Last month Yahoo! had launched Sitemap Explorer in United Kingdom (UK) and Ireland, much to the joy and satisfaction of UK users and Webmasters. However, Search Engine Journal is reporting that since yesterday Yahoo! is redirecting its UK users to uk.yahoo.com. It means that Yahoo! is automatically presenting the localized version of its homepage to all users from UK.

For example, when users in UK key in the Yahoo! homepage yahoo.com they are immediately redirected to uk.yahoo.com.

According to Webmasters World, Yahoo! Has launched its Site Explorer in Japan. Yahoo! Site Explorer helps users explore all the web pages indexed by Yahoo! Search. The Yahoo! Site Explorer, Japan has been launched in BETA mode for the time being.

At present, Yahoo! Site Explorer, Japan is unable to use dynamic URL feature or badge.However, it is very well compatible with Yahoo Japan Bookmark and Yahoo Japan Blog services. The algorithms have been specifically tailored for Japaneses environment, thus making it very comfortable for Japanese Webmasters.

Since the successful launch of McAfee powered Yahoo's Search Scan, it was only a matter of time for something to go wrong. It seems luck just isn't going Yahoo's way.

According to a post on TechCrunch, a small glitch in the Yahoo! SERPs (Search Engine Result Pages) that are now powered by SearchScan showed the Google Home Page as a potential Malware Threat.

So now, Yahoo! Finally is paying some attention to towards Indian users. According to Barry Schwartz at Search Engine Land, Yahoo! has announced the launch of Yahoo! Glue Pages in Yahoo! India. This feature will display pages that are embedded with enhanced visual search result page for selective search queries. Search queries entered for categories such as health, sports, entertainment, travel, technology and finance will automatically trigger special 'Glue Pages'.

Till now Yahoo! Product Submit had a direct fee structure, which meant that it charged a fixed flat category price from its advertisers. However, according to a thread posted at Webmaster World, Yahoo! is planning to move towards the bidding structure for its Yahoo! Product Submit service.

A post at Webmaster World reads, "Yahoo Product submit aka Yahoo Shopping just sent me an email saying that they're converting to Bid based advertising instead of flat rate PPC.

Yahoo! in partnership with McAfee has announced the release of SearchScan. It will show those URLs in the Yahoo! SERPs (search engine result pages) that are deemed 'risky'. This feature will incorporate McAfee's SiteAdvisor technology. The goal of this feature is to safeguard the user against spyware and other malicious software from being downloaded on his computers. It would also assist users to prevent themselves from spammy email practices. The SearchScan feature has been implemented in the BETA phase in the U.S., Canada, UK, France, Italy, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, and Spain.

Yahoo! Successfully avoided the jaws of Microsoft, but found itself drowning in the share market. Microsoft had to withdraw its takeover bid for Yahoo! as the latter had asked for a higher price of $37 a share against Microsoft's final bid of $33 a share. But this deterrence didn't give Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang any opportunity to smile. Barely 48 hours had passed since the Microsoft withdrawal, when Yahoo's shares took a
steep dive and took a massive fall of 15% .

Yahoo Locals have added a new feature to their maps. While looking for a particular query in Yahoo! Local Maps, you can use the 'Expand Map' option, which will then activate a Radius Circle within the map thereby narrowing down your search in the targeted area. The map can be moved to specifically target a location. Then the map will automatically reconfigure the location's content as per your requirement. For example, if you have been looking for 'Schools', "Spanish Dining Locations' etc.

Yahoo! has unveiled an open-source tool that would benefit both the users and publishers alike as they would be able to increase the search results in context to a particular website. This open source tool known as SearchMonkey will give the publishers the possibility of enhancing their search results on Yahoo! through the inclusion of links, images and name-value pairs in the search results. Publishers will be able to generate SearchMonkey applications in an effort to enhance search results. Users would now be able to customize their searches with applications built by their preferred websites

After posting an impressive show of their First Quarter Financial Results of 2008, Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang said that Yahoo! has still kept its doors opened to Microsoft's bid, provided this time Microsoft comes up with an offer that would be worth the company's value. Speaking on the same topic, he also didn't rule out the prospects for alternative deals.