Search Engine Optimization News Blog

The much anticipated partnership between Google and yahoo to allow Google ads to be displayed nest to Yahoo search results if floundering, say sources close to the situation. Talks seem to be breaking down over the Department of Justice’s concerns over the duo teaming up, and Microsoft’s senior vice president and legal counsel, Brad Smith has argued from the beginning that the ‘unprecedented level of control - over 90%-’ that the deal would give Google over net advertising was dangerous.

One might thing that that is just Microsoft playing dog in the manger since the proposed alliance between the two bigger search giants effectively killed an attempted takeover of Yahoo by Microsoft earlier this year. Now, with the huge plans dwindling away, will the smaller company with the deep pockets try again?

The deal with Google and the supposed millions in profits were all that kept shareholders from tearing Jerry Yang’s throat out in August when he turned down yet another offer from Microsoft’s Steve Ballmer. With Google out of the picture, many assume negotiations with Ballmer will reopen. Carl Icahn, who attempted a company takeover by way of proxy fight to force Yang to accept Microsoft’s offer and ended up settling for a seat on the board when the Google deal was signed, may be silently shaking in glee. His dreams for a Micro-Hoo may be realized after all, though it is doubtful that Yahoo can command the same price they might have earlier in the year.

Parties from both Yahoo and Google declined to comment, but the fact that Google didn’t move ahead on the 22 of October is sobering in and of itself, after the previous declamations from the search and ad monster that they had no worries about the DOJ at all.

Microsoft recently announced that it would make use of the OpenID standard for its Windows Live users. Yahoo too openly declared its support to the OpenID initiative. Now it is Google’s turn to join the race however Google did this with its usual twist.

According to the OpenID technology, users can now create a universal identity using which they can sign into many websites. This will reduce the hassles involved in creating, maintaining, and remembering the multiple usernames and passwords. Using the OpenID technology you can now stop worrying about the multiple passwords, all that we need to do is to remember the universal OpenID.

The twist however brought by Google is to be seen in the access limitation for the API for OpenID identity provider. Through this limitation, you will be able to gain access into other websites using your Gmail login but other logins may not work with Google accounts or Google sites. Users criticize Google severely for placing this limitation, which basically defeats the purpose of OpenID and makes the OpenID technology one-way technology that serves Google. Google tries to keep its users loyal to itself and this is more than obvious. If you want to login to any of the OpenID websites you will be choosing the service provider through whom you will be signing in. If you use a Google ID, then you will be choosing the option, “Sign in with Google”. However, if you select Google then you will have to go via Google to get permission to sign into the website.

Though it wears the OpenID cover, in reality it is not 100% OpenID protocol while others wait for Google to change its policy. Irrespective of this limitation, Google has number of people teaming up with it and some of the familiar names include Plaxo, Zoho etc. Google is currently trying to integrate OAuth and also OpenID so that users can have an enhanced and safe experience with websites.

Another factor to be noted here is that Google is only using the OpenID concept but not the technology of OpenID. Google has its own standard. When a user clicks the Google option to sign into websites, they are moved to a Google’s page where the user gets to the confirmation page before accessing the OpenID site. Whereas, according to the original OpenID technology the user needs to supply a special URI to the sites they like to login to. At the backend the URI authentication takes place. If you use Google then will be entering your Gmail ID. Google pre-registers the OpenID partner IDs before they can login to any OpenID sites. So now the question is, is Google really joining the OpenID initiative? Though it leaves us with questions, Google is being criticized heavily by the online community that has been looking forward for Google’s move towards OpenID. Some feel that Google is keen in protecting the interests of decentralized authentication; however, we need more convincing arguments for this view.

Blog reviews have been a time honored way to get a little free advertising and some links back to your site. While paying outright for links is black hat, and paying for blog reviews is considered grey, giving out a gift to bloggers was deemed all right until this past week. A large online company known to give out beanbag chairs in return for a blog post and the resultant back-link has apparently been penalized by Google with a PageRank hit.

Many people figured out that paying for links was a big Google no-no when the crackdowns started up again earlier this year. Now it seems that the blogs are going to have to police themselves a little more, and websites need to religiously no-follow links back from blogs that have given them a favorable review.

Links from other places that might have been influenced by the blog should still be fine, as they are organic - but that too can change at any time so be careful accepting any links back from places that could be construed as selling links to you or being bribed to make them.

It comes back to the way Google looks at things. Steering clear of the ‘appearance of evil’ is what you need to do to stay afloat. In the past, Google has come down hard on sites that appear to be buying links, and now ones that give away free gifts may be added to the penalties.

The best practice is to no-follow for all you are worth, and not to count on links from only one method as any sign of a pattern triggers the beast to attack. Once you have gotten a reputation for unsavory reports, it is hard to erase the stigma. Only do things you wouldn’t mind having well known should be passed around the web!

In a recent survey by a large digital marketing agency, It was revealed that a commonly touted concept was completely untrue. The storm of controversy surrounding the bringing of advertising to video and social networks and the dire prediction that it would effectively kill such site has been brought to a close.

The myth is debunked. According to the report, not only did 76% of respondents say that the ads they see on social sites like MySpace and Facebook didn’t bother them, a staggering 40% reported making purchases from those very ads.

Can we say, someone is doing an excellent job of targeting?? The former belief had been that users would become irritated and frustrated when confronted with such ads, and that user numbers on such sites would decline. Instead, the venue has opened up for apparently an extremely lucrative field - I’d take a 40% rate of conversion any day!

Of course, the respondents were in some part cherry-picked - they matched preset criteria as having spent at least $200 online in the past year, frequented a social site (like MySpace) and had made or consumed some type of online media like a video or music.

Still, these are who you want, right? The consumers who actually consume. The video sites had held even more warnings about displaying ad content - here too the response was milder than expected.

Users said that the ads didn’t bother them here either, but did express a preference for the banner style and ticker type ads over the traditional pre-roll video.

Sixty five % of those surveyed said they made repeat purchases from a site that sent them a recommendation based on their past purchases, probing that destination can still have an impact, and over 60% use widgets with regularity, raising the question of how to combine widgets with ads as the next step towards monetizing every aspect of the web experience.

Of all the information, the concept of social marketing naturally comes to the fore as the premier place for the average webmaster to direct some serious effort. The expected response of mass exodus from social sites upon the introduction of advertising was obviously a false alarm.

Recently Microsoft announced that it is stripping some of the crucial applications of Windows 7 and the users have to go online to download applications like Windows Mail using a Windows Live id. Further to their plans now, they have announced that Microsoft office will go online and the online version will be much lighter than the offline versions. The entire Microsoft Office suite including Microsoft Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote etc., will go online and they can be run through any of the user web browser.

According to the Janice Kapner Head of Communications, for the information worker group, which is responsible for developing Microsoft Office applications, announced that they have decided to become part of the cloud computing drive that is becoming popular these days. According to Kapner, this was one of their topics of internal speculation whether to go take the Office products online or just continue to enhance the offline version. However, now Microsoft has now decided to take the Microsoft Office suit online.

Cloud computing has been one of the latest buzzwords with Google and Yahoo. Now Microsoft too has joined the race and it stated that now it is the apt time because people have moved further from just talking about cloud computing. They want to see something more concrete in this area. Microsoft seems to be ready to meet the new gen requirements.

Though Google has already given a taste of cloud computing to its users through its Google Docs and Spreadsheets but Microsoft does not consider this as a valid competition as Google Docs and Spreadsheets are too limited in terms of features and things that they can accomplish when compared to Microsoft Office products. Microsoft estimates that there are over 500 million people using Microsoft Office applications worldwide and as such, it is seemingly one of the major revenue generating area giving Microsoft around $18.9 billion in 2008. This is an amazing 31% of Microsoft’s overall income.

This effort of Microsoft is expected to serve two purposes. Primarily it is to fight one of its major competitors and secondly this is also to reduce the rate of piracy of Microsoft Office products. The online versions of Microsoft Office Suite will be sold on the basis of volume licensing. These hosted services have to be paid for in the form of subscription like all the other Microsoft’s online services including SharePoint and Exchange.

Microsoft is hoping to bring the Office products online before the New Year. This online version will be considered as part of the next version of Microsoft Office. Microsoft hopes that this will give them more control over at least in this domain in which they are already leading. They do not want to be replaced by Google in this domain too. Moreover, by keeping Microsoft Office as a subscription service they will be able to generate more revenue on these products as they will bring in regular flow of revenue.