Ask.com’s ‘Top Questions for 2009

On a different note, Ask.com has released the top questions that were searched in their search engine during the year 2009. Some of these are similar to the usual popular search keywords that are regularly searched by Internet users while some are quite crazy too! Though ‘Michael Jackson’ seems to be the most popular search keyword for most of the search engines, here in case of Ask.com the legend could not be a part of toppers list. Just to console the soul of the ultra famous Jackson Ask.com has listed the question “Who is the father of Michael Jackson’s children?” as part of the top 10 list.

Other usual questions that made to toppers list were “How much should I weigh?”, “How do I get pregnant?” and “How do I get out of debt fast?”. Other then these some of the weird search questions were “What is Miley Cyrus’s phone number?” and “What is twitter?”. Quite tricky questions, eh?

Ask has also compiled list of top 10 questions for various categories like beauty, traveling, personal finance and pets etc. I couldn’t resist listing some of the questions that have made to the top of various sections. Have a look at them, enjoy reading them, and use them in your blog so as to hit the top of the ask’s search result pages.

• How much should you tip a hairdresser?
• Why do cats purr?
• Can dogs take asprin?
• Which came first the chicken or the egg?
• What is the best way to pack a suitcase?

Bing’s popular search keywords for the year 2009

The popular search keywords within Bing were the usual ones with Michael Jackson topping the list. Twitter, Swine Flu, and Stock Market were the others in the toppers list. ‘Cash for clunkers’ was another popular search keyword that stood at number 7 place this year.

Top Yahoo Keywords For 2009

The top three spots were bagged by Michael Jackson, Twilight, and World Wrestling Entertainment respectively. Rest two spots in yahoo keyword were bagged by Megan Fox and Britney Spears. These two have been part of this list since the year 2001 when Yahoo originally started to release such data. The ghost of recession kept looming on the brains of different Internet surfers and henceforth Yahoo! compiled the list of top economy related yahoo keywords. The yahoo keyword that topped the list was ‘coupons’. Obama was the top searched politician for 2009 and hence an top 10 Obama-related yahoo keywords was also compiled. The very famous inaugration was at the top followed by biography, speeches, and stimulus plan.

The year started with people madly searching for “What is Twitter?” but later on the topic changed to discussions related with Twitter. Seems like search results helped the planet quick enough so that they can move to better queries!

Google Zeitgeist!

Well, it’s Google and it has to be different. So the name Zeitgeist! As even a kid will guess, Michael Jackson topped the popular search keywords list for 2009 while facebook bagged the second spot. Surprisingly, Spanish social networking website Tuenti bagged third spotwhile Turkish based social networking website Sanalika bagged the fifth spot. Twitter settled down with fourth spot. Barack Obama was at number four position in the fastest falling search keywords just because his presence in News Channels made it easy for people to keep track of his activities. Real Madrid bagged the number 1 spot for those fastest rising in sports while acai berry bagged number one spot in food and drinks list.

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After the broken deal with Microsoft we haven’t seen anything new happening over at the Yahoo! office (although they launched Shine while the deal was on its peak). Now Yahoo! looks all set to launch a new homepage which will surely be soothing for your eyes. The new homepage isn’t highly cluttered and here you have the chance to suggest them some new feature which you think will make your life a cakewalk!

Check the screenshot (the red arrow) and you will see the Gmail Logo there. In the sidebar you can add features as per your ease and even the non-Yahoo! services.

The home page is still under testing phase and many new features will be incorporated in the time to come. One thing is for sure, people love changes and new homepage will surely be appreciated if it helps the users.

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Now it looks like Microsoft has waited a lot for Yahoo! to respond and finally they have given Yahoo a three week time period after which they say they will directly approach their shareholders instead of the Yahoo Board of Directors.

This is what the letter has to say:

Dear Members of the Board:

It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! at a 62% premium to its closing price on January 31, 2008, the day prior to our announcement. Our goal in making such a generous offer was to create the basis for a speedy and ultimately friendly transaction. Despite this, the pace of the last two months has been anything but speedy.

While there has been some limited interaction between management of our two companies, there has been no meaningful negotiation to conclude an agreement. We understand that you have been meeting to consider and assess your alternatives, including alternative transactions with others in the industry, but we’ve seen no indication that you have authorized Yahoo! management to negotiate with Microsoft. This is despite the fact that our proposal is the only alternative put forward that offers your shareholders full and fair value for their shares, gives every shareholder a vote on the future of the company, and enhances choice for content creators, advertisers, and consumers.

During these two months of inactivity, the Internet has continued to march on, while the public equity markets and overall economic conditions have weakened considerably, both in general and for other Internet-focused companies in particular. At the same time, public indicators suggest that Yahoo!’s search and page view shares have declined. Finally, you have adopted new plans at the company that have made any change of control more costly.

By any fair measure, the large premium we offered in January is even more significant today. We believe that the majority of your shareholders share this assessment, even after reviewing your public disclosures relating to your future prospects.

Given these developments, we believe now is the time for our respective companies to authorize teams to sit down and negotiate a definitive agreement on a combination of our companies that will deliver superior value to our respective shareholders, creating a more efficient and competitive company that will provide greater value and service to our customers. If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board. The substantial premium reflected in our initial proposal anticipated a friendly transaction with you. If we are forced to take an offer directly to your shareholders, that action will have an undesirable impact on the value of your company from our perspective which will be reflected in the terms of our proposal.

It is unfortunate that by choosing not to enter into substantive negotiations with us, you have failed to give due consideration to a transaction that has tremendous benefits for Yahoo!’s shareholders and employees. We think it is critically important not to let this window of opportunity pass.

Sincerely,
Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Office
Microsoft Corp.

What say? Are you ready to see the face to face WWE between Microsoft and Yahoo!?

This time I will keep you updated with the happenings..

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After Bill Gates showed interest in buying Yahoo the Sunnyvale, California-based company has been trying its best to retain hold of the reader base which it has earned in years. Looks like they are not ready to give up their business and Yahoo Shine is another attempt to cash on the 40 million females visitors which yahoo has in its bag.

Basically shine is a blog with a magazine style theme which focuses very well on the various categories like parenting, sex and love, healthy living, food, career and money, entertainment, fashion, beauty, home life, and astrology.

The homepage also give you the option to create your own blog (once you are logged in) and you can even leave comments for various posts. This commenting feature will attract many bloggers like me so that they can publicize their tiny blogs.

I am sure this project will add some bucks to the bid which Microsoft will offer for Yahoo!

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To be frank OpenID has been suffering from huge marketing problems. People have accounts over a couple of websites which support the OpenID concept but I am very sure that they have no idea what is OpenID and what are it’s benefits. People still prefer using their respective login accounts for different services instead of using OpenID for all of them.

But with the recent announcement by Yahoo that it’s 926 applications will be supporting OpenID and Google enabling the OpenID support for the blogger users, the OpenID concept is set to rise. I hope the two giants will be able to bring the concept of OpenID to the masses and some day I will be able to use one single ID for my yahoo, gmail, orkut, wordpress, blogger ….. accounts!

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Google Suggests suggest you an example of what you were searching, displaying along with the example the number of results for that keyword. Yahoo, a little late though, has also launched it suggestions tool Yahoo Search Suggest. Similar in working like Google Suggestions Yahoo forgets to tell you the number of results for that keyword.

Google Suggests FAQ states that it has integrated the technology with Google News too. Its a different case that I wasn’t able to find that working. Yahoo on the other hand is still working with there new tools bug fixes.

Google and Yahoo both let you disable the suggest feature if you find it disturbing. I do not find it disturbing though. Its more of a helper many times. Like if I was to search for Arnold Swarchenegger both would display the full spelling when I type Arnold S. It saves me from writing down that sir name. Quite a help!

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“Paris drops dumb blond act”, “Paris plays for sympathy”, “Hot Hollywood beach bods” These and many more are the expected headlines which will now regularly appear on the new Yahoo Celebrity Website “omg“. No doubt why such sites drive maximum traffic.

Unfortunately, Yahoo! OMG offers no RSS feeds for any of the content. Still now you can be rest assured that one of the worlds largest visited portals will keep you updated with celeb news which you want.

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“This is not a knock on Google per se, but Yahoo has taken that a very specific starting point — your town or neighborhood,” said Gartner analyst Mike McGuire. “The context of many mobile phone searches is going to be very local. That starting point is key, like road traffic in my area.”

Yahoo is one of the biggest rivals of Google. Ofcourse Google is the leader of desktop search but Yahoo has been making good attempts lately to hit back hard on Google and OneSearch, as Yahoo calls its mobile phone service, differs from how computer Web search delivers raw sets of links. OneSearch delivers locally relevant answers, instead Yahoo serves up a list of actual information, such as news headlines, images from Yahoo’s Flickr photos site, business listings, local weather and links to other Web sites.

Rather than showing popular movies or critical reviews, for example, Yahoo search lists local theaters playing a particular movie, user ratings of the film and news headlines related to the movie. Users only need to enter a zip code or city name for Yahoo OneSearch to begin delivering local search results.

Google takes a user several more steps to reach the same information as Yahoo OneSearch.

OneSearch runs sponsored advertising tied to Web search results and display advertisements, or mini-banner ads designed for mobile phone screens.

Starting in the United States, with international markets to follow later this year, the Sunnyvale, California-based company said it planned to take advantage of the inherently local nature of many Web searches performed on phones. Alarm bells for Google are ringing.

Source: Reuters

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Initially it will look like the old my yahoo page where you can add and remove widgets the way you want. RSS, weather forecasts, TV listings etc are the legacy widgets which continue to give there own touches to your own My Yahoo page.

Now the big one. The biggest change is its art to learn from your past. The first time you open My Yahoo! you’ll find a personalized page designed just for you, based on how you’ve used Yahoo! in the past. If you frequently use Yahoo! to look up movies or TV listings, you’ll have access to those items. This is a pretty handy feature if you don’t feel like spending hours customizing your start page.

Time for a upgrade. Click Here

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Yahoo is the same company due to which google had to shutdown google answers as yahoo answers attracted all the traffic. Yahoo is the same company due to which google still faces problems on giving equivalent fame to gtalk as has been earned by yahoo messenger. Yahoo has been giving stiff competition to the computing giant Google every now and then. Copying digg to create there own similar platform shouldn’t have been a entrepreneur step preferred by yahoo.This isn’t enough for you to understand that computing giants can also be copy cats. Here is another one!

Taking inspiration from the Digg model, Microsoft will introduce the MSN Reporter in Norway and Belgium that will allow users to post news headlines and blog postings that other users can rate.by Josephine Roque
Source: BizReporter

The MSN Reporter will work with individual votes generating views customized for the users. Users will be able to check out top news by order of popularity or those garnering the most comments through different views via RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or though their personal Live.com site.Ofcourse the Digg concept is not the proprietary of digg but such steps explain that digg is the talk in the town and giants are ready to cash on it.

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