Essentially, the deal has Microsoft’s Bing powering Yahoo’s search. Interestingly, the announcement states that Bing, not Microsoft’s AdCenter, is powering search, because both organic and paid listings are part of the deal. Furthermore, Microsoft is licensing Yahoo’s existing search technology for integration into Bing, not buying it. The organic impact and how SEO (define) practitioners address any evolved algorithms will, of course, be covered separately by the industry experts and pundits.

Yahoo and Microsoft: The Deal for Search Advertisers – ClickZ

Our team would like to sincerely thank you for your participation and your invaluable contributions to the program. Our objectives at the outset were to serve the needs of small and midsize self-service customers, as well as evolve the Microsoft strategy to address the Web analytics space.

The insights you’ve contributed through your feedback and your use of the tool have served an invaluable purpose in shaping Microsoft’s future in this space. You’ve helped us work towards making an informed decision about building a general Web analytics solution, and despite the end of life plan, the beta was very much a success.

RIP Microsoft Gatineau!!!adCenter Analytics Beta To Close – adCenter Analytics Blog

Which is King – Quality Content or Keywords?

Yahoo tends to lean towards commerce-related sites more so than informational sites and has a paid-inclusion program that allows even newer websites to appear at the top of search engine results. To rank well with Yahoo, it helps to have very descriptive and keyword-rich content and titles for each page. The same goes for MSN search, which places high value on descriptive content.

However, MSN search currently drives little traffic so any website owner’s goal should be to rank with Google and Yahoo first and foremost. To rank with Google, long-term efforts to improve organic ranking are your best bet while more aggressive SEO tactics fare better with Yahoo and MSN. Google is a bit trickier when it comes to ranking your website based on content. If your website is obviously targeting a particular keyword phrase, such as when that particular keyword phrase is used in internal links, inbound links, the page title, etc., Google may omit your website from search results for that particular keyword.

If you want to successfully rank on Google, you must make the content on your website appear as natural as possible. Avoid overuse of keyword phrases and make your content newsy and informational. Disperse semantically related text throughout the content on your website and be frugal with keywords if you want your website to have a better chance of ranking on Google.

Query Processing – Text vs. Concept

Yahoo places a lot of importance on the text of your website. If you search for a particular keyword phrase, you will notice that the top search engine rankings on Yahoo have the exact same phrase in the title. Even common words of lesser importance such as “how to” will show up in the text of the page titles. Yahoo values even such commonly used phrases, making them important to use in your page titles and text if you want to rank on Yahoo.

On the other hand, Google places little importance on common words and phrases and instead judges a page based on its educational value. In sum, Google values concept over text. If your website has a lot of informational content it is more likely to rank on Google, which judges content based on its meaning rather than merely taking it for its literal value. MSN is also better than Yahoo in this regard but it still pales in comparison to Google.

So there you have it. Query processing and content are just a couple of the important factors top search engines like Google, Yahoo, and MSN judge when ranking websites. Keep these points in mind when creating content and titles for your website’s pages because your actions will have varying results from search engine to search engine. Decide which search engine you want to focus on ranking for and alter your approach based on that decision.

SEO Articles: How Google, Yahoo and MSN Differ

Earlier today Stan Schroeder posted the news on Mashable about Microsoft acquiring Greenfield Online for a princely sum. Much of the talk within the tech blogosphere about the deal is one of confusion. Many of the people are wondering why Microsoft would be interested in buying the company and then only keeping Ciao!, the European shopping and price comparison site. The other parts of the company apparently already have buyers lined up for the rest of the Greenfield Online company.

On the surface this would seem to be a rather strange acquisition for Microsoft, with some suggesting that the purchase is just a way to increase its reach into the European market. For Microsoft though the idea behind the purchase is to primarily integrate Ciao! capabilities into Microsoft Live Search

makes the company a fantastic asset to the future of our search offer. Integrating Ciao’s capabilities into Live Search will provide a strong launchpad for our commercial search offer in Europe and enhance our e-commerce offering on MSN.”

Just by itself this news really may not seem like that much. However, there could be another way to look at this which is what Allen Stern of CenterNetworks is proposing. The idea is that Microsoft may not be interested in the same type of information search business that Google dominates right now.

Read the rest of the article here at Mashable Which Is Worth More? Product Search or Information Search….

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Best Practices

Keywords: Visibility, search engine optimization, SEM, meta tags, Alt tags, Google Adwords and other forms and strategies of online advertising depend on just one word – the keyword. There are two types of keyword that you can use: primary keyword and secondary keyword. Now for example: if the primary keyword is adventure travel then secondary keywords can be travel cruises, trekking, hiking, mountaineering, river rafting and many more. It will then come down to how well you are able to use your primary and secondary keywords without making your content sound more like a drag. So you need to avoid keyword spamming. You need to place your primary keyword strategically on your website so that the search engines can find them with ease and treat them as the most important words to appear on your website.

Optimizing website content: The factor that drives page ranking is textual content on your web page. You need to hence ensure that your web site should have sufficient text on each of the web pages in order to facilitate proper indexing by various search engines. You need to keep in mind that the text on your web page will not include images or Flash elements. The body copy of a web page should have the correct and most important keyword phrases.

Links from external websites: Page Rank is often increased based on the number as well as quality of links. This means that if your web page is linked to other good or high page ranking websites then it will have a positive affect on the page ranking of your website as well. You can start by sending linking requests to other top ranking websites. This should also be followed by reciprocal linking.

JavaScript navigation: If you are thinking of using JavaScript navigation then you need to reconsider the decision because search engines have difficulty indexing websites using JavaScript based navigation.

Page titles: You need to create appropriate page titles for each of the web pages on your website. A page title is the first line of copy that is displayed during search listing. To attract visitors, you need to apply the right keywords and compelling copy in page titles.

Dynamic URLs: If you are using a dynamic URL then search engines will face difficulty in indexing your web pages. Try to avoid using dynamic URL’s.

Flash content: As of date, search engines are unable to index flash based web pages. So if you need to use flash then limit it to images only and for text, you can use simple HTML. This will serve all your purposes.

First Place Goes to Google:

Second is Yahoo – not as good as Google, but a fair stab at it!

Third Place is Ask – one of my Favorite entries, very original and ‘artsy’:

Fourth Place and LAST place is awarded to MSN, who has a poor showing of Independence Day Cheer in their logo:

*Looks like the MSN Butterfly is flying into battle and knows it will get burned up in the colorful explosions of Fireworks…lol – morbid I know.

Have a great Independence Day everyone!

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