This morning it looks like Microsoft is offering 44.6 billion dollars to buy Yahoo. Holy Cow. That’s a far cry from the usual things I see when I browse my morning Twitter feed.

Actually, I’ve been wondering what’s taken them so long, since it’s clear they’re not going to get decent market share any other way.

You can read the gory details here, while I go try and register Microsahoo.com…

All month, Yahoo site explorer has been excruciatingly slow, and this morning it appears to be completely unusable. I suppose it could be Comcats, or some problem in beteween us, but it’s been going on for over a week.

Just trying to do a simple backlink check can take over a minute or more,  and sometimes it fails to respond altogether.

If you can’t afford to have employees waiting for Yahoo site explorer to come back to life, try Yahoo site explorer in alternative languages. It may not be ideal, but it’s better than getting nowhere!
UK/ Ireland, Spain, Mexico and Argentina all seem to be responding just fine, and it’s only the US English version has been giving us hard time – here’s a Google search for the different versions

I’m not going to take the time to translate, because if you go there often enough you can certainly figure it out. The Mexican one seems to be quite snappy this morning

Does anyone have any other alternatives?

In a blog post in July about Yahoo selling its SERPS, I pointed out that a search for Special K cereal came up with the Special K logo, any clearly paid advertisement at the top of the page.

That blog post got submitted to the new (at the time) social networking site called Sphinn, which is all content exclusively related to search engines and Internet marketing.

In addition to the 20+ people that commented on my own blog, hundreds of people likely saw the post on Sphinn, and it even elicited a comment from Matt Cutts at Google.

Now, in an apparent change of heart, Yahoo has changed their policy, and they are clearly marking these types of advertisements with the word “sponsored

Here is a screenshot today -

And here is a screenshot about two months ago -

See the green “Sponsored” notation now added?

Without the visibility and outspoken opinions of those in the Sphinn community, I seriously doubt anything would have changed…

Kudos to Yahoo and kudos to Sphinn! – Now I’m hungry for a bowl of cereal…

I wrote a blog post a few weeks ago about Yahoo selling its search results , and now I’m seeing another anomaly that appears as if those “unmarked, yet sponsored serps” may be available for sale in other ways too.

If you do a search on Yahoo right now for “Wii”, you’ll be given all of the following:

• 3 sponsored results in a tinted box at the top, and a bunch of sponsored results on the right side.
• Another listing with a red Y logo appearing below the sponsored links, but above the actual number 1 organic, with stars and links to user reviews on the Yahoo shopping site.
• Immediately below those, there are three links to three more domains.

• Below those three links are the words “Yahoo Shortcut” and a link to “About”.

Following that link to About leads to “What is a Yahoo shortcut” with a screenshot that is NOT including any of these mysterious links. Hmmm…

In the text on that page, to the left of the Yahoo provided screen shot, it explains that:

“Some of the content may come from partners who pay to be included in Yahoo! or have another financial relationship with Yahoo!”

What is the criteria for determining whether you are one of those three listed?

Is it the price? Clearly not, because at $499, the second listing is nowhere in the ballpark of even being considered a good deal.

When I posted about similar links on Google, Matt Cutts commented the following:

The links in Google’s flight OneBox were chosen for merit. They’re not paid in any way and no money changed hands. So this is completely different than Yahoo’s paid-but-unlabeled Special K promotion.

Besides taking the wind out of my sails for that post, Matt clearly pointed out that Google’s rankings are not for sale unless they are clearly labeled as such.

What determines Yahoos placement of these links? Does anyone know?

Is it relevance? I don’t think so because the domain name is not even specific to Nintendo Wii, or even to video games, and the pages are not particularly good.

Is it inbound links? Nope, not looking like it…

Ahh, all three seem to be running their shopping cart from Yahoo Store… Is that it?

Well ONE of those three links was to Amazon this morning, but when I had time to write, and went back to get the screen shot, it was all Yahoo

Are there some sponsored programs that are only offered through inside sales people at Yahoo? If these three listings underneath ARE through a “financial relationship”, how do we sign up to play this game?

I’m not talking about them selling the company, (although there are rumors) I’m talking about their integrity and their overall credibility as a search engine, by appearing to sell the number one organic search result to the highest bidder.

Yesterday I attended the Internet strategy conference in Portland, and one of the speakers was Cammie Dunaway, the chief marketing officer for Yahoo.

During her presentation, she explained some new ways that Yahoo is working with advertisers, and she showed a TV commercial where the words “Special K” were typed into a Yahoo search box.

When the search result page appeared, there was Kellogs, at the top of the search results, with a Special K logo right there by the SERP.

Something about it looked odd to me, then it hit me… Directly above the advertisement, were the words “search Results” and the tinted box and the words “Sponsored Results” had been removed.

Apparently this campaign is still running, as I just tried a search and here’s the result -

Perhaps this is nothing new, and Yahoo has done it before, but I’ve personally never noticed it.

What bothers me about this, is that by removing the tinted box and leaving out the words “sponsored results“, Yahoo is effectively selling the number one search result.

Is that option available for all advertisers? Is that option available for all phrases? Are they selling the number two, three, fours and five search results as well?

Cool, where do I sign up before my competition does, and how much does it cost?

Yahoo does seem to be leaving the actual ranking numeral to the left of the organic result, does not make this any less confusing for the end user.

Yahoo, I think I would I would like my graphic for my “ad” to be a large red #1? Would that be all right?

Clearly, it appears that Yahoo has gone out of their way to seamlessly blend an advertisement with their search results. Has anyone seen other instances of this?

Do you think we’re seeing the beginning of the end of organic search on Yahoo?