In a bid to halt Google’s growing dominance online, Microsoft has offered to buy struggling Internet giant Yahoo for $44.6 billion, an acquisition that would unite the world’s most influential software company with the Web’s most-trafficked site. The deal — if successful — could also change the way many consumers and businesses use the Internet. The biggest change, though, would be in the Internet search business. Suddenly, Microsoft would become a more formidable player in an area where it has traditionally struggled and Yahoo would have the major influx of cash needed to battle Google. Combined, this could be a powerful enemy for Google.

 Let me first say - I have been begging for this for several years. Googlenow has about 55% of the search market, way too much for any one company. They control way the income of many US based companies, as well as people such as myself and most of you reading this. Google needs a good challenger to keep it from being evil.

I’ll watch this one very closely. This could be an epic battle in the making here folks, and I hope webmasters and American business comes out on top.

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If you participate in an affiliate program, this post should be beneficial to you. It’s how to link with your affiliate code but conceal your affiliate link.

Affiliate links are usually not search engine friendly, so making them a bit more friendly is always beneficial. There are FOUR EASY STEPS to setup your affiliate links and this can work for any affiliate links you might have.

This not only helps you make the links friendly, but if the affiliate link ever changes, it’s as simple as changing one line in your affiliate link file and it’s updated on all of your pages.

Regarding what to name your affiliate file(s), I originally said to name it unique to your own site. After thinking further, I realized that a lot of webmasters want to completely hide who they’re working with from the search engines. If this is something that is a concern for you, here are two additional steps to add:

 

 

• Name your affiliate file with common words found on all sites. Example names: file.php, html.php, page.php, add.php

  Or make it even tougher and use their names: google.php, search.php, yahoo.php, googlebot.php

   

   

• Now prevent search bots from following your links. Use the rel=”nofollow” when linking to your affiliate file. For example, if you name your affiliate file “google.php”, link to the file like this:

  <a href="/path/to/google.php" rel="nofollow">Affiliate</a>

  You can also use your robots.txt file to block them from reading your affiliate file(s).

  Disallow: /path/to/google.php

Of course, the last two steps are only necessary if you want to disguise who you’re affiliated with. I am seeing more and more affiliate links in the SERP’s ranked really well, so if you don’t need to hide things, shoot for being ranked. Having your affiliate link ranked well translates into more money in your pocket!

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eBay is going to lower it’s fees in 2008. Since affiliates get a % of those fees (and if you use auctionads/shoppingads, your part of an eBay affiliate) you can expect to make less if your an eBay affiliate through Commission Junction or use AuctionAds / Shoppingads.

eBay plans to cut the fees it charges sellers across auctions in its three biggest markets — the United States, Germany and Britain, executives told investors. Next week, eBay will announce changes in the pricing of its services and improvements in the way buyers can rate sellers, Donahoe said.
http://www.cnbc.com/id/22808450/for/cnbc

Personally, I think eBay needs to really shore up it’s affiliate program and make it a bigger incentive for webmasters to place eBay ads on their site. I think they should be taking care of the top line and drive buyers to buy more often, instead of lowering fees and saving the seller money.

A study from the University of Maryland suggests eBay buyers save billions of dollars every year by purchasing via online auctions rather than conventional retailers. A research study by two statisticians from the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business—Wolfgang Jank and Galit Shmueli—finds that consumers save billions of dollars every year by buying products through the online auction service eBay rather than going through conventional retailers. The study claims to be the first time the overall economic impact of online auctions—specifically eBay—has been quantified. 

So why would you cut the fees charged to sellers? To get them to sell more? They are going to do that anyway. You need to just drive more buyers to eBay. A great way to do that is through affiliates. How many people think to buy an automobile part on eBay and then have a mechanic install the part. You can save alot of money doing that kind of thing. But, many people dont know that. Websites such as my automobile forums can help educate them, and are more likely to do so if eBay provides a decent incentive to do so.

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I happened to notice something the other day –

vBulletin-faq.com always has been near the top of the Google Serps for almost any vBulletin related keyword I sought after. Normally, if you search for "vBulletin" you get vBulletin.com, vBulletin.org, Wikipedia vBulletin page then vBFAQ. To my delight I noticed the other day that vBulletin-faq.com replaced Wikipedia in that slot and now ranks ahead:

So I started looking around and found Wikipedia has dropped a few spots in the rankings on various other searches. Now this isnt scientific, its just a casual observation on my part. But it makes me wonder if this is just a fluke change in algorithim or is Google starting to downgrade wikipedia in anticipation of the upcoming Google Knol? I would like to hear other’s thoughts on this so leave a comment.

While we’re on the subjects of Wikipedia and Google, I ran across this:

The professor of media studies at the University of Brighton has had enough of students turning in "banal and mediocre work" and decided that Google and Wikipedia must go. Tara Brabazon provides her students with a reading list, of books, and expects their work to reference those works, rather than a rehash of a Wikipedia entry or the top five results from Google. To achieve this she has, reportedly, banned her students using search engines and Wikipedia. ( http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/15/wiki_google_ban)

I found it humorous.

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