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SEO News for January 2008 from searchenginejournal.com

New Year’s Resolutions from Search Engine Journal
As I woke up this morning to greet the last day of 2007, I started thinking to myself the things I want to change for next year. 2007 was an interesting and successful year for me and for Search Engine Journal, as I grew as a person and Search Engine Journal grew as a search [...]

EarthFrisk: Another Meta-HyBrid Search Engine Rises
While we all await the opening of Wikia, join me in taking a closer look at another one of ‘em “meta-hybrid-social search engine” which just launched a couple of days ago and which goes by the name - EarthFrisk. Wait, is it just me or are the search engine branding getting obscure if not utterly [...]

Ask.com Offers Voice Activated Mobile Directions
Ask.com today introduced new voice-activated capabilities to its Ask.com Mobile Directions service, dubbed “Click to Speak.” Click to Speak lets Ask.com Mobile users speak their location and desired destination to receive directions on mobile devices. Ask.com says that Click to Speak “eliminates typing addresses, which can be slow, error-prone and, in some cases, unsafe. Available [...]

Netscape : Strong Brand with No Identity
AOL has done everything it can to mangle the Netscape brand, which it purchased 10 years ago for $4.2 billion, into a disoriented web zombie, which has crawled its way through our browsing for years and classification of sites on the web, to a community of social news sharing, and now into the void of [...]

Paid Link Spending Per Industry by Nielsen
Yesterday Search Engine Watch covered the Nielsen break down of the amount of spending by industry for ’sponsored links’ and ‘text links’ in online advertising. At first glance, I thought the numbers would be based upon ’sponsored text links’ or ‘paid links’, which would have been an interesting overview, but nonetheless, the Nielsen numbers do [...]

The Importance of Research: A 2008 Resolution
Research, Research, Research! Personally, 2007 was the year I spent a few hours a day doing research on branding strategies, traffic strategies, news, etc. A big part of it is because I write on my blog, as well as SEJ. I can’t begin to tell you how much of a difference it has helped [...]

Google Jet Hosts NASA Quadrantid Meteor Shower Research Over Artic
Google’s relationship with NASA got even more intimate as the search & technology company hosted NASA scientists yesterday on the Google Gulfstream V Jet to witness and study a meteor shower over the artic. The quadrantid meteor shower usually produces 100+ meteors per hour, but is seldom seen because of it being in the middle of [...]

China To Implement (New) Online Video Regulations
According to AP China has decided to restrict the broadcasting of Internet videos — including those posted on video-sharing Web sites — to sites run by state-controlled companies and require providers to report questionable content to the government. The article also mentions that the regulations will take effect Jan. 31. According to the new regulations online video [...]

ChaCha’s Human Powered Search Goes Mobile with TextChaCha
You got to give credit to ChaCha search for trying to compete with the major search engines through its own little ways. Although its human-powered search engine have not gained major grounds since its inception, but still it wouldn’t just give up easily. As an opening salvo for the new year,  ChaCha is bringing its [...]

Google Tells Us How They Can be Gamed: They Artificially Inflate Recent Web Pages
To kick off the new year, the Google Operating System blog spoke about the downside of their ability to index pages faster: artifically boosting the rankings of newly created pages. New pages obviously can’t rank normally because they have no backlinks, so instead, Google will artifically inflate the rankings based on historical data and any [...]

Yahoo Says Goodbye to “Yahoo Picks�
After twelve years of existence, Yahoo finally shut down Yahoo Picks, a service which highlighted new and interesting sites on the web. Yahoo bid the service farewell at the start of the new year, on January 1. Sites such as Yahoo Picks used to be a big hit, but interest in such sites has waned [...]

Tips For Upgrading Your Search Marketing Career Outlook
The never ending quest for web sites to rank higher and higher in search engine results pages has resulted in a corresponding development of entire careers that support this goal. For a number of years now, search engine marketing has been a viable career option for many thousands of people all over the world. In [...]

Wikia Search Launching Next Week
Let the build up and anticipation begin, as Wikia Search has announced that it will be opening its social doors on Monday, January 7th to try and change the way people search online. The community driven search initiative from the people who brought us Wikipedia, and is based on the four organizing principles of transparency, community, [...]

Hardcore SEO Fundamentals: Markov Chaining Points and Term Vector Modeling
Heather Paulson from Paulson Management Group wrote a post for ReveNews.com titled “SEO Matrix’s- Markov Chaining and Term Vector Models“. It is basically a rundown of the fundamental SEO ranking factors, but from a very technical perspective, nothing for the SEO beginner and folks who were not A-Grade in math during High School and/or College.

Google Docs Presentation Adds Embed Feature
When Google Docs Presentation was launched sometime in September, it was a much awaited tool that was being touted as the missing piece to Google’s web-based application suite’s final success. Unfortunately, the missing piece has in itself a missing piece as well. While it was a nifty web tool back the, Google Presentation lacks the [...]

Yahoo To Dominate Growing Graphic Ad Market in 2008
Analysts are predicting large growth in 2008 in the U.S. graphical ad market, and expect the biggest winner of the bunch to be Yahoo. JP Morgan forecasts an $8.6 billion industry in 2008, which is an increase of about 20% over 2007. The average CPM is also expected to increase by about 4%. The [...]

Revamped Google-Linux gOS 2.0 Launching Soon
Just about two months ago, a start-up Linux distributor by the name of Good OS jumped onto the scene with gOS 1.0, an Ubuntu based desktop Linux featuring dedicated links to Google applications. Already, the second generation version of the OS is ready. Good OS has announced that they will release the next [...]

Search Engine Land : Best Search Industry News Blog of 2007
The winner of this year’s Search Industry News Blog of 2007 Award is not just a blog, but the heartbeat of the search marketing industry… Search Engine Land Danny Sullivan, Barry Schwartz, Greg Sterling, Vanessa Fox and the rest of the Search Engine Land team ran away with the Best Search Industry News Blog in a landslide! Gathering [...]

Search Engine Roundtable : Best SEO Blog of 2007
Another year, another blog voted Best SEO Blog by Search Engine Journal’s readers. In 2005, Matt Cutts took away the award. In 2006, SEOmoz. Search Engine Roundtable For 2007, Search Engine Roundtable’s team of Barry Schwartz and Tamar Weinberg continuously bring excellent coverage of SEO and webmaster issues as discussed in the various search marketing forums [...]

Yahoo Launches Go 3.0, The Mobile Search Service Formerly Known as Go 2.0
Yahoo’s participation in the on-going Consumer Electronics Show is by way of the launch of its flagship mobile search service, Yahoo! Go 3.0 which is an update of fairly recently released Yahoo Go 2.0. This time around, the mobile search service promises to deliver of what consumers want, anywhere, anytime. Currently available for download on more [...]

Spam for the Search Engines and a Smile for Matt Cutts
I wanted to call the post “Website Scraper, Trackback Spammer and Cloaking Bundle” at first, but then thought that the current one is a bit funnier, which is a bit more appropriate considering the irony, which will become apparent in a little bit. Back in March when I did some research for my post about some [...]

Search Blogs Award Voting : Quality vs. Quantity
In this year’s Search Engine Journal Search Blogs Awards, I took a different approach at the blog rating system, giving voters the option to rate only the blogs that they want to rate. In the past, ranking each blog was required. According to the instructions, voters were to rate blogs and other entries from 1 to [...]

Google Ron Paul : Connecting with Searchers
I admit, I have not been following the Ron Paul campaign much besides the mobilization of Digg users and some of the ads I’ve seen on sites which normally do not host political advertising, like v7n Forums. But today I was exposed to the “Google Ron Paul” campaign for the first time, when an early model [...]

Yahoo Announces Mobile Software for Third Party Developers
One of my predictions for 2008 was the continuation and increase in mobile web marketing. A lot of talk went on last year in the mobile space, but I think 2008 is the year where strategies will take place and companies will emerge to innovate the mobile marketing industry. Yahoo has been in the mobile [...]

Best 2007 Search Conference Coverage in Photos : Close, Very Close
Not only do the bloggers who cover the search sessions keep us in tap on the happenings at SES, SMX and Pubcon, but so do the flashes and flickers of the cameras, which have somehow created some sort of internal cult of celebrity within the search industry. I know that after my first few conferences, I [...]

Search Engine Roundtable : Best Search Conference Coverage of 2007
We see them at every search marketing conference, those busy bee bloggers, taking up the whole front row and fighting over power outlets, typing away and taking snapshots while the rest of us are trying to pay attention to the discussion. They’re the first ones in the conference halls, even skipping breakfast or lunch to get [...]

Dosh Dosh : Breakout Blog of 2007
2007 brought some interesting new blogs into the searchosphere, some hitting the bigtime after being around for a while and others launched by some well known authority figures in the search marketing industry. Which new blog stuck out the most?

SEO by the SEA : Best Search Engine Research Blog of 2007
While some of us are writing about Sugar Ray singing at Yahoo or Google founders swimming in the Atlantic, others are deep into their bookmarks and databases, analyzing patents, algorithmic trends and obscure search technologies … giving us all a glimpse of things to come in the future of search engines. Nominees for the Best Search [...]

Sphinn : Best Search Engine Community/Forum of 2007
Before search engine blogs, there were always search engine forums, where members could swap ideas, ask questions and argue over the latest trends in SEO and search marketing. I learned most of what I know from my early days in forums and discussion groups, monitoring Webmaster World, SitePoint, Cre8asite, HighRankings and even the I-Search email list [...]

YouTube Videos and Picasa Web Going the HDTV Way
I know this idea may seem cool, but then would you really get excited about your newly bought HDTVs because of these features? Announced in the ongoing CES, Panasonic and YouTube are set to have reached an agreement that would bring user-generated videos uploaded into YouTube into consumers’  HDTVs. With Panasonic’s Viera HDTV equipped with [...]

Wikia Search : The Testbed for a Google Mock-up
The blogs are abuzz on the release of the new search project, Wikia. It has been a disappointing note everywhere (from what I have read so far). There have been detailed deliberations on the vision of Wikia Search and how it will not pan out as a major search engine in the immediate future . I [...]

There is No G.com, Y.com, M.com, Why Not?
Google’s acquisition of the one character g.cn domain for China, reminded me of the old question about one and also two character domain names in the gTLD (generic top level domain) space like .com, .net and .org. Who has domains that are only one or two characters long and how did they get them and why [...]

Best Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007?
ShoeMoney also won Best Affiliate Marketing Blog of 2007, in a voting LANDSLIDE with the most total votes and 54% of the voters who ranked ShoeMoney ranking the blog a 4 or 5! ShoeMoney won the Best Contextual Advertising Blog of 2007, which is making me think of mixing these categories into one and renaming them [...]

New Downloadable Book Tests Yahoo-Adobe Ad System
Back in November, it was announced that Yahoo and Adobe would be testing out some new technology that lets publishers place advertising in PDF documents. After a couple months of being left to wonder exactly how such an advertising system would be implemented, Adobe and Yahoo have attempted satisfied our curiosity by releasing a [...]

Do Not Hire an SEO Company!
As the owner of an SEO company it is somewhat contradicting to write such an article. However, there are many times when a company or business simply does not need to hire an SEO company. While I hate to turn away business, I rather turn the business away now then face future hassles [...]

Google &Facebook Join Support For Social Content: DataPortability
Google and Facebook, two of the sites that contain the most social content on the web announce they have joined the DataPortability Workgroup. DataPortability is a company which is dedicated in creating ways to share user-generated content and personal information created on social networks. Computerworld reports, “The move by the two firms, which together [...]

Yahoo Launches Web-Based MP3 Player
Yahoo just release an update of its mp3 player that no matter how Yahoo wants to underplay it, still web analysts might see it as the start of something grand to come. Previously, the Yahoo MP3 player lets users playback 30-second samples and tracks of music from Yahoo’s Music web site. But with the release of [...]

Google To Phase Out Adsense Referral Program
If you are still implementing Adsense referral units on your blogs/sites and you’re outside of North America, Latin America and Japan and still manage to pull in a significant flow income through successful Adsense sign-ups,then you might get pissed at this new announcement from the Inside Adsense blog.

Dailymotion : Video Marketing on this Global Version of YouTube
I am happy to announce my first in a series of posts on video marketing on video sharing sites. I will be going off of the global list of top trafficked video sites, as ranked by Alexa. Obviously the first would be YouTube but since I have been doing some posts on this already at [...]

Best SEO Plugin for Wordpress of 2007
One more category in the Search Blog Awards that I overlooked (thanks Joost!) was the Best SEO Plugin for Wordpress! The nominees were : Joost’s Meta Robots Plugin Simple Tags Plugin All in One SEO Pack Plugin Do Follow And the winner of the Best SEO Plugin for Wordpress as voted by Search Engine Journal readers is …

Best Overall Search Marketing Blog of 2007 : Search Engine Who?
And the final Search Blog Award of 2007, the award for Best Overall Search Marketing Blog, which includes blogs that cover everything, from SEO to link building, from search tutorials to conference and industry coverage…. SEO and Search Marketing blogs alike … this is the big one. The nominees were : Search Engine Land Top Rank Blog Search Marketing [...]

Best Search Blogger on Paid Linking : Matt Cutts or Michael Gray?
One of the most blogged about and talked about occurrences in search in 2007 was the paid link controversy and Google’s Matt Cutts encouraging webmasters to label paid links with the No Follow attribute, which was originally created to be used on links which are placed in user generated content areas of blogs and other [...]

Truveo Forecasts 1 Billion Searchable Online Videos by 2009
Video search engine Truveo announced today that their index has exceeded an astonishing 100 million videos, and predicts that based on current growth rates, the online video universe will reach one billion searchable videos by 2009. Truveo claims to have operated one of the largest and most comprehensive video search engines on the Internet [...]

Weather Channel Adds Weather to Google Maps
The Weather Channel Interactive, Inc. has launched a new mapplet for Google Maps, which makes weather conditions available on the map with one click. Additionally, The Weather Channel is the select weather provider for Google Earth, supplying up to the minute weather conditions, forecasts and radar. If you go to your Google MyMaps screen, the Weather [...]

New Google Toolbar PageRank Update
Google ‘Toolbar’ PageRank is updating this week, in what seems to be the first PageRank update of 2008. Barry points to this Webmaster World thread about sites being penalized and dropped down to a zero. Some of the webmasters are reporting that the issue may be because of duplicate content. For those of you who remember [...]

PredictAd’s Search Auto-Complete Pays on CPC, What’s the Catch?
PredictAd is a fairly new product that offers bloggers/web site owners a new way to earn additional income. By adding a short code into a blog’s HTML, publishers can earn 50% of the advertising fee generated from the PredictAd code. When a publisher insert the PredictAd code on to a blog/site with a search box, [...]

Ask.com Names New CEO Jim Safka, Replacing Jim Lanzone
IAC made an interesting move today, replacing one of the head figures responsible for taking Ask.com out of the search spammy shadow of Jeeves, and transforming it into the incredible search engine it has become today, announcing that Jim Safka will takeover as CEO of Ask.com. Lanzone, a search guy, is being replaced by Safka, [...]

FuzzFind : Calibrating Social and Algorithmic Search
If the title of the post appeared too technical, then my apologies. I wanted to convey in a nutshell that FuzzFind, the meta-social-search mashup combines results from search engines and social bookmarking sites on an equal footing (an achievement for social bookmarking I must say). The approach should fetch relevant results since social bookmarking is [...]

Yahoo Poised to Begin Implementation of OpenID
Although no official announcements have yet been made, it appears as though Yahoo is gearing up to implement OpenID, a web authentication standard that eliminates the need to remember multiple passwords to log into different web sites. A subdomain of Yahoo, me.yahoo.com, features a short message that indicates they will act as an identity [...]

Belo Corp. to Provide Local News Video to Yahoo News
Yahoo! Inc. and Belo Corp. announced today a new agreement that will make 13 of Belo’s television stations exclusive providers of local news video  in their respective markets.  As a part of the agreement, Yahoo will now host dozens of local news video clips provided by Belo each day that will run in the local [...]

Adwords Tweaked Conversion Optimizer for Profit Increase
The Conversion Optimizer introduced by Google AdWords in September is now out of beta. Along with this development are some improvements that would benefit AdWords advertisers in increasing profits and saving time. Conversion Optimizer is a free AdWords tool for managing CPA (cost-per-acquisition) bids. Now that the Conversion Optimizer is out of beta, AdWords is making [...]

Yahoo Serving Images in Sponsored Search Listings
Yahoo Search Marketing is testing the serving of images embedded within their sponsored search results on Yahoo Directory pages. The images, which are being supplied by a company called ImageAdvantage, are generated either from a stock photo database or from their sponsors’ sites to the left of their Yahoo Search Marketing results. One has to [...]

SMX West Early Bird Special Expires Tomorrow : Save $400!
SMX West has been running an early bird special for attendees who wish to get their tickets reserved early for what is turning out to be a much anticipated conference featuring keynotes by : PeterNorvig, Director of Research, Google Inc. Lous Monier of Cuill Brad Goldberg, General Manager, Search Business Group, Microsoft; Jim Lanzone, former CEO of Ask.com Along [...]

Microsoft &Library of Congress Team Up to Support New Interactive Experience for Visitors
Today, Microsoft Corp. and the Library of Congress made a joint announcement indicating that they have signed a cooperative agreement that will make the Library’s vast collection of historical artifacts available electronically. The joint technology innovation effort will expose the Library’s collections like never before, allowing immersive interactive experiences to bring the collections and [...]

Baidu to Launch Japanese Version of Search Service After 1-month Delay
China’s most used Internet search web site, Baidu.com, is set to launch a Japanese language version of their site on January 23, one month later than initially expected.  The launch of the service had been postponed not because of any technical problems, but rather, to avoid the new year’s holiday in Japan. Baidu CEO Robin Li [...]

Yahoo Software Will Work on Rival Google’s Mobile Programs
This week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, Yahoo revealed that they will provide software that allows independent developers and companies build programs for phones, including those that run Google’s new Android operating software for wireless mobile devices.  Instead of ignoring their search rival’s operating system, Yahoo is embracing it and aims to [...]

Google Launches iGoogle for the iPhone &Mobile Phones
Google has gone live with a version of iGoogle, their personalized home page, for the iPhone and other mobile devices (it works pretty well on my Motorola). The site is available at http://www.google.com/ig/i. If you stay constantly connected and logged into Google via your iPhone, mobile or online, iGooge for the iPhone is a really great [...]

Google Boots IncrediMail from AdSense Program
IncrediMail revealed today that they had received a notification from Google indicating that they had been dismissed from the Google AdSense program. Upon the announcement of this news, IncrediMail shares plummeted more than 45% to a new year low. Ouch. It’s not known how or if IncrediMail violated any of Google AdSense terms of [...]

Can Semantic Search Ensure a More Secure Web?
The Web experienced a roller-coaster ride in 2007 with Social Networking emerging as the happening area. More and more user activity moving to the clouds was another phenomena. But it was also the year which raised serious questions on security around web applications and web services. Issues galore Just a couple weeks back Carsten Cumbrowski mentioned [...]

Professor Bans Google &Wikipedia : Encourages Critical Thinking &Research
Professor Brabazon of the University of Brighton is doing her best to break student dependency of the ‘University of Google’, that is trusting the first result in Google or the perceived authority of Wikipedia as a credible source for research. To encourage her students to revert back to traditional research measures, Brabazon has banned the [...]

Collaborative Blog Search with BlogDigger
RSS and blog search engine BlogDigger provides services such as media search, link search and grouping of blog results. Media search pertains to RSS feeds on media types such as mp3, WindowsMedia, QuickTime etc. Link search provides information on sites that back link to a particular website, tracking the train of linkages among blog posts. The [...]

Pepperjam Network Launches : Affiliate Network Built by Affiliates &Search Marketers
Kris Jones emailed us this week to let us know that PepperJam is launching Pepperjam Network today, a new affiliate network which the company has been working on for almost 8 years. Being affiliate managers themselves, Pepperjam has applied affiliate best practices to their network along with a wishlist of applications which include ease of [...]

Paid Links : Do You Report Them?
Patrick Altoft is hosting a poll on whether or not search marketers report paid linking. Patrick admits that he usually only reports paid links “only when the site buying or selling them was a direct competitor and ranked higher than me.” So far 68% of the voters claim that they do not report paid links to [...]

Gmail for the iPhone Gets Two New Features
iPhone users would be delighted to know of two new nifty features of Gmail in their mobile devices. Gmail for iPhone enhances iPhone users’ Gmail experience with pre-fetching and auto-complete functions. With the use of AJAX Gmail for the iPhone is now more responsive and faster to load. Gmail will also automatically pre-load the most recent [...]

MediaWhiz Merges AuctionAds Into ShoppingAds
This month MediaWhiz, which acquired AuctionAds from ShoeMoney Media last year, merged their AuctionAds and ShoppingAds products into one product, dropping the AuctionAds name and sticking with ShoppingAds. ShoppingAds is now a hybrid which serves both CPA affiliate style ads served by eBay and also CPC ads provided by the shopping comparison engine partners of [...]

Adapt Offers Free 7 Day Test of Paid Search Management Software
Adapt Technologies is offering free 7 day, no obligation “Test Drive” of its pay-per-click management software, Adapt SEM (SEM-in-a-box). Adapt SEM is a software application which helps marketers manage paid search campaigns, in a simplified manner which includes features such as automated performance analysis, bid management, competitive research, and ad text testing and optimization. The Adapt [...]

Microsoft’s Targeted Shopping Cart Advertising, Innovation or an Act of Desperation?
ShopRite shoppers will soon be treated to a slew of advertisements while doing their shopping at ShopRite outlets. Thanks to a partnership between Microsoft, MediaCart Holdings and Wakerfern Food Corporation, data obtained from ShopRite’s customer loyalty card will be used by Microsoft technologies to serve targeted advertisements to ShopRite customers.  Either that’s a ridiculous idea or [...]

Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against Ask.com For Failure to Prevent Click Fraud
Ask.com is apparently being sued in a class action lawsuit for “failing to adequately detect and stop ‘click fraud’ or other invalid or improper clicks on online advertisements.” According to SlightlyShadySEO, a notification went out via e-mail informing advertisers of the lawsuit and a website has been set up to address the lawsuit. How Ask.com [...]

First Google Android Prototype Phone Completed
A La Mobile, a San Ramon, Calif. based start-up dedicated to Linux-based open systems for mobile devices, will reveal today plans to unveil a suite of applications based on the new Google mobile operating system, Android. A La Mobile has deployed a Google browser, audio player, maps, calculator, camera, games, calendar, contacts manager, [...]

Traffic to Google from iPhones Reaches “Impressive Levels�
It turns out that Google’s iPhone gamble is paying off in a pretty noticeable way. Despite the phone’s relatively low market share, the New York Times reports that traffic to Google from iPhones has reached “impressive levels”. Traffic to the search engine surged over the Christmas holiday, likely reflecting all the new iPhones lucky consumers [...]

Local Search Engine Grayboxx Finally Goes National
Online local search firm Grayboxx which was succeedingly rolled out in 5 major cities the past five months has finally come out of the box and is now available across the United States. With the national version comes new features and data topped by what it claims as “neighborhood-recommended” local search engine technology. Using its Preference [...]

Google and Clearwire Reach Collaboration Agreement
Top broadband service provider Clearwire is teaming up with Google to provide popular Google Apps communication to Clearwire customers. In the first half of the year, Clearwire customers will be migrated into Gmail and Google Calendar as well as access to Gtalk. Scott Richardson, Clearwire’s chief strategy officer said that the agreement would further the company’s [...]

Google Account Consolidation – Real World Security Concerns – An Involuntary Case Study
About Security There are rarely talks about security breaches and problems that did or could result from those breaches in the public. The reason for that are simple, it is often embarrassing for the owner of the compromised account to admit the breach and for the solution provider to get possible flaws exposed that could result [...]

New Trademark Lawsuit Could Impact Search Marketing
1-800-Contacts has filed a lawsuit in federal court against LensWorld for buying search links that were triggered by the keyword “1-800-contacts.” 1-800-contacts has filed several other similar cases, and says that they are doing so in order to prevent confusion. 1-800-Contacts, whose headquarters are in Draper, Utah, is amongst several other Utah lawsuits filed recently [...]

SEMMYS : 14 SEJ Entries Nominated for Best in Search Engine Marketing
Matt McGee of SmallBusinessSEM has put together a masterful awards competition for the best blog posts in search engine marketing; The SEMMYS (get it? SEM + EMMY’s). A fine compliment to the Annual SEJ Search Blog Awards, the SEMMY’s look at individual blog posts and start out with numerous posts per topic. Judges then boil the [...]

Yahoo &T-Mobile Sign Mobile Advertising Deal
One of the top mobile service operators in the U.K. - T-Mobile - has just announced a strategic partnership deal with Internet giant Yahoo! Inc. that will place ads on to their “Web n’ Walk” mobile Internet service. The first ads to be born out of this new agreement are expected to appear sometime [...]

Yahoo to Support OpenID for its 248 Million Users, OpenID to Support Yahoo ID’s
Yahoo today announced that it is supporting the OpenID 2.0 digital identity framework for all of its 248 million active registered Yahoo global users; in a move which marks one of the first steps in the opening of Yahoo and its Web 2.0 properties. Yahoo’s inclusion of OpenID will open in public beta on January 30, [...]

China Has 210 Million Internet Users
China has now 210 million users according to a press release from the China Internet Network Information Centre (The CNNIC is a government agency). That’s a lot, considering that half a year ago there were only 165 million users and a year ago 137 million. In one year the number of users has gone up [...]

Superpages.com Supplying Local Search Content to Parenthood.com
Superpages.com and Parenthood.com have partnered for Superpages.com, of Idearc Media, to supply Parenthood.com with its full directory of Superpages.com business listings. “Parenthood.com reaches a very niche group of female audiences, which is one of the most influential consumer buying groups in the nation,” said Eric Chandler, President – Internet for Idearc Media. “Our relationship with [...]

Google Opens Up iGoogle Theme Directory
Have the less-than-impressive options for personalizing your iGoogle homepage gotten you down? Well frown no more - now you’ve got a chance to do something about it, and give your iGoogle page the personalization that it deserves. Launched Wednesday, Google has made available the new iGoogle Theme Directory which allows users to submit [...]

Microsoft Snatched Advertising Deal with Edgar Online
And so the battle for internet strategic alliances surges on this year. Right after Google announced that it has reached a deal with broadband service provider Clearwire, here comes Microsoft with its own deal. For Microsoft, it has to be in the form of advertising and content agreement with EDGAR Online, a premier source of [...]

A Friendly Adsense Reminder About Policy-Compliant Images and Videos
The image and video content that you embed in your blogs/websites that run Adsense units may conflict with Adsense program policies. Hence, the Inside AdSense blog is reminding site owners who are running Adsense units to make sure that these images and videos are not offensive or disturbing enough to make advertiser feel uncomfortable to [...]

Google Picasa Rumored to Be Coming to Mac OS X
According to the folks over at Wired, a Google employee confirmed that a version of Picasa for Mac OS X is presently in the works, and will be launched later this year.  Picasa, for those you that some how don’t know what it is, is Google’s own photo management software. It lets you do things [...]

5 More Free Tools To Improve Search Engine Optimization
As we mentioned in our last article, 5 Free Search Engine Optimization Tools Available Online, analytics can be a great way to evaluate and improve your website. Based on all the feedback and information we received from readers, we decided to round out our top ten with five more sites (and some useful tools) [...]

Google Directory Shows True PageRank of Penalized Pages
Recently there has been some talk about the Google Directory, which is powered by Netscape’s Open Directory Project (DMOZ), updated on January 8th and is listing the ‘original’ Google PageRank of sites before Google slapped a paid links penalty to the ‘Toolbar’ PageRank of those sites (thanks to Andy Beard). As an example, Search Engine Roundtable’s [...]

Google Wants to Change the World with 5 Initiatives
Google’s philanthropic arm, Google.org announces its 5 core initiatives that will be the focus of its social responsibility activities. Using its strong information and technology infrastructure, Google.org will partner with experienced experts in the fields relating to the 5 core initiatives. This 5 core initiatives which shall be the guiding principles of Google.org in the [...]

AOL’s Truveo Joins the Election Fever
As the US election fever heats up, the focus has been directed towards the use online videos in each of the candidates campaign trails. Online video sharing sites and internet properties launched their own Election portals one after the other. Among these election-related sites, the most prominent and widely used medium is online video. YouTube [...]

Google Maps is Gaining Ground on MapQuest
According to new data from Hitwise, Google Maps is quickly and quietly gaining ground on the top-ranked map web site, MapQuest.  MapQuest which is owned by AOL, had more than 429% (or 5x) the number of U.S.-based visits to Google Maps just one year ago.  But now that lead has been cut significantly. To date, MapQuest’s [...]

Google Modifies Adsense Referral Program, Again
As a response to Adsense publishers outrage over the previously announced change in the Adsense referral program, Google is modifying the program policy yet again. Whereas a week ago, Adsense publishers’ earnings would depend on their location, it would depend on the location of the users referred by the publishers. As stated in the recent Inside [...]

It is Time for Putting on Some Link-Condoms!
Warning! This post uses metaphors and some phrases that are not suitable for children’s eyes and ears. It is directed towards other bloggers and not the average public who does not know about the struggles and fights that occur invisible to them behind blog plug-ins and comment management and review tools and are part of [...]

Google Experimental Search Featured in SERPs
Always innovating, Google’s at it again — this time showing us another product of Google Labs called “Google Experimental Search”. Links to try Google Experimental are being littered in the footer of many search result pages today, as noted by a number of users here at my office. Google’s Experimental Search is another effort made [...]

Redirects in AdWords Ads Bypass Banned Sites Filter in Google AdSense
Even if you block a domain in AdSense from being served on your site, there are still ways that publishers and Made For AdSense “spammers” are getting around this feature; using redirects to show one domain in a Google AdWords advertisement, then redirect that user to the initial domain which has been blocked by a [...]

Yahoo Search Weather Report : Crawling &Ranking Algorithm Update Today
Today Yahoo is planning to roll out its first major Yahoo ‘Weather Report’ of 2008 which will include some changes to its crawling and ranking algorithms. Yahoo says that the changes are currently being made, but webmasters may notice a shuffling of their rankings throughout the day as Yahoo will be doing some “ranking changes [...]

Yahoo Search Tests Delicious Integration into the SERPS
Yahoo Search is testing the integration of Delicious.com bookmarking information into its search results. The Delicious integration shows the Yahoo searcher the number of people who have bookmarked a specific page in Delicious and the most popular tags used. Such bookmarking could be seen as a quality search metric and perhaps influence the choice of the [...]

The Rumors are Getting Stronger, Yahoo to Layoff Staff
The rumor that started over the weekend about Yahoo’s impending plan to layoff hundreds of Yahoo staff worldwide seems to be getting stronger than bleaker. NYT, WSJ and Bloomberg are citing reliable sources confirming the rumored mass layoff. Yahoo’s CEO Jerry Yang and his crew are opting to stay mum about it and would either [...]

Top 10 Social Networks, Blogs &Web Brand Rankings for Dec. 2007
Reported by Marketing Charts, Nielson Ratings releases the statistics for the top 10 social networks, blogs, and web brand rankings for December 2007. Top 10 Social Networks: Myspace continues to be the stop social network site. You’d think Facebook would over pass Myspace by now, but that is still not the case. Myspace increased its [...]

The Domain Name Market in 2008: Buy or Sell?
I wrote a story a couple of months back, “Domain Market Remains Hot: A Bubble Waiting To Burst?” Today, there was a comment from an SEJ reader from the story which asked, “It is now 7 months later… And I haven’t read much about domain valuation since Business.com. I spent quite a bit on [...]

Chinese Search Engine Baidu Turns Japanese
After a month of delay, China’s top search engine Baidu finally launches its Japanese portal. By establishing a stronghold in the Japanese web scene, Baidu hopes to develop search products that compliment Japanese users’ habits and preferences. With Baidu’s first attempt to establish its presence outside of China, the Chinese search giant hopes to achieve in [...]

Google to Offer Terabytes of Free Database Storage to Scientists
Google will soon be offering up terabytes of online storage for open-source scientific datasets, which will be housed at the domain http://research.google.com. Storage will be free to researchers, and anyone will be able to access the data. The service, which is currently known as Palimpsest, was due to launch this week, but missed its [...]

Google Allows IncrediMail Back in AdSense Program
We’re not sure quite what happened, but IncrediMail announced on Monday that Google had reinstated them as an AdSense online customer.  If you recall, IncrediMail was booted from the program unexpectedly just a week and a half ago, causing their stock to take an immediate nosedive. Yaron Adler, CEO at IncrediMail, said, “We are pleased to [...]

YouTube Extends Mobile Phone Video Coverage
Business is definitely good on YouTube land, as the web’s most popular video uploading site expands its coverage on mobile phones. The Associated Press is reporting  all video contents available on YouTube’s web portal will now also be available on mobile handsets.  But here’s the catch, those mobile phones must belong to the “smart” phone categories [...]

Introducing Google Adwords’ Demographic Bidding
Google Adwords introduces demographic bidding, a new Adwords feature which will help advertisers in displaying their ads to specific gender and age group within the Google content network. Demographic bidding will give advertisers more control in managing how their ads perform and their targeted audience. Demographic bidding is will be available to advertisers who are running [...]

Google AdWords Running Click-to-Call Ads Again
We haven’t seen Click to Call running in Google AdWords for a long time, but then received an email today from Mark Bufalini of DailyCandy.com who tipped us off that Google AdWords is indeed running Google Click to Call again. Notice the saved phone number, the 0 infront of the number (please don’t call me) and [...]

Google, Publicis Working Together on Digital Ads Technology
Google Inc. and Publicis Groupe announced Wednesday that they are working together on using technology to improve advertising.  The two companies have already been collaborating in stealth mode for about a year, but are now hoping to extend that relationship into several areas, including a “talent exchange and training scheme.” Google CEO Eric Schmidt and Publicis [...]

SeeqPod MP3 Search Engine Sued by Warner Music
SeeqPod, the MP3 search engine which lets users play music on the site, has come under target by the Warner Music legal team because it lets its users stream MP3 files which are hosted on other sites, which its bots index. Warner Music is suing, saying that it does not matter whether the illegal MP3 [...]

Microsoft Patent Filing Reveals Ideas to Monitor Offline Behavior for Advertising Purposes
Earlier this month, Microsoft filed a patent application that presents a method of collecting information about users’ “cellphones, geolocation systems, credit card information” and other sources of data to select and display “targeted advertising”.  While collecting user data to target advertising is nothing new, Microsoft’s filing points to another source of data: offline sources. This collection [...]

Search Ranking for Tech Support &Error Message Search Queries
Search queries on Google and other search engines for informational terms dealing with “tech support”, “how to…” and “trouble shooting” have been constant and traffic driving queries for years and are ripe for the picking for those who can fully optimize for them. Sites like eHow and WikiHow have been capitalizing on this space for some [...]

Google May Let AT&T or Verizon Win in Wireless Spectrum Auction Today
The hotly anticipated U.S. federal auction of mobile phone airwaves begins today, and some are speculating that Google - who famously announced their intentions to bid - may spend less than investors have anticipated and let the telecoms win after all. Why after all the hoopla would Google just let them at it without [...]

eMail Beats Search &Display Marketing : Best Performing Online Marketing Medium?
Datran Media (an online marketing firm specializing in email marketing) recently published the results of a survey which consists of 2,000 online marketers in December 2007 on the best performing medium for their online marketing efforts. eMail marketing came ahead of search and display. There are some very interesting statistics in this survey that [...]

Roost Launches Real Estate Search Engine
General search engines like Google are great, but sometimes a more specialized search engine will get the job done much better. That’s the idea behind a new search engine that launched on Wednesday - Roost, a real estate search engine. Roost differs from many of the more established home buying sites in that they are [...]

Yahoo Dumps its Brand Universe Social Media Branding Project
In what first was seen by the search and branding community as the perfect mix of Yahoo’s social properties and advertising, Yahoo has now discontinued its Yahoo Brand Universe initiative, exactly one year after its birth. AdWeek reports that a Yahoo rep said the destinations “did not fit into the broader strategy laid out by CEO [...]

Google Won’t Help Monetize Sites Less Than 5 Days Old
According to DomainTools, Google is about to stop monetizing domains that are less than five days old, effectively killing the practice of “Domain Tasting“. There is a huge amount of money involved in domain tasting, where AdSense for Domains ads can be thrown up on domains during their free five-day grace period. Potentially, one could [...]

EU Regulators Likely to Approve Google’s DoubleClick Deal
Despite rivals’ concerns that Google’s acquisition of DoubleClick may increase the cost and difficulty in advertising online advertising, EU regulators reviewing the case are likely to approve the $3.1 billion takeover deal. The European Commission is about to make their ruling on the acquisition, and with the US already having approved it, it is not [...]

Link Building For Search When Google Does Not Exist
Let’s all take the time to stop checking our rankings, searching for new blogs in TLA and sending link request emails to envision an alternate universe, a world wide web where Google does not exist. An Internet where link anchor text does not influence ranking, because link based ranking does not exist. Let us pretend [...]

Amazon to Launch DRM-Free MP3 Digital Store
Things are about to heat up (and get dirty) between Amazon and Apple’s digital music venture as Amazon announces that it will soon be launching its DRM-Free MP3 digital store. Amazon’s digital music store boasts of around 3.3 million songs from the four major U.S. music labels as well as around 33,000 independent labels. This [...]

SearchGuild.com Sells for only $8,655 at SEDO : $3 per Link!
Aaron Wall noticed that SearchGuild.com, which was one of the first major search marketing portals, news sites and forums which just kind of died off over the past 2 years after endless hacking and bad hosting, just sold on SEDO for the low low price of $8,655. Aaron points out that the price was a major [...]

Worst Link Building Email I’ve Ever Received
Today I opened my email inbox to a subject line so bad, it added a nice slice of humor into my daily morning routine. I thought the text of the Tarzan-esque email is worth sharing not only for its absolute funniness, but also as an example of what not to do when sending emails promoting [...]

Gameseekr : Online Gaming Search Engine
Gameseekr is a search engine tailored for games which are accessible and playable on the internet. It also supports a social model that enables users to share and create communities that further enhance a vertical that does require a dedicated engine of its own. How Gameseekr Works The engine maintains its own database of content obtained by [...]

Reversing Google’s Position Six Penalty
When Search Engine Land reported last week that some sites were being hit by a mysterious plague called position six penalty, it created a stir among webmasters and SEO experts from SEL’s forums. None other than SEO guru Aaron Wall publicized this issue when his site was hit by the position six penalty. When a [...]

Google Experiments on New Search Views
Finally Google maybe realizing that there’s more to being a search engine than giving relevant search results. Over at Google’s experimental lab, several new views for its search results pages are being tested. Aside from the traditional search results views that we used to get, additional search views might be offered soon - [...]

Google Entering Paid Reviews Business? Via AdSense?!?
Shoemoney has published a tip coming from a secret source that Google is going to be offering paid reviews via their Google AdSense system and is looking for beta testers. Make no sense to you or seem to good to be true? Jeremy lays down some reasons why this may be doable. Publishers - Google already [...]

Marchex and Idearc Media Form Local Advertising Partnership
Marchex, Inc. a local online advertising, SEM & local content company and Idearc, parent company of Superpages.com, have formed a local advertising agreement where Superpages.com performance-based advertisers will be placed on Marchex’s network of web sites through Enhance Interactive, Marchex’s advertising network. “Marchex is dedicated to providing the products and services that enable leading sales [...]

Yahoo to Proceed with Mass Layoffs
According to Silicon Alley Insider, a source close to Yahoo is confirming that Yahoo! CEO Jerry Yang will indeed press on with plans for an aggressive round of layoffs. The source has indicated that the layoffs will likely be announced at Yahoo’s conference call scheduled for later this week, and that roughly 1,500 to [...]

DotHomes.com : UK Property Search Engine Invades US Market
UK property search engine Dothomes is expanding its range of coverage to now include the lucrative U.S. market. Slightly less than two years after the initial founding of the search engine, the site’s parent company, BytePlay, indicated that they were ready to launch a concerted effort to break into the US market and challenge [...]

Offline Version of Google Docs Expected to Launch Soon
Word around the web is that Google is preparing to launch an offline version of Google Docs through Google Gears, a rumor which has been fueled even more now by what look to be screenshots of Google Docs in offline mode.  To date, the only official integration for Google Gears is Reader.  Google Blogoscoped, however, [...]

Report: Google Surges on in Q4 2007 Search Performance But ROI Didn’t Quite Improved
We have seen various search engine performance statistics of the three major search engines for the last quarter of 2007 and Google topped these reports statistically. So, it would hurt a bit to add another report which again shows that Google’s top rivals, Live Search and Yahoo Search are lagging way behind Google in terms [...]

Microsoft Seals Advertising Deal with Wall Street Journal
Microsoft and Wall Street Journal has reached and advertising deal, which if I may say so, is perhaps Microsoft’s biggest deal so far as a content publishing network. The deal involves Microsoft providing contextual and paid search advertising on all Wall Street Journal digital properties including financial investment news portal Barrons.com, stock market quotes site, [...]

Yahoo 4th Quarter Revenues Went Up in 2007, But Overall Net Income Suffered
The reports and statistics are out, and as I was looking over Yahoo’s financial report for 2007, all I saw was increase in this, and increase in that. But of course, we should all not be mislead by this report. Actually, you just have to open your eyes a little bit wider to see the [...]

Google Adsense Changes PIN Program a Bit
For Google AdSense publishers, the Personal Identification Number (PIN) is a validation method used by AdSense to verify the accuracy of information provided by publishers when they sign up for an AdSense account. The PIN is usually sent out to AdSense publishers who have already reached the minimum earnings of $50 for their AdSense implementation. Now, [...]

Which Keyword Research Tool Do You Recommend?
I’m currently looking into various keyword research tools for an upcoming project. Some of the tools I have been reviewing internally are Wordze, KeywordDiscovery and the keyword research tools provided by the search engines. So, I’d like to ask our SEJ reader base; what keyword research tool(s) do you recommend and why? Thanks.

Click Fraud Jumped 15% in 2007 Says Click Forensics
Click fraud is substancially increasing along with search marketing spends according to a study released by Click Forensics today which looks at paid search click fraud figures for the fourth quarter 2007. The study shows a sharp difference between the click fraud rates of search and contextual advertising, along with numbers on clickfraud associated it [...]

Which Engine Is Giving You The Best ROI for Your Search Marketing?
EfficientFrontier, a search marketing company, has released a very interesting report on search advertisers and their ROI in paid search. “Search advertisers spent 29% more on search engine advertising in the fourth quarter of 2007 compared with the year-earlier period, and they improved their return on investment (ROI) 13.1% in the same period, according to Efficient [...]

Google Intensifies Presence in the UK
The past couple of days have been pretty busy in Google’s UK front. First, Google’s mobile search gets a much needed boost followed by the opening of UK’s financial portal. And lastly, YouTube has just rolled out its Partner Program to video publishers in the UK. Google’s mobile search is now open to users located in [...]

Yahoo, AT&T Expand Advertising Partnership
Yahoo! Inc. and AT&T Inc. announced Tuesday that they have signed a multi-year deal to share revenue from advertising on mobile phones and personal computers.  This deal expands upon a pre-existing alliance the companies have shared since 2001, and will bring Yahoo advertising to approximately 70 million AT&T customers. Terms of the deal, which includes revenue [...]

Google Overhauls Korean Search Engine, Adopting Universal Search
Wednesday morning, Google announced that they had done an overhaul on their Korean-language search engine, adopting universal search for the Korean site. Google is attempting to gain significant ground in South Korea, which just happens to be one of the world’s most wired countries. Lee Won-jin, director of Google Korea, said that the results-blending concept [...]

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