I recently spoke on the multivariate testing panel at eMetrics in San Francisco. You would think that I dropped a hand grenade into the room when I opined that the Taguchi Method was a bad fit for landing page testing. This is a well understood fact to anyone with a solid understanding of basic statistics. Unfortunately this seems to leave out most landing page testers...

In the world of landing page testing there are two common mathematical approaches: A-B Split testing, and parametric Multivariate testing. A subset of Multivariate testing is known as "Design of Experiments" (DoE) and is also called "fractional factorial". A common fractional factorial approach is called the "Taguchi Method".

Some online marketers consider A-B Split testing to be kind of wimpy, and endow fractional factorial methods with an almost mythical quality.

I spend way too much of my time explaining to people that at least when applied to landing page optimization fractional factorial methods are a really bad idea. Despite this, the illusion persists that this kind of testing is somehow state-of-the-art, when in fact, nothing could be further from the truth.

For a lot more detail (30 pages worth), download the whitepaper - "The Truth About Taguchi".

Testing is composed of two important activities:

- Deciding what to test and coming up with good ideas
- Finding the best solution among your tested alternatives

People claim to get really good results with fractional factorial multivariate testing, and they credit this to the method that they use to analyze the data.

In reality, the improved conversion rates are the results of the great ideas for new landing page elements that go into the test. If all of your alternative landing pages designs are better then the original, it does not really matter what method you use to confirm that. Fractional factorial approaches may actually miss the best version of the landing page in your test and often lead you to a sub-optimal answer.

There is a huge mismatch between the original environment in which fractional factorial testing was developed and how it is usually applied to landing page optimization. It was basically transplanted to online marketing because it is relatively easy for a non-mathematical audience to understand, and not because of its appropriateness or fitness for the task.

The principal drawbacks of fractional factorial methods are:

• Very small test sizes
  
• Restrictive & inflexible test designs
  
• Less accurate estimation of individual variable contributions
  
• Drawing the wrong conclusions
  
• Inability to consider context and variable interactions
  

If you plan on using parametric (i.e. "model building" )approaches for landing page testing you should always use full factorial data collection regardless of the subsequent analysis you plan to do. It greatly simplifies your test design, and produces better estimates of the main effects.

All parametric methods (including fractional factorial) are also outclassed by newer non-parametric testing methods such as the SiteTuners TuningEngine, which can be licensed to run your own tests in-house and have the following advantages:

• Very large test sizes (1,000-10,000 times larger with the same data rate)
  
• Much faster data collection (on the same data rate)
  
• More accurate results (consider variable interactions)
  
• Flexible test construction
  
• No knowledge of statistics required
  

There is a discussion at WebmasterWorld forums about Yahoo sending visitors to country specific versions of their homepage.

So if you try and go to Yahoo.com from England or Germany you end up at the country specific version of the Yahoo homepage. Google has been doing this for a long time, interesting that it has taken this long for Yahoo to catch on and drive local traffic to their many country specific sites.

Could this help international search numbers?

Yahoo's Chairman of the Board Roy Bostock fired back a reply, on behalf of the beleaguered board members Carl Icahn has been trying to replace, stating Icahn had a "significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal".

Icahn had sent an open letter to the board informing them of his intended proxy fight, Kevin Newcombe reported earlier today.

Bostock's letter read:

Dear Mr. Icahn:

We are in receipt of your letter with regard to your intention to seek control of Yahoo!'s board of directors.

Unfortunately, your letter reflects a significant misunderstanding of the facts about the Microsoft proposal and the diligence with which our board evaluated and responded to that proposal. A fair-minded review of the factual record leads to one conclusion: that Yahoo!'s ten-member board, comprised of nine independent directors along with Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang, remains the best and most qualified group to maximize value for all Yahoo! stockholders.

Conversely, we do not believe it is in the best interests of Yahoo! stockholders to allow you and your hand-picked nominees to take control of Yahoo! for the express purpose of trying to force a sale of Yahoo! to a formerly interested buyer who has publicly stated that they have moved on. Please may I remind you that there is currently no acquisition offer on the table from that company or any other party. That said, we have been crystal clear in our stance that we have been and remain willing to consider any proposal from any party including Microsoft if it offers our stockholders full and certain value.

From the beginning of the process with Microsoft, Yahoo!'s independent directors focused on one central goal: how best to maximize stockholder value. At all times directing this process, Yahoo!'s independent directors carefully considered Microsoft's initial unsolicited proposal, which was at the time valued at $31 per share. After considering input from its financial advisers the board unanimously concluded that Microsoft's proposal significantly undervalued Yahoo! and was, therefore, not in the best interests of the company or our stockholders. While we rejected this offer publicly on February 11, 2008, we could not have been more clear in that communication and in every subsequent communication, both public and private, that we were and are willing to enter into any transaction that would maximize value for stockholders and provide them certainty of value.

The record of our efforts to engage Microsoft in meaningful discussions is unequivocal. Following receipt of Microsoft's proposal on January 31, our board of directors has met over twenty times to review Microsoft's proposal and Yahoo!'s other strategic alternatives. Throughout this process our board kept an open mind and an open ear. Our independent directors met with several of our largest stockholders to solicit their views and to make it clear that Yahoo!'s independent board is fully committed to maximizing stockholder value. In addition, at the direction of our board, our management team met with many of our investors to provide insight into Yahoo!'s strategy and views on value.

Our board's openness also extended to Microsoft. Without reciting all of the contacts between us and between our advisers, the senior-most management of Yahoo! and Microsoft and the companies' respective financial advisers spoke on numerous occasions and met in person seven times. During those meetings, Yahoo! discussed its strategic objectives in search and display advertising monetization, its perspectives on operating strategy and integration in a transaction with Microsoft, its perspectives on transaction synergies, and other non-price deal terms. Because certainty of closing is a critical issue, we sought to understand Microsoft's thinking with regard to the regulatory issues associated with a potential transaction. In fact, at the board's direction, our lawyers on March 28 asked for additional information in this regard, information which was never forthcoming.

On April 15th, a meeting was held at Yahoo!'s request. At that meeting, which included our respective financial advisors, we made clear, once again, that we were open to a transaction with Microsoft. During those discussions, Yahoo! made a detailed presentation of its strategic and financial plan, its thoughts on integration and its view with respect to the potential synergies that could be achieved in a transaction, essentially laying the foundation for Microsoft to understand--and respond to--our board's conclusion that Microsoft's offer substantially undervalued the company. Following that meeting we also provided to Microsoft a list of key non-price deal terms that our board believed were critical items to be addressed in a deal to provide reasonable protections for our stockholders.

Throughout this period, Microsoft continued to state that it would not raise its offer, and even suggested that it could lower it.

Despite this failure by Microsoft to respond in any substantive way to any of Yahoo!'s requests, on May 2nd, the same day we first learned of Microsoft's apparent willingness to increase its proposal to $33 (although this oral "offer" was never delivered in writing and did not include details of a cash/stock mix), our board determined to continue discussions, instructing Jerry Yang to indicate to Microsoft that we would be prepared to enter into a transaction that valued Yahoo! at $37 per share and that provided reasonable certainty of value and certainty of closing. This was communicated to Microsoft in-person at a meeting in Seattle on May 3rd. With Microsoft's offer at $33 and Yahoo!'s counter-proposal at $37, Microsoft elected, within hours, to walk away from the negotiating table and informed us that they were "moving on," having never engaged further on price or any of the key non-price deal terms.

In short, Yahoo!'s board was at every point in this process prepared to enter into a transaction with Microsoft that would maximize stockholder value--and included certainty of value and closing. What Yahoo!'s independent board refused to do was to allow control of this company to be acquired for less than its full value.

That brings us to today. Our business is performing well as evidenced by our first quarter results. As we have publicly stated, our board continues to actively and expeditiously explore strategic alternatives to maximize stockholder value. None of the alternatives we are considering would preclude us from entering into a transaction with Microsoft or any other party.

We continue to believe that Yahoo!'s current board has the independence, the knowledge, and the commitment to navigate the Company through the rapidly changing Internet environment and to deliver value for Yahoo! and its stockholders.

We look forward to a productive dialogue.

Very truly yours,

Roy Bostock

Chairman of the Board

The U.S. government charged a mother who allegedly used MySpace in a deadly hoax that drove her daughter's 13-year-old classmate (pictured here) to suicide with conspiracy.

Missouri resident Lori Drew, after her daughter's schoolgirl fights with neighbor Megan Meier, 13, created a fake MySpace account to pose as a boy and flirt with Meier. When Drew began using her online identity to taunt Meier, the girl hanged herself.

The boy Megan had been corresponding with on MySpace unexpectedly began calling her a fat slut. He wrote "the world would be a better place without you." It turns out he was a hoax created by the mother of a former friend.

Drew was indicted today for conspiracy and accessing protected computers without authorization to inflict emotional distress. She faces 20 years in prison, the maximum penalty.

"Any adult who uses the internet or a social gathering website to bully or harass another person, particularly a young teenage girl, needs to realize that their actions can have serious consequences," Los Angeles federal prosecutor Thomas O'Brien, who brought the charges, said in a statement.

The case was filed in California, where MySpace is headquartered.

The suit goes a long way toward establishing and enforcing the boundaries of acceptable and illegal behavior on the Internet in general and social media sites in specific.

Yahoo announced today the general public availability of their SearchMonkey program. This is a program that has been in beta testing with limited partners. It allows the partner to provide Yahoo with structured data that provides advanced information about a web page. This information is then used by Yahoo to influence the presentation of organic search listing results for that page.

This is a very powerful concept in that a modified search listing can surely influence click through rates. Imagine your search listing with an image and several related links built in. Let's look at a quick example:

You can see additional examples in my interview with Yahoo Chief Scientist Andrew Tomkins. The interview was published this past Monday and focuses on SearchMonkey.

The basic process for creating SearchMonkey applications is straightforward. SearchMonkey supports multiple formats, including microformats, RDFa, eRDF, XML feeds, and APIs such as OpenSearch, so publishers have many options for exposing the data.

In addition, developers can build sophisticated applications into the search results. An example of this is the notion of an InfoBar. With an InfoBar, you can actually put an active control in your search listing result. When users click on the control, you mini application will run and can present additional data that displays inline right on the Yahoo search results page.

Here is what it looks like:

The InfoBar provides a very powerful mechanism for managing complex interactions with users right on the Yahoo search results screen. This should have significant value from a branding and click through perspective.

Here is a summary of the development process:

1. Application Type – Decide what type of app you want to build (Enhanced Result or Infobar) and enter basic info such as application name, description, and icon.
2. Trigger URLs – Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app.
3. Data Services – Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page mark-up such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction.
4. Appearance - Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.

Commentary

Note step 2, the one in which your application gets activated. A critical part of the program will be determining when and where you would like your enhanced result to show up.

One key element of the program is that creating an enhanced result, or an InfoBar, does not mean that all users will be exposed to them. Users need to enable the enhanced listings on a publisher by publisher basis. In addition, users can change their minds later and remove your SearchMonkey application from their results.

I spoke to Amit Kumar, Director of Product Management at Yahoo, this past Tuesday, and he indicated that in the future that select SearchMonkey applications may get exposed to all comers. Applications that are adopted by lots of users, and not remove by many at all would be more likely to make this leap to general availability. This however, is not a certainty.

Amit also told me that Yahoo is going to setup a Gallery of such applications for users. This will be a place where the user can go to select an application and enable it. It will be interesting to see how much exposure the Gallery gets. This will play a critical role in the rate of adoption of these types of results. The publisher can, of course, promote their own application, and try to drive people to sign up for it.

Another thing that Amit emphasized during our conversation was that the effort level for developers to engage with SearchMonkey is quite low. The platform makes it really easy for them to engage. This could play a critical role in broadening adoption.

One thing I learned in my interview with Andrew, and also from his presentation at SES New York, is that building SearchMonkey applications will not help you improve your rankings. The program is not intended to be used for that purpose.

Personally, I'd like to see a stronger move towards exposing some of the applications to all users. This maybe a difficult thing to implement at some level, and it makes it far more susceptible to spam. But it would certainly accelerate the exposure of these types of applications to the general public.

The early action (in terms of users) will likely be driven by early adopters. Then we will need to see how widely it penetrates the market, and how aggressively Yahoo pushes it forward.

That said, this is exciting stuff. I have long been a believer that search engines should get more information from the publishers, in a structured format. Yahoo has taken a big step in that direction with this program.

Recently, Yahoo announced SearchMonkey, which will allow developers access to open source to create applications for search results. Well, today is the day that developers finally get their hands on the tools to make that happen.

There are two types of applications developers can build using SearchMonkey – Enhanced Results and Infobars.

• Enhanced Results take the current standard results and give them a makeover with a richer display. Links to results must remain intact (don't mess with those search results!).
• Infobars will appear below search results and can display information such as metadata about the result, related links or content, or links for user actions (i.e. adding a movie to a Netflix queue).

The process for building SearchMonkey applications is very straightforward:

1. Application Type – Decide what type of app you want to build (Enhanced Result or Infobar) and enter basic info such as application name, description, and icon.

2. Trigger URLs – Decide the URL patterns that will trigger your app. For example, for the Enhanced Result above, the pattern would be “acmemovies.com/*”

3. Data Services – Data Services are the structured data on which SearchMonkey apps are based. They can be created using data available in the Yahoo! Search index (via data feeds or page mark-up such as microformats or RDF) or by using APIs or page extraction.

4. Appearance - Use PHP to configure how structured data should appear in the application.

Need incentive? How does a contest with $10,000 in prizes? Submit your application by June 14th to enter. The contest has four categories: Best Enhanced Result, Best Infobar, Most Innovative Use of Structured Data, Best Data Service, and Grand Prize (best over all categories).

And if you're in the Bay Area, catch the SearchMonkey Launch Party tonight at Yahoo's Headquarters in Sunnyvale.

Yahoo has confirmed that billionaire investor Carl Icahn has initiated a proxy fight via an open letter to Yahoo's board of directors notifying them of his intention to replace the existing board with his own slate of directors.

The proposed board includes: Harvard Law Professor Lucian Bebchuk; Frank J. Biondi, Jr., senior managing director of WaterView Advisors; John Chapple, president of Hawkeye Investments; investor and NBA team owner Mark Cuban; Adam Dell, managing general partner of Impact Venture Partners; Carl Icahn; Keith Meister, principal executive officer and vice chairman of the board of Icahn Enterprises G.P.; Edward H. Meyer, chairman, CEO and chief investment officer of Ocean Road Advisors; private investor Brian S. Posner; and Robert Shaye, co-chairman and co-CEO of New Line Cinema.

The full text of Icahn's letter is after the jump.

Click to read the rest of this post...

Plaxo has signed an agreement to be aquired by cable giant Comcast, accoring to a post on the Plaxo blog. The two companies had previously been working together in partnerships, but have now decided that a permanent merger would maximize their efforts.

Those efforts include a unified approach to mashing up tv and social media. For example, one of the goals includes photo sharing across a variety of mediums including mobile, tv and computer.