Posts Tagged ‘News’

Word on the online world is that Sean Suchter, Yahoo’s top search engineer has left Yahoo the day after Jerry Yang stepped down as CEO. Yang was well known for his dedication to Web Search with his strong, perhaps stubborn efforts to grow this sector of Yahoo’s business including the rejection of Microsoft’s bids.

The tipster who gave this information to valleywag.com, states

“Today is the end of Yahoo Search. Sean Suchter just left for Microsoft. Everyone in the office is shocked. I’ve been on the Yahoo Search team for a while and he is the one key executive that it all depends on. If Microsoft has convinced him to leave and join them, they won’t need to buy Yahoo Search. We will just all join Microsoft anyway. I am definitely going to send him my resume.”

Suchter apparently commanded a lot of loyalty and respect from the Yahoo search group. Yahoo has already lost a search executive, Qi Lu, to Microsoft. Will there be more to come? Could Microsoft end up hiring it’s way into Yahoo’s search business?
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Holiday spending has been weakest in 17 years but TNS Retail Foward forecasts a 1.5% growth for the holiday Q4 in key retail areas. Online sales is expected to grow 9% to $42.5 billion during the holiday seasons compared to 19% in 2007.

Apparel retailers are expected to decline in 1.3%. Homegoods channels and Furniture/ home furnishing stores are expected to decline by 1%. Consumer electronic stores on the other hand is expected to grow at 4% partially helped by consumer conversion to digital TV signals. Mass retailers are also expected to show a 5.6% growth as higher food prices are expected to shift consumers to focus on value.

Holiday Shopping
Mediamark (MRI) is expecting 35% of adults (62.3 million) will begain holiday shopping before Thanksgiving while another 35.8% is expected to shopt between Thanksgiving and Dec 15th. 25.6% (45.3 Million) is expected to shopt from December 16 to December 23rd.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - SEM

Word is spreading that Google, who is well known for their incredible line up of perks, is cutting back their budget on their culinary program. Among several things being cut from the program the largest hit will be the elimination of free dinners.

It has been estimated that Google spends anywhere from $20-$30 a day per employee. about $5000-$7,500K per Google employee which results in about $50-$72 Million a year just on providing free food for their employees. The headquarters in Mountain view alone holds 8,000+ employees.

Google’s founders have always communicated their commitment to providing great perks for their employees. The only sign of breakage from this commitment was the rumor that Sergey Brin complained about employees’ sense of entitlement to “bottled water and M&Ms”. Google has lost a lot of their chef’s to other companies such as facebook and has been supposedly understaffed.

What will this mean for Google’s culture and the sustainability of future perks?

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - SEM

Google is changing the way they measure your Quality Score. Though Google uses an auction bid type system for its Adwords management, much of your position ranking is currently determined by how relevant Google deems your structure, ad, keyword and landingpages are with one another. Then it takes that score, factors in your account history, click through rate and many other factors and this final “score” is often called “Quality Score” or “index”. If this Quality score is too low, Google will raise the minimum bid required to show your ad. This is how more established players who have good history and have properly structured and optimized accounts can out position you with a $0.10 bid while you may be unable to show your ad even at a $2 bid.

The news out of Google is that in the next few days, the Quality Score, which used to be static and by keyword, will now be calculated at the time of each query.
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Yahoo! & Ichan have come to an agreement a few weeks ahead of the upcoming shareholders meeting. It was expected that the meeting would result in a contentious battle between Yang and his board and Carl Icahn and his supporters. Icahn had proposed ousting the entire Yahoo! board and replacing them with his own suggested group. However Yahoo! And Icahn agreed to expand its board to 11 members. Icahn and two new members will join the board while current director Robert Kotick will step down. The two new members are expected to be from the pool of board members recommended by Icahn.

Paul Lee
Director of Online Marketing
LeadQual - Search Engine Marketing