We launched a new Yahoo! Search Crawler, Yahoo! Slurp earlier this week. In addition to crawling the Internet faster, our new crawler is more efficient at visiting websites. As a result, site owners will notice as much as a 25% reduction in the number of requests and bandwidth consumed by the crawler.

While transitioning to the new crawler over the past few weeks, we had been running both crawlers in tandem. In some cases, this increased the frequency of Yahoo Search requests to websites. Now, with the new crawler in full production, we have turned off the old crawler and site owners should see a much lower crawl load without a loss in content coverage.

With this change of behavior in the crawler, you may see some shuffling of the pages that are included in the index and some changes in ranking as well.

Let us know what you observe through our feedback form, or if you have any technical issues with Slurp please contact support.

Thank you to everyone who helped us with this update!

David Simpson
Yahoo! Slurp Team

Google Analytics is what I’ve been saying a search engine should have done years ago, provide the statistics to any website that uses it. People love stats and aspecially when its of their own website, so this will get huge uptake, and probably provide Google really invaluable information. A year or so ago I hoped Technorati would do this for blogs, but they probably saw it as outside their core business. Interesting note: this is the first stat tracking javascript I’ve seen that validates as XHTML Strict. Good job, guys. (Most examples leave the language attribute.)

Another best thing is, Google don't restrict you with (or ask you to pay for) a pre-determined one-size-fits-all professional services package. Instead, you customize your integration, analysis, and implementation package according to your needs. Some of you already have in-house expertise, some prefer a do-it-yourself model, and others prefer to work directly with one of the Google Analytics partners.

Here are some of the useful resources to learn more about Google Analytics:

Google Analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/
Google Analytics Online Help: http://www.google.com/support/analytics
Google Analytics Discussion Group: http://groups.google.com/group/analytics-help
Conversion University: http://www.conversionuniversity.com/

Google-powered ads, which have become a mainstay on Web sites, are now being played on at least one radio station in Detroit. And like so many other Motor City radio products, it won't be long before they go global. Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt said in a conference call with analysts last week that the search giant plans to make its radio-ad business generally available within three months.

"We are in the process of introducing AdSense for radio, which is essentially the integration of the dMarc console and management tools into our advertising system. There are a number of very interesting deals being negotiated," Schmidt said. It's a typically ambitious effort for Google, which got into the radio business in January with its $102 million acquisition of dMarc Broadcasting, a company that had an automated radio advertising system.

So the million dollar question is, Is Google really going for Radio Ad Business? If that's true then it will surely turn Radio Ad Industry upside down.

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The latest big hubbub not involving blond newsreaders is that eBay has added Google Checkout to its list of payment services not allowed in its marketplace. Check this out:

Payment Services not permitted on eBay: AlertPay.com, anypay.com, AuctionChex.com, AuctionPix.com, BillPay.ie, ecount.com, cardserviceinternational.com, CCAvenue, ecount, e-gold, eHotPay.com, ePassporte.com, EuroGiro, FastCash.com, Google Checkout, gcash, GearPay, Goldmoney.com, graphcard.com, greenzap.com, ikobo.com, Liberty Dollars, Moneygram.com, neteller.com, Netpay.com, Nochex.com, paychest.com, payingfast.com, Payko.com, paypay, Postepay, Qchex.com, rupay.com, scripophily.com, sendmoneyorder.com, stamps, Stormpay, wmtransfer.com, xcoin.com

All of these services have been banned due to being unsafe for eBay buyers, that they are in some way poorly designed or secured and thus aid fraud. Google Checkout, however, is too new and untested to fall into this category, so it is far more likely that this is being done for political reasons. Checkout is very similar to Paypal, just cheaper, so if a large number of eBay’s merchants switched over, a huge portion of their revenue model would just go away.

eBay, unlike many other internet companies, doesn’t really believe in transparency. Unlike Google or Microsoft or Yahoo, they don’t release many products, and have a consistent stream of earnings coming from owning a large marketplace, like Amazon, and don’t need community support to survive. Google could have went the eBay route, and been a far less stressful company for it, but they decided to jump right in and go toe-to-toe with the big boys.

Ars goes over the possible reasons for the decision (beyond the more obvious political/conspiracy ones):

Unlike PayPal, Google Checkout is not primarily a consumer-to-consumer (C2C) payments service. Google’s new service appears to be focused primarily at small businesses while aiming at larger sites down the line. As it is currently situated, it’s not going to turn into a C2C service anytime soon. There is no provision for sending payments to those without merchant accounts and no way to send money to an e-mail address, as is the case with PayPal.

So why the hate from eBay? In perusing eBay’s Accepted Payments Policy, Google Checkout would appear to meet criteria such as financial, privacy, and antifraud protection; not involving precious metals or other noncash services; and regulatory concerns. However, a couple of bullets point from eBay’s list of criteria for who makes the cut stand out: “the identity, background and other business interests of the payment service sponsor” along with “whether the payment service has a substantial historical track record of providing safe and reliable financial and/or banking related services.”

AuctionBytes has a quote from a Google spokesperson:

A spokesperson for Google said it has no restrictions regarding marketplace use. “We want to work with everybody,” she said on Wednesday.

Now, isn’t that the most gosh-darn cutest quote ever!

Are you waiting for the next page rank update from Google to move up their results page and bring you a flood of new traffic? (aren’t we all?) Well a little well places birdie told me last night that Google are getting close to an update - in fact a page rank update is scheduled for anytime in next 10days as of today.

Of course I’m not about to guarantee the dates - but my source generally knows what he’s talking about so I guess we’ll see in a couple of weeks.

Google today announced the launch of their own rival to PayPal, Google Checkout.

"Google Checkout offers an easy and trusted checkout option that enables shoppers to purchase from participating stores with a single Google login. It also works with Google's search advertising program, AdWords, to help merchants acquire new customers and process all or a portion of their Checkout sales for free."

I will have a look into this to see how well this works, I'm particularly interested in seeing how the AdWords intergration performs. Starbucks Store, Levi's, Timberland and Buy.com are e-commerce websites already using Google Checkout.