary.

I should note that it’s not always quite as simple as this case where the #1 site has a links page. Sometimes you will go through many sites just to find a few that exchange or give out links. This can be a time consuming process but done right, and in conjunction with a solid site optimization, it can yield fantastic results.

I sincerely hope that this helps you in your link-building endeavors. For additional information on link building you can check out an article on our site at http://news.stepforth.com/2003-news/link-building-for-top-placements.html. There you will find additional tips for finding the kind of links that will help your site attain the rankings you need.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:28 AM.

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Thursday, March 04, 2004

Yahoo! Introduces Paid-Inclusion Program

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 3:00 PM

The search engine marketplace has undergone significant changes over the past 18-months but yesterday's news from Yahoo! marks a turning point in the industry. Timed to coincide with the New York Search Engine Strategies conference, Yahoo announced a massive increase in paid inclusion fees and distribution of results. While Yahoo! and Overture issued press releases through their public relations firm, Fleishman-Hillard, their affiliates and resellers such as Position-Tech and Trellian issued press releases of their own, creating a confusing and at times messy mountain of uninformative information. Countless calls and articles later, we think we have deciphered meaning within the morass. The bottom line is, search engine advertising is about to become a lot more expensive. How these new expenses will impact the search engine marketplace in the long-run remains to be seen but the impact on websites with lower advertising budgets will be enormous.

Yahoo's distribution reach is massive. Since it began displaying results from its own search engine in place of Google results, Yahoo controls over 41% of search engine traffic either directly or through one of its six distinct search properties, Yahoo Search, Yahoo Directory, Overture, AlltheWeb, Inktomi and AltaVista. Inclusion at Yahoo is extremely important, and may become more important in the near future if AOL continues to consider Yahoo as an alternative listings provider to Google. Yahoo acquired its search engine empire over the past year through the acquisitions of Overture and Inktomi. While Yahoo's purchasing streak left it in the position of owning several powerful patents and some of the most innovative technologies, it was also left with six different (and sometimes competing) inclusion programs. It appears Yahoo is trying to consolidate these programs but the method they have chosen is eerily reminiscent of a fatally flawed fee structure LookSmart implemented in November 2002.

Yesterday's announcement centered around Yahoo's new Content Acquisition Program (CAP), which will be run by Yahoo's Overture division. CAP has two basic components, one for smaller websites, known as Site Match, and another, known as Site Match XChange for larger corporate sites. Inclusion in either component will be more expensive and will include a cost-per-click charge of $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the competitiveness of the sector the site is listed under.

Site Match
For small businesses, costs will rise considerably. Under the new fee structure, a smaller website will be required to pay the following fees:

$50 deposit (to cover cost-per-click charges)
$49 for review and indexing of the Index page from a URL
$29 for each of the next 2 - 10 pages
$10 for all subsequent pages from a unique domain

This means a minimum cost of $99 for a minimal submission with the addition of a cost-per-click charge of either $0.15 or $0.30, depending on the competitiveness of the category. The hidden fees attached to per-click charges could quickly run into the hundreds or even thousands of dollars per month if your website marketing team has done their jobs well. For example one of our clients is a small business who's site sees approximately 100 visitors per day, a reasonable figure for her sector. Accepting the 41% of web traffic figure, and assuming she was being charged the lower figure of $0.15 per click, her placement would cost her approximately $6.15 per day. Over the course of a 30-day month, that charge increases to $184.50. After 12-months, our client will pay approximately $2214.00 in click-through charges on top of the $49 submission fee and $50.00 deposit. That's a far cry from the $299 cost of being in the directory, the $39 cost of inclusion at Inktomi (placement at Yahoo until April 15), and the no-fee costs when Yahoo displayed results from Google. The only major benefit to the small advertiser is an increased frequency of visits from Yahoo's spiders which allows webmasters and SEOs to make minor tweaks and see results much faster.

Site XChange
For larger, corporate websites, the new fee structure is not as daunting or intimidating, and may provide benefits for the advertisers. Site XChange will accept all pages in a site from an XML feed detailing information about that site. Overture staff will manage these accounts and provide feedback to webmasters in order to help them improve the information they provide to help improve rankings under targeted keywords and phrases. Fees will be charged on a pay-per-click basis. Ask your webmaster or SEO for advice on establishing an XML feed, or follow this link for more information.

Costs Per Click
Washington DC based SEO Heidi Hendricks posted a breakdown of costs per category at the IHelpYouServicesForums today. She found the list at this Overture page.

Tier 1 Categories: $.15/click Adult
Automotive
Books
Computers & Software
Dating
Education & Career
Jewelry & Watches
Music & Video
Office
Other
Reference
Sports & Outdoors
Toys & Baby Equipment

Tier 2 Categories: $.30/click
Apparel
Electronics
Financial Services
Flowers, Gifts & Registry
Health, Beauty & Personal Care
Home & Garden
Professional Services
Real Estate
Telecom & Web Services
Travel

The Bottom Lines
The last time the search engine marketing world saw a fee-schedule like this one was in November 2002 when LookSmart introduced a cost-per-click charge on top of previously paid submission fees. Webmasters immediately rebelled against LookSmart and look what's happened since. That is where the comparison ends however as Yahoo is the second largest search tool in the world and placement at Yahoo is just about as essential as placement at Google. A webmaster rebellion is not likely to last very long or be successful. A better idea would be for everyone to tell Yahoo's customer service department what they think of this new pricing schedule by following this convenient link. We expect the team at Yahoo to make some changes to the fee structure of Site Match as it is obviously unfair to smaller players and will likely improve Overture's revenues at the cost of Yahoo's.

Adding a cost-per-click charge on top of a fee for inclusion might also drive smaller businesses over to Google which continues to provide the only 100% free listings available from the major search engines. This change also abruptly ends the honeymoon the "new" Yahoo has enjoyed with search engine marketers. SEOs and webmasters seemed unanimous in their praise for Yahoo's recent Google-free listings. With a massive increase in fees, many small businesses will no longer be able to afford to list in Yahoo. Several of our clients view search engine marketing as an equalizer against their larger corporate competition. This assumes all things are equal on the Internet, which is obviously untrue as all advertising budgets are not created equally.

On a darker note, Danny Sullivan has predicted that the days of free-listings are numbered, citing this move from Yahoo as his main example. With Google being the only major player not charging fees for inclusion, it is assumed that it is only a matter of time before they are forced into jumping on the fee-for-service bandwagon. Luckily, Google co-founder Larry Page criticized Yahoo's new policy yesterday saying he felt paid-inclusion has the ability to compromise the credibility of search.

For now, it appears the future is about to get a lot more expensive. Thank goodness it is at least interesting.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 3:00 PM.

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View this Article Only: Yahoo! Introduces Paid-Inclusion Program

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Overture vs. Yahoo for Small Business Budgets (By Scott Van Achte)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 2:59 PM

With all these changes surrounding Yahoo and the new Overture Site Match system, where do you stand to get the best bang for you buck as a small business?

First a quick glance at the new Site Match system. It is based on a combination of cost-per-click and paid inclusion. For $49 you can submit the first page to Site Match, for subsequent pages the cost is reduced. This will include your site within a network of engines such as Yahoo, AltaVista, AlltheWeb, Overture, all engines in the FAST network and others. But there is a catch. You will also be charged a $50 minimum deposit to go towards the new 15 to 30 cents per click charges that your listing will accumulate, and you are limited to having only the submitted pages indexed. So basically just to have your site included in the index you are looking at 49 dollars a year plus 15 to 30 cents per click, and are not guaranteed any placements what so ever.

For big companies with high advertising budgets, this may not seem so bad. But what about the little ma and pa shops? With Overture Content Match you can get nearly the same distribution, for less money and rank number one! Well, this isn’t entirely true, but for many smaller online companies who are positioned in a less competitive market this is an angle to look at.

If you are bidding on a keyword phrase that has little competition, there is a good chance that you can pay less per click for your traffic and avoid the $49 annual fee. If ‘blue widget’ is going for 12 cents a click for number one in Overture, you can have your site listed across the network for 3 cents less per click than with Site Match.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 2:59 PM.

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View this Article Only: Overture vs. Yahoo for Small Business Budgets (By Scott Van Achte)

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Ask Jeeves buys Excite! (From WebProNews)

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 2:57 PM

Search provider Ask Jeeves announced today its plans to acquire Interactive Search Holdings, one of the largest privately owned online media and search companies, in a $343 million deal that is part of the company’s efforts to strengthen its grasp on the steadily growing search market.

Last December, comScore Media Metrix reported that Interactive Search Holdings was the ninth most visited United States property on the Internet. The company was launched in 1999 and is commonly known as “the Excite Network.”

Ask Jeeves will double in size with this acquisition, which includes web properties such as the search engine Excite.com and iWon, among others. This news comes after the announcement that Ask Jeeves will drop its paid inclusion program.

"The acquisition of Interactive Search Holdings will be an important step in Ask Jeeves' growth strategy,” said Ask Jeeves CEO Steve Berkowitz. "This acquisition will enable us to combine Ask Jeeves' proven strengths in user experience, search technology and brand development with Interactive Search Holdings' strengths in distribution and direct marketing. By leveraging these two complementary approaches to search, we expect to accelerate Ask Jeeves' market share gains in 2004 and beyond."

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 2:57 PM.

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An Inside Glimpse of AskJeeves - An Interview with Jim Lanzone

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 10:14 AM

Right now AskJeeves has a search engine that, in my opinion, is truly impressive. The natural language processing and wealth of quality information in their database has become so good that searching by query actually provides relevant results 90% of the time! This is a vast improvement over the original natural language system that Ask had in place just a year ago. When asked what made AskJeeves so different from its competitors, Jim answered decisively that it was Ask's search technology that put it in a category all of its own. Why the technology? Well Jim argued that the intuitive query performance of the search and the system's ability to reliably show only the experts in every field was Ask's ‘secret sauce'. When I personally put this to the test I had to agree that at the very least the top results I found were relevant and spam-free… an impressive characteristic. What I must enter into consideration, however, is the considerable difference in database size in comparison to Ask's competitors; Ask has only 2 billion pages, whereas Google claims a 6 billion count and Yahoo! over 4.5 billion. In this case size does matter… especially when you consider trying to filter twice to three times more content.

During my interview with Jim Lanzone, we discussed Ask's current standing and where he expects the prominent search engine to appear within the next few years. Obviously Jim could not provide specifics on the technology they plan on including; however, I was able to garner some idea of the company's vision:

Jim gave serious kudos to Google and Yahoo! for creating relationships with the ‘hidden web'; vast information resources once missed by the average search engine such as the Library of Congress, US Supreme Court Audio, the NPR, etc.. According to Jim these types of relationships are definitely going to play a role in future development at Ask. The problem is time, they plan on making some inroads this year but it will take a while before Ask can match the kind of advances that Yahoo or Google have made. This is especially true since Index Express was phased out; initially this was to be the model for uncovering the hidden web.

AskJeeves is very focused on providing a quality user experience. This is evidenced strongly by Ask's current clean interface and Smart Search ideology that “search experience is as important as results themselves”. From what I could gather, Ask's goal is to minimize the successful search experience to one click.

A fresher index was noted which indicates a strong desire to begin spidering web sites more frequently in the near future. Jim did not elaborate on this, however, I speculate that this means isolating web sites that are updated regularly and spidering them more often.

Currently the News section of AskJeeves is populated using Moreover; a popular and reliable news syndication resource. At the moment, Ask only minimally controls the results of its Moreover results with a basic algorithm. This is a major difference between AskJeeves and its search competitors Google and Yahoo!; Ask is the only engine without its own news spider! When asked, Jim noted that advances in Ask's news asset will begin to take place in the second quarter of this year.

What else? At this point in the interview I encountered the familiar and completely understandable ‘wall of vague'; to quote Jim Lanzone, AskJeeves plans to “move into the different areas of search and apply our search engines to new areas of the web and make improvements to the methodologies that determine the relevance of the web.” Well said!

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 10:14 AM.

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Did Yahoo!'s Rising Storm Finalize a Shift in AskJeeves Colors?

Written by Ross Dunn and published at 10:11 AM

It appears that Yahoo!'s bold and less than brilliant foray into " Looksmart-like " paid inclusion may have been the final nudge that AskJeeves needed to shut down their paid inclusion program, Index Express (not Index Connect which is Inktomi). This significant shift of AskJeeves away from their 18 month-old paid inclusion program appears to be a timely distancing from the pending storm coming to Yahoo! after it announced its new Site Match system.

Why did AskJeeves shut down their Index Express service? To get to the bottom of that I spoke today with Jim Lanzone, VP of product management at AskJeeves. First I should mention that he very carefully noted he does not believe there is a 'dark underbelly' to monetary search engine inclusion models. He noted Yahoo!, Looksmart, and many others when he emphasized that. When we concentrated on the topic of the cancelled Index Express service he explained that AskJeeves came to this decision based on two elements; the first was technical and attributed to significant testing of their paid inclusion model, the second was entirely monetary. The testing revealed that the differences between a page submitted via a trusted feed (xml feeds via Index Express customers) and a page indexed by the Ask spider were so significant that attributing proper relevance was very difficult. As a result, users, advertisers and Ask technicians alike were finding Index Express submitted pages ranking in odd places; sometimes ranking inordinately high or low. The second reason focuses on what is likely the shareholder's bottom line; the model was “not a very good monetization vehicle."

Will the AskJeeves database take a big hit with this change? This is difficult to say but considering that Jim Lanzone said 30,000 of the 2 Billion pages indexed in Ask were Index Express pages there could be a miniscule drop in Ask's database size. Other than that I cannot foresee any significant negative impact. In fact, I only see a brilliant move here since paid inclusion models will undeniably be under the FTC and SEO microscope for the next few months, what with Yahoo!'s 6 web properties adapting to it with gusto.

Note: It is important that our readers understand that the paid submission process at Ask Jeeves is still active and recommended by the staff at StepForth. According to Jim Lanzone, the sites that are submitted via Site Submit will be indexed within one week and then repeatedly 2 times per week. Considering that sites which do not pay submit may not be found or may only be indexed sporadically, this appears to be a very worthwhile service.

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This SEO News was posted by Ross Dunn @ 10:11 AM.

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Tuesday, March 02, 2004

Press release from Yahoo. More clues but no solid answers

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 11:07 AM

We're still calling people and trying to root out the information. Here is a press release forwarded by Ana, a spokesperson for the PR firm Fleishman Heller...

Yahoo! Search Launches New Content Acquisition Program, Providing More Relevant, Comprehensive Online Content For Users
Tuesday March 2, 8:20 am ET
http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/040302/25391_1.html
SUNNYVALE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--March 2, 2004--
Includes Relationships With NPR, The New York Public Library,
National Science Digital Library And More; Program Also Introduces Overture's New Site Match Paid Inclusion Program, Giving Commercial Content Providers Direct Way to Interact with Search Engines

Yahoo! Inc. (Nasdaq:YHOO - News), a leading global Internet company, today announced that Yahoo!® Search (http://search.yahoo.com) will be rolling out its new Content Acquisition Program (CAP) this week as part of Yahoo! Search's ongoing efforts to enhance search quality and comprehensiveness. CAP enables non-commercial and commercial content providers to better interact with Yahoo! Search Technology by directly providing their Web pages, which are then added to Yahoo!'s search index and displayed in search results based on their relevance to a search term.

Overture, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Yahoo!, has launched a new paid inclusion program, called Site Match, as the commercial component of CAP. Site Match allows commercial content providers to effectively submit Web content, update it frequently, obtain additional targeted leads, and track and optimize their performance.

"Our primary goal is to discover all the content on the Web for free. In addition, the Content Acquisition Program serves to make a richer set of content accessible to users in a way that most search engines today are unable to achieve," said Tim Cadogan, vice president of Search at Yahoo! Inc. "This program enables us to develop direct, structured relationships with content providers to increase comprehensiveness, maintain the most up-to-date data, improve relevance and thereby deliver a higher quality search experience for users."

As part of the non-commercial channel of CAP, called Public Site Match, Yahoo! Search is working with several content providers from government, academia and other non-profit sectors to help improve search quality and expand the breadth and depth of content users can access through search, including:

- NPR (National Public Radio), an internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of non-commercial news, talk and entertainment programming, will provide access to the audio from its flagship news and information programs.
- Northwestern University's online OYEZ project contains more than 2,000 hours of Supreme Court audio, including all audio recorded since 1995.
- Library of Congress, the research arm of Congress, is the largest library in the world with more than 128 million items, including 29 million books and other print materials, 12 million photographs and 57 million manuscripts.
Additional CAP partners include The New York Public Library, one of the most renowned libraries in the country; Project Gutenberg, the Web's oldest producer of free electronic books; University of Michigan's OAIster project, which provides hard to find academic collections; UCLA's Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI) with content documenting Babylonian history back to 3500 B.C.; Wikipedia, a free, multilingual online encyclopedia with articles in more than 50 languages; and the National Science Digital Library (NSDL), the National Science Foundation's online library, with more than 250 collections that improve the way Americans learn about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. The OYEZ, CDLI and NSDL projects are all federally funded in part or in whole by the National Science Foundation.

"Yahoo! is thinking innovatively about how to bring content to the broader Web search audience while changing and improving the way search engines interact with content providers," said Maria Thomas, vice president and general manager for NPR Online. "Through Yahoo!'s CAP program, NPR's daily news, information and entertainment content will be searchable by and accessible to audiences we might not otherwise reach."

The Overture Site Match program enables structured interaction between commercial content providers and Yahoo!'s search index. By creating a straightforward process for submitting deep and dynamic content, Site Match allows content providers to provide and frequently update Web pages and additional relevant content. With one program, content providers will be able to reach more than 75% of Web users through distribution on Yahoo! and a network of partners.

"We are pleased to join the new Site Match Xchange program, which will provide greater access to Yahoo!'s large user base and generate additional leads," said Curt Cozadd, director of marketing for CarsDirect. "The expanded reach and direct interaction with Yahoo! were huge selling points in joining this program."

Site Match is available in the U.S. as a self-service subscription program for smaller commercial content providers and Site Match Xchange is a full-service program for larger commercial content providers. Site Match will be available directly from Overture and through resellers including Position Technologies, Marketleap, ineedhits, Trellian, Network Solutions and infoSpider. Site Match Xchange will also be available directly and through resellers including TrafficLeader, Performics and GO TOAST. Customers participating in current Inktomi, AltaVista and FAST paid inclusion programs should contact their resellers or Overture for information regarding migration to the new Site Match program.

About Yahoo!
Yahoo! Inc. is a leading provider of comprehensive online products and services to consumers and businesses worldwide. Yahoo! is the No. 1 Internet brand globally and the most trafficked Internet destination worldwide. Headquartered in Sunnyvale, Calif., Yahoo!'s global network includes 25 World properties and is available in 13 languages.

Yahoo! and the Yahoo! logo are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Yahoo! Inc.
All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owners.

---
As I said, we're still digging.

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Yahoo announces biggest changes to pricing and distribution ever

Written by Jim Hedger and published at 9:50 AM

I am still looking for more information on this one and have been on hold at Yahoo for several minutes now. A major change in pricing and distribution has been announced but, after reading several items relating to these changes, all we know is that we don't know enough to piece together an informative piece. We're obsessing on this one today so expect a few more postings and finally a real answer.

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This SEO News was posted by Jim Hedger @ 9:50 AM.