Yahoo CEO (Chief Executive Officer) Jerry Yang will step down as soon as Yahoo will get a new CEO.

Yang will return to his former role as Chief Yahoo. Jerry Yang is the co-founder of Yahoo along with David Filo.

Yang took office last year in June 2007 as CEO, promising investors and the company to bring back lost glory of Yahoo and advertisers who turned to Google for online advertising needs.

It seems it was one of the worst decisions Yang took in his life.

First the offer of Microsoft to buy Yahoo for $31 per Share, (approximately $44.6 billion in cash and stock) was rejected.

Second, Google abandoned a search advertising partnership amid regulatory concerns. Yang was desperate that this deal goes through, but things just did not go the way he wanted.

Yang faced a growing chorus of criticism from investors and analysts as Yahoo’s shares nosedived. Yahoo shares which were trading at over $30 just a few weeks before are now hovering at $10 per share.

Shareholders are unhappy, investors are not happy, and now finally Yang is stepping down.

There are some lessons learnt from this:

1) Even if you are a founder of a company, it does not necessarily mean that you will be good in all the jobs in the company.

2) Yang became emotional with his business. He treated Yahoo as his child. A business is a business and one should not get emotional at any point of time. Had he used his brain instead of his heart, Yahoo would have been sold – and he would have made a lot of money along with the investors and shareholders.

3) One should NOT get too greedy. Yang said he wanted to sell Yahoo “at the right price”. What is the right price? When Yahoo stock price was around $30, MicroSoft offered $31 per share. They were willing to offer even more. That’s reasonable from business point of view. They couldn’t have offered more than that; after all even MS is doing business.

4) Listen to your investors and shareholders. In anticipation that MicroSoft will buy Yahoo, the share price of Yahoo skyrocketed. It was a clear indication that shareholders wanted the sale. But it did not happen.

What have you learnt from this incident?

Are you an advertiser with Yahoo Search? If yes this news will benefit you. HOW?

First the news.

In June 2008 Google and Yahoo announced an Ad showing deal where Yahoo was to show ads of Google Advertisers in their search and partner results.

However it wasn’t a smooth ride as some advertisers and government regulators raised concerns about the deal. Here are some threads of webmasterworld that clearly shows webmasters were concerned over the deal:

Yahoo and Google announce advertising deal

Microsoft Wages War Against Google-Yahoo Ad Deal in Washington

Google Yahoo Ad Deal In Doubt Over Potential Antitrust Restriction

Apparently it seems there were too many road blocks that Google ultimately called it off.

Google in its blog says:

Quote:

However, after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.

Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang was disappointed Google didn’t fight harder for search deal.

It’s easy to understand why Google wasn’t interested in the deal but Yahoo was. It would have given Yahoo more dollars in terms of Ad revenues simply because for many searches – especially the long ones – Yahoo just doesn’t have enough inventories to fill ads. (The deal was supposed to bring Yahoo $250 million to $450 million in additional operating cash flow in the first year. Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/07/technology/companies/07google.html)

Yahoo has a lot of advertisers in the news, sports, and finance and entertainment categories, but for others it really needs a lot of inventory to fill ads.

The deal was a boon to Yahoo, but not for Google. Secondly because of the concerns it was generating in the advertisers community it was better for Google to call it off – so it backed out.

Now Yahoo advertisers will stand to gain because of this. Why?

First, Yahoo will feel a bit insecure and that would be reason enough to make Yahoo work harder and try to be a better search engine. A proof is the letter Yahoo sent to its advertisers once the deal was over.

Quote:

In short, even in the absence of a commercial agreement with Google, we intend to become an ever-stronger player in online advertising. Our certainty on this front comes from the progress we continue to make in many areas, not the least of which are the significant innovations we’re making in search. We continually optimize our algorithmic and sponsored search. In fact, in 2008 alone, we have developed and launched hundreds of improvements to our search engine, including index expansions and updates, ranking models and performance tuning. Each of these features is designed to improve search quality and deliver a more relevant search experience to our users.

Secondly, due to more advertisers the competition would have increased leading to an increase in keyword bids. It is a well known fact that those who cannot afford Google turn to Yahoo for online advertisements.

An increase in bid prices would have been a setback to small advertisers.

Thirdly, since Google advertisers pay more per click, it needs no rocket science to assume that Yahoo would have shown Google Ads first before showing their own ads pushing the Yahoo only advertiser’s ads to well below their current position resulting in lower clicks. Poor Yahoo advertisers would have then paid more for less clicks.

These are the reasons I think Yahoo advertisers stand to benefit because of this no-deal.

Though I feel Google advertisers, especially those who do not advertise in Yahoo, would have benefited from this deal. Unlike Yahoo advertisers they would have paid the same for more clicks and would have had an opportunity to know how their campaigns were faring in Yahoo if they had analytics in place.

For some strange reason, even Google advertisers were not happy with this deal as is mentioned in the Google blog. I think the reason why they were against it is that most were already advertising in Yahoo and felt no reason to advertise the same ads in Yahoo through Google and essentially pay more per click. (It’s a well know fact that advertisers are willing to pay more per click in Google than in Yahoo.)

Are you happy that this deal is now over?

Do you conduct a proper research before you buy a domain name from a domain registrar?

If not, you should.

Here is why:

ICANN (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) on 28 October 2008 sent a letter to EstDomains Inc saying it terminated its registrar accreditation agreement.

The action is swift too, it says the termination will be effective within 15 calendar days i.e.… on 12 November 2008.

The official letter notifying EstDomains:

http://www.icann.org/correspondence/burnette-to-tsastsin-28oct08-en.pdf

NOTE: ICANN is a non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. government by other organizations, notably the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority IANA.

(The latest news is that the notice of termination is under review and is stayed.)

http://www.icann.org/en/announcements/announcement-2-29oct08-en.htm

According to ICANN, EstDomains has approximately 281,000 domains under its management. I hope you understand – the owners of these domains must be really worried.

Of course one can transfer a domain to another registrar, but the process is not very easy especially for dynamic database driven sites (example blogs, ecommerce sites etc).

Think of the unnecessary hassle they must have gone through.

So before buying a domain look for the following in the domain registrar’s website:

1. ICANN Accreditation: See that they have ICANN Accreditation. It will be in the form of a logo, link or text. If not they CANNOT register a domain for you. If they are still doing it, they are basically domain resellers and purchase domain on behalf of a registrar. Unfortunately since these companies get a commission, you will have to pay a higher amount for the same product. My advice is to stick with the original registrar and not buy a domain from a reseller.

2. 24/7 Customer Support: Make sure that your domain registrar has a 24/7 customer support phone line, a contact us page and other forms of contacting them. It’s important because business online is 24 hours a day and if need be you should be able to contact them in the middle of night.

One easy way to know about the quality of their customer support is to write them a mail and see how long they take to respond back.

3. SSL Certificate: They must be able to provide SSL Certificates. Also known as secure sockets layer (SSL) – they are required for e-commerce sites. If in future you feel the need to add credit card processing application in your website, the SSL certificate will be an absolute essential.

The SSL protocol is the Web standard for encrypting communications between users and SSL sites. Data sent via an SSL connection is protected by encryption. This is a method that prevents tampering with any transmitted data. SSL provides businesses and consumers with the confidence that private data sent to a Web site, such as credit card numbers, are kept confidential.

SSL websites have https rather than http and their browser displays a little gold padlock at the bottom.

Again, you may not need SSL while booking a domain, but you may always need it in the future.

4. Privacy Protection: While purchasing a domain you need to provide your name, address and phone number. Please note that you are required to provide your real name, address and contact number while registering. This is required by law. If in future it is found that you provided false information, legal action may be taken against you.

Anyone who wants to know the owner of a domain can do a whois search and know about their name, phone and address. However, if you don’t want your name to be displayed, you can always buy a privacy protection. This way your contact details will not be displayed in whois search and you will still hold the domain.

5. Domain Transfer: A domain registrar should allow easy domain transfer. Say after a year of service you are not comfortable with your registrar, you should be able to transfer your domain to another registrar without any hassles.

6. Domain Parking: It’s important from branding point of view. Let’s suppose you own seo.net. You work hard and make it a huge brand. Someone buys seo.com. What happens? People who will not remember .net may type in .com and land straight in your competitor’s website. Unfortunately this is still happening. To prevent this domain parking is done.

You can buy seo.com and point it to seo.net or vice versa. Domain parking is a great tool, it helps traffic stealing.

Try these:

http://www.Google.net/ – Goes to http://www.google.com/

http://www.Yahoo.net/ – Page not found, but you are still in Yahoo!

http://www.Live.net/ – Goes to http://www.live.com/

7. Good Reputation: Finally the domain registrar should have a good reputation in the online community. To know their reputation you can search forums, social networking sites, do a search in search engines with their names + the strings “good or bad”. For example if you want to search for abc.com domain registrar, you can search for “abc.com good or bad?” I am sure you will get some interesting results. Don’t bother if a few people are not satisfied, but if a lot of people are not happy from their service, then its better to avoid such registrars.

You can also search Google News with their names to know the latest about them.

Have I missed something? Are you a EstDomains customer? If yes what are you doing with your domains?

Recommended Reading:
 
1. InterNIC – FAQs on the Domain Names, Registrars, and Registration
2. Domain Name Registration FAQ

You worked really hard to make sure that you get quality inbound links to your site… and you got them. A few years down the line you felt a need to change the look of your site. You did that, and possibly changes to some navigational structure. Knowingly or unknowingly you changed name or deleted a few pages. Whack – the inbound links to those pages are now showing a 404 error – i.e. page not found.

People coming to these pages get irritated or get confused and worst of all, the link juice you got from other websites vanished too! (Search engines don’t give any credit to inbound links that point to a non-existent page.) Heck due to this your rankings have also suffered.

Good News!

Now there is a way to find the sources linking to your sites’ not found pages. If you know the website that’s linking to your non-existent page, you can take some action like mail them and ask them to link to the right page or do something to make sure that visitors do not land into an ugly looking 404 page. What’s more you can even make sure that the search engines give your site the credit for inbound links.

Google webmaster blog recently announced that you can find the sources that link to your 404 error page.

You will need a Google Webmaster account and your site should be registered.

If you don’t have a Google Webmaster account, click here to register.

Those who have can login and then go to:
 
Diagnostics >> Web crawl

Under, “Errors for URLs in Sitemaps”, click on “Not found”.

Now you should see all the sources that have linked to your 404 pages.

The “Linked From” column contains the links of all sites linking to not found pages. You can download the data CSV file if you want.

Now that you know the source, you can mail them and request them to change the link to point to the correct page,

OR

You can do something so that your 404 page looks attractive and has all relevant links.

This way neither the visitors, nor the search engines will get angry.

The best way is to create a custom 404 page if your web-server supports it. Google can help you here.

There is a JavaScript code that Google generates for 404 pages. To get it login to your Google webmaster account then go to:

Dashboard > Tools > Enhance 404 pages

This should help you to generate the JavaScript code. Just copy and paste this into your custom 404 page code.

I am sure these tips will help you to improve your sites’ inbound link quality and help you to improve rankings too.

Recommended Reading:
 
1. Free Links To Your Site - Matt Cutts offering some more information on improving inbound link quality to 404 error pages.

2. Custom 404 pages - Google help page on Custom 404 pages.

3. Make your 404 pages more useful - More info on how to generate the JavaScript code to put in your custom 404 page.