Tag: yahoo

Yahoo launches Fire Eagle

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 13, 2008

Yahoo launched Fire Eagle yesterday, a web service that lets users input their location for use by other web applications. Web developers can use its API to create applications that then use this information to provide location-based services to the user.

The user can input their location through a variety of methods, with the most antiquated being the entry of their location on the Fire Eagle website or even, in the hyper Web 2.0 world, SMS. However it also allows phone-based applications to broadcast the user’s location to the web service which allows for real-time uses of local data that open a lot more application possibilites.

The user has control over what location details are broadcast, but privacy advocates are sure to cringe at the encroaching of the smart cloud that knows more about you, as the initial uses for this are largely related to commercial opportunities in your proximity.

Are you imagining an ad network that serves ads relevant to where your laptop or phone currently is? I am and it’s a frickin’ “Starbucks on the right” banner that I think could wring a few more bucks a day out of those caffeine junkies.

Google crosses 70% search market share in US

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 12, 2008

Research firms Neilsen Online and Hitwise have released traffic information that shows strong Google growth in the US market. Google’s audience through its variety of web properties grew by a million from June to July to 129 million (Google has the largest audience in the US through its properties like Google.com and YouTube.com). But even more damning for its rivals (namely Microsoft and Yahoo), and arguably for the webmaster community, is the information Hitwise released today about the most coveted traffic of all: search traffic. Hitwise announced that Google has crossed the 70% mark (they cite 70.77%) which is up 10% from July of last year and 2% from June of this year. Here’s the rest of the search landscape that Google dominates:

  • Google – 70.77%
  • Yahoo – 18.65%
  • MSN/Live – 5.36%
  • Ask – 3.53%

And here’s a graph from Hitwise:

Yahoo search update for August 2008

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 4, 2008

Quick heads up for the SEO crowd: Yahoo search is being updated with new indexing and ranking algorithms today. You should see significant changes in their results as they are being rolled out.

Yahoo launches the Yahoo Music API

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 4, 2008

Yahoo announced their Yahoo Music API today, releasing another tool in their open strategy of providing services to web developers. Their music API allows other websites to tap into some of the Yahoo Music content. Their API can be used for catalog data, such as searching Yahoo Music by artist, or getting charts like the new releases or popular music or for user data, like recommendations for the user. The user data requires Yahoo’s browser-based authentication while the catalog data does not.

Right now, the rate limit is 5,000 queries a day, which is too low for me to consider it worth building on yet but hopefully they’ll announce a paid service for commercial sites that want to build something serious on it.

Check out the API and apply for an API key here or have a look at their example application (Facebook app, requiring Facebook login).

Yahoo claims that Yahoo Buzz is social bookmarking leader over Digg

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 3, 2008

On Friday Yahoo held its annual shareholder meeting, and while the Yahoo board’s deal with Carl Icahn’s opposing slate of directors has removed a lot of the drama from the meeting it was still interesting. And one of the things I’d like to highlight is a claim made by Yahoo president Susan Decker about Yahoo Buzz, Yahoo’s social media site that’s currently in BETA.

Steven Shankland blogs on CNET that at around 11:13 am Decker boasted that Yahoo Buzz has “displaced Digg as the top way to find content across the entire Internet”.

Without supporting information it’s hard to assess the validity of this claim, but given Yahoo’s size and audience it would be foolish for Social Media Marketers to ignore this service in their online marketing efforts.

Right now, it is a bit of a walled garden, and it seems that they will differ from Digg in that some editorial control comes from relying on trusted publishers. Whether relying on feeds from screened publishers is a BETA restriction or a long-term approach to Yahoo Buzz is unclear. But you can get a head start and apply to be a publisher with Yahoo Buzz here.

The new del.icio.us at Delicious.com

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 1, 2008

Yahoo launched the new del.icio.us at Delicious.com, releasing its long-awaited new version of the popular social bookmarking website. According to their blog, the release focuses on changes to:

  • Speed – Yahoo claims to have addressed scalability issues for Delicious and improved page loading times.
  • Search – The search feature has been rewritten to work better and handle more social filtering of the search results.
  • Design – The site has had a complete design overhaul. They have a what’s new page to explain the new navigation and layout.

Yahoo Search now uses Yelp and LinkedIn apps by default

Posted by Robert Gentel – August 1, 2008

Yahoo’s response to Google’s universal search is SearchMonkey. Inspired by the JavaScript-based website extension from Greasemonkey it is a Facebook Apps style platform where apps (called “Enhancements”) run on Yahoo’s search results, extending them with structured data. Yahoo allows users to add and remove these apps from their search results through the Yahoo Search Gallery.

Have a look at what it looks like in practice. In this search, Yelp.com’s result in the search now has structured data from Yelp’s search enhancement.