The Big Wave Blog

I wanted to take a moment to thank Lee Odden and the Top Rank Blog team for adding us to their BIGLIST of search marketing Blogs (we are filed under T).

As a result, we now get to carry a neat badge on our main page. Click here if you are reading this via a RSS reader and check out our shiny new badge!

We’ll keep on blogging as we always have. But it feels good to be noticed!

The Big Wave Team

Yahoo Search Marketing Rant

OR

Where Has the Keyword Tool Gone?

Has anyone noticed that the Yahoo Keyword Tool is missing? It used to be available to any internet user, but has now disappeared from both its public webpage and within the Yahoo Search Marketing platform. I used to love using this tool, because it would produce different keyword combinations than the Google tool due to different user demographics.

I have performed numerous Google searches looking for it (no coincidence I’m not searching on Yahoo). The results show up in the SERPs, but the page that is linked doesn’t even load.

The Nail in the Coffin
Well, for me, it all started with Panama, Yahoo’s big, much anticipated update to their paid search marketing platform. We all know now that the Panama update never materialized into what search marketers were hoping for. Their biggest mistake: It no longer offers the main advantage that Yahoo once had over Google, which was being able to see the top 5 bids for each keyword phrase. Instead, they opted to implement a similar keyword phrase bidding structure, but the engine has failed to deliver the same results in terms of traffic and paid search effectiveness.

If you haven’t heard Vikram speak yet, tomorrow is the perfect chance.

Vikram is presenting a two-part search marketing seminar: a morning session on Basics and an afternoon session on Advanced Strategy. Participation is limited, so you can expect the workshop to be extremely targeted to the group. Vikram will spend plenty of time answering questions as well.

You can attend either session, or both. You should be at the Hotel Nikko at 9am to register on-site. Fee for the full day is $149 for CH&LA members, and $199 for non-members.

Here’s the marketing blurb from CH&LA, our host.

CH&LA invites you to attend one of our most exciting and practical
workshops, Leading Practices in Search Marketing, where you can
learn how to get the most from your hotel website.

At this full-day seminar, search marketing expert Vikram Singh of Evision Worldwide will provide both basic and advanced training on topics that include how to:

• Create a website that gets more traffic and more bookings
• Capture your niche market and crush your online competition, and
• Maximize your online revenue

Plenty of time will be given for Q&A, so you can be sure to have your questions answered.

Vikram Singh’s seminars are very popular, so we urge you to book your seat now. You are guaranteed to have a great time, pick up a lot of useful
information, and return to work with a list of things to do.

WHEN
Tuesday, May 6, 2008
Basic: 9:00 am - 11:30 am
Advanced: 1:00 pm - 3:30 pm

WHERE
Hotel Nikko
222 Mason Street
San Francisco, CA 94102

Watching Vikram in action is a real pleasure. You are sure to be entertained and to learn something new. Hope to see you there!

Hot off the presses: Microsoft withdrew its offer to buy out Yahoo.

According to the official press release, Microsoft stated:

“Despite our best efforts, including raising our bid by roughly $5 billion, Yahoo! has not moved toward accepting our offer. After careful consideration, we believe the economics demanded by Yahoo! do not make sense for us, and it is in the best interests of Microsoft stockholders, employees and other stakeholders to withdraw our proposal,” said Ballmer.

Below is the text of the letter from Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer to Yahoo!
CEO Jerry Yang:

May 3, 2008

Mr. Jerry Yang, CEO Yahoo
Yahoo! Inc. 701 First Avenue
Sunnyvale, CA 94089

Dear Jerry:
After over three months, we have reached the conclusion of the process
regarding a possible combination of Microsoft and Yahoo!.

I first want to convey my personal thanks to you, your management team,
and Yahoo!’s Board of Directors for your consideration of our proposal. I
appreciate the time and attention all of you have given to this matter, and
I especially appreciate the time that you have invested personally. I feel
that our discussions this week have been particularly useful, providing me
for the first time with real clarity on what is and is not possible.

I am disappointed that Yahoo! has not moved towards accepting our
offer. I first called you with our offer on January 31 because I believed
that a combination of our two companies would have created real value for
our respective shareholders and would have provided consumers, publishers,
and advertisers with greater innovation and choice in the marketplace. Our
decision to offer a 62 percent premium at that time reflected the strength
of these convictions.

In our conversations this week, we conveyed our willingness to raise
our offer to $33.00 per share, reflecting again our belief in this
collective opportunity. This increase would have added approximately
another $5 billion of value to your shareholders, compared to the current
value of our initial offer. It also would have reflected a premium of over
70 percent compared to the price at which your stock closed on January 31.
Yet it has proven insufficient, as your final position insisted on
Microsoft paying yet another $5 billion or more, or at least another $4 per
share above our $33.00 offer.

Also, after giving this week’s conversations further thought, it is
clear to me that it is not sensible for Microsoft to take our offer
directly to your shareholders. This approach would necessarily involve a
protracted proxy contest and eventually an exchange offer. Our discussions
with you have led us to conclude that, in the interim, you would take steps
that would make Yahoo! undesirable as an acquisition for Microsoft.

We regard with particular concern your apparent planning to respond to
a “hostile” bid by pursuing a new arrangement that would involve or lead to
the outsourcing to Google of key paid Internet search terms offered by
Yahoo! today. In our view, such an arrangement with the dominant search
provider would make an acquisition of Yahoo! undesirable to us for a number
of reasons:

— First, it would fundamentally undermine Yahoo!’s own strategy and
long-term viability by encouraging advertisers to use Google as opposed
to your Panama paid search system. This would also fragment your
search advertising and display advertising strategies and the ecosystem
surrounding them. This would undermine the reliance on your display
advertising business to fuel future growth.

— Given this, it would impair Yahoo’s ability to retain the talented
engineers working on advertising systems that are important to our
interest in a combination of our companies.

— In addition, it would raise a host of regulatory and legal problems
that no acquirer, including Microsoft, would want to inherit. Among
other things, this would consolidate market share with the
already-dominant paid search provider in a manner that would reduce
competition and choice in the marketplace.

— This would also effectively enable Google to set the prices for key
search terms on both their and your search platforms and, in the
process, raise prices charged to advertisers on Yahoo. In addition to
whatever resulting legal problems, this seems unwise from a business
perspective unless in fact one simply wishes to use this as a vehicle
to exit the paid search business in favor of Google.

— It could foreclose any chance of a combination with any other search
provider that is not already relying on Google’s search services.

Accordingly, your apparent plan to pursue such an arrangement in the
event of a proxy contest or exchange offer leads me to the firm decision
not to pursue such a path. Instead, I hereby formally withdraw Microsoft’s
proposal to acquire Yahoo!.

We will move forward and will continue to innovate and grow our
business at Microsoft with the talented team we have in place and
potentially through strategic transactions with other business partners.

I still believe even today that our offer remains the only alternative
put forward that provides your stockholders full and fair value for their
shares. By failing to reach an agreement with us, you and your stockholders
have left significant value on the table.

But clearly a deal is not to be.

Thank you again for the time we have spent together discussing this.

Sincerely yours,
/s/ Steven A. Ballmer

Steven A. Ballmer
Chief Executive Officer
Microsoft Corporation

End of a love affair or a false retreat? Makes me think of the Komodo Dragon. It bites and waits for its prey to die slowly from toxins in its saliva. I know… Gross!