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Fiddle Dee Dee - Is Yahoo Gone With The Wind?

by Tom Tsinas.

With the flurry of news stories running rampant over the past 24-48 hours, poor Scarlett Yahoo must be exhausted. Who indeed to take to the cotillion? There’s that awful Rhett MSN or that nice Ashley Wilkes Google.

Frankly, I’m reminded of the opening scene with Scarlett on the veranda cloying with prospective suitors and the saga is all a little exhausting. Makes me want for a nice Mint Julip and a nap until this whole silly thing blows over

Afterall, tomorrow is just another trading day.

Yahoo - Ever Corner a Wild Animal?

by The Guy.

Image Courstesy Businessweek.com

HOLY SMOKES!  I am completely blown away by the moves of Yahoo this week, in an effort to stave off the Microsoft takeover.  As of yesterday for a two week trial, Google will handle advertising for a tiny piece of the searches carried out on Yahoo.  In fact, Google will place ads alongside 3% of the U.S. queries on Yahoo’s site.  GOOGLE SEARCH RESULTS ON YAHOO!!!  It would appear that instead of being eaten by the lion, Yahoo would prefer to throw itself into the dragon’s mouth!  I’d LOVE to hear what you all have to say about that, or what your thoughts on this maneuver are!  Doesn’t that actually reduce Yahoo’s perceived value as a search engine, having results served up by the competition?  Wouldn’t that also drive down the stock price, making it even easier for Microsoft to be able to pick it up?

In This Corner…Google vs Microsoft

by The Guy.

The auditorium is packed with spectators there to cheer on their favorite contender!  In one corner, weighing in as the largest search provider the world has ever seen, with creative genius that seems to never falter, and a “the sky is the limit” develop and deploy stance that has seen them through to the development of robust search tools, you have Google - The search engine that would, could and did, also known as the search engine that will, can and does!

Image Courtesy of ahajokes.com

Google Geotargeting

by The Guy.

One of my New Year’s Wishes for 2008 was that Google would introduce a negative market option, much like negative keywords.

In short, I want all of Ontario, but not Ottawa.

Well, the new Google geo-targeting tool comes close, so I guess it’s only a matter of time.

I had the opportunity to use it to day, creating a North American campaign… Well, North America sans Mexico. (Not that there’s anything wrong with Mexico, just not part of my campaign needs.)

Click on North America bundle and viola! Canada, United States and Mexico. Click on Mexico and viola! There it is. Gone.

Google To Americans - We Love You Again! The Organic Realignment

by Jeff Quipp.

Did you know that Google played favourites (Canadian spelling eh?) for a long time?

Its true! For the longest time, American companies were not really given a fair shake in the search results. It wasn’t intentional, rather was just the byproduct of legacy infrastructure, and competing priorities. And don’t get me wrong, this is in no way Google bashing. I certainly understand the problems associated with their dilemma, and why it took so long to rectify.

Let me explain. Being Canadian, we’re obviously very aware of our neighbours (yes I spelled that with a ‘u’, eh) to the south. Until very recently, we understood that there were 3 different sets of Google search results applicable to us:

Search Wars - Microsoft vs Google

by The Doug.

So how many of you are familiar with Enterprise tools such as Google Search Appliance? Google Mini Search Appliance for example, starts at $2,990 for searching up to 50,000 documents with a 300,000 max document capacity. Google Search Appliance starts at $30,000 for searching up to 500,000 documents with a 30 million max document capacity. (By the way, these are tools used for internal development of infrastructure and intranet and to enable maximum efficiencies between the internal world of information and the internet, among other things, for those of you wondering.)

Google Behavior

by Ruud Hein.

Hal Varian, Google Chief Economist, kicked off what he calls "an occasional series that discusses how we harness the data we collect"

After a short introduction to the history of search featuring PageRank he notes how over the years Google has "added more than 200 additional signals"

He raises and of course doesn’t completely answer the question where those signals come from. He suggests that at least some of them come from looking at user behavior:

• What results do people click on?
• How does their behavior change when we change aspects of our algorithm?

The End Is Nigh!!!

by The Guy.

Wow! What a beating Google took on the heels of the comScore data showing Google’s paid search ads were down 12% in January from October, and flat from a year prior.

“Has Google Peaked?”

Google’s shares drop as surfers cease clicking, another wails.

Dear Goth, has there been more fraught chest-thumping, more moaning, since last Celine performed that song at the 69th Annual Academy Awards®?

Google will go on. And oddly enough, if surfers have stopped clicking and are now only treading water like Leonardo’s Jack Dawson just before succumbing in that movie where Celine performed that song then why haven’t Yahoo and MSN been just as negatively affected?

Does the future of Windows spell the doom of Google?

by The Doug.

So I was snooping aroiund YouTube to see what information I could find about Windows 7, when I came across this video of Construction Mike managing his day to day with a myriad of various informational and communication devices, all apparently loaded up with Windows 7.

 While I found most of the devices to be soooooo cool and I want them, I have difficulty actually imagining people from most industries, let alone the construction industry, investing in the number of gadgets per employee that Mike had the good fortune to use in his daily routine.

The JotSpot Draft Defence

by Ruud Hein.

Oh, I love this. The deluge of "news" articles about Google’s re-release of JotSpot as Google Sites has only just begun and already everyone and their mother has an opinion that needs to be shared.

Which is great — I’m not one to lobby for blogging to then slam it. In fact, as soon as I heard about the release (Twitter, anyone?) I wanted to write about it all SEO expert style, you know? How Google Sites will increase the number of sites on the web (duh!). Or how down the line Google could include automated optimization reports for Google Sites the way they’re toying around for AdSense.