Microsoft Live Search added malware warnings to their search results. If a searcher clicks a result that Microsoft has detected contains malware, a popup warns then not to proceed to the site.
How can you find out if Microsoft has flagged your site for malware and how can you let them know you’ve fixed the problem? As part of this update, Microsoft Live Search also launched an update to their Webmaster Center that added alerts about malware.
Here are some excerpts from the article/interview:
“We were going to file the complaint at a certain time during the day,” says Litvack, who rejoins Hogan & Hartson today. “We told them we were going to file the complaint at that time of day. Three hours before, they told us they were abandoning the agreement.”
The never-filed government complaint would have charged that the agreement violated Sections 1 and 2 of the Sherman Act, Litvack tells the Am Law Daily in one of his first interviews since the companies canned the venture. Section 1 bans agreements that restrain trade unreasonably. Section 2 makes it unlawful for a company to monopolize or attempt to monopolize trade.
“It would have ended up also alleging that Google had a monopoly and that [the advertising pact] would have furthered their monopoly,” Litvack says.
Litvack acknowledges that Microsoft Corporation and other companies lobbied the department to block the agreement, both publicly and and in private meetings. Litvack insists, though, that Microsoft’s lobbying had no bearing on his recommended course of action or on the division’s ultimate decision.
Ideas for generating high quality inbound links
Start a blog – and write content that will give people a reason to link to your website
Join a reputable industry association – often times they will list their members and provide links to their websites. Examples could be a local rotary club, or a professional association like the American Medical Association.
Get involved with your community – participating with your community through blogs, forums and other online resources may give you legitimate reasons to provide links to your site.
Talk to a reporter – is there a potential story around your business? Or do you have helpful tips about your business people might be interested in? Pitch a story to a reporter or journalist, and they might give you a link.
Press Releases – if your company has a significant event, consider doing a press release through a site like http://prweb.com.
Suppliers and partners – ask your business partners if they would add a section to their website describing your partnership, with a link to your website. Or, if your suppliers have a website, perhaps they have a page where they recommend local distributers of their products.
Evangelize your site in the real world – with business cards, magnets, USB keys and other fun collectables.
The process of building up these high quality links can take time, and we hear from many webmasters who have tried to speed things up by purchasing links, or participating in linking schemes. We recommend webmaster be very careful with these, as they can often end up hurting your ranking in the long run by providing you with only low quality links that are often associated with spammy sites. If a link isn’t adding significant value to a website’s user, than it is most likely a low quality link.
Microsoft Corp. today announced that Dr. Qi Lu will join the company as president of the Online Services Group. Dr. Lu will lead Microsoft’s efforts in search and online advertising and all the company’s online information and communications services. Dr. Lu will report to Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer.
Lu, 47, most recently served as executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for development efforts around Yahoo!’s Web search and monetization platforms. Dr. Lu left Yahoo! in August 2008 after 10 years of service.
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“I am tremendously excited to welcome Qi to Microsoft,” Ballmer said. “Dr. Lu’s deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities and hard-working mentality are well-known in the technology industry, and Microsoft will benefit from his addition to our executive management team.”
“I am genuinely excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft to make an enormous impact on the online industry,” Dr. Lu said. “Microsoft has built a great foundation for its search and advertising technologies and put an amazing team of researchers and engineers in place to drive the next wave of innovation in online services. I’m looking forward to working with them to help transform the way people and businesses use the Internet to find and share information.”
Before his most recent role at Yahoo!, Lu was vice president of engineering responsible for the technology development of Yahoo!’s Search and Marketplace business unit, which includes the company’s search, e-commerce, and local listings of businesses and products.
Lu, 47, most recently served as executive vice president of Engineering for the Search and Advertising Technology Group at Yahoo!, where he was responsible for development efforts around Yahoo!’s Web search and monetization platforms. Dr. Lu left Yahoo! in August 2008 after 10 years of service.
“I am tremendously excited to welcome Qi to Microsoft,” Ballmer said. “Dr. Lu’s deep technical expertise, leadership capabilities and hard-working mentality are well-known in the technology industry, and Microsoft will benefit from his addition to our executive management team.”
“I am genuinely excited about the opportunities ahead for Microsoft to make an enormous impact on the online industry,” Dr. Lu said. “Microsoft has built a great foundation for its search and advertising technologies and put an amazing team of researchers and engineers in place to drive the next wave of innovation in online services. I’m looking forward to working with them to help transform the way people and businesses use the Internet to find and share information.”
Before his most recent role at Yahoo!, Lu was vice president of engineering responsible for the technology development of Yahoo!’s Search and Marketplace business unit, which includes the company’s search, e-commerce, and local listings of businesses and products.
Our focus on portal and search is super-strong, and even if we never do a Yahoo deal or anything else, I wanted to have Qi come on board. It is kind of a bonus that if something happened with Yahoo I'm sure it's somewhat simpler."
Get more details on the interview with Steve Ballmer of Microsoft.
Google
October 2008: 63.1%
September 2008: 62.9%
Change: +0.2
January 2008: 58.5%
Change: +4.6
Yahoo
October 2008: 20.5%
September 2008: 20.2%
Change: +0.3
January 2008: 22.2%
Change: -1.7
MSN - LIVE (soon maybe Kumo)
October 2008: 8.5%
September 2008: 8.5%
Change: 0.0
January 2008: 9.8%
Change: -1.3
ASK
October 2008: 4.2%
September 2008: 4.3%
Change: -0.1
January 2008: 4.5%
Change: -0.3
AOL
October 2008: 3.7%
September 2008: 4.1%
Change: -0.4
January 2008: 4.9%
Change: -1.2
Source: comScore
Nielsen Online has also released its October 2008 US search market shares. Google, as expected, remains on top with 61.2% of the total number of queries, which is around 7.8 billion search queries. Yahoo Search is in second position with 16.9% share.
Google and Yahoo's rankings went up and down, respectively, just over one percentage point since September 2008 when Google Search had 59.7% and Yahoo Search, 18.1%.
Yahoo's share represents a 12% decrease in year-over-year basis in search shares. MSN - Microsoft Live, the third largest search engine in market share, stayed about level dropping from 11.8% in September to 11.4% in October 2008.
AOL Search earned 4.3% of the share while Ask.com came in fifth with 2.3%.
Now if you add Live Search and Yahoo Search the combined share is close to 30% which is what is probably motivating the team in Microsoft to go ahead and acquire the search business of Yahoo.
Also, to compete in any way on performance advertising it is critical that they get together or else they dont have the volumes in searches to drive revenues in performance advertising.
So Microsoft has to probably buy out Yahoo's search business and also do some major rebranding to ensure they improve their share in the search business.
2009 promises to be an exciting year ahead as we watch Yahoo with a new management and Microsoft with a new brand go at Google for Market Share.
The question in everyones mind is why Kumo? Did Microsoft consider other names before they decided on Kumo? Did they do a consumer research to see if Kumo has any preconceived notions attached to it? How would it be compared to Yahoo Search and Google Search?
Well, our news is that these names were considered before Kumo was finally decided:
In all this selection came the bid for Yahoo and maybe there was a section in the team that the Yahoo Search Brand is better than "Live". But we all know what happened to Microsoft's bid for Yahoo and then for Yahoo's Search Business. The bid for Yahoo's search business is still not a closed chapter and keeps coming back into the news.
We are also not sure why Microsoft thinks there is a need to change the branding for Live Search.
Microsoft’s search engine Live Search is rumored to be going in for a rebranded effort in 2009. Sites across the internet report that the domain name Kumo.com got just transferred to Microsoft and points to an internet server at the company.
Will the change in branding really work for Microsoft? Microsoft can name their search engine but they probably need to relook at their product and compare it with Google.
Microsoft must have obviously done their research well but im sure they know that Microsoft needs to dramatically offer something superior and pathbreakingly new to shift some users away from Google.
As we move ahead, I will try and capture all I can about Live Search and Kumo as it unfolds. Do give you comments and suggestions on what all is happening in this space.
Look forward to a new and exciting product from Microsoft to take on the Search Giant Google.
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