Google has pulled out of the deal due to ongoing concerns from the Justice Department on the fairness of the deal and Google’s belief that it was a case not worth fighting.

This is what David Drummond; Google Chief Legal Officer had to say:

…after four months of review, including discussions of various possible changes to the agreement, it’s clear that government regulators and some advertisers continue to have concerns about the agreement. Pressing ahead risked not only a protracted legal battle but also damage to relationships with valued partners. That wouldn’t have been in the long-term interests of Google or our users, so we have decided to end the agreement.

Read more from David on the outcome.

Unsurprisingly, Yahoo! is not happy with the news; here is an excerpt from the press release they issued:

…Google has terminated the advertising services agreement the companies announced in June. Yahoo! continues to believe in the benefits of the agreement and is disappointed that Google has elected to withdraw from the agreement rather than defend it in court. Google notified Yahoo! of its refusal to move forward with implementation of the agreement following indication from the Department of Justice that it would seek to block it, despite Yahoo!’s proposed revisions to address the DOJ’s concerns.

So where does this leave Yahoo!, with the chief exec under mounting pressure from shareholders? The major loser from the decision is Yahoo! The deal promised a revenue opportunity that the search engine desperately needed. It was a glimmer of hope for Yahoo!’s shareholders who have been bitterly disappointed over the last few years. In fact, the ink was barely dry on announcements that the deal was off, when Yahoo!’s head Yang rekindles Microsoft acquisition talk with the comment “To this day the best thing for Microsoft to do is buy Yahoo.”

Talking at the Web 2.0 summit, Jerry continued with:

…I don’t think that is a bad idea at all…at the right price, whatever the price is, we are willing to sell the company…We were ready to negotiate, we wanted to negotiate a deal, and we felt that we weren’t that far apart. But at the end of the day, they withdrew and they since have been very clear about not wanting to buy the company.

Well, that was then and this is now. There’s no denying the worlds finances have changed radically from when Microsoft walked away from Yahoo! acquisition talks.

Yahoo! really has its back up against the wall, and with its share price about 25% lower than it was when the offer was made, it could be a good time for Microsoft rekindle discussions.

Neither of the other “major” search engines are making any real inroads into Google’s ascendancy on their own, so combined, they could possibly offer some serious competition.

Right now it seems for Microsoft the price is right – for Yahoo!, they’re desperate to sell!

Cashback Shopper has just achieved the number 1 position for all the following keyphrases on Yahoo:

• shop cashback
• shopping cashback shopping
• shopper cashback
• shops cashback
• uk cash back
• cash rewards site
• extra cashback
• free cashback
• cash-back directory
• get cashback
• uk shopping cashback
• uk cashback shopping pays cash
• cashbackshopper
• cashback shopper
• earn cash back rewards
• cash back uk
• cash back shop
• cash back directory

and is in the top 10 results for 19 other keyphrases!!!!

It’s taken 9 months of constant promotion, blogging, marketing, seo etc. but it’s a nice feeling when the results are so visible. Will keep working at phrases that aren’t doing so well & the key objective is to start making a bigger dent in the Google SERPS!

The best Google positions currently achieved are:

cash rewards site 7
cashback shopper 1
cashback shopping 3
cashback shopping site 7
cashback site 3
cashback uk 9
earn cashback 5
extra cashback 4
shopper cashback 1
site cashback 4
uk cashback 2
uk cashback shopping 2

with 17 other phrases appearing in the next 2 pages of results.

MSN is a strange creature; I have about 13 top ten positions, but only 2 other phrases in the next 2 pages and a dozen or so ways down in the top 100! But with a only 3% of the search market, it doesn’t really matter anyway.

So, the aim now is to find the most searched phrases (& those with the highest KEI) from all these on Google & give them a real push to try & get them to the top!! With lots of FREE traffic up for grabs, this is the most important task for any affiliate marketer!

The share price for Yahoo has been falling after rejecting Microsoft’s takeover bid & shareholders have been very angry at what they feel was a bad management decision. Yahoo has been under pressure from shareholders, for major management changes, while others have even filed lawsuits. This deal with Google is meant to assist Yahoo!’s under performing revenues & appease the shareholders.

With Yahoo! now only achieving 19% search market share, it appears that they have now abandoned the PPC market, its users and advertisers. Google have now increased their already dominant position and bought even more market share, which can only reduce competition & increase costs!

Competition also breeds innovation – for both search consumers and the advertiser & without it, will Google now rest on its laurels & just rake in the money? The paid search market is still relatively young and has been going through rapid changes and growth. But with the battle already won, the need for product innovation is gone. Microsoft may very well have deep pockets and control of the desktop, but Live Search lacks the traffic to be a true competitor – and they also seem to have diverted their attention elsewhere – at least in the short to medium term.

A lack of competition also means that advertisers are likely to pay more for each click. Advertisers will be forced to pay for Google, rather than the cheaper Yahoo! rate & without an alternative, the Google monopoly will mean that they can increase their charges as and when they like! Whilst this is great for Google & the Yahoo! shareholders, it is not great for anyone who is already struggling to make a return from PPC marketing.

Whilst a combined Yahoo!/Microsoft might not have been perfect, it at least would’ve provided competition for Google, benefiting advertisers and searchers alike.

With the small advertiser being frozen out of PPC markting by the big players with big budgets, it looks like search engine optimisation & high natural search engine listings will be even more important for affiliate marketeers!!!

The report was conducted over December 2007 & January 2008 & tried to develop an understanding of how search engine users behaved in their searches on the three largest search engines: Google, Yahoo! and MSN.

The study revealed that 68% of search engine users click a search result within the first page of results and 92% click a result within the first three pages of search results! The importance of appearing high in the search results has always been emphasised by SEO companies & it seems this importance is steadily growing! There is a clear pattern developing between the data from 2002 to 2008 which indicates that more search engine users click the first page in 2008 (68%) as compared to 2002 (48%). Inversely, fewer search engine users are willing to click results past the third page in 2008 (8%) as compared 2002 (19%). In both these cases, there is a year on year rise & fall respectively.

So more than ever, it is vital for search marketers to ensure that their sites appear within the first three pages of search results and especially on page one.

In a second related finding, the study revealed that 49% of search engine users who continue their search process when not initially finding what they seek, change their search term and/or search engine after reviewing just the first page of search results, rather than search further down the SERPS & 91% do so if they do not find what they seek in the first three pages. Again from 2002 to 2008, it seems that more users are abandoning their query after reviewing the first page in 2008 (49%) as compared 2002 (28%) & fewer users are willing to continue their review of results past the third page in 2008 (9%) as compared to 2002 (22%).

Again, the need to obtain top placements on search results pages has progressively increased in importance for search engine marketers.

Finally, the study reveals that brand equity is conveyed upon companies whose websites appear among the top search results by roughly a third of the search engine users. In 2008, 39% of search engine users believe that the companies whose websites are returned among the top search results are the leaders in their field. This figure has grown from 33% in 2002. Another 42% feel neutral on this question, with only 19% believing that top search engine rankings do not automatically denote an industry leader.

Initiatives that produce top search engine rankings can clearly help companies achieve their branding goals.

The study, tabled by Yahoo!, iProspect and JupiterResearch, paints a dark picture for website owners who are sitting below the top 10 results! Theoretically, they are only exposing their sites to 32% of searchers by sitting off the first page.

Freshwebz have partnered with one of the UK’s leading Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) companies to offer your website guaranteed Top 10 Google rankings for your desired keywords in the natural listings.

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1. Link building is important

Links are like votes for a website. The more votes a website has, the better the rankings.

2. There are different link types

Search engines consider the relevance of the links. Links from unrelated websites don’t help as much as links from relevant websites. A link from a website that has many inbound links for itself counts more than a link from an unpopular website.

3. It’s important to keep on link building

It does not help to get more links than your competing web pages. At least one of your competitors will continue to build links and pass your website. For that reason, it’s important to know that link building is an ongoing activity.

4. Buying links can get you in trouble

Search engines don’t like paid links because they consider the links to your website as editorial votes. Google has officially stated that it considers paid links as an attempt to game the system.

Google penalises websites that buy links. Even if Google cannot automatically find all paid links to your website, your competitors might report your website.

Try to get high quality organic links if possible.

5. Redirects can cause problems

Redirects have been used by spammers in the past and some search engines still have difficulties with that. If you have to use redirections on your website, only use 301 redirects.

A 301 redirect is the only server side redirect that is defined as a permanent redirect. That means that search engines will follow the links and pass the links from the old URL to the new URL.

6. Duplicate content can cause problems

Search engines want to return as many different results as possible in their results. That is why search engines only list one copy of a document in their search results.

For that reason, you shouldn’t promote more than one domain for the same website and you should have unique content on your web pages.

Near copies are also considered duplicate content, for example, when the same article is listed on more than one website.

7. Why your web pages must be optimised

Search engines use simple software programs to index web pages. These web pages analyse the text on a web page to determine what it is all about.

If a keyword is mentioned in the right places and in the right frequency, search engines will consider the web page relevant to that keyword. If a keyword is mentioned too often, search engines might penalise a website because it looks like a spamming attempt.

8. Keywords are the key to your success

It’s important to choose the right keywords for search engine optimisation. Single word keywords can be very popular but they seldom lead to sales. Industry specific keywords can be so special that no one searches for them. The perfect keyword is targeted, has a high search volume and leads to sales.

Search engine optimisation is not rocket science but it requires some work and ongoing efforts. If you understand the basic SEO concepts, it’s easier to get top 10 rankings on Google and other major search engines.

If you want guaranteed top 10 Google Rankings, then contact us to discuss our search engine optimisation plans, if you want to try SEO yourself, then we recommend Internet Business Promoter, an award-winning web site promotion suite that helps you to get top 10 rankings in Google, Yahoo and all other major search engines.

IBP is the only SEO software tool that guarantees top 10 rankings for your keywords. IBP offers all the tools you need to get top rankings, including tools for website optimization, link building, search engine submission and more.

Bearing in mind that Cashback Shopper was only launched in November 2007 & the amount of on-site optimisation was limited to just the front page by the original control panel provided by eDealsUK, I’m pretty pleased with how the site progressed. However, following a major rankings update by Google, the site slipped in and out of the results for a few weeks, but seems to have stabilised again now.

First of all, the site jumped straight into the Cashback News top 20 most visited cashback sites with an Alexa (Alexa rankings are only a rough indicator of how popular a site is) ranking of 400,468!! This put it above NHS Cashback (21st) & Cashback To You (26th), which are both run by eDealsUK themselves! As well as this, Cashback Shopper is the highest Alexa ranked white label site registered on Cashback News!!

Over the past couple of years there has been an explosion in the number of cashback sites & Cashback News tracks the major news from the UK’s Cashback sites.

Their top 20 as at 31st March 2008 is:

# Quidco 25,348
# Rpoints 76,403
# GreasyPalm 77,747
# Give or Take 81,311
# Top Cashback 116,208 – ↑1
# MutualPoints 119,432 – ↓1
# eDeals UK 167,891
# Free Fivers 197,208 – ↑2
# Cashback Rewards 205,521
# Linemypocket 246,858 – ↑4
# MoneyBackMadness 249,117 – ↑1
# RupizCompare 265,300 – ↑5
# Cashbin 270,200
# eCashBack 287,635 – ↑19
# Comparison Plus 299,291 – ↑15
# CashbackChief 321,828 – ↑5
# Cashback Junction 333,294 – ↑6
# trollyCASH 375,873 – ↓7
# CashbackCascade 397,672 – ↑9
# Cashback Shopper 400,468 New

As some of the sites in the Top 20 have been established for many years & are all unique cash-back websites rather than white labels, I’m very pleased with my Search Engine Optimisation efforts so far )

Since this chart, the control panel for Cashback Shopper has been updated to Version 2 and allows for much more customisation of other pages. This can only benefit my SEO efforts & I look forward to the next chart which is due at the end of May.

But although this is nice to see, the most important “chart” is the one known as Google (plus Yahoo & MS Live Search!). So a regular rankings check on popular keywords will show how my site is doing in the search engines & what they think its value is for these key phrases.

Google
cash back 38
cash back shopping 14
cash rewards site 9
cashback 36
cash-back 39
cashback from shopping 48
cashback shopper 1
cashbackshopper 1
cashback shopping 15
cashback shopping site 12
cashback site 3
cashback sites 4
cashback uk 12
earn cashback 6
get cashback
online shopping uk 38
online shops 87
shopping cash back 11
shopping cashback 10
uk cash back 6
uk cashback 5
UK cashback shopping 4
UK cashback shopping site 11
UK shopping cashback 6

Yahoo
cash back 42
cash back shopping 1
cash rewards site 83
cashback 77
cash-back 44
cashback from shopping 23
cashback shopper 1
cashbackshopper 1
cashback shopping 13
cashback shopping site 5
cashback site 19
cashback sites 16
cashback uk 27
earn cashback 15
free cashback 6
get cashback 6
internet shopping 81
shopping cash back 11
shopping cashback 2
uk cash back 10
uk cashback 6
UK cashback shopping 7
UK cashback shopping site 4
UK shopping cashback 9