Posts Tagged ‘yahoo’

5
Mar

Yahoo! Launches Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Search Engine Marketing

The much anticipated launch of the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop PPC tool has finally happened, as announced on the official Y! SM Blog. Similar to its counterparts, the Google AdWords Editor and the MSN AdCenter, this PPC management platform promises to deliver a complete set of marketing tools, designed to enhance your control over any SEM campaign.

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Loading Screen
Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop Loading Screen

A notable difference from more traditional Search Marketing applications is that the Yahoo! SM Desktop tool runs on Adobe Air, as opposed to Google’s AdWords Editor, which is a Mozilla XUL-powered application. Most of you may be familiar with the Adobe Air medium as being the backbone for most Twitter clients, but whether or not this platform will be an advantage in battling the Search giant Google remains to be seen.

I have downloaded the application only recently and there is still much testing to be done before I can offer a full-fledged review of the software, but stay tuned. Alternatively, if you want to beat me to it, feel free to download the tool for yourself at Yahoo! Search Marketing HQ and jot down your own thoughts.

Yahoo! promises us this tool will provide the standard features of a PPC management system:

  • Bulk editing that will allow easy management of multiple sets of keywords, ad groups, ads and match types;
  • Export options which will allow us to customize and save a campaign report in Excel;
  • A keyword tool to facilitate keyword research, long tail targeting and key phrase implementation;
  • Third-party campaign import options… this one I can’t wait to test. Yahoo! is notorious for holding you hostage for your campaign data and forcing you to export your Yahoo! Search Marketing campaigns manually and strenuously (one ad group at a time, one keyword set at a time and so forth…), so one is left to wonder if this third-party import option will also have an export equivalent;
  • Account performance metrics allowing you to assess your campaign’s performance – obviously, a no-brainer.

So far, I must say I am not impressed with the feature list. I would have expected Yahoo! to step up the game with at least one key improvement to the familiar AdWords Editor interface. For instance, I have often wondered when Google was going to allow us to change a campaign’s bidding model (CPC vs CPM) within the AdWords Editor interface, without having to log into the web interface. Another problem with the AdWords Editor is that the ad writing specifications aren’t synchronized with the web interface… for instance, if I were to write an ad with a headline ending in an exclamation mark (”!“) or with the copy containing ASCII characters, the Editor would allow me to publish my changes to my AdWords campaign, which would, in term, get disallowed via the web interface. The point is you can discover some screw-ups within Google’s PPC tool and I’m quite surprised to see Yahoo! not jumping the chance to stick it to The Man with this new and improved Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application.

I have yet to see this tool in some real action, but it has already made a negative impression on me, as it failed to download one of my UK campaigns, stating that:

Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop is currently not supported in your market.  Please check our website for information on future releases.

The application is not supported in the United Kingdom? I figured it must be due to my Romanian server connection, so I tried accessing it via a proxy… to the same effect. So until further research, I’m giving this tool a disappointed thumbs down.

Download the Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop application!

Read the official Yahoo! Search Marketing Desktop “Getting Started” guide!

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26
Oct

RIP, GeoCities (1995 – 2009)

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Internet & Technology

Yahoo! officially announced the closing of their web hosting service, GeoCities, on October, the 26th, 2009.

It is like attending a funeral service for a nasty, despicable relative… everyone – yourself included – hated the bastard, but you can’t help but feel a draft of nostalgia and sadness. There are few non-technically inclined Internet users who have not had at least one page set up within one of the service’s many “neighbourhoods” back in the day. During those “Wild-Wild-West” days of the World Wide Web, GeoCities was the platform that gave us the chance to be web publishers before web publishing was cool; in a time when owning a website was seen as somewhat elitist, GeoCities provided anyone with a functional, albeit ghastly and horrendous personal or professional website.

Of course, in today’s Web 2.0 world, GeoCities has become something of an inside joke and few people would ever think about actually establishing a web presence through the system, so Yahoo! – who had acquired the platform back in 1999, four years after its inception – had little choice but to shut the service down for good, a move that had been announced in early April. The closure leaves current GeoCities site owners with an upgrade option, allowing them to move their free GeoCities website to the Yahoo! Web Hosting platform. Care to speculate on the number of users who will actually take Yahoo! up on this offer? My guess would be somewhere around 50, two of which will most likely be David Bohnett and John Rezner, founders of the original BHI company, in 1995.

Although GeoCities is widely speculated to have been an unprofitable business venture for Yahoo!, it has empowered and inspired people’s self-expression online, an attitude that has shaped the way we use the Internet and that has spanned many relevant aspects of today’s World Wide Web, including blogs and social networks.

RIP, Yahoo! GeoCities!So as we bid a final farewell to an old friend and look towards the future, we must never forget that we may well owe WordPress, Facebook and Twitter to the much-ridiculed GeoCities.

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23
Oct

Google Music – Google, Taking Up Arms Against Apple

   Posted by: Horia Neagu    in Internet & Technology

Earlier this week, rumours started circulating the WWW, announcing the soon-to-be-released Google Music, a platform supposedly offering advanced music search capabilities, along with an in-browser streaming functionality.

The match between Internet giants Google and Yahoo / Microsoft is heating up, with the playoffs probably scheduledGoogle Chrome OS vs Microsoft Windows for the second half of 2010, which will see the launch of Google Chrome OS, a heavyweight contender for Micrososft Windows’ undisputed veteran OS championship reign. In the meantime, however, neither of these major league contenders is touring the country and signing autographs. They are all hard at work adding value to the Web 2.0 environment and to their shares of stock. But Google might take the Spartan approach, as it seems to be looking to taunt junior heavyweight star, Apple.

Google MusicA couple of days ago, Wired.com divulged Google was working on a new project, intended as a music search platform and speculated on the possible names for said platform, namely Google Music, Google Audio and Google One Box. The service is likely to be unveiled next Wednesday and will feature song previews and buying options via music retailers Lala and iLike, according to the same source.  Now aside from the excitement and fun, this might turn out to be a big move on Google’s part, as such a music platform is likely to target a market traditionally dominated by Apple’s iTunes application. Although the new system will most probably feature some similar functions to those of Yahoo Music – more specifically, song and artist search, news and artist information – the song preview streaming and buying options, however, are clearly a poke at the iTunes media player application.

The Google Music project seems to have been one year in the making, according to FoxNews, having been suggested to Google by the Big Four of the music industri themselves, SA Universal Music Group, Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Bros. Music Corp and EMI Group. In other words, a staggering 85% of the music industry is looking to break the iTunes monopoly on music download.

With the more or less official announcement of Google Music, the company took a rahter bold, albeit profitable step forward, teaming up with the entertainment industry’s giants to tackle a well-established monopoly. Not only will the new platform boost Google’s image and score points in the epic Search Engine Wars, but it will also fill the shareholders’ pockets, as the collected revenue from advertising will most probably be immense. With record sales plummeting to record lows and Internet music downloads rising fast, Google has seized a tremendous opportunity and has proven, once again, that it is always one step ahead of the competition in terms of understanding and capitalizing on the potential of Web 2.0.

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