Microsoft considers buying Yahoo for $45 billion

Posted by multippt

Seems like Google will be facing a whole lot more competition this time round. While this idea is not new, it is was just speculation amongst webmasters on discussing whether Google will still stay king of the net. Some jokingly said that the only way Microsoft ever get close enough to Google, is to buy Yahoo. This joke has become a reality.

What this means

If this deal is successful, Microsoft will soon find itself into the pages of numerous web surfers around the world. Well, no one can really complain. It’s not like Microsoft is all that bad right? (*Braces self for Windows-related sarcarsm*) Even more importantly, this deal may determine who shall dominate the Internet. Don’t forget that Microsoft had always have an influence over the Internet from the beginning, starting with its Internet browser, Internet Explorer. Microsoft’s acquisition over Yahoo means that Microsoft will have a permanent stake in the Internet. Advertising, search, media will soon have Microsoft’s presence around.

The deal involves Microsoft acquiring Yahoo’s stocks, at $31 per share (i.e. Yahoo is worth $44.6 billion from this offer). Microsoft even added some incentives for existing Yahoo shareholders to make them willing to support the acquisition.

Though, Microsoft hasn’t really mention what it will do with Yahoo, however it does give hints that they will make use of Yahoo’s influence (particularly advertising) and technology (as well as research).

Other offers?

Since Microsoft is offering such a large deal which boosts the value of Yahoo, surely other companies will be more than willing to offer higher prices. AOL may offer up a price. Google might do the same though unlikely, since if Google were to do so, it will face the same problem as Microsoft once did - anti-trust controversy (i.e. monopoly of the search engine market).

The press release

Microsoft has released a formal press release statement on its offer, complete with the excerpt of the letter Microsoft sent to Yahoo.

The problem with the phishing filter

Posted by multippt

It seems like even security experts make mistakes at times. Trendmicro is one of them. Aside from spreading the mentality that cookies do much harm to your computer (which is incredibly impossible), they decided to “help” you further by giving you that extra phishing site detector. The problem is, it doesn’t work sometimes.

What do you mean, “it didn’t work”?

It didn’t work in that it didn’t deliver the goods. When it comes to phishing filters, it means that the user will be severely discouraged from visiting the blacklisted site. So, what if a site gets into the list? One sad thing with the case of TrendMicro, is that once you are stuck on that list, you cannot come off it, unless TrendMicro discovers its mistake.

Just recently, TrendMicro blacklisted a few IP addresses, one of which is a Google datacenter. Pretty bad move, since not only has they shown that they didn’t actually check that it belongs to Google, this will mean that at random whenever a user uses Google cache, they get a nasty phishing site error.

Fortunately, there are cases where TrendMicro has remove several sites, most especially parked pages, from its list of blacklisted sites.

And then there were others

Thanks to phishing and viruses, we have rich guys like Norton, MCaFee and TrendMicro. Of course, there are others who want a slice of this pie, well, at least they used phshing filters as a means of advertising their actual product. Do you think Microsoft added that phishing filter into Internet Explorer 7 just to protect your surfing experience? Not really, all Microsoft wanted was users to use Internet Explorer 7 because it is now “safer”.

On the other hand, there were open-source projects and the giant Google that came into the phishing scene. Firefox now got a brilliant phishing filter, but it is not any better than the filter in Internet Explorer. For one thing, they are slow in responding, and sometimes they respond inaccurately (thanks to a group of people known as “saboteurs”). In light of that, some phishing filters have that remove site ability. But, what’s the point of a phishing filter if the owner of the phishing site gets to remove their sites from the filter?

It was flawed from the beginning

Most phishing sites often get away with phishing someone’s credentials. Unless there is a perfect automatic phishing site detector, no one can be sure that the login page is rigged, unless someone else has reported the issue.

The best phishing site detector is yourself. Not Google, not Norton, not Trendmicro. You are the one who can distinguish what appears to be off from the actual site. No one should tell you that you should always check the address bar, because you should probably know very well to know what site you are about to go to. Phishing E-mails are so common that they cease to be creative, making identifying one easy.

Webmasters tools - crawl stats update

Posted by multippt

Google has updated the crawl stats for PageRank allocated in each site, viewable via Webmasters tools. Well, that’s about all the news, nothing much really. Though, an interesting point of note is that Google hadn’t done the January update in the way it used to. It might be a tiny update, probably separate from the major ones, but it is still an update, nonetheless one that is done incompletely.

Despite all that temporary rush about the latest PageRank 2 weeks ago, it does seem that the PageRank of most sites will not change until the next update. Though, Google seem to do hit-and-miss, as apparently it didn’t update the PageRank of a large pool of sites. Some sites like Technorati got it by the hit-and-miss bug, causing it to be not ranked at all (it should be PR7-8 depending on the Google directory).

Seems like the only place where you can get an updated score is via the Google directory, which is more transparent at showing PageRank results (i.e. no penalties included). Though, that would only work for a handful of sites that didn’t get rejected by Open directory editors (the irony?).

Content vs speed

Posted by multippt

Speedily updating a site is a nice way of getting visitors to stay on your site, however don’t let that be a priority. Updating a site often is not a feasible thing to do if you are working alone. Rather, you should “invest” or venture into other areas that are able to get you a sustained amount of visitors.

Speed alone (i.e. news)

While updating a site steadily will net you a steady stream of visitors more easily than any other method, it’s the updating that takes the most out of you. Blogs are a popular example - update it frequently, and people are bound to find it, somehow or rather. However, it takes a significant amount of updating to get people to return to the site.

Content alone

Having quality content is an important ingredient for any site. However, quality content is hard to come by, and takes a lot of work, simply because you can’t make “quality content” in just a day - it takes accumulation of all that hard work. Did Wikipedia went public when it is nearly empty? No. Wikipedia was popular because it contained great and complete content.

Wikis usually seem to fare better in search engines than any other site (unless the site itself is a search engine or a tool). This is because Wikis are briming with information and organized in a way that almost everything in it is considered quality in the eyes of anyone (e.g. Wikia and all its Wikis are a good example).

Tool and Software alone

Tools tend to keep visitors better if it is incredibly useful. Search engines and traffic trackers fall under this category. Statcounter proved itself that giving out a free service doesn’t always mean they won’t gain anything. Google and Yahoo are another example. However, in order to make an incredible tool, you need plenty of time, and experience.

Similarly, software is a traffic magnet as well. Firefox is a huge magnet of traffic, drawing those who had enough with Microsoft. However, making the software itself ain’t good enough. Updates should follow every piece of thing you work with, otherwise people will get bored playing with version 1.0. Firefox didn’t stay at 1.0, it continued right up to 2.0.10. That’s a whole lot of updating.

Projects are another possible source of traffic. Sourceforge make advertising certain large scale projects easier, to the extent that the traffic generated is sustainable in the long run (e.g. the eMule torrent client). But, that’s for large projects only. Small projects do not fare well in this, and they do not last long in the spotlight.

Combo?

Combinations are great, but they can be pretty messy at times. It might be a good opportunity to split up different sections of your site into strictly independent areas. You can’t have a news site and a download site together, you have to have them separate. It’s like a rule and almost everyone have attempted to put them into a strictly isolated area (e.g. CNET splitting news.com.com and download.com from each other, and QuickJournal making a site dedicated to downloading stuff featured in its multiple blogs).

It’s a matter of preference and the amount of resources you have. But do try to create more than one area of your site worth visiting.

Audio ads? Not such a good idea

Posted by multippt

Thanks to web 2.0, we have much more innovative ideas than what we have a few years ago. Now comes a new ad which sounds promising (literally), which utilises a lesser used medium, known as the ear. Instead of having banner ads that are already annoying already, why not pop in an audio ad instead? Certain to capture the daily surfer who hasn’t got their speakers muted off, these ads hope to enhance the way advertisements get delivered to you.

Unwanted “noise”

To be frank, how many seconds could you last on a page blasting music at you from god-knows-where? Now with those ads, you do not just have to tolerate sites who have some sort of personalized music, you have to deal with those ads blabbering about how good a product is. 5 seconds while pretty short, turns up the annoyance level by a whole lot. While this sort of advertisement is normally targetted at radios, which is perfectly fine, it’s a pretty bad idea for sites non-audio related. Fancy visiting Engadget and having commercialism blasted at you? Fret not, there’s that mute button to silence the advertisement.

While it’s not too unfamiliar to find personal blogs having a “sweet” background music playing, audio ads is simply an unwanted presence. Thanks, but no thanks.

And there was video ads

When it comes between pictures and videos, videos win. We have tons and tons of videos online, and it’s no wonder why some ad company decided to make video ads as well. While this sort of ad is pretty okay if it is not as distracting as your everyday TV commercial, they are pretty much like mimes  - no sound. Why isn’t there audio? That’s because Google and DoubleClick know very well that it’s in their best interests to not annoy the hell out of their “clickers”.

Muted surfers

What’s the best thing to keep a computer silent? It’s to mute it off course! About 1 in every 15 person has their computer muted (particularly the ones in offices), or at least its volume tuned to inaudible levels. So, those ads will be practically invisible to those fortunate Internet surfers. Who knew muting a computer was such a nice thing? 

Payout, and final thoughts

As compensation for annoying your visitors, NetAudioAds does give a high payout, paid by visitor count (well, it’s paid per play, but it’s pretty similar to a well known system known as CPM). Though, no matter how high a payout is, it’s probably not worth it putting those ads on your site. Even so, the payout system is probably susceptable to cheating (yeah, like they know who is actually listening to the ad), and they have every right to suspend a publisher, even if the publisher did nothing wrong.

Sloppy PageRank update?

Posted by multippt

Seems like Google had it all half done, probably one of the very few times you get to see Google make a few mistakes here and there. The last known change in PageRank was in 10th January 2008. I was hoping this update to continue, but it stopped right there - exactly half-way through. Then again, this whole “update” may not be the real update yet; it might be a prelude to the major one.

Hit-and-miss

The update is like a barrel of machine gun rounds. Not all your pages get hit by it. If you are lucky, your main page gets updated, if not, then you’ll see newer PageRank on your least expected pages. It’s all totally random. So, it’s not too surprising to see higher PageRanks in internal pages compared to the main page, as much as a difference of 4. About 10% of pages get hit, so you have a few pages with a new PageRank, while most of your other ones keep the same PageRank (or have none).

As the new PageRank takes values from links, Google only update pages with an updated “link” report (i.e. via the not-so-reliable “link:” command). The update in the link command is also yet another hit-and-miss, except that more pages experience updates in the links displayed.

Nuked PageRanks

Google hasn’t stopped with the penalties. Certain sites are getting further penalized, notably blogs dealing with paid reviews. Strangely, Search Engine Roundtable is penalized as well (and to think that the official Google blog is actually linking to the site in its blogroll). Technorati is another example with its PageRank nuked off; no it’s not just a normal penalty, Technorati now no longer has any PageRank (not even PR0 for the main page), even internal pages are not spared from Google’s wraith, or maybe all that could be a mistake on Google’s part (ah, brings backs memories when Google accidentally penalized its own Youtube).

The average site gets Google praise

Well, that’s for high-profile pages. Fortunately, small sites with established PageRanks get to benefit from this small update. Unfortunately, small and new sites which do not get established PageRanks do not get the same kind treatment. Remember hit-and-miss? Seems like Google is more prone to “missing” your main page, and prefers to hit your inside pages instead.

Covering up mistakes?

Toolbar pagerank is no longer telling the truth. Instead, let’s now refer to something more accurate, Google directory. For some strange reason, Google did not reflect penalties in the directory, so the directory should contain the most accurate values. Technorati for example, is supposed to have probably PR7. Engadget and Gizmodo is supposed to have approximately the same PageRank as well.

Though, this sort of method for checking PageRank works only on sites who have been listed with the Dmoz directory. While Dmoz is supposingly “open”, it seems near impossible to get entered into Dmoz, and even if you managed to make the cut, delays will come. In addition, the PageRank shown is probably newer than the ones dished out in this update.

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Don’t forget that PageRank is just a number.

Do site-wide links help?

Posted by multippt

When it comes to links, it is known that the more links there are, the merrier. What about site-wide links? All it takes is to add a link to every page, and you’ll get plenty of links. Site-wide links comes in all flavors: External ones, internal ones. Internal site-wide links are easy: put a link to your main page on every other page, and presto, a site-wide link. Depending on the size of the site, you can get several links, to hundreds.

Do they really help?

They may help. PageRank is one visible proof. But, each of those links appear to weigh lesser than several links scattered about. Sure, you have hundreds of links that can compensate for that, but it’s worth noting that even internal pages with the most exposure to site-wide links (e.g. archives in blogs) get a much lower PageRank than other pages that are linked less often (e.g. tag pages). Strange behavior?

On the other hand, site-wide links do add on to PageRank, but at the same time reduce PageRank (for the pages with the link). So, having many site-wide links on a site will result it in having more pages getting the juice, but it also results more pages having the same PageRank.

External Site-wide links?

Site-wide external links give a varying amount of link juice. If they are one-way ones, they pack a punch, unlike reciprocal ones that do not influence much. However, save your links, it’s probably much better to get several links from a site than getting site-wide links.

Another problem newly introduced by Google regarding external links, is that Google is weakening their strength, and penalizing certain links (usually site-wide ones) that it would consider “paid” or “sponsored”.

Weakened site-wide links?

Strangely, Google treats sitewide links unpredictably. Sometimes it credits them (particularly in pages you least expect them), sometimes it doesn’t. There is also a problem of links that come from only 1 site. Which is better? 1000 links from different sites, or 1000 links from one site? Google probably credits the former more than the latter in terms of PageRank.

Outbound links in a page

Within this site itself lies pages with varying PageRank. The main index page has most of the external links, so all other internal pages would have to get their link juice from the main page. Categories pages for example, have much lesser PageRank compared to some lesser tag pages, even though they appear almost everywhere in the site.

RSS pages on the other hand appears to get the most benefit out of PageRank. Seems like they are trapping the PageRank. After all, the amount of PageRank is determined by the amount of back-links and outgoing links (RSS feeds have much fewer than any other pages). The more back-links you have, and the fewer outgoing links you have, you get a page with a high PageRank. Quite a nice theory ain’t it?

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On any case, it’s up to the webmaster to control who shall and how to link to their site.