Yahoo Tag

Yahoo Makes Cuts and Company Changes

Yahoo is one of the most established internet presences, and this has been a busy week for the online-centered business. While one move represents a company improvement, another feels like a step backwards.

The first change marks the company’s concerted effort to improve the spam filter on its mail service. Spearheading the campaign is Mark Risher, who has been aptly named the “anti-spam czar.” The new effort teams Yahoo’s research department with several universities in order to more effectively block spam in its mail service. Even with this new effort, Yahoo still urges their mail users to manually mark when spam messages get through to the inbox or legitimate messages get sent to the spam folder with the “spam” or “not spam” buttons.

The second company change actually speaks to the larger economic climate. After recently opening a research and development facility in France, Yahoo has announced that roughly 20% of the French department will receive the dreaded pink slip. These announced layoffs will reduce the French department from 251 employees to 199 employees.

Search News Recap 12.5

In keeping with my post last week about recapping the latest news in search, here’s some search engine stories of interest from around the web. This week, we’ll be talking about the recent releases of the data on the search trends of 2008, Google’s beta release of the social networking tool Friend Connect, and the on and off again drama of the Google / Yahoo search deal that has dominated headlines recently.

Search Trends 2008
It’s the time of year when the search giants like Google, Yahoo! and Ask.com give us some insight into the behavior of searchers. Some trends have remained consistent from 2007, but 2008 saw some interesting new topics rise and fall in the search box, most notably in American politics, natural disasters, the 2008 Olympics, and celebrity gossip. Search Engine Land has summarized the information quite nicely for us, highlighting the most important trends across all the engines that provided info. Here’s an overview:
(more…)