This day in search marketing history: February 11

Yahoo officially rejects Microsoft

In 2008, rumor became reality as Yahoo rejected Microsoft’s $45 billion bid to buy Yahoo.

The company concluded that the proposal substantially undervalued Yahoo and was not in the best interests of Yahoo and its stockholders.

Microsoft basically rejected Yahoo’s rejection, calling it “unfortunate” and pledging to “pursue all necessary steps” to get what it called its “full and fair” proposal to be accepted.

In other words, this wasn’t the end of the story.

Dig deeper:

Also on this day

Google Ads issue results in missing conversions from data-driven attribution

2022: The company was working on recovering the data.

Google ad label experiment makes it easier to distinguish paid results

2022: The design was a throwback to 2017’s green, boxed ad labels.

3 changes coming to Google Ads automated extensions

2022: Automated and manual extensions could be shown together, Google Ads added a report and they could be added at ad group, campaign, or account level.

Google passage ranking now live in US English search results

2021: Google said it could have a 7% impact on search queries.

Google Image Search update reduces duplicate image results

2021: Google wanted to display images that were relevant yet visually distinct.

Google My Business adds messaging to desktop interface

2021: Businesses could message customers through their web browser, not just the mobile app.

Google Search dark theme mode expands but search ads are hard to distinguish

2021: Light mode showed a black ad label on a white background but on dark mode, it showed a gray ad label on a black background.

A Google Ads setting allowed advertisers to exclude people of ‘unknown gender’

2021: Employers, landlords and credit providers could keep their ads from showing to people of “unknown gender,” enabling discrimination against nonbinary individuals.

The onus of diversity should not fall to Black marketers

2021: Keys to diversity and inclusion include mentorship and promotion of Black search marketers.

Unconfirmed Google Search ranking update feels big

2020: It seemed like Google had pushed out some ranking algorithm change over the weekend, resulting in a large shift in the rankings of many websites.

Google resolves rejected Posts problem

2020: New Posts would publish after the “fix” and rejected Posts would go live that week.

Conditional IF functions now available in all Microsoft Advertising accounts

2020: Scale expanded text ad messaging by device or audience – and it worked with Google import.

Yelp launches ‘Showcase Ads’ and store visits attribution

2020: The products were intended for national and multi-location brands.

Warner Bros. renamed the Harley Quinn movie for better SEO

2020: After a disappointing opening weekend, the film’s new title began showing up on movie ticket booking sites last night.

How Google will shift resources to media search and other tidbits from Gary Illyes’ AMA on Reddit

2019: The Google webmaster trends analyst also touched on topics like the possibility of an Indexing API, whether internal over-linking penalties exist and how the clustering of duplicate pages works.

Google Ads bringing click share to Search campaign competitive metrics

2019: The rollout of click share could be seen as a follow-up to the position metrics Google introduced the prior fall, as average position had become less useful.

Bing Ads multiple language targeting: What you need to know

2019: Bing Ads issued additional guidance for advertisers wanting to target multi-lingual users who may search in multiple languages.

Is Google Maps what augmented reality has been waiting for?

2019: Google was actively testing augmented walking directions with select Local Guides.

Retailers: GTINs Required By May 16 For Google Product Listing Ads

2016: GTINs would be required for brand name products sold by multiple merchants.

Google Says There’s No Whitelist To Save You From Panda Or Penguin

2015: Google’s John Mueller said there was no whitelist (or “exception lists”) for the Penguin and Panda algorithms.

Bing Ads Offers Search Insights For Mother’s Day Marketers

2015: A $20 billion holiday in the U.S., Mother’s Day-related searches started rising roughly a month in advance, though search habits varied by gift category.

Google Showing Restaurant Menus In Card-Style Search Result

2014: Google started showing complete restaurant menus in its search results when a query specifically looked for menu information. 

Google In Trouble Again Over Racist Search Suggestions In UK

2014: Google was suggesting racist terms when users searched for a number of UK cities, including Bradford, Leicester and Birmingham.

Bing Ads Updates Reporting Capabilities, Chiefly Conversion Performance Insights

2014: Bing Ads introduced the full set of conversion fields to all Performance reports.

Yelp Supersizes Its Local Profiles, Makes Them Less Busy

2014: Business profile pages were changed to emphasize images, featured user reviews and key pieces of local content.

Google’s Cutts On How To Locate Unnatural Links Pointing To Your Web Site

2013: Cutts answers: “How do I know which links to remove when I get an ‘unnatural links’ message?

Financial Analyst Affirms Google’s $1 Billion In “Default Search” Payments To Apple

2013: It was believed that Google paid Apple roughly $3.20 per iOS device, which would avoid the accounting issues arising from a revenue-sharing agreement.

Google Still World’s Most Popular Search Engine By Far, But Share Of Unique Searchers Dips Slightly

2013: Google led in the number of searches, but had seen a marked drop in unique searchers over the past few months.

Google Now (And Nexus 4) Featured In Grammy Show Commercial

2013: The Apple-like ad showed people around the world getting useful and “just in time” information from Google Now.

Bill Gates On Google: “Bing Is The Better Product”

2013: Although Gates never really said which search engine he used.

Google’s Recent Domain Registrations: Labs, Screenwise & AdWords

2012: Google registered 14 domains.

Bing Sees 13% Spike In Searches In January

2011: Google dropped from 66.6% to 65.6% share, still way in front of Bing, Yahoo, and their combined numbers.

US Lawmakers Voice Concerns Over Google-ITA Deal

2011: Critics argued that once Google became a participant in the travel services market, it might use its advertising dominance to steer consumers to its services, further limiting competition.

Google Promotes Hotpot, Places In Austin In Advance of SXSW

2011: Google representatives would meet with local businesses to talk up the benefits of promoting their goods and services through Places.

Nokia Is The New Yahoo: Microsoft OS, Bing To Power Its Smartphones

2011: Nokia would build and distribute Windows Phones as its primary competitive offering to go head-to-head with the iPhone and Android.

January 2011: Search Engine Land’s Most Popular Stories

2011: Search Engine Land’s 10 most popular stories from January 2011.

SEO Industry Cries Foul Over Google SEO ‘Services’

2010: A vocal contingent of SEOs were up in arms over Google “offering SEO consulting services.”

Aardvark Acquired By Google

2010: For $50 million.

Sergey Brin Might Do Google Buzz

2010: Brin and other Googlers either needed to be enabled to tap into the public version of Google Buzz or open new accounts.

Google AdSense Using Search History In Contextual Matching

2010: If you searched for something and clicked through to a site with AdSense ads on them, Google would store the query that led to that website and use it 2 or so hours later, when you visited another website with AdSense ads on them.

Bing Updates Webmaster FAQs

2010: The PDF download was 28 pages long, 82 questions and answers deep and broken out in 12 categories.

Bing Demos StreetSide With Flickr Photos, Live Video & “Bing Sky”

2010: Bing announced that in the near future, it would allow people using StreetSide to look “up” virtually and see what was in the sky.

Yahoo Search: This Is The “Dark Time” But We’ll Be Back

2010: Yahoo sought to dispel the “misconception” that Yahoo was no longer investing in search.

Google Penalizes Google Japan For Buying Links

2009: Cutts said Google.co.jp PageRank was ~5 instead of ~9 and he expected it to stay that way for a while. He also confirmed it was a paid link penalty.

Google Maps Nearly Catches MapQuest: Hitwise Report

2009: It showed the continuing ascent of Google Maps and the simultaneous decline of MapQuest traffic during 2008.

Gmail Labs Adds Location To Signatures

2009: You could append your current location to your email signature, when you used Gmail or Google Apps email within the Gmail interface.

Microsoft Beefs Up Enterprise Search

2009: Microsoft was starting to integrate FAST Search & Transfer’s capabilities into its other products and to market FAST more aggressively.

New Ask Datacenter Expands Search Capacity

2009: Ask made a bid to improve its search index and efficiency, having completed a move to a new datacenter.

Yahoo! BOSS Expands Feature Set; Adds Usage Fees

2009: In exchange for the introduction of fees, BOSS added several new features. Key among them was the ability to monetize results. 

How To Track Keyword-Based Tweets Within Your Twitter Stream

2009: Twhirl to the rescue.

Google Wins Upside Down Social Security Number Privacy Lawsuit

2008: Complainant claimed when you turned his social security number upside down, it spelled Google.

SEO Makes Oprah In Roundabout Way

2008: Rand Fishkin was slated to share how he popped the question to his fiancee.

The Googliest Place On Earth: Google Takes Over Disneyland

2008: Instead of going skiing, as they had traditionally done for their annual company trips, Google went to Disneyland.

Google: We Didn’t Censor Aboutrika’s Gaza T-Shirt Photo

2008: Google Images search team debunked a rumor that Google censored an image of an Egyptian football player stripping off his team jersey during the African Cup Of Nations to show a “Sympathize With Gaza” T-shirt underneath.

Microsoft Buys Danger

2008: Maker of the T-mobile “Sidekick” device and the Danger operating system and platform.

Chipmakers Demo Android Prototype Phones In Barcelona

2008: Would Android be the success Google was hoping for?

From Search Marketing Expo (SMX)

Past contributions from Search Engine Land’s Subject Matter Experts (SMEs)

These columns are a snapshot in time and have not been updated since publishing, unless noted. Opinions expressed in these articles are those of the author and not necessarily Search Engine Land.

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