Yahoo will be phasing out the Overture keyword tool and perhaps making room for a new keyword search tool based on their new Panama advertising platform in the near future. The Overture keyword tool has been up and down for a few days now, but as of this morning it seems all regional versions of the Overture keyword inventory tool are also dead.

In a thread over at Webmasterworld someone claims to have talked with Yahoo representatives and they have given assurances they will fix the problem as early as today. If you rely heavily on the Overture keyword inventory data you have a few options although most of these options have some type of costs associated with them. Some of the best keyword research tools include Wordtracker, Keyword Discovery, Keywords Analyzer and Wordze.

The only free keyword tool available without creating an account is the Google external keyword tool. Unfortunately the Google external keyword tool only gives a search volume indicator instead of the actual search volume in numbers.

Update Feb, 02, 2007

The overture keyword invertory tool is still alive at this address http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/, although it shows the previous month's results from December 2006. This may mean December 2006 was the last update for this popular keyword tool.

Also, a new Wordtracker Free Keyword Suggestion Tool and KeywordDiscovery research tool has been released to the Overture keyword tool decommissioning.

Comscore released the latest search stats for the total U.S. home, work and university Internet users collected in August 2006. Google had regained some of the loss from last month albeit a small gain.
Yahoo and MSN held pretty much steady where they were last month and AOL and Ask have no significant gain or loss either.
 
If we compare August 2005 vs August 2006 results, it’s clear Google is still maintaining momentum in gaining market share at the expense of MSN, Yahoo. Since Time Warner is serving up Google results Google’s dominance is even more striking at nearly 50% of the total searches in the US.
 

We have put together a couple quick chart to illustrate the differences.
 
 

Article writing and submissions are still a great one way link building option for website owners who love to write and educate their readers on a variety of topics.
Giving out free information builds credibility for any website and also builds strong topical one way links to the article authors’ website. Although the whole article writing fever is just staring to gain momentum, but it may be already starting to scrape the limits of how much weight search engines will continue to give to these types of links. As you may know the byline inserted into these articles usually contain a link back to the authors’ website. Some article directories also allow the articles to be posted in HTML format which gives the author the opportunity to insert more inbound links to a target website’s inner pages.

Since most SEOs know the value of inbound links containing target keywords surrounded by text on the same topic provide the most valuable links, it’s no wonder most SEO companies offer article writing and submission as an add on service.

As the whole article writing and submission game becomes mainstream the search engines will naturally develop some type of defense mechanism to limit the influence of these articles in their search results. Google, Yaoo and MSN already suggested bloggers to use “link condoms” with the rel=”nofollow” attribute on hyperlinks in blog comments. Are article bylines and embedded HTML links in the articles may be the next target?

I don’t want to rain on anybody’s link building parade, but thinking ahead of the next search engine algorithm update curve is a good idea especially if your website heavily relies on articles submission for link popularity building. On that note here is our newly updated articles/ezine directory submission list.

In reading the results of a recent survey performed by
Keynote Systems.com, Yahoo, AskJeeves and MSN are gaining up against Google. The California based company which measures search engine usage by consumers stated Yahoo and MSN are closing the gap with Google since they are now serving up better search results.

The survey indicates both Yahoo and MSN noted a substantial number of consumers would consider using these search engines and making them their primary sites. I have to wonder if the recent acquisition of lead programmer of Firefox web browser, Ben Goodger by Google to work on the newly registered domain “gbrowser.com”,do the math yourself, what else could this mean even though Google is known for not commenting on rumor and speculation. It would appear as though Google has been losing some ground according to the survey in the search engine wars and is now preparing for a game of chess whereas Google is planning strategic moves to capture the Microsoft king and so we will all be pawns in watching this intense game of Chess.

Looks like things are really heating up in the ring these days between Microsoft, Yahoo and Google. Will Microsoft become the next heavyweight champions of the world who by the way have enough financial means to swallow up both Yahoo and Google in one gulp. On one side of the ring we have Microsoft who has been testing the MSN Search (beta) robot “MSNbot” for the past few months now, and have been noted by several Search Engine Optimization firms as doing an effective job processing search results, but ultimately their fate will be decided by MSN users.

In the other side of the ring are Google and Yahoo together vying for top spot Let’s all reflect in remembering how Microsoft chewed Netscape up and left them for dead. Is the same scenario playing out here again. If Microsoft can provide excellent search results and convince the general population that MSN is the way to go, then definitely Google and Yahoo are up against some stiff competition.

Since Micosoft has abolished Yahoo, users of MSN.com who when enter a search query, no longer find advertisements from Yahoo’s search engine provided by Overture’s Site Match. However, Overture Pay Per Click ads will continue to be displayed until Microsoft develops their own pay per click engine. Of course this equates to Microsoft losing advertising dollars from Overture’s Site Match and so who will throw the next punch and what will be the next tactic from Microsoft. Oh please give me a break, like Microsoft will idly sit by and go dahhhh, no they will hit below the belt. As we all know Google generates millions of dollars on Adwords, in order for Microsoft to take hold of that market share they will have to come up with some sort of new advertising plan to encourage people to advertise and mostly likely will under cut Google in paid advertising and as we all know Microsoft has the bucks to do just that and so the saga continues.