Jim and Dave had a full plate to chew on this week on Webcology. Between Yahoo! wanting back in the search engine ring and Facebook turning ten we’re glad to say that Justin Beiber never made it into the show today. No complaints yet.
Yahoocology
Good ol’ Marissa Mayer is ready to tango in the search engine world. According to Search Engine Watch author Jenifer Slegg, Mayer has prepared two projects code named Fast Break and Curveball. This is all an attempt to raise Yahoo!’s organic and paid search in-house. Is it possible that Yahoo!’s golden child can make this happen?
Many are sceptic if Yahoo! can achieve this or not. Their one year contract with Microsoft’s Bing ends this year in March but up until then there’s not much Yahoo! can do as Bing provides organic search results and paid advertising. This relationship gets even more complicated because Microsoft powers the international version of Yahoo!. How this will play out for Yahoo is unpredictable mainly because of its variable and uncertain past with search.
According to SEW’s Jennifer Slegg, Microsoft contributes to 31 percent to Yahoo’s revenue. Making a bold move like this and saying goodbye to Microsoft would make this a large gamble. Like Jim said; “If there is anybody more perfect for this job Marissa is.”
Facecology
Did everyone have fun with their little gift from Mark and the FB team? Seems to be that’s the case. The short summary about time wasted on Facebook accompanied by tear jerking music was a sweet success. Even if you didn’t want to do it, you did it anyway. I would agree with Dave Davies that I would have picked different pictures in the video but on another note, I would probably do what Jim did and post a Sid Vicious video as my Facebook Movie.
Googcology
Expedia.com got slapped with a massive penalty from Google forcing Expedia to lose 25% of its visibility on the net according to Forbes. Expedia isn’t the only big power house to get slapped on the wrist by Google; JCPenney as well as Overstock.com survived. Unfortunately, when this type of action occurs it’s not just ranking that is hurt it’s the pocket book. The EXPE stock dipped losing a grip in the stock market birthing proof that a negative online reputation can affect your public trust.
This reminds me when just after the crash of the American economy in the early 2000 many major Ponzi schemes appeared. This is just what happened after the house cleaning done by Google in the last year. As search became cleaner and cleaner the negative link efforts appeared. Many of these link acquisitions were nasty and happened to be sadly unethical; thanks to Google we won’t be seeing much of this in the future.
Laycology
Advertising and marketing can be an interesting world. We often find ourselves scratching at the door of creativity trying to come up with the next best ad. Frito-Lay came up with that next great idea named “Do Us a Flavor”. What they did was allow fans to design a flavor, name it and post it on a bag then share it for voting. Thousands upon thousands entered then shared it socially. Unfortunately, the way the general public took advantage of this by naming the flavor unmentionable names brought it into debate. None the less this brought them epic publicity and an edge with competition.
Sumcology
* Yahoo needs attention
* Facebook knows you best
* Justin Beiber wasn’t mentioned on the show
* Google likes making the big boys sweat
* Hopefully the next flavor of chips isn’t “Dirty Socks”