Yahoo Locates Foursquare for Purchase?

admin    Web Marketing     Foursquare, Locates, Purchase, Yahoo

When the news is slow it’s always a relief to find a good juicy rumor to pass along to the readers of Marketing Pilgrim. Heck, if it wasn’t for rumors about Internet companies and other Internet related things there would be precious little to talk about on any day.

So what’s the latest? We hear from the folks at The Business Insider that Yahoo is looking to acquire Foursquare for somewhere in the range of $100 million.

Deal-makers are deciding right now whether or not to buy super-hot location-based startup Foursquare for ~$100 million, says a source close to bankers involved in Foursquare’s current fundraising efforts.

A source close to Yahoo told us a Foursquare-owned Yahoo “would be nice.” This source told us “we’ve had discussions,” but cautioned: “We talk to everybody.”

For his part, Foursquare CEO and cofounder Dennis Crowley spent all last week meeting with all the big name companies in the Valley, including Apple, Facebook, and Twitter. Reached, Dennis declined to comment.

Yahoo’s official response is that they don’t comment on rumors and speculation. Standard press relations stuff. Some feel that Foursquare may be trying to goose valuations as it gets significant attention from major VC’s like Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.

How would Foursquare fit in the Yahoo view of the world? Pretty well. Yahoo has been sitting on the sidelines since its purchases of Flickr and Delicious and flirted with Facebook back in 2007.

A Foursquare acquisition makes tons of sense for Yahoo, where product executives believe that paradigm of Web pages could soon go away, to be replaced by a universe of service built on Internet-connected devices in, around, and outside the home. It would be a relatively cheap way for Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz to show employees and Wall Street that she’s serious about innovating.

So do you think that Carol Bartz is really serious about innovating or does she just want to tell her boat loads of friends that she is the new mayor of Foursquare?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Yahoo Hacked in China (Still Waiting for Other Shoe)

admin    Web Marketing     China, Hacked, Shoe, Still, Waiting, Yahoo

In January, Google reported a coordinated hack attack targeting Chinese human rights activists’ Gmail accounts. In response, Google (eventually) pulled their search engine from China.

And now the hackers are at it again. The Yahoo “e-mail accounts of more than a dozen rights activists, academics and journalists who cover China have been compromised by unknown intruders” last month, according to the New York Times. NYT reporter Andrew Jacobs, one of the targeted journalists, said the “hackers altered e-mail settings so that all correspondence was surreptitiously forwarded to another e-mail address.”

Several of the affected users received messages from Yahoo after problems accessing their accounts, according to the AP.

Yahoo hasn’t yet decided to respond, as Agence France Presse reports. Yesterday, the side stepped the news agency’s questions on the matter, only stating

Yahoo! condemns all cyberattacks regardless of origin or purpose. We are committed to protecting user security and privacy and we take appropriate action in the event of any kind of breach.

However, Yahoo doesn’t really have a whole of options. They left their Chinese business in 2005, selling their interests to Chinese e-commerce company Alibaba (which later had an IPO larger than Google’s). They still own 39% of Alibaba, but don’t have operational control of the company. They may be able to shut down their email offerings, which are routed through Chinese servers.

There’s no indication that these are the same hackers (or not), although the targets are substantially similar. Victims this time included “a law professor in the United States, an analyst who writes about China’s security apparatus and several print journalists based in Beijing and Taipei, the capital of Taiwan,” the NYT reports.

What do you think? Should Yahoo shut down its Chinese email?

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View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Yahoo ID Hanging in There (Is Facebook Facing a Dive?)

admin    Web Marketing     Dive, Facebook, Facing, Hanging, There, Yahoo

Data portability has been a big buzzword for the last couple years. Just about everybody has gotten in on the act, from MySpace to Facebook to Google. Even Yahoo has a universal login option.

An new data from commenting platform Echo suggests that the Yahoo ID is doing pretty well for itself (despite launching almost a year after the others). Echo allows commenters to post from a number of profiles, including Facebook, Google and Twitter—and Yahoo ID is the most popular choice:

Over a third of their logins use Yahoo IDs. Facebook sees a quarter and Google a little less. One in ten use Twitter and one in 14 use Open ID.

Facebook may face an automatic increase—or decrease—soon, however. Friday, Facebook announced a new initiative to automatically share your information with pre-approved sites participating in Facebook Connect. Usually, you have to login to Facebook Connect on a participating site in order to comment using your Facebook profile.

The new system makes Facebook Connect opt-out instead of opt-in—if you’re signed in to Facebook and browse to one of the pre-approved sites, they may get your information even if you don’t choose to comment. At the same time, Facebook says they’re working on finer privacy controls so you can limit the data shared with these sites.

What do you think? Will Facebook Connect see an automatic boost from this, followed by a serious drop once people figure it out? Does Yahoo have a chance with Yahoo ID?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Yahoo Wants Local Display Dollars

admin    Web Marketing     Display, Dollars, Local, Wants, Yahoo

Yahoo is the top display ad seller at this point in time. That may come as a surprise to many because Yahoo has had a rough go of staying on top of anything lately. Now they are coming off a rough transition year and the tumult of the Microhoo deal is behind them (from a public perspective at least) so Yahoo needs to get in gear.

One of the methods it will be using to keep its top spot in the display ad sales category is to do what everyone seems to figuring out as of late: go local. Forbes.com tells some more

National advertisers spend more than $120 billion on advertising in local markets and Yahoo wants it.

This year the Sunnyvale, Calif., company’s sales reps are going after big companies with outlets that advertise in local newspapers and on regional radio stations and Web sites. These marketers include Dunkin’ Donuts, Burger King, Pizza Hut, State Farm Insurance and Home Depot. The list goes on and Yahoo intends to call every advertiser on it, offering them the opportunity to target regionally and reach millions of people online.

Granted, when you hear about a sales rep charge to make inroads into a hot market you can only hope that you aren’t on the other end of one of those calls. Despite that though, savvy local advertisers may see the value of Yahoo’s local display offering all by themselves (how about that idea?!) and can take advantage of the traffic that Yahoo’s site generates.

Hearing this kind of focus is being put into what Yahoo is actually good at is a great change of pace from the search “news” that still trickles out of Sunnyvale from time to time. In my opinion, Yahoo as a search entity is pretty much dead. They are a content company that provides a search option that will be run by another company who may or may not be a search company themselves. From a business perspective this push for display dominance makes sense especially since Google is flexing its muscles in this area as well.

Yahoo’s focus on local markets comes as Google is diving into the display world to grow beyond its core search business. Having launched a new ad exchange system similar to ones the stock market uses, Google is heating up the competition, adding more clients to its growing roster of display advertisers. Google is also going after some of the same customers–the burger joints and home-improvement centers–as Yahoo, pitching similar opportunities to reach TV-sized audiences without TV prices. It makes for a big battle.

With location based offerings becoming more prominent in the marketplace (at least by the social media industry types….The rest of the world? We’ll see.) and efforts like AOL’s Patch.com to generate local content for businesses to place ads around this space is getting the attention it likely deserves.

Most of our lives occur on some local level. Even if you live in a big metro area you do much of your regular life in close proximity to your home. Local is for everyone. Of course, it is also different for everyone so how this market plays out over time will be interesting as marketers try to find more ways to reach the consumer closer to home when they are closer to buying.

Your thoughts on local display advertising through large publishers?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

Yahoo Integrating Mobile, Maps and Search

admin    Web Marketing     Integrating, Maps, Mobile, Search, Yahoo

Just in time for the iPad, Yahoo is premiering two new Apple apps based around their local/mobile search offerings. One is a fairly standard search app—but the other brings an interesting dimension to local search. Considering that, as Google reported, a third of mobile searches are local, there’s obviously a significant market for local/mobile search.

Using the iPod and iPhone’s touch-screen capabilities, users of the new Sketch-a-Search app can outline an area on a map and search within that area for a specific type of business. The feature is specifically geared toward US restaurants and lets users search by details including ambiance, ratings and types of cuisine. The app is slated to expand to other business categories and countries soon.

This is especially nice if you live in one of those megalopolii (the plural of megalopolis, of course), where you can never be sure exactly what city that awesome Thai place was in (and who on earth would remember a ZIP code?).

The regular search app also includes some cool local features:

Since mobile searchers tend to ping-pong back and forth between map applications and search, we’ve integrated maps into the app to simplify the experience. The app also allows you to customize the local maps experience: Want to see more map and fewer local results? More results and less map? It’s totally up to you. . . .

Finally, we’ve made it easier to search for what’s nearby with location-based, local results. For example, if you’re searching for plumbers here in Sunnyvale, California, the app will detect that you’re likely looking for plumbers in this area and will provide you with results in a combined map-list view. As you scroll down the list of plumbers and their reviews, the app repositions the map with the currently selected item. You can also use the map to browse the associated ratings and reviews.

The search app also includes shortcuts for Yahoo’s Movies, Finance and News areas, as well as a voice to search feature.

I think these apps (especially Sketch-a-Search) are a big step forward for mobile search. While there may already be some similar offerings out there, the backing of a big brand like Yahoo can help these apps gain popularity. We can only hope that these apps and this kind of thinking can continue after the merger with Microsoft (you know, if/when).

What do you think? What other features would you like to see in mobile search?

View full post on Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim

How to convert YouTube, google, yahoo, stream, limewire video to Google Phone Nexus One?

admin    Google's Nexus One     Convert, google, limewire, Nexus, Phone, Stream, Video, Yahoo, YouTube

Better than iPhone and Droid, Google Phone Nexus One features a 3.7in AMOLED display, with a resolution 800×480. The camera of the Google Nexus One phone has a 5MP sensor with autofocus, and LED flash, and can capture video at up to 720×480 resolution (DVD quality). You can take the big screen with you to enjoy movies and videos on the ultra sharp wide screen display.The article includes three parts:Part 1: Natively supported video formats by Google Nexus OnePart 2: Convert popular audio and video files like AVI, WMV, MPEG, MP4, Divx, Xvid, MOV, ASF to the video format for Nexus One step by step quickly.Part 3: Free download video from YouTube, Google, Myspace, iFilm, limewire and put them on Nexus One.Part1. Graphics, video and audio of Google Nexus OneImage: JPEG, GIF, PNG, BMPVideo: H.263, MPEG-4 SP, H.264 AVCAudio encoders: AMR-NBAudio decoders: AAC LC/LTP, HE-AACv1 (AAC+), HE-AACv2 (enhanced AAC+), AMR-NB, AMR-WB9, MP3, MIDI SMF, Ogg Vorbis, WAVE (8-bit and 16bit PCM) PlaybackVideo playback: Up to 7 hoursAudio playback: Up to 20 hoursPart2. How to convert AVI, WMV, MPEG, MP4, Divx, Xvid, MOV, ASF to Nexus One?How to enjoy your downloaded video from your camera or other players with this Google Nexus One Phone? I`ll show you how to convert video to Nexus One format with a best video converter, such as AVI, WMV, MPEG, MP4, Divx, Xvid, MOV and ASF to Nexus One. Just rest assured. The whole process of video converting can’t be much easier for everyone.Convert video to Nexus One step1: Download and install Aimersoft video converter Free download it here: http://download.aimersoft.com/aimer-video-converter_full68.exe It is safe for trial and works very well for Google Phone Nexus One. So just run it.Convert video to Nexus One step2: Load your video to this Nexus One video converter Click “Add…” or “File”button to load your AVI, WMV, MPEG, MP4, Divx, Xvid, MOV, ASF to this best video converter.This video converter supports those audio video formats to input: Audio: WAV, APE, AAC, WMA, AC3, MKA, OGG, M4A, MP3 etc. Video: AVI, MP4, MPG/MPEG, WMV, 3GP, H.264, VOB, MOV, FLV, MKV, TS, M2TS, TP, TRP, DV etc. Convert video to Nexus One step3: Select output format for your Google Nexus One PhoneSelect your desired output format from the categorized output formats. Here select “Android – Gphone Video MPEG-4(*.mp4)” as output video for your Google Nexus One Phone. Convert video to Nexus One step4: Start convert your video to Google Nexus One Phone Hit the Start button. A conversion progress screen will be shown during the process where you can preview the video. Part 3: Free download video from YouTube, Google, Myspace, iFilm, limewire and put them on Nexus OneGoogle Nexus One Phone will support Flash Player 10.1 soon, and then you can play YouTube video, BBC iPlayer video, MySpace, mega, Yahoo, Facebook etc with your Google Nexus One. How to free download video from YouTube, Google, Myspace, iFilm and limewire, you can see this article: How to free download youtube, yahoo, google, stream video? After converting video with part2, connect your Google Nexus One Phone to your PC and drag those converted MP4 video into your Nexus One video folder. Then, you can enjoy your video from camera or other players on your Google Nexus One Phone. You can update the video from your Google Nexus One Phone to YouTube with this Nexus One video converter also. Just choose the proper input and output formats, and follow the same steps to get it done.

How Google, Msn and Yahoo Differ on Search Engine Marketing

admin    Google Optimization     Differ, Engine, google, marketing, Search, Yahoo

So you are interested in advertising on Google, MSN and/or Yahoo but don’t know if there are any real differences. Take it from me, there are very big differences and being aware of them can save you a lot of money.Back-story

Recently, I was charged with the task of promoting a new piece of software that is geared towards the small business market. I felt this was a good opportunity to run a test to see which search engine is most effective to advertise on. What I found was some startling differences between Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter and how effective each one was at promoting my product.Test Setup

Over two months run the same advertisements with the same keywords on Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search and MSN AdCenter to see how each of them performs. Though the daily budgets were the same, the cost per click had to vary in order to keep consistent with other bids for each search engine. The goal was to bid just enough to appear in an average search position of 2-3. Test in progress

While the test was taking place I noticed that Google had by far the most impressions to offer and had very little trouble filling my entire budget each day. Yahoo, though they said they didn’t have many impressions to offer for those keywords also maxed out my budget each day, sometimes even exceeding my daily maximum. MSN on the other hand never came close to filling my budget; sometimes it only drove a handful of people to the site over a week’s time.

Another thing I noticed is that the cost per click varied slightly for the same position in their results. Google was the most expensive at just over $3 dollars per click, Yahoo was $2.67 and MSN was $2.39. I realize that the costs are a bit arbitrary without the keywords but this article is for comparison’s sake and not specifics.The Conclusion

In the end the only thing that really matters is how many clicks were converted. For those of you new to the term “conversion”: A conversion is any signup, purchase or traceable action that you wish a user to perform. For us, a conversion meant a sign up.

After two months we had 60% of our signups from Google, 50% from MSN and a dismal 10% from Yahoo. The biggest surprise is that Google cost 50% of our total money spent, Yahoo cost 35% and MSN cost only 15% of our total budget. In the end MSN ended up being much cheaper per conversion and even though they didn’t send a ton of traffic to our site it seemed that they were well qualified people that they were sending.

Yahoo was the biggest disappointment, costing over 3x’s per conversion than Google and over 6x’s more than MSN. There can be a host of reasons this is so, one of the possibilities is that Yahoo’s users are not interested in the type of software we were promoting. Another possibility is that Yahoo’s ads get clicked on by their users at a much higher rate which also causes the quality of the leads to be lower.

In the end, running campaigns on the major three search engines can be a great help, but monitoring them can save you a lot of money in the long run. What works on one search engine many not work on another, and keeping an eye on it will help you determine this. Don’t be afraid to pull the plug if one is not working, sometimes you just need to go with what works and not force something that isn’t showing you results.

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Great Search Engine Rankings With Yahoo and Google

admin    Google Optimization     Engine, google, Great, Rankings, Search, Yahoo

I have been blessed due to the fact that I am not a “true” webmaster, but I have still been able to achieve high search engine rankings for a number of keyword phrases that I need to dominate my niche markets. You can get great search engine rankings by following a few simple techniques and then by focusing on creating your site for real people. I share this information with you today because I constantly see programs that will help improve your search engine rankings, but I honestly believe that most of them aren’t very effective.
One example of the programs in which I don’t waste my time is the many link building programs across the web. Even though link building can be very important, my suggestion is that you just let inbound links come naturally. If you have a good website, then people will link to you. Also, if you get the chance to set up a simple affiliate program, then even more people will link to you.
I recently read an article that said that some websites with Google page ranks of 7 or higher will actually let you pay them thousands of dollars per month in order for them to link to your website. All I can say is: WOW! You better hope that the search engines don’t find out! If you haven’t heard, there can be some serious consequences for websites that have been discovered buying or selling link placement.
O.K., so I would like to cover a couple of things that you can do to get easy and effective SEO without spending a dime. Also, by following these steps, people will eventually start to naturally link to your website. Let’s start off by further explaining the power of having a blog on your site. A blog is a really easy way in order for you to build tons of good content for your website and to start getting more links. Many bloggers discover that they can get a lot of free exposure to their blogs in a short period of time.
Let me share an example: For one of my sites, I got “slapped” by Google for the critical keyword phrases that I needed to advertise my business. This means that Google wanted to charge me between $5 and $10 per click for those keyword phrases. In an attempt to fix things, I decided that I should add a blog to that same website. After only a few weeks of posting, Google had started ranking my website naturally for the same keyword phrases that they wanted $5 and $10 a click for! Why did Google change their minds? Well, it was due to the simple fact that I started easily creating pages and pages of quality content through the blog that focused directly on those keyword phrases. When it comes to SEO, content is king, and if you can start to grow a nice blog, then you will grow content fast.
At times Google and other search engines will start naturally visiting your website in order to spider, index and rank your pages, but this can sometimes take months to happen unless you follow this next huge tip. This tip is to provide Google and Yahoo with sitemaps to your website. It isn’t very hard to figure out how to do this, and your website will start to get spidered and ranked pretty fast, all for just providing the search engines with a “map” to your website! Just go to http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools in order to start submitting a sitemap to Google, or for Yahoo you can head on over to http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/. If you don’t know how to write a sitemap, then there are also programs across the web that will do it for you.
One last piece of simple SEO advice that I have to share with you is that you should still include titles and meta tags in the html of your web pages. You are also going to want to make sure that you “theme” these pages. Even though the search engines don’t rank your websites according to the titles and meta tags like they did in the past, the search engines will still use these titles and tags as a “guide” in order to see what type of content you are providing. When you provide these titles and tags, you will want to make sure you use similar keyword phrases within the body of your web page. For example, if you had a web page on grocery savings, you would want to maybe have the title say “The Grocery Savings Zone.” You would also want to make sure that the content on that page mentioned grocery savings a few times, and you would also want to have your meta tags include phrases similar to grocery savings.
Following these 3 simple techniques for SEO together will prove to be most effective. As you grow your blog, your new posts will be easily spidered, indexed, and ranked because of your sitemap submissions. Also, by providing titles and meta tags on your other web pages, you will easily allow the search engines to discover the main themes for your site. Before you know it, you will see high search engine rankings for a number of your pages all because you followed a few basic and effective techniques.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage

Are your website pages being indexed by Google and Yahoo?

admin    Google Optimization     Being, google, Indexed, Pages, website, Yahoo

We have already discussed why strong internal link structures are so essential to your SEO strategy for the company website, and we looked at how to better promote strong internal linking.  Adding a sitelink map to your text link navigation menu was mentioned as one major way to ensure better internal links, and we also talked about how these maps should comply with both Google and Yahoo.  It would be a worthwhile exercise to login into both these search engines and confirm that they are both indexing each of your site pages.  Making sure that those pages are engine-indexed does not guarantee higher engine keyword rankings but it certainly does not hurt.  At the very least, you will obtain relevant and valuable data on how well those internal links are functioning as well as which external website pages are actually linked to your internal pages.

Webmasters and SEO guys have not always been able to go to Google and Yahoo and find out if site pages are engine-indexed.  These two engines use to steadfastly keep secret which external pages are linked to your internal ones.  The SEO world has changed, however, and now Google and Yahoo recognize the importance of helping Webmasters and SEOs find out which pages are linked.  So now they offer up the tools to help you.

After designing your site and engine optimizing it, and making sure that you have created an engine-friendly sitemap, you should immediately set up accounts in Google Webmasters Console and Yahoo Site Explorer.  With your sitemap established, you can employ tools from the two search engines to find out if your pages are indexed.

Google Webmasters Console (www.google.com/webmasters/sitemaps/)

After setting up an account in Console, you can actually add one site or several sites and have multiple ones all registered on a single interface.  There are several tools empowering you to obtain valuable information on your site pages:

ü      Diagnostics Tab: find out in detail if Google spiders are having problems accessing pages (i.e. URLS not found, timed out or restricted by robots.txt, http errors).

ü      Links Tab: click on External Links to view all external links pointing to each of your internal pages.  Click on Internal Links to discover which internal pages are linked to a specific external page.  In both areas you can select Numeric Link to access a list of website pages currently Google-indexed that point to each of your own pages.  Links Tab probably provides you with the most valuable information you will obtain in Console.

ü      Pages Analysis: access a Google Analysis of your site and/or page content

ü      Sitemap Tab: create the sitemap for each of your domains, and feature all pages you want crawled.

ü      Statistics Tab: learn about how Google PageRank is distributed on your site, and which page ranks the highest each month. 

Yahoo Site Explorer (www.siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com)

After setting up an account in Explorer, you can also add one site or several sites but you have to authenticate each of your unique domain names.  Tools allowing you to collect details on your pages include:

ü      Explore: located on the administrative interface, this tool lets you view all site pages which are engine-indexed.

ü      Inlinks: allows you to see how many pages are linked to the page you are “exploring”.  By selecting Except From This Domain on the Show Inlinks dropdown menu you can view just the external links pointing to your site. 

You are advised to visit both Console and Explorer frequently to find out which pages were recently indexed and which pages have external links pointed to them.  The great news for both Webmasters and SEO people is that Google and Yahoo are finally allowing them to obtain detailed and valuable information on their website links.  If you are a Webmaster or SEO person, you would do well to take advantage of such support, as it can only help you formulate a more comprehensive and effective SEO campaign!

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SEO Elite – Search Engine Optimization Software to Help Improve your Rankings on Google, Yahoo and Msn

admin    Google Optimization     Elite, Engine, google, Help, Improve, optimization, Rankings, Search, Software, Yahoo

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a skill which can take years to master. Being able to successfully rank your website(s) in high positions for popular keywords at main search engines (specifically Google) can increase your traffic and revenue exponentially. Search engine optimization consists of two separate, yet equally important areas. The first is aspects of the website(s) in question such as page titles, content, keywords and alt tags. The second deals with inbound links to your site(s) placed on pages of other websites. Mastering both of these areas will give you the best chance of gaining quality positions on the most popular search engines.

I think it’s important to realize that when one performs SEO, the only search engine they should be trying to please is Google. Yahoo and MSN are also somewhat important, but having high positions on Google will send you at least 10 times more traffic than having the same positions on both MSN and Yahoo. In addition, since Google is often the most difficult search engine to get highly ranked on, if you can achieve this than doing the same on Yahoo and MSN should not be too difficult.

The basics of off-site SEO are quite simple: get as many high quality links to your website’s pages as possible. One way links are best, but are often hard to achieve. Try and use keywords to link to your site, as this will bring your pages closer to the top of Google’s results when people search for those particular keywords. On-site SEO requires you to use proper page titles filled with keywords (but don’t go overboard and use long lists of keywords as your page titles). Unique content on your pages is something else search engines will reward you for. Placing descriptive alt tags on all your site’s images is another way of helping your rankings.

As I mentioned above, SEO can take years to fully understand. It is the best way to gain free traffic to your websites. If you have great search rankings, visitors will continue to visit your site and you will certainly profit from it. The best SEO resource available is called SEO Elite by Brad Callen. This software costs $167 US and is immensely helpful when it comes to performing SEO on all your websites. It has proven to be successful and is currently being used by many of the internet’s top online marketers. To learn more about Brad Callen’s SEO Elite software please click here.

need a website? want to be #1 on Google? visit our florida web design company homepage