I was a little curious and anxious to see the finish of what seemed to be the deal of the century – Microsoft acquiring Yahoo. Well, Yahoo said ‘no’ and the waves calmed down.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “the proposal would see Yahoo hand over its search advertising operation to Google in a deal that could yield Yahoo as much as $1bn in new revenues”. The publication cited anonymous sources within Yahoo corporation as saying that the outsourcing deal had been granted initial approval and will move forward. It is about an advertising deal being pushed by Google.

Since the acquisition offer was first made, some analysts have speculated that Yahoo would seek out a deal with former rival Google in attempt to preserve its independence. Other rumours placed Yahoo in a deal with AOL, the American giant.

You all know what happened when Microsoft made the first offer. We all want to see what the outcome will be, and how Yahoo will preserve its independence. I’d rather see Microsoft gone, than Yahoo. And I’m sure many people would choose Yahoo over Microsoft.

I grew up with Yahoo. Search engine, email, instant messaging. I still use the email and the Messenger. So, Yahoo, keep it up, don’t go with Microsoft.

Infoworld announces that MSN is going to put advertisement on mobile phones.

Microsoft trails its biggest competitors in the PC-based online advertising market in bringing ads to mobile users, but its late start may not have any significant effect. “AOL and Yahoo have previously introduced display ads, but the mobile user base is still on the small side compared to the Net, so they’re not truly late,” said Greg Sterling, an analyst following mobile search as part of a joint venture between Sterling Market Research and Opus Research. “It’s not like there’s a huge opportunity cost here or revenue lost.” Google also supports ads for mobile users.

So far, it looks like the mobile environment is echoing the PC world in terms of mobile advertising market share from the search leaders, Sterling said. However, because it’s such a small and changing market, any of the participants could take the lead. “It’ll continue to be fluid for the foreseeable future,” he said.

In addition to the new display ads, Microsoft also introduced some new features to its MSN Mobile offering. Users can now buy movie tickets on their phones through a deal that MSN Mobile has with MovieTickets.com.

It seems that MSN Search is doing more and more changes. Two weeks ago, MSN announced that they introduced a new Live Search “relevant, faster and easier to use”. They offered us a press release and a fact sheet containing all changes made.

A few days ago, MSN announced again new and improved product results in web search, and a MSN shopping update. More relevant results, reduced spam and a bigger index.

Here is a screenshot of their new appearance:

I, personally like the old one with cooler blue/green colours. The new fonts and colours resemble a lot Yahoo’s and Google’s. So, MSN wants to go with the flow and align to Yahoo and Google tendencies.

What I really like is the way MSN Image search behaves. You scroll down to the last result, and more results appear, scroll down again, and the AJAX works one more time and shows you more images.

The war continues and Yahoo (who previously launched Search Assist) upgrades its search experience and adds multimedia content in results. Yahoo is attempting to drive more search traffic via its homepage – one of the web’s most popular destinations.

Here are some recommendations that may help MSNBot and other web crawlers effectively index and rank your site. We’ve also provided a list of items and techniques that MSN Search discourages.

Technical recommendations for your website

* Use only well-formed HTML code in your pages. Ensure that all tags are closed, and that all links function properly. If your site contains broken links, MSNBot may not be able to index your site effectively, and people may not be able to reach all of your pages.
* If you move a page, set up the page’s original URL to direct people to the new page, and tell them whether the move is permanent or temporary. For more information, see What to do when your site moves.
* Make sure MSNBot is allowed to crawl your site and is not on your list of web crawlers that are prohibited from indexing your site.
* Use a robots.txt file or meta tags to control how MSNBot and other web crawlers index your site. The robots.txt file tells web crawlers which files and folders it is not allowed to
crawl. The Web Robots Pagesprovide detailed information on the robots.txt Robots Exclusion standard. This site may be available in English only.
* Keep your URLs simple and static. Complicated or frequently changed URLs are difficult to use as link destinations. For example, the URL www.example.com/mypage is easier for MSNBot to crawl and for people to type than a long URL with multiple extensions. Also, a URL that doesn’t change is easier for people to remember, which makes it a more likely link destination from other sites.

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MSN is getting into the business of offering online searches of books and other writings, and says its approach aims to avoid the legal tussles met by rival Google Inc.

The Redmond-based software giant said that it will avoid copyright issues for now by initially focusing mainly on books, academic materials and other publications that are in the public domain. MSN plans to initially work with an industry organization called the Open Content Alliance to let users search about 150,000 published documents. A test version of the product is promised for this year.

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