by Mike Banks Valentine © October 26, 2004

Google market value has topped $50B, so now they're worth more in dollar value than Yahoo. That goes right in line with being worth more in search value and relevance. (CBS MarketWatch)

I've written before that Yahoo has their fingers in so many pies that they don't have necessary attention on search that Google does. Google only buys companies that offer services, software and add-ons which increase value of Google search experience. http://www.website101.com/arch/archive140.html

Yahoo buys companies when they think they might be able to squeeze some extra bit of profit from them and add to already confusing array of services which take an alphabet soup of 109 Yahoo "properties", broken down alphabetically. http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/family/more/

Yahoo bought up all available search "properties" within last couple of years and, as I said in mid-July of 2003, "Well if it is a horse race, Yahoo may gain on leader Google if they are able to integrate their Inktomi and Overture (and by extension, Altavista and Fast/AllTheWeb) purchases into relevant search results that searchers trust. But all of Jockeys on those horses will be whipping their charges toward finish line with an eye to winning purse." http://searchengineoptimism.com/Yahoo_acquire_Overture.html

The fact is - Yahoo search is no better than Google now that they have bought up all real competitors. Referred traffic from Yahoo search results to web sites is still only one fifth that of Google at 70% versus Yahoo's anemic 15 to 20%. http://searchengineoptimism.com/Google_refers_70_percent.html

The new MSN search may pose a threat to Google if they continue on their current path toward relevant search results. As of October 2004, Google market capitalization of $52 billion with shares hovering around $160 per share price, reflects true value of Google.

While it is true that writing articles is time consuming, value for an online business can be extremely high.

I've been fortunate enough to reap strong benefits from posting articles to web sites including my own, and leveraging right keyword phrases to deliver content.

As you do same (or post other people's articles) and search engines index your pages, you'll see more and more traffic coming to your site via that content.

And, as your pages "settle in" to their positions in search engines results pages, your site will be 'maturing', and that concept can be worth lots of money to you.