Yahoo! appears to be heading in the right direction when it comes to regaining market share from Google.  They have taken their Advanced Search setting a step further and have now developed Personalized Search.  The Personalized Search collects information about a searcher’s interests from their search history, browsing history, and interests listed in profiles from websites such as MySpace and other social networks. In doing so, it eases the users experience by narrowing the searches. 

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Yahoo! recently paired with McAfee security solutions to launch a new feature called “SearchScan”.  Some of the new features included are “always-on” alerts and identify sites with bad e-mail practices.  The deal signed is for multiple years and Yahoo! is hoping it will help minimize the gap with Google over that time period.

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On Saturday, Microsoft withdrew its bid to takeover Yahoo!.  CEO Steven Ballmer stated that the reason for Microsoft backing off from acquiring the company was the concern that Yahoo! would take action to make the company undesirable to Microsoft.  One concern in particular was Yahoo!’s partnership to test Google’s search ads on its own search results pages.

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The author of the book The Art of War, Sun Tzu, once said, “Every battle is won before it’s fought.”  With everyone talking about the recession and rising gas prices, it seems that businesses will have to do “battle” in order to get through this downturn.  In my last blog entry, “Recession: Blessing in Disguise?” I talked about the MarketingSherpa report and how businesses can leverage online marketing during these uncertain times.  However, that report has a second part which talks about strategies that marketers are using to get through the slump.  In this blog post, I’m going to talk about those strategies, plus add some data from eMarketer that backs them up. This post will explain how local businesses can use these strategies to their advantage.  It can be your “business battle plan” if you will. (more…)

The Search Engine Marketing Professional Organization’s (SEMPO) annual survey of agencies and advertisers concluded traditional media is slowing largely due to search.  “Thirty-two percent of marketers said they’re spending less on print magazine ads in favor of search: 22% are shifting dollars away from Web site development and 17% said they are raiding direct mail budgets to reallocate cash toward search efforts.  What was even more interesting was the conclusion that search will continue to grow even amid fears of a recession.”  The primary reason is that search is considered a performance method of advertising.

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I read with interest the Wall Street Journal’s article this week, “More Gloom in Newspaper Ad Sales” – in the online edition, of course. Online media and Internet-based search continue to grow at the expense of their offline counterparts, newspapers and magazines. (more…)

Google has announced that it will sell Performics, the search engine marketing arm of Doubleclick.

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