Since it’s lunch a year ago, Yahoo! Site Explorer has been serving web-masters to “explore” their website information contained in Yahoo! database. If you have been using Google site-map using Yahoo! Site Explorer will be very easy. In fact when it comes to submitting site-feeds (“site-map”-Google equivalent), Yahoo! Site Explorer seams to be much more flexible. It offer you to submit your feeds in following formats Atom 0.3, RSS 0.9, RSS 1.0 RSS 2.0 and simple URL list.

Although Yahoo! states that using this service will not improve your site’s ranking for the search result, it is very useful tool to notify Yahoo about new content and updates on your website(s).

*WordPress users may simply submit their syndication feeds to Yahoo! Site Explorer.

If you have your business listed with Google Local Listings this should be of interest to you. Three days ago Inside AdWords had an article about offering printable coupons with your local business listing. Seams like an excellent feature to drive “foot trafic” to your store or business. Read the full article at Inside Adwords Blog.

I think by now all advertisers, merchant and affiliates alike had been affected by recent changes at Google AdWords. Inconsistency of their policies will eventually bite them back, but it may be to late. My personal opinion is that it is Google desire to introduce CPA advertisement model, drives them to go after affiliate site’s. But if they were smart they would turn to affiliates for recommendations instead of driving them away. Who knows better about CPA model than affiliates themselves? But you can not operate CPA on a robot, human-kind businesses relationship is needed for CPA to be a success. It cannot simply be run on a robot, and once in a while be corrected (as Google is doing recently) by hand. The funny part is that when you stop/pause your campaigns, big message runs across your screen saying that your adds are not running (well, duh! I just turned the off) and if they can help me. I other words Google is telling me, we do not want your pages on AdWords but if you insist and give us $10 a click we may allow you back. Now if they have done in across AdWords, they can get away with not disclosing the details. But I personally have two different campaigns running on AdWords, both use same keywords, both use same ad copies, both direct to the same page. One campaign runs just fine at .05-.50 per click, the other one is stopped by Google and the asking $5-10 a click to reactivate my words. I think this is not the way to go about it. Unfortunately it will take few moths for them to realize the stupidity of the changes they are trying to introduce. By that time it may be just simply too late. They will loose most of the advertisers at least those in affiliate businesses to Yahoo and MSN.
But maybe it is good. Remember, if not for Pepsi-Cola Coca Cola will never be on the top of soft drinks in America and otherwise. Maybe all will learn from mistakes and do the right by costomer

Latest developments at Google are troubling to say the least. In the affiliate community every one had experienced prices go up as high as $10 per click. There is much inconsistency in how they apply, tweaking and change the quality score.

If you every need an alternative way to advertise via PPC, Yahoo and MSN should be looked at.

MSN has a little difficult interface to use, but not hard to get used to. They dynamic add features are superb. You can customize your adds in so many different ways. MSN is really worth looking into. And of course there is always Yahoo. Very soon we will see Google trailing in the place #3 after Yahoo and MSN. If they don’t put their act together, that is.

If over last few days you saw that your keywords on Adwords have risen to $1 or even $10 a click, you are not the only one. Many people had experienced the same. Evidently they have introduced new algorithm of calculating “quality score”. It is not clear of long term effects of this step, but in the short term many small businesses are upset with Google. I am sure many of them will allocate their budgets to Yahoo and MSN for time being.

So if you have ridiculously expensive keywords in your Adwords campaigns, there are few things can be done. If keywords did not performed well, just get rid of them and look for new ones. If they did performed well until the recent changes at Google, try moving the keywords and ads to MSN and Yahoo at least for time being.

Hopefully all search engines will learn from Google’s mistakes.