Yahoo’s Search Assist There When you Need It

Search Engine Land takes a close look at Yahoo’s new Yahoo Search Assist tool

. Unlike normal search suggestion tools, Search Assist predicts when you might need a little help with your search and then shows up.
As Danny Sullivan explains…
Ever had one of those moments when you start to type in a query, enter a word and then pause because you’re not quite sure what other words to add to it? Search Assist senses this. It notes that you’ve paused, takes that as a sign you need help and magically makes suggestions appear below the search box. Cool!
In addition, you don’t just get suggestions that contain some of the letters you initially type. Search Assist goes beyond the original word to suggest related topics.

Yahoo Fully Acquires Right Media

After investing in online advertising company Right Media, in October (and getting 20% of the company in the process), Yahoo has now shelled out $680 million to secure the remaining 80%.

In a move that many suspected and most see as an answer to Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick, Yahoo’s acquisition of Right Media will strongly boost the companies online display advertising options.
“The acquisition of Right Media will further Yahoo!’s goal to create the industry’s most open, accessible and vibrant advertising marketplace, which will help democratize the buying and selling of digitally enabled advertising,” said Terry Semel, chairman and CEO of Yahoo!, in a statement. “This acquisition is an important step in our long-term vision to build the industry’s leading advertising and publisher ecosystem. We believe that Yahoo!’s open approach is a clear differentiator from others in the industry and provides significant benefits to advertisers, publishers and Yahoo! itself.”
Before the acquisition, Yahoo’s display advertising had been mostly confined to its own network of properties. With Right Media’s open exchange model, Yahoo will combine its content with many other third-party offerings, providing an expansive network for publishers and advertisers to buy and sell online ad placements in a real time auction system.
Here’s what Yahoo is promising will come from the acquisition:


*Advertisers will have greater inventory and audience options from Yahoo! and other participants in this exchange, as well as increased control and visibility into the buying process.
Publishers will be able to bundle their own ad inventory with Yahoo!’s inventory and the exchange’s inventory - thereby boosting demand and generating the highest returns for each ad placement.
*Advertising networks will reap the same benefits as advertisers and publishers, and additionally, the exchange will benefit those ad networks with unique value propositions, giving them an opportunity to compete with the largest players, thanks to reduced friction and increased transparency.
*For Yahoo!, this more open approach will allow the company to increase liquidity, allow advertisers to more efficiently ascertain the true value of display ad inventory, and generate greater returns for Yahoo!’s own display inventory. It will give Yahoo! a new channel and inventory for excess demand and provide an opportunity to derive more value from non-premium inventory.

The deal is a mixture of stock and cash and is expected to close within 3 months.

Yahoo Buyout Rumors Echoing Loudly

The good news of increased revenue received a splash of cold water as investors also digested Yahoo's drop in earnings for the recent fiscal quarter. Wall Street pummeled the stock overnight, leading to an open of $26.07 that has been largely unchanged through the day after Yahoo's earnings report.
It has reopened talk that the company rests at the cusp of being taken over, with the only questions being how soon and for how much. Microsoft has long been discussed as a new corporate master for the Sunnyvale-based portal.
A Bloomberg report cited analyst Clayton Moran of Stanford Group in discussing the latest wave of rumors that Yahoo will soon find a home within the Microsoft arcology:
"Given a seemingly increasing disconnect between management commentary and operating results, a sale of Yahoo seems more likely," Moran wrote in a note to clients. "In the near-term, we believe this stock will linger in the mid-$20s, unless a suitor arises."
Steve Ballmer and company could make that deal, and plenty of banks would be more than willing to help Microsoft take on some debt to acquire Yahoo. If one can accept Precursor president Scott Cleland's assertion that Yahoo simply cannot make up ground against Google in online advertising, a takeover may be inevitable.

Microsoft Buying Yahoo: Rumors Reappear

A pairing in the spirit of a superhero teamup could happen if the latest chatter about Yahoo and Microsoft proves true. Once again, a potential merger is being considered, as neither company has made gains against Google's search and advertising dominance.
The Wall Street Journal said last year's talks have become this year's discussions. Both Yahoo and Microsoft have been rejiggering their online advertising products, but have not been able to eat into Google's lead.
"Short of a wholesale merger, Microsoft could spin its online group into a separately-run Yahoo, in return for a Yahoo stake," the WSJ said. "Though a person familiar with the matter says Microsoft would likely want to acquire Yahoo."
Microsoft would have to take on some debt to do that, despite its massive pile of cash and equivalents. Yahoo is up to a market cap of over $38 billion, thanks to rumors of the Microsoft talks that began in the New York Post.
The Post carried a story earlier in the week that claimed Microsoft was ready to purchase 24/7 Real Media, in order to offset Google's DoubleClick deal as well as Yahoo's Right Media purchase. A Microsoft spokesperson would not comment on the story to WebProNews, citing the article as rumors and speculation.
If Microsoft were to make a deal with Yahoo, the WSJ thinks there could be some massive upheaval in Yahoo's executive ranks. Considering Yahoo's performance for shareholders over the past couple of years, it's hard to think of that as a negative here.

Yahoo Again Linked To Partner Click Fraud

In April 2006, spyware researcher Ben Edelman implicated Yahoo in click fraud problems stemming from the company's arrangements with a trio of third parties delivering phantom clicks on ads. Those clicks cost legitimate advertisers money, while Yahoo and the company enabling that click profit each time.
BusinessWeek's recent expos of click fraud provided more ammunition for critics of search advertising companies like Yahoo and Google. Greater calls for transparency of how those businesses protect against fake clicks will be a hot topic this fall.
Part of the BusinessWeek report focused on the saga of advertiser MostChoice.com. That website's CEO, Martin Fleischmann, claimed click fraud cost his firm a significant sum, and blamed Oemji for this:
(I)n the past year, Yahoo charged the online financial-information provider an estimated $10,300 for 2,690 clicks from visitors to Oemji. Ninety percent of the clicks came from such places as Mongolia, Vietnam, and Honduras, where MostChoice does no business. Only eight clicks, less than 0.3%, turned into sales, compared with 30% or more from clicks on ads on Yahoo's own Web site.
Oemji's parent firm, Oemtec, may be receiving more scrutiny from Yahoo. The article cited Yahoo's Joshua Meyers, a senior director of the search engine's publisher network group, in noting the company would review its connection to Oemji.
Oemtec contested accusations of illicit activity that would be counter to its partnership agreement with Yahoo:
Oemtec calls the negative ratings of its products "patently and demonstrably false." Oemji Bar is similar to toolbars distributed by major online companies, and SpySpotter "is a legitimate and effective anti-spyware application," Craig Marcus, an attorney for the company, said in a Sept. 8 letter to BusinessWeek. Denying any involvement in click fraud, Marcus wrote: "Every single Oemji-generated click to MostChoice.com, and every other Web site, was and remains legitimate and genuine."
As of this month, the report noted Yahoo still has its partnership with Oemtec in force, and delivers advertising to the Oemji product.

Yahoo Opens Traffic Quality Center

Yahoo touted its proprietary Click Protection System as the most stringent in the industry, in their humble opinion. If it is that, VP Reggie Davis and the development team have been really busy.
Some of their efforts receive a little publicity on the Traffic Quality Center, recently opened at Yahoo Search Marketing. The company provided some insights into the ways they protect advertising customers.
They also offered a peak at what is to come with their search marketing platform. On quality based pricing:
Later in 2007, we plan to apply quality-based pricing to a broader group of keywords.
There's nothing you need to do to take advantage of quality-based pricing. Discounts are applied automatically based on Yahoo!'s Quality Based Pricing technology.
On domain blocking:
While quality-based pricing provides discounts based on traffic performance, you might identify certain domains that you don't want to receive traffic from due to branding considerations or other reasons. To help meet this need, we plan to launch a product that will provide our advertisers with the controls and tools to block their ads from appearing on certain domains.
Advertisers who want to report possible click fraud but aren't familiar with the procedure can view a walkthrough of the process on the Traffic Quality Center website. Yahoo said they will contact the submitter within 48 hours, and will try to resolve the issue within ten business days.

The agency that oversees Internet domain names has asked VeriSign to voluntarily suspend a new service that redirects Web surfers to VeriSign's site w

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) on Friday posted a notice on its Web site with its response to the so-called wildcard service, which launched Sept. 15. The wildcard service sends people to a VeriSign page with search results, including links to paid advertisements. Until now, Web surfers would have gotten an error message. VeriSign runs the registry for the .com and .net domains--among the most widely used top-level domains on the Web. The wildcard service is for .com and .net domains.
ICANN said it is investigating complaints about the wildcard service and asked VeriSign to pull it, pending further study.
"Recognizing the concerns about the wildcard service, ICANN has called upon VeriSign to voluntarily suspend the service until the various reviews now under way are completed," the agency wrote in a notice posted on its Web site.
On Saturday, the Internet Architecture Board also weighed in on the controversy with an analysis of domain name system (DNS) wildcards. The group recommended that "DNS wildcards should not be used in a zone unless the zone operator has a clear understanding of the risks, and that they should not be used without the informed consent of those entities which have been delegated below the zone."
Criticism has been growing over Mountain View, Calif.-based VeriSign's surprise decision to take control of unassigned .com and .net domain names, which has confused antispam utilities and drawn angry denunciations of the company's business practices from frustrated network administrators.
Verisign could not immediately be reached late Sunday.
Last week, the company stood by its new service.
"There is a lot of fiction about the actual technology and the service," VeriSign spokesman Brian O'Shaughnessy had said. "What we are doing is trying to determine fact and fiction, and we're doing so by reaching out to the technology community and helping them to understand exactly what is fact and fiction."
VeriSign is not alone in seeking to replace DNS errors. Microsoft has also directed people who use its Internet Explorer Web browser to a Microsoft search page when they mistype certain domain names in the browser's URL bar.