Microsoft

Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft all announced this morning that they’re supporting an addition to the Sitemaps protocol that makes it easier for site owners with multiple subdomains to manage sitemap files.

In the past, you were forced to maintain an XML sitemap in the same domain as the domain which it referred to. i.e. www.hallme.com would have a sitemap for this domain, and blog.hallme.com would also need its own sitemap hosted on its own domain. There was no way to specify that we wanted blog.hallme.com to have a sitemap hosted on www.hallme.com, nor could we for www.hallblog.com.

For most site owners, this isn’t much of an issue, but if your business consists of multiple web properties, or many subdomains, the management of the sitemaps protocol could be quite a chore! (Imagine a scalable CMS such as wordpress.com).

The update makes life a lot easier for webmasters in these situations. Now, you can host all of your sitemaps for multiple domains at a single domain, and then use your robots.txt file to point search engines to the location of the correct sitemap.

So let’s say we want www.masterdomain.com to have the sitemap for subdomain.masterdomain.com. All you need to do is add the following line to the robots.txt file on subdomain.masterdomain.com:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/subdomain.masterdomain.xml

On the same token, www.masterdomainblog.com could have this line added to the robots.txt:

Sitemap: http://www.masterdomain.com/sitemaps/masterdomainblog.xml

For the average small business, this is an interesting, if useless feature, but for businesses spanning multiple web properties, with subdomains, or for businesses like ourselves who manage sitemaps for hundreds of clients, the new update is welcome news indeed!

By now you’ve already hear that Microsoft has made an incredible bid of $45 billion to pick up Yahoo. Some call it an offer Yahoo can’t refuse, but what does it mean for your business online?

While in general monopolies have never proven to be great for the little guys, a combined Yahoo-Microsoft effort would either produce a viable competitor to the Goog or continue a tailspin of diminishing relevance, leaving Google the #1 search engine by default, not choice. With Google already enforcing strict policies about paid links and essentially defining how thousands of webmasters develop their sites, the latter situation would create a hazardous environment for business owners who have desires for their sites that at odds with Google’s policies.

Now to Google’s credit, their standards for websites are generally pretty good ones — build sites for users, avoid using duplicate content, have a reliable site, etc. However, what checks and balances will there be if the organic search world is a one-company show? Especially as Google stretches its fingers into acquiring information and media properties, the neutrality of this web behemoth is going to become ever more a subject of scrutiny… and legitimate concern.

On the other hand, even a more influential Google will have to contend with the emerging power of social networks, which is exactly where a Microsoft-Yahoo would be strong. The savvy website owner — that is, you — will be wise to keep working on a site which drives in diverse sources of traffic, and answers all of the questions your customers typically have. Though it’s also not a bad idea to make an appearance in social media circles!

Well all know that technology changes will abruptly alter how we approach web marketing, and though the tactics will differ depending on how organic search companies butt heads, the bottom line will always be reaching your customers. Keep speaking the message your customers want to hear — no matter the medium — and success will follow you.

Microsoft, in its desperate scramble to get back on the online ad train, today announced the availability of the Gatineau Web Analytics program, an enhancement to the MSN AdCenter paid search platform that’s also open to webmasters in general. Like other analytics programs (*cough cough* Google *cough*) there will be information on specific visitors, clickthrough tracking, keywords, demographic/geographic information as well as analytics to help advertisers better track the success of their AdCenter campaigns.

It’s interesting and invigorating to see MS taking this market so seriously, even though they’re clearly far behind where Google, and even Yahoo, are. I must admit that I, like many other paid search managers, find the AdCenter software cumbersome and even frustrating to use. Yet, the traffic from MSN is more captive (and cheaper) than the competitors and results in strong conversions, making it a vital paid of every comprehensive paid search campaign. I look forward to using the new analytics program and hope it makes my job of keeping paid search campaigns profitable more easy… Let’s just hope they make it easy to use for people managing multiple accounts, multiple campaigns, and many, many ad groups.

While it’s no $6 billion deal, the $240 million stake Microsoft has just purchase in FaceBook puts an astonishing $15 billion valuation on what was until very recently little more than a college hang-out. However, Microsoft is ready to bet big money on the future of internet advertising, and where innovation is limited, they have big money to spend.

Online ads are a big part of the deal, with Microsoft becoming exclusive provider of all advertising through the site, and while it’s unlikely that their $240 million will return a profit through the site, it does firmly ensconce Microsoft in the Web 2.0 world and clearly shows that these sites aren’t just a “fad” anymore.

Obviously, the big players are interested in getting involved in the big money at stake in online ads and Microsoft is not willing to be left behind. The question now is how worthwhile this online advertising will be in the long run and how many ad systems will be tested and broken, and budgets spent, before the online ad machine is as well-oiled as those in other media.