When Yahoo Buzz first opened in beta, stories soon surfaced that, those invited to the beta, saw some big increases in traffic. If you’ve been pining to get a piece of your own Buzz, you’ll be pleased to know that Yahoo Buzz is now open to all web sites.

Today, six months and more than 5 million users later, we’re pleased to share that we’re opening Yahoo! Buzz up so that you can “buzz up” content from any publisher on the Web…And for anyone publishing Web content that was not part of our beta testing, today we hope you will join Yahoo! Buzz and let our audience (of more then half a billion people!) buzz up your content, too. Joining is as simple. Just grab code from our Buttons page and paste it into your website or blog.

Now, before you get dizzy with excitement, you might want to temper your expectations. Marketing Pilgrim joined Yahoo Buzz, late in the beta–actually about 3 weeks ago. Despite adding big buttons to the bottom of each post, we’ve not seen any significant traffic from Yahoo Buzz. Maybe we don’t appeal to Yahoo Buzz’s majority or perhaps our posts just stink. Either way, Yahoo Buzz hasn’t been the winner, we’d hoped it would be.

So, go ahead and give Yahoo Buzz a whirl. It’s a great site and I still plan on keeping our Yahoo Buzz buttons on each post. Maybe you can leave me a comment with your results.

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.

For example, a search on spears returns a news box in the middle of Yahoo Search:

I decided to see how Yahoo handled a search for cuil (for more on Cuil, see Cuil Launches — Can This Search Start-Up Really Best Google?) and yes, they do show a news result at the top of the listings, just like Google:

vs:

Yes, Google ranks cuil.com as the number one result in the web search results, while Yahoo currently does not - but that is for a different blog post.

Google has also had news results within the different positions of the web search results since they launched Universal Search in May 2007.

comScore has released the top 50 ad networks and top 50 web properties for June 2008.

In ad networks, AOL’s Platform-A takes the top spot, reaching 90% of American internet users. Yahoo comes in second, reaching 83% and Google comes in third with 81%. Here’s the full list:

In web properties, Google leads the pack 140.2 million unique visitors, but Yahoo comes in a very close second at 140.1 million. This past April, Google’s sites beat Yahoo’s properties for the first time. Microsoft trails in third with 119 million. AOL is in 4th with 110 million and Fox Interactive rounds out the top 5 with 85 million. Here’s the chart:

As a webmaster, when you put a page up on the web, there may be parts of that page that you may not want to have indexed by a search engine.

Many web pages contain information that isn’t unique to each page, such as the navigation for a site, copyright notices, advertising, links to other sites such as blog rolls, and other sections that may not contain information about the main topic of the page itself.

Yahoo’s Robots-Noindex Classes

In May of 2007, Yahoo made a post on the Yahoo Search Blog about how webmasters could let the search engine know that content in certain sections of pages shouldn’t be returned in search results to searchers, titled Introducing Robots-Nocontent for Page Sections.

The Yahoo Search Help pages provide details on how to assign a class of “robots-noindex” to HTML elements, so that the content inside of those elements aren’t recalled by the search engine in response to a search, in How do I mark web page content that is extraneous to the main unique content on the page?

Yahoo Patent Filing on No-Recall Sections

A Yahoo patent application was published last week which looks more deeply into how the search engine would follow directions not to recall sections of pages pursuant to “robots-nonindex” tags.

It also describes how the search engine might decide on its own that some sections of web pages shouldn’t be returned to searches regardless of whether we use the “robots-noindex” or not, after they break a page down into sections, and analyze the content of those sections.

The Yahoo filing provides a way for it to rate different sections of a page against a main topic for a page, and designate some sections as no recall sections, that won’t be returned in a search for the content that they contain.

Method for improving quality of search results by avoiding indexing sections of pages
Invented by Priyank S. Garg, Amit J. Basu, Timothy M. Converse
US Patent Application 20080168053
Published July 10, 2008
Filed January 10, 2007

Abstract

A method and apparatus for improving search results is provided. The method works by delineating sections of a document that are not relevant to the main content. The document content is subjected to ranking analysis in entirety. In response to a query results are recalled omitting terms included in the no-recall sections.

Terms in the no-recall sections are not used in titles and abstracts of the results. The results are ordered at least in part by the rankings attributed to the identified no-recall sections.

An Overview of the No-Recall Sectioning Process

Some of the method involved in the patent filing:

1) When a search crawling program visits a web page, it might pay attention to the structure of the page, breaking it down into sections.

2) The crawling program may identify sections to ignore, and to not index in the search engine and present (recall) to searchers.

3) Sections to be ignored may be referred to as “no-recall” sections, and sections of pages that are indexed may be referred to as “recall” sections.

4) The search engine crawling program may ignore sections of pages that have been marked by webmasters who have used a “robots-nocontent” class in an HTML tag around that section, such as a “div” or a “span” or other types of HTML elements that have opening and closing tags, such as paragraphs and other sections.

5) The search engine crawling program may also ignore sections of pages that may have been identified by analyzing section content rather than “robots-nocontent” classes.

6) Terms inside those no-recall sections do not contribute to the document term frequency counts in the search engine index, so words in those no-recall sections aren’t considered when determining which words a page may be relevant for in ranking a page for search queries.

The content in those no-recall sections are also not used for recalling the pages in response to search engine queries.

7) While the information in the no-recall sections are ignored in search results, it is included as input to the analysis of pages that can affect such things as a page’s ranking.  Continue Reading »
Which Sections of Your Web Pages Might Search Engines Ignore?

Sigh. Andy, Andy, Andy. Always taking the good stories and leaving me to cover Yahoo/Google/Microsoft and their latest flings. Well, let’s get to it, shall we? Let’s spin the wheel of metaphors and see what we’ll use today . . . Mixed sports—no, sailing! Sailing it is!

(Apologies in advance if I go a little overboard. Oops, I think I already have.)

Back on the Eastern front (oops, sorry, yesterday’s metaphor)—in the capital, Microsoft has sailed into the pending Google and Yahoo search ad deal during Senate hearings on the topic—and as we mentioned in today’s Picks, they’re making quite a splash in claiming that the Y/G deal would monopolize 90% of the search market. But come on, are they wrong?

But perhaps even more likely to take the wind out of the sales of Yahoo & Google’s honeymoon cruise is Yang’s own admission that this would be a near-monopoly. The story told by Microsoft General Counsel, Brad Smith, according to the LA Times:
Continue Reading »
Yahoo Admits Google Monopoly; Deal with AOL?

It’s times like this, that I take my hat off to mainstream media. The ability to keep up with the ongoing Yahoo/Microsoft/Icahn love triangle is something MSM journalists have honed down the years–even if it takes two New York Times staff writers to keep up!

The bottom line is that Microsoft (and Carl Icahn) last week submitted a new, sweetened bid for Yahoo’s search business.

The offer on the table was a revision of Microsoft’s previous bid for Yahoo’s search business, in which Yahoo would effectively outsource the advertising that runs alongside search results. This time, however, Microsoft would shorten the 10-year agreement to five years, while guaranteeing that Yahoo would earn $2.3 billion in annual revenue for five years, up from the three-year guarantee of the original proposal. The contract could be renewed for another five years.

Microsoft also proposed having Yahoo sell its Asian assets. It also proposed making an equity investment of $3.9 billion and a preferred debt investment of $2.8 billion.

That was rejected by Yahoo on Saturday. However, the struggling company turned around and suggested it would be interested in Microsoft’s original acquisition offer… Continue Reading »
Does Anyone Know What Yahoo Wants? Does Yahoo Even Know?

AdGooroo has released second quarter search advertising results, and Google’s client base is down 6.4% from the previous quarter. Google also declined 8.5% year-over-year.

Things were far worse for MSN. Their client base dropped a whopping 20% from Q1. The decline contributed to a 6.7% drop year-over-year. The decrease is not really a surprese since Microsoft has essentially admitted how bad their search is in their attempt to acquire Yahoo, and their successful acquisitions of FAST and Powerset.

Meanwhile, Yahoo could use some good news right now, and the AdGooroo data delivers. Yahoo saw a slight increase in its advertiser base at 0.03% over last quarter, and up 9.8% over last year.

Here’s a chart with all the data goodness:

AdGooroo also reported data on the number of ads per keyword. Globally, the number of ads per keyword declined across Google, Yahoo, and MSN. When just looking at the U.S., however, Yahoo and Google held steady while Microsoft saw a decline.

More data for the math junkies:

What do you think of these numbers? Let us know in the comments.

Yahoo! is back around the $20 range again today. If Microsoft could find a way to buy them they could quickly gain some search marketshare, but presuming Microsoft builds a memorable search brand they could probably catch up through other acquisitions cheaper.

I think rather than buying another overpriced ad platform a cheaper way to attack Google would be to buy some of the leading editorial brands/sites that dominate Google’s organic rankings. For far less than the $47 billion Microsoft offered for Yahoo! they could buy…

• Expedia (currently valued at $5.2 billion) and have a leading role in the travel market. I think something like 40% of internet commerce is travel.
• Monster.com (currently values at $2.24 billion) and have a leading role in employment and education.
• Bankrate (currently valued at $700 million) and have a leading role in the mortgage and consumer credit markets.
• WebMD (currently valued at $1.64 billion) and have a leading role in the medical market
• IAC (currently valued at $5.38 billion) After IAC spins off many of their other units this price might go cheaper. Google paid $1 billion for 5% of AOL. Microsoft can get 100% of Ask (with more marketshare than AOL) for not a whole lot more, giving them significantly more marketshare than they currently have and an actual brand in the search market. Plus IAC is buying Dictionary.com and some other generic high traffic sites.
• The New York Times (currently valued at $2.25 billion) and have a leading role in the news market. If they wanted to they could buy it out, spin out About.com as a Microsoft owned web property, then set up the NYT as an industry non-profit that monetizes via a longterm ad arrangement with Microsoft.

I think those companies add up to around $17.4 billion. Pay 50% over market value to close the deals and they could have all the above for $26 billion, giving them a leading position in most high value markets and $20 billion left over for marketing, branding, and buying further assets.

Is the above strategy crazy? What would you do if you were Microsoft?

Despite a search advertising deal with Google, Yahoo shares are down and rumors are on again about Microsoft buying just the search chunk of Yahoo. But just how big is that chunk? Would it destroy Yahoo as a whole if sold separately? Not necessarily, according to Hitwise Vice President of Research, Heather Hopkins.

Hopkins analyzed the US internet hits for the top 20 Yahoo properties in the month of June. Yahoo Mail by far saw the most traffic, at 37.47%. Yahoo.com saw 30.62%, and remember that’s a portal not just a search page like Google.com. Yahoo Search came in third but only saw 12.10%. The remaining 17 made up a combined 19.83%. Here’s the full breakdown of Yahoo’s top 20 properties.

Hopkins also took a look at what search referrals look like for the above 20 properties. Yahoo Answers, Finance, My Yahoo, Mail, Flickr, Fantasy Baseball, Hot Jobs, Sports, and Groups all received more referrals from Google search than from Yahoo search. Check out the full chart below.

These numbers are only for the U.S., and Yahoo is more popular in Asia. Attempts to reach Hitwise for Asian data were not immediately returned.