Reuters is reported as saying that Yahoo is currently seeking to sell its Job Search website, HotJobs, to one of its competitors. The Rumour currently surrounds Monster.com and CareerBuilder.com.

The past week has seen many rumours floating around about Yahoo and Microsoft. If we were to consider these rumours as true then the sale of HotJobs would make total sense. But this does lead to the possibility that Yahoo is considering getting completely out of the search engine game. HotJobs would not be an asset that would be of interest to Microsoft and therefore would potentially be sold before any agreement was made.

We can understand why Yahoo would want to concentrate on advertising but moving away from search would be a very big move for Yahoo.

What do you think, Leave your comments below and share your opinion!

Article by Creative SEO

Yahoo has been promising a redesign of their home page for months and finally it’s here, but was it worth the wait?

Yahoo seem to be having a very good time, second quarter earnings are up and rumours of a Microsoft deal seem to be back in the public arena. Yahoo have updated their website with a new home page, but have they listened to their users?

“By focusing on what people have told us they want, our new homepage is designed to help them stay on top of what is going on in their world, and in the rest of the world,” said Ari Balogh, EVP of products and CTO, in a statement.

A bold claim but although the new homepage can be user personalised there still remains one problem, advertising! It’s everywhere, all over the homepage and in the My favourites section. No matter how hard you might want to personalise the homepage, you will never be able to remove the advertising. Is this really what Yahoo’s users were expecting?

Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has admitted that Yahoo has a problem with excessive advertising, so why was this not addressed with the redesign of the site?

This short sighted view could potentially upset many of its users, Google offers a clean and simple user interface and iGoogle can be configured and personalised in any way a user sees fit. Yahoo have a long way to go before they truly understand there users.

Article by Creative SEO UK

Yahoo is all set to launch a brand new search feature, later this week, which is hoped will increase Yahoo’s share of the search engine marketplace. But will the new feature truly challenge Google and increase Yahoo’s active user numbers?

Search Pad is a new cloud based smart tool which will recognise when a user is doing research using search queries from within the Yahoo interface. After three searches for related search queries a small popup will appear and ask if search pad should be taking notes. Search pad will keep a running list of all the sites you have been searching for and have selected, displaying the page title, URL and snippet information. This would be particularly useful if a user was looking to buy a product and wanted to compare prices, reviews and demos. But why is Search Pad a threat to Google?

With the massive growth of the internet and the increase in new indexed websites, search engines have been battling to offer their users more and more relevant information. This has become increasingly difficult and as a result new methods of filtering and displaying content are being investigated. Google is working on personalised search and a number of other similar features and filters. Search Pad is the first indication that Yahoo are looking to refine and improve their search engine results. Search pad itself is a useful and interesting product, but what is more important is the technology behind it and the data which is being recorded and data based. Potentially Yahoo will be able to use Search Pad data to understand search habits, improve related search results and more effectively assess keyword popularity. It is possible that like Google, Yahoo are looking at ways to offer their users personalised search results based on their users specific search habits and demographics. This would potentially dramatically improve the quality of Yahoo’s results.

This is an important first step in Yahoo’s ongoing development and it will be very interesting to see how Yahoo plans to move forward.

Article by Creative SEO

Yahoo’s Site Explorer has had a makeover and is now sporting a brand new look and feel.

Site Explorer has been around for a few year and was designed to offer site owners a set of tools that would offer them better visibility into how their site was being indexed in Yahoo. Site owners can submit feeds and sitemaps, delete Urls and report Spam. Probably the most successful service is the Dynamic URL Rewriting.

Yahoo have now launched an updated version of Site Explorer which can be found on a separate Url, http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/new . The New Site Explorer offers a more dynamic interface and has been designed to allow Yahoo to continue to add new functionality. It’s worth checking out the changes, let us know your thoughts.

Yahoo are to lay off 1,430 employees on Wednesday of this week, as reported by the Dow Jones’ AllThingsD site. Yang has also noted that more jobs might be at risk in 2009, an anonymous source is said to claim another 500 positions may go.

Yahoo move to reduce its workforce by 10% is a direct result of the current economic situation. Let’s hope 2009 see an end to the financial downturn, is Yahoo at risk of closure and are Google slowly monopolizing the online search engine industry. Only time will tell.