LBi Netrank: LBi Netrank Newsletter: March 2008

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2008 (12)
2007 (13)
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Search Engine Updates

Yahoo! Update

Yahoo! announced at the beginning of March that it has had another algorithmic update, so fluctuations in Yahoo! positions should be expected. In particular, it mentioned that its crawler traffic may be unusually light or heavy in the weeks following this.

"We're in the process of rolling out some changes to our crawling, indexing and ranking algorithms. While we expect the update will be completed soon, as you know, throughout this process you may see some ranking changes and page shuffling in the index." (Yahoo! Search Blog, March 2008)

Yahoo! embraces the semantic web

Yahoo! has launched an initiative to integrate 'semantic web standards' into its search engine. It will be adding support for detecting a number of microformats such as hCard or hCalendar, and will then use this data to present more detailed search results.

"Microformats are designed for humans first and machines second. They are a set of simple, open data formats built upon existing and widely adopted standards." (Microformats.org, 2008)

When a social networking site marks up its profile pages with microformats that describe the person and their relationship with other users on the site, the initiative could result in Yahoo! displaying some of this data beside that page when it appears in its search results.

Google now keeping violation messages in webmaster console for one year

Google has announced that it will now be retaining messages about violations of its webmaster guidelines in Google Webmaster Central for one year. Any person able to authenticate themselves for a particular site will be able to see the message for up to one year after it was posted, regardless of whether or not it was previously deleted by a different user using a different authentication key.

This is a good move as it means that it is no longer possible for shady SEOs to hide these violation messages from their clients.

Google, Yahoo! and MSN offer cross-host submission for sitemaps

Google, Yahoo! and Microsoft have jointly announced support for cross-host submission for XML sitemaps. This means that XML sitemaps can now be stored on a different host and autodiscovery will be possible via the robots.txt sitemap field.

Previously, Google enabled website owners to do cross-site XML sitemap submission via Google Webmaster Central.

Acquisitions and Partnerships

Google officially acquires DoubleClick

Google has announced that it has officially acquired DoubleClick. The deal was objected to by a number of civil liberties groups worried about the privacy impact, and was also objected to by Microsoft as anticompetitive, a move which was viewed with some cynicism by the world's press. Both the US FTC and the EU antitrust authorities allowed the deal to go ahead with no conditions.

AOL buys social network Bebo for $850 million

In a move that has surprised some industry observers, AOL has purchased popular social networking site Bebo for $850 million in cash. According to AOL's press release, Bebo is rated as the third largest social networking site in the US after MySpace and FaceBook, is one of the larger ones in the UK, and is the most popular site of its kind in Ireland and New Zealand. It claims to have over 40 million members worldwide.

"Together with its AIM and ICQ personal communications network, the acquisition will give AOL a premier position in the fast growing world of social media with a network of approximately 80 million unique users." (AOL, March 2008)

Yahoo! joins OpenSocial

Yahoo! has jumped on the OpenSocial bandwagon, joining Google (via Orkut), MySpace and a host of other social networking sites in this nascent open social networking partnership. Yahoo!, MySpace and Google have also announced the creation of a non-profit foundation for OpenSocial to ensure that it remains unbiased in the future.

FaceBook is now the only major player in the social networking field that is not part of the OpenSocial project. OpenSocial will potentially create increased competition between social networks and will ease the process of transferring one's account to a different social network, an openness which runs counter to the previous model where most social networks strove to lock-in their users. It is being viewed in many corners as direct competition to FaceBook, which is aiming to become a key internet platform.

New Product Launches

Google Analytics releases Benchmarking

The Google Analytics team has finally launched its new Benchmarking reports feature. Website owners who use Google Analytics now have the option of sharing their aggregate analytics data, allowing them to compare their site against other sites in the same vertical, The feature therefore provides site owners with a method of comparing their site's progress against others in the same industry.

Internet Explorer 8 beta 1 for developers released

Microsoft has released an early version of Internet Explorer 8 for developers and web designers to use for testing. This is recommended for testing only, and not for use on production machines.

One of the more important details also released is that Internet Explorer 8 will be available for Windows XP, which should mean much wider initial adoption. The Vista update has not been as fast as Microsoft would have liked.

Although details are still limited, Internet Explorer 8 sounds like it will be a leap forward for Internet standards support. There has only been one significant update from Microsoft since 2001, when Internet Explorer 7 was released in 2006.

Microsoft has backtracked on a previous decision to make the new standards mode 'opt-in' by default for web pages using current standards, and will instead make it 'opt-out', meaning that web developers are required to actively insert a small amount of code to ensure that their documents continue to display as they did before.

News and Research

Google says mobile usage accelerating fast

Google has reported what it is describing as a "watershed" in the growth of mobile internet usage over recent months. It believes that much of this is due to its introduction of faster web services on selected mobile devices, such as the Blackberry and iPhone plus a number of Nokia products.

In addition, the introduction of flat-rate data services from mobile carriers is also believed to be a factor, as pay-as-you-go data plans discouraged high mobile internet usage.

Microsoft-Yahoo! takeover tussle continues

Microsoft's fight for ownership of Yahoo! has taken a number of convoluted twists and turns. News Corporation appears to have ruled itself out of the running to buy Yahoo! (although we are not discounting them yet), and AOL is now being considered as a reasonably serious contender (possibly through either a partnership or a merger). However, most analysts believe that Microsoft's chances are better.

Financial analysts have publicly given a range of differing views, with some declaring that Microsoft's bid was too low and others decrying the deal as bad value.

Microsoft seems determined to win Yahoo! one way or another, and has publicly threatened the board of Yahoo! with a shotgun wedding. In an open letter published on the internet, Microsoft told Yahoo! that if it doesn't receive a positive response to its offer within three weeks, it will launch a hostile takeover bid, including a proxy contest to oust the Board of Directors. Yahoo! has responded with its previous line - that the company is not opposed to the deal in principle, but that it believes that offer is too low.