Loren Baker poses the question of whether Yahoo will be well-served to sell off its search business--and uses the growing success of AOL's Platform-A to illustrate why the answer may be yes. "As Google, Yahoo and Microsoft are battling over who will acquire Facebook, who will buy part of Yahoo and who will compete with Google, an Internet giant is stocking its armory with some of the best and most integrated offerings to one day topple all three companies," Baker says. That giant is AOL, and when you add up the ad network, social media and …

Loren McDonald touts the benefits marketers can gain from keeping SEO in mind when crafting their newsletters. "If you're a b-to-b company or invested in building a brand, a simple but often overlooked way to increase your keyword rankings is to optimize the content of your e-mail newsletter," he says. Start by keeping your target keywords in mind during the article creation stage, and include these phrases in the titles and headlines. McDonald also suggests mining the email analytics data to find new terms, as well as second- and third-tier words that may be less competitive--but still relevant--for …

Most lead generation campaigns have an information capture form at the end of the search pathway. And as Joe Kerschbaum points out, if a user's first click leads to a poorly functioning form, then the value of the PPC campaign it originated from is negated. Assess your info capture form in terms of whether there's too much or too little copy, and whether the details you're asking for are actually relevant to your end goal. Forcing all users to provide a phone number may make sense for a high-end item that requires well-qualified leads. But asking potential email …

The rationale behind a site's various categorization schemes is a topic that comes up often during Web site effectiveness testing at the Rimm-Kaufman Group. "How to categorize and present major navbar links," says Alan Rimm-Kaufman. "How to categorize and present subnav links. How to categorize and present site search results. And so on." And though your current categories may make sense to you, they could actually be standing in the way of conversions because they don't make sense to your visitors. Rimm-Kaufman says that using data from site search analytics and usability tests can illustrate where your categorization …

Jonathan Mendez delivers a comprehensive reference point for multivariate testing with this post, which includes links to six separate articles. Each link covers a different aspect of multivariate landing page testing, from a breakdown of the factorial designs (or choosing of specific on-page factors) that actually make the test work, to the set up and analysis of the resulting data. "If you're just getting started with MVT hopefully this helps make sense of it all to you," Mendez says." If you're already experienced hopefully this will give you some new ideas and methods."

John Ellis provides a number of examples of how marketers can use insights gleaned from PPC campaigns to influence their offline marketing efforts. First up are the analytics from ad testing--including headlines, copy and landing pages. You can use this data to influence your offline messaging. "Ad rotation gives the advertiser great insight into the mind of the customer," Ellis says. "For instance, do customers click more on ads that offer 'Free Shipping' or 'Free Item with Purchase'?" Meanwhile, using features like broad matching offers further consumer insights, as you can see the words that your …

Henry Blodget piggybacks on the latest scoop from All Things Digital's Kara Swisher regarding the latest Microhoo developments. Sources said that the two parties were discussing a search outsourcing deal--not unlike the one Yahoo has been pursuing with Google--and Blodget argues that it would still be a step in the wrong direction for them both. "We were encouraged when we heard that Microsoft (MSFT) and Yahoo (YHOO) are now talking about an 'alternative transaction,'" Blodget says. "We thought that, finally, the companies might be discussing a combination we think would be smart: Microsoft spinning its Internet operations and …

Late last year, MSN upgraded Live Search for Windows Mobile and included a feedback option that let users send their requests directly to the engineering team. And this month's update to the mobile search platform stems from those user requests. The improvements include a weather icon that provides current conditions and a four-day forecast, and better Bluetooth support. In addition, the team integrated more features with Live Search maps, with new cities added to the live traffic conditions module, as well as the ability to map contacts directly from your address book. The core search function …

Jackie Baker gives GolfAsian.com, an agency that plans... well, golf vacations in Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam, the once-over for keyword usage, link building efforts and overall site design. While GolfAsian.com's Webmaster has done the necessary work by crafting unique, keyword-rich title tags and meta descriptions for each page, Baker says that he's narrowed the site's scope by using too many geo-targeted terms. "SEO will serve GolfAsian.com best by targeting visitors who are looking for a golf vacation, but aren't sure where they want to go," she says. "I would recommend using broader terms throughout the website that aren't …

Laura Gallow serves up a take on the search developments in '08 from an investor's perspective. Right off the bat she says that finance types shouldn't count Yahoo out--even in the wake of a 20% share drop after the botched Microsoft buyout. "Yahoo! (Nasdaq) is not dead by a long shot," Gallos says. "While the 2 year trend has been a decline, there is much positive speculation about the future of company and thus the stock." Google rode out a rocky first quarter (well -- speculations about one, at least), so she thinks that the share price won't …