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Last night Yahoo shocked the world by introducing something that looks cool, useful and unique - Yahoo Axis.
Yahoo Axis is a browser/extension/search tool that changes the way people explore and search the web. The best way to describe it is to show you some videos.
How It Works:
Here are some commercials:
Pretty cool, don't you think?
Will you use it? That is another question.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
We know Google Images deploys framebuster busting techniques to prevent sites that use framebusters from sending the user directly to the site.
Yahoo does something similar.
For example, this picture of a flower on Yahoo Images is from flowershopsflowers.com/nature-flowers, which has framebusting JavaScript on the site.
Yahoo breaks the framebuster and places in the window below the image a message that reads:
Loading the page might take you away from Yahoo! Image Search (Not recommended). Continue Anyway
This message really upsets those who use the framebusting script. These are webmasters who specifically dislike that the search engine is showing a higher resolution version of their image on the search engine as opposed to sending the user to the site to view and download the image.
Here is a picture:
A WebmasterWorld thread has some users calling this out right stealing:
I can't believe that Yahoo image search is stealing my images
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Well, it is done - Yahoo, everywhere you go with the exception of Korea, even on mobile or desktop, will be fully powered by a different search engine - Microsoft Bing.
Yahoo Search is not providing their own algorithmic search results anymore, like they haven't being doing so in the U.S. in Canada since August 2010. Country after country, Yahoo has been handing over their search technology and search engine to Microsoft.
The other day, Yahoo declared the process is now complete, with the exception of Korea. Why not Korea? Because of "a three-way integration between Yahoo, Microsoft and Daum, remains, and is expected to complete by the end of the year."
That being said, this was the plan and the plan has been implemented.
Paid search is still not fully transitioned over. It is in the U.S., Canada and many other countries, but not every where, not yet.
For some reason, I remain sad about all of this.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.
Yahoo announced they have made the transition from Yahoo powered search results to Bing powered results in the Asian markets.
These markets include Hong Kong, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand and Vietnam but exclude Korea.
Yahoo also said the transition for the organic results in Greece, Poland, Romania, Switzerland (German, French and Italian languages) and Turkey are complete.
I am not sure when the paid search side will be transitions, there have been issues on that front - from what I understand.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
No one is really surprised by last night's news that Yahoo announced "leadership change" including firing Carol Bartz over the phone. I mean, she had only 33% approval rating and the stock rose 6% on the news of the firing.
Yahoo said:
Yahoo! Inc. under which the Board of Directors has appointed Timothy Morse interim Chief Executive Officer, effective immediately, replacing Carol Bartz, who has been removed by the Board from her role as Chief Executive Officer.
The Board has also named key senior Yahoo! executives to a newly formed Executive Leadership Council tasked with supporting Morse in managing the Company's day-to-day operations until a permanent chief executive is appointed, as well as supporting a comprehensive strategic review that the Board has initiated to position the Company for future growth.
Bartz emailed everyone via her iPad saying:
I am very sad to tell you that Iâve just been fired over the phone by Yahooâs Chairman of the Board. It has been my pleasure to work with all of you and I wish you only the best going forward.
Carol took over as the CEO of Yahoo in January 2009 after Jerry Yang replaced Terry Semel as CEO in 2007. It has been a rough road for Yahoo, very rough.
I am still so sad about Yahoo, so sad. But will I ever forgive Bartz for pulling Yahoo out of the search space, at least in terms of building backend search technology? I doubt it.
It is hard to see what future Yahoo has but I do hope the next CEO, not the interim, has a clear future for Yahoo.
If Carol did anything well, it was fire a lot of people and cut a tremendous amount of costs.
Do you think Yahoo will have a solid future from here on out?
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
It is official, Yahoo's european properties are now powered by Bing for organic search.
As of this morning, August 3rd, Yahoo France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain and the UK are powered by Bing.
A year ago, Yahoo US and Canada switched over to Bing and now Yahoo US, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Spain, UK, Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, New Zealand, Peru and Venezuela are now all powered by Bing.
This is just the organic results, not the paid results. Yahoo US, Canada and others are powered by adCenter for ads, but not the European properties. That comes later. Microsoft said:
With regards to the paid search transition of Yahoo! traffic into Microsoft Advertising adCenter outside North America, both companies continue to focus on meeting marketplace and product performance benchmarks we have agreed. We are making good progress, as echoed by independent third parties such as Efficient Frontier and Marin Software. We have recently extended our testing efforts to gain the learnings necessary to provide international advertisers and partners with a quality transition experience.
Once these tests completed, we will be able to provide an update on our global rollout plans for search marketing. We remain more than ever committed to providing advertisers and partners with ample notice prior to the transition of their market, and working with them to plan and prepare for a smooth transition.
I first reported this at Search Engine Land as coming on Monday.
Forum discussion at DigitalPoint Forums.
In 2009 Yahoo made a big splash in the industry by saying they will only hold on to search data for 90 days. It was a very short amount of time to retain search queries but Yahoo did it.
Now Yahoo is reversing that decision and upping it from 3 months to 18 months.
The LA Times first reported this saying:
Yahoo Inc. said it would begin keeping records of its usersâ search engine queries for at least 18 months, abandoning an earlier policy under which it kept data for only three months.
"Over the past several years itâs clear that the Internet has changed, our business has changed, and the competitive landscape has changed," Anne Toth, a policy executive at Yahoo, wrote in a blog post. "We have gone back to the drawing board to ensure that our policies will support the innovative products we want to deliver for our consumers."
This is interesting because Microsoft has a 6 month policy. So here, Microsoft will only have 6 months of search history whereas Yahoo will hold onto it for a year or so longer. Microsoft and Yahoo are search partners.
I guess Yahoo has little to lose and a lot to gain from this policy change. At least that is the way I see it.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
I remember back when Yahoo bought AlltheWeb. Most Webmasters and SEOs were a bit upset, because AlltheWeb was one of those upcoming search engines who really could compete with Google back in the day.
So Yahoo acquired it back in 2004 when Overture, which acquired AlltheWeb in 2003, was acquired by Yahoo. Very early 2004, Yahoo was shopping for search engines to buy, so they no longer have to be dependent on Google's search engine. They were expected to use Inktomi which they acquired earlier, but then they bought AllTheWeb and Alta Vista. They made changed to both engines and released their own flavor of Yahoo Search soon after, surprising some webmasters.
AlltheWeb had one of the largest web indexes back then and was loved by Webmasters.
Now, well, those investments are gone. They outsource their search technology to Microsoft and will redirect the technologies they acquired in 2004 to Yahoo Search, which is powered by Microsoft.
The funny thing, they are doing this on Microsoft's birthday - April 4th!
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
Yahoo made big news in search yesterday by announcing the launch of Yahoo Search Direct. It is like Google Instant but within the search suggestions box.
Now saying Yahoo is copying Google here is not fair. Why? Because Yahoo had Yahoo Instant Search back in 2005, about five years prior to Google launching Google Instant.
That being said, Search Engine Land has a nice number of articles on it that sum up what it does. Before I do that, here is a brief feature list:
Search Engine Land Stories:
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorldand Google Blogoscoped Forums.
Currently Yahoo Search in the UK is still running off the original Yahoo index and algorithm.
As you know, Bing is powering Yahoo's organic and paid results in the US and Canada. Last week, Yahoo and Bing announced they migrated over the organic results in Australia, Brazil and Mexico to Bing.
So what is next?
A WebmasterWorld has some speculation that Yahoo UK is next. Some webmasters and SEOs are noticing that the Yahoo UK results have "two different indexes" on refreshes. By that, if a person searches once and then again, they are seeing two completely different set of results. In addition, when they compare one of those sets, it seems to match up with the Bing results. This shows me that Bing and Yahoo are heavily testing the UK migration and it might be next up on the list.
Are you ready for Bing to power Yahoo in the UK? I assume so, at least by now.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
