Yahoo's Casualties in Search War

Semel maybe out but so are 10 of Yahoo's 26 executives (see then and now). A 40% turnover in executive management in one year is pretty high. I guess the battle against Google is taking its toll. Semel, who didn't know what email was before he arrived at Yahoo has left behind a trail of destruction. The vacancies are being filled by Susan Deckers' friends according to sources. Susan, who takes over as President of Yahoo, is famous for saying that "Yahoo's goal is not to be number one in search". Besides losing all this "talent" in a short time, the company is losing millions in severance compensation. Several employees said that Farzeed Nazem, CTO, spent more time filing papers with the SEC over stock options purchases and sales during his 11 year hibernation. The WSJ says it reinforces doubts about Panama when the guy overseeing the global rollout leaves smack in the middle of it. A senior Yahooligan (Yahoo employee) described Panama as larger than the Titanic and that it will help Yahoo capture more search advertising dollars.

Here is the list of executives jumping ship:
Terry Semel, CEO
Susan Decker, CFO
Lars Rabbe, CIO
Dan Rosensweig, COO
Farzeed Nazem, CTO
Chris Castro, CCO
Lloyd Braun, President, Yahoo! Media
John Marcom, VP International, Yahoo!
Phu Hoang, VP Engineering
Daniel Finnigan, VP Classifieds

At the annual shareholder meeting Jerry Yang had nothing to say about Yahoo's business but human rights. Yesterday, he released a statement saying "Terry has given Yahoo! six of its best years".

Yahoo, hosting the Titanic party at its campus in Sunnyvale, CA.

"Search Is History", says Yahoo!

As the company realizes that it can no longer compete with Google, it is saying the future of web search is history. Yahoo says the model for getting information via the browser is outdated. In the future relevant information will be delivered directly to readers. "The future of the web is about personalization. Where search was dominant, now the web is about 'me.' It's about weaving the web together in a way that is smart and personalized for the user," said Tapan Bhat, VP, Yahoo!'s Personalised Home Page.

Interestingly, iGoogle is about personalization and Google has been making alot of noise of about it. Suddenly, it has become the core focus at Yahoo. Yahoo has been losing market share to Google in search and has been recasting itself as a company not focused on search. In fact Susan Decker, CFO, Yahoo has said previously that "Our goal is not to be number one is search". "They've realised they can't compete with Google on search." said Deborah Schultz, a Silicon Valley-based marketing consultant.

Search continues to gain wider adoption as an enabler for online commerce and soon may become the platform for commerce. Billions of dollar are being channeled into search as major marketers and brand advertisers see the efficiency of the medium. The river of money is finding its way mostly to Google. In fact the company does more in reveune in a single quarter than Yahoo does in a year. The entire Searchnomics conference is focused on the importance of search to web sites and online businesses.


On Tuesday June 12, 2007, Yahoo holds it annual shareholder meeting. Yahoo's Terry Semel was the highest paid CEO in 2006, with total compensation of $71.7 million, according to the AP. That is two times more than the $27 million in total compensation for the New York Yankees' Alex Rodriguez, baseball's highest-paid player, and higher than the typical pay A-list stars like Brad Pitt who earn $20 million a movie, plus 20 percent of the gross box office take.

There is even talk that Microsoft may buy the company. That would give Semel a graceful exit. However, the word is that the company is not attractive enough to any single major buyer to advance their product line, not at that price. Jeff Clavier, a venture capitalist at SoftTech, said: "The problem with Yahoo! is that they're trying to be all things to all people but they don't do any one thing particularly well."

All this is making investors, partners and customers very nervous. Several advertisers and partners are moving to Google; Friendster, a social networking site, moved to Google from Yahoo to better monetize its user base with Google's larger ad platform and deeper inventory. If this trend continues, Yahoo maybe history before search is.

Yahoo's CTO, Farzad Nazem, Resigns

Farzad Nazem, Yahoo's CTO for the past 11 years has called it quits. Couple of weeks ago Susan Decker quit as Yahoo's CFO. An SEC, filing outlines that Farzad will not we able to work for a competitor such as Google or Microsoft for 3 years nor can he solicit or contract Yahoo employees.

Yahoo CFO Out: Goal Not To Be No. 1 In Search

Susan Decker, the former CFO of Yahoo has been replaced by Blake Jorgensen. He will begin his new job on June 4, 2007. Susan was famous for saying that "It's not our goal to be No. 1 in Internet search." and that is precisely the plan the company has been sticking to. Here is the press release from Yahoo.

Google searches web's dark side

One in 10 web pages contains malicious code that could infect a user's PC. Researchers at Google scrutinized 4.5 million pages to and 10% or 450,000 were capable of launching so-called "drive-by downloads", sites that install malicious code, such as spyware, without a user's knowledge, and a further 700,000 pages were thought to contain code that could compromise a user's computer.

Drive-by downloads are an increasingly common way to infect a computer or steal sensitive information. They usually consist of malicious programs that automatically install when a user visits a booby-trapped website.

"To entice users to install malware, adversaries employ social engineering," wrote Google researcher Niels Provos.

"The user is presented with links that promise access to 'interesting' pages with explicit pornographic content, copyrighted software or media. A common example are sites that display thumbnails to adult videos."

Some downloads, alter bookmarks, install unwanted toolbars or change the start page of a browser. However, increasingly, criminals are using drive-bys to install keyloggers that steal login and password information.

Other pieces of malicious code hijack a computer turning it into a "bot", a remotely controlled PC.

Drive-by downloads represent a shift away from traditional methods of infecting a computer, such as spam and email attachments.

The vast majority exploit vulnerabilities in Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser to install themselves.

Google will start to identify all web pages on the internet that could be malicious.
Google, part of the StopBadware coalition, already warns users if they are about to visit a potentially harmful website, displaying a message that reads "this site may harm your computer" next to the search results.

"Marking pages with a label allows users to avoid exposure to such sites and results in fewer users being infected," the researchers wrote. This is similar to the browser install produced by McAfee called SiteAdvisor, which alters users to spyware, spam, viruses and online scams. SiteAdvisor, alerts users of web site's safety by assigning color codes next to the severity of the threat posted. However, the constant pop-up that alerts users of a sites threat level can get annoying and time consuming.

The Google report also identified the other methods by which criminals inject malicious code on to innocent web pages.

1. Spam email - are a common way to infect a computer. It found that the code was often contained in those parts of the website not designed or controlled by the website owner, such as banner adverts and widgets.

2. Widgets - are small programs that may, for example, display a calendar on a web page or a web traffic counter. These are often downloaded from third-party sites. The rise of web 2.0 and user-generated content gave criminals other channels, or vectors, of attack, it found. For example, postings in blogs and forums that contain links to images or other content could unwittingly infect a user.

You're a Nobody Unless You Google Well

If your name does not come up on Google you are nobody according to an article published by the Wall Street Journal.

Today, employers frequently Google their candidate prior to even calling. Interviewers often search to see if what a candidate say on their resume could be verified online. More than 80% of executive recruiters said they routinely use search engines to learn more about candidates, according to a recent survey by executive networking firm ExecuNet. Nearly 40% of individuals have used search engines to look up friends or acquaintances with whom they'd lost touch, according to a Harris Interactive survey commissioned by Microsoft Corp.'s MSN unit.

Parents to be are turning to Google to find unique names for their children. They explain they want their children to stand out. Google, John Smith and you will get 209,000,000 searchresults and as people flood the web this is going to be a growing problem.

To increase visibility musicians are turning to unique sites like Gruuve where they can be found. Eg. a search for "U2" on Google is getting very noise but a search for "U2" on Gruuve brings us the band.

For web professionals WebGuild is building its own version on an online directory. People in the web profession can add themselves to the directory and use it as an online biography which they could provide to reporters, employers, for speaking engagements and more.

Sir Martin Says Google Is Frienemy

I was at "The Future of Advertising Conference" at Stanford and Sir Martin Sorrell, Chairman, WPP, the largest advertising holding company shared some interesting stats about the advertising business.

1. WPP has a market share of approximately 25% of the global ad business, annual billings of $60 Billion and yet only $200 M of that is with Google.
2. Google's revenues are approximately $11 Billion and at $200 M, WPP is one of Google's largest customers. So Google's tail is very very long and they are just getting started.
3. He went on to say that Google is a FRIENEMY - Google is your friend in the short term and enemy in the long term. His reasoning was Google wants access to large advertising account, that they do not have relationships with and that is where the friendship begins.
4. There was little mention of Microsoft or Yahoo and it understandable as their respective foot prints in this space is still considered baby steps.

On May 16, 2007, the WebGuild will be having an event of The Future of Online Advertising with all the heavy weights including Google. The panel will share insight into the future of online advertising from several perspectives of paramount importance to web professionals, seos, sems or search engine marketers, web analytics professionals, online merchants, venture capitals, entrepreneurs and anyone that uses a website to acquire customers, service customers or monetize customers. There are still a few spots left. If you miss this then there is always Searchnomics, which delves deep into search advertising and search & marketplaces and must attend for all web professinal.

Local Search Marketplace

Local.com has launched "Local Promote" a service for small businesses.

The service allows small businesses to establish a Web presence with a landing page on Local.com, in addition to various distribution, pay-per-click and featured placement options.

The free basic version includes the ability for businesses to post and update business name, description and contact info. This will make it easier for lots of small business to form a Web presence.

Local.com is one of several companies along with Google Maps, Krillion, Gruuve and others that are enabling the "Webification" of the the local search marketplace. These services enable local business to establish a web presence easily and essentially expand the addressable market of online advertisers.

Once there, they are hoped to evolve into paid marketers, whether that be a subscription service like Local Promote, featured placement or paid search on Google.

Search Engine Awards Launched to Recognize Industry Leadership

There is now an award for the best search engine web site. This is the very first award of its kind to recognize leadership, outstanding achievement, and innovation in the search engine industry.

Entry is open to all search engine websites and there is no cost for participation. The winners will be decided by a panel of judges comprised of industry professionals and nominations received for each search website. Search engines websites are encouraged to have their users vote for their favorite search engine website.

To submit your entry please visit http://www.webguild.org/meetings/2007/searchnomics/search_awards.php.

For more information vist http://www.sys-con.com/read/367042.htm.

Google's New Search Page on IE

I rarely use Microsoft IE, so today when I searched using IE the Google search results page on IE was different to the search results page on Firefox. I guess Google is doing a browser detect and displaying different looks on the different browsers. I would like to hear everyone comments on this.

Google search results on IE



Google search results on Firefox

Google Voice Search

Voice will be a key piece of mobile search and thus Google has launched an initiative to enable users them to find information about local businesses, driving directions, sports scores, stock quotes, weather, news, movie show times, and more via their phone.

Google Voice Search currently in beta allows users to call a number and specify a search query and get the results on a web page read back to them (that match the specified query). To try the service dial 650.623.6706.

Voice will play an important roll in the rapidly growing local search market. I believe Google will integrate Voice and Maps into its Local Search offering. Thus it will be another way for user for search and locate information.

Voice has been used extensively as an automated directory assistance feature by companies such as Fedex, Cingular/AT&T, American Airlines, American Express and other large companies to handle customer requests. The difference here being, voice is used as a way for users/searchers to get actionable information at their finger tips.

Recently, Microsoft bought TellMe for the very same reason. Microsoft believes that the battle to win the hearts and minds of searchers is going to be mobile and local search, and that Tellme has what it needs to win. However, Tellme's service is call center automation solution. It simply uses voice to as the executable to handle customer traffic in a call center. This is different from utiliting voice as the executable to search web pages. Sure, TellMe can be retooled to read web pages but that is not worth paying $800M plus. So in fact Microsoft is in the call center automation business and not mobile search. I know because I had a start up in the internet voice search way back when it was not sexy.

Local.com Lands $8M

Local.com Corp. which provides technology and services for helping retailers advertise and consumers search for locally available products, has received $8 million in financing from Hearst Interactive Media and Greenway Capital.

Local.com Corp. (NASDAQ: LOCM) attracts about 10 million visitors a month seeking information on local businesses, products, services, people and jobs.

Google, Yahoo and other provide local search as side offering of their core platform. eg. I did a search on Google and Local.com for Chinese food in my zip code. Local.com displayed sponsor/paid listings first (which I quickly skipped) and when organic results. The results we displayed by the closest to my zip code in miles which made it easy. However, the map and directions went the best user experience.

I did the same search on Google and the closest venue to my zip code was third. If I was new to an area this would be useful information. Google Local in now integrated with Google Maps and it was very easy to use.

Microsoft buys into Health Search

This is additive to my original post on Dr.Google. Microsoft today announced that it plans to acquire Medstory a California health search company in Google's backyard. What is Microsoft up to and can this translate into a meaningful advantage for Microsoft? I believe it could if integrated well. Medstory is back by some of silicon valley's savvy techrazzi. Microsoft's strategy is to integrate Medstory with the MSN constellation and present users searching for medical information a solution. Some of the biggest online advertisers per ad capita are drug companies. Older users are more likely to use this service and are more likely to have a higher incomes. Microsoft's strategy could be to get a foot hold into a small but very lucrative piece of the add pie and extend outwardly.

Publishers Take Control FAST

FAST has introduced a new product called AdMomentum. AdMomentum provides, publishers with a private-label contextual advertising platform, eliminating the need for third-party services and enabling them to better monetize their content and serve their clients (advertisers).

AdMomentum is targeted at online media companies, retailers and telecommunications service providers. It enables them to better sell locally and nationally, to both their audiences and advertisers. Publishers can grow their revenues and reverse the tide of ad dollars that are going to third-party services.

“Publishers want to maintain control of their revenue, serving their advertisers and audiences more effectively, and this has been difficult to do with third-party platforms." said John M. Lervik, CEO of FAST.

“Online ad revenue drives the digital economy, and no one has a lock on that revenue stream today,” said Sue Feldman, IDC's Vice President for Search and Digital Marketplace Technologies. “Online advertising – particularly contextual advertising – continues to soar. IDC believes that large publishers and ad networks can seize a significant share of this revenue and AdMomentum provides this infrastructure for publishers to manage and monetize their online content. It's a digital marketplace in a box."

"Contextual advertising continues to drive the advertising economy, and publishers everywhere are looking for ways to deliver more qualified leads to their advertisers," said Stephen Baker, CEO of Search at Reed Business.

“To meet the needs of our customers, we have to meet the needs of their customers – the readers and advertisers that support their businesses,” said Dylan Fuller, Senior Product Director at FAST. “There’s a reason why contextual advertising has done so well with readers and advertisers, and now publishers will be able to make the experience even better. They know their customers better than anyone else, and with the right tools they can better serve them.”

New media getting more ad money

According to a study from the American Advertising Federation, as much as 73% of online marketers are reserving 20% of their ad budgets for new and emerging media. About 12% of those marketers say they reserve between 21% and 40% of their marketing budgets for new media.

Advertisers are betting on new mediums like television programs viewed over the internet, text messaging and social networking to be among the top categories. The study also indicates that marketers want new ways to use traditional media (78%), a balance of traditional and non-traditional media (75.5%) and increasing awareness of new media properties (57.7%) in order to remain competitive.

One surprising result from the study is that many of those polled believe traditional mediums are in need of a make-over. The respondents indicated that newspapers (51.4%), network television (34.5%), radio (33.8%) all needed to be overhauled to remain competitive with new media like social networking sites, online video and other consumer generated media.

Magazines are not exempt from the overhaul message that marketers are sending. According to the categories of business magazines (46%), women's service (25%), fashion and beauty (18.8%) and men's (17%) magazines are all in need of a make-over to remain competitive in today's market.

The WebGuild event on Feb 15, 2007 held at Google Headquarters examine Online Video: Revolutionizing Advertising & Marketing. The panelists will be;
YouTube Jordan Hoffner, Director, Worldwide Web Syndication, YouTube
AOL Timothy Tuttle, Vice President, AOL Video, AOL
Fox Todd Murtha, VP, Business Fox Interactive Media, Inc.
NBC John Saroff, Content Acquisition Leader, NBC
Moderated by
Daya Baran. Chief Gruuve, GRUUVE

SideStep Steps into $15 Million

Travel search engine SideStep said it raised $15 million in its Series C round, led by Norwest Venture Partners. "SideStep will use the funding to aggressively scale key areas of the business, while growing its leadership position in vertical search and building out its media and user-generated content offerings." To date, SideStep has raised approximately $32 million. Other competitors include Kayak which has raised $30 million.

Lately, Norwest, Charles River Ventures, WorldView and many other hardware oriented venture capitalists have been investing in consumer internet. This is the domain of seasoned pioneers like Ram Shriram of Google. Forbes calls him the man with the midas touch. Ram has many stellar successes to his name including Junglee which was acquired by Amazon and Netspace - in which he was a key player.

Norwest is an investor in Turn (the new CPA ad network), which wants to challenge Google Adsense. Turn is led by Jim Barnett. Jim Barnett sits on the board of SideStep.

Also, Norwest is an investor in Yatra, an India based travel search engine. Ram is an investor in ClearTrip.

It is yet to be seen if the new entrants can stay in the kitchen when it gets hot. After all the were the same folks asking Serge Brin and Larry Page, why another search engine was necessary when Yahoo and MSN existed. I am betting on the "clear" winner.

Danny Sullivan - 'Social Media Engines' are Next Big Search Thing

Danny Sullivan said recently that 'Social Media Engines' are Next Big Search Thing

Social Media engines like Gruuve, Digg and StumbleUpon are the new traffic powerhouses. Now search marketers have another channel to reach consumers in addition to Google and Yahoo.

According to Danny, TechCrunch gets much of its traffic from Google, Digg and StumbleUpon. These "social media engines" are not merely smaller vertical search engines about which search marketers can say "oh, I'm not up on Digg. I might look into it later," Sullivan writes.

These vertical engines are becoming the equivalent of major search engines in their niches. Eg. Gruuve is creating the Google of Music. Gruuve has over 20 million bits of music information. Thousands of users from MySpace come to the site everyday for discovery and recommendations.

The WebGuild Social Search event featured Gruuve, Digg, StumbleUpon and Delicious.

Best Search Websites 2007

Submit and rate your favorite search websites
Click here.

If you can't find the site you are looking for or if it is not on the list please submit it.

Rating Criteria
Accessibility:
Weak - contents are accessed by scrolling through site's pages
Acceptable - contents are made more accessible via a simple search engine or other finding aid
Strong - site incorporates its own search engine with sophisticated search capabilities

Content:
Weak - site consists primarily of links to other sites, some of which are broken or not useful
Acceptable - some unique material; links to other sites are annotated, up to date, and useful
Strong - contains material unique to this site; goes into sufficient depth for research purposes; is accurate and up to date

Authority:
Weak - site's creator is not identified or lacks the credentials or training to present material of value to serious researchers
Acceptable - site's creator is clearly identified and can reasonably claim the authority to present research quality material
Strong - individual or organization maintaining site is recognized as an authority in this subject area

Navigation:
Weak - site is not organized into manageable segments or is confusing to navigate
Acceptable - site is well organized and navigation is clear and consistent
Strong - material is presented in manageable units; access to contents is logical and intuitive

Design:
Weak - site is bland or else so loaded with graphics and features that it is torture to wait for the connection
Acceptable - graphics contribute to the material being presented and enhance the aesthetics of the site
Strong - site loads quickly when initial connection is made; graphics are well-integrated into the design

Accessibility:
Weak - contents are accessed by scrolling through site's pages
Acceptable - contents are made more accessible via a simple search engine or other finding aid
Strong - site incorporates its own search engine with sophisticated search capabilities

People Power Search

Last week Jimmy Wales Wikipedia foounder, announced the launch of user-based search. Now there is another start up called ChaCha put a different spin on called people power search. On the company's website it says is ChaCha is a smart search engine powered by human intelligence, a place to find exactly what you're looking for without sifting through millions of results and intelligent search results from people who are knowledgeable about the very thing you are looking for.

I tried it out but for now I will stick with Google and for social search I will stick with GRUUVE where I am the Chief Gruuve and maybe Wikipedia.

Vertical search engine revenue $1 billion by 2009

Revenue from Vertical search engines are projected to reach $1 billion by 2009, this is according to white paper titled “The Emerging Opportunity in Vertical Search,” by Slack Barshinger and SearchChannel.

The paper analyzes 38 b-to-b vertical search engines serving two dozen industries, including agriculture and technology. In the past six months b-to-b vertical search engines grew by 26% . Among the search engines studied were Business.com, SearchFinance, ThomasNet and Zibb.

“The vertical search engine landscape has witnessed rapid change over the past year, and we think growth in this online segment will continue to soar,” said Bill Furlong, president and partner of SearchChannel, in a statement.

SearchChannel is a vertical applications services provider that specializes in developing search engines for media companies. Slack Barshinger is an integrated marketing communications agency.

Dr. Google!

Web-based search engines such as Google are becoming the latest tools in clinical medicine. Hangwi Tang of the Brisbane, Australia-based Princess Alexandra Hospital wrote in a study on British Medical Journal's Web site. Doctors are increasingly Googling for a diagnosis. Google gives users access to more than 3 billion articles on the Internet, according to Tang.

When a 16-year-old patient of Tang's showed up with a blood clot, Tang told his parents that the cause of the condition was uncertain. However, the patients father suggest that it was Paget-von Schroetter syndrome. The father Googled the symptoms, which include pain and circulation problems in the arms and shoulders, into the search engine and arrived at the correct diagnosis, the Tang said.

According to the New England Journal of Medicine last year, doctors Google three out of five difficult to diagnose symptoms. In 58 percent of the cases, the researchers said doctors we able to locate and specific diagnostic information.

Like.com Launches

Like.com just launched. The site helps you find other things that are similar or look like in appearance to a product featured on the website (usually worn by celebs). The site is a shopping portal for vendors - at least at present. For example you cannot search for "cats" and find similar cats. The experience is great but the site is very limiting. I believe it is a matter of time before the majors Google, Yahoo et la come up with their own version of "Like.com".

Google's Custom Search Engine

Google's just announced the launch of their Custom Search Engine service. The service makes it easy to add a customized search engine to your website or blog.

See the top right-hand side (channel) with "Google Custom Search" for a quick implementation of this service.

This service lets user choose the order and display of search results by specifying Google or non-Google vertical search engines to show at the top of Google search results.

How to Create your own Search Engine
Go to www.google.com/coop/cse to get started. There you can find a control panel with FAQs and other information about the service. The control panel is very user friendly and simple to use. I created this search engine in 30 seconds.

Step 1 - specify sites you want to include or exclude from your search engine.
Step 2 - you can enter sites in any order and you can add and delete sites as you wish
Step 3 - do a quick test - you can customize the look and fine and other refinements later
Step 4 - click "Code" - copy and paste the code to your web site or blog
Step 5 - now you are ready to gruuve

You can also add collaboration and money making tools to your search engine.