Digital Marketing and Technological Insight

Recently I had the chance to sit back and reflect on how far Online Marketing has come since my early days in the industry and where we are headed. Back when i got started in the late 1990’s, when I was more on the development side,  Online Marketing was nothing compared to what it is now. SEO wasn’t really SEO (it was more submitting your site to search engines) email marketing was the best way to communicate with your customers and affiliate marketing / paid search were just showing their true value. Over the years we have seen each component of online marketing grow in importance, change and evolve into real marketing strategies used by companies of all sizes. However, I feel that drastic charges to how we market online are coming.

As with any industry there comes a “tipping point” where the ship is just too crowded and something has to give. For the past couple of years we have seen the rise of people calling themselves “experts” in whatever online area they deem fit - regardless of their actual qualifications. This is creating a great deal of negativity and confusion throughout the online world. The most extreme example is of course SEO. How many SEO experts are out there right now? Just about anyone who even does a tiny bit of SEO work calls themselves an expert. Same thing goes for Affiliate Marketing and every other piece of Online Marketing.  Is the specialization of services really the future? No it isn’t. First, most of the “experts” are just people who are good at selling themselves and talk a good game - but lack in actual real world experience. I can’t count how many times I have talked with these “experts” about a strategy or method and have them back-track and stumble unable to provide any true thoughts on the subject matter outside the normal high-level, over-used, terminology and information. Don’t get me wrong there are a few people who I deem to be TRUE experts in the field but most of the people doing the innovative / meaningful / results driven work are not busy speaking at every single conference out there or spending more time promoting themselves then their clients / companies. The true experts are hard at work making their companies, whether their own or someone else’s, some serious cash.

So what is the future of Online Marketing and all of its pieces like SEO, PPC, Email, etc? The way I see it each piece will become less important individually and more important as part of a total strategy. For example SEO by itself will be a fraction of what it is now as Search Engines get smarter and rely on more semantic information rather then the traditional methods - like inbound links, keyword density, etc - we currently rely on today to rise to the top of the SERP’s. Will SEO ever go away completely? Of course not. As long as there are Search Engines there will be Search Engine Optimization - but what SEO actually entails will change.

The future of Online Marketing is about taking every piece of the online puzzle and putting them together to create a synergistic strategy based on a companies goals and objectives.  Every aspect of Online Marketing should complement each other, no longer will companies be able to rely on one or the other. I also see the future of Online Marketing being about brands and quality. The general web users have and will continue to get smarter - those affiliate based landing pages that offer nothing more than a “order now” button won’t work.  Customers will look and expect to have a wealth of information at their finger tips. Content will still be king but it will go beyond general copy -  the smarter consumer will want to see more social data,  meaning testimonials, feedback, reviews, product comparison and general unbiased information. Companies large and small will need to focus on their entire brand experience, off-site and on-site, in order to compete in a increasingly competitive landscape….notice I said competitive not crowded.

So who stands to really lose from the changes in online marketing? The people who aren’t willing to invest the required time and effort. No more crappy landing pages. No more mass low-quality / high-volume PPC buys.  No more nonsense domain names. Embrace the changes or find a  new line of work.

Ok that is enough ranting for one post…

When it comes to dealing with Mobile Search / SEO, it is important to remember that the mobile audience is much different than the PC audience. Not only do mobile searchers use a smaller screen with a longer load time to display their results; they are often on-the-go, looking for time-sensitive or location based information (flight times, restaurant phone numbers, etc.), and may not have access to a QWERTY keyboard making search a cumbersome process. The goal of Mobile SEO is to make your content easily found by a mobile searcher as well as making their time on your website a simple and streamlined experience so that they’re likely to find what they need quickly and become a return visitor.

Mobile SEO Best Practices
1. Site Content Should Be Easily Accessible

• Flash, AJAX, and frames create roadblocks for the mobile user. Make your site layout simple and avoid unnecessary design elements.
• Remember that the mobile audience has a smaller screen to view your content – keep titles, metadata, and urls short and succinct so that they can be rendered on a small screen.

2. Keyword Research Must Reflect Mobile Search Results

• Google and other mobile search engines provide “predictive” search – ie., after the searcher types a few letters, the search engine tries to predict what is being searched and provides popular keyword options. If you know what keywords appear in predictive search you can optimize your site around those terms.
• Follow all standard SEO best practices including the use of optimized H1 tags, keyword rich anchor links, optimized titles and metadata.

3. Optimize for a Variety of Mobile Phones, PDAs, Blackberry’s, etc

• Use 100% XHTML, cHTML, or WML code
• Follow all mobile web best practices and then have your site validated - http://www.w3.org/TR/mobileOK-basic10-tests/ & http://validator.w3.org/mobile/
• Make sure robots.txt is accessible to mobile crawlers

4. Implement meta.txt

• Meta.txt files indicate which URL the user-agent should follow to present the most suitable format to the mobile user’s platform.

5. Submit Mobile Site Maps to Search Engines

• Google, Yahoo and other search engines accept mobile sitemaps
• If your website is location based, also submit to local directories

6. Strategic Linking

• Develop an inbound linking strategy with other relevant, mobile websites to increase your site’s relevancy
• Ensure that you are also linking internally to relevant pages within your own website.
• It is necessary to use keyword rich anchor links for both linking strategies.

7. Mobile SEO Analytics

• Develop benchmarks and analyze your results on a consistent basis

Last night MySpace officially launched their new advertising platform, myAds, which has been in the works for at least a year. MyAds is a self service, targeted ad platform, like the similar product offered by Facebook. Facebook’s ad platform allows only text ads, MyAds currently allows only display ads - advertisers are limited to 728×90 or 300×250.  MyAds offers display ad templates and a flash tool for those who need help creating their ads, of course advertisers can upload their own as well.

MyAds operates on a CPC model and ad placement are prioritized by max CPC rate set by the advertiser and how often ads are clicked on. A key differentiator between MyAds and Facebook however is the ability for MyAds advertisers to “hyper-target” their ads. MySpace’s hyper-targeting technology takes into account a users activity over time, where Facebook focuses on the specific user defined interests. All together there are 1,200 different ways an advertiser can categorize users within MyAds.

So, will this add the revenue stream Rupert Murdoch has been looking for from his social portal? Personally, I don’t think it will be what adWords was to Google but should of course add something to the bottom line. I see MyAds being very similar to Facebook in the sense the CPC will be pennies and result in a high-volume of impressions but low quality click counts. However, as with Facebook, MySpace should be part of any advertisers marketing plan.

From the MySpace Press Release.

MySpace today officially announced the domestic beta launch of MySpace MyAds, the new advertising platform designed to empower individuals and small businesses from local retailers to musicians and politicians to create relevant, targeted promotional business campaigns within the world’s premier social media environment.  MySpace MyAds is a new, do-it-yourself advertising platform that democratizes the landscape of online advertising, enabling anyone to create customized banner ads, target to specific audiences using MySpace’s HyperTargeting technology, and analyze campaign performance tracked throughout the MySpace ecosystem.

With MySpace MyAds, we’re blowing the lid off display advertising solutions for small and medium businesses, said Jeff Berman, President of Sales and Marketing for MySpace. MySpace MyAds is a direct marketer’s dream providing entrepreneurs with the most accessible, personalized, and targeted advertising toolkit in the market. We’re giving businesses better ROI ASAP and in today’s economy, that’s a must-have.

MySpace MyAds empowers any advertiser to build a customized, targeted, and measurable campaign in a few easy steps:

STEP 1: Visit https://advertise.myspace.com or click the Advertise link located at the bottom of any MySpace page
STEP 2: Create a display ad using the MySpace MyAds Builder Tool
STEP 3: Select a variable ad spend anywhere from $25 to $10,000
STEP 4: HyperTarget to customers
STEP 5: Measure ad performance with MySpace MyAds analytics reporting

It is no secret that I am a huge fan of WordPress as a CMS and especially as a blog platform. WordPress offers the best flexibility, user-interface and stability of any platform out there. On top of that, the real value of using WordPress are the enormous amounts of plugins available to help you manage, promote and do just about anything else with your blog. With that being said I felt it was time to list my favorite WordPress Plugins covering anything and everything.

• All in One SEO Pack: Optimizes your Wordpress blog for Search Engines. Automatically optimizes your titles for search engines, generates META tags automatically, avoids the typical duplicate content found on Wordpress blogs. Override any title and set any META description and any META keywords you want. You can fine-tune everything, Backward-Compatibility with many other plugins, like Auto Meta, Ultimate Tag Warrior and others.
• Crawl Rate Tracker: This is a plugin to log every visit by search engine robots, and show the results in different reports.
• Digg Digg: Integrates Digg button into blog posts.
• Lighter Menus: Lighter Menus creates drop-down menus instead of the regular admin menus of the WordPress interface, so that you can browse items with one click and work at your blog in a much more usable environment.
• Enhanced WP-ContactForm: WP Contact Form is a drop in form for users to contact you. In the message it sends to you it gives the page the user visited before the contact page, as well as the original outside referrer. It can be implemented on a page or a post.
• Google XML Sitemaps: This plugin will generate a sitemaps.org compatible sitemap of your WordPress blog which is supported by Ask.com, Google, MSN Search and YAHOO.
• MultiFeedSnap: Plugin for displaying multiple RSS feeds.
• Redirection: A redirection manager - KEY for when you move from one blog platform to another.
• Robots Meta: This plugin allows you to add all the appropriate robots meta tags to your pages and feeds, disable unused archives and nofollow unnecessary links.
• WordPress Automatic Upgrade: Usually you have to go to your hosting company in order to upgrade your blog - not with this plugin which takes care of the upgrade automatically.
• ShareThis: Let your visitors share a post/page with others. Supports e-mail and posting to social bookmarking sites.
• SEO Friendly Images: This plugin automatically optimizes ALT and TITLE attributes for each of your images that doesn’t have one. This will make them xHTML valid, and it will also help you a bit in your rankings.
• Twitter Tools: A complete integration between your WordPress blog and Twitter. Bring your tweets into your blog and pass your blog posts to Twitter.
• Yet Another Related Posts Plugin: Returns a list of the related entries based on keyword matches, limited by a certain relatedness threshold.
• WP Super Cache: WP Super Cache is a static caching plugin for WordPress. It generates html files that are served directly by Apache without processing comparatively heavy PHP scripts. By using this plugin you will speed up your WordPress blog significantly.
• RSS Footer: This very simple plugin let’s you add an extra line of content to articles in your feed, defaulting to “Post from: ” and then a link back to your blog, with your blog’s name as it’s anchor text.
• SimplyExclude: Exclude pages from site search

For more information on Wordpress plugins and development visit Yoast.com.

Not so long ago the Google let the world know of an upcoming AdWords Quality Score adjustment / improvement. Well, today the announcements came out that those changes are going to go live over the next couple days. This change will impact ALL AdWords accounts, so if you do anything in Paid Search you should take notice.

Why is AdWords Quality Score important? Google uses the Quality Score to determine the order of the ads that show up for a search query. The AdWords Quality Score improvements include:

• Better Quality Score accuracy: New quality score calculations will take into consideration the accounts history, click-through rate of all ads & keywords and to a lesser extent landing page quality.

• All keywords are labeled as active: Previously keywords with a low quality score were listed as “inactive for search” and would not be shown on Google.com. Now those keywords will be listed as active and be evaluated for any relevant search query - even though they would continue to produce low-volume impressions.

• First Page Big Estimates: Within the AdWords account the “first page bid estimates” will replace “minimum bids”. “For queries without many advertisers competing for placement, the first page bid estimate should be relatively close to your existing minimum bid. However, queries with a high level of advertiser competition may have significantly higher first page bid estimates, because you’ll likely need to bid above the old minimum bid to rank higher than your competition and show on the first page. Remember that you can bid less than your first page bid estimate and still show on subsequent pages — as long as your keyword is relevant to our users.“

So why is Google making these changes? Plain and simple Google AdWords is working on improving the quality and relevancy of ads shown throughout their AdWords network…therefore improving the overall search experience. For more information on Google AdWords Quality Score changes check out the Google AdWords Blog.

Is there a day that goes by where some new micro-blogging “Twitter Killer” isn’t launched? Jaiku, Pownce, Plurk, FriendFeed…the list goes on and on. Each comes out the gate promising to be the next big thing and outside of a few earlier adopters they usually fizzle into social media purgatory - some good user numbers but nothing to get that excited over.

The latest entry into the micro-blogging field is Identi.ca and the buzz around them is of course very loud. So what is the big deal? Well, first they copy the Twitter minimalist approach in terms of user-experience. They avoid cluttering the site with other features / content and stay away from displaying content in a new way (e.g. Plurk) - Identi.ca sticks to the basics. However, the key differentiation is that while other micro-blogging services are looking to capitalize on Twitters technical issues (Fail Whale anyone?) Identi.ca actually tries to solve it. Identi.ca has made its code open-sourced and encourages users to host Identi.ca on their own servers - this approach would distribute the load if the service became extremely popular and theoretically avoid the downtime that plagues Twitter.

So why wont Identi.ca, or any other micro-blogging service, take down Twitter? The answer is simple, long-term user adoption. There is a difference between just signing up & updating a few times and actually contributing on a regular basis. For micro-blogging the power is in the conversation and right now Twitter wins hands-down. During Twitters technical issues, where it seemed like it was down more than it was up, many people tried out other services, however the majority of users have always come back to Twitter in some capacity. It is true that some other services, like FriendFeed, have better features but if you look at the traffic (see graph below) Twitter has too big of a head start in terms of users and conversations. Any other micro-blogging service who launches is automacially put behing the 8-ball and must play serious catch-up and face, in my opinion, insurmountable odds.

Right now, FriendFeed is probably the biggest Twitter competitor in terms of functionality and industry buzz.  All of the big social media players are users and some (like Jason Calacanis) have become fans and have threatened to start migrating all of their conversations to FriendFeed and away from Twitter. However, the success of a micro-blogging service has to do more than just having Calacanis, Arrington, Scoble, Israel, etc, use it - I already read their blogs and subsribe to their feeds so really how is that providing new content discovery? It isnt.

On top of users and conversations, Twitter also has two other areas where they are killing the competition: their API and mobile strategy. Just about every Web 2.0 service offers their API’s - Twitter is no different. However, because of the volume of traffic Twitter generates, numerous third-party developers have built applications that truly enhance the Twitter experience - Summize, Twellow, TwitterVision, Twirl, the list goes on and on. Granted every other micro-blogging service can replicate each of these applications, but again it comes down to users and Twitter just blows everyone else away.  In regards to mobile, Twitter has gotten this right from day one. Micro-blogging is about sending quick updates and the ability to do that from your mobile phone via text message or applications (e.g. TwitterBerry) adds another layer of ease to the conversation.

At the end of the day micro-blogging comes down to two things - users and conversations, and you cant have one without the other. Twitter has both. Twitter does need to overcome its technical hurdles and there are definite improvements to be made to the user-interface but in the end Twitter is the only micro-blogging service that doesnt have to be perfect to succeed.

Google has posted the audio, decks and Q&A transcript for the Webmaster Live chat that took place last Thursday.  For those that missed it, the live chat basically brought together all of the important people who work at Google to answer any and all search related questions. Even though a great deal of the information presented was very basic, it was still very informative. Below I have pulled out some of the highlights from the live Q&A session that I found to be the most interesting and useful.

Here is the full Google Q&A transcript and the complete Google Webmaster Central blog recap.

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus ?
A (John Mueller): That’s generally ok. I would still make sure that the pages are obviously well-targeted for those audiences. It wouldn’t make sense to send users from specific areas to one general page. In that case, I would use a single page without geotargeting.

Q: can Google crawl Flash sites/
A (John Mueller): Somewhat — we can extract some information from the Flash files, but it’s generally not the same as with HTML sites/pages.

Q: I’ve got a question about internationalization: I have a multinational site with country-coded subdirectories and I’ve registered these as such in Webmasters’ tools, will this be exempt from duplicate content rules for a site spanning uk/us/aus?
A (Susan Moskwa): Geographic targeting doesn’t affect the fact that we only want to show one version of a piece of content in search results; we will still try to filter out duplicates when we serve search results.

Q: Hi John, I wanted to know more about Google webmaster tools stats.. How can we automate it? Why are there special characters like “[” when we download excel file
A (John Mueller): Hi Ankit, I have a python script on my site at http://johnmu.com/ that will convert those files into more readable ones.

Q: does Google ‘value’ a website incorporating a relevant blog and forum
A (Matt Dougherty): Hi Paul, I would say that an organic blog or forum definitely adds value to your website by creating a community effect.

Q: If a website’s Robots.txt file is goign to a 404 error will it be removed from the index? What if it is missing altogether?
A (Michael Wyszomierski): If there is no robots.txt file Google will assume that there are not any crawling restrictions, as long as there are no other robots directives via meta tags or the x-robots HTTP header directive.

Q: In regards to the Flash files, I believe it is possible to create Flash movies with extra accessible content, correct?
A (evan t): We encourage building Flash sites with html accessibility for googlebot to crawl. For more information check out our blog post on flash: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2007/07/best-uses-of-flash.html

Q: Does Google differentiate between searches in lower case and searches with proper capitalization?
A (John Mueller): We may take this into account if we can recognize that it is relevant to the query.

Q: Our pages are using mod_rewrite to strip “.html”– Will Google think of “process” and “process.html” as separate pages?
A (Susan Moskwa): If both URLs serve content, we will interpret them as two separate URLs. If the one redirects to the other (e.g. with a 301 redirect), this will let us know that one is the preferred/permanent URL.

Q: is an empty robots.txt bad?
A (Reid Yokoyama): Hi ralf - an empty robots.txt by default will allow all Internet spiders to crawl through all the pages on your site. If that is not something you want, then consider modifying your robots.txt file to set permissions.

Q: Does Google take anything from links taged nofollow, for example does it read the anchor text and credit that to the destination?
A (Susan Moskwa): No, it basically drops that link from our link graph (it ignores it).

Q: Is there any limit on the number of redirections 301, a Web site?. In a large site, if you change the URL structure, is the optimum time to do it with 301? or is best done gradually
A (Matt Cutts): There’s no per-page limit on the number of 301s you can do, so you could move 100K pages to 100K new location. However, if we see a really long chain of redirects, eventually we will decide to stop following the chain.

Q: Do 301 redirects send PR to its destination? I have several domains that 301 to 1 domain, and a couple have PR. Will it now send that PR to the 1 domain now that it is 301 redirected? Thank you.
A (Susan Moskwa): 301 redirects are the best way to let us know that you’d like a particular URL to get “credit” for factors from another URL; we’ll pass those signals across a 301 redirect as appropriate.

Q: if the site is designed with css, does the crawler throw out the .css and look only at the HTML?
A (Matt Cutts): Typically we wouldn’t crawl CSS, Kien, but in a few limited circumstances we can (e.g. if we’re checking for hidden text).

Q: Matt, can you comment on the number of links leading to interior content/category pages, that appear on the index of a site - and the impact of having many internal links on the index or not having that..
A (Maile Ohye): Hi Jeff, by index do you mean Sitemap or index.html type page. In general, if it’s index.html (not a Sitemap) then keep is user-friendly and navigatable. We usually say 100 links or fewer. http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer

Q: I’m worried that we’ll miss new visitors because personalized search will drive them to their frequently visited sites instead of those based on organic search relevance. Should I be concerned about this?
A (John Mueller): No :) — we try to show variety in the search results and additionally smaller sites are generally quicker in adopting to new trends, allowing new sites to rank for new terms faster.

Q: Hi Matt, Are there any guidelines available on keyword density we have pages that are about 1 single subject and the keyword density is quite high
A (Matt Cutts): Antony, you may not believe this, but we tend not to think much about KW density here at Google, b/c our algorithms handle it pretty well. My advice is to pull in an innocent/non-search friend and have them read the text. If they raise their eyebrow, …

Q: If I click a PPC listing, will that visit influence organic, personalized search results?
A (John Mueller): I believe this is tracked only if you have the Toolbar, are logged in and have web history enabled.

Q: there is a general view that having a lot of backlinks is a strong influence on PageRank. Does Google have a response to this theory?
A (Matt Cutts): It’s more about the quality of the links than just the raw number of links.

Q: WHAT ARE THE 3 MOST INPORTANT THINGS TO DO TO EARN A GOOD PAGERANK?
A (Mariya Moeva): Content, content and content (:

Yahoo sent a letter to its shareholders explaining its recent decisions, with a focus on why they let the Microsoft deal slip away and the rational behind signing with Google. However, the obvious underlying motive of the letter is to garner support at the upcoming shareholders meeting and keep Carl Icahn and his agenda away.

“The events of recent weeks underscore the fact that your board of directors is far better qualified to represent your interests in the effort to maximize stockholder value than the slate put forward by Carl Icahn.” Sort of reeks of desperation doesn’t it?

The letter does a good job at explaining their rational behind the Google deal, however I was hoping they would have elaborated on a couple points. For example,  I would have loved to hear more about their “key strategic objectives”. What exactly is Jerry Yang’s vision for the future of Yahoo? What direction are they going in? How are they going to capture more search market share? What are they doing about the serious brain-drain going on? Yahoo will have to address these questions before the shareholder vote in order to build any sort of investor confidence….however, based on Jerry’s actions recently I wouldn’t be so sure.

Read the letter and make your own conclusions…

———————————————————-

Dear Fellow Stockholders:

We are writing to update you on the latest developments here at Yahoo!, including our recently announced commercial agreement with Google and the outcome of our discussions with Microsoft regarding a potential transaction.

On June 12, we announced a non-exclusive agreement with Google that we expect will generate approximately $250 to $450 million in incremental operating cash flow for Yahoo! in the first twelve months following implementation. This cash flow will enhance our profitability as well as help support achievement of our key strategic objectives. Combined with continuing advances in our own search capability, the agreement is an important step in our efforts to capitalize on the high-growth online advertising opportunities where we are best positioned to compete successfully and create more value.

Let us explain why we find this new agreement so exciting.

The Yahoo!-Google Agreement is Financially Attractive and Strikes the Right Strategic Balance.

Under the agreement with Google, Yahoo! will continue to provide algorithmic and sponsored search results, but now will also have the ability to run sponsored search ads supplied by Google alongside Yahoo!’s search results. Advertisers will pay Google directly for each click on Google paid search results appearing on Yahoo!. Google will then pay us a fee (in industry jargon, traffic acquisition cost) based on revenue realized from click-throughs on ads supplied to Yahoo! by Google.

This carefully structured agreement strikes the right strategic balance, enhancing our financial results while advancing our strategic objectives of being the “starting point” for the most users on the Internet and offering such compelling value that advertisers will see us as the “must buy” in online advertising.

One of our key strategies for achieving these objectives is to capitalize on the increasing convergence of search and display advertising, where we are especially well positioned to compete and succeed. We have already accelerated our efforts to strengthen our presence in display through a variety of initiatives and acquisitions in recent months. Our new commercial agreement with Google enhances our ability to pursue this strategy.

Another key strategy is to open our platform to other developers to optimize monetization for our advertisers and publishers and provide the best experience for our users. We see this agreement as a natural extension of the efforts we have already made toward an open marketplace.

The Google agreement is non-exclusive and provides strategic and operational flexibility for Yahoo!. It allows Yahoo! to use Google’s services in those areas where Google monetizes our inventory more effectively but also permits us to continue to use our own search technology in areas where we believe we are most competitive. The net result is that the agreement helps us accelerate one of our strategic aims–closing the monetization gap. At the same time, it allows Yahoo! to continue to compete aggressively in search and display advertising.

Importantly, the agreement does not prevent Yahoo! from pursuing other alternatives that could increase stockholder value. Because the agreement can be terminated by either party upon a change in control, it would not preclude a transaction with Microsoft or any other potential acquiror in the future.

The Yahoo!-Google Agreement Does More for Stockholder Value than Microsoft’s Search-Only Hybrid Proposal.

We also want to update you on the conclusion to our discussions with Microsoft regarding a potential transaction. As we explained in our last letter, our board and management held numerous meetings and conversations with Microsoft about its proposal to acquire Yahoo!, both before and after Microsoft withdrew that proposal on May 3. On June 8, our Chairman, Roy Bostock, other independent board members, and members of Yahoo!’s management team again met in person with Microsoft representatives. At that meeting, Microsoft stated unequivocally that it has no interest in acquiring all of Yahoo!, even at the price range Microsoft had previously suggested.

Microsoft did propose an alternative transaction. Rather than acquire our whole company as it had been proposing for months, Microsoft now proposed to acquire only our search business for $1 billion and a share of future search advertising revenue. This proposal also included an $8 billion investment in Yahoo! but required Yahoo! to commit to a 10-year exclusive arrangement that would have made us dependent on Microsoft for all of our search business. It would also have given Microsoft veto rights on certain future Yahoo! actions, including a sale of Yahoo!. Our board of directors and management made a great effort–and conducted in depth negotiations–to elicit a feasible proposal from Microsoft that made strategic and financial sense for Yahoo!, but without success.

While Microsoft’s search-only hybrid proposal may have been helpful to Microsoft, our board and management concluded it would have had a significant adverse impact on Yahoo! strategically, leaving the Company without the operational control of search assets and technology we view as critical to our objective of becoming a leader in the converging search and display advertising business. The board and its advisers also carefully studied the financial impact of Microsoft’s proposal and concluded that it would have provided no meaningful improvement to our operating cash flow. In short, this proposal would have generated substantially less value for Yahoo! stockholders than Microsoft has suggested.

Based on all the key factors–strengthening our competitiveness, protecting our strategic position, generating attractive financial returns–the Google agreement is far better than Microsoft’s search-only hybrid proposal. That’s why we moved forward with it.

Your Current Board of Directors Has the Knowledge, Experience and Commitment to Best Represent Your Interests and Maximize Stockholder Value.

The events of recent weeks underscore the fact that your board of directors is far better qualified to represent your interests in the effort to maximize stockholder value than the slate put forward by Carl Icahn.

Based on Mr. Icahn’s narrow agenda, it seems highly unlikely that either he or his slate would bring added value to Yahoo!. Consider the following:

– Mr. Icahn put forward his slate so as to sell Yahoo! to Microsoft, even though he had no knowledge of the sustained efforts made by your current board and management to determine whether Microsoft was willing to engage in a transaction that would provide appropriate value and certainty of achieving that value. On June 8, Microsoft once again made it perfectly clear that it is not currently interested in acquiring Yahoo!.
— Mr. Icahn publicly opposed any alternative form of transaction with Microsoft. Your board and management, after thorough and deliberate negotiations and evaluation, separately concluded on its own that the alternative hybrid deal proposed by Microsoft was, indeed, not in the best interests of the Company or its stockholders.
— Mr. Icahn urged, as an alternative to a Microsoft transaction, that Yahoo! find a way to partner with Google that would not preclude a transaction with Microsoft in the future. We have done exactly that through the commercial agreement with Google we announced on June 12.

Simply put, you can choose to vote for a slate of nominees with no articulated plan for the future of Yahoo!–and who now have essentially no alternative agenda to offer you–or you can choose to vote for your existing board of directors which has the independence, experience, knowledge and commitment to navigate the Company through the rapidly-changing Internet environment, execute on our strategic objectives and deliver value for Yahoo! and its stockholders.

It is time for Yahoo! to turn its undivided attention to implementing its key strategies, and we therefore urge you to reject Mr. Icahn’s slate and his ill-defined agenda.

We strongly urge you to vote your WHITE Proxy Card today for your current board of directors.

We look forward to sharing our progress with you as we move forward and we thank you for your support.

Sincerely,

Roy Bostock                     Jerry Yang
Chairman of the Board      Chief Executive Officer

Just came across the funniest website I have a seen in a long time. Yahoorezinr.com is a do-it-yourself Yahoo! resignation letter…yup all you have to do is pick who you want to send it to, what you want to say and sign your name. Then you just have to click send and it will be forwarded to Jerry Yang himself. The form gives you the option to me nice, mean or brutally honest…all depends on your experience working at Yahoo.

Here is an actual example of the letter that is sent out…

——————–

To: JerryYang@Yahoo.com

Subject: Get bent, asshat

Dear Mr. Yang

It is with great glee that I ask you to accept this letter as my official resignation from Yahoo. My last day here will be tomorrow after which time I shall be taking a position with Google. As you know for some time now I have been desiring more time with my family and thus I feel the time has finally arrived for me to move on and of course I would not be forthright if I failed to mention how much it distressed me to see some of the moves management has made in recent weeks.

For example I found the recent advertising agreement reached with Google to be unwise. Furthermore as I have watched management squander once-valuable properties such as Flickr I have come to realize that management does not seem to fully understand social media. Thus, I am tendering my resignation as of today. If you would like me to sign a non-compete clause I will be glad to do so seeing as my new position is in a different market segment.

Sincerely

John Q. Yahoo

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I actually choose some of the “nicer” and less vulgar options when it came to putting together the letter. Sadly, considering the moves Yahoo has made in recent weeks many people might feel some of the more risque options are completely valid. Plus, with all of the senior Yahoo people leaving recently this Yahoo resignation letter could come in handy.

Of course the big question is still where does Yahoo go from here?

Yesterday Google launched their own web analytic guessing service based off their popular Trends platform. Google Trends for Websites offers “insights into the traffic and geographic visitation patterns of your favorite websites”.

You can now add Google to the list of web services like Alexa, Compete, Quantcast and ComScore that offer very interesting but not concrete traffic data. The fact of the matter is that unless you are pulling data directly from a website any numbers that these services provide have to be taken with a grain of salt. Some open analytic providers data might be better than others but at the end of the day the numbers found are not true numbers. Being a data junky I love services like Compete and Alexa, but I use that information as a guideline or for insight when working on various digital initiatives. I would never put those numbers as actuals - every one of these services collect and display data in a different way, therefore it is up to the user to determine the best service to use. Plus, I always make sure to use at least 2 open web analytic services when doing research - just to make sure the information I am using is as accurate as possible.

So the big question becomes, like with every other open web analytic service, how does Google calculate their data? According to Google: “Trends for Websites combines information from a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, aggregated opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. The data is aggregated over millions of users, powered by computer algorithms, and doesn’t contain personally identifiable information. Additionally, Google Trends for Websites only shows results for sites that receive a significant amount of traffic, and enforces minimum thresholds for inclusion in the tool.” So, like I mentioned above, Google, and every one else, goes about collecting their data in a different way. Google however does have the chance to be a bit more accurate as they have a tremendous amount of Google Search data they can use, plus they can leverage the limited public Google Analytics data they collect.

You know what I would like to see? Open analytics, meaning every sites data logs are open for all to see. I am not talking about in-depth data but more like top-line info like visits and uniques. This way there would be far less questions when valuing a website from a advertising or competitive standpoint. Think anyone would go for sharing this info? Yeah I didn’t think so either

So lets look at the raw data and see how the players in the “open” web analytics field stack up head-to-head…for traffic comparison I used Facebook.com and Myspace.com. Each service uses different metrics to measure traffic so even though we aren’t comparing apples to apples you get the idea.

As you can see from the above 4 graphs the data each provides is somewhat the same. Myspace.com is more popular than Facebook.com and there is a similar amount of space between the two social networking giants. So, which one should you use? Well, for me it comes down to what I am looking for. Each service provides a little something different so I tend to use all 4 - however, I do lean towards Compete.com as I feel their information is not only more accurate but more consistent.

For more information on Google Trends for Websites visit their about / FAQ page.