How would you like to change the way your site rankings appear within the search engines? I am not talking about the ranking itself, but rather the listings appearance. This idea may soon become a reality, at least at Yahoo, with the introduction of Yahoo Open Search. As noted in the Yahoo Search Blog Monday: "..instead of a simple title, abstract and URL,

It appears that YouTube is having some serious problems because it has been unreachable for over an hour now. I checked with a fellow Twitterer and there is no question this is a widespread outtage. What I find the most odd... Is there isn't even a error page provided by Google which is highly irregular and does not bode well. I hope you are all having a great weekend. Tomorrow I am off to Santa Clara for SMX West... I hope to see some of you there.

Today comScore released the search engine rankings for January 2008 and although the leaders of search are still holding strong to their positions Ask.com has experienced 20% growth! By far, ASK has shown the most significant improvement of all search properties. Furthermore when the report included all of the Ask Network the growth still trumped all other networks with 14.7% growth; the network includes other search properties such as MyWebSearch.com, Bloglines.com , etc.

Over the past few days there seems to be a lot of action with Google and Mobile search. As the advancement in mobile technology continues, the major search engines are finding their place in this infant marketplace to seek out as many advertiser dollars as possible. Google Searches Abundant on iPhones On Wednesday, Google reported that it has seen more mobile searches by users using Apple iPhones by 50 times that of any other mobile handset, according to the Financial Times .

The policy at Google may not be changing regarding how they treat Display URL's within AdWords accounts, but they are cracking down on those abusing the system. Effective April 1st of this year the display URL policy will be strictly enforced. While the policy is relatively simple, some advertisers have found ways to abuse the system and in the light of some advertiser complaints, Google has decided to put its foot down in the act of fairness.

Over the past week I have been keeping the StepForth SEO Blog updated on the events focused on Microsoft's attempted acquisition of Yahoo and the fall out since. This is becoming quite a debacle so I thought a little chronological update on how all this went down might be useful. From 2006 to Now 2006: Rumors abounded that Yahoo and Microsoft were in talks about working together and that an acquisition was possible. However,

Google has added a "search box" for sites chosen to have "a high probability that a user wants more refined search results within that specific site". Without leaving Google's results page the "search box" will help find information within that website and hopefully the exact page people are looking for within a site. The "search box" will gather query specific results from within the site and display them on a new refined results page.

Microsoft released the following official statement today in response to Yahoo's denial of the $44 bn dollar offer and I highlighted Microsoft's fully-expected overture towards a hostile takeover: It is unfortunate that Yahoo! has not embraced our full and fair proposal to combine our companies. Based on conversations with stakeholders of both companies, we are confident that moving forward promptly to consummate a transaction is in the best interests of all parties.

Over the weekend Bloomberg reports that Yahoo's board decided to reject Microsoft's offer of $44 bn because they felt their stock was substantially undervalued but they hinted they could be drawn back to the table with a more alluring offer. "The board spent a week reviewing the $31-per-share offer before deciding it was too low. The statement didn't give a counter-proposal for the price. Yahoo wants at least $40, the Wall Street Journal reported this weekend.

Yesterday I had the good fortune to be invited to speak on the Webcology Webmasterradio.FM radio show with Jim Hedger and Dave Davies about my experience with competitor analysis . The show was a part of a 10 part SEO series where experts in their select field of SEO are invited to discuss their artform.