Legal Search Marketing Blog

Yahoo Announces Fire Eagle

Michael Arrington at Techcrunch reported that Yahoo is announcing fireeagle, which is a new service for obtaining geo-location information, storing it, and making it available to other web applications. This is a technology coming out of Yahoo Brickhouse, a semi-autonomous Yahoo group focused on new product development.

Evidently, the whole system is permission based, which means that users can choose to share their location information, or choose not to. This includes giving users the ability to eliminate any stored information about their locations over time from Yahoo's servers. This should keep the "big brother" concerns to a minimum.

One of the most intriguing aspects of this is that the geo-location information can come from any number of sources, such as other applications, and from GPS devices. You can setup a GPS phone to periodically update your locations information automatically.

The Techcrunch post provides the example of users who make submissions to Flickr who frequently don't provide any geo-location information for the photos submit. With fireeagle enables, this information could be extracted automatically.

Of course, search engines have been using location based information for a long time. They have the ability to look at the IP address of a person who is entering a search query, and then do a reverse lookup to determine the approximate location of that person. Geo-location information from a GPS device, however, would be much more accurate.

IP address based geo lookup is very general in nature, and in some scenarios can be completely wrong. For example, AOL users may have an IP address that changes mid-session. In other cases, someone working in a company office in LA may connect through their corporate network based in Chicago. There are many other example of these types of errors.

From a search perspective, improved location information can improve the location based personalization that search engines have already engaged in for some time. As an example of this, if you are sitting in Seattle, and type in "Italian restaurant", there is a good chance that you really mean "Seattle Italian restaurants".

However, if you just a few miles outside of Seattle, and type in "Italian restaurant", traditional IP based geo lookup might still give you a list of restaurants in Seattle, where what you may really want is a list of restaurants closer to where you are.

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Yahoo Settles Clickfraud Lawsuit

Good article about Yahoo settling a clickfraud suit from Search Engine Watch.

A California judge has approved Yahoo's proposed settlement of a class action click fraud case brought against the company by Checkmate Strategic Group in June 2005.

Yahoo believes the settlement will cover all click fraud claims that have been filed against Yahoo, including a suit filed by Lane's Gifts and Collectibles in Arkansas last year against both Yahoo and Google.

The terms of the settlement include a cash payment of $4.95 million to plaintiffs' counsel and a provision that will allow advertisers to file a claim for Yahoo to investigate potentially fraudulent clicks back through January 2004. Yahoo will pay refunds to advertisers who file claims if it discovers evidence of fraudulent clicks.

"We're very pleased with the terms of the settlement," said Reggie Davis, associate general counsel for Yahoo. "We believe it's a reasonable and fair settlement."

What does it mean for Yahoo advertisers?

The cash payment is far less than the $90 million settlement Google agreed to last March to resolve the Lane's Gifts class action click fraud case. In that case, up to $60 million was allocated for credit to advertisers, while plaintiffs' council received $30 million.

The Yahoo settlement differs from the Google settlement in other ways, as well. Google is offering credit to advertisers, rather than cash refunds, with a cap of $60 million. Yahoo, by contrast, is offering cash refunds, and there is no ceiling on the amount it will refund if it finds evidence of click fraud, though the company is optimistic that the refund amounts won't be onerous due to the safeguards it has had in place.

Yahoo says it believes the favorable terms are due to the strong position it took maintaining that its proprietary system does a good job at protecting advertisers from click fraud. To bolster its position, Yahoo invited the plaintiffs' attorneys and their experts to meet with Yahoo's clickthrough protection team, examine its systems, ask questions and attend presentations to better understand the controls the company has in place to filter out questionable or fraudulent clicks.

Yahoo says that its clickthrough protection system has identified and not billed advertisers for billions of clicks during the past eight years, all the way back to the early days before Yahoo purchased Overture and its sponsored listing technologies. Clicks not billed for included obvious click fraud, but also other clicks that the company believed shouldn't be billed to advertisers (for example, blocked IP addresses, double-clicks, back browser clicks and so on).

Yahoo said that as part of the settlement it is taking five specific steps to combat click fraud:

1. The company is extending the claims period for advertisers suspecting fraudulent activity from sixty days to two and a half years, or back through January 2004. Yahoo will investigate all claims filed under this one-time extension and offer cash refunds to advertisers if it finds questionable activity.

Judge Taylor, a retired federal judge, will be overseeing the extended claims process. His role will be to ensure that Yahoo sticks to the agreed-upon process, and he will also be available to review advertiser appeals if they are not satisfied with the results of Yahoo's investigation.

2. The company plans to appoint a dedicated traffic quality advocate to act as ombudsman for advertisers.

3. Once a year Yahoo plans to host a panel of individual advertisers to tour the company's clickthrough protection headquarters, allowing them to ask questions and provide feedback. The company will also seek advice from this panel.

4. Yahoo plans to work with reputable third parties to develop an industry wide definition of click fraud, a list of recognized click bots, and take other measures to garner awareness of the issue and what's being done to combat the problem.

5. Yahoo plans to build a "traffic quality resource center" for advertisers, providing much more information about traffic quality, including extensive FAQs about the company's click-through protection methodology.

Full Article: Search Engine Watch

Yahoo Unveils Public Details Of "Panama" Ad System Upgrade

Yahoo's finally gone public with details about its new "Panama" ad system upgrade, which when launched later this year will bring the system up to matching what Google's long offered, though both Yahoo and Google will remain behind Microsoft's third-generation ad platform "adCenter," launched last week. Details have leaked before, but now Yahoo's doing the talking directly.

You won't find the new system or features in place today. Instead, all that's happened today is that Yahoo is giving the many ad management companies and others who programmatically access the Yahoo system through APIs more information on how things will work, so they can start building support.

The system itself won't start changing until the third quarter of this year, sometime between July and September, Yahoo says. The switch will mean that you'll be able to build campaigns of multiple ads linked to multiple keywords. But the ranking system won't change. Those campaigns paying the most money per click will still come up tops first.

SOURCE: Search Engine Watch

Yahoo! Tests New Search-Engine Ad Model

Forbes is reporting that Yahoo has released a test version of its new search monetization in Scandinavia and will expand the rollout to the U.K. in July.

Codenamed “Project Panama,” Yahoo’s new model will be similar to that of Google, which ranks search-engine ads by both the amount advertisers pay for keywords and the relevance of the ad. The Google-like algorithm should result in higher click-through rates than its older model that ranked ads only by the amount paid for keywords.

Yahoo! Search Index Update

The Yahoo blog reports that they did a index update over this past weekend. As a result, you may see some changes in ranking as well as some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index.

Facelift For Yahoo's Home Page

Internet News reports that Yahoo is redesigning the front page of the site.

Yahoo is quietly testing a redesigned front page that makes its search features more prominent and puts all its various services front and center for users.

The design, which began appearing to select users today, brings the search function much higher on the page and offers larger icons of the portal's popular features beyond search, such as mail and messenger, as well as localized features such as weather, movies and search.

I have seen some updates today that look pretty good and it seems a little better organized and I like how they have certain things more front and center.

Yahoo To Ban Bidding On Competitor Trademarks To Stop Comparison Advertising

Search Engine Watch blog has a good post about how Yahoo will no longer be allowing companies to purchase ads linked to the trademarks of their competitors. From what's being sent to Yahoo search marketing advertisers:

On March 1, 2006, Yahoo! Search Marketing will modify its editorial guidelines regarding the use of keywords containing trademarks. Previously, we allowed competitive advertising by allowing advertisers to bid on third-party trademarks if those advertisers offered detailed comparative information about the trademark owner's products or services in comparison to the competitive products and services that were offered or promoted on the advertiser's site.

In order to more easily deliver quality user experiences when users search on terms that are trademarks, Yahoo! Search Marketing has determined that we will no longer allow bidding on keywords containing competitor trademarks.

Problems With Yahoo Search Marketing / Overture

Ive had all kinds of problems with Overture / Yahoo Search Marketing, especially with them over charging my credit card. Then trying to get them to reverse the charges is a herculian effort, the customer service is not very good. It seems like many other people agree with me. Heather posts some rather damning criticism of YSM.

Ive talked with many other people who have basically cut back on Yahoo/Overture and put that money into Google adwords, thats a wise choice in my opinion. Not only does Google adwords produce more focused and qualified traffic, but you have more control, its easier to manage and Ive never had a problem with customer support. 

Yahoo! Search Marketing Eliminates Minimum Spend

Yahoo Search Marketing, formely Overture, has eliminated the $20 monthly minimum spending requirement for the pay per click Sponsored Search.

This is a good thing because for some lawyers, they only need to bid on certain geographic specific keyphrases that arent that expensive and dont have much competition. So now lawyers who may have been hesitant because of the minimum requirement can now choose to spend as much or as little as they like, with no minimum to meet.

Yahoo! Joins AOL Chase

Yahoo has joined the whirlwind courtship of AOL reports the Street.com. Yahoo is joining Microsoft, Google, and Comcast and making a play for at least a portion of AOL.

Yahoo Launching Blog Search Engine

Business Week is reporting that Yahoo is going to announce some kind of new blog seach.

Look for Yahoo! to unveil a response to Google's blog search early next week. This from Bradley Horowitz, director of tech development in the company's search group. He wouldn't provide details in advance. And it could be that Yahoo's announcement will cover only one aspect of blog or RSS search, and not the comprehensive release the search industry's waiting for.

Yahoo's announcement comes less than a month after Google's release of its much antipated blog search. The Google engine, while fast and competent, has drawn few raves.

Yahoo Instant Search

Yahoo has come up with something new called "Instant Search" and here are the details from the Yahoo Blog:

sometimes there is one really good answer to your search. And that’s what led us to develop Instant Search, which went into beta today on our next.yahoo.com site. As you type your search into the Instant Search box, it checks to see if there is a single, relevant answer for your query. If there is, that single result instantly appears on the page, just below the search box in a kind of "speech bubble". You don't even have to hit the Search button or the Enter key, and you don't have to sort through pages of results (though of course that option is still available to you).

Yahoo Local Expands With City Pages & More User Reviews

Yahoo Local has expanded with new city and neighborhood pages, along with increased display of maps and use of community reviews.

Yahoo features custom pages for major cities throughout the US, as listed here, with areas of those cities broken down into individual neighborhoods. In addition, it has coverage of all cities throughout the US offering information in various ways.

Its important that your law firm is listed in the Yahoo local listings, as well as the normal Yahoo search listings.

Search Engine Penalties at Yahoo & MSN

Search Engine Watch has a post about penalties imposed at Yahoo and Msn for spam like activities, which can get your web site banned. I personally dont think Yahoo or MSN is doing enough because I see spam like sites all the time in those seach indexes.

In Yahoo's guidelines pages for webmasters, the following is considered spam:

• Pages that harm accuracy, diversity or relevance of search results
• Pages dedicated to directing the user to another page
• Pages that have substantially the same content as other pages
• Sites with numerous, unnecessary virtual hostnames
• Lots of pages that were automatically generated or of little value
• Pages using methods to artificially inflate search engine ranking
• The use of text that is hidden from the user
• Pages that give the search engine different content than what the end-user sees
• Excessively cross-linking sites to inflate a site's apparent popularity
• Pages built primarily for the search engines
• Misuse of competitor names
• Multiple sites offering the same content
• Pages that use excessive pop-ups, interfering with user navigation
• Pages that seem deceptive, fraudulent or provide a poor user experience

The bottom line is that you should never do anything that any of the search engines might consider spam. You really don't have to because as long as your site is search engine friendly and optimized, has good content and has links from other related sites, then you should be able to get good listings for your legal site.

Yahoo search update gets mixed reviews

Yahoo made updates to its search index this week that are supposed to improve the quality of the search results, but many people are unhappy, probably the ones that lost search rankings.  CNET has an article:

The search engine updates are aimed specifically at growing the list of relevant Web sites in Yahoo's search index, said Tim Mayer, director of product management for Yahoo Search. The company is also in the midst of tweaking its search algorithm, which determines the ranking of search results, he said.

The update, which began Wednesday, is a work in progress that won't be complete for another week or two, Mayer said. He urged Webmasters to be patient until the process is complete.

"We need to ensure quality results for our users," Mayer said. "If we feel that this is a much better experience for our users, we feel it's the right thing to do."

Yahoo! Search Marketing Kicks Off "Think Big" Contest

Yahoo's Search Marketing, formerly Overture Services, announced the launch of its "Think Big" contest, which will award one small business with 10 million free ad impressions across the Yahoo! network.

Sir Richard Branson, world renowned entrepreneur and founder of Virgin Group, will serve as the official contest judge and will hand select the winning company based on its business plan and proven ability to "think big."

Yahoo! Search Marketing will accept contest entries between April 28 and May 20 online at http://thinkbig.yahoo.com. Rules for contest eligibility are also available at the contest website.

Yahoo! did not give an estimated value of the prize, but given the minimum PPC fee of $.10 per click through Yahoo! Search Marketing, the minimum value would be $1,000,000.

Thats a LOT of clicks but I personally would rather just take the cash!

Yahoo Launches My Web Personal Search

Chris Sherman explains how Yahoo is not standing still with their My Yahoo personal search features.

I personally use My Yahoo and really like it because it allows me keep track of many different things on one page and now these new features add even more value.

I can't say the same thing about the Yahoo search engine though, I just don't think its keeping up with Google as far as the amount of traffic it produces. It has a long way to go before it ever catches Google in my opinion.  Google not only produces more traffic but they also seem to have a much better handle on how they index sites.

Overture now is YAHOO Search Marketing

Story from CNET about Overture changing its name to "Yahoo Search Marketing".

The portal giant on Monday shed its Overture Services brand and renamed the unit Yahoo Search Marketing. The replacement of the Overture brand will take place in the U.S. market initially, the company said. Other international markets will be re-branded later, but the Overture brand will be maintained in Japan and Korea.

The change comes nearly two years after Yahoo's purchase of Overture, a pioneer in the commercial search business. The acquisition was meant to bolster Yahoo's marketing efforts and its position against rivals Google and Microsoft.

I remember when Overture was GOTO.com, which really wasnt that long ago. I still hear people referring to it as Goto.  I do like how they changed the name close to my sites name of Legal Search Marketing though!

Yahoo Search Index Updated

Report from the Yahoo Blog that Yahoo Search has updated the search index and that they will update people and provide an algorithm "weather report" in the future.  Which is something  that search engine legend Danny Sullivan requested awhile back.  From the Yahoo blog....

So consider this our first weather report. We're releasing a new index tonight. You should see a lot of new content in the index as well as fluctuations in the rankings of results from previous searches.

Good to see Yahoo responding to the requests of the search engine community.  I have noticed a change in the Yahoo rankings and the overall listings seem to be improved.  I had noticed that a lot of spam like sites where starting to pop up, hopefully this new update removes those sites.    

I cant say that Ive noticed that much traffic from Yahoo though, it seems to have dropped if anything.  Still I love Yahoo and feel its a strong search engine and better then ever!

Yahoo Fires Back At Google

CBS News online has a story about the ongoing battle between Google and Yahoo.

Yahoo Inc. is quadrupling the amount of storage provided with its free e-mail accounts and upgrading its desktop search software in its ongoing duel with rivals Google Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Yahoo said late Tuesday that it will provide 1 gigabyte of storage for each free e-mail account. The current limit is 250 megabytes.  As part of its e-mail changes, Yahoo also is providing software from Symantec Corp. to clean viruses detected in attachments.

Yahoo! Celebrating their 10th Anniversary

Yahoo! will be celebrating their 10th anniversary on March 2nd. Hard to believe its already been a decade since Yahoo has been delivering search results.  The AP has a wonderful timeline of Yahoo! with key dates and milestones in the history of Yahoo.

Importance of being listed in Search Directories

Good article from the Search Engine Guide entitled "Utilizing Popular Directories as Free Link Resources". It talks about how important it is to get listings from the search directories such as Yahoo, Open Directory (DMOZ), Zeal and a few others.

The obvious benefit is that you can get traffic from a directory listing from users who visit your site from the directory. In addition though it provides a valuable link to your site that can help build link popularity and also many sites will take links from Yahoo and Open Directory and place them on other sites, so you can get additional links pointing to your site.   

Ive always noticed  that sites that have BOTH a Yahoo directory listing and a DMOZ directory listing, do much better in the organic search engine results.  Google has its own directory and its based on results from the Open Directory, so it really pays off to get that free open directory listing, but it takes a lot of patience. 

Yahoo charges $299 per year for its listing and in most cases its worth it I feel.  In the long run it will pay off and getting a link from Yahoo just seems to carry a lot of weight, in addition to producing traffic from the directory listing.  For law firms, also getting listings from other known legal directories can be of great value, especially if those legal directories are well ranked.