5 years. 3 CEOs. What makes Scott different? He actually codes. He was the CTO and president for PayPal. But it appears employees are excited to have him on board. One employee from Yahoo! mentioned in Wall Street Journal described having Thompson as a “relief.”

Yahoo! has a lot of stuff. Stuff that nobody really wants anymore because there are better versions of that stuff from other providers. It’s a lot of clutter and distraction, and frankly they’re playing catch up. Thompson gets this, and he doesn’t seem like a guy to slowly coast Yahoo! to its death.

He is committed to innovation. But why didn’t the last CEO? She (Carol Bartz) seemed to commit to threats and profanities. When she took over, her intention was to give Yahoo! “some friggin’ breathing room.” Of course, she failed to turn the company around and was fired over the phone.

A sign that Yahoo! might actually come back around is the Yahoo! Connected TV. The main features will be interaction between iPhone/iPad/Android and the television; but with a social twist so it’s not just another remote control app. It will be launched in early 2012.

The monetization of the Connected TV could turn out to be great for Yahoo!. The technology will identify what program is on the TV and display relevant ads and content based on that program. It could be a total game changer, like Pop Up video was for VH1 years ago, or Shazam for music tagging today.

But will Thompson change Yahoo!’s relationship with Bing, or adjust their search platform? It’s too soon to tell. His background certainly doesn’t fit Yahoo!’s growing role as a news content provider. However, some insiders expect him to take mobile very seriously.

One thing seems clear, they don’t care to own the standard desktop space anymore. This is probably a good thing, as they are too far behind Google to innovate. If you depend on off-desktop devices for your websites, don’t write off Yahoo! as a thing of the past just yet. If you use paid advertising, watch them closely.

Here’s the newsflash from Associated Content‘s homepage: “…We’ve signed a definitive agreement to be acquired by Yahoo!…Yahoo! plans to leverage our content to extend its leadership and build upon their global properties to deliver personally relevant content in a scalable and efficient manner.”

Founded in 2005, Associated Content states they have over 2 million pieces of content, over 300,000 freelance writers, and more than 30 million visitors per month. Not too bad, eh. According to MarketWatch, Yahoo! parted with just over $100 million.

Yahoo! has announced that they are closing the Yahoo Publisher Network beta program as of April 30, 2010. Yes, their “beta” program. They have been in beta for 5-6 years. I know what you are thinking … “Yahoo! had a Publisher Network?” Yes, they did and if you don’t know what a Publisher Network is just think of Google AdSense – that’s a Publisher Network.

Yahoo! stated that publishers will receive their final payments no later than May 31st, 2010. To replace Yahoo! ads on your site, Yahoo! is suggesting using Chitika. That is a riot that aren’t recommending AdSense. Is there something more going on behind the scenes?

In the “news that makes you yawn” department, more info on the forever pending Yahoo!/Microsoft deal … and it seems the deal now just needs to the right people approve the deal and it will be done. And hopefully then, Yahoo! Search goes away.

Yahoo! Inc. and Microsoft Corporation today announced that the companies have finalized and executed the definitive Search and Advertising Services and Sales Agreement and License Agreement in accordance with the letter agreement announced in July.

The companies released the following joint statement:

“Microsoft and Yahoo! believe that this deal will create a sustainable and more compelling alternative in search that can provide consumers, advertisers and publishers real choice, better value, and more innovation.

“Yahoo! and Microsoft welcome the broad support the deal has received from key players in the advertising industry and remain hopeful that the closing of the transaction can occur in early 2010.”

So, Yahoo! just went through with what looks like an update. I am seeing link counts down across the board. For example, two days ago my main site, www.webmarketingnow.com had just over 30,000 links according to Yahoo! Site Explorer. Today? 25,000. That’s a drop of 1/6th, which is pretty significant. My affiliate sites have seen about the same.

What about traffic?

Good question. Just 6.22% of my traffic comes from Yahoo! (organic). Compare that with 5.05% for MSN (organic) and Google’s lion share of 54.4%. The remaining 35% is PPC, direct or referral traffic. By the way, that’s a pretty healthy ratio 65/35. You don’t want one area to be too dominant (more than 75%) of your referral traffic. And you also don’t want to count on pure PPC for all your traffic either.

Back to Yahoo! … what other changes have taken place? Over at Webmaster World they are discussing canonical issues, which are present mainly because their bot, Inktomi, continues to be ignored and it really needs an update … or just kill it altogether an go to a PPC dominated page with directory results as the organic listing. What Yahoo! is doing with organic search right now just isn’t working. When it was working correctly, they were either using Google to feed their results or using their directory listings.

This isn’t rocket science. Spammers aren’t going to pay $299.00 a year to be listed – real businesses will.

Have you been getting emails like this one below that we have received all week?

This is a courtesy notice to inform you that the minimum bid requirement on one or more of the keywords in your account ‘COMPANY NAME’ [XXXXXXXXXXX] has recently decreased. This means that your ad(s) associated with these keywords are now eligible to be displayed in search results.

The one consistent factor of all the emails we have received, is they are for accounts which have been basically “inactive” or “low volume.” It seems Yahoo! is taking the approach of getting accounts to spend again to lower the bids. I haven’t seen any lower bids on our active accounts, so it seems like this may just be a cheap marketing ploy … and my question is, will the bids go back up once a certain time frame hits?

Are we looking at a “sub-prime” issue in the PPC space? I doubt it, as Yahoo! just doesn’t have the push needed to make a strong case in the space. Even in strong female markets where Yahoo! has been so strong in past years, the conversions just aren’t there.

How is your Yahoo! PPC account? Seeing the same issues?

On another note, what about the new tools Yahoo! introduced a couple of days ago?

Here is what they are offering:

• Search Retargeting: gives advertisers the ability to target display advertising based on user search activities
• Enhanced Retargeting: allows advertisers to deliver dynamically generated display ads across the Yahoo! network based on user activity on an advertiser’s site
• Enhanced Targeting: capabilities for search advertising, including ad scheduling and demographic targeting within search.

Due to sheer volume of traffic, I haven’t used these new tools yet so I can’t comment, but I have heard good things about them and the overall feedback has been positive.

This is why I stopped investing in the stock market.

Analysts are pleased with the cuts that Yahoo! has made in terms of layoffs and some slight movement in management, but the bottom line is their search engine sucks just the same today as it did last year, and the year before that, and so on …

Overall, the stock at Yahoo! dropped 48% in 2008.

My “Five Steps to Fix Yahoo! Search” two years ago are still relevant today.

Yahoo! has a history of completing the updates BEFORE they announce them, therefore, you can probably ignore the “next few days” comment. One change that I noticed is I dropped from #3 to #7 for the term “web marketing.”

The bottom line is, until Yahoo! can get more organic market share, changes they make to their algorithm will matter little.

Yang’s “downfall” was pinned on his inability to close the deal with Microsoft. I disagree. There have been waves of bad decisions, including indecision on Yang’s part over the years. I cover these issues in my “How Yahoo Screwed Itself” blog post from last year.

The biggest benefit is Yahoo! will be offering real time tracking rather than Google’s 24-hour delay. Let’s see if Google is true to form and upgrades GA to include real-time tracking.

And then they issued this statement:

From November 3, 2008, until December 31, 2008, Yahoo! will be making a seasonal rate adjustment by increasing the cost per click (CPC) by 25% in all categories. This means that during this period your actual billed CPC will be 25% higher. This adjustment reflects the increased consumer buying activity during the holiday shopping season, which is typified by increased leads, better conversion to sale, and increased revenue for our merchant partners. The 25% adjustment to your billed CPC will be reflected on your Click Report and in your invoice.

I even received an email telling me my phone support has been discontinued. Someone please explain to me why we continue to advertise with Yahoo!? It is getting harder and harder for me to answer that question.

An average drop of 18% in the reported number of links. My main site, Web Marketing Now, saw a drop of 4,000 links (from 25,000 to 21,000).

Yahoo! just did an algorithm update, and while this probably has nothing to do with that update, I have looked at what the changes could be and I’m not seeing any consistency in the types of links which were dropped. There is speculation that Yahoo! is no longer counting certain types of links and removed “nofollow” type of links, but that is just pure speculation at this point.

The bottom line is, there was an adjustment, and Yahoo! doesn’t have enough market share organically to really cause too much stress over this.