Yahoo has come out with a Web-based smushing tool. Smush.it optimizes your imagery for you so you can minimize your page size and load time. Upload an image or input the image url and Smushit will smush it for you and provide the results of the smushing. You can then download the decreased file size image in a zip file. I tried it; you can see the results in the screenshot. You can also get a Firefox extension to optimize the images found on any Web page.
As described on the site, “Smushit.com is a service that More»

Labels: usability, user experience, web 2.0, Yahoo, YHOO

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A poll conducted by Yahoo in conjunction with Stanford University and the Associated Press of 2,227 adults from Aug. 27 to Sept. 5, found that racial misgivings could cost Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, the presidency in his bid for the White House. The poll found that 40 percent of white Americans including Dems and independents hold a less than favorable view of blacks. The More»

Labels: online polls, Yahoo

In its first major redesign in two years, Yahoo announced plans to makeover several popular front-door sections of its Web site including the homepage over the next few months. The company plans to streamline the design of Yahoo.com giving users what matters most to them no matter where they ‘live’ on the Web. The company plans to:

add more bells and whistles like widgets for increased personalization
provide users with a dashboard area (off to the left) that will let users add previews of their favorite Yahoo and non-Yahoo services such More»

Labels: redesign, usability, user experience, web 2.0, Yahoo

I attended Yahoo’s shareholder meeting last year and it was “The Circus of Santa Clara”. Some shareholder were hurling f*** y** at Terry Semel - the man responsible for creating the mess that Jerry is in today. Others threw banana peels and still others cried over losing money after buying Yahoo shares. However this year things were different. There was hardly anyone there. All the food remained untouched (see image). Jerry stayed on message, reiterating the strategy. “Yahoo is a great brand, More»

Labels: Yahoo

The Yahoo Search Blog announced they have made “significant enhancements” to how they show news results in the web search results. Yahoo is now showing news results in different positions throughout the web search results, based on their new “News Direct Display (DD)” algorithm. In addition, Yahoo improved how they detect news queries and will show more news boxes in the search results due to that improvement. More>>
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Labels: Search, Yahoo

Click fraud rates for search advertising remain practically unchanged for the second quarter of 2008 according to ClickForensics. The overall industry average click fraud rate was 16.2 percent for Q2 2008. That’s down slightly from the 16.3 percent rate reported for Q1 2008 and up from the 15.8 percent click fraud rate reported for Q2 2007.
However the average click fraud rate of PPC advertisements appearing on search engine content networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo’s Publisher Network, was 27.6 percent. That’s down from the 27.8 percent rate reported for Q1 More»

Labels: Click Fraud, google, Yahoo

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s top legal counsel told the US Senate that on June 8, he met Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang at the San Jose, Calif. airport and Yang told Microsoft executives that a partnership with Google would isolate Microsoft. Smith, Microsoft’s top legal counsel said Yang is conspiring with Google to freeze Microsoft out of the web search business and turn the market into a duopoly and that it would hurt competition.
Yahoo struck the partnership with Google to ward off an unsolicited bid by Microsoft to buy Yahoo. Search marketers and advertisers More»

Labels: google, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Search, Yahoo

Reuters is reporting that AOL’s parent TimeWarner is seeking to sell the property to either Yahoo or Microsoft. The discussions between the companies “have taken on new urgency ahead of Yahoo’s Aug 1 shareholders meeting.”
Discussions with Time Warner have accelerated as both Yahoo and Microsoft view AOL as beneficial to leverage their positions in online advertising. Over the past two years AOL focused on turning itself into a one-stop online advertising outfit.
Microsoft’s interest in acquiring AOL would serve to bulk up its display advertising business as well as gain more traffic More»

Labels: AOL, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Search, Yahoo

A US Senate subcommittee heard testimony today about the competitive implications of Yahoo’s recent deal with Google, which will see the company mix ads supplied by Google with its own on search result pages. They also heard from Microsoft’s top lawyer, Brad Smith. Their testimony presented radically different pictures of what constitutes competition in the search market, how this deal will affect that competition, and the ongoing negotiations between Microsoft and Yahoo. More >>
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Labels: google, Microsoft, Online Advertising, Search, Yahoo

Today, Yahoo! Search is taking another step in extending the Yahoo! Open Strategy with the launch of Yahoo! Search BOSS, a web services platform that allows developers and companies to create and launch web-scale search products by utilizing the same infrastructure and technology that powers Yahoo! Search.
The goal with BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) is simple — foster innovation in the search landscape. As anyone who follows the search industry knows, the barriers to successfully building a high quality, web-scale search engine are incredibly high. Doing so requires hundreds of millions of dollars More»

Labels: Search, Yahoo