Noah Mallin poses the question of whether Yahoo has been the victim of schadenfraude from the entire marketing industry--that is, we're all taking pleasure in the Web giant's bad fortune. While the company has admittedly faced major challenges in recent months, Mallin outlines areas in which Yahoo is charging forward--particularly with search. "A close look suggests that Yahoo hasn't given up on search and in fact may have the pieces in place for, if not a comeback, at least a stabilization of their fortunes," he says. "The first bit of evidence is the re-jiggering of their search algorithms …

When ICANN changed the rules for top-level domain (TLD) names last month, Webmasters imagined an unlimited number of new possible Web site addresses. And the country of Montenegro was seemingly one of the first beneficiaries of the change, as it was granted .me as its official TLD. Companies with visions of Web addresses like optimize.me in their heads salivated at the chance to buy a .me domain once they became available through GoDaddy, Montenegro's partner. But the experience quickly became a nightmare as thousands of people that tried to register .me domains were charged for domains that actually …

While most of the media frenzy surrounding Microsoft's proposed acquisition of Yahoo has died down, the deal still had the potential to change the entire search and online advertising landscape--and as such, there's still fodder for discourse. For example, search execs at yesterday's RBC Capital conference were vocal about wishing the deal had gone through, if only to be left with a real alternative to Google. "We always have a need for multiple sources of quality traffic and we don't see that need going away as Google's share increases," Will Margiloff, CEO and founder of Innovation Interactive," during …

The latest cartoon from Big Oak illustrates what the real world would look like if there were "paid links" in our everyday conversations--and acknowledges that many companies need to purchase links, at least when trying to establish a Web presence. "Link buying has certainly gotten a bad rap lately," says Brad Smart "But, you know, sometimes buying links is all the little guy can do to compete with larger more established sites. And while the credo of good content will draw links, it doesn't work that way in the real world much of the time. Small site owners …

Earlier this week, Microsoft upgraded the Live Search homepage and tweaked the user interface, and the software giant has also made changes to its suite of Webmaster Tools. It's the first major upgrade since the company released the suite last fall. The additions include a "Crawl Issues" tab on the main page, which informs users of any problems that the Live Search bot encountered in trying to spider their site. Issues include 404 errors and unsupported content types, among others. There is also more extensive backlink data, as well as new data-refining tools so that users …

Lee Odden poses the question of whether companies using SEO are thinking not just about how well their content is optimized for their target audience--but whether the content they're optimizing is the right content for said audience. "It's an important distinction to make, optimizing the right content for the right audience, but many companies and their SEO consultants tend to focus on content that can convert directly into revenue," Odden says. "This is a reasonable expectation but there are other types of content, communications and audiences that affect the bottom line like increasing the likelihood of getting media …

Hana Odrusek offers tips for ensuring that your landing pages are as relevant as possible. "When there's a clear connection between the information contained in your ads and keywords and the information found on your landing page, your campaigns are more likely to pass through editorial with a clean bill of health and increase conversions," Odrusek says. For example, you'll need to make sure that the keywords referenced in the ad actually appear on the landing page. "If you effectively include your keywords on your landing page, it helps to guide your visitors and makes them feel that …

Brad Goldberg is general manager of the Search Business Group at Microsoft, where he oversees product management, planning and marketing for Live Search. Eric Enge picks Goldberg's brain in this interview, asking questions about Microsoft's game plan for gaining search market share and the cashback program, among other things. With regards to market share, Goldberg acknowledges that Live Search had made modest gains according to the latest comScore report--but notes that paying too much attention to monthly fluctuations wasn't part of Microsoft's long term strategy. That strategy focuses on increasing the relevancy of results, simplifying the search process …