Yahoo! has now integrated local results (complete with maps) for broad keywords (Bing and Google have already done this).  For instance, I typed in “pizza” and these were the results at the top of the page:

According to Search Engine Land, “Yahoo’s results will, in some cases, be better because, when available, it uses the location that users provide via their Yahoo Profile; Google and Bing both rely more on IP-based targeting, which is far from accurate for some users.”  My Yahoo! profile is still registered to my hometown, so there can still be some slip-ups it seems.

Sources: Search Engine Watch, Search Engine Land

Photo courtesy of Search Engine Land

Yahoo! announced that they were adding tweets to News Results, but now are putting them in organic search results as well!  The tweets might be minutes or hours old, depending on which tweets the algorithm finds the most relevant to the search terms.  This becomes important for companies with social media accounts to maintain their feeds, since this traffic from Twitter could drive more traffic to your site.  Google announced that it was instituting this same practice just this week with its Real Time Search Results.  Both search engines are attempting to provide customers with up-to-the-minute results while also maintaining relevancy.

Yahoo! has announced that it will be ending the Paid Inclusion Program (previously known as the Search Submit Program) at the end of the year with the upcoming Microsoft merger.  Yahoo has been both praised and criticized for its paid inclusion program.  It allows advertisers to pay to be included on the page of search results, but not pay for rank.  However, it did create a monopoly with certain competitive search terms because people were able to optimize their sites using keywords.  How does this affect Visiture customers?  ”Many web developers feel that the loss of paid inclusion will jumpstart pay-per-click ads and other smaller online marketing practices.”

Source quoted, image credit: David Liu, Resource Nation