I don’t know about you, but Yahoo buying out a Web Analytics company called IndexTools, and also testing Google ads on 3% of the Yahoo network search results is a sign of desperation from Yahoo – trying to stop a takeover that I think should happen.

Microsoft acquiring Yahoo in my opinion is a good move for Microsoft, and maybe even a good move for the internet in general, I’m still a little divided on that 2^nd point.

It’s great for Microsoft because Yahoo has a following of developers and general public, both of which Microsoft needs to set up its internet campaign overall – in followers, developers, advertising and more.

Not only that, Yahoo has a whole heap of other services that could be easily folded into the Microsoft family of services, such as their poor music delivery service, mail, developer network, geocities etc etc.

As for Yahoo, well I never thought they had the long term fire power to enter a war with Microsoft and Google, sure they have big numbers, and have for a long time, but Google came along pretty quick and stole a large share of that, and Microsoft is really pushing themselves into the arena.

Yahoo IS innovating, but people aren’t hearing it as loud as when Google innovates, I think Microsoft would do Yahoo some good, Microsoft knows how to make noise, even if it’s not always good. Yahoo has a lot of services that have been launched pretty poorly and developed poorly too, they seem to give up on them at times as well, I think this is where the Microsoft side of things can really help, Microsoft seem to stick with things and push enough resources and money into something until it either works well, or is completely dead.

Personally I think overall it’ll be a good move to join the two, the public might even benefit here somehow, not sure just how yet – besides some nicer apps around, it might mean there’s a gap in the market for another search provider, who knows.

Since I’m busy and haven’t discussed the topic for a while, I’m going to revive some old posts about PPC marketing.

• 8 PPC Marketing tips for every campaign I do
• Perfect example of a bad adwords ad
• PPC Campaign Intelligence

I actually have a fair bit of knowledge in the area, I just never get around to talking about it!

Will try in the future, but for now I have clients and a dying laptop battery to deal with!

People are touting it as a sign of recession and a sign of an online marketing slowdown (since Google control the vast majority of online ad revenue).

What they aren’t talking about is how it jumped from $415 to almost $450 in 1 day. Since then it’s dropped around the $435 mark.

Hardly call for concern.

What would be concerning me more is that since November 2007 – when they were $750 a share, they have been falling A LOT faster then they climbed to get there.

Like I said before, $750 a share they were in November, 5 months ago, they are now $435 a share. Last time they were $435 a share was about November 2006! (Click the 5y view).

This is why I think Microsoft will outlive any other major player in the marketplace, for the last 5 years their stock price has been on average the same, around $27.

It’s jumped up high, it’s gone down low, but it doesn’t just completely crash and burn, they have lots of fingers in lots of pies in lots of different markets, lots of places to draw solid revenue from.

Meanwhile, everyone is throwing money into gold and oil, personally I’d be buying shares in MSFT or GOOG right now, get it while it’s cheap, it’ll go back up again.

Recessions hurt the poor and make the rich, richer.

Well it’s only a simple feature, but I think if it was there it would make gmail so much better.

Folders…!

Being able to have folders makes a world of difference, it really does!

Anyone else agree with me here? I’ve got this massive inbox of items, if I could just categorise them into folders I’d be so much happier!

A major feature that would really change the game would be if the gmail business version worked the same as Microsoft exchange.

Microsoft Exchange if you’re not familiar – synchronises your mail on the server with your outlook.

So if you in your webmail or outlook if you delete emails, read emails or create folders etc, both are synchronised so it’s all the same.

Right now if I read an email in outlook, I have to go and check it as read in my gmail so I’m not seeing it as new mail anymore.

The spam I’m getting is really low quality, most of the time its random letters that don’t form words and emails put together so badly no one ever would click on the link. If you’re going to start spamming and take the risk, at least do a good job of it.

I typically get about 100+ spam emails a day…

Well I used to. My old setup for receiving mail was to use my own mail servers, on my own servers, for my own domains. Like my todd at talkingdynamics.com email address, I used to use my server for my email, that way I can use my own domain names for my email, not some free domain like gmail.com

However, if you go to google.com/a (google apps) you can sign up for some google applications for business. One of those applications is email hosting.

Google let you point your domains’ MX records in your dns to their gmail server, they will collect all your email for your domain, and you can use them to send your mail to, so you effectively use them as your whole mail server solution, at no cost.

This way gmail acts as your mail server and you simply use outlook to collect your mail from the email pop server.

What this also does is trap spam at the gmail level, rather then it hitting your outlook, and then outlook sending it to junk mail or to your inbox.

I’m finding that gmail is filtering spam much better than what my outlook does, I think mostly since it’s an online service, it’s able to cross reference other accounts and look at what email is hitting other accounts hard, and it’s able to flag it as spam across the network, where outlook has to use some rating system to weight the email as spam or not.

Using gmail as your mail server is also a nice way to have webmail too, my old server has a web mail client, but the gmail client is much nicer, and I’ve setup a dns record to point to my email account. (gmail.mydomain.com). And as far as a webmail client goes, if you move servers you won’t lose your email, it’s hosted elsewhere.

Being business mail you can also add additional users to your account, it’s a very nice solution, it’s worth a look.

Another failed Google invention is their Video ‘download to own’ and ‘download to rent services. Last Wednesday they emailed everyone letting them know that they had very little success being able to sell the products.

Not only that, the DRM for the videos that people ‘bought to own’ is set to expire soon, and since it can’t be renewed Google are giving people Google Checkout coupons… not refunds. Bit tight don’t you think considering there’s crap all you can buy with Google Checkout compared to the CASH refunded to your Visa that you can use anywhere.

Anyway, another Google invention bites the dust.

I mentioned a while ago that Google can’t sell anything but search, Google Checkout is no exception.

Google Checkout is a payment processing service that competes with services like Paypal on processing payments for shops, I’ve yet to see any shop use it that I’ve purchased from, but I’ve made heaps of Paypal purchases. Google are trying so hard to compete with this product that are offering free credit card processing and no monthly setup or gateway fees at all for sellers, not only that, Googles payment guarantee protects 98% of orders, if there’s a chargeback, you don’t have to pay anything, you still keep that payment.

It’s a pretty good deal.

But it would seem they have a new competitor, one with lots of money that could eat into that market share they are trying to steal from Paypal and others – Amazon is expanding their reach into the payment processing arena with the launch of an expansion on their current payment web services they offer, it’s not launched yet, but there’s talk of a launch of the new service as early as next week.

Keep an eye on the Amazon web services page for updates.

Is it just me or is their keyword tool inaccurate?

Their Keyword search tool which will give you a view of the search volume and advertiser competition shows the keyword ‘adwords miracle’ has a average search volume with 0 competition, which seemed odd so I Googled it and what do you know, it’s full of ads, 3 big yellow ads at the top of the screen and the right hand bar is jam packed, what’s the deal Google? There’s no point offering these tools if they are giving out bad data…

The next page rank update should be soon, unless it’s already come and passed and I’ve missed it, if it hasn’t and I’m right then I imagine lots of people are rushing to add more back links to their site at this very moment.

If you’re not busy working on those oh so important back links, then maybe you should, here’s some resources to get yourself started.

Free Guides

• Search engine watch – 131 Legitimate link building strategies – this is one of the oldest link building strategies around, I’ve read it a bunch of times over the years, it’s a little dated in areas but there’s still the basics of link strategies in there that’ll help you
• Coyblogger – link building strategies that work – Copyblogger always pump out quality content and this is no exception
• Linking Matters – The definitive link building strategy – it’s a basic guide, I wouldn’t call it definitive, more of ’simple and obvious shit to do’
• SEOBook – 101 link building tips – this has to be the real definitive guide of link building, read it if you haven’t already.
• DoshDosh – Link building and SEO – I’m not going to link to any direct post, he keeps a category full of link building techniques, have a read.

Link building services

• Andy Hagans – Andy will build you some link bait, he’s done it for people like SEOBook, the service isn’t cheap with a $6k price tag but it’ll be worth it.
• Eric Ward – Another link bait service, he’s been around for a fair while and the price tag is cheaper then Andy’s at only $2k

Obviously Google is the king of search, and they are big in other areas too, but the other areas they dominate you’ll find they never actually started. Most of the businesses other than their search related ones have done much really.

Most of their start-ups they have invested in have failed, and they are way behind in market share for email, shopping and their messenger.

Falling behind

• Gmail has a big user base but it’s nothing compared to Yahoo Mail or Hotmail
• Google Checkout is struggling to make any kind of impact compared to Paypal
• Google’s IM client has nothing on ICQ or MSN Messenger Live
• Google video never took off, so they bought Youtube
• Google docs and spreadsheets can’t compete with Microsoft

Acquisitions

• Google Groups
• Blogger
• Picasa
• Google Earth
• Google Maps
• Google Ride Finder
• Google’s spreadsheet and word processor
• Analytics
• And so many more

Even their advertising model was a buyout.

Microsoft has recently acquired aQuantive and ScreenTonic, both are advertising companies, on top of that Microsoft is aggressively pushing their search technology. Last month Microsoft increased their market share my 67% with Google dropping share slightly.

I think in the next few months we’ll see more market share clawed Microsoft’s way, Microsoft have more than one popular service they can leverage whereas Google are still relying on search to bring in their money, if that starts to decline they could be in trouble, not trouble enough to die, but I think you’ll see their revenue drop. Microsoft wants a piece of the online advertising pie and they are defiantly positioning themselves to hit hard.