Microsoft Russia recently purchased the domain MSN.ru at an undisclosed price, but experts say it could have amounted to a million dollars. Microsoft confirmed the acquisition so if you visit MSN.ru now its homepage sports the ubiquitous Microsoft icons with Windows Live in the spotlight.

Microsoft intends to boost its share in Russia and acquiring the .ru domain is part of the plan. “MSN is getting more and more popular in Russia, and this is very important for Microsoft Russia”, said Petr Suzdalev, Microsoft Russia spokesman. “We will undoubtedly continue developing MSN.ru”.

One of Russia’s most expensive domains was Vodka.ru, sold at $1M. Vodka.com was more expensive at $3M. In 2005, Google bought Google.cn and Google.com.cn for $1M. So did Microsoft really pay $1 million for MSN.ru? It is certainly a possibility, and the domain is definitely worth that amount. It’s also interesting to note that in Russia and China, foreign companies seem to prefer to pay the actual market value for domains they failed to register when they had the opportunity to do so, rather than entangle themselves in lengthy lawsuits with an uncertain outcome.

Source.

Since now Google Checkout is available to online shops and shoppers in the United Kingdom.

Jim Lanzone, CEO of Ask.com, has confirmed with me that Ask.com is working on Edison. Edison is the code name behind merging of Ask.com’s two different search technologies they own, Teoma and Direct Hit.

Apostolos Gerasoulis is very excited about this new algorithm and he told me he feels this will be the most powerful algorithm in search.

Source.

SEOUL, South Korea (Reuters) -- Samsung Electronics, the world's top memory chip maker, reported a 15 percent fall in first-quarter earnings on Friday, hurt by a steep drop in margins, and predicted further price pressure in the near term.

Source.

If you remember, I’ve posted about this not so long time ago.
Seems that’s not true, I’ve transfered one site using 301
redirect about two months ago and Page Rank wasn’t
transfered yet.

Let’s see if my ”theory” will confirms that Page Rank
transfers after Page Rank update.

OK, here’s another peace of … written by me

You might think that your earnings depends only on visitors, right? It’s one of the factors, for sure, but if you would just place ads wherever you want you might earn less than other webmaster with even less visitors but some techniques. I’ll give you some tips for Google Adsense, but basically it will work with any CPC program.

I’ve seen so many webmasters who are trying to discern their ads from site, for example: If site got white background and dark grey font color, they are making something like: blue ad background with white font and light green borders or something like that. This is not good idea in the most cases. Of course, visitor will notice your ad, but are you sure that visitor will read/view it for more than a second? You can always disagree with me, that’s only mine opinion, but I suggest you to make your ad look the same as your site content, make borders and background color same as your site background color, make your ad url/title same color as all your site links. This will definitely attract more attention; most will think that it’s a part of site so they will read that ad. So if ad will be interesting there’s big chance that it will be clicked, more clicks – less views = higher CTR.

I can give you mine own example, I own a free forum skins site (www.GPF-Design.com), when I had an exclusive ad with different colors than mine whole site theme it had near 1% CTR so I was earning just a few cents, but once I made it look like my site theme, CTR increased five times next day. It’s just example how important text ad color is.
So where should you place your ads? Good question. Most would place it at the top of the site, 468*60 for example. This is not good idea if you are being paid for clicks, but not views, how many of you are looking there when you are surfing site? I suggest you to place ads in the corners or somewhere in the content. OK, I will give you one more example: let’s say that you want to buy laptop, you are looking for reviews first, right? You were searching via search engine for something like laptop reviews, found site. You didn’t place much attention to that site top, where most place ads, right? Good. So you are reading… Found that this one is the best in its class, so you think, ah, I will buy this one, and then you notice! Notice Google ad in the middle of the text where it says “Buy Cheap Laptops”, what a cool ad! You just wanted to buy this one, so what you do? You click ad and see what that e-shop/seller can offer, webmaster was smart and knew that it was good idea to place ad somewhere where it will be profitable. I suggest you to be smart too.

Of course, if you are getting paid for views or got some very exclusive ads which are being noticed you could get some clicks too, but most just will scroll site or surf around and won’t take many attention to the top again, but it’s your decision. It’s not always bad to place you ad there or make it look different than your site theme, just take a shot and try both.
Just don’t forget main rule: Ad shouldn’t make your site look ugly, it should decorate your site and make it look even better.

That’s it. Enjoy your growing earnings.

Multi-year search ad deal covers 33 of Viacom’s sites and could expand to 140 more worldwide.

NEW YORK (Reuters) — Media conglomerate Viacom Inc. said Tuesday that it had chosen Yahoo Inc. to provide search advertising for 33 of its Internet sites in a major boost to Yahoo’s new Web ad system.

The system, dubbed Project Panama, was launched in early February and is seen as a key test of Yahoo’s ability to offer advertisers a competing technology to Web search leader Google Inc (down $1.71 to $466.50, Charts).

Viacom said the multiyear advertising partnership with Yahoo covers broadband sites for its MTV, VH1, Comedy Central and Nickelodeon networks and could expand to more than 140 additional sites worldwide.

Through its new system, Yahoo will provide search tools and serve up contextual advertising, which utilizes data on what a user is looking at online.

Yahoo spokeswoman Gaude Lydia Paez declined to comment on financial terms of the deal with Viacom.

“It is our typical revenue-sharing deal we use with most of our partners,” Paez said. “It is exclusive, and it is multiyear.”

Viacom last month sued Google and its video-sharing site YouTube for $1 billion for failing to protect its copyrighted entertainment from being placed online without authorization.

Shares of Viacom (down $0.30 to $40.70, Charts) edged lower on the New York Stock Exchange, while shares of Yahoo (up $0.32 to $31.96, Charts) rose nearly 1 percent on Nasdaq.

Source

So first of all, it’s not a beta anymore (see their announcment)!

They’ve added mobile site submit, ”Report Spam” button and other great
things.

Visit Site Explorer.

Remember Google Co-Op?

Here’s a response from Yahoo: Yahoo Alpha.

Alpha is a new beta product from Yahoo! that introduces the concept of Federated Search. With Alpha, you can search across many different search indices all on one page. Also, if you have a Yahoo! ID, you can log in to personalise your experience by moving the search sources around to suit you, or adding completely new ones of your own.

This offers a comprehensive search result that’s tailored and controlled by you, the searcher!