Yahoo is shutting down their Publisher Network. What is confusing is why they chose not to send this traffic to their new partner Microsoft instead of sending them to Chitika.

Below is Yahoo’s official letter, yet the Yahoo YPN blog has remained quiet about this change so far (last post 2/12/10).

Dear Publisher,

Yahoo! continuously evaluates and prioritizes our products and services, in alignment with business goals and our continued commitment to deliver the best consumer and advertiser experiences. After conducting an extensive review of the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta program, we have decided to close the program effective April 30, 2010. We expect to deliver final publisher payments for the month ending April 30, 2010 to publishers no later than May 31, 2010. All publishers eligible for 1099s for the 2010 tax year will have those mailed by January 31, 2011.

Because our content will no longer be delivered to your ad unit spaces after April 30, 2010, we recommend removing all YPN ad code from your pages by that date.

For the opportunity to continue earning revenue, we suggest using Chitika, a leading advertising network that syndicates Yahoo! Content Match and Sponsored Search ads. Chitika has set up a special process for YPNO beta publishers to participate in its platform. Click here for more information.

We thank you for your participation in the Yahoo! Publisher Network beta. If you have any questions regarding this announcement, please contact our Support Team at (866) 785-2636, Monday through Friday from 7:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. PDT.

Sincerely,

Your Partners at Yahoo!

Resources:

Chitika – FAQ Transition Page
TechCrunch – Yahoo Publisher Network To Be Axed, Customers Referred To Chitika Instead
Yahoo – Publisher Network

You knew it was going to happen……Today (actually this afternoon), according to HitWise, Facebook has just surpassed Google as the most visited website in the US using data from March 7 – March 13.

An interesting aside is that Google’s traffic increased by only 9% while Facebook’s increased 185% as compared to the same week in 2009 and both properties together accounted for roughly 14% of all US Internet visits during the March 7 – March 13 timeframe.

Link to HitWise Post – Facebook Reaches Top Ranking in US

TotalAbout is a great new FREE website reference that allows you to input a URL and find out a lot about it on one place. In my tests I found it to be pretty accurate and useful when evaluating the value of any website. The data covers a large amount of ground inclusive of:

- Domain information
- Web Details
- DMOZ category listings
- Related websites
- Server speed
- Visitors by country
- Traffic rank by country
- Sub-domain information
- Keyword traffic
- Keyword density
…..and much more

Check it out today at – TotalAbout

Ever wanted a second opinion on your SEO website reviews and/or have no idea what you are doing (hopefully you do), well then we have two fun and FREE (yes I said FREE) online tool to help you…:-)

Website Grader and SEO Site Checkup are two great tools to really get under the hood with evaluating a website. They both offer some great detailed analysis and they both offer features and details the other does not. Used in conjunction you end up with quite a good set of data from which to work and build your foundation for analysis.

Check them both out today at:

Website Grader – Link
SEO Site Checkup – Link

NetworkTools is a website that offers FREE webmaster tools including:

- Whois Records
- Ping Hosts
- Query DNS Records
- Trace Hosts
- Display Host Information
- Domains on IP
- Reverse IP Checker
- Check Spam Blacklist
- RBL Checker

Check it all out for FREE here – NetworkTools

Below is a list of great places to build free websites in order to drive more traffic to your main website, create additional backlinks and lock-up additional branded organic search results.

Weebly Link

HubPages Link

WordPress Link

Blogger Link

Blogetery Link

Tumblr Link

Viviti Link

Wikispaces Link

Xanga Link

WetPaint Link

Blink Web Link

Squidoo Link

Please note that if you were looking for the largest list of search engines in the world that you can submit to for FREE – that list is here – FREE SEARCH ENGINE ADD YOUR URL LIST

Below is a list created with data from Website Shadow. Please note that all data is based on global Internet users usage of the website and since some of these search engines are also portals, that some of the popularity may not be search only and may reflect how these website ranks.

Google – 42.27% (USA)
Yahoo – 27.19% (USA)
Baidu – 8.51% (China)
QQ – 5.59% (China)
Yahoo – 4.95% (Japan)
Bing – 3.79% (USA)
Google – 3.55% (Germany)
Google – 2.89% (France)
Yandex – 2.40% (Russia)
Google – 2.08% (Italy)
Google – 1.96% (Spain)
Ask – 1.95% (USA)
Google – 1.33% (Canda)
Google – 1.16% (Russia)
Google – 0.85% (Poland)
MyWebSearch – 0.83% (USA)
Sogou – 0.77% (China)

Google’s domination was pretty obvious, but what stands out most to me is this…..MyWebSearch has almost 1% of the global Internet users using it? All I can say is wow…:-)

While I am a HUGE fan of Pingler I have to say I am really impressed by blogbuzzer and where your blog actually gets pinged. The list is pretty unique and shows the real value of this service. A premium membership is available for only $9 per year (yeah I said per year) and it includes a monitoring service to tell when you blog has been updated and automatically pings it for you in addition to adding your blog to other services like Delicious, Stumble Upon, Blogopedia, BlogHub, Google, Yahoo and Bing to name a few….

Check it out here for FREE – blogbuzzer

Also, check out Pingler for FREE here – Pingler

Just a quick heads-up that the 20% off coupon for Best of the Web (BOTW) is expiring at the end of January. I would advise you to take advantage of this as these 20% off coupons/discounts are getting harder and harder to find and who knows when they will offer it again.

Get Started today and Save 20% on new:

* Directory Submissions – Discount the annual or the one-time review fee and get listed in the Internet’s Oldest Directory.
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* Blog Advertising – Discount on all new sponsorship ads in the Blog Directory.
* Premium Local Listings – Discount the monthly and annual rate for your Local Business Profile listing.
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Use Code – NEWYR

Click Here For Discount Link – BOTW Discount Link

I have a goal and that goal is to get more people to subscribe to Traffic Flow SEO. As you can see (as of 1/16/10 at 5:24CST) I have only 138 RSS/email subscribers. While I appreciate each and every one of them, I would like more. So, today I have made it my goal to try and get to 200 by the end of February. That being the case, I would like to request you help in achieving this goal. What I want to ask you is:

1. Do you have any suggestions as to how to get additional subscribers?

2. If you read the blog and have not subscribed, why not?

I look forward to your feedback and/or subscriptions….:-)