And as if the situation wasn’t a nightmare for the current board and can never get darker the worst occurred, It seems that mutiny is coming from inside the board itself.On Friday, Yahoo announced that Ed Kozel a board member for almost 8 years has decided to depart.

Ed Kozel has stated that he decided to leave as he needs to give his family more time and he is considering to relocate with his family to Europe and this was his “only” reason for departing.

With Kozel departure ,Yahoo has moved to reduce the board number from 10 to 9 members cornering Icahn in a situation where he has to give up one of his alliances in the new board. Guess who will be the lucky Loser.

Microsoft has considered and raised the issue with Yahoo of an alternative cooperation between the two internet giants but not a complete takeover.Microsoft is offering to buy only Yahoo search advertising business and not the whole Yahoo so that Microsoft will be a shareholders in Yahoo not the owner.

“Microsoft is not proposing to make a new bid to acquire all of Yahoo! at this time, but reserves the right to reconsider that alternative depending on future developments and discussions that may take place with Yahoo! or discussions with shareholders of Yahoo! or Microsoft or with other third parties. ” as stated in the Microsoft press release.

The new Microsoft proposal increased the complexity of the situation at Yahoo . Will this new proposal put an end to the mutiny in the shareholders side ??? We’ll see…..

Google stands proudly at top spot of the com score Inc. Top 50 U.S. Properties for the first time in its history.Google attracted 141 million U.S. visitors while Yahoo got 140.6 million and Microsoft sites 121 million.The most searched content categories were job search, career resources, and television sites.

“April was a very active month. Google took the top property position, thanks to continued search growth and rapid growth at YouTube,” commented Jack Flanagan, executive vice president of comScore Media Metrix.

Seems that the bad news doesn’t to end for Yahoo these days . With the news going around about Yahoo and the lawsuit ,hopefully it can get the traffic back again

In the original lawsuit ,Shareholders were suing only Yahoo and its board of directors. Today ,in a recent development ,the shareholders decide to sue the board of directors and David Filo (not a board member and company co-founder) as defendants. Yahoo shareholders are accusing Internet giant board for their irresponsible actions that lead to the Microsoft withdrawal of the $47.5 billion takeover offer.

Lawyers of the shareholders are saying that the board and Filo have been hiding documents from the shareholders including the employees severance after the takeover , Yahoo future plans prior to the Microsoft offer and several notes taken by Microsoft and Yahoo chairmans during the takeover negotiation.

Also the lawyers of the shareholders issued a complaint to the Delaware Chancery Court to disclose all the suit documents to the public, the matter that Yahoo rejects and prefers that some of the documents remain confidential.

The battle is going from bad to worse…………to be continued

Carl Icahn says that his decision came based on his complete believe that the current board failed to handle the Microsoft takeover in an “irresponsible” and “irrational” manner. These Actions lead to Microsoft withdrawal of a proposal of $47.5 Billion US Dollars to takeover Yahoo .

Carl Icahn is now preparing an alternate board of directors to manage Yahoo in hope that they can bring Microsoft back to the negotiation . The nominees for this board other than Carl Icahn himself are Mark Cuban, Adam Dell,Frank Biondi Jr. and others.

Carl threatened that the only way for the current Yahoo board to overcome this embarrassing situation is to reopen the negotiation again with Microsoft.

Carl has sent Thursday a letter to the current Yahoo Chairman Roy Bostock expressing his anger from these actions made by the current board and implied that Microsoft is still interested in taking over Yahoo and he aims on getting Microsoft back and completing the deal.”It is irresponsible to hide behind management’s more than overly optimistic financial forecasts,” Icahn wrote. “It is unconscionable that you have not allowed your shareholders to choose to accept an offer that represented a 72 percent premium over Yahoo’s closing price of $19.18 on the day before the initial Microsoft offer.”

Until this no comment have been issued from the Yahoo chairman but Microsoft spokesman declined to comment on Icahn letter and stated that Microsoft has moved over.

I guess we will be hearing more of this subject now that the angered shareholders is declaring mutiny. Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon as the only loser of this derby is the shareholders themselves.

All what was disclosed is that the two internet giants has agreed to conduct a two weeks experiment to test the idea and both parties claimed that it was a success. Just a success nothing and everything else is hush hush.

Until now no comments have been issued from both sides on how this deal will be concluded or is there any deal coming their way or was it a leverage that yahoo used in Microsoft takeover proposal and Google found a golden opportunity to weaken Microsoft proposal .

Now with the two weeks experimental period is coming to an end , Followers of the subject strongly suggest that an agreement is in the horizon as the two sides have their own agenda

Yahoo is relaying heavily on this partnership to boost their revenues and gain the shareholders support after the failure of the Microsoft proposal after months of negotiations.

Also Google is in need to this partnership to deny all voices claiming that Google used this partnership to weaken Microsoft position in the takeover situation and also find more channels as Google will benefit more from this deal than anyone.

I think that the situation is going to a new direction with this partnership. What I really believe is that we will be hearing good news soon !!!!

In the second place comes Yahoo with the share of 20.29%, which shows a drop of 0.30% from
February 2008 and almost 1% in comparison with March 2007!

In the third place come MSN with the share of 6.55% which shows a drop of 0.30% from February
2008 and 2.36% in comparison with March 2007!

Last but never least Ask.com with share of 4.09% which shows a drop of 0.7% from February 2008 but shows also an increase of 0.61% in comparison with March 2007!

This leave to us 1.72% left which is covered by the remaining search engines!

The figures above clearly shows that Google is still the ‘big mama’ not to mention that the report also showed that the number of traffic generated from search engines for Travel, Entertainment, Business and Finance and Sports categories have doubled and Google contributed to this traffic increase by 17%!

These results shouldn’t be misleading to a decision to concentrate your efforts to only Google as there are still more than 30% of 10 million internet users (Hitwise studied their search habit as a basis of analysis ) are still using other search engines.

How do I get top Yahoo ranking?

Develop superior content. The quality of your content is still the biggest determinant of your Yahoo ranking. If you keep it unique and specific, Yahoo finds and associates it to search queries easily. Fill your content with relevant keywords and phrases without sacrificing form and quality. You should likewise be very careful when writing your title – it has to contain words or phrases that match commonly-searched terms.

Use meta tags. Your Yahoo rankings can also be greatly improved by your meta tags. Decide on what optimal keywords to use in this string – they have to be accurate and straight to the point, and interesting.

You should likewise use a “keyword” meta-tag to catalog keywords for your web pages. Experts agree that it is better to make use of a divergent list of keywords associated to a particular page on your site instead of using one wide-ranging group of keywords for every page.

Use HTML. Putting your links and other important text within graphics or images may seem like a good idea, but remember that when it comes to Yahoo rankings, HTML is still the king. It’s better to put relevant texts and links (such as a site map) in HTML because this helps Yahoo crawl through all of your pages. If you really want to put graphics on your site, use ALT text. This way you preserve your creative efforts, and boost your Yahoo ranking at the same time.

Network, network, network. The more websites link to your site, the more ‘valuable’ it becomes in the eyes of Yahoo ranking engines. Network with webmasters and other content providers – you can ask them to link you back. Building linkages between related pages is one of the most effective ways of improving your Yahoo ranking. All it really takes is a polite email and quality content. Editors and webmasters would be happy to link you back if your site is worthy.

Beware that create links between unrelated pages for no reason except to increase page link counts is considered illegal according to Yahoo’s Site Guidelines. Yahoo ranking engines are able to detect such unethical activities, and your Yahoo ranking will not improve even if you do this.

What are the different types of search engines?

A search engine is actually a user-friendly program that indexes websites in a database to help users locate sites and pages relevant to what they are searching for. There are three different kinds of search engines: (a) crawler-based search engines, (b) human-powered directories, and (c) hybrid search engines. Each type works differently, and you therefore need to know what tactics to employ to make sure you rank high in any kind.

A crawler-based search engine (such as the ever popular Google) works without human intervention. It literally crawls or ‘spiders’ the internet based on keywords (especially titles) to generate its listings. The process is fully-automated, so if you make changes to your website, Google finds it robotically.

Getting high rankings in crawler-based search engines entails skills in “Search Engine Optimization’ or SEO, which should be easy if you happen to have a solid background in programming. If you don’t however, it may be best to seek professional help. There are companies who specialize in optimizing your website for crawler-based search engines. While their services can cost a good deal of money, your investment almost immediately pays off in the form of increased site traffic and sales.

Another type of search engine comes in form of human-powered directories. As its name implies, this type of search engine relies on humans to manually add to its listings. Depending on the search engine company, you can either (a) submit your site details yourself, or (b) talk to their editor to write an entry for you.

Note that if you modify your site, you need to manually submit the changes to the search engine. Things that are important to crawler-based search engines (such as metafiles and keyword-rich content) have little or no importance to a human-powered directory. If you want editors to notice your site and put it in the top ranks of the search engine, you just have to improve its quality and usability.

Finally, there are hybrid search engines that are very prevalent today. An example of such a search engine is MSN. How does this kind of search engine work? By combining crawler-based technology and human-powered listings, MSN uses LookSmart to lead users to sites of general queries, but also uses Inktomi for more ambiguous search engine queries.