Search Engine Optimisation Services

Jerry Yang has quit Yahoo, the company he co-founded with David Filo in March 1995. His resignation is effective immediately just weeks after Yahoo had announced Scott Thompson as their new CEO.

Yesterday Yahoo announced that Yang had resigned from the Board of Directors and all other positions within the company. Yang had been on the Board of Directors spanning nearly 17 years. 

In 2007, Yang replaced Terry Semel as CEO but stepped down from the job a year later. This led to Carol Bartz becoming the CEO in 2009 but 2011 seen Bartz ousted from the position and was eventually replace by Scott Thompson.

Thompson said of Yang “I am grateful for the warm welcome and support Jerry provided me during my early days here. Jerry leaves behind a legacy of innovation and customer focus for this iconic brand, having shaped our culture by fostering a spirit of innovation that began 17 years ago and continues to grow even stronger today. Jerry has great confidence in the future of Yahoo!, and I share his confidence in the enormous potential of Yahoo! in the days ahead.”

Jerry Yang had this to say about his time at Yahoo “My time at Yahoo!, from its founding to the present, has encompassed some of the most exciting and rewarding experiences of my life. However, the time has come for me to pursue other interests outside of Yahoo! As I leave the company I co-founded nearly 17 years ago, I am enthusiastic about the appointment of Scott Thompson as Chief Executive Officer and his ability, along with the entire Yahoo! leadership team, to guide Yahoo! into an exciting and successful future.”

Yang still owns 3.6 per cent of the company.

Bing has become the number 2 search engine in the United States for December 2011 according to the latest figures released by comScore.

Bing was first launched by Microsoft in 2009 and landed just over 8 per cent of the search engine market share. Bing user numbers have steadily increased over time and the search engine now holds a 15.1 per cent of the search engine market share.

Google not only continues to lead the way in terms of market share, it also increased its share to 65.9 per cent. Yahoo has seen its share drop to third with 14.5 per cent of the market share. This is nearly a 4 per cent decrease from numbers in November where it had a 15.1 share.

Ask remained at 2.9 per cent while AOL also remained at 1.6 per cent.

The folks at Google have been busy again, this time revamping their advanced search page. The page has been redesigned with most of the functionality staying the same however some of the search options have been renamed or removed.

The removed tools include the ability to ‘Find pages similar to the page’ and ‘Find pages that link to the page’. 

Although the ‘Find pages that link to the page’ option has been removed, entering the command “link:yourdomain.com” into the Google search bar still works.

It has been coming. We had been informed that Yahoo would be winding down their Site Explorer tool a while ago but the day has finally arrived. Yahoo Site Explorer will close down today.

Yahoo’s announcement on their official blog:

Yahoo Site Explorer was a very useful tool for website owners and SEO professionals to find out link data for websites. It was particularly useful because it was data coming straight from a search engine.

If you were a user of the Yahoo Site Explorer then there’s no need to threat, the Bing Webmaster Tool will have the Site Explorer functionality. Many other third party tools offer link data such as Majestic SEO or SEOmoz.

A couple of days ago, there had been sightings of Google testing out a new “sources” box on the right hand side of the SERP’s. This box gave information about your search without having to click through to the website. Google have also started showing a box full of information in Google’s local search results.

The new results page seems to pull in all the information available in Google Places about your search query and displays it on the right hand side of the page, similar to the “sources” box. What this new box shows depends in your search query? For example, if you were searching for a restaurant, the new results can show a map, a link for directions, pictures, opening hours, reviews and even a menu.

This is a great new feature for user experience but could be harmful to businesses and marketers as users might be able to get the information they were looking for without ever clicking through to the business webpage.

After several months of testing, Google have officially announced that they would begin showing Adwords at the bottom of their search engine results page.

According to Google, the testing has shown that these ads at the bottom of the search results performed better than ads on the side of the page as they fit better with the way a user views the page scanning from top to bottom.

Having ads on the bottom of the page will give marketers more chances to get their ads appear on the first page of results rather than on the second page.

Google have made changes to the way secure search works for users logged into Google.com. Any search performed whilst a user is logged into a Google account will be done on a secure socket layer (SSL). This change also means that these searches won’t pass on any search term referrer data.

Google claim that “As search becomes an increasingly customized experience, we recognize the growing importance of protecting the personalized search results we deliver. As a result, we’re enhancing our default search experience for signed-in users.”

Whilst Google is claiming that it is making the move to better protect user privacy, search term referrer data will still be passed on to advertisers who use their PPC product. This has left the some of the SEO community unhappy, with claims that Google are effectively saying that you can have the search referrer data but only if you pay for it.