Google will fight domain name tasting, a practice by which web marketers temporarily purchase many domain names and test them, keeping just the ones that turn out to generate the most revenue. Under new measures being implemented, Google would will attempt to identify domain names that are repeatedly registered and dropped within a five-day grace period for full refunds and exclude those names from collecting AdSense revenue. Yahoo Inc., already has implemented measures to to ban tasted domain names that infringe on trademarks. Find the entire store here.

According to CyberNet News, this is a realistic possibility. "This information comes from a Merrill Lynch analyst report in which they speculate that both AOL and Yahoo are geared up for 'a transformative transaction in the coming 12 to 24 months.'”, says Ashley of CyberNet. "Ars Technica suggests that both companies are facing investors that are doubtful, and with overlapping technology, a merger would mean more profit."

Read more about the rumored merger at CyberNet.

"The Garlinghouse Memo last month signaled that change was coming at Yahoo. No senior execs have yet been shown the door, but some people just below those ranks are starting to leave", says Michael Arrington over at TechCrunch.

Last Friday, Yahoo! lost another important person in the management ranks.  This time, it was the Director of Corporate Development, Michael Marquez.  Marquez is leaving to take a position at CBS Interactive.  

Read Arrington's full commentary over at TechCrunch. 

Increasing its presence in the social networking space, Yahoo! has acquired the blogging community site for $10 million. "Yahoo is clearly on a roll, moving quickly to dispel the criticisms that it can't move quickly enough to compete with Google and Fox Interactive Media in the acquisition game", says Michael Calore of Wired Magazine.  "However, MyBlogLog and Bix are both B-list prizes (no offense to those companies) compared to Facebook and YouTube, two sites that Yahoo tried to close deals on before failing." Read more of Calore's commentary at his Monkey Bites blog.

The #2 and 3 search engines have agreed to team up with Google to support its Sitemaps protocol.  A Sitemap is an XML file that webmasters submit to Google to inform its search engine about the pages on a site.  Ken Moss of Microsoft's Live Search unit stated that "Windows Live Search is happy to be working with Google and Yahoo on Sitemaps to not only help webmasters, but also help consumers by delivering more relevant search results so they can find what they're looking for faster".  Read the full story on ZDNet here.

The potential of Internet advertising has been underestimated according to Yahoo CEO, Terry Semel. Forecasts have not included advertising on mobiles, social media or video. Semel made his comments at an Internet advertising conference on Tuesday. Read the rest of the Reuters story here.

Brad Garlinghouse, an executive at Yahoo!, indicates that in the coming months the company will be integrating is instant messaging service inside of its e-mail service. When a user composes an e-mail in the next version of Yahoo! Mail, an icon will appear to indicate whether the recipient is online. According to Reuters, clicking on the icon "instantly transforms a conversation from the delayed, read-it-when-you-have-a-chance way people use e-mail into the immediate back-and-forth of an instant message conversation." The company is still determining how and whether to merge these features into its mail service.

Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft and others have formed a working group to establish guidelines by which ad clicks are measured. The Click Measurement Working Group, formed under the Interactive Advertising Bureau, will be tasked with coming up with a common definition of what a "click" is and how they are counted. From this definition, the working group will then use these definitions as a basis to standardize the identification of fraudulent clicks.

Loren Baker at Search Engine Journal is conducting a week-long experiment with Yahoo!'s contextual advertising to see how his experience compares to Google AdSense. He is now three days into the test. His impressions of the service have been improving since the first day where he noticed significant ad relevancy problems. View an update of his findings here.

Aaron Wall of SEO Book writes about how Yahoo!'s recent algorithm changes are on the theme of links from authority sites.  The algorithm update is further evidence that the #2 search engine is placing less emphasis on on-page factors.  Read Aaron's full commentary here.

The #2 search engine company explains an upcoming Firefox 2.0 technology that lets users see sample search engine results as they are typing their keyword phrase into the search box. Yahoo! patterned this functionality after the Live Search technology they released previously for the AlltheWeb search engine.

Yahoo! announced today that it will be hosting an all-day seminar entitled "Secrets of Sucessful Yahoo! Search Marketing Advertisers" which will cover how to make your pay-per-click campaigns more profitable. The seminar will highlight the best practices of successful advertisers.

Aaron Wall, author of SEO Book, has released a Firefox extension that "pulls in many useful marketing data points to make it easy [to] get a more holistic view of the competitive landscape of a market right from the search results.", according to Wall.

Yahoo! has recently made changes to its Publisher Network control panel including more help and updates for new users and a new tab that describes how to drive traffic.

Yahoo is settling its class-action lawsuit claiming the company profited from fraudulent clicks on paid ads displayed in its search results. The company will offer the choice of advertising credits or cash for ads placed on its network starting from January 2004.