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In this letter to Yahoo, Microsoft said: “It has now been more than two months since we made our proposal to acquire Yahoo! If we have not concluded an agreement within the next three weeks, we will be compelled to take our case directly to your shareholders, including the initiation of a proxy contest to elect an alternative slate of directors for the Yahoo! board.”

Yahoo responds:

“Our Board carefully considered your unsolicited proposal, unanimously concluded that it was not in the best interests of Yahoo! and our stockholders, and rejected it publicly on February 11, 2008.

We are open to all alternatives that maximize stockholder value. To be clear, this includes a transaction with Microsoft if it represents a price that fully recognizes the value of Yahoo! on a standalone basis and to Microsoft, is superior to our other alternatives, and provides certainty of value and certainty of closing.”

We have to give Microsoft our vote on this one, Yahoo is acting like it never got an offer, and the offer is really good if you ask us! Merge and compete with the big G

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We came along a very interesting article from Reuters today. Some people think the internet its biggest growth was a couple of years back, but this is not the case as you can read in this article!

The Internet will usurp television as the biggest advertising medium in Britain by the end of 2009. The Internet was the biggest driver of overall advertising growth in 2007, with the entire sector in Britain experiencing 4.3 percent growth to 18.4 billion pounds.

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Webmasters in a discussion forum have noticed changes in Google’s search results. Do we have to expect a larger ranking algorithm update? How will this influence the ranking of your web pages in Google’s search results?

What changes did webmasters notice in Google’s search results?

Not all webmasters noticed the same changes. Here’s an overview of what has been reported:

* Some established websites that did not spam dropped out of Google’s index early March.
* It seems to take much longer now until new websites get indexed by Google.
* Rather less relevant results have received higher rankings because some relevant pages either dropped out of the index or lost some of their inbound links.
* The Cache data doesn’t seem to be updated.
* The site: and inurl: queries on Google that normally fluctuate for large websites now report the same numbers every day.

Changes like these are usually a clear indicator of an upcoming ranking algorithm update.

Is this really a ranking algorithm update?

Google engineer Matt Cutts denied that there are any major changes in the search results and that there was a ranking algorithm update on the way.

However, he wanted to investigate if and why the results change so much.

The observations of the webmasters in the forum might be normal changes that happen all the time. But the webmasters who discovered the changes are very web-savvy and they should be able to distinguish an anomaly from usual fluctuations.

What does this mean to your Google rankings?

It has yet to turn out whether this really is a ranking algorithm or not. If your rankings haven’t changed yet, there’s no need to act. The whole thing might just be a temporary hiccup.

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Our friend David recently made a post about the negative things of starting a site from scratch. He stated that the valueble sites in his network were all bought in an earlier stage and that creating new sites from scratch take to much time and money!

We have to agree at some points with David about this. Starting new sites from scratch takes indeed a lot of time and money if you want to promote it and get the word out! We also bought sites in the past (like this technology forum) and are always looking for new sites to purchase. But, starting a new site from scratch about a topic that you are very passionate about can be a good thing! You are in charge from the start and know every detail of the site! It might be hard to get traffic at the beginning, but if you keep building links and do some basic search engine optimization on it, it has to work

Recently we sold one of our own made sites, started from scratch, for the most we have ever sold a site before, so the hard work, time and money does pay off if you do it right!

David also stated that if you see a good site and are interested in it, just mail the owner of the site with the question if it is for sale! I never did this before but it looks like it’s working, as David bought 2 sites this way before! Something we are going to try to from now on

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You can get a free link back to your blog/site with a review (100-200 words) if you are a top commentator at the end of the month! We are doing this to get more activity around the blog and create a community. More backlinks are always good for your rankings as you probably know.

Never stop building links

One thing some webmasters forget after the starting up period is over of their site is keep on building links. This is very important because competition will beat you if you stop building links! Your site will get deeper and deeper in Google and giving your site less traffic! We all know less traffic is less money!

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Our friends over at Theme Spinner just launched this new wordpress theme site! Currently it has only 2 themes available for purchase, but the quality is top! These templates are designed very well and will work for more sites then only a blog!

The first theme available is called Shiva:

This theme is the best from the two in our opinion! It has a great layout and it is just all matching! This theme is only $55 which is way cheaper then ordering a custom theme from a designer!

The second theme available is the Maya theme:

Also a nice one as you can see! This one is available for $65

Both themes are widget, adsense and gravatar ready! PSD files and fonts are also included in the purchase.

Conclusion: If you are looking to fresh up your blog with a professional and unique theme, Theme Spinner is your next stop!

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