Search Engine Optimization News Blog

To wrap up the year 2009, lets take a look at the current cases that are conspicuously showcases the constantly changing internet law:

(Information from the Chicago Sun Times):

A Chicago-based financial services company is petitioning Yahoo for information related to defamatory posts about Advance Equities, Inc., 311 S. Wacker Dr., on Yahoo’s financial chat board on Nov. 9. Advances Equities wants the identity of robinlove@yahoo.com, who posted the statement.

Also, on Nov. 17, social networking Web site SoAct.net demanded Twitter and a stock market message board to hand over account information for users who called SoAct.net a “fraud.” – both lawsuits cited Illinois Supreme Court Rule 224, which “compels limited discovery before filing a lawsuit in an  effort to determine the identity of one who maybe be liable in damages.”

Google has their own battle, According to Information Week:

The National Arbitration Forum (NAF), which is accredited by Internet overseer ICANN, has dismissed Google’s complaint against Groovle.com filed in November. Google had objected to the site’s domain name, arguing that it was “confusingly similar” to its Google trademark. (Groovle.com provides Internet start pages that people can customize with their own photos.)

The three-person NAF panel said in it’s decision that the name of its site was sufficiently different to avoid confusion with Google. “Accordingly, it is ordered that the Groovle.com domain name remain with respondent.”The panel’s decision was only the second time Google has lost a domain name dispute; they also lost the challenge of the domain name froogles.com, which the NAF panel ruled was sufficiently dissimilar from the Google trademark.

So, Google doesn’t always win, and libel is a prosecutable offence. Good to know.

Google and Bing may be edging Yahoo out of the search market, but Yahoo is still the globe’s first stop for online news, according to Compete; this graph shows Yahoo clearly topping all competitors:

Over the past five years, the main sites that people go to for news have remained the same:

2004:

1. Yahoo News
2. CNN
3. MSNBC
4. AOL News
5. Gannett
6. IBS
7. Knight Ridder Digital
8. NY Times
9. Tribune Newspapers
10. USA Today

2009:

1. Yahoo! News
2. CNN Digital Network
3. MSNBC Digital Network
4. AOL News
5. NYTimes.com
6. Tribune Newspapers
7. Google News
8. Fox News Digital Network
9. ABCNEWS Digital Network
10. Gannett Newspapers and Newspaper Division

Aggregators are also heavily used, and again we see the pattern:

1. Yahoo
2. Google
3. Aol
4. Huffington Post

Yahoo definitely still has a place on the internets. Will they capitalize on it? Time will tell.

According to a recent report, the tools people use to manage their sites are becoming more intermingled all the time.

According to a recent report, the tools people use to manage their sites are becoming more intermingled all the time.

Factual did a quick rundown showing the rough numbers for how people use tools on the web:

28% of websites have Google Analytics –- pretty impressive, while 12% of the sites have AdSense.  (Side note: we’re using the count of GetContentResults=Http-200 for the denominator, since it’s not fair to count the sites that CommonCrawl was unable to get content from.)

5% of websites have a Twitter link and 5% have a Facebook URL, yet only 2% have both a Twitter and a Facebook URL.  It’ll be interesting to see how this changes over time.

The top five versions of Apache discovered are 2.2.11 (210,984 instances), 2.2.3 (200,065 instances), 1.3.41 (168,660 instances), 2.2.14 (166,644), and 2.0.52 (97,004 instances).

Factual used data from Common Crawl to present their data, which includes a nifty chart:

To read the entire post (which contains some interesting conceptions) visit Factual.

Yahoo knows which side their bread is buttered on – they’re wooing the public and don’t seem to care if they incense former staffers.

According to reports, Yahoo was paying baggage fees for customers on outbound flights from both a San Jose and a San Fransisco airport – something that raised eyebrows when stacked against the cost cutting ‘mandatory vacation’ employees were forced to take over Christmas/New Year week.

A spokesperson claims the action was not started by Yahoo the company, but that it was a “spontaneous effort” that involved Yahoo employees paying the luggage fees of San Jose travelers using the American Airlines ticket counter this morning “because they had flights at the time we were at the airport, and passengers were checking in.” This afternoon, Yahoo employees are at SFO but the spokesperson doesn’t know what airline(s) they’re working with.

On the flip side of the coin, again, former Yahoo employees Joshua Schachter and Rasmus Lerdorf Tweeted that their names are being used in targeted AdWords campaigns – advertising openings in their former employer’s workforce. Joshua tweeted sarcastically that he thought it was ‘classy’.

What is Yahoo doing? Is it really Yahoo, or is it (as claimed) merely cheerful Yahoo employees spreading Christmas cheer… and possibly, as one person pointed out, a Google happy odd-job having a spot of fun at Schachter’s and Lerdorf’s behalf?

AOL is slashing staff in preparation for the new year. The recent spin off from Time Warner Inc apparently came with a few conditions, and restructuring was one. Unfortunately, in this case restructuring means that a significant portion of AOL’s workforce is being kicked to the curb.

According to the official Form 8-K filed by AOL with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission:

The Restructuring will include the reduction of approximately a third of the Company’s current employee base, which will be conducted on a voluntary and involuntary basis. As of November 19, 2009, the Company employed approximately 7,000 people. As part of the Restructuring, the Company also intends to exit certain of its non-strategic business operations. Implementation of certain components of the Restructuring, including certain elements of the employee reductions and the exit of its non-strategic business operations, is subject to the satisfaction of applicable legal requirements.

The Company expects to incur restructuring charges of up to $200 million, the majority of which is expected to be incurred through the end of 2009, with the remainder expected to be incurred through the first half of 2010. Included in the total restructuring charges are up to $150 million of charges related to employee severance and benefit costs and up to $50 million of charges related to facility closures and other costs. The Company expects substantially all of these charges to result in future cash expenditures.

Looks like former AOL employees will be flooding into the job market come the first of the year. No word on what type of severance packages were included.