Yahoo Inc. estimates that its second quarter job cuts cost the company between $22 million and $27 million.

The Sunnyvale company (NASDAQ:YHOO) made the disclosure in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing on Friday, updating an April 21filing in which CEO Carol Bartz announced plans to cut about 700 jobs.

The company said the pre-tax hit for the 5 percent work force reduction was between $30 million and $34 million. That was offset by between $7 million and $8 million in stock-based cash awards it won't have to pay.

Yahoo! (YHOO) will never recover from its botched negotiations with Micrososft (MSFT), in which the larger company offered to buy it in early 2008. The initial offer was for $44.6 billion, or $31 a share. Yahoo! turned the deal down and by November of last year, its stock traded below $9.

Yahoo!’s new CEO, Carol Bartz, has made a series of mistakes early in her tenure, and the company probably cannot recover from them.

Yahoo!’s current dilemma, from a financial standpoint, is that it is not growing and operates on razor thin margins. In the first quarter, the firm made only$121 million on $1.82 billion. The company has no significant margin to keep its earnings positive if revenue drops. Bartz’s initial answer to this was to let people go. Yahoo! fired 1,500 staff members beginning late last year, to save $400 million annually. That may only be the beginning of employee reductions if sales remain weak.

Yahoo! has not developed any effective strategy to have any presence in the fast-growing social network sector. The same can be said of Microsoft (MSFT) and Google (GOOG). Each company may regret its lack of succes in entering the the online world created by MySpace (NWS), Facebook, and Twitter. Because of its size in relationship to Microsoft and Google, Yahoo! can least afford to let major opportunities pass. It is still questionable whether social networks will make money, but Facebook is growing so fast that it may ultimately have more unique visitors than Yahoo!. A large social network relationship would allow the No.2 search company to extend the presence of its technology and its opportunity to make money by getting tens of millions of new users. Yahoo! only has $3.5 billion in cash and short term securities. That is not nearly enough to buy a large social network. Facebook was recently valued at $10 billion which is about half of Yahoo!’s market capitalization.

Yahoo! has not shown that it has an aggressive strategy to move into the mobile search market, a place where it has to be successful to extend its reach beyond the PC. Recent data from Citigroup says that Google has 61% of the mobile search market. Microsoft has shown that it is willing to pay large sums to become the default search software on major cellular platforms. The world’s largest software company struck a deal earlier this year with Verizon Wireless (VZ)(VOD). The terms reportedly give Verizon a minimum of $550 million over five year in exchange for Microsoft being the default search program on Verizon handsets. Yahoo! does not have the cash to be a viable bidder for this kind of placement on large cellular services.
Yahoo!’s most important strategic blunder is likely to be the refusal of CEO Bartz to form a search partnership with Microsoft quickly after taking the top job. The industry has known for months that Microsoft was about to launch the next generation of its search product. Bartz and many experts believed that Microsoft did not have the product development and engineering expertise to build a highly competitive search engine. This turned out to be an underestimation of Microsoft’s resolve, its willingness to invest great sums of money on risky ventures, and the prowess of its developers.

Yahoo! now faces Microsoft’s new search product, Bing, and a pledge by Microsoft’s Ballmer that he is willing to invest as much as 10% of his company’s operating income over the next five years to become a power in the search industry. This investment could be $20 billion by most estimates, a sum that Yahoo! cannot come close to matching.
Bing is off to a remarkably good start. Microsoft has historically had 8% to 9% of the US search market compared to Yahoo!’s 20% and Google’s 65%. Early results show Bing’s share surging as high as 13% of 14% in the three weeks after its introduction. Some of that growth is likely to come at Yahoo!’s expense because its search product is weaker than Google’s. Google may be able to lose two or three market share points. Yahoo! cannot afford to lose any.
Bing may be able to hold its improved position. If the Microsoft product pulls users evenly from Google and Yahoo!, it would have 14% of the market compared to to Yahoo!’s 18%. The billions of dollars Microsoft is willing to spend to improve its position makes it likely that Redmond will will further shrink Yahoo!’s advantage.

Microsoft has a chance, to catch Yahoo! over the next year or so. Yahoo!’s value will plunge if this happens and Microsoft’s need to have a deal which combines the search market operations of the two companies will be significantly less. Microsof could still make an offer for a partnership with Yahoo!. Nonetheless,Yahoo! will have lost a great deal of its leverage and its shareholders will lose most of their opportunity to profit.
Bartz only had to make one important decision in her early tenure at Yahoo! and she made the wrong one.

Refference: http://247wallst.com/2009/06/21/why-yahoo-yhoo-will-never-recover/

Yahoo has introduced a new version of the Yahoo Toolbar today. It runs on Internet Explorer 6+ and Firefox (as a beta).

"The new Yahoo! Toolbar now offers greater customization and more immediate access to the information you care about most from across the entire web – not just Yahoo! sites," says Burke Culligan, Senior Director of Yahoo Front Doors.

One of the new features of the toolbar is a "preview and go" feature, which lets you see small previews of your favorite sites in a drop down window, showing real-time info without having to leave the page you're on. "Customize your toolbar with dozens of apps from Yahoo! and across the rest of the web, so you can check on your multiple email inboxes (Yahoo! and AOL), your eBay listings, the latest news from People.com or USA Today, stock portfolios, and even your local weather or movie showtimes," suggests Culligan.

The toolbar also comes with a faster search tool. It incorporates technology from Inquisitor, and offers query suggestions, search history, and the ability to directly search other sites from the search box.

Users can also easily customize the toolbar by adding and subtracting apps. You can choose from the apps in Yahoo's gallery, add your own, edit the layout, and customize your search settings.

BEIJING (AFP) — US Internet giant Yahoo! has opened a global research and development centre in Beijing to tap into China's pool of intellectual talent as it seeks to reduce costs, state media said Wednesday.

The centre, the third for Yahoo! with the two others located at its US headquarters and in India, will focus on search, advertising and other personal Internet tools and technologies, the China Daily reported.

It will also work on developing the company's core platform globally, the report said, citing Jeff Kinder, senior vice president of Yahoo! Media Products and Solutions.

"The primary reason (for us to set up the centre here) is the deep pool of engineers and scientists the country has. We will also optimise our cost structure," said Kinder, according to the report.

The company did not disclose the value of the investment or the number of staff the centre planned to employ, the paper said.

The facility will be operated independently from the Alibaba Group, China's biggest e-commerce portal that controls Yahoo!'s operations in the country, it added.

Yahoo! owns 39 percent of Alibaba, which also runs China's top online auction site Taobao.com and business-to-business e-commerce platform Alibaba.com, the report said.

The launch of the Beijing centre came after Yahoo! reported a nearly 80 percent slump in its net profit in the first three months of the year due to the economic downturn and said it would trim its workforce by five percent.

However Yahoo! Chief Executive Officer Carol Bartz has said the company planned to bolster its ranks of engineers while shaving away unneeded layers of management.

Resource: http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5jQ9q38Q76MBRSE0Kipo0RpSVwIxg

There is no dearth of spammers who are clever enough to crack the search engine algorithms of Google. And therefore to maintain a secure environment, it is trying its best to constantly change the algorithms so as to be a step ahead of the culprits. Spamming spoils the credibility of the search engines, thus resulting in the quality to deteriorate both in terms of the speed and relevancy. And to put a check into all this is to identify an efficient ways to deal with it – changing the algorithm being a smart option.

Over the years it has been noticed that the SEO spammers using techniques like Black Hat and other such means generally manage to procure better rankings for their sites. Therefore, although their sites may lack in content and relevancy, they nevertheless manage to feature on the top of the searches. While the better sites in the genuine sense have to settle for low rankings and thus feature below. This tremendously affects the internet users and their trust in Google. Unfortunately for Google, despite having resorted to several security measures in the past, spammers have nonetheless managed to crack the code and pose the issue as a serious security threat.

Therefore, it is now a tough job for Google to maintain two things – facilitate users with good quality and timely results and keep a check on the internet spammers. Although processes have begun to sustain a balance between the two, noteworthy results and a complete spam free ambiance may take a little time. Till then keep your fingers crossed.

Since SEO spammers are very clever in cracking the search engine algorithms, Google has set to change its search ranking algorithm. Spammers destroy the credibility of search engines to deliver relevant and quality results. This is what Google is trying to avoid happening. Changing its algorithm would eventually stop the spammers from doing their job.

Black hat SEO techniques are used by several internet marketers who play nasty. "Bad internet marketers" dominate the search engine results most of the time because of their spamming techniques. Their sites get higher ranking while the credible and legitimate websites are ranking in the SERP just below them. This condition is really unfair for other internet marketing who are doing their job ethically.
Even if Google updates its search ranking algorithm, the spammers still find their way to get through Google's "iron hand." Just recently, these spammers have become disturbingly effective once again. Lots of internet users and even occasional web surfers trust Google search engine. This is the reason why Google has to pursue the changing of search engine algorithm.

Google is accepting the fact that it is really difficult to do tasks at the same time--combating the internet spammers while giving internet users with fresh and timely search results. However, they are now exerting efforts in changing the search algorithm for a more refined, totally spammer-free search results; this would help the internet marketing venture a bias-free business field. The time when it shall happen remains a question though.

When it comes to succeeding in the search engines, you must pin-point problem areas and eliminate them with lightning speed. Professional search engine optimization is a competition that doesn’t have room for errors, believe me!
1. Don’t fall for obtaining low quality links. Always research out the popularity of websites that you obtain links from, and avoid obtaining links from link farms.
2. Don’t obtain links using the same anchor text and description repeatedly in short bursts, that is a red flag to the search engines that you want to manipulate their well thought out algorithm.
3. Make sure you always have unique Meta and Title Tags for EVERY page. You need to understand that every title should have at least one unique element to set it apart from your other pages. Include major keywords in your title and make it appealing so that it actually receives clicks!
4. Update your website regularly. You should run a blog with bi-weekly updates at a minimum on your website if you really want to succeed. Also research out the blog topics and use titles and keywords that will generate an increase in website traffic you are not tapping in to.
5. Don’t over do reciprocal linking, and have a diverse link portfolio! According to Google, reciprocal linking is valuable - however it can be harmful if it is overdone. You should obtain links from Blogs, Blog Posts, Forums, Reciprocal links, Articles, Social Media bookmarks and more!
6. Don’t be deceitful to the search engines. Don’t try to over use keywords, hide text or create doorway pages. Everything on your website should be well thought out, unique and valuable to both search engines and users. These are often times signs of black hat seo.
7. Network with other website owners. You need to create great relationships with powerful website owners and use those relationships to benefit both yourself and the other website owner. Get advice from them, get links from them and give something back!
8. Research out your competition. You need to know what your competition is doing in every way. Find out where they are getting links from. Find out what they are doing on their website, and determine any new ideas they are using to generate traffic, links and business!
9. Work hard and don’t give up. Search engine optimization is a tiring and hard to accomplish effort, and once you have put in effort you need to stick with it and never consider giving up. Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your eyes off the goal.

One of the recent posts by Site Visibility informed that Google has updated their keyword suggestion tool. In fact, even we also noticed the same thing.
The update tool will help you target local keywords during research.

This tool will show both local search volume and global search volume. Under the local column you'll find results specific to your targeted country, language and selection from the Match Type drop-down menu. Whereas the global column will include traffic of all countries, languages and selection from the Match Type drop-down menu.
This new feature will surely help in building and focusing keyword research to a specific country. However, it is also found that the local aspect of the tool is not as local as it could be, but it is too early to make any firm conclusions.