LBi Netrank: LBi Netrank Newsletter: June 2008

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2008

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June (1)
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March (1)
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Year

2008 (10)
2007 (13)
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Acquisitions and Partnerships

Yahoo! turned down $40 per share offer from Microsoft.

Mutiny is brewing amongst Yahoo! shareholders after it was revealed that Yahoo! turned down a $40 per share offer from Microsoft back in January 2007. This is according to unsealed court papers in a lawsuit over Yahoo! failing to accept the Microsoft bid. The current price of Yahoo! shares is a lot lower, meaning a substanial loss if any buyout goes ahead.

Yahoo! cut off talks with Microsoft and strikes a deal with Google

Having refused Microsoft's advances, Yahoo have signed a deal with Google to gain access to AdSense.This will cover AdSense for search and content advertising programmes on Yahoo's web properties in the US and Canada.

High profile people leaving Yahoo!

Over the last month, many people have handed their notice in at Yahoo!, including Flickr founders Caterina Fake and Stewart Butterfield. Leavers include Former Vice-President of Communications and Activities, Brad Garlinghouse, Former Yahoo Senior Vice President Vish Makhijani and Delicious founder, Joshua Schachter, amongst others.

Microsoft buys TV ad company Navic

Navic enables more targeted and interactive advertising on cable TV. Microsoft acquiring this company is part of their effort to expand their adCenter offering. This potential 'one-stop shop' advertising platform will allow advertisers to post, track and target ads on several different media, including TV, Web, mobile and video games.

Search News and Research

MSN to be default search engine for HP computers in North America

Microsoft have won a contract with Hewlett-Packard for MSN Live Search to be the default search engine on all HP consumer PC's shipped out across North America. The PC's will have a special Live Search Toolbar fitted to their IE browser with an MSN search box. Microsoft's Flash rival Silverlight will also be fitted to it.

Bill Gates steps down as chairman of Microsoft

Bill Gates has given up his day job running the largest Software company in the world to pursue his charity work. He remains lifetime chairman.

ICANN approves shakeup of domain name system

The domain name system faces a shakeup that will let you make any TLD possible. For instance, companies could turn their brands into web addresses. A second proposal that would allow domain names to be written in Arabic and other scripts has also been approved.

Adobe, Google and Yahoo! work together to make Flash sites more indexable by search engines

Google are developing an algorithm for indexing the text content of all types of Flash files. This can be anything from menus to buttons and banners, even self-contained websites. Adobe are now assisting them by providing optimised Flash Player technology to enhance search engine indexing of the Flash File format (SWF). Yahoo! are also part of this partnership, and are expected to roll out similar support for indexing Flash in a future update.

New Product Launches

Google Trends update adds new features including website benchmarking

Google have added some interesting extras to their Trends application. You can already see how popular certain search terms are in different comapnies and regions, but know you can have the numbers on the graph download to a spreadsheet. You can export your data to a CSV file with either fixed or relative scaling and can opened in most spreadsheet applications. The Google Trends for websites tool allows you to view how popular your favourite sites are, including your own. You can also compare sites across geographies and related searches.

Microsoft to launch IE 8 Public Beta

Hot on the heels of Firefox 3 and Safari 3.1, Microsoft are planning to make a public beta release of the new Internet Explorer 8. The release was originally intended for October, but the launches of their competitors new products may have pushed things forwards.

MSN Live launch Web Page Error Toolkit for better 404 pages

MSN have launched an ASP.net application that will allow you to build a 404 page with customisable error messages and search results seeded with relevant keywords. This lets the user move onto a page with the info they need.

Wikia launches

Wikia Search has been revamped and has aquired a wealth of editing tools. The open source search engine allows users to edit or annotate results with text, images and links. You can also isolate specific searches or even delete a site from search results.

Microsoft shuts down Live Expo

Live Expo, a mix of classified listings and social networking features, has been discontinued by Microsoft and will shut on July 31st. Microsoft believe that Expo is not core to it's position in search.

Google launch Ad Planner

Google's new app Ad Planner is a media planning tool which allows you to research demographics and sites associated with the target audience that you want to reach. The app then returns information about the sites that are popular with your audience.For the statistically minded amongst you, further info can be gleaned with demographics, related searches and aggregate stats for the sites.

Google deny Android phone delay

Despite PC World stating that the Google Android phone rollout will face delays, Google have denied that it will be late. Rumours are that developers have found programming difficult for the phone due to the numerous changes Google have introduced.

Search Engine Market Share Updates

Facebook catches Myspace, Myspace get a facelift

The fact that Myspace is undergoing a makeover, just as Facebook catches it up in the visitors stakes is probably no coincidence. A major new look was rolled out on June 18th, updating navigation, search facilities, profiles and their TV player. Whether this will stop the inexorable march of Facebook, remains to be seen.

Google Mobile Search takes 61% share in first quarter

Google is also leading the way in the mobile search market with 61%, according to Nielsen. As expected, Yahoo! are second with 18% and MSN third with 5%. Finding results however, is still a difficult affair, only 44% of Google searchers and 40% of Yahoo! searchers rated their experience in the 8-10 range on a scale of 10. Google have also updated their mobile search offering to make it quicker for mobile searchers.

May 2008 Search Engine market share: Google up, others down

Google continue to take the lions share of both the US and the French-language search engine markets, according to the May figures by Compete and XiTiMonitor. Compete shows Google streaking out into the lead with a 67% share of all US searches. Once again Yahoo! and MSN rate second and third but are a very long way behind. According to XiTiMonitor's assessment of French language sites, Google has a 90.33% share, whereas it's nearest competitor, Yahoo! trails with just 2.90%. MSN Live Search and AOL were third and fourth respectively.