This is really a good news to wide range of users such as website owners, advertisers, and developers because this web application enables them to evaluate their marketing performance, learn traffic behaviour and tweak their website designs. Unlike Google Analytics, Yahoo! Analytics provides real-time reports and graphs that help them slice and dice metrics like sales, page views, and sources of traffic and ultimately identify ways to improve their visitor satisfaction.

This application is still in Beta and is expected to be available for normal users by 2009.

Technorati Tags: web analytics, Google analytics, yahoo! analytics, indextools

How Your Bids Work

The new minimum bids are a little bit like auction house reserve prices, and can be based on multiple factors, such as your keyword quality and the keyword’s value—or how much we think that keyword is worth. Here’s a look at the two main factors:

Quality - High quality generally means that your ads are being clicked more often, relative to your competitors. We try to reward quality with higher rankings and lower costs, and now, potentially, with lower minimum bids.

Value - We look at a number of things to determine what a keyword is worth: for example, how many advertisers are bidding on your keyword, and what they’re willing to pay for it.

A keyword term becomes “active”— or eligible for display—when your bid is equal to or greater than your minimum bid. Keywords become inactive when your bid falls below your minimum. You will be notified in an alert on your Account Dashboard if the minimum bid for a keyword increases above your current bid, and you’ll have a grace period of up to several days to raise your bid to keep your keyword active.

As this change bring several uncertainties to advertisers' current campaigns, it is advisable to stick to few rules of thumb to keep the campaigns effective.

- Get to know your keyword and its value
- Improve your ad quality.
- Keep updated with account interface
- bids and continually monitor any changes
- Try Advanced Match for broader exposure and see how it's affected by the new system
- Perform ads testing and optimize

Learn more about the changes at YSM.

Technorati Tags: YSM, yahoo search marketing, minimum bid, new algorithm

According to its letter to Yahoo, Microsoft attempted to enter talks about a deal a year ago, but was rebuffed because Yahoo was confident about the "potential upside" presented by the reorganisation and operational activities that were being put in place at the time.

"To me, the premium seems exorbitant, for what is a dwindling business," said Tim Smalls from the brokerage firm Execution LLC. "I personally don't see how the synergies of Microsoft-Yahoo is going to take on Google." Other analysts were more enthusiastic about the offer.

"It is a fantastic offer. It is game on," said Colin Gillis from Canaccord Adams. "This consolidates the marketplace down to Google versus Microsoft. These two companies will be going head to head."

"A year has gone by, and the competitive situation has not improved," Microsoft's letter said.

With Yahoo! total return in 2007 drops 32% and with Yahoo chief executive, Jerry Yang himself announced recently that he intended to lay off 1,000 staff as part of a restructuring plan, the bid seems to be on the right time and place. However, with the aggressive overture by Microsoft which required Yahoo! execs to respond in 2 days or Microsoft will go public, made a turning point to Yahoo! to seek all other options but Microsoft.

I still hope the the acquisition will go on even the chance seems to be slim (according to the latest update). I'm wondering what changes would be on the net.

References:

- Two days to response or else
- Microsoft wants to purchase Yahoo!
- Microsoft wants to buy Yahoo!

Technorati Tags: microsoft overture, Yahoo!, search engine, Microsoft acquisition

So what's new with this version?

- A whole new look for your contact list. Keep it in detail view to see larger Avatar images for your friends, or switch to compact list view (in the Contacts menu). Plus, you can just hover and click to IM, SMS or call a friend.

- This is my favourite feature. Sharing a video (e.g from youtube) with your buddies is made easier because you can watch the video right inside the chat window. Say no more to external browsers. This new in-line media player feature is not only limited to video but it also extends to other things like maps and photos. Best of all, it's built in and no plugins required.

- Brand new skins and emoticons! Click the dot near the top of your Messenger window to choose a skin, and check the emoticon menu for the new ones that were inspired by user entries in our Emoticontest earlier this year (more on our winners in a future post).

- This is another small feature spotted by my little sister. Emoticons can appear on the status message. I never knew how does it look like in the previous version, but this must be a cute little toy for teenager of my sister's age.

- New Flickr integration in the photo sharing feature. Easily share photos from your Flickr.com account, or save photos shared with you directly to Flickr.

So what's your reckon? Give it a try by downloading Yahoo Messenger Beta 9.0 here.

Technorati Tags: yahoo messenger, instant messenger, yahoo, IM, flickr, youtube

Previously, the size of the Yahoo! search box is fixed to 300px and 600px and you are allowed to custom the search box size but it is limited within the 300px to 600px range. However new option (200px) has emerged to cater the needs of bloggers to fit the search box into their blog.

Should you want to opt to Yahoo! search box instead of Google's, you can simply setup the search box by following 4 simple steps as the picture below. Apparently, you must sign in into your Yahoo! account in order to start using it and the whole process won't take more than few minutes.

[via: CCTech]

Technorati Tags: yahoo search box, blogging tips