Continue reading »]]> Well, it’s been a long time coming, but it has finally happened…..Microsoft and Yahoo have teamed up in the search and web advertising arena.

After several take-over offers from Microsoft were refused by Yahoo over the last year, the final deal that has now been reached will see Microsoft’s search engine Bing powering Yahoo’s search, with the advertising sales team at Yahoo taking over the same role for Bing’s advertising.

According to the BBC, there are two main factors as to why a deal has now been reached.  Firstly, after the CEO of Yahoo stood down towards the end of last year, Carol Bartz took over the role and she is not clouded by the centiment of keeping search within Yahoo, as was the case with many of the individuals who have been with the company since the glory days.

Secondly, and perhaps most importantly, Microsoft have finally come up with a search engine that can actually compete with that of Google.

You can read the full article on the BBC here.

Technorati Tags: bing, google, Microsoft, search, yahoo

Continue reading »]]> Its been a while since I last posted…..I have been really busy!

One thing I have been working on is the latest project for my colleague, James Farrer, a Trout Fisheries directory. Now, although the subject of Trout fishing is not the most enthralling (at least for me), I have been trying to assist in the area of SEO (Search Engine Optimisation).

James is using quite a few ASP.NET controls on his pages, including Collapsable Panels, Link Buttons and some of the AJAX extenders for pop up links. None of these are very search engine friendly.

So we are currently working to increase the indexability of his web site by using pure html links and QueryStrings instead of the horrible JavaScript links produced when using LinkButtons and other controls. I know……I Know…..QueryStrings aren’t very search engine friendly either! This is the first stage. The next is to introduce some URL re-writing so that we have some friendly URLs to link to as well.

There is alot more that can be done to make this site more ‘spiderable’ and I will post again when we are further on. Also, do check the site out as it does use GoogleMaps and AJAX in quite a nice fashion.

Trout Fisheries in England

Technorati Tags: AJAX, SEO