You look familiar. Are you on Twitter? Subscribed to my feed yet?
News has just broken on Twitter that Microsoft and Yahoo! have finally closed a deal where Bing will power Yahoo! search results while Yahoo! will become the worldwide sales force for both companies’ search advertising.
@Bing broke the news with this tweet:
“Bing. Yahoo! Two great tastes that are now going to be great together. Check out http://bit.ly/9eUh7″
I can hear the mobile phones of a hundred Google executives ringing from here. Talk about a wake up call!
More details available on my SiteProNews blog post: It’s Official: Bing to Power Yahoo! Search.
Added: more industry coverage here:
It’s Finally Official, Microsoft and Yahoo Make a Deal, Yahoo Gives Up on Search (Search Engine Land)
Microsoft and Yahoo Finally Announce Deal (WebProNews)
Live Blogging The MSFT – YHOO Search Press Conference (Search Engine Land)
Top 10 Things the Microsoft/Yahoo! Deal Changes for SEO (SEOmoz)
The Microsoft-Yahoo Search Deal, In Simple Terms (Search Engine Land)
Could the Google Gigantosaurus be challenged by a Yahoo / Bing Tyrannosaurus-Rex?
That’s the question I pose in my latest SiteProNews blog post Could it be Bing(o) for Yahoo? in response to the rumors that Yahoo and Microsoft are about to announce a major search advertising partnership.
What are your thoughts? Is a Yahoo / Bing T-Rex going to be strong enough to take a bite out of the Google Gigantosaurus? Please leave your comments below.
Has anyone else been following the drama unfolding at Yahoo this week?
A battle of wills between a major shareholder, Carl Icahn, and the Yahoo board of directors has seen Microsoft take a step closer to a Yahoo acquisition. The in-fighting has seen board members step down, new ones get appointed and the majority of them having to stand for re-election when the company holds it’s Annual General Meeting on August 2.
Read the whole saga in my latest blog post at SiteProNews.
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.
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.
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