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Yahoo! and Monster – Dismantling the Yahoo! EmpireI got this interesting email from Monster today – another pillar being carved off and outsourced by Yahoo! First search goes to Bing, now Jobs to Monster. Check it out: Monster To Acquire Yahoo!'s HotJobs Dear Customer: Today, we are excited to announce that Monster has entered into an agreement to acquire HotJobs that will provide you with unprecedented access to job seekers and make Monster the leading site for job seekers in the U.S. Upon the close of the acquisition, Monster will also enter into a multi-year strategic agreement with Yahoo!, becoming the jobs and recruitment engine on Yahoo!'s homepage for both the U.S. and Canada. HOW DOES THIS ACQUISITION AND MULTI-YEAR TRAFFIC AGREEMENT IMPACT YOU? • Increased traffic to your jobs: Monster will become Yahoo!'s provider of career and job content on the Yahoo! homepage in the United States and Canada. This is not just a generic portal deal – people with a demonstrated interest in jobs and careers will be sent to Monster from Yahoo!. In fact, with an increase in qualified candidates, we expect that job response, our metric for apply per post, will increase significantly. • Broader industry seeker mix: HotJobs brings new strengths to Monster in the form of healthcare, retail, finance and insurance seekers that complement Monster's traditional strengths. As a Monster customer, you will be able to put your message in front of Monster's and Yahoo!'s vast combined reach of career-minded candidates. • Additional market presence: We will be able to leverage HotJobs's strong reach in markets such as Atlanta, Houston, Los Angeles, and Phoenix. • Increased local presence: This acquisition expands our newspaper partnership network to approximately 1,000 weekly and daily newspapers, giving you local reach in all 50 states. THE RIGHT RESUMES. With Monster's larger and growing job seeker population, you will receive increased exposure for your jobs. Couple this with Monster's innovative patented 6Sense™ search technology and our Power Resume Search product and you'll receive precise, relevant resume results that match people with your opportunities faster and better than ever before. WHAT'S NEXT? In the immediate term and while we work to develop plans and programs that will deliver the value inherent in our new relationship, you can expect Monster and HotJobs to operate independently. Your Monster Account Manager will continue to provide world class support assisting you with all your recruitment needs. We will have much more to announce with respect to specifics after we conclude the regulatory process and close the transaction, which we currently expect to occur sometime in the third quarter of 2010. Until that time, if you have any questions, please reach out to your Monster Account Manager or call 1-800-MONSTER. In addition, you may read our press release or our frequently asked questions. At Monster, you are one of our most valued customers and we wanted to share this exciting news with you. We are confident that today's agreements will bring together the complementary strengths of Monster and HotJobs, thereby offering far greater opportunities, convenience and results for both employers and job seekers than ever before. Best regards, Steve Cooker Senior Vice President, U.S. Sales Labels: HotJobs, Industry, Monster, online marketing, Yahoo No Bling for BingLooks like all the hype hasn't translated into market share for Microsoft's "decision engine" Bing. After an initial bump in usage, Bing's market share is now 3.39%, according to the latest figures from a NetApplications survey. Meanwhile, StatCounter says that 89.92% of all global searches were done on Google. Here's a link to the article: http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7016574732?Microsoft%27s%20%27Bing%27%20Is%20Anything%20But%20Bling%20As%20Marketshare%20Keeps%20Slipping Wonder what Google has up their sleeve to grab the remaining market share away from competitors like Bing and Yahoo? How about date ranges, pages not yet visited, and translation? After several months of an almost continuous barrage of feature upgrades, Google dropped a few more goodies into their feature set yesterday: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2353667,00.asp Social Media Weekly BuzzWelcome to the second edition of Social Media Weekly Buzz. This week, both Google and Facebook managed to steal the majority of the headlines. Gmail’s outage on Tuesday sparked widespread panic and led most people, ironically, to use Google search to investigate the incident. In addition, the oh-so familiar, yet quite stark, Google search landing page has finally been patented, five years after being submitted to the USPTO. Facebook tested out a new ad scheme with direct offer engagement ads, and is being accused of leading a Welsh citizen to murder their partner. Also, have you checked out Russian President Dmitry Medvedev on YouTube yet? All this and more follows below:  • Gmail Outage – At 12:30pm PST, a small fraction of Gmail’s servers were taken offline for routine maintenance. Unfortunately, Google underestimated the load recent changes placed on the request routers… The result? Gmail went down for 100 minutes, and online chaos quickly ensued. • Google’s Search Landing Page Now Patented – After 5 years of fierce debate with federal bureaucrats, Google has finally won the right to patent their unmistakable home page. Google now owns the concept of having a large search box in the middle of the page, on top of two big buttons, with several links scattered here and there. Does this spell trouble for sites which possess similar layouts, such as Yahoo search?  • Facebook Tests Direct Response Ads – Craving a Chick-fil-A Chicken Biscuit? How about if it’s free? Soon you might be seeing more ad offers like this on Facebook if their testing of direct offer engagement ads goes well. Facebook has recently been exploring different advertising options as it gradually shifts away from its traditional sales funnel. • Facebook Regional Networks No More – Regional networks on Facebook are now officially gone. This move comes as Facebook attempts to expand beyond its college roots to a worldwide communication platform, not unlike Twitter. But is that really what users want? • Facebook Jealousy Blamed on Murder – A murder trial in South Wales has taken an interesting twist, with a UK prosecutor arguing that Facebook-related jealousy pre-empted the tragic event. Apparently the whole thing got started when Mrs. Jones started to “expand her social horizons” online. The last straw? When she changed her Facebook status to “single”. • Kremlin Launches YouTube Channel – Russian President Dmitri Medvedev launched his very own YouTube channel, located at www.youtube.com/kremlin. The main purpose of the channel will be to reach out to and connect with the youth of Russia. So far he has covered topics from good neighborhood ties between schoolchildren, to the outcome of the Second World War. • eBay Sells Skype – On Tuesday, eBay officially announced that it would be selling th  e VoIP and chat service Skype to a group of private investors for $2.75 billion. eBay will still retain a 35 percent equity stake in the service however, which they hope will increase in value under the new management. The decision to sell was provoked by a lack of synergy between Skype and eBay’s e-commerce and payments services.The Gmail downtime serves as a reminder of how much of our lives are becoming dependent on the Internet. As more and more services become cloud-based in nature, it is imperative that network interruption be minimized at all costs. Fortunately the Gmail downtime occurred during the night, which helped save what could have been a large-scale interruption in productivity for the US. Twitter experienced a similar issue not too long ago, though that issue was more malicious in nature, and not just a big mistake. Facebook continues to modify its services in order to improve both the experience of both consumers and advertisers. The direct offer engagement ads are a great source of lead generation for businesses, however it will be interesting to see how many people are willing to enter their address and other personal info for discounts and promotions. This is definitely a jump in the right direction for Facebook as it tries to shift away from its traditional sales funnel. The major step in this development is that companies will now receive instant results from the advertisements they publish on the service. The Facebook alteration that might not be met with open arms is the decision to completely remove regional network categories. As Facebook attempts to take a more worldly approach to its communications platform, it has the potential of upsetting long time users of its service. For them, Facebook served as a tool to better connect with friends, not strangers. In addition, many users prefer Facebook over Twitter for the very fact that it isn’t… Twitter. Any step closer to the other service could be taken very negatively among its fan base. The sale of Skype was definitely a smart move for eBay, whose e-commerce and online payments businesses really have nothing in common with the VoIP service. The real question is what prompted eBay to make the acquisition in the first place? Earlier in April StumbleUpon was also sold off to a group of investors after a failed attempt to synergize operations. Fortunately now the company can turn to focusing on its core eBay and PayPal businesses. Labels: Facebook, Google, Industry, Landing Pages, online marketing, Online Media, Social Media, Social Media Marketing, Twitter, Video, web 2.0, Yahoo, YouTube Yahoogle – It’s HereWell folks, it’s official! On Thursday, Yahoo officially stated that under a new pact with Google it will display “some” ads sold by its rival. The deal is expected to generate an additional $800 million in annual revenue for Yahoo, through what the Wall Street Journal describes as improved monetization of certain types of searches. On top of it all, both companies also stated that they are looking for ways to now expand what is considered to be a limited partnership, possibly into the realm of display advertising. Now this would be interesting, as display is one area where Yahoo does hold a commanding lead over Google. While all of the specifics of this deal have not been definitively worked out, the understanding is that Yahoo will control how Google’s ads are displayed along side its own advertising. Although it has not been 100% defined, my guess here is that Yahoo will most likely give priority to ads purchased directly through its own site, but then populate excess inventory with ads from Google. Therefore, it appears that Yahoo is entering in a pact to become part of Google’s “Expanded Search Network”. This means that while you will still be able to buy everything you would like directly via Yahoo, whenever there is a case of excess inventory on Yahoo, Google’s ads will now be displayed. It appears to be a similar arrangement that Google has with sites such as Business.com, from which you can purchase ads directly from or go through Google to do so, as Business.com is part of Google’s expanded search network. Assuming I am correct, and while this great news for the shareholders of Yahoo, there are few things that we as search engine marketers must now consider. If you did not already know, when you buy advertising from Google, you have a few options. You can go with Google Search, which means you advertise to people just searching on Google; Expanded Search, which means adverting on Google and all of its search partners (AOL, Earthlink, etc.); and then of course there are programs such as Google Content. In my experience, most people opt to go with Google’s expanded search network as they not only get access to the audience on Google, but also those on AOL, Earthlink and more. However, unlike Yahoo’s expanded search network, with Google, it’s an all or nothing proposition. This means that with Google, you can not select which search partners you advertise with and which you do not. Additionally, Google does not disclose what percentage of your searches or budget are actually being spent with their partners, versus them directly. This leads most people to believe that when they advertise with Google all traffic and clicks are coming from people directly on Google, but this is not necessarily the case at all. Why this is important is that if Yahoo does join Google’s Expanded Search Network, you could end up spending a good portion of your budget directly with Yahoo unknowingly via Google. Because Yahoo does command upwards of 20% of the Search Marketplace, they still have a very good sized audience and therefore you could soon find your Google programs spending much faster that you had previous realized, as you now have your ads being put in front of Yahoo’s still very sizeable audience. As a result, if you were previously reaping the benefits of Google’s Expanded Search Network, whether you knew it or not, with Yahoo in the fold you may have to start spending a lot more to continue to do so. Additionally, seeing that Google does not let you see the specifics behind what is happening on their Expanded Search Network, you will loose the ability to plan your budget accordingly for Yahoo. I see this as important as both Google & Yahoo perform differently under certain circumstances and therefore you want to be able to structure your campaign on many levels such as Keyword, bidding and budget to take advantage of different audience dynamics. However, under this pact you will be relegated to spending some of your budget with Yahoo, but planning based on your insights from Google. Now, you might say that with Google’s Expanded Search Network you’ve already had to do this for AOL, Earthlink, Business.com, etc., but the difference here is that none of these engines offer an audience the size of Yahoo’s and really have the potential to shift things one way or the other. Now of course you can still advertise with Yahoo directly and plan accordingly, but previously you had the advantage of knowing that you had a Google budget and a Yahoo budget. But now under this new pact you will have a Yahoogle budget and a Yahoo budget, if in fact you decide to advertise directly with Yahoo at all. This leads me to my last point, what does this mean for Yahoo in the future? In my experience, a lot of organizations like the fact that they can go through one provider and get their ads displayed on multiple engines. In the end you basically get the same result, without the headache of having to manage multiple programs and campaigns. In short, life is simpler. So, does this mean that over time, we will see more people just turning to Google to leverage the fact that they can go there and use them as a one stop shop? I guess the answer to this question relies on the definition of “some”, in terms of what the Google/Yahoo pact means when they say it means that Yahoo will display “some” ads displayed/sold by Google. Ultimately the word “some” is very ambiguous, and leaves a lot of room for this partnership to grow and expand. However, while you can at times get better cost efficiencies of going straight to the source, versus going through a partner, the challenges of managing multiple programs sometimes outweighs the cost benefits gained. Therefore, while I do believe that Yahoo will always have direct presence, I feel that the number of advertisers who opt run programs directly with them will shrink as they realize they can go to Google and manage everything from one single interface. This will be particularly true for those businesses that don’t have the ability to have a dedicated search marketing staff, but previously felt they had to run on both engines in order to access both audiences. One thing that is for sure is that by making a bid for Yahoo, Microsoft has certainly shaken-up the search marketing landscape. Who would have thought that the net result of trying to acquire Yahoo, would have the unintended effect of making Yahoo run directly in to the arms of the rival that Microsoft as trying to fend off via their intended acquisition strategy. If you think this is strange; based on the precedent set here, I can only imagine what's going to happen next. Labels: Google, Industry, Online Media, Paid Search, POV, Strategy, Yahoo One Stop Search ShoppingYahoo! India recently launched Glue Pages Beta, a new search experience that collates and integrates information from across the Web onto one enhanced visual results page. Glue Pages run across searches for select terms in categories such as health, sports, entertainment, travel, technology, and finance. Glue Pages Beta works well when searching for topics that have broad search results. For example, if you search for “yoga,” the classic paid and natural search results will show up, but the page is also complimented with a Wikipedia definition for yoga, Google Blog Search results, as well as links from HowStuffWorks, YouTube videos on yoga and information from Y! India Answers. “Searching on Glue Pages Beta will result in an experience that promises more than just web links. Users will receive more relevant, visually appealing search results from across the Web in one topical page. The new Glue Pages Beta feature for Yahoo! India Search supports our strategy to make Yahoo! the leading starting point on the Internet and demonstrates our commitment to provide a compelling online search experience,” said Gopal Krishna, Head of Audience, Yahoo! India. To try out Yahoo! India Glue Pages Beta, click here Labels: Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Yahoo Yahoogle! –A New Way to Define the Online Marketing Landscape…according to Microsoft. Yahoogle (Ya-hoo-gle) n. 1. An arrangement between Google and Yahoo! that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! 2. A world, according to Microsoft, in which talent flees, prices increase, the Feds come after you and most of all Google becomes an Evil Price Fixing Baron.
Labels: Google, Industry, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Yahoo Look Out - Here Comes Yahoogle!Well folks, if you have not already heard the news, Microsoft has withdrawn its offer to acquire Yahoo!. Despite having raised its offer by $5 Billion, from $29/Share to $33/Share, Yahoo! still walked away from the deal unless Microsoft would pony-up an additional $5 Billion ($37/Share). However, what I find makes the collapse of this deal really interesting is that when you read the letter that Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang on Saturday, May 3rd while price was certainly deciding factor, the straw that broke the camels back appears to be Yahoo’s decision to further expand their “partnership” with Google. In short, it’s the prospect of having to acquire “Yahoogle!”, not Yahoo! that has really made Microsoft stop its pursuit and not go hostile. In a letter to Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer stated that “We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number of reasons.” So what would the world according to Yahoogle! look like? Well according to Mr. Ballmer, its one that’s pretty dark in which talent flees, prices increase, the Feds come after you (Microsoft certainly knows about this) and most of all Google becomes an Evil Price Fixing Baron. But who am I to tell you about Yahoogle!, let Mr. Ballmer be your guide! The following is a summary of why Mr. Ballmer feels that Yahoogle! would make Yahoo! undesirable acquisition for Microsoft: 1. No More Panama 2. Talent Will Flee 4. Google Now Sets Every Price So what do you think? Is Yahoogle! good or bad? Whether you agree with Microsoft or not, the paid search and online advertising landscape is quickly changing and Yahoogle! is certainly going to play role in paving the way. Labels: Google, Industry, Online Media, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Yahoo Microsoft Offers To Buy Yahoo For $44.6 BillionOk, pretty big news right! Technically I do not predict big changes for online advertisers and search marketers in the short term as I am sure Microsoft will not want to rock the revenue boat. It will be in interesting to see how competition between MSN and Yahoo! plays out though. Microsoft said it had offered to buy Yahoo for $31 per share, which it said represented a 62 percent premium above the company's closing stock price on Nasdaq on Thursday. Microsoft said Yahoo holders would be able to trade each of their shares for $ 31 in cash or 0.9509 of a Microsoft share, pro-rated so that no more than half of the overall purchase price is paid in cash. Pre-market trading Friday sent the stock to: 29.34 +10.16 (52.97%) as of Feb 1 8:36am ET. The deal values Yahoo at 65 times earnings. Currently, it trades at 40 times earnings, according to FactSet Research. Yahoo shares haven't traded at $31 since November. The companies held talks about partnering or merging in late 2006 and early 2007. Those talks included the potential of a merger proposal, but Yahoo told Microsoft in February it wasn't interest in being acquired. On another note Google's shares did not do well in pre-market trading: GOOG: Pre-Market: 526.76 -37.54 (-6.65%) Feb 1 8:51am ET This announcement and yesterday's earnings news from Google really hit them hard: "NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Google reported earnings and sales for the fourth quarter that missed Wall Street estimates, sending the stock tumbling after hours." Labels: Google, Industry, Yahoo How I tried to Save the Yahoo! Search Term Suggestion ToolSo if you have a little time to read all of this you may actually find this post to be entertaining. Below is an email chain that resulted from me hearing that the person in charge of the Yahoo! Panama launch, planned to do what I consider to be one of the most wasteful things Yahoo! ever did. It all started when we attended the Panama road show at the Harvard Club in Boston and this person (to protect his privacy I have replaced his name, contact info and title with XXXXX) announced that Yahoo! would be replacing the current Search Term Suggestion Tool with something that, instead of reporting historical search volume, would predict clicks. (Much like the Google Click Estimator.) Now this flew right over the head of most of the people in the room but I raised my hand and said, "Wait a second, are you saying that the Search Term Suggestion tool that every search marketer on the planet loves and uses every day is going away?" His answer was, "yes." Could this guy be unaware of how essential that tool was and how cool everyone thought Yahoo! was for proving search marketers with this info? The strange part was his reaction was as if no body had protested before. So from there a whole little feud let loose between me and this person who admittedly said, "I am the one directly responsible for this decision." The really funny part was I started making a huge stink about this and when I told Yahoo! reps about it one of two things would happen: A) They would say "Oh my god – I use that tool all the time in my presentations to show potential clients how much people are searching under their keywords – this is terrible." (My reaction.) B) They would say, "Oh I heard about you." Clearly my protests had made their way around the company. Ok, so the real reasons why I think they stopped maintaining the tool are as follows. ( It is certainly not that people were "confused" by it or that what they have given us as a replacement is better.) A) Most people used the tool as an SEO keyword scoring tool and clearly that was of no benefit to Yahoo! B) All that usage, data storage and other applications that scraped the results of the tool into their interfaces was probably very taxing on Yahoo! from an IT, storage and load balancing standpoint. C) It could have shown that search volume on a month by month basis for certain terms was trending down on Yahoo! and that they were losing. Now to XXXXXX's credit he did have a conference call with me, let me express my opinions and engaged in the lengthy email exchange that I am about to share with you and I give XXXX and the whole Yahoo! team major kudos for that. Also Yahoo! did leave the tool up but it often does not work and now only displays 2007 data. However, it is still a good scoring tool and they should use it as a way to build a search marketing community made up of Yahoo! Search Term Suggestion Tool members. (Basically this is what I say in all the emails.) So as you read these emails realize that they started right after the event at the Harvard Club. The last email was from me to on of our Yahoo! reps that was facilitating the dialogue between me and XXXXXXXX. Actually, I must add that we did in fact all survive the Search Term Suggestion Tool effectively going away and all is well. Panama is indeed leaps and bounds above were it was and Yahoo! is very often the top performing property in many of our B2C paid search campaigns from a cost per action and ROI standpoint. ******************* Email # 1 ********************** From: Harry Gold Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 13:32:44 -0700 To: XXXXXXX XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com Subject: It was great talking to you! Hi XXXXXXX, I just wanted to tell you what a pleasure it was to meet you the other night and talk to you about the coming changes at Yahoo! I also want to thank you for letting me express my views on the importance of the current suggestion tool and for you agreeing to take the time to see how our company uses it in the new business process. I know you are either on or winding down from the road show so as we discussed I will give you a couple weeks to catch up then I’ll send you some of my pitch materials that use the tool and we can schedule a time to talk though them. Again thank you so much for this opportunity, I look forward to talking again. Best regards, Harry- ___________________________ Harry J. Gold founder, managing partner 617-254-5000 x 1100 direct ______________________ overdrive 46 Leo M. Birmingham Parkway First Floor Boston, MA 02135 http://www.ovrdrv.com/ ******************* Email # 2 ********************** From: XXXXXXX [mailto:XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Thursday, August 31, 2006 6:31 PM To: Harry Gold Subject: Re: It was great talking to you! Harry, Indeed it was fun meeting you and your team. I love the passion around this industry, and getting out of the “Panama factory” to get in front of actual customers really revs me up.I appreciate the perspective you brought me on how valuable keyword search data is to sell the search tactic to customers. Let’s definitely continue the dialog there. If you have proposals ready to ship my way, please don’t hesitate, as I’d like to put my thinking cap on around this topic as soon as possible. But if you want to think on it for a bit, just send them along when you’re ready. Looking forward to the next conversation! XXXXXXX XXXXXXX Sr. Director, XXXXXXX ManagementYahoo! Search Marketing searchmarketing.yahoo.comAddress: 3333 Empire Ave. Burbank, CA 91504 USAO: XXXXXXXXXXX F: XXXXXXXXXXX E: XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com ******************* Email # 3 ********************** From: Harry Gold Date: Thu, 31 Aug 2006 21:12:17 -0700 To: XXXXXXX XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com Conversation: It was great talking to you! Subject: RE: It was great talking to you! Hello XXXXXXX, Below is a link to a download page where you will find a portion of our capabilities presentation. In order to see the stats we use from the suggestion tool you will want to view it in Slide Show mode and then click on the live links embedded in the Current Search Situation slides. (Some links may require a user name and password to access the destination pages and they are listed in the presentation.) I have included three Keyword Usage Analysis Tables from past pitches. What I am basically showing here is that there are millions of searches per year that describe these companies’ products and then illustrate with position reports that they have no presence in those terms responsible for the majority of those searches. I then present paid search as the best and fastest way to capitalize on this channel. Please do let me know what you think and in the mean time I will try and send you more relevant materials as they arise. I have dozens and dozens of these pitches and these types of analysis slides have been critical parts of the close every time. I look forward to speaking with you about this further and again thank you so much for this opportunity. Download Page:XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX (sorry, cannot post this in the blog) Talk to you soon, Harry- ******************* Email # 4 ********************** From: XXXXXXX [mailto:XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com] Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 1:48 PM To: Harry Gold; XXXXXXX Subject: Re: It was great talking to you! Harry, Hope all is well and that you’re enjoying a nice early fall in New England. This is the one time of year where we southern Californians are justifiably jealous of your climate. We’re going gangbusters here to get project Panama ready and out the door. You’re going to like it. I’ve spent time with some of the Product Managers on my team thinking about the use case around search volumes that we discussed in Boston. We think that the Panama offering actually will allow you to make your pitch in a much more compelling manner. We’d like to get an hour to talk with you (and others from Overdrive if you want them there) to kick the tires on what we’ve been thinking. Can you suggest a couple of times in the latter part of next week or early in the first week in October that might work for you? If you can, I can rally our team here and get a call set up for us to talk. Thanks, XXXXXXX XXXXXXX Sr. Director, XXXXXXX ManagementYahoo! Search Marketing searchmarketing.yahoo.comAddress: 3333 Empire Ave. Burbank, CA 91504 USAO: XXXXXXXXX F: XXXXXXX E: XXXXXXX@yahoo-inc.com ******************* Email # 5 ********************** From: Harry Gold Sent: Monday, October 02, 2006 8:56 PM To: 'XXXXXXX'; 'XXXXXXX' Subject: RE: It was great talking to you!Importance: High Hi XXXXXXX, Please let me know that you are getting my emails as for some reason our IP is getting blocked here and there. I sent you some dates but have not heard back from you and I am a bit concerned you didn’t get my emails. I am very excited about seeing your new tool but I still get the feeling from your email (below) that the tool that is at the foundation of everything we do is going to go away. I am still a bit mystified as to why you would want to remove the most valuable search marketing tool on the entire web. One that is used literally several times a day by every search marketer on the planet. Why not simply leave it and offer the other one to? Also, look at the interface for your current tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/ If people are confused by it simply put more info on it to tell them what they are looking at. (Tell them specifically they are not looking at click or traffic projections if it is causing confusion.) I always look at that interface and the lack of promotions and registration requirements you have on it and think it is the biggest lost opportunity for Yahoo! Again, why not leave it and use it to your benefit? You could: 1) Use the interface as a branding, marketing and cross selling page for search marketers 2) Use it to promote the new tool 3) Make search marketers register for access to it – think of the amazing email/direct mail database you guys will be able to create I can understand closing it to tools that use it to display the info in their environments but if you put a password on it like the bid viewing tool you would stop those kinds of queries. Finally, why even risk upsetting a community that represents a significant customer base and disrupt their research and selling process? (I know I am incredibly stressed about it. Its absence will rock the foundation of my business and force us to change a winning way of doing this that scored many clients for us and you. Again, I am very excited about the tool you are launching and if it gives the total search volume on Yahoo! for a previous month then I am all for it and we have no issue. If it does not give that data and replaces it with click and position projections based on max bid levels then you are changing the whole way we and thousands of other search marketers pitch our services. It is my sincere hope that you choose to simply leave the tool alone and add the new one. The current tool is the only credible source of the simple info it provides and the whole industry loves Yahoo! for providing it! (See all the links to it below.) I hope to connect with you soon. Best regards, Harry- The links below are typical of thousands of pages on the web that promote and link to the tool. (According to Yahoo! there are over 4500 links pointing at the tool. According to MSN there are over 5400 links pointing at the tool. Why not capitalize on that presence with my suggestions above?) (I removed the long list of links for this blog post.) ******************* Email # 6 ********************** This was the one to the Yahoo! sales rep that was trying to appease me – I definitely commend her for her efforts – she was really great about the whole thing. From: Harry Gold Sent: Wednesday, October 11, 2006 1:31 PM To: XXXXXXXXX Subject: RE: Yahoo! Buzz Index Information Hi XXXXXXXX, Thank you for this information. After the call with XXXXXX and team I have to confess that I am still as concerned and confused as ever. I am really grateful that he would take the time to talk to me but I think Yahoo! should ask themselves quick question from a sales point of view: Taking away a tool that is known, loved and used everyday by the search marketing community (see me email from last week below) will a) make search marketers happy or b) upset search marketers? The reality is that no matter what John says this new system is not going to make my life easier or my sales process better. I am sure the new tool is great but why take the other tool away? Again – the big question is “Why take the other tool away?” It is like telling a person who has been eating toast everyday for the past 5 years that your are now going to take the toast away and give him a bagel. On top of that you are telling them that they will like the bagel more because you think bagels are better. Why not offer them both and let them decide? I am sorry to be such a nudge on this but it just makes no sense to me since the forecasted click and cost data that the new tool is going to provide is going to be equally, if not more, inaccurate as the historical date the current search term suggestion tool provides. Harry- Ok, in conclusion I may have devoted way to much energy to this but I still believe to this day that the Yahoo! / Overture Search Term Suggestion tool was an amazing resource and I will miss it. I guess I am grateful that it is still up in its current form but I do wish it was more reliable. Labels: Industry, Paid Search, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Yahoo |
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