Ask Kalena

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Microsoft has called it quits on their 3 month infatuation with Yahoo, withdrawing their official proposal today by snail mail.

From the official press release, Microsoft CEO Steve Balmer states:

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal”.

Wow. Now there’s a turn-up for the books. Yahoo’s advertising fling with Google last month must have really hurt for Balmer to abandon the pursuit. Kudos to Charlie for the heads up.

ADDED: Yahoo has officially responded to the rejection.

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Hi Kalena,

For the past 3 months my site would appear on page 1 of Yahoo when my “girly party” or “girly party” was typed into the search engine. Recently I’ve noticed that I don’t even appear in the top 10 pages. How could this have happened within 1 week? Something seems a little weird. Please advise. Why wouldn’t my company appear if I type in my entire business name in Yahoo search?

Tonya

Hello Tonya

I can’t believe your site was ever ranking for your business name. Or anything else for that matter.

Here’s why:

• You’ve used Homestead SiteBuilder to create your site. This is a CMS notorious for being search engine unfriendly.
• I’m not entirely sure, but I suspect that this is a free-hosted site with content pulled from the main Homestead site and just displayed on your web site. If you want search engines and potential customers to take your business seriously, you need to take it seriously and get a professional web site designed and properly hosted by a real host on your domain.
• Your META tags are identical on every page and appear to be automatically generated by the Homestead CMS.
• Your site isn’t optimized for keywords at all. Your page content doesn’t appear to have logical search keywords integrated within the visible text.
• The Title tag for your home page just says “Home”! Search engines consider the content of the Title tag to be one of the most important aspects of your page in determining whether it is a relevant match for search queries. Your title tag says didley squat about your business.

I could go on but it’s too depressing. Sorry to be so blunt, but it always pains me to see businesses using Homestead or Geocities or similar types of piggy-back, unprofessional, free-hosted or cheap-ass accounts online. It only takes a small effort and very little financial investment to get a professional-looking site built, hosted and optimized for search engines.

An easy way to regain a ranking in Yahoo and Google for “My Girly Party” is to include this phrase at the beginning of the Title Tag of every page on your site.

In the meantime, may I suggest you download our free SEO101 lesson? Implementing the techniques mentioned should help you gain some rankings fairly quickly.

Popularity: 35%

You all know by now that Yahoo has rejected Microsoft’s 45 billion dollar offer to acquire them and form a super search company (which I nicknamed Microhoo). The price was unanimously rejected by Yahoo’s Board of Directors and described as “substantially undervaluing the Yahoo brand”.

But what I found the most interesting development in the whole chain of events that unfolded last month was Google’s reaction. Check out their public statement on the potential acquisition. Not only does it use a scathing language against Microsoft, but it’s issued by a single person instead of the company as a whole: David Drummond, Senior Vice President, Corporate Development and Chief Legal Officer. Here’s an extract:

Could Microsoft now attempt to exert the same sort of inappropriate and illegal influence over the Internet that it did with the PC? While the Internet rewards competitive innovation, Microsoft has frequently sought to establish proprietary monopolies — and then leverage its dominance into new, adjacent markets.

Could the acquisition of Yahoo! allow Microsoft — despite its legacy of serious legal and regulatory offenses — to extend unfair practices from browsers and operating systems to the Internet?

I may be completely off base here, but this suggests a couple of things to me:

1) Senior staff at Google weren’t comfortable enough with the content of the statement to release it as a standard-issue corporate press release.

2) Some staff at Google clearly have an axe to grind with Microsoft.

3) A potential Microsoft-Yahoo deal scares Google. A lot.

4) Google may approach (or may have already approached) Yahoo with a similar acquisition offer.

Maybe the threat of a Microsoft buyout of Yahoo will force Google’s hand. I am betting we’ll see some big moves from the big G this year.

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Hi Kalena

I was wondering if you knew anything about the algorithm changes that Yahoo has made in recent months? My pages have really shifted there. Can you refer me to anything that may help?

Diane

Dear Diane

This article by Aaron Wall will probably help you. You will also find some related blog posts and articles in the Yahoo SEO category on Sphinn.

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If you’re a blogger in the search industry, you’re probably still reeling from the jaw-dropping news that broke on Saturday: Microsoft has made a 45 billion bid to purchase Yahoo.

So if this rather ambitious acquisition proceeds, what exactly will this mean for the search industry? There is a lot of speculation right now that it will never happen, but let’s just imagine it did.

For starters, I’m sure MS would scrap their existing PPC offering AdCenter and incorporate the better known Yahoo Search Marketing system under their own brand. They would also likely scrap Yahoo’s Directory and combine the Yahoo search data with their own Live Search results to create a super search engine of sorts, running on their own algorithm.

The new Microhoo could be a definite threat to Google. Just how the acquisition could or should proceed is perhaps the most interesting part of the whole deal. There are bound to be market monopoly issues at stake. You can bet both the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission are watching the unfolding saga very closely.

Meanwhile reactions from bloggers in the search industry are fun to watch.

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