Yahoo!'s Cofounder: Emerging Markets Critical
(Extracted from InfoWorld, April 27, 2007) Yahoo! intends to focus on emerging markets like India, China, Vietnam, Indonesia, and Brazil to attract more users, said company cofounder David Filo during a visit this week to India. In a wide-ranging interview Wednesday with IDG News Service, Filo said that Yahoo! will continue to expand in various countries, even those that do not have democratic governments, as it believes that the Internet and some of Yahoo!'s products could be agents of change.

3 Reasons Yahoo! Local Search Can Dominate Google
(Extracted from Search Engine Journal, August 16, 2007) This week has been filled with news and commentary regarding Yahoo!’s release of the new Yahoo! Local. The enhanced system integrates a number of new and exciting elements, all presented to the user in order to deliver a higher quality experience. For search marketers, Yahoo! Local is exciting because it can be identified as one weak spot where Google can quickly be dethroned. Of course, that all depends on how things play out — but I’m impressed by what I am seeing. With that idea in mind, here are three reasons Yahoo! Local should become the local search giant. Unlike Google, Yahoo! operates as a true web portal as it provides a wealth of services to it’s audience of users. Everything, from games to fantasy sports, entertainment news to auto reviews — is all in one place. Google, once acclaimed for it’s simplicity — cannot compete here. We have all heard the real estate mantra of "Location, Location, Location…" and in this case, Yahoo! has all the prime real estate to attract local search users.

Yahoo! Is the New Philly Phanatic
(Extracted from Motley Fool, August 16, 2007) Stop the presses! Yahoo! has landed yet another deal to help enhance a local newspaper's website with Yahoo!'s wider network of online advertising inventory. Philly.com, the online hub of privately owned The Philadelphia Inquirer, is the latest player to team up with Yahoo!. The search engine giant's consortium of local media partnerships now covers more than 400 daily newspapers, representing a circulation of more than 21 million. It's a good place to be for Yahoo!, with the local Internet advertising market projected to grow from $3.5 billion annually today to $12.5 billion over the next six years. Cities have come to count on their local newspaper websites to keep them up to date with the latest news, events, and job listings. Partnering with them is perfect for Yahoo! as it seeks to erode rival Google's dominance in paid search. Yahoo!'s ability to line up so many papers is impressive.

Search Engines Top Best Online Brands
(Extracted from PC Magazine, August 16, 2007) In a battle of users' favorite online brands, search engines Google and Yahoo! topped a recent Jupiter Research poll that surveyed Internet users' preferred Web sites of choice. When broken out by age, however, MySpace proved just as popular among younger respondents. Of the 3,500 people polled by Jupiter analysts, 36 percent cited Google as their favorite online brand, with 32 percent selecting Yahoo! and 20 percent choosing online retailer Amazon.com. eBay and MySpace ranked fourth and fifth, with Microsoft/MSN, AOL and Apple trailing them, according to the report. Broken down by gender, there was a slight preference among men for Google while women chose Yahoo!.

A Remodel Opens Door for Yahoo!
(Extracted from Investor’s Business Daily, August 16, 2007) Yahoo! has landed a fairly new success in, of all things, real estate. Yahoo! has emerged as the fastest-growing online destination for home shoppers. It's well ahead of rival portals AOL and Microsoft. In the past two months it trails just one site. In June, traffic at the Yahoo! Real Estate site soared a whopping 211% vs. a year earlier, says market tracker Nielsen/NetRatings. And in July it shot up another 136%, to 3.7 million. No other site came close to that growth. For the two months, Yahoo! ranked No. 2 overall in the U.S. to Realtor.com in unique visitors for the month. But Realtor.com was down 3% in June and up just 24% in July. In July 2006, Yahoo Real Estate ranked No. 11. "The quality of Yahoo's Web site is pretty good," said Phil Immel, the founder of RealEstateGuru.com. "It operates like a search engine. You can put criteria for what kind of home you're looking for and it will continue to automatically forward you e-mails of listings that best match that (query)."

Yahoo! Banks On SmartAds To Lift Display Business
(Extracted from the Wall Street Journal, August 15, 2007) In the middle of Yahoo! Inc.'s plan to reinvigorate its big, sluggish display-advertising business lies a new breed of diminutive, chameleon-like advertisements. The ads, which the Internet giant began offering to travel-industry advertisers a month ago, change colors, images and messages in response to what Yahoo! knows about the Web surfer viewing them. A woman in New York who researched plane tickets to Miami on Yahoo! Travel could be shown two days later an airline ad in a feminine hue including a fare quote for flights there. Dubbed SmartAds, the ad type could help make Yahoo!'s display inventory more competitive and lucrative. That is because targeted ads are more effective at engaging consumers and, therefore, more attractive and valuable to advertisers. If SmartAds are a success, Yahoo! could also use them to bolster two other display-ad initiatives, the Right Media ad exchange it recently acquired and a budding business providing display ads to partner sites such as eBay Inc.

Yahoo! Beats Out Google in Customer Satisfaction Survey
(Extracted from Los Angeles Times, August 14, 2007) The search engine juggernaut was overtaken for the first time by rival Yahoo! Inc. in a University of Michigan customer satisfaction survey scheduled for release today. Consumers gave Google a score of 78 out of a possible 100 points, down three points from last year. It was the first time Google slipped below 80 points since 2002, when the company was added to the survey. Meanwhile, Yahoo! gained three points to 79 to secure the top spot. Yahoo!'s ascent reflects consumers' impression, whether deserved or not, that Yahoo! has done a better job of innovating to keep up with the times, said Larry Freed, president of ForeSee Results, which wrote an analysis of the data as a sponsor of the University of Michigan's American Customer Satisfaction Index. Because Google's core search page has retained roughly the same simple, streamlined appearance it has had for years, consumers don't notice the Mountain View, Calif., company's new features, Freed said.

Green Energy Hot, Price Rising
(Extracted from San Jose Business Journal, August 10, 2007) The demand for green energy has grown so much that the market for renewable energy credits may award the movement its greatest honor: an increase in price. Among the big consumers of the energy credits are Yahoo! Inc., which just signed up for 1.6 million kilowatt hours of green power locally -- the equivalent of half the annual energy output of a large wind turbine. Cisco Systems Inc. is another big purchaser. Earlier this month, Silicon Valley Power signed up Yahoo! Inc. to buy 1,604 million kwh of power. That comes to about 6.5 percent of Yahoo!'s Santa Clara energy need. A slight cost increase for the renewable energy credits will not deter Yahoo! from the energy credit program, says Rick Cuevas, senior facilities manager.