Microsoft+Yahoo > Google

Last week Microsoft offered to buy Yahoo! for $44.6 billion in cash and stock. This represents a 50% premium for shareholders, and indicates Microsoft's anxiety to beat Google. In my view, it also represents a tacit admission from Microsoft that Windows Live, MSN, etc., are all failing to win market share. As the Nielsen Online report indicates, Google is still comfortably controlling the market, and that's in spite of the fact that MSN/Windows Live are default home pages are virgin Vista/Internet Explorer installations.
This is a big play, even by Microsoft's standards, and is a sure indicator that Microsoft recognises that search is the key battlefield for this decade. Search is the big driver for all online marketing and content. Microsoft's increased muscle in this market, will paradoxically increase customer choice, and hinder Google's hegemony.

From an agency point of view, the biggest problem we face with Yahoo and Windows Live is poor programmatic interfacing. I'm hopefully Microsoft will throw similar resource at a decent API for Windows Live and Yahoo!. If you they couple the API with better incentives for intermediaries, large scale advertisers will have a realistic alternative to Google.

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Microsoft+Yahoo > Google
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Taking the search engine point of view: why you want whatever the search engines want.

Let’s take a second and try and look at the internet from the search engines point of view. Why do the search engines provide us with this invaluable service of allowing us to search the internet? The answer, not surprisingly, is money. The more users that a search engine has, the more potential they have to make money. But how, and what does this have to do with search engine optimization?
The answer to the first question is simple enough, ads? Search engines make money by showing ads along side their search results. For instance, imagine that you did a search on Google for free cell phones. You would arrive at a page that looks like this:

On the left hand side of the screen there are what is known as the organic search results. These are the websites which Google thinks are the most relevant site for the term free cell phone (note: everything which we are about to say about Google also applies to the other major search engines: Yahoo, MSN, and Ask.com). Furthermore, Google does not take money for showing these results. They are displayed based on Google’s algorithm (a mathematical formula which Google uses to determine how to rank sites for any given search term). On the right hand side of the page are different results which also show up for the term free cell phone. These are ads, or more exactly Google AdWords ads, and the owner of that ad pays Google every time someone clicks on their ad (the amount varies according to various factors).
What is worth noting is that Google’s entire business plan revolves around people clicking on these ads. As such, the more people who use Google’s search engine, the more money Google will make (as more people will see Google’s ads with a certain percentage of those people clicking on them). Thus Google has a vested interested in providing the highest quality search engine that they possibly can (as do the other major search engines), for that is what drives people to their site. And the key ingredient to a quality search engine is relevance! After all, people are only interested in a search engine insomuch as it helps them find the results that they are looking for. And since that is what Google’s customers want, that is what Google wants. And since that is what Google wants, that is also what we want.
Here comes the answer to our second question. When we say that Google ranks the search results according to relevancy what we really mean is that Google has developed various criteria and methods for determining what is the most relevant site for any given search. What this means for us is that if we can discern what those criteria and/or methods are (Google doesn’t reveal them) then we can build our site accordingly for the terms that we want to rank well for. Put simply, Google sets the ranking rules. If we want to rank well then we best learn what those rules are and follow them. This, in a nutshell, is all that search engine optimization is about.
As simple as that may sound it’s actually a bit harder to do in real life. Particularly since the search engines are constantly trying to improve the results that they return. What that means is that the criteria and methods that the search engines use to rank sites are constantly changing. So not only is it important to know how it is that the search engines rank sites today, but it is equally important to get as clear a sense as possible as to how they plan to rank sites tomorrow. That way you can always be prepared (or at least try to be prepared) for whatever changes come tomorrow. Thus ensuring that your high rankings are as stable as can be.
Our first order, therefore, when it comes to optimizing our sites for the search engines is to understand as best as possible the criteria and methods that the search engines use to determine their search results. As such, that is the topic of the next tutorial.

Previous tutorial: What is search engine optimization?

Read Other Articles :How to optimize your site : SEO process ,Basic link terminology ,Taking the search engine point of view: why you wa... ,What is search engine optimization (aka SEO)? ,The best keyword research tools available ,Antivirus reviews 2008 (part 1) ,Strange Google Crawler ,Creating Statspack job

Strange Google Crawler

Well it has been so long that I am trying to get my blog indexed in google search but no luck yet। My Blog is not even displayed in search result when I put whole url in search keyword. Enough of trying and I had decided to create another blog in wordpress because of two reasons .one is that wordpress has great themes and many widgets and second lots of people are switching to wordpress. Just two day before I had created oraview.wordpress.com blog .but after creating I got to know that we can' t have adsense on that so, I switched back again to blogspot on my old blog random-view.blogspot.com.

Today when I was trying to search for 'random-view' term in google god damn this blog didn't came up in search result but guess what my wordpress blog was up there .This is really annoying the blog, one which is created one and half year back is still not indexed. Whereas wordpress blog which was created just 2 days back got indexed so fast . looks google search and crawling algorithm is really grate secret in it. No one can guess how it works .Anyways Till time I will keep trying my blog to get indexed with good ranking and will see people coming to my blog via Google path way :)

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