Yahoo recently announced that they have released a brand new look that was intended to capture a more modern appearance. Individuals everywhere agree that the search result redesign looks an awful lot like Google’s search results. It has also been noted that both the page and the search results appear to be loading a great deal faster than they had before.

Yahoo has decided to do away with the tab navigation that the company introduced in their 2011 makeover. Now, the company has decided to go with simple text links (very much like Google uses). Yahoo also introduced a navigation menu on the left site that is very similar to the one that was introduced by Marissa Mayer for Google in 2010. Yahoo claims that in time the top navigation bar is going to feature more of Yahoo’s properties.

This redesign marks the first major milestone that has taken place for Yahoo since Mayer assumed the position of CEO for Yahoo. Keep in mind, this redesign is going to have no weight on the organic search results obtained through Yahoo. This is because despite the redesign Yahoo is still being powered and supported by Bing.

Mayer has expressed that she is still dissatisfied with the search deal that Yahoo has with Microsoft. The dissatisfaction is supposed to have a lot to do with the fact that Bing and Yahoo have swapped their search engine market shares over the course of the last two years instead of taking anything from Google.

Have you seen the new Yahoo SERP design? Do you think it looks like Google? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

Figures show that Google mobile advertising revenue has tripled from what it was in 2011 to an estimated 4.61 billion dollars. This means that by the end of 2012 Google held 52.36% of the entire global mobile revenue market. It is believed that this will increase to 55.97 % by the year 2013.

Despite a huge gap in numbers, Facebook technically falls into second place in 2012 holding 5.35 % of the mobile advertising market. It is believed that this number will increase to 12.9% by next year. Twitter, on the other hand, has fallen below its usually high numbers. In 2013, it has increased its share by 1.95%. However, this still only puts it up 1.57% from where it was last year.

Surprising enough, it is not Twitter that comes in third place when it comes to the mobile revenue market. Pandora (music streaming website) has actually beaten Twitter and taken that third place slot.

According to eMarketer, Google has YouTube largely to thank for their overall success in the mobile advertising market. It is also believed that thanks to YouTube, Google’s share in the mobile marketing revenue market is going to continue to rise.

Do you see Google’s dominance continuing to grow or will someone else come along and grab some of the coveted mobile money?

Google’s Pierre Far and Yoshikiyo Kat discussed, in a recent blog post, the change that Google will be making in order to provide the usability of Google’s search for mobile users.

To improve the search experience for smartphone users and address their pain points, we plan to roll out several ranking changes in the near future that address sites that are misconfigured for smartphone users.

Following the announcement, the two did take the time to share what they believed to be the most common mistakes that web owners made when it came to their mobile users.

The number one mistake that web owners make is referred to as a faulty redirect. This is an error where your website directs every mobile user to one mobile page instead of directing them to a page they want that has been optimized for the use of mobile users. The next biggest issue is when mobile users try to access a website that comes up in a search result and are returned to nothing more than an error.

Google says there is nothing to lose and everything to gain when it comes to making your website friendly for mobile and smartphone users. First and foremost it is going to keep the visitors of your website happy. Furthermore, it is going to increase the number of visitors your website gains through increasing the ranking of your website’s search results for mobile users.

While the monthly increase may not seem like a very big advantage, Bing’s market share is in a much better place than they were last year. In fact, this time last year Bing only had a market share of 15.4 percent in April of 2012.

Google still manages to hold their position as the head powerhouse when it comes to the search market shares in the United States despite dropping by 0.6% in April. However, Bing is definitely making progress as they have gained nearly 2% from where they were at this time last year.

When comparing Yahoo and Bing’s shares from year to year experts are noticing that they appear to be swapping their marketing shares as opposed to making a dent in Google’s shares. Naturally, this is something that both search engines see as a problem.

Ask’s search engine market shares have not changed since March and AOL’s search market shares have decreased by 0.2%.

In terms of number of searches, there were over 20 billion people searches executed on the Internet in April alone. Google lead the pack with 13.3 billon searches, Bing came in second place with 3.5 billion, Yahoo had 2.4 billion, Ask had 539 million, and AOL falls in last place with 290 million.

The long awaited next-generation Penguin 2.0 update has been released by Google with the official announcement coming from Matt Cutts, Google’s head of spam.

Here is the official statement:

We started rolling out the next generation of the Penguin webspam algorithm this afternoon (May 22, 2013), and the rollout is now complete. About 2.3% of English-US queries are affected to the degree that a regular user might notice. The change has also finished rolling out for other languages world-wide. The scope of Penguin varies by language, e.g. languages with more webspam will see more impact.

This is the fourth Penguin-related launch Google has done, but because this is an updated algorithm (not just a data refresh), we’ve been referring to this change as Penguin 2.0 internally. For more information on what SEOs should expect in the coming months, see the video that we recently released.

Cutts said that the Penguin 2.0 update was designed to target spam that is classified as black hat. Google believes that this is going to impact a larger portion of spam than what the original Penguin as well as the previous updates has been able to accomplish. While the previous version of Penguin would really only look at the home page of a site, Cutts has hinted that the new generation of Penguin goes much deeper and has a really big impact in certain small areas of a website.

It was back in April of 2012 that the first Penguin update was released to the public.

Twitter is bursting at the seams with individuals who are discussing Penguin 2.0. In a few days there should be a plethora of information available in regards to just what kind of spam this new update is targeting.

Web owners everywhere are all standing by to see just how these changes may either help or hurt their flow of traffic as well as their page ranking with Google.

What makes this keyword tool different is the fact that it is a perfect blend of Google’s existing keyword tool as well as AdWords Traffic Estimator. The purpose of this new keyword tool is to more effectively help website owners locate the best keywords for their marketing campaigns. Though it is only speculation, individuals everywhere are assuming Google‘s intention is to eventually replace the AdWords Tool and Traffic Estimator with this single web application.

There are several new features that make the Google’s new keyword tool a lot more beneficial and effective than the previous AdWords tool. These features include:

• A keywords search option allowing users to search for new keywords that are going to complement their marketing campaign
• Keyword statistics and performance estimations is about giving the user a general idea of how well the keywords they have chosen are going to do.
• Keyword filters allows the individual to narrow down their search with filters such as the average CPC or the monthly search volume.
• Group/list views will display the keywords in a list like the old keyword tool did.

You can find more details about the new Google AdWords Keywords Planner tool here.

According to Matt, these are the most common mistakes to make and can be easily avoided when you first get started on SEO.

So here goes….

Mistake #1: Not having a crawlable website. If you make your good content really hard to find, then Google can’t crawl, index, and rank your content.

Solution: Watch the video below for Matt’s suggestion.

Mistake #2: Not including the right keywords and phrases within your website’s content.

Solution: According to Matt, it helps if webmasters think about what keywords and phrases searchers are going to use to find your website/business. Those are the words that should appear throughout the content on your site.

Mistake #3: Webmasters are focusing entirely too much on building links. Their focal points should be on creating quality content as well as marketing.

Solution: Rather than thinking of link building as the bee-all and end-all of SEO, you should focus on making something compelling – a reason people will really want to use your website.

Mistake #4: Webmasters are not using proper descriptions and titles. The purpose of your titles and descriptions is to entice viewers to want to click your link and visit your website.

Solution: Watch Matt’s video below for his suggestions on creating correct title and description tags.

Mistake #5: Not reaping the benefits of all the SEO and Webmaster resources readily available on the Internet.

Solution: Matt highly recommends that webmasters consider following Google’s videos and blogs. It is also suggested that they engage in conversation on the Google forums, and try using resources from other search engines like Blekko’s link tool and Bing Webmaster Tools.

You can watch the full video of the SEO mistakes below:

Apparently there are a lot of very precise reasons why the company wants to pull the plug on the deal that is nearly 4 years old. One of the biggest reasons is that Microsoft has not been successful in helping Yahoo reach the previously agreed upon revenue per search results.

However, it’s not going to be easy for Yahoo to simply walk away from the 10 year deal.

Why Can’t Yahoo Just Leave?
Under the terms of the deal Microsoft’s Bing powers Yahoo search, while Yahoo uses its solid relationship with advertisers to be the salesforce for both companies.

When the deal was formed Yahoo gave up their online search technology. So, Yahoo physically cannot quickly break the deal and move on with search as easily as it would like. It would cost the company more than the deal is costing them now. Yahoo would have to find another search partner that could power the bulk of their search results as quickly as possible. Google is the only option left that Yahoo has to consider. Unfortunately, going to Google may not be possible without having regulatory approval.

Making a deal with Google would lead to a financial hole that Yahoo might not be able to climb back out of. This is because Yahoo would also lose the vast majority of its search advertisement serving technology until the approval process is complete. This is because Microsoft also took over that aspect of Yahoo when the deal was made. Yahoo may be able to go without their listings for a little while, but they would have a long and difficult time having to recreate all of their search advertisements. They would almost definitely be taking a financial loss as well.

The deal terms between Microsoft and Yahoo mean that the partnership can only be called off if either Microsoft closes or sells Bing, or if Yahoo’s revenue per search falls below 40% of Google’s. To put this into persperctive, Yahoo’s search revenue grew 6 percent year-over-year in Q1 of this year and there are no rumors of Bing going anywhere anytime soon.

However, according to a Bloomberg report, Yahoo is undeterred by these stumbling blocks. While Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer has been unsuccessful in her attempts to get out of the agreement for almost a year, she has already met with her previous employer Google and agreed to enter an alternative search partnership if the Microsoft agreement can be concluded.

Could we see a “Goohoo” or “Yahogle” sooner rather than later?

Fast-forward to the beginning of May and Cutts hasn’t disappointed. He has warned webmasters to expect a Penguin “hit” in the “next few weeks”. Here are Matt’s exact words in reply to a Twitter conversation:

@mrjamiedodd we do expect to Penguin 2.0 (next generation of Penguin) sometime in the next few weeks though.

The announcement came after there was speculation that a ranking update had already hit last week with many noticing a change to their website’s ranking. However, Matt put the rumors to rest by stating via Twitter that there was no Penguin update as of 10th May.

What is Penguin 2.0?
Good question…. Matt refers to it as the “next generation” of Penguin and it has been the source of much speculation since Matt mentioned it in March.

All we know is that if Matt went so far as to announce the impending update (which is unprecedented), then we can expect it to be quite a significant algorithm update. It’s certainly one of the most talked about Google changes to happen so far this year.

Take this as your official warning…. Big changes are coming!

What Google has released is called the Customer Journey to Online Purchase and this new interactive tool is revolutionary in how it collects customer habits to better help you serve your business and customer needs.

The tool describes in great detail how customers interact online. Whether they respond to advertisement quickly, what types of online advertisement they respond to and how long they take before deciding to purchase any product or service. This tool also breaks down the data by industry so you will better know just how to grab the attention of potential customers as well as compare your results to those of your industry’s benchmark.

This tool takes over 36,000 different analytics from 11 different industries across 7 countries and places them in one tool. You get to see just how your customers find you whether it’s due to online ads, banners, search engines and which results they used, and other sites such as affiliate links on blogs or 3rd party advertisements.

Google explains its philosophy behind the tool:

Savvy marketers understand that you don’t always seal the deal with a single message, image, or advertisement. A user may see a display ad, click on a link from a friend, or do a search before buying something from your website — and all of these interactions can play a role in the final sale. It’s important to understand the entire customer journey so you can measure all of the elements that contribute to your campaigns, attribute the right value to them, and adjust your marketing budgets where appropriate.

The Customer Journey to Purchase Tool allows businesses to finally get the all-in-one data arrangement they have been asking for. They finally get to know just exactly how their customers find them, how they make purchases, and exactly how long they take. This not only helps them to properly target advertisement, they will now know which type works best for their ROI.

You can start working with the Customer Journey to Online Purchase Tool here.