Introducing Yahoo! Image and Video Search Re-imagined

With the World’s Most Recent and High Quality Photography from Getty Images

Searching for images and video on the Web should be the most visually stunning experience possible. After all, sometimes a photo or video can tell a story better than words.

Today, we are taking Yahoo! Image Search and Video Search to an eye-catching new level. Through an extension of our partnership with Getty Images and some reengineering (and redesigning) of our multimedia search experiences, we are delivering a more timely experience, supported by the most recent, and often never-seen-before content.

That’s right, thanks to Getty Images, Yahoo! Image Search will have access to some of the highest quality digital images on the planet. And these are not just any photos, they are the crème-de-la-crème, from the collection of more than 20,000 new Getty Images added every day by Getty Images’ award-winning network of photographers. Of course we also help people find top quality images of the very latest headline news, sports and entertainment events within minutes of being taken.

Optimizing Your Results – New Image Search and Video Search Results Pages

With this amazing influx of new content, we thought it was only fitting to juice up the entire experience. So we’ve introduced awesome new features to help people take a closer look at the images and videos they want.

• Thumbnail Viewing Experience –Users can now get a fantastic thumbnail viewing experience of images and videos. The new search results page sports a neatly tiled look, with each image and video squarely sized, then becoming larger when you hover over it.
• A New Video Search Results Page, with preview on hover and continuous scroll

The new Video Search results page introduces continuous scroll, and each video equally sized, then becoming larger and playing the preview when you hover over it.

• High Quality Badge & Latest Filter – We have introduced two prominent filters on the left rail to help you find the highest quality and most recent images. For images, the HQ badge identifies photos with at least 2 megapixels and a 1024 x 768 aspect ratio. For Yahoo! HQ videos, we use adaptive streaming technology to optimize your viewing experience by continuously adjusting the quality of the streamed Yahoo! hosted video to match the capabilities of your network and device. The Latest filter allows you to discover the most recent photos and videos available on the Web, so you can always keep up to date.
  
  
  
• Search While You Watch – For those of us interested in a lot of different topics, we now have a “search while you watch” option, to search for a video without going back to the search results page. For users who want to look at interesting video search topics, clearing of the search query on the full image page now shows recommended & trending topics to provide them with an experience of continuous discovery.
  
  
• Full Screen Viewing – Since we have built on the power of the HTML5 browser, we’re now providing a full screen option and cross-device support to help you discover the content you are looking for more easily.
  

Now more than ever, it’s easier to discover the images and video you are looking for on Yahoo!. We could not be more excited about these enhancements, and so is the Getty Images team (check out their post). Give us a try next time you want to find top quality images and video.

Source: http://www.ysearchblog.com/2012/06/20/image-and-video-search/

Yahoo Ad Sales Still on the Decline

It’s ironic that the top story on Yahoo’s front page is about how J. C. Penney is reinventing the brand. Perhaps the higher ups at Yahoo should read their own article, then maybe sit down with the retailer for a round of commiseration and cheering up.

The once powerful Yahoo, just reported a decline in net income of 5% for Q4. Recently, Yahoo invested a lot of money and effort into raising the quality of its content. That gave them the title of the “most trafficked news site on the web,” but apparently that didn’t help their bottom line.

A large part of the problem is the drop in their display advertising business. This used to be the jewel in the crown for Yahoo, but now they’re down 4% quarter over quarter.

In general, display advertising is on the rise. eMarketer’s numbers show a 24.5% increase in ad dollars over last year. Unfortunately, the competition is benefiting from the rise, not Yahoo. Google and Facebook are taking the lead, but why? How did Yahoo go from being the top site for display ads to third place?

It feels like Yahoo is going the way of AOL. Out with the old, in with the new. That leaves us with a two-horse race and that’s not good for marketers or consumers.

With Google and Facebook increasingly out distancing themselves from the pack, is it even possible for Yahoo to get back in the race? Or will it be Google or Facebook for the win from now on in?

Source: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/01/yahoo-ad-sales-still-on-the-decline.html

Yahoo! Search Trends: Macworld 2012

The “iPhone” was the top searched term in 2011 — will this year’s Macworld reveal yet another spell-binding tech game changer that propels Apple to the top of searches in 2012?

As you consider stories focused on the news that comes out of this year’s Macworld, we wanted to share a few tidbits about what people are searching for online related to this year’s show.  So, what is captivating the attention of Apple addicts and pushing them toward Yahoo! for more information?

Macworld/iWorld 2012: Let’s face it, with people gearing up for the latest Mac news, Yahoo! searches for all things “i” continue to dominate, with 64% of searches this month for “Macworld” coming from men. And, beyond Macworld, people are turning to Yahoo! for info on everything from Apple products to details on legendary founder Steve Jobs.

 

According to Yahoo!, the top states searching for “Macworld” this month include:

1.     California

2.     Florida

3.     Texas

4.     Illinois

5.     Massachusetts

 

According to Yahoo!, the top countries searching for “iWorld” this month include:

1.     United States

2.     Hong Kong

3.     United Kingdom

4.     Canada

5.     Taiwan

 

All Things Apple: When it comes to Apple’s latest and greatest, fans are usually only kept satisfied for a few short hours before they begin scouring the Internet for information on the next version. Product searches for Apple this month on Yahoo! include:

·       App Love:

o   Angry Birds Season 2012 – Searches are spiking 330% this month on Yahoo!.

o   Searches on Yahoo! for “best iPad apps” are up 414% this month.

o   ”Free iPad games” searches this month on Yahoo! are up 2,426%.

o   Additional apps that are popular in search this month on Yahoo! include: “fitness apps,” “Instagram,” “free apps,” and “Parade.com apps.

 

·       iPhone:

o   Searches for “free iPhone” this month on Yahoo! are up 4,649%.

o   “iPhone 4S sale” searches on Yahoo! this month are up 844%.

 

·       iPad:

o   Yahoo! searches for ”cheap iPad 2″ are up 3,810% this month.

o   Searches for “iPad tutorial” are up 1,036% this month on Yahoo!.

o   Of the searches for “iPad 2” this month on Yahoo!, 15% are coming from people 24 and under.

 

·       Jailbreak: Yahoo! searches this month for “how to jailbreak iPod touch” are up 866% and searches for ”jailbreak iPhone 4″ are up 1,085%.

 

·       Other:

o   Yahoo! Searches for ”What is iCloud” this month are up 927% and searches for ”How to use iCloud” are up 276%.

o   ”FaceTime for Mac” searches this month on Yahoo! are up 547%.

o   Searches for ”iBook” this month on Yahoo! are up 505%.

 

According to Yahoo!, the top searched Apple products this month include:

1.     iPad 3 — Of the searches for “iPad 3″ this month on Yahoo!, 61% are coming from men.

2.     iPhone 5 — 62% of the searches for “iPhone 5″ are coming from people 34 and under.

3.     iPad 2 — Of the searches for “iPad 2″ this month on Yahoo!, 53% are coming from men.

4.     iCloud — Of the searches for “iCloud” this month on Yahoo!, 29% are coming from people ages 25-34.

5.     iPhone 4S — Top states searching for “iPhone 4S” this month on Yahoo!: California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, and Florida.

Steve Jobs: It has been almost four months since the world lost tech visionary Steve Jobs, and all eyes are on Apple to see how the company will push forward without the creative genius that brought the company back from the brink of failure with the creation of the iPod. As a result, people are still turning to Yahoo! for information on the beloved innovator who changed so many lives. Searches on Yahoo! this month for “Steve Jobs Apple” are up 4,527%.  Additional Steve Jobs searches that are piquing people’s interest in search this week include: “Steve Jobs Grammy,” “Steve Jobs doctor,” “Steve Jobs last words,” “Bill Gates and Steve Jobs,” “Steve Jobs first inventions,” “the Steve Jobs betrayal,” “Steve Jobs book,” “How Steve Jobs revolutionized technology.”

Regardless of what is revealed and debated at this year’s Macworld event, one thing is for sure, Mac fans will be sure to keep on chattering long after the doors close at the show!

Source: http://www.ysearchblog.com/2012/01/25/yahoo-search-trends-macworld-2012/

Jerry Yang Quits Yahoo!

Jerry Yang is leaving Yahoo, the company he co-founded with David Filo in 1995. Yang’s resignation from the Yahoo board of directors and all other positions with the company, effective today, was announced via a press release minutes ago.

“My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life,” Yang wrote in a letter. “However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo into an exciting and successful future.”

The former Chief Yahoo, who owns a 3.6 percent stake of the Sunnyvale, California-based company, had served on Yahoo’s board of directors since March 1995. Yahoo, a website that began as “Jerry and David’s Guide to the World Wide Web,” went public in 1996. Yang served as Yahoo’s CEO from June 2007 to January 2009, when Carol Bartz was hired, following the controversial rejection of a Microsoft buyout.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2139515/Jerry-Yang-Quits-Yahoo

Bing Tops Yahoo for Search Share in December

Microsoft’s Bing search engine grabbed 15.1% of the total search pie in December, a rise of .01% over November. Nothing to write home about? Actually, it is, because with that .01%, Bing slid past Yahoo to become number two on the charts.

Here are the numbers straight from comScore:

USAToday says the jockeying for position was due to a partnership agreement between Microsoft and Yahoo that gave Microsoft the searches so Yahoo could save money.

I say, it was the Bumble that earned Bing that second place ribbon. From Black Friday on, Bing flooded the TV ad market with commercials based on Rankin-Bass’ classic retelling of Rudolph. The Bumble used Bing to find out how to be scary. Yukon searched for a hot yoga studio, and Mr. and Mrs. Claus went bubble wrap crazy.

Add to this, Bing’s advent calendar of deals and downloads and it’s easy to see why they won the battle. But what now? The Bumble has gone back to his snowy cave until next year and now Bing is the official search engine of The Sundance Film Festival. Nice, but it’s no Rudolph.

Can Bing keep the small lead they picked up in December? If it really is a product of the Yahoo partnership, then yes. If not, I’d bet the two companies continue to swap in and out of the number two spot for the rest of the year.

As for number one? It’s this search engine called Google. Perhaps you’ve heard of it?

Source: http://www.marketingpilgrim.com/2012/01/bing-tops-yahoo-for-search-share-in-december.html

Yahoo Deletes 75,000 Associated Content Articles, Moves Rest To New Yahoo Voices Site

Yahoo is cleaning up Associated Content by deleting some of the articles, moving the keepers to Yahoo’s domain and giving the site a new name, too. And next year, Yahoo will begin an online training course to help its writers create higher quality content.

The company has announced plans to “retire” more than 75,000 Associated Content articles, keep only “the best content submitted over the last seven years,” and move it all to a new site,Yahoo! Voices (www.voices.yahoo.com). In the process, Yahoo has also introduced new submission guidelines for its army of writers.

Associated Content Hit By Panda

Yahoo bought Associated Content in May 2010, a site that — at the time — was creating about 10,000 new pieces of content per week. That was, of course, before Google’s “Panda” algorithm update targeted content farms in early 2011.

Speaking at our SMX West conference just a couple of weeks after Panda, Yahoo VP Luke Beatty (who founded Associated Content) said that two-thirds of Associated Content’s articleshad suffered sizable declines in Google traffic, while the other one-third was getting more Google traffic.

Likewise, when the search industry tried to sort out Panda’s winners and losers, Associated Content was listed regularly on the losing side.

Yahoo Voices: Post-Panda

We haven’t asked Yahoo if today’s announcement is a direct reaction to the Panda update, and it’s unlikely they’d admit to it, but you don’t have to read too deep between the lines to see how it is.

For starters, Yahoo is retiring a domain (associatedcontent.com) that was hit hard by Google’s update and moving the content to yahoo.com, a more trusted domain. It’s ditching the entire Associated Content name and calling the new site Yahoo! Voices.

Yahoo has also eliminated some Associated Content, as explained in today’s announcement:

We have retired more than 75,000 pieces of inactive and outdated content from Associated Content. None of this content will appear on Yahoo! Voices, and only content that meets our revised Submission Guidelines will be accepted moving forward. Older content that does not meet these standards will be gradually retired or returned to the original author for editing.

To be fair, those 75,000 articles are a small drop in Yahoo’s bucket. Earlier in the announcement, Yahoo says that Voices will have “more than two million pieces of original content.” So, depending on the exact numbers, Yahoo is zapping only about 4% of Associated Content’s material. Still, removing low-quality and under-performing content has consistently been one of the most common SEO recommendations for Panda-hit sites.

Even the new guidelines appear to go out of the way to teach SEO basics to Yahoo’s writers. Here’s a sample:

• Don’t rehash. You must provide a fresh and unique angle on every story.
• Don’t stuff your content with keywords. We encourage you to optimize your content for search-engine discovery, but not at the expense of readability.
• Don’t over-link. We encourage relevant links that make your content more valuable and informative. Avoid excessive hyperlinking that compromises readability.

I’m unable to find out how the new guidelines compare to the old. The previous Yahoo Contributor Network guidelines page (contributor.yahoo.com/community/guidelines) is gone and the URL redirects to the new page. It also doesn’t seem to be available via any cache searches.

Yahoo’s focus on quality is also evident in one other way: Early next year, Yahoo will launch Yahoo! Contributor Academy, an “interactive learning program” with lessons and tools to help its writers create “useful, engaging online content.”

Source: http://searchengineland.com/yahoo-deletes-75000-associated-content-articles-moves-rest-to-yahoo-voices-103376

Not Just Google: Regulators Shut Down Bing, Yahoo Mortgage Scam Ads

The fake mortgage programs that brought Google under recent scrutiny don’t seem to be run by Google-exclusive con artists. Mortgage scams that claim to provide assistance from the U.S. government have also been located in Microsoft adCenter. Microsoft has cooperated in banning the associated advertisers from Bing and Yahoo search results.

According to the statement from SIGTARP(the Special Inspector General for the Troubled Asset Relief Program), at least 125 illicit companies of this nature were identified. The investigation, however, remains ongoing.

Microsoft, meanwhile, has extended its cooperation in much the same way Google did earlier on in the investigation. Microsoft proactively shut down the accounts of more than 400 advertisers that were connected to the 125 mortgage scam companies.

“Many homeowners who have fallen prey to these scams were enticed by web banner ads and online search advertisements that promised, for a fee, to help lower mortgage payments,” according to Christy Romero, Deputy Special Inspector General for SIGTARP.

In addition to working with Google and Microsoft to shut down these ads (which Romero states will “dramatically decrease the scope and scale of these scams”), SIGTARP hopes to educate home owners.

According to the official SIGTARP statement, “Homeowners can protect themselves from becoming a victim of these scams by seeking a HAMP mortgage modification directly through their lender or mortgage servicer or through HUD-approved housing counselors.” The HAMP program is free of charge and approved by the U.S. government.

Having Microsoft fall to the same issue re-raises the question of ad platform responsibility. Should Microsoft have spotted these ads prior to posting them on Bing and Yahoo? Is it likely they ignored them for profit alone? Or is it simply too much to expect a company to vett their potential ads so thoroughly? Leave your thoughts in the comments.

Source: http://searchenginewatch.com/article/2127978/Not-Just-Google-Regulators-Shut-Down-Bing-Yahoo-Mortgage-Scam-Ads

Bing And Yahoo Advertisers Get New Tools

Microsoft is talking about some new features it has for adCenter.

“Over the last two weeks, adCenter has released its latest round of pre-holiday features, all delivering on advertisers’ wish lists of improving campaign performance, increasing volume, and simplifying processes to help save time,” a spokesperson tells WebProNews.

Features include a redesigned web user interface, an upgrade to the adCenter Desktop, and the release of several performance reporting tools.

Microsoft outlines each of these.

The interface:

• Simplified Campaign Set Up for creating campaigns and ad groups, and a sleek, new single-page view with real-time previews and keyword suggestion, enabling quicker campaign deployment.
• Improvements to Navigation & Discovery to help advertisers manage across their entire account by viewing and editing keywords and ads across multiple campaigns and ad-groups at once.
• Improvements to Campaign Reporting with new multi-metric trend charts, delivery status notification features and positional bid estimates.
• Improvements to Editing with in-line editing, in-line bid editing, and best position estimations in the keywords grid.

The desktop:

• New Welcome Screen takes advertisers on an end-to-end tour of the Desktop tool to help them get set up and started quickly.
• An expanded Import Campaigns feature to allow advertisers to easily and directly import their Google AdWords campaign data into the Desktop.
• Clipboard support to enable basic copy and paste functionality so that advertisers can quickly and easily copy data and move it to, from, and within Desktop.
• Bulk bid suggestions to offer more than 1,000 keywords and let advertisers easily apply changes in order to increase traffic.
• Simplified Targeting with a default set to the advertisers’ account location, determined by the language listed in their Desktop settings.

Tools:

• New, improved Opportunities Tab that includes bid suggestions for exact/broad match and in-line editing. With this new feature advertisers can easily address underperforming bids to target more volume.
• New Share of Voice feature that quantifies missed impressions in Account, Campaign, and Ad Group performance reports, and helps prioritize optimizations more effectively.
• Improved historical and aggregated Quality Score data to allow advertisers to view aggregated quality score by summary or by time frame, including hour, day, week or month.
• An upgrade to Change History reports so advertisers can view targeting changes and gain better insights into campaign performance related to those changes.

For those of you who aren’t advertising with adCenter, remember that these things apply to Bing and Yahoo advertisers.

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/bing-and-yahoo-advertisers-get-new-tools-2011-11

Google’s Search Share Increases, Bing And Yahoo’s Don’tSir

Source: http://www.webpronews.com/googles-search-share-increases-bing-and-yahoos-dont-2011-10

The latest report from Hitwise concerning search volume shows Google still dominates search. Surprise, surprise. In other news, water is still wet and grass is still green. Flippancy aside, Google is dominating search with such a lead, it’s akin to watching Usain Bolt race against people who have no legs.

So much for those “Bing is making inroads concerning Google’s search share,” right? Or are we still holding out hope that Bing, which powers Yahoo search as well, will be able to make up all that ground between it and Google’s dominant position? The reason I’m asking in such a manner is because every time a report comes out about Bing taking some of Google’s market share, people come out of the woodwork, proclaiming/hoping Google’s time at the top is over.

With that in mind, does Hitwise’s latest report, with its data taken from the month of September, 2011, mean that Google has effectively rebuffed the challenges from Bing and Yahoo? A look at the findings show just how dominant Google is terms of search volume:

As you can very well see, Google’s search volume is more than all of Bing’s efforts, which, in this report, includes Bing.com, Yahoo.com, and a combination of the two. Bing makes up 12.80 percent of the search volume, Yahoo is at 15.27 percent, which, when added together, gives us the 28.07 percent, representing the Bing-powered search total.

 

Meanwhile, Google’s search volume comes in at a dominant 66.12 percent, more than double all of Bing’s combined search engine efforts.

With that in mind, is it time to stop saying Bing is a threat to Google’s market share? While the Panda-fueled backlash against Google is understandable, ignoring the dominant search engine when conducting SEO/SEM tasks would be an exercise in foolishness. Unless, of course, you don’t like fishing where the fish are.

Please visit: SEO Blog

Get These Three Things Right In Enterprise SEO

Source: http://searchengineland.com/get-these-three-things-right-in-enterprise-seo-87145

The other day in URLs café at Yahoo! headquarters in Sunnyvale, I had a great conversation with our head of SEO. He was telling me about significant recent success SEO has been enjoying at Yahoo!

At many large companies, SEO is an uphill battle, so any victory should be fully celebrated. I asked what happened that enabled him to be so wildly successful in this case, and he told me there were three things that caused an SEO tipping point:

1. Executive Support
2. SEO involvement early in the project
3. SEO ownership of standards

Executive Support

As I’ve mentioned before, executive support is a prerequisite for SEO success in a big organization, so it’s great having leadership that is vocal about SEO.

As you may know, Yahoo! recently hired a new Chief Product Officer. He is a sharp, energetic leader who also happens to be a big fan of SEO – he mentions it at all-hands meetings, and even includes it as part of his monthly business reviews at CEO staff meetings. Since his arrival, many Yahoo! products are evolving with the imprint of his leadership.

One recent project involved a retooling of the building blocks of some of our media properties. The project, Yahoo! Publishing Platform, was meant to standardize publishing for our content-oriented properties such as news, sports, and finance, globally. News ended up being at the top of the list, and the product folks in News are huge fans of SEO.

Early & Often

While executive support is a necessary ingredient for SEO success, it’s not enough. I’ve written in the past about the approach to SEO that we try to take at Yahoo! Rather than auditing our Web properties once they’re built and trying to retool them for SEO purposes, we work to incorporate SEO into the products themselves throughout the design and implementation phases of development.

I’ve noted that we work this way out of necessity – once the sites are built and released, the teams that wrote the code generally disband and move on to other projects, reforming in different teams to build new products. So the audit-and-retool approach, while expensive and inefficient for most companies, doesn’t work at all for us.

As a result, products or sites we build are either released SEO-friendly or not, and they pretty much stay that way until they’re eventually replaced.

The real challenge, then, is getting SEOs in the right place at the right time and giving them the proper audience and support so they can do their jobs. When we follow that recipe, sometimes the simple things can make a big difference.

By working together in the early (and late) stages of development, SEO and Product were able to incorporate SEO requirements into the product development cycle. One of the smart moves here was prioritizing a small number of key SEO requirements that we knew would make a difference.

Own Your Standards

There were several long-standing and well-known issues with our news sites that we sought to address in this release. First off, we knew that our URLs were a big problem for search engines. Long and non-intuitive, these beasts had long ago been identified as one of the main culprits on our SEO most-wanted list.

Also, our tags weren’t standardized or automated with SEO in mind. Finally, the architecture of our legacy publishing system allowed for duplicate content, a well-documented SEO problem. The key to solving these SEO problems was to bake SEO-friendly standards and conventions into the product so that published content can’t be SEO un-friendly.

In SEO terms, the content platform is very inflexible. URLs are automatically generated from article titles with fixed ranges for keyword count in the URL. Subdirectory structure is strictly limited by design. Title and description tags are generated automatically. Editorial and SEO approval of content and tags is completely centralized.

From a product perspective, the initial features of the new sites are not major changes, but from an SEO point of view, they make an enormous difference. Now when articles are published, they generally appear with clean titles and URLs – globally. This was huge.

We’re talking triple-digit percentage increases in SEO traffic in some regions. Another great benefit of this standardization is that it eliminated a lot of the duplicate content out there. So we are now seeing large increases of SEO traffic on a significantly smaller number of pages. If you’re an SEO, that makes you smile.

What’s Next?

Editorial, that’s what. We’re in the process of hiring an editorial search lead for our media properties. In addition to working with editors on SEO-friendly titles for articles, this person can further the SEO cause by building and standardizing internal and external linking strategies.

Looking forward, such a resource could leverage search data to drive content development strategies, and also might assist in developing more robust standards for de-duplicating content on a more global basis.

Please visit: SEO Blog