Live Search Webmaster Tool Issues

It has been reported that Live Search Webmaster tool has been upgraded that it now looks like a legitimate help for webmasters who care about the appearance of their websites on Live Search. The announcement of the update has been greeted with excited although many were open about telling the issues.

A quick guide on the new features can be found at SEOMOZ, where it has been revealed that the linkomain tool which used to work at MSN Search but doesn’t anymore, can be applied within this tool.

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4 Things That Could Happen If Microsoft Buys Yahoo!

BBC reported Microsoft’s interest in acquiring Yahoo! for $44.6 billion. If this unsolicited offer gets accepted by Yahoo! to form a more potent alliance to challenge Google, I think there are a few things could probably happen:

Loss of jobs
Not only Yahoo! is poised to lose 1,000 jobs by mid-February as published recently, it could even lose much more in an effort by Microsoft to weed out overlapping jobs and emphasize on streamlining in the workplace. That said, Microsoft could also slash jobs in its own backyard especially on under performing product offerings that are not as robust as what Yahoo! offers. While it also happens to small mergers, it’s what typically happens when large corporations combine as one.

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Examining Search Engines’ 404 Error Pages

I was inspired by Rustybrick’s post about a Search Engine Watch forum thread that talks about Google’s 404 page. 404 pages are displayed once we misspell a URL or click on a broken link. What’s coincidental was that I discussed this one in the office this afternoon. So I’d like to go beyond Google and check whether other search engines are providing as good (or as bad) usability within their 404 error pages. Have a look at which search engine have done something and which has done nothing on their respective websites.

Ask

Baidu

Google

Live Search

Yahoo!


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Tips on Managing In-House Paid Search

Have a Sound Background on Business Objectives
Introducing paid search to our teams can require some serious persuasion skills and plenty of tools to back up our claims. Knowing the business objectives isn’t just about making sure we get the approval from the finance department. More importantly, we will know where to start and be able to formulate long-term campaign strategies to address each identified objective, long before launching our in-house paid search campaigns.

Allocate Time to Educate Company Stakeholders
Let’s spend time to talk to your colleagues or the management on different aspects of paid search:

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10 Most Popular Search Engines in the World

Baidu.com and Alibaba.com, two of China’s major Internet search engines, ranked among the world’s 10 most popular search engines last month by comScore, an Internet research firm.

Highlights

1. In December 2007, 66.2 billion search queries were conducted worldwide.
2. In December 2007, Baidu.com Inc. was the third ranked search property worldwide with 3.4 billion searches, capturing 5.2 percent of worldwide search share.

Nasdaq-listed Baidu ranked third, with 5.2 percent of worldwide searches, according to the survey of 66.2 billion search queries.

Baidu is often referred to as China’s version of Google due to the Chinese-language search engine’s soaring popularity and profits. It made a net profit of 24.2 million U.S. dollars in the third quarter of 2007.

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