Before there was Google, Bing, Facebook or Twitter, there was Yahoo. On Wednesday, Microsoft put to sleep one of the truly great original Internet brands. Yahoo search is no more in 2010. All Yahoo search capabilities will be migrated into Microsoft’s new search engine Bing. The remaining Yahoo brand will function mostly as an AOL style content portal, probably destined for a similar fate.

“A search and advertising deal announced Wednesday means Yahoo’s once-dominant search engine will grind to a halt for 10 years, replaced by Microsoft’s often-revamped and newly branded Bing. Yahoo gets a big slice of text ad revenue, and Microsoft buys itself into a (distant) second place in the search race, still with less than half the searches as Google.” Yahoo Gives Up, Turns Search Over to Bing [Wired].

And now, there are two.

“Forget that Yahoo was one of the first significant internet brands to come out of Silicon Valley. That it has been a leader in cool web technologies, from Hadoop to Flickr to its open search interface and its support for new web standards. That it recognized and bought smart tech companies like Flickr, Zimbra and Delicious.

By letting Microsoft take over its search engine, Yahoo has essentially announced it can’t keep up with Google and Microsoft and instead will focus on amusing users with multimedia deals and Fantasy Football leagues.

Microsoft, for its part, gets a huge bump in traffic to its revamped search engine and online text ad platform. Bing, which currently handles about 8 to 10 percent of U.S. searches, will jump to something in the neighborhood of 30 percent. And by capturing one opposing army, they dramatically simplify the battle lines and create a two-sided conflict.” Yahoo Gives Up, Turns Search Over to Bing [Wired].

It is unfortunate that after decades of success, Microsoft still prefers corporate warfare to innovation. Some things never change.

Goodbye Yahoo, you will be missed. Say hi to Netscape for us.

GOOGLE Website Submit

Properly Submitting your website to the search engines is a critical part of any successful Internet footprint. Each has their own particular procedure. Each is demystified below.

The first step is to establish a FREE Google account. Once the account is ready, point your web browser to Google webmaster central and click [Sign in to Webmaster Tools]. Follow the instructions to verify your website (file upload or meta tag). Verification gives you access to a wide range of helpful information about your website like; Pages with external links, Top search queries, What Googlebot sees, and Web crawl. Set your preferences under [Settings] and choose; target users in the US or worldwide, display your domain with the www, and include your website images in Google Image Labeler (remember to search engine optimize your image titles).

Once your preferences are set it’s time to upload your sitemap. Your sitemap.xml should contain a weighted and formatted list of every page. If you don’t already have one, creating your sitemap is easy with this FREE online sitemap tool. After the sitemap is compiled and uploaded, return to Google and enter the path to it. If the sitemap was uploaded to the root of your website, this will be http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (if otherwise located, enter that). Be sure the check the status of your sitemap and correct any errors. Updating is done via the [Resubmit Selected] feature on the Webmaster Toools sitemap page.

There is one additional file to create and upload so that we are prepared for when the search bots visit your website.  Point your web browser to Generating a robots.txt file or Manually creating a robots.txt file and follow the instructions.  The purpose of the robots.txt file is to tell the search bots what portions of your website should “Allow” or “Disallow” indexing of content. Google is now aware of your content. Now let’s move to Yahoo.

YAHOO Website Submit

Yahoo also requires you to establish a FREE account. Once ready, point your web browser to Submit Your Site and click on [Submit Your Site for Free] then [Submit a Website or Webpage]. Enter your website address (URL) and login to your Yahoo account if prompted. You should see the following:

Thank you! Your URL has been added to our list of URLs to crawl. Please expect a delay of several weeks before your URL is crawled. Note that in the effort to maximize the quality of search results that appear on Yahoo! and our other distribution partners, we do not add every submitted URL to our search index. Therefore we cannot make predictions or guarantees about whether your URL will appear as a search result.

Now we need to authenticate your website to Yahoo. While in Yahoo Site Explorer, choose [My Sites].  Click on your website address (URL). Here you can check the Authentication Status and Number of Pages Indexed. Choose [Authentication] from the left menu. Follow the instructions to verify your website (file upload or meta tag).

Once your website is authenticated, return to the Yahoo Site Explorer and again choose your website under [My Sites]. Now choose [Explore Site] toward the bottom.  Voila, a full list of indexed pages as they appear in the Yahoo’s organic listings.  Click [InLinks] at the top to display a full list of incoming links to your website.  If the data is blank, simply give the Yahoo bots more time to do their work. The big two are done, MSN Live Search and Ask.com are next after the fold.

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After installing the Google Analytics tracking code on your website(s), verify the code is installed correctly for FREE with SiteScan. SiteScan is an online diagnostic tool from EpikOne that verifies that your Google Analytics (GA) Tracking Code is installed properly on your website. Try a FREE SiteScan now at www.sitescanga.com.

About Epik One
Based in Burlington Vermont, we are situated in a creative environment powered by technology that enables us to deliver innovative insights to organizations around the globe. Since our inception we have stayed diligently focused on building a data-driven organization that considers every member of our team an analyst. Visit Epik One at www.epikone.com.