Will There Ever Be A Yahoo – Google Partnership?
Guest Post by Dan Chaney
Before Google dominated the search engine market, the #1 place to go for information on anything was Yahoo. No one could go outside or watch TV without seeing one of their ads each day. Today, Yahoo is not in good shape. Some internet users either think it’s dead or have no idea what it is. At one point, a few companies tried to buy the company but the execs and shareholders refused the offers. However, no one has thought of a partnership. Will Yahoo ever do such a thing with Google or someone else? The short answer is maybe.
Yahoo could use some help in some form or another. Their net income is at $228.5 million according to their Q2 2012 earnings report, which has been in decline for some time. They’ve also had many of their top-level execs either leave or have been let go over the past six years. Add on the fact that they’re having to compete for business with two juggernaut-sized companies (Google and Microsoft) and it becomes clear that Yahoo has a massive hill to climb if they wish to stay open.
A partnership of some could work in their favor, but it depends on what the other party would offer them. The first thing they need is more people using their search engine. Without that, there’s not much of a reason to visit except to check e-mail and read the news. Original content would also help. If Yahoo offers something people want to see or read that can’t be found elsewhere, there’s a good chance that they’ll be able to convince users and investors to give them a second look. In short, they’d have to utilize multiple services from one company or team up with multiple companies to remain afloat.
At some point, Yahoo will have to do something big to attract the attention of internet users and businesses alike. If they can’t offer better services and content than its competition, it’ll have to put itself up for sale and hope for the best. A partnership with Google would help, but only if it’ll convince people to come to their site on a regular basis aside from checking and sending email. Also, it’ll depend on which services the partnership will improve. Otherwise, the deal may turn out to be an expensive waste of time for all parties involved.
One way or another, Yahoo needs to get its house in order. Will that include a partnership of some kind? Only time will tell. Given the history they’ve had when it comes to being bought up, the folks in charge may choose to do things on their own until all of their efforts fall flat before striking a deal with anyone.
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Dan Chaney is a blogger for HirePulse advertising with a background in social media and marketing.
Read MoreCribbed Content for March 6th
I haven’t had the chance to do very many of these during February… the month was filled with birthday celebrations, a vacation, and a lot of Wii in the evening since I’ve been strangely obsessed with Guitar Hero and Animal Crossing: City Folk. But since I’ve been back from vacation I’ve seen some great stuff, so I want to share.
Forgive me, some of it will be a bit out of date.
- Geno Prussakov put together a great list of affiliate marketing events in 2009.
- California is looking into a tax for online sales. Scott Jangro has written an open letter to the California outlining why it’s a bad idea. I am going to take his advice and grab the letter to send myself as a resident of California.
- Read the full California Assembly Bill 178 and contact your representatives to explain why this is a bad idea for affiliate marketers in California!
- 20/20 contacted the Performance Marketing Alliance for some background on affiliate marketing for a series they’re doing on the proliferation of work-at-home schemes. It’s good to see that they’re able to do some positive PR for the industry already… very promising since they’re off to a slow start.
- I wrote another guest post for Marketing Pilgrim, this time on The Search Engine Known as Twitter.
- If you’re at all interested in reading about my rambles about my Caribbean cruise vacation, check out my Posterous blog.
Online Marketing Glossary: Click Bot
Click Bot:
- A program generally used to artificially click on paid listings within the engines in order to artificially inflate click amounts.
This is bad news for anyone engaging in PPC campaigns, affiliate or not. With inflated click amounts the prices go up, giving the larger companies an unfair advantage in keeping out their competition. Studies have shown that the users eyes are more drawn to the sponsored listings at the top of the page, so an inflated price puts the smaller businesses and affiliates at a severe disadvantage.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Sponsored Listing
Sponsored Listing (also Paid Listings or Paid Sponsors):
- A term used as a title or column head on search engine results pages to identify paid advertisers and distinguish between paid and organic listings.
On Google, these are the links highlighted by yellow on the top of the page and the right side that say “Sponsored Links” above them. These are the links that are the results of search engine marketing and pay per click campaigns.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Meta Tag
Meta Tag:
- A way to describe various aspects of a webpage that is not intended for users to see. Meta tags pass information to Web crawlers and spiders along with browsers and other applications.
Remember when I said there were basic tools out there to optimize your website for search engines on a very prime level? This is one of the easiest ones. There are many tutorials out there on where to put meta tags in the head html area of your website that will assist with search engine results.
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
Online Marketing Glossary: Cloaking
Cloaking:
- A deceptive process that sends search engine spiders to alternative pages that are not seen by the end user. Search engines record content for a URL that is different from what the visitor sees in order to obtain more favorable search positions.
Okay I could be completely off the mark, but practically speaking I think this is what happens when you click on a result on the SERP that has a description that sounds on the mark, but when you get there it’s nothing what you want.
Seriously, can anyone chime in here for some better (or more accurate) examples of this?
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Glossary Definition From ABC’s of Online Marketing by Alexandra Wharton, Issue 22, Revenue Magazine
