A Rackspace representative today confirmed that a prior reported issue of Yahoo! being unable to index sites on certain Rackspace servers had now been resolved.

The problem was first reported in Rackspace hates Yahoo? Or Vice Versa? in which it was discovered that Yahoo! spiders were unable to index sites across the IP range 72.3.128.0 to 72.3.128.19.

It has since been resolved, with Yahoo!’s indexing spiders apparently blocked in transition to the sites, rather than any proactive blocking on either Yahoo! or Rackspace’s part.

Google and Yahoo! both released beta versions of video search today, starting what will ultimately be a very hard run race to conquer internet video & digital media.

Google video search comes in the form of a subdomain, while the Yahoo! video search exists as a tab on the usual Yahoo! search bar.

Interestingly, both search companies are taking different approaches. While Yahoo! is an archive of movie files found on the internet for keywords, the Google video search is geared towards tracking regional TV listings, and undoubtedly is gearing towards encouraging the search and development of search for TV broadcasting companies.

Some commentators have suggested that

Yahoo! today announced Q4 profits of over $187m from sales in excess of $1 billion, after sales of stock including shares from Google.

Yahoo! indicated strong advertising revenue as a principle growth area, with TV and media companies especially moving increasing marketing budgets to search and banner advertising.

The news was welcome on the stock market, and Yahoo! shares closed at $37.86 on the day.

Danny Sullivan continues his habit of detailed analysis on search engine news, presenting possibly the most comprehensive appraisal of Yahoo! desktop search aspirations in Yahoo Details Desktop Search Plans.

Aside from detailing that the Yahoo! desktop search will be a licensed form of the X1, it will also be able to index more files than the current Google Desktop release. Danny Sullivan also suggests that the Yahoo! offering could be more consumer friendly, by its inclusion of such features as integration into the task bar menu. However, with Google’s developer tools open to the internet, it can surely only be a matter of time before the basics of Google Desktop search are developed into a more consumer-specialised application.

Yahoo! desktop search is apparently due for public release in January 2005.

According to Revolution, Yahoo! UK have hired investment banker Salim Mitha as director of search “to maximise its investment in its search products”.

Karl Gregory, formerly a marketing director at Alta Vista International, will apparently join him in the marketing arm of search.

I have to being a little confused by this, as the Yahoo! UK results suffer the same in Ask in simply returning UK domain names, rather than ajudging sites on their IP. So any UK company with a top level .com/.net/.org domain loses out and what you end up with is appalling SERPs.

So how does bringing in an investment banker and marketing director in help promote Yahoo! UK search, when the product - in this case, UK search - is so terribly flawed in the first place?

Perhaps these people are hired to notice that - but I won’t hold my breath.

Yahoo! has taken a step up in the online dating industry, with a new premium dating arm that now charges $35 per month, as opposed to its existing $20 per month service.

Apparently, Yahoo! believes the online dating industry to be worth around half a billion dollars a year, and already dominates about 20% of the market.

Recent high-profile advertising in the US by eHarmony, for a premium $49.95 service, apparently prompted Yahoo!’s response - though analysts warn that Yahoo! covers a consumer base generally outside of eHarmony’s dating market.

Looks as if Yahoo! like the model that Google use with GMail - Yahoo! have now bought up a private company called Stata Labs, which uses software to provide relevant context-based ads in e-mails.

As reported at CNet:
Yahoo buys e-mail search company

Yahoo has quietly purchased e-mail software company Stata Labs, in what could be an investment in a coming PC search tool to rival Google and Microsoft.

Stata Labs, a privately held company based in San Mateo, Calif., sells an e-mail application called Bloomba that lets people search message text and attachments. Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Yahoo apparently bought the underlying technology of Stata Labs and does not intend to continue sales of Bloomba.

Popular blogger and Yahoo! engineer, Jeremy Zawodny, announced last night that he is moving departments - and will be working on the Yahoo! search team again.

While Jeremy makes a point of trying to open, it’ll be interesting to see how informal Jeremy can keep his discussion of search tech. And whether he likes it or not, there will certainly be pressure for some kind of “limited marketing” of Yahoo! search via his blog.

However, that comes with the territory - so possibly the most interesting aspect of Jeremy’s promotion is that webmasters would have an accessible figure from a major search company.

Whether that actually develops into anything useful and constructive in the long-term remains to be seen.

Jeremy has also contributed to the official Yahoo! blog, such as his recent coverage of the Web 2.0 conference.

Greg R Notess gives Yahoo! search a fairly comprehensive examination in his paper Review of Yahoo! search.

Definitely worth a read if you’ve been so focussed on Google for traffic, that you pay far less attention to other major search engines than you should - myself included.