Oops, seems like Digg.com is out of service today. Just tried to log in but the site is temporarily down for upgarde. I wonder, what will these new services announced be? Anyway, I thought there are some other ways for upgrading a site except for shutting it down for an unestimated period of time…

With Google breaking away from the pack does Microsoft have any chance to compete? Well if Microsoft acquires Yahoo they do. Here are ten reasons why they will acquire Yahoo in 2007.

Here are ShoeMoney’s Top 10 reasons why:

1. The search algorithm… duh… Microsoft’s horrid search algo is by far the single biggest problem that Microsoft has right now. The problem is that when there is no users using the search engine then there is a ton of ads that never are shown. If Microsoft were to acquire Yahoos search algorithm this would be a GIANT step in getting users back.

2. Overture Yahoo Search Marketing. Microsoft used to broker every through the company formally known as overture. for showing ads on msn.com search. They are now trying there own company but its chugging along at a very slow pace. Most advertisers like Microsofts Adcenter but agree there is just not enough volume from its search engine (see #1).

3. Yahoo Publisher Network - YPN IMO is the best contextual advertising network there is. They have a great quality control team and also a REAL PHONE NUMBER THAT REAL PEOPLE ANSWER if you have contextual questions. Nobody provides the level of customer support in regards to contextual advertising that Yahoo Publisher Network does.

4. Flikr - Again Microsoft may have a similar product but the volume is here. Boom another zillion people to market to.

5. del.icio.us - While Google is signing up or buying all the 2.0 advertising space Microsoft can acquire a huge name right here.

6. The People - Microsoft has tons of stale old people who do not understand this new industry. They are starting to just now contribute to rival open source projects like Zend and Mysql. Acquiring Yahoo people like Jeremy Zawodny (who wrote a book on Mysql and also contributed tools to the project). Microsoft realizes that they are not only loosing ground in the search industry fast but they also lost market share in server technology to zend (PHP) and other opensource products. If they want to keep there market share with Windows Server I think bringing in a lot of these brilliant Yahoo developers would keep them on the right track in making sure they integrate well with the open source items.

7. Video - Between Yahoo Video and Microsoft’s Soapbox They might be able to combine for a decent share of the video market. Why is the video market important - 2 words - video advertising. I took part in the beta test when Google did a trial run of video ads and then 2 months later they buy out utube… ya… video advertising. Ad Volume ++

8. Community properties - Yahoo has yahoo groups which numbers rival close to Myspace. Never heard of groups.yahoo.com ? Ohh yea you forgot about that huh? Instantly you have millions of people to show more ads to! Ad Volume++

9. Business Directory - Microsoft Just gave up there Business Directory efforts. Yahoo has always rocked it with there paid inclusion directory. Its by far the most respected business directory on the internet. Even at 300$ per year fee webmasters line up all day to submit there websites. Mean while Google’s Business directory is a laughing stock being powered by the corrupt DMOZ.

10. Yahoo Just cleaned house. It seems to me this makes a merger that much easier with less chiefs to merge.

Our money is on Q2 2007 for the hostile takeover to occurr, maybe Q3 depending on the growth curve of Vista and Adcenter advertiser scalability needs.


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Google Adwords added ‘tree’ and ‘candle’ borders to their sponsored listings that appeared for the three top Holiday search terms: Christmas = Trees, Hanukkah = One type of candle, Kwanzaa = Colored alternating candles. How cute and festive - we just wonder if it improved CTR? That was the goal right? Leave it up to a bunch of PHD’s to celebrate the holidays quantitatively and qualitatively on top - LOL.

Thanks KB for the tip!


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Online advertising has become the main source of income for most site owners, content providers and publishers. No wonder new and improved measures are being taken to refine and improve it’s targeting/delivery. One consolidation tool new on the block is an interface described in Yahoo’s new patent application- Yahoo Universal Advertisement Services.

The new invention was created to enhance the process of ad creation and optimization for advertisers. Both banner ads and sponsored search media buying can be processed using the single interface with no need to open and switch between multiple windows. As we expectes this service should significantly simplify and expedite the online ad publication and management process:

A universal advertisement services system provides a common framework for managing web-based advertisement campaigns associated with various kinds of advertisement formats and advertisement pricing mechanisms. A unified set of interfaces is provided for advertisement configuration, fetching, arbitration and optimization, and advertisement campaign validation, exposing services to external parties as well as internal users. The universal advertisement services system enables delivery of an optimal available guaranteed or performance-based advertisement for a specified position in a web page and based on given business rules and metrics.

Now that Google SiteTargeting has also launched, and MSN has their hands in the mix, this new online marketplace is due for a shake-up!

The Microsoft adCenter team has announced a new feature available within the adCenter – “Divide Across The Month”. Enabling Microsoft advertisers to better predict the number of impressions available monthly and measure an “Average Participation Rate” which displays in percentage from 10% to 100% scale how your ad delivery will be allocated-flighted throughout the month.

The addition gives the advertiser an opportunity to better meet the targeted budget and flight thier ads throughout the month (though maybe in less quantities daily).

You could learn more about the new features in the adCenter help section.

The latest shift of the Yahoo ranking algorithm and the update of its search results database was announced today. Yahoo representative Tim Mayer stated it should be finished by today, December 13, and don’t wonder if your site experience some shifting of rank and number of pages included to the index.

Some feedback from site owners is already available within the Yahoo announcement. As usual there are many negative threads, and the majority are less then positive. However we hope this update will not influence the overall stability and ‘well-being’ of the majority. All the negative buzz is usually comes from the minority who obviously lost in their rankings. Though, who knows…

Can other people benefit when one’s wife goes out of town? Well, if we’re referring to SEO people and more specifically the wife of Matt Cutts - yes we can.

Last Sunday night Randish from SEOmoz posted the Questionaire for Matt Cutts from which we learned such useful aspects as:

• Google may become much stricter with spam and scraper sites made for Adsense (question #4)
• If your large site is still poorly indexed though you have already done all the needed basics (i.e. sitemap submission, posting in the group), the best course of actions for you now is to look for more high-quality backlinks (question #6)
• Matt Cutts thinks that even if Google starts to better inform and help webmasters to get their site indexed and ranking SEO consultants will still be highly-valued and needed to develop efficient search strategies (question #8)
• Matt Cutts doesn’t want to disclose his email address for those who don’t have a chance to interview him or talk to him on the industry conferences and other arrangements (question #10)

Enjoy the full version of questionnaire here.