Yahoo Names Mann Search Head

In Yet Another Internal Hire, Yahoo's Mayer Names Mann Search Head - Kara Swisher - News - AllThingsD: "Sources at Microsoft said the company is unlikely to extend the agreement without major concessions, and that any efforts to end the overall deal will be difficult for Yahoo. “There is what [Yahoo] wants, and what’s possible,” said one person close to the situation. In his new job, Mann will be in charge of improving the situation, which he has had some experience with. Mann, said one source, “used to spends hours at night on the phone with Microsoft trying to get concessions from their lack of RPS achievement,” referring to revenue per search. Whether that means he can fix the situation — either by extricating Yahoo from the deal or improving Yahoo’s search experience to boost revenue and market share — is unclear. Mayer herself has a lot of search product chops from her time at Google, so she is expected to play a dominant role in the arena."

When Mayer Called Yahoo's Mobile Revenue "Nascent," She Wasn't Kidding - Kara Swisher - Mobile - AllThingsD: " . . . According to sources, Yahoo’s current search partnership does not preclude the company from working with Google in certain mobile monetization areas. In fact, the pair recently struck a deal, as Peter Kafka wrote, “to begin running some of its AdSense display ads on Yahoo sites, and will become one of several ad networks Yahoo uses to fill some of its pages.” That’s money in the bank for Yahoo, which Mayer — an ex-Googler, too — knows might extend well to mobile monetization and innovation. She has famously handed out free smartphones to all employees, which is a nice touch and also an important message to send to them and others. But it will take a lot more than an iPhone in every cubicle at Yahoo, because mobile is the issue she will be scrutinized for, given the stress she has put on it as one of the key ways to revive Yahoo. “There is no question Marissa will be judged on bringing the product management expertise she demonstrated at Google to Yahoo to make things consumers want to use in mobile,” one top Yahoo insider told me. “The thing is, she has to also actually make some real money doing it.”"

Tips on how to make SEO work for your business - Washington Business Journal: ". . . . At the 30,000-feet flyover level, here are some top tips for improving results on Google: Make pages for users first, not for search engines. There’s a term called “cloaking,” which means presenting different content to search engines than you display to users. That’s misleading and deceptive, and in the end will hurt more than it helps. Make navigation easy. Your site has to have a clear hierarchy and text links. Users should be able to reach any page from at least one static text link. Make content information-rich. Create a useful, information-rich site, and write pages that clearly and accurately describe your content. Make sure that your title elements are descriptive and accurate. The same applies to “alt attributes” — specific text in HTML that describes images in your site, and is picked up by screen reading and Web browsing software. Create descriptive, human-friendly URLs with keywords . . ."


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