The drop in AdWord clicks over the past two months has created a bump Google's ongoing success. But not to worry, CEO Eric Schmidt told Business Week, people will eventually pay more for the better quality clicks.

There has been a lot of press about this lately. I think "Google's Gamble" as Business Week called it may be expecting too much. If the cost of their clicks continues to increase through their minimum bid and Quality Score push people may start using Yahoo and Microsoft first.

While their popularity will continue to give them the high volume of traffic, if Yahoo and Microsoft offer lower CPA (cost per acquisition) then the strategy of starting with Google because of that could be changed to get the lower costing conversions first and then test the successful ones over at Google.

If this happens then the edge Google has could drop. It is one thing to be the popular search engine for users, but if they lose their position as the popular engine for advertisers then they are almost back to the days when they had no idea how to monetize their engine.

Obviously in some cases where there is a big enough margin in what is being marketed advertisers will buy the more expensive clicks. But in the case of companies selling small margin items such a move will make it difficult.

Apart from the Quality Score influence, this move suggests Google is using information they are getting from Google Analytics to determine if people will pay more. This is a dangerous step for a number of reasons - one, the privacy issues could be a problems and stop this and two, many people using GA may not be doing so effectively, measuring the wrong thing and thus giving Google information that they use but is not real.

We will all have to wait and see if their hopes are founded.

When Google raised concerns over a possible Microsoft-Yahoo merger, it may have just been the pot calling the kettle black. According to new stats released by Attributor, Google's acquisition of DoubleClick gives them a whopping 69% of the online advertising market share. This comes in the wake of news that Google saw 59.2 percent of all US searches in February.

Furthermore, DoubleClick has 48% share of sites with 1 million unique visitors per month, while Google enjoys a whopping 71.38% share of sites with less than 100,000 unique visitors per month.

MSN has a lot of work to do if it wants to catch Google, as Steve Ballmer has declared in recent months. Currently, they only have 9.86% of the total market share. Even adding Yahoo, with an 11.54% market share, they will only come in at 21.4%.

Attributor also shared telling statistics for content distribution. For every article Attributor tracks, there are an average of 20 copies published. 57% of copies do not contain links back to the author, and 64% of copies have ads on them. Most copies are published on sites with less than 1 million unique visitors.

Attributor analyzed 68 million domains for their ad-server crawls and compared it with unique user data from Compete.com.

Ever since Microsoft made its initial 44 billion bid on Yahoo several weeks ago the venerable search engine has desperately tried to rebuff the software giant s advances. From behind-the-scenes bargaining with other companies to announcements that the deal vastly underrates Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang has been working to keep his company from being purchased by the monolithic monopolist. Read on for his latest move....
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Yahoo Shine launched as the company reaches for attention from women amid a competitive web environment for the 25-54 female market.

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Yahoo just announced Shine, and is hopping on the bandwagon that says women are a great target. Why now?

Just like iVillage, Glam and others, Yahoo knows that getting inventory in home, garden, health and other categories can translate into higher effective CPMs. They developed nine separate content areas and 38 sub-topics that appeal to visitors and advertisers.

What's Been Launched?

Yahoo has licensed decent article content for Shine, from major publishers who already cover this desired content in print and online. Then they hired both editors and bloggers to fill in the rest. There's no focus on video content yet.

Like any respectable Web 2.0 community, Yahoo also encourages contributions by visitors. If you have Yahoo email, then you automatically have access to your own blog. Of course, Yahoo also encourages you to buzz articles shown at Shine.

You can search content across Shine only, which should equate to site search on competitor sites. Given the sparse content so far, the results are fairly limited. So Yahoo isn't trying to create a vertical or women's search engine -- or directly respond to Ask.com, which recently claimed that position.

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Want to check your rankings on Google.com, international Google search results, Yahoo, and Microsoft? Try Rank Checker, our free Firefox extension which tracks your rankings, and allows you to automatically check ranking changes over time.

If you have any questions please watch this video.

The tool has issues with special international characters, but we are trying to get that fixed ASAP. Have any other feedback? Please leave it in the comments below.

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Screenshots have surfaced detailing Google's AdWords for TV tests, which appear to be near completion after a year of trials. Next stop: the UK. We are definitely on the verge of some kind of merger between the Web and TV, and Google may beat everybody to it. We expected more from Yahoo back in the day, especially with all those Hollywood ties. read more

Yahoo Maps announced Wednesday that an update was rolled out, which includes several data and style improvements. Gus Maldonado, senior product manager, wrote on the Yahoo Local Maps Blog that users can expect to see lower zoom levels, new neighborhood data for 300 North American cities, and expanded worldwide coverage. New points of interest have also been added and include schools, rest areas, and ski resorts. Usability was also a focus of the recent update, offering increased city density as well as adjustments to hybrid road and label colors.

Yahoo has joined the companies working on helping people stay connected through location technology, the company announced today. They have launched Fire Eagle - as a sub domain of Yahoo.net.

An information page explains the beta here:

"Fire Eagle shares your location information with services and applications that you choose. This location information is obtained from the web or your mobile device.

Information Collection and Use Practices

* Fire Eagle collects your current location information from location-enabled devices or services that you authorize. The specificity of the location data collected by Fire Eagle (e.g., city, street, latitude/longitude, etc.) depends on the authorized device or service that you link with Fire Eagle.
o You can view the service(s) or device(s) updating your location, the location indicated, and the time passed since collection at the “My Locations” tab.
* Fire Eagle shares your location information with application(s) that you authorize to obtain your information from the Fire Eagle database.
o If you authorize an application to obtain your location data from the Fire Eagle database, you may go to the “My Applications” tab and choose the specificity of location data available to the application from the drop-down list.
o In approximately 45 days, you will be sent an email to reauthorize the sharing of your location data with your Fire Eagle enabled application(s). If you do not respond to this email within 10 days, authorization will be automatically revoked; however, you can later reauthorize your application(s) to interact with Fire Eagle’s location database.

Practices Regarding Your Ability to Update or Delete Information

* If you want to prevent all applications from reading your location from the Fire Eagle database, go to the “My Privacy” tab and click “Hide Me.” Your current location will continue to be stored by Fire Eagle.
* If you want to prevent a single application from reading your location or providing the Fire Eagle database with your location, go to the “My Applications” tab and delete the application.
* If you want to remove previously stored location data from the Fire Eagle database, go to the “My Privacy” tab and click “Delete my location info.” The “Delete my location info” action will have no effect on information you previously authorized Fire Eagle to share with Fire Eagle enabled applications.

Other

* When you use Fire Eagle, you are subject to the Yahoo! Terms of Service."

Yahoo retaliated in the ongoing saga of Microsoft's hostile takeover attempt today by extending the deadline for nominations of its board of directors to some future date 10 days after it announces the date of its annual meeting.

Yahoo is taking its time making that decision, since if there's no annual meeting, there can be no vote by shareholders, bolstered by Microsoft, to replace Yahoo's existing board with a more Microsoft-friendly one. By postponing the possible house-cleaning of the current board, Yahoo also makes it more likely that it can reach a peaceful accord with Microsoft on an acquisition, or find another suitor willing to step in.

The plan could backfire on Yahoo if shareholders see this move as disenfranchising them from the decision to accept Microsoft's offer. Yahoo needs to hold its annual meeting within 13 months of its last one, which took place on June 12, 2007.